In
the mean time my father and I were corresponding
with our dearest friends—he who had opened a magic
door for us, and added a love whose greatness
had enriched our whole lives. I only which I could
convey to you who did not know him some idea of
his great charm, his quaint whimsical humour and
tender hearted chivalry. There is no room here
for my father’s correspondence which is a matter
to be dealt with by itself, but I am going to
include some of the letters the Duke wrote to
me before he died after our return to Canada.
The
Palace Peterborough
December 31, 1911
"My Dear Faith:—
A Happy New Year
to you and to your father—whose name I ought
to have written first—but one gets into bad
habits writing and talking to ladies! Ask him
if this is not so?
You will be having
all sorts of "high jinks" now at Ottawa,
but I am sorry to hear the snow has not come
up to time, and that the frost is not inclined
to take part in the season at all. Never mind
Ottawa has Faith—the rest will follow. We have
fog which is always punctual and pervasive if
not persuasive.
We are visiting
a sister, and are lodged in a 13th. Century
Palace—dine in a vaulted and finely arched "Refectory["]
near a guard-room—and sit in church in stalls
next [to] the tomb of Catharine of Arragon.
This lady you know lived before the Campbells
took possession of Canada.
Ever
yours,
Argyll"
Kensington
January
4th. 1911
"My Dear Faith—
A very happy New Year to your dear Father and
to you with many repetitions of "that same"—I
wish we had the winter you speak of—all is wet
and damp and foggy with us. I wonder if you
have yet seen your own wonderful West which
is developing so rapidly, that I shouldn’t know
again the places I visited in 1881 unless there
be a mountain form in the far West to make a
place recognizable. All foreground scenes would
be altered.
Lord Strathconna
goes on attending "functions" as tho
he were still a young Employe[e] of the H.B.
Company, and is himself a wonderful advertisement
of the healthy climate you enjoy.
The Princess and
I are staying in London for the present, and
the New Year opens with a rifle fight in the
London slums as tho we were in the early days
of American administration, and had to fight
desperadoes in Paint and Feathers.
Inverary harbours
two brothers and their families, and much New
Year festivity.
Ever
your truly,
Argyll"
A
letter starts this—
"My
dear Faith:—
See you don’t
come to scaith
By thinking there’s nothing nice
In Winter
but ice.
For a brother of mine at a rink
Paused too
often to think
When he was too warm and got ill
With an asthmatic
chill—
Became in fact as you call it sick
As he hadn’t
the trick
Which you must have for next Winter
When again
a hot sprinter
That bad chills succeed a long warning
In ways that
are truly alarming—
So after each skating—don’t do any waiting
But go home
all rosy
Warm-dry-for a half hour
And then you
have will power
Like a good lass—a sensible—
And don’t
be ostensible
Till thoroughly rested.
This recipe’s tested
By our secretary
Thus enabled to marry
At an age past all reason
Because he in season
Skated—then slept
And strength and health kept;
Also oh never
Tho’ ever so clever
Write too many "tomes"
—Mind I don’t wish you dumber
And hope that all Summer
You’ll sing and be "werry"
Happy and Merry-
That you’ll never "for Lorne"
be but
"Ever strike "Ile"
Is Faith fully wished by,
Yours
ever,
Argyll."
Kensington
Palace
March
11, 1913
"My Dear Faith:—
Many thanks for
your nice "note of hand" which I see
attempts to break into verse. You seem to expect
Mr. Wilfred to live through Faith and not by
sight as regards letter receiving—all must come
through you—not through him to you! This is
more advanced than is the doctrine of our suffragists,
who still allow Parents some correspondence
free of supervision. We shall hear of all your
progress on these matters soon officially from
the Governor General whom we expect at the end
of this month. I have seen you in "Muskwash"
never in a state of squash; perhaps you mis-wrote
the term? I am looking forward to seeing your
father—Faith is not of sight you know.
Yours
truly and faithfully,
Argyll"
Kensington
Palace
March
5, 1914.
"My Dear Faith:—
I am delighted
to hear the good news. The name sounds very
literary. Pray present him with my "felicitation"
(odious and unliterary word) and tell him I
forgive a desertion of the clan under the circumstances.
Your account of the Rideau night scene takes
me back to the days when we had Canada "more
to ourselves." Your father will feel the
change greatly—and I cannot help wishing I had
a "question hour" as the H. of Commons
calls their time of Government Examination to
hear what the future Malloch Government intended
to do??? I fancy a farm somewhere will form
part of life’s outfit even if there be any amount
of city occupation besides?????? One can’t help
being inquisitive about one’s friends.
Pray remember
me to your father and believe me,
Yours
truly,
Argyll."
"The little old fashioned hot water or
gravy pot is called an Argyll from the 18th.
