VI
THE MAN

To say that Mackay was a mass of contradictions is merely to say that he was human. Every man is a mass of contradictions, and it is God alone who knows us exactly as we are. The late Lord Riddell, with whom I worked for some happy years, used constantly to say of me that he could never quite determine whether I was a sentimentalist posing as a cynic or a cynic pretending to be a sentimentalist. The rather perplexing truth is that a man may be half sentimentalist and half cynic, a sentimentalist on Monday and a hard cynic before the end of the week. It is therefore extraordinarily difficult, in considering an original and out of the way personality like Mackay, to arrive at anything like a satisfying picture of the man as he actually was. It is true, as I have already suggested, that a man's realities are expressed in his achievements, in his failures as well as in his successes, and in the quality of his relations with his fellows. But, while we are all giving ourselves away, we never quite give all of ourselves away, and, while every secret is in a sense a secret de Polichinelle, every secret remains a secret to the end. That is the paradox of a man's life. The man who is the easiest to understand is the man who hates to be understood. The expansive man tells us much, though in effect he tells very little; while, on the other hand, in the effort to hide himself, the reticent man nearly always shows exactly where he is. He crawls under the couch, but he always leaves his foot sticking out.

Mackay was essentially a reticent man to whom talking of himself would have seemed extraordinarily bad manners. A priest who worked with him for years tells me that never once in all their long association did Mackay make the smallest reference to his own inner life. Sometimes, of course, there would come some swift and, as it were, undesired revelation. I remember one night dining with him and Geoffrey Heald, and I said that one of my troubles was that, as I grew older, I became more and more easily bored. And at once there came the comment in the familiar staccato voice: "My dear chap, I am bored all the time!" No man could have achieved what Mackay achieved unless he had been interested most of the time. But he liked to think that he was bored. He was a man apt to pose to himself. In one of his letters he says that lie knows how unpleasant it is to be praised. But it is not in the least unpleasant to be praised. All men love praise, even when it is undeserved. The appreciation of one's fellows is the more valuable when one can look at the labour of one's hands or one's brain and see that it is good. Indeed, the "Well played, Sir" from a competent critic, or even from an affectionate and not too critical friend, is eminently good for the soul. And, as a matter of fact, Mackay appreciated praise even as lesser men.

Most men reach God, if they contrive to reach Him at all, through their fellow-men. They first love their neighbour, whom they have seen, and then they learn to love God, Whom they have not seen. God is often revealed to us in the smiles of our friends. Mackay was unusual. He had an intense realization of God and he had no great hunger for the human friendship that both gives and demands. He was ready enough to give, but he made hardly any demands. This, I think, is a limitation and perhaps it is a limitation likely to be the characteristic of a celibate. The more intimate are one's associations with one's fellows, the more one asks of them, and it is most certainly true that the more one asks, the more one receives.

I was singularly fortunate in my own personal association with Mackay, because, while we had as an initial bond our mutual interest in the Anglo-Catholic movement, I cannot be described, even by my worst enemy, as ecclesiastically minded. Consequently we rarely talked Church or religion and our gossip was of politics, in which we widely disagreed, literature, the drama, and so on. And although--here perhaps is another paradox--Mackay was essentially a priest, he was most easy to understand when he was least a priest.

The Quaker strain in him was very apparent. The Quaker is the spiritual aristocrat. He has the right of entry into the Royal Presence, which he accepts with proper modesty, but naturally and to the manner born. The Catholic is the spiritual democrat. His faith has made him whole, but he is always a little afraid of himself. He takes his place at the royal banquet awkwardly, sitting unostentatiously below the salt. He is exceedingly abashed if, maybe, he hears the invitation: "Friend, come up higher." The Catholic, therefore, with Quaker origin, is torn between two influences. He realizes the great value of symbolism, though to him it may mean little. He has a full appreciation of what may be called the trappings of worship, though he has a certain instinctive spiritual fear of them. All Saints' under Mackay was famous for the perfection of its ritual, but Mackay always held it in hand. In his day All Saints' was only theatrical on Christmas Eve, when Gounod and the drummer were given their heads.

Mackay had a rare capacity for knowing his own limitations. He had little personal ambition. He always refused to accept obligations which he felt he was incapable of fulfilling. After the death of Bishop Weston it was generally supposed that Mackay would become the recognized leader of the Anglo-Catholic party in the Church of England. As a preacher he had no peer. Bishops and priests continually came to him for advice. His judgment and common sense were generally respected. The leadership was constantly pressed on him, but he always declined, and he was perfectly right.

He was born absolutely without the committee mind. I have the same limitation. In the protracted conferences during the Prayer Book controversy he and I were often present at the same meetings, and we subsequently discussed who of us had been the most wearied. I can see his face now at one of these conferences. At first the well-mannered attempt to be interested and helpful, then the gradual conquest of boredom as one 4^eary speech was made after the other, and the final look of almost desperate despair. Moreover, a leader must be capable not only of inspiration but of sharp and salutary criticism. Bishop Weston could be severe when severity was necessary, and had Bishop Weston had a successor who could have been equally severe, in view of the more eccentric developments of the last few years, it would have been all for the good of the Catholic revival. But Mackay was not that man, and he knew that he was not that man. He had an instinctive dislike of criticising his brethren. He would have found it extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, sharply to put on the curb. He had no illusions about certain tendencies and about certain men. He would, in his study, speak with extreme candour, but it was not for him to admonish and therefore it was not for him to lead. His refusal to accept responsibility has been attributed to mental and spiritual laziness and to a dislike of accepting responsibility. I think the refusal is to be attributed to nothing except self-knowledge and to a realization of inability to fill a difficult office.

