The Henson Journals
Mon 19 August 1918
Volume 23, Page 129
[129]
Monday, August 19th, 1918.
1477th day
The weather today has been fine, but not unduly hot. Ella and I walked out both before lunch and after tea. We noticed that harvesting proceeds steadily in the fields but not rapidly. Tommie Hall brought his wife and children to tea. Marion and I cut out paper animals for the amusement of the little girls. Streeter sends me the volume which he edited last year, "Immortality an essay in discovery coordinating scientific, psychical, and Biblical Research". He inserts an inscription in which he calls me "ecclesiæ libertatis propugnatori" [defender of ecclesiastical liberty]. I could accept the description with more confidence if I could agree with myself upon an understanding of the two words "libertas" and "ecclesia".
[129] [Second entry for date]
Monday, August 19th, 1918.
1477th day
An over–clouded day but without rain. The post brought me two letters thanking me for my pronouncement in "The Times", the one from Fleming, the other from Canon James. "The Times" itself contained letters from Streeter & from Arthur Robinson, neither hostile to me. I wrote to Linetta, and to Mr Whitehouse, the Vicar of Sellack, whose son Major Whitehouse is reported to have been killed in France. I started reading "Immortality", judging it best to finish the volume before thanking the donor. The opening essay by Clutton–Brock did not impress me save as wordy & pretentious: but the next essay "The Mind and the Brain" by a surgeon named Hadfield was suggestive & informing. It opens up new ground, and brings together much little known but relevant matter.
[130]
In the afternoon we (Ella, Carissima & I) drove to Minster, & there were joined by Ralph, Kitty & Edward, who came by train from Canterbury. We visited the glorious parish church (always interesting to me as the place in which I was baptized,) and then had tea very pleasantly in a tea–garden, "Rose–dene". Our meal was enlivened by the discovery and destruction of a swarm of winged ants which emerged in the garden–path hard by the place where our tea–table was spread. Petrol was poured upon the creatures & then ignited – a barbarous proceeding. After tea Ralph and I walked & talked for an hour, while our wives visited the curiosity shop, and Carissima sate with Edward in the carriage. I was pleased to learn from Ralph that he would have no more dealings with the Peace movement inaugurated by Lord Lansdowne. He said that it had got into the wrong hands, & mentioned Ramsay Macdonald. A reference to Sinn Fein at the recent meeting had been received with cheers. We drove back to Birchington under a cloudless sky & through fields from which rich crops of grain were being gathered. Ralph thinks the philosophical work in Streeter's volume is inadequate. I read most of Streeter's Essay on the Resurrection, and was rather alarmed at his evident inclination to take up with the Psychical Research Society's attitude, which seems to me essentially materialistic, & to open the door to all the old debasing superstitions. On the whole, I prefer a frankly agnostic position, which seems to me both more reasonable and less perilous. Once allow free speculation in a sphere so charged with estranging emotions, & failure is almost inevitable.