Writing the Life of Von Hugel

25th Anniversary of One of England's Noblest Catholic Figures
TWENTY-FIVE years ago today (January 27) Baron Friedrich von Hugel died in his home at Vioarage Gate, London, at the age of 72.
The notices and memoirs in the religions and more serious journals acclaimed his life and Work as something quite outstanding in the religious story of the times, and writer after writer bracketed the " Baron," as he was so often called, with Newman, or at least as standing second only to Newman among Catholic figures in England. Thus the Times Literary Supplement wrote: " Were we asked to name the Roman Catholic thinkers who have in modern times left an enduring mark on the religious mind of England, we should mention Newman and we should mention Friedrich von Hfigel, but no third without doubts and reserva tions." The Tabletechoed this judgment by attributing to von Bilge's writings " an influence, greater perhaps than any that has been wielded by Catholics in this country since Newman."
Yet so outstanding a Cathalic figure died almost unknown to the great majority Of his fellow-Catholics in this country, and today, twenty-five years later, his name is hardly remembered outside specialist circles. It is possible that he is a more familiar figure to Anglicans than to Catholics.
One reason for this is that he suffered the fate of many of those people whose pre-eminent appeal lay m their living personalities. No one who knew von Hugel or even met or heard him was likely to forget him; but the number was limited and such memories are not easily communicated far and wide unless there is a Boswell to hand. Nor did he help his own posthumous fame by his writings. He was, as he said himself, a " writers' writer," not a writer who sought any wide appeal.
First Book at 56 His first book was published when he was 56 years old. and the review in the Times very rightly observed that this was " no jaunty enterprise, but a solid metaphysical life-work " which involved the reader in "wire entanglements of psychological terminology " and " phalanxes of serried syntax." And apart from she two weighty volumes of The AI yrtical Element of Religion As Studied In Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends, he never really wrote an other book. Eternal Life was the expansion of an Encyclopaedic article, and it bears the mark, despite wonderful passages, of its pedagogical origin. All the other books bearing his name are collections of essays, addresses, lectures and, above all. letters.
Most of these are not easy to read, partly perhaps because of a Germanic approach—he was half German and half Scottish.—hut mainly because his most remarkable quality lay in his power to bring to bear on any and every spiritual point the weight of an immensely wide and remarkably deep understanding of religion — the point in question always felt with a strength and urgency for which ordinary language and syntax were inadequate vehicles.
Yet 1 think that the difficulty of his language has been exaggerated. It always demands the closest attention. but it is not in itself mystify ing. Von Hugel never avoids a
difficult), by throwing up a haze of words and formulae as so many "difficult" writers do: the toughness. of Iris writing only comes because of his patient determination to tackle every detail of a difficulty.
Hence the enormous impressiveness of his whole life's work. Perhaps he stands actually alone in the whole army of spiritual writers for his persistent refusal to leave a difficulty unfaced. Perhaps he stands alone in what he himself distinguished as " subjective truthfulness" from " objective truth."
" The soul," he wrote, " finds that its sheet-anchor is its interior (Le. formally willed) truthfulness —ha humble, faithful, loving seeking of material, objective truth, by an ever-increasing attempt to become and be all it knows. And it would rather keep on thus, seeking truth sincerely and with selfhumiliation. and thus unconsciously itself grow more like the truth it seeks and which is already inwardly impelling such a soul; than to hold truth in such a static and self-complacent manner, as to arrest its own further approximation and apprehension of that truth."
How much there is to meditate on in those words; how timely they are for the temper of our own times when religious profession without absolute ,inner sincerity and frankness disgusts; how welcome they sound to those who look, in spiritual direction and advice. not for stale cliches and wordy maxims divorced from our real beings, but for an honest helping hand one real step on solid ground further along the way of God.
An Appeal to All
Arid the truth is that if anyone of reasonable intelligence does pick up his letters and some at least of his essays, they will very soon come to appreciate his uncanny power of impressing the reader with what really counts, what is really solid in
the life of religion. A beginning can be made with Letters to a Niece (which is being republished) with its moving introduction by Gwendolen Greene.
But just because von Wagers spiritual force is so closely connected with his personality and life story we shall probably have to await some interpreter of spiritual genius who will be able to re-create for posterity the living man and his decisive contribution to religious thought. In all probability this task will not be fulfilled for another generation or two when Catholicity, having perhaps lived through, withstood and absorbed tempestuous times, will find it easier to see in a true perspective the troubled years which have immediately preceded the present
slow Catholic renaissance. Meanwhile the time has perhaps already come when a first biographical assessment may be made if only to ease the task of someone tomorrow who can place von Fitigel among, at least. the unofficial doctors of Christianity.
