The Henson Journals

[181]

24th Sunday after Trinity, November 18th, 1928.

A most beautiful morning, the golden sun rising in a cloudless sky & kindling it into a calm radiance. The silver crescent of the new moon, which smile like a guardian angel on our homeward drive yesterday, may possibly be the harbinger of some kinder weather than that which has filled with the records of disaster the newspapers of the past week.

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m.; there were 10 communicants including Florrie, Edward & Harold Bryden.

I worked at the Bunyan Sermon until Ella came back from Church, & then we walked for an hour before lunch. The white–headed blackbird was quite familiar.

I walked round the Park in the afternoon. Mr Justice Roche, Lady Roche, Miss Roche, Richardson (the judge's marshall), and another young man came to tea, & looked over the House.

Peter Richardson, who has been ill with pneumonia but is more recovered, came to tea, and stayed to dinner. He is now 25, and has been for some while past engaged to a young lady somewhat his junior. He desires the sweet constraints of matrimony, but is 'held up' by the problem of finance.

[182]

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My Pilgrim's book has travell'd sea & land,

Yet could I never come to understand

That it was slighted, or turn'd out of door

By any kingdom, were they rich or poor.

In France or Flanders where men kill each other,

My Pilgrim is esteem'd a friend, a brother.

In Holland too 'tis said, as I am told,

My Pilgrim is with some worth more than gold.

Highlanders & wild Irish can agree

My Pilgrim should familiar with them be.

These lines prefacing the 2nd part of the Pilgrim's Progress (published 1684) attest the foreign circulation of the 1st part. It would be difficult to imagine a more intensely English composition than this famous allegory, & certainly its author was a typical English sectary though endowed with a literary genius of the first quality. Yet the Pilgrim's Progress almost at once gained acceptance among foreigners. This is not the least astonishing circumstance connected with the famous allegory.

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