Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Oswald Hunter Blair]
A NEW MEDLEY OF MEMORIES
BY THE
RIGHT REV. SIR DAVID HUNTER-BLAIR
BT., O.S.B., M.A.
TITULAR ABBOT OF DUNFERMLINE
WITH PORTRAIT
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
1922
[_All rights reserved_]
TO THE
MASTER AND SCHOLARS
OF
SAINT BENET'S HALL, OXFORD,
IN MEMORY OF
TEN HAPPY YEARS.
{vii}
FOREWORD
Some kindly critics of my _Medley of Memories_, and not a few private
correspondents (most of them unknown to me) have been good enough to
express a lively hope that I would continue my reminiscences down to a
later date than the year 1903, when I closed the volume with my jubilee
birthday.
It is in response to this wish that I have here set down some of my
recollections of the succeeding decade, concluding with the outbreak of
the Great War.
One is rather "treading on eggshells" when printing impressions of
events and persons so near our own time. But I trust that there is
nothing unkind in these more recent memories, any more than in the
former. There should not be; for I have experienced little but
kindness during a now long life; and I approach the Psalmist's limit of
days with only grateful sentiments towards the many friends who have
helped to make that life a happy as well as a varied one.
DAVID O. HUNTER-BLAIR, O.S.B.
S. Paulo, Brazil,
_March_, 1922.
{ix}
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.--1903-1904.
The Premier Duke--Oxford Chancellorship--A Silver Jubilee--In
Canterbury Close--Hyde Park Oratory--Oxford under Water--"Twopence
each" at Christ Church--Church Music--Gregorian Centenary in
Rome--Pope Pius X.--Pilgrims and Autograph--Cradle of the
Benedictine Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER II.--1904.
"Sermons from Stones"--_Alcestis_ at Bradfield--Whimsical
Texts--Old Masters at Ushaw--A Mozart-Wagner Festival--Bismarck
and William II.--"Longest Word" Competition--Medal-week at
St. Andrews--Oxford Rhodes Scholars--Liddell and Scott--Lord
Rosebery at the Union--Oxford Portraits--Wytham
Abbey--Christmas in Bute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
CHAPTER III.--1905.
A "Catholic Demonstration"--Boy-prodigies--Spring Days in
Naples--"C.-B." at Oxford--Medical Sceptics--Blenheim
Hospitality--A Scoto-Irish Wedding--Dunskey
Transformed--Lunatics up-to-date--Eton War Memorial--Four
Thousand Guests at Arundel--At Exton Park--Abbotsford and
Blairquhan--Lothair's Bride . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
CHAPTER IV.--1905-1906.
Modern Gothic--Contrasts in South Wales--Chamberlain's Last
Speech--A Catholic Dining-club--Lovat Scouts' Memorial--A Tory
_debacle_--Hampshire Marriages--On the _Cote d'Azur_--Three
Weddings--An Old Irish Peer--Guernsey in June--A Coming of Age
on the Cotswolds--The Warwick Pageant--Bank Holiday at
Scarborough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
CHAPTER V.--1906-1907.
Melrose and Westminster--Newman Memorial Church--The Evil
Eye--Catholic Scholars at Oxford--Grace before Meat--A
Literary Dinner--A Jamaica Tragedy--An Abbatial
Blessing--Deaths of Oxford friends--Robinson Ellis--A Genteel
Watering-place--Visit to Dover--Pageants at Oxford and
Bury--Hugh Benson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
CHAPTER VI.--1907-1908.
Benedictine Honours at Oxford--Anecdotes from Sir
Hubert--Everingham and Bramham--Early Rising--Mass in a
Deer-forest--A Bishop's Visiting-cards--A Miniature College--Our
New Chancellor--Bodley's Librarian--Dean Burgon--A Welsh
Bishop--Illness and Convalescence--H.M.S. _Victory_ . . . . . . 94
{x}
CHAPTER VII.--1908.
Miss Broughton at Oxford--Notable Trees--An Infantile
Rest-cure--Equestrians from Italy--"The Colours"--A
Parson's Statistics--Two Anxious Mammas--"Let us Kill
Something"--Scottish Dessert--A Highland Bazaar--I Resign
Mastership of Hall--Notes on Newman--Scriptural
Heraldry--Myres Macership--Scots Catholic Judge--At a
_chateau_ in Picardy--Excursions from Oxford--St. Andrew's
Day at Cardiff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
CHAPTER VIII.--1908-1909.
