The Henson Journals

[128]

Tuesday, October 28th, 1930.

Ella and I motored to Durham, where I presided over the opening of the Bazaar in aid of the County Hospital. The market presented a gay and animated appearance, for the stalls were prettily decorated, and there was a great concourse of people. I made a short speech, & then Lady Barnard declared the Bazaar open. Leaving Ella to waste some money, I went to the College, and had some talk with the Bishop of Jarrow about Merryweather, who is now at Mirfield sick of a heart attack. The three aggrieved parishioners, egged on by a solicitor, & financed by the Church Association, are proving obdurate: and Merryweather is, of course, quite penniless. He will have to become a bankrupt: and what to do with him, and his family, is a problem, the solution of which grows the more difficult, the longer it is postponed. I have no doubt that a kind of reaction in his favour will develop as these organized Protestant fanaticks get more busy and braggart, & the woeful case of Mrs Merryweather and her children becomes apparent.

[129]

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The evening papers report the sudden death of the Bishop of Worcester, as he was watching the Royal Procession to Westminster for the opening of Parliament. Ernest Harold Pearce was about 18 months younger than myself, being born on July 23rd 1865. For more than a quarter of a century he and I have been friends, though we took opposite sides in the Revised Prayer Book controversy and lost, in consequence, our former comfortable intimacy. He was a man of moderate powers, but considerable sagacity, who commended himself easily to the leaders of the Church and State as trustworthy, serviceable, and intelligent. Reared in a narrow kind of Protestantism, he was never able to shake himself free from his early prejudices, but he had in a notable degree what is called 'a genius for friendship', and he waked no resentments. His industry was great, and his interests, happily for him, lay in a region where the fiercer feuds, which divide men, do not enter. He was an antiquary, & made for himself a respectable figure in the antiquarian world. An able leader–writer, he was a very dull preacher, pompous in style, & commonplace in matter.

[130]

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"Lord, let me know mine end, & the number of my days, that I may be certified how long I have to live." The last time Ernest and I had any talk together was at Lambeth last summer, and then we discussed the question which was becoming important to both of us, when we should retire from active work, & how we would spend the evening of our days. He was insistent that we ought to retire on reaching the age of 70, when a pension is provided. I was in favour of completing 50 years service in the Ministry which would, in my case, carry me on to 74. He was taken away before he had to decide on that issue. I remain, but for how long? Hutton and Pearce have played a considerable part in my life, and from both I have been estranged in these last years, the one by the shadow of his own folly, the other by a difference in practical policy. Both are now gone, and a void is created. The deepening loneliness of old age is coming on me, and there is no earthly source from which any relieving of sympathy can come.

[131]

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I finished reading Gore's Gifford Lectures, "The Philosophy of the good Life". They are pleasant reading, coherent, and (if you are yourself a believer) convincing. I doubt if they will be effective outside the Christian sphere. This volume is an astonishing indication of Gore's mental alertness & ardour of spirit. He was born as long ago as 1853, and is now 77 years old. He has been pouring out publications for more than 40 years. On the whole I imagine that his influence on the Church of England has been wider, more various, & more persistent than that of any of his contemporaries. One considerable section of the Modernists, those who call themselves "Catholic Modernists", are intellectually his disciples, and the "Anglo–Catholicks" as distinct from the 'Tractarians' must own him as their leader. But neither Modernists nor Catholicks follow his teaching, though both profess to do him honour. He is too conservative for the criticks, and too Anglican for the Romanisers. He, more than anybody else, is the Prophet of Anglican Socialists, but here also he lags behind his followers. Yet, considered impartially, Charles Gore is the most influential Anglican of his generation.

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