At Madeira I went ash.o.r.e to see the Consul (Boyle, a cousin of Glasgow"s) and his pleasant wife, sat for an hour with them enjoying the enchanting view, and returned on board in company (as I afterwards discovered) with three professional card-sharpers, who, having been warned off Madeira, were returning more or less _incog._ to England.
The last days of {188} our voyage were made in a fog that never lifted--an anxious time for my friend the captain. We never sighted Ushant light at all, and steamed far past Cherbourg, to which we had to return dead slow, our dreary foghorn sounding continually all night long. However, it cleared quite suddenly, and we raced across the Channel in bright sunshine, but reached Southampton so late that a kind brother who had come down to meet me there had been obliged to return to London.
[1] Once quite unjustly--but that was not his fault, for he acted only on "information received." This reminds me of Mr. Gladstone"s story of his schoolfellow Arthur Hallam (of _In Memoriam_ fame). "Hallam," said W. E. G., indulging in some Etonian reminiscences at his own table when not far off ninety, "was a singularly virtuous boy; but he was once flogged by Dr. Keat, though quite unjustly. When we came into school one day, the master, Mr. Knapp--("He was a sad scoundrel, and got into prison later," the old gentleman added in parenthesis, "and I subscribed to relieve his necessities"),--said at once, "Praepostor, put Hallam"s name in the bill for breaking my window."--"Please, sir, I never broke any window of yours," cried Hallam, starting up.
"Praepostor," said Mr. Knapp, "put Hallam"s name in the bill for lying, and breaking my window."--"Upon my sacred word of honour, sir," said Hallam, jumping up again, "I never touched your window." But Mr. Knapp merely said, "Praepostor, put Hallam"s name in the bill for swearing, and lying, and breaking my window!"
[2] _Tom Brown"s School Days_ (ed. 1839), pp. 370, 371.
[3] Replaced in 1920 by a new and sonorous peal. They still struck the quarters! but anyhow in tune.
[4] "Were the Vanderbilts as great a power in the American railway and financial world in your time as they are now?" some one asked an Englishman who had at one time spent some years in the United States.
"No," he replied; "I think when I was out there they were only Vanderbuilding!"
[5] His quiet sojourn at St. James"s, which he had himself built and inaugurated five years previously, was a sadly short one. I heard with deep regret of his death there on St. Benedict"s, Day (March 21) of this year, 1910.
[6] See _ante_, page 130, _note_.
[7] This straining of the sight precipitated, I think, the affection of the eyes which was to prove so troublesome.
[8] d.i.c.kens, _Martin Chuzzlewit_, chap. ix.
[9] "La creme de la guillotine," as our Parisian monk, Dom Denis, described them.
[10] The O"Sullivan Beare, a graduate of Dublin University, had had an interesting career. He had served in the Egyptian War of 1885, had been medical officer on the Gold Coast and at Zanzibar, a Vice-consul in East Africa, engaged in the suppression of the slave-trade, and later Consul at Bahia and S. Paulo. He was Consul-general at Rio de Janeiro during a great part of the European War. Col. O"Sullivan Beare died in 1921.
[11] See, however, _post_, page 202.
