The Henson Journals

[124]

Friday, July 20th, 1923,

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W. P. Ker's death is reported in the "Times" which prints an appreciation by some Oxford friend, and an excellent portrait. His heart failed suddenly after a great climb over Monte Rosa, on the Italian side. From my election at All Souls in 1884 until this present he has been my friend. His death leaves another great void impossible to fill. He was my "best man" in Westminster Abbey when I was married there in 1902. This has been a fatal year for me – Willie Murray, Marion, and W. P. Ker.

I spent the morning in writing the 2nd of the two articles for the Morning Post. Almost in spite of myself, they take an increasingly Protestant tone, a fact which cannot but offend many. But really there is no middle way between the "Aye" of the Catholicism, and the "No" of Protestantism. The spiritual "high–brows", who profess to reconcile contradictories, are unconsciously dominated by their emotional preferences .

Then I had a series of interviews (1) with an Ordination candidate, (2) with old Mr Watts who cannot pay his dilapidations & thinks that inability ought to serve as an acquittance, (3) with Wilkinson who is already 'bored stark' with the little parish for which he begged hard two years ago, (4) with Heselton, the treasurer of the Shildon parochial church council, who came to explain the mystery of the parish deficit!

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