The Henson Journals

[175]

Thursday, June 22nd, 1922.

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It is with a real shock of painful disillusionment that, in the passage from middle age into the last dolorous phase of life, a man discovers that he is ceasing to be intelligible to his contemporaries. I am myself experiencing that shock in rebus ecclesiasticis. The control of affairs has now passed mainly into the hands of men younger than myself who walk by new lights, & see nothing in the older standards. To me those older lights are still the only trustworthy guides: but to these others they are "darkness visible". It is not improbable in itself that I may be called to continue for another 10 years in an ever-waxing remoteness from my own contemporaries, tolerated or despised or denounced until the welcome announcement of my departure carries my battered name under the protection of "De Mortuis"! Whatever else is doubtful about the future, this at least is certain that there will be no returning to the old ways. The past is dead, and I am dead with it. The gymnastics of those ambitious elders, who would simulate an agreement with their juniors, which they cannot really enjoy, move more contempt than admiration. They deceive nobody, and, though they woke the plaudits of the young, whom they flatter & serve, they bring no genuine consolation to the performer, who remains aloof and isolated in the multitude which tolerates him. Phillipe Égalité had a worse fortune than Louis xvi!

[176] [symbol]

A few minutes after 9 a.m. I left the castle, & motored to Hart, a picturesque village out of which the Hartlepools have grown. Here I conducted a "devotional" service for a "Fellowship" of clergy and ministers. There were only about a dozen present in the old church, but there was a sense of solemn reality among us, & I think we were all the better for being together in that way. The ministers thanked me very nicely in the porch. I motored to Durham, and attended the High Sheriff's lunch. There was a fair company of "elder statesmen", as I called them when proposing our host's health. Then I joined William at the College, & motored back to Auckland. There I wrote letters to Carissima, Frank, & Cecil Fortescue. I motored again into Durham, and dined in College to meet the examiners. The number exceeded 30, and conversation was brisk & interesting – Richard Lodge, who examined me in the Final Schools at Oxford in 1884, was there, & talked much with me. He said that is brother, Sir Oliver Lodge, had left school at 14, and had passed his examinations in London Univ: by working after business. He attributed Sir Oliver's aberration in psychical matters to the influence of his wife. The publication of "Raymond" was in his judgment very regrettable. After dinner I motored back to Auckland, and was there met with the news that the eminent soldier, Sir Henry Wilson, who has been organizing the defence of Ulster, had been foully murdered.

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