{189}
CHAPTER XI
1910-1911
The first news that reached me on my landing at Southampton on July 17, 1910, was that my nephew, Alan Boyle, the intrepid young airman, had been seriously hurt at Bournemouth--not in the "central blue," but through the wheels of his "Avis" catching in a clover-field. His life had probably been saved by the chance of his having borrowed (for he always as a rule flew bareheaded) an inflated rubber cap from a friend just before the disaster; but, as it was, his head was badly injured.[1] After telegraphing sympathy and inquiries to the Glasgows, I went straight to London, to interview doctor and oculist, who both advised consultation with the famous Wiesbaden specialist, Pagenstecher. My brother and I accordingly left England next day, staying a night at Cologne to visit the Cathedral, which D. had never seen, and which, marvellous as it is, struck me once again as the most uninspired of all the great churches of Europe. We reached Wiesbaden next evening; and I was soon established {190} in the comfortable _klinik_ devoted to the cosmopolitan clients of the great oculist. Our party included patients from America, Australia, Mexico and Ceylon, as well as from every country in Europe, and I found myself at table next to a wealthy Catholic gentleman from Yucatan, who told me much about that little-known and marvellous country, and gave me an alb.u.m of most interesting photographs. I had feared to be caged in a dark room, but escaped this fate, and was able to enjoy of an afternoon the excellent music in the Kurhaus gardens. The internal decorations of the Kurhaus were too hideous for words; but it stood charmingly among shady groves, lakes and fountains, and there were 350 newspapers in the huge rococo reading-room. I had some pleasant walks with my new friend from Yucatan--one to the top of the Neroberg, where we enjoyed a really magnificent prospect, and partook of iced coffee and kirschen-kuchen in a rustic summerhouse. Another glorious view was from the Greek Chapel, erected by a Grand Duke of Na.s.sau to the memory of his Russian wife, with an extraordinarily sumptuous and beautiful interior: I was greatly struck by it, though I could not help thinking that when the guide said it cost 700,000 he meant marks, for it is of no great size.
Meanwhile I continued the prescribed "treatment" (unpleasant as it was) at the hands of the eminent oculist, a mysterious-seeming old gentleman who reminded me uncomfortably of Uncle Silas in Le Fanu"s blood-curdling novel. Our party at the Klinik was a remarkably cheerful one, everybody seeming quite confident of being cured, or at least greatly benefited. Personally, I soon made up my mind {191} to the permanent loss of one eye (even though, as d.i.c.kens remarked of Mr.
Squeers, "popular prejudice runs in favour of two"); and in this antic.i.p.ation I was confirmed by the verdict of Pagenstecher"s clever son Adolf, a much more _simpatico_ person than his distinguished parent. Anyhow I was out of the surgeons" hands (for this relief much thanks!), and to celebrate my emanc.i.p.ation I dined at the Kurhaus, listened to the admirable "Doppel-Orchester" (it was an Italian Opera night, recalling many memories), witnessed the illuminations, and felt quite dissipated.
I was cheered, in the midst of these preoccupations, by a very hopeful letter from my sister, fortified by Sir Victor Horsley"s favourable prognosis of Alan"s case.[2] Interesting news, too, came from Lady Lovat (doubly interesting to me) that Simon, now nearly thirty-nine, was engaged to my pretty young kinswoman Laura Lister.[3] And on the same day I heard of the betrothal of a favourite niece to a brigadier-general, with a command in West Africa (whither, I imagine, his bride could _not_ accompany him), and a little place in Lincolnshire. In both cases, curiously enough, the bridegroom-expectant was more than double the age of the bride-to-be; but I saw no reason, if they knew their own minds, why this discrepancy should militate against their happiness.
Bethinking myself that I had never yet gone down the Rhine by water, I boarded a steamer at Biebrich, {192} and steamed down the yellow turbid river for eight hours in mist and rain, wishing all the time that I was in the train. A female fellow-pa.s.senger introduced herself to me as a former governess of the Glasgow children in the Antipodes, said she had lost her party _and_ her purse, and requested a small loan! I spent two pleasant days at Cologne (Sunday and the _festa_ of August 15 next day), was edified by the immense and devout congregations and the beautiful music in the vast cathedral, and pleased to see the simple holiday-making of the good Rhinelanders in their pretty river-side gardens. Brussels, my next halting-place, was crammed with visitors to the Exhibition, or rather to the smoking ruins of what had been the exhibition, the greater part of which had been burned down the night before my arrival. I walked through the cheerful city, of which the only new feature (to me) was the colossal Palace of Justice, which seemed to dominate Brussels as the heaven-piercing spires of the Dom dominate Cologne; but the gigantic ma.s.s of the Brussels building seemed rather to be heaven-defying, and too suggestive of the Tower of Babel to please me.
