From ARNOLD LUNN
SIR,-1 was touched by "JOtter's" sympathetic note. about my brother, the late Hugh Kingsmill Lunn. It is true, but not the whole truth, that he had " a strong prejudice against Catholicism." He had an exaggerated dislike of all forms of collective activity religious or political, but he often said to me that the only Church for which he had any real respect was the Catholic Church.
His intense individualism explained among other things the fact that his work did not receive the recognition to which I believe it to be en
titled. His extreme individualism took the form of alienating influential critics. If lie saw an important corn he promptly trod on it.
Though, as you say, he was deeply predjudiced against the Church, his basic philosophy had much in common with Catholic mysticism. I remember staying at Campion Hall just after his review of Huxley's Perennial Philosophy
had appeared. One of the Jesuit
Fathers remarked that it was odd that my brother's review in Punch was so much better than the reviews in the Catholic Press. which had erred on the side of kindness. That review is reprinted in his last book, Progress of a Biographer. Some allowance must be made for fraternal bias but even so I shall mention the fact that his hooks have been for years my favourite bedside books. He yielded a real where so many Catholics yield a merely nominal assent tel the belief that happiness in this life Is of its nature ephemeral and he had a complete certitude of immortality. " My feelings about death." he wrote to a friend a few days before he died, " are more or less similar to those of an evacuee who is confident that arrangements have been made for his reception but who would greatly prefer to
remain where he is." " Hughie," writes his great friend Malcolm Muggeridge. " was extraordinarily serene in his last days, and entirely confident in the reality of a future life. He was a unique person and even now I find it hard to imagine the world without him."
I was at an International Congress in Oslo when he died, unexpectedly, for he had made a good recovery. I would not trouble you with this letter but for the fact that it is always interesting to find a brilliant writer who reaches conclusions on so many subjects, mysticism among others, similar to the Catholic hut by a very different road.
ARNOLD LUNN.