The Henson Journals

[207]

8th Sunday after Trinity, August 10th, 1930.

A hot comfortless night, and a wet morning. I celebrated the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. in the Chapel. There were 8 communicants, including Harold Bryden, and William, the new Butler's Boy. Since last, on June 29th, I celebrated this Altar, the Lambeth Conference has run its course, and is no more than another confused memory!

I wrote to William. It is just 6 years since he left me in order to go to South Africa.

Also, I wrote to Lord Balfour of Burleigh, returning the papers containing his evidence about the Tied–house System, which he lent me some weeks ago. I took occasion to send him the Bishoprick. He is a dull estimable fellow, of great pertinacity and mediocre ability, who has cast himself in the rôle of a social reformer of the traditional type: but it may be doubted whether the modern political stage will find a place for that rôle much longer.

I finished reading Coulton's 'Romanism & Truth'. It is immensely learned and conscientious: yet it somehow fails to be convincing, although in the main he makes out his case, & one knows his opponents to be practical liars!

[208]

What can I fitly speak about to an audience of unemployed youths, gathered in a summer–camp at Seaton Carew? Their mentality is for the most part very poor: their ignorance is abysmal: their power of continuous attention extremely small. It is difficult to assume that they have anything that can be called a career open to them, for hitherto all our politicians and economists have been totally helpless before the grim & waxing phenomenon of unemployment. Economically these lads are rubbish: politically they are dangerous: socially they are hopeless. Individually they are – well, at their baptism (most, perhaps all, of them have been baptized) they were declared to be "children of God, members of Christ, and inheritors of the Kingdom of God". The stately description reads like a satire. I think I shall speak about "The Paradox of Man" i.e. about the weakness and the greatness, boldly pointing the moral by the situation of my hearers – economically, politically, socially useless, and yet individually, of supreme potential dignity & value. I may show that on a just estimate it is this latter valuation that really matters.

[209]

Charles accompanied me to the Camp at Seaton Carew, where the Superintendent & Mr Eddon were awaiting my arrival. About 90 lads came to the tent, all between the ages of 18 and 25. The service was of the simplest description. I did not wear my robes, but spoke in mufti for about 20 minutes. They were very attentive, & afterwards shook hands with me as they filed out. There was a party of Toc H. members who were helping to "run" the camp. I invited them to visit the Castle, & have tea with me there on Thursday, the 21st.

Eddon, the Vicar of Craghead, seems to me ill–chosen for the job of being chaplain to a camp of Unemployed men. He cannot be less than 62 and he looks older. Moreover he is a melancholy man, whose aspect and voice are depressing. He is, so far as I can judge, a failure in his own parish. It is difficult to understand how, in cold blood, men of his age & type could be selected for their work. I suppose he volunteered, and even with parsons, you cannot "look a gift–horse in the mouth"!

[210]

I finished reading, or rather running through, "Temple Gairdner of Cairo", a biography which I have heard much praised. The two photographs give a pleasing impression of him: but the theurgical tone, so characteristic of Evangelical writing, offends me, & makes it difficult for me to do justice to the book. Moreover, the intense domesticity which blends with the religious unction does not please me. That Temple Gairdner was an able and devoted man is apparent: but might he not have been "cribbed, calmed, and confined" within the narrow limits of his Evangelical Creed? He was one of the Undergraduates who played the dervish at the Martyrs' Memorial in Oxford: & his mother was clearly right in thinking that his religion lost him his first–class in the School. There is no evidence in this biography that he was interested in anything beyond the concerns of his religious mission. Yet he lived through a generation which was called to move through experiences of extraordinary importance and filled with tragedy.

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