The Henson Journals

[430]

Saturday, August 26th, 1916.

754th day

Instigante diabolo [at the instigation of the devil] (as my excellent wife thinks) I wrote a short letter, more or less in identical terms, to the Challenge, the Guardian, the Record, & the Church Times on the Council of the National Mission, asking who the members may be, & which of them attended the meetings at which the Resolutions on Women's Preaching and the Distribution of Church Endowments were adopted. I worked at the Article. After lunch I had a delightful walk with Olive. The view from the golf–course was splendid. I attended Mattins and Evensong. Lord Barnard wrote to ask me to become Provincial Grand Chaplain for this year, and I consented though my knowledge of Freemasonry is ridiculously small, & the functions bore me abominably. I wrote to Carissima, and to Jack Boden. After dinner Olive sang all her songs very sweetly, & I listened with the sad knowledge that her delightful presence was about to be withdrawn. We went into my study, and there I read poetry for an hour. Olive listens with extraordinary appreciation & ardour. It is a delight to have such a listener. I read some poems of William Watson, & Faber, ending with the glorious passage in Milton's 'Comus', which I had quoted in the course of our walk:–

So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity,

That, when a soul is found sincerely so,

A thousand liveried angels lacky her,

Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt;

And in clear dream and solemn vision,

Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear;

Till oft converse with heavenly habitants

Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,

The unpolluted temple of the mind,

And twin it by degrees to the soul's essence,

Till all be made immortal –

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