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 æsthetic 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
æsthetic; 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: