Part 8

A. is not at all well. He says he has got a bad headache, but he has to go to an official dinner to-night. He is also most annoyed at having been chosen as a delegate to the Conference that takes place in Canada in August. This, he says, will prevent his doing any yachting this year as he will not be back before the end of September.

_Wednesday, June_ 1_st_.

Riley came to see me at the office and asked me whether I could put him up for a few nights. I would with pleasure, but I warned him that I should be having most of my meals with Solway, who is up in London for a week.

_Thursday, June_ 2_nd_.

Went to Aunt Ruth's after dinner and remembered to tell her that Gertrude was arriving next week. Aunt Ruth was glad to hear the news and said she hoped Edmund would get promotion this time. He had been passed over so often. I said I hoped so also, but I suppose I did not display enough enthusiasm, as Aunt Ruth said I didn't seem to take much interest in my brother-in-law's career. I assured her I was fond of Gertrude and had the greatest respect for my brother-in-law. Uncle Arthur said: "What, Anstruther? The man's a pompous ass." Aunt Ruth was rather shocked.

_Friday, July_ 3_rd_.

Solway has arrived in London. He is staying at St Leonard's Terrace, Chelsea. He is taking me to a concert to-morrow night. Riley has also arrived. He said he would prefer not to go to a concert.

_Saturday, June_ 4_th._

The concert last night was a success. Miss Bowden played Bach's _Chaconne._ Solway was greatly excited and said loudly: "I knew she could do it; I knew she could do it."

_Sunday, June_ 5_th_.

A. hasn't been at all well this week, and he has put off staying with the Housmans to-day. They asked me, but as Solway and Riley were here I did not like to go. Cunninghame has asked me to dinner next week to meet his cousin, Mrs Caryl. I shall have to conceal from Gertrude that I am going to meet them, as Caryl was promoted over his head and she would think it disloyal on my part. Solway and Riley had luncheon with me at the Club. In the afternoon I went to hear Miss Bowden play at a Mrs Griffith's house, where Solway is staying. We could not persuade Riley to come. I had supper there with Solway. Riley went to more literary circles and had supper with Professor Langdon, the Shakespearean critic.

_Letter from Guy Cunninghame to Mrs Caryl_

LONDON, _Monday, June_ 6_th._

DEAREST ELSIE,

Please write down in your engagement book that you are dining with me on Thursday as well as on Monday. I have asked Godfrey Mellor to meet you on Thursday. George is laid up with appendicitis, and I am afraid he is _very_ bad indeed. The doctors are going to decide to-day whether they are to operate immediately or not. He is at a nursing home in Welbeck Street. His sister is looking after him. He was going to Canada in August. I don't suppose he will be able to now.

I am looking forward to seeing you quite tremendously.

Yours, G.

_From the Diary of Godfrey Mellor_

_Monday, June_ 6_th._

A. has got appendicitis and has been taken to a nursing home. I have just heard he is to have an operation to-morrow morning.

_Tuesday, June_ 7_th._

A.'s operation was successfully performed, but he is still very ill. Cunninghame has been to Welbeck Street this morning and saw his sister. She is most anxious. He was, of course, not allowed to see A.

_Wednesday, June_ 8_th._

I sat up late last night talking to Riley.

_Thursday, June_ 9_th._

Cunninghame went to Welbeck Street and saw the doctor. He says there is every chance of his recovery. Apparently the danger was in having to do the operation at once, while there was still inflammation. It was not exactly appendicitis, but Cunninghame's report was too technical for my comprehension.

I dined with Cunninghame to-day to meet Mrs Caryl. I had not met her husband before. He is, I thought, slightly stiff. Lady Jarvis was there also. She was much disturbed about A.'s illness.

_Friday, June_ 10_th_.

