The Henson Journals

[35]

Saturday, April 28th, 1923.

Nothing hold's one's spirit: every experience repeats the moral that here we have no abiding city, for it palls before it is traversed, & we are weary of the feast long before its close. All my life through, it has been so with me that I have found no pleasure in anything, but have longed that it may be passed & done with. Will it not be so up to the end, with an increasing emphasis when the end draws near? Shall not I say of life itself what I find myself saying involuntarily of every experience, that I wish it were over? Perhaps man really lives only in his descendants, and this weary sense of continuing futility is not present in those happier persons who see their own lives being visibly renewed in the lives of their children.

I left the Deanery after breakfast, & went to the Athenaeum, where I spent the morning in writing letters, & revising my Abbey sermon. After lunch I walked to Victoria Station, and said Goodbye to Marion who went off to Brichington. That excellent person, Miss M. Graham, was with her. They both assured me that the doctors approved of Marion's travelling . Later, I went to Little Cloisters to spend the weekend with Canon & Mrs Charles. Barnes & his wife came to dinner, & we had much talk together. I had not realised that Barnes was so "advanced" a Liberal. He declared himself utterly opposed to our entering on the war against Germany.

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