A New Medley of Memories Part 12

[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 sh.e.l.ls 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 "d.u.c.h.ess 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 G.o.d, 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!_'"

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CHAPTER XII

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 a.s.sumed 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 n.o.ble 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 1,000 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 Ma.s.s 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 Ha.s.salls took me to see the renovated west front (Wolsey's) of Christ Church. The work, they said, had cost some 15,000, 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 invest.i.ture at Carnarvon. By some new contrivance the primary colours, only, were reproduced on the films, giving us the blue sky, the green gra.s.s 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 embarra.s.sed 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 n.o.ble view over Morecambe Bay and towards the distant Lakes.

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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 Pa.s.s), 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 ma.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trious 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]

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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 Sat.u.r.day 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 ma.s.s; 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 Ma.s.s, 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 pa.s.sions 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 300,000 (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 cla.s.ses, the poor monks had to crowd in before breakfast matins, lauds, prime, meditation, October devotions, tierce, s.e.xt, none, and Pontifical high ma.s.s--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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.sive 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sport; and it was never difficult, in lecturing on the straits and struggles of the Scottish Church in the early nineteenth century, to pa.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 d.u.c.h.ess'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: ma.s.ses 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. d.u.c.h.ess 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 Suss.e.x.

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 pa.s.s 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.