The Henson Journals

[201]

7th Sunday after Trinity, July 21st [14th], 1929.

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LIVERPOOL

Another tropical day. I accompanied mine host to the Cathedral, & received the Blessed Sacrament at 8 a.m. There were, perhaps, about 50 communicants. At mattins (shortened) I preached the sermon. There was a large congregation, which (as I was assured) was enabled to hear what I said by means of the "loud speakers"! It disturbed me not a little in delivery. After the Service several women claimed acquaintance with me as having been connected with the Church in Barking during my Vicariate. Lady Thurlow also spoke with me. After lunching with the Bishop, I returned to Auckland Castle, where I arrived about 7.10 p.m. having driven about 140 miles in exactly 5 hours. We stopped off for tea, so that the average pace was not less than 30 mile an hour, which is fair going.

[202]

Dr Edward Lyttelton sent me a little book on an extraordinarily embarrassing subject, on which, he seems to assume, perhaps justly, that the Bishops are to make a pronouncement at the forthcoming Lambeth Conference. "The Christian and Birth Control" expresses the "die–hard" conservative's view. It gives me the impression of having been mainly constructed from the notes of addresses given at "Quiet Days". Lyttleton was born in 1855, and is, therefore, 74 years old. He has the outlook of an old man. He is a strong Tractarian, and approaches the whole problem of sex from the stand–point of a rigid & rather pedantic orthodoxy. He is so far from any sympathy with modern ways of considering sex–questions that his contribution to the solution of the problem of 'contraception' is really worthless. Indeed, he becomes morally repulsive when he describes the counsel he would give to what he calls a 'hard case'. He thinks that intercourse ought to proceed in the husband's interest if it cost the wife's death! That contingency is to be accepted as the effect of Divine Will, & as such to be accepted with resignation!!

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