extraordinarily from intimacies with others. He has done this, not I. I
have longed for intimacies and failed to win them." He had little of the
pastoral spirit; I do not think that he yearned over unshepherded souls,
or primarily desired to seek and save the lost. On the other hand he
responded eagerly to any claim made to himself for help and guidance,
and he was always eager not to chill or disappoint people who seemed to
need him. But he found little satisfaction in his work at the Eton
Mission, and I do not think he would ever have been at home there.

At Kemsing, on the other hand, he had an experience of what I may fairly
call the epicureanism of religion. The influences there were mainly
Êsthetic; the creation of a circle like that at Kemsing would have been
impossible without wealth. Beautiful worship, refined enjoyment,
cultivated companionship were all lavished upon him. But he soon tired
of this, because it was an exotic thing. It was a little paradise of a
very innocent kind, from which all harsh and contradictory elements had
been excluded. But this mere sipping of exquisite flavours became to him
a very objectless thing, because it corresponded to no real need. I
believe that if at this time he had discovered his literary gifts, and
had begun seriously to write, he might have been content to remain
under such conditions, at all events for a time. But he had as yet no
audience, and had not begun to exercise his creative imagination.
Moreover, to a nature like Hugh's, naturally temperate and ardent, and
with no gross or sensuous fibre of any kind, there was a real craving
for the bareness and cleanness of self-discipline and asceticism. There
is a high and noble pleasure in some natures towards the reduction and
disregard of all material claims and limitations, by which a freedom and
expansiveness of the spirit can be won. Such self-denial gives to the
soul a freshness and buoyancy which, for those who can pursue it, is in
itself an ecstasy of delight. And thus Hugh found it impossible to stay