The Henson Journals

[144]

Tuesday, August 31st, 1926.

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The weather has changed, becoming wet and chilly. I frittered away the morning very fruitlessly. After lunch the hair–dresser came, and both cut & washed my hair. Then I went into the Park, where I fell in with the old miner, who was carrying home some very dubious looking fungoids for his supper. Like old Bishop Durnford he disdained the common English prejudice against all fungoids except mushrooms. I met a decent looking miner, & got into talk with him. He "opened out" on the desire of the older men to get back to work, & spoke with some bitterness of the terrorism under which they lived, and the losses which the strike had inflicted upon them.

Then I wrote to Adamson, the Vicar of Grangetown, telling him that I would accept a title from his parish for Neil, who is due for Ordination at Advent.

I received from the bookseller a very interesting book published by the Manchester University Press – Canon Pietro Casola's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Year 1494 by M. Margaret Newett B. A. It is a translation with introduction and notes. One gets a juster estimate of the Middle Ages from a contemporary than from the ablest modern writer. This volume may stand beside Coulton's "From Francis to Dante" which is really a translation of Salimbene's Chronicle with notes. The revived study of the Middle Ages in the History Schools of the Universities is certainly not a negligible factor in the sum of causes which have facilitated the spread of Socialism in modern society. The a priori method of reasoning by which ideal systems were justified by the schoolmen accords well with a social theory which practical experience condemns.

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