1906-1907
Before returning to Oxford for the autumn term of 1906, I spent a
pleasant ten days at Abbotsford with my old friends the Lane Foxes, and
visited with them Dryburgh Abbey, Galashiels, and other interesting
places. Melrose, too, we thoroughly explored, agreeing that (_pace_
Sir Walter) the time for seeing it "aright" was _not_ "by the pale
moonlight," but on a sunlit afternoon, which alone does justice to the
marvellous colouring--grey shot with rose and yellow--of the old stone.
Modern textbooks talk of the "decadence" of its architecture, but it
has details of surpassing beauty nevertheless. It was ill exchanging
the beauties of Tweedside in perfect September weather for foggy
London. I arrived there on a Sunday morning, just in time for high
mass at Westminster Cathedral, of which a fog rather enhances the
charm, softening the raw brick walls and imparting a mysterious and
shadowy splendour to the great spaces under the lofty domes. The grave
polyphonic music, perfectly rendered, greatly pleased me; but the
acoustics of the building seemed to be defective.[1] A noted preacher
was discoursing {75} to an immense congregation on "Pessimism"--so the
notice-boards informed me; but it might as well have been on Optimism
for anything I could hear of it. Walking homewards to Regent's Park, I
looked in at a Ritualistic church in Red Lion Square, where a singular
function was in progress in presence of the (schismatic) Archbishop of
Sinai, under the auspices of a body styling itself "The Anglican and
Orthodox Churches Union."[2] As I entered, a clergyman was just
remarking from the pulpit that as there was no visible Church on earth,
or as, at any rate, it was temporally broken to bits, there was no use
in looking for a visible head! a theory which his audience may or may
not have found satisfactory.[3]
I lingered for a day at Birmingham, on my way to Oxford, to attend the
opening of the nave of the Newman Memorial Church. It was the
sixty-first anniversary of Newman's reception into the Church at
Littlemore, as well as the sixth of the death of Lord Bute, whose
conversion was a fruit of the Oxford movement, of which Newman was the
inspiring genius. I was pleased with the simplicity, even austerity,
of the building, relieved to some extent by the beautiful tints of the
double row of marble monoliths, and by the warm russet of the coved
roof of Spanish chestnut. Eight or ten prelates (the Archbishop of
Westminster was the preacher) gave dignity to the function, which {76}
was followed by a rather higgledy-piggledy luncheon at the "Plough and
Harrow" next door. The Norfolk family were of course present in force
at their beloved Oratory, the Duke, with sisters, brothers-in-law,
nephews and nieces, being prominent among the large gathering. Lord
Ralph Kerr's boy, a pupil of the Fathers, showed me over the school;
and I rather marvelled to see an educational establishment of such
deserved repute housed in so quaint a collection of lean-to's and
shanties, the only thing worth looking at being the fine refectory of
the Oratory, which the schoolboys used as their dining-room.
I found Oxford swept and garnished for the new term, and my old friend
the President of Magdalen installed as Vice-chancellor, and performing
his multifarious duties (which included the matriculation of my two
Benedictine freshmen) with the mingled dignity and urbanity which
characterized him. Grissell, who was in residence this term, invited
me to luncheon to meet "a Roman Prince," and a lady who had, he said,
been miraculously cured by the Madonna of Pompeii. The cure,
unfortunately, had been incomplete or temporary, for the lady had had a
relapse, was in bed, and could not turn up. The Roman Prince, or
princeling, proved to be Don Andrea Buoncompagni-Ludovisi, descendant
of two Popes,[4] and a freshman at Merton; a pleasant youth, {77} but
his English, though fluent, was vulgar rather than princely. I
wondered where he had picked it up. A different type of Italian whom I
met the same week was the distinguished South Italian violinist, Signor
Simonetti. He had been fiddling at our Musical Club on the previous
evening--_roba Napolitana_, but clever and interesting. Our
conversation, however, turned not on music but on the "Evil Eye," as I
was anxious to know to what extent the belief in this still prevailed
in Italy. He said it was as persistent as ever, especially in the
