1905-1906
An event of Benedictine interest in the autumn of 1905, and one which
attracted many visitors to Downside, our beautiful abbey among the
Mendip Hills, was the long-anticipated opening of the choir of the
great church. Special trains, an overflowing guest-house, elaborate
services, many congratulatory speeches, and much monastic hospitality,
were, as customary on such occasions, the order of the day.
Architecturally, I confess that I found the new choir disappointing: it
but confirmed the impression (which after many years had become a
conviction with me) that the art of building a real Gothic church on a
grand scale is lost, gone beyond hope of recovery. _Ecce signum!_
Design, material, workmanship all admirable, and the result, alas!
lifeless, as lifeless as (say) the modern cathedrals of Truro and
Liverpool and Edinburgh, the nave of Bristol, and the great church of
Our Lady at Cambridge. I have seen Downside compared with Lichfield:
nay, some one (greatly daring) placed pictures of them side by side in
some magazine. Vain comparison! Lichfield, built long centuries ago,
is _alive_ still--instinct with the life breathed into it by its
unknown creators in the ages of faith; but these great modern Gothic
churches seem to me {57} to have never lived at all, to have come into
existence still-born. No: Gothic architecture, in this century of
ours, is dead. Such life as it has is a simulated, imitative,
galvanized life, which is no more real life than the tunes ground out
of a pianola or a gramophone are real living music.[1] "'Tis true,
'tis pity: pity 'tis, 'tis true."
Another engagement which I had in the west about this time was to
preach at the opening of the new Benedictine church at Merthyr Tydvil.
Bishop Hedley and I travelled thither together from Cardiff, through a
country which God made extremely pretty, with its deep glens and hills
covered with {58} bracken and heather, but which man, in search of
coal, has blackened and defaced to an incredible extent: the whole
district, of course, a hive of industry. Lying in bed at night, I saw
through my blindless window the flames belching from a score of
furnace-chimneys down the valley, and thought what it must be to spend
one's life in such surroundings. A curious change to find oneself next
day in the verdant environment of Cardiff Castle, where, once within
the gates, one might be miles away from coalpits and from the great
industrial city close by. My room was the _quondam_ nursery, of which
the walls had been charmingly decorated by the fanciful genius of
William Burges (the restorer of the castle), with scenes from
children's fairy stories--Jack the Giant-killer and Cinderella and Red
Riding-hood and the rest, tripping round in delightful procession. The
Welsh metropolis was _en fete_ on the day of my arrival, in honour of
the town having become a city, and its mayor a lord-mayor; and Lord
Bute was giving a big luncheon to civic and other magnates in the
beautiful banqueting hall, adorned with historic frescoes and rich
stained glass. The family was smiling gently, during my visit, at the
news published "from a reliable source," that my young host was to be
the new Viceroy of Ireland. Another report, equally "reliable" (odious
word!) published, a little later, his portrait and not very eventful
biography, as that of the just-appointed Under-Foreign Secretary. Why
not Lord Chancellor or Commander-in-chief at once? one was as likely as
the other.
The reference to the commander-in-chief reminds me that the Oxford
Union was honoured this {59} (October) term by a visit from Lord
Roberts, who gave us a very informing lecture, illustrated with many
maps, on the N.W. frontier of India and was received by a crowded house
with positive shouts of welcome.[2] Almost equally well received, a
week later, was Lord Hugh Cecil, who had held no office in the Union in
his undergraduate days, but had often since taken part in its debates.
His theme on this occasion was the interminable fiscal question; and
the curiously poignant and personal note in his oratory appealed, as it
always did, to his youthful hearers, who supported him with their votes
as well as their applause.
A little later there was a great audience in the Town Hall, to hear Joe
Chamberlain inveigh against the new Government,[3] and preach _his_
fiscal gospel. He was in excellent form, and looked nothing like
seventy, though his long speech--his last, I think, before his great
break-down--certainly aged him visibly. A little incident at the
opening showed his undiminished aptitude for ready repartee. He
announced his intention of treating Tariff Reform from the Imperial
standpoint, adding, "I am not going to deal with the subject from the
economic side"; and then, as a derisive "Yah!" broke from some
disgruntled Liberals at the back of the hall, going on without a
moment's hesitation--"not, however, for the reason which I see suggests
itself to some of the _acuter_ minds among my audience!"
