Like all sensitive people, who desire sympathetic and friendly relations, he was apt to discover the best of new acquaintances at once, and to evoke in them a similarly genial response. It was not till later, when the first conciliatory impulse had died down, that he discovered the faults that had been instinctively concealed, and indeed repressed by his own personal attractiveness.
He had, too, an excessive confidence in his power of managing a critical situation, and several times undertook to reform people in whom corruption had gone too far for remedy. He believed in his power of "breaking" sinners by stern declarations; but he had more than once to confess himself beaten, though he never wasted time in deploring failures.
Mr. Meynell, in his subtle essay which prefaces my brother"s little book of poems, speaks of the complete subjugation of his will. If I may venture to express a different view, I do not feel that Hugh ever learned to efface his own will. I do not think his temperament, was made on the lines of self-conquest. I should rather say that he had found the exact _milieu_ in which he could use his will to the best effect, so that it was like the charge of powder within the gun, no longer exploding itself vaguely and aimlessly, but all concentrated upon one intense and emissive effort. Because the one characteristic of the last years of his life was his immense enjoyment of it all. He wrote to a friend not long before the end, when he was feeling the strain upon him to be heavier than he could bear; after a word or two about the war--he had volunteered to go to the front as a chaplain--he said, "So I am staying here as usual; but the incessant demands on my time try me as much as shrapnel and bullets." That sentence seems to me to confirm my view that he had not so much sacrificed as devoted himself. He never gained a serene patience; I have heard him over and over again speak with a sigh of his correspondence and the demands it made on him; yet he was always faithful to a relation once formed; and the number of letters written to single correspondents, which have been sent me, have fairly amazed me by their range, their freshness, and their fulness. He was deeply interested in many of the letters he received, and gave his best in his prompt replies; but he evidently also received an immense number of letters from people who did not desire guidance so much as sympathy and communication. The inconsiderate egotism of unimaginative and yet sensitive people is what creates the burden of such a correspondence; and though he answered his letters faithfully and duly, and contrived to say much in short s.p.a.ce, yet he felt, as I have heard him say, that people were merciless; and much of the time he might have devoted to creative work, or even to recreation, was consumed in fruitless toil of hand and mind. And yet I am sure that he valued the sense that he could be useful and serviceable, and that there were many who depended upon him for advice and consolation. I believe that his widespread relations with so many desirous people gave him a real sense of the fulness and richness of life; and its relations. But for all that, I also believe that his courtesy and his sense of duty were even more potent in these relations than the need of personal affection. I do not mean that there was any hardness or coldness about him; but he valued sympathy and tranquil friendship more than he pursued intimacy and pa.s.sionate devotion. Yet in the last year or two of his life, I was both struck and touched by his evident desire to knit up friendships which had been severed, and to renew intercourse which had been suspended by his change of belief. Whether he had any feeling that his life was precarious, or his own time short, I do not know. He never said as much to me. He had, of course, used hard words of the Church which he had left, and had said things which were not wholly impersonal. But, combative though he was, he had no touch of rancour or malice in his nature, and he visibly rejoiced in any sign of goodwill.
Yet even so, he was essentially solitary in mind. "When I am alone," he once wrote, "I am at my best; and at my worst in company. I am happy and capable in loneliness; unhappy, distracted, and ineffective in company."
And again he wrote, "I am becoming more and more afraid of meeting people I want to meet, because my numerous deficiencies are so very apparent. For example, I stammer slightly always and badly at times."
This was, I believe, more an instinctive shrinking from the expenditure of nervous force than anything else, and arose from the feeling that, if he had to meet strangers, some brilliancy of contribution would be expected of him. I remember how he delighted in the story of Marie Bashkirtseff, who, when she was summoned to meet a party of strangers who desired to see her, prayed as she entered the room, "Oh G.o.d, make me worth seeing!" Hugh disliked the possibility of disappointing expectations, and thus found the society of unfamiliar people a strain; but in family life, and with people whom he knew well, he was always the most delightful and charming of companions, quick, ready, and untiring in talk. And therefore I imagine that, like all artistic people, he found that the pursuit of some chosen train of thought was less of a conscious effort to him than the necessity of adapting himself, swiftly and dexterously, to new people, whose mental and spiritual atmosphere he was obliged to observe and infer. It was all really a sign of the high pressure at which he lived, and of the price he paid for his vividness and animation.