south, and told us how the most famous advocate in Naples, in quite
recent times, was so universally accredited with this mysterious power,
that when the leader opposed to him in an impending lawsuit died on the
eve of the case coming on, another lawyer was only with the greatest
difficulty found to take his place. _He_ was killed by an accident on
the very morning of the trial; and the dreaded advocate was face to
face with the judge, who was in fear and trembling, as he expected to
have to give judgment against him. The story went that when the judge
rose to speak, his spectacles accidentally fell out of place. "I am
struck blind!" he cried out; "forgive me, Signor Avvocato--I have not
yet pronounced against you." Suddenly his spectacles fell across his
nose again. "Forgive me again," he said; "I can see after all!" The
Neapolitans laughed, but they believed all the same. When this
redoubtable advocate fell ill, half Naples was praying fervently for
his death; and if one reproached them for desiring the death of a
fellowman, the answer was, "Non e un uomo, e un _jettatore_!" Signor
Simonetti, I felt pretty sure, himself {78} sympathized with this
sentiment, although he passed it off as a joke. I contributed a tale
of a certain Count who had been pointed out to me, during my visit to
Naples in the previous year, as the most dreaded _jettatore_ in the
city. He was dining alone at a restaurant, and I was told that no one,
if they could avoid it, would sit down in his company. Meeting his
cousin, the old Duca di M----, in the street, he gave him his arm. The
Duca suddenly slipped, fell, and broke his leg. He was stunned by the
shock; and his first words, on recovering consciousness, were whispered
(in confidential Neapolitan patois) into the ear of his formidable
kinsman: "Grazie, perche tu me putive accidere, e te si cuntentate de
m'arruinare!" ("Thanks; for you might have killed me, and you contented
yourself with laming me!")[5]
Some of us went over to Radley College for the usual All Saints' play,
the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes, in Greek; and it _was_ Greek, no doubt, to
the majority of the audience. Books of the words in English were,
however, supplied--"an attention," remarked a local paper, "which the
ladies received with unconcealed satisfaction, and the gentlemen with
satisfaction which they vainly endeavoured to conceal." Some of the
undergraduates present doubtless, like the schoolboy in _Vice Versa_,
"recognized several words from the Greek Grammar"; but what pleased me
was an elderly clergyman who declined to share his wife's copy of the
translation. "No, no, my {79} dear," he said, "I can follow the Greek
quite sufficiently well!" but before the end of the first act they were
both very contentedly looking over the English version together.
Michaelmas Term is not of course the time for triumphs in the Schools;
but we were all delighted with the final achievement of the invincible
Cyril Martindale, S.J., who this autumn crowned his previous
successes--first classes in Moderations and "Greats," the Hertford and
Craven Scholarships, and the Chancellor's and Gaisford Prizes for Latin
and Greek Verse--by carrying off the Derby Scholarship for the year.
Another Jesuit much in evidence at Oxford at this time was Bernard
Vaughan, who was preaching sermons, giving lectures, and attending
discussions and debates with characteristic energy. Colum Stuart and I
heard him deliver himself, at a full-dress meeting of the Union, on the
subject of Egotism. His perfervid oratory made one occasionally
_squirm_ (it is the only word); but he was very well received by his
young audience, and carried the House with him.
To the Jesuits and Benedictines, already domiciled in Oxford, were
added this winter the Franciscan Capuchins, who opened with some
ceremony their church and "seraphic college"[6] at Cowley. It was
something of an historic event, this returning of the Friars to Oxford
after a rustication of 367 years; and it evoked general and kindly
interest {80} quite outside Catholic circles. Sir Hubert Jerningham
accompanied me to the inaugural function, and to dinner later at Mgr.
Kennard's. We spoke of the decay of the good old custom, universal in
my youth, of grace before meals. Our host recalled a country squire
who, perfunctorily looking round his table, would mutter, "No parson?