{60}
S---- H----, whom I found waiting to see me when I got home from the
Town Hall, told me that after two years in the Catholic Church he was
thinking of returning to the flesh-pots of Anglicanism, and said (among
other foolish things) that he had "a Renaissance mind!" I ventured to
remind him that he had also an immortal soul. How to increase his
income seemed his chief preoccupation; and he did not "see his way"
(that fatal phrase again!) to do this as a "practising" Catholic.
Wilfrid Ward, the Editor of the _Dublin Review_, had recently started a
"dining-and-debating-club" in London with a rather interesting
membership; and I went up in November to read a paper on "Catholics at
the National Universities." I was less "heckled" than I expected; but
there was some "good talk" (as old Johnson would have said), and I
enjoyed the evening. Less enjoyable was another evening spent with our
Architectural Society at Oxford, to hear a lecture by Wells (fellow and
future Warden) of Wadham, on "Tudor Oxford" an interesting topic, and
treated by a man who knew his subject, but disfigured by strongly
Protestant interpolations about monks, Jesuits, and "Bloody Mary," much
out of place in an address to a quite "undenominational" society. It
recalled another paper read to us on the inoffensive subject of
"Bells." The reader on that occasion adroitly founded on the text of
the inscriptions on church bells a violent diatribe against the
invocation of saints and other "mediaeval corruptions," to the intense
annoyance of my little friend the Master of Pembroke (himself an
Anglican bishop), who sat next me, and whom I with difficulty
restrained until {61} the end of the lecture from rising to protest, as
he ultimately did with some warmth, against "turning an archaeological
address into a polemical sermon."
Term over, I made my way north to Beaufort, arriving there just in time
to assist at the unveiling in the village square of Beauly, of the
Lovat Scouts' Memorial, for which I had written the inscription.[4] A
pretty function, with much local enthusiasm, an excellent speech from
The Mackintosh, our new Lord Lieutenant, and of course the inevitable
"cake and wine" banquet, at which I toasted Lovat. Christmas followed,
with a big and merry family party, the usual seasonable revels, and
some delightful singing from the wife of a Ross-shire laird, an
American lady with a well-trained voice of astonishing sweetness and
compass. The New Year found the whole country agog about the coming
General Election; and at Arundel, whither I went from Beaufort, I heard
Lady Edmund Talbot falsify Johnson's cynical dictum[5] by making an
excellent {62} speech on behalf of her husband, who was laid up in
London. He retained his seat for Chichester by a good majority; and
"dear little Wigtownshire" remained faithful to a lost cause, returning
Lord Stair's eldest son.[6] But on the whole the "Radical reaction,"
"turn of the tide," "swing of the pendulum"--whichever you liked to
call it--was complete, the very first victim of the _debacle_ being my
brother-in-law, Charles Dalrymple, who was dismissed at Ipswich, after
twenty years' service, by nearly 2,000 votes. He had been given a
Privy Councillorship by the outgoing Government; but this poorly
compensated him for being ousted from the House of Commons, which had
been his "nursing mother" for nearly forty years.[7] Manchester was
absolutely swept by the Liberals, poor Sir James Fergusson going to
join his brother in limbo, and Arthur Balfour being beaten by a larger
majority than either of them. The final result showed--Radical members
returned, 378, against 156 Unionists. The new Ministry put educational
reform in the front of their programme; and we Catholics, with a
section of Anglicans (for they were by no means united on the subject),
organized meetings in advance against the nefarious projects of the
Government. I attended some of them, and heard many speeches, {63}
some of them terribly long and "stodgy." A Hampshire parson, by whom I
sat at one of these dreary meetings, told me, by way of illustrating
the educational standard of his peasant parishioners, that a bridegroom
would thus render the promise in the marriage-service: "With my body I
thee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou!" While the
bride's version of _her_ promise would be: "To 'ave an' to 'old from
this day fortnight for betterer 'orse, for richerer power, in
siggerness 'ealth, to love cherries and to bay!" I copied these
interesting formulas into my note-book on the spot.