Gertrude and Edmund Anstruther arrived yesterday. I dined with them to-night. Edmund said the way diplomats were treated was a scandal. The hard-working members of the profession were always passed over. The best posts were given to men outside the profession. No conscientious man could expect to get on in such a profession. If he was passed over this time he would not stand it any longer, but he would leave the Service altogether. The Foreign Office, he said, was so weak. They never backed up a subordinate who took a strong line. They always climbed down. I wondered what Edmund had been taking a strong line about in Buenos Aires. Gertrude agreed. She said they had been there for three years without leave, and if they did not get a good post she would advise Edmund to retire and get something in the City. There were plenty of firms in the city who would jump at getting Edmund. She mentioned the Housmans and said she knew they were friends of mine, and didn't want to say anything against them, but she had met many people in Buenos Aires who knew Mrs Housman intimately, and said she was rather a dangerous woman. I asked in what way she was dangerous. Gertrude said: "Perhaps you do not know she is a Roman Catholic." I said I had known this for years, but she never talked of it. "That's just what I mean," said Gertrude; "they are far too subtle, and I am afraid too underhand to talk of it openly. They lead you on." I asked Gertrude if she thought Mrs Housman wished to convert me. She said most certainly. Her friends in Buenos Aires had told her she had made many converts. It was the only thing she cared for, and even if she didn't, Roman Catholics were obliged to do so. It was only natural, if they thought we all went to hell if we were not converted.

I said I was not sure Roman Catholics did believe that. Gertrude and Edmund said I was wrong. I could ask anyone. Gertrude repeated she had no wish to say anything against Mrs Housman, and she was convinced she was a good woman according to her lights.

Edmund said there had been many conversions in the Diplomatic Service. He was convinced this was part of a general conspiracy. If you wanted to get on in the Diplomatic Service you had better be a Roman Catholic. Of course those who did not choose to sacrifice their conscience, their independence, their traditions, and were loyal to the Church and the State, suffered. I said I didn't quite see where loyalty to the State came in. Edmund said: "How could you be loyal to the State when you were under the authority of an Italian Bishop?" I must know that the Italian Cardinals were always in the majority. I said that, considering the number of Catholics in England, compared with the number of Catholics in other countries, I should be surprised to see a majority of English Cardinals at the Vatican. I said Edmund wanted England to be a Protestant country, and at the same time to have the lion's share in Catholic affairs. Edmund said that was not at all what he meant. What he meant was that an Englishman should be loyal to his Church, which was an integral part of the State.

I said there were many Englishmen who would prefer the State to have nothing to do with the Church. Edmund said there were many Englishmen who did not deserve the name of Englishmen. For instance, Caryl, who was now Second Secretary at Paris, had been promoted over his head three years ago. What was the reason? Mrs Caryl was a Roman Catholic and Caryl had been converted soon after his marriage. I foolishly said that the Caryls were now in London, and when Edmund asked me how I knew this I said that Aunt Ruth had told me.

This raised a storm, as it appears that Aunt Ruth does know the Caryls and asks them to dinner when they are in London. Edmund said he would talk to Aunt Ruth about them seriously. I asked him as a favour to do no such thing. And Gertrude told him not to be foolish, and added magnanimously that Mrs Caryl was a nice woman, if a little fast.

For a man who has lived all his life abroad Edmund Anstruther is singularly deeply imbued with British prejudice.

They are staying in London until the middle of July. Then they are going on a round of visits. Edmund is confident that he will get Christiania. I feel that it is more than doubtful.

Riley went back to Shelborough to-day.

_Saturday, June_ 11_th._

Received a telegram from Housman, asking me to go to Staines. I went down by the afternoon train, and found Lady Jarvis, Miss Housman and Carrington-Smith. Housman was anxious for news of A. I told him I believed he was now out of danger, but that it would be a long time before he was quite well again. Housman said he must certainly come to Cornwall. I said he had intended to go to Canada for a Conference, but would be unable to do so now. Housman said that was providential.

_Sunday, June_ 12_th._

A fine day, but the river was crowded and hardly enjoyable. I sat with Mrs Housman in the garden in the evening. The others went on the river again. Mrs Housman asked me if I had seen A. I said he was not allowed to see anyone.

