A New Medley of Memories Part 6

[7] Nearly, but not quite, the shortest grace on record. That palm, perhaps, belongs to the north country farmer wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after a plentiful meal, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. the single word, "Then!"

[8] Perhaps for the same reason as was given me by a Christ Church don, who rashly prophesied that Wolsey's great hall would never be lighted by electricity, as the additional heat given by the gas-jets was absolutely essential by way of supplement to the huge fireplaces.

[9] A large a.s.sumption; but Swinburne was doubtless better qualified than most people to make it. The lines are from _Sordello_ (ed. 1863, p. 464).

[10] My own idea, suggested by a proposed memorial to Goschen at Rugby school, where James Fergusson had been his school-fellow, was that the memory of the latter also should be perpetuated there in some fitting manner. I received letters cordially approving this suggestion; but I never heard whether it was carried out in the case of either, or both, of these distinguished public servants.

[11] Is it necessary to explain that Argus Panoptes, the all-seeing guardian of Io, had a hundred eyes, and Briareus, the pugnacious son of Earth and Heaven, a hundred arms? Sir Walter's application of these myths was distinctly neat.

[12] Authentic or not, I added them to the collection of _novissima verba_ of famous men which I had been long compiling. See Appendix.

[13] Clement Maydeston, in his _Directorii Defensorium_ (A.D. 1495).

"Windsor," of course, means the "winding sh.o.r.e," not the "sick wind!"

[14] The truth underlying the last sentence of this delectable report is that some of the wilder rioters chucked the Secretary of the Pageant's desk (containing all his papers) into the Cherwell; but it was rescued so speedily by two of their more sober comrades that no harm was done.

[15] This particular episode was really regarded by many people as almost an outrage; and an article called "A Blot on the Pageant," which I devoted to it in a weekly review, elicited many expressions of sympathy and approval in Oxford and elsewhere.

[16] The Master of the Oxford Pageant, to whom I protested emphatically against the scandalous caricatures of the Benedictines of Abingdon, calmly told me that the British public looked on a monk as a comic kind of creature, and would think itself defrauded unless he were so represented!

[17] The lines (vv. 824-826):

[Greek: echousa ... tan phrygian xenan tan, chisss os atenes, petraia blasta davasen]

seemed to strike the good lady particularly--the sound, that is, not the sense of them. "Kisson----blast her--d--n her! Dear me!" she remarked; "what language, to be sure! I had no idea that Antigone [p.r.o.nounced _Antigoan_] was that kind of young person!"

[18] The Rev. R. H. Benson died on October 19, 1914.

{94}

CHAPTER VI

1907-1908

The opening of the Long Vacation of 1907 was pleasantly signalized for us Benedictines by the gratifying successes in the Final Schools of our little Hall, which secured two first cla.s.ses (in "Greats" and History), and a second cla.s.s in Theology. The _Oxford Magazine_ was kind enough to point out that this was a remarkable achievement for a Hall numbering nine undergraduates, and compared favourably with the percentage of honours at any college in the university. I was given to understand that my young theologian would also have secured his "first"

had he not objected to the matter and form of some of the questions set him, and declined to answer them!

This cheerful news sent me in good spirits up to Dumfries for my usual week's examinations at the Benedictine convent school there. I found almost eighty nuns in residence, including the exiled community of the mother house of Arras, whom (the Prioress was eighty-five, and there were several old ladies on crutches) the great French Republic had driven out of house and home as a "danger to the State!" I had several interesting talks with "Madame la Prieure," who had been professed in the reign of Louis Philippe, and who bore her cruel {95} uprootal with true French (and Christian) resignation and cheerfulness. I do not know if the tradition about St. Swithun holds good in Scotland; but these days succeeding his festival (July 15) were certainly almost continuously wet. One of the French nuns said that in her country (Picardy) St. Medard was credited with a similar influence, and quoted the lines--

Quan ploon per San Medar, Ploon quarante jhiours pus tard;

and I recalled the Italian distich about St. Bibiana (December 2)--

Se piove il giorno di Santa Bibiana, Piovera per quaranta giorni ed una settimana.

I spent a few days at Longridge Towers, Sir Hubert Jerningham's Border castle, when my work at Dumfries was finished, and found my host, as usual, excellent company, and full of anecdotes, both French and English. Speaking of a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Edmund at Pontigny in which he had joined some years before, he said that an English newspaper described an open-air benediction given by the "Bishops of Estrade and Monte"; the reporters having doubtless been informed that the bishops would _mount_ on the _platform_ to give the blessing! He showed us a cutting from another English newspaper, stating that MM. Navire, Chavire, and Bourrasque had been s.h.i.+pwrecked and drowned at sea! Sir Hubert had a complete set of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ in his library; and I hunted up for his delectation a pa.s.sage in which M. Forgues, writing on English clerical life, _a propos_ of George Eliot's first book, {96} gave an original etymology for the word _tract_. "Il [Rev. Amos Barton] a sa _Track Society_, qui va mettre en Fair toutes les bonnes femmes du pays, enregimentees pour depister (track) les pauvres heres susceptibles de conversion." The same writer rendered the epithet "Gallio-like" (applied by the minister to the paris.h.i.+oners of Shepperton) by "pareils a des Francais!"

Yorks.h.i.+re, after Northumberland, claimed me for two pleasant visits--the first to the Herries' at Everingham, with its beautiful chapel copied from the Maison Carree at Nimes, and its famous deer-park, one of the oldest in England (so Lord Herries told me), and a very different thing, as one of Disraeli's country squires in _Lothair_ remarks, from a mere park with deer in it. The weather was bright and hot; and it was a pretty sight to see the droves of fallow-deer, bucks and does together, cl.u.s.tering for shade under the great trees near the house. From Everingham I went on to Bramham, where George Lane Fox was spending a happy summer in his old home. He took me everywhere, through the lovely gardens laid out by Lenotre, and (in a brougham drawn by an ancient hunter and driven by a stud-groom not less ancient) all over the park, and up the n.o.ble beech avenue called Bingley's Walk. My friend had lost his splendid inheritance for conscience' sake; and it was pleasant to see him, in old age and enfeebled health, pa.s.sing happy days, through his nephew's hospitality and kindness, at the well-loved home of his boyhood and youth.

I was glad to find myself settled for some golden weeks of August and September at our abbey among {97} the Highland hills, where we were this autumn favoured with almost continuous suns.h.i.+ne. Our many guests came and went--some of them busy city men, enjoying to the full the pure air, lovely surroundings, and quiet life in our guest-house, all to the accompaniment of chiming bells and chanted psalms. Whether they found our "brown Gregorians" as devotional as the sentimentalist of Mr.

Hichens's novel[1] I know not; but anyhow to me our monastic plain-chant was restful and pleasant after the odd stuff in the way of "church music" which had elsewhere a.s.sailed my ears. I confess that after our more normal Oxford hours (though I hope we were not sluggards at our Hall), I reconciled myself with difficulty to "the hour of our uprising" in the monastery. The four o'clock matin-bell had always been more or less of a penance to me (as I suppose it was to most of my brethren), though I tried to fortify myself with Dr. Johnson's argument--a purely academic one in the case of that lie-abed old sage--that "it is no slight advancement to obtain for so many more hours the _consciousness of being_"; but an American guest of ours, to whom I cited this dictum, countered it by a forcibly-expressed opinion "on the other side" by one of the most eminent living specialists in insanity.[2]

{98}

One recalls delicious rambles with our brethren or our guests during those sunlit autumn days: sometimes among the verdant Glengarry woods, sometimes at our outlying "chapel-of-ease," some miles up the most beautiful of the glens which run from Central Inverness-s.h.i.+re to the sea. A veritable oasis this among the hills, with its green meadows, waving pines, and graceful bridge spanning the rus.h.i.+ng river; and all framing the humble chapel, its eastern wall adorned with a fresco (from the brush of one of our artist monks[3]) which the little flock--sadly diminished of late years by emigration--greatly admired and venerated.