I was happily able to escape, at the end of term, from these political
alarums and excursions to the Continent. I longed for Italy; but the
friend who accompanied me (and financed us both) insisted on carrying
me to Nice--a place I never loved; and it proved sunless, the palms
shivering in a mistral and we shivering in sympathy. I used to escape
the odious Promenade des Anglais (much more a Promenade des Allemands)
by climbing the steep steps into old-world Nizza, and talking to the
good simple folk, who (so the parish priest assured me) remained devout
and pious, and wonderfully little affected by the manners and morals of
the objectionable crowd which haunts Nice more than any other spot on
the _Cote d'Azur_, except, I suppose, Monte Carlo. The latter resort
we eschewed (my friend and host was no gambler), but we had many
strolls through the toy-city of Monaco, where the tourist is little in
evidence. I noticed, crowning the picturesque promontory, the new
cathedral built by M. Blanc out of casino profits, which the
ecclesiastical {64} authorities accepted, I suppose, on the principle
of the good old maxim, _Non olet!_[8] We took a run to Milan before
turning homewards, and after an hour in the cathedral--impressively
vast, but not (to my thinking) impressively beautiful, either without
or within--spent a long day in exploring the far more interesting
churches of SS. Maurizio, Maria delle Grazie, Vittore, Lorenzo,
Giorgio, and Ambrogio, every one well worth visiting, and the
last-named unique, of course, in charm and interest.[9] Turin, where
we stayed a day, was wet and cold; but the arcades which line the chief
streets at least keep the rain off. At Paris the sun was actually
shining, and the trees on the boulevards sprouting greenly. I read in
the English papers here of the engagement of my nephew Kelburn (the
family had only recently dropped the final e from both the title and
the castle)[10] to a Miss Hyacinth Bell, whose pretty floral name
conveyed nothing to me. The {65} new Minister of Education[11] had
also published his "Birreligious" Bill (as some wags nicknamed it): it
seemed to satisfy nobody--least of all, of course, Catholics.
I spent Easter, as usual, at Arundel, where a gathering of Maxwells
(the Duchess's young relatives) made the big house cheerful and
homelike. The summer term at Oxford was an uneventful one, the most
interesting event that I recall being our annual Canning and Chatham
dinner, with a more distinguished gathering than usual. Lord Milner
made a remarkable and interesting speech in reply to the toast of "The
Empire," and "Smith of Wadham," M.P. (the future Lord Chancellor), was
also very eloquent. The Duke of Leinster (then up at Balliol), who sat
next me, spoke of the hereditary good relations between his family and
Maynooth College, and amused me by saying that he thought it must be
"much more interesting" to be a Catholic in England than in Ireland! I
motored some of my young Benedictines over to Blenheim one day; and we
were, with other sight-seers, escorted over the show-part of the
palace. The little Duke burst in on us in one state-room, and retired
precipitately, banging the door with an audible "D--n!" "His Grace the
Dook of Marlborough!" announced, without turning a hair, the solemn
butler who was acting as showman; and our party was, of course, duly
impressed.
{66}
I was summoned this summer to three weddings, all of interest to me,
the first being that of my nephew Kelburn, a pretty country function in
Surrey. The Bishop of Worcester tied the knot--"impressively," as the
reporters say (but why cannot an Anglican dignitary read the Bible
without "mouthing" it?), and I afterwards found in his wife, Lady
Barbara Yeatman-Biggs, an old friend of my childhood.[12] Many
relatives, of course, were present here, and also, ten days later, in
the Chelsea church where Archdeacon Sinclair ("genial and impressive,"
the newspapers called _him_) united my younger sister, _en secondes
noces_, to Captain Cracroft Jarvis. I spent the evening of her wedding
in the House of Commons, where I had a mind to see our famous new
Radical Parliament-men gathered together. A very "scratch lot" they
seemed to me to be; and Archbishop Walsh of Dublin, whom I found beside
me in the D.S.G., seemed as little impressed as myself by their
"carryings-on." His Grace was so pleased with Carlyle's definition, or
description, of the House, which I quoted to him (he was apparently
unfamiliar with it), that he promptly copied it down in his note-book:
"a high-soaring, hopelessly-floundering, ever-babbling, inarticulate,
dumb dark entity!"
