The Henson Journals

[457]

Monday, September 22nd, 1913. Tillypronie.

I picked up in mine host's study Fisher's Biographical Sketch of Frederick William Maitland (Cambridge, 1910). It is very good reading. I was particularly interested in the description of Maitland on p. 178:

'Conscious theory or method of style he neither claimed nor cared to possess; he wrote as the spirit moved him, finding with astonishing ease the vestment most appropriate to his thought, & composing with such fluency that his manuscript went to press almost free of erasures. The literary & artistic conventions of the hour did not appeal to him. He never went to picture galleries: in later life he seldom read poetry, though as a boy he been fond of it: & he wd profess to be unable to distinguish a good sonnet when he saw one. Knowing the thing which he cd do best, & judging that it was worthy of a life, he stripped himself of all superfluous tastes & inclinations that his whole time & strength might be dedicated to the work. Even music had to give way… He wd sit in an armchair with a pipe in his mouth & some ponderous folio propped against his knees, steadily reading & smoking far into the night, [458] thinking closely, taking no note, but apparently retaining everything. For a man who wrote & taught so much his knowledge was amazing both in range & accuracy: but his panoply might have been of gossamer so lightly did he bear it'.

Donaldson & Lawley came to lunch with their wives. We had much converse together. Both men are excellent, but quite petrified by the Anglican convention.

Jones, the Episcopal minister from Aboyne, came to dinner. He is a typical Celt: has done much journalistic work: & reached his present position by way of the Dissenting ministry. He says that he has known Lloyd George well in the past, but is now regarded by him with aversion. The present insistence on Disestablishment is partly explicable as an anti–Lloyd–George movement. He expressed a very unfavourable opinion of the Chancellor's personal character, & quoted Principal Edwards of Aberystwith [sic] as his authority. But, when I pressed him on the point, he could give no evidence: & I was perforce driven to conclude that either Lloyd–George is the worst–libelled politician in the world, or that Welsh public opinion is more complaisant on the subject of personal immorality than one can well believe possible in so religious a democracy.

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