Hugh: Memoirs of a Brother

pted 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 educat

care of boys-an orphan school or a training ship. Only the most sensitive are shocked and distressed by the sight of hard conditions of life it all,

rict which it was very hard to reach from Eton, so that few of the boys were ever able to make a personal acquaintance with the hard and bare conditions of life in the cro

naged parish, with ample resources to draw upon; and it certainly attracted the services of a number of old Et

. He knew Hugh well, and Hugh was an Etonian himself. Moreover, my father was glad that Hugh should be with a trusted friend, and so he went there. St. Clair Donaldson was a clergyman of an Evangelical type, though the Mission had been previously conducted by a very High Churchman, William Carter, the present Archbishop of Capetown. But now distinctive High Church practices were given up, and the parish was run on moderate

s type. His mind was full of mystical and poetical ideas of religion, and his artistic nature was intent upon expressing them. He was successful in a way, because he had by this time a great charm of frankness and simplicity; he never had the least temptation to draw social distinctions, but he desired to find people personally interesting. He used to say afterwards that he did not really believe in what involved a sort of social condescension, and, like another incisive missioner, he thought that the giving up a few evenings a week by wealthy and even fashionable young-men, however good-hearted and earnest, to sharing the

the coffin itself was delayed, and he was asked to keep things going. He gave out hymns, he read collects, he made a short address, and still the undertaker at the door

ver it more or less impressively, and the kind that might venture, after careful preparation, to speak extempore; and that he felt bound to tell Hugh that he belonged undoubtedly to the first kind. This was curious, because Hugh afterwards became, by dint of trouble and practice, a quite remarkably di

ll sorts, very systematic visiting, a ladies' settlement, plays acted by children, in which Hugh took a prominent

Confession. These ideas began to take shape in Hugh's mind, and he came to the conclusion that it was necessary in a place like London, and working among the harassed and ill-educated poor, to materialise religion-that is to say, to fit some definite form,

magical kind of influence over the material side of life. Rites, relics, images tend to become, in irrational minds, invested with an inherent and mechanical sanctity, instead of being the symbols o

owed in 1895; and he then made a f

to Ireland, on his return went to stay with Mr. Gladstone

lowed were so crowded with business and arrangements, that even the sight of my father's body, lying robed and still, and palely smiling, in the great library of the rectory failed to bring home to me the sense that his fiery, eager, strenuous life was over. I remember that Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone came to the church with us, and that Hugh celebr

ver, and was ordered to go out with them. It was here that he formed a very close and intimate companionship with my