My third wedding was a picturesque Irish {67} one--that of Ninian
Crichton Stuart to Lord Gormanston's only daughter, with, of course, a
large party of Butes and Prestons gathered at Gormanston Castle, a huge
pile mostly modern; but the quaint little chapel, Jacobean Gothic
without and Empire style within, gaily adorned with lilies,
marguerites, and trailing smilax, dates from 1687.[13] It was far too
small to hold the wedding guests, who perforce remained on the lawn
outside. I walked with our host, later in the day, in the splendidly
timbered park, and the great picturesque untidy Irish garden; and he
held forth on the hardship of having to live uncomfortably in Ireland
after the luxury of Colonial governorships. "_Ireland!_ a rotten old
country, only fit, as some one said, to dig up and use as a
top-dressing for England!" was the summing-up of his lordship, whose
ancestors had owned the land on which we were walking for some seven
centuries.[14] I thought his bemoanings rather pathetic; but he amused
me by his recital of a prescription for "The Salvation of Ireland"
which once appeared (anonymously) in a northern newspaper. "Drain your
Bogs--Fat more Hogs--Lots more Lime--Lots more Chalk--LOTS MORE
WORK--LOTS LESS TALK!"
I returned to Oxford in time for Commemoration, at {68} which Lord
Milner and Mgr. Duchesne, two of our be-doctored guests, were very
warmly received; attended the big luncheon in All Souls' library, where
the agreeable ladies who sat on my right and left were totally unknown
to me; and drank coffee in the sunlit quad, where a band played and I
met many friends. Next day I took ship at Southampton (a noisy, shaky,
creaky ship it was) for Guernsey, on a visit to my brother, who was in
command of the Gunners there. I thought the approach to the island
very pretty on a still summer morning: quaint houses and church towers
climbing the hill among trees and gardens, with a foreground of white
sails and blue sea. Very pretty too was "Ordnance House" and its old
garden, with hedges of golden calceolarias and other attractions. I
spent a pleasant week here, delighted with the rocky coast (reminding
me of my native Wigtownshire) and the luxuriant gardens, especially
that of the Lieutenant-Governor, whose charming house (he occupied Lord
de Saumarez's seat) was full, as was to be expected,[15] of beautiful
naval prints and other relics. Of a morning I would walk down to Fort
Cornet--part of it of great antiquity--and watch my brother's guns at
sea-target practice, till my head ached with the roar and concussion.
The shooting was excellent, but the electric firing-apparatus
occasionally went wrong, which might be awkward in battle! I was
interested in the fine fifteenth-century parish church of St.
Peter-Port, of flamboyant Gothic: the effect of the interior {69}
nave-arches rising almost from the ground, with hardly any pillars, is
most singular.
I had to hurry back to "the adjacent island of Great Britain" (as the
Cumbrae minister put it),[16] to attend the jubilee dinner in London of
St. Elisabeth's Catholic Hospital, with Norfolk in the chair: a great
success, owing, I think, to the unusual circumstance that dinner and
wine were provided gratis, the result being much-enhanced subscriptions
from the grateful banqueters. I was present a little later at the
coming-of-age celebrations of Lord Gainsborough's son and heir at
Campden, the beautiful Jacobean family seat on the Cotswold slopes. We
sat down seventy to dinner on the evening of Campden's birthday; and
the youth acquitted himself excellently of what I consider (and I have
had some experience of majority banquets, including my own) one of the
most embarrassing tasks which can fall to any young man's lot. I,
being unexpectedly assigned the easier duty of replying for the
visitors, utilized the admirably appropriate opening which I had heard
not long before from the witty and eloquent American Ambassador,[17] at
the dinner of the Royal Literary Fund, and which was _not_ a "chestnut"
then, whatever it may be now.
