The Henson Journals

[319]

Wednesday, June 2nd, 1926.

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The best night in point of sleep that I have yet had. Laus Deo! The morning is calm and bright, portending a perfect summer's day. The slate roofs, which form my outlook, are almost tragic in their grey hideousness. Auckland Castle must be glorious today. Londonderry's angry letter about Duncan's "Socialism" is only typical of what employers, & not employers only, are coming to feel about the Clergy. Of course their attitude is marked by much prejudice, by some injustice, and by a grave lack of perspective. But it includes also legitimate elements of fear and moral repugnance. They know far better than the clergy, who dogmatize so boldly, the formidable risks which the contempt of economic considerations implicit in "Socialism" involves. Many of them are upright men & sincere Christians who are honestly trying to treat their workmen, not only justly but even generously, and they are wounded at what they must needs regard as a cruel misunderstanding of their purpose & method. They are genuinely shocked at the apparent indifference of the Church to the breach of contract, the tyranny, and the evident disloyalty of the Labour Movement: & they cannot understand how the Clergy of all men should have nothing but condonation & sympathy for the Strikers.

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Then it is the case – although the fact is forgotten and ignored by the "Socialist" clergy – that the chief, indeed almost the only supporters of the Church's work are precisely these same employers. If – & after all it would but be natural that the attitude of the clergy should provoke reprisals – the employers were to withdraw their support, it is difficult to see how the Church's work, at home or abroad, would be maintained. This consideration, of course, will count for nothing in the minds of the "dervishes" of "Socialism", to whom "Socialism" is a religion, and the "class–war" the true formula of fraternity: but for more reasonable people, especially if they be charged with any measure of responsibility for carrying on Church Work, it will not be negligible. And if at bottom one agrees with the economic doctrine which the present social order assumes, & really believes that on the lines of "Socialism" only economic perdition is in the long run attainable – and this is my own case – it follows that this alienation of the employers, as such, is a proceeding as reckless as it must be finally destructive.

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J. G. Wilson sent me an amusing & violently hostile satire on the famous Henry of Exeter, sometime Rector of Stanhope and Prebendary of Durham – "Bishop Toby's Pilgrimage or the Method of Procuring a Mitre in Six Stages – narrated by himself by way of advice to his son. Newcastle. Printed for the Author by W, E, & H. Mitchell, and may be had of the booksellers. 1832." Men felt, & wrote bitterly about their rivals, political & professional in those days. Miss Wood of Coxhoe paid me a visit. She had had her appendix removed some years since, & was moved by a fellow–feeling for my condition! Then Rosemary Wild brought me some roses from Benwell Tower. She is a good but very plain maiden. Ella and Fearne came next, & had tea.

Then the Bishop of Jarrow arrived & stayed an hour. He is beginning to discover what I have long seen, that the root of all our difficulties in the diocese of Durham is the inadequacy of the clergy. The only way in which any real improvement can be made is the introduction at the yearly Ordinations of a superior type of clergy: and this is rendered impossible by the severe & continuing shortage of Ordination candidates. [I authorized the Bishop to fill up the vacant benefice of Lumley.

The weather all day has been brilliantly fine.]

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