Thank God!"[7] and hastily seat himself. I told of a Scots farmer on a
Caledonian Canal steam-boat, who, invited to "return thanks," delivered
himself of this sentiment, "O Lord, we're all floating down the stream
of time to the ocean of eternity, for Christ's sake, Amen!" and Sir
Hubert had a family story of the chaplain who, if he espied
champagne-glasses on the table, would begin his grace with "Bountiful
Jehovah!" but if only sherry-glasses, "We are not worthy of the least
of these Thy mercies." We all remembered Mr. Mallock's canon, who,
glancing with clasped hands at the _menu_, beginning with two soups,
comprising three _entrees_, and ending with Strasburg pate, began, "O
Thou that sittest between the Cherubim, whose glory is so exceeding
that even they veil their faces before Thee; consecrate to their
appointed use these poor morsels before us, and make them humble
instruments in the great scheme of our sanctification." I took Sir
Hubert next day over the Clarendon Press, which I had never myself
seen. We were both struck by two things: all the machinery was
American, and there was no electric light, the whole place being lit by
flaring {81} gas-jets.[8] We had planned that evening to go and hear
George Wyndham speak at the Union; but it occurred to us, as a happy
thought, to stay comfortably at home on a foggy November night, and
read his speech in next day's _Times_. The only important politician I
heard speak this term was Bonar Law, by whom I sat at the Conservative
Club dinner one evening. I found him a very pleasant neighbour, and he
made as good a speech as I ever heard at a gathering of the kind.
I made my way northward to Beaufort for Christmas, feeling a bit of a
wreck after a sharp bout of influenza, and enjoyed to the full the
breezy sunshine which so often prevails there in mid-winter. There was
a shooting-party at New Year, with pleasant _al fresco_ luncheons in
sheltered corners of leafless woods, and of an evening music, and ghost
stories round a great fire of beechen logs. Of telepathy between the
dying and the living Lord Hamilton gave me a striking instance. He had
served in South Africa; and at dawn, sleeping on the veldt, was aroused
by an unmistakable voice thrice calling his name. The voice was his
father's, of whose death he heard next day by cable. The quiet
conviction with which he narrated this little incident impressed me
much.
Staying at an uncle's in Edinburgh on my way south, I met at dinner
Lord Dunedin and some other interesting people; and there was some
"good {82} talk" on books and poetry. Some one quoted Swinburne's
opinion that the two finest lines in the language[9] were Browning's--
"As the king-bird, with ages on his plumes,
Travels to die in his ancestral glooms."
Three unhackneyed images, from the _City of the Soul_, I noted as
admirable:
"The distant rook's faint cawing, harsh and sweet."
"Black was his hair, as hyacinths by night."
"Wet green eyes, like a full chalk stream."
The mention of Mallock reminded me of some of his delectable similes:
"Miss Drake dropped a short curtsey, which resembled the collapse of a
concertina."
"Above them a seagull passed, like the drifting petals of a magnolia."
"She advanced slowly towards the group, moving along the carpet like a
clockwork mouse on wheels."
"Her eyes had the brown moisture that glimmers on a slug's back."
A cousin of mine at this dinner, lately returned from China, amused me
by the information that the pigeon-English word, or phrase, for a
bishop was "Number one topside heaven pidgin-man!"
On the evening of my arrival in London, a geographical friend carried
me to a notable meeting of his Society at Queen's Hall--the sailor Duke
of the Abruzzi lecturing, in quaint staccato {83} Italian-English, on
his ascent of Ruanzori, in Equatorial Africa. The King (with the
Prince of Wales) was on the platform--stout, grey-bearded, and rather
bored, I fancied, at being deprived of his after-dinner cigar: he made
a nice little speech of thanks and appreciation. A day or two later
came the startling news of the great earthquake in Jamaica, the only
Englishman who lost his life being my dear old friend Sir James
Fergusson, whose body was found beneath the ruins of a tobacconist's
shop in Kingston. He was a man of many gifts and many friends, who had
served his country with distinction in almost every part of the Empire;
and his death was a real tragedy, as well as a very real grief to me.
It was followed very shortly by that of another old friend, Susan Lady
Sherborne; and two very pleasant houses in Cornwall Gardens and Brook
Street, where I had spent many happy hours, were thus closed to me.
