The Henson Journals

[37]

Boxing Day, December 26th, 1929.

It occurred to me that, after the recent rains, it might be worth while to make an expedition to High Force. Ella and Fearne went with me. The fineness of the weather and the mildness of the air made the drive through the moorland very pleasant: but we were disappointed in the appearance of the water–fall, which, though presenting a noble spectacle, was far from coming over the central rock. We climbed to the higher ground, and looked at the river before it took its bisecting leap into the abyss. Mistakenly assuming that the path would return to the high road, we lost our way, & ultimately had to seek direction at a lonely farm–house. We got back to Auckland in time for lunch. It is not without a certain melancholy suggestiveness, that the good woman at the Farm–house, who directed us back to the road, and who was a decent civil–spoken person, said that she had never seen High Force, though living within half a mile! The interest in scenes of natural beauty is, perhaps, even less widely distributed than that in scenes of historic memory: for the latter are, more or less, advertised in the schools, but the former lie outside the curriculum. Alexander tells me that numbers of the townsfolk have never troubled themselves to see the Chapel here.

[38]

The Winchester Diocesan Chronicle (Jan. 1930) contains a letter from the Bishop, who has just returned from a visit to the United States. The following is worth extracting:–

"In few countries of the world is there more churchgoing, and in few is there more crime. It was a typical scene that confronted me when, under the guidance of the Bishop of New York, I walked down the magnificent nave of his growing cathedral. Coming towards us was a man carrying the bag in which he had brought the weekly wages of the men engaged on the building. But on each side of him walked a man armed to the teeth, and standing outside was an armoured car in which the money had been brought!"

The Bishop of Jarrow gave me the Oxford edition of Donne's Poems, as a Christmas Present. I read a good many of them, & was amazed at their grossness. That great preacher & poet clearly presented the disconcerting blend of sensuality & spirituality which has darkened ecclesiastical history with so many moral paradoxes. The Elegies, Satires, & Marriage Songs are particularly swinish.

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