A New Medley of Memories Part 9

and so on. My young friend used to bring me these nuts to crack, and we had a good deal of fun over them.

It was proposed, and decided, before Easter that Oxford should send a representative to Louvain in the summer, to take part in the jubilee celebrations of the Catholic University. Cambridge, London, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and, I believe, other universities, had all elected, as a compliment to Louvain, to send a Catholic representative on this occasion; and the senior proctor told me that my name had been mentioned before the Council in this connection. Oxford, however, declined to a.s.sociate itself with the other universities in this graceful act of courtesy--one which, as I heard privately from Louvain, was very highly appreciated there. A clergyman of the Church of England was nominated as the Oxford representative; and to a letter of remonstrance which (after consulting one or two of our resident masters) I sent to the Vice-chancellor, he replied by a courteously-worded note of explanation--which explained nothing.

Early in March I paid an interesting little visit to Douai Abbey, in the beautiful wooded country about Pangbourne, and lectured to the community and their eighty pupils on Jerusalem. I had a warmly {138} Benedictine welcome here, and was glad to see additions being made to the buildings of the former diocesan college of Portsmouth, which the bishop had made over to the monks when they were expelled from their beloved home at Douai, by decree of the French Government dated April 3, 1903. Term over, I went up to Yorks.h.i.+re to spend St. Benedict's festival with my brethren at Ampleforth, where I found myself deputed that evening to present the football colours in the college. They were scarlet and black; but while reminding the young players that those were the traditional colours of Mephistopheles, I disclaimed any intention of suggesting a common origin. My stay here was saddened by the rather unexpected news of the death of my dear old friend George Angus of St. Andrews. He had long been the only Catholic member of his Oxford Hall; and exactly a week before his death I had had, by a consoling coincidence, the pleasure of reconciling to the Catholic Church an undergraduate of the same venerable foundation.

I stayed a night in London, on my way to Arundel, to hear Lord Hugh Cecil discourse at our Westminster Dining-club, with his usual perfervid rhetoric, on "Some Diseases of the House of Commons." Two of our University Members, Sir William Anson and Professor Butcher, joined in the interesting subsequent discussion. A friend next morning insisted on carrying me off to Selfridge's, the huge new emporium in Oxford Street, and showing me all over it. He amused me by a story of how there, or in some other Brobdingnagian London store, the electric light suddenly went out, just at the busiest hour of the evening.

"There they were--thousands of {139} 'em," the narrator of the incident is supposed to have said, "pinching the goods right and left--'aving the time of their lives, with not a light in the 'ole place; and there was _I_--just my blooming luck--where do you think? _in the grand piano department!_"

I went for the week-end to Rickmansworth, to stay with Lady Encombe, who had a little party for the laying of the foundation-stone of the new church of the a.s.sumptionists. The Bishop of Kimberley (S.A.) gave a nice address. I preached next day (Sunday) in the old church, and in the evening we all listened to a quaint Franco-English sermonette from good Fr. Julian, the superior. Monday was Jack Encombe's tenth birthday: I gave him _Jorrocks_, with coloured plates, which delighted him; saw him and his brother start hunting on their ponies (their mother following them awheel); and then left for Arundel, where I was very glad to find myself (though not yet fully robust) able to take my share in the solemn Easter services. I found the castle grounds at length "redd up" and in perfect order; the hordes of workmen vanished, and lawns and terraces and shrubberies and flower-beds twinkling in the April suns.h.i.+ne. It was a joy to see the beautiful home of the Howards looking itself again after all these years of reconstruction and upheaval. The Duke had told me that he was determined to get the place s.h.i.+pshape within a year of his second marriage, or (like Trelawny) "know the reason why!" and he had been as good as his word. I heard with pleasure in Easter week that my nephew had got his first in moderations at Balliol; and with sorrow of the death of my kind old friend Bishop {140} Wilkinson, successor of St. Cuthbert as Bishop of Hexham, and a s.h.i.+ning example of loyalty and devotion to his Church and his country. I lunched in London, on my way to Oxford, with Lady Maple, at Clarence House, the pretty residence in Regent's Park left to her by Sir Blundell Maple. Telephoning previously to "Clarence House"

to inquire the luncheon-hour, I was informed in haughty tones that "their Royal 'Ighnesses were in Egypt, and that nothing was known about any luncheon!" It turned out that I was in communication with the other Clarence House, the St. James's residence of the Duke of Connaught.

My first duty, on returning to Oxford, was to marry my cousin John Simeon,[3] until recently an undergraduate of the House, to Miss Adelaide Holmes a Court. My little sermon at the Jesuit church (which was almost filled with the wedding guests) was not intended to be otherwise than cheerful, and I was surprised in the course of it to observe the unusual phenomenon of the bridegroom's father dissolved in tears! The happy couple motored off later to North Wales in a downpour of rain, which (I heard) never once stopped during their brief honeymoon.

