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Title: Hugh
Memoirs of a Brother

Author: Arthur Christopher Benson

Release Date: June 17, 2006 [eBook #18615]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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HUGH

Memoirs of a Brother

by

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON

Fifth Impression

_But there is more than I can see,
And what I see I leave unsaid,
Nor speak it, knowing Death has made
His darkness beautiful with thee._

[Illustration: _From Copyrighted Photo by Sarony, Inc., New York_
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
IN 1912. AGED 40
In the robes of a Papal Chamberlain.]

Longmans, Green, and Co.
Fourth Avenue & 30th Street, New York
1916

PREFACE

This book was begun with no hope or intention of making a formal and
finished biography, but only to place on record some of my brother's
sayings and doings, to fix scenes and memories before they suffered from
any dim obliteration of time, to catch, if I could, for my own comfort
and delight, the tone and sense of that vivid and animated atmosphere
which Hugh always created about him. His arrival upon any scene was
never in the smallest degree uproarious, and still less was it in the
least mild or serene; yet he came into a settled circle like a freshet
of tumbling water into a still pool!

I knew all along that I could not attempt any account of what may be
called his public life, which all happened since he became a Roman
Catholic. He passed through many circles--in England, in Rome, in
America--of which I knew nothing. I never heard him make a public
speech, and I only once heard him preach since he ceased to be an
Angl