Christmas at Beaufort--_Annus mirabilis_--Kenelm Vaughan--A
"Heathen Turk"--Sven Hedin--Centenary of Darwin--Oxford
and Louvain--Hugh Cecil on the House of Commons--Arundel
itself again--The Bridegroom's Father weeps--Cambridge
Fisher Society--Bodleian Congestion--Shackleton at Albert
Hall--Oakamoor, Faber, and Pugin--Welsh Pageant--Hampton
Court--Father Hell and Mr. Dams!--A Bishop's
Portrait--Gleann Mor Gathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
CHAPTER IX.--1909-1910.
The White Garden at Beaufort--Andrew Lang--A Holy Well--The
new Ladycross--"My terrible Great-uncle!"--Off to
Brazil---King's Birthday on Board---The New City
Beautiful--Arrival at S. Paulo---An Abbey
Rebuilding--Cosmopolitan State and City--College of S.
Bento--Stray Englishmen--Progressive Paulistas--Education in
Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
CHAPTER X.--1910.
Provost Hornby--Christmas in Brazil--Architecture in S.
Paulo--The Snake-farm--Guests at the Abbey--End of the
Isolation of Fort Augustus--A Benedictine Festival--Sinister
Italians--Death of Edward VII.--Brazilian Funerals--Popular
Devotion--"Fradesj estrangeiros"--Football in the
Tropics--Homeward Voyage--Santos and Madeira--Sir John Benn . . 170
CHAPTER XI.--1910-1911.
A Wiesbaden Eye Klinik--The Rhine in Rain--Cologne and
Brussels--Wedding in the Hop-Country--The New Departure at
Fort Augustus--St. Andrew's without Angus--Oxford
Again--Highland Marriage at Oratory--One Eye _versus_
Two--Cambridge _versus_ Oxford---A Question of Colour--Ex-King
Manuel--A Great Church at Norwich--_Ave Verum_ in the
Kirk--Fort Augustus Post-bag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
CHAPTER XII.--1911.
Monks and Salmon--FitzAlan Chapel--April on Thames-side--My
sacerdotal Jubilee--Kinemacolor--Apparition at an
Abbey--St. Lucius--Faithful Highlanders--Hay Centenary--Nuns
for S. Paulo--A Brief Marriage Ceremony--Pagan
Mass-music--Seventeen New Cardinals--Doune Castle--A Quest
for our Abbey Church--Great Coal Strike--at Stonyhurst and
Ware--Katherine Howard--Twentieth-Century Chinese--An
Anglo-Italian Abbey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
{xi}
CHAPTER XIII.--1912-1913.
A Concert for Cripples--Queen Amelie--May at Aix-les-Bains--A
Sample Savoyards--Hautecombe--A "Picture of the Year"--A
Benedictine O.T.C.--Pugin's "Blue Pencil"--My nomination
as Prior--Fort Augustus and the Navy--Work in the
Monastery--Ladies in the Enclosure--A Bishop's Jubilee--A
Modern Major Pendennis--My Election to Abbacy--Installation
Ceremonies--Empress Eugenie at Farnborough--A Week at Monte
Cassino--Fatiguing Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
CHAPTER XIV.--1913-1914.
St Anselm's, Rome--Election of a Primate--My Uncle's
Grave--Milan and Maredsous--Canterbury Revisited--An Oratorian
Festival--Poetical Bathos--A Benedictine Chapter--King of
Uganda at Fort Augustus--Threefold Work of our Abbey--Funeral
of Bishop Turner--Bute Chapel at Westminster--A
Patriarchal Lay-brother--Abbot Gasquet a Cardinal--Corpus
Christi at Arundel--Eucharistic Congress at Cardiff--The Great
War--Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
APPENDIX I. _Novissima Verba_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
II. Darwin's _Credo_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
{1}
A NEW MEDLEY OF MEMORIES
CHAPTER I
1903-1904
I take up again the thread of these random recollections in the autumn
of 1903, the same autumn in which I kept my jubilee birthday at St.
