A New Medley of Memories Part 4

Term over, I made my way north to Beaufort, arriving there just in time to a.s.sist at the unveiling in the village square of Beauly, of the Lovat Scouts' Memorial, for which I had written the inscription.[4] A pretty function, with much local enthusiasm, an excellent speech from The Mackintosh, our new Lord Lieutenant, and of course the inevitable "cake and wine" banquet, at which I toasted Lovat. Christmas followed, with a big and merry family party, the usual seasonable revels, and some delightful singing from the wife of a Ross-s.h.i.+re laird, an American lady with a well-trained voice of astonis.h.i.+ng sweetness and compa.s.s. The New Year found the whole country agog about the coming General Election; and at Arundel, whither I went from Beaufort, I heard Lady Edmund Talbot falsify Johnson's cynical dictum[5] by making an excellent {62} speech on behalf of her husband, who was laid up in London. He retained his seat for Chichester by a good majority; and "dear little Wigtowns.h.i.+re" remained faithful to a lost cause, returning Lord Stair's eldest son.[6] But on the whole the "Radical reaction,"

"turn of the tide," "swing of the pendulum"--whichever you liked to call it--was complete, the very first victim of the _debacle_ being my brother-in-law, Charles Dalrymple, who was dismissed at Ipswich, after twenty years' service, by nearly 2,000 votes. He had been given a Privy Councillors.h.i.+p by the outgoing Government; but this poorly compensated him for being ousted from the House of Commons, which had been his "nursing mother" for nearly forty years.[7] Manchester was absolutely swept by the Liberals, poor Sir James Fergusson going to join his brother in limbo, and Arthur Balfour being beaten by a larger majority than either of them. The final result showed--Radical members returned, 378, against 156 Unionists. The new Ministry put educational reform in the front of their programme; and we Catholics, with a section of Anglicans (for they were by no means united on the subject), organized meetings in advance against the nefarious projects of the Government. I attended some of them, and heard many speeches, {63} some of them terribly long and "stodgy." A Hamps.h.i.+re parson, by whom I sat at one of these dreary meetings, told me, by way of ill.u.s.trating the educational standard of his peasant paris.h.i.+oners, that a bridegroom would thus render the promise in the marriage-service: "With my body I thee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou!" While the bride's version of _her_ promise would be: "To 'ave an' to 'old from this day fortnight for betterer 'orse, for richerer power, in siggerness 'ealth, to love cherries and to bay!" I copied these interesting formulas into my note-book on the spot.

I was happily able to escape, at the end of term, from these political alarums and excursions to the Continent. I longed for Italy; but the friend who accompanied me (and financed us both) insisted on carrying me to Nice--a place I never loved; and it proved sunless, the palms s.h.i.+vering in a mistral and we s.h.i.+vering in sympathy. I used to escape the odious Promenade des Anglais (much more a Promenade des Allemands) by climbing the steep steps into old-world Nizza, and talking to the good simple folk, who (so the parish priest a.s.sured me) remained devout and pious, and wonderfully little affected by the manners and morals of the objectionable crowd which haunts Nice more than any other spot on the _Cote d'Azur_, except, I suppose, Monte Carlo. The latter resort we eschewed (my friend and host was no gambler), but we had many strolls through the toy-city of Monaco, where the tourist is little in evidence. I noticed, crowning the picturesque promontory, the new cathedral built by M. Blanc out of casino profits, which the ecclesiastical {64} authorities accepted, I suppose, on the principle of the good old maxim, _Non olet!_[8] We took a run to Milan before turning homewards, and after an hour in the cathedral--impressively vast, but not (to my thinking) impressively beautiful, either without or within--spent a long day in exploring the far more interesting churches of SS. Maurizio, Maria delle Grazie, Vittore, Lorenzo, Giorgio, and Ambrogio, every one well worth visiting, and the last-named unique, of course, in charm and interest.[9] Turin, where we stayed a day, was wet and cold; but the arcades which line the chief streets at least keep the rain off. At Paris the sun was actually s.h.i.+ning, and the trees on the boulevards sprouting greenly. I read in the English papers here of the engagement of my nephew Kelburn (the family had only recently dropped the final e from both the t.i.tle and the castle)[10] to a Miss Hyacinth Bell, whose pretty floral name conveyed nothing to me. The {65} new Minister of Education[11] had also published his "Birreligious" Bill (as some wags nicknamed it): it seemed to satisfy n.o.body--least of all, of course, Catholics.

