Tuesday, March 1st.
Dined with the Housmans, a very agreeable dinner. Mrs Housman played and sang after dinner: Brahms' Lieder, and some Grieg.
Wednesday, March 2nd.
A. asked me to luncheon. He told me he had been so sorry not to be able to go to the Housmans' last night. He said he had not seen them yet. He was so busy. He asked me how Mrs Housman was and whether Florence had done her good.
Thursday, March 3rd.
I told Riley I had been reading Renan's Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse, and that Renan said in this book that there was nothing in Catholic dogmas which raised in him a contrary opinion; nothing either in the political action or in the spirit of the Church, either in the past or in the present, that led him to doubt; but directly he studied the "Higher Criticism" and German text-books his faith in the Church crumbled. I asked Riley what he thought of this. He said people treated German text-books superstitiously then and they still did so now. If German text-books dealt with Shakespeare people could see at once that they were talking nonsense, and that mountains of erudition were being built on a false base, a base which we knew to be false, because we were English; but when they dealt with things more remote, like the Gospels, people swallowed what they said, and accepted any of their theories as infallible dogma. In twenty years' time, he said, nobody will care two straws for the "Higher Criticism."
Riley is going away to-morrow.
Friday, March 4th.
Mrs Housman has written to ask me to come and see her on Sunday afternoon if I am in London.
Dined with Cunninghame at a restaurant and went to the Palace Music Hall afterwards.