A New Medley of Memories Part 13

[3] "There was an old maid of Carstairs, Whose villa required some repairs: When she asked if the plumber Could finish _next summer_, He said he would be there for years!"

[4] My impression is that the "king of Britain" was a bit of a myth, and that the "Lucius" venerated at Chur was Saint Lucius of Glamorgan--called in Welsh "Lleurwg" or "Lleurfer Mawr"=the "Great Light-bearer," who, according to the Welsh tradition, was the founder of the Church of Llandaff and of others in South Wales.

[5] Sir William and some of his nearest relations formed a remarkable group of men who had won t.i.tles and honours in their various careers.

His brother was created Baron Farrer; one brother-in-law was Sir Stafford Northcote, first Earl of Iddesleigh, and another was created Baron Hobhouse; his nephew was Lord Northcote, the first Governor-General of Australia; and he himself was given his knighthood at the first Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

[6] Three (of whom one, the destined Superior, unhappily died on the voyage out) were English nuns from Stanbrook Abbey, near Worcester: the remaining four were Brazilians, who had pa.s.sed through their novitiate in the same convent.

[7] Our friends.h.i.+p had begun unconventionally. An anonymous article of mine, in a weekly paper, on my Eton schoolfellows, had mentioned Tom's father, Eustace Vesey, as "the dearest of them all." Tom, then himself a small Etonian, wrote to me through the publisher: I of course replied, and the friends.h.i.+p thus begun lasted through his school days, his rather meteoric time at Christ Church, and afterwards.

[8] Sister to my best and oldest Oxford friend, Willie Neville. Sir Arthur Bigge, private secretary successively to Queen Victoria, Edward VII., and George V., was raised to the peerage as Baron Stamfordham this year (1911).

[9] In the neighbourhood of Calgary. Nothing, however, came of the scheme.

[10] And domestic conditions, I may add, highly uncomfortable--far more so than in the prolonged strike some years later, for which people were more or less prepared. "I wonder, my lord," said a lady, visiting a bishop in his vast and unwarmed palace, "that you don't get some of that nice Welsh coal for your big house. I forget the exact name; I think it is called _anti-christ_ coal!"

[11] It was said to be the finest bit of scaffold-work ever put up. I secured an excellent photograph of it.

[12] Archbishop Bourne of Westminster had been created a Cardinal by Pius X. in the Consistory of November 27, 1911.

[13] "I never hear Gregorian music on earth," he said to me once, "but I trust I shall hear nothing else in heaven. There are 'many mansions'

there, and I humbly hope that _my_ mansion will be as far removed as possible from 'Hummel in B flat'!"

[14] I mentioned this in my description of the wedding on our return to Arundel. The comment of one of our party, a lady rather "slow in the uptake" (as we say in Scotland) was, "But what did he _mean_? Whom was she leaning _on_? was it _King_ George?"

[15] The Duke of Sutherland died about a year later.

[16] Pugin justified his love for "dim religious" churches with his usual delightful inconsequence. "In the thirteenth century," he said in effect, "no one thought of reading in church: they told their beads and made acts of faith and said their prayers. _My_ church is a thirteenth-century church, to all intents and purposes--_ergo!_"

[17] It was a case of "inflammatory gouty eczema," too long neglected.

{227}

CHAPTER XIII

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 (Cucujes), 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 a.s.sured 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 ca.s.se 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, a.s.suring 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 m.u.f.fler) 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 G.o.d in peace. Unfortunately the fine twelfth-century church had been restored and re-restored in debased and florid fas.h.i.+on, 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 ma.s.s of Ben Ledi. Another day we saw the smart little soldier-boys of Queen Victoria's School at Dunblane get their prizes from the d.u.c.h.ess 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 fas.h.i.+on) 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 Staffords.h.i.+re, 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 superiors.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps. 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 a.s.sociation 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ma.s.s, 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 a.s.sociation, an admirably beneficent inst.i.tution 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 c.u.mbernauld 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 G.o.dman"

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 a.s.sembled 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 pa.s.s 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-fis.h.i.+ng; 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 Const.i.tutions, {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 Pa.s.sion Week, under the presidency of the abbot of Ampleforth. It took place after the customary ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.cious than I had imagined; to the scanty remains--only the ma.s.sive 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 a.s.semblage 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 a.s.sisted 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-const.i.tuted head at the great Benedictine gathering which was to take place in Italy this summer. The object of this a.s.semblage, to which every abbot of Black Monks (_Monachi Nigri_) in Christendom received an invitation, was two-fold: first to a.s.sist at the consecration of the crypt of the church at Monte Ca.s.sino, 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.sive 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 Ca.s.sino about mid-day, and was driven up the sacred mountain in a motor-car (an innovation since my last pilgrimage hither!) pa.s.sing, 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 Ca.s.sino.

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 ma.s.s for the deceased benefactors of our Order: another, the consecration by the Cardinal Legate representing {244} the Pope,[17] a.s.sisted 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 ma.s.s and subsequent procession, the great church, _cortili_ beyond, and every available foot of s.p.a.ce 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Ca.s.sino 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 s.p.a.cious, 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.