1910-1911
The first news that reached me on my landing at Southampton on July 17,
1910, was that my nephew, Alan Boyle, the intrepid young airman, had
been seriously hurt at Bournemouth--not in the "central blue," but
through the wheels of his "Avis" catching in a clover-field. His life
had probably been saved by the chance of his having borrowed (for he
always as a rule flew bareheaded) an inflated rubber cap from a friend
just before the disaster; but, as it was, his head was badly
injured.[1] After telegraphing sympathy and inquiries to the Glasgows,
I went straight to London, to interview doctor and oculist, who both
advised consultation with the famous Wiesbaden specialist,
Pagenstecher. My brother and I accordingly left England next day,
staying a night at Cologne to visit the Cathedral, which D. had never
seen, and which, marvellous as it is, struck me once again as the most
uninspired of all the great churches of Europe. We reached Wiesbaden
next evening; and I was soon established {190} in the comfortable
_klinik_ devoted to the cosmopolitan clients of the great oculist. Our
party included patients from America, Australia, Mexico and Ceylon, as
well as from every country in Europe, and I found myself at table next
to a wealthy Catholic gentleman from Yucatan, who told me much about
that little-known and marvellous country, and gave me an album of most
interesting photographs. I had feared to be caged in a dark room, but
escaped this fate, and was able to enjoy of an afternoon the excellent
music in the Kurhaus gardens. The internal decorations of the Kurhaus
were too hideous for words; but it stood charmingly among shady groves,
lakes and fountains, and there were 350 newspapers in the huge rococo
reading-room. I had some pleasant walks with my new friend from
Yucatan--one to the top of the Neroberg, where we enjoyed a really
magnificent prospect, and partook of iced coffee and kirschen-kuechen in
a rustic summerhouse. Another glorious view was from the Greek Chapel,
erected by a Grand Duke of Nassau to the memory of his Russian wife,
with an extraordinarily sumptuous and beautiful interior: I was greatly
struck by it, though I could not help thinking that when the guide said
it cost L700,000 he meant marks, for it is of no great size.
Meanwhile I continued the prescribed "treatment" (unpleasant as it was)
at the hands of the eminent oculist, a mysterious-seeming old gentleman
who reminded me uncomfortably of Uncle Silas in Le Fanu's
blood-curdling novel. Our party at the Klinik was a remarkably
cheerful one, everybody seeming quite confident of being cured, or at
least greatly benefited. Personally, I soon made up my mind {191} to
the permanent loss of one eye (even though, as Dickens remarked of Mr.
Squeers, "popular prejudice runs in favour of two"); and in this
anticipation I was confirmed by the verdict of Pagenstecher's clever
son Adolf, a much more _simpatico_ person than his distinguished
parent. Anyhow I was out of the surgeons' hands (for this relief much
thanks!), and to celebrate my emancipation I dined at the Kurhaus,
listened to the admirable "Doppel-Orchester" (it was an Italian Opera
night, recalling many memories), witnessed the illuminations, and felt
quite dissipated.
I was cheered, in the midst of these preoccupations, by a very hopeful
letter from my sister, fortified by Sir Victor Horsley's favourable
prognosis of Alan's case.[2] Interesting news, too, came from Lady
Lovat (doubly interesting to me) that Simon, now nearly thirty-nine,
was engaged to my pretty young kinswoman Laura Lister.[3] And on the
same day I heard of the betrothal of a favourite niece to a
brigadier-general, with a command in West Africa (whither, I imagine,
his bride could _not_ accompany him), and a little place in
Lincolnshire. In both cases, curiously enough, the
bridegroom-expectant was more than double the age of the bride-to-be;
but I saw no reason, if they knew their own minds, why this discrepancy
should militate against their happiness.
