The Henson Journals

[121]

Friday, July 27th, 1917.

1089th day

Beyond writing letters, paying bills, talking to the Precentor & Sacrist, and attending Mattins, little was done before Hadow arrived for lunch. The afternoon was used up in the meeting with the Engineers' & Boilermakers' representatives. Three workman, of whom one Hill was a "labour leader", talked with us rather disconnectedly for more than two hours. They are very polite, very suspicious, & very incoherent. I suspect that their real policy is determined by motives which they could hardly state frankly, and directed by men who have surrendered themselves to large schemes of revolutionary socialism. After the meeting I showed them the house, and then walked with Hadow through Houghall Wood calling on the Heawoods en route. Hadow & dined together, & talked mightily until we went to bed. Then I finished "Sonia" before turning in.

[122]

July 28th 1917

Dear Mr Balfour

I trust you will pardon me for intruding a letter on you at this time of great pressure, & will believe that I wd not do so if it seemed rightly possible for me to avoid it. The case stands thus.

Some while back I was asked by Miss Anson to undertake the writing of a memoir of her brother, the late Sir William Anson, and I am now engaged on the task. There is not much material available for my purpose, for the important work, academical & political, in which he was engaged, hardly lends itself to a biographer's purpose : and the "Great Divide"of the War has stricken with premature & irreparable obsoleteness so much that in happier times might have been thought fit to engage the interest of considering men. So I propose to be brief, & to seek rather to draw a portrait than to narrate a career, or at least only to attempt the last in so far as doing so assists the first.

I shd be really more than grateful if you could write an appreciation of Sir William Anson's work in Parliament & in the Education Office, when he served under you. It is much to ask, but not, I trust, too much.

Believe me.

Yours v. faithfully

H. Hensley Henson

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