An Autobiography Part 16

I devoted a great deal of my time to getting up a "one-man-show," my first of many, composed of water colours, and in accomplis.h.i.+ng the Afghan picture I have already mentioned as being so much honoured by the Hanging Committee at the Academy in the spring of 1904. My husband's command of the Western District terminated on January 31st, 1905, and with it his career in the army, as he had reached the retiring age. The Liberal Party was very keen on having him as an M.P., representing East Leeds. I am glad the idea did not materialise. I know what would have happened. He would have set out full of honest and worthy enthusiasm to serve the _Patria_. Then, little by little, he would have found what political life really is, and thrown the thing up in disgust. An old story. _Non Patria sed Party!_ So utterly outside my own life had politics been that I had an amused sensation when I saw the Parliamentary world opening before me, like a gulf!

"_January 31st_, 1905.--Will is to stand for East Leeds. It is all very sudden. Liberals so eager that he has almost been (courteously) hustled into the great enterprise. Herbert Gladstone, Campbell-Bannerman and other leaders have written almost irresistible letters to him, pleading.

When he goes to the election at Leeds he is to be 'put to no expense whatever,' and they are confident of a 'handsome majority.' We shall see! Besides all this he is given a most momentous commission at the War Office to investigate certain ugly-looking matters connected with the Boer War stores scandal that require clearing up. I am glad they have done him the 'poetical justice' of selecting him for this.

"_February 13th_.--We went to a very brilliant and (to me) novel gathering at the Campbell-Bannermans'. All the leaders of the Liberal Party there, an interesting if not very n.o.ble study. All so cordial to Will. Tremendous crush, but nice when we got down to the more airy tea room. The s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation I got in the general hubbub all sounded somewhat 'shoppy.' Winston Churchill, a ruddy young man, with a roguish twinkle in his eye, Herbert Gladstone and his lovely wife, our bluff, rosy host and other 'leaders' were very interesting, and we met many friends, all on the 'congratulate.' All these M.P.'s seem to relish their life. I suppose it _has_ a great fascination, this working to get your side in, as at a football match."

The general election in course of time swept over England and brought in the Liberal Party with an overwhelming majority. My husband did not stand for East Leeds. He had to abandon the idea, as a Catholic, on account of the religious difficulties connected with the Education Act.

Our life in the glorious west of Ireland, which followed our retirement from Devonport, has been so fully described by this pen of mine in "From Sketch-book and Diary" that I give but a slight sketch of it here. Those were days when one could give one's whole heart, so to speak, to Erin, before the dreadful cloud had fallen on her which, as I write, has lent her her present forbidding gloom. That will pa.s.s, please G.o.d!

To come straight through from London and its noise and superfluous fuss and turmoil into the absolute peace and purity of County Mayo in perfect summer weather was such a relief to mind and body that one felt it as an emanc.i.p.ation. Health, good sleep, enjoyment of pure air and n.o.ble scenery; kindly, unsophisticated peasantry--all these things were there, and the flocks and herds and the sea birds. In the midst of all that appealing poetry, so peculiar to Ireland, I had a funny object lesson of a prosaic kind at romantic Mulranny, on Clewe Bay. In the little station I saw a big heap in sackcloth lying on the platform--"_Hog-product from Chicago_"--and the country able to "cure" the matchless Irish pig! I went on to get some darning wool in the hamlet--"_Made in England_"--and all those sheep around us! Outside the shop door a horse had the usual big nose-bag--_"Made in Austria"!_ All these things, with a little energy, should have come out of the place itself, surely? I thought to encourage native industry, when found, by ordering woollen hose at the convent school. No two stockings of the same pair were of equal length.

The bay was rich in fish, and one day came a little fleet of fis.h.i.+ng boats--_from France!_ There was Ireland to-day in a nutsh.e.l.l. What of to-morrow? Is this really Ireland's heavy sleep before the dawn?

I have seen some of the most impressive beauties of our world, but never have I been more impressed than by the solemn grandeur of the mountain across Clewe Bay they call Croagh Patrick, as we saw it on the evening of our arrival at Mulranny. The last flush of the after-glow lingered on its dark slopes and the red planet Mars flamed above its cone, all this solemn beauty reflected in the sleeping waters. At Mulranny I spent nearly all my days making studies of sheep and landscape for the next picture I sent to the Academy--"A Cistercian Shepherd." This gave me a period of the most exquisitely reposeful work. The building up of this picture was in itself an idyll. But the public didn't want idylls from me at all. "Give us soldiers and horses, but pastoral idylls--no!"

