A New Medley of Memories Part 7

Aldate's, where I had a room so close to Tom Tower that the "Great Bell of Tom" sounded as if it were tolling at my bedside![11] In his pretty chapel (of which the open roof was said to be a relic of Oseney Abbey), I had the happiness, on Trinity Sunday, of celebrating Ma.s.s for the first time for more than three months--a greatly-appreciated privilege.

[1] "A brown Gregorian is so devotional.... Gregorians are obviously of a rich and sombre brown, just as a Salvation Army hymn is a violent magenta."

[2] Dr. Selden Talcott, of the State Asylum, Middleton, New York; according to whom early rising is the most prolific cause of madness.

"A peremptory command to get up, when one's sleep is as yet unfinished, is a command which grinds the soul, curdles the blood, swells the spleen, destroys all good intentions, and disturbs all day the mental activities, just as the tornado disturbs and levels with advancing ruin the forest of mighty pines.... The free and lazy savage gets up when he feels ready, and rarely or never becomes insane." Dr. Talcott quotes the percentage of lunacy among country people as compared with professional men. The latter, almost without exception, get up comparatively late, whereas our manual labourers all leave their beds long before they should. "The early morning hours, when everything is still, are peculiarly fitted for sleep; and it is a _gross violation of Nature's laws_ to tear human brains out of the sound rest they enjoy at this time." A weighty utterance, no doubt: still, it is but fair to point out that among monks, who perhaps, as a cla.s.s, get up earlier than any men living, the number of those whose good intentions are destroyed and mental activities disturbed, and who finally become lunatics, is really not alarmingly large.

[3] Dom Paulinus Gorwood, who had been a choirboy at Beverley Minster, and draughtsman in a great shipbuilding yard, and had studied religious art in the famous Beuron Benedictine school at Prague. He had industry as well as talent; and there were specimens of his handiwork in places as remote from one another as the Highland Catholic Church at Beauly, and the college chapel at St. Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate.

[4] This printer's feat somehow reminds me of the statement in an Edinburgh paper that a certain eminent tenor, who had had a bad fall alighting from the train, was nevertheless "able to appear that evening at the concert in several pieces." But the funniest printer's slip which I remember in connection with trains was an announcement in a Hampshire newspaper that "The Express Engine was seriously indisposed, and confined to bed." The distinguished invalid was really the Empress Eugenie!

[5] The word Glenelg is, of course, a palindrome, reading backwards and forwards alike.

[6] Randolph Churchill, Joseph Chamberlain, and Arthur Balfour were only a few among the political magnates who had enjoyed my brother-in-law's hospitality in the fine old Georgian mansion where Lord Hailes had entertained Dr. Johnson. Newhailes was, of course, a very convenient "jumping-off" place for meetings in the Scottish metropolis.

[7] About as good, perhaps, as a certain English nine-hole course over which the secretary invited (partly by way of advertising his club) a famous golfer to play. "Well, what do you think of our course?" asked the secretary with some trepidation when the game was over. "Oh well, it might be worse," was the great man's answer. "How do you mean exactly, might be worse?" "Well," said the eminent golfer, "there might be eighteen holes!"

[8] That of Alister Gordon, of the Gordon Highlanders, to a sister of Charles Edmonstoune-Cranstoun, an old pupil of mine. The bridegroom was a fine soldier, became Brigadier-General in the European War, and fell gallantly at Ypres in July, 1917.

[9] My well-informed friend told me, if I remember right, that statutes having been pa.s.sed in more recent times, limiting the grant of patents to actual new inventions, scientific or otherwise, nothing so amusing as the instances he quoted were to be found in their modern records.

[10] Not more gruesome, perhaps, than an exhibition organized at Stafford House, in my young days about London, by Anne d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland, of _wicker-work coffins_. They were spread about the garden, where tea was likewise provided; and a dapper and smiling young man (I suppose the patentee) was in attendance to point out the advantages--sanitary, economic, and aesthetic--of his invention to the d.u.c.h.ess's interested guests.

[11] I could not claim the concession (I believe unique) granted to an old Captain De Moleyns, who lived--and died--close to Christ Church, and during whose last days the immemorial ringing of "Tom" was suspended. He was a man of very advanced age, and used to tell how as a little boy he was rowed across Plymouth Harbour to see Napoleon standing on the deck of the _Bellerophon_!