Letters at Brussels told me of the long-hoped-for arrival of Kelburn"s son and heir, G.o.dson to Queen Mary (her first since the King"s accession). He was named Maurice at the special wish of Her Majesty, who (so I understood) was possessed with the odd idea that "Maurice"
was the masculine equivalent for "Mary!" Crossing from Ostend to Dover, I encountered a well-known Scottish peer of whose demise I had read in an English paper two days before. He was on his way home from visiting the Pa.s.sion-play at Ober Ammergau, had seen no papers, {193} and had been surprised, and rather annoyed, at receiving letters and telegrams at Brussels congratulating him on being still alive. I cheered him up with a story of another man who saw his death announced in the morning papers, and calling up an intimate friend on the telephone, said, "Did you see in this morning"s paper that I was dead?"
"Yes," replied his friend, "I did. Where are you speaking from?" When I got to London, the same kind brother who had escorted me to Wiesbaden took me (by way of consolation for my wasted month[4]) to lunch--on turtle soup and punch--at the "Ship and Turtle" in the City. After a flying visit to my kind friends at Arundel and to my sister in Surrey, I came back to stay with him at his elm-shaded Thames-side home. We made some pleasant expeditions thence by land and water, motoring one day to quaint old Guildford, where we explored Archbishop Abbott"s delightfully picturesque old Jacobean almshouses, and drank tea in an almost equally picturesque tea-shop, kept, I was carefully informed, by _real_ ladies!
My pretty niece Cicely insisted on my presence at her wedding to her Brigadier; and I journeyed down to Kent, on a piping August day, in the company of crowds of Irish hoppers bound for the same county. The marriage was from the Cranbrooks" nice place, Hemsted, in the very heart of the Garden of England, a big Victorian house full of the first Earl"s[5] memorials of Queen Victoria, Beaconsfield, {194} and the other great Tory statesmen of his day. Lady Jane Gathorne-Hardy did the honours for the large house-party, as her parents were away taking a "cure" somewhere; and the day after the pretty wedding in the pretty parish church (the vicar, an old Magdalen man, gave a very good address), our kind hostess escorted the whole party up to town and entertained them to luncheon and a frivolous afternoon at the "Follies." I left London the same night for Scotland, and met at Beaufort, where I stayed _en route_, for our Highland abbey, Lovat"s youthful bride-elect--as tall, and I am sure as good, as the lady in _The Green Carnation_,[6] and already an accepted and affectionate member of the large and merry family of Frasers and Maxwells. I sailed down our familiar ca.n.a.l to Fort Augustus on a marvellously still and bright autumn afternoon; and as we slid alongside the Fort Augustus quay and looked back on the panorama of azure lake and purple hills, a friend and I agreed (as he colloquially put it) that it "licked the Rhine into fits."
I found things externally little changed under the new, or restored, Anglo-Benedictine regime, the chief visible difference being that my brethren now wore the flapping English hood, which gave them rather the aspect of large nuns. There was much coming and going to and from missions and {195} loc.u.m-tenancies of vacant parishes; and our house seemed destined to become more and more a "jumping-off place" for that kind of work rather than a great centre of monastic life and observance. One aim was not of course incompatible with the other, given a large enough community; but ours was at this time small enough, and there were several more or less permanent absentees. Most of the latter, however, "rolled up" for the excellent retreat given us by our good old friend Bishop Hedley, who had done us the same kindness just twenty-one years before. He was interested, after it was over, in hearing of our plans and hopes (then much "in the air") for re-starting the suspended building of our much-needed church, of which the foundation-stone had been laid nearly fifteen years previously. A young architect (an "old boy" of the abbey school) was staying with us, and quite prepared to produce the most fascinating designs at the shortest notice. But money, or the lack of it, was, as usual, the crucial point; and we did not "see our way" (horrid phrase) to resume operations either then or in the immediate future.