I spent Easter, as usual, at Arundel, where a gathering of Maxwells (the d.u.c.h.ess's young relatives) made the big house cheerful and homelike. The summer term at Oxford was an uneventful one, the most interesting event that I recall being our annual Canning and Chatham dinner, with a more distinguished gathering than usual. Lord Milner made a remarkable and interesting speech in reply to the toast of "The Empire," and "Smith of Wadham," M.P. (the future Lord Chancellor), was also very eloquent. The Duke of Leinster (then up at Balliol), who sat next me, spoke of the hereditary good relations between his family and Maynooth College, and amused me by saying that he thought it must be "much more interesting" to be a Catholic in England than in Ireland! I motored some of my young Benedictines over to Blenheim one day; and we were, with other sight-seers, escorted over the show-part of the palace. The little Duke burst in on us in one state-room, and retired precipitately, banging the door with an audible "D--n!" "His Grace the Dook of Marlborough!" announced, without turning a hair, the solemn butler who was acting as showman; and our party was, of course, duly impressed.

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I was summoned this summer to three weddings, all of interest to me, the first being that of my nephew Kelburn, a pretty country function in Surrey. The Bishop of Worcester tied the knot--"impressively," as the reporters say (but why cannot an Anglican dignitary read the Bible without "mouthing" it?), and I afterwards found in his wife, Lady Barbara Yeatman-Biggs, an old friend of my childhood.[12] Many relatives, of course, were present here, and also, ten days later, in the Chelsea church where Archdeacon Sinclair ("genial and impressive,"

the newspapers called _him_) united my younger sister, _en secondes noces_, to Captain Cracroft Jarvis. I spent the evening of her wedding in the House of Commons, where I had a mind to see our famous new Radical Parliament-men gathered together. A very "scratch lot" they seemed to me to be; and Archbishop Walsh of Dublin, whom I found beside me in the D.S.G., seemed as little impressed as myself by their "carryings-on." His Grace was so pleased with Carlyle's definition, or description, of the House, which I quoted to him (he was apparently unfamiliar with it), that he promptly copied it down in his note-book: "a high-soaring, hopelessly-floundering, ever-babbling, inarticulate, dumb dark ent.i.ty!"

My third wedding was a picturesque Irish {67} one--that of Ninian Crichton Stuart to Lord Gormanston's only daughter, with, of course, a large party of Butes and Prestons gathered at Gormanston Castle, a huge pile mostly modern; but the quaint little chapel, Jacobean Gothic without and Empire style within, gaily adorned with lilies, marguerites, and trailing smilax, dates from 1687.[13] It was far too small to hold the wedding guests, who perforce remained on the lawn outside. I walked with our host, later in the day, in the splendidly timbered park, and the great picturesque untidy Irish garden; and he held forth on the hards.h.i.+p of having to live uncomfortably in Ireland after the luxury of Colonial governors.h.i.+ps. "_Ireland!_ a rotten old country, only fit, as some one said, to dig up and use as a top-dressing for England!" was the summing-up of his lords.h.i.+p, whose ancestors had owned the land on which we were walking for some seven centuries.[14] I thought his bemoanings rather pathetic; but he amused me by his recital of a prescription for "The Salvation of Ireland"

which once appeared (anonymously) in a northern newspaper. "Drain your Bogs--Fat more Hogs--Lots more Lime--Lots more Chalk--LOTS MORE WORK--LOTS LESS TALK!"