Mackay was for sometime the Warden of a small Society of Anglo-Catholic writers known as the Guild of St. Francis, which came to an end when Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith went to Rome. He was at his very best at the Guild breakfasts after the monthly Communions, witty, friendly, delighting to meet men and women who earned their living with their pens. He was equally delightful at the dinners of a club of which he and I were original members and that consisted of Churchmen and Nonconformists, where, though he probably spoke less than most of us, when he did speak he said more than any of us. The original members of this club were Mackay, Arnold Pinchard, the Secretary of the English Church Union, now, alas, dead, the Dean of Chichester, Lord Wolmer, Henry Slesser and myself on the Church side, and on the Nonconformist side Dr. Workman, Wesleyan, Dr. Benjamin Gregory, editor of the Methodist Times, Dr. Albert Peel, editor of the Congregational Quarterly, Dr. Hubert Simpson, a minister of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, Sir Henry Lunn and C. T. Le Quesne, K.C. One of the most interesting things that came out of our meetings was to find the rather odd contacts created between men of different ecclesiastical allegiances, and I think this was most apparent in the friendship created between Mackay and Hubert Simpson, a most attractive Scotsman whose cousin was Robert Louis Stevenson's companion on the Inland Voyage.

It was when he was with his peers, particularly when he was with men of varying kinds, that Mackay's distinction became most apparent, perhaps because it was then that he was himself most unaware of his distinction. He may have posed a little to himself: he never posed to other people. He never asked to be understood, but I think he wanted to be understood. He would have shivered if one had told him that he wanted to be liked, but still he did want to be liked. I think he enjoyed the meetings of this All Saints' Club because he knew quite well that we were all more than happy when he came and that we found the meetings a little less satisfactory when he could not come.

Mackay had a caustic tongue and he was certainly more critical of women than of men. It may be one of the misfortunes of the Catholic cause that it attracts more women than men and it may be also the fact that a pious woman is apt to be tiresome. I remember Mackay telling me that, when he was sitting in his confessional, he could see the feet of his penitents as they were making their way to him and that his heart always gave a bound of joy when he saw a pair of trousers.

He was perhaps a little too acute in discovering hypocrisy, but he rejoiced in simplicity and that is why he loved children. The real Mackay, the lovable Mackay, the great Mackay, was to be found most clearly in his relation with the boys of the All Saints' Choir School, who were in a very real sense his children. And it was in arranging the annual play that the lover of the theatre, whom we met first in the charades in youthful days, the lover of the child, and the lover of seemliness and order all found their fulfilment.

The clergyman in patent leather shoes--that is how Geoffrey Heald first saw him and always remembered him. He loved dignity and seemliness. His choir-boys may have seemed to be a little over-drilled, but good behaviour was the first essential to the Vicar. They must turn together exactly, they must be neat, their surplices must be clean, they must behave like gentlemen. When Christmas came round and the play was prepared, if they were to act they must act like actors.

Thanks to the collaboration of Heald and Mackay the greatest successes of the choir boys' plays came in the years 1922 and 1923. In 1922 The Taming of the Shrew was played not only in the restricted space of the All Saints' Parish Hall but at a matinee at the Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford. On the morning before, the choir-boys walked in procession to Shakespeare's grave, where they sang a dirge which consisted of a special setting of De Profundis by George Henschel and a setting by W. S. Vale of Fear no more the heat of the sun. The Birmingham Post said:

"This little service, lasting only some twenty minutes, was very moving and soothing. The music was full of sad charm and the unaccompanied voices sweet to the ear. A deep impression was made on all present. One feels that this modest venture may be the forerunner of many more ambitious, resulting in a world Shakespeare Memorial Service that might be annually performed, not only at Stratford but "in every part of the Empire."

The Stratford performance was an immense success and had a really amazing press. The Times said that the main interest of the performance was to suggest how well boys must have played women's parts in Shakespeare's time. The critic concluded:

"If the action halts for a moment, you may be occupied in wonder at lines so well and fairly spoken, or may ask yourself how it is that boys have so wonderfully learned to walk like women. You feel that, if an apple were thrown to this Katherine, she would instinctively catch it in her lap, and, if apples give her pleasure, we hope with all gratitude that someone will make the experiment."

The Morning Post said that "the boys all played with the zest, grace and suppleness of young boys at cricket, and, moreover, showed a very keen sense of character". The critic of the Birmingham Post declared:

"The most delightful general characteristic was the grace and freedom and largeness of gesture which is nearly a lost art on the English stage. Yet, with these choristers, it was almost Italianate--no, more than Italianate, for it seemed Elizabethan."

The performance was seen by a large number of distinguished people, and because it suggests an acute understanding of Mackay's intention in devoting so much time to these performances, I quote at length from a letter addressed to him by J. N. Comper, the eminent ecclesiastical architect:

"The remembrance of Tuesday haunts me, but does not crowd out the remembrances of Julius Caesar, and Twelfth Night, and Julius Caesar most of all. But somehow I think you have made Shakespeare live in this last achievement of the Shrew more than can ever have been done before, or at any rate since his own days.

"I am afraid it is absurd, if not impertinent of an ignoramus like myself to make any remarks unless it be about the staging, but it is the interpretation of the play and the acting that makes me almost forget that other part of it, (wonderful as it was), and, since I must write to thank you again, from us all, for your goodness in inviting us, I cannot help the attempt to say how it struck me.