Century, so you may deign accept it.
A."
This
was the last letter I ever received from the Duke,
and two months later he died of pneumonia. It
was as if a great light had gone out of the Poet’s
world—He whom he had loved with a great love had
passed away— the one who had shared and sympathised
with all his Imperial and poetical dreams. His
loss was irreparable, so few there are in life
who are great enough to forget themselves long
enough to enter into the lives and dreams of others.
We never have so many friends that we can afford
to lose one, and when we lose the one who has
been most surely a part of us great is one’s loss
indeed. But those things that bind friends together
love, sympathy, and understanding are eternal
and cannot die, but live on and in living bind
us everlastingly to those we love who have passed
on, forming a promise and a surety of Eternal
things for us. These things the Poet felt and
was consoled in part. I am going to quote here
a description of the Duke’s funeral from the "Westminster
Gazette":—
The
Last Sleep of Argyll
"Kilmun,
the Cell of Munne, one of the Columbian Saints
of the sixth century, has been the resting-place
of the Argyll name since the 14th. century. The
church lies on the shores of the Holy Loch, on
the broad waters of the Clyde. There is a legend
that connects its name with the wrecking of a
galley containing soil brought from Palestine.
Its name may more probably have come from the
founding of a chantry and collegiate church by
Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochow in 1442. He was
the first to assume the title of Argyll, and the
first to be buried in the church. The earliest
burying place of the Lords of Lochow was under
the shadow of Cruachan, and tradition says that
the Black Knight of Lochow received permission
from the great Lamont, in whose lands Kilmun then
stood, to bury a son he was carrying home to Loch
Awe, but the severities of the winter season obliged
him to lay the body in this alien land.
No
rood or ground, save the simple place of sepulture,
belongs now to the Argyll family. Better than
possession are the hearts of a great people and
when John, the ninth of his name, was carried
to his fathers, he passed through a multitude
who claimed him as of kindred in name, in race
and of country. Argyll was destined to die in
the month of May, a season which has through the
ages been associated with the fate of chieftains
of his name. On the 2nd. of that month "unfortunate
Argyll" started to help Monmouth in his rebellion
and was executed for his part in it. His father,
the Great Marquis, had died on the scaffold in
the same month. The first Duke, created to the
title by William of Orange for services rendered
to him abroad and in England and the seventh and
eighth Dukes were all three carried home along
the shores of Corval in the time of May. No fairer
day ever dawned on the Highland shores than that
which broke on May 15th. and turned the gleaming
waters of the West into a silver shield over which
passed the fleet of vessels accompanying the one
which bore the body, and carried the flag of the
galleys and the Cross.
Far
away on English soil passed John Douglas Sutherland,
the twenty-ninth Baron of Lochow. Westminster
Abbey gave him shelter and a stately service.
He lay in a chapel close by the vault that holds
the Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, immortalised
by Scotland’s greatest Immortal; and at the service
there was present the Sovereign whose House and
descent "Argyll and Greenwich" had so
great a part in establishing on the throne.
But
the Abbey and the great congregation were aliens
to his name and country, and the last sleep of
Argyll must be under the shelter of the hills
everlasting, and among a people whose history
civil and religious, was one with the story of
his name. There was pageantry without pomp, there
was mourning but not as of those who dwell in
the shadow of the sealed tomb. Nature was at its
gayest. The green lowhills along the foreshores
flames with whin [sic], and the "Heavens
upbreaking through the castle" came with
the wild hyacinths in the larchwood. From Roseneath—the
point of the sanctuary, encircled with the sharp
ethereally blue outline of the hills— sarcastically
named "Argyll’s bowling-green"—past
the castle of Ardencaple, the birth place of the
eighth Duke, along the shores of Loch Long till
the shore wide Holy Lock was reached, sped the
ship with the flag at half-mast. There were met
representatives of all the story of his life among
his countryman: The Volunteer forces, which had
claimed his early enthusiastic service, the Lairds
owning the name of Campbell and wearing the tartan
that has seen the watch-fires of many a camp in
many lands. A half mile bordered by the rippling
waves on which floated a procession of boats.
One minute guns, coming back in low peals of echoing
thunder, the waving of heraldic symbols, and the
foot-falls of an unnumbered multitude, so passed
the long-drawn procession. The pipers calling
the coronach and the laments sounding with the
cadence of a great pilgrim’s march—so he was left
in the guardianship of the hills, the gentlest
and most chivalrous of the White Knights of Lochow,
in the place of his ancestors.
And
as he would have wished, the ship that had borne
him returned over the great ferry ways, carrying
at its masthead the galleys of Lorne, the flag
of Niall Diarmid, thirtieth Baron of Lochow, tenth
Duke of Argyll.
Ne Obliviscaris." |
