MOSTLY A ROMAN DIARY
Palm Sunday, 1911, found me in Rome, on the eve of my son’s ordination
as priest. One of those extraordinary occurrences which have happened in
my life took place that day. Four of us joined at the appointed place
and hour: I and Eileen from Ireland (Dick, already in Rome) and Patrick,
just landed, in the nick of time, from India! We three met at the foot
of the Aventine and went up to Sant’ Anselmo, where we knew we should
see _the other one_ during the Palm Sunday Mass, though not to speak to
till after the long service was ended. He intoned the Gospel as deacon,
and when his deep voice reached us in the gallery we looked at each
other with a smile. None of us had seen him for a more or less long
time.
“Holy Saturday. The great day. Dick assumed the chasuble, and is
officially known now as Father Urban, though ‘Dick’ he will ever remain
with us. The weather was Romanly brilliant, but I was anxious, knowing
that these young deacons were to be on their knees in the great Lateran
Church, fasting, from 7 a.m. We three waited a long time in the piazza
of the Lateran for the pealing of the bells which should announce the
beginning of the Easter time, and which was to be the signal for our
entry into the great basilica at 9.15. We had places in two balconies,
right over the altar. Below us stood about forty deacons, with our
particular one in their midst, each holding his folded chasuble across
his arms ready for the vesting. The sight of these young fellows, in
their white and gold deacons’ vestments, was very touching. Each one was
called up by name in turn, and ascended the altar steps, where sat the
consecrating bishop, who looked more like a spirit than a mere human
creature. When Urbano Butler (pronounced _Boutler_, of course, by the
Italian voice) was called, how we craned forward! To me the whole thing
was poignant. What those boys give up! (‘Well,’ answers a voice, ‘they
give up the world, and a good thing too!’)
“We went, when the ceremony was completed, into a side chapel to receive
the newly-made young priests’ first blessing. These young fellows ran
out of the sacristy towards the crowd of expectant parents and friends,
their newly-acquired chasubles flying behind them as they ran, with
outstretched hands, for the kisses of that kneeling crowd that awaited
them. What a sight! Can any one paint it and do it justice? Old and
young, gentlefolk and peasants, smiling through tears, kissing the young
hands that blessed them. Dick came to his mother first, then to his
soldier brother, then to his sister, and I saw him lifting an aged
prelate to his feet after blessing him. Strangers knelt to him and to
the others, and I saw, in its perfection, what is meant by ‘laughing for
joy’ on those young and holy faces. There was one exception. A poor
young Irish boy, somehow, had no relative to bless--no one--he seemed
left out in his corner, and he was crying. Perhaps his mother was
‘beyond the beyond’ in far Connemara? I heard of this afterwards. Had I
seen him, I would certainly have asked his blessing too. So it
is--always some shadow, even here.
“As soon as we could get hold of Dick, in his plain habit, we hurried
him to a little _trattoria_ across the piazza, where his dear friend and
chum, John Collins,[17] treated him to a good cup of chocolate to break
his long fast.”
It was quite a necessary anti-climax for me when we and our friends all
met again at the hotel and sat down, to the number of fifteen, to a
bright luncheon I gave in honour of the day. A very celebrated English
cardinal honoured me with his presence there.
“_Easter Sunday_.--Patrick, Eileen and I received Holy Communion in the
crypt of Sant’ Anselmo from Dick’s hands at his first Mass. These few
words contain the culmination of all.
“_April 17th_.--In the afternoon we were all off, piloted by Dick, to
the celebrated Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, a long way down
towards Naples, to spend a few days, Patrick as guest within the
precincts, and E. and I lodging at the guest-house, which forms part of
the monastic farm, poised on the edge of a great precipice. The sheer
rock plunges down to the base of the mountain whereon stands the
wonderful monastery. It is something to see a great domed church on the
top of such a mountain, and a building of such vast proportions,
containing one of the greatest libraries in the world. A mule path was
all the monks intended for communication between the two worlds, but now
a great carriage road takes us up by an easy zigzag.