Andrews. I went from there successively to the Herries' at Kinharvie,
the Ralph Kerrs at Woodburn, near Edinburgh, and the Butes at
Mountstuart, meeting, curiously enough, at all three places Norfolk and
his sister, Lady Mary Howard--though it was not so curious after all,
as the Duke was accustomed to visit every autumn his Scottish relatives
at these places, as well as the Loudouns in their big rather
out-at-elbows castle in Ayrshire. He had no taste at all either for
shooting, fishing, or riding, or for other country pursuits such as
farming, forestry, or the like; but he made himself perfectly happy
during these country house visits. The least exacting of guests, he
never required to be amused, contenting himself with a game of croquet
(the only outdoor game he favoured), an occasional long walk, and a
daily romp with his young relatives, the children of the house, who
were all devoted to him. He read the newspapers perfunctorily, {2} but
seldom opened a book: he knew and cared little for literature, science,
or art, with the single exception of architecture, in which he was
keenly interested. The most devout of Catholics, he was nothing of an
ecclesiologist: official and hereditary chief of the College of Arms,
he was profoundly uninterested in heraldry, whether practically or
historically:[1] the head of the nobility of England, he was so little
of a genealogist that he was never at pains to correct the
proof--annually submitted to him as to others--of the preposterous
details of his pedigree as set forth in the pages of "Burke." I seem
to be describing an ignoramus; but the interesting thing was that the
Duke, with all his limitations, was really nothing of the kind. He
could, and did, converse on a great variety of subjects in a very
clear-headed and intelligent way; there was something engaging about
his utter unpretentiousness and deference to the opinions of others;
and he had mastered the truth that the secret of successful
conversation is to talk about what interests the other man and not what
interests oneself. No one could, in fact, talk to the Duke much, or
long, without getting to love him; and every one who came into contact
with him in their several degrees, from princes and prelates and
politicians to cabmen and crossing-sweepers, did love him. "His Grace
'as a good 'eart, that's what 'e 'as," said the old lady who used to
keep the crossing nearly opposite Norfolk House, and sat against the
railings {3} with her cat and her clean white apron (I think she did
her sweeping by deputy); "he'll never cross the square, whatever 'urry
'e's in, without saying a kind word to me." One sees him striding down
Pall Mall in his shabby suit, one gloveless hand plucking at his black
beard, the other wagging in constant salutation of passing friends, and
his kind brown eyes peering from under the brim of a hat calculated to
make the late Lord Hardwicke turn in his grave. A genuine
man--earnest, simple, affable, sincere, and yet ducal too; with a
certain grave native dignity which sat strangely well on him, and on
which it was impossible ever to presume. Panoplied in such dignity
when occasion required, as in great public ceremonies, our homely
little Duke played his part with curious efficiency; and it was often
remarked that in State pageants the figure of the Earl Marshal was
always one of the most striking in the splendid picture.
The only country seat which the premier Duke owned besides Arundel
Castle was Derwent Hall, a fine old Jacobean house in the Derwent
valley, on the borders of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. The Duke had lent
this place for some years past to his only brother as his country
residence (he later bequeathed it to him by will); and herein this same
autumn I paid a pleasant visit to Lord and Lady Edmund Talbot, on my
way south to Oxford. In London I went to see the rich and sombre
chapel of the Holy Souls just finished in Westminster Cathedral, at the
expense of my old friend Mrs. Walmesley (nee Weld Blundell). The
Archbishop's white marble _cathedra_ was in course of erection in the
sanctuary, and preparations were going forward {4} for his
enthronement.[2] Eight immense pillars of onyx were lying on the
floor, and the great painted rood leaned against the wall. I was glad
to see some signs of progress.
Our principal domestic interest, on reassembling at Oxford for
Michaelmas Term, was the prospect of exchanging the remote and
incommodious semi-detached villa, in which our Benedictine Hall had
been hitherto housed, for the curious mansion near Folly Bridge, built
on arches above the river, "standing in its own grounds," as
auctioneers say (it could not well stand in any one else's!), and known
to most Oxonians as Grandpont House. Besides the Thames bubbling and
swirling at its foundations, it had a little lake of its own, and was
(except by a very circuitous _detour_) accessible only by punt. Rather
fascinating! we all thought; but when the pundits from Ampleforth Abbey
came to inspect, the floods happened to be out everywhere, and our
prospective Hall looked so like Noah's Ark floating on a waste of
waters, that they did not "see their way"[3] to approve of either the
site or the house.
Oxford was preoccupied at this time with the question of who was to
succeed to the Chancellorship {5} vacant by the death of Lord
Salisbury. I attended a meeting of the Conservative caucus summoned to
discuss the matter at the President's lodgings at St. John's. These
gatherings were generally amusing, as the President (most unbending of
old Tories) used to make occasional remarks of a disconcerting kind.
