The Henson Journals

[100]

Saturday, July 5th, 1924.

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After breakfast I went round to Eccleston Square. & saw Ella: then, I went to the Athenaeum, & wrote my letters. Then I returned to Park Lane, & lunched with mine hosts. Then I picked up Ella, Fearne, & a lady–friend of Geordie, & went to Buckingham Palace for the Royal Garden Party. There was a monstrous crowd: I lost touch with my females, &, after hanging about to the last moment looking for them, came away in a rage by myself. After picking up my bag in Park Lane, I went for the 3rd time to Eccleston Square, joined Ella, & went to Victoria St where we caught the train for Chichester, which left at 7.20 p.m. and arrived at its destination about 10 p.m.

I had some talk with Lord Ullswater, Sir Lewis Dibdin, Sir Ed. Clarke, Lord Stamfordham, Edward Fielden, Kitty Inge, & some others: but mainly the crowd was unknown to me. Lord S. asked me about the vacant bishoprick of Birmingham: I said that Barnes was the man: to which he demurred, & indicated Guy Rogers – who passed at the moment with his exceedingly plain wife – as more suitable. I did not object, but said that, perhaps, he would be more suitable for another see.

On my journey I read a queer book – "Beasts, Men, & Gods" by a Polish Professor, whose honesty & competence are vouched for by some unknown American. It is certainly an astonishing book, and discloses a mad world, in which the most archaic superstitions are oddly jumbled together with the shameless secularities of the most recent phases of European "civilization".

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