He had collected about himself an informal band of young men who read theology under his direction. He used to give a daily lecture, but there was no college or regular discipline. The men lived in lodgings, attended the cathedral service, arranged their own amusements and occupations. But Vaughan had a stimulating and magnetic effect over his pupils, many of whom have risen to high eminence in the Church.

They were constantly invited to meals at the deanery, where Mrs. Vaughan, a sister of Dean Stanley, and as brilliant, vivacious, and witty a talker as her brother, kept the circle entranced and delighted by her suggestive and humorous talk. My brother tells the story of how, in one of the Dean's long and serious illnesses, from which he eventually recovered, Mrs. Vaughan absented herself one day on a mysterious errand, and the Dean subsequently discovered, with intense amusement and pleasure, that she had gone to inspect a house in which she intended to spend her widowhood. The Dean told the whole story in her presence to some of the young men who were dining there, and sympathised with her on the suspension of her plans. I remember, too, that my brother described to me how, in the course of the same illness, Mrs. Vaughan, who was greatly interested in some question of the Higher Criticism, had gone to the Dean's room to read to him, and had suggested that they should consider and discuss some disputed passage of the Old Testament. The Dean gently but firmly declined. Mrs. Vaughan coming downstairs, Bible in hand, found a caller in the drawing-room who inquired after the Dean. "I have just come from him," said Mrs. Vaughan, "and it is naturally a melancholy thought, but he seems to have entirely lost his faith. He would not let me read the Bible with him; he practically said that he had no further interest in the Bible!"

Hugh was very happy at Llandaff. He says that he began to read John Inglesant again, and explored the surrounding country to see if he could find a suitable place to set up a small community house, on the lines of Nicholas Ferrar's Little Gidding. This idea was thenceforth much in his mind. At this time his day-dream was that it should be not an ascetic order, but rather devotional and mystical. It was, I expect, mainly an aesthetic idea at present. The setting, the ceremonial, the order of the whole was prominent, with the contemplation of spiritual beauty as the central principle. The various strains which went to suggest such a scheme are easy to unravel. Hugh says frankly that marriage and domesticity always appeared to him inconceivable, but at the same time he was sociable, and had the strong creative desire to forth and express a definite conception of life. He had always the artistic impulse to translate an idea into visible and tangible shape. He had, I think, little real pastoral impulse at this, if indeed at any time, and his view was individualistic. The community, in his mind, was to exist not, I believe, for discipline or extension of thought, or even for solidarity of action; it was rather to be a fortress of quiet for the encouragement of similar individual impulses. He used to talk a good deal about his plans for the community in these days—and it is interesting to compare with this the fact that I had already written a book, never published, about a literary community on the same sort of lines, while to go a little further back, it may be remembered that at one time my father and Westcott used to entertain themselves with schemes for what they called a Coenobium, which was to be an institution in which married priests with their families were to lead a common life with common devotions.

But I used to be reminded, in hearing Hugh detail his plans, of the case of a friend of ours, whom I will call Lestrange, who had at one time entered a Benedictine monastery as a novice. Lestrange used to talk about himself in an engaging way in the third person, and I remember him saying that the reason why he left the monastery was "because Lestrange found that he could only be an inmate of a monastery in which Lestrange was also Abbot!" I did not feel that in Hugh's community there would be much chance of the independent expression of the individualities of his associates!

He was ordained deacon in 1894 at Addington, or rather in Croydon parish church, by my father, whose joy in admitting his beloved son to the Anglican ministry was very great indeed.

Before the ordination Hugh decided to go into solitary retreat. He took two rooms in the lodge-cottage of Burton Park, two or three miles out of Lincoln. I suppose he selected Lincoln as a scene endeared to him by childish memories.

He divided the day up for prayer, meditation, and solitary walks, and often went in to service in the cathedral. He says that he was in a state of tense excitement, and the solitude and introspection had an alarmingly depressing effect upon him. He says that the result of this was an appalling mental agony: "It seemed to me after a day or two that there was no truth in religion, that Jesus Christ was not God, that the whole of life was an empty sham, and that I was, if not the chiefest of sinners, at any rate the most monumental of fools." He went to the Advent services feeling, he says, like a soul in hell. But matters mended after that, and the ordination itself seemed to him a true consecration. He read the Gospel, and he remembered gratefully the sermon of Canon Mason, my father's beloved friend and chaplain.



VIII

THE ETON MISSION

There were many reasons why Hugh should begin his clerical work at Hackney Wick, though I suspect it was mainly my father's choice. It was a large, uniformly poor district, which had been adopted by Eton in about 1880 as the scene of its Mission. There were certain disadvantages attending the choice of that particular district. The real raison d'etre of a School Mission is educative rather than philanthropic, in order to bring boys into touch with social problems, and to give them some idea that the way of the world is not the way of a prosperous and sheltered home. It is open to doubt whether it is possible to touch boys' hearts and sympathies much except by linking a School Mission on to some institution for the care of boys—an orphan school or a training ship. Only the most sensitive are shocked and distressed by the sight of hard conditions of life it all, and as a rule boys have an extraordinarily unimaginative way of taking things as they see them, and not thinking much or anxiously about mending them.

In any case the one aim ought to be to give boys a personal interest in such problems, and put them in personal touch with them. But the Eton Mission was planted in a district which it was very hard to reach from Eton, so that few of the boys were ever able to make a personal acquaintance with the hard and bare conditions of life in the crowded industrial region which their Mission was doing so much to help and uplift, or to realise the urgency of the needs of a district which most of them had never visited.

But if the Mission did not touch the imagination of the boys, yet, on the other hand, it became a very well-managed parish, with ample resources to draw upon; and it certainly attracted the services of a number of old Etonians, who had reached a stage of thought at which the problem of industrial poverty became an interesting one.

Money was poured out upon the parish; a magnificent church was built, a clergy-house was established, curates were subsidised, clubs were established, and excellent work was done there. The vicar at this time was a friend and contemporary of my own at Eton, St. Clair Donaldson, now Archbishop of Brisbane. He had lived with us as my father's chaplain for a time, but his mind was set on parish work rather than administration. He knew Hugh well, and Hugh was an Etonian himself. Moreover, my father was glad that Hugh should be with a trusted friend, and so he went there. St. Clair Donaldson was a clergyman of an Evangelical type, though the Mission had been previously conducted by a very High Churchman, William Carter, the present Archbishop of Capetown. But now distinctive High Church practices were given up, and the parish was run on moderate, kindly, and sensible lines. Whether such an institution is primarily and distinctively religious may be questioned. Such work is centred rather upon friendly and helpful relations, and religion becomes one of a number of active forces, rather than the force upon which all depends. High-minded, duty-loving, transparently good and cheerful as the tone of the clergy was, it was, no doubt, tentative rather than authoritative.

Hugh's work there lay a good deal in the direction of the boys' clubs; he used to go down to the clubs, play and talk with the boys, and go out with them on Saturday afternoons to football and cricket. But he never found it a congenial occupation, and I cannot help feeling that it was rather a case of putting a very delicate and subtle instrument to do a rough sort of work. What was needed was a hearty, kindly, elder-brotherly relation, and the men who did this best were the good-natured and robust men with a generic interest in the young, who could set a clean-minded, wholesome, and hearty example. But Hugh was not of this type. His mind was full of mystical and poetical ideas of religion, and his artistic nature was intent upon expressing them. He was successful in a way, because he had by this time a great charm of frankness and simplicity; he never had the least temptation to draw social distinctions, but he desired to find people personally interesting. He used to say afterwards that he did not really believe in what involved a sort of social condescension, and, like another incisive missioner, he thought that the giving up a few evenings a week by wealthy and even fashionable young-men, however good-hearted and earnest, to sharing the amusements of the boys of a parish, was only a very uncomfortable way of showing the poor how the rich lived! There is no sort of doubt about the usefulness and kindliness of such work, and it obviously is one of the experiments which may tend to create social sympathy: but Hugh came increasingly to believe that the way to lead boys to religion was not through social gatherings, but by creating a strong central nucleus of Christian instruction and worship; his heart was certainly not in his work at this time, though there was much that appealed to him particularly to his sense of humour, which was always strongly developed.

There was an account he gave of a funeral he had to conduct in the early days of his work, where, after a large congregation had assembled in the church, the arrival of the coffin itself was delayed, and he was asked to keep things going. He gave out hymns, he read collects, he made a short address, and still the undertaker at the door shook his head. At last he gave out a hymn that was not very well known, and found that the organist had left his post, whereupon he sang it alone, as an unsustained solo.

He told me, too, that after preaching written sermons, he resolved to try an extempore one. He did so with much nervousness and hesitation. The same evening St. Clair Donaldson said to him kindly but firmly that preachers were of two kinds—the kind that could write a fairly coherent discourse and deliver it more or less impressively, and the kind that might venture, after careful preparation, to speak extempore; and that he felt bound to tell Hugh that he belonged undoubtedly to the first kind. This was curious, because Hugh afterwards became, by dint of trouble and practice, a quite remarkably distinguished and impressive preacher. Indeed, even before he left the Church of England, the late Lord Stanmore, who was an old friend of my father's, said to me that he had heard all the great Anglican preachers for many years, and that he had no hesitation in putting my brother in the very first rank.

