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.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
IN 1910. AGED 39
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.