The Henson Journals

[5]

Wednesday, December 4th, 1929.

It has suddenly dawned on me that I am pledged to address the Rotarians at South Shields tomorrow. The choice of a subject is not easy, for it must be both interesting and non–controversial, and these are hardly compatible qualities. Most interesting subjects are also controversial, indeed the keenest of the controversy is a measure of the intensity of the interest. To be 'safe' is surely also to be 'dull', and all our wisest advisers bid us 'live dangerously'. To do that can hardly mean anything else than to live in the thick of controversy. Recently the 'Times' has had a correspondence on "sneak–guests", & I might, perhaps, take that as my text. It would naturally enough lead on to a discussion of the legitimacy of privately recording the obiter dicta of great men, which one hears in private company. The whole question of keeping a private journal would be raised, and the further question, which has become acute since the war, of the rightness of publishing conversations which have never been checked by one of the parties concerned in them.

[6]

Ella went with me to Durham, where she took train for Sunderland, and I betook myself to the Castle. There I collated to their honorary canonries both Parry–Evans and Froggatt, admitted Brain to the chapelry in his parish, & gave Ainsworth of S. John's College a general licence.

Pattinson & I motored to Darlington, where I confirmed more than 100 persons in S. Luke's Church. The sexes were about equally represented. I had no reason to complain of the inattention of the candidates, but it is not a pleasing church, & the parson is a dull, listless fellow, whose natural defects are emphasized by his domestic troubles.

The Times includes in its page of photographs one of my portrait. It is not large enough or distinct enough to be impressive. I shall be much interested by the comments and criticisms which it will evoke, if it should appear in the Academy's Exhibition next year.

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