The Henson Journals

[71]

Tuesday, December 6th, 1921.

My dear Mrs Tolliday,

I hear with much regret that you have been called to sustain the great shock & calamity of your husband's death: and I must make no delay in sending a few lines of deep sympathy and condolence.

I had hoped the event of his illness would have been otherwise, for he seemed so brave & hopeful when I saw him that I allowed myself to look forward to his recovery. But it has pleased God that this should not be; & we may not doubt that He orders this, & all our affairs well.

Your husband was one of my most valued clergy: I counted much on his zeal and devotion in the present, and in my plans for the future. Now he has been taken from this sphere of labour to another, of which we know only this, that there also he is in the Hands of God for good. You will try to "lift up your heart" from the immediate shock and desolation, and to fix your thoughts in those eternal Things, into which your Husband has entered, and to which we also are called. "The world passeth away and the lust thereof but he that doeth the Will of God abideth for ever."

I pray that God may bless, comfort, and direct you, through this dark time, and bring you to an ever fuller faith in His Love here and hereafter.

Believe me,

Yours very sincerely,

Herbert Dunelm:

The weather became very warm and enervating, with the consequence that I became unsettled and incapable of work. William brought me the photograph Ella gave him on his Birthday, and I signed it for him. Then he motored Ella and Fearne into Durham bringing back the Moderator and Cruickshank, who had undertaken to lunch with me, and be shown the Castle. I asked the Moderator whether they in Scotland had the same difficulty in recruiting for the Ministry as we in England. He replied in the affirmative adding that he thought one main cause was the superior attraction of the Teaching profession, which is now relatively well paid. My guests returned to Durham in the motor.

[72]

I had much talk with the Moderator on the subject of Reunion. It is sufficiently evident that, though civility compels a pretence of conference on the Lambeth appeal, there is no real expectation that anything can come of that manner of approach. The profound division of the English Church cannot be concealed. It was paraded on the morrow of the Moderator's sermon in Durham Cathedral by the protest of the Newcastle branch of the E.C.U. to which the morning paper gives great prominence. The Bishop of Zanzibar has already repudiated the Appeal, of which in some sense he was himself the author. I gave the Moderator a copy of "Anglicanism" which will help to open his eyes as to the situation here.

Before going to bed I wrote to Welldon suggesting that the impossible situation in Birtley should be relieved by the transference of old Barclay to one of the vacant livings in the gift of the Dean and Chapter. I can think of no other method of solving the problem. That demonstrated incompetence should be seriously advanced as a title to preferment has an odd appearance: but how otherwise can the blunders of patrons be remedied? It would be unfortunate for me to prefer Barclay to one of the livings in my gift, because that would give the rebels plausible reason for thinking that I had yielded to their agitation: but the same reasoning could not so evidently hold in the case of the Dean & Chapter. To what woeful shifts are we reduced in rebus ecclesiasticis!

The paper announces that the late Mrs Gee left no less than £68,000. The income is left to the Dean of Gloucester for the term of his life. This should render Gee financially comfortable enough. He appears to have moved into the Deanery at last. His long sojourning in the Bell Hotel was not only unpopular and hard to defend, but also for a man of studious habits most uncomfortable. Now at length after an interval of nearly 4 years he will be able to unpack his books from their cases, and arrange them in his bookcases.

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