The Henson Journals

[131]

Wednesday, April 9th, 1919.

I wrestled with the Anson Memoir, but to very small purpose. The task is really far more difficult than I realized, and now my time is so pre–occupied that anything beyond the diocesan claims seems impossible. After lunch I started in the motor for Aldenham Park. William being still hors de combat I was entrusted to the hands of a strange youth named Owen Clifford who hails from Lugwardine. We got on excellently until some way beyond Ludlow when the tyre burst to bits, & bounded outside the rims! We screwed on the stepney wheel, but had not proceeded more than two miles before it punctured. The rough stone on the roads is cruel on tyres. However we arrived at Aldenham Park shortly after 5 p.m., and after tea, I was taken by mine host & hostess for a walk in the Park. The whole place, in the bright changing lights of a fine April day was a pageant of loveliness. The walk was made the more interesting by vivacious conversation.

[132]

In my bedroom I found a book which seems to be worth looking at. It is a small sketch of the Oxford Movement, or, at least, of its central figure from rather an unusual point of view. – "Cardinal Newman and His Influence on Religious Life & Thought" by Charles Sarolea; D.Ph., University of Edinburgh. T & T Clark. 1908. He says some striking things, e.g. "In France the influence of Newman is today perhaps even wider and deeper than it is in Great Britain…. And thus there exists today on both sides of the channel an ever–growing band of enthusiastic disciples, who are kept together by this one creed; Credo in Newmannum"… "After producing a religious schism in his native Church, Newman is now producing a more epoch–making heresy in the Church of his adoption". There is much truth, but also much exaggeration in this writer's account of the Tractarian Movement & its effect on the Church of England. He overrates both, & underrates the steady Protestantism of the English people. The Vicar of Morville came in after dinner, & stayed the night. He is a large hefty fellow to look at, but he is more or less chronically invalidish. He appears to be fairly well–liked by his parishioners.

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