The Henson Journals

[159]

Saturday, May 1st, 1920.

'Things are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why, then, should we desire to be deceived?' To take in and to digest such a sentence as that, is an education in moral and intellectual veracity.'

Matthew Arnold.

I wrote to Carissima, & then cleared off a whole mass of tiresome letters. Mrs Burrell came to see me about Humber, & then the Vicar of Dyndor called to ask counsel about some tiresome parishioners who have taken to writing libellous post–cards. Mrs Waterfield & a party came in to lunch. Then I visited the Zenana Missionary Exhibition in the Shire Hall. As I came out I saw a Trade Union orator addressing a crowd, & stopped to listen. He was exalting the virtues of organisation. Really, Catholicism has not so much expired as changed its name. These perfervid Trade–Unionists display the spirit & employ the arguments of Jesuits! Colonel & Mrs Darwin arrived by the afternoon train. Both of them expressed great disgust at Jowett's preaching in the Cathedral at Durham. The vulgarity of the whole incident ̶ the Dean & the preacher being photographed together - stirred them most. Deep in the hearts of the English gentry is the repugnance, half dislike, half contempt, with which they regard Dissenters, those crude & violent enthusiasts, whose crazy notions & fierce self–assertion wrecked the Church & Monarchy in the 17th century, and will repeat the infamy in modern fashion in the 20th! The past enchains us all.

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