ted from King Edward the task of editing Queen
Victoria's letters, and had resigned my Eton mastership. Hugh was then
engaged in writing his book _By What Authority_ with inconceivable
energy and the keenest possible enjoyment. His absorption in the work
was extraordinary. He was reading historical books and any books
bearing on the history of the period, taking notes, transcribing. I have
before me a large folio sheet of paper on which he has written very
minutely hundreds of picturesque words and phrases of the time, to be
worked into the book. He certainly soaked himself in the atmosphere of
the time, and I imagine that the details are correct, though as he had
never studied history scientifically, I expect he is right in saying
that the mental atmosphere which he represented as existing in
Elizabethan times was really characteristic of a later date. He said of
the book: "I fear it is the kind of book which anyone acquainted with
the history, manners, and customs of the Elizabethan age should find no
difficulty in writing." He found many faults subsequently with the
volume, but he convinced himself at the time that the Anglican
post-Reformation Church had no identity or even continuity with the
pre-Reformation Church.

He speaks of himself as undergoing an experience of great unhappiness
and unrest. Undoubtedly leaving the Mirfield Community was a painful
severance. He valued a friendly and sympathetic atmosphere very much,
and he was going to migrate from it into an unknown society, leaving his
friends behind, with a possibility of suspicion, coldness, and
misunderstanding. It was naturally made worse by the fact that all my
father's best and oldest friends were Anglicans, who by position and
tradition would be likely to disapprove most strongly of the step, and
even feel it, if not an aspersion on my father's memory, at all events a
disloyal and unfilial act--as indeed proved to be the case. But I doubt
if these considerations weighed very much with Hugh. He was always
extremely independent of criticism and disapproval, and though he knew
many of my father's friends, through their visits to our house, he had
not made friends with them on his own account--and indeed he had always
been so intent on the life he was himself leading, that he had never
been, so to speak, one of the Nethinims of the sanctuary; nor had the
dependent and discipular attitude, the reverential attachment to
venerable persons, been in the least