Father Maturin (whose repute as an orator had been long established in Oxford) was giving our weekly conferences this term, and I was greatly struck with them--packed close with thought and luminous argument, and scintillating besides with {141} genuine eloquence. I had heard many of his pulpit orations, but I thought this series of lectures the finest thing he had ever done, though perhaps slightly over the heads of his undergraduate auditors. I was myself fully occupied at this time with a long article (biographical and critical) on St. Gregory n.a.z.ianzene,[4] which, by a happy coincidence, I completed on May 9, the feast-day of that great saint and doctor. I took two days off for a visit to Cambridge (my first for fourteen years) in connection with the Fisher Society dinner, at which I represented Oxford and the "Newman."

Some distinguished guests--a Cardinal, a judge, an author, and a statesman--failed us at the last moment; but the gathering was cheery and successful and the after-dinner oratory much less wearisome than usual. I visited, of course, while at Cambridge, the really n.o.ble Catholic church of Our Lady--finer, I thought (as I had thought before), and more impressive outside than in. I remembered that the great church of St. John at Norwich had given me precisely the contrary impression.

I was always bidden to (and pleased, when I could to attend) the numerous weddings of my youthful relatives. One, in these early summer days, was that of my pretty cousin, Eleanor Bowlby, to a Dorrien-Smith, heir-apparent to the "King of Scilly," as his sobriquet was, though I believe his proper local t.i.tle was "Lord Proprietor." I sat at the ceremony next to my brother-in-law Charles Dalrymple, who did not approve of the ever-popular "O for the Wings of a Dove!" which a little chorister warbled in the course of the service. {142} "Absurd and unreal!" I heard him mutter. "They are going to Paris for their honeymoon, and don't want doves' wings, or to be at rest either."[5]

On the same evening I attended, at the invitation of the genial head master of University College School (whom I had known when on the staff of Inverness College), an excellent presentation of _Alcestis_ in the fine oak-panelled hall of his school at Hampstead. Not all the audience witnessed dry-eyed the death of the poor heroine; the sustained pathos, too, of Admetus was admirably portrayed; but the chief honours of the evening fell to a young hero of six-foot-four, who had played great cricket for the school against the M.C.C., and was a most doughty and convincing Herakles. A very pleasant evening's entertainment, which I had to abandon not quite completed to catch the midnight train to Oxford; for I was interested in a debate in Convocation next day, on the perennial problem of how and where to house the ever-increasing thousands of books accruing to the Bodleian Library. There were some drastic suggestions thrown out--one, if I remember right, was to make a bonfire of all the obsolete works on theology, philosophy and natural science! but our final decision was to adopt somebody's ingenious proposal to excavate underground chambers, with room for a million or so volumes, under the gra.s.s-plots round the Radcliffe camera. This point settled, I went to lunch with my friend Hadow in his rooms at Worcester, the former calefactory or recreation-room (so he said) of {143} our whilom Benedictine students, and looking out on a long narrow raised garden which there is reason to believe was once the monastic bowling-green. I thought, as often before, of the many unknown nooks and corners in this dear Oxford of ours, each bearing its silent witness to some phase of her "strange eventful history."

A few interesting incidents in this--my last summer term in residence--come back to me as I write. I recall a crowded meeting at the Town Hall enthusiastically cheering a vitriolic attack on the Admiralty by "Lieutenant Carlyon Bellairs, M.P., R.N." (a most un-sailor-like person); a paper, or rather a harangue, at the Newman Society, from Hilaire Belloc on "The Church and Reality," which left us gasping at his cleverness but rather doubtful as to his drift; and an odd meeting of dons and dignitaries at Hertford College, whereat Lord Hugh Cecil was accepted as prospective Parliamentary candidate for the university. I have called it "odd"; for odd it certainly was to hear the Master of University, who proposed Lord Hugh, a.s.sert that he did so in spite of his own profound disagreement with him on fiscal, ecclesiastical, and educational questions! As a matter of fact, it mattered little what the Master of University or anybody else thought, said, or did; for as every one knew that the six hundred clerical members of Convocation would vote for Lord Hugh to a man, his election was of course a foregone conclusion.

My last evening at Oxford was a happy one: a pleasant party gathered round the Vice-chancellor's hospitable table, and after dinner the Commemoration concert at Magdalen, Waynflete's ancient {144} hall echoing with old madrigals perfectly rendered by the unrivalled choir, and we guests, during the interval, flitting about the cloisters, dimly lit with Chinese lanterns, and set out with tables of refreshments. I left Oxford next day for Birmingham, for a jubilee celebration at the Oratory School--a solemn memorial service in the fine church, an admirable representation of Terence's _Phormio_ (as arranged by Cardinal Newman), and a prize-distribution presided over by the Duke of Norfolk. The Duke was next day the chief guest at an Oxford and Cambridge Catholic graduates' dinner in London, and proposed the toast of Oxford University, to which I had the pleasure of replying. I took occasion to point out our guest's new and close family connection with Oxford, where he had recently had three nephews, while two more were shortly going up. His own father, the previous Duke, had been a Cambridge man. London was so sultry during these midsummer days, that it was pleasant to find oneself transported to the Antarctic Circle, listening (at the Albert Hall) to Shackleton's fascinating narrative of his trip to the South Pole. His great lantern pictures made one feel almost cool: and the groups of solemn penguins, in their black-and-white, pacing along the snowy sh.o.r.es, were quite curiously reminiscent of a gathering of portly bishops--say at a Pan-Anglican Congress.

