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22 chapters
PREFACE
PREFACE
This book was begun with no hope or intention of making a formal and finished biography, but only to place on record some of my brother's sayings and doings, to fix scenes and memories before they suffered from any dim obliteration of time, to catch, if I could, for my own comfort and delight, the tone and sense of that vivid and animated atmosphere which Hugh always created about him. His arrival upon any scene was never in the smallest degree uproarious, and still less was it in the least mild
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HARE STREET
HARE STREET
How loudly and boisterously the wind roared to-day across the low-hung, cloud-smeared sky, driving the broken rack before it, warm and wet out of the south! What a wintry landscape! leafless trees bending beneath the onset of the wind, bare and streaming hedges, pale close-reaped wheat-fields, brown ploughland, spare pastures stretching away to left and right, softly rising and falling to the horizon; nothing visible but distant belts of trees and coverts, with here and there the tower of a hidd
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CHILDHOOD
CHILDHOOD
I very well remember the sudden appearance of Hugh in the nursery world, and being conducted into a secluded dressing-room, adjacent to the nursery, where the tiny creature lay, lost in contented dreams, in a big, white-draped, white-hooded cradle. It was just a rather pleasing and exciting event to us children, not particularly wonderful or remarkable. It was at Wellington College that he was born, in the Master's Lodge, in a sunny bedroom, in the south-east corner of the house; one of its wind
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TRURO
TRURO
We all went off again to Truro in 1877, when my father was made Bishop. The tradition was that as the train, leaving Lincoln, drew up after five minutes at the first small station on the line, perhaps Navenby, a little voice in the corner said: "Is this Truro?" A journey by train was for many years a great difficulty for Hugh, as it always made him ill, owing to the motion of the carriage. At Truro he becomes a much more definite figure in my recollections. He was a delicately made, light-haired
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BOYHOOD
BOYHOOD
He went to school at Clevedon, in Somersetshire, in 1882, at Walton House, then presided over by Mr. Cornish. It was a well-managed place, and the teaching was good. I suppose that all boys of an independent mind dislike the first breaking-in to the ways of the world, and the exchanging of the freedom of home for the barrack-life of school, the absence of privacy, and the sense of being continually under the magnifying-glass which school gives. It was dreadful to Hugh to have to account for hims
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AT WREN'S
AT WREN'S
Hugh accordingly went to Mr. Wren's coaching establishment in London, living partly at Lambeth, when my family were in town, and partly as a boarder with a clergyman. It was a time of hard work; and I really retain very few recollections of him at all at this date. I was myself very busy at Eton, and spent the holidays to a great extent in travelling and paying visits; and I think that Christmas, when we used to write, rehearse, and act a family play, was probably the only time at which I saw hi
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CAMBRIDGE
CAMBRIDGE
Hugh went then to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1890. He often talked to me in later days about his time there as an undergraduate. He found a number of his Eton contemporaries up there, and he had a very sociable time. A friend and contemporary of his at Trinity describes him as small, light, and boyish-looking. "He walked fast, and always appeared to be busy." He never cared much about athletics, but he was an excellent steerer. He steered the third Trinity boat all the time he was at Cambrid
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LLANDAFF
LLANDAFF
In 1892 Hugh went to read for Orders, with Dean Vaughan, who held the Deanery of Llandaff together with the Mastership of the Temple. The Dean had been a successful Headmaster of Harrow, and for a time Vicar of Doncaster. He was an Evangelical by training and temperament. My father had a high admiration for him as a great headmaster, a profound and accomplished scholar, and most of all as a man of deep and fervent piety. I remember Vaughan's visits to Lambeth. He had the air, I used to think, ra
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THE ETON MISSION
THE ETON MISSION
There were many reasons why Hugh should begin his clerical work at Hackney Wick, though I suspect it was mainly my father's choice. It was a large, uniformly poor district, which had been adopted by Eton in about 1880 as the scene of its Mission. There were certain disadvantages attending the choice of that particular district. The real raison d'être of a School Mission is educative rather than philanthropic, in order to bring boys into touch with social problems, and to give them some idea that
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KEMSING AND MIRFIELD
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 i
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THE CHANGE
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 Victori
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THE DECISION
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 v
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CAMBRIDGE AGAIN
CAMBRIDGE AGAIN
Hugh went to the College of San Silvestro in Rome, and there he found many friends. He said that on first joining the Catholic Church, he felt like a lost dog; he wrote to me: Rome , Nov. 26 , '03. My own news is almost impossible to tell, as everything is simply bewildering: in about five years from now I shall know how I felt; but at present I feel nothing but discomfort; I hate foreign countries and foreign people, and am finding more every day how hopelessly insular I am: because of course,
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HARE STREET
HARE STREET
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 af
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AUTHORSHIP
AUTHORSHIP
As to Hugh's books, I will here say a few words about them, because they were a marked part of himself; he put much skill and care into making them, and took fully as much rapture away. When he was writing a book, he was like a man galloping across country in a fresh sunny morning, and shouting aloud for joy. But I do not intend to make what is called an appreciation of them, and indeed am little competent to do so. I do not know the conventions of the art or the conditions of it. "Oh, I see," s
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FAILING HEALTH
FAILING HEALTH
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 d
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THE END
THE END
I had spent a long day in London at a business meeting, where we discussed a complicated educational problem. I came away alone; I was anxious to have news of my sister, who had that morning undergone a slight operation; but I was not gravely disquieted, because no serious complications were expected. 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 p
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BURIAL
BURIAL
We had thought that he should be buried at Manchester; but a paper of directions was found saying that he wished to be buried at Hare Street, in his own orchard, at the foot of his Calvary. My mother arrived on the Monday evening, and in the course of Tuesday we saw his body for the last time, in biretta and cassock, with a rosary in his hands. He looked strangely young, like a statue carved in alabaster, with no trace of pain or weariness about him, simply asleep. His coffin was taken to the mi
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PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
Hugh was always youthful-looking for his age, light and quick in movement, intent but never deliberate, passing very rapidly from one thing to another, impatient of boredom and dullness, always desiring to do a thing that very minute. He was fair of complexion, with grey-blue eyes and a shock head of light hair, little brushed, and uncut often too long. He was careless of appearances, and wore clothes by preference of great shabbiness. He told me in 1909 that he had only bought one suit in the l
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RETROSPECT
RETROSPECT
Now that I have traced the progress of Hugh's outer life from step to step, I will try to indicate what in the region of mind and soul his progress was, and I would wish to do this with particular care, even it the risk of repeating myself somewhat, because I believe that his nature was one that changed in certain ways very much; it widened and deepened greatly, and most of all in the seven last years of his life, when I believe that he found himself in the best and truest sense. As a boy, up to
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ATTAINMENT
ATTAINMENT
And then Hugh made the great change of his life, and, as a Catholic, found his dreams realized and his hopes fulfilled. He found, indeed, the life which moves and breathes inside of every faithful creed, the power which supplements weakness and represses distraction, the motive for glad sacrifice and happy obedience. I can say this thankfully enough, though in many ways I confess to being at the opposite pole of religious thought. He found relief from decision and rest from conflict. He found sy
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TEMPERAMENT
TEMPERAMENT
Hugh never seemed to me to treat life in the spirit of a mystic or a dreamer, with unshared and secret experiences, withdrawing into his own ecstasy, half afraid of life, rapt away into interior visions. Though he had a deep curiosity about mystical experiences, he was never a mystic in the sense that he had, as great mystics seem to have had, one shell less, so to speak, between him and the unseen. He lived in the visible and tangible world, loving beautiful secrets; and he was a mystic only in
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