However his time was very full; the parish was magnificently organised; besides the clubs there were meetings of all sorts, very systematic visiting, a ladies' settlement, plays acted by children, in which Hugh took a prominent part both in composing the libretto and rehearsing the performances, coaching as many as seventy children at a time.

He went to a retreat given by a Cowley Father in the course of his time at the Eton Mission, and heard Father Maturin unfold, with profound enthusiasm and inspiring eloquence, a scheme of Catholic doctrine, worship, and practice, laying especial stress on Confession. These ideas began to take shape in Hugh's mind, and he came to the conclusion that it was necessary in a place like London, and working among the harassed and ill-educated poor, to materialise religion—that is to say, to fit some definite form, rite, symbol, and practice to religious emotion. He thought that the bright, dignified, and stately adjuncts of worship, such as they had at the Eton Mission, were not adequate to awaken the sense of the personal and intimate relation between man and God.

In this belief he was very possibly right. Of course the dangers of the theory are obvious. There is the ultimate danger of what can fairly be called superstition, that is to say giving to religion a magical kind of influence over the material side of life. Rites, relics, images tend to become, in irrational minds, invested with an inherent and mechanical sanctity, instead of being the symbols of grace. But it is necessary to risk something; and though the risk of what may be called a sort of idolatry is great, the risk of not arousing the sense of personal religion at all is greater still.

Hugh's ordination as a priest followed in 1895; and he then made a full confession before a clergyman.

In 1896, in October, my father, who had paid a state visit to Ireland, on his return went to stay with Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden, and died there in church on a Sunday morning.

I can never forget the events of that terrible day. I received a telegram at Eton which summoned me to Hawarden, but did not state explicitly that my father was dead. I met Hugh at Euston, who told me the fact, and I can recollect walking up and down the half-deserted station with him, in a state of deep and bewildered grief. The days which followed were so crowded with business and arrangements, that even the sight of my father's body, lying robed and still, and palely smiling, in the great library of the rectory failed to bring home to me the sense that his fiery, eager, strenuous life was over. I remember that Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone came to the church with us, and that Hugh celebrated and gave us the Communion. But the day when we travelled south with the coffin, the great pomp at Canterbury, which was attended by our present King and the present King of Norway, when we laid him to rest in a vault under the north-western tower, and the days of hurried and crowded business at Addington are still faint and dream-like to me.

My mother and sister went out to Egypt for the winter; Hugh's health broke down; he was threatened with rheumatic fever, and was ordered to go out with them. It was here that he formed a very close and intimate companionship with my sister Maggie, and came to rely much on her tender sympathy and wise advice. He never returned to the Eton Mission.



IX

KEMSING AND MIRFIELD

The change proved very beneficial to Hugh; but it was then, with returning health and leisure for reflection, that he began to consider the whole question of Anglicanism and Catholicism. He describes some of the little experiences which turned his mind in this direction. He became aware of the isolation and what he calls the "provincialism" of the Anglican Church. He saw many kinds of churches and varieties of worship. He went on through the Holy Land, and at Jerusalem celebrated the Communion in the Chapel of Abraham; at Damascus he heard with a sort of horror of the submission of Father Maturin to Rome. In all this his scheme of a religious community revived. The ceremonial was to be Caroline. "We were to wear no eucharistic vestments, but full surplices and black scarves, and were to do nothing in particular."

When he returned, he went as curate to Kemsing, a village in Kent. It was decided that for the sake of his health his work must be light. The Rector, Mr. Skarratt, was a wealthy man; he had restored the church beautifully, and had organised a very dignified and careful musical service. Hugh lived with him at the vicarage, a big, comfortable house, with a succession of interesting guests. He had a very happy year, devoting much attention to preaching, and doing a great deal of work among the children, for which he had a quite singular gift. He had a simple and direct way with them, equally removed from both petting and authoritativeness. His own natural childlikeness came out—and indeed all his life he preserved the innocence, the impulsiveness, the mingled impatience and docility of a child more than any man I ever saw.

I remember a conversation I had with Hugh about this time. An offer had been made to him, through me, of an important country living. He said that he was extraordinarily happy at Kemsing but that he was too comfortable—he needed more discipline. He said further that he was beginning to find that he had the power of preaching, and that it was in this direction rather than in the direction of pastoral activity that his life was going to lie.

It was rather a pettish conversation. I asked him whether he might not perhaps find the discipline he needed in doing the pastoral work which did not interest him, rather than in developing his life on lines which he preferred. I confess that it was rather a priggish line to take; and in any case it did not come well from me because as a schoolmaster I think I always pursued an individualistic line, and worked hard on my own private basis of preferences rather than on the established system of the school. But I did not understand Hugh at this date. It is always a strain to find one whom one has always regarded as a boy, almost as a child, holding strong and definitely matured views. I thought him self-absorbed and wilful—as indeed he was—but he was pursuing a true instinct and finding his real life.

He then received an invitation to become a mission preacher, and went to consult Archbishop Temple about it. The Archbishop told him, bluffly and decisively, that he was far too young, and that before he took it upon himself to preach to men and women he ought to have more experience of their ways and hearts.

But Hugh with his usual independence was not in the least daunted. He had an interview with Dr. Gore, now Bishop of Oxford, who was then Head of the House of the Resurrection at Mirfield, and was accepted by him as a probationer in the Community. Hugh went to ask leave of Archbishop Maclagan, and having failed with one Primate succeeded with another.

The Community of the Resurrection was established by Bishop Gore as an Anglican house more or less on Benedictine lines. It acquired a big house among gardens, built, I believe, by a wealthy manufacturer. It has since been altered and enlarged, but Hugh drew an amusing set of sketches to illustrate the life there, in which it appears a rueful and rather tawdry building, of yellow stone and blue slate, of a shallow and falsetto Gothic, or with what maybe called Gothic sympathies. It is at Mirfield, near Bradford, in the Calder valley; the country round full of high chimneys, and the sky much blurred with smoke, but the grounds and gardens were large, and suited to a spacious sort of retirement. From the same pictures I gather that the house was very bare within and decidedly unpleasing, with no atmosphere except that of a denuded Victorian domesticity.

Some of the Brothers were occupied in definitely erudite work, editing liturgical, expository, and devotional works; and for these there was a large and learned library. The rest were engaged in evangelistic mission work with long spaces of study and devotion, six months roughly being assigned to outside activities, and six to Community life. The day began early, the Hours were duly recited. There was work in the morning and after tea, with exercise in the afternoon. On Saturday a chapter was held, with public confession, made kneeling, of external breaches of the rule. Silence was kept from Compline, at ten o'clock, until the next day's midday meal; there was manual work, wood-chopping, coal-breaking, boot-cleaning and room-dusting. For a long time Hugh worked at step-cutting in the quarry near the house, which was being made into a garden. The members wore cassocks with a leather belt. They were called "Father" and the head of the house was "Senior" or "Superior."

The vows were simple, of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but were renewed annually for a period of thirteen months, accompanied by an expression of an intention, only, to remain in the community for life. As far as I remember, if a Brother had private means, he was bound to hand over his income but not his capital, while he was a member, and the copyright of all books written during membership belonged absolutely to the Community. Hugh wrote the book of mystical stories, The Light Invisible, at this time; it had a continuous sale, and he used humorously to lament the necessity of handing over the profits to the Order, long after he had left it and joined the Church of Rome. The Brothers were not allowed, I think, to possess any personal property, and received clothing and small luxuries either as gifts, or purchased them through orders from the Bursar. Our dear old family nurse, Beth, to whom Hugh was as the apple of her eye, used to make him little presents of things that he needed—his wardrobe was always scanty and threadbare—and would at intervals lament his state of destitution. "I can't bear to think of the greedy creatures taking away all the gentlemen's things!"

There was a chapel in the house, of a High Anglican kind, where vestments and incense were used, and plainsong sung. There were about fourteen Brothers.

Hugh was obviously and delightfully happy at Mirfield. I remember well how he used to describe the pleasure of returning to it from a Mission, the silence, the simplicity of the life, the liberty underlying the order and discipline. The tone of the house was admirably friendly and kindly, without gossip, bickering or bitterness, and Hugh found himself among cheerful and sympathetic companions, with the almost childlike mirthfulness which comes of a life, strict, ascetic, united, and free from worldly cares. He spent his first two years in study mainly, and extended his probation. It illustrates the fact that he was acquainting himself strangely little with current theological thought that the cause of his delay was that he was entirely taken aback by a sermon of Dr. Gore's on the Higher Criticism. The whole idea of it was completely novel to Hugh, and upset him terribly, so that he thought he could hardly recover his balance. Neither then nor later had he the smallest sympathy with or interest in Modernism. Finally he took the vows in 1901; my mother was present. He was installed, his hand kissed by the Brethren, and he received the Communion in entire hopefulness and happiness. I was always conscious, in those days, that Hugh radiated an atmosphere of intense rapture and ecstasy about him: the only drawback was that, in his rare visits to home, he was obviously pining to be back at Mirfield.

Then his work began; and he says that refreshed and reinvigorated as they were before going on a Mission, by long, quiet, and careful preparation, they used to plunge into their work with ardent and eager enthusiasm. The actual mission work was hard. Hugh records that once after a Mission in London they spent four days in interviewing people and hearing confessions for eleven hours a day, with occasional sermons interspersed.

