The Henson Journals

[253]

Thursday, April 22nd, 1926.

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I wrote letters most of the morning, & took a short walk with mine host on the front. Sir Oliver & Lady Lodge went off after lunch. The newspapers gave prominence to his foolish speech, & hardly noticed anything else in yesterday's proceedings.Campbell explained to me that he had invited Lodge as an old friend to attend the Commemoration, & that he had apparently failed to understand the nature of the function, only assuming that he was expected to advocate his hobby! Accordingly, he had prepared his oration, & had sent a resumé of the same to the Times. Thus he could not refrain from making his speech, even after he had learned its irrelevance! It is annoying to find one's self tied up with this foolish stunt: and very hard on Robertson's memory to associate it with silly speculations of which he would have been the severest of criticks. In the afternoon I motored to Danny Park, Hurstpierpoint, and had tea with General & Mrs Oldfield. It is a fine Elizabethan Mansion used as a kind of private hotel. It belongs to the Campions, & contains a good many interesting portraits. There is a fine park, & generally the place was attractive.

[254] [symbol]

I dined with the Vicar of Brighton & Mrs Hicks, with whom were staying the Dean of Westminster and Mrs Foxley Norris. We had a good deal of talk about ecclesiastical politics.

I received an affectionately worded letter from Brooke Westcott, & wrote myself to him. Also, a characteristic epistle from Gerald Rainbow.

I had a long talk with mine host before turning in. He said that the centralizing, standardising tendency, which was so pronounced in the Church of England, was not less so in the several dissenting bodies, in which anything like individuality was discouraged or even suppressed. He told me that he had been consulted by a son (or grandson) of the great Scottish ecclesiastic, McLeod, on the subject of Confirmation. Resident in England, and desiring to communicate with the Church of England, he was unconfirmed and reluctant to do anything which would seem to throw doubt on the full validity of his Christian membership as one who had been admitted to the Church of Scotland by "the right hand of fellowship" at the age of 13. The matter was ultimately referred to the Abp. of C. who decided that he ought to be confirmed without prejudice as having thus to formalize his status in the C of E.

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