The Henson Journals

[172]

16th Sunday after Trinity, September 19th, 1926.

The Chapel looked ravishingly beautiful when I celebrated the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. for the sun was shining brightly, and kindled the coloured windows wonderfully. We only numbered 7 communicants including the President.

Blakiston accompanied me to S. Helen's, West Auckland, where I preached to the members of the Bishop Auckland Rotary Club. The lessons were read by Laidler, a local secretary who, however, read them well. I noticed three policemen outside the church, one of them mounted. They evidently thought that there might be a demonstration against me. I preached on "Truthfulness", and was closely listened to. Davison expressed himself as pleased with the discourse. We returned to the Castle for lunch.

Blakiston read through the proof of the Edinburgh Article, which he approved. He detected two errors in the printing, which I had overlooked, but which appeared to me important enough to bear the burden of a letter to Harold Cox. I certainly was not marked out by nature to be a proof–corrector!

I wrote to Frank Berry, addressing my letter to Witbank, Transvaal. He is working there in a coal–producing district, which threatens to become a crowded industrial area.

Arthur Harrison & his wife came from Durham, & had tea. He desired to explain to me what precisely what the business was to be at tomorrow's meeting of the Bede College Committee. He thinks that the probable solution (?) of this obstinate mining problem will be the return of the men to work in spite of their leaders.

I had much talk with Blakiston de rebus academicis et ecclesiasticis. He is a man of intelligent observation & quiet humour.

[173]

[']I think Randal Davidson will make a good Archbishop. He has a good deal of common sense, which is better than brilliancy or scholarship. I believe I gave him his first lift by speaking of him to the Queen, who said once to me: "You said a true thing about him, that he had an old head on young shoulders". I think that is true still though the shoulders are no longer young. His grandfather was one of the ministers of Edinburgh and his father an elder of the kirk, so he has made a good thing of his "conversion" or "perversion". I believe he will do really well. I think my friend Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, will likely go to Winchester. He is a splendid preacher and not like Davidson, of whom your Aberdeen doctor said, "Yon man wadna get a kirk in Scotland"![']

v. James Cameron Lees. Letter. January 1903.

I had always supposed (but why I don't know) that the Archbishop came of episcopalian stock. It appears that he, like the younger primate, was a convert from the Kirk. That both the English Archbishops should be Scots, and both ex–Presbyterians, are surely very astonishing circumstances. Ought one to infer from the facts that the Church of England is destitute of governing ability? or, merely (a very familiar proposition) that the Scottish genius of success can triumph over any English ability? In any case, I cannot doubt that the Scottish temperament & Presbyterian training of the Archbishops have had a potent (and not at all a wholesome) influence on the Church of England.

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