“_April 18th_.--Every hour of our visit to Monte Cassino must be lived.
I made a sketch of the monastery and the abyss into which one peers
from that great height, with angry red clouds gathering over the tops of
the snowy mountains. But my sketches are too didactic; and, indeed, who
but Turner could convey to the beholder the awful spirit of that scene?
The tempest sent us in and we had the experience of a good thunderstorm
amidst those severe mountains that have the appearance of a petrified
chaos. Last night E. woke up to find the room full of a surprising blue
light, which at first she took to be the dawn because, through the open
windows, she heard the whole land thrilling with the song of birds. But
such a _blue_ light for dawn? She got up to see. The light was that of
the full moon and the birds were nightingales.
“I was enchanted to see the beautiful dress of the peasant women here.
Their white _tovaglie_ are looped back in a more graceful line than the
Roman. The queerest little thin black hogs, like poor relations of the
tall, pink Valentia variety which I have already signalised, browse on
the steep ascent to this great stronghold, and everything still looks
wild, in spite of the carriage road. I should have preferred coming up
here on a mule. Our suppers at the guest-house were Spartan. Rather
dismal, having to pump conversation with the Italian guests at this
festive(!) board. Our intellectual food, however, was rich. The abbot
and his monks did the honours of far-famed Monte Cassino for us with the
kindest attention, showing very markedly their satisfaction in
possessing Brother Urban, whose father’s name they held in great
esteem.”
On April 22nd we had the long-expected audience with Pio Decimo. It was
only semi-private and there were crowds, including eleven English naval
officers, to be presented. I had my little speech ready, but when we
came into the Pope’s presence we found him standing instead of restfully
seated, and he looked so fatigued and so aged since I last saw him that
I knew I must keep him listening as short a time as possible. First I
presented “_Mio figlio primogenito, ufficiale_;” then “_mio figlio
Benedettino_” and then “_mia figlia_.” He spoke a little while to Dick
in Latin, and then we knelt and received his blessing and departed, to
see him no more.
It is a great thing to have seen Leo XIII. and Pius X., as I have had
the opportunity of seeing them. Both have left a deep impression on
modern life, especially the former, who was a great statesman. To see
the fragile scabbard of the flesh one wondered how the keen sword of the
spirit could be held at all within it. It was his diplomatic tact that
smoothed away many of the difficulties that obtruded themselves between
the Vatican and the Quirinal, and that tact kept the Papacy on good
terms with France and her Republic, to which he called on all French
Catholics to give their support. It was he who forced “the man of blood
and iron” to relax the ferocious laws against the Church in Germany, and
to allow the evicted bishops to return to their Sees. Diplomatic
relations with Germany were renewed, and the Church’s laws regarding
marriage and education had to be re-admitted by the Government. Even the
dark “Orthodox” intolerance of Russia bent sufficiently to his influence
to allow of the establishment of Catholic episcopal Sees in that
country, and the cessation of the imprisonment of priests. The
episcopate in Scotland, too, was restored. We owe to him that spread of
Catholicism in the United States which has long been such a surprise to
the onlooker. Then there are his great encyclicals on the Social
Question, setting forth the Christian teaching on the relations between
capital and labour; establishing the social movement on Christian lines.
How clearly he saw the threat of a great European war at no very distant
date from his time unless armaments were reduced. That refined mind
inclined him to the advancement of the cause of the Arts and of
learning. Students thank him for opening the Vatican archives to them,
which he did with the words, “The Church has nothing to fear from the
publication of the Truth.” His is the Vatican observatory--one of the
most famous in the world. It makes one smile to remember his remarks on
the then young Kaiser William II., who seems to have struck the Holy
Father as somewhat bumptious on the occasion of his historic visit.
“That young man,” as he called him, evidently impressed the Pope as one
having much to learn.
