The Henson Journals

[270]

Saturday, December 4th, 1926.

Colonel Headlam came to see me with respect to the project of organizing the emigration of Durham miners, who will be permanently unemployed as a result of the "stoppage". I promised that I would try to interest Lord Londonderry. It is nowise easy to be optimistic as to anything effective being done, but we must certainly try. The [Y.?] P. has an estimate that 20,000 miners will be idle in Durham county.

I walked in the Park during the afternoon. Spurrier and his mother came to see me, and I gave them tea. He asked me to officiate at his marriage on Thursday, the 21st April, and I promised to do so. Ella, Fearne, and Lionel went in to Durham to attend a lecture by Canon Hannay ("George Birmingham") in the Chapter House. The subject was "Ireland and Hungary".

A parcel of books arrived from Hugh Rees: –

1. British Slavery & its Abolition 1823–1838, by William Law Mathieson. 16/–

2. Short History of Marriage by Edward Westermarck. 10/6

3. Modernism in the English Church by Percy Gardner. 5/–

4. The Anglo–Catholic Faith by T. A. Lacey. 5/–

5. The Faith of an English Catholic by Darwell Stone. 3/6 (?)

My reading grows ever more multifarious & intermittent. It is difficult to know what to choose out of the varied stream of publications, & one's choice is determined by the most various motives. The result must be to make one's mind a "rag–bag" filled with odds & ends of unrelated information. And this is the negation of knowledge for it prohibits that concentration of interest which is the condition of gaining any degree of knowledge. As I review my life I can see quite clearly that the root of its failure has been the lack of concentration. Partly this has grown from the circumstances of my life, but partly from a radical instability of character, itself the evidence of a deep–rooted defect. And now at 63 it is too late to attempt amendment.

Miss Fox came for the week–end.

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