Bethinking myself that I had never yet gone down the Rhine by water, I
boarded a steamer at Biebrich, {192} and steamed down the yellow turbid
river for eight hours in mist and rain, wishing all the time that I was
in the train. A female fellow-passenger introduced herself to me as a
former governess of the Glasgow children in the Antipodes, said she had
lost her party _and_ her purse, and requested a small loan! I spent
two pleasant days at Cologne (Sunday and the _festa_ of August 15 next
day), was edified by the immense and devout congregations and the
beautiful music in the vast cathedral, and pleased to see the simple
holiday-making of the good Rhinelanders in their pretty river-side
gardens. Brussels, my next halting-place, was crammed with visitors to
the Exhibition, or rather to the smoking ruins of what had been the
exhibition, the greater part of which had been burned down the night
before my arrival. I walked through the cheerful city, of which the
only new feature (to me) was the colossal Palace of Justice, which
seemed to dominate Brussels as the heaven-piercing spires of the Dom
dominate Cologne; but the gigantic mass of the Brussels building seemed
rather to be heaven-defying, and too suggestive of the Tower of Babel
to please me.
Letters at Brussels told me of the long-hoped-for arrival of Kelburn's
son and heir, godson to Queen Mary (her first since the King's
accession). He was named Maurice at the special wish of Her Majesty,
who (so I understood) was possessed with the odd idea that "Maurice"
was the masculine equivalent for "Mary!" Crossing from Ostend to
Dover, I encountered a well-known Scottish peer of whose demise I had
read in an English paper two days before. He was on his way home from
visiting the Passion-play at Ober Ammergau, had seen no papers, {193}
and had been surprised, and rather annoyed, at receiving letters and
telegrams at Brussels congratulating him on being still alive. I
cheered him up with a story of another man who saw his death announced
in the morning papers, and calling up an intimate friend on the
telephone, said, "Did you see in this morning's paper that I was dead?"
"Yes," replied his friend, "I did. Where are you speaking from?" When
I got to London, the same kind brother who had escorted me to Wiesbaden
took me (by way of consolation for my wasted month[4]) to lunch--on
turtle soup and punch--at the "Ship and Turtle" in the City. After a
flying visit to my kind friends at Arundel and to my sister in Surrey,
I came back to stay with him at his elm-shaded Thames-side home. We
made some pleasant expeditions thence by land and water, motoring one
day to quaint old Guildford, where we explored Archbishop Abbott's
delightfully picturesque old Jacobean almshouses, and drank tea in an
almost equally picturesque tea-shop, kept, I was carefully informed, by
_real_ ladies!
My pretty niece Cicely insisted on my presence at her wedding to her
Brigadier; and I journeyed down to Kent, on a piping August day, in the
company of crowds of Irish hoppers bound for the same county. The
marriage was from the Cranbrooks' nice place, Hemsted, in the very
heart of the Garden of England, a big Victorian house full of the first
Earl's[5] memorials of Queen Victoria, Beaconsfield, {194} and the
other great Tory statesmen of his day. Lady Jane Gathorne-Hardy did
the honours for the large house-party, as her parents were away taking
a "cure" somewhere; and the day after the pretty wedding in the pretty
parish church (the vicar, an old Magdalen man, gave a very good
address), our kind hostess escorted the whole party up to town and
entertained them to luncheon and a frivolous afternoon at the
"Follies." I left London the same night for Scotland, and met at
Beaufort, where I stayed _en route_, for our Highland abbey, Lovat's
youthful bride-elect--as tall, and I am sure as good, as the lady in
_The Green Carnation_,[6] and already an accepted and affectionate
member of the large and merry family of Frasers and Maxwells. I sailed
down our familiar canal to Fort Augustus on a marvellously still and
bright autumn afternoon; and as we slid alongside the Fort Augustus
quay and looked back on the panorama of azure lake and purple hills, a
friend and I agreed (as he colloquially put it) that it "licked the
Rhine into fits."
