His sense of humour was unfailing, and when he laughed, he laughed with the whole of himself, loudly and contagiously, abandoning himself with tears in his eyes to helpless paroxysms of mirth. There was never the smallest touch of affectation or priggishness about his attitude, and he had none of the cautious and uneasy reverence which is apt to overshadow men of piety. He was intensely amused by the humorous side of the people and the institutions which he loved. Here are two slight illustrations which come back to my mind. He told me these two stories in one day at Tremans. One was that of a well-known Anglican Bishop who attended a gathering of clergy, and in his valedictory speech said that they would expect him to make some allusion to the fact that one who had attended their last meeting was no longer of the Anglican communion, having joined the Church of Rome. They would all, he said, regret the step which he had thought fit to take; but they must not forget the serious fall their poor friend had had from his bicycle not long before, which had undoubtedly affected gravely his mental powers. Then he told me of an unsatisfactory novice in a religious house who had been expelled from the community for serious faults. His own account of it was that the reason why he was expelled was that he used to fall asleep at meditation, and snore so loud that he awoke the elder brethren.
Though Hugh held things sacred, he did not hold them inconveniently sacred, and it did not affect their sacredness if they had also a humorous side to them. He had no temptation to be easily shocked, and though he hated all impure suggestiveness, he could be amused by what may be called broad humour. I always felt him to be totally free from prudishness, and it seemed to me that he drew the line in exactly the right place between things that might be funny and unrefined, and things which were merely coarse and gross. The fact was that he had a perfectly simple manliness about him, and an infallible tact, which was wholly unaffected, as to the limits of decorum. The result was that one could talk to him with the utmost plainness and directness. His was not a cloistered and secluded temperament. He knew the world, and had no fear of it or shrinking from it.