I went, in these golden October days, when a wonderful stillness so often broods over Highland hills and glens in their livery of autumnal russet, to do chaplain for two Sundays to the Lovats, who had a large shooting-party at Beaufort--Seftons and Howicks and Gathorne-Hardys and some others, including an A.D.C. to the Irish Viceroy, of whom he told me a good story. An old peer from the country presented himself at a levee at Dublin Castle; and his Excellency engaged him in conversation, starting as usual with the weather. {196} "Wonderful rain we"ve been having: everything coming up out of the ground."--"G.o.d forbid!" said the old peer. "I said that everything was coming up out of the ground," repeated H.E., slightly raising his voice. "And _I_ said "G.o.d forbid!"" retorted the old gentleman: "I"ve got three wives buried under it!"
I went from Beaufort for a day or two to Nairn, which I remember hardly more than a poor fishing village, frequented by ladies and children for sea-bathing, but which owes its present reputation and prosperity, like so many other places, to its excellent golf-links. After a short stay at Kelburn, where I found my poor nephew Alan Boyle making good progress to recovery, I could not resist an invitation to pa.s.s a few days at St. Andrews, where the successor of my dear friend George Angus was anxious for me to see his new church lately opened. It was a rather effective building, in what a descriptive report called the "Lombardic style, adapted to suit local conditions." One of the "adaptations" was putting the tower at the wrong end, the "local condition" being that the lady who had built the church, and who inhabited a villa close by, had objected to a western tower as blocking her view of the North Sea! I strolled about the "dear romantic town,"
mounting the East Neuk road as far as "Rest and be thankful," and feeling heavy-hearted enough, with Tennyson"s lines constantly in my mind:
I climb the hill from end to end: Of all the landscape underneath, I find no place that does not breathe Some gracious memory of my friend.
{197}
For each has pleased a kindred eye, And each reflects a happier day; And leaving them to pa.s.s away, I think once more he seems to die.
I came home from my last walk by the old harbour, admiring, as I had done a hundred times before, the wonderful lights on sea and land which one a.s.sociates with St. Andrews in autumn; but feeling that I never cared to see the place again. Soon I went south, to Oxford, where Mgr.
Kennard, who was again threatening for the _n_th time to resign, for reasons of health, his office of chaplain, had begged me to come and help him for as much of the Michaelmas term as I could spare. I found him, as a matter of fact, rather exceptionally well, and ready and anxious to recount to an intelligent listener (which I fear I was _not_, on this subject) every one of his golfing achievements during the past four months at Burnham, Westward Ho! North Berwick, and elsewhere. Although quite incapable of talking "golf shop," I contributed one anecdote (new, I believed), which I had brought from Nairn, and which pleased my old friend. It concerned a young man and maiden who were playing golf--the lady quite a novice--and had reached a hole which was on the top of a little hill. The youth ran up first to see the lie of the b.a.l.l.s. "A stymie!" he shouted: "a dead stymie!"
The young lady came up with a sniff. "Well, do you know?" she said, "I _thought_ I smelled something as I was walking up the hill!"
