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Reader and Collector, v. 3, issue 3, June 1944

Page 13

13

AN APPRECIATION*

"It is written of some men that to know them is to love them." It is frequently written without sincerity, but it cannot be so written with regard to one who has just passed over. It was in September last that he wrote to me expressing the hope that at some future date we might meet and "find in each other kindred spirits." It was just like him to assume that a obscure person whose name he did not even know and who followed the same road, but far behind him, should be worthy of his friendship. He wrote: "Eight years at sea, three times around the world, ten years an author, and now nearly two and a half years a soldier--for I left my little chalet on the French Riviera to join up--brings me to 1917, and if good fortune attends me I shall be in France this week-end." It was characteristic of his large hearted personality that he should have enclosed his photograph--and it is curious that never since that letter was received has it left my pocket. There are some letters like that--but how few from the hundreds are worth keeping and carrying for seven months. What he was an author one is not competent to judge. His critics were all of one mind, and each new work as it appeared brought from the leading literary weeklies some new word of praise. On the only occasion we ever met he asked me "Do you like imaginative stuff," and the next day's post brought me his wonderful romance, "The Nightland." What he was pleased to call pot-boilers were eagerly sought after by the leading London magazines but his heart lay in bigger tasks. What it must have meant to a temperament like his to leave his quiet home and work for the big guns can be imagined. He did it cheerfully, as many others have done. It some it is worse than to others. To the sensitive, to the post, to the writer, it is something different from what it can be to the ordinary person. They see further and they feel more accurately. No man "left all" in a more literal sense than did Hope Hodgson, and what it meant to him will never be known. He laughingly said once that it was "good for local colour." He joined from a great sense of duty, and now his duty done he is free from earthly things. In one of his last letters he wrote "Shells bursting all around us, and yet one did not seem to care, hardly even noticed them. The moment was too intense, tremendous----looked forward to through weary months with hope and expectation and some wonder and perhaps dread lest one should fall short--and then in a moment the event was upon us...and that with gun-firing with two of us loading it, fixing a round every three seconds, and even faster, I should say. The whole road where the Germans were coming round the end of a wood was simply one roar of dust and smoke where our shells were striking." "A dread lest one should fall short"--there was no need for dread on his part. His work remains. A life work crowned not with fullness of years and praise of men, but with the sublimest heroism. The praise of men he had for all the work he did; not that he wanted it, but it was his due. In his wife he had a collaborator of like talent and sympathy. To her remain the best memories; to us an odd letter or two and his writings. "There is no one who can fill his place in his home nor in his sphere of work."

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13 AN APPRECIATION* "It is written of some men that to know them is to love them." It is frequently written without sincerity, but it cannot be so written with regard to one who has just passed over. It was in September last that he wrote to me expressing the hope that at some future date we might meet and "find in each other kindred spirits." It was just like him to assume that a obscure person whose name he did not even know and who followed the same road, but far behind him, should be worthy of his friendship. He wrote: "Eight years at sea, three times around the world, ten years an author, and now nearly two and a half years a soldier--for I left my little chalet on the French Riviera to join up--brings me to 1917, and if good fortune attends me I shall be in France this week-end." It was characteristic of his large hearted personality that he should have enclosed his photograph--and it is curious that never since that letter was received has it left my pocket. There are some letters like that--but how few from the hundreds are worth keeping and carrying for seven months. What he was an author one is not competent to judge. His critics were all of one mind, and each new work as it appeared brought from the leading literary weeklies some new word of praise. On the only occasion we ever met he asked me "Do you like imaginative stuff," and the next day's post brought me his wonderful romance, "The Nightland." What he was pleased to call pot-boilers were eagerly sought after by the leading London magazines but his heart lay in bigger tasks. What it must have meant to a temperament like his to leave his quiet home and work for the big guns can be imagined. He did it cheerfully, as many others have done. It some it is worse than to others. To the sensitive, to the post, to the writer, it is something different from what it can be to the ordinary person. They see further and they feel more accurately. No man "left all" in a more literal sense than did Hope Hodgson, and what it meant to him will never be known. He laughingly said once that it was "good for local colour." He joined from a great sense of duty, and now his duty done he is free from earthly things. In one of his last letters he wrote "Shells bursting all around us, and yet one did not seem to care, hardly even noticed them. The moment was too intense, tremendous----looked forward to through weary months with hope and expectation and some wonder and perhaps dread lest one should fall short--and then in a moment the event was upon us...and that with gun-firing with two of us loading it, fixing a round every three seconds, and even faster, I should say. The whole road where the Germans were coming round the end of a wood was simply one roar of dust and smoke where our shells were striking." "A dread lest one should fall short"--there was no need for dread on his part. His work remains. A life work crowned not with fullness of years and praise of men, but with the sublimest heroism. The praise of men he had for all the work he did; not that he wanted it, but it was his due. In his wife he had a collaborator of like talent and sympathy. To her remain the best memories; to us an odd letter or two and his writings. "There is no one who can fill his place in his home nor in his sphere of work."