The Henson Journals

[146]

Friday, June 14th, 1929.

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"The Imp of the Church of England" – that is the description of me which is current. I know whose coinage that is, for I have heard Lang call me "imp" many times, but what is passable folly in college may be injurious belittlement at Lambeth! "Imp" is poisonous variety of 'enfant terrible', conveying the impression of a puckish malevolence rather than of a disconcerting naiveté.

I left Park Lane after breakfast, and, after visiting the hair–dresser & the bookseller, I went to King's Cross and took train for Darlington. My journey was relieved by the conversation of a fellow–traveller, whose unusual height attracted my notice. He told me that he was 6 feet 5 inches: that his name was Norman Edmendson: & that he hailed from Northumberland.

Lionel met me at Darlington with the car. I found that Henry de Candole, erstwhile a chaplain at Lambeth, but now a curate in Newcastle, had arrived to stay the night. He is said to be a rather extreme Anglo–Catholic though, as the son of the Dean of Bristol, he might be expected to look the other way.

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