The Henson Journals

[618]

Friday, May 19th, 1916.

655th day

Conversation having drifted on to the subject of the state of modern Germany, I made reference to that deplorable book "Degenerate Germany", and expressed my regret that Lord Rosebery should have given it public commendation. Lord Haldane agreed, and asked me whether I had read Flexner's "Prostitution in Europe", which he said was the best book on the subject. He had lent it to the Bishop of London, and was not sure whether his Lordship had returned it. He then went to his library to look for the volume, & soon returned with it. He insisted on my borrowing it. I read it in the train, & found it painfully interesting. Had the atmosphere of the railway carriage been less asphyxiating, I should have finished it, but this circumstance combined with the incessant talking of a Transatlantick female, whose rasping voice penetrated to every corner of the corridor–department, effectually hindered me. The writer assumes that unchastity is universal among Continental males, but allows that England is in this respect probably unique. He also denies the commonly asserted statement that prostitutes are short–lived. The majority of prostitutes are but intermittently such. What a vista of domestic hypocrisy all this opens out to the mind!

[616]

I have promised Chancellor Smith that I will give a short address to the Churchwardens, when they assemble in the Galilee for his visitation tomorrow. What can I say to them which shall be relevant, useful, and spiritually edifying? At least I must read the Chancellor's article in the Prayer–book Dictionary as a precaution against certain obvious blunders!

I presided at a meeting of the Cosin's Almshouses Trustees, and then attended the meeting of the Charity Organisation Society in the Mayor's Parlour. Gee made a very interesting speech as Chairman. He did, perhaps, something less than justice to the Abbey, whose "indiscriminate almsgiving" he represented as the cause of the squalid poverty of our Durham slums. I walked with him afterwards, and he at once started on the subject, which has too great a place in his thoughts viz: preferment. "When are you going to Peterborough? Everybody here takes for granted that you will go there". To this I replied rather coldly that I was in no such anxiety to leave Durham as my neighbours appeared to think: that a bishoprick had no great attraction for me: that I doubted my competence for the kind of life which a modern bishop led: that, so far as I could learn, little could be done even by a brave man to defeat the fanaticks: finally, that it needed not to meet trouble halfway!

I wrote letters to Mary, & Gilbert, also a Collins to Miss Mundella sending her therewith as I had promised a copy of "Robertson" and my photograph. I went into the Cathedral, and had some speech with Paine. The scaffolding has gone at last, & the nave again looks superb.

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