1911
Our brothers had good success this year with the spring salmon-netting
in Loch Ness; and I myself witnessed the landing one afternoon of nine
clean fish, all scaling between fifteen and thirty pounds. We had
always enjoyed the privilege of netting a certain number of salmon
during Lent; and I think it was this year that Lovat proposed, at a
meeting of the syndicate of riparian owners and tenants who had
recently assumed the control of the fishing, that this right should be
conceded to us as heretofore. It was agreed to with but one
dissentient voice, that of a rather cantankerous neighbour of ours who
was only, I believe, an honorary member of the syndicate, having
pleaded that he was too poor to pay his subscription. "Certainly,"
said a noble duke who had leased for some years the best spring water
in the vicinity; "by all means let the poor monks (or was it "poor
devils"?) have their salmon: it's probably all they get to eat!"
Lovat was kind enough to tell me, when he came down about this
salmon-fishing question, that he and others (unnamed) were "pulling
strings" in various quarters to get me appointed chaplain at Oxford in
succession to our dear old Kennard, who (after numerous unheeded cries
of "Wolf!") was, {209} it seemed, really resigning, and preparing to
retire for life to a dull seaside town in Somerset. I told him,
however, that I was sure there was no chance of any monk or other
"regular" being appointed: moreover I had heard that a priest hailing
from Brighton, with the patent and obvious qualification of possessing
L1,000 a year of his own, had been already chosen; and, finally, I
hoped and expected to be allowed to return to Brazil, unless I received
some very clear and unmistakable indication that I was more wanted at
home. Meanwhile the work immediately in front of me was organizing the
Bishop Hay centenary celebrations, which were to be kept at our abbey
in the autumn on a considerable scale, and of which I had been named
general secretary. Before tackling this business I was enabled to
spend Holy Week and Easter, as so often before, happily at Arundel,
where my visit this year coincided with the anniversary of Duchess
Mora's death. I officiated at the memorial service for her in the
FitzAlan chapel, always an impressive function among the venerable
monuments--some of them more than five centuries old--of bygone
FitzAlans and Howards, touched by the chequered light from the great
east window, in which the Duke and his little son are depicted in
prayer before the altar.
I went from Arundel to Brighton to see my friend Grissell, whom I found
wrestling with census-papers, and with the difficulty of inducing his
female domestics to admit (at least approximately) their real ages. I
had not, of course, had the same trouble at Fort Augustus, where our
residents varied in age from sixteen to ninety-five, the latter being
the record of our good old Brother Nathalan, whom {210} we all hoped to
see reach his century.[1] At the Union Club, whither Grissell carried
me to lunch, I remember how we (members, guests, waiters and all)
deserted our tables and flocked to the window to see--a flying man!
Gustave Hamel swooping down on the Hove lawns after flying from Hendon
(61 miles in 58 minutes), as steady as a rock on his Bleriot monoplane.
It was the first 'plane I had ever seen in the air! I reached London
next morning in time to attend Linlithgow's pretty wedding at St.
Margaret's, Westminster. It was Primrose Day, and the crowds inside
and outside the church were augmented by mobs gazing idly at Dizzy's
bedecked statue in Parliament Square. I squeezed in afterwards for a
few minutes at Hereford Gardens, congratulated the bridegroom's mother,
and was amused to hear a dignified menial (who, I thought, must have
been a City toastmaster hired for the occasion) shouting out the names
of the distinguished guests in stentorian tones for the benefit of our
exceedingly deaf host. April was summerlike this year; and I was glad
to escape from the noisy stuffy town to my brother's river-side home,
where we sat in the violet twilight on the edge of Thames, watching the
crafts of all sorts and sizes gliding past in the gloaming, and
listening to the snatches of music (sometimes quite pretty and
effective) coming to us from launch or wherry across the darkling
water. "That's a quiet pretty little thing," said my brother, looking
admiringly at an electrically-propelled canoe {211} "made for two"
which was skimming up stream swiftly and silently. But the susceptible
youth to whom the remark was addressed had eyes only for the vision of
beauty in the stern. "I don't think," he said knowingly, "that you'd
find her quite so quiet if you knew her!" and was surprised at the
shout of laughter with which his remark was received. I got back to
Fort Augustus just in time to vote at the School Board elections. We,
of course, all "plumped" for our Father Andrew Macdonell, who was duly
elected, together with the local Established, United Free, and "Wee
Free" ministers, and the Stratherrick priest--a curious clerical crowd.