On this occasion he treated us to some reminiscences of the great
Chancellors of the past, adding, "I look round the ranks of prominent
men in the country, including cabinet ministers and ex-ministers, and I
see few if any men of outstanding or even second-rate ability"--the
point of the joke being that next to him was seated the late Chancellor
of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, whose presence and counsel
had been specially invited. The names of Lords Goschen, Lansdowne,
Rosebery, and Curzon were mentioned, the first-named being evidently
the favourite. "Scholar, statesman, financier, educationalist," I
wrote of him in the _Westminster Gazette_ a day or two later, "a
distinguished son of Oriel, versatile, prudent and popular.... The
Fates seem to point to Lord Goschen as the one who shall sit in the
vacant chair."[4]
Another less famous Oriel man, my old friend Mgr. Tylee, was in Oxford
this autumn, on his annual visitation of his old college, and came to
see me several times. He gravely assured me that he had "preached his
last sermon in India"; but this was {6} a false alarm. The good
monsignore was as great a "farewellist" as Madame Patti or the late Mr.
Sims Reeves, and at least three years later I heard that he was
meditating another descent on Hindostan; though why he went there, or
why he stayed away, I imagine few people either knew or cared.[5]
We were all interested this term in the award of the senior Kennicott
Hebrew scholarship to a Catholic, Frederic Ingle of St. John's, who had
already, previous to his change of creed, gained the Pusey and Ellerton
Prize, and other honours in {7} Scriptural subjects. One could not
help wondering whether it came as a little surprise to the Anglican
examiners to find that they had awarded the scholarship to a young man
studying for the Catholic priesthood at the Collegio Beda in Rome, an
institution specially founded for the ecclesiastical education of
converts to the Roman Church. The "Hertford" this year, by the way,
the Blue Ribbon of Latin scholarship, was also held by a Catholic, a
young Jesuit of Pope's Hall--Cyril Martindale, the most brilliant
scholar of his time at Oxford, who carried off practically every
classical distinction the university had to offer. The "Hertford" was
won next year (1904) by another Catholic, Wilfrid Greene, scholar of
Christ Church.
I celebrated in 1903 not only my fiftieth birthday, but the silver
jubilee of my entrance into the Benedictine Order; and I went to keep
the latter interesting anniversary at Belmont Priory in Herefordshire,
where twenty-five years before (December 8, 1878) I had received the
novice's habit. Two or three of the older members of the community,
who had been my fellow-novices in those far-off days, were still in
residence there; and from them and all I received a warm welcome and
many kind congratulations. These jubilees, golden and silver, are apt
to make one moralize; and some words from an unknown or forgotten
source were in my mind at this time:
Such dates are milestones on the grey, monotonous road of our lives:
they are eddying pools in the stream of time, in which the memory rests
for a moment, like the whirling leaf in the torrent, until it is caught
up anew, and carried on by the resistless current towards the
everlasting ocean.
{8}
Soon after the end of term I made my way northwards, to spend
Christmas, as so many before, with the Lovats at Beaufort, where the
topic of interest was the engagement, just announced, of Norfolk to his
cousin, elder daughter of Lord Herries. We played our traditional game
of croquet in the sunshine of Christmas Day, and spent a pleasant
fortnight, of which, however, the end was saddened for me by the
premature death of my niece's husband, Charles Orr Ewing, M.P. They
had only just finished the beautiful house they had built on the site
of my old home, Dunskey, and were looking forward to happy years there.
I was at Arundel for a few days after New Year, and found the Duke very
busy with improvements, inspecting new gardening operations, and so on;
"and after all," he said, "some one will be coming by-and-by who may
not like it!" From Arundel I dawdled along the south coast to
Canterbury, and paid a delightful visit to my old friends Canon and
Mrs. Moore at their charming residence (incorporating the ancient
monastic guest-house) in the close. I spent hours exploring the
glorious cathedral--the most interesting (_me judice_) if not the most
beautiful in England. The close, too, really is a close, with a
watchman singing out in the small hours, "Past two o'clock--misty
morning--a-all's we-e-ell!" and the enclosure so complete that though
we could hear the Bishop of Dover's dinner-bell on the other side of
the wall, my host and hostess had to drive quite a long way round,
through the mediaeval gate-house, to join the episcopal dinner-party.
