The Henson Journals

[124]

Saturday, September 18th, 1920.

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We spent the morning with the Archbishop, who showed us the library, and the cathedral. The manuscripts of the first, and the vestments of the last, were indeed remarkably interesting. Incidentally we had much conversation, in which the Archbishop's sympathies with Germany were very freely disclosed. At lunch the conversation turned on ecclesiastical questions, in which the Archbishop disclosed a disconcerting devotion to all the shibboleths which I dislike & despise! Peterborough purred with pleasure at hearing his Swedish Grace declare himself an ardent admirer of "Life and Liberty"! I gathered that the Archbishop is deeply infected with the Transatlantick fondness for dramatic displays of fraternity in public conferences. He has been at Geneva taking part in the "world congress", which so excited the American bishops, & moved good Bishop Brent to write a fervid letter to the "Times". For my part, I don't know set much store by these effusions. Brotherly language is cheap, & pleasanter than the ferocious language of bigotry, but it may, and does, very easily become a particularly nauseous kind of cant. In point of fact, this is actually happening. Talk about reunion has become habitual in ecclesiastical circles, and it is most earnest & persistent on the lips of men who carry no authority, either of learning, or of character, or of position, but who see a shortcut by this means into a certain kind of importance & popularity! If instead of softening their religious speech men would examine their religious assumptions, & criticize what they call their "principles", we might advance.

[125]

We dined with Professor & Frau Stavenow. There was quite a large party of professors & their wives. After the soup the host made a kindly little speech welcoming us, and the dinner went forward. I had a long conversation with an aged Professor of History who was said to be the most learned man in the University. The Swedish women are pleasant to look on, gentle in their manners, & kindly in their speech. The food, as far as we have yet sampled it, is abundant, excellent, and well cooked; and wine is supplied in sufficient quantity, & of fair quality. Of the conversational powers of the Swedes, it is hard to judge as my own linguistic helplessness limits them to the English language in which they are not really competent.

After dinner we all returned to the drawing room, and there the host & hostess took up their position as at a reception, and everybody went up, shook hands, and thanked them for their hospitality. Then the gentlemen went off to smoke. The general impression was that of pleasant & cordial hospitality. This inevitable Greek Archbishop rather embarrasses me. [His ignorance of English precludes my conversing with him; & his being one more of these inevitables does certainly disincline me to attempt any conversation in French.] His rank as an Archbishop I willingly concede when I remember it, but this in point of fact I rarely do, so that his Beatitude (or whatever else he is styled) is continually being treated with what he might be excused for interpreting as "studied contempt" and "deliberate discourtesy"!

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