I refused to stay in London (as I had proposed doing) to attend an international anti-vivisection meeting in Trafalgar Square, when I found that I was expected to speak (from the back of a lion?). I fled to Surrey, to stay first with my sister at her {145} newly-acquired home near Reigate, a pretty old house in a "careless-ordered garden" of which Tennyson would have approved; and then to the Kennards at their charming Elizabethan manor-house of Great Tangley. The Sunday of my visit here I spent partly at the fine diocesan seminary of Wonersh, and partly at the Greyfriars monastery at Chilworth. The same architect had designed the chapels at both; and I admired the skill with which he had achieved extremely effective results by entirely different methods of treatment. From Surrey I travelled to Scotland, to preach a charity sermon at Saltcoats, in Ayrs.h.i.+re, for the excellent work of the Society of St. Vincent of Paul. Saltcoats was within easy reach of Kelburn, and I went thither for a short visit, finding my sister enjoying what was always one of the chief pleasures of her life--that of having helped to secure the happy engagement of one of our numerous nieces, the elder daughter of my third brother.

My Oxford Local Examination work lay this summer not among the little maidens of Dumfries Convent School, but at St. Wilfrid's College at Oakamoor, in the picturesque Staffords.h.i.+re Highlands, a country quite new to me. My room commanded a lovely view of wooded glens and distant purple hills; and the place itself was full of interest, incorporating as it did the old house of Cotton Hall, given by Lord Shrewsbury fifty years before to Faber and his "Wilfridian" community, most of whom joined the Oratory after their conversion to Catholicism. I admired Pugin's church, at once graceful and austere, with the famous east window which the architect told Lord Shrewsbury he "could {146} die for."[6] I had a pleasant week here, presiding on the last day at the school prize-distribution, and promising the boys a new set of Scott's novels, to replace the one which, I was glad to see, was worn out with a.s.siduous reading.

Going on to Cardiff from Staffords.h.i.+re, I found Lady Bute entertaining the Cymnodorion and other mysterious Welsh societies in the castle grounds. I was lodged in the lofty clock-tower, in one of Burges's wonderful painted chambers, and said ma.s.s for the family and large house-party on Sunday in the richly-decorated but tiny domestic chapel--so tiny (it has been the dressing-room of Bute's grandfather, who died there) that most of my congregation were outside in the pa.s.sage, and the scene recalled my ma.s.s in the Grotto of the Nativity at Bethlehem eight years before. I had never thought to see a Pageant again; but the Welsh one, for some reason, had been postponed to this summer, and we all attended the opening representation on July 26, most of our house-party, indeed, taking part in the show. Lady Bute was Dame Wales, and Lady Ninian Stuart Glamorgan; but the great reception of the day was reserved for Lord Tredegar, veteran of Balaclava, and the most popular magnate of Wales, who came on in full armour as Owen Glendower, with Lady Llangattock as Lady Glendower. I thought the finest feature of the Pageant the singing of the national hymn, "Hen Wlad fy nhadau," at the close, actors and audience all joining in the stirring chorus with thrilling effect. Most of {147} the next day we spent at Caerphilly Castle, whither Princess Louise and the Duke of Argyll came to explore the imposing ruins.

I spent a couple of nights, on leaving Cardiff, at Belmont Priory, full to me of old Benedictine memories; and in August I was once more my brother's guest at his pleasant river-side home near Shepperton. One day we devoted to a visit to Hampton Court--my first, curiously enough.

We saw everything conscientiously, great hall, state-rooms, pictures (I had not expected so many good ones), big vine, and Dutch garden; but I think I was most struck, entering Clock Court under the red turreted tower, with the almost uncanny likeness of the place to the familiar School-yard at Eton.[7] From Shepperton I presently moved higher up the river to Goring, to attend the local regatta, of which my kind host there was secretary and treasurer. He was likewise the leading Catholic of the little mission, and had given up his commodious boat-house to serve as a chapel till the pretty church was built. The _padre_ at that time was a German priest called h.e.l.l (to which he later added an e for euphony), while the name of the Anglican vicar, oddly enough, was Dams! My host's son accompanied me up to town on an excursion to the White City, where the outstanding attraction (how strange it seems to-day!) was the aeroplane in which Bleriot had achieved the unprecedented feat of crossing the Channel. London struck me as a curious place in mid-August: a city of aliens and country visitors, French and German {148} chattered everywhere, and the only familiar face among the millions that of Simon Lovat, whom I came across at Hatchard's buying books.