The exceptionally fine summer attracted an unusual number of visitors
to Fort Augustus; and we had quite a gathering for the local
celebration of King George's coronation-day, which was kept chiefly as
a children's holiday, with games, an enormous tea, and loyal and
patriotic songs and speeches. A more domestic festival, a few days
later, was the silver jubilee of my ordination, which I was glad to be
able to celebrate with my brethren. I received quite a sheaf of
letters and telegrams--I had no idea that the anniversary would be so
generally remembered--and had the pleasure of reading in a Scottish
newspaper that I was "one of the most amiable, devout, and learned
ecclesiastics of the day!" I was glad that among those present at my
jubilee Mass was one of my oldest Catholic friends, Lady Lovat,[2] who
was herself receiving congratulations this year on the birth of three
new grandchildren, including {212} sons and heirs to Lovat and the
Stirlings of Keir. Arriving at Keir a few days later, _en route_ for
my examination-centre in Staffordshire, I found my host and hostess
out, but made friends with the "younger of Keir"--_alias_ Billy
Stirling--(aged two months), who was reposing in his perambulator
"under a spreading chestnut tree" on the lawn.
My "Oxford Local" work at Oakamoor College over, I went on to Oxford
for a few days, on the tiresome (and to me rather melancholy) business
of finally packing up my goods and chattels there. Although in Long
Vacation, I found a few kind friends still in residence: and the
Hassalls took me to see the renovated west front (Wolsey's) of Christ
Church. The work, they said, had cost some L15,000, but was well worth
it. A few hours in London I devoted to taking a nephew to see the
Kinemacolor pictures--the Durbar and the Prince of Wales's investiture
at Carnarvon. By some new contrivance the primary colours, only, were
reproduced on the films, giving us the blue sky, the green grass and
the scarlet uniforms, but everything else brownish-grey: the effect was
perhaps more weird than beautiful or lifelike. The popular young
Prince was in a box with his sister, looking at his own doings at
Carnarvon; and it was curious to see the audience cheering alternately
the filmed prince and the live one, who seemed rather embarrassed by
the attention paid to him. On my northward journey I visited my
friends the Rector of Exeter College and his wife at their pretty
Westmorland home, near Oxenholme; it was a district quite new to me,
and I was delighted with the fine rolling country, and the noble view
over Morecambe Bay and towards the distant Lakes.
{213}
I found, on my return to our abbey, extensive repairs going on in view
of the expected influx of visitors in September, and the procurator in
despair at the dilatoriness of Highland workmen, recalling the famous
plumber of Carstairs.[3] All the shooting-lodges were full, and
expeditions to our monastery, when the shooters had an off-day, seemed
one of the regular attractions of the neighbourhood. I remember one of
our nearer neighbours, the shooting-tenant's wife from Glendoe, riding
down one day to call, with Lady Winifred Elwes--the ladies astride, in
ordinary frocks, on fat grey ponies, and our good lay-brother porter in
speechless astonishment at the apparition. I was glad to welcome one
day for an hour or two my old friends the Portsmouths, _en route_ for
their remote castle of Guisachan: his lordship pompously pleasant as of
old, and his wife equally pleasant without the pomposity. I presented
them to the Bishop of Chur (or Coire), Mgr. Schmitt, at that time a
guest in the abbey with his two chaplains. I had visited Chur more
than thirty years before on my way to the Engadine (before the railway
was made under the Albula Pass), and had visited the cathedral in quest
of the supposed relics of St. Lucius, the king of Britain who, Bede
says, wrote to Pope Eleutherius asking for instruction in the Christian
faith. The Bishop had never heard this story; but he said that there
was a constant tradition at Chur that Lucius was a Welsh saint who had
died there after {214} spending many years in missionary labours among
the Rhaetian Alps.[4]
I spent the last Sunday of August as chaplain to the Lovats at
Stronlairg, their remote lodge nestling under the great range of the
Mona Liadh hills, in the wildest part of Central Inverness-shire. I
have called it, and Guisachan, "remote"; but no place is really so, if
accessible by a decent road, in these motoring days; and "neighbours"
from thirty or forty miles away thought nothing of dropping in casually
to luncheon or tea. Lady Derby, whose husband had one of Lovat's
forests, came up one day with her daughter and her sister-in-law Lady
Isobel Gathorne-Hardy, from whom I was sorry to hear a disquieting
account of the health both of my niece Dorothy Cranbrook and of her
husband. With our house-party and the servants, I had quite a
congregation in our _chapelle provisoire_ on Sunday; and it was, as
always, a happiness to me to have the privilege of saying mass for a
little flock of faithful Catholics in the splendid solitude of these
Highland hills and glens.