"I felt the same thing before, but here you have got a step further still from the conventional stage of to-day, which after the first glamour and originality of the Lyceum of our youth, has made me less and less anxious to go and see Shakespeare. The doing away with the auditorium altogether and of the make-belief of realism no doubt enormously helps this emancipation, but such a setting would be powerless without the individual acting and the spirit behind it of your conception of the play and of Shakespeare. (I always rejoice in a letter from Father Congreve in my youth when I made some piagnoni-like remark on something or other in the plays, and he merely tells me that "Archbishop Trench canonized Shakespeare".) And in this veritable glamour of the Renaissance I felt that, without a suspicion of becoming piagnoni you had canonized the bard whom I worship. The sanity and kindness of the play asserted themselves all the time over its extravagance. You had got all the qualities of proportion, spaciousness and breadth that I love most in architecture and on which you built all those delicious refinements of beauty and grotesqueness in detail which it must also have, but which would be lost without the other.

"Incidentally you have proved once again that Shakespeare, as always, knew what he was about in writing his parts for boy actors. One wonders in the presence of these young choirboys if any grown men or women could acquire the perfect freedom from self-consciousness that seems natural to them and enables them at their best so to assimilate themselves with the parts that it seems no longer acting. But what teaching it must require, as they cannot, of course, act from their own experience!

"Please tell Mr. Heald that if he did not look on beauty with so much the same eyes as mine I should be jealous of him! I am critical of the dyes of Watts's materials and no doubt he agrees with me, but I never saw them used so well and in such combinations that one's criticism was disarmed. In some blues and pinks of the boys and stripes of black and grey, it was veritable Italy. But beautiful materials would be of little use without the shapes of those many-coloured long-legged elegants that flit across the pavements of Massuccio and Carpaccio, or without the skill to fit them the one to the other, and you must have a second Miracle-worker in the boys' Matron!"

After the performance of The Taming of the Shrew at Margaret Street, A. B. Ramsay of Eton, wrote to Mackay:

"Since I came away from that delightful treat on Friday afternoon I have had time to think about it calmly, and I have come to the deliberate conclusion that no performance has ever given me such enjoyment. I don't pretend to be a dramatic critic, but I am quite clear that I have never seen anything so natural and so convincing from professional actors. I could not help thinking all the time of what a highly privileged position I was occupying in being admitted as one of the few spectators of such an exquisite work of art. The acting, the dresses, the setting, all gave me a peculiar sense of perfection; and perhaps best of all was the boys' perfectly natural enjoyment of the fun, and the complete absence of any self-consciousness. The comradeship between masters and pupils must be excellent to produce such results.

"As you keep--quite rightly, I think--the performances private, and visible only to a limited number, you must naturally be anxious to secure for your spectators those who can really appreciate what you are doing; and so I thought I would write and tell you how I feel about it. I think I can speak for the Provost as well as myself. Not a minute of the great work which you all put into this fine thing was wasted on us. As we came away he said to me: 'That proves that Shakespeare ought always to be acted by boys.'"

Mr. Komisarjevsky, the famous producer, wrote:

"I was most interested in The Taming of the Shrew. What I appreciated the most was the sincerity, the seriousness and the simplicity with which the boys played. The 'characterization' which they gave to each part in their manner of speech and their gestures would have astonished many an old actor.

"It was perhaps the only performance which I have seen in England where I did not notice that false 'theatricality' which is leading to the death of the Theatre.

"The literary arrangement of the play and the unconventional mise en scene showed imagination and a happy freedom from the 'Shakespearean tradition' (or routine). The producer caught the 'spirit' of Shakespeare and gave to the performance a definite artistic form, which I appreciated to the full.

"As concerns the teaching of acting in schools for boys and girls, I think it can play an immense role in the development of mind and formation of character. And I think it would be a great thing were it introduced in all the schools. It is a delicate task, however, and one of great responsibility. In any case I do not think the actors of the contemporary 'commercial' theatre are fit to teach acting without the risk of deforming and poisoning the childish soul."

The Taming of the Shrew was followed next year by a performance of Twelfth Night, of which E. A. Baughan, the critic of the Daily News said, "In an extraordinary degree the performance expressed the spirit of the play, especially its jolly fun and its romance. Who says we have no dramatic talent?" And J. L. Garvin, who rarely writes of the drama, was moved to lyrical admiration.

"The result," he wrote, "was a rendering so nimble, beautiful--so poignant in innocent imitation of mature characters and passions--that everyone who witnessed it was moved with a paradoxical pleasure, joyous and regretful at once, too subtle and contradictory to be defined. All Saints', Margaret Street, has not only reconciled Church and Stage at last. As in the Middle Ages, it has made them one."

I am particularly interested in printing the following letter from my friend Francis Birrell, neither by heredity nor by conviction likely to be attracted by Anglican choir-boys.

"Just a line to thank you more than I can say for having so kindly given me a ticket for the Twelfth Might which I enjoyed more than I can describe, and which was in fact an event in my life--without any exaggeration."

Ben Greet, sweetest of Christian gentlemen and himself a producer of genius, wrote:

"Thank you so much for the delightful afternoon. It was a beautiful performance and I'd love to see it again. All were so good, but I am obliged to pick out Olivia as one of the best--if not the best I ever saw. The whole play is full of delightful surprises and we never know how wonderful Shakespeare is, but most wonderful, I'm sure, when played by boys."

Geoffrey Heald has been good enough to recall "the V" as he knew him:

"The first time I ever saw Mackay was in the Oxford Union; the first time I ever met him was in his rooms at Pusey House.