A week-end was sometimes spent pleasantly and not unprofitably at some remote shooting-lodge, saying ma.s.s for Catholic tenants, and perhaps a handful of faithful {99} Highlanders. One such visit I remember this autumn at a lodge in Glencarron, a wild wind-swept place, with the surrounding hilltops already snow-coated, which Lord Wimborne (for some years Lovat's tenant at Beaufort) had recently acquired. Although in the heart of the forest, the lodge was but two hundred yards from the railway; there was no station, but the train would obligingly stop when signalled by the wave of a napkin from the front door! A crofter's cow strayed on the line one day of my stay, was, by bad luck, run over by one of the infrequent trains, and (as a newspaper report once said of a similar mischance) "cut literally into _calves_."[4] The night before I left Glencarron, we were all wakened, and some of us not a little perturbed, by two very perceptible shocks of earthquake--a phenomenon not unusual in the district. We heard afterwards that at Glenelg, on the west coast, the shocks had been more severe, and some damage had been done; but, as a witty member of our party remarked, Glenelg might have been turned inside out, or upside down, without suffering any appreciable change.[5] On my way back to Fort Augustus I stayed a day at Beaufort to wish _bon voyage_ to Lovat's brother-in-law and sister, who were just off {100} to visit another married sister at our Emba.s.sy in j.a.pan, and (incidentally) to travel round the world. I met on the steamer on my way home one of my Wauchope cousins, a spinster lady who had gone some time before to live in Rome, and had asked me for letters of introduction to "two or three Cardinals." Tired of Rome, she was now making for the somewhat different _milieu_ of Rotherhithe, with some work of the kind popularly called "slumming" in view.

I visited, on my way south, a married brother at his charming home in Berwicks.h.i.+re, where there was much tennis, and pleasant expeditions by motor to interesting spots on both sides of the Border. One lovely autumn day we spent at Manderston, where our hostess had her brother, my lord chancellor of Oxford University, staying with her. The great man was very affable, and asked me to go and see him in Michaelmas Term, when he would be in residence at the "Judge's Lodgings" in St.

Giles's. I joined a family gathering at Newhailes, a few days later, for the pretty wedding of my niece, Christian Dalrymple--"a very composed bride," remarked one of the reporters present, "as befitted a lady who had acted as hostess to the leading lights of the Conservative party ever since she left the schoolroom."[6] Her uncle, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, tied the knot (of course "impressively"), and I was glad to find myself at Newhailes in his always pleasant {101} company.

Driving with him to pay a call or two in the neighbourhood, I amused him with an _a propos_ story of the bishop who rode out on a long round of leaving-calls, attended by his groom, who was sent into the house, before starting, to get some cards. When they reached the last house, the order came, "Leave two cards here, James"; and the unexpected reply followed: "I can't, my lord; there's only the ace of spades left!"

After a few days at Niddrie Marischal, the fascinating old seat of the Wauchopes near Edinburgh (General "Andie" Wauchope's widow had lived there since her husband's gallant death at Magersfontein), I went to c.u.mbrae to visit Lady Bute at the Garrison, her home on that quaint island in the Firth of Clyde. The house, too, was quaint though comfortable, built in semi-ecclesiastical Gothic, with a sunk garden in front, and a charming moonlight view from my window of the broad Firth, with the twinkling lights of the tiny town in the foreground. Millport was a favourite "doon-the-water" resort for Glasgow folk on holiday; and I had quite a congregation at my Sunday ma.s.s in the little chapel in the grounds, as well as a considerable catechism-cla.s.s afterwards.

Winifred Lady Howard of Glossop, my lady's stepmother, was paying her a visit, and as an inveterate globe-trotter (if the word may be respectfully applied to an elderly peeress) kept us entertained by stories of men and things in many lands. I spent one afternoon at the college and "cathedral" of the Isles, the quaint group of buildings, redolent of b.u.t.terfield and looking like an Oxford college and chapel through the wrong end of a telescope, which the sixth Earl of Glasgow (my {102} brother-in-law's predecessor) had more or less ruined himself in erecting. Provost Ball, whom I found at tea with his sisters, received me kindly, and showed me the whole establishment, which looked rather derelict and neglected (I fancy there was very little money to keep it going); and the college had been closed for some years. Some of us crossed the Firth next day in an absurd little c.o.c.kle of a motor-boat (unsuitable, I thought, for those sometimes stormy seas), and I was glad to find myself on _terra firma_, in a comfortable White steam-car--my first experience of that mode of propulsion--which whirled us smoothly and swiftly to Glasgow, in time for me to take the night train to London and Oxford.

