1912-1913
The Lovat family were all interested in St. Vincent's Home for
Cripples, near London, where a daughter of the house (a Sister of
Charity) was a nurse; and I attended at their invitation a concert in
aid of it, the day before I left London, at Sunderland House. The
sumptuous ball-room, with its walls of Italian marble, heavily gilt
ceiling, and chandeliers of rock crystal, made a handsome setting for a
brilliant audience, which included Queen Amelie of Portugal. Her
Majesty honoured me with a short conversation during the afternoon, and
seemed interested to hear of my sojourn, some years before, in a
Portuguese monastery (Cucujaes), and of our charitable but eccentric
neighbour there, the Condessa de Penha Longa.[1] The concert, which
included two woebegone recitations from Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and a
funny song written, composed, and sung by Cyril Maude--his first
effort, he assured us, in that line[2]--was a success by which, I hope,
the poor cripples benefited considerably. {228} Next day I made a
bee-line for the south of France, going through Paris without stopping.
The season was hardly open in Aix-les-Bains; and the pretty town looked
a little _triste_, with many shops still shut up. But the spring
weather was fresh and bright, and I was much in the open air between
the stages of my "cure," which was fairly severe. I liked the friendly
Savoyards, a pious and faithful race, though with such a reputation for
_grumbling_ that their own king (Victor Amadeus II.) said of them, "Ils
ne sont jamais contents: s'il pleuvait de sequins, ils dirait que le
bon Dieu casse leurs ardoises!" They did not, however, grumble in my
hearing; and the portly cure of the new church on the hill, with whom I
made friends, praised their simplicity and virtue. He organized
various attractions during May in his church, whither I used to conduct
some of my hotel-acquaintances after dinner, assuring them that they
would be better entertained there than in losing their money on the
"little horses" in the stuffy casino. One evening there would be
_projections lumineuses_, lantern-views of some of Our Lady's loveliest
churches in France, or of the adventures of Joan of Arc, always with
racy comments from his reverence; at another time a _conference
dialoguee_--the _vicaire_ (disguised in a red muffler) propounding
agnostic conundrums from a pew, and the _cure_ answering them
triumphantly from the pulpit, amid the plaudits of the congregation.
He was a really excellent preacher; and his series of May sermons
(which I insisted on my friends staying to hear) on "Les Peches d'un
homme d'affaires"--"de plaisir"--"d'Etat," and so on, were uncommonly
practical as well as eloquent. {229} Pentecost, a great popular
festival here, was kept with piety as well as merriment. The church
was crowded with communicants from daybreak: later on the Cardinal
Archbishop of Chambery (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at breakfast
at the presbytery) came and confirmed a large number of children who
had made their first Communions on Ascension Day, after himself giving
them a pretty searching public examination in the catechism. The
afternoon and evening were devoted to festivity--dancing, gymnastics,
military _retraites_, fireworks, illuminations, and a sort of Greenwich
Fair; all very gay and harmless.
The exigencies of my cure would not permit of distant expeditions to
Annecy, the Grande Chartreuse, etc., which I should have liked to
visit. One interesting excursion I managed, to the Cistercian Abbey of
Hautecombe, charmingly situated on a wooded promontory overlooking Lake
Bourget. There was a resident community of thirty monks--the only one
left in France under the then anti-Christian regime. They owed their
exemption to the fact of their church being the Westminster Abbey of
Savoy, containing some thirty tombs of the ancestors of the King of
Italy, who had protested to the French Government against the expulsion
of the guardians of the ashes of his ancestors; and so they were
allowed to remain and serve God in peace. Unfortunately the fine
twelfth-century church had been restored and re-restored in debased and
florid fashion, a single chapel being all that was left intact of the
pre-Revolution building.
