The Henson Journals

[518]

Saturday, July 1st, 1916.

698th day

I finished reading a romance by Baroness Orczy called 'Unto Caesar'. It is rather extravagant, of the religious–tragical type of composition so vastly popular with the Sunday School Teachers! The 'sources' are Suetonius, Petronius, & the New Testament, & the hero is some dramatically converted & triumphantly approved believer, who brings together in his experience a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ, and a personal intimacy with the most grotesque of the Caesars – Caligula. The story is a mass of improbabilities and impossibilities set in a framework of sensuous description. This kind of composition is not literature, nor is it drama: it is a species of literary melodrama fit for representation on the suburban stage.

After prayers (which follow breakfast) I read prayers (a shortened from of Mattins) in the chapel, and then wrote to Carissima. Then Cyril Liddell showed me the garden & glass–houses, all on a generous scale, as befits a great house. We had much interesting conversation. His experiences with "conscientious objectors" cast a curious light on the state of men's minds. There seems reason for thinking that the elementary teachers are largely leavened by non–patriotic & anti–patriotic opinions. These and a considerable section of the Dissenting ministers have no adequate sense of public duty. They are neither loyal nor law–abiding in habit of mind: they are unaccustomed to think clearly on any subject: their political convictions are a bundle of inbred animosities: & their religious beliefs little more than a mélange of phrases & sentiment! The accident that gave us a Radical Government when the War broke out carried the mass of Dissenters into supporting the War on the wave of their political partisanship: but they are soaked in Pacifist nostrums, and at any moment capable of clamouring for Peace–at any–price.

[516]

Lord Normanby told me this story. His grandfather was Ambassador in France when Napoleon III carried through the coup d'étât which started the Second Empire. Riding with the Emperor on one occasion, the latter related to the Ambassador that a 'wise woman' had once foretold that he (Napoleon) would be either shot or confined in a madhouse. A shot was fired at the Emperor, who twirled his moustachio, & uttered the single word 'Déja'!

The weather worsened as the day advanced. Shortly after noon rain began to fall, & continued falling at intervals for the rest of the day. The Vicar of St Chad's, Gateshead, came to lunch, and sate talking in the smoking–room for an hour afterwards. He also is decidedly sceptical as to the projected Mission. We discussed the practice & method of Confession in the Church of England. Lord N. told me that Bishop Lightfoot had offered him the position of Canon Missioner, and that he had declined it because there was no regular care of souls attached to it. He thought that missioning alone was too spiritually hazardous. I wrote letters to Mrs Patterson (Raleigh's sister) and to Jack Boden. I ran through two volumes of letters of Gray, Walpole, & others, edited by Toynbee for the Clarendon Press. They are sufficiently interesting to justify publication. Writing from Rome in 1840 Walpole speaks of the ruinous state of the City, the penury of its people, and the rapid dissipation of its art–treasures. Gray's letters contain a good many literary criticisms of interest. Lord N. says that the effect of the submarines, or of their destruction, has been strangely apparent in the destruction of the eider–ducks, which are fatally affected by the petrol on the ocean. The fish also have been similarly destroyed in vast numbers.

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