"I was taken to see him by an undergraduate friend. My first impression of him lasted all through the years to come. He was standing with his back to the fire, his hands planted

firmly in his cincture, a favourite attitude. I was only eighteen then and short for my age. So that he appeared to me a tall, thin man. He was wearing a well-cut cassock, black-rimmed pince-nez and patent-leather shoes. Also about his room and on the mantelshelf behind him were several children's toys. This first impression I had of him and his surroundings became symbols of what the man was. The black-rimmed pince-nez glasses--he had very near sight--seemed to obscure his eyes. And yet behind the glasses you always felt that you were being very carefully scrutinized. It was difficult to see his eyes. His very neat habit, he was always perfectly turned out, ended with the patent-leather shoes. I had never seen a clergyman before in neat patent leathers. I do not think I have since.

"He had an eye for detail, and he liked things that glittered. He loved burnished silver, and the toys. He loved children, and the child mind. It comes out vividly in his sermons. He speaks there of fairyland on some occasions. He asked a congregation once in a Sermon if they had lost their fairyland. His tenderness and understanding with children was very beautiful. He knew what they were thinking. It was no effort to him. He had not to play down to them, and never put on the conventional pose which people use with the 'youngsters'. Oh dear no! He carried on a perfectly natural conversation with them, but it was with them. I remember once he was interviewing a priest who had applied to join the Staff. Afterwards I asked him if he was coming. 'Oh dear no,' he said, 'while he was here one of the boys came in and he addressed him as 'Sonny '!' Exactly----

"I was only in his rooms at Pusey House for a few minutes as I had been commended to another Librarian, and it was against all the laws of the Puseum to mix the sheep and shepherds. He said very little, and I was very shy, but it all went off quite easily because at once he introduced me to his latest toy, one of those Bavarian things. It was screwed on to his mantelpiece and a wooden ball hung down by a string. When this was worked like a pendulum, it made an old man saw wood. It was a splendid device to set a shy lad at his ease. So instead of the interview being stiff, and my receiving some precept for my University career, we had a delightful talk about toys.

"Then his care of detail. The shoes, yes, even to the choir-boys' shoes, they too must be of patent leather. Every detail of their dresses for the fancy dress ball was scrutinized by him with that characteristic sidelong glance of his glasses.

"In 1916, I had been resting on account of loss of voice after my first curacy, and I was painting the figure of the great Calvary now in the Baptistry at All Saints'. During the morning he came down the church, I thought to see my work. He never looked at it. 'Do you think ----?' I began. 'No, I don't want to talk about that, but something much more important.' I followed him to his study. 'I want you to join the Staff here; will you come?' Roscow Shedden was leaving for Bathwick, which never came off. I suppose I was very young and very bold, or was it that he understood the young and therefore I felt no fear? I said, 'If I made a list of the churches in London to which I should go, yours would be the last on the list.' This amused him immensely. 'Splendid,' he said, 'but why?' 'Because,' I said, 'I am only an old tub-thumper and if I came here I should jar.' 'That is exactly what I want,' he replied. 'Gome and jar. We want jarring at All Saints'.' So I went--and stayed nearly thirteen years.

"The story about the 'one curate and three vicars' was truth in jest. He was never vicarish. But by that subtlety he was more Vicar than ever. He let his men have free play, develop their own line. This is the only way to run a non-parochial London church. When one man's congregation walked out another walked in. There was never financial difficulty while I was there. We had our own departments. A big concern cannot be one man's.

"But he was always 'the V,' the V who expected the best from each man, and very quickly the man realized it when he got there. He had no need to be vicarish. He had no need to give orders. He himself was the order--that was quite sufficient. He would suggest. Brilliant suggestions! He always said 'we'. Quite quietly. 'I think we had better, etc.' 'I don't think we.' And you knew that 'we' meant what he wanted you to do or not to do.

"Once at 84, Roscow Shedden and I and Blofield, and some other clergyman who had been dragged in were playing bridge. On the table at Roscow's elbow was a large bottle of beer, and the room fogged with tobacco smoke. Suddenly the door opened and there stood Mackay wrapped to the teeth in his old Inverness. He very seldom came to 84 and hardly ever entered his colleagues' rooms. I suppose we looked a bit awkward. He stood stock-still and then, 'Ah! this is what I have always suspected'! Roars of applause. And everyone set at their ease.

"He and I were most intimately associated with one another over the choristers' plays. It is difficult for me to get out of the way here, because it was a real partnership. A sort of Barker-Vedrenne affair. I had the goods in me, but his amazing keenness and enthusiasm brought it all out. We both needed one another. Before I joined the Staff in 1916 they had been performing such plays as Vice Versa with brown-paper scenery. My first love had been the drama and scenic decorative art. So at once he had at hand the man he wanted. He was himself a superb actor. I have never seen him act, but it was all there. He was able to impart to the actors what he wanted. He had such a wonderful appeal to the mind. One man said of his Sermons that they made you cry with your mind. You know how undemonstrative he was. He never mimed. The miming was left to me. But the thoughts came from him.

"So the first year I was with him we began with a Triple Bill and scenery--the Ghost of Jerry Bundler, and two excerpts from Shakespeare. And when we realized we were kindred spirits we embarked on the Roman scenes of Julius Caesar. It was the cramped space which made us take to the Elizabethan method of playing amongst the audience. We tried our first great venture with The Taming of the Shrew, Laurence Olivier as a little boy playing Katharine to my Petruchio. I deplored having to appear, but with the ambitious ventures we had to have a Ring Master in the middle of the Circus. We placed a broad flight of steps on to the stage and raised the audience on to two rows of chairs, down each side of the room. Like a choir with a broad aisle in the middle, so that there was an exit at each end. The room was drapped with stone-coloured hangings, and simple effects, with white pillars and a brilliant Italian sky, gave a vivid picture. We concentrated on the dresses with great care, so that each figure stood out as a perfect miniature. Mackay was a terror for detail and an awful critic. Always just and never negative. He never plucked up unless he had something to plant. I generally adapted the play for our particular production, so that it could be made possible and not too long.

