The Henson Journals
Wed 2 July 1930
Volume 50, Pages 110 to 111
[110]
Wednesday, July 2nd, 1930, London.
Before leaving the Castle I sent a cheque for £25 to Marr in order that he might get to the sea for convalescence after his operation. This reduces the balance of the Barrington Fund to a perilous small sum.
Pattinson accompanied me to Darlington. The train was unusually empty, perhaps because people were preferring to see the Prince of Wales who visits Teeside today. I had a carriage to myself, &, save for the heat, travelled comfortably. I drove at once to 12 Neville Terrace, Onslow Gardens., where I found Fearne. The house is very small, &, perhaps, rather inconveniently distant from Lambeth, but it will suffice.
I dined at Grillions in its new place of meeting, the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane. It was a small, but very pleasant party of: Sir George Murray, Lord Hartington, Lord Buckmaster, Geoffrey Dawson, Owen Seaman, and myself. We had a brisk conversation which never flagged, & we parted in the utmost amiability.
[111]
Geoffrey spoke about India with evident anxiety. He said that Ld Irwin, the best of men, could believe no ill of anybody, & was therefore, but too likely to be deceived by the plausible humbugs in India. He himself wrote the articles on India in the Times: & he had today had an interview with the Prime Minister, who expressed himself well enough, but pleaded both the exigencies of his position as the head of the Labour Government, and the yielding counsels of the Government of India. Geoffrey expressed no estimate of Ramsay Macdonald. He was, he thought, both vain and false. I said that I hoped Baldwin wd be contented with his triumph over Beaverbrook & Rothermere; & would not continue the contest. He replied that Baldwin himself had told him that he had done with the matter.
Lord Buckmaster spoke with enthusiasm about Joan of Arc, whose history he had evidently studied with care: but he had not seen the articles in the Manchester Guardian which affirmed that she was alive five years after she was said to have been burned at Rouen.