“Yours most affectionately,
“G. E. H.”
Westward Ho, from which several of the preceding letters were written, had become his favourite watering-place. He had gone there at first by chance, and, finding links and a golf club, had taken to the game with his usual success. At Pau he had played a little, but certainly never handled a club till he was past forty. Nevertheless, though it is a game in which, I am told, early training and constant practice is almost an essential condition of success, he entered for, and succeeded in winning the champion’s medal in the annual gathering of 1870. Soon after his return from the meeting he wrote to me.
“We spent three very pleasant weeks at Westward Ho. I wish that I could infect you with ‘golfomania.’ Golf is the middle-aged man’s game. I mean by the middle-aged man, the man who could once, but cannot now, get down upon a leg shooter. We had a dozen hard-worked men from the city, besides doctors, lawyers, soldiers on leave, etc., all perfectly mad whilst it lasted. I was quite as mad as the rest, and having now ‘relapsed’ into sanity, I am able to look back upon it with the most intense amusement. The humour of the whole thing was positively sublime. You have heard squires at their wine after a good run—bless you, they can’t hold a candle to golfers. Most of the players were Scotch, and the earnestness with which the Scotch ‘play’ is a caution. I think of trying my hand at a rhapsody about golf.”
The rhapsody was, I believe, never written, but he continued to like and practise the game till his death, which indeed is, in my mind, rather painfully connected with it. My last visit to Offley was in the short Easter vacation of this year, and I thought I had never seen him better, or in more full vigour of body and mind. On the 30th of March he mounted me, and I rode with him and two of his boys to a meet near Offley. We had a run early in the day, and got home to a late lunch, after which he went out into his plantations and worked till dark. Indeed, when I left the same evening by the mail train for the north, I beguiled my journey by thinking that the whole kingdom might be searched in vain to find a finer specimen of a man. On that day four weeks I received a telegram from Hoylake to say that he was lying there very dangerously ill. He had gone on there, after leaving his boys at Rugby, to take part in the golf tournament. He went down with a bad cold, but paid no attention to it, and went round the links with some friends on the first evening. The next day he became much worse, and was obliged to take to his bed, from which he never got up. The cold had settled on his lungs, and violent inflammation was set up. His wife and children were summoned at once, and his mother and sister and myself two days later. When I arrived, the lower part of the lungs had suppurated, and the medical man gave very slight hopes of his recovery. He could only speak with exceeding difficulty, but retained his strength, and the grip of his hand was as strong as ever. He met death with the same courage as he had shown throughout life, giving me a few clear instructions for a codicil to his will, while his youngest boy lay with his head on his shoulder, crying bitterly, and almost with his last breath regretting the trouble he was giving his nurse. On the afternoon of May 1st he received the Sacrament with all of us, and at four on the morning of the 2nd passed away, leaving behind him, I am proud to think, no braver or better man. But you shall have better testimony than mine on this point. Out of the many letters to the same purpose which I received, and two of which have found a place in the earlier part of this memoir, I select an extract from one written by Bishop MacDougal, who, thirty years ago, had rowed behind him in the University boat.
“I must just write a line to express my heartfelt sympathy with you in your sad, sad bereavement. Dear old George! What an irreparable loss to you and all his old friends! I have myself been heavy-hearted ever since I heard he had been called away from us, and shall never think of his cheery voice, his hearty greeting, his kindly, loving words, without a sharp pang of regret that I shall no more in this life meet with him I loved so well, and admired as the finest specimen of the high-minded, earnest, true-hearted English gentleman it has been my lot to meet with. He was too good for this hard, selfish generation, and he is in God’s mercy called away to that better world, where love and truth and peace dwell undisturbed in the presence of our blessed Lord. May we, my dear Tom, have grace given us so to fight the good fight of truth and faith, that when our work is done we may be called thither to join your dear brother and our other loved ones, who have gained the victory over self and the world, and have been called to their rest before us.”
CHAPTER XI.
CONCLUSION.
On looking through the preceding pages, I have been struck with one special shortcoming. I am painfully conscious how poor and shallow the picture here attempted will be, in any case, to those who knew my brother best. Nevertheless, those for whom it was undertaken will, I trust, be able to get from it some clearer idea of the outer life of their father and uncle, but of that which underlies the outer life they will learn almost nothing. And yet how utterly inadequate must be any knowledge of a human being which does not get beneath this surface! How difficult to do so to any good purpose! For that “inner,” or “eternal,” or “religious” life (call it which you will, they all mean the same thing) is so entirely a matter between each human soul and God, is at best so feebly and imperfectly expressed by the outer life. But, difficult as it may be, the attempt must be made; for I find that I cannot finish my task with a good conscience without making it.