Sir David Oswald Hunter Blair

“ My own life was of course, after my entering on the office and duties of prior, much more confined than heretofore to the precincts of our Scottish abbey. This was no additional burden to me; for my life, whether at Fort Augustus or Oxford or in Brazil, had always been a life in community; and I had always been happy and at home in the society of my brethren in the monastery. ”

“ On this crowning day we were more than three hundred in the vast refectory for dinner, at the end of which a choir of monks chanted with thrilling effect the mediæval Laudes, or Acclamations of Hincmar, in honour of our illustrious guests. Among these magnates was my old friend of early days in Brazil, Bishop Gerard van Caloen, whom I had not seen for sixteen years. [18] He had grown a long grey beard, and his eyes looked out through his spectacles as sad and inscrutable as ever. ”

“ They went off straight to Rome, in Christian fashion, to ask the Pope's blessing on their betrothal; and I just missed them there, for I had the happiness this spring of another brief visit to Italy, at the invitation of a Neapolitan friend. I spent two or three delightful weeks at the Bertolini Palace, high above dear dirty Naples, with an entrancing view over the sunlit bay, and Vesuvius (quite quiescent) in the background. I found the city not much changed in thirty years, and, as always, much more attractive than its queer and half-savage population. ”

“ I was unable to attend the next lecture—a most interesting illustrated history of the old Fort—being called south to attend the funeral of the Bishop of Galloway, an old and faithful friend of our house, with whom I had been intimate for close on forty years. The funeral procession, with crucifix and choir, vested clergy and mitred prelates, passing through the streets of Dumfries thronged with silent mourners, was one of the most remarkable spectacles I ever witnessed in Scotland. Bishop Turner had long been on terms of close friendship with the Bute family ”

“ I went from Kneller to spend a breezy week at Brighton with Captain Frank Grissell, to whom his brother, my old Oxford friend, had left practically all his possessions and collections, and who had just purchased a pretty villa in Preston Park in which to house them. No brothers were ever more dissimilar or more devoted than Hartwell, whose whole interests in life had been ecclesiastical and Roman, and his brother Frank, ex-cavalry officer, to whom horses and hunting, racing and coaching, were the salt of life. ”

“ 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 hardship of having to live uncomfortably in Ireland after the luxury of Colonial governorships. "Ireland! a rotten old country, only fit, as some one said, to dig up and use as a top-dressing for England!" ”

“ I write down these closing memories in our monastery under the Southern Cross, in the great South American city where my brethren in Saint Benedict, active and devoted men, but far too few for the ever-growing work that lies ready to their hands, are leading the same life of prayer and liturgy, untiring, pastoral labour, and the education of the young in religion and letters, which has been the mission of our Order all through the Christian centuries. ”

“ We motored out after them, and lunched on one of the highest points of the island; drinking in, as we ate our Irish stew, an entrancing prospect of the blue Firth, the long sinuous Ayrshire coast, and the lofty serrated peaks of Arran. From Bute I went on to Dunskey, a place full to me always—even under its new, altered, and improved conditions—of a hundred happy memories. There was an al fresco entertainment—tea, music, and dancing on the lawn—given by my niece to the tenants and their families one afternoon ”

“ The rapid drop down the serra—it was my first trip on the wonderfully-engineered "English Railway," which enjoys the profitable monopoly of carrying passengers and coffee (especially coffee) to the busy port of Santos—was enjoyable and picturesque, with glimpses, between the frequent tunnels, into deep wooded valleys, the dark uniform green of the matto {186} interspersed with the lovely azure and white blossoms of the graceful Quaresma, or Lent tree (Tibouchina gracilis) , one of the glories of the Brazilian forest. ”

“ In an age when faith is tinged with philosophic doubt, when love is regarded but as a spasm of the nervous system, and life itself as but the refrain of a music-hall song, I believe that it is still the function of art to give us light rather than darkness. ”

“ I had a stimulating neighbour in Baron Anatole von Hügel.
The opening of the Lent Term of 1908 at Oxford was dreary enough, with a succession of the dense white fogs which only the Thames valley generates in perfection. It is not cheering to come down morning after morning to find what looks like a huge bale of dirty cotton-wool piled up against one's window-panes; and the news at this time was as depressing as the weather. We heard early in February of the brutal murder of the King and Crown Prince of Portugal, before the eyes of wife and mother ”

“ I was at Arundel for a few days after New Year, and found the Duke very busy with improvements, inspecting new gardening operations, and so on; "and after all," he said, "some one will be coming by-and-by who may not like it!" From Arundel I dawdled along the south coast to Canterbury, and paid a delightful visit to my old friends Canon and Mrs. Moore at their charming residence (incorporating the ancient monastic guest-house) in the close. I spent hours exploring the glorious cathedral—the most interesting (me judice) if not the most beautiful in England. ”