I returned to Oxford in time for Commemoration, at {68} which Lord Milner and Mgr. d.u.c.h.esne, two of our be-doctored guests, were very warmly received; attended the big luncheon in All Souls' library, where the agreeable ladies who sat on my right and left were totally unknown to me; and drank coffee in the sunlit quad, where a band played and I met many friends. Next day I took s.h.i.+p at Southampton (a noisy, shaky, creaky s.h.i.+p it was) for Guernsey, on a visit to my brother, who was in command of the Gunners there. I thought the approach to the island very pretty on a still summer morning: quaint houses and church towers climbing the hill among trees and gardens, with a foreground of white sails and blue sea. Very pretty too was "Ordnance House" and its old garden, with hedges of golden calceolarias and other attractions. I spent a pleasant week here, delighted with the rocky coast (reminding me of my native Wigtowns.h.i.+re) and the luxuriant gardens, especially that of the Lieutenant-Governor, whose charming house (he occupied Lord de Saumarez's seat) was full, as was to be expected,[15] of beautiful naval prints and other relics. Of a morning I would walk down to Fort Cornet--part of it of great antiquity--and watch my brother's guns at sea-target practice, till my head ached with the roar and concussion.

The shooting was excellent, but the electric firing-apparatus occasionally went wrong, which might be awkward in battle! I was interested in the fine fifteenth-century parish church of St.

Peter-Port, of flamboyant Gothic: the effect of the interior {69} nave-arches rising almost from the ground, with hardly any pillars, is most singular.

I had to hurry back to "the adjacent island of Great Britain" (as the c.u.mbrae minister put it),[16] to attend the jubilee dinner in London of St. Elisabeth's Catholic Hospital, with Norfolk in the chair: a great success, owing, I think, to the unusual circ.u.mstance that dinner and wine were provided gratis, the result being much-enhanced subscriptions from the grateful banqueters. I was present a little later at the coming-of-age celebrations of Lord Gainsborough's son and heir at Campden, the beautiful Jacobean family seat on the Cotswold slopes. We sat down seventy to dinner on the evening of Campden's birthday; and the youth acquitted himself excellently of what I consider (and I have had some experience of majority banquets, including my own) one of the most embarra.s.sing tasks which can fall to any young man's lot. I, being unexpectedly a.s.signed the easier duty of replying for the visitors, utilized the admirably appropriate opening which I had heard not long before from the witty and eloquent American Amba.s.sador,[17] at the dinner of the Royal Literary Fund, and which was _not_ a "chestnut"

then, whatever it may be now.

From Campden I went on to Leamington to visit {70} another brother, who had invited me to witness the Warwick Pageant, I think the first, and certainly the most effective and successful, of these spectacles, for which the craze was just beginning to spread through England. The dramatic episodes at Warwick were not always dramatic, and the dialogue and acting were perhaps not quite worthy of the superb surroundings; but the setting of the spectacle was absolutely perfect. Behind us the towers and battlements of the feudal castle rose above the woods: on our right the giant oaks of the park, in their glorious midsummer foliage: to our left the Avon glistening like a ribbon of burnished silver; and in front, beyond a great expanse of verdant lawn (the "stage" of the pageant), a prospect of enchanting wooded glades and long-drawn sylvan avenues, down which came the long processions of players, mounted and afoot, with singular and striking effect. Lord and Lady Willoughby de Broke, who appeared (with the splendidly mounted members of their hunt) as Louis XI. and Margaret of Scotland, were conspicuous, if only because the former acted his part and spoke his lines best of the whole company. The concerted singing was quite charming; and charming, too, the spectacle of the hundred boys of the famous old Warwick Grammar-school, in their pretty dresses of russet and gold, and their masters costumed as old-world pedagogues.

Altogether a delightful and notable entertainment, which I was very glad to have seen; and in other respects I enjoyed my visit, my brother taking me to Kenilworth, Stoneleigh, Charlecote, and other interesting places in that most interesting country. The August Bank-holiday found me at Scarborough, {71} of all places in the world, spending the day there with the two schoolboy sons of my host at a country house in the East Riding. I recall, at the aquarium there, my interest on discovering a "fact not generally known"--namely that fishes can, and do, yawn. We saw a turbot yawn twice, and a cod once. The cod's yawn was remarkable chiefly for its width, but the turbot's was much more noteworthy. It begins at the lips, which open as if to suck in water;[18] then the jaws distend themselves and so the yawn goes on, works through the back of the head, stretching the plates of the skull almost to cracking point, and finally comes out at the gills, which open showing their red lining, and are inflated for a moment; and then, with a gasping kind of s.h.i.+ver, the fish flattens out again, until, if unusually bored, as it appeared to be by our presence, it relieves its feelings by another yawn. I left my young friends to enjoy the varied humours of the front; and climbing up (as I had done at Nice) "far from the madding crowd," discovered many quaint and charming bits of old Scarborough. A policeman told me that they reckoned that at least 120,000 visitors were in the town that day; and they all seemed collected together to view the evening firework display above the Spa.

