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

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

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 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

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.

It is said that no artist is ever really interested in another artist's work. My brothers, Fred and Hugh, my sister and myself would sometimes be at home together, and all writing books. Hugh was, I think, always the first inclined to produce his work for inspection; but we had a tacit convention which was not in the least unsympathetic, not to feel bound to be particularly interested in each other's books. My books, I felt, bored Hugh more than his bored me; but there was this advantage, that when we read each other's books, as we often did, any critical praise that we could offer was much more appreciated than if we had felt bound to proffer conventional admiration. Hugh once told me that he envied my sostenuto; but on another occasion, when I said I had nothing to write about, and feared I had written too many books, Hugh said: "Why not write a book about having nothing to write about?" It was good advice and I took it. I can remember his real and obvious pleasure when I once praised Richard Raynal to him with all my might. But though he enjoyed praise, it was always rather because it confirmed his own belief that his work was worth doing. He did not depend in the smallest degree either upon applause or sympathy. Indeed, by the time that a book was out, he had generally got another on the stocks, and did not care about the previous one at all.

Neither do I think that his books emanated from a high artistic ideal. I do not believe that he was really much interested in his craft. Rather he visualised a story very vividly, and then it seemed to him the finest fun in the world to spin it all as rapidly as he could out of his brain, to make it all alert with glancing life. It was all a personal confession; his books bristle with his own dreams, his own dilemmas, his own social relations; and when he had once firmly realised the Catholic attitude, it seemed to him the one thing worth writing about.

While I write these pages I have been dipping into The Conventionalists. It is full of glow and drama, even melodrama; but somehow it does not recall Hugh to my mind. That seems strange to me, but I think of him as always larger than his books, less peremptory, more tolerant, more impatient of strain. The book is full of strain; but then I remember that in the old days, when he played games, he was a provoking and even derisive antagonist, and did not in the least resent his adversaries being both; and I come back to my belief in the game, and the excitement of the game. I do not, after all, believe that his true nature flowed quite equably into his books, as I think it did into The Light Invisible and Richard Raynal. It was a demonstration, and he enjoyed using his skill and adroitness; he loved to present the smouldering and flashing of passions, the thrill and sting of which he had never known. Saved as he was by his temperament alike from deep suffering and tense emotion, and from any vital mingling either with the scum and foam or with the stagnancy and mire of life, the books remain as a brilliant illusion, with much of the shifting hues and changing glimmer of his own ardent and restless mind rippling over the surface of a depth which is always a little mysterious as to the secrets it actually holds.

XV

Hugh's health on the whole was good up to the year 1912, though he had a troublesome ailment, long ignored, which gave him a good deal of malaise. He very much disliked being spoken to about his health, and accepted no suggestions on the subject. But he determined at the end of 1912, after enduring great pain, to have an operation, which was quite successful, but the shock of which was considerable. He came down to Tremans just before, and it was clear that he suffered greatly; but so far from dreading the operation, he anticipated it with a sense of immense relief, and after it was over, though he was long unwell, he was in the highest spirits. But he said after he came back from Rome that he felt ten years older; and I can recall his coming down to Cambridge not long after and indulging one evening in an immense series of yawns, for which he apologised, saying, "I'm tired, I'm tired—not at the top, but deep down inside, don't you know?"

But it was not until 1914 that his health really declined. He came over to Cambridge at the beginning of August, when the war was impending. He stayed with me over the Sunday; he was tired and overstrained, complained that he felt unable to fix his mind upon anything, and he was in considerable depression about the possibility of war. I have never seen him so little able to throw off an anxiety; but he dined in Hall with me on the Sunday night, met some old friends, and was full of talk. He told me later in the evening that he was in much anxiety about some anonymous menace which he had received. He would not enter into details, but he spoke very gravely about it. However, later in the month, I went over with a friend to see him at Hare Street, and found him in cheerful spirits in spite of everything. He had just got the place, he said, into perfect order, and now all it wanted was to be left alone. It was a day of bright hot sunlight, and we lunched out of doors near the chapel under the shade of the yew trees. He produced a peculiar and pleasant wine, which he had made on the most scientific principles out of his own grapes. We went round and looked at everything, and he showed me the preparation for the last adornment, which was to be a rose garden near the chapel. We walked into the orchard and stood near the Calvary, little thinking that he would be laid to rest there hardly two months later.

