The Henson Journals

[159]

Thursday, November 8th, 1928.

1873–1928

Today I complete 65 years of life. I received affectionate letters from my friends and relations. Of these Ken's was so ardent and artless that it really moved me. Precious to the Old are the loyalties of the Young. I spent the morning in answering these letters. To lunch came Dick and his wife, George Nimmins and his wife, Shore, & Lady Eden. After lunch Lionel and I walked in the Park. Then I wrote more letters until it was time to motor to Etherley, where I instituted a fat dingy Welshman named Lewis Evans to the Rectory. There was a large congregation and an impressive service. I spoke with some earnestness about pastoral duty, and had the humiliation of being assured by Hodgson of Escombe that it was a "beautiful address". No weapons available for the preacher are able to pierce the triply–brazen armour of clerical conceit. Caröe was busy all day in surveying the Castle with a view to dilapidations. His fertile mind produces a rich crop of suggestions, but the connexion between them & the money requisite to carry them out is not always apparent.

[160]

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The handicap of a mishandled boyhood has been too great for me. Not to have had a regular education is a disadvantage which is as irreparable as not to have had a famous ancestry, or adequate money, or a sound constitution. It may indeed consist with a large measure of secular success, & in my case has done so: but it is destructive of influence & still more of happiness. For as men grow older they attach more & more importance to their early years. The public school and the college are talked about, revisited, & magnified in old age, as never before since boyhood & adolescence. The man who has never been to either becomes enigmatic & even suspected to his contemporaries, & when any circumstance arises which directly requires a consideration of records, the poor wretch becomes suddenly an out–caste. His very distinction provokes resentment; & every fault he has receives an immense & sinister emphasis. And this situation affects both his mind and his manner. He becomes cautiously unintelligible and aloof, draws away from the society of his contemporaries, and lives in a haughty seclusion which affirms their suspicion & damages his character.

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