The biggest crowds I had ever seen were at Epsom on Derby Day, between Mortlake and Putney on Boat-race Day, and in St. Peter's Square at Rome on the election-day of Leo XIII.: but this great _congeries_ at Scarborough surpa.s.sed them all in impressiveness. I {72} turned my back on the "set pieces" and Roman candles, gazed almost awestruck at the vast sea of upturned white faces on the beach below, lit up from time to time by the lurid glow of coloured fires, and listened to the cry "Ah-h-h!" of the great mult.i.tude as the rockets shrilled up into the starlit sky. _Mirabile visu et auditu!_ it somehow made me think (at Scarborough on Bank Holiday evening!) of the Last Day and the Valley of Jehoshaphat. From Scarborough, before going north to Scotland, I went for a few days to Longridge Towers, Sir Hubert Jerningham's beautiful place near Berwick, with views on every side over the rolling Border country. "Norham's castle steep," built nine centuries before by Flambard, the "Magnificent" Bishop of Durham, was on the Longridge property; and I spent some delightful hours there with my accomplished host, who was a charming companion, and (as became a _bachelier-es-lettres_ of Paris University) could tell a good story as well in French as he could in English. He showed me among many curiosities a letter from an early Quaker which I thought worth copying:--

FRIEND JOHN,--

I desire thee to be so kind as to go to one of those sinful men in the flesh called an attorney, and let him take out an instrument, with a seal fixed thereto, by means whereof we may seize the outward tabernacle of George Green, and bring him before the lambskin men at Westminster, and teach him to do as he would be done by; and so I rest thy friend in the light,

M.D.

Mountstuart claimed me for a short visit when I had got across the Border; and I found the big house very cheerful under the new and youthful regime, and my hostess, now a happy mother, driving the baby Lady Mary about the island and exhibiting {73} her to the admiring farmers' wives. I made my way up the West coast to Fort Augustus to spend the rest of the Oxford "Long," travelling thence in September to Aberdeen to read a paper at the annual conference of the Catholic Truth Society. There was a large attendance, Lady Lovat doing hostess at a big reception one evening; and it was pleasant to find oneself in a genuinely Scottish, as well as Catholic, gathering, presided over by a Highland bishop (aeneas Chisholm of beloved memory), as patriotic and popular as he was pious and pleasant. My paper, on "The Holy See and the Scottish Universities," was very well received, and the local newspapers did me the honour of reprinting it verbatim next morning, while the _Scotsman_ devoted a leading article to it. Our princ.i.p.al meeting, in the largest hall of the city, wound up not only with "Faith of our Fathers" but "G.o.d save the King." "Is this necessary?"

whispered a prelate of Nationalist leanings to the presiding bishop, in the middle of the loyal anthem. "It may not be necessary," replied Bishop Chisholm, in a very audible "aside," "but it is very right and extremely proper." _O si sic omnes!_"[19]

[1] Such seeming exceptions as the n.o.ble churches of St. John at Norwich and St. Philip at Arundel, the Duke of Newcastle's sumptuous chapel at Clumber, the impressive church of the Irvingites in Gordon Square, are only satisfactory in so far as they are more or less exact imitations of mediaeval Gothic. The cloisters of Fort Augustus Abbey are beautiful because they are reproductions, from A. W. Pugin's note-books, of real live fifteenth-century tracery. The more the modern Gothic architect strives to be original (a hard saying, but a true one), the more certainly he fails. And to see how feebly ineffective even his imitations can be, one need only look at the entrance tower of St. Swithun's Quad at Magdalen, and compare it with the incomparable Founder's Tower immediately opposite.

