Father Payne

Part 1

FATHER PAYNE

By Arthur Christopher Benson

1915

PREFACE

Often as I have thought of my old friend "Father Payne," as we affectionately called him, I had somehow never intended to write about him, or if I did, it was "like as a dream when one awaketh," a vision that melted away at the touch of common life. Yet I always felt that his was one of those rich personalities well worth depicting, if the attitude and gesture with which he faced the world could be caught and fixed. The difficulty was that he was a man of ideas rather than of performance, suggestive rather than active: and the whole history of his experiment with life was evasive, and even to ordinary views fantastic.

Besides, my own life has been a busy one, full of hard ordinary work: it was not until the war gave me, like many craftsmen, a most reluctant and unwelcome space of leisure, that I ever had the opportunity of considering the possibility of writing this book. I am too old to be a combatant, and too much of a specialist in literature to transmute my activities. I lately found myself with my professional occupations suddenly suspended, and moreover, like many men who have followed a wholly peaceful profession, plunged in a dark bewilderment as to the onset of the forces governing the social life of Europe. In the sad inactivity which followed, I set to work to look through my old papers, for the sake of distraction and employment, and found much material almost ready for use, careful notes of conversations, personal reminiscences, jottings of characteristic touches, which seemed as if they could be easily shaped. Moreover, the past suddenly revived, and became eloquent and vivid. I found in the beautiful memories of those glowing days that I spent with Father Payne--it was only three years--some consolation and encouragement in my distress.

This little volume is the result. I am well aware that the busy years which have intervened have taken the edge off some of my recollections, while the lapse of time has possibly touched others with a sunset glow. That can hardly be avoided, and I am not sure that I wish to avoid it.

I am not here concerned with either criticising or endorsing Father Payne's views. I see both inconsistencies and fallacies in them. I even detect prejudices and misinterpretations of which I was not conscious at the time. I have no wish to idealise my subject unduly, but it is clear to me, and I hope I have made it clear to others, that Father Payne was a man who had a very definite theory of life and faith, and who at all events lived sincerely and even passionately in the light of his beliefs. Moreover, when he came to put them to the supreme test, the test of death, they did not desert or betray him: he passed on his way rejoicing.

He used, I remember, to warn us against attempting too close an analysis of character. He used to say that the consciousness of a man, the intuitive instinct which impelled him, his attack upon experience, was a thing almost independent both of his circumstances and of his reason. He used to take his parable from the weaving of a tapestry, and say that a box full of thread and a loom made up a very small part of the process. It was the inventive instinct of the craftsman, the faculty of designing, that was all-important.

He himself was a man of large designs, but he lacked perhaps the practical gift of embodiment. I looked upon him as a man of high poetical powers, with a great range of hopes and visions, but without the technical accomplishment which lends these their final coherence. He was fully aware of this himself, but he neither regretted it nor disguised it. The truth was that his interest in existence was so intense, that he lacked the power of self-limitation needed for an artistic success. What, however, he gave to all who came in touch with him, was a strong sense of the richness and greatness of life and all its issues. He taught us to approach it with no preconceived theories, no fears, no preferences. He had a great mistrust of conventional interpretation and traditional explanations. At the same time he abhorred controversy and wrangling. He had no wish to expunge the ideals of others, so long as they were sincerely formed rather than meekly received. Though I have come myself to somewhat different conclusions, he at least taught me to draw my own inferences from my own experiences, without either deferring to or despising the conclusions of others.

The charm of his personality lay in his independence, his sympathy, his eager freshness of view, his purity of motive, his perfect simplicity; and it is all this which I have attempted to depict, rather than to trace his theories, or to present a philosophy which was always concrete rather than abstract, and passionate rather than deliberate. To use a homely proverb, Father Payne was a man who filled his chair!

