The Henson Journals

[169]

Monday, September 15th, 1919.

[symbol]

Ruth & Ethel went off before breakfast. Sir John & Lady Struthers immediately afterwards. Miss Barlow & Miss Spooner left a little later. So the party dispersed rapidly. I wrote to George. After breakfast I wrote a number of letters. The "Times" contains a long & highly characteristic letter from the Bishop of Winchester, evidently designed to mitigate the asperity of Gore's diatribe, while endorsing its substance. He had evidently written before Carnegie Simpson's letter had appeared, and his letter suffers greatly from comparison with it. I almost incline to think that events are moving to a secession. The inner dissidence of the Church of England has reached a point at which common action is becoming difficult.Gore's resignation of his Bishoprick has released an eager, passionate fanatick of great ability & reckless courage, who is now "spoiling for a fight". Burrows, now Bishop of Chichester, sends me a pamphlet containing an account of his relations with the rebellious parson, Wason, whom he prosecuted for various outrageous proceedings. It is a curious side–light on the Church of England. There are many clergymen who are expressing sympathy with this absurd parson, apparently on the general ground that every step towards "Catholick" ideals is to be supported, and every effort to enforce discipline is to be resisted. I hardly see how some kind of disruption can be, or even ought to be, averted.

[170] [symbol]

Lady Olga Montague came to lunch. I had much talk with her on the question of women's ordination, to which she expressed the utmost repugnance. She is evidently a devout "Anglo–Catholic", & worships regularly in St Matthew's, Westminster: but she is a very intelligent woman, & more fair–minded than most religious women are apt to be. It is sufficiently evident that she has not the slightest knowledge of modern Biblical criticism, for she expressed considerable alarm when I assumed that the Fourth Gospel was not written by St John. Her attitude towards Protestantism is plainly determined rather by her temperament than by her reason. She declaimed against the irreverence & worldliness of Low Churchmen, & exalted the devoutness of Roman & English Catholics. I pointed out that the reverence of the latter was very evidently connected with their doctrine of the Real Presence, which the former disallowed as superstitious. She expressed strong dislike of clerical marriage, & said she could never make her confession to any but a celibate. Her notion of a priest was exactly the Roman, but she admitted that women might possibly be well qualified to hear the confessions of "sisters" and nuns. She had with her a rather poor–looking musician, who, she says, is a musical genius of the first quality, but I forgot his name!

---