The Henson Journals

[55]

Thursday, December 31st, 1925.

I finished the Article, but nowise to my satisfaction. It is too incoherent, and what its real drift may be few would discover, least of all the writer!

Ella and I motored to Wynyard in the afternoon, & saw the theatricals, which were amusing enough. We stayed to dinner, where I sate between Lady Londonderry and Lady Ilchester. Robin was there, & had some talk with me. He has certainly gained in manliness and appearance by his stay at the embassy in Rome. His ambitions now look towards the House of Commons. Lord Ilchester and Lord Winbourne were there, and a Princess of sorts. There was, of course, a numerous company of young people. Wyldbore Smith and Brack represented the clergy. Sir Hedworth Williamson gave a display of his well–known powers as a comic singer! After dinner there was dancing, which was in progress when we came away at 11 p.m. The weather was wet and wild, changing from rain to snow. We motored back to Auckland through a whitened landscape. So we made an end of 1925, and turned our faces towards 1926. Are we at length beginning to move out of the trough of industrial depression in which we have been so long held?

[56]

1925.

This has been a fatiguing and disappointing year, in which there has been little to show on the credit side, & very much on the debit. In February I was elected a member of Grillion's Club, and was ridiculously pleased at the compliment, but I was only able to dine thrice in the year. I bestowed much time in preparing a volume for publication on "Spiritual Healing" but when at length, in October, it made its appearance, it attracted little notice, and commanded less sale! This both surprised, and humiliated me. But my ill–fortune on the matter of books appears to be unalterable. In April I began to contribute articles for the Evening Standard, & of these 12 had appeared before the end of the year. I wrote an article on "Prohibition & Liberty" for the Westminster Gazette, and too articles on "Religion and Science" for "John o'London's Weekly". Thus I earned about £300, which I expended partly on the Escombe [sic] Repairs Fund, and partly on educating Jimmie for Ordination. I preached in Manchester Cathedral (Feb. 8) the Temple (May. 24), Halifax Parish Church (June 24.), Westminster Abbey (June 28.), Buckingham Palace & the Chapel Royal (July 5.), Canterbury Cathedral (July 12.), Birmingham (Oct. 11.), [57] Nottingham (Oct. 18th), and Leeds (Oct. 18.). I wrote to the Times directing attention to some rather remarkable statements of the Abbé Portal, and drew from Lord Halifax a very rude, angry letter, to which I replied with decision. I wrote a letter on the proposed disruption of the Hereford Diocese, and evoked much approval in Hereford. But there were answers from Shropshire which, perhaps, (as I left them unnoticed,) damaged my cause.

On Sept 24, I married Katherine Pember to Charles Darwin. Ella and I visited the Steele–Maitlands and the Haldanes.

In the course of the year Harold and Elsie Knowling were divorced. This grievous termination to marriage, which had seemed to be indestructibly rooted in a romantic attachment caused me deep sorrow. Harold evidently had behaved very badly. His position probably was never easy, and, when he fell out of work, perhaps became intolerable. But nothing can possibly extenuate or excuse his desertion & degrading of his three children.

Death removed Curzon, Burge, Ryle, & Westlake. The attenuated ranks of my personal friends are being rapidly depleted. Clayton's chaplaincy came to an end with the year. He had been with me from my coming to Auckland in 1920.

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