The Henson Journals

[106]

Saturday, August 14th, 1926.

I wrote to Harold Henson consenting to be godfather to his boy, and sending him a cheque for £10 to purchase a christening cup as an evidence of the relationship. It is rather a futile thing for a man of 63 to link himself to an infant.

Ella tells me that Herbert Smith has responded with alacrity to the suggestion that he should visit Auckland Castle, and will present himself there almost as soon as we do. So the plot thickens, and I must "keep the door of my lips" to the best of my power in order not to wound the prematurely sophisticated conscience of a young Anglo–Catholick! How these accursed divisions in the Church destroy the naturalness of social intercourse, & cast a paralysing artificiality on all we say and do! It is the case that when I saw the lad for a moment at Cheltenham, & was told almost in a breath that he was my namesake, fatherless, & dreaming of Ordination, the thought flashed across my mind that I might befriend him & assist his good purpose: & rather rashly I said as much to Ella. But had I known that he was already a predestined Mirfield Father, I should certainly have hesitated. For I cannot conceal from myself that between the Anglicanism of Mirfield and the Anglicanism which I myself profess, there is a great gulf, as wide as the distance which parts the Protestant from the Papist. We use many similar phrases, & (but to an ever waning extent) use the same forms & ceremonies, but we are none the less completely alienated in rebus ecclesiasticus [church business].

[107]

Benevolence also has its fashions which change and pass. In the middle ages the founding of leper–houses was fashionable. The redemption of Christian slaves from their Mohammedan captors was long a much–favoured object of Christian concern. The provision of dowries for poor & virtuous maidens commended itself to many. Almshouses were popular in the xviith and xviiith centuries: and the endowment of grammar schools all over the country attests the general desire to extend education to the poor. The assistance of the clergy in many ways has received large support: and every organized industry has concerned itself for the needs of its own poorer members. The great benevolent societies are a prominent feature of our modern world: & the charities of the Freemasons are famous. Municipal solidarity has been a potent occasion of benevolence. London and Amsterdam have long been famous for their charities. Provision of loans to distressed tradesmen on easy terms is common. Lending libraries, of which Dr Bray's is the best known example, were at one time favoured by the benevolent. In the medieval and Roman Catholic spheres benevolence has concerned itself more with the next world than with this. Masses for the departed have been provided, sometimes on a grand scale. The modern State has extended its activities so widely that now there is hardly any department of human need which is not included in its concern, and dealt with at public cost.

[108]

No letters came for me so I loafed in the garden all the morning reading the Times which contained a rather characteristically "swelled–head" letter from Archie Fleming, eminently sane, of course, but somehow making one rather wish that it wasn't written [on] one's own side in the controversy. As always, I only find my side doubtful & disgusting when it begins to secure supporters and attain to success! This is to be a Trimmer indeed, but of that perversely whimsical type that ever trims to its own disadvantage! Also, I read an amusing novel by H. G. Wells, Tono–Bungay.

In the afternoon Ella and I called on the retired Vicar, Mr Boyce, and found him comfortably settled in his own house about a mile from Halesworth, and near enough to Bramfield to hear its gossip and share its emotions. He expressed himself with unexpected vigour on the faults of his successor, and, still more, of his successor's wife! We called on this much–denounced lady, and found her less formidable than we had been led to expect. Thorrington Church is practically in the same garden with the Vicarage. It has been much restored, but is still interesting by reason [of] its round tower. We went on for a few miles, and called on a large landed proprietor named Gooch, whose mansion has recently been burnt out, so that he was living in a farm house near by. Finding nobody at home, we returned to Bramfield.

Wells describes the morality of English villagers as being lower than that of townsfolk, emphasising especially their coarse and cryptic lewdness. Miles's account of the Suffolk rustics was thus sustained by the novelist. Yet I am not quite convinced of its truth.

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