The _triduo_, or three days' celebrations in honour of the centenary of
Bishop Hay, had been fixed for September 12-14; and we entertained more
than seventy guests in the abbey for the occasion. All the Scottish
bishops, except the aged Archbishop of Glasgow, were present, besides
Bishop Hedley, Abbot Gasquet, Monsignors, canons, heads of religious
orders, priests and devout laymen, including {215} Lovat and his
brother Alastair. The weather was perfect throughout the week; and the
religious services, though naturally the chief feature of the
celebrations, were not so prolonged or so continuous as to prevent our
visitors from enjoying many pleasant excursions by land and water. The
fine portrait of the illustrious bishop by George Watson (first
president of the Scottish Academy), lent us by Blairs College, excited
much interest; and my lantern-lecture on the Life and Times of Hay (a
collateral descendant of whom, by the way, was one of our guests), was
very well received by a distinguished audience. Many of the visitors
to the abbey and village stayed on a day or two for the local concert
and Highland Gathering. The Rotherhams, Bishop John Vaughan, Lady
Edmund Talbot and her sister Lady Alice Reyntiens, were among those who
arrived in time for these later festivities. I heard from Lord
Rotherham of the death of a very old friend, Sir William Farrer, whose
daughter had married my brother. He and his wife, whom he had long
survived (he was nearly ninety at his death) had shown to us all
constant kindness in the days of our childhood and ever since; and I
recalled pleasant days at his beautiful Berkshire home, where the
lovely gardens were the delight and recreation of his busy professional
life.[5]
{216}
The kind abbot of S. Paulo had come to England in order to escort to
Brazil a little community of nuns for his newly-founded Benedictine
convent; and I had promised to attend their _dispedida_ at Southampton
at the end of September. I found myself at Inverness among the gay
crowds attending the Northern Meeting, of which the special feature
this year was a great rally of boy-scouts from all the northern
counties, in honour of their popular Chief, Sir Robert Baden-Powell.
Seven hundred mustered, at least half of them kilted--a very pretty
sight; and "B. P." made them a stirring speech, with an interesting
account of the spread of the movement ("Escotismo," they called it in
Brazil, where it was very popular), in different parts of the world. I
travelled from Edinburgh to London with the Archbishop of York, who had
been officiating at the wedding of an Ayrshire Houldsworth. We had
last met at Dunskey, my old home in Galloway, when he was, I think,
vicar of Portsea. I journeyed straight to Southampton, where good
Abbade Miguel, an English Benedictine (Dom Sibley) who was accompanying
him to Brazil, and the seven nuns,[6] were all ready for their long
voyage. I saw them on board the good old _Aragon_ (which looked very
spick-and-span), "waved my hands (like Nancy Lee) upon the quay," and
rather wished that I was one of the party! Meanwhile I had to get back
to London, to help to marry (on a murky Saturday afternoon) my Irish
Guards friend Tom {217} Vesey[7] to Lady Cicely Browne. A "mixed
marriage," as it is called, is always a short affair, with no vocal
music, and of course no nuptial mass; but this was the briefest I ever
remember, the whole ceremony, including a five minutes' sermon from
Father Maturin, taking exactly a quarter of an hour! There was the
usual tiresome crowd afterwards at Lord Revelstoke's house in Carlton
House Terrace; but I was glad to see some old friends, and to have a
pleasant chat with Lady Bigge,[8] who, by the way, had just become Lady
Stamfordham. If there was no music at the Chelsea church, I came in
for more than I bargained for next day (Sunday), namely a performance
by a famous London choir of Beethoven's Grand Mass, a composition which
I would fain hear anywhere rather than in church. It was, of course,
excellently rendered; but as I listened to the crashing chords, I could
not help recalling the appreciation of an eminently-qualified critic,
treating of this musical masterpiece:--
"The Christian sentiment has completely left him in the _Gloria_, where
there bursts forth, not the pure and heavenly melody of a hymn of
praise and peace, but the shout of victory raised by human passions
triumphing over a conquered enemy."