There was some talk, a little later, of a memorial to Sir James, the
Anglican Bishop of the West Indies suggesting that this should take the
form of subscriptions to his church restoration scheme. I ventured
strongly to deprecate this proposal in the columns of _The Times_, and
my objections were emphatically endorsed by Mr. Fleming, the well-known
Presbyterian minister in Belgravia.[10]
Two more deaths I may note in the early spring of 1907--the first that
of Professor Pelham, president {84} of Trinity; a gentleman and a
scholar, a real loss to Oxford, and (incidentally) one of my kindest
friends among college heads, just as his brother Sidney (famous slow
bowler and future archdeacon) had been thirty years before, when I was
a feather-headed freshman at Magdalen. In the same week died our
worthy Chancellor, Lord Goschen, after little more than three years of
office. Lords Rosebery and Curzon of Kedleston emerged as the
favourites among the many candidates "in the air"; but dining with a
large party at Lord Teignmouth's a little later, I heard it confidently
said that the country parsons would almost certainly "bring Curzon in."
They came up, as a matter of fact, in such swarms that they practically
swamped the election, Lord Curzon obtaining 1,101 votes against Lord
Rosebery's 440. I sat, by the way, at Lord Teignmouth's dinner next an
American "scientist" (odious word!) of some kind, who told me some odd
things about the Lower Mississippi. That river, he said, had, in 176
years, shortened itself by 242 miles--an average of about l 1/10 miles
per year. From this it followed that in the old Oolitic-Silurian
period, some 100,000 years ago, the lower Mississippi was upwards of
1,300,000 miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a
fishing-rod!
I went to Downside in March, for the solemn blessing of the new abbot,
my kind and learned friend Dom Cuthbert Butler. The elaborate ceremony
took nearly three hours: we were mercifully spared a sermon, but, _en
revanche_, the episcopal and abbatial speeches at the subsequent
luncheon were long and rather wearisome. At Fort Augustus, {85}
whatever the occasion, we never in those days derogated from the good
old monastic usage of silence, and public reading, in the refectory.
_Summum ibi fiat silentium_, said Saint Benedict: "let no _mussitatio_
[delicious Low Latin word for "whispering"] be heard there, or any
voice save that of the reader alone." The custom was one, I think, as
congenial to our guests as to their monastic hosts.
I was preoccupied at this time with the rapidly-failing health of my
oldest Oxford friend, H. D. Grissell of Brasenose, who spent half his
year in Rome, and the other half in what seemed a bit of old Rome
transported to Oxford. He was the most pertinacious and indefatigable
_collector_ I ever knew: coins, books and bindings, brass-rubbings,
autographs, book-plates, holy relics, postage-stamps, even birds'
eggs--all was fish that came to his far-flung net; and he laboured
incessantly to make all his collections, as far as possible, complete.
I found the old man at this time, rather pathetically, trying to
complete the collection of eggshells which he had begun as a Harrow boy
sixty years before. He insisted on exhibiting every drawer of his
cabinet, and was greatly pleased with the motto which, I told him, Sir
Walter Trevelyan had inscribed on _his_ egg-cabinet: "Hic Argus esto,
non Briareus"; or, in plain English, "Look, but don't touch!"[11]
Grissell said he would like to affix this classical caution to all his
collections of curios; but he did not live to do this, or indeed to do
much else of {86} any kind. He left England before Easter for Rome;
and there (as perhaps he would have wished) he died very suddenly a few
weeks later. By his own desire his body was brought back to England,
at great trouble and cost (these _post mortem_ migrations never
appealed to me), and was laid near his parents' graves in the pretty
country churchyard of Mickleham, in Surrey. There was a large
gathering in the pouring rain, Professor Robinson Ellis and I
representing his many Oxford friends. As his literary executor, I came
into possession of a great number of curious and interesting letters
and documents, dealing chiefly with Roman matters and the early days of
the Ritual movement at Oxford and elsewhere.
The Corpus Professor of Latin, old Robinson Ellis, and I saw
subsequently (perhaps drawn together by the loss of our common friend)
a good deal of one another. At "meat tea," a meal he dearly loved, we
used to sit long together, and talk classics, the only subject in which
he seemed in the least interested. I wish I had noted down all the odd
bits of erudition with which he used to entertain me. Cicero's last
words, he said (I cannot imagine on what authority) were "Causa
causarum, miserere mei!"[12] A curious story (perhaps mediaeval) of
Ovid was of how two monks visited his tomb, and in gratitude for the
noble line--the best, in his own opinion, that he had ever
written--"Virtus est licitis abstinuisse bonis," began reciting Paters
and Aves for his soul. The poet's spirit, unhappily, {87} was
unappreciative of their charity; and a voice was heard from the tomb
declaiming the irreverent pentameter: "Nolo Paternoster: carpe, viator,
iter!" The professor told me that in his opinion the best elegiac
couplet ever written in English was:
"Three Patagonian apes with their arms extended akimbo:
Three on a rock were they--seedy, but happy withal."
