The Henson Journals

[87]

Saturday, February 28th, 1931.

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All the world is in a conspiracy to make me extravagantly, disgustingly, morbidly egotistical. That queer adhesive "claw–back" Moore of Hereford in a quite superfluous letter which arrived by this morning's post enlarges grotesquely on the theme: & the Dean of Westminster, taking occasion from a sentence in my letter to him ("There will soon be none left who have known and loved me") allows himself in language, too kindly meant to be offensive, but none the less absurd.

"Your world is large yet – the world of those who "know & love" – larger I believe than you realise. I hear many things as people pass in and out of this house, & there is no name that is spoken of so universally with affection as yours. People disagree with what you say very likely, or criticise what you do, but the only people who don't love you are those who have never known you. Forgive my saying this. But it is true. If I had to say who were the two known men in the Church to whom most people would naturally sign themselves "yours affly", I should say the Bishop of Durham & the Archdeacon of S. Alban's! And no one who knows would contradict me.["]

[88]

Binning came to lunch, and to say Goodbye. He goes to his new parish near Lancaster next week. I am sorry that he is leaving the diocese. To find a new Vicar for Witton Park will not be easy. Happily the patronage is not mine, but the Crown's. The Prime Minister's Secretary wrote to invite my comments on two clergymen, whose names he was considering and to ask for suggestions. Neither of the men is very satisfactory, but I can think of nobody better. The dominance of "Labour" is all but fatal to the Church in many parishes. Indeed, I think that almost the whole of the practicing Church folk of the diocese belong to the Conservative minority. A certain number of the clergy are avowed members of the "Labour" party, and now, with a Labour Government in Office, their hopes of preferment are bright: but their appointment means division & paralysis to the parishes.

Lady Askwith, Mrs Dodds, & Miss Askwith came to tea, and went over the house. Her Ladyship has been holding forth on her pet subject – the sterilization of the Unfit!! It is a theme on which it is difficult to be interested, and quite impossible to become enthusiastic about.

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