The Henson Journals
Sat 23 August 1930
Volume 50, Pages 236 to 238
[236]
Friday, August 23rd, 1930.
Our guests – Mr & Mrs Maclaren – went after breakfast – dull worthy folk whom one soon forgets! I prepared with some careful notes for a speech on Education for delivering at Gateshead in the afternoon, but I might have spared my pains for the reporters were either absent or didn't think it worthwhile to ask for the notes!
Ella and I motored to Gateshead, where I said prayers & made a speech at the opening of the new infant school belonging to S. Mary's Church. Old Francis Priestman declared the building open. There was a considerable gathering of people, mostly parents of the school children. Councillor Armstrong, the deputy major, gave me what he called a 'civic welcome', & in the course of his speech said that he had himself been a "conscientious objector" to the Education Bill in 1902, but had been led to alter his views. I began my speech by making some reference to the death of the Duke of Northumberland, the announcement of which appeared on the notice–board. We had just begun to hope that he would succeed in pulling through his illness.
[237]
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The Duke of Northumberland was a far more considerable man than his poor physique and insignificant appearance would suggest. Since he became Chancellor of Durham University I was brought into direct relation with him, and I was, rather to my own surprize both impressed by his ability, and attracted by his character. He was a good public speaker, well–informed on most subjects if an expert on none, very conscious of the greatness of his family, & honourably anxious to fulfil its responsibilities, hot–tempered and prejudiced, but of a generous temper and readily reconciled, a conscientious & high–spirited man, who was certainly drawing to himself in growing measure the respect & affection of the Northern people. We came into collision in the "Times" over the League of Nations, which the Duke had publicly derided, but I let him have the last word, and the incident left no ill–feeling on either side. We were, I think, consciously drawing together, and I had promised to visit him at Sion House. It is the fact that his death creates in my mind a feeling of personal bereavement.
[238]
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The Bishop of Blackburn and Mrs Herbert arrived soon after 6 p.m.: and I spent an hour in showing them the Castle, which neither of them had seen, the day had become so gloomy that nothing looked its best. I had some talk with the Bishop before going to bed, and was interested to learn that, though he had been in charge of the resolutions about the Ministry of Women in the Lambeth Conference, he lamented the advance of the feminist movement in the church. He was influenced by the fatalistic reasoning that since we had gone so far at the last Conference in the feminist direction, we were bound in logic to go farther. The Bishop was born in 1885, and is therefore only 45 years old, and has been 22 years in Orders. He was for 6 years, 1916–22, Warden of the Trinity Cambridge Mission in Camberwell. He is a tall man with pleasant expression & a rather winning address: intelligent but not, I imagine, intellectual, and certainly not learned. His wife, a daughter of Lord Bolton, is pretty, attractive, and bright–witted. They have a charming family of 3 children. Altogether, the Herberts make up a refreshing spectacle.