I had been invited to preach Lovat"s wedding sermon on October 15; but this, as well as much of the long choral service, had been countermanded {198} at the eleventh hour. I went up the day before to the family residence in Grosvenor Gardens: presents still pouring in, and such unconsidered trifles as diamond pendants, silver salvers, gold cigarette-cases, telescopes, and illuminated addresses, lying promiscuously about. A small army of newspaper-reporters (whom I was deputed to interview) swarmed in after dinner. There was a great gathering at the Oratory next morning, where the ample s.p.a.ce beneath the dome makes a most effective setting for a wedding pageant. The bride"s procession was a little late; and the stalwart bridegroom, supported by his Scots Guards brother, was (shall I say "the cynosure of all eyes" or the "observed of all observers"?--both good old _cliches_) in the full dress bravery of a Highland chief.[7] I went in afterwards to sign the register, while the _primo soprano a.s.soluto_ of the famous choir thrilled out the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria," as inevitable an accompaniment of Oratory weddings as "O for the Wings of a Dove" is of those at Sloane Street or Eaton Square. Mrs. Asquith (the bride"s aunt) entertained us afterwards in the none too s.p.a.cious reception rooms at 10, Downing Street, where the well-dressed mob, _more suo_, made play with their elbows in their quest for their own and other people"s presents on the loaded tables. There were representatives from the bride"s home in Ribblesdale, as well as a deputation of farmers from distant Beaufort; {199} and one heard intermittently the broad accent of Lancashire and the slow soft Highland speech, mingling oddly with the London cackle. The festivities at an end, I escorted a party of youthful Maxwells to the Zoo. We saw a much-bored tiger, which gaped at us most rudely; also a greatly vaunted American aloe, of the "blooming-once-in-a-hundred-years" kind, which we all thought a fraud.
I had planned to finish while at Oxford my greatly belated work for the _Encyclopaedia_, but was (perhaps unduly) mortified to find how much my progress was impeded by my altered conditions of eyesight. Let me, however, record here, _pour encourager les autres_ similarly handicapped, that the initial difficulty of _focussing_ (very serious and very discouraging at first to a one-eyed man) tends to disappear not only quickly but completely. "Un poco paciencia," as we say in Brazil; kind Mother Nature steps in with her compensations, and one can only feel grateful--I hope and believe that I did--at suffering so little from what seems, and after all is, so serious a privation.
Two of Lovat"s nephews were now undergraduates at Trinity, Cambridge, whither I went over to see them from Oxford. They gave me luncheon in their quaint low-ceiled rooms in Trinity Street, took me to see their sister (a pupil in a convent school), and escorted me over some of the "lions," wanting to know at every turn whether I did not admit that Cambridge was infinitely superior to Oxford. I handsomely owned that we possessed nothing quite so fine, in their different ways, as King"s Chapel, the famous "backs," and the Fitzwilliam Museum {200} (to say nothing of the Catholic church); and they were both pleased at this tribute, though it must be confessed that the absorbing interest of their lives at that period seemed less to be architectural masterpieces than the internal mechanism of motor-bicycles, about which they, in common with many of their undergraduate friends, appeared to be quite curiously infatuated. I went on from Cambridge (an insufferably tedious journey) to Douai Abbey, our Berkshire monastery, where one was always sure of a welcome of Benedictine heartiness, and where I gave a lantern-lecture on Brazil, of a popular and superficial kind, to the good monks and their pupils. This reminds me that, as a supposed authority on negroes (many Englishmen, I firmly believe, are under the impression that the population of Brazil is almost exclusively black!), I was invited by my friend the Warden of Wadham to meet the Master of Pembroke at dinner, in order to discuss the advisability or otherwise of admitting black, brown and yellow men freely into the university.
The Warden (a Scotsman who had never, I think, been out of Britain) was all in favour of the "open door"; whereas the little Master of Pembroke, who had been bishop of Barbadoes, and knew a thing or two about blacks, was strongly for the "keep "em out" policy, and I was entirely with him. We had an interesting evening"s talk; but the solution of this not unimportant question (which the foundation of the Rhodes Scholarships had brought much to the front) did not of course rest with us. The mention of Rhodes reminds me that a conspicuous memorial tablet had lately been erected to him in the Schools: the design was good and simple, but the lettering of the inscription (as {201} is too often the case on modern monuments) so deplorably bad as to spoil the whole effect.[8]
Walking through Magdalen cloisters on a sombre November afternoon, I came unexpectedly on the poor young King (or ex-King) of Portugal, who was looking through the college with a single companion. He looked (who could wonder)[9] pale, depressed and nervous; and I was shocked at the change in his appearance since I had seen him at Blenheim on the occasion of his previous visit to England. Professor Oman (who had been his guest in Portugal for the anniversary celebrations at Busaco) met him, I believe, accidentally in High Street, and showed him all over All Souls and the Bodleian; but I heard that his listless and apathetic demeanour underwent little change. To be a "Roi en exil"
almost before reaching man"s estate is about as dreary a lot as could fall to any man; and one could only hope that fate had something better in prospect for the young monarch so early and so tragically dethroned.