George Lane Fox claimed my services as chaplain, before I returned to Scotland, at Monkhams, the pretty place near Waltham Cross where he was then living with his family; the house stood atop of a high hill (pleasantly cool in these sultry August days), and was quite rural, though the Lights o' London were clearly visible at night not many miles away. There was a tiny chapel for our daily services, and a big scouts' camp in the park close by, whence a quota of young wors.h.i.+ppers turned up for Sunday ma.s.s. George took me to see the n.o.ble church at Waltham (surely one of the finest Norman naves in England),[8] and, across the Lea, the beautiful and still perfect Eleanor Cross in the market-place, before I went north to pay a few farewell visits to Scottish relatives, in view of my approaching departure for South America. At Blairquhan I found my brother entertaining his customary August party, with, as usual, a considerable naval contingent. The weather was "soft"--in other words, it rained every day and all day; but people shot, fished, golfed, motored and played tennis quite regardless of the elements. My brother had {149} developed a pa.s.sion for mechanical music; and the house was continuously resonant with the weird strains of pianolas, gramophones and musical boxes. There was music, too, of a strenuous kind when I reached Dunskey in preparation for an amateur concert for some good object (I forget what) at Portpatrick. My brother-in-law, David Glasgow, sang a naval song or two with astonis.h.i.+ng vigour and sweetness for a man of seventy-six; I contributed "The Baby on the Sh.o.r.e," which I had first sung on the old _Magdalena_ going out to Brazil in 1896; and the entertainment was so successful that an overflow concert had to be arranged for the following evening. I was sorry to leave the merry and pleasant party; but I was due at Aberdeen to a.s.sist at the presentation of his portrait to our kind old friend Bishop Chisholm, on the occasion of his sacerdotal golden jubilee. The presentation ceremony took two hours, and the luncheon afterwards two hours more! Why is there no time-limit to the oratory on such occasions? I contrived to propose the health of the whole Hierarchy of Scotland[9] in exactly six minutes (one minute for each bishop); but the length of some of the speeches was appalling.

Next day I went on to Fort Augustus, where I found myself, after a quarter of a century, "presiding" (as the phrase is) again at the organ, our organist being away on a walking tour among the hills. In the week after my return our local games (the Gleann Mhor Gathering) came off in {150} glorious weather. Motors from neighbouring lodges occupied the monastic lawns: the Chief of Glenmoriston and other noted highlanders were acting as judges; and "quite a special feature (so said one of the reporters) was given to the gay scene by the black-robed monks, who flitted [I like that word] hither and thither with a word of welcome for all." As a matter of fact, one of our community (a Macdonell, to wit) was the moving spirit of the Gathering, the success of which was in great measure owing to his efforts and enthusiasm.

[1] I would not venture to make such a statement except on the best authority--Darwin's own words. See Appendix.

[2] Dean Burgon. See _ante_, page 104.

[3] His grandfather, Sir John Simeon, M.P. for the Isle of Wight, had married my father's cousin, one of the Colvilles of Culross. They were both converts to the Catholic Church. Johnnie succeeded his father as fourth baronet in 1915.

[4] For the _Catholic Encyclopaedia_ (vol. vii., pp. 10-14).

[5] The most inappropriate wedding-anthem I ever heard was at a smart marriage in Scotland; it was sung by a lady, and was called, "With thee th' unsheltered moor I tread!"

[6] Pugin's ecstatic allusion was, of course, to the tracery of the window designed by himself, not to the (contemporary) stained gla.s.s, which is in truth _laid a faire fremir_.

[7] The likeness was the more remarkable in view of the fact that there is a difference of eighty years in the respective dates (Eton _c._ 1440, Hampton Court, _c._ 1520) of the two buildings.

[8] George was greatly amused with a description which I afterwards sent him from a fifty-year old church paper, of a Victorian "restoration" of this fine old church. There were oak choir-stalls (so wrote the aggrieved reporter), but no choir, the stalls being occupied by fas.h.i.+onably-dressed ladies. The only ornament of the restored sanctuary was a gigantic Royal Arms under the East Window--"a work in which the treatment of the Unicorn's tail is especially remarkable for what Mr. Ruskin would call its 'loving reverence for truth.'"

[9] I amused the company, in this connection, with the tale of the undergraduate who was asked in an examination to enumerate the Minor Prophets. "Well," said the youth after some hesitation, "I really do not care to make invidious distinctions!"