I left Aix, much the better for my visit, at the end of May, travelling
straight to Paris with two {230} ladies--one an extraordinarily voluble
Irish widow, in my carriage. The weather was hot; and I tired myself
out with an exhaustive and exhausting visit to the Salon and the
sculptures in the Champs Elysees. The picture of the year (surrounded
always by a silent and interested crowd) was Jean Beraud's "New Way of
the Cross,"[3] which, if it made only a percentage of French men and
women realize what the public renunciation of Christianity meant, was
calculated to do more good than many sermons. A week later I was at
Keir, where I found some anxiety caused by the serious illness of
Lovat, who was laid up with typhoid, and fretting at being unable, for
the first time since the raising of the Lovat Scouts a dozen years
before, to take command of the corps at their annual training. We
enjoyed some lovely June weather at Keir, motoring one day to
Stirling's picturesque lodge on Loch Lubnaig, and lunching _al fresco_
among stonecrops and saxifrages and pansies, on a bank overlooking the
loch and the purple mass of Ben Ledi. Another day we saw the smart
little soldier-boys of Queen Victoria's School at Dunblane get their
prizes from the Duchess of Montrose, with whose husband I had a chat
about our Etonian days together, _consule Planco_.
I was bidden to Ampleforth for the jubilee celebrations there (their
fine college had been opened in 1862), which was graced by the presence
of {231} Cardinal Bourne--a stately figure with his long scarlet train
sweeping over the green lawns in the great open-air procession which
was the central feature of the solemnities. The college O.T.C. formed
an uncommonly smart bodyguard to his Eminence, though they puzzled, and
even shocked, some of the old Benedictines present by remaining covered
(in military fashion) during the service. The after-luncheon oratory
was neither more nor less tedious than usual; but we all enjoyed later
an admirable presentment by the boys of _The Frogs_ of Aristophanes,
with Parry's delightful music. I got back to Fort Augustus in time for
the canonical visitation of the monastery by the Abbot-president, to
whom I spoke of my hope that I might be allowed to return for a time to
Brazil; but he replied to me, in effect, in the words of St. Sixtus to
his faithful deacon,[4] and I could only resign myself with what grace
I could to the inevitable. I learned on July 2, the thirty-second
anniversary of my religious profession, that our prior's resignation of
office, owing to his almost continual ill-health, had been accepted,
and that I was to be appointed in his place. Meanwhile the Oxford
Local Examinations called me (for the last time) to North
Staffordshire, where it was pleasantly cool among the hills and wooded
glens of Oakamoor. I spent a Sunday at Cheadle, in the valley below,
and admired the graceful church which Pugin had been given _carte
blanche_ by the "Good Earl of Shrewsbury" to build as he liked, with no
fear of the "accursed blue pencil" (as he called it) {232} which so
often mutilated his elaborate designs.[5] "As attractive an example of
the architect's skill as could be quoted," a severe critic[6] had
called the Cheadle church; and the tribute was well deserved. Two days
after my return to our abbey I was formally installed in office as
prior, by my good friend the abbot of Ampleforth, with the same
ceremonial which I had witnessed thirty-four years previously, when Dom
Jerome Vaughan was inducted into office in the vaulted guard-room of
the old Fort, afterwards incorporated into the monastic guest-house.
The burden of superiorship, a heavy one enough, was lightened not only
by the unanimous kindness of my own brethren, but by the cordiality
with which my appointment was greeted by friends outside, including the
bishop and clergy of our diocese of Aberdeen, who were the guests of
the abbey for their annual retreat, a few days after my installation.
A consoling message, too, came to me from the Holy Father himself
through Pere Lepicier, who had come from Rome in the quality of
Apostolic Visitor to Scotland, and stayed with us for some days; a
Franco-Roman diplomatist with the suavest possible manner and address,
masking (it struck me) no little acuteness and a strong personality.
His visit, and that of the diocesan clergy, coincided with {233} St.
Oswald's Day, which we kept very happily, many of our neighbours in the
village and district, including my old friend the parish minister,
dining with us in the monastic refectory. A still older friend, George
Lane Fox, sent me a cordial telegram; and I was able to send one in
return congratulating him on the handsome testimonial he had just
received on his retirement from a quarter of a century's office as
Vice-chancellor of the Primrose League. A grief to us both, only a few
days later, was the news of the death, at our abbey of Cesena in Italy,
of his eldest son, who had been closely connected with Fort Augustus
from his childhood, first as a little boy in the abbey-school, and
later as a monk and priest of our community.
