Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: Oswald Hunter Blair]
A NEW MEDLEY OF MEMORIES
BY THE
RIGHT REV. SIR DAVID HUNTER-BLAIR
BT., O.S.B., M.A.
TITULAR ABBOT OF DUNFERMLINE
WITH PORTRAIT
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
1922
[_All rights reserved_]
TO THE
MASTER AND SCHOLARS
OF
SAINT BENET'S HALL, OXFORD,
IN MEMORY OF
TEN HAPPY YEARS.
{vii}
FOREWORD
Some kindly critics of my _Medley of Memories_, and not a few private correspondents (most of them unknown to me) have been good enough to express a lively hope that I would continue my reminiscences down to a later date than the year 1903, when I closed the volume with my jubilee birthday.
It is in response to this wish that I have here set down some of my recollections of the succeeding decade, concluding with the outbreak of the Great War.
One is rather "treading on eggshells" when printing impressions of events and persons so near our own time. But I trust that there is nothing unkind in these more recent memories, any more than in the former. There should not be; for I have experienced little but kindness during a now long life; and I approach the Psalmist's limit of days with only grateful sentiments towards the many friends who have helped to make that life a happy as well as a varied one.
DAVID O. HUNTER-BLAIR, O.S.B.
S. Paulo, Brazil, _March_, 1922.
{ix}
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.--1903-1904.
The Premier Duke--Oxford Chancellorship--A Silver Jubilee--In Canterbury Close--Hyde Park Oratory--Oxford under Water--"Twopence each" at Christ Church--Church Music--Gregorian Centenary in Rome--Pope Pius X.--Pilgrims and Autograph--Cradle of the Benedictine Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER II.--1904.
"Sermons from Stones"--_Alcestis_ at Bradfield--Whimsical Texts--Old Masters at Ushaw--A Mozart-Wagner Festival--Bismarck and William II.--"Longest Word" Competition--Medal-week at St. Andrews--Oxford Rhodes Scholars--Liddell and Scott--Lord Rosebery at the Union--Oxford Portraits--Wytham Abbey--Christmas in Bute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
CHAPTER III.--1905.
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: A New Medley of Memories by David Hunter-Blair
- 2: A Bishop's Portrait Gleann Mor Gathering
- 3: Provost Hornby Christmas in Brazil Architecture in S
- 4: A fine old Jacobean house in the Derwent valley
- 5: 4 Another less famous Oriel man
- 6: From Arundel I dawdled along the south coast to Canterbury
- 7: Also came down and addressed the Newman
- 8: Himself pontificated in the presence of 40
- 9: Archbishop Bourne became a Cardinal in 1911
- 10: The crypt verger was called in to explain the phenomenon
- 11: De relever la tete avec bonheur et epanouissement
- 12: The sermon being against chignons
- 13: To attend the Mozart Wagner festival there
- 14: 8 From Woodchester I went over one day to Weston Birt
- 15: Another young American drifted into Keble
- 16: Which the good provost attributed entirely to the orangeade
- 17: Lord Abingdon himself was a kind 35 of patriarch
- 18: Than the then Earl of Leicester the second
- 19: But bicycles were ubiquitous at Oxford
- 20: The 550 undergraduates present listened
- 21: But I went to the Magdalen concert
- 22: The Loudouns went on to Ayrshire
- 23: I paid a visit to Eton this summer
- 24: My father had stayed at Abbotsford as a little boy
- 25: The eminent Catholic jurist and writer
- 26: I have seen Downside compared with Lichfield nay
- 27: Bishop Hedley and I travelled thither together from Cardiff
- 28: I made my way north to Beaufort
- 29: The first being that of my nephew Kelburn
- 30: Jacobean Gothic without and Empire style within
- 31: I went for a few days to Longridge Towers
- 32: On The Holy See and the Scottish Universities
- 33: Has evoked the word birrelling
- 34: Strike the gallant Scottish general as an adequate one
- 35: As the most dreaded jettatore in the city
- 36: The Hertford and Craven Scholarships
- 37: A cousin of mine at this dinner
- 38: As congenial to our guests as to their monastic hosts
- 39: Morti mortem nisi morte dedisses
- 40: The ancient Pharos or lighthouse
- 41: Father Benson is a thorough man of the world
- 42: 16 The Master of the Oxford Pageant
- 43: Bibiana December 2 Se piove il giorno di Santa Bibiana
