A New Medley of Memories

by Sir David Oswald Hunter Blair

1912-1913

The Lovat family were all interested in St. Vincent's Home for Cripples, near London, where a daughter of the house (a Sister of Charity) was a nurse; and I attended at their invitation a concert in aid of it, the day before I left London, at Sunderland House. The sumptuous ball-room, with its walls of Italian marble, heavily gilt ceiling, and chandeliers of rock crystal, made a handsome setting for a brilliant audience, which included Queen Amélie of Portugal. Her Majesty honoured me with a short conversation during the afternoon, and seemed interested to hear of my sojourn, some years before, in a Portuguese monastery (Cucujães), and of our charitable but eccentric neighbour there, the Condessa de Penha Longa.[[1]] The concert, which included two woebegone recitations from Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and a funny song written, composed, and sung by Cyril Maude—his first effort, he assured us, in that line[[2]]—was a success by which, I hope, the poor cripples benefited considerably. Next day I made a bee-line for the south of France, going through Paris without stopping. The season was hardly open in Aix-les-Bains; and the pretty town looked a little triste, with many shops still shut up. But the spring weather was fresh and bright, and I was much in the open air between the stages of my "cure," which was fairly severe. I liked the friendly Savoyards, a pious and faithful race, though with such a reputation for grumbling that their own king (Victor Amadeus II.) said of them, "Ils ne sont jamais contents: s'il pleuvait de séquins, ils dirait que le bon Dieu casse leurs ardoises!" They did not, however, grumble in my hearing; and the portly curé of the new church on the hill, with whom I made friends, praised their simplicity and virtue. He organized various attractions during May in his church, whither I used to conduct some of my hotel-acquaintances after dinner, assuring them that they would be better entertained there than in losing their money on the "little horses" in the stuffy casino. One evening there would be projections lumineuses, lantern-views of some of Our Lady's loveliest churches in France, or of the adventures of Joan of Arc, always with racy comments from his reverence; at another time a conférence dialoguée—the vicaire (disguised in a red muffler) propounding agnostic conundrums from a pew, and the curé answering them triumphantly from the pulpit, amid the plaudits of the congregation. He was a really excellent preacher; and his series of May sermons (which I insisted on my friends staying to hear) on "Les Péchés d'un homme d'affaires"—"de plaisir"—"d'État," and so on, were uncommonly practical as well as eloquent. Pentecost, a great popular festival here, was kept with piety as well as merriment. The church was crowded with communicants from daybreak: later on the Cardinal Archbishop of Chambéry (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at breakfast at the presbytery) came and confirmed a large number of children who had made their first Communions on Ascension Day, after himself giving them a pretty searching public examination in the catechism. The afternoon and evening were devoted to festivity—dancing, gymnastics, military retraites, fireworks, illuminations, and a sort of Greenwich Fair; all very gay and harmless.

The exigencies of my cure would not permit of distant expeditions to Anneçy, the Grande Chartreuse, etc., which I should have liked to visit. One interesting excursion I managed, to the Cistercian Abbey of Hautecombe, charmingly situated on a wooded promontory overlooking Lake Bourget. There was a resident community of thirty monks—the only one left in France under the then anti-Christian régime. They owed their exemption to the fact of their church being the Westminster Abbey of Savoy, containing some thirty tombs of the ancestors of the King of Italy, who had protested to the French Government against the expulsion of the guardians of the ashes of his ancestors; and so they were allowed to remain and serve God in peace. Unfortunately the fine twelfth-century church had been restored and re-restored in debased and florid fashion, a single chapel being all that was left intact of the pre-Revolution building.

I left Aix, much the better for my visit, at the end of May, travelling straight to Paris with two ladies—one an extraordinarily voluble Irish widow, in my carriage. The weather was hot; and I tired myself out with an exhaustive and exhausting visit to the Salon and the sculptures in the Champs Elysées. The picture of the year (surrounded always by a silent and interested crowd) was Jean Beraud's "New Way of the Cross,"[[3]] which, if it made only a percentage of French men and women realize what the public renunciation of Christianity meant, was calculated to do more good than many sermons. A week later I was at Keir, where I found some anxiety caused by the serious illness of Lovat, who was laid up with typhoid, and fretting at being unable, for the first time since the raising of the Lovat Scouts a dozen years before, to take command of the corps at their annual training. We enjoyed some lovely June weather at Keir, motoring one day to Stirling's picturesque lodge on Loch Lubnaig, and lunching al fresco among stonecrops and saxifrages and pansies, on a bank overlooking the loch and the purple mass of Ben Ledi. Another day we saw the smart little soldier-boys of Queen Victoria's School at Dunblane get their prizes from the Duchess of Montrose, with whose husband I had a chat about our Etonian days together, consule Planco.

