The Henson Journals

[103]

Thursday, September 2nd, 1920.

I finished the Lectures after a fashion! They are woefully poor stuff, but put out some things of no slight importance, which yet are commonly concealed. What the Swedes will make of them I can't imagine!

[An ordination candidate ‒ the Revd W. Rowland–Jones ‒ an ex–Wesleyan minister, who had been accepted for Ordination by Bishop Moule, lunched here. I allowed the acceptance to stand, but he impressed me as very inadequate.]

The Hereford Diocesan Messenger is humiliating to read, for it is full of amazingly exaggerated eulogies of the late Bishop. As descriptions of me they are absolutely grotesque, but they are evidently sincere, & raise the question what is there in me which can carry to anybody the impression which is indicated.

The Archbishop of Canterbury writes to inform me that the Swedish Primate will welcome a second bishop at the Consecration on the 19th: and that he had asked the Bishop of Peterborough to go. I wrote both to his Grace, & to my prospective companion. I spent some time in the miserable task of tearing up letters and packing up my more private papers. There are few experiences more profoundly depressing than those which accompany one's departure from one scene of residence & work to another. It becomes increasingly difficult to fit one's self in to new surroundings as one grows older, & one's illusions are fewer.

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