The Henson Journals

[451]

Saturday, September 20th, 1913. Tillypronie.

Eagles – Coltman tells me that eagles are so numerous in the deer forests that the keepers poison them. A fine stuffed specimen in my dressing room is a case in point: it dropped dead on this estate. These noble birds build in this neighbourhood; the hill was pointed out to me. A local naturalist watches their nests, & photographs them. He reports that the eaglets are fed on grouse & lamb! Capercailzie are said to be numerous this year, and almost insolently tame.

We had much talk at breakfast about the Churches. Clearly mine host & his wife have no great regard for the Church of Scotland; they – like so many of the landowning class – frequent the Episcopalian Chapel. How hard it is for any of us to transcend the limits of temperament, training, & interest! The strength of sectarianism is the acceptance & quasi–consecration of those limits. Yet more often than not it prides itself on transgressing them!

After breakfast mine host and I walked on the moors. We fell in with Denman, the Police magistrate, on his way to join a shooting party. A good number of grouse & black–cock shewed themselves, but not capercailzie; but I was shown a deserted capercailzie's nest, in which fragments of egg–shell yet lingered.

[452] [symbol]

About 300 acres planted 60 years ago brought in £1400 for the timber. This represents about £24 per annum, i.e. 13/– per acre. What would have been α the original cost of planting. Bη the rates, taxes &c. γ the cost of felling & selling?

We motored to Castle Fraser, and lunched with Mr Crawford, who is renting it for the summer. Professor Miller of Edinburgh & his wife were at lunch. We were shown over the house, which is a fine example of an old Scottish baronial mansion. It dates from the end of the 16th century: the greater part of the fabric belongs to the early decades of the 17th century: substantial additions were made at the beginning of the 19th: The house is set in an ample & well wooded park: & possesses a very fine walled garden. Many portraits adorn the walls: & there is in one of the rooms a curious spying device known as a 'lugg'.

After lunch Lord Sanderson, Lady Burghclere, & Professor Hume Brown called. Our expedition was favoured by the best of weather. We returned to Tillypronie about 6 p.m. well–satisfied with our day's exertion.

Mr Crawford had known Dean Lake well when he (Lake) was Fellow of Balliol. He appears then to have had the reputation of a dominating & unconciliatory person. He was wont to relate with complacency how he had been mistaken for a layman, when he went abroad as the only clergyman on an Educational Commission. Mr Crawford is an intimate [453] [symbol] friend of Dicey, whom he has known for a long time. They were contemporaries at Balliol. He said with truth that Dicey is now obsessed by Home Rule; but he did full justice to his remarkable intellectual powers. He pointed out the curious limitations which Dicey laboured under in having no interest in, & no acquaintance with, natural objects. He could not distinguish one bird from another &c.

After dinner we had some conversation about the working of the Church in England, & in Scotland respectively. Mine hostess is evidently disposed to take a severe view of the Kirk in its local representatives. The episcopalian minster at Aboyne – 11 miles distant – to whose congregation mine host & his family have attached themselves is obviously a favourite, & of course no praise is too high for him and his ways. It distresses me to hear the national church spoken about with so little respect, and – so I must needs think – with so little justice. Having heard similar complaints, not less vehemently expressed, against the rural clergy in England, I am but little impressed by them. All ecclesiastical systems are unsatisfactory, yet none is so fatally bad as to paralyze the Christian ministry: & none is so good as to make the personal quality of the clergy unimportant. Christianity in no respect shows its Divine character more plainly than in the fact that it works its blessed effects in all circumstances & under all conditions.

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Issues and controversies: irish home rule