People had a slightly reproachful tone in their comments after seeing my poor pastoral on the Academy walls. Some one said, "How are the mighty fallen!"

We made our home in the heart of Tipperary, under the Galtee Mountains.

It seemed time for us to seek a dignified repose, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," but we did not succeed in our intention. In 1906 my husband went on a great round of observation through Cape Colony and the (former) Boer Republics on a literary mission. I and E. went off to Italy, meanwhile; Rome as our goal. There I had the great pleasure of the companions.h.i.+p of my sister, and it may be imagined with what feelings we re-trod the old haunts in and about that city together.

"_April 9th, 1906_.--We had a charming stroll through the Villa d'Este gardens, where the oldest, h.o.a.riest cypresses are to be seen, and fountains and water conduits of graceful and fantastic shape, wherever one turns, all gus.h.i.+ng with impetuous waters. The architects of these gardens revelled in their fanciful designs and sported with the responsive flood. Cascades spout in all directions from the rocks on which Tivoli is built. We had _dejeuner_ under a pergola at the inn right over one of these waterfalls, where, far below us, birds flew to and fro in the mist of the spray. Nature and art have joined in play at Tivoli. I always have had a healthy dislike of burrowing in tombs and catacombs. The sepulchral, bat-scented air of such places in Egypt--the land, of all others, of limpid air and suns.h.i.+ne and dryness--is not in any way attractive to me, and I greatly dislike diving into the Roman catacombs out of the sunny Appian Way. On former occasions I went through them all, so this time I kept above ground. I learnt all that the catacombs teach in my early years, and am not likely to lose that tremendous impression.

"_April 10th_.--A true Campagna day, as Italianised as I could make it.

We had a frugal _colazione_ under the pergola of an Appian Way-side inn, watched by half a dozen hungry cats, that unattractive, wild, malignant kind of cat peculiar to Italy. The girl who waited on us drew our white wine in a decanter from what looked like a well in the garden. It had, apparently, not 'been cool'd a long age in _that_ deep-delved earth,'

but it did very well. I was perfectly happy. This old-fas.h.i.+oned _al fresco_ entertainment had the local colour which I look for when I travel and which is getting rarer year by year. Our Colosseum moonlight was more weird than ever. At eleven we had our moon. It was a large, battered, woeful, waning old moon, that looked in at us through the broken arch. An opportune owl, which had been screeching like a cat in the shade, flitted across its sloping disc just at the supreme moment."

To receive Holy Communion at the hands of the Holy Father is a privilege for which we should be very thankful. It was mine and E.'s on Easter morning that year, at his private Ma.s.s in the Sistine Chapel. There I saw Pius X. for the first time. Goodness and compa.s.sion s.h.i.+ne from that sad and gentle face. It is the general custom to kiss the 'Fisherman's ring' on the Pope's hand before receiving, but Pius X. very markedly prevents this. One can understand! Our audience with the Holy Father took place on the eve of our departure. There was a never-absent look with him of what I may call the submissive sense of a too-heavy burden of responsibility. No photographs convey the right impression of this Pope. He was very pale, very spiritual, very kind and a little weary; most gentle and touching in his manner. The World War at its outset broke that tender heart. I sent him my "Letters from the Holy Land," for which I received very urbane thanks from one of the cardinals. I don't think the Holy Father knows a single word of English, and I wonder what he made of it.

As to our tour homeward, taking Florence and Venice on the way, I think we will take that as read. I revel in the Diary in all the dear old Italian details, marred only by the change I noticed in Venice as regards her broken silence. The hurry of modern life has invaded even the "silent city," and there is too much electric glare in the lighting now, at night, for the old enjoyment of her moonlights. It annoyed me to see the moon looking quite shabby above the incandescent globes on the Riva.

From Venice to the Dublin Castle season is a big jump. We had an average of twenty-one b.a.l.l.s in six weeks in each of the two seasons 1907--1908.

Little did I think that it would be quite an unmixed pleasure to me to do _chaperon_ for some five hours at a stretch; but so it turned out. It all depends what sort of daughter you have on the scene! The Aberdeens were then in power.

Lady Aberdeen was untiring in her endeavours to trace and combat the dire disease which seemed to fasten on the Irish in an especial manner.

She went about lecturing to the people with a tuberculosis "caravan."

She brought it to Cashel, and my husband made the opening speech at her exhibition there. But her addresses came to nothing. The lungs exhibited in the "caravan" in spirits of wine appealed in vain. She actually asked the people that day to go back to their discarded oatmeal "stir-about"!