Let me add that I have no animus against Downside in particular: it is merely an instance taken at random to ill.u.s.trate my thesis. I had felt just the same, years before, about the first grandiose plans for our own church at Fort Augustus. "Go to Westminster Abbey--you can see it from your windows," I wrote to the architect, "and get an inspiration from that glorious temple of _living_ Gothic. Your elaborate designs have no life, no reality. If they were ever realized among our Highland hills, I should expect some genie of the Arabian Nights to swoop down one day and whisk the whole impossible structure back to Victoria Street!" I still recall the pleasure and approval with which Dom Gilbert Dolan of Downside, one of the most distinguished of modern Benedictine architects, read this letter.

[2] Who was the reporter who once announced (I believe it was really a printer's error and not a little bit of malice) that "the Conservatives among the audience received the candidate with welcoming snouts"?

[3] Arthur Balfour had resigned the premiers.h.i.+p in the previous week, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had succeeded him.

[4] Not an easy task! for Lovat wanted the Scouts to have all the honour, which _they_ wished a.s.signed to him. My inscription (I believe generally approved) ran: Erected by the Lovat Tenantry and Feuars of the Aird and Fort Augustus Districts to Commemorate the Raising of the Lovat Scouts for Service in South Africa by Simon Joseph, 16th Lord Lovat, C.V.O., C.B., D.S.O., who Desired to Show that the Martial Spirit of their Ancestors still Animates the Highlanders of To-Day, and Whose Confidence was Justified by the Success in the Field of the Gallant Corps Whose Existence was Due to His Loyalty and Patriotism.

A.D. 1905.

[5] "A woman speaking in public is like a dog walking on its hind legs: it is not well done, but you are surprised to find it done at all."

[6] My native county remained consistently and uninterruptedly Tory for fifty years--from 1868, when it returned Lord Garlics, until 1918, when its separate representation was taken from it by the new Redistribution Act.

[7] Sir Charles had sat in Parliament continuously, except for a few weeks, since 1868, when he was first elected for Butes.h.i.+re. It was only this very slight break which prevented him from being at one time the Father of the House of Commons.

[8] I heard an odd story to the effect that at the Anglican Church at Monte Carlo no one had ever heard any hymn before No. 37 announced to be sung; the reason being that the mention of any one from 1 to 36 would instantly have sent a quota of the congregation racing down to stake their money on that number! It was, and is, a current superst.i.tion that a number suggested by something as remote as possible from gambling is likely to prove a lucky one.

[9] Due, I think, largely to the fact that though the greater part of the church is ninth and tenth century work, it has the air of being very much older, and seems to recall the days of St. Ambrose himself.

[10] "Kelburn" was, I believe, the old spelling. About the same time the Duke of Athole dropped _his_ final _e_ also; and the name-board at the well-known station, at his castle gates, displayed, as I observed on my next journey to the Highlands, the legend "Blair Atholl," instead of "Blair Athole" as formerly.

[11] Augustine Birrell, the distinguished essayist, whose literary method, easy, witty, and urbane, has evoked the word "birrelling." He succeeded Mr. Bryce a little later as Irish Secretary, and retained that office (in which he was no more successful than most of his predecessors) under Mr. Asquith.

[12] _Nee_ Legge: one of a crowd of sisters (Ladies Louisa, Octavia, Wilhelmina, Barbara, Charlotte, and I know not how many more) with whom I made friends as a small boy when staying with my parents at Aix-la-Chapelle; and we saw much of them afterwards. We children used to call them the "Lady-legs." Their brother Augustus, who was also a friend of my childhood, became Bishop of Lichfield in 1891.

[13] Built in James II.'s reign (the original castle was of Henry VII.'s), when the accession of a Catholic King enabled Catholics, British and Irish, to emerge for a short time from the Catacombs.

[14] Lord Gormanston, like Lord Talbot de Malahide and a few others, represented the Anglo-Irish landowners of the time of Henry VII., "Lord of Ireland." My friend Lord Kenmare was typical of the enriched Elizabethan settlers in the country, while Sir Henry Bellingham was one of the seventeenth-century group of immigrants popularly known as "Cromwell's Drummers." Three out of the four mentioned were Catholics.