At times some of the Brothers went into residence at Westminster, in Dr. Gore's house—he was a Canon of the Abbey—and there Hugh preached his only sermon in the Abbey. But he was now devoting himself to Mission preaching, and perfecting his system. He never thought very highly of his gift of exposition. "I have a certain facility in preaching, but not much," he once said, adding, "I have far more in writing." And I have heard him say often that, if he let himself go in preaching, his tendency was to become vulgar. I have in my possession hundreds of his skeleton notes. They consist of the main points of his argument, written out clearly and underlined, with a certain amount of the texture indicated, sentence-summaries, epigrammatic statements, dicta, emphatic conclusions. He attained his remarkable facility by persistent, continuous, and patient toil; and a glance at his notebooks and fly-leaves would be the best of lessons for anyone who was tempted to depend upon fluid and easy volubility. He used to say that, after long practice, a sermon would fall into shape in a very few moments; and I remember his once taking carefully written address of my own, summarising and denuding it, and presenting me with a little skeleton of its essence, which he implored me to use; though I had not the courage to do so. He said, too, that he believed that he could teach anyone of ordinary brain-power and choice of language to preach extempore on these lines in six months, if only he would rigidly follow his method. His arguments, in the course of his sermons, did not always seem to me very cogent; but his application of them was always most clear and effective. You always knew exactly what he was driving at, and what point he had reached; if it was not good logic, it was extremely effective logic, and you seemed to run hand in hand with him. I remember a quite admirable sermon he preached at Eton at this date—it was most simple and moving. But at the same time the effect largely depended upon a grace of which he was unconscious—quaint, naive, and beautiful phrasing, a fine poetical imagination, tiny word-pictures, and a youthful and impetuous charm. His gestures at that time were free and unconstrained, his voice resonant, appealing, and clear.

He used to tell innumerable stories of his sermon adventures. There was a story of a Harvest Festival sermon near Kemsing, in the days when he used a manuscript; he found on arriving at the church that he had left it behind him, and was allowed to remain in the vestry during the service, writing out notes on the inside of envelopes torn open, with the stump of a pencil which would only make marks at a certain angle. The service proceeded with a shocking rapidity, and when he got to the pulpit, spread out his envelopes, and addressed himself to the consideration of the blessings of the Harvest, he found on drawing to an end that he had only consumed about four minutes. He went through the whole again, slightly varying the phraseology, and yet again repeated the performance; only to find, on putting on his coat, that the manuscript was in his pocket all the time.

He used to say that the most nervous experience in the world was to go into a street or market-place of a town where he was to hold a Mission with open-air sermons, and there, without accompaniment, and with such scanty adherents as he could muster, strike up a hymn. By-standers would shrug their shoulders and go away smiling. Windows would be opened, figures would lean out, and presently withdraw again, slamming the casement.

Hugh was always extremely nervous before a sermon. He told me that when he was about to preach, he did not generally go in for the service, but remained in the vestry until the sermon; and that he would lie on a sofa or sit in a chair, in agonies of nervousness, with actual attacks of nausea, and even sickness at times, until he was summoned, feeling that he could not possibly get through. This left him after speaking a few words: but he also maintained that on the rare occasions when he felt quite confident and free from nervousness, the result was a failure: he said that a real anxiety as to the effect of the sermon was a necessary stimulus, and evoked a mental power which confidence was apt to leave dormant.



X

THE CHANGE

Hugh has himself traced in full detail, in his book The Confessions of a Convert, how he gradually became convinced that it was his duty to make his submission to the Church of Rome; and I will not repeat the story here. But I can recall very distinctly the period during which he was making up his mind. He left Mirfield in the early summer of 1903, so that when I came home for the summer holidays, he was living there. I had myself just accepted from King Edward the task of editing Queen Victoria's letters, and had resigned my Eton mastership. Hugh was then engaged in writing his book By What Authority with inconceivable energy and the keenest possible enjoyment. His absorption in the work was extraordinary. He was reading historical books and any books bearing on the history of the period, taking notes, transcribing. I have before me a large folio sheet of paper on which he has written very minutely hundreds of picturesque words and phrases of the time, to be worked into the book. He certainly soaked himself in the atmosphere of the time, and I imagine that the details are correct, though as he had never studied history scientifically, I expect he is right in saying that the mental atmosphere which he represented as existing in Elizabethan times was really characteristic of a later date. He said of the book: "I fear it is the kind of book which anyone acquainted with the history, manners, and customs of the Elizabethan age should find no difficulty in writing." He found many faults subsequently with the volume, but he convinced himself at the time that the Anglican post-Reformation Church had no identity or even continuity with the pre-Reformation Church.

He speaks of himself as undergoing an experience of great unhappiness and unrest. Undoubtedly leaving the Mirfield Community was a painful severance. He valued a friendly and sympathetic atmosphere very much, and he was going to migrate from it into an unknown society, leaving his friends behind, with a possibility of suspicion, coldness, and misunderstanding. It was naturally made worse by the fact that all my father's best and oldest friends were Anglicans, who by position and tradition would be likely to disapprove most strongly of the step, and even feel it, if not an aspersion on my father's memory, at all events a disloyal and unfilial act—as indeed proved to be the case. But I doubt if these considerations weighed very much with Hugh. He was always extremely independent of criticism and disapproval, and though he knew many of my father's friends, through their visits to our house, he had not made friends with them on his own account—and indeed he had always been so intent on the life he was himself leading, that he had never been, so to speak, one of the Nethinims of the sanctuary; nor had the dependent and discipular attitude, the reverential attachment to venerable persons, been in the least congenial to him. He had always rather effaced himself in the presence of our ecclesiastical visitors, and had avoided the constraint of their dignity. Indeed, up to this time he had not much gone in search of personal relationships at all except with equals and contemporaries.

But the ignorance of the world he was about to enter upon was a more serious factor in his outlook. He knew that he would have to enter submissively and humbly an entirely strange domain, that he would have to join a chilly and even suspicious circle—for I suppose a convert to any new faith is apt to be regarded, until he is fully known, as possibly weak, indeterminate, and fluctuating, and to be treated with compassion rather than admiration. With every desire to be sympathetic, people in conscious possession of security and certainty are naturally inclined to regard a claimant as bent on acquisition rather than as a hero eager for self-sacrifice.

Certainly Hugh's dejection, which I think was reserved for his tired moments, was not apparent. To me, indeed, he appeared in the light of one intent on a great adventure, with all the rapture of confidence and excitement about him. As my mother said, he went to the shelter of his new belief as a lover might run to the arms of his beloved. Like the soldier in the old song, he did not linger, but "gave the bridle-reins a shake." He was not either melancholy or brooding. He looked very well, he was extremely active in mind and in body.

I find the following extract from my diary of August:

"August 1903.—In the afternoon walked with Hugh the Paxhill round. Hugh is in very good cheerful spirits, steering in a high wind straight to Rome, writing a historical novel, full of life and jests and laughter and cheerfulness; not creeping in, under the shadow of a wall, sobbing as the old cords break; but excited, eager, jubilant, enjoying."

His room was piled with books and papers; he used to rush into meals with the glow of suspended energy, eat rapidly and with appetite—I have never seen a human being who ate so fast and with so little preference as to the nature of what he ate—then he would sit absorbed for a moment, and ask to be excused, using the old childish formula: "May I get down?" Sometimes he would come speeding out of his room, to read aloud a passage he had written to my mother, or to play a few chords on the piano. He would not as a rule join in games or walks—he went out for a short, rapid walk by himself, a little measured round, and flew back to his work. He generally, I should think, worked about eight hours a day at this time. In the evening he would play a game of cards after dinner, and would sit talking in the smoking-room, rapidly consuming cigarettes and flicking the ash off with his forefinger. He was also, I remember, very argumentative. He said once of himself that he was perpetually quarrelling with his best friends. He was a most experienced coat-trailer! My mother, my sister, my brother, Miss Lucy Tait who lives with us, and myself would find ourselves engaged in heated arguments, the disputants breathing quickly, muttering unheeded phrases, seeking in vain for a loophole or a pause. It generally ended by Hugh saying with mournful pathos that he could not understand why everyone set on him—that he never argued in any other circle, and he could only entreat to be let alone. It is true that we were accustomed to argue questions of every kind with tenacity and even with invective. But the fact that these particular arguments always dealt with the inconsistencies and difficulties of ecclesiastical institutions revealed their origin. The fact was that at this time Hugh was accustomed to assert with much emphasis some extremely provocative and controversial position. He was markedly scornful of Anglican faults and mannerisms, and behaved both then and later as if no Anglicans could have any real and vital belief in their principles, but must be secretly ashamed of them. Yet he was acutely sensitive himself, and resented similar comments; he used to remind me of the priest who said to Stevenson "Your sect—for it would be doing it too much honour to call it a religion," and was then pained to be thought discourteous or inconsiderate.

Discourteous, indeed, Hugh was not. I have known few people who could argue so fiercely without personal innuendo. But, on the other hand, he was both triumphant and sarcastic. There was an occasion at a later date when he advanced some highly contestable points as assumptions, and my aunt, Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, in an agony of rationality, said to him, "But these things are surely matters of argument, Hugh?" To which Hugh replied, "Well, you see, I have the misfortune, as you regard it, of belonging to a Church which happens to know."