_Monday, June_ 13_th._

A. is getting on as well as can be expected. There appears to be no doubt of his recovery. Cunninghame is going to see him to-day.

_Tuesday, June_ 12_th._

Cunninghame says that A. wants to see me. I am to go there to-morrow.

Dined with Hope, who was at Oxford with me. He is just back from Russia, where he has been to make arrangements for producing some play in London. He thinks of nothing now but the stage, and a play of his is going to be produced at the Court Theatre. I promised to go and see it. He spoke of Riley, and I told him he had become a Roman Catholic. Hope said he regarded that as sinning against the light. He said no one _at this time of day_ could believe such things.

_Wednesday, June_ 15_th_.

I went to see A. at Welbeck Street. He has been very ill and looks white and thin. His sister was there, but I had some conversation with him alone. I told him all the news I could think of, which was not much. He said he liked seeing people, but was not allowed more than one visitor a day. He had got a very good nurse. Housman had sent him grapes and magnificent fruit every day. He said he would like to see Mrs Housman, but supposed that was impossible, as she never came to London now. He said Cunninghame had been very good to him, and had put off going to Ascot to look after him.

I wrote to Mrs Housman this evening and gave her A.'s message.

_Thursday, June_ 16_th._

Dined with Aunt Ruth. Gertrude and Edmund were there. Edmund said to Aunt Ruth that he had heard the Caryls were in London. Aunt Ruth said she had no idea of this, and she would ask them to dinner next Thursday. Aunt Ruth asked a good many diplomats to meet Edmund, and they had a long talk after dinner about their posts. They called Edmund their "_Cher collègue_." Edmund enjoyed himself immensely. Uncle Arthur cannot bear him, nor, indeed, any diplomats, and it is, I think, the chief cross of his life that Aunt Ruth asks so many of them to dinner.

Aunt Ruth asked after A. and said that she had been to inquire.

_Friday, June_ 17_th_.

Received a letter from Mrs Housman, saying she was coming up to London to-morrow, and was going to stay with Lady Jarvis till Monday. She would go and see A. on Sunday afternoon if convenient. She asked me to ring up the nurse and find out. I did so and arranged for her to call at four o'clock.

_Saturday, June_ 18_th._

I dined with Lady Jarvis. There was no one there but Mrs Housman and myself. Cunninghame is staying somewhere with friends of the Caryls.

_Sunday, June_ 19_th_.

I had luncheon with Aunt Ruth. Edmund and Gertrude were there, but no one else. Edmund has been appointed to Berne. It is not what he had hoped, but better than any of us expected. He said Berne might become a most important post in the event of a European war.

_Monday, June_ 20_th._

Dined with the Caryls at the Ritz. Cunninghame was there and Miss Hollystrop. Mrs Vaughan asked me whether it was true that A. had become a Roman Catholic. She had heard Mrs Housman had converted him. Cunninghame deftly turned the conversation on account of Mrs Caryl.

We all went to the opera--_Faust_.

_Tuesday, June_ 21_st_.

I went to see A. He told me Mrs Housman had been to see him. He is still in bed, but looks better.

_Wednesday, June_ 22_nd_.

Barnes of the F.O. came to the office this morning. He asked after A. He said he had heard that the real cause of his illness was his passion for Mrs Housman, who would have nothing to do with him unless he was converted. Cunninghame said he wondered he could talk such nonsense.

_Thursday, June_ 23_rd_.

Went to Aunt Ruth's after dinner. The Caryls were there, and Gertrude and Edmund came after dinner. Heated arguments were going on about the situation in Russia, Edmund taking the ultra-conservative point of view, much to the annoyance of Aunt Ruth and Uncle Arthur, who felt even more strongly on the matter because he thought they were discussing the French Revolution.

_Friday, June_ 24_th_.

Dined with Lady Jarvis; she was alone. She said Mrs Housman was coming up again to-morrow. The fact is, she says, Staines is intolerable now on Sundays. Mrs Fairburn comes down almost every Sunday. She overwhelms Mrs Housman with her gush and her pretended silliness. Housman thinks her the most wonderful woman he has ever met.

