The Henson Journals
Tue 13 July 1926
Volume 41, Page 40
[40]
Tuesday, July 13th, 1926.
It is precisely nine weeks since the operation. I started to walk up and down stairs in normal fashion. I read Bright's Early English Church History with a view to the Hereford sermon, but gained woefully little. The papers announce the death of that very brave, briilliant, and patriotic lady, Miss Gertrude Bell. She died at Baghdad in sleep [sic], worne out beyond all question by her indefatigable labours. Her life shames my conventionality, sloth, and cowardice.
J. G. Wilson lunched here. He brought me the Funeral Sermon for Bishop Morton preached by John Barwick on Michaelmas–day 1659 in the parish church of St Peter at Easton Mauduit in Northampton–shire. It has a clean–cut portrait of the valorous old bishop.
Jimmie Dobbie came to report that he had passed his matriculation. He now aspires to honours! Ambition is a week that grows quickly in young minds! He would be better–placed, perhaps, under a more energetic and masterful vicar than the amiable but somewhat lethargic Marsh.
Ella, Mrs Korsteiner, and I motored to Sedgefield, & had tea at the great Rectory. What is to be the future of such a house? The present endowment (£1600) is all required to live in it suitably: but our reformers will not contemplate a parochial income that exceeds £700. Who would buy the Rectory? It is too large for the only kind of purchaser that is likely to present himself. Durham is not a district in which schools or institutions naturally establish themselves, for its amenities are few, and its climate is severe. Sykes told me that he had had some correspondence with Iremonger about the Archbishop of Canterbury's unfortunate action during the Strike, and had sent him a cutting of my letter to the Newcastle Journal: but Iremonger would not publish anything in the Guardian. It is not the least grave indication of the sorry pass into which ecclesiastical affairs have come that a man of the type and temperament of Iremonger should wield so relatively considerable influence at the centre.