One of my first works as prior was to organize a work which we had very
gladly undertaken--that of ministering as naval chaplains to ships in
Scottish waters. The chief naval stations were Lamlash (Arran) in the
south-west and Cromarty in the northeast; and thither certain of our
fathers journeyed every week, meeting as a rule with every kindness and
consideration from the captains and officers, and getting into touch
with the considerable number of Catholic bluejackets on the various
ships. Sometimes, between the Sundays, they found time to prosecute
the quest, which was ever before us, for our church-building fund; and
our good Father Odo, in particular, reaped quite a little harvest,
during his Lamlash chaplaincy, in my native diocese of Galloway, where
there were still kind friends who remembered me, and were glad to show
sympathy with an object which I had so deeply at heart. Dom Odo was
not only a zealous priest but an {234} equally zealous antiquarian and
F.R.S.A. (Scot.). He had specialized in artificial islands, about
which he read an interesting paper this autumn at the British
Association meeting at Dundee; and he was elected about the same time
president of the Inverness Field Club, the premier scientific society
of the north of Scotland. I record this with pleasure as an example
(not, of course, an isolated one) of the Benedictine liberty which
permits and encourages the members of our Order to cultivate
freely---apart from their professional studies and avocations--such
tastes and talents as they may possess, and which, needless to say,
greatly adds to the interest and variety of their lives.
My own life was of course, after my entering on the office and duties
of prior, much more confined than heretofore to the precincts of our
Scottish abbey. This was no additional burden to me; for my life,
whether at Fort Augustus or Oxford or in Brazil, had always been a life
in community; and I had always been happy and at home in the society of
my brethren in the monastery. Perhaps the most tiring and trying
feature in my position as superior was the never-ceasing correspondence
of all kinds which it involved, and with which one had personally to
grapple; but in other ways the wise subdivision of labour which
prevails in a well-ordered religious house did much to lighten the
daily burden, and the ready willingness in all quarters to afford
whatever help and relief was needed was a constant solace and
encouragement. The busy days thus passed quickly by, varied by the
continual influx of guests--always interested and sometimes
interesting--who were never wanting in our abbey. {235} Our
neighbours, too, were kind and friendly; and their motors were often at
one's disposal for an afternoon's drive up one or other of the
beautiful glens which ran westward from our Gleann Mhor, the Great Glen
of all, to the sea. Then there were duties connected with the parish
and district Councils, to which I was elected soon after becoming
prior; and the constant interest of directing the plan of campaign in
aid of our building-fund, and the satisfaction of seeing its steady
increase. I recall, during those bright still days of late autumn
(often the loveliest season of the Highland year), a retreat given us
by an eloquent Dominican; and also a visit from Lady Lovat, who, as our
founder's widow, enjoyed the privilege of entering the monastic
enclosure with her "suite" (in this case her daughter-in-law, Lovat's
wife, and a friend)--a formal enough affair, but of course novel and
interesting to the ladies concerned. According to the quaint antique
prescription, the great bell was tolled when they entered the cloister,
warning the monks to remain in their cells: no meat nor drink could be
served to them within the enclosure: they were to visit only the
"public places" of the monastery, and were enjoined "not to gaze
curiously about them." Lady Lovat would fain have lingered in our
well-furnished library; but our little procession swept on
relentlessly, and her literary longings remained ungratified.[7]
{236}
It was not, I think, until November of this year that I spent a night
away from Fort Augustus, being bidden to Liverpool to keep, with a
large gathering of his friends, the golden jubilee of our kind old
friend Bishop Hedley. There was a High Mass, a sermon, and (of course)
a festival dinner, with many speeches--prosy, melancholy,
retrospective, or humorous, according to the mood or the idiosyncrasy
of the several speakers. My brief oration, conveying the thanks of the
guests, included two funny stories, which so favourably impressed one
of the reporters, that he announced in his paper next day that "the
honours of the evening's oratory undoubtedly rested with a venerable
and genial monk from the other side of the Border!" I stayed at
Glasgow on my way north, to take the chair at the annual festival of
the Caledonian Catholic Association, an admirably beneficent
institution in which I was glad to show my interest.[8] After the
concert, and before the ball which followed, Stirling and I left for
Keir in a hired motor-car, which broke down badly in the middle of
Cumbernauld Muir, leaving us _plantes-la_ till past midnight. There
was the residuum of a big shooting-party at Keir; and we all attended
next day a vocal recital given in the old cathedral by "Mlle.
