The Henson Journals
Fri 4 October 1912
Volume 18, Pages 88 to 89
[88]
Friday, October 4th, 1912. White Marsh.
'Convictions that have been strained through the instances & the comparisons of modern times differ immeasurably in solidity & force from those which every new fact perturbs, & which are often little better than illusions or unsifted prejudices.'
Lord Acton 'Lectures on Modern History' p. 8.
At breakfast Mr Toland gave an absurd illustration of the tyranny of Trade Unionism. On one occasion his horse cast a shoe. He took the beast to a blacksmith's shop, & left him there to be shod. Some hours later, having transacted his business, he called for his horse, & found it still unshod. On demanding the reason, he was assured that three other shoes were 'non–union' shoes, & therefore an 'union' shoe could not be provided, unless these also were removed!
I wrote letters to Raleigh & Rudling.
We lunched with Mrs Biddle, & were afterwards taken to see an astonishing house made entirely of cement, & decorated with the most amazing tiles, by an eccentric of genius named Mercer. He showed us over his mansion, & also over his museum, where he had collected specimens of tools used from the earliest times. His notion was that [89] the evolution of society might best be illustrated by the tools which men had used for the satisfaction of their increasing needs. He intended to build a suitable building in the town (Doylestown) for the housing & exhibiting of his tools. Mr Mercer has had many interests in the course of a life which has hardly passed its meridian. Inter alia, he was a member of an archaeological expedition to Yucatan. His belief, based on careful observations, was not favourable to any great antiquity as attaching to the Indian monuments. I promised to see whether rubbings of our 13th century tiles in the Chapter House of Westminster could not be sent to him. We had tea at his brother's house, & then motored home. The brilliant colourings of the foliage arrested my attention in the course of our drive. If the weather continue to be favourable we ought to see the 'Indian Summer' to advantage.
This morning, when strolling through the Lutheran & Anglican cemeteries, I was struck by the contrast between the gravestones & the epitaphs. While the first were hideous in extreme, the latter were by no means invariably repulsive. The Lutheran epitaphs were marked by unrelieved gloom: the Anglican generally included some consoling text, or verse instinct with Christian hope.