Their schoolboy son invited me that night to accompany the watchman (an
old {9} greybeard sailor with a Guy Fawkes lantern, who looked himself
like a relic of the Middle Ages) in his eleven o'clock peregrination
round the cathedral. A weird experience! the vast edifice totally
dark[6] save for the flickering gleam of the single candle, in whose
wavering light pillars and arches and chantries and tombs peered
momentarily out of the gloom like petrified ghosts.
I saw other interesting things at Canterbury, notably St. Martin's old
church (perhaps the most venerable in the kingdom),[7] and left for
London, where, walking through Hyde Park on a sunshiny Sunday morning,
I lingered awhile to watch the perfervid stump-orators wasting their
eloquence on the most listless of audiences. "Come along, Mary Ann,
let's give one of the other blokes a turn," was the prevailing
sentiment; but I did manage to catch one gem from a Free Thought
spouter, whose advocacy of _post mortem_ annihilation was being
violently assailed by one of his hearers. "Do you mean to tell me,"
shouted the heckler, "that when I am dead I fade absolutely away and am
done with for ever?"--to which query came the prompt {10} reply, "I
sincerely hope so, sir!"[8] Lord Cathcart (a great frequenter of the
Park), to whom I repeated the above repartee, amused me by quoting an
unconsciously funny phrase he had heard from a labour orator near the
Marble Arch: "What abaht the working man? The working man is the
backbone of this country--and I tell you _strite_, that backbone 'as
got to come to the front!"[9]
I left Paddington for Oxford in absolutely the blackest fog I had ever
seen: it turned brown at Baling, grey at Maidenhead, and at Didcot the
sun was shining quite cheerfully. I found the floods almost
unprecedentedly high, and the "loved city" abundantly justifying its
playful sobriquet of "Spires and Ponds." A Catholic freshman, housed
in the ground floor of Christ Church Meadow-buildings, described to me
his dismay at the boldness and voracity of the rats which invaded his
rooms from the meadows when the floods were out. The feelings of Lady
Bute when she visited Oxford about this time, and found her treasured
son--who had boarded at a private tutor's at Harrow, and had never
roughed it in his life--literally immured in an underground cellar
beneath Peckwater Quad, may be {11} better imagined than described. It
is fair to add that the youth himself had made no complaint, and
shouted with laughter when I paid him a visit in his extraordinary
subterranean quarters in the richest college in Oxford.
The last words remind me of a visit paid me during this term by Dom
Ferotin and a colleague from Farnborough Abbey. Escorting my guests
through Christ Church, I mentioned the revenue of the House as
approximately L80,000 a year, a sum which sounded colossal when
translated into francs. "Deux millions par an! mais c'est incroyable,"
was their comment, as we mounted the great Jacobean staircase.
"Twopence each, please," said the nondescript individual who threw open
the hall door. It was an anti-climax; but we "did" the pictures
without further remark, and I remember noticing an extraordinary
resemblance (which the guide also observed) to the distinguished French
Benedictine in the striking portrait of Dr. Liddon hanging near the
fireplace. We lunched with my friend Grissell in High Street, meeting
there the Baron de Bertouche, a young man with a Danish father and a
Scottish mother, born in Italy, educated in France, owning property in
Belgium, and living in Wales--too much of a cosmopolitan, it seemed to
me, to be likely to get the commission in the Pope's Noble Guard which
appeared at that time to be his chief ambition.[10]
{12}
I remember two lectures about this time: one to the Newman Society
about Dickens, by old Percy Fitzgerald, who almost wept at hearing
irreverent undergraduates avow that the Master's pathos was "all
piffle," and that Paul Dombey and Little Nell made them sick; the other
a paper on "Armour" (his special hobby) by Lord Dillon. I asked him if
he could corroborate what I had heard as a boy, that men who took down
their ancestral armour from their castle walls to buckle on for the
great Eglinton Tournament, seventy years ago, found that they could not
get into it! I was surprised that this fact (if it be a fact) was new
to so great an authority as Lord Dillon; but we had no time to discuss
the matter. Mr. Justice Walton, the Catholic judge, also came down and
addressed the "Newman," I forget on what subject; but I remember his
being "heckled" on the question as to whether a barrister was justified
in conscience in defending (say) a murderer of whose guilt he was
personally convinced. The judge maintained that he was.