What a contrast Pius X. presents to his predecessor! The son of a
postman at Rieti, a little town in Venetia. I remember when a deputation
of young men came to pay him their respects at the Vatican, arriving on
their bicycles, that he told them how much he would have liked a bike
himself when, as a bare-legged boy, he had to trudge every day seven
miles to school and back. Needless to say, he had no diplomatic or
political training, but he led the truly simple life, very saintly and
apostolic. He devoted his energies chiefly to the purely pastoral side
of his office. We are grateful to him for his reform of Church music
(and it needed it in Italy!). He was very emphatic in urging frequent
communion and early communion for children. His condemnation of
“modernism” is fresh in all our minds, and we are glad he removed the
prohibition on Catholics from standing for the Italian Parliament,
thereby allowing them to obtain influential positions in public life. He
took a firm stand with regard to the advancing encroachment of the
French Government on the liberties of the Church in his day. His policy
is being amply justified under our very eyes.
We joined the big garden party, after the Papal audience, at the British
Embassy. A great crush in that lovely remnant of the once glorious,
far-spreading gardens I can remember, nearly all turned to-day into
deadly streets on which a gridiron of tram lines has been screwed down.
Prince Arthur of Connaught brought in the Queen-Mother, Margherita, to
the lawn where the dancing took place. The Rennell-Rodd children as
little fairies were pretty and danced charmingly, but I felt for the
professional dancer who, poor thing, was not in her first youth, and
unkindly dealt with by the searching daylight. To have to caper airily
on that grass was no joke. It was heavy going for her and made me
melancholy, in conjunction with my memories of the old Ludovisi gardens
and the vanished pines.
On October 26th my youngest daughter, Eileen, was married to Lord
Gormanston, at the Brompton Oratory, the church so loved by our mother,
and where I was received. Our dear Dick married them. I had the
reception in Lowndes Square in the beautiful house lent by a friend.
Ireland has many historic ancestral dwellings, and one of these became
my daughter’s new home in Meath. Shakespeare’s “cloud-capp’d towers”
seemed not so much the “baseless fabric” of the poet’s vision when I
saw, one day, the low-lying trail of a bright Irish mist brush the high
tops of the towers of Gormanston. A thing of visions, too, is realised
there in a cloister carved so solidly out of the dense foliage of the
yew that never monastic cloister of stone gave a more restful
“contiguity of shade.”
I spent the winter of 1911--12 in London, and worked hard at water
colours, of which I was able to exhibit a goodly number at a “one-man
show” in the spring. The King lent my good old “Roll Call,” and the
whole thing was a success. I showed many landscapes there as well as
military subjects; many Italian and Egyptian drawings made during my
travels, and scenes in Ireland. These exhibitions in a well-lighted
gallery are pleasant, and the private view day a social rendezvous for
one’s friends.
Through my sister, with whom I revisited Rome early in 1913, I had the
pleasure of knowing many Americans there. How refreshing they are, and
responsive (I don’t mean the mere tourist!), whereas my dear compatriots
are very heavy in hand sometimes. American women are particularly well
read and cultivated and full of life. They don’t travel in Europe for
nothing. I have had some dull experiences in the English world when
embarking, at our solemn British dinners, on cosmopolitan subjects for
conversation. What was I to say to a man who, having lately returned
from Florence, gave it as his opinion that it was only “a second-rate
Cheltenham”? I tried that unlucky Florentine subject on another. He:
“Florence? Oh, yes, I liked that--that--_minaret thing_ by the side of
the--the--er----“ I: “The Duomo?” He: “Oh, yes, the Duomo.” I (in
gloomy despair): “Do you mean Giotto’s Tower?” Collapse of our
conversation.
Very probably I bade my last farewell to St. Peter’s that year. I had
more than once bidden a provisional “good-bye” at sundown on leaving
Rome to that dome which I always loved to see against the western glory
from the familiar terrace on Monte Pincio, only to return, on a further
visit, and see it again with the old, fresh feeling of thankfulness. My
initial enthusiasm, crudely chronicled as it is in my early Diary on
first coming in sight of St. Peter’s, was a young artist’s emotion, but
to the maturer mind what a miracle that Sermon in Stone reveals! The
tomb of one Simon, no better, before his call, than any ordinary
fisherman one may see to-day on our coasts--and now? “TU ES PETRUS....”