Despite Sargent's vanities and rivalries, he had many friends. Sir Thomas Armstrong in a 1994 broadcast interview stressed that Sargent "had many good generous virtues; he was kind to many people, and I loved him...". Nevertheless, even friends such as Sir Rupert Hart-Davis, secretary of the Literary Society, considered him a "bounder", and the composer Dame Ethel Smyth called him a "cad". Yet despite his philandering and ambition, Sargent was a deeply religious man all his life and was comforted on his deathbed by visits from the Anglican Archbishop of York, Donald Coggan and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Heenan. He also received telephone calls from Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, and had a reconciliation with his son, Peter, from whom he had been estranged.