Another source of happiness to him in these last days was his sense of power. This was a part of his artistic nature; and I believe that he enjoyed to the full the feeling of being able to give people what they wanted, to enchant, interest, move, and sway them. This is to some natures a great temptation, because they come to desire applause, and to hunger for tangible signs of their influence. But Hugh was marvellously saved from this, partly by a real modesty which was not only never marred, but which I used to think increased with the years. There is a story of William Morris, that he could read aloud his own poetry, and at the end of a fine stanza would say: "That"s jolly!" with an entire freedom from conceit, just as dispa.s.sionately as he could praise the work of another. I used to feel that when Hugh mentioned, as I have heard him do, some course of sermons that he was giving, and described the queue which formed in the street, and the aisles and gangways crowded with people standing to hear him, that he did so more impersonally than anyone I had ever heard, as though it were a delightful adventure, and more a piece of good luck than a testimony to his own powers.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT HUGH BENSON
IN 1912. AGED 40]
It was the same with his books; he wished them to succeed and enjoyed their success, while it was an infinite delight to him to write them.
But he had no egotism of a commonplace sort about him, and he never consciously tried to succeed. Success was just the reverberating echo of his own delight.
And thus I do not look upon him as one who had bent and curbed his nature by stern self-discipline to do work of a heavy and distasteful kind; nor do I think that his dangerous devotion to work was the fierce effort of a man who would have wished to rest, yet felt that the time was too short for all that he desired to do. I think it was rather the far more fruitful energy of one who exulted in expressing himself, in giving a brilliant and attractive shape to his ideas, and who loved, too, the varieties and tendencies of human nature, enjoyed moulding and directing them, and flung himself with an intense joy of creation into all the work which he found ready to his hand.
XXI
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 sh.e.l.l 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 the sense that he had an hourly and daily sense of the presence of G.o.d. He wished to share his dreams and to make known his visions, to declare the glory of G.o.d and to show His handiwork. He found the world more and more interesting, as he came to know it, and in the light of the warm welcome it gave him. He had a keen and delicate apprehension of spiritual beauty, and the Ma.s.s became to him a consummation of all that he held most holy and dear. He had recognised a mystical presence in the Church of England, but he found a supernatural presence in the Church of Rome; yet he had, too, the instinct of the poet, to translate into form and substance his inmost and sweetest joy, and to lavish it upon others.
No one dares to speak of great poets and seers as men who have profaned a mystery by making it known. The deeper that the poet"s sense of beauty is, the more does he thirst to communicate it. It is far too divine and tremendous to be secretly and selfishly enjoyed.
It is possible, of course, that Hugh may have given to those who did not see him constantly in everyday familiar intercourse, the sense of a courteous patience and a desire to do full justice to a claim. Still more may he have given this impression on social occasions and at conventional gatherings. Interviews and so-called festivities were apt to be a weariness to him, because they seemed so great an expenditure of time and force for very scanty results; but I always felt him to be one of the most naturally courteous people I have ever seen. He hated to be abrupt, to repel, to hurt, to wound feelings, to disappoint; yet on such occasions his natural courtesy was struggling with a sense of the waste of time involved and the interruptions caused. I remember his writing to me from the Catholic rectory when he was trying to finish a book and to prepare for a course of sermons, and lamenting that he was "driven almost mad" by ceaseless interviews with people who did not, he declared, want criticism or advice, but simply the luxury of telling a long story for the sake of possible adulation. "I am quite ready to see people," he added, "if only they would ask me to appoint a time, instead of simply flinging themselves upon me whenever it happens to be convenient to them."
