The Henson Journals
Fri 5 August 1927
Volume 42, Pages 235 to 236
[235]
Friday, August 5th, 1927.
Fedden writes to me very frankly about his position, & leaves the decision with respect to Seaton Carew in my hands: on the whole I decided against his having Consett, & wrote to tell him so. Then I wrote to Froggatt of S. Thomas's, Sunderland, offering the benefice to him.
Two more of the party went away – Niall Chaplain and Major Foster. Both interested me, & with both I exchanged promises of continuing acquaintance. N. C. is a fine hefty fellow, only 19 years old. He goes to New York in the autumn, to learn the mysteries of money–making – a sorry service for an ingenuous youth. Foster hails from the diocese of Hereford, where he has a large property. He lost a leg in the war.
The papers announce the death of John Dillon. His name evokes the memory of an acute phase of the troubled relations between England and Ireland. Was it Tim Healy who described him as "the melancholy humbug"? The description 'took on', and is now inseparable from Dillon's name.
[236]
Borrow ('The Romany Rye', first publicised in 1857) indicates the prejudice against extemporaneous preaching:
"The clergyman preached long and well: he did not read his sermon, but spoke it extempore: his doing so rather surprised and offended me at first: I was not used to such a style of preaching in a church devoted to the religion of my country. I compared it within my mind with the style of preaching used by the high-church rector in the old church of pretty D_____, and I thought to myself it was very different, and being very different I did not like it, and I thought to myself how scandalized the people of D_____ would have been had they heard it, and I figured to myself how indignant the high-church clerk would have been had any clergyman got up in the church of D_____ & preached in such a manner. Did it not savour strongly of dissent, methodism [sic], & similar low stuff? Surely it did: why the methodist I had heard preach on the heath above the old city, preached In the same manner." (p. 51)