Memories of the future : $b Being memoirs of the years 1915‒1972, written in the year of grace 1988Knox, Ronald Arbuthnott
History
Memories of the future : $b Being memoirs of the years 1915‒1972, written in the year of grace 1988
Knox, Ronald Arbuthnott
English fiction -- 20th century; Satire, English; Twentieth century -- Forecasts
About this time Francis and Gervase, who had both done very well at
Eton, got leaving scholarships into the Guards. It was not so much the
financial side of this that appealed to me (the scholarships had the
effect of reducing the premium to £500) as the consciousness that my
boys were well thought of by their masters and were worthy grandsons of
Herbert Blisworth. And now what was left for me but to retire into the
background? And what is left for me, you will ask, but to retire into
the background, and bring these inconsequent memoirs to a conclusion?
Well, I confess that I have finished with public affairs; and if any of
my readers goes beyond this point, he must do it on the clear
understanding that he has let himself be betrayed into taking an
interest in the private affairs of a talkative old woman who was not,
after all, much of a personage even in her day. Her private affairs,
nay, her very private affairs, for what is so personal to each of us as
his or her attitude towards religion? And that is all I have left to
speak of. It is what we older folk begin to worry about when the
interests of youth desert us and the friends of youth are taken from our
side, and we find ourselves no longer battling with the winds of
circumstance, but volplaning steadily towards the drome that waits for
all of us at the last.
I know I have figured in these pages as a careless sort of butterfly,
untroubled by any thought of my last end. Perhaps my readers will be
disappointed in me at finding such a reversal of my old ways of thought.
But, be that as it may, old age and bereavement and the lack of
absorbing occupations combined to drive me in upon myself, and make me
think about my last landing. It was natural that in this position I
should turn for guidance to one who from quite an early age had
manifested an interest in my spiritual affairs, who, indeed, had
laughingly described himself as my “father professor,” Canon Dives.
Canon Dives I have written, for so I shall always remember him, but
indeed by this time he had attained that preferment for which his
exceptional qualities had long marked him out, as Episcopal Bishop of
Norwich.[15] So long as the Established Church remained a single body
(only weakened by the secession of the Feminists in ’46, and the
Enthusiasts in ’53), the Westernizing party had still sufficient weight
to hinder the advancement of one who had always been so outspoken a
champion of “relativist” views. But, as those of my readers who are
interested in such subjects will remember, in 1964, only five years
after Disestablishment became an accomplished fact, the ecclesiastical
map was yet further complicated by a schism within the old Church of
England. The Westernizers succeeded in securing for themselves that
recognition by the Orthodox Churches of the East which remained theirs
till, on the outbreak of the Great War, they were solemnly anathematized
and cut off from Communion. But they secured this advantage at the price
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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