RECOLLECTIONS OF MONSIGNOR BENSON

New Zealand Tablet, 15 April 1915, Page 26

RECOLLECTIONS OF MONSIGNOR BENSON

The Corn hill for February has an interesting article on some , early memories of tire late Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson by Mr. Archibald Marshall, an intimate friend and fellow-student at Trinity College, Cambridge (writes the London correspondent of the Melbourne A dvocate). On his first appearance at Cambridge, Monsignor Benson looked like a schoolboy, with a tangled mop of- fair hair, quick, stammering speech, and a shy but attractive manner. But even at this very early period his thoughts were turned towards Rome, for Mr. Marshall remembers hearing him say one day, when they were discussing their future: —‘ I would like to be a Cardinal.’ It was a very ambitious aspiration, but had he been spared, he might have realised it. When he was so sadly and prematurely cut off in the prime of his powers a few weeks ago, Monsignor Benson was certainly one of the most prominent and picturesque figures in English Catholicism, and his boyish dream of a red hat really looked like an intelligent anticipation, and approaching actuality on the ecclesiastical horizon. While still an undergratuate at Cambridge, Monsignor Benson wrote a. couple of novels, one in collaboration with Mr. Marshall and the other entirely by himself. Neither of them has so far appeared in print, but Mr. Marshall still possesses the manuscript of the first. He does not think much of this early juvenile experiment' in fiction, although he allows that it ‘ Contains a Few Gleams of Observation.’ Mr. Marshall says young Benson always felt under a sort of imperious necessity ‘ to be doing something with a. pen. Later on he plunged deeply into life, and his craftsmanship fitted itself to his knowledge.’ One very clever thing young Benson wrote at Cambridge was a poem in the style of Pope entitled ‘ A Scandal in High Life,’ and published in one of the University comic papers. It satirised a prank played by a group of noble and aristocratic undegraduates, which got them into trouble with both the academic and civic authorities. Young Benson’s poem aroused considerable interest and amusement. “It was,’ says Mr. Marshall, ‘ remarkably well written, and its thinly-veiled points were so sharp that they aroused the ire of one of the gentlemen concerned, who made determined efforts to discover the author, but without success.’ In due course young Benson received ordination as an Anglican minister at the hands of his father, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and proceeded to work as a missionary in the densely-populated East- End of London. Afterwards he became a curate at Kemsing, a picturesque Kentish village, where Mr. Marshall was also living, and so they renewed their old University acquaintanceship. It was at Kemsing that Father Maturin, then a famous High Church preacher, now a well-known Loudon Catholic priest, conducted a retreat that proved A Turning-point in the Spiritual Life of Benson. ‘ Of all the preachers I have ever heard,’ says Mr. Marshall,’ Father Maturin was at his best the most capable of holding his hearers’ attention, and he was at his very best then. He .sat in a chair on the chancel steps and talked, and I for one hardly took my eyes off him. Hugh Benson was just as deeply impressed. But he was not at all prepared to accept the advanced doctrine that was uncompromisingly put before us.’ Of course, he did eventually, but at this time he had not lost faith in the Church of England as * keeping her authoritative course, as far removed from Romanism on the

1 one side as from anti-Catholic Protestantism on the other.’ As Cardinal Newman did before 1 him. Monsignor Benson soon found that this half-and-half arrangement would not work. ‘lt was necessary,’ Mr. Marshall observes, ‘ that Hugh Benson should feel that ,he * had widely-admitted authority behind him. That has been impossible in the Church of England since the Oxford Movement turned its level plain into a mountain, upon one slope or other of which its clergy must find a foothold, each for himself. There is no authority that is universally accepted in the Church of England, and with Hugh Benson’s temperament, when he had once set foot upon the slope that is on the Romeward side, he was bound to end where he did, little as he or his friends thought it.’ While still an Anglican minister, MonsigAor Benson developed considerable power as a preacher, but it was not until he became a Catholic priest that he reached the zenith of his fame in this respect. Mr. Marshall says he carefully prepared his sermons and addresses. He spent most of his mornings writing them out. He did not commit them to memory, but he read them over several times, and thus got them fixed in his head. The result was that he seemed to be speaking exfemporarily and without any perceptible trace of previous study. He did not prepare any oratorical effects at all. His Eloquence Was Purely Natural, inspired by his interest in the subject and his impetuous habit of mind and speech. As iiis mind became more stored, his need for self-expression greater, and his power's of speech more flexible, he gave every indication of developing into a great preacher. He was exceedingly fond of children, and they loved him. With the boys of the Westminster Cathedral Choir lie was an immense favorite, and he delighted in their performance of the Christmas plays he wrote for them. As an Anglican curate at Kemsing he was on the best possible terms with the village children, and for them he wrote three Hairy plays, which they performed with conspicuous success. Mr. Marshall concludes with the expression of 1 1is conviction that Robert Hugh Henson did the right thing in joining the Catholic Church: —‘ With the break-up of our circle at Kemsing our continuous contact ceased, though I thing our friendship deepened in spite of widely-divergent ways of life and thought. I have spent very happy days with him since, and found him an even more delightful companion than he was during the years of which I have written. Our common sympathies, if more sober, were much wider than those of our youth, and a certain friction, that made itself felt before he finally found what I believe to have been his true vocation in life, had completely vanished. He had the most lovable qualities, and they seemed to shine out in him more and more each time we came together.’