The Henson Journals

[188]

October 21st, 1922.

My dear Sir,

I cannot undertake to re–open the subject of your marriage. You will remember that you may have considerable difficulty in finding a clergyman who will be ready to officiate at the marriage of a divorced person: and you will know that marriage at a Registry Office, although properly distasteful to a Christianly educated man or woman, is yet wholly a valid marriage, if there be no other reason for creating invalidity.

You will, however, in this matter reach your own decision.

Believe me, yours v. faithfully,

Herbert Dunelm:

Captain George W. Barker

In all "shop–window dressing".

Well, well. I am sorry, but we mustn't drift apart more quickly than needs must.

Yours aff.

Herbert Dunelm:

The Bishop of Newcastle.

[189]

October 21st, 1922.

My dear Bishop.

Thank you for your letter. I think you have made the mistake which the Bishops have generally made for a generation past viz: the mistake of thinking that you can manipulate principles. You can't in this case the proof leaps to the eyes of every student of Anglicanism in its most recent phase. Bishop Butler's words ought never to be out of our minds.

"Things and actions are what they are: & their consequences will be what they will be: Why therefore should we desire to be deceived".

Thousands of moderate Anglicans, including most of the Bishops "desire to be deceived" about a movement which attracts so many ardent souls, & which perhaps accords with preferences of their own: & assuredly deceived they are.

Are you really prepare to assist in bringing English Religion again, after 350 years, to the medieval type, now modernised in its own fashion by Rome, & gathered about the Mass and the Confessional? That, and nothing but that, is the avowed objective of the Anglo–Catholic movement: all the rest – admirable disquisitions on Fundamentals which are unquestioned, and a vast parade of affection for non–Anglicans.

[190]

Saturday, October 21st, 1922.

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Mr Ben Spoor, the local (Labour) member, brought Mr Frank Hodges, the Secretary of the Miners' Federation to lunch. They arrived a full half hour before the time appointed, and I showed them the Castle. Frank Lodge is a young looking man with a confident manner and an intelligent but suspicious glance. He seemed to be keenly interested in seeing everything I had to show him. Clayton and I motored into Durham where I interviewed aspirants to Ordination for two hours in my rooms at the Castle. And what aspirants! Two men over 40, the one an "overman" in a pit, the other a "Social Welfare" officer in an Industrial School, and both the sons of sectarian preachers: a youth of 19, anaemic & feeble to look at, & with but one hand, and an graduate, who "knows no theology"! "Not many noble are called!" But that which moved the exultant wonder of the Apostle of the 1st. century must needs stir the worst misgivings in the Anglican Bishop of the 20th.!

Lloyd George is reported to be making something like a triumphant progress, from London to Leeds. In the manner of Gladstone he addresses stirring orations to crowds at every station where the train halts. He appears to be in a fighting mood. Meanwhile Bonar Law is engaged in the task of cabinet–making.

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