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Two Autobiographical Narratives of Conversion: Robert Hugh Benson and Ronald Knox
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
Extract
Ever since the Reformation, and increasingly since the example set by Newman, the Church of England has had to contend with the lure of Rome; in every generation there have been clergymen who converted to the Roman Catholic Church, a group either statistically insignificant or a momentous sign of the future, depending on one’s viewpoint. From the nineteenth century Newman and Manning stand out. From the first two decades of the twentieth century among the figures best remembered are Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914) and Ronald Arbuthnot Knox (1888–1957). They are remembered, not because they were more saintly or more scholarly than others, but because they were both writers and therefore are responsible for their own memorials. What is more, they both followed Newman in publishing an account of the circumstances of their conversion. This is a genre which continues to hold interest. The two works demonstrate, among other things, the continuing influence of Newman’s writings about the identity of the Church.
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- Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973
References
Notes
1 David, Williams, Genesis and Exodus, A Portrait of the Benson Family, 1979.Google Scholar
2 Percy, Lubbock (ed.), The Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson, 1927, p. 282.Google Scholar
3 Benson, p. 152. He developed this argument further in Paradoxes of Catholicism, 1913, pp. 12–19.
4 Fitzgerald, p. 79. Benson himself came to dislike The Light Invisible as ‘feverish and sentimental’ (Hugh, p. 163).
5 Knox, pp. 161, 215.
6 Fitzgerald, p. 64.
7 Williams, op cit, p. 187.
8 Benson, A. C., Life and Letters of Margaret Benson, 1917, p. 374.Google Scholar
9 Knox, E. A., Reminiscences of an Octogenarian 1847–1934, 1935, p. 300.Google Scholar
10 Fitzgerald, p. 11.
11 Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. XXXI, pp. 243–244.
12 Benson, Preface to the 1913 edition, p. vii.
13 Ibidem, p. viii. The New York Times (6 April 1913) thought that his expressions of affection and respect for the Church of England were proof of his conscientious motives.
14 Benson, p. 5.
15 Ibidem, p. 111.
16 Ibidem, pp. 29–30.
17 Hugh, p. 131.
18 Ibidem, p. 110.
19 Benson, pp. 112–113. Curiously, his mother too spoke of his going to the shelter of his new belief ‘as a lover might run to the arms of his beloved’. (Hugh, pp. 107–108). Benson had already used a similar phrase of the hero of his novel By What Authority? (part II, ch. V).
20 In a letter to Archbishop Amigo, quoted in Waugh, p. 254.
21 Newman, chapter IV.
22 Benson, pp. 24–25.
23 Ibidem, p. 125.
24 Knox, pp. 7, 14.
25 Ibidem, p. 76.
26 Ibidem, p. 39.
27 Ibidem, p. 63.
28 Ibidem, p. 73.
29 Benson, pp. 44–45.
30 Ibidem, pp. 4–5.
31 Knox, p. 5.
32 Benson, pp. 6–15.
33 Benson, pp. 16–23; Knox, p. 16.
34 Benson, p. 17; Knox, pp. 27–28.
35 Knox, pp. 31–38.
36 Ibidem, pp. 56–60.
37 Benson, p. 23.
38 Benson, pp. 23–24; Knox, pp. 28, 84, 138. There is some inconsistency in Knox’s references to the novel. On page 28 of A Spiritual Aeneid he says that he came to admire the work, through extracts, while still at school. On page 84 he mentions two books often used by ordinands in overcoming the problem of subscribing to the Thirty-nine Articles—John Inglesant and ‘a work by Bishop Forbes’—but adds ‘I never saw either of these books.’
39 Benson, pp. 27, 29.
40 Ibidem, p. 35.
41 Benson, p. 74.
42 Knox, pp. 84–85.
43 Benson, p. 72; Newman, chapter IV.
44 Benson, pp. 74—75.
45 Newman, chapter IV.
46 Benson, p. 105.
47 Benson, pp. 105–107; Newman, J. H., An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1845 Google Scholar, introduction.
48 Benson, pp. 116–117.
49 See, for example: Christopher, Haigh, English Reformations, Oxford, 1993 Google Scholar; Peter, Marshall (ed.), The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640, 1997.Google Scholar
50 R. H. Benson, By What Authority?, 1904, part II, chapter IV.
51 Knox, R. A., Some Loose Stones, 1913, p. 193.Google Scholar
52 Knox, p. 138.
53 Ibidem, p. 95.
54 Ibidem, p. 126.
55 Ibidem, pp. 193–196.
56 Newman, chapter IV.
57 Benson, p. 6; Martindale, C. C. (The Life of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, 2 volumes, 1916, vol. 1, p. 25)Google Scholar suggests that, in fact, the Archbishop was already ‘nervous’ about the way that Hugh’s thinking was going.
58 Benson, p. 15.
59 Ibidem, p. 40.
60 Newsome, p. 125.
61 Brian, Masters, The Life of E. F. Benson, 1991, p. 151.Google Scholar
62 Ibidem, p. 152.
63 Benson, A. C., Life and Letters of Margaret Benson, 1917, p. 318.Google Scholar
64 Hugh, p. vii.
65 Fitzgerald, p. 52.
66 For example, his Tractarian Movement, 1933, is scrupulously fair in explaining opinions he clearly does not share.
67 Fitzgerald, p. 103.
68 Waugh, p. 152.
69 Fitzgerald, p. 132.
70 Benson, pp. 137–139. Benson names no names but it is clear from Hugh that the former bishop was John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury, and the latter bishop Wilkinson.
71 Hugh, pp. 137–138.
72 Newsome, p. 149. Arthur was always puzzled that his brother had left a church which would have been far more accommodating to his individuality. (Hugh, p. 120).
73 Fitzgerald, p. 103.
74 Peter, Anson, Abbot Extraordinary, A Memoir of Aelred Carlyle, Monk and Missionary, 1874–1950, p. 189.Google Scholar
75 Hugh, p. 148; Newsome, p. 190.
76 Waugh, pp. 167–168. Bishop Knox wrote in his Reminiscences of an Octogenarian 1837–1934 (1935): ‘When I resolved to be ordained in 1870, it neither occurred to me, nor would it have been suggested by anyone to me, that I should spend a year at a theological training college.’ (p. 80).
77 Masters, op. cit., p. 206.
78 Hugh, pp. 99, 102. He was, according to Martindale, ‘unlike, and knew himself to be unlike, and wanted to be unlike, a type of Catholic priest which is by many held to be so general, so deliberately produced, as alone to be satisfactory.’ (Martindale, op. cit., vol. 1, p. x).
79 Fitzgerald, p. 152.
80 Waugh, p. 200.
81 Martin, Stannard, Evelyn Waugh, No Abiding City, 1939–1966, 1992, pp. 381, 402–406.Google Scholar
82 Quoted in G. B. Stern, ‘Monsignor Ronald Knox’ (Blackfriars, March 1958, pp. 98–113).
83 Waugh, p. 166.