I found things externally little changed under the new, or restored,
Anglo-Benedictine regime, the chief visible difference being that my
brethren now wore the flapping English hood, which gave them rather the
aspect of large nuns. There was much coming and going to and from
missions and {195} locum-tenancies of vacant parishes; and our house
seemed destined to become more and more a "jumping-off place" for that
kind of work rather than a great centre of monastic life and
observance. One aim was not of course incompatible with the other,
given a large enough community; but ours was at this time small enough,
and there were several more or less permanent absentees. Most of the
latter, however, "rolled up" for the excellent retreat given us by our
good old friend Bishop Hedley, who had done us the same kindness just
twenty-one years before. He was interested, after it was over, in
hearing of our plans and hopes (then much "in the air") for re-starting
the suspended building of our much-needed church, of which the
foundation-stone had been laid nearly fifteen years previously. A
young architect (an "old boy" of the abbey school) was staying with us,
and quite prepared to produce the most fascinating designs at the
shortest notice. But money, or the lack of it, was, as usual, the
crucial point; and we did not "see our way" (horrid phrase) to resume
operations either then or in the immediate future.
I went, in these golden October days, when a wonderful stillness so
often broods over Highland hills and glens in their livery of autumnal
russet, to do chaplain for two Sundays to the Lovats, who had a large
shooting-party at Beaufort--Seftons and Howicks and Gathorne-Hardys and
some others, including an A.D.C. to the Irish Viceroy, of whom he told
me a good story. An old peer from the country presented himself at a
levee at Dublin Castle; and his Excellency engaged him in conversation,
starting as usual with the weather. {196} "Wonderful rain we've been
having: everything coming up out of the ground."--"God forbid!" said
the old peer. "I said that everything was coming up out of the
ground," repeated H.E., slightly raising his voice. "And _I_ said 'God
forbid!'" retorted the old gentleman: "I've got three wives buried
under it!"
I went from Beaufort for a day or two to Nairn, which I remember hardly
more than a poor fishing village, frequented by ladies and children for
sea-bathing, but which owes its present reputation and prosperity, like
so many other places, to its excellent golf-links. After a short stay
at Kelburn, where I found my poor nephew Alan Boyle making good
progress to recovery, I could not resist an invitation to pass a few
days at St. Andrews, where the successor of my dear friend George Angus
was anxious for me to see his new church lately opened. It was a
rather effective building, in what a descriptive report called the
"Lombardic style, adapted to suit local conditions." One of the
"adaptations" was putting the tower at the wrong end, the "local
condition" being that the lady who had built the church, and who
inhabited a villa close by, had objected to a western tower as blocking
her view of the North Sea! I strolled about the "dear romantic town,"
mounting the East Neuk road as far as "Rest and be thankful," and
feeling heavy-hearted enough, with Tennyson's lines constantly in my
mind:
I climb the hill from end to end:
Of all the landscape underneath,
I find no place that does not breathe
Some gracious memory of my friend.
{197}
For each has pleased a kindred eye,
And each reflects a happier day;
And leaving them to pass away,
I think once more he seems to die.
I came home from my last walk by the old harbour, admiring, as I had
done a hundred times before, the wonderful lights on sea and land which
one associates with St. Andrews in autumn; but feeling that I never
cared to see the place again. Soon I went south, to Oxford, where Mgr.
Kennard, who was again threatening for the _n_th time to resign, for
reasons of health, his office of chaplain, had begged me to come and
help him for as much of the Michaelmas term as I could spare. I found
him, as a matter of fact, rather exceptionally well, and ready and
anxious to recount to an intelligent listener (which I fear I was
_not_, on this subject) every one of his golfing achievements during
the past four months at Burnham, Westward Ho! North Berwick, and
elsewhere. Although quite incapable of talking "golf shop," I
contributed one anecdote (new, I believed), which I had brought from
Nairn, and which pleased my old friend. It concerned a young man and
maiden who were playing golf--the lady quite a novice--and had reached
a hole which was on the top of a little hill. The youth ran up first
to see the lie of the balls. "A stymie!" he shouted: "a dead stymie!"
The young lady came up with a sniff. "Well, do you know?" she said, "I
_thought_ I smelled something as I was walking up the hill!"
