The Henson Journals

[86]

Friday, August 20th, 1920.

[I worked (but vainly) at the lectures. Then we motored to Mordiford and lunched with the [sic] Ella's "cousins". Colonel & Mrs Wm Smith arrived at tea–time, & the little Swedish parson, Gabrielsson, arrived in time for dinner. I send a cheque for £4.0.4 to the Foreign Office to pay pass–port fees.]

Mrs Dickinson, the wife of a local doctor, who has some skill in painting volunteered to make a portrait of me. This morning at 8 a.m. we made a start ‒ a tiresome & silly performance, also almost certainly futile, for no painter not of the first magnitude ‒ a Rembrandt or a Sargent ‒ could make my face into a tolerable picture! However, even a daub in a series of official portraits is better than a gap: and the picture will not, in the worst event, be markedly inferior to the squalid representation of former Bishops of Hereford in the dining–room.

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