They prefer their stewed tea and their artificially whitened, so-called bread, with the resultant loss of their teeth. My experiences at the different Dublin horse shows were sociable and pleasant. There you see the finest horses and the most beautiful women in the world, and Dublin gives you that hospitality which is the most admirable quality in the Irish nature.

Sir William spent the remaining days of his life in trying, by addresses to the people in different parts of the country, to quicken their sense of the necessity for industry, sobriety, and a more serious view of existence. They did not seem to like it, and he was apparently only beating the air. I remember one particularly strong appeal he made in Meath at a huge open-air meeting. I thought to myself that such warnings, given in his vivid and friendly Irish style, touched with humour to leaven the severity, would have impressed his hearers. The applause disappointed me. Well, he did his best to the very last for the country and the people he loved. He had vainly longed all his life for Home Rule within the Empire. Was this, then, all that was wanting?

I recall in this connection an episode which was eloquent of the hearty appreciation of his worth, quite irrespective of politics. At a banquet given in Dublin to welcome Lord and Lady Granard, after their marriage, he was called upon to respond for "the Guests." For fully one minute the cheers were so persistent when he rose that he had to wait before his opening words could be heard. The company were nearly all Unionists.

After all the misunderstandings connected with Sir William's a.s.sociation with the Boer War and its antecedents had been righted at last, these words of a distinguished general at Headquarters were spoken: "Butler stands a head and shoulders above us all."

The year 1910 is one which in our family remains for ever sacred. My dear mother died on March 13th.

On June 7th a very brave soldier, who feared none but G.o.d, was called to his reward. Here my Diary stops for nearly a year.[16]

CHAPTER XXIV

MOSTLY A ROMAN DIARY

Palm Sunday, 1911, found me in Rome, on the eve of my son's ordination as priest. One of those extraordinary occurrences which have happened in my life took place that day. Four of us joined at the appointed place and hour: I and Eileen from Ireland (d.i.c.k, already in Rome) and Patrick, just landed, in the nick of time, from India! We three met at the foot of the Aventine and went up to Sant' Anselmo, where we knew we should see _the other one_ during the Palm Sunday Ma.s.s, though not to speak to till after the long service was ended. He intoned the Gospel as deacon, and when his deep voice reached us in the gallery we looked at each other with a smile. None of us had seen him for a more or less long time.

"Holy Sat.u.r.day. The great day. d.i.c.k a.s.sumed the chasuble, and is officially known now as Father Urban, though 'd.i.c.k' he will ever remain with us. The weather was Romanly brilliant, but I was anxious, knowing that these young deacons were to be on their knees in the great Lateran Church, fasting, from 7 a.m. We three waited a long time in the piazza of the Lateran for the pealing of the bells which should announce the beginning of the Easter time, and which was to be the signal for our entry into the great basilica at 9.15. We had places in two balconies, right over the altar. Below us stood about forty deacons, with our particular one in their midst, each holding his folded chasuble across his arms ready for the vesting. The sight of these young fellows, in their white and gold deacons' vestments, was very touching. Each one was called up by name in turn, and ascended the altar steps, where sat the consecrating bishop, who looked more like a spirit than a mere human creature. When Urbano Butler (p.r.o.nounced _Boutler_, of course, by the Italian voice) was called, how we craned forward! To me the whole thing was poignant. What those boys give up! ('Well,' answers a voice, 'they give up the world, and a good thing too!')

"We went, when the ceremony was completed, into a side chapel to receive the newly-made young priests' first blessing. These young fellows ran out of the sacristy towards the crowd of expectant parents and friends, their newly-acquired chasubles flying behind them as they ran, with outstretched hands, for the kisses of that kneeling crowd that awaited them. What a sight! Can any one paint it and do it justice? Old and young, gentlefolk and peasants, smiling through tears, kissing the young hands that blessed them. d.i.c.k came to his mother first, then to his soldier brother, then to his sister, and I saw him lifting an aged prelate to his feet after blessing him. Strangers knelt to him and to the others, and I saw, in its perfection, what is meant by 'laughing for joy' on those young and holy faces. There was one exception. A poor young Irish boy, somehow, had no relative to bless--no one--he seemed left out in his corner, and he was crying. Perhaps his mother was 'beyond the beyond' in far Connemara? I heard of this afterwards. Had I seen him, I would certainly have asked his blessing too. So it is--always some shadow, even here.