Here is another extract from my diary at this time:

"August 1903.—At dinner Hugh and I fell into a fierce argument, which became painful, mainly, I think, because of Hugh's vehemence and what I can only call violence. He reiterates his consciousness of his own stupidity in an irritating way. The point was this. He maintained that it was uncharitable to say, 'What a bad sermon So-and-so preached,' and not uncharitable to say, 'Well, it is better than the sickening stuff one generally hears'; uncharitable to say, 'What nasty soup this is!' and not uncharitable to say, 'Well, it is better than the filthy pigwash generally called soup.' I maintained that to say that, one must have particular soups in one's mind; and that it was abusing more sermons and soups, and abusing them more severely, than if one found fault with one soup or one sermon.

"But it was all no use. He was very impatient if one joined issue at any point, and said that he was interrupted. He dragged all sorts of red herrings over the course, the opinions of Roman theologians, and differences between mortal and venial sin, &c. I don't think he even tried to apprehend my point of view, but went off into a long rigmarole about distinguishing between the sin and the sinner; and said that it was the sin one ought to blame, not the sinner. I maintained that the consent of the sinner's will was of the essence of the sin, and that the consent of the will of the sinner to what was not in itself wrong was the essence of sin—e.g. not sinful to drink a glass of wine, but, sinful if you had already had enough.

"It was rather disagreeable; but I get so used to arguing with absolute frankness with people at Eton that I forget how unpleasant it may sound to hearers—and it all subsided very quickly, like a boiling pot."

I remember, too, at a later date, that he produced some photographs of groups of, I think, Indian converts at a Roman Catholic Mission, and stated that anyone who had eyes to see could detect which of them had been baptized by the expression of their faces. It was, of course, a matter which it was impossible to bring to the test; but he would not even admit that catechumens who were just about to be baptized could share the same expression as those who actually had been baptized. This was a good instance of his provocative style. But it was always done like a game. He argued deftly, swiftly, and inconclusively, but the fault generally lay in his premisses, which were often wild assumptions; not in his subsequent argument, which was cogent, logical, and admirably quick at finding weak points in his adversary's armour. At the same time he was wholly placable. No one could so banish and obliterate from his mind the impression of the harshest and fiercest arguments. The effervescence of his mind subsided as quickly as it arose. And my whole recollection of the period is that he was in a state of great mental and spiritual excitement, and that he was experiencing to the full the joys of combat and action.

While the interest of composition lasted, he remained at home, but the book was soon done. He was still using the oratory in the house for celebrations, and I believe that he occasionally helped in the services of the parish church. The last time I actually heard him preach was at the previous Christmas, when the sermon seemed to me both tired and hard, as of one whose emotions were strained by an interior strife.

Among his diversions at this time he painted, on the casement windows of the oratory, some figures of saints in water-colour. The designs were quaint, but in execution they were the least successful things he ever did; while the medium he employed was more apt to exclude light than to tinge it.

These strange figures became known in the village as "Mrs. Benson's dolls." They were far more visible from outside than from within, and they looked like fantastic puppets leaning against the panes. What use my mother was supposed to make of them, or why she piled her dolls, tier above tier, in an upper window was never explained. Hugh was very indignant when their artistic merit was called in question, but later on he silently effaced them.

The curious intensity and limitation of Hugh's affections were never more exemplified than in his devotion to a charming collie, Roddy, belonging to my sister, the most engaging dog I have ever known. Roddy was a great truant, and went away sometimes for days and even weeks. Game is carefully preserved on the surrounding estates, and we were always afraid that Roddy, in his private hunting expeditions, might fall a victim to a conscientious keeper's gun, which, alas, was doubtless the cause of his final and deeply lamented disappearance. Hugh had a great affection for Roddy, and showed it, when he came to Tremans, by keeping Roddy constantly at his heels, having him to sleep in his room, and never allowing him out of his sight. For the first day or two Roddy enjoyed these attentions, but gradually, as the visit lasted, became more and more restive, and was for ever trying to give Hugh the slip; moreover, as soon as Hugh went away, Roddy always disappeared for a few days to recover his sense of independence and liberty. I can see Hugh now walking about in his cassock, with Roddy at his heels; then they would join a circle on the lawn, and Roddy would attach himself to some other member of the family for a little, but was always sternly whistled away by Hugh, when he went back to his room. Moreover, instead of going back to the stable to sleep snugly in the straw, which Roddy loved best, he had to come to the smoking-room, and then go back to sleep in a basket chair in Hugh's bedroom. I can remember Hugh departing at the end of his visit, and saying to me, "I know it's no use asking you—but do try to keep an eye on Roddy! It makes me miserable to think of his getting into the woods and being shot." But he did not think much about Roddy in his absence, never asked to take Roddy to Hare Street; nor did he manifest deep emotion when he finally disappeared, nor make long lamentation for him. Hugh never wasted any time in vain regrets or unavailing pathos.

He paid visits to certain friends of my mother's to consult about his position. He did this solely out of deference to her wishes, but not, I think, with any hope that his purpose would be changed. They were, I believe, John Reeve, Rector of Lambeth, a very old and dear friend of our family, Bishop Wilkinson, and Lord Halifax. The latter stated his position clearly, that the Pope was Vicar of Christ jure ecclesiastico but not jure divino, and that it was better to remain an Anglican and promote unity so. Hugh had also a painful correspondence with John Wordsworth, late Bishop of Salisbury, a very old friend of my father's. The Bishop wrote affectionately at first, but eventually became somewhat indignant, and told Hugh plainly that a few months' work in a slum parish would clear his mind of doubt; the correspondence ended by his saying emphatically that he regarded conversion almost as a loss of sanity. No doubt it was difficult for one of immense patristic and theological learning, who was well versed in the historical aspect of the affair as well as profoundly conscious of the reality of his own episcopal commission, to enter the lists with a son of his old friend. But neither sympathy nor harshness could have affected Hugh at this time, any more than advice to return could alter the position of a man who had taken a leap and was actually flying through the air.

Hugh then went off on a long bicycle tour by himself, dressed as a layman. He visited the Carthusian Monastery of St Hugh, near West Grinstead, which I afterwards visited in his company. He spent a night or two at Chichester, where he received the Communion in the cathedral; but he was in an unhappy frame of mind, probably made more acute by solitude.



XI

THE DECISION

By this time we all knew what was about to happen. "When a man's mind is made up," says the old Irish proverb, "his feet must set out on the way."

Just before my brother made his profession as a Brother of the Mirfield Community, he was asked by Bishop Gore whether he was in any danger of becoming a Roman Catholic. My brother said honestly, "Not so far as I can see." This was in July 1901. In September 1903 he was received into the Church of Rome. What was it which had caused the change? It is very difficult to say, and though I have carefully read my brother's book, the Confessions of a Convert, I find it hard to give a decisive answer. I have no intention of taking up a controversial attitude, and indeed I am little equipped for doing so. It is clear that my brother was, and had for some time been, searching for something, let us call it a certainty, which he did not find in the Church of England. The surprise to me is that one whose religion, I have always thought, ran upon such personal and individualistic lines, should not have found in Anglicanism the very liberty he most desired. The distinguishing feature of Anglicanism is that it allows the largest amount of personal liberty, both as regards opinion and also as regards the use of Catholic traditions, which is permitted by an ecclesiastical body in the world. The Anglican Church claims and exercises very little authority at all. Each individual Bishop has a considerable discretionary power, and some allow a far wider liberty of action than others. In all cases, divergences of doctrine and practice are dealt with by personal influence, tact, and compromise, and force majeure is invoked as little as possible. In the last hundred years, during which there have been strong and active movements in various directions in the Church of England both towards Catholic doctrine and Latitudinarianism, such synodical and legal action as has been taken has generally proved to be a mistake. It is hard to justify the system logically and theoretically, but it may be said that the methods of the Church have at least been national, in the sense that they have suited the national temperament, which is independent and averse to coercive discipline. It may, I believe, be truly asserted that in England any Church which attempted any inquisition into the precise doctrine held by its lay members would lose adherents in large numbers. Of late the influence of the English Church has been mainly exerted in the cause of social reform, and her tendency is more and more to condone divergences of doctrine and opinion in the case of her ministers when they are accompanied by spiritual fervour and practical activity. The result has certainly been to pacify the intellectual revolt against religious opinion which was in full progress some forty years ago. When I myself was at the university some thirty years ago, the attitude of pronounced intellectuals against religious opinion was contemptuous and even derisive. That is not the case now. The instinct for religion is recognised as a vital part of the human mind, and though intellectual young men are apt at times to tilt against the travesty of orthodoxy which they propound for their own satisfaction, there is a far deeper and wider tolerance and even sympathy for every form of religious belief. Religion is recognised as a matter of personal preference, and the agnostic creed has lost much of its aggressive definiteness.