[15] The first baronet and Baron de Saumarez was second in command at the Battle of the Nile, and was raised to the peerage by William IV.

[16] It was the parish minister of Millport, in c.u.mbrae (off the coast of Ayrs.h.i.+re) who habitually prayed at Divine Service for the "inhabitants of the Greater and the Lesser c.u.mbraes, and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland!"

[17] The late Mr. Choate. "When I came into this a.s.sembly this evening, I felt very much like the prophet Daniel when he got into the lion's den. When Daniel looked around, and saw the company in which he was, 'Well,' he said, '_whoever's got to do the after-dinner speaking, it won't be me!_'"

[18] A turbot's mouth is twisted on one side, rather as if it had belonged to a round fish which some one had accidentally trodden on, and had squashed half-flat.

[19] My friend Lord Ralph Kerr had, some time previously, refused to preside at a meeting of the same Society (of which he was president) in another Scottish city, on learning that the local committee would not permit the National Anthem to be sung at the close. The reason alleged, that "the Irish in the audience would not stand it," did not, naturally, strike the gallant Scottish general as an adequate one.

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CHAPTER V

1906-1907

Before returning to Oxford for the autumn term of 1906, I spent a pleasant ten days at Abbotsford with my old friends the Lane Foxes, and visited with them Dryburgh Abbey, Galas.h.i.+els, and other interesting places. Melrose, too, we thoroughly explored, agreeing that (_pace_ Sir Walter) the time for seeing it "aright" was _not_ "by the pale moonlight," but on a sunlit afternoon, which alone does justice to the marvellous colouring--grey shot with rose and yellow--of the old stone.

Modern textbooks talk of the "decadence" of its architecture, but it has details of surpa.s.sing beauty nevertheless. It was ill exchanging the beauties of Tweedside in perfect September weather for foggy London. I arrived there on a Sunday morning, just in time for high ma.s.s at Westminster Cathedral, of which a fog rather enhances the charm, softening the raw brick walls and imparting a mysterious and shadowy splendour to the great s.p.a.ces under the lofty domes. The grave polyphonic music, perfectly rendered, greatly pleased me; but the acoustics of the building seemed to be defective.[1] A noted preacher was discoursing {75} to an immense congregation on "Pessimism"--so the notice-boards informed me; but it might as well have been on Optimism for anything I could hear of it. Walking homewards to Regent's Park, I looked in at a Ritualistic church in Red Lion Square, where a singular function was in progress in presence of the (schismatic) Archbishop of Sinai, under the auspices of a body styling itself "The Anglican and Orthodox Churches Union."[2] As I entered, a clergyman was just remarking from the pulpit that as there was no visible Church on earth, or as, at any rate, it was temporally broken to bits, there was no use in looking for a visible head! a theory which his audience may or may not have found satisfactory.[3]

I lingered for a day at Birmingham, on my way to Oxford, to attend the opening of the nave of the Newman Memorial Church. It was the sixty-first anniversary of Newman's reception into the Church at Littlemore, as well as the sixth of the death of Lord Bute, whose conversion was a fruit of the Oxford movement, of which Newman was the inspiring genius. I was pleased with the simplicity, even austerity, of the building, relieved to some extent by the beautiful tints of the double row of marble monoliths, and by the warm russet of the coved roof of Spanish chestnut. Eight or ten prelates (the Archbishop of Westminster was the preacher) gave dignity to the function, which {76} was followed by a rather higgledy-piggledy luncheon at the "Plough and Harrow" next door. The Norfolk family were of course present in force at their beloved Oratory, the Duke, with sisters, brothers-in-law, nephews and nieces, being prominent among the large gathering. Lord Ralph Kerr's boy, a pupil of the Fathers, showed me over the school; and I rather marvelled to see an educational establishment of such deserved repute housed in so quaint a collection of lean-to's and shanties, the only thing worth looking at being the fine refectory of the Oratory, which the schoolboys used as their dining-room.

