The Henson Journals

[116]

Monday, August 22nd, 1921.

[symbol]

Mrs Paget talked very interestingly about her travels in Thibet. She was the only European, and had company of 19 men to carry her baggage, & render necessary service. The feeding and doctoring of the pantry was the most difficult part of the business. She had slept at an altitude of 19000 feet. She described the leeches in Sikkhim, & the extraordinary precautions which had to be taken against them. These horrible insects have destroyed all animal life in the forests which they frequent so that the traveller moves forward in an absolute and sinister silence. They drop from the branches of the trees impelled by a frightful passion for blood. The only beast of burden that can endure the mountain heights is the yak, a slow moving and ill–tempered brute, which adds its own contribution to the worries of travel. In spite of her sex she had been allowed to lodge in the Thibertan monasteries where the consecrated inhabitants drink "brick–tea" incessantly, mingling it with animal blood, a nauseous composition, which however politeness requires the visitor to consume! These monks appeared to be idle, superstitious, and immoral: but they were not uncivil. On these journeys she took no weapons, not even a revolver, and had invariably been treated with respect. The Indian Government, in sanctioning her expeditions, impressed on her the importance of doing nothing which could in away implicate itself – a wise precaution.

[117] [symbol]

The analysis of modern conversation yields results not very flattering to human pride. There is much abuse of absentees, and not a little obvious mendacity. The chestnuts are trotted out in one country–house after another, and as some of the company have not heard them before, or pretend they have not, there is never lacking some responsive cackling. Often there is no substructure of common interest, or common experience, or common knowledge, on which to build any rational talk, but the prattle moves conventionally from one commonplace to another. Everybody pretends to know more people, and to be more important than he, or she, actually knows and is. It is fortunate if you can discover someone who has the materials of conversation, and if you can find the method of bringing them into use. I find myself increasingly driven to amuse myself by studying the company, which implies an externality of personal attitude, difficult to reconcile with politeness. It adds something to one's knowledge of human nature, something to one's understanding of human society, as it is now constituted. For every country–house is a confessional–box, in which "Society" is at the work of describing itself. The description is partial, and only half–sincere, but it contains genuine elements, and can give the intelligent & experienced confessor some insight into "Society's" character! Probably the strength of prejudices in the "upper classes" is in great part occasioned by the habit of stereotyping thought and feeling in phrases, and repeating these phrases incessantly from one house to another, until they are sacrosanct as the creeds!

[118]

We left Hallshanger at 11 a.m. in a falling rain, and motored to Bulford Manor in Wiltshire, where we arrived about 7.45 p.m. Our journey lay through Exeter and Honiton, where we lunched comfortably at the Dolphin Hotel. Then we continued our journey to Crewkherne where we visited the quaintly decorated Perpendicular Church. William took a photograph of the Tower entrance. We went through Chard to Sherburne where we visited the very noble perpendicular church. William photographed the southern (Norman) portal. In the church one of the Knutsford students, who said that he knew Clayton, got into conversation with me. We motored to Shaftesbury, where the churches are very mean, and then through Amesbury, where we filled up with petrol, to Bulford Manor.

General Oldfield talked much, and interestingly of the situation in Ireland, of which he appears to have special information. He confirmed the worst accusations which have been made against the "Black and Tans". Our conversation turned on the chaplains, of whom he spoke rather contemptuously. He preferred the Roman Catholics to the Protestants. I pointed out that the latter were at a great disadvantage, for their only weapon was personal influence, and this could only be gained slowly, whereas the former held a perfectly understood position and rendered services (extreme unction and absolution) which had no relation to their personal qualifications. They were priests, and the R.C. soldiers wanted nothing else.

---