"He would sit at a rehearsal, and often remain perfectly still with the text in his hands, apparently with his eyes glued to the print as though he were not taking the slightest notice--maddening for the producer--and yet all the time he was taking every detail in. So like his attitude in Choir in his Stall. As though he saw nothing, yet nothing escaped him. His insight in the reading of the text was quite wonderful. He would give us pure inspiration for getting over the most difficult bits, so that in the end they would become even more attractive than the plums.

"There is no doubt that The Shrew and Twelfth Night were our magnum opus, but there was the little play of Dickens, The Holy Tree Inn, which stands out, and I sometimes think it was his favourite. We had two splendid children for the boy and girl. Over the latter most people were wholly deceived by the sex!

"I remember so well Ellen Terry being present, and from the stage I could overhear her comments. Of her own accord she came the second night unasked. I think it took her back to the old school. There she was with a bag of sweets in her lap enthralled. She deplored the fact that it could not be shown to the public and said what fools the managers were not to produce such things. Couldn't it be put on for a week at the Coliseum? Stoll would take it! There is no doubt that the plays should have been shown to a wider public. Time and lack of space prevented it. The audience was very select and precious on many occasions. Great stars were dragged to see a performance, coming bored and departing amazed. I remember Fred Terry, Kate Terry, Ellen Terry and Julia Neilson all being there one night for Twelfth Might. As the lights dimmed to singing 'off' by the choristers, just humming some of Mr. Vale's specially composed music, and two minutes after the first entrance, Fred Terry said to his companion, 'Don't talk to me'; and soon the tears were in his eyes.

"Forbes-Robertson too, Du Maurier, Violet Vanbrugh, Marie Lohr, and very many others, great people in all professions, writers, poets, musicians, doctors, lawyers. They all found a 'something', difficult to express, which struck some chord in them which is seldom touched.

"The then President of the Incorporated Stage Society was brought to the Christian Religion by the boys' acting. He would not come. 'What! Kids! Oh no, I can't!' They all thought they were going to see the usual rough school play. But an influential person would dine a 'big star' first and then get him into a taxi and somehow get him there. This is what actually happened in the case of the President of whom I am speaking. He saw the 'something' and soon appeared at the High Mass, and there he found the 'something' once again.

"I think Mackay's happiest day was when the whole company were invited to play a matinee of The Shrew at the Old Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. It was a royal day for him. These plays were not knocked up in a month. We took nine months to produce The Shrew. But all the time it gave to Mackay his chief form of relaxation.

"I have always felt that the Choir School was his hobby. He had no hobbies in the ordinary sense of the word. The usual parson's day off was unknown to him. He was a prolific reader. But the relaxation hobby of real recreation was the boys. And how splendid it was that this hobby was at his door. He was wrapped up in the Choir School. He had to have an escape. And this was the fairyland in which he hid himself.

"He loved the child mind and had no need to get down to it or play down to it. He could be it. He knew their minds and the working of them. He could be with them, so that they in turn could be.absolutely 'natural' with him.

"The power of the plays was not because we had a company of actors, but because he saw a certain boy who was in himself a certain part. 'He is a perfect Toby Belch.' 'He is Grumio.' Many of the characters had to be made. But most fitted like a glove, because the play was chosen to fit them.

"How people bored him! I think, although he was always perfectly courteous, that was the reason why he appeared so forbidding. I have heard men say, 'Well, how is that poor miserable man?' But if only they could have seen him in his element, say at a dress rehearsal of the costumes of the Fancy Dress Ball for the boys! Radiant with delight! He nearly always took the boys' evening prayers. I nearly always dined with him. Then about 8.15, there would be the padding of their feet coming nearer. After prayers they all hustled up into his room, and I left. I knew that that was his hour. It was the boys who produced his Book on Francis. That book was his fairyland written for the public. All the plays are there; and that was in all the plays.

"I never knew if he had a real cpaP during his floreat at All Saints'. He was a member of no club in London. He had no 'palship' of that sort. So many of his acquaintances were so much on their best behaviour when they came. I think he gave them the impression that they were 'on approval'. There may have been one or two, but how seldom he saw them in playtime! It was only on 'affairs'.

"I remember his sense of humour, when once there had been a meeting of incumbents over some crisis, one of the perpetual crises in the Church of England. They were all departing and he said to one, 'Well, I suppose we shall not meet until the next crisis'.

"I really think I am the only man who actually played the fool in his study. But then I knew his fairyland and so I knew what he liked to play with. Often I have found him very 'down' and I knew the cure. 'I've just designed Norman's dress for Olivia.' At once he would rub his hands together and we entered his world of toys.

"There was something about him which made those who worked with him give him every ounce. He brought the very best out of those people. They knew 'the best was good enough for him'. They knew that he saw. He saw right through; and he expected the best. He was essentially a director, there to direct. He expected the work done. He took it for granted. I always felt that he did not understand 'labour'. He gave the brilliant idea, but had to be surrounded with those who could carry it out. He could ring from the bridge, but of the engine-room he knew nothing.