Hommedieu"--an odd-sounding name: I wondered if she was "Miss Godman"
in private life.
I had spent Christmas so often at Beaufort (no {237} less than eleven
times since 1893) that it seemed strange to be absent from there this
year; but I had of course to preside at the solemnities in our own
church, which (notwithstanding the appalling weather conditions) was
crowded to the doors for the midnight services. We dined, as usual, in
the vacant school refectory, gaily decorated, with a blazing log fire:
there was an informal concert afterwards, and the festive evening was
enjoyed by all. I made a Christmas call on my old friend Sir Aubone
Fife,[9] whose annual quest for hinds had been interrupted by illness.
He rented the winter shooting of Inchnacardoch Forest from Lovat, and
spent every Christmas and New Year _solus_ at our little hotel, content
with his sport, his own society, and an occasional visit from me! He
had comfortable bachelor quarters in Jermyn Street: London for him was
bounded by Pall Mall and Oxford Street: his home and recreation were in
his many clubs, and he always reminded me irresistibly of a
twentieth-century Major Pendennis. I managed to put in two nights at
Beaufort in Christmas week, receiving a hearty welcome from the merry
party of Frasers and Maxwells assembled there, and returned to the
abbey for New Year's Day, in time to take part in the various holiday
entertainments--Christmas trees, theatricals, etc., organised for our
good people. Twelfth-day I spent at Keir, preaching {238} (_seated_,
my usual practice now),[10] to a good congregation in the beautiful
private chapel, which was almost complete; and before returning home I
paid a little visit to Kelburn, where I found my poor brother-in-law in
bed with a broken crown (having fallen downstairs!) but my nephew the
flying-man apparently quite recovered, I was glad to see, from _his_
more serious knock on the head at Bournemouth. I was pleased to hear
from my gunner brother, who was staying at Kelburn, of his
appointment--an excellent berth--as A.A.G. at the War Office.
The closing weeks of our long northern winter were exceptionally bleak
and stormy this year; but constant occupation made them pass quickly
enough. February 10 (St. Scholastica's Day), on which our good nuns
kept high festival, and I officiated at their solemn services, was also
the opening day of our salmon-fishing; and in the first haul we landed
fifteen fish weighing just 250 pounds, the heaviest a beautiful
26-pounder. A salmon was always an acceptable present to a kind friend
in the south: some we ate fresh (a welcome variation of our Lenten
fare), and the rest we tried to kipper.[11] February 10 was otherwise
memorable this year, as on that day I learned that our community was to
elect its abbot a month later. We voted first on the important
question whether the election should be for life, as provided in our
Constitutions, {239} or (by special indult of Rome) for a fixed term of
years, which was the usual practice in the other houses of the
Congregation. The votes--some sent by post and telegraph--were almost
equally divided; and it was finally settled that the election should be
for eight years. Nearly all our absentee monks arrived from missions,
chaplaincies, and elsewhere, for the _tractatus_, or discussions
preliminary to the election, which was fixed for Thursday in Passion
Week, under the presidency of the abbot of Ampleforth. It took place
after the customary mass of the Holy Spirit, and turned out a very
brief affair, as I was elected by more than the requisite number of
votes at the first "scrutiny," as it was called.[12] My confirmation
and installation followed immediately--and then the letters and
telegrams began pouring in, all requiring to be answered; but the roads
and railways were providentially blocked for some days before Easter,
by a March snowstorm of almost unprecedented violence, and our mail
service was entirely suspended; so I got a little breathing time! Thus
undistracted, I officiated at all the services of the season,
