The Henson Journals

[619]

Monday, January 24th, 1916.

539th day

A brilliantly fine day, though rather cold. Jim went hunting with the Rogersons: & I worked at the Robertson lecture, which has become nauseous to me. He must have been an ill person to live with: and he talked to everybody as if he were addressing a public meeting! Then beneath the vehemently asserted indifference to public criticism, it is impossible not to see that he resented it fiercely, & positively hungered for praise! He was in a false position, the falsest possible position for any man, that of a fashionable preacher to idle supercilious people, who were for ever criticising people more earnest if less elegant than themselves. He was far too clear–sighted not to see this: & far too honest not to understand it. In fact, 'the iron entered into his soul'. Do I not know the fact, & the feeling? Though, at its worst, S. Margaret's could never have fallen to the level of a proprietary chapel at a fashionable watering–place! What a desert pulpit for a John Baptist! As I returned from my afternoon's walk, I fell in with a very young soldier in the Banks. He was going home on leave from Scotland to Cornwall, & had hit on the very intelligent notion of breaking his journey on the way, to see as many interesting places as possible. I showed him the Cathedral, gave him a stall at Evensong, and afterwards fed him. It gave me an ill impression to see a lad who could not have been more than 16 years old passing as a soldier. He told me that there were many others no older than himself in the Army. Cruickshank & his wife came in to dine. Caröe arrived shortly before dinner, looking very grey & tired. The War is wearing us all out with work, or grief, or the continuing chagrin of enforced idleness.

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