The Henson Journals

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Thursday, September 18th, 1913

The revival of the quickly perishing vernacular is a venture which makes strong appeal to the patriotic Highlander. In Ireland the movement appears to be wholly political, but in Scotland it is more genuine. Mr Macdonald is an enthusiast for Gaelic speaking, his native tongue in Iona where the crofters speak nothing else. I inquired, with a hypocritical pretence of sympathy with a movement which I dislike & would like to discourage, what literature existed in Gaelic & Erse, to reward the labours of the student, & feed the intellect of the Gaelic–speaking patriot. I was assured that there was an abundance of unpublished material in the libraries of Edinburgh & Dublin! More especially, I was told that there existed a Gaelic translation of the Aeneid, which was of extraordinary merit. This, of course, was not without interest, but I could get nothing to assure me that the Gaelic–speaking boy would not by that fact be mentally starved. Of course there is something to be said for keeping up Gaelic as a second & secondary language. There is some reason for thinking that a bilingual population has an intellectual advantage over a monolingual.

[446]

Mine hostess told me that she herself had known a robin carry food from the house to a lame sparrow outside. This is a case of generosity in a bird which has a reputation of exceptional selfishness.

The newspapers report growing violence among the strikers in Dublin, and the orators in Ulster! Carson & F. E. Smith now boast of the illegality of their proceedings! The strike fever seems to be still spreading in England. Meanwhile these frenzied females continue their mad course. Penshurst House near Tunbridge was attacked yesterday. Quo tendimus?

We drove into Aberfeldy which was uncommonly busy by reason of a cattle–market there proceeding. While Mrs Bell did her shopping, I amused myself by observing the inhabitants. Most of the people in the streets seemed to be drovers & farmers, all with a harsh shrewd type of face with a colouring born of weather & whisky. A miserable little old Highlander in a kilt played the bag–pipes: & a lamentable undersized man with a face eloquent of underfeeding & overdrinking begged hard of me on the score that he was an Englishman! The decanal gaiters no doubt gave him a sense of home! The weather became much colder in the course of the afternoon, so that we were glad to walk the last stage of the journey back.

[447]

After dinner I had some more conversation with the astonishing Pringle. He talks with some freedom about the Church, to which he has now submitted himself, & his talk is evidently marked by the sacristy brand. Yet the account he indicates rather than gives of the Roman system is not attractive. He says that many, perhaps most, Frenchmen who profess to be Catholics, limit their religious duties to confession & communion at Easter: that many adopted this modicum of external observance as a demonstration against the Republic: that the mental attitude towards confession was disclosed by a Frenchman who said to him, "If I were dying at home, I should send for the priest & make my confession: if away from home, I should not trouble myself!" We spoke of the place of art in Religion, & I said that there was no connexion between the aesthetic & the ethical: to which he rejoined that the connexion was with the spiritual. But I demurred to the suggestion that the ethical & the spiritual could be thus severed. The very essence of all paganism, or false religion, seems to me to consist in the severance of these two. In this respect, the protest of the Hebrew Prophets remains the indispensable witness of the spirit in all Religions.

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Miss Gertrude Bell has asked me to preside over an Anti–Female Suffrage Meeting in Southampton during the Church Congress. Not without much hesitation I have consented to do so on the explicit understanding that I desire to indicate that the Church is not so completely on the side of the Suffragists as the incessant activity of some clergymen might suggest. I am, indeed, opposed to the movement for ignoring sex in politics, but my opposition is based on reasons, which have nothing to do with my official character as a Christian minister. No amount of enthusiasm in the advocates can really transform a question which belongs to practical politics into anything more considerable. Yet these Women are possessed by a furious ardour which might fill a Calendar with martyrs: even the moderate representations of the Cause display a temper of exstatic [sic] devotion which makes rational discussion impossible. Their conviction is written on their faces, so that one hardly needs to be told that anyone is a Suffragist: a glance at the countenance is sufficient. In this irrelevant & misplaced devotion the considering citizen may find cogent reason for thinking that the female temperament is ill–suited for political life. The fervours of advocacy are the undoing of the Cause.

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Issues and controversies: female suffrage