XVIII
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 last five years. I have seen him, when gardening at Hare Street, wear a pair of shoes such as might have been picked up in a ditch after a tramp's encampment. At the same time he took a pleasure of a boyish kind in robes of state. He liked his Monsignor's purple, his red-edged cassock and crimson cincture, as a soldier likes his uniform. He was in no way ascetic; and though he could be and often seemed to be wholly indifferent to food, yet he was amused by culinary experiments, and collected simple savoury recipes for household use. He was by far the quickest eater I have ever seen. He was a great smoker of cheap cigarettes. They were a natural sedative for his highly strung temperament. I do not, think he realised how much he smoked, and he undoubtedly smoked too much for several years.
He was always quick, prompt, and decisive. He had an extraordinary presence of mind in the face of danger. My sister remembers how he was once strolling with her, in his cassock, in a lane near Tremans, when a motor came down the road at a great pace, and Roddy, the collie, trotted out in front of it, with his back turned to the car, unconscious of danger. Hugh took a leap, ran up hill, snatched Roddy up just in front of the wheels, and fell with him against the hedge on the opposite side of the road.
He liked a degree of comfort, and took great pleasure in having beautiful things about him. "I do not believe that lovely things should be stamped upon," he once wrote to a friend who was urging the dangers of a strong sense of beauty; adding, "should they not rather be led in chains?" Yet his taste was not at all severe, and he valued things for their associations and interest as much as he did for their beauty. He had a great accumulation of curious, pretty, and interesting things at Hare Street, and took a real pleasure in possession. At the same time he was not in the least dependent on such things, and could be perfectly happy in bare and ugly rooms. There was no touch of luxuriousness about him, and the adornment of his house was one of the games that he played. One of his latest amusements was to equip and catalogue his library. He was never very much of a reader, except for a specific purpose. He read the books that came in his way, but he had no technical knowledge of English literature. There were many English classics which he never looked into, and he made no attempt to follow modern developments. But he read books so quickly that he was acquainted more or less with a wide range of authors. At the same time he never wasted any time in reading books which did not interest him, and he knew by a sort of intuition the kind of books he cared about.
He was of late years one of the liveliest and most refreshing of talkers. As a boy and a young man he was rather silent than otherwise in the family circle, but latterly it was just the opposite. He talked about anything that was in his mind, but at the same time he did not wish to keep the talk in his own hands, and had an eager and delighted recognition of his companion's thoughts and ideas.
His sense of humour was unfailing, and when he laughed, he laughed with the whole of himself, loudly and contagiously, abandoning himself with tears in his eyes to helpless paroxysms of mirth. There was never the smallest touch of affectation or priggishness about his attitude, and he had none of the cautious and uneasy reverence which is apt to overshadow men of piety. He was intensely amused by the humorous side of the people and the institutions which he loved. Here are two slight illustrations which come back to my mind. He told me these two stories in one day at Tremans. One was that of a well-known Anglican Bishop who attended a gathering of clergy, and in his valedictory speech said that they would expect him to make some allusion to the fact that one who had attended their last meeting was no longer of the Anglican communion, having joined the Church of Rome. They would all, he said, regret the step which he had thought fit to take; but they must not forget the serious fall their poor friend had had from his bicycle not long before, which had undoubtedly affected gravely his mental powers. Then he told me of an unsatisfactory novice in a religious house who had been expelled from the community for serious faults. His own account of it was that the reason why he was expelled was that he used to fall asleep at meditation, and snore so loud that he awoke the elder brethren.
Though Hugh held things sacred, he did not hold them inconveniently sacred, and it did not affect their sacredness if they had also a humorous side to them. He had no temptation to be easily shocked, and though he hated all impure suggestiveness, he could be amused by what may be called broad humour. I always felt him to be totally free from prudishness, and it seemed to me that he drew the line in exactly the right place between things that might be funny and unrefined, and things which were merely coarse and gross. The fact was that he had a perfectly simple manliness about him, and an infallible tact, which was wholly unaffected, as to the limits of decorum. The result was that one could talk to him with the utmost plainness and directness. His was not a cloistered and secluded temperament. He knew the world, and had no fear of it or shrinking from it.
He dearly loved an argument, and could be both provoking and incisive. He was vehement, and hated dogmatic statements with which he did not agree. When he argued, he used a good deal of gesture, waving his hands as though to clear the air, emphasising what he said with little sweeps and openings of his hands, sometimes covering his face and leaning forwards, as if to gain time for the onset. His arguments were not so much clear as ingenious, and I never knew anyone who could defend a poor case so vigorously. When he was strained and tired, he would argue more tenaciously, and employ fantastic illustrations with great skill; but it always blew over very quickly, and as a rule he was good-tempered and reasonable enough. But he liked best a rapid and various interchange of talk. He was bored by slow-moving and solemn minds, but could extract a secret joy from pompous utterances, while nothing delighted him more than a full description of the exact talk and behaviour of affected and absurd people.