A New Medley of Memories

by Sir David Oswald Hunter Blair

The closing weeks of our long northern winter were exceptionally bleak and stormy this year; but constant occupation made them pass quickly enough. February 10 (St. Scholastica's Day), on which our good nuns kept high festival, and I officiated at their solemn services, was also the opening day of our salmon-fishing; and in the first haul we landed fifteen fish weighing just 250 pounds, the heaviest a beautiful 26-pounder. A salmon was always an acceptable present to a kind friend in the south: some we ate fresh (a welcome variation of our Lenten fare), and the rest we tried to kipper.[[11]] February 10 was otherwise memorable this year, as on that day I learned that our community was to elect its abbot a month later. We voted first on the important question whether the election should be for life, as provided in our Constitutions, or (by special indult of Rome) for a fixed term of years, which was the usual practice in the other houses of the Congregation. The votes—some sent by post and telegraph—were almost equally divided; and it was finally settled that the election should be for eight years. Nearly all our absentee monks arrived from missions, chaplaincies, and elsewhere, for the tractatus, or discussions preliminary to the election, which was fixed for Thursday in Passion Week, under the presidency of the abbot of Ampleforth. It took place after the customary mass of the Holy Spirit, and turned out a very brief affair, as I was elected by more than the requisite number of votes at the first "scrutiny," as it was called.[[12]] My confirmation and installation followed immediately—and then the letters and telegrams began pouring in, all requiring to be answered; but the roads and railways were providentially blocked for some days before Easter, by a March snowstorm of almost unprecedented violence, and our mail service was entirely suspended; so I got a little breathing time! Thus undistracted, I officiated at all the services of the season, celebrating on Easter Sunday amid rain, hail, and driving easterly gales that made the text of my Paschal sermon—"Jam hiems transiit, imber abiit et recessit,"[[13]] sound ironical enough. I spent an Eastertide Sunday at Keir, where spring had really set in, and while there made an expedition or two with an archæological enthusiast who was of our party: to Stirling Castle, much finer and more spacious than I had imagined; to the scanty remains—only the massive church tower and the old monastic dove-cot!—of the grand old abbey of Cambuskenneth; and to Doune Castle, where it was odd to come on workmen installing electric light in the venerable ruins in preparation for the coming-of-age of my Lord Doune, son of the "Bonnie Earl of Moray." I returned to Inverness just in time to attend the funeral of Andrew Macdonald, Sheriff-clerk of the county, a devout Catholic, and one of the oldest and most faithful friends of our abbey and community. There was a great gathering in the church and at the grave-side, and all seemed impressed by the solemn rites, and by the chanting of our monastic choir.

We were all busily occupied, during the next ten days, with preparations for the solemnity of my abbatial benediction, which took place on April 9, in presence of a large assemblage of invited guests and interested onlookers. It was a particular pleasure to me to receive the Church's benison at the hands of a friend of many years' standing, the venerable Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, whom I had known in old happy days at Mountstuart, as parish priest of Rothesay. Abbots Gasquet and Smith assisted the bishop; and Lovat and other friends were among the laymen who had their part in the august and impressive ceremony, which lasted for fully three hours. A hundred guests were entertained in our refectory; and I received many good wishes during the day, including telegrams from Cardinals Bourne and Merry del Val, Norfolk, Bute, and Charles Dalrymple, whose kind message gratified me as the only one received from any member of my family.[[14]] An informal concert in the evening, in the theatre-hall of the college, was a pleasant close to a memorable day.

An earlier date than might otherwise have been the case had been fixed for the abbatial election at Fort Augustus by the superiors of our Order, who desired that our abbey should be represented by its duly-constituted head at the great Benedictine gathering which was to take place in Italy this summer. The object of this assemblage, to which every abbot of Black Monks (Monachi Nigri) in Christendom received an invitation, was two-fold: first to assist at the consecration of the crypt of the church at Monte Cassino, the cradle of our venerable Order, after its complete restoration and decoration by the Beuron School of Benedictine artists; and secondly, to elect, in Rome, a coadjutor to the Abbot Primate of the Order, whose health had broken down. I went south in the last week of April, and after a flying visit to my sister in Surrey (where I said mass at the very pretty and well-kept church at Redhill), went on to stay with the French Benedictines at Farnborough, where two members of our Fort Augustus community were at that time in residence. They showed me much of interest, including the small museum of Napoleonic relics, and, of course, the crypt containing the massive granite sarcophagi containing the bodies of Napoleon III. and his only son. It so chanced that the aged Empress (then in her eighty-eighth year) had been praying in the church when we entered it; and we saw her leaving in her carriage for her château a few hundred yards away. I thought, as I glanced at the frail shrunken figure leaning on her staff, of a summer day in Paris forty-eight long years before, when I had seen her, a radiant and beautiful vision, walking in the Tuileries gardens with her little son, amid the admiring plaudits of an apparently devoted people. The young prince was mounted on a sort of two-wheeled hobby-horse, gaily painted and gilt, and I asked my companion (a French lady) what it might be. "Ah!" she replied, "c'est une invention absolument nouvelle: cela s'appelle un' 'vé-lo-ci-pède'!" The only other occasion on which I ever saw the Empress was in Rome some ten years later, when she came, widowed and dethroned, to pay her respects to the venerable Pontiff Pius IX. I have described elsewhere[[15]] this memorable visit, which I was privileged to witness as being at that time a chamberlain on duty at the Vatican.

