The Henson Journals

[14]

Monday, May 12th, 1930.

Mary Radford and Reggie Smith went away after breakfast.

Merryweather, the Vicar of Pelton, came to see me and I took occasion to rate him soundly for his folly. He is a very foolish, ignorant fellow and enormously conceited. I doubt whether he is capable of taking reproof: & it may be that he has some kind of a mental kink.

Jessie Hedger, now Mrs Lemon, writes to me from Australia. It is more than 30 years since I have seen her, & then she had been "converted" to Papistry in Ilford, and I "recovered" her. She was then a pretty, rather unsteady girl, after whom the boys ran, & who simply couldn't help "making eyes" at them. But there was no harm in her, only high spirits and flightiness. She wants me to send her a photograph! It is truly amzing that the humbler English cling to their attachments, personal & local, with a tenacity which nothing can break.

Pattisnson & I motored to Haswell, where I confirmed 137 persons in the poor little parish church, which was densely crowded.

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