The Henson Journals

[17]

Monday, September 8th, 1930.

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We left Murraythwaite after breakfast. The weather was threatening when we started at 10.15 a.m.: but it improved as the day advanced, & ended brilliantly. I was not feeling well, and the motoring did not better my condition, with the result that, when we arrived at Daljarrocks, where we had arranged to lunch, I felt sufficiently indisposed to accept with gratitude the hospitable proposal that we should stay the night. Mrs Coltman, her sister, and her daughter Lillian were at home, but Major Copland was in England shooting partridges.

I retired to bed, and read through the rest of Glover's book on Virgil. It is interesting, acute, learned, and suggestive. I think it provides me with material for a sufficient 'after dinner' speech in proposing the toast of 'Virgil' at the dinner in Durham in October. The longer I live, the more I lament the mishandling of my boyish years. If, instead of reading an amalgam of history and controversial divinity, I had been properly grounded in the classics, I should have been incomparably better equipped for my present situation. As it is I have to live intellectually "from hand to mouth'!

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