Journeying north to Ampleforth Abbey, where I {218} was engaged to give
my "Bishop Hay" lecture, I read in my morning paper (1) that old Sir
William Farrer had left L300,000 (I hoped my sister-in-law would
benefit), (2) that Lady Herbert of Lea, an outstanding figure in
English Catholic life for sixty years, and a very kind friend to me in
my own early Catholic days, had died at the age of nearly ninety; (3)
that the Pope had created seventeen Cardinals and two new English
archbishoprics (Liverpool and Birmingham); but no Benedictine Cardinal,
and none for Canada or Australia, although there were two
Irish-Americans for U.S.A.! I spent November 1 and 2 at Ampleforth: on
All Saints' Day I saw the college football team give a handsome
drubbing to a visiting school--a feat to be proud of, as they were
themselves quite novices at the Rugby game. Next day, All Souls',
there were the usual solemn requiem services; but owing to the
exigencies of the school classes, the poor monks had to crowd in before
breakfast matins, lauds, prime, meditation, October devotions, tierce,
sext, none, and Pontifical high mass--with a full day's teaching to
follow! rather killing work, I should imagine. The abbot told me that
he proposed sending two of his community to Western Canada, to
"prospect" in view of founding a monastery and college there.[9]
A long day's journey from Ampleforth took me to Keir, where I found the
new house-chapel, though far from complete, available for mass on
Sunday. We drove over to Doune in the afternoon with the Norfolks (who
were my fellow-guests), and explored {219} the old castle of the Earls
of Moray, partially restored by Lord Moray's grandfather. The massive
remains I thought very impressive; and the Duke, who was perhaps more
interested in architecture than in anything else, was much taken with
the old place. He was also, however, interested in the Arundel
parlour-game of "ten questions," which we played after dinner, and in
which he displayed, through years of practice, an almost diabolical
cleverness. I travelled north to Fort Augustus after a night of
terrific gales, with fallen trees and snapped-off limbs lying
everywhere along the railway--a melancholy sight.
