The Henson Journals

[101]

Friday, June 29th, 1923.

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Style has three kinds of excellence, correctness, lucidity, and elegance (for many include the all–important quality of appropriateness under the heading of elegance). Its faults are likewise three, namely the opposites of these excellences.

Quintlillian. I. v.

I thought it well to write to the Abp. of Canterbury asking him whether I was expected to second the Bishop of Chelmsford's motion which appears on the printed Agenda in the original form of my resolution, not in the conflated form which I had offered as a compromise.

Ella and I motored to Lambton, where the County Nursing Assn was being entertained by Lord Durham. The dining room was well filled. Lady Gainford presided. The Countess of March was the chief speaker. I proposed a vote of thanks to her Ladyship & our noble host. Then we had tea in a large marquee in the grounds, & in due course came away, & returned to Auckland.

A cheerful letter from Marion was quickly followed by a very disconcerting communication from Madge Graham. It is but too plain that doctor & nurses were in a kindly conspiracy to put a cheerful aspect on a situation which is really extremely unpromising. But we can do nothing. The real tragedy of human life emerges in the utter helplessness of virtue & affection before the inexorable fact of physical disease.

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