In university circles I found a certain amount of uneasy trepidation owing to the official presence of Lord Curzon. A resident Chancellor was a phenomenon unprecedented for centuries, and one unprovided for in the traditional university ritual, in which the first place was naturally a.s.signed to the Vice-chancellor. There was much talk as to when, and in what direction, the new broom would begin to sweep, and amusing stories (probably _ben trovati_) of dignified heads of houses being called over the coals at meetings of the Hebdomadal Council.

Personally the Chancellor made himself very agreeable, entertaining everybody who was anybody at his fine old mansion, once the "town house" of the Dukes of Marlborough. It was all, perhaps, a little Vice-regal for us simple Oxonians, who were not accustomed to write our names in a big book when we made an afternoon call, or to be received by a secretary or other underling instead of by our host when we went out to luncheon or dinner. But it {103} was all rather novel and interesting; and in any case the little ripples caused on the surface of Oxford society by our Chancellor's sayings and doings soon subsided; for, as far as I remember, his term of residence did not exceed a month or so altogether. I was kept busy all this autumn term by the considerable work I had undertaken (the contribution of nearly eighty articles) for the American _Catholic Encyclopaedia_. One of the longest was on Cambridge; and I felt on its completion that I knew much more about the "sister university" than about my own! Most of my work was done in the Bodleian Library; and it was a pleasant and welcome change to find oneself installed in the new, well-lighted and comfortable reading-room arranged in one of the long picture-galleries, instead of (as heretofore) in an obscure and inconvenient corner of Duke Humphrey's mediaeval chamber. The then Bodley's Librarian was a bit of an oddity, and perhaps not an ideal holder of one of the most difficult and exacting offices in the university; but he was always kindness itself to me, and, whatever his preoccupations, was always ready to put at my service his unrivalled knowledge of books and their writers. His memory was stored with all kinds of whimsical rhymes: sometimes he would stop me in the street, and--at imminent peril of being run over, for he was extraordinarily short-sighted--would peer in my face through his big spectacles, and say, "Did you ever hear of

----the learned Archdeacon of York, Who _would_ eat his soup with a knife and a fork: A feat which he managed so neatly and cleverly, That they made him the Suffragan Bishop of Beverley!"

{104} Or it would be, perhaps, "Listen to this new version of an old saw:

Teach not your parent's mother to extract The embryo juices of an egg by suction: The aged lady can the feat enact Quite irrespective of your kind instruction."

And before I had time to smile at the quip I would be dragging my friend off the roadway on to the pavement to escape the oncoming tramcar, bicycle or hansom cab. Sometimes we walked together, usually in quest of some relic of antiquity in the neighbourhood, in which he would display the most lively interest, though I really believe it was all but invisible to his bodily eyes. One such walk was to inspect the old lepers' chapel of St. Bartholomew, in the fields near Cowley--a lovely derelict fragment of the ages of faith, which the local Anglican clergy had expressed their intention of "restoring to the ancient wors.h.i.+p." "_You_," said my friend the librarian, with his ironic smile, "will doubtless regard this promise as what our friend Dean Burgon would have called 'polished banter,'" the allusion being to a phrase in a sermon preached by the future Dean of Chichester at St.

Mary's at the time when the spread of the so-called "aesthetic movement"

was causing some concern to sensible people. "These are days," he cried, "when we hear men speak, not in polished banter, but in sober earnest, of 'living up to their blue china!'" I heard him speak these words myself; and recalling that inimitable tone and accent, can imagine the impression made by a more memorable utterance from the same pulpit, when the new doctrines of Darwin were in the air, and the alleged affinity of man with monkey was {105} fluttering orthodox dovecotes. "O ye men of science! O ye men of science! leave me my ancestors in Paradise, and I will willingly leave you yours in the Zoological Gardens!"

