An Autobiography

CHAPTER XXIV

MOSTLY A ROMAN DIARY

PALM Sunday, 1911, found me in Rome, on the eve of my son’s ordination as priest. One of those extraordinary occurrences which have happened in my life took place that day. Four of us joined at the appointed place and hour: I and Eileen from Ireland (Dick, already in Rome) and Patrick, just landed, in the nick of time, from India! We three met at the foot of the Aventine and went up to Sant’ Anselmo, where we knew we should see the other one during the Palm Sunday Mass, though not to speak to till after the long service was ended. He intoned the Gospel as deacon, and when his deep voice reached us in the gallery we looked at each other with a smile. None of us had seen him for a more or less long time.

“Holy Saturday. The great day. Dick assumed the chasuble, and is officially known now as Father Urban, though ‘Dick’ he will ever remain with us. The weather was Romanly brilliant, but I was anxious, knowing that these young deacons were to be on their knees in the great Lateran Church, fasting, from 7 a.m. We three waited a long time in the piazza of the Lateran for the pealing of the bells which should announce the beginning of the Easter time, and which was to be the signal for our entry into the great basilica at 9.15. We had places in two balconies, right over the altar. Below us stood about forty deacons, with our particular one in their midst, each holding his folded chasuble across his arms ready for the vesting. The sight of these young fellows, in their white and gold deacons’ vestments, was very touching. Each one was called up by name in turn, and ascended the altar steps, where sat the consecrating bishop, who looked more like a spirit than a mere human creature. When Urbano Butler (pronounced Boutler, of course, by the Italian voice) was called, how we craned forward! To me the whole thing was poignant. What those boys give up! (‘Well,’ answers a voice, ‘they give up the world, and a good thing too!’)

“We went, when the ceremony was completed, into a side chapel to receive the newly-made young priests’ first blessing. These young fellows ran out of the sacristy towards the crowd of expectant parents and friends, their newly-acquired chasubles flying behind them as they ran, with outstretched hands, for the kisses of that kneeling crowd that awaited them. What a sight! Can any one paint it and do it justice? Old and young, gentlefolk and peasants, smiling through tears, kissing the young hands that blessed them. Dick came to his mother first, then to his soldier brother, then to his sister, and I saw him lifting an aged prelate to his feet after blessing him. Strangers knelt to him and to the others, and I saw, in its perfection, what is meant by ‘laughing for joy’ on those young and holy faces. There was one exception. A poor young Irish boy, somehow, had no relative to bless – no one – he seemed left out in his corner, and he was crying. Perhaps his mother was ‘beyond the beyond’ in far Connemara? I heard of this afterwards. Had I seen him, I would certainly have asked his blessing too. So it is – always some shadow, even here.

“As soon as we could get hold of Dick, in his plain habit, we hurried him to a little trattoria across the piazza, where his dear friend and chum, John Collins,17 treated him to a good cup of chocolate to break his long fast.”

It was quite a necessary anti-climax for me when we and our friends all met again at the hotel and sat down, to the number of fifteen, to a bright luncheon I gave in honour of the day. A very celebrated English cardinal honoured me with his presence there.

“Easter Sunday. – Patrick, Eileen and I received Holy Communion in the crypt of Sant’ Anselmo from Dick’s hands at his first Mass. These few words contain the culmination of all.

“April 17th. – In the afternoon we were all off, piloted by Dick, to the celebrated Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, a long way down towards Naples, to spend a few days, Patrick as guest within the precincts, and E. and I lodging at the guest-house, which forms part of the monastic farm, poised on the edge of a great precipice. The sheer rock plunges down to the base of the mountain whereon stands the wonderful monastery. It is something to see a great domed church on the top of such a mountain, and a building of such vast proportions, containing one of the greatest libraries in the world. A mule path was all the monks intended for communication between the two worlds, but now a great carriage road takes us up by an easy zigzag.

“April 18th. – Every hour of our visit to Monte Cassino must be lived. I made a sketch of the monastery and the abyss into which one peers from that great height, with angry red clouds gathering over the tops of the snowy mountains. But my sketches are too didactic; and, indeed, who but Turner could convey to the beholder the awful spirit of that scene? The tempest sent us in and we had the experience of a good thunderstorm amidst those severe mountains that have the appearance of a petrified chaos. Last night E. woke up to find the room full of a surprising blue light, which at first she took to be the dawn because, through the open windows, she heard the whole land thrilling with the song of birds. But such a blue light for dawn? She got up to see. The light was that of the full moon and the birds were nightingales.