I had been endeavouring to interest our friends in the south in our
desire to reopen the Abbey School when feasible; but at a Council held
at the abbey on my return it was decided to leave that project in
abeyance, and to concentrate our efforts meanwhile on trying to replace
the ramshackle shed which served as our church by at least a part of
the permanent building. Harrowing appeals in the Catholic press,
embodying views of the shanty in question: a personal campaign
undertaken by some of the fathers, and begging-letters of the most
insidiously-persuasive kind, were part of the plan of campaign, which
met with a fair measure of success. There was some feeling in our
community in favour of a very much less ambitious (and expensive)
church than originally planned; but I personally would be no party to
any scheme involving the abandonment of our hopes to see built a real
abbey church, worthy of the site and the surroundings, and the erection
instead of a neat, simple, and inexpensive R.C. chapel, which seemed
the ideal of some of the less {220} imaginative of our brethren. I was
receiving invitations from various Scottish centres to repeat my Hay
lecture; and this, we thought, might be judiciously combined with
efforts on behalf of our building-fund. I went to Blairs College,
outside Aberdeen, for the old bishop's actual centenary (which we had
anticipated at Fort Augustus), and lectured to the students and their
professors there. On my way back, I visited, for the first time, our
"cell" at St. James's, high above the pretty prosperous sea-port of
Buckie. The place pleased me--a conveniently-planned house, standing
among pine-woods and meadows, with a fine prospect over land and sea;
and a nice chapel, simple and devout, with a gaily-gilt altar from
Tyrol. I gave my lecture in three other places during these weeks of
early winter: at Motherwell, where my lantern failed me, and I was
grateful to my audience for listening to an hour's dry talk without
pictures; in Edinburgh, where I had a large and very appreciative
audience; and in Glasgow, where a still bigger gathering filled the
City Hall, and was really enthusiastic. It was all very fatiguing; and
I was glad to get home and enjoy a little rest and peace before
Christmas. Beaufort, too, where I acted as Christmas chaplain as
usual, was restful this year, with only a small family party, and the
Lovats getting ready for a trip to Egypt and Khartoum. We had a long,
severe, and stormy winter in the Highlands: gale after gale, in which
our poor wooden church swayed and shivered and creaked like the old
_Araguaya_ in the Bay of Biscay; and then bitter frosts with the
thermometer down in the neighbourhood of zero, and all the able-bodied
{221} monks smashing the ice in the "lade," in order to keep the
current going for our electric light. Meanwhile we were cheered by the
general interest, even in far-off lands, in our church-building
crusade. Our Maltese father brought a cheque from his island home; and
subscriptions came from my Yucatan friend, Senor Ygnacio Peon, and from
Alastair Fraser in remote Rhodesia. I went off on a campaign south of
the Tweed, with my lantern slides as a passport; and it was never
difficult, in lecturing on the straits and struggles of the Scottish
Church in the early nineteenth century, to pass to the needs and hopes
of the Scottish Benedictines in the early twentieth. I had, as always,
a kind reception and a sympathetic hearing from our brethren at Douai
Abbey, but had the bad luck to be invalided immediately afterwards,
fortunately in the pleasant Surrey home of my sister, who took me
drives, when I was convalescent, all among the queer-shaped hills of
the North Downs, intersected by the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury.
The national coal-strike began whilst I was at Nutwood--a million men
"downing tools," and the end impossible to foresee. Travelling, of
course, became at once infinitely troublesome and tedious;[10] however,
I made my way to Stonyhurst College, where I had a big and interested
audience (there were many young Scots among the 400 pupils), and then
managed to crawl back to London (one simply {222} sat in a station, and
waited for a train to come along some time), where I attended the
"house-warming" dinner of our Caledonian Club--I was an original
member--transferred from Charles Street to Lord Derby's fine house
overlooking St. James's Square. There were, of course,
self-congratulatory speeches; and a concert of Scottish music wound up
the evening agreeably. I paid a flying visit to Oxford this week--a
guest now in my old Hall, which had a full muster of monastic
undergraduates. The most conspicuous object in Oxford seemed to be our
"gracious tower" at Magdalen--a mass of elaborate scaffolding from top
to bottom:[11] spring-cleaning, I imagined, for the Prince of Wales,
who was going into residence there in October. I called on the new
University chaplain, installed, but not yet, apparently, quite at home
in, the old familiar house in St. Aldate's, and also managed to put in
a few hours at the Bodleian, to finish my article on William of
Wykeham, the last of eighty-three which I had written for the American
Encyclopaedia. It had been interesting work, of which some tangible
results were certain vestments, pictures, and other adornments which I
had been thus able to provide for the chapel of our Benedictine Hall.
Lunching at the new Caledonian, on my way through London, I found
myself next young Bute, dreadfully depressed about the coal-strike, and
(not for the first time) looking forward to the workhouse for himself
and family. My next lecture was due at St. Edmund's College, Ware,
where I had the honour of numbering among my audience the {223}
brand-new Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster,[12] imposing in his
brand-new rose-coloured robes, but as kind and gracious as ever. In
the middle of my lecture (I had an audience of nearly 300) the "divine"
(as the church students were called) in charge of the lighting startled
us all by suddenly crying out, "There is going to be an explosion!" and
the next moment a flame shot up from the lantern almost to the ceiling.
