The Henson Journals

[44]

Saturday, May 12th, 1917.

1013th day

A dull morning, depressing but not particularly cold, comfortless. I attended Mattins, & then "fooled away" the morning over this hapless Memoir. I wrote to Ker expounding my difficulties, & to Sir Henry Graham asking his assistance. My theory is that the Warden was not taken seriously by others or by himself until his father's sudden death in 1873. Then he became the Head of his family, & a person of social importance. His deeper qualities were stirred into activity. He left London, where he had more or less frittered away his time & took up residence at Oxford in a definite position of responsibility – as Vinerian Reader. Bayley lunched. Old M. Demelle, braving the terrors of the law, came to solicit his annual order for claret. We had an interesting conversation, & I ordered 12 dozen of claret @ 22/– per dozen. I grudge the money, but it is an act of homage to France. Then I walked with "Logic", & on the way picked up Jevons. We had some interesting conversation. He takes a gloomy view of the future of this little University, & indeed it is hard to see how it can grow into anything considerable.

[45]

How far does the following passage from the "Nation" ^(for April 21st 1917)^ state the truth about the Warden? It is written of Alfred Lyttelton, in a review of his wife's Memoir of him:–

“He will remain as a figure of the best type of a class which was passing before the war began, a class wh the war is destined to sweep away. 'He perhaps of all men of his generation' – as Mr Asquith described him in a fine tribute to his memory – 'came nearest to the mould & ideal of manhood wh every English father wd like to see his son aspire to, and, if possible, to attain.' It was the best type of the old historic landed aristocracy: kindly landlords, the friendliest relationship with tenants & neighbours, public school & university success, brilliant athletic achievments, intellectual interests, delight in conversation, & the life of country houses & the London season, clean, capable, with a high ideal of service & of generous friendship. It was feudalism at its best before its death, as found in (say) the finest families of the Southern States of America before the flood came & destroyed them all. And in England today the flood has come & has destroyed them all. No better record cd be provided for a future age than this life of a man so greatly loved by a whole generation, a personality whose courtesy, chivalry, capacities for friendship, enriched the society in which he moved, & were carried with him triumphant to the grave."

Subtract the athletics, add intellectual vigour, & change the scene of life from the Bar & Politics to the life of Oxford – would not the description hold?

Archdeacon Derry came to tea, & I had some talk with him. He expressed very gloomy views of the ecclesiastical situation, but not gloomier than the situation compels in any considering man's mind. He borrowed the current issue of the "Church Quarterly", which contains a startling description of the existing anarchy, & some of Headlam's ripest wisdom by way of curative suggestions.

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