“I was enchanted to see the beautiful dress of the peasant women here. Their white tovaglie are looped back in a more graceful line than the Roman. The queerest little thin black hogs, like poor relations of the tall, pink Valentia variety which I have already signalised, browse on the steep ascent to this great stronghold, and everything still looks wild, in spite of the carriage road. I should have preferred coming up here on a mule. Our suppers at the guest-house were Spartan. Rather dismal, having to pump conversation with the Italian guests at this festive(!) board. Our intellectual food, however, was rich. The abbot and his monks did the honours of far-famed Monte Cassino for us with the kindest attention, showing very markedly their satisfaction in possessing Brother Urban, whose father’s name they held in great esteem.”

On April 22nd we had the long-expected audience with Pio Decimo. It was only semi-private and there were crowds, including eleven English naval officers, to be presented. I had my little speech ready, but when we came into the Pope’s presence we found him standing instead of restfully seated, and he looked so fatigued and so aged since I last saw him that I knew I must keep him listening as short a time as possible. First I presented “Mio figlio primogenito, ufficiale;” then “mio figlio Benedettino” and then “mia figlia.” He spoke a little while to Dick in Latin, and then we knelt and received his blessing and departed, to see him no more.

It is a great thing to have seen Leo XIII. and Pius X., as I have had the opportunity of seeing them. Both have left a deep impression on modern life, especially the former, who was a great statesman. To see the fragile scabbard of the flesh one wondered how the keen sword of the spirit could be held at all within it. It was his diplomatic tact that smoothed away many of the difficulties that obtruded themselves between the Vatican and the Quirinal, and that tact kept the Papacy on good terms with France and her Republic, to which he called on all French Catholics to give their support. It was he who forced “the man of blood and iron” to relax the ferocious laws against the Church in Germany, and to allow the evicted bishops to return to their Sees. Diplomatic relations with Germany were renewed, and the Church’s laws regarding marriage and education had to be re-admitted by the Government. Even the dark “Orthodox” intolerance of Russia bent sufficiently to his influence to allow of the establishment of Catholic episcopal Sees in that country, and the cessation of the imprisonment of priests. The episcopate in Scotland, too, was restored. We owe to him that spread of Catholicism in the United States which has long been such a surprise to the onlooker. Then there are his great encyclicals on the Social Question, setting forth the Christian teaching on the relations between capital and labour; establishing the social movement on Christian lines. How clearly he saw the threat of a great European war at no very distant date from his time unless armaments were reduced. That refined mind inclined him to the advancement of the cause of the Arts and of learning. Students thank him for opening the Vatican archives to them, which he did with the words, “The Church has nothing to fear from the publication of the Truth.” His is the Vatican observatory – one of the most famous in the world. It makes one smile to remember his remarks on the then young Kaiser William II., who seems to have struck the Holy Father as somewhat bumptious on the occasion of his historic visit. “That young man,” as he called him, evidently impressed the Pope as one having much to learn.

What a contrast Pius X. presents to his predecessor! The son of a postman at Rieti, a little town in Venetia. I remember when a deputation of young men came to pay him their respects at the Vatican, arriving on their bicycles, that he told them how much he would have liked a bike himself when, as a bare-legged boy, he had to trudge every day seven miles to school and back. Needless to say, he had no diplomatic or political training, but he led the truly simple life, very saintly and apostolic. He devoted his energies chiefly to the purely pastoral side of his office. We are grateful to him for his reform of Church music (and it needed it in Italy!). He was very emphatic in urging frequent communion and early communion for children. His condemnation of “modernism” is fresh in all our minds, and we are glad he removed the prohibition on Catholics from standing for the Italian Parliament, thereby allowing them to obtain influential positions in public life. He took a firm stand with regard to the advancing encroachment of the French Government on the liberties of the Church in his day. His policy is being amply justified under our very eyes.

We joined the big garden party, after the Papal audience, at the British Embassy. A great crush in that lovely remnant of the once glorious, far-spreading gardens I can remember, nearly all turned to-day into deadly streets on which a gridiron of tram lines has been screwed down. Prince Arthur of Connaught brought in the Queen-Mother, Margherita, to the lawn where the dancing took place. The Rennell-Rodd children as little fairies were pretty and danced charmingly, but I felt for the professional dancer who, poor thing, was not in her first youth, and unkindly dealt with by the searching daylight. To have to caper airily on that grass was no joke. It was heavy going for her and made me melancholy, in conjunction with my memories of the old Ludovisi gardens and the vanished pines.