I found Oxford swept and garnished for the new term, and my old friend the President of Magdalen installed as Vice-chancellor, and performing his multifarious duties (which included the matriculation of my two Benedictine freshmen) with the mingled dignity and urbanity which characterized him. Grissell, who was in residence this term, invited me to luncheon to meet "a Roman Prince," and a lady who had, he said, been miraculously cured by the Madonna of Pompeii. The cure, unfortunately, had been incomplete or temporary, for the lady had had a relapse, was in bed, and could not turn up. The Roman Prince, or princeling, proved to be Don Andrea Buoncompagni-Ludovisi, descendant of two Popes,[4] and a freshman at Merton; a pleasant youth, {77} but his English, though fluent, was vulgar rather than princely. I wondered where he had picked it up. A different type of Italian whom I met the same week was the distinguished South Italian violinist, Signor Simonetti. He had been fiddling at our Musical Club on the previous evening--_roba Napolitana_, but clever and interesting. Our conversation, however, turned not on music but on the "Evil Eye," as I was anxious to know to what extent the belief in this still prevailed in Italy. He said it was as persistent as ever, especially in the south, and told us how the most famous advocate in Naples, in quite recent times, was so universally accredited with this mysterious power, that when the leader opposed to him in an impending lawsuit died on the eve of the case coming on, another lawyer was only with the greatest difficulty found to take his place. _He_ was killed by an accident on the very morning of the trial; and the dreaded advocate was face to face with the judge, who was in fear and trembling, as he expected to have to give judgment against him. The story went that when the judge rose to speak, his spectacles accidentally fell out of place. "I am struck blind!" he cried out; "forgive me, Signor Avvocato--I have not yet p.r.o.nounced against you." Suddenly his spectacles fell across his nose again. "Forgive me again," he said; "I can see after all!" The Neapolitans laughed, but they believed all the same. When this redoubtable advocate fell ill, half Naples was praying fervently for his death; and if one reproached them for desiring the death of a fellowman, the answer was, "Non e un uomo, e un _jettatore_!" Signor Simonetti, I felt pretty sure, himself {78} sympathized with this sentiment, although he pa.s.sed it off as a joke. I contributed a tale of a certain Count who had been pointed out to me, during my visit to Naples in the previous year, as the most dreaded _jettatore_ in the city. He was dining alone at a restaurant, and I was told that no one, if they could avoid it, would sit down in his company. Meeting his cousin, the old Duca di M----, in the street, he gave him his arm. The Duca suddenly slipped, fell, and broke his leg. He was stunned by the shock; and his first words, on recovering consciousness, were whispered (in confidential Neapolitan patois) into the ear of his formidable kinsman: "Grazie, perche tu me putive accidere, e te si c.u.n.tentate de m'arruinare!" ("Thanks; for you might have killed me, and you contented yourself with laming me!")[5]

Some of us went over to Radley College for the usual All Saints' play, the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes, in Greek; and it _was_ Greek, no doubt, to the majority of the audience. Books of the words in English were, however, supplied--"an attention," remarked a local paper, "which the ladies received with unconcealed satisfaction, and the gentlemen with satisfaction which they vainly endeavoured to conceal." Some of the undergraduates present doubtless, like the schoolboy in _Vice Versa_, "recognized several words from the Greek Grammar"; but what pleased me was an elderly clergyman who declined to share his wife's copy of the translation. "No, no, my {79} dear," he said, "I can follow the Greek quite sufficiently well!" but before the end of the first act they were both very contentedly looking over the English version together.

Michaelmas Term is not of course the time for triumphs in the Schools; but we were all delighted with the final achievement of the invincible Cyril Martindale, S.J., who this autumn crowned his previous successes--first cla.s.ses in Moderations and "Greats," the Hertford and Craven Scholars.h.i.+ps, and the Chancellor's and Gaisford Prizes for Latin and Greek Verse--by carrying off the Derby Scholars.h.i.+p for the year.

Another Jesuit much in evidence at Oxford at this time was Bernard Vaughan, who was preaching sermons, giving lectures, and attending discussions and debates with characteristic energy. Colum Stuart and I heard him deliver himself, at a full-dress meeting of the Union, on the subject of Egotism. His perfervid oratory made one occasionally _squirm_ (it is the only word); but he was very well received by his young audience, and carried the House with him.