It appears to me that, so far as I can measure the movement of my brother's mind, when he decided first to take Orders his religion was of a mystical and aesthetic kind; and I do not think that there is any evidence that he really examined the scientific and agnostic position at all. His heart and his sense of beauty were already engaged, and life without religion would have scented an impossibility to him. When he took Orders, his experience was threefold. At the Eton Mission he was confronted by an Anglicanism of a devout and simple kind, which concentrated itself almost entirely on the social aspect of Christianity, on the love of God and the brotherhood of man. The object of the workers there was to create comradeship, and to meet the problems of conduct which arose by a faith in the cleansing and uplifting power of God. Brotherly love was its first aim.

I do not think that Hugh had ever any real interest in social reform, in politics, in causes, in the institutions which aim at the consolidation of human endeavour and sympathy. He had no philosophic grasp of history, nor was he a student of the psychology of religion. His instincts were all individualistic and personal; and indeed I believe that all his life he was an artist in the largest sense, in the fact that his work was the embodiment of dreams, the expression of the beauty which he constantly perceived. His ideal was in one sense a larger one than the technically artistic ideal, because it embraced the conception of moral beauty even more ardently than mere external beauty. The mystical element in him was for ever reaching out in search of some Divine essence in the world. He was not in search at any time of personal relations. He attracted more affection than he ever gave; he rejoiced its sympathy and kindred companionship as a flower rejoices in sunshine; but I think he had little taste of the baffled suffering which accompanies all deep human passion. He once wrote "God has preserved me extraordinarily from intimacies with others. He has done this, not I. I have longed for intimacies and failed to win them." He had little of the pastoral spirit; I do not think that he yearned over unshepherded souls, or primarily desired to seek and save the lost. On the other hand he responded eagerly to any claim made to himself for help and guidance, and he was always eager not to chill or disappoint people who seemed to need him. But he found little satisfaction in his work at the Eton Mission, and I do not think he would ever have been at home there.

At Kemsing, on the other hand, he had an experience of what I may fairly call the epicureanism of religion. The influences there were mainly aesthetic; the creation of a circle like that at Kemsing would have been impossible without wealth. Beautiful worship, refined enjoyment, cultivated companionship were all lavished upon him. But he soon tired of this, because it was an exotic thing. It was a little paradise of a very innocent kind, from which all harsh and contradictory elements had been excluded. But this mere sipping of exquisite flavours became to him a very objectless thing, because it corresponded to no real need. I believe that if at this time he had discovered his literary gifts, and had begun seriously to write, he might have been content to remain under such conditions, at all events for a time. But he had as yet no audience, and had not begun to exercise his creative imagination. Moreover, to a nature like Hugh's, naturally temperate and ardent, and with no gross or sensuous fibre of any kind, there was a real craving for the bareness and cleanness of self-discipline and asceticism. There is a high and noble pleasure in some natures towards the reduction and disregard of all material claims and limitations, by which a freedom and expansiveness of the spirit can be won. Such self-denial gives to the soul a freshness and buoyancy which, for those who can pursue it, is in itself an ecstasy of delight. And thus Hugh found it impossible to stay in an atmosphere which, though exquisitely refined and quiet, yet hampered the energy of aspiration and adventure.

And so he came to the Mirfield Community, and for a time found exactly what he wanted. The Brotherhood did not mainly concern itself with the organisation of social reform, while it reduced the complications of life to a spare and rigorous simplicity. The question is, why this life, which allowed him to apply all his gifts and powers to the work which still, I think, was the embodiment of his visions, did not completely satisfy him?

I think, in the first place, that it is probable that, though he was not conscious of it, the discipline and the subordination of the society did not really quite give him enough personal freedom. He continued for a time to hanker after community life; he used to say, when he first joined the Church of Rome, that he thought he might end as a Carthusian, or later on as a Benedictine. But he spoke less and less of this as the years went on, and latterly I believe that he ceased to contemplate it, except as a possibility in case his powers of speech and writing should fail him. I believe that he really, thought perhaps unconsciously, desired a freer hand, and that he found that the community life on the whole cramped his individuality. His later life was indeed a complete contrast to anything resembling community life; his constant restlessness of motion, his travels, his succession of engagements both in all parts of England as well as in Rome and America, were really, I do not doubt, more congenial to him; while his home life ultimately became only his opportunity for intense and concentrated literary work.

But beyond and above that lay the doctrinal question. He sums up what he came to believe in a few words, that the Church of Rome was "the divinely appointed centre of unity," and he felt the "absolute need of a Teaching Church to preserve and to interpret the truths of Christianity to each succeeding generation." Once convinced of this, argument mattered little. Hugh was entirely fearless, adventurous, and independent; he had no ambitions in the ordinary sense of the word; that is to say he made no frontal attack upon promotion or respect. He was not what is called a "safe" man; he had neither caution or prudence, nor any regard for average opinion. I do not think he ever gave allegiance to any personality, nor took any direct influence from anyone. The various attempts he made to consult people of different schools of thought, all carefully recorded in his Confessions, were made courteously and deferentially; but it seems to me that any opposition or argument that he encountered only added fuel to the fire, and aroused his reason only to combat the suggestions with which he did not instinctively agree. Indeed I believe that it was his very isolation, his independence, his lack of any real deference to personal authority, which carried him into the Church of Rome. One who knew Hugh well and indeed loved him said to me a little bitterly that he had become a Roman Catholic not because his faith was strong, but because it was weak. There was a touch of truth in this. Hugh did with all his heart desire to base his life upon some impersonal unquestionable certainty; and where a more submissive mind might have reposed, as a disciple, upon the strength of a master, Hugh required to repose upon something august, age-long, overpowering, a great moving force which could not be too closely or precisely interrogated, but which was a living and breathing reality, a mass of corporate experience, in spite of the inconsistencies and irrationalities which must beset any system which has built up a logical and scientific creed in eras when neither logic nor science were fully understood.

The fundamental difference between Catholicism and Protestantism lies ultimately in the old conflict between liberty and discipline, or rather in the degree to which each is valued. The most ardent lover of liberty has to admit that his own personal inclinations cannot form a satisfactory standard of conduct. He must in certain matters subjugate his will and his inclination to the prevailing laws and principles and beliefs, and he must sacrifice his private aims and desires to the common interest, even when his reason and will may not be convinced. That is a simple matter of compromise, and the sacrifice is made as a matter of expediency and duty rather than as a matter of emotion. But there are other natures to whom it is essential to live by emotion, and to whom it is a relief and delight to submerge their private inclinations in some larger national or religious emotion. We have seen of late, in the case of Germany, what tremendous strength is generated in a nation which can adore a national ideal so passionately that they can only believe it to be a blessing to other nations to have the chance given them, through devastation and defeat, of contributing to the triumph of German ideals. I do not mean that Catholicism is prepared to adopt similarly aggressive methods. But what Hugh did not find in Anglicanism was a sense of united conviction, a world-policy, a faith in ultimate triumph, all of which he found in Catholicism. The Catholic believes that God is on his side; the Anglican hopes that he is on the side of God. Among Anglicans, Hugh was fretted by having to find out how much or how little each believed. Among Catholics, that can be taken for granted. They are indeed two different qualities and types of faith, and produce, or perhaps express, different types of character. Hugh found in the Roman Church the comfort of corporate ideals and corporate beliefs; and I frankly admit that the more we became acquainted with Catholicism the more did we recognise the strong and simple core of evangelicalism within it, the mutual help and counsel, the insistence on reparation as the proof of penitence, the insight into simple human needs, the paternal indulgence combined with gentle authoritativeness. All this is eminently and profoundly Christian. It is not necessary here to say what the Anglican does not find in it or at what point it seems to become inconsistent with reason and liberty. But I desire to make it clear that what Hugh needed was an emotional surrender and a sense of corporate activity, and that his conversion was not a logical one, but the discovery of a force with which his spirit was in unison, and of a system which gave him exactly the impetus and the discipline which he required.

It is curious to note that Father Tyrell, whom Hugh consulted, said to him that he could not receive officially any convert into the Church except on terms which were impossible to persons of reason; and this is so far true that I do not believe that Hugh's conversion was a process of either intellect or reason. I believe that it was a deep instinctive and emotional need for a basis of thought so strong and vivid that he need not question it. I believe he had long been seeking for such a basis, and that he was right to accept it, because he did so in entire simplicity and genuineness. My brother was not sceptical nor analytic; he needed the repose of a large submission, of obedience to an impersonal ideal. His work lay in the presentment of religious emotion, and for this he needed a definite and specific confidence. In no other Church, and least of all in Anglicanism, could this be obtained. I do not mean for a moment that Hugh accepted the Catholic faith simply as a conscious relief; he was convinced frankly and fully that the Church of Christ could not be a divided society, but must have a continuity of doctrine and tradition. He believed that to be the Divine plan and method. Having done this, his duty and his delight were one. He tasted the full joy of obedience, the relief of not having to test, to question, to decide; and thus his loyalty was complete, because his heart was satisfied, and it was easier to him to mistrust his reason rather than to mistrust his heart. He had been swayed to and fro by many interests and ardours and influences; he had wandered far afield, and had found no peace in symbolism uncertain of what it symbolised, or in reason struggling to reconcile infinite contradictions. Now he rowed no more against the stream; he had found no human master to serve, and now he had found a great ancient and living force which could bear him on. That was, I think, the history of his spiritual change; and of one I am sure, that no surrender was ever made so guilelessly, so disinterestedly, and in so pure and simple a mood.