On October 26th my youngest daughter, Eileen, was married to Lord Gormanston, at the Brompton Oratory, the church so loved by our mother, and where I was received. Our dear Dick married them. I had the reception in Lowndes Square in the beautiful house lent by a friend.

Ireland has many historic ancestral dwellings, and one of these became my daughter’s new home in Meath. Shakespeare’s “cloud-capp’d towers” seemed not so much the “baseless fabric” of the poet’s vision when I saw, one day, the low-lying trail of a bright Irish mist brush the high tops of the towers of Gormanston. A thing of visions, too, is realised there in a cloister carved so solidly out of the dense foliage of the yew that never monastic cloister of stone gave a more restful “contiguity of shade.”

I spent the winter of 1911 – 12 in London, and worked hard at water colours, of which I was able to exhibit a goodly number at a “one-man show” in the spring. The King lent my good old “Roll Call,” and the whole thing was a success. I showed many landscapes there as well as military subjects; many Italian and Egyptian drawings made during my travels, and scenes in Ireland. These exhibitions in a well-lighted gallery are pleasant, and the private view day a social rendezvous for one’s friends.

Through my sister, with whom I revisited Rome early in 1913, I had the pleasure of knowing many Americans there. How refreshing they are, and responsive (I don’t mean the mere tourist!), whereas my dear compatriots are very heavy in hand sometimes. American women are particularly well read and cultivated and full of life. They don’t travel in Europe for nothing. I have had some dull experiences in the English world when embarking, at our solemn British dinners, on cosmopolitan subjects for conversation. What was I to say to a man who, having lately returned from Florence, gave it as his opinion that it was only “a second-rate Cheltenham”? I tried that unlucky Florentine subject on another. He: “Florence? Oh, yes, I liked that – that —minaret thing by the side of the – the – er – “ I: “The Duomo?” He: “Oh, yes, the Duomo.” I (in gloomy despair): “Do you mean Giotto’s Tower?” Collapse of our conversation.

Very probably I bade my last farewell to St. Peter’s that year. I had more than once bidden a provisional “good-bye” at sundown on leaving Rome to that dome which I always loved to see against the western glory from the familiar terrace on Monte Pincio, only to return, on a further visit, and see it again with the old, fresh feeling of thankfulness. My initial enthusiasm, crudely chronicled as it is in my early Diary on first coming in sight of St. Peter’s, was a young artist’s emotion, but to the maturer mind what a miracle that Sermon in Stone reveals! The tomb of one Simon, no better, before his call, than any ordinary fisherman one may see to-day on our coasts – and now? “TU ES PETRUS…”

CHAPTER XXV

THE GREAT WAR

I WAS very busy with oil brush and water-colour brush during the summer of 1913, and the succeeding winter, in Ireland, accomplishing a large oil, “The Cuirassier’s Last Reveil, Morning of Waterloo,” and a number of drawings, all of that inexhaustible battle, for my next “one-man show” held on its centenary, 1915. I left no stone unturned to get true studies of dawn twilight for that reveil, and I got them. At the pretty house of my friends, the Egerton Castles, on a steep Surrey hill, I had my chance. The house faced the east. It was midsummer; an alarm clock roused me each morning at 2.30. I had modelled a little grey horse and a man, and set them up on my balcony, facing in the right direction, and there I waited, with palette spread, for the dawn. Time was short; the first ray of sunrise would spoil all, so I could only dab down the tones, anyhow; but they were all-important dabs, and made the big picture run without a hitch. Nothing delays a picture more than the searching for the true relations of tone without sufficient data. But this is a truism.

The Waterloo water colours were most interesting to work out. I had any amount of books for reference, records of old uniforms to get from contemporary paintings; and I utilised the many studies of horses I had made for years, chiefly on the chance of their coming in useful some day. The result was the best “show” I had yet had at the Leicester Galleries. But ere that exhibition opened, the World War burst upon us! First my soldier son went off, and then the Benedictine donned khaki, as chaplain to the forces. He went, one may say, from the cloister to the cannon. I had to pass through the ordeal which became the lot of so many mothers of sons throughout the Empire.