_Saturday, June_ 25_th._

Went down to S---- to stay with Riley. Riley lives in a small villa surrounded with laurels. A local magnate came to dinner, who is suspected of being about to present some expensive masterpieces to the public gallery.

_Sunday, June_ 26_th_.

Riley went to Mass in the morning. I sat in his smoking-room, which is a litter of books and papers and exceedingly untidy. A geologist came to luncheon, Professor Langer, a naturalised German. When we were walking in the garden afterwards, he said he could not understand how Riley reconciled his creed with plain facts of geology. But Riley's case surprised him less than that of another of his colleagues, who was a great authority on geology, and nevertheless a devout Catholic, and not only never missed Mass on Sundays, but had told him, Langer, that he fully subscribed to every point of the Catholic Faith. It was true he was an Irishman, but politically he was not at all fanatical, and not even a Home-Ruler.

In the afternoon we had tea with the magnate, whose house is full of Academy pictures. I now understand what happens to that great quantity of pictures we see once at the Academy and then never again. An art critic was invited to tea also. He had, I believe, been invited here to persuade the magnate in question to present some very modern piece of art to the city. He seemed disappointed when he saw the pictures on the walls, and when the magnate asked his opinion of a composition called _A Love Letter_, he said he did not think the picture a very good one. The magnate said he regretted not having bought _Home Thoughts_, by the same painter, which was undoubtedly superior.

We dined alone, and I told Riley what Professor Langer had said. He said: "Most Protestants, whether they have any religion or not, attribute Protestant notions to the Catholic Church. What these people say shows to what extent the conception of Rome has been distorted by their being saturated with Protestant ideas. Mallock says somewhere that the Anglicans talk of the Catholic Church as if she were a _lapsed Protestant sect_, and they attack her for being false to what she has never professed. He says they don't see the real difference between the two Churches, which is not in this or that dogma, but in the authority on which all dogma rests. The Professors you quote take for granted that Catholics base their religion, as Protestants do, on the Bible _solely_, and judged from that point of view she seems to them superstitious and dishonest. But Catholics believe that Christ guaranteed infallibility to the Church _in perpetuum: perpetual_ infallibility. Catholics discover this not _at first_ from the Church as doctrine, but from records as trustworthy human documents, and they believe that the Church being perpetually infallible can only interpret the Bible in the right way. They believe she is guided in the interpretation of the Bible by the same Spirit which inspired the Bible. She teaches us _more_ about the Bible. She says _this_ is what the Bible teaches."

He said: "Mallock makes a further point. It is not only Protestant divines who talk like that. It is your advanced thinkers, men like Langer and his colleagues. They utterly disbelieve in the Protestant religion; they trust the Protestants in nothing else, but at the same time they take their word for it, without further inquiry, that Protestantism is more reasonable than Catholicism. If they have destroyed Protestantism they conclude they must have destroyed Catholicism _a fortiori_. With regard to Langer's geological friend, it doesn't make a pin's difference to a Catholic whether evolution or natural selection is true or false. Neither of these theories pretends to explain the origin of life. Catholics believe the origin of life is God." He had heard a priest say, not long ago: "A Catholic can believe in evolution, and in evolution before evolution, and in evolution before that, if he likes, but what he must believe is that God made the world and in it _mind,_ and that at some definite moment the mind of man rebelled against God."

_Monday, June_ 27_th_.

A. telephoned for me. I saw him this afternoon. His room was full of flowers. He will not be allowed to get up till the end of the week. As soon as he is allowed to go out the doctor says he ought to go away and get some sea air. There is no question of his going to Canada. The Housmans have asked him to go to Cornwall and he is going there as soon as he can. He asked me when I was going. I said at the end of the month, if that would be convenient to him.

_Tuesday, June_ 28_th._

Finished Renan's _Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse_. He says: "Je regrettais par moments de n'être pas protestant, afin de pouvoir être philosophe sans cesser d'être Chrétien. Puis je reconnaissais qu'il n'y a que les Catholiques qui soient conséquents." Riley's argument. Dined at the Club.

