A New Medley of MemoriesHunter Blair, David Oswald, Sir
Religion
A New Medley of Memories
Hunter Blair, David Oswald, Sir
Hunter Blair, David Oswald, Sir, 1853-1939
I refused to stay in London (as I had proposed doing) to attend an
international anti-vivisection meeting in Trafalgar Square, when I
found that I was expected to speak (from the back of a lion?). I fled
to Surrey, to stay first with my sister at her {145} newly-acquired
home near Reigate, a pretty old house in a "careless-ordered garden" of
which Tennyson would have approved; and then to the Kennards at their
charming Elizabethan manor-house of Great Tangley. The Sunday of my
visit here I spent partly at the fine diocesan seminary of Wonersh, and
partly at the Greyfriars monastery at Chilworth. The same architect
had designed the chapels at both; and I admired the skill with which he
had achieved extremely effective results by entirely different methods
of treatment. From Surrey I travelled to Scotland, to preach a charity
sermon at Saltcoats, in Ayrshire, for the excellent work of the Society
of St. Vincent of Paul. Saltcoats was within easy reach of Kelburn,
and I went thither for a short visit, finding my sister enjoying what
was always one of the chief pleasures of her life--that of having
helped to secure the happy engagement of one of our numerous nieces,
the elder daughter of my third brother.
My Oxford Local Examination work lay this summer not among the little
maidens of Dumfries Convent School, but at St. Wilfrid's College at
Oakamoor, in the picturesque Staffordshire Highlands, a country quite
new to me. My room commanded a lovely view of wooded glens and distant
purple hills; and the place itself was full of interest, incorporating
as it did the old house of Cotton Hall, given by Lord Shrewsbury fifty
years before to Faber and his "Wilfridian" community, most of whom
joined the Oratory after their conversion to Catholicism. I admired
Pugin's church, at once graceful and austere, with the famous east
window which the architect told Lord Shrewsbury he "could {146} die
for."[6] I had a pleasant week here, presiding on the last day at the
school prize-distribution, and promising the boys a new set of Scott's
novels, to replace the one which, I was glad to see, was worn out with
assiduous reading.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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