"Only that and nothing more"; but it was quite sufficiently alarming
for the moment. Next day we enjoyed a motor-drive through the pretty
pastoral country, and saw in the course of it one curious sight--a
suffragist female (militant by the look of her) standing on a stool
just outside the lychgate of a village church, and addressing an
apparently very unreceptive audience of open-mouthed Hertfordshire
yokels.
Holy Week and Easter found me again at Arundel, where there was a
holiday gathering of many young people at the castle, the youngest
member of the party being the Duke's baby daughter, who was christened
Katherine the day after my arrival. "_Absit omen!_" whispered (not
very tactfully, I thought) the good vicar of Arundel, as we drank tea
and nibbled the christening cake after the ceremony--looking up, as he
spoke, at a portrait of the baby's luckless ancestress Queen Katherine
Howard. "Il n'y a pas de danger," I whispered back; but I don't know
whether he understood French. I was amused afterwards, talking to the
nurse of the Duchess's small nephews and nieces, to hear _her_ opinion
of the castle and its glories. {224} "A dreadful place for children,
_I_ call it, with all these towers and battlements and dungeons and
hiding-holes--one never knows where they'll get to next. A London
house for me, where there's children to look after!" The services were
jubilant, and the great church beautifully adorned on Easter Sunday,
and the choir warbled what poor Angus[13] used to call the "sensuous
harmonies" of Gounod in their best style. Yet more children arrived
after Easter, including three tomboy great-nieces of our host; and
there were great games in the vast Baron's hall--roller-skating on the
expanse of polished floor, and dancing to the rather inadequate strains
of a wheezy gramophone which had suffered from the depredatory
explorations of my lord of Arundel and Surrey and his sisters.
The Duke motored me up to London in Easter-week to attend Stafford's
wedding in Eaton-square: masses of arums and Madonna lilies, tall
upstanding plumes of Eton blue waving from the bridesmaids' heads, and
the inevitable and inappropriate "O for the Wings of a Dove!" The
Primate of All Ireland began his sermon by addressing the happy pair,
with unnecessary intimacy, as "Eilleen and George";[14] and when he had
finished we all trooped off to Grosvenor House. Duchess Millicent was
in {225} great beauty, but I was sorry to see Sutherland, with whom I
talked for five minutes, looking very ill and almost voiceless.[15] We
had a pleasant drive back to Arundel; and I was interested to notice
what one never, of course, sees travelling by rail, how completely the
scenery, the soil, even the appearance of the people, changed as we
crossed the border from Surrey into Sussex.
I recall a luncheon about this time at a big London hotel--a snug
little party of a hundred or so--with Lord Saye and Sele in the chair,
and speeches from Lord William Cecil, Sir Henry Lunn, and others, about
the development of China, and especially the projected Chinese
university. The novel toast of the "President of the Chinese Republic"
was replied to, in excellent English, by the Chinese Minister, Yew Luk
Lin, next to one of whose two agreeable daughters I was seated: they
were all three in Western garb. Next day my brother motored me down to
Eton (always a pleasure to me) to see his boy there; we went on
afterwards to Brooklands, and looked at the motors dashing round the
track and the aeroplanes swooping round, rising and alighting, all new
to me and very interesting. Another interesting evening was spent at
the Albert Hall, at the annual demonstration of the Boys' Brigade, to
which, after the drill and other performances, Prince Arthur of
Connaught presented new colours, the gift of the Princess Royal. After
this I had to go down to Ramsgate (though feeling far from fit) to give
my last lecture at the Benedictine school and abbey there. I was
interested in the {226} church--Pugin's masterpiece, as he considered
it himself, and thought it impressive, but so dark that I could not
read my breviary in it at noonday.[16] The observance of the good
monks was in some respects Italian (e.g. the reading in the refectory
was in that language); but the schoolboys seemed quite British, and
cheered my lecture with British heartiness. I should have liked to
stay a little and enjoy the hospitality of my brethren in the pure air
and sunshine of the Thanet coast; but I had to hurry back to London and
submit to a serious medical overhauling, the net result of which was an
order to go in for an immediate and drastic "cure"--if possible at
Aix-les-Bains.[17] A friend's generosity made this feasible; and, duly
authorized, I prepared to pass three weeks at the famous Savoy
watering-place.