I had the pleasure in November of paying a short visit to the wise and good Bishop of Newport, for a church-opening at Cardiff. A profit as well as a pleasure, one may hope; for indeed no one could spend any time in Dr. Hedley's company without instruction as well as edification. We spoke of the late Lord Bute's remarkable philological gifts; and I asked the Bishop if he had found his ignorance of Welsh any practical hindrance to the work of his diocese. "No," was his reply. "Fortunately for me (for I am no Mezzofanti) I find English a good enough means of communication with my people, the majority of whom are neither Welsh nor English, but Irish." I told him, much to his amus.e.m.e.nt, of the advice once given to an Englishman appointed to a Welsh (Anglican) see, as to the proper p.r.o.nunciation of the Welsh double _l_. "May it please your lords.h.i.+p to place your episcopal tongue lightly against your right reverend teeth, and to hiss like a goose!" A young Oxford friend of mine whom I met at Cardiff carried me thence to Lichfield to stay a night at the Choristers' House of which his father was master. It chanced to be "Guy Fawkes Day," and I a.s.sisted at the fireworks and bonfires of the little singing-boys, who (I was rather interested to find) did not a.s.sociate their celebration in the slightest degree with the old "No Popery" tradition. The merry evening concluded with some delightful part-singing.

I recall a week-end at Arundel when term was over: a large and cheerful party, and the usual {106} "parlour games" after dinner, including dumb-crambo, in which I was almost the only spectator; for everybody else was acting, the Duke being a polar bear rolled up in a white hearthrug! My customary Christmas was spent at Beaufort, in a much-diminished family circle. Lord Lovat was on his way home from South Africa, one brother absent on a sporting tour in Abyssinia, another gold-mining in Rhodesia; his second sister with her husband in j.a.pan, and two others still _en voyage_ round the world. Some schoolboy nephews, however, and their young sisters, were a cheerful element in our little party, and there was a great deal of golf, good, bad, and indifferent, on the not exactly first-cla.s.s course recently laid out in the park.[7] I had to go south soon after New Year, to tie the knot and preach the wedding sermon at a marriage in Spanish Place Church.[8] A thoroughly Scottish function it was, with Gordon Highlander sergeants lining the long nave, the bridegroom's kilted brother-officers forming a triumphal arch with their claymores, and a big gathering of friends from the north afterwards at the d.u.c.h.ess of Roxburghe's pretty house in Grosvenor Street. I attended next evening at our Westminster dining-club, and heard {107} Father Maturin read a clever, if not quite convincing paper, on "The Broad and Narrow Mind,"

some of his paradoxes provoking a lively subsequent discussion which I found very interesting. I had a stimulating neighbour in Baron Anatole von Hugel.

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; and I was saddened in the same month by the death of an exemplary member of our community at Fort Augustus, though that had been long expected. I was myself on the sick-list, and recall little of interest during these weeks, except a most excellent lecture--of course on boy scouts--given by General Baden-Powell, which I only wished could have been heard, not by dons, ladies, and undergraduates, but by the cigarette-s...o...b..ring, street-corner-loafing lads who were, I think, more in evidence at Oxford than anywhere else. Early in March I was in London, for the wedding of my old pupil, Charles Vaughan of Courtfield, to the pretty niece of the Duke of Newcastle. I got to Westminster Cathedral an hour before the appointed time: the chapter-ma.s.s was being celebrated, and waves of sonorous plain-song floating about the great misty domes overhead. After the ceremony I joined the wedding guests at the Ritz for a short time, and, amid the _frou-frou_ {108} and _va-et-vient_ of all the smart people, managed to impart to a few intimate friends the news that I was going into hospital in a few days, with no very certain prospect of coming out alive!

The next fortnight or so was of course taken up with inevitable worries--giving up work for an indefinite period, resigning for a time (it turned out to be for good) the masters.h.i.+p of my Hall, and finding a _loc.u.m tenens_ letter-writing to a host of inquiring friends, and all this when physically fit to do nothing. I spent the last days of freedom at Arundel, receiving from the good people there every possible kindness; and on March 18, under the patronage of the Archangel Gabriel (saint of the day), betook myself to my nursing home in Mandeville Street. Nurses (mine were most kind and devoted), surgeons and anaesthetists soon got to work; and for a time at least (in the almost cla.s.sic words of Bret Harte) "the subsequent proceedings interested me no more."

