The Henson Journals

[312]

Wednesday, April 27th, 1921.

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I squandered the day in dictating letters, preparing a speech for the House of Lords, reading the newspapers which are full of the scandalous Archdeacon, and finally in going to Darlington and meeting Archbishop & Mrs Söderblom. They came from Oxford, where they had been staying with the Headlams.

[Diogenes' sketch (of Theophrastus B.C. 370–285) ends with the quotation of some sayings attributed to him, of which the most noteworthy are 'Nothing costs us so dear as the waste of time'. 'One had better trust an unbridled horse than an undigested harangue'.]

Söderblom has preached in Peterborough Cathedral, and carried his medieval staff with him. Rather to my astonishment he has brought this very precious heirloom of his see with him. He tells me that the Bishop of P. wore mitre and cope. I told him that the Archbishop of Canterbury had never used these baubles, & had too much sense to start doing so now after they had been disused in his see for 350 years, or more. S. professes himself opposed to the adoption of desertion as a ground of divorce: alleging that it has been the easy victim of collusion, & has certainly lowered the standard of marriage. But I took the impression that this was not the wily Swede's real mind, but rather an attitude adopted for use in England, where it pleases greatly the English bishops!

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