The Henson Journals

[672]

Friday, April 14th, 1916.

620th day

A bright sun, but an east wind bringing razors into the sunshine! I celebrated in the Cathedral at 8 a.m. After breakfast I finished the sermon for Sunday afternoon, & then lunched alone, as Ella had taken Linetta (who arrived last night) & Clarence Stock to lunch at Auckland. I took Logic for a walk, & then attended Evensong. The afternoon brought a long letter from Dicey, very interesting & autobiographical. He had evidently typed it with his own hand, so that there are some quaint varieties of spelling. But it argues no mean vigour in a man of 81 to perform such a task. He is exercised in mind over a passage in my little book on "Robertson", in which I describe the period of his ministry as one of mental anxiety & public excitement. To this he demurs as conflicting with his own recollections:

"The visible effects of the Reform Act had passed. Even in 1860 I remember being laughed at by a friend for being interested in a Reform Bill brought forward about that date by Lord J. Russell which was soon withdrawn & perished under Disraeli's sneer that the author of the Bill 'came to bury Caesar, not to praise him.' The 'fifties' remain in my mind as an age of small things, of indifference without happiness. To some extent surely this is true. Was there any agitation more noisy & more unmeaning than the fuss over papal aggression? or more delusive than the enthusiasm for industrial progress which, tho' it contained some important ideas, found its outward expression in the Exhibition of 1851. Buckle thought that it showed that War was among civilized nations all but abolished…..All I want to urge is that to the men then living, feeling, & thinking in England, it was not consciously a time of general interest."

So far Dicey.