He said that one of Dr. Johnson's acutest literary criticisms was his
remark that Tacitus seemed rather to have made notes for a historical
work than to have written a history. The word "jour," he pointed out
to me, was derived from "dies" (though every single letter was
different) through the Italian--"dies, diurnus, giorno, jour." He
asked if I could tell him the authorship of the striking couplet--
"Mors mortis! morti mortem nisi morte dedisses,
AEternae vitae janua clausa foret."
This I was unable to do: on the other hand, I evoked a chuckle
(whimsical etymologies always pleased him) by telling him how a
fifteenth-century writer[13] had rendered the "Royal Collegiate Church
of Windsor" into Latin as "Collegium Domini Regis de _Ventomorbido_!"
At the end of Lent Term I spent a few days at Eastbourne, which struck
me (as the Honourable Mrs. Skewton struck Mr. Dombey) as being
"perfectly genteel"--no shops on the front, no minstrels or pierrots or
cockshys or vulgarity. The hill behind seemed to swarm with schools:
my host took me to one where he had two sons--a fine {88} situation,
capital playgrounds, and the head a pleasant capable-seeming little
man, who trotted briskly about on his little Chippendale legs, clad in
knickerbockers, and was as keen on his Aberdeen terriers as on his
young pupils. I remember at Eastbourne a quite appallingly ugly Town
Hall, and a surprisingly beautiful fourteenth-century church, I suppose
the only bit of old Eastbourne left. I went on to Arundel for my usual
pleasant Easter-tide visit; and after hearing much florid church-music
there, I enjoyed, on Low Sunday, the well-rendered plain-chant at
Westminster Cathedral; but I did not enjoy a terrible motett composed
by an eminent Jew--the words unintelligible and the music frankly
pagan. My nephew Kelburn and his wife ran me down one day to Chatham
in their new motor--cream-colour lined with crimson, very smart indeed.
He had been lately posted as first lieutenant to H.M.S. _Cochrane_, and
took us all over the great grey monster, vastly interesting. We buzzed
home through Cobham and Rochester, stopping to look over the grand old
Norman cathedral. "How strange," observed the simple sailor, looking
at the sculptured images round the west doorway, "to see all these old
Roman Catholic saints in a Protestant cathedral!" How I wished some of
my young Oxford friends had been by to hear him! Our whole drive to
town was of course redolent of Dickens and "Pickwick"--to me, but not
to my modern nephew and niece.
For the last week of the vacation a friend was bent on taking me to
Belgium; but great guns were blowing when we reached the coast, so we
alighted at Dover and stayed there! finding it quite {89} an
interesting place of sojourn. I was astonished at the antiquity,
extent, and interest of the Castle, especially of its church, once a
Roman barrack, and its tower, the ancient Pharos or lighthouse.
Gilbert Scott and the Royal Engineers between them had done their best
(or their worst) in the way of "restoration," disjoining the Pharos
from the main building, and adding an Early English (!) front, windows,
and door; but it still was, and is, by far the oldest edifice in
England used for religious worship, and of the greatest antiquarian
interest.
The event of the summer at Oxford was the installation of our new
Chancellor, Lord Curzon, who was by no means content, like the Duke of
Wellington, Lord Salisbury, and others of his not indistinguished
predecessors, to be quietly inducted into office by the university
officials at his own country residence. There was a great function at
the Sheldonian, and a Latin harangue from my lord which was both
elegant and well delivered, though it was thought by some that his
emotional reference to his late wife was a little out of place.
Oxford had caught the pageant-fever which was this summer devastating
England; and a great part of the term was spent (some cynics said
wasted) in the extensive preparations for our own particular show.
