The Henson Journals

[74]

Ash Wednesday, February 18th, 1931.

I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. Charles, Mrs Berry, Mary and William communicated.

I worked at a Lenten Sermon, but not very fruitfully.

After lunch I walked round the Park. The wind had fallen, & the temperature had risen.

Christine, the fiancée of my chaplain, came to tea. I wrote at some length to Welch, and (a wearisome task) copied my letter into my 'Letter–Book'. Why do I take this trouble? It is as certain as anything can be that my Journal and Letter–books will be without the smallest interest to any human being. They, with a mountainous mass of old sermons, letters from all sorts of obscure folk, and memoranda, can but feed the flames of a post–mortem bonfire! Why, then, this gratuitous & futile toil?

Somebody sends me a copy of a Glasgow paper, 'The Socialist'. It contains "An Open Letter to the Bishop of Durham", which informs that gentleman that there are miners in Bishop Auckland working under worse conditions than those which obtain in the Russian timber–camps! I wonder what amount of circulation this woeful rag enjoys.

---