The Henson Journals

[16]

Monday, June 7th, 1920.

I left Cambridge by the 10 a.m. to King's Cross, & drove to the Athenaeum. Then I had my hair cut & returned to the Club, & lunched. Bayley from Durham was there, & I had some talk with him. He evidently was curious as to my being aware of the appointment to the Bpk., but I thought it prudent to tell him nothing. He gave an ill account of the Dean & Chapter. Welldon appears to get on with nobody. The people "don't dislike him, but they don't take him seriously. They laugh at him." He won't take trouble about Chapter business, with the insult that "the Archdeacon is altogether too much for him." I inquired whether Bp. Moule was "under a certificate for Auckland". He said that he believed he was, & that he had raised a loan from Q.A.B., but died before affixing his signature! This sounds alarming. Gamble came in to lunch, & asked me outright whether I was going to Durham. So I told him 'sub sigillo'. When I reached Hereford a reporter was waiting for me on the platform. It appears that one of the Sunday papers had announced my appointment to Durham, & he wanted to know "if it was true"! Of course I could only decline to say anything. Then Bateman brought two telegrams enclosing pre–paid forms asking the same question. I suspect that the underlings in Downing Street have been gossiping. Certainly, the information cannot be even plausibly attributed to me for it appears in newspapers in London & the North, & is thence copied into the Hereford journals. But none the less, it is horribly annoying, & in some queer way mortifying.

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