“ I made a Christmas call on my old friend Sir Aubone Fife, [9] whose annual quest for hinds had been interrupted by illness. He rented the winter shooting of Inchnacardoch Forest from Lovat, and spent every Christmas and New Year solus at our little hotel, content with his sport, his own society, and an occasional visit from me! He had comfortable bachelor quarters in Jermyn Street: London for him was bounded by Pall Mall and Oxford Street: his home and recreation were in his many clubs, and he always reminded me irresistibly of a twentieth-century Major Pendennis. ”

“ It was at this supreme moment that an Englishman of the baser sort once rose to his feet, and looking round exclaimed, "Is there no one in this vast assemblage who will lift up his voice with me, and protest against this idolatry?" "If you don't get down in double quick time," retorted an American who was on his knees close by, "there's one man in this vast assemblage who will lift up his foot and kick you out of the church!" ”

“ The event of the summer at Oxford was the installation of our new Chancellor, Lord Curzon, who was by no means content, like the Duke of Wellington, Lord Salisbury, and others of his not indistinguished predecessors, to be quietly inducted into office by the university officials at his own country residence. There was a great function at the Sheldonian, and a Latin harangue from my lord which was both elegant and well delivered, though it was thought by some that his emotional reference to his late wife was a little out of place. ”

“ One interesting excursion I managed, to the Cistercian Abbey of Hautecombe, charmingly situated on a wooded promontory overlooking Lake Bourget. There was a resident community of thirty monks—the only one left in France under the then anti-Christian régime. They owed their exemption to the fact of their church being the Westminster Abbey of Savoy, containing some thirty tombs of the ancestors of the King of Italy, who had protested to the French Government against the expulsion of the guardians of the ashes of his ancestors; and so they were allowed to remain and serve God in peace. ”

“ 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 headship of our Oxford Hall, which I had held for ten years, passed 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. ”

“ Going on to Cardiff from Staffordshire, 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 mass 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 passage, and the scene recalled my mass in the Grotto of the Nativity at Bethlehem eight years before. ”

“ I spent Easter, as usual, at Arundel, where a gathering of Maxwells (the Duchess'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. ”

“ An even more barefaced imposture is the "portrait" of Egglesfield (chaplain to Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III, and founder of Queen's) , which hangs, or hung, in the hall of that college. It is really, and manifestly, the likeness of a seventeenth-century French prelate—probably Bossuet—in the episcopal dress of the time of Louis XIV! Most of our Magdalen portraits are, I think, authentic; but then they do not profess to represent personages of the early Middle Ages! The best and most interesting portraits at Oxford belong to the nineteenth century. ”

“ I was amused afterwards, talking to the nurse of the Duchess's small nephews and nieces, to hear her opinion of the castle and its glories. {224} "A dreadful place for children, I call it, with all these towers and battlements and dungeons and hiding-holes—one never knows where they'll get to next. A London house for me, where there's children to look after!" The services were jubilant, and the great church beautifully adorned on Easter Sunday, and the choir warbled what poor Angus [13] used to call the "sensuous harmonies" of Gounod in their best style. ”

“ Anselm, much impressed by the virile and sonorous chant of the monastic choir. {249} I left Rome a few days later, travelling by night to Milan, where I said mass early in the duomo—more impressive than I had ever yet seen it in the dull morning light, with the vast spaces in deep shadow, and the great jewelled windows gleaming faintly through the murk. From Milan a long and fatiguing journey brought me to Maredsous, the famous Belgian abbey which I had seen only once since I had spent four months there as a young monk thirty years before. ”

“ I stayed at Loudoun Castle on my way south, finding there a big party of young men and maidens—Howards of Glossop, Hastings', Bellasis', Beauclercs, and Bethells, gathered for an Eglinton Hunt Ball (recalling the days of my youth) . Nearly all were Catholics, so I had quite a congregation in the little chapel, redecorated (with the rest of the castle) since my previous visit. I was back in Oxford before the middle of January for the Lent term, to me always a more interesting period than the golden weeks of summer, when everybody's heads seemed to be full of nothing but amusement and sport. ”

“ I spent the rest of the Long Vacation at Fort Augustus, whither the summer-like autumn had attracted many visitors, and where a golf-course had been lately opened. Golf, too, and nothing but golf, was in the air during my annual visit to St. Andrews, which coincided with the Medal Week there. A lady told me that, looking for a book to give her golfing daughter on her birthday, she was tempted by a pretty volume called Evangeline, Tale of a Caddie, and was disappointed to find that Longfellow meant something quite different by "Acadie!" "Medal Day" was perfect, and the crowd enormous. ”

“ 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 embarrassing tasks which can fall to any young man's lot. ”

“ I always enjoyed showing my friends those of Tait and Manning, side by side in Balliol Hall, and recalling how their college tutor once remarked, when they had left his room after a lecture: "Those two undergraduates are worthy and talented young men: I hope I shall live to see them both archbishops!" His prophetic wish was duly fulfilled, though he had probably never dreamt of Canterbury and Westminster!
I remember pleasant visits this autumn to the Abingdons at Wytham Abbey, their fine old place, set in loveliest woods, within an easy drive of Oxford. "Why Abbey?" ”