This task was entrusted some years ago to the present writer. hut the war, other work and, above all, a sense of insufficient maturity have caused it to he deferred. However, one now hopes to be able to offer something in time for the centenary of von Hagel's birth in 1852.
A Dramatic Life One minor fear was very soon dissipated once the work was seriously begun. In the abstract it did not seem very easy to tell in any dramatic and generally interesting way the life of a saintly scholar. deaf and of poor health. whose days were devoted to prayer and to study. But drama and action are not to be measured by physical movement, participation in headlined events (though for a period von Hugel was " news "), and material accomplishment.
Within the pages of SOME' forty volumes of not always easily decipherable diaries and in large numbers of unpublished, as well ria the published letters or extracts of letters (such as the Loisy correspond(Pnce not easily accessible to an English reader) there is to he found the inner story of a fascinating and often genuinely tragic drama in which a passionate and vehement Catholic spirit. wreitled, often -literally on his knees, before God, with Catholics and nott-Catholic.s for the honest truth as he lived and saw it, and how that first struggle dovetailed into a yet tougher one — a struggle with himself when. as he wrote: " my allegiance to tire Roman Catholic Church cost Me more than ten years of intense struggle and wrestling, precisely because. though I needed a large measure of freedom to carry out the task' I had proposed to myself. I was beset by temptations to discard all the obligations of authority and seek complete freedom in individual effort: but that, finally, my fidelity to the Church saved me from scepticism and spiritual arrogance, being, when rightly understood and practised. completely reconcilable +visit the healthy freedom necessary to my studies."
Modernism
The first ten years of the present century witnessed the convulsions of Modernism, a chapter in the long and never, to fallen man, finally resolvable talc of conflict between faith and reason. and in those " terrible years," as von Hugel called them the Baron played a very prominent part. a part by no means always objectively defensible. yet a part with an astonishingly edifying aspect, both because of his own never weakened personal religious observance and his deep, deep loyalty in spite of everything to the Faith, a loyalty thrown into acute conflict with his loyalty to friends and. as he thought. to himself as scholar and man of integrity. God alone is final judge, and in the wonderful way in which von Htlgel—and von Hugel practically alone—found his way with renewed strength and spirituality out of the quicksands and morasses of the Modernist years to become the beloved spiritual guide in the deepest things of the spirit to so many Catholics and non-Catholics in the last years of his life, we can surely discern a Divine blessing for this fidelity of Catholic spiritual life and observance, a blessing which provides art assurance that whatever the puzzles and perplexities for human observers, yet all was well with a faithful servant. And this, maybe, was echoed on earth by the assurance of Cardinal Bourne that he had never troubled the Baron and never would.
All this experience. all this courage. all this strength, all this temptation, anguish and suffering were the matter from which the spirit of von Hilgel was shaped and which gave to his least utterance, his least sentence, a quality of depth and sincerity which I believe to have been unique—unique at least for the needs of many and of many not least today.
He Came Through .There is the picture of the bearded, mantled Baron arguing for two hours on some point of Scriptural criticism at the top of his voice in the windy portico of the British Museum; there is the picture of the broken-hearted father standing by the bedside of his dying daughter— the daughter whom his too strong spiritual food had for a period lead astray only to return and render her soul to God in a full and brave Catholic faith; there is the picture of the utterly loyal friend, deeply influenced by. deeply sympathetic with. Loisy and Tyrrell. and never able to convince himself that these souls which he measured always by
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the standards of his own had crossed or were perilously near crossing the line which he knew divided all that was rich and fruitful from all that si,as decased and dead; there is the picture of the leader, to whom the best of the " reformers" looked. exhorting his friends to high ideals before they parted at dawn on a Tyrolese mountain; there is the picture of the Baron absorbed and motionless in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament; and there is the picture. perhaps the best of all. of the old worn and weather-beaten prophet. with a schoolgirl or a schoolboy sitting at his feet. telling of the things of God. of the things that were worthwhile in the life God has given us. while the child sat fascinated by the piercing, yet soft eyes. the strange booming accent. the absurd stories, above all, the heart of the scholar who could find such words for the teaching of the young. To the end of his life. with every bit as much care and trouble as he would bestow on the weightiest Anglican scholar, he would write page after page of educational and spiritual guidance for a child. Surely there was the authentic touch of the Master !
To have known. even at secondhand, Baron Friedrich von Hugel, to have lived long hours with the hundreds of pages on which his angular pencilled script lies. to have read the intimate, God-fearing. Godloving letters which the young husband wrote to his young convert bride—to have done these things is
to have lived. The problem is to convey to others, without prejudice, without favour, without fear, the story (which could easily be expanded to many volumes) of a life so intense. so spiritual. so edifying, so human, yet so unusual. so perplexing, so studded with pitfalls, so easy to misunderstand.