"Of course my intimacy with him in private affairs cannot be written. But some of his humour amidst them was priceless. 'Kye, that woman always seems to be perfectly happy, so much so that it becomes rather sickening.'

'My dear Geoffrey, that woman will be perfectly happy in Hell!' Of another, a repulsive woman and yet always in church at her prayers: 'That woman's prayer has been turned into sin.'

"He was the most marvellously self-controlled man I have ever known, but when he did 'come down' and spoke at last it wasn't a 'ton of bricks'; it was a complete 'black out'. The last time I lunched with him was at my club. It had been a long time since I had seen him. In two minutes we were just as we had always been. I had hoped we were going to make merry over food and wine, but from the enormous menu he merely chose the eternal cutlet. And wine? 'No, I mustn't, a little dry ginger ale.3 So we made merry once again over the old, old feast. The plays and the boys, and we just revelled in the toys that might have been."

Children appealed to Mackay and Mackay appealed to children, which, considering his sophisticated mind, was extremely odd. His sermons were always simple in their expression, they were never difficult to understand and, though I do not believe he ever intentionally preached a children's sermon, children and young people heard him and read him gladly.

Dr. Edward Lyttleton wrote to him in December, 1931:

"Permit me to thank you very cordially for your book on St. Paul. I wish I had seen it before I had given up school work, for a better book for a sixth form divinity class was never printed."

Even more striking was the effect on a small boy with a long distance to go before the sixth form was reached. In July 1933, Dr. Rawlinson, the Bishop of Derby, then Archdeacon of Auckland, wrote to Mackay:

"I cannot resist writing to tell you how immensely edified my small son Anthony, aged seven years, is by the study of your The Ministry of Our Lord. Every night at bed-time he induces his mother to read to him the relevant passage of the Gospel and what 'old Mac' has to say about it. He is thrilled and spellbound by your discourses, his imagination utterly gripped by the vividness of your description, his religious outlook just exactly suited by the tone of your book, and his understanding of the Gospel quite obviously immensely promoted. I cannot imagine anything more rewarding either to a preacher of sermons or a writer of books than to know that he has thus captured a youthful but intelligent reader of seven summers."

Two years later Mrs. Rawlinson wrote to Mackay:

"We have Anthony home after two most happy terms at school. Every night I read to him to his great delight and interest your new Studies in the Old Testament. A new 'Mac' was a lovely discovery for the holidays. You are lighting up the Old Testament for him as you lit up the New. He often exclaims, 'How I love Mac's mind!' I thought this new one might be too difficult for him, but he simply drinks it in, and it gives him the right view point for the Old Testament which is so vitally important."

To men and women Mackay was sometimes difficult of approach, austere, apparently rather unsympathetic. To a small boy he was "old Mac", and perhaps this fact summarizes the man more accurately than pages of criticism and explanation. As I remember the man, as I recall him with a happy smile leaving his dinner-table to take the choir-boys' prayers, as I remember him, too, a little uncomfortable on the playing-fields because that was not his home land, I believe that it is quite probable that in his last hours he remembered that little Rawlinson thought of him as "old Mac" and was happy in the thought.

In his private relations Mackay had a distinctive and whimsical humour. He was once asked how many curates there were at All Saints' and he replied: "One curate and three vicars." As Heald has said, he left every man on his staff to do his own job, with little interference and far too little direction. With one or two exceptions, in the last fourteen years of his incumbency his assistant priests were anything but inspired preachers and I over and over again suggested to him that he should sub-edit their sermons, as an editor regularly sub-edits the writings of his contributors. "My dear Vicar," I once said to him, "I wear out a blue pencil a week. I don't believe that you wear out a blue pencil a year." "Not in five years," was the characteristic answer.

I have often looked at him during a singularly tiresome sermon, sitting impassive, with his detached appearance, and I was perfectly convinced that he was not listening to a single word that the preacher said. "I have rarely heard a sermon right through," Dr. Gore once said to me. "I sometimes hear the text and sometimes catch the peroration." I think this was true of Mackay, and this was part of his disinclination for overseer-ship. It is not a nice job to tell a much younger man that his work is extraordinarily bad, and I imagine it is easier for me than for Mackay, because I derive from Fleet Street and he derived from Cuddesdon and Pusey House. The training of a young journalist, who has often been asked whether he is really a newspaper man or a plumber, hardens one to criticism and makes it easier in later years for faithful dealing with subordinates, which, after all, is all for their good, both spiritual and material. All his assistant priests agree in their tribute to the stimulation of his friendship and his conversation, but those of them, who have most distinguished themselves in after life, have owed that distinction to intrinsic qualities more than to hard-earned lessons from a superior.

Just as he to some extent had persuaded himself that he cared nothing for praise, so he was little more inclined to praise than he was to blame. His judgments were quick and, when he had once made up his mind, he was adamant. His taste, too, was both accurate and pernickety. He told Heald to order a set of altar-cards which were to be fitted into some old silver frames. Heald took considerable pains with the type and the mode of setting, but, when he showed the result to the Vicar, he was met with the devastating criticism: "Oh dear, no! the paper is far too white." And Heald says that the Vicar was absolutely right.

It was the same thing with the music. W. S. Vale, the gifted organist to whom All Saints' owes an unpayable debt, remembers extremely small interference with the choice of Masses, and so on, but he had the inspiring knowledge all the time of a cultured, whimsical critic sitting in the Vicar's stall.

