The Henson Journals

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Wednesday, September 17th, 1913.

A beautiful day after the rain of yesterday. The valley looked ravishingly beautiful. The little becks & burns were flowing freely & noisily down the hill sides.

Mr Macdonald, the parish minister came to lunch. He looks like a farmer, &, indeed, is of farmer stock. His people for generations have been crofters of a substantial kind in the sacred island of Iona. There he was born, and there, when a school boy, he met Bishop Lightfoot. He had spread out his books on the turf, & was reading, when he became aware of a stranger's presence. Looking up he saw a heavy stout man with a kindly face, who seemed much interested in him & his books. Taking up one of the latter, which happened to be the Iliad open at the VIth book, the stranger asked him if he could read the Greek, &, when he found he could do so, sate with him for an hour reading the Author with him. His pronunciation was unfamiliar, but his comments were illuminating. Afterwards the lad learned with pride that he had been reading Homer with the greatest scholar of the Church of England. I inquired as to the feeling of the people with respect to Church Union. Mr Macdonald told me that there was but little interest anywhere; & in some places [444] strong prejudices against the scheme. He said that one difficult factor was the partisan fervour of the U.F. minister. At the last election, while the ministers of the Established Church almost everywhere stood aside from the political conflict, the U.F. ministers generally presided at the Radical meetings.

After lunch we drove with our hostess to Pitlochry. After dinner I had some talk with Pringle Nicol in the smoking room. He has known many men at Oxford in his time. His father, the Glasgow Professor was a friend & contemporary of Dicey. He knew at Oxford the repulsive but now again popular Oscar Wilde, also that poor miserable creature Lord Alfred Douglas, who, he says, has now become a Papist.

In "The new Statesman" – a Christian Socialist paper of the pseudo–independent type – I read an article on 'Larkinism', which represented the Irish demagogue Larkin as a serious, successful, & sincere organizer of Labour, a total abstainer and only censorable for violent speaking! In another article I stumbled on a reference to 'Canon Hensley Henson' as desiring to expurgate the Bible for popular use! This, of course, is an allusion, rather belated to be sure, to an old article on 'the Future of the Bible', which I wrote for the 'Contemporary' some years ago.

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