The weeks passed on, and at the end of September I went to stay near Ambleside with some cousins, the Marshalls, in a beautiful house called Skelwith Fold, among lovely woodlands, with the mountains rising on every side, and a far-off view down Langdale. Here I found Hugh staying. He was writing some Collects for time of war, and read many of them aloud to me for criticism. He was also painting in oils, attempting very difficult landscapes with considerable success. They stood drying in the study, and he was much absorbed in them; he also was fishing keenly in a little trout lake near the house, and walking about with a gun. His spirits were very equable and good. But he told me that he had gone out shooting in September over some fields lent him by a neighbour, and had had to return owing to breathlessness; and he added that he suffered constantly from breathlessness and pain in the chest and arms, that he could only walk a few paces at a time, and then had to rest to recover his breath. He did not seem to be anxious about it, but he went down one morning to celebrate Mass at Ambleside, refusing the offer of the car, and found himself in such pain that he then and there went to a doctor, who said that he believed it to be indigestion.

He sat that morning after breakfast with me, smoking, and complaining that the pain was very severe. But he did not look ill; and the pain suddenly left him. "Oh what bliss!" he said. "It's gone, suddenly and entirely—and now I must go out and finish my sketch."

The only two things that made me feel anxious were that he had given up smoking to a considerable extent, and that he said he meant to consult our family doctor; but he was so lively and animated—I remember one night the immense zest and intensity with which he played a game of throwing an old pack of cards across the room into the grate—that it was impossible to think that his condition was serious.

Indeed, I said good-bye to him when he went off, without the least anticipation of evil. My real hope was that he would be told he had been overdoing it, and ordered to rest; and a few days later, when I heard that this was what the doctor advised, I wrote to him suggesting that he should come and settle at Cambridge for a couple of months, do exactly what he liked, and see as much or as little of people as he liked. It seems that he showed this letter to one of the priests at Manchester, and said, "There, that is what I call a real invitation—that is what I shall do!"

Dr. Ross-Todd saw him, and told him that it was a neuralgic affection, "false angina," and that his heart was sound, but that he must diminish his work. He pleaded to be allowed to finish his imminent engagements; the doctor said that he might do that, if he would put off all subsequent ones. This was wisely done, in order to reassure him, as he was an excitable though not a timid patient. He was at Hare Street for a day or two, and his trusted servant, Mr. Reeman, tells me that he seemed ill and out of spirits. The last words he said as he drove away, looking round the lime-encircled lawn, were, "Ah! the leaves will all be gone when I come home again."

He preached at Salford on October 4, and went to Ulverston on October 5, where he conducted a mission. On October 10 he returned, and Canon Sharrock says that he arrived in great pain, and had to move very slowly. But he preached again on October 11, though he used none of the familiar gestures, but stood still in the pulpit. He suffered much after the sermon, and rested long in a chair in the sacristy. He started to go to London on the Monday morning, but had to return in the taxi, feeling too ill to travel. Then followed days of acute pain, during which he no doubt caught a severe chill. He could not sleep, and he could only obtain relief by standing up. He wandered restlessly one night about the corridors, very lightly clad, and even went out into the court. He stood for two or three hours leaning on the mantelpiece of his room, with Father Gorman sitting near him, and trying in vain to persuade him to retire to bed.

When he was not suffering he was full of life, and even of gaiety. He went one of these afternoons, at his own suggestion, to a cinema show with one of the priests, but though he enjoyed it, and even laughed heartily, he said later that it had exhausted him.

He wrote some letters, putting off many of his autumn and winter engagements. But he grew worse; a specialist was called in, and, though the diagnosis was entirely confirmed, it was found that pneumonia had set in.