I had been invited to preach Lovat's wedding sermon on October 15; but
this, as well as much of the long choral service, had been
countermanded {198} at the eleventh hour. I went up the day before to
the family residence in Grosvenor Gardens: presents still pouring in,
and such unconsidered trifles as diamond pendants, silver salvers, gold
cigarette-cases, telescopes, and illuminated addresses, lying
promiscuously about. A small army of newspaper-reporters (whom I was
deputed to interview) swarmed in after dinner. There was a great
gathering at the Oratory next morning, where the ample space beneath
the dome makes a most effective setting for a wedding pageant. The
bride's procession was a little late; and the stalwart bridegroom,
supported by his Scots Guards brother, was (shall I say "the cynosure
of all eyes" or the "observed of all observers"?--both good old
_cliches_) in the full dress bravery of a Highland chief.[7] I went in
afterwards to sign the register, while the _primo soprano assoluto_ of
the famous choir thrilled out the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria," as
inevitable an accompaniment of Oratory weddings as "O for the Wings of
a Dove" is of those at Sloane Street or Eaton Square. Mrs. Asquith
(the bride's aunt) entertained us afterwards in the none too spacious
reception rooms at 10, Downing Street, where the well-dressed mob,
_more suo_, made play with their elbows in their quest for their own
and other people's presents on the loaded tables. There were
representatives from the bride's home in Ribblesdale, as well as a
deputation of farmers from distant Beaufort; {199} and one heard
intermittently the broad accent of Lancashire and the slow soft
Highland speech, mingling oddly with the London cackle. The
festivities at an end, I escorted a party of youthful Maxwells to the
Zoo. We saw a much-bored tiger, which gaped at us most rudely; also a
greatly vaunted American aloe, of the
"blooming-once-in-a-hundred-years" kind, which we all thought a fraud.
I had planned to finish while at Oxford my greatly belated work for the
_Encyclopaedia_, but was (perhaps unduly) mortified to find how much my
progress was impeded by my altered conditions of eyesight. Let me,
however, record here, _pour encourager les autres_ similarly
handicapped, that the initial difficulty of _focussing_ (very serious
and very discouraging at first to a one-eyed man) tends to disappear
not only quickly but completely. "Un poco paciencia," as we say in
Brazil; kind Mother Nature steps in with her compensations, and one can
only feel grateful--I hope and believe that I did--at suffering so
little from what seems, and after all is, so serious a privation.
Two of Lovat's nephews were now undergraduates at Trinity, Cambridge,
whither I went over to see them from Oxford. They gave me luncheon in
their quaint low-ceiled rooms in Trinity Street, took me to see their
sister (a pupil in a convent school), and escorted me over some of the
"lions," wanting to know at every turn whether I did not admit that
Cambridge was infinitely superior to Oxford. I handsomely owned that
we possessed nothing quite so fine, in their different ways, as King's
Chapel, the famous "backs," and the Fitzwilliam Museum {200} (to say
nothing of the Catholic church); and they were both pleased at this
tribute, though it must be confessed that the absorbing interest of
their lives at that period seemed less to be architectural masterpieces
than the internal mechanism of motor-bicycles, about which they, in
common with many of their undergraduate friends, appeared to be quite
curiously infatuated. I went on from Cambridge (an insufferably
tedious journey) to Douai Abbey, our Berkshire monastery, where one was
always sure of a welcome of Benedictine heartiness, and where I gave a
lantern-lecture on Brazil, of a popular and superficial kind, to the
good monks and their pupils. This reminds me that, as a supposed
authority on negroes (many Englishmen, I firmly believe, are under the
impression that the population of Brazil is almost exclusively black!),
I was invited by my friend the Warden of Wadham to meet the Master of
Pembroke at dinner, in order to discuss the advisability or otherwise
of admitting black, brown and yellow men freely into the university.
The Warden (a Scotsman who had never, I think, been out of Britain) was
all in favour of the "open door"; whereas the little Master of
Pembroke, who had been bishop of Barbadoes, and knew a thing or two
about blacks, was strongly for the "keep 'em out" policy, and I was
entirely with him. We had an interesting evening's talk; but the
solution of this not unimportant question (which the foundation of the
Rhodes Scholarships had brought much to the front) did not of course
rest with us. The mention of Rhodes reminds me that a conspicuous
memorial tablet had lately been erected to him in the Schools: the
design was good and simple, but the lettering of the inscription (as
{201} is too often the case on modern monuments) so deplorably bad as
to spoil the whole effect.[8]
Walking through Magdalen cloisters on a sombre November afternoon, I
came unexpectedly on the poor young King (or ex-King) of Portugal, who
was looking through the college with a single companion. He looked
(who could wonder)[9] pale, depressed and nervous; and I was shocked at
the change in his appearance since I had seen him at Blenheim on the
occasion of his previous visit to England. Professor Oman (who had
been his guest in Portugal for the anniversary celebrations at Busaco)
met him, I believe, accidentally in High Street, and showed him all
over All Souls and the Bodleian; but I heard that his listless and
apathetic demeanour underwent little change. To be a "Roi en exil"
almost before reaching man's estate is about as dreary a lot as could
fall to any man; and one could only hope that fate had something better
in prospect for the young monarch so early and so tragically dethroned.
I got to Ampleforth Abbey, on my way north, in time for our great
Benedictine festival of All Saints of our Order; but the "sweet vale of
Mowbray" was wrapt in mist and rain, and the boys' holiday spoilt. I
gave a lecture to them that evening on the lighter side of Brazil, with
stories of snakes and niggers; and another next evening on the work of
{202} the religious orders, especially our Benedictines, in the
evangelization of that vast country. I lectured in the new college
theatre, a really fine room, and acoustically very satisfactory, though
I did not care for the semi-ecclesiastical woodwork. When I got back
to Fort Augustus a few days later, I found Lovat, Lochiel, and other
local magnates there, discussing the fate of our poor little railway,
which the N.B. Company, tired of working it at a loss for several
years, had given notice to close after New Year.[10] Two pieces of
news reached me soon after my arrival--one that Congregation at Oxford
had declined, by a good majority, to abolish compulsory Greek; the
other that the Brazilian Navy was in full revolt, and the crews of
their two new Dreadnoughts (one the _Sao Paulo_, whose captain and crew
had come to England with me) were firing their big guns from the
harbour into the city! I could only hope that our poor abbey, which
must have been in the direct line of fire, had not suffered.[11]
My own plans were almost matured for returning to Brazil early in 1911;
but it seemed prudent now to "wait and see" if this naval _emeute_
really portended anything like a general revolution. Meanwhile I had
been authorized to accept an invitation from the Norfolks to stay with
them at Norwich, for the opening of the great church which had been
many years a-building, at the Duke's expense, in his {203} titular
city. He had taken the "Maid's Head," a delightful old half-timbered
inn, for our party, which pretty well filled it. I said an early mass
on Our Lady's _festa_, December 8, in the lady-chapel (a memorial of
the Duke's first wife),[12] of the vast, austere, and splendid
church--the only modern church in which I have ever felt as if I were
in a mediaeval cathedral. Breakfasting afterwards with the
clergy--mostly Irish--the news of Ninian Crichton Stuart's victory at
Cardiff[13] (which came to us by wire) was a bit of a bombshell; but
the "Maid's Head" party were of course delighted. The inaugural
services were very splendid, though unduly prolonged by a sermon an
hour long; and though for once there was no after-luncheon oratory, the
bishop preached for another full hour in the evening. The tediousness
of my long journey back to Scotland next day was aggravated by an
amateur politician (with a wheezy cough) in my carriage, who bored me
almost to tears with a _rechauffe_ of his speeches at various
election-meetings; but I consoled myself by reading in an evening paper
that the Unionist candidate for Ayr had increased his majority
five-fold. At Edinburgh I came on my energetic old brother-in-law
Glasgow, who had come in from Ayrshire (he was then not far off
seventy-eight) to dine at a naval banquet and to vote for the
Representative Peers. I went for the week-end to the Kerrs at
Woodburn, meeting {204} there a serious young publisher, who offered me
very good terms to write a detailed history--it has never yet been
written--of Scottish Catholicism since the Reformation: a fascinating
subject, and one with which I should have loved to grapple, but life is
too short to do all, or even half, that one would like to do.
