The Henson Journals

[146]

Thursday, January 24th, 1918.

1270th day

The "Times" contains the announcement that Gore has withdrawn his protest in response to the Archbishop's letter. He professes to be entitled to assume that I don't disbelieve what he thought that I did disbelieve, & that I give an ex animo belief to what he thought I doubted. Is he really entitled to make this assumption? I certainly did not intend him to be so. Stuckey Coles writes again, not quite so hopefully as Gore.

"We now have your reassuring statement which as a matter of fact reads to us like a retractation. Probably to your mind there is some reconciling statement which would shew that a retractation is not needed."

Well, they won't get anything further from me to re–assure them!

The Bishop of Durham writes a long, embarrassed, & affectionate letter to explain that he proposes to take part in my consecration, but could not, if he were asked, present me! I wrote & told him that I was glad he did not feel compelled to absent himself.

The Archbishop of Upsala sends me a telegram. "Hearty congratulations". He doesn't know what a bed of thorns I am being pitched on to.

Mr W. M. Pigott writes to congratulate me. He says that he was "one of the small boys whom in about the year 1880 you taught at the Grammar School, Brigg", and that he "had never forgotten that, in those far–off days, before you had taken orders you used to say that your highest ambition was to become Archbishop of Canterbury". I certainly cannot remember any such ambition for myself, [147] though I do remember about that time sketching out a wonderful scheme for the re–union of Protestantism in which the Archbishop of Canterbury played the leading part!

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