When they were all but complete, one of the historic "rags" by which
Christ Church has from time to time distinguished itself broke out, in
consequence of the House becoming head of the river; and among other
excesses, some damage was done to the pageant-stands already erected in
the meadows. A few days after this _emeute_ a description of it, which
is really too good to be lost, {90} appeared in the _Corriere della
Sera_ of Milan, "telephoned by our London correspondent." I translate
literally from the Italian:--
Recently the students of Oxford were beaten by those of Cambridge in
the great annual regatta: the other day they were defeated by the
sportive group (_il gruppo sportivo_) of Merton College; finally, they
allowed themselves to be vanquished by the sportive section (_la
sezione sportiva_) of the Society of Christ Church, to whom was
adjudged the primacy of the Thames. Yesterday, profoundly moved in
their _amore proprio_, the students of Oxford permitted themselves to
proceed to deplorable excesses, even to the point of applying fire to
the _stands_ erected on the riverside by the rival Societies. They set
fire also to the tent of the Secretariat of Christ Church, feeding the
flames with the chairs which they discovered in the vicinity.[14]
I believe that our Oxford pageant (in spite of the wet summer) proved
financially successful, if not altogether so artistically. A few of
the scenes were very pretty, especially the earliest (St. Frideswide),
and also the one representing Charles I. and his family at Oxford. And
the ecclesiastical and monastic episodes were instructive, if only as
showing the incompetence of twentieth-century Anglicanism to reproduce
even the externals--much more the spirit--of the Catholicism of old
England. Even more deplorable was the "comic" scene (written by the
Chichele professor of modern history!) in which the _clarum et
venerabile nomen_ of one of Oxford's saintliest sons was dragged in the
mud: Roger Racon being depicted as a mountebank cheap-jack, hawking
quack medicines from a {91} motor-bicycle![15] My brother, who had
entertained me at Warwick, came as my guest to witness the Oxford
effort; and we had the rather interesting experience of viewing it in
the company of Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain. They were both pleased
and interested; but it was impossible to deny that the poetic glamour
of the Warwick pageant (largely due to the romantic beauty of its
setting) was almost wholly wanting at Oxford.
Of the other pageants which were sprouting up all over the country
during this summer (unhappily one of the wettest on record), I attended
only one--that held at Bury St. Edmunds, which attracted me as being
mainly concerned with Benedictines. The setting was almost as fine as
at Warwick--verdant lawns, big trees and the majestic ruins of our
famous abbey all "in the picture"; and the "monks," mostly represented
by blameless curates, were at least presentable, not unkempt
ragamuffins as at Oxford.[16] The appearance of "Abbot Sampson"
(played, I was told, by a local archdeacon) was grotesque enough: he
wore throughout a purple chasuble over a black cassock, with a white
mitre, and strode about brandishing a great wooden crosier! but he
spoke his lines very well. Everything, however, was spoilt by the
pitiless rain, which {92} fell unceasingly. A clever black-haired lady
who played Boadicea (I believe the wife of an Ipswich dentist) had to
abandon her chariot and horses and appear on foot, splashing through
several inches of mud; and some of the "early British" matrons and
maidens sported umbrellas and mackintoshes! I had to leave half-way
through the performance, chilled to the bone, and firmly convinced that
open-air drama in England was a snare and a delusion.
Mark Twain, whom I have mentioned above, was one of the miscellaneous
celebrities, including Prince Arthur of Connaught and "General" Booth,
whom our Chancellor nominated for honorary degrees at his first
Encaenia. I met Mrs. Whitelaw Reid (the American Ambassadress) at
dinner at Magdalen on Commemoration evening, and lunched with her a few
days later at Dorchester House. One of the attaches was told off to
show me the famous "old Masters," about which I found he knew a good
deal less than I did! The same agreeable young American accompanied me
a little later to Bradfield, to see the boys play _Antigone_: a real
summer's day, for once, and the performance was admirable, especially
that of the title-role, the youth who played the part proving himself a
genuine tragedian. The comments of a lady just behind us, who was
profoundly bored most of the time, were amusingly fatuous.[17]
{93}
I was in spiritual charge this term of our Catholic undergraduates
(fifty or so), their chaplain having gone off on an invalid's holiday,
and left his flock in my care. I was delighted to have the company
every week-end of Robert Hugh Benson, who was giving the Sunday
conferences in our chapel. "Far from being the snake-like gloomy type
of priest so common in fiction," a weekly paper said of him about this
time, "Father Benson is a thorough man of the world, liberal, amiable,
and vivacious." He was, of course, all this and a great deal more; and
I greatly appreciated the opportunity which these summer weeks afforded
me of becoming really intimate with him. It was the beginning of a
genuine friendship, which was only interrupted (not, please God,
broken) by his premature and lamented death seven years later.[18]
[1] "Very satisfactory, I think, from an architectural point of view,"
said the alderman to his colleague, as they surveyed together the
interior of the new town hall; "but I fear the acoustics are not
exactly what they ought to be." His companion sniffed several times.