February 15 was Norfolk's wedding-day--a quiet and pious ceremony,
after his own heart, in the private chapel at Everingham. I recollect
the date, because I attended that evening a French play--Moliere's _Les
Femmes Savantes_--at an Oxford convent school. It was quite well done,
entirely by girls; but the unique feature was that the "men" of the
comedy were attired as to coats, waistcoats, wigs and lace _jabots_ in
perfectly correct Louis XIV. style, but below the waist--in petticoats!
the result being that they ensconced themselves as far as possible,
throughout the play, behind {13} tables and chairs, and showed no more
of their legs than the Queen of Spain.
Going down to Arundel for Holy Week and Easter, I read in _The Times_
Hugh Macnaghten's strangely moving lines on Hector Macdonald,[11] whose
tragic death was announced this week. Easter was late this year, the
weather balmy, and the spring advanced; and the park and the whole
countryside starred with daffodils and anemones, primroses and
hyacinths. Between the many church services we enjoyed some delightful
rambles; and the Duke's marriage had made no difference to his love of
croquet and of the inevitable game of "ten questions" after dinner.
The great church looked beautiful on Easter morning, with its wealth of
spring flowers; and the florid music was no doubt finely rendered,
though I do not like Gounod in church at Easter or at any other time.
I refrained, however, when my friend the organist asked me what I
thought of his choir, from replying, as Cardinal Capranica did to a
similar question from Pope Nicholas V.--"that it seemed to him like a
sack of young swine, for he heard a great noise, but could distinguish
nothing articulate!"[12]
{14}
All the clergy of St. Philip's church dined at the castle on Easter
Sunday evening; and the young Duchess, wearing her necklace of big
diamonds (Sheffield's wedding present), was a most kind and pleasant
hostess. Two days later my friend Father MacCall and I left England
_en route_ for Rome, crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe in three-quarters
of a gale. _Infandum jubes_.... The boat was miserable, so was the
passage; but we survived it, hurried on through France and Italy (our
_direttissimo_ halting at all kinds of unnecessary places), and reached
Rome at the hour of Ave Maria, almost exactly twenty-six years since my
previous visit. What memories, as from our modest _pension_ in the Via
Sistina we looked once again on the familiar and matchless prospect!
My companion hurried off at once to the bedside of a fever-stricken
friend; and my first pilgrimage was of course to St. Peter's. I felt,
as I swung aside the heavy "baby-crusher,"[13] {15} and entered, almost
holding my breath, that strange sense of exhilaration which Eugenie de
Ferronays described so perfectly.[14] Preparations were on foot for
the coming _festa_,[15] and the "Sanpietrini" flying, as of old, a
hundred feet from the floor, hanging crimson brocades--a fearsome
spectacle. On Sunday we Benedictines kept the Gregorian festival at
our own great basilica of St. Paul's; but the chief celebration was
next day at St. Peter's, where Pope Pius X. himself pontificated in the
presence of 40,000 people, and a choir of a thousand monks (of which I
had the privilege of being one) rendered the Gregorian music with
thrilling effect. All was as in the great days of old--the Papal March
blown on silver trumpets; the long procession up the great nave of
abbots, bishops, and cardinals, conspicuous among them Cardinals
Rampolla, with his fine features and grave penetrating look, and Merry
del Val (the youthful Secretary of State), tall, dark, and strikingly
handsome; the Pontifical Court, chamberlains in their quaint mediaeval
dress; and, finally, high on his _sedia gestatoria_, with the white
peacock-feather fans waving on right and left, the venerable figure of
the Pope, mitred, and wearing his long embroidered _manto_: turning
kind eyes from side to side on the vast concourse, and {16} blessing
them with uplifted hand as he passed. His Holiness celebrated the Mass
with wonderful devotion, as quiet and collected as if he had been alone
in his oratory. High above our heads, at the Elevation, the silver
trumpets sounded the well-known melody, and the Swiss Guards round the
altar brought down their halberts with a crash on the pavement.[16]
After the great function I lunched with the Giustiniani Bandinis in the
Foro Trajano, where three generations of the princely family were
living together, in Roman patriarchal fashion. But (_quantum
mutatus!_) the old Prince had sold his historic palace in the
Corso;[17] and his heir, Mondragone, who talked to me of sending his
son to Christ Church as the Master of Kynnaird, seemed to shy at the
expense.[18] They had all been at St. Peter's, in the tribune of the
"Patriciato," that morning, and were unanimous (so like Romans!) in
their {17} verdict that the glorious Gregorian music would have been
much more appropriate to a funeral!