I was bidden to Ampleforth for the jubilee celebrations there (their fine college had been opened in 1862), which was graced by the presence of Cardinal Bourne—a stately figure with his long scarlet train sweeping over the green lawns in the great open-air procession which was the central feature of the solemnities. The college O.T.C. formed an uncommonly smart bodyguard to his Eminence, though they puzzled, and even shocked, some of the old Benedictines present by remaining covered (in military fashion) during the service. The after-luncheon oratory was neither more nor less tedious than usual; but we all enjoyed later an admirable presentment by the boys of The Frogs of Aristophanes, with Parry's delightful music. I got back to Fort Augustus in time for the canonical visitation of the monastery by the Abbot-president, to whom I spoke of my hope that I might be allowed to return for a time to Brazil; but he replied to me, in effect, in the words of St. Sixtus to his faithful deacon,[[4]] and I could only resign myself with what grace I could to the inevitable. I learned on July 2, the thirty-second anniversary of my religious profession, that our prior's resignation of office, owing to his almost continual ill-health, had been accepted, and that I was to be appointed in his place. Meanwhile the Oxford Local Examinations called me (for the last time) to North Staffordshire, where it was pleasantly cool among the hills and wooded glens of Oakamoor. I spent a Sunday at Cheadle, in the valley below, and admired the graceful church which Pugin had been given carte blanche by the "Good Earl of Shrewsbury" to build as he liked, with no fear of the "accursed blue pencil" (as he called it) which so often mutilated his elaborate designs.[[5]] "As attractive an example of the architect's skill as could be quoted," a severe critic[[6]] had called the Cheadle church; and the tribute was well deserved. Two days after my return to our abbey I was formally installed in office as prior, by my good friend the abbot of Ampleforth, with the same ceremonial which I had witnessed thirty-four years previously, when Dom Jerome Vaughan was inducted into office in the vaulted guard-room of the old Fort, afterwards incorporated into the monastic guest-house. The burden of superiorship, a heavy one enough, was lightened not only by the unanimous kindness of my own brethren, but by the cordiality with which my appointment was greeted by friends outside, including the bishop and clergy of our diocese of Aberdeen, who were the guests of the abbey for their annual retreat, a few days after my installation. A consoling message, too, came to me from the Holy Father himself through Père Lépicier, who had come from Rome in the quality of Apostolic Visitor to Scotland, and stayed with us for some days; a Franco-Roman diplomatist with the suavest possible manner and address, masking (it struck me) no little acuteness and a strong personality. His visit, and that of the diocesan clergy, coincided with St. Oswald's Day, which we kept very happily, many of our neighbours in the village and district, including my old friend the parish minister, dining with us in the monastic refectory. A still older friend, George Lane Fox, sent me a cordial telegram; and I was able to send one in return congratulating him on the handsome testimonial he had just received on his retirement from a quarter of a century's office as Vice-chancellor of the Primrose League. A grief to us both, only a few days later, was the news of the death, at our abbey of Cesena in Italy, of his eldest son, who had been closely connected with Fort Augustus from his childhood, first as a little boy in the abbey-school, and later as a monk and priest of our community.

One of my first works as prior was to organize a work which we had very gladly undertaken—that of ministering as naval chaplains to ships in Scottish waters. The chief naval stations were Lamlash (Arran) in the south-west and Cromarty in the northeast; and thither certain of our fathers journeyed every week, meeting as a rule with every kindness and consideration from the captains and officers, and getting into touch with the considerable number of Catholic bluejackets on the various ships. Sometimes, between the Sundays, they found time to prosecute the quest, which was ever before us, for our church-building fund; and our good Father Odo, in particular, reaped quite a little harvest, during his Lamlash chaplaincy, in my native diocese of Galloway, where there were still kind friends who remembered me, and were glad to show sympathy with an object which I had so deeply at heart. Dom Odo was not only a zealous priest but an equally zealous antiquarian and F.R.S.A. (Scot.). He had specialized in artificial islands, about which he read an interesting paper this autumn at the British Association meeting at Dundee; and he was elected about the same time president of the Inverness Field Club, the premier scientific society of the north of Scotland. I record this with pleasure as an example (not, of course, an isolated one) of the Benedictine liberty which permits and encourages the members of our Order to cultivate freely—-apart from their professional studies and avocations—such tastes and talents as they may possess, and which, needless to say, greatly adds to the interest and variety of their lives.

