The Henson Journals

[41]

Tuesday, September 16th, 1930.

I bethought me of the sermon which I promised to preach to the School in Durham on October 19th. For my text Deut: xxxii.7. might serve: "Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations": and for my subject, the interest & value of History. I might introduce a reference to foreign travel, which would come home to Derek, and point how much those travellers lose, who have no knowledge which can invest what they see with the appropriate historical associations. I might illustrate my thesis with a reference to the "cutty stool" in the Vestry of Biggar Church, and the sword of Anthony Bek in the State room of Auckland Castle. The value of History as a treasury of warnings is, of course, familiar enough: but not on that account the less worth urging. Something, perhaps, it would be fitting that I should say about the special value of Greek and Roman history from this point of view. They were civilized communities whose life and thought have been expressed in great literature, not semi–barbarous societies immersed in general ignorance as were the Medieval states.

[42]

We left Carwood at 2 p.m. and motored to Sauchieburn where we arrived about 4 p.m. The latter part of the road lay through and industrial district, which presented the too–familiar unloveliness which makes such places. Huge slag heaps, mean houses lining the road without any mitigating interval of garden but coming sheer & sharp to the very pavement, lots of dirty children playing in the gutters, &, to the risk of their lives, on the street, and begrimed men sitting crouched on their haunches, like poultry on a perch, and everywhere a pervading suggestion of squalor, toil, & social dereliction.

We found staying in the house, Mary the eldest daughter, now Mrs O'Brien & a mother: her younger sister & a coeval friend, and Lady Watson, an Admiral's wife.

The only letter awaiting me was from yet another Dissenting Minister seeking Ordination:–

"I should welcome Episcopal Ordination because I have felt all along that my Ordination to the Non–conformist ministry was but a preliminary to the more authentic affirmation of my calling by the imposition of a Bishop's hands." !!!!

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