{151}

CHAPTER IX

1909-1910

Since my first visit to Brazil in 1896-97, my Benedictine friends labouring in that vast country had frequently expressed the wish that I should, if possible, return and help them in their great work of restoration and reconstruction, for which more labourers were urgently needed. With health in great measure restored, and the heads.h.i.+p of our Oxford Hall, which I had held for ten years, pa.s.sed into other hands, the way to South America seemed once again open; and the autumn of 1909 found me fully authorized to make all necessary preparations for the voyage. I left Fort Augustus happy in the a.s.surance that the long antic.i.p.ated, and generally desired, reunion of our abbey with the English mother-congregation was certain to be soon realized; and stayed at Beaufort for a few days before going south, meeting there "Abe"

Bailey (of South African renown), Hubert Jerningham, and some other interesting people. My last glimpse of the Highlands was a golden afternoon spent in the White Garden (the idea of one of the daughters of the house), and a vision of serried ma.s.ses of white blossoms--I never realized before how many shades of white there are--standing up in their pale beauty against the dark background of trees which encircle {152} one of the most beautiful of Scottish gardens. From Beaufort I went to Kelburn to take leave of my sister, whom I found entertaining her Girls' Friendly Society, a.s.sisted by twenty bluejackets from a cruiser lying off Arran. Their commander, Lord George Seymour, had brought his sailors by express invitation to play about and have tea with the Friendly Girls--an arrangement which seemed quite satisfactory to all parties! I crossed the Firth next day to say good-bye to Lady Bute, who was in residence at her pretty home in the Isle of c.u.mbrae, and went on the same afternoon to visit my hospitable cousin Mrs. Wauchope at beautiful Niddrie. The Somersets and other agreeable folk were my fellow-guests there; and Andrew Lang arrived next day, and seemed--shall I say it?--a little bit "out of the picture." I was accustomed to his small affectations and egotisms and cynical "asides," which always seemed to me more or less of a pose; for the eminent writer was really a very kind-hearted man, and I dare say just as humble-minded in reality as any of us. The poor Duke of Somerset, however, who had no affectations or pretentions of any kind, could not do with Mr. Lang at all; and I remember his imploring me (against my usual habit) to come and sit in the smoking-room at night, so that they should be on no account left _tete-a-tete_! On Sunday we all walked to see the n.o.ble ruins of Craigmillar Castle, sadly reminiscent of poor Queen Mary, and admirably tended by their present owner, whom we chanced to meet there, and whom I interested by a tale (oddly enough he had never heard it) of a ghost-face on the wall of his own house at Liberton.

At Woodburn, where I spent the following Sunday, {153} and where Lord Ralph and Lady Anne Kerr were always delighted to welcome a priest to officiate in their tiny oratory, I found staying with Ralph his brother Lord Walter, whose seventieth birthday we kept as a family festival, and who on the same day retired, as Admiral of the Fleet, from the Navy in which he had served for fifty-six years. Our birthday expedition was a most interesting pilgrimage to the Holy Well of St. Triduana, near Restalrig, with its beautiful vaulted Gothic roof, recently restored by the owner, Lord Moray.[1] The unpretentious little Catholic chapel hard by pleased me more than the elaborate and expensive new church recently erected at Portobello, which we also visited. I broke my journey south at Longridge Towers, and whilst there motored over with Sir Brooke Boothby, our Minister in Chili (an agreeable and well-informed person) to see the poor remains of the great convent at Coldingham--sad enough, but wonderfully interesting.

I made a farewell call at Ampleforth _en route_, lingering an hour at York to admire the west front of the minster, from which all the scaffolding was at length down after years of careful and patient repairs. Hurrying through London, I travelled to Brighton and Seaford, for the opening (by the Bishop of Southwark) of the new Ladycross school, recently transferred from Bournemouth. There was quite a notable gathering of old pupils and friends, and I had a charming neighbour at luncheon in the person of Madame Navarro (Mary Anderson), on my other {154} side being Count Riccardi-Cubitt, English-born, but a Papal Count in right of his wife. The speeches, from the bishop, Lord Southwell, and others, were for once commendably short.

I was bidden to meet at luncheon in London next day Princess Marie Louise--a t.i.tle unfamiliar to me: it had, in fact, been lately adopted to avoid confusion with an aunt and cousin, both also called Louise.

We spoke of the recent re-discovery of an abbey in Lincolns.h.i.+re, of which literally not a single stone had been left above ground by the iconoclasts of the sixteenth century. "My terrible great-uncle again, I suppose!" said Her Highness with a deprecatory smile. The reference was to Henry VIII.! but I hazarded a conjecture that the work of destruction dated from later and Puritan days. I attended on this same afternoon the marriage of my old friend Herbert Maxwell's only son to the youngest daughter of the House of Percy, at St. Peter's, Eaton Square, the bright and ornate interior of which contrasted cheerfully with the mirk and mire outside. The Bishop of Peterborough, the bride's uncle, tied the knot; and the church, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Northumberland's house in Grosvenor Place afterwards, were thronged with Percys and Campbells and Glyns.