Of one thing I feel sure, and that is that wherever Father Payne is, and whatever he may be doing--for I have as absolute a conviction of the continued existence of his fine spirit as I have of the present existence of my own--he will value my attempt to depict him as he was. I remember his telling me a story of Dr. Johnson, how in the course of his last illness, when he could not open his letters, he asked Boswell to read them for him. Boswell opened a letter from some person in the North of England, of a complimentary kind, and thinking it would fatigue Dr. Johnson to have it read aloud, merely observed that it was highly in his praise. Dr. Johnson at once desired it to be read to him, and said with great earnestness, "The applause of a single human being is of great consequence." Father Payne added that it was one of Johnson's finest sayings, and had no touch of vanity or self-satisfaction in it, but the vital stuff of humanity. That I believe to be profoundly true: and that is the spirit in which I have set all this down.

September 30, 1915.

CONTENTS

I. FATHER PAYNE II. AVELEY III. THE SOCIETY IV. THE SUMMONS V. THE SYSTEM VI. FATHER PAYNE VII. THE MEN VIII. THE METHOD IX. FATHER PAYNE X. CHARACTERISTICS XI. CONVERSATION XII. OF GOING TO CHURCH XIII. OF NEWSPAPERS XIV. OF HATE XV. OF WRITING XVI. OF MARRIAGE XVII. OF LOVING GOD XVIII. OF FRIENDSHIP XIX. OF PHYLLIS XX. OF CERTAINTY XXI. OF BEAUTY XXII. OF WAR XXIII. OF CADS AND PHARISEES XXIV. OF CONTINUANCE XXV. OF PHILANTHROPY XXVI. OF FEAR XXVII. OF ARISTOCRACY XXVIII. OF CRYSTALS XXIX. EARLY LIFE XXX. OF BLOODSUCKERS XXXI. OF INSTINCTS XXXII. OF HUMILITY XXXIII. OF MEEKNESS XXXIV. OF CRITICISM XXXV. OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY XXXVI. OF BIOGRAPHY XXXVII. OF POSSESSIONS XXXVIII. OF LONELINESS XXXIX. OF THE WRITER'S LIFE XL. OF WASTE XLI. OF EDUCATION XLII. OF RELIGION XLIII. OF CRITICS XLIV. OF WORSHIP XLV. OF A CHANGE OF RELIGION XLVI. OF AFFECTION XLVII. OF RESPECT OF PERSONS XLVIII. OF AMBIGUITY XLIX. OF BELIEF L. OF HONOUR LI. OF WORK LII. OF COMPANIONSHIP LIII. OF MONEY LIV. OF PEACEABLENESS LV. OF LIFE-FORCE LVI. OF CONSCIENCE LVII. OF RANK LVIII. OF BIOGRAPHY LIX. OF EXCLUSIVENESS LX. OF TAKING LIFE LXI. OF BOOKISHNESS LXII. OF CONSISTENCY LXIII. OF WRENS AND LILIES LXIV. OF POSE LXV. OF REVENANTS LXVI. OF DISCIPLINE LXVII. OF INCREASE LXVIII. OF PRAYER LXIX. THE SHADOW LXX. OF WEAKNESS LXXI. THE BANK OF THE RIVER LXXII. THE CROSSING LXXIII. AFTER-THOUGHTS LXXIV. DEPARTURE

FATHER PAYNE

FATHER PAYNE

It was a good many years ago, soon after I left Oxford, when I was twenty-three years old, that all this happened. I had taken a degree in Classics, and I had not given much thought to my future profession. There was no very obvious opening for me, no family business, no influence in any particular direction. My father had been in the Army, but was long dead. My mother and only sister lived quietly in the country. I had no prosaic and practical uncles to push me into any particular line; while on coming of age I had inherited a little capital which brought me in some two hundred a year, so that I could afford to wait and look round. My only real taste was for literature. I wanted to write, but I had no very pressing aspirations or inspirations. I may confess that I was indolent, fond of company, but not afraid of comparative solitude, and I was moreover an entire dilettante. I read a good many books, and tried feverishly to write in the style of the authors who most attracted me, I settled down at home, more or less, in a country village where I knew everyone; I travelled a little; and I paid occasional visits to London, where several of my undergraduate and school friends lived, with a vague idea of getting to know literary people; but they were not very easy to meet, and, when I did meet them, they did not betray any very marked interest in my designs and visions.

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