A critical operation, followed by a slow and difficult convalescence, ranks, of course, among the deeper experiences of a man's life. "We were all anxious," said an Oxford friend some weeks later, a good old chemist whom I had known for years; "for we heard that you were pa.s.sing through very deep waters." The expression was an apt one; and I suppose no one rises from such waters quite the same man as he was before. This is not the place to dwell on such thoughts; but one reflection which occurs to me is that in such a time as I am now recalling one realizes, as perhaps one had never done before, how many kind people there are in the world, and appreciates what true friends.h.i.+p is. During {109} my long stay in hospital my nearest relations chanced to be greatly scattered, some of them in very remote parts of the world. This made me all the more grateful for the extraordinary kindness and attention I received, not only from approved friends, but from many others whom I had hardly ventured to count as such. I remember a little later compiling a kind of _libro d'oro_, with a list of the names of all who had been good to me in word or deed during those weary weeks. Some of them I have hardly ever seen since: many have pa.s.sed beyond the sphere of one's grat.i.tude here on earth; but I still sometimes con my list, and thank the dead as well as the living for what they did for me then.

I remember my first drive--round Regent's Park, on a perfect May day, in the steam-car of which I have already spoken; and very tiring I found it. After a lazy fortnight at St. John's Lodge, and daily trundles in a Bath chair among the gay flower-beds of the park, I was able to get down into the country; and after a sojourn with Lady Encombe and her two jolly little boys near Rickmansworth (a wonderfully rural spot, considering its nearness to London), I made my way to Arundel, where it was pleasant to meet the Herries's and other kind friends. The great excitement there was the hoped-for advent of a son and heir, who made a punctual and welcome appearance before the end of the month, and was received, of course, with public and private jubilations in which I was happy to be able to partic.i.p.ate. After this I paid quite a long visit to my soldier brother at Kneller Court, the pretty place near Fareham which he was occupying while commanding the Artillery in that district. There were plenty of {110} pleasant neighbours, who treated me to pleasant motor-drives through a charming country little known to me; and the elm-shaded hall (I believe Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller had really lived there once), with its gay old garden and excellent tennis-lawn, was a popular resort for young officers from Portsmouth and elsewhere, who dropped in almost daily to luncheon, tea, or dinner, and doubtless found the society of a kind hostess and her two pretty daughters a welcome diversion from their naval and military duties. One June day we spent in Portsmouth, lunching with Sir Arthur and Lady Fanshawe at Admiralty House, a big, cool roomy mansion like a French chateau, full of fine old portraits. We went out afterwards on the flag-captain's launch to see the _Victory_, a visit full of interest, though I was unequal to climbing the companions connecting the five decks. A man whom I sat next at tea in the Admiral's garden said he was connected with the Patent Office (I do not think he was actually Comptroller-General, but he was something high up in that rather mysterious department of the Civil Service), and told me some entertaining yarns about early patents and monopolies.[9] One was granted in 1618 to two men called Atkinson and Morgan, "to find out things in monasteries!" Another man, about the same time, secured the exclusive right of importing lobsters, which had hitherto cost a penny; but the patentee bought them out at sea from Dutch fishermen, and {111} sold them at threepence. In Charles I.'s reign a "doctour in phisick"

called Grant got a patent for a "fishe-call, or looking-gla.s.s for fishes in the sea, very useful for fishermen to call all manner of fishes to their netts, seins, or hooks." In the same reign it was made compulsory to bury the dead in woollen in order to encourage the wool manufacture; and ten years later Widow Amy Potter got a (rather gruesome) patent for the elegant woollen costume she devised for this purpose.[10]

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. He had arranged his brother's miscellaneous treasures, in one or two s.p.a.cious rooms, with great care and pains; and it was a curious experience to pa.s.s out of an atmosphere and environment of religious paintings, Roman bookbindings, panels from cardinals' coaches, Papal coins and medals, Italian ecclesiological literature, and what the {112} French call _objets de piete_ of every description, to the ex-lancer's own cheerful living-rooms: the walls hung with pictures of hunters, steeplechasers, coaching and sporting scenes; stuffed heads, tiger-skins, and other trophies of the chase everywhere about, and the windows looking out on a pretty garden, in the improvement and cultivation of which the owner was promising himself unfailing interest and occupation.

"Doctor Brighton" (was not this affectionate sobriquet the invention of Thackeray?) did much for the restoration of my health and strength; and I was able to get to Oxford before the end of summer term, to spend a fortnight with kind Monsignor Kennard at his charming old house in St.