I got to Ampleforth Abbey, on my way north, in time for our great Benedictine festival of All Saints of our Order; but the "sweet vale of Mowbray" was wrapt in mist and rain, and the boys" holiday spoilt. I gave a lecture to them that evening on the lighter side of Brazil, with stories of snakes and n.i.g.g.e.rs; and another next evening on the work of {202} the religious orders, especially our Benedictines, in the evangelization of that vast country. I lectured in the new college theatre, a really fine room, and acoustically very satisfactory, though I did not care for the semi-ecclesiastical woodwork. When I got back to Fort Augustus a few days later, I found Lovat, Lochiel, and other local magnates there, discussing the fate of our poor little railway, which the N.B. Company, tired of working it at a loss for several years, had given notice to close after New Year.[10] Two pieces of news reached me soon after my arrival--one that Congregation at Oxford had declined, by a good majority, to abolish compulsory Greek; the other that the Brazilian Navy was in full revolt, and the crews of their two new Dreadnoughts (one the _So Paulo_, whose captain and crew had come to England with me) were firing their big guns from the harbour into the city! I could only hope that our poor abbey, which must have been in the direct line of fire, had not suffered.[11]
My own plans were almost matured for returning to Brazil early in 1911; but it seemed prudent now to "wait and see" if this naval _emeute_ really portended anything like a general revolution. Meanwhile I had been authorized to accept an invitation from the Norfolks to stay with them at Norwich, for the opening of the great church which had been many years a-building, at the Duke"s expense, in his {203} t.i.tular city. He had taken the "Maid"s Head," a delightful old half-timbered inn, for our party, which pretty well filled it. I said an early ma.s.s on Our Lady"s _festa_, December 8, in the lady-chapel (a memorial of the Duke"s first wife),[12] of the vast, austere, and splendid church--the only modern church in which I have ever felt as if I were in a mediaeval cathedral. Breakfasting afterwards with the clergy--mostly Irish--the news of Ninian Crichton Stuart"s victory at Cardiff[13] (which came to us by wire) was a bit of a bombsh.e.l.l; but the "Maid"s Head" party were of course delighted. The inaugural services were very splendid, though unduly prolonged by a sermon an hour long; and though for once there was no after-luncheon oratory, the bishop preached for another full hour in the evening. The tediousness of my long journey back to Scotland next day was aggravated by an amateur politician (with a wheezy cough) in my carriage, who bored me almost to tears with a _rechauffe_ of his speeches at various election-meetings; but I consoled myself by reading in an evening paper that the Unionist candidate for Ayr had increased his majority five-fold. At Edinburgh I came on my energetic old brother-in-law Glasgow, who had come in from Ayrshire (he was then not far off seventy-eight) to dine at a naval banquet and to vote for the Representative Peers. I went for the week-end to the Kerrs at Woodburn, meeting {204} there a serious young publisher, who offered me very good terms to write a detailed history--it has never yet been written--of Scottish Catholicism since the Reformation: a fascinating subject, and one with which I should have loved to grapple, but life is too short to do all, or even half, that one would like to do.
