Canon Hatinay'és Tribute to Charles Hawtrey "'Somewhere and at some time," said the Rev. Canon J. O. Han-nay, in his address at the memorial service for Sir Charles Haw-trey at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, "one -inevitable criticism. must be made of his life and the lives ut countless others like him. Of what use and of what value is a life like his? 2 "We admit, as he whose memory we mourn to-day, would admit, that Charles Hawtrey was no philosopher, that he neither built up nor destroyed any creed, that he preached no gospel for the salvation of the world, and that in his actor's' art: he neither moved us to tears or deep emotion, nor punged our souls into the purified waters. of remorse and tragic terror. He gave us laughter—that is all.
"But is it nothing," he asked, "Gri a world all too full of tears, where joy is a brief and precious gift, is it nothing to give laughter to men? And we laughed with Charles Hawtrey like children in simple joy, for the laughter which he gave us was clean, and fresh and left no foul imaginings behind it.
"Is it nothing to give clean laughter? And the laughter that he gave was kind. - There is a sort of laughter like the crack_of a whip of which we are afraid,.-because we know the lash will sting when it touches us. His laughter had no sting, no_ bitterness, all. Charles Hawtrey never ed to hurt or injure any living thing.
"Ts this small praise to give aman? Is there not in this laughter he gave something of the divine?. Is it not a gift of God? God gives to every man his gift, his talent, and requires of us that we may use it to the full.
"Some of you know," he went on, "what I can only partly know or partly guess, how hard Charles Hawtrey worked to make the most: of this great gift of his,.to -make the most of his art, for he was an artist. He is but a fool of little understanding who thinks that laughter such as he made is so easy and so inevitable that no toil goes to the making of it. Doubtless to him the work itself was a joy, a joy as great as, perhaps greater an, the achievement. when he got. it,.
"And we may called him blessed to-day that death came ere his power failed- him, ere he was found to say that saddest of all sad words, 'I can do my work no more.' That final trial was spared him. He could still work, still laugh, when death came and took him from us. Therefore, count: him blessed; therefore, we may say, as the poet said of. one who died -in the full greatness of his power; he has-'outsoared the shadow of'our night." chance that the records carry-the same tunes that. the holiday-maker hears allover, the town.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.