The Henson Journals

[116]

Sexagesima, February 12th, 1928.

A most beautiful morning, the sky suffused with brilliant amber light, and the crispness of frost in the air. There is an interest & excitement in the birds' voices which is a prophecy of spring.

I got up, though by no means feeling well, and celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. The communicants numbered 9, including John.

I read through Bell's 'The Modern Parson', and wrote to thank him for it, & to express civilly my dissent from much that it contains & assumes. Bell is a good fellow, for whom I have a real liking, but he is swathed in the new conventionalism which treats the resolutions of a Lambeth Conference as binding spiritual pronouncements, and hails "Copec" as another Pentecost.

I wrote pusillanimously to Hugh Macmillan, telling him that I should not attend the meeting of the Home Office Committee next Friday, & hinting that I might have to absent myself during the Confirmation Season.

After dinner, for Lady Eden's benefit, I read aloud the oath against Modernists required by Pius X to be taken by all Ordination candidates & clergy, & now exacted. It fills 3 pages of an Appendix in the Dean of Canterbury's book.

[117]

'The Winchester monk's daily allowance of beer was six quarts, a little less than at some other great monasteries: not that he normally drank all this, but it helped him in the entertainment of friends and in other ways.'

(v. a Review in the Observer by G.G. Coulton. Sunday, February 12th 1928.)

With this may be compared the chapter on 'The Material Comfort of Monastic Life' in Snape's 'English Monastic Finances'. It is of S. Swithun's, Winchester, that the following statement is made:–

'Dean Kitchin calculates the daily allowance of meat alone at about a pound and a half per head.'

Snape gives his own verdict thus:–

"There is comparatively little in these later years to be seen beyond a life of easy sauntering comfort. Though extravagant luxury might be absent, ease and plenty were not …… The monk lived comfortably, as comfort went then: he was provided with pocket money for luxuries, apart from those which the ordinary fare of the monasteries gave him …. On the whole, he lived a slow and well–to–do life."