He has told the story of his own reception very simply and impressively. He wrote to my mother, "It has happened," and I see that he wrote also just before it to me. I quote from my diary:

"September 9, 1903.—Also a note from Hugh, from the Woodchester Dominican Convent, saying that he thinks he will be received this week, very short but affectionate. He says he won't attempt to say all that is in his mind. I replied, saying that I could not wish, knowing how he felt, the he should do otherwise—and I blessed him in a form of words."

It, may be frankly said that however much we regretted his choice, we none of us had the slightest wish to fetter it, or to discourage Hugh from following his true and conscientious convictions. One must recognise that the sunshine and the rain of God fall in different ways and at different times upon those who desire to find Him. I do not wholly understand in my mind how Hugh came to make the change, but Carlyle speaks truly when he says that there is one moral and spiritual law for all, which is that whatever is honestly incredible to a man that he may only at his direst peril profess or pretend to believe. And I understand in my heart that Hugh had hitherto felt like one out on the hillside, with wind and mist about him, and with whispers and voices calling out of the mist; and that here he found a fold and a comradeship such as he desired to find, and was never in any doubt again. And I am sure that he soon began to feel the tranquillity which comes from having taken, after much restlessness and anxiety, a hard course and made a painful choice.

At first, however, he was deeply conscious of the strain through which he had passed. He wrote to me in answer to the letter mentioned above:

Sept. 23, '03.

... Thank you so very much for your letter. It was delightful to get it. I can't tell you what happiness it has been through everything to know that you, as well as the others, felt as you did: and now your letter comes to confirm it.

There is surprisingly little to say about myself; since you ask—

I have nothing more than the deepest possible conviction—no emotionalism or sense of relief or anything of the kind.

As regards my plans—they too are tolerably vague.... All the first week I was with the Dominicans—who, I imagine, will be my final destination after two or three years.

... I imagine that I shall begin to read Theology again, in view of future Ordination: and either I shall go to Rome at the beginning of November; or possibly to Prior Park, near Bath—a school, where I shall teach an hour a day, and read Theology.

* * * * *

Mamma and I are meeting in London next week. She really has been good to me beyond all words. Her patience and kindness have been unimaginable.

Well—this is a dreary and egotistical letter. But you asked me to write about myself.

* * * * *

Well—I must thank you again for your extreme kindness—I really am grateful: though I am always dumb about such things when I meet people.

* * * * *

I remember taking a walk with Provost Hornby at Eton at this date. My diary says:

"October 1903.—We talked of Hugh. The Provost was very kind and wise. He said, 'Such a change is a testimony of sincerity and earnestness'; he went on to tell a story which Jowett told him of Dr. Johnson, who said, when a husband and wife of his acquaintance went over to Rome, 'God bless them both.' At the end of the walk he said to me, 'When you write to your brother, remember me very kindly to him, and give him, as a message from me, what Johnson said.' This I thought was beautiful—more than courteous."

I sent this message to Hugh, who was deeply touched by it, and wrote the Provost an affectionate and grateful letter.

Soon after this he went out to Rome to prepare himself for the Orders which he received nine months later. My mother went to see him off. As the train went out of the station, and Hugh was lost to view, my mother turned round and saw Bishop Wilkinson, one of our dearest friends, waiting for her. She had told him before that Hugh was leaving by that train, and had asked him to bear both herself and Hugh in mind. He had not intruded on the parting, but now he drew my mother's hand into his arm and said, "If Hugh's father, when he was here on earth, would—and he would—have always wished him to follow his conscience, how much more in Paradise!" and then he went away without another word.



XII

CAMBRIDGE AGAIN

Hugh went to the College of San Silvestro in Rome, and there he found many friends. He said that on first joining the Catholic Church, he felt like a lost dog; he wrote to me:

Rome, Nov. 26, '03.

* * * * *

My own news is almost impossible to tell, as everything is simply bewildering: in about five years from now I shall know how I felt; but at present I feel nothing but discomfort; I hate foreign countries and foreign people, and am finding more every day how hopelessly insular I am: because of course, under the circumstances, this is the proper place for me to be: but it is a kind of dentist's chair.

* * * * *

But he soon parted once and for all with his sense of isolation; while the splendours of Rome, the sense of history and state and world-wide dominion, profoundly impressed his imagination. He was deeply inspired, too, by the sight of simple and and unashamed piety among the common folk, which appeared to him to put the colder and more cautious religion of England to shame. Perhaps he did not allow sufficiently for the temperamental differences between the two nations, but at any rate he was comforted and reassured.

I do not know much of his doings at this time; I was hard at work at Windsor on the Queen's letters, and settling into a new life at Cambridge; but I realised that he was building up happiness fast. One little touch of his perennial humour comes back to my mind. He was describing to me some ceremony performed by a very old and absent-minded ecclesiastic, and how two priests stood behind him to see that he omitted nothing, "With the look in their eyes," said Hugh, "that you can see in the eyes of a terrier who is standing with ears pricked at the mouth of a burrow, and a rabbit preparing to bolt from within."

He came back a priest, and before long he settled at Cambridge, living with Monsignor Barnes at Llandaff House. Monsignor Barnes was an old Eton contemporary and friend of my own, who had begun by going to Woolwich as a cadet; then he had taken orders in the Church of England, and then had joined the Church of Rome, and was put in charge of the Roman Catholic undergraduates at Cambridge. Llandaff House is a big, rather mysterious mansion in the main street of Cambridge, opposite the University Arms Hotel. It was built by the famous Bishop Watson of Llandaff, who held a professorship at Cambridge in conjunction with his bishopric, and never resided in his diocese at all. The front rooms of the big, two-gabled house are mostly shops; the back of the house remains a stately little residence, with a chapel, a garden with some fine trees, and opens on to the extensive and quiet park of Downing College.

Hugh had a room which looked out on to the street, where he did his writing. From that date my real friendship with him began, if I may use the word. Before that, the difference in our ages, and the fact that I was a very busy schoolmaster only paying occasional visits to home, had prevented our seeing very much of each other in anything like equal comradeship. But at the beginning of 1905 I went into residence at Magdalene as a Fellow, and Hugh was often in and out, while I was made very welcome at Llandaff House. Hugh had a small income of his own, and he began to supplement it by writing. His needs and tastes were all entirely simple. He seems to me, remembering him, to have looked extremely youthful in those days, smaller in some ways than he did later. He moved very rapidly; his health was good and his activity great. He made friends at several of the colleges, he belonged to the Pitt Club, and he used to attend meetings of an undergraduates' debating club—the Decemviri—to which he had himself belonged. One of the members of that time has since told me that he was the only older man he had ever known who really mixed with undergraduates and debated with them on absolutely equal terms. But indeed, so far as looks went, though he was now thirty-four, he might almost have been an undergraduate himself.

We arranged always to walk together on Sunday afternoons. As an old member of King's College, I had a key of the garden there in the Backs, and a pass-key of the college gates, which were locked on Sunday during the chapel service. We always went and walked about that beautiful garden with its winding paths, or sat out in the bowling-green. Then we generally let ourselves into the college grounds, and went up to the south porch of the chapel, where we could hear the service proceeding within. I can remember Hugh saying, as the Psalms came to an end "Anglican double chants—how comfortable and delicious, and how entirely irreligious!"

We talked very freely and openly of all that was in our minds, and sometimes even argued on religion. He used to tell me that I was much nearer to his form of faith than most Anglicans, and I can remember his saying that the misery of being an Anglican was that it was all so rational—you had to make up your mind on every single point. "Why not," he said, "make it up on one point—the authority of the Church, and have done with it?" "Because I can't be dictated to on points in which I feel I have a right to an opinion." "Ah, that isn't a faith!" "No, only a faith in reason." At which he would shrug his shoulders, and smile. Once I remember his exhibiting very strong emotion. I had spoken of the worship of the Virgin, and said something that seemed to him to be in a spirit of levity. He stopped and turned quite pale. "Ah, don't say that!" he said; "I feel as if you had said something cynical about someone very dear to me, and far more than that. Please promise not to speak of it again."

It was in these days that I first perceived the extraordinary charm of both mind and manner that he possessed. In old days he had been amusing and argumentative enough, but he was often silent and absorbed. I think his charm had been developed by his new experiences, and by the number of strangers he had been brought into contact with; he had learned an eager and winning sort of courtesy, which grew and increased every year. On one point we wholly and entirely agreed—namely, in thinking rudeness of any kind to be not a mannerism, but a deadly sin. "I find injustice or offensiveness to myself or anyone else," he once wrote, "the hardest of all things to forgive." We concurred in detesting the habit of licensing oneself to speak one's mind, and the unpleasant English trait of confusing sincerity with frank brutality. There is a sort of Englishman who thinks he has a right, if he feels cross or contemptuous, to lay bare his mood without reference to his companion's feelings; and this seemed to us both the ugliest of phenomena.



Hugh saw a good deal of academic society in a quiet way—Cambridge is a hospitable place. I remember the consternation which was caused by his fainting away suddenly after a Feast at King's. He had been wedged into a corner, in front of a very hot fire, by a determined talker, and suddenly collapsed. I was fetched out to see him and found him stretched on a form in the Hall vestibule, being kindly cared for by the Master of a College, who was an eminent surgeon and a professor. Again I remember that we entered the room together when dining with a hospitable Master, and were introduced to a guest, to his bewilderment, as "Mr. Benson" and "Father Benson." "I must explain," said our host, "that Father Benson is not Mr. Benson's father!" "I should have imagined that he might be his son!" said the guest.

