The Project Gutenberg EBook of Father Payne, by Arthur Christopher Benson

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Title: Father Payne

Author: Arthur Christopher Benson

Release Date: May 4, 2004 [EBook #12264]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FATHER PAYNE ***

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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 wa