Father Payne

Father Payne

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Father Payne, by Arthur Christopher
Benson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Father Payne
Author: Arthur Christopher Benson
Release Date: May 4, 2004 [EBook #12264]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FATHER
PAYNE ***

Produced by David Newman and PG Distributed Proofreaders.
Produced from images provided by the Million Book Project.

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 was only three
years--some consolation and encouragement in my distress.
This little volume is the result. I am well aware that the busy years
which have intervened have taken the edge off some of my
recollections, while the lapse of time has possibly touched others with a
sunset glow. That can hardly be avoided, and I am not sure that I wish
to avoid it.
I am not here concerned with either criticising or endorsing Father
Payne's views. I see both inconsistencies and fallacies in them. I even
detect prejudices and misinterpretations of which I was not conscious at
the time. I have no wish to idealise my subject unduly, but it is clear to
me, and I hope I have made it clear to others, that Father Payne was a
man who had a very definite theory of life and faith, and who at all
events lived sincerely and even passionately in the light of his beliefs.
Moreover, when he came to put them to the supreme test, the test of
death, they did not desert or betray him: he passed on his way rejoicing.
He used, I remember, to warn us against attempting too close an
analysis of character. He used to say that the consciousness of a man,

the intuitive instinct which impelled him, his attack upon experience,
was a thing almost independent both of his circumstances and of his
reason. He used to take his parable from the weaving of a tapestry, and
say that a box full of thread and a loom made up a very small part of
the process. It was the inventive instinct of the craftsman, the faculty of
designing, that was all-important.
He himself was a man of large designs, but he lacked perhaps the
practical gift of embodiment. I looked upon him as a man of high
poetical powers, with a great range of hopes and visions, but without
the technical accomplishment which lends these their final coherence.
He was fully aware of this himself, but he neither regretted it nor
disguised it. The truth was that his interest in existence was so intense,
that he lacked the power of self-limitation needed for an artistic success.
What, however, he gave to all who came in touch with him, was a
strong sense of the richness and greatness of