After Hugh had lived at Llandaff House for a year he accepted a curacy at the Roman Catholic church at Cambridge. I do not know how this came about. A priest can be ordained "to a bishop," in which case he has to go where he is sent, or "on his patrimony," which gives him a degree of independence. Hugh had been ordained "on his patrimony," but he was advised to take up ministerial work. He accordingly moved into the Catholic rectory, a big, red-brick house, with a great cedar in front of it, which adjoins the church. He had a large sitting-room, looking out at the back over trees and gardens, with a tiny bedroom adjoining. He had now the command of more money, and the fitting up of his rooms was a great delight to him; he bought some fine old oak furniture, and fitted the walls with green hangings, above which he set the horns of deer, which he had at various times stalked and shot—he was always a keen sportsman. I told him it was too secular an ornament, but he would not hear me.

Canon Scott, the rector, the kindest and most hospitable of men, welcomed me to the rectory, and I was often there; and our Sunday walks continued. Hugh became known at once as the best preacher in Cambridge, and great congregations flocked to hear him. I do not think he had much pastoral work to do; but now a complication ensued. A good many undergraduates used to go to hear him, ask to see him, discuss religious problems with him. Moreover, before he left the Anglican communion, Hugh had conducted a mission at Cambridge, with the result that several of his hearers became Roman Catholics. A certain amount of orthodox alarm was felt and expressed at the new and attractive religious element which his sermons provided, and eventually representations were made to one that I should use my influence with Hugh that he should leave Cambridge. This I totally declined to do, and suggested that the right way to meet it was to get an Anglican preacher to Cambridge of persuasive eloquence and force. I did eventually speak to Hugh about it, and he was indignant. He said: "I have not attempted, and shall not attempt, any sort of proselytisation of undergraduates—I do not think it fair, or even prudent. I have never started the subject of religion on any occasion with any undergraduate. But I must preach what I believe; and, of course, if undergraduates consult me, I shall tell them what I think and why I think it." This rule he strictly adhered to; and I do not know of any converts that he made.

Moreover, it was at this time that strangers, attracted by his sermons and his books, began to consult him by letter, and seek interviews with him. In this relation he showed himself, I have reason to know, extraordinarily kind, sympathetic, and straightforward. He wrote fully and as often as he was consulted; he saw an ever-increasing number of inquirers. He used to groan over the amount of time he had to spend in letters and interviews, and he used to say that it often happened that the people least worth helping took up the most time. He always gave his very best; but the people who most vexed him were those engaged in religious inquiry, not out of any profound need, but simply for the emotional luxury; and who argued round and round in a circle for the pleasure of being sympathised with. Hugh was very clear and practical in his counsels, and he was, I used to think, like a wise and even stern physician, never influenced by sentiment. It was always interesting to discuss a "case" with him. I do not mean that he discussed his cases with me, but I used to ask him how to deal with some intellectual or moral problem, and his insight seemed to me wonderfully shrewd, sensible, and clear. He had a masterly analysis, and a power of seeing alternatives and contingencies which always aroused my admiration. He was less interested in the personal element than in the psychological; and I used to feel that his strength lay in dealing with a case scientifically and technically. Sometimes he had desperate, tragic, and even alarming cases to deal with; and here his fearlessness and toughness stood him in good stead. He never shrank appalled before any moral enormity. He told me once of a series of interviews he had with a man, not a Catholic, who appealed to him for help in the last extremity of moral degradation. He became aware at last that the man was insane, but he spared no pains to rescue him.

When he first began this work he had a wave of deep unhappiness; the responsibility of the priesthood so overwhelmed him that for a time, I have learned, he used to pray night after night, that he might die in his sleep, if it were possible. I saw and guessed nothing of this, but I think it was a mood of exhaustion, because he never exhibited anything but an eager and animated interest in life.

One of his pleasures while he was at Cambridge and ever after was the writing, staging, and rehearsing of little mystery-plays and sacred scenes for the children of St. Mary's Convent at Cambridge and for the choir boys of Westminster Cathedral. These he thoroughly enjoyed; he always loved the companionship of children, and had exactly the right way with them, treating them seriously, paternally, with a brisk authority, and never sentimentally. They were beautiful and moving little dramas, reverently performed. Unhappily I never saw one of them. Even now I remember with a stab of regret that he came to stay with me at Cambridge for one of these, and besought me to go with him. But I was shy and busy, and though I could easily have arranged to go, I did not and he went off alone. "Can't you really manage it?" he said. "Pray-a-do!" But I was obdurate, and it gives me pain now to think that I churlishly refused, though it is a false pathos to dwell on such things, and both foolish and wrong to credit the dead with remembering trifling grievances.

But I do not think that his time at the Catholic rectory was a really very happy one. He needed more freedom; he became gradually aware that his work lay in the direction of writing, of lecturing, of preaching, and of advising. He took his own measure and knew his own strength. "I have no pastoral gift," he once said to me very emphatically. "I am not the man to prop," he once wrote; "I can kindle sometimes, but not support. People come to me and pass on." Nor was he at ease in the social atmosphere of Cambridge—it seemed to him bleak, dry, complacently intellectual, unimaginative. He felt himself what the law describes as "a suspected person," with vague designs on the spiritual life of the place.

At first, he was not rich enough to live the sort of life he desired; but he began to receive larger incomes from his books, and to see that it would soon be in his power to make a home for himself. It was then that our rambles in search of possible houses began, while at the same time he curtailed his own personal expenditure to the lowest limits, till his wardrobe became conspicuous for its antiquity. This, however, he was wholly indifferent about; his aim was to put together a sufficient sum to buy a small house in the country, and there to settle "for ever," as he used to say. "A small Perpendicular chapel and a white-washed cottage next door is what I want just now," he wrote about this time. "It must be in a sweet and secret place—preferably in Cornwall." Or again, "I want and mean—if it is permitted—to live in a small cottage in the country; to say mass and office, and to write books. I think that is honestly my highest ideal. I hate fuss and officialdom and backbiting—I wish to be at peace with God and man." This was his dream. The house at Hare Street was the result.



XIII

HARE STREET

I have no doubt at all that Hugh's seven years at Hare Street were the happiest of his life. He generally had some companion living there—Mr. Gabriel Pippet, who did much skilful designing and artistic work with and for him; Dr. Sessions, who managed his household affairs and acted as a much needed secretary; Father Watt, who was in charge of the Hormead Mission. At one time he had the care of a little boy, Ken Lindsay, which was, I think, the greatest joy he ever had. He was a most winning and affectionate child, and Hugh's love of children was very great. He taught Ken, played with him, told him stories. Among his papers are little touching trifles which testify to his love of the child—a withered flower, or some leaves in an envelope, "flower which Ken gave me," "leaves with which Ken tried to make a crown," and there are broken toys of Ken's put away, and little games and pictures which Hugh contrived for his pleasure, memories of happy days and hours. He used to talk about Ken and tell stories about his sayings and doings, and for a time Ken's presence gave a sense of home about Hare Street, and filled a part of Hugh's heart as nothing else did. It was a pleasure to see them together; Hugh's whole voice and bearing changed when Ken was with him, but he did not spoil him in the least or indulge him foolishly. I remember sitting with Hugh once when Ken was playing about, and how Hugh followed him with his eyes or listened to Ken's confidences and discoveries. But circumstances arose which made it necessary that Ken should go, and the loss of him was a great grief to Hugh—though even so, I admired the way in which he accepted the necessity. He always loved what he had got, but did not miss it if he lost it.



He made friends, too, with the people of the village, put his chapel at their disposal for daily use, and had a Christmas festival there for them. He formed pleasant acquaintances with his country neighbours, and used to go to fish or shoot with them, or occasionally to dine out. He bought and restored a cottage which bordered on his garden, and built another house in a paddock beyond his orchard, both of which were let to friends. Thus it was not a solitary life at all.

He had in his mind for a long time a scheme which he intended to carry out as soon as he had more leisure,—for it must be remembered that much of his lecturing and occasional writing was undertaken simply to earn money to enable him to accomplish his purposes. This was to found a community of like-minded people, who desired more opportunity for quiet devotion and meditation, for solitary work and contemplation, than the life of the world could afford them. Sometimes he designed a joint establishment, sometimes small separate houses; but the essence of it all was solitude, cheered by sympathy and enough friendly companionship to avoid morbidity. At one time he planned a boys' home, in connection with the work of his friend Mr. Norman Potter, at another a home of rest for troubled and invalided people, at another a community for poor and sensitive people, who "if they could get away from squalor and conflict, would blow like flowers." With his love of precise detail, he drew up time-tables, so many hours for devotion and meditation, so many for work and exercise, so many for sociability.