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CHAPTER VII

1908

I pa.s.sed the closing days of the summer term of 1908 very pleasantly at Oxford, receiving many kindnesses from old friends, mingled with expressions of regret that my official connection with the university was approaching its close. I recall an interesting dinner-party at Black Hall, the Morrells' delightful old house in St. Giles's, where my neighbour was Miss Rhoda Broughton, at that time resident near Oxford.

We talked, of course, of her novels; and the pleasant-faced, grey-haired lady was amused to hear that my sisters were not allowed to read _Cometh Up as a Flower_, and _Red as a Rose is She_[1] (considered strong literary food in the early 'seventies), until they "came out."

Mrs. Temple, the archbishop's widow, was also a fellow-guest: she had taken a house in Oxford, close to "dear Keble"; but said that the noise and uproar emanating at night from the college of "low living and high thinking" was so great that she thought she would have to move. A member of the lately-established {114} Faculty, or Inst.i.tute, of Forestry, who was of our party, told us some "things not generally known" about trees, which I noted down. The biggest tree known in the world was, he said, not in America (what a relief!), but the great chestnut at the foot of Mount Etna, called the Chestnut of a Hundred Horses, with a trunk over 200 ft. round, and a hole through it through which two carriages can drive abreast. The biggest orange-tree known was, said our oracle, in Terre Bonne, Louisiana: 50 ft. high, 15 ft.

round at base, and yielding 10,000 oranges annually. Finally, the most valuable tree in existence was the plane-tree in Wood Street, in the City, occupying a s.p.a.ce worth, if rented, 300 a year--a capital value of 9,000 or thereabouts. All these facts I thought curious.

Term over, I stayed for a little time with a sister in Kensington Gore, very handy for Kensington Gardens, where I sat an hour or two every morning enjoying the fresh air and verdure of that most charming of "London's lungs," and surrounded by frolicking children, including my small nephew. One of his little playfellows, a grandson of Lord Portman, suddenly disappeared from the gay scene; I inquired where he was, and was told that he had gone for a rest-cure. "Great heavens!" I said, "a child of three!--but why, and where?"--"Oh," was the reply, "Master Portman was taking too much notice of the busses and motor-cars and such-like, and wouldn't go to sleep; so he is taking a rest-cure in his nursery at the top of the house, looking over the chimney-pots!"

The modern child! but then I do not of course profess to understand infants and their ways and needs.

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The White City, with its Irish village, and a notable exhibition of French and English pictures, was a great attraction this summer. A kind cousin motored me thither once or twice; and I met a little later at her house some pleasant Italian cavalry officers, smart in their Eton blue uniforms, who were going to jump at the horse-show at Olympia. I went, at their urgent invitation, to see their performance, and was both interested and impressed. As an exhibition of the art of show-jumping it seemed to me unsurpa.s.sable. The horse answered the very slightest movement of the leg or body of its rider, who, as he rose to each leap, was so perfectly pivoted on the insides of his knees that his balance remained absolutely unaffected. The French compet.i.tors combined pace and dash with their excellent horsemanship; and the finest horses were certainly those ridden by the English. But the cool, quiet, scientific, deliberate riding of the Italians, trained in the finest school in the world, made all their rivals seem, somehow, a little rough and flurried and amateurish; and they gained, as they undoubtedly deserved, the chief honours of the show.

The heat in July was great; and I was so depressed, visiting the great National Rose Show in the Botanic Gardens, by the spectacle of 100,000 once lovely blossoms hopelessly wilted and shrivelled, that I fled from London to a brother's shady river-side home near Shepperton. It was reposeful under the big elms overhanging his garden, to watch the boat-laden Thames gliding past; and another pleasure which I enjoyed whilst there was a quite admirable organ-recital given at a neighbouring church--Littleton, I think it was. The kind rector showed us round {116} and gave us tea; and the sight of the many tattered regimental colours (Grenadier Guards and others) hanging on the church walls drew down upon him the following lines, which I sent him next day in acknowledgment of his courtesy:--

THE COLOURS

(Hung in churches: no longer [1908] taken into action.)