With an hour or two to spare in Glasgow on my way to the Highlands, I lunched with my friend (the friendship was personal, not political) the editor of the _Observer_, at his Radical Club. In the middle of the meal a member rose with a long face, and announced an unexpected Unionist victory at Tavistock--whereat, to the consternation of every one, I cheered loudly! I reached Fort Augustus the same evening, to learn of the death, at the advanced age of ninety-three, of our kind old friend and neighbour Mrs. Ellice of Invergarry, one of the last of the great landladies who a few years before had by a curious coincidence owned and managed (very capably, too) some of the largest estates in the North of Scotland. The vast Glengarry property, once the domain of the Macdonells, and stretching from the Caledonian Ca.n.a.l to the western seaboard, had been under Mrs. Ellice"s sole control since her husband"s death more than thirty years before. We at Fort Augustus, as well as the numerous Highland Catholics resident on her estate, and under our spiritual care, had always found in her a most friendly, kind and considerate neighbour.
Two happenings I recall at Fort Augustus during these December days--one a remarkably interesting lecture on the theory of lake-temperature from a Mr. Wedderburn, who had been recently on the {205} Scottish loch survey; and the other event was our all (that is, all the priests of the monastery) being called on to vow, promise, swear and sign, individually and collectively, our adherence to the Creed of Pope Pius IV., which _I_ had sworn to some thirty-six years before.[14] This act of submission, enjoined on every Catholic priest in Christendom, was part of the vigorous campaign against Modernism initiated by Pope Pius X. Having discharged this duty, I betook myself to Keir, to spend Christmas with the Stirlings. It was a family party, including the Lovats and a few others, and we spent the season in homely d.i.c.kens fashion, with ghost-stories and snapdragon and a priceless Early Victorian conjurer in a crumpled dress suit, who accompanied tricks of really incredible antiquity with a "patter"
almost prehistoric. One day we drove down to survey the grand old cathedral of Dunblane, very carefully restored (of course for Presbyterian worship) since I had last seen it. As we entered, we heard the opening strains of Elgar"s _Ave Verum_--
[Ill.u.s.tration: Music fragment: Ave verum cor-pus na-tum Ex Ma-ri-a Vir-gi-ne! etc.]
(a Eucharistic hymn by a Catholic composer!) being played on a fine organ, and wondered what old John Knox would have thought about it all.
Meanwhile the Catholics of Dunblane, a devout and fervent little flock (so I was told), had perforce to content themselves with a poor loft, where I preached {206} to them on two Sundays. At Stirling, not far distant, there was a new church designed by Pugin--a rather dismal and angular edifice, but anyhow s.p.a.cious and well kept. On my return journey to Fort Augustus, I found myself condemned, by the unholy rivalry of the Caledonian and North British Railways, to a four hours"
wait at Crianlarich, where I found the temperature, on a frosty January morning, quite as "invigorating" as did the fabled tourist.[15] I had a few busy days at the abbey preparing for my return to South America.
My pa.s.sage was booked for the middle of January: I had devoted a week to farewells to relatives and friends--and then came the anti-climax!
On the very day on which (like the poor Sisters of Mercy) I was to have "breasted the billows of the Atlantic"[16] _en route_ for Brazil, I received so discouraging and peremptory a letter from my London oculist, as to the risk to my remaining eye of a possibly stormy winter voyage, that I had perforce to abandon the idea, and to return (like the bad sixpence of poor Grissell"s story)[17] to my {207} northern monastery, where I received so brotherly a welcome home that I did not, after the first disappointment, regret the change of plan. I was inducted again into my old office of librarian (first entrusted to me twenty-seven years before); and our young organist having gone into residence at the Benedictine Hall at Oxford, I acted for a time as his subst.i.tute. The post of subprior being presently vacated by the departure of the then holder of the office for a Liverpool mission, that also was committed to me; and as our good prior was at this time to some extent invalided, I found myself pretty fully occupied, more especially as I had in those days a curiously cosmopolitan correspondence (much of it on literary or antiquarian matters), which could not be neglected. I recall receiving by a single mail (on St.
Benedict"s Day, as it chanced), letters from India, North America, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Soudan!