The Henson Journals

[165]

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Wednesday, October 30th, 1912.

'Every student ought to know that mastery is acquired by resolved limitation'

– Lord Acton.

This is a dictum which a modern Dean may well lay to heart, for it may well happen that he will dissipate himself on a multitude of petty concerns, responding with too facile good nature to the demands of fussy folk, who have no notion of the value of time or the conditions of work. Such fussy folk gather about all men in gaiters, & smother the aspirations of ecclesiastics in muffs and shawls!

I wrote to Archdeacon Watkins asking information about the late Dean's family, for I don't know whether he has left a widow, or what, if any, children he had. It is exceedingly inconvenient that a whole month must elapse before I can get within sight of the House, in which we are to live. If my successor is appointed with the same rapidity, he will also be gnashing his teeth at my absence. But he at least will be able to go & see the house. There are two names which occur to mind as probable successors. Masterman, who has just gone to Bow church: & Gamble. The last would be agreeable to me, & would be successful in S. Margaret's, but he is not a supporter of the Government. This, however, need not be decisive, for I myself am even an opponent & avowed as such.

[166] [symbol]

Our rooms were charged 8 dollars per night – less than we had expected though enough in all conscience. 75c. went in tips: the cab to the station was 1 dollar: porters going to & arriving in, New York were 75c., & the cabbie to Manhattan Hotel 1 dollar: the two boys for carrying up the luggage 50c. Lunch 2 dollars.

Rooms	16	.	More than £4.10.0 expended in a single day apart from the railway Fare.
Tips	1	.25
Porters		.75
Cabs	2	.
Lunch	2	.
	22	.00
Telegraph		25
	22	.25

Having identified our room in Manhattan Hotel, (it was dark & pokey beyond our somewhat lordly expectations) we went out into this hustling city – surely the most hateful of places. Here we soon lost both our way and our tempers; coming as near to a quarrel as two Christian folks reasonably can. However we picked up a little at tea–time, & were restored to complete harmony when I spilled ink on the floor, & – being thus fairly put out of action – my wife retired from the contest with the honours of war. But our dislike of New York, already strong, was deepened & pointed by the episode.

[167] [symbol]

I wrote to Westlake bidding him postpone until my return all discussions of arrangements necessitated by my retirement from Westminster. I wrote also to Aubrey, telling him that we should have to receive him in Durham instead of in Westminster. After dinner I wrote to Gow, and to Beeching.

One of the most distasteful and unreasonable of American Institutions is the breakfast, &, certainly, none is more difficult for an Englishman to understand or conform to. The initial difficulty of its strange, &, strangely ordered constituents might in time be mastered. Grapefruit, & 'Cereals' might in process of time be condoned: but no amount of use & wont could make tolerable the preposterous practice of serving solemnly every item of the repast, so that one's liquid has grown cold before one's solid food has reached one's plate: & the solitary domestic is for ever revolving round the vacant board with disconnected fragments of a meal which never comes wholly into view! The standing crux of American housekeeping, namely the fewness, cost, & badness of the domestics cannot justify an arrangement, absurd in itself, which actually increases the demand for service. The breakfast is a standing disproof of American efficiency, & can only be explained by some hypothesis of unreasoning and invincible conservatism!

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