That rent is Talavera; that patch is Inkerman: A hundred times in a hundred climes the battle round them ran.

But that is an ended chapter--they will not go to-day: Hang them above as a link of love, where the people come to pray.

Perhaps when all is quiet, and the moon looks through the pane, Under that shred the splendid dead are marshalled once again, And hear the guns in the desert, and see the lines on the hill, And follow the steel of the lance, and feel that England is England still.

I found it very little cooler in Yorkshire than in London; but there were n.o.ble trees and welcome shade in the beautiful park of Langdon, near Northallerton, where I spent some July days, in an atmosphere a thought too equine for my taste; however, my kind hosts (the Fifes) were as fond of their flowers as of their horses, and were busy adding wildernesses and rockeries and other informal beauty-spots to the formal gardens of their new home, which they had recently bought from Lord Teignmouth. I was driven over one day to see the Hospital of St.

John of G.o.d at Scorton, where a hundred inmates, all crippled or disabled, were tended with admirable care and devotion by a religious brotherhood. A local clergyman, I remember, dined with us that evening at Langdon--a man whose mission, or hobby, seemed to be to collect and retail such odd and out-of-the-way facts as one finds in the {117} statistical column of _t.i.t-Bits_. In the course of the evening he informed us (1) that a pound of thread spun by a silkworm will make a thread 600 miles long; (2) that there are in the skin of the average man 2,304,000 pores; and (3) that about 30,000 snails are eaten every day in the city of Paris. What one feels about such facts, dumped down on one promiscuously, is that they do not lead anywhere, or afford any kind of opening for rational conversation.

I had rather hoped to escape the burden of my Oxford Local Examination work this summer; but as it was apparently difficult to replace me, I went up to Dumfries for my usual week in July. Our Convent-school being the only centre in the district for these examinations, there were, as usual, several candidates from outside. Among them were two pairs of Protestant sisters (Wedderburn-Maxwells and Goldie-Scotts), whose mamma and governess respectively sat all day in the corridor outside the big schoolroom, keeping watch and ward, it was understood, against the danger of their children being "got at" between the papers by the nuns--or possibly the Benedictine examiner!--and influenced in the direction of Popery. Our children were much amused by the way in which these little girls were whisked away, during the intervals, from any possible contact with their "Roman" fellow-candidates; but the little girls themselves looked somewhat disconsolate, having perhaps had pleasant antic.i.p.ations of games, between examination-hours, in the well-equipped playground of the school.

The kind abbot of Fort Augustus would not let me return to the monastery, as I had expected to do when my Dumfries work was over, but {118} suggested instead some further rest (for I was still far from robust) with my own people in the west of Scotland. I spent a few pleasant days first at Mountstuart, and was rather amused on the first of August (the end of the "close season" for small birds) to see my young host sally forth--a sailor, an architect, and an artist in his wake--on a shooting-expedition, with as much ceremony and preparation as if it had been the Twelfth![2] We motored out after them, and lunched on one of the highest points of the island; drinking in, as we ate our Irish stew, an entrancing prospect of the blue Firth, the long sinuous Ayrshire coast, and the lofty serrated peaks of Arran. From Bute I went on to Dunskey, a place full to me always--even under its new, altered, and improved conditions--of a hundred happy memories.

There was an _al fresco_ entertainment--tea, music, and dancing on the lawn--given by my niece to the tenants and their families one afternoon; and I (mindful of old days) was happy to watch her and her boy, the little heir, welcoming their guests. Some of their names, Thorburns, Withers and MacWilliams, recalled the past; and they greeted me with the friendly simple cordiality characteristic of Galloway folk.

One of our house-party had just arrived (by yacht) from the Isle of Man, where he had been staying for some weeks. He had stories of the quaint customs of the Men of Man, and wrote down for me the oath administered in their courts. {119} The closing simile is delightfully unconventional:--

By this book, and by the holy contents thereof, and by the wonderful works that G.o.d has miraculously wrought in heaven above and in the earth beneath in six days and seven nights, I do swear that I will, without respect of favour or friendship, love or gain, consanguinity or affinity, execute the laws of this isle, and between party and party as indifferently as the herring's backbone doth lie in the middle of the fish.