From Campden I went on to Leamington to visit {70} another brother, who
had invited me to witness the Warwick Pageant, I think the first, and
certainly the most effective and successful, of these spectacles, for
which the craze was just beginning to spread through England. The
dramatic episodes at Warwick were not always dramatic, and the dialogue
and acting were perhaps not quite worthy of the superb surroundings;
but the setting of the spectacle was absolutely perfect. Behind us the
towers and battlements of the feudal castle rose above the woods: on
our right the giant oaks of the park, in their glorious midsummer
foliage: to our left the Avon glistening like a ribbon of burnished
silver; and in front, beyond a great expanse of verdant lawn (the
"stage" of the pageant), a prospect of enchanting wooded glades and
long-drawn sylvan avenues, down which came the long processions of
players, mounted and afoot, with singular and striking effect. Lord
and Lady Willoughby de Broke, who appeared (with the splendidly mounted
members of their hunt) as Louis XI. and Margaret of Scotland, were
conspicuous, if only because the former acted his part and spoke his
lines best of the whole company. The concerted singing was quite
charming; and charming, too, the spectacle of the hundred boys of the
famous old Warwick Grammar-school, in their pretty dresses of russet
and gold, and their masters costumed as old-world pedagogues.
Altogether a delightful and notable entertainment, which I was very
glad to have seen; and in other respects I enjoyed my visit, my brother
taking me to Kenilworth, Stoneleigh, Charlecote, and other interesting
places in that most interesting country. The August Bank-holiday found
me at Scarborough, {71} of all places in the world, spending the day
there with the two schoolboy sons of my host at a country house in the
East Riding. I recall, at the aquarium there, my interest on
discovering a "fact not generally known"--namely that fishes can, and
do, yawn. We saw a turbot yawn twice, and a cod once. The cod's yawn
was remarkable chiefly for its width, but the turbot's was much more
noteworthy. It begins at the lips, which open as if to suck in
water;[18] then the jaws distend themselves and so the yawn goes on,
works through the back of the head, stretching the plates of the skull
almost to cracking point, and finally comes out at the gills, which
open showing their red lining, and are inflated for a moment; and then,
with a gasping kind of shiver, the fish flattens out again, until, if
unusually bored, as it appeared to be by our presence, it relieves its
feelings by another yawn. I left my young friends to enjoy the varied
humours of the front; and climbing up (as I had done at Nice) "far from
the madding crowd," discovered many quaint and charming bits of old
Scarborough. A policeman told me that they reckoned that at least
120,000 visitors were in the town that day; and they all seemed
collected together to view the evening firework display above the Spa.
The biggest crowds I had ever seen were at Epsom on Derby Day, between
Mortlake and Putney on Boat-race Day, and in St. Peter's Square at Rome
on the election-day of Leo XIII.: but this great _congeries_ at
Scarborough surpassed them all in impressiveness. I {72} turned my
back on the "set pieces" and Roman candles, gazed almost awestruck at
the vast sea of upturned white faces on the beach below, lit up from
time to time by the lurid glow of coloured fires, and listened to the
cry "Ah-h-h!" of the great multitude as the rockets shrilled up into
the starlit sky. _Mirabile visu et auditu!_ it somehow made me think
(at Scarborough on Bank Holiday evening!) of the Last Day and the
Valley of Jehoshaphat. From Scarborough, before going north to
Scotland, I went for a few days to Longridge Towers, Sir Hubert
Jerningham's beautiful place near Berwick, with views on every side
over the rolling Border country. "Norham's castle steep," built nine
centuries before by Flambard, the "Magnificent" Bishop of Durham, was
on the Longridge property; and I spent some delightful hours there with
my accomplished host, who was a charming companion, and (as became a
_bachelier-es-lettres_ of Paris University) could tell a good story as
well in French as he could in English. He showed me among many
curiosities a letter from an early Quaker which I thought worth
copying:--
FRIEND JOHN,--
I desire thee to be so kind as to go to one of those sinful men in the
flesh called an attorney, and let him take out an instrument, with a
seal fixed thereto, by means whereof we may seize the outward
tabernacle of George Green, and bring him before the lambskin men at
Westminster, and teach him to do as he would be done by; and so I rest
thy friend in the light,
M.D.
