The Henson Journals

[123]

Saturday, September 23rd, 1922.

[symbol]

Kennett went off by the 7.57 a.m. train: Spooner followed by the 9.15 a.m. The Fieldens sauntered about the garden until at 11.30 Ella took them into Durham: and I collected my scattered wits for utilizing the débris of the morning. Visitors, from the point of view of work, are perdition.

I wrote to George and sent him the promised photograph. After lunch I talked with Fielden until tea–time, & then motored into Durham to meet Sir Robert Leighton, who had proposed himself for a visit in order to see the Cathedral. I showed him over the great Church and the Library. Then we returned to Auckland Castle.

Thus then are the days passing, every hour occupied and none employed. The fulfilment of my conventional duties as a host is a poor exchange for the performance of my task as a bishop. It were perhaps more tolerable to the conscience if the guests had any kind of relation to my spiritual obligation: but in truth they have none. My conventional duties as host are however very ill performed, for my pastoral conscience is active enough to spoil their performance while powerless so to re–order my scheme of life as to exclude guests altogether! 'Pecca fortiter' is a maxim bred of profound wisdom, & much observation of human life. It is the complement to the sentence in which the Bible stigmatizes a well–intentioned but vacillating character – "unstable as water thou shalt not excel". I shall neither gain 'the world's' approval as 'a good fellow', nor the Church's praise as a 'true Bishop'!

---