After two busy days at Oxford, devoted to packing up and to taking hasty farewells of kind old friends (both things I detest), I went down to Hamps.h.i.+re to spend the Sunday previous to sailing with my brother at Kneller Court. The omens were inauspicious, for it blew hard all day, with torrents of rain. Next morning, however, was calm and bright as we motored to Southampton, where I boarded {155} R.M.S.P. _Aragon_, nearly 5,000 tons bigger than the good old _Magdalena_. We sailed at noon, crossed to Cherbourg in perfect weather, and found the Bay of Biscay next day all smiles and dimples and suns.h.i.+ne. I did not land at Lisbon, having seen it all before, and having no friends there. We dropped quietly down the Tagus at sundown, just when points of light were breaking out over the city, and all the church bells seemed to be ringing the Angelus. We had a full s.h.i.+p, and our voyage was diversified by the usual sports, of which I was an "honorary president," my colleagues in that sinecure office being a Brazilian coffee-king, the President-elect of Argentina, and a Belgian Baron.

There were four Scotsmen at my table in the saloon, three of them Davids! Somewhere about the Equator we kept the birthday of King Edward, whose health was pledged by Brazilians and Argentinos as cordially and enthusiastically as by the British. I wrote to Fritz Ponsonby to tell him of this, for His Majesty's information.[2] Two days later we sighted the low green sh.o.r.es of Brazil. I looked with interest at the well-remembered heights of Olinda, with the white walls of S. Bento s.h.i.+ning {156} in the morning sun. Somehow I did not picture myself stationed there again, though a newspaper which came aboard at Pernambuco announced, I noticed, that "o conhecido educationalista sr. David Hurter-blais" was coming to that city "afim de tratar da educaco religiosa das cla.s.ses populares!" The pa.s.sengers for Pernambuco, I observed, were now chucked into the Company's lighter in a basket (in West African style), instead of having to "s.h.i.+n" down a dangerous companion in a heavy swell, as we used to do. Two lank-haired red-brown Indians, who came on board here to sell feather fans and such things, interested me; and I recalled how Emerson had described the aboriginals of North America as the "provisional races"--"the red-crayon sketch of humanity laid on the canvas before the colours for the real manhood were ready."

My destination on this voyage was not, as thirteen years previously, the steaming Equatorial State of Pernambuco, and the venerable half-derelict city of Olinda, whither our Benedictine pioneers had come out from Europe soon after the fall of the Brazilian Empire, just in time, as it seemed, to save the Benedictine Order in that vast country from collapse and utter extinction. From Olinda the arduous work of revival and restoration had gone quietly and steadily on, including one by one the ancient and almost abandoned abbeys of the old Brazilian Congregation; and it was to one of these, the monastery of our Order in the great and growing city of S. Paulo, that my steps were now turned.

Bahia, two days voyage from Pernambuco, is a city to which (like Constantinople) distance very decidedly lends enchantment, and I did not land {157} there. It was raining fast, and the fantastic hilltops were wrapped in clouds, as we entered Rio Bay. I was welcomed by a kind Belgian monk whom I had known at Olinda in 1896, and who drove me up to our fine old Portuguese abbey, standing on its own mount or _morro_ close to the sea, where I had paid my respects to the last of the old Brazilian abbots a dozen years before. A vigorous young community now occupied the long-empty cells; and the conduct of a flouris.h.i.+ng college, as well as pastoral work of various kinds outside, gave scope to their energy and zeal.

The weather next day was perfect, and my friend Dom Amaro devoted two or three hours to driving me round the City Beautiful. Beautiful, of course, it had always been; but I was astounded at the transformation which had taken place in four short years. From "the cemetery of the foreigner," as Rio had been called when its name, like those of Santos, Havana and Panama, had been almost synonymous with pestilence and death, it had become one of the healthiest, as it had always been one of the loveliest, capitals in the world. Four men--Brazilians all--minister of works, engineer, doctor, and prefect of the city,[3]

had undertaken in 1905 the gigantic task of the city's sanitation. The extermination of the mosquitoes which caused yellow fever and malaria, the destruction of their breeding-places, the widening of malodorous streets, the demolition of thousands of buildings, the disinfection {158} and removal of tens of thousands of tons of garbage, the filling-up of swamps and marshes, were only preliminary to the colossal work of reconstruction of which I saw some of the results. Right through the central city was pierced the new Avenida, a broad thoroughfare lined with n.o.ble buildings, of which the theatre, built at enormous cost, and rivalling the Paris Opera, struck me most. More striking still was the new Beira Mar, the unique sea-drive skirting the bay for four miles, and leading to the equally beautiful circular esplanade round the Bay of Botafogo. Here I left cards and letters of introduction on the British Minister (who, I may remark _en pa.s.sant_, never took the slightest notice of either,)[4]; and we drove homewards in a golden sunset, the whole city flushed with rosy light, and the heights of Corcovado and the Organ Mountains glowing purple--as purple as the evening tints of Hymettus and Pentelicus which gave to Athens the immortal name of [Greek: Iostephanos], the violet-crowned. Behind us the pointed Sugar-loaf rose grey and menacing into the opal sky; and I recalled the quaint Brazilian tradition which tells how the Creator, when He had made the Bay of Rio and found it very good, desired to call man's admiring attention to His masterpiece by a mark of exclamation.

