The Henson Journals

[122]

Wednesday, July 18th, 1923.

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8.15 a.m. All my guests communicated. After breakfast we had a conference until 12.30 p.m., when we lunched, and dispersed. I motored in to Durham and presided over the Committee of the Conference Committee. We determined the order of proceedings for the next Conference, on October 27th. I refused to allow the election of 6 representatives to Temple's Conference at Birmingham to be on the agenda. When this Committee was over, another immediately succeeded, the Board of Education. Here we discussed the Coundon School question, & then I returned to Auckland.

Just a hundred years will have passed since Byron died in Greece, when I have to give my Rede Lecture at Cambridge. Why should I not take him as my subject ? There would be an obvious reason for my choice which would serve to propitiate the critics; and it might not be beyond my powers to acquire so much acquaintance with his life and words as to make it possible for me to produce a tolerable essay. Next year I must carry out a formal visitation of the diocese, and that will necessarily leave me small margin for such parerga as the Rede lecture. It has always been my dream to deliver a charge which should be something more than a summary and analysis of the answers to my inquiries.

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