_Wednesday, June_ 29_th._

Dined with Hope at a restaurant in Soho. Quite a large gathering, with no one I knew. We had dinner in a private room. Two journalists--Hoxton, who writes in one of the Liberal newspapers, and Brice, who edits a weekly newspaper--had a heated argument about religion. Brice is and has always been an R.C. Hoxton's views seemed to me violent but undefined. He said, as far as I understood, that the Eastern Church was far nearer to early Christian tradition than the Western Church, and that by not defining things too narrowly and by not having an infallible Pope the Greeks had an inexpressible advantage over the Romans. Upon which someone else who was there said that the Greeks believed in the infallibility of the First Seven Councils; they believed their decisions to be as infallible as any papal utterance, and that dogma had been defined once and for all by the Councils. Brice said this was quite true, and while the Greeks had shut the door, the Catholic Church had left the door open. Besides which, he argued, what was the result of the action of the Greeks? Look at the Russian Church. As soon as it was separated it gave birth to another schism and that schism resulted in the rise of about a hundred religions, one of which had for one of its tenets that children should be strangled at their birth so as to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven without delay. That, said Brice, is the result of schism.

The other man said that there was no religion so completely under the control of the Government as the Russian. The Church was ultimately in the hands of gendarmes. Hoxton said that in spite of schisms, and in spite of anything the Government might do, the Eastern Church retained the early traditions of Christianity. Therefore, if an Englishman wanted to become a Catholic, it was absurd for him to become a Roman Catholic. He should first think of joining the Eastern Church and becoming a Greek Catholic. The other man, whose name I didn't catch, asked why, in that case, did Russian philosophers become Catholics and why did Solovieff, the Russian philosopher, talk of the pearl Christianity having unfortunately reached Russia smothered under the dust of Byzantium?

Brice said the Greek Church was schismatic and the Anglican Church was heretical and that was the end of the matter. Hoxton said: "My philosophy is quite as good as yours." Brice said it was a pity he could neither define nor explain his philosophy. Hope, who was bored by the whole argument, turned the conversation on to the Russian stage.

_Thursday, June_ 30_th._

Dined with Aunt Ruth. After dinner I sat next to a Russian diplomatist who knew Riley. He said he was glad he had become a Catholic--he himself was Orthodox. He evidently admired the Catholic religion. He said, among other things, how absurd it was to think that such floods of ink had been used to prove the Gospel of St John had not been written by St John. He said, even if it wasn't, the Church has said it was written by St John for over a thousand years. She has made it her own. He himself saw no reason to think it was not written by St John. Uncle Arthur, who caught the tail end of this conversation, said the authorship of _John Peel_ was a subject of much dispute. Gertrude wasn't there; they have gone to the country.

_Friday, July_ 1_st_.

Dined with Lady Jarvis. Cunninghame was there and a large gathering of people. More people came after dinner and there was music, but such a crowd that I could not get near enough to listen so I gave it up and stayed in another room. Lady Jarvis told me Mrs Housman is going down to Cornwall next Monday.

_Saturday, July_ 30_th. Grey Farm, Carbis Bay._

Arrived this evening after a hot and disagreeable journey. The Housmans are here alone. Housman goes back to London on Tuesday. A. is coming down here as soon as he is fit to travel. He is still very weak.

_Sunday, July_ 31_st_.

The Housmans went to Mass. Father Stanway came to luncheon. He said he had been giving instruction to an Indian boy who is being brought up as an R.C. I asked him if it was difficult for an Indian to understand Christian dogma. Father Stanway said that the child had amazed him. He had been telling him about the Trinity and the Indian had said to him: "I see--ice, snow, rain--all water."

_Monday, August_ 1_st_.

Housman played golf. Mrs Housman took me to the cliffs and began reading out _Les Misérables_, which I have never read.

_Tuesday, August_ 2_nd_.

Housman left early this morning. We sat on the beach and read _Les Misérables_.

_Wednesday, August_ 3_rd_.