The Henson Journals

[134]

Thursday, October 30th, 1930.

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I spent the morning in preparing notes for the address which I have promised to give to the C.E.M.S. at Redcar next week. The subject is both difficult and repulsive – "Sexual Morality, Old and New". There is so much to say, and so much that is disgusting and dangerous. I was a fool to undertake the speech at all.

Charles drove me to Durham, where I presided at a meeting of the Lay helpers Association, and afterwards I had tea with the Bishop of Jarrow, and walked in the Banks. We talked of Pearce's sudden death, & of the time when we would ourselves retire from active work. He seemed to be disappointed when I spoke of completing 50 years service, & therefore, holding on for yet another seven years. He seemed to have assumed that I would retire on reaching the age of seventy i.e. in 1933: and expressed his own wish to retire, & devote himself to literary work. But, indeed, it is vain to let one's thoughts run on retirement: when "a pitiless arrow of death" may even now being fitted to the bowstring of our fate.

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