The Henson Journals

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Monday, July 20th, 1914.

At breakfast there emerged the perilous question of female suffrage. Mine hostess (an ardent suffragist) made appeal to her Norwegian guests to testify from experience to the excellent results of a franchise, which has for some years existed in their country. But their response was not encouraging. The lady thought the concession of the vote had been unduly precipitate, & that years must pass before the women acquired an adequate sense of political responsibility. Her husband owned himself frankly hostile to female suffrage.

Walking in the garden after breakfast, I asked him further of the question. He said that most women, & they the more responsible of their sex, were opposed to the change: & that there had been a lessening of political interest among the men, so soon as they found that they must share the vote with women. Thus the gift of female suffrage had fostered that contempt of representative institutions which is the disease of modern democracy. We talked of Ireland, and he seemed astonished to find that the Ulster folks were English & Scotch by race, & Protestant by religion. He had assumed that all the population of Ireland was Celtic and Roman Catholick!

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I travelled to town by the 10.17 train from Witley, arriving about 11.30 a.m. I went to the Athenaeum & lunched there. The Bp. of S. Asaph exchanged a few remarks with me. He has a melancholy & undone appearance. I called on Lady Craik: had some talk with Watkins, who was much excited over his earlier information as to the new Canon! Then I went to King's Cross, & travelled back to Durham by the 5.30 express: beguiling the way with a spirited romance of Maurice Hewlett, "The Song of Renny". It is odd to note how tied he is to the conception of woman as essentially passionate & self–abandoning in her sexual surrender to the man of her choice. He reads all the famous historical women – e.g. Eleanor of Castile & Mary of Queen of Scots – in that sense. Cummings met me with the car.

On Tuesday, July 21st 1914, I went to Newcastle, & spent a miserable morning with the dentist. In the afternoon, I attended Evensong: & after dinner wrote letters.

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Issues and controversies: irish home rule; female suffrage