m at Eton which summoned me to Hawarden, but did not state
explicitly that my father was dead. I met Hugh at Euston, who told me
the fact, and I can recollect walking up and down the half-deserted
station with him, in a state of deep and bewildered grief. The days
which followed were so crowded with business and arrangements, that even
the sight of my father's body, lying robed and still, and palely
smiling, in the great library of the rectory failed to bring home to me
the sense that his fiery, eager, strenuous life was over. I remember
that Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone came to the church with us, and that Hugh
celebrated and gave us the Communion. But the day when we travelled
south with the coffin, the great pomp at Canterbury, which was attended
by our present King and the present King of Norway, when we laid him to
rest in a vault under the north-western tower, and the days of hurried
and crowded business at Addington are still faint and dream-like to me.

My mother and sister went out to Egypt for the winter; Hugh's health
broke down; he was threatened with rheumatic fever, and was ordered to
go out with them. It was here that he formed a very close and intimate
companionship with my sister Maggie, and came to rely much on her tender
sympathy and wise advice. He never returned to the Eton Mission.

IX

KEMSING AND MIRFIELD

The change proved very beneficial to Hugh; but it was then, with
returning health and leisure for reflection, that he began to consider
the whole question of Anglicanism and Catholicism. He describes some of
the little experiences which turned his mind in this direction. He
became aware of the isolation and what he calls the "provincialism" of
the Anglican Church. He saw many kinds of churches and varieties of
worship. He went on through the Holy Land, and at Jerusalem celebrated
the Communion in the Chapel of Abraham; at Damascus he heard with a sort
of horror of the submission of Father Maturin to Rome. In all this his
scheme of a religious community revived. The ceremonial was to be
Caroline. "We were to wear no eucharistic vestments, but full surplices
and black scarves, and were to do nothing in particular."

When he returned, he went as curate to Kemsing, a village in Kent. It
was decided that for the sake of his health his work must be light. The
Rector, Mr. Skarratt, was a wealthy man; he had restored the church
beautifully, and had organised a very dignified and careful musical