The Henson Journals

[109]

Saturday, July 7th, 1923.

The heat increases. A record 90o in the shade if reported today. Letters from Birchington gave the worst account of poor Marion's condition. Ella went off to Camberwell to visit the Institution into which the poor girl is to be sent, and I went to the Athenaeum to write my letters. I spent the morning in the Club: then lunched there pleasantly with Gamble and Bernard. I walked to Westminster, and attended Evensong in the Abbey Church. After service I had tea with Vernon Storr & his wife. I returned to the Club, and there had an interview with an Ordination Candidate. Then I walked back to the Deanery where a dinner party had been arranged. Lady Boyce, Mrs Gaskell, Sir James Masterton Smith, & Mrs Macnaughten came to dine. Sir Frederick & Lady Maurice had been invited, but failed to turn up. We had much interesting conversation. Sir J. M. Smith gave a circumstantial account of the circumstances in which Asquith left, or was driven out of office in 1916, and the deadly feud with Lloyd George began. He defended Winston Churchill energetically against the accusation of having effected his own escape at the cost of his friends during the Boer War. On the whole I think he made out his case. Mrs Gaskell talked in a bright, intelligent way as became one who had been a "soul".

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