The Henson Journals

[43]

Saturday, August 27th, 1927.

I finished "running through" one of the foolishest autobiographical volumes I have yet met with – 'Lively Recollections by the Rev. John Shearne, M.A. Hon. Canon of Winchester. John Lane. 1917'. In the stories of his boyhood in Cornwall – he was born in 1842 – there are a few things possible worth recording, but all the rest is dull, trivial, & sapless as the garrulous chatter of any silly senile man who has lived in English Society of the demure county family type. He evidently kept a diary, and constructed his volume from it: but his vanity has destroyed his sense of proportion, and if (as we must suppose) this record gives the cream of his daily narrative, that composition must have been mighty poor stuff. Stevenson says somewhere that he often 'tried to keep' diaries, but 'always and very stupidly discarded them, finding them a school of posturing & melancholy self–deception' (v. 'Memories & Portraits'. 4th Edition. Chatto & Windus. 1895. P.58). If, however, a Diary be frank enough, & kept for many years faithfully, it provides such a record of tergiversation, inconsistency, & folly as gives it real disciplinary value.

[44]

We left the Priory, Woodchester, shortly before 10. A.m. and motored to Sandbeck Park, Rotherham, where we arrived shortly before 7 p.m. We punctured 4 miles out of Ashby–de–la–Zouch, where we lunched at 2.45 p.m. The weather was fine, but sunless during the afternoon. At Ashby–de–la–Zouch we visited the parish church of S. Helen, hard by the ruins of the Castle. It is a double–aisled building of large capacity. I noticed evident indications that the Sacrament was reserved at two altars.

Sir John and Lady Leslie, (the parents of the disreputable Shane Leslie, whose indecent novel "The Cantab" created a sensation some short while back) are staying at Sandbeck: and a Mr Scovell, whom I have met here before, but of whom I know nothing.

I found in the billiard room the book about which many people have spoken to me in terms of high appreciation – Mother India by Katherine Mayo – Jonathan Cape. 1927: and I read much of it. The writer is an American who went to India "to see for herself" the condition of that country. She claims to have gone there without prepossessions, and to have been led to conclusions which she did not, and could not, forecast.