With an hour or two to spare in Glasgow on my way to the Highlands, I
lunched with my friend (the friendship was personal, not political) the
editor of the _Observer_, at his Radical Club. In the middle of the
meal a member rose with a long face, and announced an unexpected
Unionist victory at Tavistock--whereat, to the consternation of every
one, I cheered loudly! I reached Fort Augustus the same evening, to
learn of the death, at the advanced age of ninety-three, of our kind
old friend and neighbour Mrs. Ellice of Invergarry, one of the last of
the great landladies who a few years before had by a curious
coincidence owned and managed (very capably, too) some of the largest
estates in the North of Scotland. The vast Glengarry property, once
the domain of the Macdonells, and stretching from the Caledonian Canal
to the western seaboard, had been under Mrs. Ellice's sole control
since her husband's death more than thirty years before. We at Fort
Augustus, as well as the numerous Highland Catholics resident on her
estate, and under our spiritual care, had always found in her a most
friendly, kind and considerate neighbour.
Two happenings I recall at Fort Augustus during these December
days--one a remarkably interesting lecture on the theory of
lake-temperature from a Mr. Wedderburn, who had been recently on the
{205} Scottish loch survey; and the other event was our all (that is,
all the priests of the monastery) being called on to vow, promise,
swear and sign, individually and collectively, our adherence to the
Creed of Pope Pius IV., which _I_ had sworn to some thirty-six years
before.[14] This act of submission, enjoined on every Catholic priest
in Christendom, was part of the vigorous campaign against Modernism
initiated by Pope Pius X. Having discharged this duty, I betook myself
to Keir, to spend Christmas with the Stirlings. It was a family party,
including the Lovats and a few others, and we spent the season in
homely Dickens fashion, with ghost-stories and snapdragon and a
priceless Early Victorian conjurer in a crumpled dress suit, who
accompanied tricks of really incredible antiquity with a "patter"
almost prehistoric. One day we drove down to survey the grand old
cathedral of Dunblane, very carefully restored (of course for
Presbyterian worship) since I had last seen it. As we entered, we
heard the opening strains of Elgar's _Ave Verum_--
[Illustration: Music fragment: Ave verum cor-pus na-tum Ex Ma-ri-a
Vir-gi-ne! etc.]
(a Eucharistic hymn by a Catholic composer!) being played on a fine
organ, and wondered what old John Knox would have thought about it all.
Meanwhile the Catholics of Dunblane, a devout and fervent little flock
(so I was told), had perforce to content themselves with a poor loft,
where I preached {206} to them on two Sundays. At Stirling, not far
distant, there was a new church designed by Pugin--a rather dismal and
angular edifice, but anyhow spacious and well kept. On my return
journey to Fort Augustus, I found myself condemned, by the unholy
rivalry of the Caledonian and North British Railways, to a four hours'
wait at Crianlarich, where I found the temperature, on a frosty January
morning, quite as "invigorating" as did the fabled tourist.[15] I had
a few busy days at the abbey preparing for my return to South America.
My passage was booked for the middle of January: I had devoted a week
to farewells to relatives and friends--and then came the anti-climax!
On the very day on which (like the poor Sisters of Mercy) I was to have
"breasted the billows of the Atlantic"[16] _en route_ for Brazil, I
received so discouraging and peremptory a letter from my London
oculist, as to the risk to my remaining eye of a possibly stormy winter
voyage, that I had perforce to abandon the idea, and to return (like
the bad sixpence of poor Grissell's story)[17] to my {207} northern
monastery, where I received so brotherly a welcome home that I did not,
after the first disappointment, regret the change of plan. I was
inducted again into my old office of librarian (first entrusted to me
twenty-seven years before); and our young organist having gone into
residence at the Benedictine Hall at Oxford, I acted for a time as his
substitute. The post of subprior being presently vacated by the
departure of the then holder of the office for a Liverpool mission,
that also was committed to me; and as our good prior was at this time
to some extent invalided, I found myself pretty fully occupied, more
especially as I had in those days a curiously cosmopolitan
correspondence (much of it on literary or antiquarian matters), which
could not be neglected. I recall receiving by a single mail (on St.