"As soon as we could get hold of d.i.c.k, in his plain habit, we hurried him to a little _trattoria_ across the piazza, where his dear friend and chum, John Collins,[17] treated him to a good cup of chocolate to break his long fast."

It was quite a necessary anti-climax for me when we and our friends all met again at the hotel and sat down, to the number of fifteen, to a bright luncheon I gave in honour of the day. A very celebrated English cardinal honoured me with his presence there.

"_Easter Sunday_.--Patrick, Eileen and I received Holy Communion in the crypt of Sant' Anselmo from d.i.c.k's hands at his first Ma.s.s. These few words contain the culmination of all.

"_April 17th_.--In the afternoon we were all off, piloted by d.i.c.k, to the celebrated Benedictine monastery of Monte Ca.s.sino, a long way down towards Naples, to spend a few days, Patrick as guest within the precincts, and E. and I lodging at the guest-house, which forms part of the monastic farm, poised on the edge of a great precipice. The sheer rock plunges down to the base of the mountain whereon stands the wonderful monastery. It is something to see a great domed church on the top of such a mountain, and a building of such vast proportions, containing one of the greatest libraries in the world. A mule path was all the monks intended for communication between the two worlds, but now a great carriage road takes us up by an easy zigzag.

"_April 18th_.--Every hour of our visit to Monte Ca.s.sino must be lived.

I made a sketch of the monastery and the abyss into which one peers from that great height, with angry red clouds gathering over the tops of the snowy mountains. But my sketches are too didactic; and, indeed, who but Turner could convey to the beholder the awful spirit of that scene?

The tempest sent us in and we had the experience of a good thunderstorm amidst those severe mountains that have the appearance of a petrified chaos. Last night E. woke up to find the room full of a surprising blue light, which at first she took to be the dawn because, through the open windows, she heard the whole land thrilling with the song of birds. But such a _blue_ light for dawn? She got up to see. The light was that of the full moon and the birds were nightingales.

"I was enchanted to see the beautiful dress of the peasant women here.

Their white _tovaglie_ are looped back in a more graceful line than the Roman. The queerest little thin black hogs, like poor relations of the tall, pink Valentia variety which I have already signalised, browse on the steep ascent to this great stronghold, and everything still looks wild, in spite of the carriage road. I should have preferred coming up here on a mule. Our suppers at the guest-house were Spartan. Rather dismal, having to pump conversation with the Italian guests at this festive(!) board. Our intellectual food, however, was rich. The abbot and his monks did the honours of far-famed Monte Ca.s.sino for us with the kindest attention, showing very markedly their satisfaction in possessing Brother Urban, whose father's name they held in great esteem."

On April 22nd we had the long-expected audience with Pio Decimo. It was only semi-private and there were crowds, including eleven English naval officers, to be presented. I had my little speech ready, but when we came into the Pope's presence we found him standing instead of restfully seated, and he looked so fatigued and so aged since I last saw him that I knew I must keep him listening as short a time as possible. First I presented "_Mio figlio primogenito, ufficiale_;" then "_mio figlio Benedettino_" and then "_mia figlia_." He spoke a little while to d.i.c.k in Latin, and then we knelt and received his blessing and departed, to see him no more.

It is a great thing to have seen Leo XIII. and Pius X., as I have had the opportunity of seeing them. Both have left a deep impression on modern life, especially the former, who was a great statesman. To see the fragile scabbard of the flesh one wondered how the keen sword of the spirit could be held at all within it. It was his diplomatic tact that smoothed away many of the difficulties that obtruded themselves between the Vatican and the Quirinal, and that tact kept the Papacy on good terms with France and her Republic, to which he called on all French Catholics to give their support. It was he who forced "the man of blood and iron" to relax the ferocious laws against the Church in Germany, and to allow the evicted bishops to return to their Sees. Diplomatic relations with Germany were renewed, and the Church's laws regarding marriage and education had to be re-admitted by the Government. Even the dark "Orthodox" intolerance of Russia bent sufficiently to his influence to allow of the establishment of Catholic episcopal Sees in that country, and the cessation of the imprisonment of priests. The episcopate in Scotland, too, was restored. We owe to him that spread of Catholicism in the United States which has long been such a surprise to the onlooker. Then there are his great encyclicals on the Social Question, setting forth the Christian teaching on the relations between capital and labour; establis.h.i.+ng the social movement on Christian lines.