My friend MacCall, from Arundel, joined me at Dover, and we had a swift and uneventful journey to Venice (actually my first visit!) where I spent three crowded happy days—it was all I could spare—as the guest of an old Eton and Oxford friend in his delightful palazzo on the Rio Marin. I cannot attempt any description: what impressed me most vividly, perhaps, apart from the incomparable glories of S. Marco, was our visit, in the amber and purple twilight of a Venetian May-day, to our Benedictine church of St. George—its monastery (alas! almost derelict) and graceful rose-red campanile reflected in the deep azure of the lagoon. I regretfully left Venice that night, and travelling straight through Rome, in the company of abbots of various lands and languages, reached Cassino about mid-day, and was driven up the sacred mountain in a motor-car (an innovation since my last pilgrimage hither!) passing, at various turns of the excellent road, groups of peasants toiling up the rugged immemorial path to the monastery. We were welcomed by the kind abbot at the foot of the great staircase; and I was soon installed in a pleasant cell, with a view that almost took one's breath away over the wild and mountainous Abruzzi,[[16]] and the thin clear mountain air blowing in at one's window with delicious freshness.

I do not think I ever attended such a series of prolonged and stately church functions as during the week of our sojourn at Monte Cassino. The chiefs of our Order in various countries officiated in turn at the different solemnities; and we abbots (seventy or eighty of us) sat perched on hard and narrow benches, tier upon tier, on either side of the high altar. One day it was a solemn requiem mass for the deceased benefactors of our Order: another, the consecration by the Cardinal Legate representing the Pope,[[17]] assisted by two Benedictine archbishops, of the three altars in the crypt (this ceremony alone lasted five hours, and almost finished me!), whilst on Sunday his Eminence conducted the solemn high mass and subsequent procession, the great church, cortili beyond, and every available foot of space being occupied by an immense and devout crowd of gaily-dressed peasants, most of whom had slept on the bare ground in the open air on the previous night. On this crowning day we were more than three hundred in the vast refectory for dinner, at the end of which a choir of monks chanted with thrilling effect the mediæval Laudes, or Acclamations of Hincmar, in honour of our illustrious guests. Among these magnates was my old friend of early days in Brazil, Bishop Gerard van Caloen, whom I had not seen for sixteen years.[[18]] He had grown a long grey beard, and his eyes looked out through his spectacles as sad and inscrutable as ever.[[19]] I sat next him at the ludus liturgico-scenicus, one of the diversions provided for us by the community: a grave musical setting of the life and death of Saints Benedict and Scholastica, so pathetic that I wept—to the surprise of my friend the bishop, who said he never knew that I was so tender-hearted! The play was presented by some of the young monks and their pupils (they had over two hundred in the abbey, including a lay boarding-school and two seminaries), and on another evening they gave us a really excellent concert of vocal and instrumental music. I do not know where space was found for playgrounds for all these boys, for there seemed really very little room on the mountain top for anything except the extensive buildings. The abbot of Downside, who was a great advocate of exercise, used to walk half-way down the hill and up again every day after dinner: it was, as far as I could discover, the only walk possible. In any case the available time for recreation between the long-drawn-out religious celebrations was short enough: it was a strenuous week, though a very interesting one, and rendered enjoyable by the unwearied attention which the good monks, one and all, showed to their numberless and no doubt occasionally troublesome guests. When all was over I left Monte Cassino in the pleasant company of my friend Abbot Miguel of S. Paulo, and travelled by an incredibly slow train to Rome, where we found a second Benedictine welcome of not less heartiness in the international abbey of St. Anselm on the Aventine Hill.

[[1]] The lady supported an orphanage in her castello, and also an incredible number of dogs, and distributed her affections equally between the dogs and the orphans.

[[2]] This, however, was probably a mere appeal ad misericordiam. Cyril was no novice!

[[3]] Representing Christ hounded along the road to Calvary by atheistic deputies and anti-Christian schoolmasters, the latter inciting children to fling stones at Him. On the opposite side of the way knelt a little group of believers, children and others, with arms outstretched towards the Saviour. Some of those looking at the picture were greatly affected, even to tears.

[[4]] "Majora tibi debentur pro fide Christi certamina."—Office of St. Laurence.

[[5]] It was Pugin's constant grievance that the poverty of English Catholics prevented him from carrying out his grandiose ideas. A bishop once wrote to him asking for plans for a cathedral, very spacious, extraordinarily handsome, and—above all—cheap, money being very scarce. Pugin lost his temper on seeing what was the sum suggested. "My dear Lord," he wrote back, "why not say 30s. more, and have a tower and spire when you are about it?"