The mark of exclamation is the Sugar-loaf! We met in the Avenida, returning from a grand _formatura_ (review) in honour of the day (it was the anniversary of the foundation of the Republic), the President--a {159} mulatto, by the way--and his staff, in a none too gorgeous gala carriage. I was told that he was extremely popular.

To reach S. Paulo from Rio I had the choice of two routes, the pleasanter being that by sea to Santos, and an ascent thence to the inland city by one of the most wonderful of the world's railways. But as I wished to see something of the country, I chose the twelve hours'

train journey direct from the capital--and repented my choice; for though the first part of the route was through fine scenery, as we climbed the lofty Serra which stretches for miles along the Brazilian coast, the dust, heat and jolting of the train soon grew almost insufferable. I was very glad to reach S. Paulo, where the air was pleasantly cool and fresh (the city stands 2,100 feet above the sea, and just outside the tropical zone[5]), and where the kind abbot of S.

Bento, whom I had known up to then only by correspondence, met me at the station. We were soon at his monastery, which was well situated, occupying a whole side of one of the princ.i.p.al squares of the city, and of historic interest as built on the same spot where, three hundred and ten years before, the first Benedictine foundation in the then village of S. Paulo had been made by Frei Mauro Texeira, a zealous and fervent monk of Bahia. The monastery, as I knew it in 1909, was an unpretentious building of the early eighteenth century, constructed not of stone but of _taipa_ (compressed earth), its long {160} whitewashed front pierced by ten windows, and flanked by the facade of the church with its low cupola'd tower. My host, Abbot Miguel, who had been appointed prior of the restored abbey in 1900, and abbot seven years later, had inaugurated in 1903 a school for boys, which numbered at my arrival some 300 pupils. For their accommodation, and for that of his growing community, he had done all that was possible with the old and inadequate buildings of the monastery, to which he had built on various additions. But he and his community had already decided that a complete reconstruction of both abbey and church was absolutely essential for the development of their educational and other work; and I found them all studying and discussing ornate and elaborate plans by a well-known Bavarian architect, who had "let himself go" in a west front apparently in English Elizabethan style (recalling Hatfield), and a Byzantine church with Perpendicular Gothic details and two lofty towers.[6] The process of demolition, commencing with the choir of the old church, was started a few weeks after I reached S. Paulo; and I remember that we were nearly asphyxiated by the falling and crumbling walls, which (as I have said) were built of a kind of adobe or dried mud, and broke into thick clouds of blinding yellow dust as they tumbled about our ears.

The rebuilding of the Benedictine Abbey was only {161} one feature, and not the most considerable, of the architectural transformation which was taking place before one's eyes in every part of S. Paulo, and was developing it from an insignificant provincial capital into one of the largest and most progressive cities of South America. In twenty years the population had increased tenfold--from fifty thousand to nearly half a million--and two facts struck me as both remarkable and encouraging, namely that the birth-rate was more than double the death-rate, and was (so I was told) more than double that of London--nearly thirty-six per thousand. The State and city of S. Paulo were alike cosmopolitan, 300,000 immigrants (more than half of them Italians) having entered the country in the year before my arrival, and more than half the population being of foreign birth. The vast majority of the day-labourers in the city were Italians, on the whole an industrious and thrifty race (though not without obvious faults), who a.s.similated themselves without difficulty to the country of their adoption. The rapidly growing prosperity of S. Paulo was shown by the astonis.h.i.+ng appreciation in a few years of the value of land in and around the city--exceeding, so I was a.s.sured by a prominent American, any phenomenon of the kind in the United States. Our Abbot had, not long before my arrival, acquired with wise prescience a fine country estate in the eastern outskirts, which was already worth at least ten times what he had expended on its purchase. The _chacara_ (as such properties are called) included a fine old house of Imperial days, garden, farm, orchard, extensive woods, as well as a lake, football fields, playgrounds and a rifle-range; and here our young pupils spent {162} one day every week enjoying the open-air life and sports unattainable in the city.

The college, or _gymnasio_, of S. Bento had already taken its recognised place among the best educational inst.i.tutions of S. Paulo.

