The Henson Journals

[1]

Friday, June 18th, 1926.

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A warm, rainless, and rather sultry day. The doctor came to see me, & sanctioned the abandonment of the bandage. I got up, and made not unsuccessful essays in independent walking. Also, I joined my family at lunch. During the afternoon I sate in the garden, and talked with some of the clergy, who came to call. But they are mostly getting deaf, and conversation was more fatiguing then enjoyable. For the rest, I read Trevelyan's History of England, which is extraordinarily full of witty and suggestive obiter dicta. His references to religion are invariably respectful, and his treatment of the Church of England would have horrified his distinguished relative, Lord Macaulay. Speaking of the Puritan Sunday, which rather surprisingly survived the Puritan débâcle at the Restoration he says: "The good and evil effects of this self–imposed discipline of a whole nation, in abstaining from organized amusement as well as from work on every seventh day, still awaits the dispassionate study of the social historian." The 'Puritan Sunday' may at least claim from its criticks the benefit of the generous rule, De mortuis nil nisi bonum. It has vanished beyond recall.

[2]

A few days ago I read a letter in the newspaper, protesting almost angrily against the closing of Glastonbury Abbey to the public on Sundays. The argument was simplicity itself. The Abbey belongs to the nation: why, then, should not the nation have free access to it at all times. The writer appeared to identify the nation's interest in Glastonbury Abbey quite simply with his own preference, &, of course, had no consciousness of any greater claim than the nation's thus interpreted! The recent decision of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners no longer to adhere to the rule hitherto followed by them in letting golf–courses on the lands which they administer viz. to prohibit Sunday games, must needs compel considering Churchmen to realize the strength of the tendency towards the total secularisation of the Lord's Day. For, if the Commissioners feel themselves compelled to take that course, which could not but have been unpalatable to many of them, it cannot be imagined that private property–owners will be able to take any other. The traditional observance of the Lord's Day will hardly survive the general introduction of games, &, when we remember the conditions under which the national life now proceeds in our over–crowded island, and the fierce appetite for pleasure which now sweeps all before it, we cannot doubt that Sunday will soon approximate to the noise, movement, & business of a Bank Holiday.

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