[1] The old man died in his hundredth year, after spending nearly a
quarter of a century as a professed lay-brother in our abbey, whither
he had come as a septuagenarian, by the advice of an episcopal cousin,
to prepare for his end! See _post_, page 260.
[2] Our friendship had lasted uninterruptedly for nearly forty years,
and had now extended to two generations of her descendants.
[3] "There was an old maid of Carstairs,
Whose villa required some repairs:
When she asked if the plumber
Could finish _next summer_,
He said he would be there for years!"
[4] My impression is that the "king of Britain" was a bit of a myth,
and that the "Lucius" venerated at Chur was Saint Lucius of
Glamorgan--called in Welsh "Lleurwg" or "Lleurfer Mawr"=the "Great
Light-bearer," who, according to the Welsh tradition, was the founder
of the Church of Llandaff and of others in South Wales.
[5] Sir William and some of his nearest relations formed a remarkable
group of men who had won titles and honours in their various careers.
His brother was created Baron Farrer; one brother-in-law was Sir
Stafford Northcote, first Earl of Iddesleigh, and another was created
Baron Hobhouse; his nephew was Lord Northcote, the first
Governor-General of Australia; and he himself was given his knighthood
at the first Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
[6] Three (of whom one, the destined Superior, unhappily died on the
voyage out) were English nuns from Stanbrook Abbey, near Worcester: the
remaining four were Brazilians, who had passed through their novitiate
in the same convent.
[7] Our friendship had begun unconventionally. An anonymous article of
mine, in a weekly paper, on my Eton schoolfellows, had mentioned Tom's
father, Eustace Vesey, as "the dearest of them all." Tom, then himself
a small Etonian, wrote to me through the publisher: I of course
replied, and the friendship thus begun lasted through his school days,
his rather meteoric time at Christ Church, and afterwards.
[8] Sister to my best and oldest Oxford friend, Willie Neville. Sir
Arthur Bigge, private secretary successively to Queen Victoria, Edward
VII., and George V., was raised to the peerage as Baron Stamfordham
this year (1911).
[9] In the neighbourhood of Calgary. Nothing, however, came of the
scheme.
[10] And domestic conditions, I may add, highly uncomfortable--far more
so than in the prolonged strike some years later, for which people were
more or less prepared. "I wonder, my lord," said a lady, visiting a
bishop in his vast and unwarmed palace, "that you don't get some of
that nice Welsh coal for your big house. I forget the exact name; I
think it is called _anti-christ_ coal!"
[11] It was said to be the finest bit of scaffold-work ever put up. I
secured an excellent photograph of it.
[12] Archbishop Bourne of Westminster had been created a Cardinal by
Pius X. in the Consistory of November 27, 1911.
[13] "I never hear Gregorian music on earth," he said to me once, "but
I trust I shall hear nothing else in heaven. There are 'many mansions'
there, and I humbly hope that _my_ mansion will be as far removed as
possible from 'Hummel in B flat'!"
[14] I mentioned this in my description of the wedding on our return to
Arundel. The comment of one of our party, a lady rather "slow in the
uptake" (as we say in Scotland) was, "But what did he _mean_? Whom was
she leaning _on_? was it _King_ George?"
[15] The Duke of Sutherland died about a year later.
[16] Pugin justified his love for "dim religious" churches with his
usual delightful inconsequence. "In the thirteenth century," he said
in effect, "no one thought of reading in church: they told their beads
and made acts of faith and said their prayers. _My_ church is a
thirteenth-century church, to all intents and purposes--_ergo!_"
[17] It was a case of "inflammatory gouty eczema," too long neglected.
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