Mackay was entirely unpractical. His one idea of the way to get anywhere was to take a taxi. To have told him that to get, say, to the Elephant and Castle you must first take a No. i and then change into a No. la would have been to reduce him to a bewildered stupor. He had a deep antipathy to physical exercise of any sort. There are quaint stories of how on one occasion he was cajoled into attempting to play golf. His general walk was as far as Mudie's and later the shorter journey to The Times Book Club to change a novel. He did not suffer fools gladly and he generally succeeded in not suffering fools at all. That was one of the jobs he handed to his colleagues. There is a story that some years ago Bernard Shaw was seen eating strawberries while he was wearing cotton gloves. I often recalled this story when talking to Mackay. He seemed to live with his hands protected by nice clean cotton gloves which he changed every day.

To this sketch of the man, as I knew him and loved him, I am able to add the reminiscences of the Rev. Edward Roberts, who was master of the Choir School in Mackay's last years at All Saints' and was Vice-Principal of Cuddesdon. Mr. Roberts wrote:

"I had never met Father Mackay before going to be inspected in March, 1931, as a possible successor to John Freebairn-Smith, who was leaving the Choir School at All Saints'. I think I expected a big Scotsman to come in when the study door opened, and I was surprised when the Vicar came round the screen and shook me by the hand. He seemed very slight to be so important. I was not very keen to go and work for him at All Saints', and I thought I left it undecided when I returned to Cuddesdon, but he wrote to say how glad he was I was going to accept the title, so I did. Later I was to learn how effectively I had been examined. On one pretext or another Father Mackay fetched in the three priests on the staff to look at me, and a feminine critic was introduced at lunch. I shall not easily forget the sidelong glances and changing of spectacles and leading questions at that meal, which led to my appointment.

"I had been told that living with Mackay would be a liberal education. I don't know what this means, but if it is true, then there is a good deal to be said for a liberal education. Living with Mackay was certainly an amazing privilege. He took his staff completely into his confidence--this was partly due to his desire to relieve himself of anxious moments by imagining they were as reliable as he wanted them to be--so I at once found him initiating me into the mysteries of the Choir School work, while at the same time he expected me to cope with the situation as fast as he revealed it.

"It was therefore in his relationship with the boys that I mostly saw him. One can only say that it was a most extraordinary thing. From his first day in the school each chorister found in Father Mackay a superb friend. He had favourites, of course, but to all alike he was generous and understanding. He had very little idea of the value of money at any time, and where the boys were concerned, none at all. When he treated them it was to the best, for he believed in shewing them ideals--the ideal icecream: the ideal play from the ideal seat: and he would give them the ideal book for a present. But if it was extravagant it was justifiable, because it formed the natural foundation upon which he was later to build for them the ideal Christian character, when he prepared them for confirmation. There was an annual example of his generosity which stands out among many. About a fortnight before Christmas he would give me a cheque large enough to provide five shillings for each boy. Armed with this glorious pourboire we would sally forth to Carnage's and after a heavenly afternoon, return with anything from a cinematograph to a bottle of sweets, and after dinner display them gaily to him in his study.

"The nightly visits to the study were a great feature of the Vicar's devotion to the boys. We might have had a dull and formal dinner-party (though this never seemed to be the case if we had him alone), but the moment the door opened to admit the Head Boy with a courteous request 'Will you take prayers for us, please, Vicar?' he was all life. With a hasty sip at his coffee and a word to his guests he would slip away from the table and return in about five minutes to the study with a crowd of chattering courtiers to escort him to his throne beside the fire. They would light for him a Lapika cigarette from the box they always gave him on his birthday and at Christmas, and for half an hour they would all twinkle merrily at the gossip of the day. If there were guests present, the boys were all attention. Mackay taught them to be at home with dukes and not to be afraid of bishops. He believed they could do it as well as their elders, and he believed in treating them without a trace of condescension, as his own equals. And there is no doubt he was supremely successful in this work of social education.

"There were times in consequence when he failed to treat the boys as children when that was what they needed. He didn't realize how much sleep growing children need. He never had to teach them after he had kept them up late the night before, and they were much too artful to show any signs of tiredness when he was about! His views on food, too, were sometimes too grown up to be healthy for the young, and he often chid me for my 'vitamin mind', when I deprecated some quite monstrous dish that he had suggested for the boys last thing at night. But for these occasional outrages upon nursery lore he splendidly atoned by his profound sympathy with the boys as 'young men'. I suppose he always regarded them as potential grown-ups. This meant that when in fact they did grow up the Vicar never had to change his relationship with them, and so the returning old boy always found him reliably the same.

"This is not to say that he was at all out of sympathy with children. He could keep the attention of the children of our catechism at All Saints' (no mean feat!) simply by telling them in a charming little sermon how love of our Lord and of our Lady would make their faces beautiful and their hearts clean. And he wrote enthusiastically of the children whom he had seen in a Corpus Christi procession which he had witnessed in Italy in 1934.

"The golden age of his play-producing was over by 1931, but the Indian Summer lay ahead, and it was the greatest thrill to be allowed to help him, in 1933, with some Shakespeare scenes and a revue which he wove entrancingly round the personality of one particular boy. There were great times creating and fitting the dresses; the Vicar always knew what he wanted, though he left the rest of us to discover how to get it for him. He recognized instinctively colours that would match and he had a wonderful eye for every kind of stage effect. At rehearsals he would sit all swathed up in a voluminous overcoat with a biretta on his head, legs crossed, right hand to chin with the slender index finger pointing upwards towards his temple. He invariably complained of the cold in the stage-room, even though a formidable array of oil stoves had been marshalled to support the meagre efforts of the gas-fire. In coaching the boys in a part he would climb up to the stage and by a gesture or intonation convey precisely what was required. He nearly ended his life doing an intoxicated exit down some stairs from the kitchen scene in Twelfth Night, on behalf of a self-conscious little Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

"He must have thought a great deal about the plays at all times, and even when he was away from All Saints' his absorption with them led to a good many notes with suggestions and alterations. These were all characteristically humble. 'Do you think we could change over John and Peter? But just as you like.' 'Would you care to try such and such a plan? I leave it to you.' He knew perfectly well that he could do whatever he wished, but he preferred to let other people think that they were the real producers.

