Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother by Arthur Christopher Benson
page 76 of 154 (49%)
page 76 of 154 (49%)
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bearing on the history of the period, taking notes, transcribing. I have
before me a large folio sheet of paper on which he has written very minutely hundreds of picturesque words and phrases of the time, to be worked into the book. He certainly soaked himself in the atmosphere of the time, and I imagine that the details are correct, though as he had never studied history scientifically, I expect he is right in saying that the mental atmosphere which he represented as existing in Elizabethan times was really characteristic of a later date. He said of the book: "I fear it is the kind of book which anyone acquainted with the history, manners, and customs of the Elizabethan age should find no difficulty in writing." He found many faults subsequently with the volume, but he convinced himself at the time that the Anglican post-Reformation Church had no identity or even continuity with the pre-Reformation Church. He speaks of himself as undergoing an experience of great unhappiness and unrest. Undoubtedly leaving the Mirfield Community was a painful severance. He valued a friendly and sympathetic atmosphere very much, and he was going to migrate from it into an unknown society, leaving his friends behind, with a possibility of suspicion, coldness, and misunderstanding. It was naturally made worse by the fact that all my father's best and oldest friends were Anglicans, who by position and tradition would be likely to disapprove most strongly of the step, and even feel it, if not an aspersion on my father's memory, at all events a disloyal and unfilial act--as indeed proved to be the case. But I doubt if these considerations weighed very much with Hugh. He was always extremely independent of criticism and disapproval, and though he knew many of my father's friends, through their visits to our house, he had not made friends with them on his own account--and indeed he had always been so intent on the life he was himself leading, that he had never |
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