The Henson Journals

[18]

Wednesday, June 15th, 1921.

Old Mr Hodgson, whose resignation duly signed I received yesterday, writes to me a long letter giving a sketch of his clerical career. It is not without interest.

My Lord,

Allow me in the first place to thank you for [sic] kindly letter & then to give you very briefly an outline of my present position. I think it is a somewhat unusual one, & may, perhaps, interest you.

Ordained deacon in 1853 to the curacy of Wallsend, I remained there for six years, when the grant for a curate being withdrawn, I had to go. My lodgings were by the riverside directly opposite to Palmer's immense blast furnaces within whose roar and glare I was day and night. My distance from the church about a mile & along a disputed road which in bad weather a quagmire, all the funerals, which were many, and my salary £84:0:0 a year.

After that taking the charge of Pelton & Stanwick S. John during the illness of the incumbent, I was presented to the Benefice of Hutton Magna or Longoilluso (?) in Richmondshire with an income of £123.0.0. when I could get scraped up, but without a house or available lodgings within a radius of seven miles. And this lasted for fourteen years with as many miles to walk to church and back as often as I attended it.

Then an old schoolfellow Col. Cradock of Hartforth Hall – the father of the [19] Admiral who with his ship & a thousand men all went to the bottom before being able to fire a shot – having one of his farm–houses to rebuild, and his way thereto taking him through the little place, he was greatly affected by the forlorn & desolate aspect of its humble sanctuary only prevented from falling in two long by a continuous heap of stone rising from the ground so that one could climb on hands & knees from the grass to the apex of the slated roof. Nearly the entire parish was owned by Sir Talbot Constable a Roman Catholic – connected with the famous Tichborne case – whose tenants were of the same persuasion, &, of course, do nothing. Knowing personally all the well–to–do people round about he set to work and gathered gifts and we rebuilt the church of the very best materials & workmanship cutting out the profiteering middleman or contractor and with an overplus of £100.0.0 to serve as a nest–egg for repairs. More than that, I wrote to Miss Easton the sister of the chief owner of the Bedlington Collieries who gave a magnificent font of yellow marble and built a delightful vicarage within a field of the church.

So when I left Hutton the walls were up to full height and they were just about of the most massive character of the whole built upon a solid concrete foundation six feet thick throughout and stone walls of three.

Then I came to Witton, but only to find an almost exact parallel to what I had already gone through. The little church a damp dirty doghole of which the whole [20] north side had fallen of its own accord in 1836, choked with galleries for which a rough outside stone staircase had been contrived through what had once been the west window. Only three men of independent means lived in the village, & they were Dissenters and the Patron, though not a blatant one, an Atheist. He did all in his power to prevent any improvement being attempted by anybody. The case was as wretched as it seemed hopeless. At length he died. A grand nephew succeeded him who offered us £500.0.0 & Mr Askwith £300.0.0 to be spread over three years. That gave us a start. First one and then another came forward and at length we raised close upon £5000.0.0 largely through sewing meetings in our large rambling kitchen where many of the poor who could not give money could give their work and instead of the usual rubbish of bazaars provide shirts & stockings &c. of the best character & quality. By these means we entirely rebuilt and enlarged the church, & practically out of debt. Of all the more important detail I have made fullsized working drawings with my own hands both in wood and stone, and have at present the whole of the stencilling patterns drawn out in full. With many thanks for your Lordship's sympathy as expressed to Mrs Rudyard,

Believe me, Yours most sincerely

J. F. Hodgson.

[21]

The patron of S. Alban's, Heworth wants to appoint his senior curate to the living, but hesitates in view of the "illiteracy" of the curate's wife. He writes to me for advice: and I tell him that he had probably best venture it:

"The question of the fitness or unfitness of the wife cannot be ignored, but it must not be given too great importance. If the lady be good, religious, and sweet–tempered, able to keep her own house Christianly, so that its cleanness & order are exemplary, then I think her illiteracy and inability to take a leading part in the parish may be condoned: but if she be a slut or a scold nothing can be done but to keep her out of a Vicarage at all hazards".

Fearne accompanied me into Durham in order to meet Sylvia & her governess arriving from Scotland, & there lunched. As I walked through the Banks, I fell in with Bayley, just back from Rugby. He says that Budworth's name is being talked about as a probable successor to David. I should feel more than ever forlorn if Budworth were to leave Durham, but, of course, he deserves advancement. I went to the Mayor's Parlour, & presided over a meeting of some 30 ladies convened to support the Society for Preventing Cruelty to Children – a woefully dull business. The selected orator, one Miss Aylmer, had a voice like a screaming peacock, & a manner which nearly drove me from the chair In a tornado of maledictions! I returned to the Castle, and had tea.

[22]

On my return to the Castle I found an elaborately bound copy of the Cooperative Society's Year Book for 1921, sent to me by the Directors as a souvenir of the Scarborough Congress. I sent them a civil acknowledgement.

I placed my copy of Bishop Tuntstall's book "De Veritate Corporis et Sanguinis Christi: Paris 1554" in the case which stands in the Entrance Hall of the Castle. There are only some photographed facsimiles there, and the original is more fitting.

The account of the progress of the Everest Expedition, which appears daily in the "Times", contain today the following description of a Buddhist Prayer Wheel:– "There was also a great prayer–wheel 12ft high and 6ft to 6ft in diameter. The outside was painted & leather–covered and carried for inscription the usual formula. Om mane padme om. Each complete revolution of the wheel rang a bell. The head Lama told me that inside the wheel were one and a half million prayers. Each time the wheel turned they went up to heaven. We turned the wheel several times, trusting the prayers might be efficacious. The monks also did a great trade in little clay images of Buddha, beautifully moulded from a brass mould brought from Shigatse" This might well be a description of a great Roman Catholick sanctuary!

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