“Lyndhurst, New Forest, September 22nd, 1914.– I must keep up the old Diary during this most eventful time, when the biggest war the world has ever been stricken with is raging. To think that I have lived to see it! It was always said a war would be too terrible now to run the risk of, and that nations would fear too much to hazard such a peril. Lo! here we are pouring soldiers into the great jaws of death in hundreds of thousands, and sending poor human flesh and blood to face the new ‘scientific’ warfare – the same flesh and blood and nervous system of the days of bows and arrows. Patrick is off as A.D.C. to General Capper, commanding the 7th Division. Martin, who was the first to be ordered to the front, attached to the 2nd Royal Irish, has been transferred to the wireless military station at Valentia. That regiment has been utterly shattered in the Mons retreat, so I have reason to be thankful for the change. I am here, at Patrick’s suggestion, that I may see an army under war conditions and have priceless opportunities of studying ‘the real thing.’ The 7th Division18 is now nearly complete, and by October 3rd should be on the sea. I arrived at Southampton to-day, and my good old son in his new Staff uniform was at the station ready to motor me up to Lyndhurst where the Staff are, and all the division, under canvas. I was very proud of the red tabs on Patrick’s collar, meaning so much. I saw at once, on arriving, the difference between this and my Aldershot impressions. This is war, and there is no doubt the bearing of the men is different. They were always smart, always cheery, but not like this. There is a quiet seriousness quite new to me. They are going to look death straight in the face.

“September 23rd.– I had a most striking lesson in the appearance of men after a very long march, plus that look which is quite absent on peace manœuvres, however hot and trying the conditions. What surprises and telling ‘bits’ one sees which could never be imagined with such a convincing power. A team of eight mammoth shire horses drawing a great gun is a sight never to be forgotten; shapely, superb cart horses with coats as satiny as any thoroughbred’s, in polished artillery harness, with the mild eyes of their breed – I must do that amongst many most real subjects. But I see the German shells ploughing through these teams of willing beasts. They will suffer terribly.

“September 25th.– Getting hotter every day and not a cloud. I brought this weather with me. Patrick waits on me whenever he is off duty for an hour or so, and it is a charming experience to have him riding by the side of the carriage to direct the driver and explain to me every necessary detail. The place swarms with troops for ever in movement, and the roll of guns and drums, and the notes of the cheery pipes and fifes go on all day. The Gordons have arrived.

“September 26th.– Signs of pressure. They may now be off any hour. The ammunition has all arrived, and there wants but one battery of artillery to complete the division. General Capper won’t wait much longer and will be off without it if it delays and make up a battery en route somehow. It is sad to see so many mere boys arriving at the hotel fresh from Sandhurst. They are given companies to command, captains being killed, wounded or missing in such numbers. As to Patrick’s regiment, the old Royal Irish seem to have been so shattered that they are all hors de combat for the present.

“September 27th.– What a precious Sunday this has been! First, Patrick accompanied me to Mass, said by Father Bernard Vaughan, in a secluded part of the camp, where the heather had not been ploughed up by men, horses and guns, as elsewhere, and where the altar was erected in a wooded glen. The Grenadier and Scots Guards were all on their knees as we arrived, and the bright green and gold vestments of the priest were relieved very vividly in the sunshine against the darker green background of the forest beyond. Quite a little crowd of stalwart guardsmen received Holy Communion, and two of them were sheltering with their careful hands the candles from the soft warm breeze, one at each end of the altar. We sit out in the leafy garden of the hotel and have tea there, we parents and relatives, with our boys by us at all spare moments. To-day, being Sunday, there have been extra crowds of relatives and friends who have motored over from afar. There is pathos here, very real pathos. How many of these husbands and sons and brothers I see sitting close to their dear ones, for the last time, perhaps! Who knows? The voices are low and quiet – very quiet. Patrick and I were photographed together by M. E. These little snapshots will be precious. We were nearly all day together to-day as there was a rest. All this quiet time here our brave soldiers are being shattered on the banks of the Aisne. Just now must be a tremendously important period of the fighting. We may get great news to-morrow. Many names I know beginning to appear in the casualty lists.

“September 28th, 1914.– Had a good motor run with the R.’s right through the field of ‘battle’ in the midst of the great forest – a rolling height covered with heather and bracken. Our soldiers certainly have learnt, at last, how to take cover. One can easily realise how it is that the proportion of officers killed is so high. Kneeling or standing up to give directions they are very conspicuous, whereas of the men one catches only a glimpse of their presence now and then through a tell-tale knapsack or the round top of a cap in the bracken; yet the ground is packed with men – quite uncanny. The Gordons were a beautiful sight as they sprang up to reach a fresh position. I noticed how the breeze, as they ran, blew the khaki aprons aside and the revealed tartan kilts gave a welcome bit of colour and touched up the drab most effectively. One ‘gay Gordon’ sergeant told us, ‘We are a grand diveesion, all old warriors, and when we get out ‘twill make a deeference.’”