"The plays brought out the Vicar's astonishingly unpractical nature. He looked upon fuses and wires and screw-drivers as the inventions of the devil. He could not use a reading-lamp which had an unusual type of switch, he could not light a cigarette in the open, because he could not learn how to shield the lighted match from the wind, and he could never understand about the workings of the church safes nor how to manage the electric tabernacle over the high altar. He disliked the telephone, and would rather walk across to the school or send a maid with a note than ring me up. To see him shave himself filled one with apprehension for his wind-pipe and admiration for the razor. Yet he was an adept at carving.

"Mackay had a superb sense of humour. He could tell all his stories over and over again and they never palled. He loved it when you laughed at them, and he joined in himself. At St. David's, where the Vicar of All Saints' was attractively combined with the Pembrokeshire country gentleman, he encouraged our wildest fun.

"The Vicar always prepared the boys for confirmation himself. He took endless pains, and gave up a good deal of time to this work. The confirmation always takes place on the Saturday before Passion Sunday at All Saints', and the classes used to begin very soon after Christmas. Towards the end, the boys would go two or three times a week and stay to tea. They seemed to love the instructions he gave them, and the arrangements for their confessions, confirmation, and communions made a great impression upon everyone.

"The Vicar appreciated what was aesthetically pleasing in church as well as on the stage. He loved showing visitors round. He liked bold colours and was delightfully humble about receiving suggestions. I remember turning out an old pair of College rowing socks which exactly matched the boys' cassocks. We arrayed one of the monitors in full regalia with the cerise socks over the usual grey stockings and sent him to the study half in fun and half in trepidation to be inspected. The Vicar saw an improvement at once and ordered cerise stockings to be made, though he would never allow it to be said that it was his suggestion.

"He did not use the church for his private prayers, at any rate latterly, except to say his thanksgiving after Mass. But we were continually being reminded of the closeness of his walk with God by the transparent loveliness of some of the things he said. He would often say them, thinking them aloud, as he sat on the arm of a chair in my room after saying 'Good Night' to the boys, and then apologizing for keeping me up late, he would wander rather sadly back to the Vicarage. It always seemed that his heart was our side of the little courtyard.

"When he went shopping he used to walk as much as he could; otherwise he went by taxi. To my knowledge he only once rode in a bus. I was walking with the boys through Hyde Park one afternoon and we found him taking his solitary constitutional. After the usual flourish of red caps and some amicable converse I had to say that it was time for us to be hurrying home. We were going by bus. I secretly longed to take him with us and made the boys egg him on to the great adventure, so slightly protesting yet inwardly thrilled, he mounted the bus step and sat inside with me in silent wonder while the children scrambled up on top as usual. He was genuinely surprised to find that the great machine halted for him to get off, and that he was not expected to cast himself tout en vqyageant at the passers-by in a supreme act of faith.

"He loved taxis and their drivers. They had friendly associations for him. Once the late Lord Halifax came to consult him upon a matter of some importance; the taxi-driver had stopped on the wrong side of Margaret Street, and appeared quite at a loss. I happened to be passing and seeing the frail old gentleman peering anxiously forth from the gloom of a chariot of some years' standing, I inquired if I could help and promised to find Mackay. He at once appeared, clambered in beside the old gentleman, and there they sat in comfortable oblivion, less than a hundred yards from the study armchairs, while the meter ticked quietly away beside them.

"Mackay had an average library. His best books were not theological, and I never knew him read much for his sermons at the last, though he enjoyed quoting from the Catholic Encyclopaedia. But he made the fullest use of his Times Book Club subscription. He would read a long novel through in the watches of a disturbed night. When he was a sick man, and spent a distressingly long time in his bedroom, new books were his constant companions. It was this which made him such a fascinating friend, because he possessed the great gift of being able to introduce one to the people he had met in the course of his reading. He was always anxious to share what it had been his good fortune to discover in his books.

"No picture of Father Mackay would be complete which did not illustrate his intense hatred of stupidity and humbug. He wasn't long-suffering. It was quite terrifying to see his eyes and his lips when he was annoyed. There was an occasion when a boy's parent came to denounce us for some supposed high-handed action. When he had finished a long outburst which we received in silence, Mackay could not speak for a moment in the face of such insolence. When at last he did, he was unbelievably stern and terribly angry, but perfectly just in what he said. Over and over again the drastic action that he took in Choir School affairs was more than justified by subsequent events though one often felt at the time that he was being unnecessarily dramatic.

"He passed out of our lives with pathetic humility. A last dinner, a last visit from the boys, a last taxi for Paddington. We waved him off into the unpleasant fog of a raw November morning and went back to Margaret Street to start filling up the gap which he had left behind him.

"It is not in the least a sentimental exaggeration to say that he left his heart with All Saints'. Towards the end of his life he did not seem to realize that he had ever left the parish, and the last time I saw him, when he was gracefully allowing himself to be divested of his faculties of speech and thought and movement, it was of St. David's and the Choir School that we sat and talked."

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