At Blairquhan I found a large party a.s.sembling for August 12: naval cronies of my sailor brother (including the captain of H.M.S.

_Britannia_), the master of the Whaddon Chase Hunt, Selby Lowndes, with his wife and daughter, and other pleasant people. Shooting, dancing, bridge and golf filled up their days agreeably enough. I essayed the last-named sport, but was mortified to find myself still as weak as a kitten. The weather was glorious, but my brother complained that the long drought had left not a fruit in the garden; whereupon I suggested the subst.i.tute mentioned by Captain Topham in his _Letters from Edinburgh_ a century and a half ago:--

The little variety of fruit which this climate brings to perfection is the cause that the inhabitants set anything on their tables, after dinner, that has the appearance of it; and I have often observed at the houses of princ.i.p.al people a dish of small turnips, which they call neeps, introduced in the dessert, and ate with as much avidity as if they had been fruit of the first perfection.

The perfect summer weather accompanied me north to Beaufort, which was doubly fortunate, as a great party was gathered there for a gigantic bazaar, organized by one of the daughters of the house to raise funds for a county sanatorium for consumption, in which she was greatly interested. The difficulty of attracting _men_ to a show of the kind, {120} especially in the shooting season, was cleverly met by including among the attractions a novel and unique exhibition of stags' heads, lent from all the great Highland forests. The interest of this drew sportsmen from far and near to Beaufort, where a notable company was a.s.sembled, including the whole Lovat family, most of the Chiefs of clans and their wives, and, last not least, Ranguia, a genuine chieftain from New Zealand, clad in what was understood to be his native dress, and gifted with an astonishing voice (_tenore robustissimo_), in which he sang Maori songs of love and war in the great gallery at intervals during the two days of the bazaar. The most charming of British d.u.c.h.esses opened the proceedings with a speech of enticing eloquence: sales were brisk, the weather perfect, and the attendance enormous; and the profits, if I remember right, were something like 4,000, so that the affair was altogether a success. We recreated ourselves, after these fatiguing days, by a pleasant motor drive to Oromarty, to see the splendid fleet (the Fifth Cruiser Squadron (and some battleships of the Home Fleet) mustered in the Firth. We went all over the _Dreadnought_, and drank tea on Kelburn's ship, the _Cochrane_, burst a tyre on our way home and took refuge at Balnagowan, where Lady Ross gave us dinner and sang to us perfectly delightfully: a full and interesting day.

Ampleforth Abbey having now Masters of Arts of its own qualified to take over the Mastership of its Oxford Hall, I took the occasion of my enforced temporary retirement to resign the office which I had held for nearly ten years. The inevitable regrets were tempered by the kind tributes I received {121} both from Ampleforth and from the Vice-chancellor of the University; and also by my friend Mgr. Kennard's urgent invitation (which I was authorized to accept) that I should return to Oxford for a time as his guest and a.s.sistant-chaplain. This settled, I went south to visit the Loudouns at Loudoun Castle, cheerfully repainted and decorated in honour of the arrival of the family pictures, an accession to Loudoun since his brother Paulyn Hastings' death. At Woodburn, whither I went from Loudoun, I found Philip Kerr at home from Johannesburg (where he was, I think, Secretary to the High Commissioner)--looking as young as ever, the cynosure of his adoring family and of a circle of admiring friends, one or two of whom (I think old schoolfellows at Edgbaston) were staying at Woodburn.

The talk turned, as so often in this house, on Newman and the Oratory; and Lord Ralph Kerr read a striking pa.s.sage written by Coventry Patmore[3] soon after the great Cardinal's death:--

The steam-hammer of that intellect which could be so delicately adjusted to its task as to be capable of either crushing a Hume or cracking a Kingsley is no longer at work: that tongue which had the weight of a hatchet and the edge of a razor is silent.

I recalled a characteristic sentence or two (half jest, half earnest), from one of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's letters to Mrs. Sarjent:--

Newman was at Ryder's, but I thought it best not to see him. I heard that unmistakable voice like a volcano's roar, tamed into the softness of the flute-stop, and got a glimpse (may I say it to you?) of the serpentine form through an open door--the Father Superior!

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