Hilaire Belloc
HOWEVER long a man has been prepared for the death of a dearly loved friend, the hour of that death finds him as defenceless as though he had never admitted the possibility of the loss. Death will seem to have come un- expectedly. Health and vigour of body and full activity of mind had not been Belloc's for many years, but he retained to the end a vitality and gaiety which astonished his friends. To the end he was the best talker of our day, and would sing in that light tenor voice the French songs of his youth and the English music-hall songs which his grandchildren have carried to other homes.
To write of a man of such varied talents and activities is by no means easy. I, who was long honoured with his friend- ship, think to-day not of his public life as politician, writer, speaker, but of his private life, and of the qualities which endeared him to those who were fortunate enough to be his companions at home, on his travels, or at sea. It was at sea, I 'think, that he was more nearly happy than anywhere else. I say " more nearly happy " because, in spite of the roaring high spirits which had become a legend in his life-time, he was not, since the death of his wife forty years ago, a happy man. Other losses and separations came to try him—a son dead in each of the two wars, and another son married in America. Often some bitter and cynical phrase would escape him, but after a moment he would be himself again. More than once, during wanderings in France, I have been with him.in places where he had stayed with his wife, and then a more prolonged depression of spirit would seize him. But at sea he forgot all his cares. Whenever his work permitted he would set out for the famous Nona like a boy going on holiday. I have some notes of a cruise from Poole along the English coast to Hythe, and then across the Channel to Boulogne, and from there to Dieppe. His son Peter and I were the crew. There was a moment when we were in difficulties in a nasty sea. Belloc was resting in the little cabin, and his strong, voice came up to us on deck : " Without wine at sea, my children, we are as tinkling cymbals "—a phrase which became a catchword with us afterwards. He loved the adventure of the sea, the storms and the calms and the sudden landfalls, and his talk would be a mingling of reminiscence, history, fantasy, with interludes for song. I have heard it said that as a talker he was too overbearing, and monopolised the conversation. All vigorous men with convictions rather than opinions are accused of this. I can only say that his talk was so entertaining, and ranged over such a variety of subject that most people were contented to listen without interrupting. Robert Lynd, after dining with him at my house, said : " That was creative talk." But he could be equally entertaining in a short conversational interchange. His manner of talking was natural and easy, with no straining for epigram, and he would pass, as he passed so often in his writing, from pugnacity or a Rabelaisian jest to some remark that showed a sensitiveness, a tenderness which surprised those who had not realised the different strands that made up his character. In 1923, when one son had gone to America and another to Spain, and his daughters were no longer at home, I used to spend week-ends with him at his house-in Sussex. After dinner, he would play patience, with a candle in a silver sconce set at each side of him, and it was on those occasions that I heard the best talk of my life. He would speak of anything that came into his head, hour after hour, with, always, the songs interspersed with the talk. In these last years he talked much more of his early life, as he had lost touch with the world of to-day. He would sit in his study and recall his days in the French army, his boyhood in Sussex or in the little village near St. Cloud where he was born. Occasionally he would sing a French song I had never heard before from him, and he once told me that he had had thoughts of staying in the French army. His battery was going East, and it struck me that he might have served under Joffre or ,Gallieni, and ended up as a French General in the first war.
Belloc was a most stimulating travelling companion. He could not see a river, a town, a range of mountains without sharing with you his vision of the past. On one occasion we hired a car to take us to the battlefield of Crecy, and there he recounted in French to the astounded driver the entire battle, pointing out unchanged details of the landscape, includ- ing the mound on which stood the mill from which Edward III watched the battle. His only fault as a travelling companion was his tireless energy. He would get up sometimes before dawn to catch some cross-country train, and would go all day from place to place in any weather. I remember running through the early dawn at Chinon to catch a train. We had, as usual, started off without even a cap of coffee. Behind me, as I ran, I heard his v,oice : " Carry this bag, my boy, you're younger than I am." And at Avranches we once stumbled down a hill before it was light to the railway station. Again, I remember in Paris trying to persuade him to go to bed, as he had quinsy, and could only speak in a whisper, but we were due to lunch with some French relatives of his. We went to lunch and, speaking in a whisper, he entertained a roomful of people. Afterwards he went to bed for an hour or two in our hotel, and then was ready to dash all over Paris again. People who noted this physical energy when he was at home in England wondered how he found time to write so much. Often he would correct proofs right through a lunch in Soho, missing nothing of the conversation and contributing to it while he worked. His writing was done pretty well anywhere. He once showed me passages from The Four Men scribbled in pencil across the pages of an illustrated paper. The closing lines of his Danton, he told me, were written beside a Highland stream. Casual acquaintances had some excuse for missing his humility. He loved to startle people by boasting; but when he spoke seriously of his own work he was humble. He talked frequently of fame, and said that he hoped his verse would be remembered, but when I once praised a piece of his prose, he said : " What I have is a sense of rhythm." If you spent long hours in his company you became aware of the simplicity which underlay his apparently complicated character. The things he loved best were his home and his family life, the sea, travel on foot and the company of friends, and all his talk, like all his work, led back again and again to that which he felt most profoundly—the truths which a Catholic acknow- ledges. I have said that he was not a happy man. He was jovial, with a sort of youthful boisterousness which could not deceive any who loved him. Those to whom he gave his friendship have a treasure that time will not tarnish. I have but touched on a few. of the thousand memories I have of him. He has crossed that bridge which each of us must cross alone, and his body now lies in the Sussex cemetery where his wife and one of his sons are buried, in' the shadow of a tall cross upon which are carved the words : 0 CRUX AVE SPES UNICA. About him is the landscape he loved so deeply. Many a one who knew him, coming to the high Downs, and remembering that they were once Belloc's playground, will say to himself : The passer-by shall hear me still, A boy that sings on Duncton Hill.
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