The Henson Journals

[66]

Monday, November 3rd, 1924.

The noise of 'the High' is not favourable to repose: and in point of fact, I had a bad night. Perhaps the disturbance was as much internal as external: for never before was I conscious on visiting the college that I have fallen out of touch, and almost out of knowledge. The place is peopled with ghosts, and the actual figures of flesh & blood are strangers. I had to ask the names of many of the younger fellows. Hardinge sate next me in Hall, but he has aged, and is the shadow of his former self. He started to tell stories, & forgot them on the way, a painful reminder of what I grow to be. Dawson, fresh from America, was important & oracular as befits the editor of the "Times". He described to me how he had seen in the rivers of British Columbia multitudes of dead salmon. It appears to be the practice of the transatlantick fish to come home to die. Amery said that he had seen the bears on the river– bank "fishing" for salmon, as they crowd up the rivers in the spring. This information interested me more than the politics, of which inevitably every mind was full. I retired from the smoking room very soon, and went straight to bed – an unusual & ungracious proceeding.

I left Oxford at 10.50 a.m. and arrived at Darlington at 4.34 p.m. Here Ella met me with the car, & we were back at the Castle soon after 5 p.m.

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