XVI

When I reached my house there were two telegrams awaiting me, one to say that the operation had gone well, the other from Canon Sharrock, of Salford, to say that my brother was dangerously ill of pneumonia. I wired at once for a further report, and before it arrived made up my mind that I must go to him. I waited till the reply came—it was a little more favourable—went up to London, and caught a midnight train for Manchester.

The news had the effect which a sudden shock is apt to have, of inducing a sense of curious unreality. I neither read nor slept, nor even thought coherently. I was just aware of disaster and fear. I was alone in my compartment. Sometimes we passed through great, silent, deserted stations, or stopped outside a junction for an express to pass. At one or two places there was a crowd of people, seeing off a party of soldiers, with songs and cheers. Further north I was aware at one time that the train was labouring up a long incline, and I had a faint sense of relief when suddenly the strain relaxed, and the train began to run swiftly and smoothly downwards; I had just one thought, the desire to reach my brother, and over and over again the dread of what I might hear.

It was still dark and chilly when I arrived at Manchester. The great station was nearly empty. I drove hurriedly through dimly-lit streets. Sometimes great factories towered up, or dark house-fronts shuttered close. Here there were high steel networks of viaducts overhead, or parapets of bridges over hidden waterways. At last I came to where a great church towered up, and an iron-studded door in a blank wall appeared. I was told this was the place, and pushing it open I went up a stone-flagged path, among beds of soot-stained shrubs, to where a lantern shone in the porch of a sombre house. There was a window high up on the left, where a shaded lamp was burning and a fire flickered on the ceiling, and I knew instinctively that this was my brother's room. I rang, and presently a weary-eyed, kindly priest, in a hastily-donned cassock, appeared. He said at once that my brother was a little better and was asleep. The doctors were to see him at nine. I asked where I could go, and he advised a hotel hard by. "We did not expect you," he said, "or we would have had a room ready, but now I fear we could hardly make you comfortable."

I went to the hotel, a big, well-equipped place, and was taken to a bedroom, where I slept profoundly, out of utter weariness. Then I went down to the Bishop's House again at nine o'clock. By daylight Manchester had a grim and sinister air. It was raining softly and the air was heavy with smoke. The Bishop's House stood in what was evidently a poor quarter, full of mean houses and factories, all of red brick, smeared and stained with soot. The house itself appeared like a great college, with paved corridors, dark arches, and many doors. There was a lighted room like a sacristy, and a faint scent of incense drifted in from the door which led into the church. Upstairs, in a huge throne-room with a gilded chair of state and long, bare tables, I met the doctors—Dr. Bradley, a Catholic, and Professor Murray, a famous Manchester physician, in khaki uniform, both most gentle and kind. Canon Sharrock joined us, a tall, robust man, with a beautiful tenderness of manner and a brotherly air. They gave me a better report, but could not disguise from me that things were very critical. It was pneumonia of a very grave kind which had supervened on a condition of overwork and exhaustion. I see now that they had very little hope of recovery, but I did not wholly perceive it then.

Then I went with the Canon to the end of the room. I saw two iron cylinders on the table with brass fittings, and somehow knew that they contained oxygen.

The Canon knocked, and Hugh's voice said, clearly and resonantly, "Come in." I found him in bed, in a big library, the Bishop's own room. There were few signs of illness except a steam-kettle and a few bottles; a nurse was in the adjoining room. He was unable to speak very much, as his throat troubled him; but he was full of humour and brightness. I told him such news as I could think of. He knew that I was very busy, but was pleased that I had come to see him. He said that he felt really better, and that I should be able to go back the next day. He said a few words about a will he had made, but added, "Mind, I don't think I am going to die! I did yesterday, but I feel really better. This is only by way of precaution." We talked about a friend of mine in Manchester, a militant Protestant. "Yes," said Hugh, "he spoke of me the other day as a 'hell-hound'—not very tactful!" He said that he could not sleep for long together, but that he did not feel tired—only bored. I was told I must not stay long with him. He said once or twice, "It's awfully good of you to have come."