celebrating on Easter Sunday amid rain, hail, and driving easterly
gales that made the text of my Paschal sermon--"Jam hiems transiit,
imber abiit et recessit,"[13] sound ironical enough. I spent an
Eastertide Sunday at Keir, where spring had really set in, and while
there made an expedition or two with an archaeological {240} enthusiast
who was of our party: to Stirling Castle, much finer and more spacious
than I had imagined; to the scanty remains--only the massive church
tower and the old monastic dove-cot!--of the grand old abbey of
Cambuskenneth; and to Doune Castle, where it was odd to come on workmen
installing electric light in the venerable ruins in preparation for the
coming-of-age of my Lord Doune, son of the "Bonnie Earl of Moray." I
returned to Inverness just in time to attend the funeral of Andrew
Macdonald, Sheriff-clerk of the county, a devout Catholic, and one of
the oldest and most faithful friends of our abbey and community. There
was a great gathering in the church and at the grave-side, and all
seemed impressed by the solemn rites, and by the chanting of our
monastic choir.
We were all busily occupied, during the next ten days, with
preparations for the solemnity of my abbatial benediction, which took
place on April 9, in presence of a large assemblage of invited guests
and interested onlookers. It was a particular pleasure to me to
receive the Church's benison at the hands of a friend of many years'
standing, the venerable Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, whom I had
known in old happy days at Mountstuart, as parish priest of Rothesay.
Abbots Gasquet and Smith assisted the bishop; and Lovat and other
friends were among the laymen who had their part in the august and
impressive ceremony, which lasted for fully three hours. A hundred
guests were entertained in our refectory; and I received many good
wishes during the day, including telegrams from Cardinals Bourne and
Merry del Val, Norfolk, Bute, and Charles Dalrymple, whose kind {241}
message gratified me as the only one received from any member of my
family.[14] An informal concert in the evening, in the theatre-hall of
the college, was a pleasant close to a memorable day.
An earlier date than might otherwise have been the case had been fixed
for the abbatial election at Fort Augustus by the superiors of our
Order, who desired that our abbey should be represented by its
duly-constituted head at the great Benedictine gathering which was to
take place in Italy this summer. The object of this assemblage, to
which every abbot of Black Monks (_Monachi Nigri_) in Christendom
received an invitation, was two-fold: first to assist at the
consecration of the crypt of the church at Monte Cassino, the cradle of
our venerable Order, after its complete restoration and decoration by
the Beuron School of Benedictine artists; and secondly, to elect, in
Rome, a coadjutor to the Abbot Primate of the Order, whose health had
broken down. I went south in the last week of April, and after a
flying visit to my sister in Surrey (where I said mass at the very
pretty and well-kept church at Redhill), went on to stay with the
French Benedictines at Farnborough, where two members of our Fort
Augustus community were at that time in residence. They showed me much
of interest, including the small museum of Napoleonic relics, and, of
course, the crypt containing the massive granite sarcophagi containing
the bodies of Napoleon {242} III. and his only son. It so chanced that
the aged Empress (then in her eighty-eighth year) had been praying in
the church when we entered it; and we saw her leaving in her carriage
for her chateau a few hundred yards away. I thought, as I glanced at
the frail shrunken figure leaning on her staff, of a summer day in
Paris forty-eight long years before, when I had seen her, a radiant and
beautiful vision, walking in the Tuileries gardens with her little son,
amid the admiring plaudits of an apparently devoted people. The young
prince was mounted on a sort of two-wheeled hobby-horse, gaily painted
and gilt, and I asked my companion (a French lady) what it might be.
"Ah!" she replied, "c'est une invention absolument nouvelle: cela
s'appelle un' 've-lo-ci-pede'!" The only other occasion on which I
ever saw the Empress was in Rome some ten years later, when she came,
widowed and dethroned, to pay her respects to the venerable Pontiff
Pius IX. I have described elsewhere[15] this memorable visit, which I
was privileged to witness as being at that time a chamberlain on duty
at the Vatican.
My friend MacCall, from Arundel, joined me at Dover, and we had a swift
and uneventful journey to Venice (actually my first visit!) where I
spent three crowded happy days--it was all I could spare--as the guest
of an old Eton and Oxford friend in his delightful _palazzo_ on the Rio
Marin. I cannot attempt any description: what impressed me most
vividly, perhaps, apart from the incomparable glories of S. Marco, was
our visit, in the amber and purple twilight of a Venetian May-day, to
our Benedictine {243} church of St. George--its monastery (alas! almost
derelict) and graceful rose-red campanile reflected in the deep azure
of the lagoon. I regretfully left Venice that night, and travelling
straight through Rome, in the company of abbots of various lands and
languages, reached Cassino about mid-day, and was driven up the sacred
mountain in a motor-car (an innovation since my last pilgrimage
hither!) passing, at various turns of the excellent road, groups of
peasants toiling up the rugged immemorial path to the monastery. We
were welcomed by the kind abbot at the foot of the great staircase; and
I was soon installed in a pleasant cell, with a view that almost took
one's breath away over the wild and mountainous Abruzzi,[16] and the
thin clear mountain air blowing in at one's window with delicious
freshness.
I do not think I ever attended such a series of prolonged and stately
church functions as during the week of our sojourn at Monte Cassino.
The chiefs of our Order in various countries officiated in turn at the
different solemnities; and we abbots (seventy or eighty of us) sat
perched on hard and narrow benches, tier upon tier, on either side of
the high altar. One day it was a solemn requiem mass for the deceased
benefactors of our Order: another, the consecration by the Cardinal
Legate representing {244} the Pope,[17] assisted by two Benedictine
archbishops, of the three altars in the crypt (this ceremony alone
lasted five hours, and almost finished me!), whilst on Sunday his
Eminence conducted the solemn high mass and subsequent procession, the
great church, _cortili_ beyond, and every available foot of space being
occupied by an immense and devout crowd of gaily-dressed peasants, most
of whom had slept on the bare ground in the open air on the previous
night. On this crowning day we were more than three hundred in the
vast refectory for dinner, at the end of which a choir of monks chanted
with thrilling effect the mediaeval _Laudes_, or Acclamations of
Hincmar, in honour of our illustrious guests. Among these magnates was
my old friend of early days in Brazil, Bishop Gerard van Caloen, whom I
had not seen for sixteen years.[18] He had grown a long grey beard,
and his eyes looked out through his spectacles as sad and inscrutable
as ever.[19] I sat next him at the _ludus liturgico-scenicus_, one of
the diversions provided for us by the community: a grave musical
setting of the life and death of Saints Benedict and Scholastica, so
pathetic that I wept--to the surprise of my friend the bishop, who said
he never knew that I was so tender-hearted! The play was presented by
some of the young monks {245} and their pupils (they had over two
hundred in the abbey, including a lay boarding-school and two
seminaries), and on another evening they gave us a really excellent
concert of vocal and instrumental music. I do not know where space was
found for playgrounds for all these boys, for there seemed really very
little room on the mountain top for anything except the extensive
buildings. The abbot of Downside, who was a great advocate of
exercise, used to walk half-way down the hill and up again every day
after dinner: it was, as far as I could discover, the only walk
possible. In any case the available time for recreation between the
long-drawn-out religious celebrations was short enough: it was a
strenuous week, though a very interesting one, and rendered enjoyable
by the unwearied attention which the good monks, one and all, showed to
their numberless and no doubt occasionally troublesome guests. When
all was over I left Monte Cassino in the pleasant company of my friend
Abbot Miguel of S. Paulo, and travelled by an incredibly slow train to
Rome, where we found a second Benedictine welcome of not less
heartiness in the international abbey of St. Anselm on the Aventine
Hill.