But gradually his engagements increased so that he was constantly away, preaching and lecturing; and thus he was seldom at home for more than two or three days at a time. Thrice he went to Rome to preach courses of sermons, and thrice he went to America, where he made many friends. Until latterly he used to go away for holidays of various kinds, a motor tour in France, a trip to Switzerland, where he climbed mountains; and he often went to stay with Lord Kenmare at Killarney, where he stalked deer, shot and fished, and lived an out-of-door life. I remember his describing to me an incident on one of those visits, how he was returning from a deer-stalk, in the roughest clothes, when he saw a little group of people in a by-lane, and presently a message arrived to say that there was a dying woman by the roadside, and could he go to her. He went in haste, heard her confession, and gave her absolution, while the bystanders withdrew to a distance, that no word might be overheard, and stood bareheaded till the end came.

His engagement-books, of which I have several, show a dangerous activity; it is difficult to see how any man could have done so much of work involving so much strain. But he had a clear idea in his mind. He used to say that he did not expect to have a long life. "Many thanks," he wrote to a friend in 1905, in reply to a birthday letter. "I certainly want happy returns; but not very many." He also said that he was prepared for a break-down in his powers. He intended to do his work in his own way, and as much as he could while his strength lasted. At the same time he was anxious to save enough money to enable him to live quietly on at Hare Street whatever happened. The result was that even when he came back from his journeys the time at Hare Street was never a rest. He worked from morning to night at some piece of writing, and there were very few commissions for articles or books which he refused. He said latterly, in reply to an entreaty from his dear friend Canon Sharrock, who helped him to die, that he would take a holiday: "No, I never take holidays now—they make me feel so self-conscious."

He was very careful to keep up with his home and his family ties. He used to pay regular visits to Tremans, my mother's house, and was generally there at Christmas or thereabouts. Latterly he had a Christmas festival of his own at Hare Street, with special services in the chapel, with games and medals for the children, and with presents for all alike—children, tenants, servants, neighbours, and friends. My sister, who lately spent a Christmas with him, says that it was more like an ideal Christmas than anything she had ever seen, and that he himself, full of eagerness and kindness and laughter, was the centre and mainspring of it all. He used to invite himself over to Cambridge not infrequently for a night or two; and I used to run over for a day to Hare Street to see his improvements and to look round. I remember once going there for an afternoon and suggesting a stroll. We walked to a hamlet a little way off, but to my surprise he did not know the name of it, and said he had never been there. I discovered that he hardly ever left his own little domain, but took all his exercise in gardening or working with his hands. He had a regular workroom at one time in the house, where he carved, painted, or stitched tapestries—but it was all intent work. When he came to Cambridge for a day, he would collect books from all parts of the house, read them furiously, "tearing the heart out of them" like Dr. Johnson. Everything was done thus, at top speed. His correspondence was enormous; he seldom failed to acknowledge a letter, and if his advice were asked he would write at great length, quite ungrudgingly; but his constant writing told on his script. Ten years ago it was a very distinctive, artistic, finely formed hand, very much like my father's, but latterly it grew cramped and even illegible, though it always had a peculiar character, and, as is often the case with very marked hand-writings, it tended to be unconsciously imitated by his friends.



I used to wonder, in talk with him, how he found it possible to stay about so much in all sorts of houses, and see so many strange people. "Oh, one gets used to it," he said, adding: "besides, I am quite shameless now—I say that I must have a room to myself where I can work and smoke, and people are very good about that."



XIV

AUTHORSHIP

As to Hugh's books, I will here say a few words about them, because they were a marked part of himself; he put much skill and care into making them, and took fully as much rapture away. When he was writing a book, he was like a man galloping across country in a fresh sunny morning, and shouting aloud for joy. But I do not intend to make what is called an appreciation of them, and indeed am little competent to do so. I do not know the conventions of the art or the conditions of it. "Oh, I see," said a critical friend to me not long ago in much disgust, "you read a novel for the ideas and the people and the story." "What do you read it for?" I said. "Why, to see how it is done, of course," he replied. Personally I have never read a book in my life to see how it is done, and what interests me, apart from the book, is the person behind it—and that is very elementary. Moreover, I have a particular dislike of all historical novels. Fact is interesting and imagination is interesting; but I do not care for webs of imagination hung on pegs of fact. Historical novels ought to be like memoirs, and they are never in the least like memoirs; in fact they are like nothing at all, except each other.

The Light Invisible always seemed to me a beautiful book. It was in 1902 that Hugh began to write it, at Mirfield. He says that a book of stories of my own, The Hill of Trouble, put the idea into his head—but his stories have no resemblance to mine. Mine were archaic little romances, written in a style which a not unfriendly reviewer called "painfully kind," an epigram which always gave Hugh extreme amusement. His were modern, semi-mystical tales; he says that he personally came to dislike the book intensely from the spiritual point of view, as being feverish and sentimental, and designed unconsciously to quicken his own spiritual temperature. He adds that he thought the book mischievous, as laying stress on mystical intuition rather than Divine authority, and because it substituted the imagination for the soul. That is a dogmatic objection rather than a literary objection; and I suppose he really disliked it because it reminded him later on of a time when he was moving among shadows. But it was the first book in which he spread his wings, and there is, I think, a fresh and ingenuous beauty about it, as of a delighted adventure among new faculties and powers.

I believe that the most beautiful book he ever wrote was Richard Raynal, Solitary; and I know he thought so himself. Of course it is an archaic book, and written, as musicians say, in a mode. It is easier in some ways to write a book in a style which is not authentically one's own, and literary imitation is not the highest art; but Richard Raynal has the beauty of a fine tapestry designed on antique lines, yet replenished and enriched by modern emotion, like Tennyson's Mort d'Arthur. Yet I am sure there is a deep charm of pure beauty in the book, both of thought and handling, and I believe that he put into it the best essence of his feeling and imagination.

As to his historical books, I can feel their vigour and vitality, and their deft use of old hints and fragments. I remember once discussing one of them with him, and saying that his description of Queen Elizabeth seemed to me very vivid, but that it reminded me of a not very authentic picture of that queen, in spangled crimson and lace, which hung in the hall at Addington. Hugh laughed, and said: "Well, I must confess that very picture was in my mind!"

With regard to his more modern stories it is impossible not to be impressed by their lightness and swiftness, their flashes of beauty and emotion, their quick rippling talk; but it is hard, at times, not to feel them to be vitiated by their quite unconscious tendency to represent a point of of view. They were once called by a malign reviewer "the most detestable kind of tract," and though this is what the French call a saugrenu criticism, which implies something dull, boorish, and provincial, yet it is easy to recognise what is meant. It is not unjust to resent the appearance of the cultivated and sensitive Anglican, highly bred and graceful, who is sure to turn out hard and hollow-hearted, or the shabby, trotting, tobacco-scented Roman Catholic priest, who is going to emerge at a crisis as a man of inspired dignity and solemnity. Sometimes, undoubtedly, the books are too intent upon expunging other forms of religious life, rather than in tracing the movements of the soul. Probably this was inseparable from the position Hugh had taken up, and there was not the slightest pose, or desire to improve the situation about his mind. The descriptions, the lightly-touched details, the naturalness and ease of the talk are wholly admirable. He must have been a very swift observer, both of nature and people, because he never gave the least impression of observing anything. I never saw him stop to look at a view, or go into raptures over anything beautiful or picturesque; in society he was either silent and absorbed, or more commonly extremely animated and expansive. But he never seemed to be on the look-out for any impressions at all, and still less to be recording them.

I believe that all his books, with the exception, perhaps, of Richard Raynal, can be called brilliant improvisations rather than deliberate works of art. "I write best," he once said, "when I rely most on imagination." The time which elapsed from his conception of an idea to the time when the book was completed was often incredibly short. I remember his telling me his first swift thought about The Coward; and when I next asked him about it, the book had gone to the publishers and he was writing another. When he was actually engaged in writing he was oblivious of all else, and lived in a sort of dream. I have several sketches of books which he made. He used to make a rough outline, a kind of scenario, indicating the gradual growth of the plot. That was done rapidly, and he always said that the moment his characters were conceived, they began to haunt his mind with emphatic vividness; but he wrote very fast, and a great quantity at a time. His life got fuller and fuller of engagements, but he would get back to Hare Street for a day or two, when he would write from morning to night with a brief interval for gardening or handicraft, and briefer intervals for meals. He was fond of reading aloud bits of the books, as they grew. He read all his books aloud to my mother in MS., and paid careful heed to her criticisms, particularly with reference to his female characters, though it has been truly said that the women in his novels are mostly regarded either as indirect obstacles or as direct aids to conversion.

Mr. Belloc once said, very wisely and truly, that inertia was the breeding-ground of inspiration. I think, on the whole, that the total and entire absence of any species of inertia in Hugh's temperament reacted in a way unfavourably on his books. I do not think they simmered in his mind, but were projected, hot and smoking, from the fiery crucible of thought. There seems to me a breathless quality about them. Moreover I do not think that there is much trace of the subtle chemistry of mutual relations about his characters. In life, people undergo gradual modifications, and other people exert psychological effects upon them. But in Hugh's books the characters are all fiercely occupied in being themselves from start to finish; they have exhausted moods, but they have not dull or vacant moods; they are always typical and emphatic. This is really to me the most interesting thing about his books, that they are all projections of his own personality into his characters. He is behind them all; and writing with Hugh was, like so many things that he did, a game which he played with all his might. I have spoken about this elsewhere, because it accounted for much in his life; and when he was engaged in writing, there was always the delicious sense of the child, furiously and absorbingly at play, about him.