I was happy to enjoy a nearer view of the Holy Father before leaving
Rome, in a private audience which he gave to the English Catholic
Union. A slightly stooping figure, bushy grey hair, a rather care-worn
kind face, a large penetrating eye--this was my first impression. His
manner was wonderfully simple and courteous; and by his wish
("s'accommodarsi") we sat down in a little group around him. This
absence of formality was, I thought, no excuse for the bad manners of a
lady of rank, who pulled out a fountain pen, and asked his Holiness to
sign the photograph of her extensive family.[19] The Pope looked at
the little implement and shook his head. "Non capisco queste cose de
nuova moda," he said; and we followed him into another room--I think
his private library--where he seated himself before a great golden
inkstand, and with a long quill pen wrote beneath the family group a
verse from the hundred and twenty-seventh Psalm.[20] I had an
opportunity of asking, not for an autograph, but for a blessing on our
Oxford Benedictines, and on my mother-house at Fort Augustus.
Next day my friend and I left Rome for Monte Cassino--my first visit to
the cradle of our venerable Order. I was deeply impressed, and felt,
perhaps, on the summit of the holy mount, nearer heaven, both
materially and spiritually, than I had ever {18} done before. To
celebrate Mass above the shrine of Saint Benedict, at an altar designed
by Raphael, was my Sunday privilege. The visitors at the abbey and a
devout crowd of _contadini_ (many of them from the foot of the
mountain) were my congregation; and the monks sang the plain-chant mass
grouped round a huge illuminated _Graduale_ on an enormous lectern.
Three memorable days here, and I had to hasten northward, halting very
briefly to renew old enchanting memories of Florence and Milan, and
reaching Oxford just in time for the opening of the summer term.
[1] Lord Bute once told me that it was from him that the Earl Marshal
first learned the meaning and origin of the honourable augmentation
(the demi-lion of Scotland) which he bore on his coat-armorial.
[2] One of the first acts of Pope Pius X. had been to translate Bishop
Bourne of Southwark to the metropolitan see of Westminster, in
succession to Cardinal Vaughan, who had died on June 19. Archbishop
Bourne became a Cardinal in 1911.
[3] My father used to hate this "new-fangled phrase," as he called it.
"'See my way'! What does the man mean by 'see my way'? No, I do
_not_ 'see my way,'" he used to protest when a request for a
subscription or donation was prefaced by this unlucky formula, and the
appeal was instantly consigned to the waste-paper basket.
[4] Lord Goschen was elected on November 2 without a contest, the only
other candidate "in the running" (Lord Rosebery) having declined to
stand unless unopposed. Our new Chancellor lived to hold the office
for little more than three years, dying in February, 1907.
[5] Tylee's sole connection with India was that he had once been
domestic chaplain to Lord Ripon, who, however (much to his chagrin),
left him behind in England when he went out as Viceroy. When the
monsignore preached at St. Andrews, as he occasionally did when
visiting George Angus there, the latter used to advertise him in the
local newspaper as "ex-chaplain to the late Viceroy of India," which
pleased him not a little. He was fond of preaching, and carried about
with him in a tin box (proof against white ants) a pile of sermons,
mostly translated by himself from the great French orators of the
eighteenth century, and laboriously committed to memory. I remember
his once firing off at the astonished congregation of a small seaside
chapel, _a propos des bottes_, Bossuet's funeral oration on Queen
Henrietta Maria.
Through a friend at the Vatican, Tylee got a brief or rescript from the
Pope, who was told that he went to preach in India, and commended him
in the document, with some reference to the missionary labours of St.
Francis Xavier in that country. The monsignore was immensely proud of
this. "Haven't you seen my Papal Bull?" he would cry when India
cropped up in conversation, as it generally did in his presence. The
fact was that when in India the good man used to stay with a
Commissioner or General commanding, and deliver one of his famous
sermons in the station or garrison church, to a handful of British
Catholics or Irish soldiers. He never learned a word of any native
language, and did no more missionary work in India than if he had
stayed at home in his Kensington villa.
[6] The Dean, my host told me, whilst prowling about the crypt in
semi-darkness once noticed one of the chapels lit up by a rosy gleam.