Mountstuart claimed me for a short visit when I had got across the
Border; and I found the big house very cheerful under the new and
youthful regime, and my hostess, now a happy mother, driving the baby
Lady Mary about the island and exhibiting {73} her to the admiring
farmers' wives. I made my way up the West coast to Fort Augustus to
spend the rest of the Oxford "Long," travelling thence in September to
Aberdeen to read a paper at the annual conference of the Catholic Truth
Society. There was a large attendance, Lady Lovat doing hostess at a
big reception one evening; and it was pleasant to find oneself in a
genuinely Scottish, as well as Catholic, gathering, presided over by a
Highland bishop (AEneas Chisholm of beloved memory), as patriotic and
popular as he was pious and pleasant. My paper, on "The Holy See and
the Scottish Universities," was very well received, and the local
newspapers did me the honour of reprinting it verbatim next morning,
while the _Scotsman_ devoted a leading article to it. Our principal
meeting, in the largest hall of the city, wound up not only with "Faith
of our Fathers" but "God save the King." "Is this necessary?"
whispered a prelate of Nationalist leanings to the presiding bishop, in
the middle of the loyal anthem. "It may not be necessary," replied
Bishop Chisholm, in a very audible "aside," "but it is very right and
extremely proper." _O si sic omnes!_"[19]
[1] Such seeming exceptions as the noble churches of St. John at
Norwich and St. Philip at Arundel, the Duke of Newcastle's sumptuous
chapel at Clumber, the impressive church of the Irvingites in Gordon
Square, are only satisfactory in so far as they are more or less exact
imitations of mediaeval Gothic. The cloisters of Fort Augustus Abbey
are beautiful because they are reproductions, from A. W. Pugin's
note-books, of real live fifteenth-century tracery. The more the
modern Gothic architect strives to be original (a hard saying, but a
true one), the more certainly he fails. And to see how feebly
ineffective even his imitations can be, one need only look at the
entrance tower of St. Swithun's Quad at Magdalen, and compare it with
the incomparable Founder's Tower immediately opposite.
Let me add that I have no animus against Downside in particular: it is
merely an instance taken at random to illustrate my thesis. I had felt
just the same, years before, about the first grandiose plans for our
own church at Fort Augustus. "Go to Westminster Abbey--you can see it
from your windows," I wrote to the architect, "and get an inspiration
from that glorious temple of _living_ Gothic. Your elaborate designs
have no life, no reality. If they were ever realized among our
Highland hills, I should expect some genie of the Arabian Nights to
swoop down one day and whisk the whole impossible structure back to
Victoria Street!" I still recall the pleasure and approval with which
Dom Gilbert Dolan of Downside, one of the most distinguished of modern
Benedictine architects, read this letter.
[2] Who was the reporter who once announced (I believe it was really a
printer's error and not a little bit of malice) that "the Conservatives
among the audience received the candidate with welcoming snouts"?
[3] Arthur Balfour had resigned the premiership in the previous week,
and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had succeeded him.
[4] Not an easy task! for Lovat wanted the Scouts to have all the
honour, which _they_ wished assigned to him. My inscription (I believe
generally approved) ran: Erected by the Lovat Tenantry and Feuars of
the Aird and Fort Augustus Districts to Commemorate the Raising of the
Lovat Scouts for Service in South Africa by Simon Joseph, 16th Lord
Lovat, C.V.O., C.B., D.S.O., who Desired to Show that the Martial
Spirit of their Ancestors still Animates the Highlanders of To-Day, and
Whose Confidence was Justified by the Success in the Field of the
Gallant Corps Whose Existence was Due to His Loyalty and Patriotism.
