Arundel Castle was Derwent Hall, a fine old Jacobean house in the Derwent valley, on the borders of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. The Duke had lent this place for some years past to his only brother as his country residence (he later bequeathed it to him by will); and herein this same autumn I paid a pleasant visit to Lord and Lady Edmund Talbot, on my way south to Oxford. In London I went to see the rich and sombre chapel of the Holy Souls just finished in Westminster Cathedral, at the expense of my old friend Mrs. Walmesley (née Weld Blundell). The Archbishop's white marble cathedra was in course of erection in the sanctuary, and preparations were going forward for his enthronement.[2] Eight immense pillars of onyx were lying on the floor, and the great painted rood leaned against the wall. I was glad to see some signs of progress.

Our principal domestic interest, on reassembling at Oxford for Michaelmas Term, was the prospect of exchanging the remote and incommodious semi-detached villa, in which our Benedictine Hall had been hitherto housed, for the curious mansion near Folly Bridge, built on arches above the river, "standing in its own grounds," as auctioneers say (it could not well stand in any one else's!), and known to most Oxonians as Grandpont House. Besides the Thames bubbling and swirling at its foundations, it had a little lake of its own, and was (except by a very circuitous détour) accessible only by punt. Rather fascinating! we all thought; but when the pundits from Ampleforth Abbey came to inspect, the floods happened to be out everywhere, and our prospective Hall looked so like Noah's Ark floating on a waste of waters, that they did not "see their way"[3] to approve of either the site or the house.

Oxford was preoccupied at this time with the question of who was to succeed to the Chancellorship vacant by the death of Lord Salisbury. I attended a meeting of the Conservative caucus summoned to discuss the matter at the President's lodgings at St. John's. These gatherings were generally amusing, as the President (most unbending of old Tories) used to make occasional remarks of a disconcerting kind. On this occasion he treated us to some reminiscences of the great Chancellors of the past, adding, "I look round the ranks of prominent men in the country, including cabinet ministers and ex-ministers, and I see few if any men of outstanding or even second-rate ability"—the point of the joke being that next to him was seated the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, whose presence and counsel had been specially invited. The names of Lords Goschen, Lansdowne, Rosebery, and Curzon were mentioned, the first-named being evidently the favourite. "Scholar, statesman, financier, educationalist," I wrote of him in the Westminster Gazette a day or two later, "a distinguished son of Oriel, versatile, prudent and popular.... The Fates seem to point to Lord Goschen as the one who shall sit in the vacant chair."[4]

Another less famous Oriel man, my old friend Mgr. Tylee, was in Oxford this autumn, on his annual visitation of his old college, and came to see me several times. He gravely assured me that he had "preached his last sermon in India"; but this was a false alarm. The good monsignore was as great a "farewellist" as Madame Patti or the late Mr. Sims Reeves, and at least three years later I heard that he was meditating another descent on Hindostan; though why he went there, or why he stayed away, I imagine few people either knew or cared.[5]

We were all interested this term in the award of the senior Kennicott Hebrew scholarship to a Catholic, Frederic Ingle of St. John's, who had already, previous to his change of creed, gained the Pusey and Ellerton Prize, and other honours in Scriptural subjects. One could not help wondering whether it came as a little surprise to the Anglican examiners to find that they had awarded the scholarship to a young man studying for the Catholic priesthood at the Collegio Beda in Rome, an institution specially founded for the ecclesiastical education of converts to the Roman Church. The "Hertford" this year, by the way, the Blue Ribbon of Latin scholarship, was also held by a Catholic, a young Jesuit of Pope's Hall—Cyril Martindale, the most brilliant scholar of his time at Oxford, who carried off practically every classical distinction the university had to offer. The "Hertford" was won next year (1904) by another Catholic, Wilfrid Greene, scholar of Christ Church.

I celebrated in 1903 not only my fiftieth birthday, but the silver jubilee of my entrance into the Benedictine Order; and I went to keep the latter interesting anniversary at Belmont Priory in Herefordshire, where twenty-five years before (December 8, 1878) I had received the novice's habit. Two or three of the older members of the community, who had been my fellow-novices in those far-off days, were still in residence there; and from them and all I received a warm welcome and many kind congratulations. These jubilees, golden and silver, are apt to make one moralize; and some words from an unknown or forgotten source were in my mind at this time:

Such dates are milestones on the grey, monotonous road of our lives: they are eddying pools in the stream of time, in which the memory rests for a moment, like the whirling leaf in the torrent, until it is caught up anew, and carried on by the resistless current towards the everlasting ocean.

Soon after the end of term I made my way northwards, to spend Christmas, as so many before, with the Lovats at Beaufort, where the topic of interest was the engagement, just announced, of Norfolk to his cousin, elder daughter of Lord Herries. We played our traditional game of croquet in the sunshine of Christmas Day, and spent a pleasant fortnight, of which, however, the end was saddened for me by the premature death of my niece's husband, Charles Orr Ewing, M.P. They had only just finished the beautiful house they had built on the site of my old home, Dunskey, and were looking forward to happy years there.

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. The close, too, really is a close, with a watchman singing out in the small hours, "Past two o'clock—misty morning—a-all's we-e-ell!" and the enclosure so complete that though we could hear the Bishop of Dover's dinner-bell on the other side of the wall, my host and hostess had to drive quite a long way round, through the mediæval gate-house, to join the episcopal dinner-party. Their schoolboy son invited me that night to accompany the watchman (an old