Hugh | Page 6

a hidden treasure
concealed in or about it. That treasure Hugh certainly discovered, in the
delight which he took in restoring, adorning, and laying it all out. It was
a source of constant joy to him in his life. And there, in the midst of it
all, his body lies.

II
CHILDHOOD
I very well remember the sudden appearance of Hugh in the nursery
world, and being conducted into a secluded dressing-room, adjacent to
the nursery, where the tiny creature lay, lost in contented dreams, in a
big, white-draped, white-hooded cradle. It was just a rather pleasing
and exciting event to us children, not particularly wonderful or

remarkable. It was at Wellington College that he was born, in the
Master's Lodge, in a sunny bedroom, in the south-east corner of the
house; one of its windows looking to the south front of the college and
the chapel with its slender spire; the other window looking over the
garden and a waste of heather beyond, to the fir-crowned hill of
Ambarrow. My father had been Headmaster for twelve years and was
nearing the end of his time there; and I was myself nine years old, and
shortly to go to a private school, where my elder brother Martin already
was. My two sisters, Nelly and Maggie, were respectively eight and six,
and my brother, Fred, was four--six in all.
And by a freak of memory I recollect, too, that at breakfast on the
following morning my father--half-shyly, half-proudly, I
thought--announced the fact of Hugh's birth to the boys whom he had
asked in, as his custom was, to breakfast, and how they offered
embarrassed congratulations, not being sure, I suppose, exactly what
the right phrase was.
Then came the christening, which took place at Sandhurst Church, a
mile or two away, to which we walked by the pine-clad hill of
Edgebarrow and the heathery moorland known as Cock-a-Dobbie. Mr.
Parsons was the clergyman--a little handsome old man, like an abbé,
with a clear-cut face and thick white hair. I am afraid that the ceremony
had no religious significance for me at that time, but I was deeply
interested, thought it rather cruel, and was shocked at Hugh's
indecorous outcry. He was called Robert, an old family name, and
Hugh, in honour of St. Hugh of Lincoln, where my father was a
Prebendary, and because he was born on the day before St. Hugh's
Feast. And then I really remember nothing more of him for a time,
except for a scene in the nursery on some wet afternoon when the
baby--Robin as he was at first called--insisted on being included in
some game of tents made by pinning shawls over the tops of chairs, he
being then, as always, perfectly clear what his wishes were, and equally
clear that they were worth attending to and carrying out.
[Illustration: Photo by Hills & Saunders
THE MASTER'S LODGE, WELLINGTON COLLEGE, 1868

The room to the left of the porch is the study. In the room above it
Hugh was born.]
Then I vividly recall how in 1875, when we were all returning en
famille from a long summer holiday spent at Torquay in a pleasant
house lent us in Meadfoot Bay, we all travelled together in a third-class
carriage; how it fell to my lot to have the amusing of Hugh, and how
difficult he was to amuse, because he wished to look out of the window
the whole time, and to make remarks on everything. But at Lincoln I
hardly remember anything of him at all, because I was at school with
my elder brother, and only came back for the holidays; and we two had
moreover a little sanctum of our own, a small sitting-room named Bec
by my father, who had a taste for pleasant traditions, after Anthony Bec,
the warlike Bishop of Durham, who had once been Chancellor of
Lincoln. Here we arranged our collections and attended to our own
concerns, hardly having anything to do with the nursery life, except to
go to tea there and to play games in the evening. The one thing I do
remember is that Hugh would under no circumstances and for no
considerations ever consent to go into a room in the dark by himself,
being extremely imaginative and nervous; and that on one occasion
when he was asked what he expected to befall him, he said with a
shudder and a stammer: "To fall over a mangled corpse, squish! into a
pool of gore!"
When he was between four and five years old, at Lincoln, one of his
godfathers, Mr. Penny, an old friend and colleague of my father's at
Wellington College, came to stay at the Chancery, and brought Hugh a
Bible. My mother was sitting with Mr. Penny in the drawing-room