The Chapter was promptly summoned, and the canon-sacrist interrogated
as to how and why a votive red lamp had been suspended before an altar
without decanal authority. The crypt verger was called in to explain
the phenomenon. "Bless your heart, Mr. Dean," said the good man, "that
ain't no red lamp you saw--only an old oil stove which I fished up and
put in that chapel to try and dry up the damp a bit."
[7] I suppose that there had been a Christian church on the site for
thirteen centuries. On the day of my visit it was locked and
barred--discouraging to pilgrims.
[8] The converse of this story is that of the orthodox but sadly prosy
preacher who was demonstrating at great length the certainty of his own
immortality. "Yes, my brethren, the mighty mountains shall one day be
cast into the sea, but I shall live on. Nay, the seas themselves, the
vast oceans which cover the greater part of the earth, shall dry up;
but not I--not I!" And the congregation really thought that he never
would!
[9] One more instance of Park repartee I must chronicle: the Radical
politician shouting, "I want land reform--I want housing reform--I want
education reform--I want----" and the disconcerting interruption,
"Chloroform!"
[10] His mother, though a Catholic like himself, was a devotee of
"Father Ignatius," and lived at Llanthony. She travelled about
everywhere with the visionary "Monk of the Church of England," acting
as pew-opener, money-taker, and general mistress of the ceremonies at
his lectures, and had published an extraordinary biography of him.
[11] Have they ever been reprinted? I know not. Here they are:--
"Leave him alone:
The death forgotten, and the truth unknown.
Enough to know
Whate'er he feared, he never feared a foe.
Believe the best,
O English hearts! and leave him to his rest."
[12] These words were penned in 1449 by one whom a contemporary layman
described on his death as "the wisest, the most perfect, the most
learned, and the holiest prelate whom the Church has in our day
possessed." His beautiful tomb is in the Minerva church in Rome.
Exactly a century later (1549) Cirillo Franchi wrote on the same
subject, and in the same vein, to Ugolino Gualteruzzi: "It is their
greatest happiness to contrive that while one is saying _Sanctus_, the
other should say _Sabaoth_, and a third _Gloria tua_, with certain
howls, bellowings, and guttural sounds, so that they more resemble cats
in January than flowers in May!"
Who recalls now Ruskin's famous invective against modern Italian music,
in which, after lauding a part-song, "done beautifully and joyfully,"
which he heard in a smithy in Perugia, he goes on: "Of bestial howling,
and entirely frantic vomiting up of hopelessly damned souls through
their still carnal throats, I have heard more than, please God, I will
endeavour to hear ever again, in one of his summers." It is fair to
say that the reference here is probably not to church music.
[13] The name which we English used playfully to give to the great
heavy leather curtains which hang at the entrance of the Roman churches.
[14] Speaking of the impression of _triumph_ which one receives on
entering St. Peter's, she continues: "Tandis que dans les eglises
gothiques, l'impression est de s'agenouiller, de joindre les mains avec
un sentiment d'humble priere et de profond regret, dans St. Pierre, au
contraire, le mouvement involuntaire serait d'ouvrir les bras en signe
de joie, de relever la tete avec bonheur et epanouissement."--_Recit
d'une Soeur_, ii. 298.
[15] The thirteenth centenary of St. Gregory the Great (d. March 12,
1904).
[16] It was at this supreme moment that an Englishman of the baser sort
once rose to his feet, and looking round exclaimed, "Is there no one in
this vast assemblage who will lift up his voice with me, and protest
against this idolatry?" "If you don't get down in double quick time,"
retorted an American who was on his knees close by, "there's one man in
this vast assemblage who will lift up his foot and kick you out of the
church!"
[17] A day or two after writing these lines (1921) I heard that this
famous palazzo had been acquired as an official residence by the
Brazilian Ambassador to the Quirinal.
[18] The Scottish Earldom of Newburgh (1660), of which Kynnaird was the
second title, had been adjudged to Prince Bandini's mother by the House
of Lords in 1858. The Duca Mandragone consulted me as to the expense
of three years at Oxford for his son. He thought the sum I named very
reasonable; but I really believe he supposed me to be quoting the
figure in _lire_, not in pounds sterling, which he found quite
impossible.
[19] Would Lady X---- (who was familiar with Courts) have acted thus in
an audience granted her by King Edward VII.? I rather think not.
[20] Verse 4. "Filii tui sicut noveliae olivarum, in circuitu mensae
tuae."
{19}