How clearly he saw the threat of a great European war at no very distant date from his time unless armaments were reduced. That refined mind inclined him to the advancement of the cause of the Arts and of learning. Students thank him for opening the Vatican archives to them, which he did with the words, "The Church has nothing to fear from the publication of the Truth." His is the Vatican observatory--one of the most famous in the world. It makes one smile to remember his remarks on the then young Kaiser William II., who seems to have struck the Holy Father as somewhat b.u.mptious on the occasion of his historic visit.

"That young man," as he called him, evidently impressed the Pope as one having much to learn.

What a contrast Pius X. presents to his predecessor! The son of a postman at Rieti, a little town in Venetia. I remember when a deputation of young men came to pay him their respects at the Vatican, arriving on their bicycles, that he told them how much he would have liked a bike himself when, as a bare-legged boy, he had to trudge every day seven miles to school and back. Needless to say, he had no diplomatic or political training, but he led the truly simple life, very saintly and apostolic. He devoted his energies chiefly to the purely pastoral side of his office. We are grateful to him for his reform of Church music (and it needed it in Italy!). He was very emphatic in urging frequent communion and early communion for children. His condemnation of "modernism" is fresh in all our minds, and we are glad he removed the prohibition on Catholics from standing for the Italian Parliament, thereby allowing them to obtain influential positions in public life. He took a firm stand with regard to the advancing encroachment of the French Government on the liberties of the Church in his day. His policy is being amply justified under our very eyes.

We joined the big garden party, after the Papal audience, at the British Emba.s.sy. A great crush in that lovely remnant of the once glorious, far-spreading gardens I can remember, nearly all turned to-day into deadly streets on which a gridiron of tram lines has been screwed down.

Prince Arthur of Connaught brought in the Queen-Mother, Margherita, to the lawn where the dancing took place. The Rennell-Rodd children as little fairies were pretty and danced charmingly, but I felt for the professional dancer who, poor thing, was not in her first youth, and unkindly dealt with by the searching daylight. To have to caper airily on that gra.s.s was no joke. It was heavy going for her and made me melancholy, in conjunction with my memories of the old Ludovisi gardens and the vanished pines.

On October 26th my youngest daughter, Eileen, was married to Lord Gormanston, at the Brompton Oratory, the church so loved by our mother, and where I was received. Our dear d.i.c.k married them. I had the reception in Lowndes Square in the beautiful house lent by a friend.

Ireland has many historic ancestral dwellings, and one of these became my daughter's new home in Meath. Shakespeare's "cloud-capp'd towers"

seemed not so much the "baseless fabric" of the poet's vision when I saw, one day, the low-lying trail of a bright Irish mist brush the high tops of the towers of Gormanston. A thing of visions, too, is realised there in a cloister carved so solidly out of the dense foliage of the yew that never monastic cloister of stone gave a more restful "contiguity of shade."

I spent the winter of 1911--12 in London, and worked hard at water colours, of which I was able to exhibit a goodly number at a "one-man show" in the spring. The King lent my good old "Roll Call," and the whole thing was a success. I showed many landscapes there as well as military subjects; many Italian and Egyptian drawings made during my travels, and scenes in Ireland. These exhibitions in a well-lighted gallery are pleasant, and the private view day a social rendezvous for one's friends.

Through my sister, with whom I revisited Rome early in 1913, I had the pleasure of knowing many Americans there. How refres.h.i.+ng they are, and responsive (I don't mean the mere tourist!), whereas my dear compatriots are very heavy in hand sometimes. American women are particularly well read and cultivated and full of life. They don't travel in Europe for nothing. I have had some dull experiences in the English world when embarking, at our solemn British dinners, on cosmopolitan subjects for conversation. What was I to say to a man who, having lately returned from Florence, gave it as his opinion that it was only "a second-rate Cheltenham"? I tried that unlucky Florentine subject on another. He: "Florence? Oh, yes, I liked that--that--_minaret thing_ by the side of the--the--er----" I: "The Duomo?" He: "Oh, yes, the Duomo." I (in gloomy despair): "Do you mean Giotto's Tower?" Collapse of our conversation.

Very probably I bade my last farewell to St. Peter's that year. I had more than once bidden a provisional "good-bye" at sundown on leaving Rome to that dome which I always loved to see against the western glory from the familiar terrace on Monte Pincio, only to return, on a further visit, and see it again with the old, fresh feeling of thankfulness. My initial enthusiasm, crudely chronicled as it is in my early Diary on first coming in sight of St. Peter's, was a young artist's emotion, but to the maturer mind what a miracle that Sermon in Stone reveals! The tomb of one Simon, no better, before his call, than any ordinary fisherman one may see to-day on our coasts--and now? "TU ES PETRUS...."