The Henson Journals

[491]

Wednesday, November 17th, 1915.

471st day

We went to Willington by train – it is but 20 minutes' journey – & were there met by the Vicar, Urmson, who drove us in a cab to the new Church Institute which had been formally opened a few hours before. Here I delivered an Address on "Some Lessons of the War", speaking for exactly 45 minutes. The audience, largely composed of women & children, listened with the gravity of the perplexed, and the decorum of the polite! There was some delay in our departure, & this was explained by the humourous [sic] circumstances that the 'refreshment', which had been prepared for us, had been privily way–laid, & devoured by some enterprising bandit! We were motored back to Durham through moonlit roads, and arrived back in the Deanery before 9 p.m. Thomas Yeoman, a son of the Banks' warden, & a student of Bede College, came to see me before returning to France to his duty in the trenches.

---