The Henson Journals

[1]

Tuesday, March 1st, 1927.

A mild damp day, hostile to every kind of activity. I received from Ralph a letter in which he says that "gossip" reports that in the Bishop's meetings ''there was a steady minority of nine, rising at times to twelve''. I wrote to him at some length showing how little truth there is in this rumour. Pearce's mischievous letter to the Times lies at the root of it. There is a long, & very flattering notice of Headlam's pamphlet "Economics and Christianity".

Old Mr Ousey, the late Vicar of Billingham, came to say 'Goodbye'. He goes to his new home at Garleston tomorrow. Then Fearne & Lionel went off to Newcastle with Dr Mackintosh to see a play.

The death of Dr Ridgeway, formerly Bishop of Chichester at the advanced age of 86 recalls a pleasant, superficial man, with large ambitions and popular gifts, whose advance in the hierarchy illustrated the exorbitant importance which surface qualities may come to hold in the view of politicians. He had no pretensions to knowledge, or to intellectual distinction: he did nothing notable, and he said nothing worth remembering: he wrote nothing that can be called a book. But he was an extemporaneous preacher to the West End's mind: his children's services were much belauded: & his Hospital Sunday Collection's fabulous!

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