My own life was of course, after my entering on the office and duties of prior, much more confined than heretofore to the precincts of our Scottish abbey. This was no additional burden to me; for my life, whether at Fort Augustus or Oxford or in Brazil, had always been a life in community; and I had always been happy and at home in the society of my brethren in the monastery. Perhaps the most tiring and trying feature in my position as superior was the never-ceasing correspondence of all kinds which it involved, and with which one had personally to grapple; but in other ways the wise subdivision of labour which prevails in a well-ordered religious house did much to lighten the daily burden, and the ready willingness in all quarters to afford whatever help and relief was needed was a constant solace and encouragement. The busy days thus passed quickly by, varied by the continual influx of guests—always interested and sometimes interesting—who were never wanting in our abbey. Our neighbours, too, were kind and friendly; and their motors were often at one's disposal for an afternoon's drive up one or other of the beautiful glens which ran westward from our Gleann Mhor, the Great Glen of all, to the sea. Then there were duties connected with the parish and district Councils, to which I was elected soon after becoming prior; and the constant interest of directing the plan of campaign in aid of our building-fund, and the satisfaction of seeing its steady increase. I recall, during those bright still days of late autumn (often the loveliest season of the Highland year), a retreat given us by an eloquent Dominican; and also a visit from Lady Lovat, who, as our founder's widow, enjoyed the privilege of entering the monastic enclosure with her "suite" (in this case her daughter-in-law, Lovat's wife, and a friend)—a formal enough affair, but of course novel and interesting to the ladies concerned. According to the quaint antique prescription, the great bell was tolled when they entered the cloister, warning the monks to remain in their cells: no meat nor drink could be served to them within the enclosure: they were to visit only the "public places" of the monastery, and were enjoined "not to gaze curiously about them." Lady Lovat would fain have lingered in our well-furnished library; but our little procession swept on relentlessly, and her literary longings remained ungratified.[[7]]

It was not, I think, until November of this year that I spent a night away from Fort Augustus, being bidden to Liverpool to keep, with a large gathering of his friends, the golden jubilee of our kind old friend Bishop Hedley. There was a High Mass, a sermon, and (of course) a festival dinner, with many speeches—prosy, melancholy, retrospective, or humorous, according to the mood or the idiosyncrasy of the several speakers. My brief oration, conveying the thanks of the guests, included two funny stories, which so favourably impressed one of the reporters, that he announced in his paper next day that "the honours of the evening's oratory undoubtedly rested with a venerable and genial monk from the other side of the Border!" I stayed at Glasgow on my way north, to take the chair at the annual festival of the Caledonian Catholic Association, an admirably beneficent institution in which I was glad to show my interest.[[8]] After the concert, and before the ball which followed, Stirling and I left for Keir in a hired motor-car, which broke down badly in the middle of Cumbernauld Muir, leaving us plantés-là till past midnight. There was the residuum of a big shooting-party at Keir; and we all attended next day a vocal recital given in the old cathedral by "Mlle. Hommedieu"—an odd-sounding name: I wondered if she was "Miss Godman" in private life.

I had spent Christmas so often at Beaufort (no less than eleven times since 1893) that it seemed strange to be absent from there this year; but I had of course to preside at the solemnities in our own church, which (notwithstanding the appalling weather conditions) was crowded to the doors for the midnight services. We dined, as usual, in the vacant school refectory, gaily decorated, with a blazing log fire: there was an informal concert afterwards, and the festive evening was enjoyed by all. I made a Christmas call on my old friend Sir Aubone Fife,[[9]] whose annual quest for hinds had been interrupted by illness. He rented the winter shooting of Inchnacardoch Forest from Lovat, and spent every Christmas and New Year solus at our little hotel, content with his sport, his own society, and an occasional visit from me! He had comfortable bachelor quarters in Jermyn Street: London for him was bounded by Pall Mall and Oxford Street: his home and recreation were in his many clubs, and he always reminded me irresistibly of a twentieth-century Major Pendennis. I managed to put in two nights at Beaufort in Christmas week, receiving a hearty welcome from the merry party of Frasers and Maxwells assembled there, and returned to the abbey for New Year's Day, in time to take part in the various holiday entertainments—Christmas trees, theatricals, etc., organised for our good people. Twelfth-day I spent at Keir, preaching (seated, my usual practice now),[[10]] to a good congregation in the beautiful private chapel, which was almost complete; and before returning home I paid a little visit to Kelburn, where I found my poor brother-in-law in bed with a broken crown (having fallen downstairs!) but my nephew the flying-man apparently quite recovered, I was glad to see, from his more serious knock on the head at Bournemouth. I was pleased to hear from my gunner brother, who was staying at Kelburn, of his appointment—an excellent berth—as A.A.G. at the War Office.