The Henson Journals

[393]

1st Sunday after the Epiphany, January 8th, 1905.

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About 5 a.m. the doctor came to my study to say that the end had been reached. Ella was well, and the child was born dead. So ends another, surely the last of my dreams. The whole house mocks me at every corner with futile preparations for babyhood. I went to Church, & Celebrated at 8 a.m. with an effort; and twice I preached, fighting the while a desperate battle against the contemptible weakness which would sit down and cry. I looked at the dead boy; he is fashioned completely, & fairly proportioned though small: his tiny face had a care-stricken and sorrowful look which sufficiently confessed its father. It is no ‘stillborn infant' that I mourn, but my own son.

[394]

Mollissima coida Humano generi dare se natura fatetui Quae lacrimas dedit: haec nostri pars optima sensus. Plorare ergo jubet casum lugentis amici, Squaloremque rei, pupillum ad jura vocantem Circumscriptorem, cujus manantia fletu Ora puellares faciunt incerta capilli. Naturae imperio gemimus, quum funus adultae Virginis occurrit, vel terra clauditus infans Et minor igne rogi. Quis enim bonus et face dignus Arcana, qualem Cereris vult esse sacerdos, Ulla aliena sibi credat mala? Separat hoc nos A grege mutorum, atque ideo venerabile soli Sortiti ingenium, divinorumque capaces, Atque exercendis capiendisque artibus apti, Sensum a caelesti demissum traximus arce, Cujus egent prona et terram spectantia. Mundi Principio indulsit communis conditor illis Tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, mutuus ut nos Affectus petere auxilium et preastare juberet, Juvenal XV. 131-150

[Translation: Nature declares that she has given the human race the gentlest of hearts by her gift of tears. This is the finest element of our sensibility. She accordingly urges us to weep for the ward who summons his defrauder to court, with his girlish hair making indeterminate the sex of his face, streaming with tears. It's by Nature's command that we sigh when we meet the funeral of a marriageable virgin or when a baby is buried in the ground, too young for the pyre's flame. The fact is that no person who is good and worthy of the mystic touch, who behaves as the priest of Ceres wishes, considers the distress of others irrelevant to themselves. This is what separates us from the herd of dumb creatures. So we are the only ones alloted a disposition worthy of respect, who can comprehend divinity, who are equipped to practise and invent the arts and crafts; we are the ones to derive a sensibility sent down from the height of heaven, something missing from the four-footed creatures that face towards the earth. To them, at the beginning of the world, our common creator granted only the breath of life. To us he gave souls as well. His interntion? So our mutual feeling would urge us to seek and offer help,]

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Issues and controversies: stillborn son