I do not think he ever grudged the time to people in difficulties when he felt he could really help and save. That seemed to him an opportunity of using all his powers; and when he took a soul in hand, he could display a certain sternness, and even ruthlessness, in dealing with it.
"You need not consult me at all, but if you do you must carry out exactly what I tell you," he could say; but he did grudge time and attention given to mild sentimentalists, who were not making any way, but simply dallying with tragic emotions excitedly and vainly.
This courtesy was part of a larger quality, a certain knightly and chivalrous sense, which is best summed up in the old word "gentleman." A priest told me that soon after Hugh"s death he had to rebuke a tipsy Irishman, who was an ardent Catholic and greatly devoted to Hugh. The priest said, "Are you not ashamed to think that Monsignor"s eye may be on you now, and that he may see how you disgrace yourself?" To which, he said, the Irishman replied, with perhaps a keener insight into Hugh"s character than his director, "Oh no, I can trust Monsignor not to take advantage of me. I am sure that he will not come prying and spying about. He always believed whatever I chose to tell him, G.o.d bless him!"
Hugh could be hard and unyielding on occasions, but he was wholly incapable of being suspicious, jealous, malicious, or spiteful. He made friends once with a man of morbid, irritable, and resentful tendencies, who had continued, all his life, to make friends by his brilliance and to lose them by his sharp, fierce, and contemptuous animosities. This man eventually broke with him altogether, and did his best by a series of ingenious and wicked letters to damage Hugh"s character in all directions. I received one of those doc.u.ments and showed it to Hugh. I was astonished at his courage and even indifference. I myself should have been anxious and despondent at the thought of such evil innuendoes and gross misrepresentations being circulated, and still more at the sort of malignant hatred from which they proceeded. Hugh took the letter and smiled. "Oh," he said, "I have put my case before the people who matter, and you can"t do anything. He is certainly mad, or on the verge of madness. Don"t answer it--you will only be drenched with these communications. I don"t trouble my head about it." "But don"t you mind?"
I said. "No," he said, "I"m quite callous! Of course I am sorry that he should be such a beast, but I can"t help that. I have done my best to make it up--but it is hopeless." And it was clear from the way he changed the subject that he had banished the whole matter from his mind.
At a later date, when the letters to him grew more abusive, I was told by one who was living with him, that he would even put one up on his chimney-piece and point it out to visitors.
I always thought that he had a very conspicuous and high sort of courage, not only in facing disagreeable and painful things, but in not dwelling on them either before or after. This was never more entirely exemplified than by the way he faced his operation, and indeed, most heroically of all, in the way in which he died. There was a sense of great adventure--there is no other word for it--about that, as of a man going on a fateful voyage; a courage so great that he did not even lose his interest in the last experiences of life. His demeanour was not subdued or submissive; he did not seem to be asking for strength to bear or courage to face the last change. He was more like the happy warrior
"Attired With sudden brightness, as a man inspired."
[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT HUGH BENSON
IN 1912. AGED 41]
He did not lose control of himself, nor was he carried helplessly down the stream. He was rather engaged in a conflict which was not a losing one. He had often thought of death, and even thought that he feared it; but now that it was upon him he would taste it fully, he would see what it was like. The day before, when he thought that he might live, there was a pre-occupation over him, as though he were revolving the things he desired to do; but when death came upon him unmistakably there was no touch of self-pity or impressiveness. He had just to die, and he devoted his swift energies to it, as he had done to living. I never saw him so splendid and n.o.ble as he was at that last awful moment. Life did not ebb away, but he seemed to fling it from him, so that it was not as the death of a weary man sinking to rest, but like the eager transit of a soldier to another part of the field.
"Could it have been avoided?" I said to the kind and gentle doctor who saw Hugh through the last days of his life, and loved him very tenderly and faithfully. "Well, in one sense, "yes,"" he replied. "If he had worked less, rested more, taken things more easily, he might have lived longer. He had a great vitality; but most people die of being themselves; and we must all live as we are made to live. It was Monsignor"s way to put the work of a month into a week; he could not do otherwise--I cannot think of Monsignor as sitting with folded hands."