The fathers were a.s.sisted in the work of teaching by a competent staff of lay masters, but retained the religious, moral, and disciplinary training of their pupils entirely in their own hands; and I was pleased to see how eminently suited the paternal and family spirit characteristic of Benedictine education was to Brazilian boys, and how well on the whole they responded to the efforts of their instructors to instil into them those habits of obedience, self-control, and moral responsibility, in which the home training of the children of Latin America is often so deplorably deficient. Naturally docile, pious, and intelligent, these little boys were brought under the salutary influence of S. Bento at an age when there seemed every hope that they would be tided safely over the difficult years of early adolescence, and moulded, under solid Christian guidance, into efficient and worthy citizens of their State and their country.[7] English was taught by an American priest, who was also an excellent musician, and trained our little choristers very successfully. Several of the fathers spoke English well; but I was the only British-born member of the community, and I was naturally glad of opportunities to meet the scattered English {163} Catholics who were to be found among the not very numerous British resident colony. Our little old church, unattractive enough as to externals, was yet greatly frequented by those (and they were many) who appreciated the careful reverence of the ceremonial and grave beauty of the monastic chant. Sermons in Portuguese and German were already preached regularly at the Sunday ma.s.ses; and to these was added soon after my arrival an English sermon, which was very well attended.

One came sometimes in the hospitals of the city, which I visited regularly, on stray Englishmen of another cla.s.s--an injured railwayman, perhaps, or a sick sailor from a British s.h.i.+p, who were glad enough, even if not Catholics, of a friendly visit from a countryman. I remember a young Englishman from Warrington in Lancas.h.i.+re (this was one of the consoling cases), who was dying of some obscure tropical disease in the Santa Casa, the chief hospital of the city. It was the hottest time of year, and he suffered much, but never once murmured or complained. He had been baptized by a Benedictine (but eighteen years before) in his native town in England, and he looked on it, as he said, as "a bit of real luck" to be tended by a Benedictine on his death-bed.

"O santinho inglez" (the little English saint) his nurses called him; and his death--he was never free from pain to the last--was truly the death of the just, and made an ineffaceable impression on those who witnessed it. _Fiant novissima mea hujus similia!_

I soon fell into the routine of our Brazilian monastic day, which differed a good deal (especially as to the hours for meals) from our European time-tables. {164} Coffee betimes; breakfast ("almoco") before noon; dinner at half-past five, after vespers, suited the school hours, and the busy life of the community. We antic.i.p.ated matins at seven p.m.; hurried to the refectory for a dish of scalding tea (smothered in sugar, no milk), or a gla.s.s of lemonade, then hastened back to choir for night prayers and sundry pious exercises. This final collation (if it may be so called) was really alarming: the scorching tea was gulped down with a reckless rapidity which reminded one of Quilp tossing off the hissing rum in his riverside arbour! and I used to return to choir positively perspiring. But our commissariat was on the whole good, if simple; we had no such privations to face as in old days at Olinda, and as far as I was concerned the kind abbot was always on the alert to see that I wanted for nothing. Our chacara supplied us with farm produce of the best; and great platters of green and purple grapes, from the same source, were at this season served up at every meal.

The abbot, on his first free day, drove me round the interesting city.

We visited a fine girls' school, conducted by Augustinian canonesses; the superior was sister to an Anglo-Irish Benedictine, and another nun was a Macpherson, with an accent of that ilk. We saw, also, two inst.i.tutions founded by the Abbot, St. Adalbert's Parochial schools, under nuns of St. Catherine, and a hospital managed by sisters of the same Order. The hospital stood at the end of the Avenida Paulista, a n.o.ble boulevard lined with handsome houses of every imaginable style of architecture--Gothic, Renaissance, Moorish, Swiss, Venetian, cla.s.sical, rococo, each one in its own glowing and luxuriant garden. This, naturally, was the rich {165} man's quarter; the working people had of course their own dwellings, chiefly in the populous industrial district of Braz. But I saw no slums in S. Paulo, and nowhere the depressing contrast between ostentatious luxury and poverty-stricken squalor which is the blot on so many European cities. In S. Paulo there was, in fact, no poverty:[8] there was work and employment and food for all; and it is true to say there was no need for any man to be a pauper except through his own fault. To any one with preconceived ideas of South American cities as centres of lethargy, indolence, and want of enterprise, the industrial activity and abounding prosperity of S.

Paulo could not but appear as astonis.h.i.+ng. That prosperity, as most people know, was mainly due to the foresight and energy with which the Paulistas had realised and utilised the fact that their famous _terra roxa_ was adaptable for coffee-culture on a scale truly gigantic. Two years before my arrival (in 1906-07) the production of coffee in Brazil (three-fourths of it grown in S. Paulo) had reached the amazing figure of twenty million sacks, five times what it had been a quarter of a century before. Then, when the supply was found to exceed the demand, when prices fell by leaps and bounds, and financial disaster seemed imminent, the shrewd Paulistas conceived and adopted the much-criticised expedient of "valorisation," the State itself purchasing an enormous quant.i.ty of the crop, and holding it up until prices became again normal. It was in this and in many {166} other ways that the Paulistas showed the clearsightedness and ac.u.men which justly gained for their State and their capital the reputation of being the most enterprising and progressive on the whole South American continent.