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: