The Henson Journals

[45]

11th Sunday after Trinity, August 28th, 1927. Sandbeck Park, Rotherham.

Lord Scarbrough, Ella, and I attended the morning service in Tickhill Parish Church, and received the Holy Communion. The Church is a noble building in the Perpendicular style, with some earlier features. I was interested in the text placed on the brazen lectern:–"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". It is not unnatural to suspect that the choice of those words was determined by the understanding that by the Logos was meant the Scripture or Word written, a gross & perilous error. The lessons were read from the R.V. by a youth whom I rightly conjectured to be the Rector's son, and they were read very well. I talked with the Rector, Mr Booty, after service, & sent a message to the said youth expressing approval of his reading. I was astonished to hear the Epistle and Gospel read in the R.V., an illegal proceeding, as I told the parson. The sermon from the [46] words of Christ, "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, & forfeit his own soul", was brief, well–expressed, delivered in an agreeable voice, and edifying. After the service Lord S. took us to see the ruin of the Castle of Tickhill, of which, indeed, no more remains than the gate, the wall, & the moat. A comfortable home, built perhaps at the end of the XVIIth century, stands within the walls. The tenant, Mr Atkinson Clark, joined us, & was civil & explanatory.

In the afternoon we were all taken to Roche Abbey, which our host explained with intelligence & knowledge. The Office of Works has been continuing its work on the ruins with considerable effect. Returning to the House I wrote letters, and finished the book on India. The book is said to have infuriated the Indian Nationalists, & to have had effect on the Indian Government.

[47] [symbol]

Lady Leslie spoke to me with some freedom of her son Shane, whose conversion to the Roman Church evidently distressed her. It was engineered by Father Benson while the said Shane was at Cambridge. The young man had wanted to be a priest, but the Roman authorities adjudged him to have no vocation, and preferred to use him as a politician and a journalist. She thought that he was in some mental unrest, by no means at peace in the Roman fold. Her description of the Celtic Irish was not attractive. The priests were coarse gluttonous peasants. I inquired whether she thought the purity of the Irish was as marked as is commonly affirmed, & she replied that she thought that the sexual relations of the Irish were less intense & sentimental than those of other people. She has never seen any love–making in Ireland among the peasantry. They married for material advantage, not for love. They were a very cowardly people, and their reputation for soldierly valour was largely unmerited. The extraordinary bloodlessness of their furious encounters was due to the general fashion of firing from behind walls & hedges. She was herself an American, & came to Ireland with a high estimate of the people which experience had completely destroyed.

[48]

Sir John Leslie is, like his father, a born artist. Lord Scarborough showed me a water–colour sketch of Dr Hawtrey, done when he was a boy at Eton, which is admirable. He wanted to be an artist, but was sent into the Army, & when in later life he resumed his painting & even studied art in Paris, the best possibilities had vanished. So men play 'ducks and drakes' with the best gifts of their creator. Sir John gave me an amusing account of the Ulster troops who had been stationed at Bundoran under his command. They were well–liked by the people save for their inveterate habit of roaring "To Hell with the Pope" in the streets. The local priest protested, & Sir John admonished the troops, & with difficulty persuaded them to substitute "To Hell with the Kaiser!" In Portadown, he argued the matter with them, "Why should they curse the Pope, an elderly clergyman who certainly injured none of them?' That may be so, Sir, but the Pope has a bad reputation in Portadown! There was nothing more to be said after that. The old vivacious humour was disappearing in Ireland, & the country was going backward.