The Henson Journals

[245]

Friday, April 16th, 1926.

The Moss. Killearn. N.B.

I read an admirable appreciation of W. P. Ker by a French writer, René Galland, in the "Revue Anglo–Americaine^["]^ (Février. 1926). Mine hostess tells me that Ker's family regard it as the best estimate of "W. P." which has been published. The description of 95 Gower Street is photographic in its fidelity.

"En notre âge de specialistes, W.P. Ker fait penser par l'universalité des connaissances, à un home du moyen âge, dont le domaine était la science, non telle ou telle science particulière. Sa province à lui, comme le disaient ses amis, c'était toute la littérature."

M. Galland naturally emphasises Ker's affection for France. I wonder whether that affection would have been sufficiently robust to stand the strain which French policy would have placed on it in recent years. "W.P." died in 1923, and the enormous prejudices bred of the War, though plainly beginning to subside, were still dominant in most English minds. His extraordinary loyalty to his friends – not the least precious of his qualities – would in his case have made the subsiding process slower.

[246] [symbol]

With a thoughtful and large–minded High Churchman I believe I should sympathize more than with one of any section of the Church; but my recoil from the bare formalism of the half–educated and half–spiritualised of that school would, I fear, be stronger than from the extremes of any other party.

F. W. Robertson. Ap. 1st 1853 (v. Life. ii. 183)

It is precisely these "half–educated & half–spiritualised" High Churchmen who are molesting Barnes in Birmingham, "running" Ingram in London, and terrifying the greater part of the episcopate into a mealy–mouthed complaisance towards their extravagances. In Robertson's day the general public interested itself in the affairs of the Established Church. Now, it is otherwise. Denominationalism has prevailed so completely that whatever happens in the Church of England is looked upon as a "domestic" affair with which the nation has no rightful concern. And the Church of England is now of such slight political consequence, that the party leaders no longer affect to trouble themselves with its attitude on public issues.

[247] [symbol]

An Historical Relation of Ceylon together with somewhat concerning Severall Remarkeable passages of my life that have hapned [sic] since my Deliverance out of my Captivity by Robert Knox. A Captive there near Twenty years. Glasgow. James Machehose & Sons. Publishers to the University 1911.

This looks like a book which might be worth getting.

I worked at the Brighton Sermon before lunch, and afterwards we motored to Ballaha, and viewed Loch Lomond. The weather was capricious, & rain fell too frequently for comfort. We had tea with Herbert Guthrie Smith & his sister, who escorted us back to the Moss. He told me à propos of the bad manners of Australians that it was commonly said in Australia that the objection to touching the hat and saying "Sir" had its origin in the fact that both these polite practices were distinctive of the convicts in whose case they rather expressed a hated necessity than a willingly–rendered courtesy. "The evil that men do lives after them", and the evil consequences of the convict settlements have long survived the settlements themselves. I wrote to Lionel, & sent a "Collins" to Miss Maxwell.

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