- 44: From Everingham I went on to Bramham
- 45: We heard afterwards that at Glenelg
- 46: The then Bodley's Librarian was a bit of an oddity
- 47: For a church opening at Cardiff
- 48: I spent the last days of freedom at Arundel
- 49: 1 A brown Gregorian is so devotional
- 50: Limiting the grant of patents to actual new inventions
- 51: Very handy for Kensington Gardens
- 52: Dined with us that evening at Langdon a man whose mission
- 53: An entrancing prospect of the blue Firth
- 54: I went south to visit the Loudouns at Loudoun Castle
- 55: Andrews of another old acquaintance
- 56: Addressed aux peres et meres de famille
- 57: It was over this porch that the ladies of Cuddesdon
- 58: 131 and I made my way north to Fort Augustus
- 59: And Princess Alice all died on a Saturday
- 60: And that our Catholic freshmen
- 61: As I heard privately from Louvain
- 62: The huge new emporium in Oxford Street
- 63: 3 until recently an undergraduate of the House
- 64: To preach a charity sermon at Saltcoats
- 65: Going on to Cardiff from Staffordshire
- 66: A considerable naval contingent
- 67: And stayed at Beaufort for a few days before going south
- 68: Recently transferred from Bournemouth
- 69: And the venerable half derelict city of Olinda
- 70: Right through the central city was pierced the new Avenida
- 71: Paulo had been made by Frei Mauro Texeira
- 72: I soon fell into the routine of our Brazilian monastic day
- 73: The hospital stood at the end of the Avenida Paulista
- 74: Paulo at Campinas and Ribeirao Preto
- 75: Bento after a long interval eleven years later
- 76: Paulo in 1909 was perhaps is even now
- 77: One serum is efficacious against the rattlesnake's bite
- 78: Our poor old choir was under the hands of the house breakers
- 79: Paulo of a community of enclosed nuns of our own Order
- 80: Dom Miguel left us quite resolved
- 81: Paulo for at least another year
- 82: Paulo in the Federal Parliament
- 83: Knapp He was a sad scoundrel
- 84: Our party at the Klinik was a remarkably cheerful one
- 85: And drank tea in an almost equally picturesque tea shop
- 86: Given a large enough community
- 87: Which I had brought from Nairn
- 88: Whereas the little Master of Pembroke
- 89: I could only hope that our poor abbey
- 90: Meanwhile the Catholics of Dunblane
- 91: I found myself pretty fully occupied
- 92: Lovat was kind enough to tell me
- 93: Whither Grissell carried me to lunch
- 94: I presented them to the Bishop of Chur or Coire
- 95: Journeying north to Ampleforth Abbey
- 96: And stormy winter in the Highlands gale after gale
- 97: Lunching at the new Caledonian
- 98: And especially the projected Chinese university
- 99: One brother in law was Sir Stafford Northcote
- 100: My church is a thirteenth century church
- 101: We enjoyed some lovely June weather at Keir
- 102: A severe critic 6 had called the Cheadle church
- 103: Stirling and I left for Keir in a hired motor car
- 104: And before returning home I paid a little visit to Kelburn
- 105: Went on to stay with the French Benedictines at Farnborough
- 106: 17 assisted by two Benedictine archbishops
- 107: But Fort Augustus had never been so honoured
- 108: Like the assemblage just held at Monte Cassino
- 109: Exercised episcopal jurisdiction
- 110: Philip's festa with the London Oratorians
- 111: And the reopening of the school itself as soon as feasible
- 112: December brought wild and stormy weather
- 113: Supported by a younger brother
- 114: Where were also Cardinals Bourne and Gasquet
- 115: Petitioned a certain Dean at family prayers
- 116: I remember his writing to the prior of Belmont
- 117: Alexander the famous schoolmaster
- 118: And indeed a position tantamount with
- 119: 143Bellingham of Castlebellingham
- 120: A New Medley of Memories by David Hunter-Blair
- 121: 12Fort Augustus Abbey reunited with English Benedictines
- 122: A New Medley of Memories by David Hunter-Blair
- 123: A New Medley of Memories by David Hunter-Blair
- 124: 89 91Oxford and Cambridge Club
- 125: A New Medley of Memories by David Hunter-Blair
- 126: 1922 MOUNT EVERESTThe Reconnaissance
- 127: Chief assistant at the royal observatory
- 128: But Sir Sidney Colvin has done more than that
- 129: By ANNE DOUGLAS SEDGWICK MRS
- 130: Farrer was one of the great masters of English prose
- 131: The book deals not only with isotopes