Benedict's Day, as it chanced), letters from India, North America,
Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Soudan!
[1] Alan, the Glasgows' youngest son, had taken up flying most
enthusiastically, living in a shed at Brooklands (his mechanic acting
as his cook), and practising continually with his Avis monoplane,
which, like himself, was of purely Scottish origin. He had been the
third flying-man to gain an aero-certificate on a machine of British
design and build.
[2] My nephew's recovery was slow and tedious; but he was ultimately
restored to health.
[3] Her grandmother, Emma Lady Ribblesdale (born a Mure of Caldwell)
was my father's first cousin.
[4] The word seems ungrateful: the time was not really wasted, for I
had done my best and knew the worst, and the suspense was anyhow over.
[5] Gathorne Hardy, who turned Gladstone out of his seat for Oxford
University in 1865, and was afterwards successively Home Secretary and
Secretary for War and for India. His grandson the third Earl (my
nephew by marriage) broke away from the Tory traditions of the family,
sold Hemsted Park to one of the Harmsworths, and set up a new home for
himself in Suffolk.
[6] "I believe she is very tall and very religious--if you notice, it
is generally short, squat people who are atheists."--_The Green
Carnation_.
[7] Possibly the last spectacle of the kind at the Oratory (but that
was in the old tin church) had been the apparition of the youthful Earl
of Loudoun in Campbell tartan kilt and philabeg, acting as best man to
his cousin Lord Bute on the latter's memorable wedding-day, April 16,
1872.
[8] The stonemason of to-day imitates (usually very badly, and with
deplorable result) the printing of a book, not in the least realizing
that a lapidary inscription is something quite different from a
sentence struck off movable metal types.
[9] It was hardly a month since the Revolution of October 3, 1910, had
driven the unfortunate youth from the uneasy throne which he had
occupied since the cruel murder of his father and brother, in the
streets of Lisbon, on February 1, 1908.
[10] The negotiations resulted in a respite for six months, after which
financial arrangements of some kind were made for keeping the line open
for the future.
[11] It was, as a matter of fact, considerably damaged: moreover, one
of the shells fired by the insurgents not only inflicted serious injury
on the Prior, Dom Joachim de Luna, but blew the poor tailor of the
monastery into atoms.
[12] Artistically reminiscent of "Duchess Flora" were the elaborate
carvings in this chapel, conventional but very charming representations
of English wild flowers.
[13] A General Election--"Peers _v._ People," as the Radicals called
it--was at this time in progress. Ninian's election for Cardiff came
as a considerable surprise to the Liberals, as well as a triumph to the
Unionists.
[14] When I escaped from the City of Confusion into the Church of God,
at Rome, on March 25, 1875.
[15] "Isn't this invigorating?" exclaimed an English traveller, as he
emerged from his stuffy carriage early on a breezy August day. "No,
sir," said the stolid Highland station-master: "it's just Crianlarich!"
[16] "In May, 1842, Sisters Ursula, Frances, and Rose left the
parent-house for the Far West--the first Sisters of Mercy who had ever
breasted the billows of the Atlantic."--_Annals of the Sisters of
Mercy_, vol. III., p. 16. It really reads as though the good nuns had
swum across!
[17] "In Italy," he said to me once, "one is welcomed back with an
embrace and a cordial 'Ben ritornato, signore!' but coming back here to
Oxford, I call to pay my respects to the good Jesuit Fathers; and the
old brother who opens the door only grumbles out, 'Well, Mr. Grissell,
here you are, back again, _like sixpenn'orth of bad halfpennies!_'"
{208}