ter a word or two about the war--he
had volunteered to go to the front as a chaplain--he said, "So I am
staying here as usual; but the incessant demands on my time try me as
much as shrapnel and bullets." That sentence seems to me to confirm my
view that he had not so much sacrificed as devoted himself. He never
gained a serene patience; I have heard him over and over again speak
with a sigh of his correspondence and the demands it made on him; yet he
was always faithful to a relation once formed; and the number of letters
written to single correspondents, which have been sent me, have fairly
amazed me by their range, their freshness, and their fulness. He was
deeply interested in many of the letters he received, and gave his best
in his prompt replies; but he evidently also received an immense number
of letters from people who did not desire guidance so much as sympathy
and communication. The inconsiderate egotism of unimaginative and yet
sensitive people is what creates the burden of such a correspondence;
and though he answered his letters faithfully and duly, and contrived
to say much in short space, yet he felt, as I have heard him say, that
people were merciless; and much of the time he might have devoted to
creative work, or even to recreation, was consumed in fruitless toil of
hand and mind. And yet I am sure that he valued the sense that he could
be useful and serviceable, and that there were many who depended upon
him for advice and consolation. I believe that his widespread relations
with so many desirous people gave him a real sense of the fulness and
richness of life; and its relations. But for all that, I also believe
that his courtesy and his sense of duty were even more potent in these
relations than the need of personal affection. I do not mean that there
was any hardness or coldness about him; but he valued sympathy and
tranquil friendship more than he pursued intimacy and passionate
devotion. Yet in the last year or two of his life, I was both struck and
touched by his evident desire to knit up friendships which had been
severed, and to renew intercourse which had been suspended by his change
of belief. Whether he had any feeling that his life was precarious, or
his own time short, I do not know. He never said as much to me. He had,
of course, used hard words of the Church which he had left, and had said
things which were not wholly impersonal. But, combative though he was,
he had no touch of rancour or