The Henson Journals

[142]

Monday, August 30th, 1926.

The glorious weather still holds, and as my little visit to this house began so it ends in brilliant sunshine. Is it superstition to think that I came here not without some purpose of Providence in my coming? My visit to Oliver Stanley and his wife may, perhaps, bear fruit, and my meeting Robin again may be serviceable. Is it not equally vain and foolish to regard anything that happens to me now as a possible foundation for anything in the future, seeing that I have now but few years left in which I can possibly work. There is no reason, indeed, why I, like so many others who begin this day in health and hope, should not be destined to reckon it as my last. Is such a reflection to be called morbid? Is it not rather as reasonable as it is religious? "Teach me to number my days that I may apply my heart unto wisdom." My reading has been more interesting than edifying – Hervey's Memoirs of the Reign of George III. The meanness, depravity, and spite of that monarch, and even of his far more considerable consort, are almost beyond belief. No voice of censure or remonstrance seems to have come to them, though their disgusting Court was haunted by Bishops! Is this degraded acquiescence in the wrong–doing of royal patrons morally more reprehensible than the steady silence with which the episcopal & clerical toadies of "Labour" regard its violences, perfidies, and profanities? We change the object of our worship from one age to another, but ever cherish the same superstition. Hoadley and Sherlock were perhaps no more blameworthy than Kempthorne and Temple. How difficult it is to avoid the Scylla of cynicism when steering clear of the Charybdis of political subservience!

[143]

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We came away after breakfast, and travelled home. I got out at Barnard Castle, and was met by the car, arriving at the Castle in time for lunch. The two young ladies – Barbara Lilley & her friend Miss Cash, who is a grand–daughter of John Bright – went away after lunch. The Bishop of Jarrow arrived, & discussed diocesan business most of the afternoon. Then Mr & Mrs Carlyle with their infant daughter arrived on a short visit.

I sent copies of "Quo tendimus?" to Sir John Weston Bt, whom I met yesterday: and also to Oliver Stanley, to whom I had promised one. The former was to read the account of the Enabling Act, the latter, the criticism of "Copec".

In response to my request a copy of the Lichfield Diocesan Magazine was sent to me. It contains a short article on "The Coal Industry" signed by the Bishop of Lichfield. This article appears to be designed as an apology for the Ten Bishops, whose futile & untimely intervention in the Coal Dispute has done so much harm, & provoked so much resentment. It is curiously ineffective and mainly irrelevant. He pleads the precedent of Bishop Westcott "who in the great Durham coal disputes of 1894 'interfered' and brought about a settlement". It needs but to weigh the change, which the last 30 years have brought about in the economic sphere, to realize the folly of pleading that precedent for present action.

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