The Henson Journals

[161]

Saturday, August 1st, 1925.

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Perhaps Mr Cook has provided me with a subject for the opening article in the new Diocesan Gazette, which is to be called "The Bishoprick", and carried on at my own personal expense. He told me by way of rejoinder to my articles in the "Evening Standard" to "mind my own business", and I think a discussion of what the bishop's business is might be timely, relevant, serviceable, & interesting. 1. The Official Chief. 2. The Father in God. 3. The leading Citizen. 4. The Spiritual Peer. 5. The Christian Thinker. 6. The Neighbour. These might form the headings of the sections of the Article, which would give occasion for many luminous obiter dicta. Fuller's Holy and Profane State provides a model which is very suggestive if also very difficult to imitate. I have come, or been driven, into a position of exceeding difficulty and discomfort, but also of unique personal independence, until I am knocked on the head, a contingency which is less improbable than it once was. My time is short, for when this Article (if indeed it be ever written) sees the light, I shall have just completed 62 years of life. It is time that I garnered the harvest of my experiences, and formulated what faith (if any) remains to me. On the whole I incline to think that my best work must be done in these short compositions, for I have neither time, temperament, nor knowledge for anything more considerable.

[152]

Ella and I motored to Lowestoft, and stopped on the way to visit the truly glorious church of Blythborough, which rises in gaunt vacant majesty in the midst of a dwindling village, which was once the centre of a considerable woollen manufacture. The medieval bench ends (c. A.D. 1400) are admirable. That villain, Dowsing, is credited with destroying the painted windows, of which the slight surviving remnants sufficiently attest the grandeur. The roof is a very noble feature of a very noble church. In the vestry I could not but notice the "mass vestments" prominently hanging on their peg. "What are those?" I inquired. The guardian–female's countenance fell, "Those things", she said sullenly, "belong to the Vicar". I said no more, lest I should induce a demonstration against Anglo–Catholicism! We returned through Beccles, where we stopped to see what looked like a great church.

After lunch we were carried by our hostess to an entertainment at the house of one Lomax, the brother of the old crank–vicar of Ferryhill. He is a member of the House of Laity, and, of course, entirely accordant with all the reigning ecclesiastical shibboleths. The Bishop of the Diocese and Mrs Whittingham were there, good people, doubtless, but woefully conventional. There was an old parson, with whom I had some conversation. He said that he had stayed at Auckland Castle with Bishop Baring, and had attended the funeral of Dean Waddington.

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