"Do you think not?" he said. "I don't notice anything myself!"
[2] [Greek: Henosis tes anglichanes chai tes Orthodoxou Echchlesias.]
[3] It was at least a convenient method of disposing of the Pope and
his claims.
[4] Collaterally, of course: Gregory XIII. (Buoncompagni), 1572-1585;
and Gregory XV. (Ludovisi), 1621-1623. I interested Don Andrea by
telling him that Gregory XIII. (reformer of the Julian Calendar and
builder of the Quirinal) was probably the last Pope officially prayed
for at Oxford, and that in his own college chapel. Mass certainly
continued to be celebrated in Merton Chapel well into the Pontificate
of Gregory XIII.
[5] The possession of the Evil Eye has never been considered
incompatible with the highest moral excellence. Pius IX., who was
venerated by his people as a saint, was nevertheless regarded by many
of them as an undoubted _jettatore_.
[6] The traditional name given by the Franciscans to their monastic
schools. But they had, if I remember rightly, sufficient sense of
humour not to apply it to their Cowley seminary.
[7] Nearly, but not quite, the shortest grace on record. That palm,
perhaps, belongs to the north country farmer wiping his mouth with the
back of his hand after a plentiful meal, and ejaculating the single
word, "Then!"
[8] Perhaps for the same reason as was given me by a Christ Church don,
who rashly prophesied that Wolsey's great hall would never be lighted
by electricity, as the additional heat given by the gas-jets was
absolutely essential by way of supplement to the huge fireplaces.
[9] A large assumption; but Swinburne was doubtless better qualified
than most people to make it. The lines are from _Sordello_ (ed. 1863,
p. 464).
[10] My own idea, suggested by a proposed memorial to Goschen at Rugby
school, where James Fergusson had been his school-fellow, was that the
memory of the latter also should be perpetuated there in some fitting
manner. I received letters cordially approving this suggestion; but I
never heard whether it was carried out in the case of either, or both,
of these distinguished public servants.
[11] Is it necessary to explain that Argus Panoptes, the all-seeing
guardian of Io, had a hundred eyes, and Briareus, the pugnacious son of
Earth and Heaven, a hundred arms? Sir Walter's application of these
myths was distinctly neat.
[12] Authentic or not, I added them to the collection of _novissima
verba_ of famous men which I had been long compiling. See Appendix.
[13] Clement Maydeston, in his _Directorii Defensorium_ (A.D. 1495).
"Windsor," of course, means the "winding shore," not the "sick wind!"
[14] The truth underlying the last sentence of this delectable report
is that some of the wilder rioters chucked the Secretary of the
Pageant's desk (containing all his papers) into the Cherwell; but it
was rescued so speedily by two of their more sober comrades that no
harm was done.
[15] This particular episode was really regarded by many people as
almost an outrage; and an article called "A Blot on the Pageant," which
I devoted to it in a weekly review, elicited many expressions of
sympathy and approval in Oxford and elsewhere.
[16] The Master of the Oxford Pageant, to whom I protested emphatically
against the scandalous caricatures of the Benedictines of Abingdon,
calmly told me that the British public looked on a monk as a comic kind
of creature, and would think itself defrauded unless he were so
represented!
[17] The lines (vv. 824-826):
[Greek: echousa ... tan phrygian xenan
tan, chissos os atenes,
petraia blasta davasen]
seemed to strike the good lady particularly--the sound, that is, not
the sense of them. "Kisson----blast her--d--n her! Dear me!" she
remarked; "what language, to be sure! I had no idea that Antigone
[pronounced _Antigoan_] was that kind of young person!"
[18] The Rev. R. H. Benson died on October 19, 1914.
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