The Henson Journals

[568]

Tuesday, June 13th, 1916.

680th day

Another day of chill and gloom. I went to the Cathedral at 8 a.m.: & there received the Holy Communion. The morning was spent in my study, & there I finished going through Brightman's "The English Rite". It is careful and scholarly, but (like all the work of these neo–Tractarians) leaves on the mind an impression of elaborate posing. He assumes tacitly that there was no English Reformation, only a troubled interval during which some unfortunate changes were made. Thus he always refers to the Holy Communion service in the 2nd Book of Edward VI as 'the Mass', ignoring the fact that to those who fashioned and enforced that book it was the evangelical substitute for the Mass, which they never referred to save in terms of abhorrence. This method of resolute make–belief is extraordinarily hard to disallow, especially when it has hardened into a settled mental habit, & has become nothing short of a postulate. I ordered the "Dead March" in Saul to be played after Mattins and Evensong in memory of Lord Kitchener, for whom a Memorial Service is being held today in S. Paul's Cathedral: and I attended Evensong. Then Ernest & I walked for an hour.

The Cecils arrived shortly before 9 p.m., their train being very crowded & late. Miss Maxwell had arrived earlier in the day. Dr Stuart, who came to attend Ernest, is full of patriotic zeal against the German music–seller, Hiller, whom he accuses of disloyal sentiments. But I could not discover any more serious justification for the accusation than that the old man, fearing some popular demonstration against his shop, had caused a paragraph to be inserted in the local paper, stating that his son (the minor canon at Manchester) had received a Chaplain's commission at the Front, the truth being that the young man was proceeding to France on temporary duty with the Red Cross! I hate & despise these "German spy scares".

---