Hugh, Arthur Christopher Benson [beach books TXT] 📗

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