A.D. 1905.
[5] "A woman speaking in public is like a dog walking on its hind legs:
it is not well done, but you are surprised to find it done at all."
[6] My native county remained consistently and uninterruptedly Tory for
fifty years--from 1868, when it returned Lord Garlics, until 1918, when
its separate representation was taken from it by the new Redistribution
Act.
[7] Sir Charles had sat in Parliament continuously, except for a few
weeks, since 1868, when he was first elected for Buteshire. It was
only this very slight break which prevented him from being at one time
the Father of the House of Commons.
[8] I heard an odd story to the effect that at the Anglican Church at
Monte Carlo no one had ever heard any hymn before No. 37 announced to
be sung; the reason being that the mention of any one from 1 to 36
would instantly have sent a quota of the congregation racing down to
stake their money on that number! It was, and is, a current
superstition that a number suggested by something as remote as possible
from gambling is likely to prove a lucky one.
[9] Due, I think, largely to the fact that though the greater part of
the church is ninth and tenth century work, it has the air of being
very much older, and seems to recall the days of St. Ambrose himself.
[10] "Kelburn" was, I believe, the old spelling. About the same time
the Duke of Athole dropped _his_ final _e_ also; and the name-board at
the well-known station, at his castle gates, displayed, as I observed
on my next journey to the Highlands, the legend "Blair Atholl," instead
of "Blair Athole" as formerly.
[11] Augustine Birrell, the distinguished essayist, whose literary
method, easy, witty, and urbane, has evoked the word "birrelling." He
succeeded Mr. Bryce a little later as Irish Secretary, and retained
that office (in which he was no more successful than most of his
predecessors) under Mr. Asquith.
[12] _Nee_ Legge: one of a crowd of sisters (Ladies Louisa, Octavia,
Wilhelmina, Barbara, Charlotte, and I know not how many more) with whom
I made friends as a small boy when staying with my parents at
Aix-la-Chapelle; and we saw much of them afterwards. We children used
to call them the "Lady-legs." Their brother Augustus, who was also a
friend of my childhood, became Bishop of Lichfield in 1891.
[13] Built in James II.'s reign (the original castle was of Henry
VII.'s), when the accession of a Catholic King enabled Catholics,
British and Irish, to emerge for a short time from the Catacombs.
[14] Lord Gormanston, like Lord Talbot de Malahide and a few others,
represented the Anglo-Irish landowners of the time of Henry VII., "Lord
of Ireland." My friend Lord Kenmare was typical of the enriched
Elizabethan settlers in the country, while Sir Henry Bellingham was one
of the seventeenth-century group of immigrants popularly known as
"Cromwell's Drummers." Three out of the four mentioned were Catholics.
[15] The first baronet and Baron de Saumarez was second in command at
the Battle of the Nile, and was raised to the peerage by William IV.
[16] It was the parish minister of Millport, in Cumbrae (off the coast
of Ayrshire) who habitually prayed at Divine Service for the
"inhabitants of the Greater and the Lesser Cumbraes, and the adjacent
islands of Great Britain and Ireland!"
[17] The late Mr. Choate. "When I came into this assembly this
evening, I felt very much like the prophet Daniel when he got into the
lion's den. When Daniel looked around, and saw the company in which he
was, 'Well,' he said, '_whoever's got to do the after-dinner speaking,
it won't be me!_'"
[18] A turbot's mouth is twisted on one side, rather as if it had
belonged to a round fish which some one had accidentally trodden on,
and had squashed half-flat.
[19] My friend Lord Ralph Kerr had, some time previously, refused to
preside at a meeting of the same Society (of which he was president) in
another Scottish city, on learning that the local committee would not
permit the National Anthem to be sung at the close. The reason
alleged, that "the Irish in the audience would not stand it," did not,
naturally, strike the gallant Scottish general as an adequate one.
{74}