[1] The lady supported an orphanage in her _castello_, and also an
incredible number of dogs, and distributed her affections equally
between the dogs and the orphans.
[2] This, however, was probably a mere appeal _ad misericordiam_.
Cyril was no novice!
[3] Representing Christ hounded along the road to Calvary by atheistic
deputies and anti-Christian schoolmasters, the latter inciting children
to fling stones at Him. On the opposite side of the way knelt a little
group of believers, children and others, with arms outstretched towards
the Saviour. Some of those looking at the picture were greatly
affected, even to tears.
[4] "Majora tibi debentur pro fide Christi certamina."--_Office of St.
Laurence_.
[5] It was Pugin's constant grievance that the poverty of English
Catholics prevented him from carrying out his grandiose ideas. A
bishop once wrote to him asking for plans for a cathedral, very
spacious, extraordinarily handsome, and--above all--cheap, money being
very scarce. Pugin lost his temper on seeing what was the sum
suggested. "My dear Lord," he wrote back, "why not say 30s. more, and
have a tower and spire when you are about it?"
[6] Sir Charles Eastlake (_History of the Gothic Revival_, p. 154).
[7] Queens Regnant (and I think Consort) have the _ex officio_ entree
to monasteries; but Fort Augustus had never been so honoured, our only
"crowned head" visitor having been King Leopold of Belgium. I remember
Prince Henry of Battenberg, who came in a yacht with Princess Beatrice,
being put out at the latter being denied admission into the enclosure.
There was some talk of King Edward paying us a visit from Glenquoich,
where he was Lord Burton's guest; but nothing came of it.
[8] I had presided at a festival of the Association fifteen years
previously (in 1897).
[9] A fine old soldier and sportsman, who had fought in Afghanistan and
Burmah, and was afterwards appointed, first Clerk of the Cheque, and
later standard-bearer, in the King's Bodyguard. He volunteered, when
well over seventy, for service in the Great War, and was given, I
think, some post in connection with the defences of the Forth Bridge.
[10] "I preach sitting," said Bateman: "it is more conformable to
antiquity and to reason to sit than to stand."--Newman, _Loss and Gain_
(ed. 1876), page 70. My friend George Angus had followed suit at St.
Andrews.
[11] I say "tried"; for our good Belgian _chef_, who _said_ he
understood the process, used some mysterious pickle of his own
invention--with disastrous results!
[12] In the event of no candidate receiving a sufficient number of
votes, the "scrutiny" was repeated again and again--often a very
lengthy and tedious proceeding.
[13] "The winter is now past, the rain is over and gone." It was never
really safe to quote these words at Fort Augustus before (say) the end
of May.
[14] My brother-in-law, Sir Charles Dalrymple, had been one of those
who most bitterly resented my change of religion in 1875, and still
more my entrance into the Benedictine Order. But time had softened old
asperities; and we had been on affectionate terms for many years past.
[15] _A Medley of Memories_ (1st Series), pp. 81, 82.
[16] Most of the Abruzzi was included in the extensive diocese of Monte
Cassino (one of the largest in Italy), which was under the
administration of the abbot, although he was not a bishop. His
jurisdiction extended over no less than seven ancient dioceses--a fact
symbolized by the interesting and unique custom of his wearing, when he
celebrated pontifical high mass, seven different mitres in succession.
[17] Cardinal Gasparri, at that time Secretary of State to the reigning
Pontiff, Benedict XV.
[18] The pioneer of the Benedictine revival in Brazil, and my Superior
at the abbey of Olinda seventeen years before. See _A Medley of
Memories_ (1st Series), chaps, xvi. and xvii. Dom Gerard was
consecrated (titular) Bishop of Phocaea on April 18, 1906.
[19] Like Dr. Firmin's in _Philip_. "Dreary, sad, as into a great
blank desert, looked the eyes."--Thackeray, _Philip_, chap. iii.
{246}