The Henson Journals

[198]

Wednesday, March 19th, 1924.

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Mrs Headlam died yesterday in a nursing home at Gloucester. The Bishop of Gloucester telegraphed the news, & added a request that I would officiate at Whorlton, where the funeral will take place on Friday.

The gardener picked up a large brown owl in the garden. It was living, but injured probably by rooks, & died during the night.

I succeeded in finishing the Edinburgh Article, & sent it off to the Editor. It doesn't please me, but I can do nothing better.

We motored into Durham, where I licensed two curates, & lunched with Wilson. Then we went to Houghton–le–Spring, where I confirmed 96 candidates. After tea with Knight, we went on to S. Aidan's, South Shields, where I confirmed 135 candidates. In all the confirmations in this town, the fewness of males is very marked. Why is this? We returned to Auckland after the service.

Sir Fredrick Bridge died yesterday. He was 80 years old, a kindly old man enough, amusingly vain & egotistical. More popular, perhaps with the unmusical multitude, than with the musical few. He tried us too much at Westminster by his incapacity to train the choir, by his ill choice of music, by the frequency with which he caused his own compositions to be sung in the Abbey–church, so that the profane spoke of our "Bridge parties", and, most of all by his incorrigible and untimely jocosity. But he had many loveable traits, and on the whole we liked him well enough.

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