Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-11-23
Britain's Fearless Dean
but
andM of Church.

On the assumption that he does carry
a private little inferno about with him
behind the dull, sunk eve in his mar
row, tall skull, England has named him
1.-The gloomy dean"
PrOphesies Death and Disaster.
He is always prophesying death
doom and disaster, doubtless being
moved thereto mainly because he shares
the conviction of the German historian
Seek that civilization sits out the
best. helps them to rise in the social
scale and then sterilizeS them, and that
this is the secret of the rise and fail
of earlier civilizations and that our ex-
listing civilization is following the same
road to ruin and extinction,
Under civilized conditions, he asserts,
Sub-men are being bred and artiflcially
nurtured and preserved in overwhelm-
ing hordeS. Like the logger. that
criminal of the plant world which fas-
tens upon superior plants and thrives
on their sap, so that they wilt and pres
emily perish, the Sub-men are Stran-
Cling the middle class, the backbone
class OF every civilization (the deans
class.
All his ideas revolve round this fun
damental outlook and conviction, driv-
ing him to mysticism in religion, to a
violent and virulent class partisanShip
in politics and into the gloom which
has become his legend.
He Is a YorkShireman. His grand
father was an old-fashioned scholar
and divine (the phrase is his OWN his
father was a scholarly clergyman who
became provost of one of Oxford's COL
leges, but was (hiS son notes diSapprov-
ingly) so lacking in self-confidence that
he refused the offer of q bishopric by
return post and without consulting his
wife; his mother was an archdeacon's
daughter, his wife the daughter of an
archdeacon and granddaughter of a
bishop. Space forbids further enumera-
ton OF churchly antecedentS, traditions,
connections and influences.
Was a Timid Boy.
He was a timed boy who, with his
brothers and sisters, got more education
at home before he went to school at
Elton than most boys get in their entire
school career. Once he got such q
shock from seeing the distorted image
of his face at the bottom of a sink that
for years after he could not bear to
look at himself in the glass. He Is still
so inherently nervous that his face
often goes through contortions as he
speaks; his hands, claSped behind his
back. writhe like the tentacles of an
octopus in peril.
On one occasion when I was sitting
Immediately behind him at a banquet
at which he was speaking, I observed
that after standing on his own toes he
had, in the excitement of getting OF q
Greek epigram (waSted on that crowd,
anyway, but he diSdained to translate
it, kicked one of his ecclesiastical
buckled shoes clean OH, and for the
next five minutes, while pearls Of intel
lect fell from his thin lips, his stock
inged foot CROPPED for. the lost shoe
under the table and, having located it,
wriggled frantically until, with a sigh
of relief that was almost audible, it got
into its dark home again.
He went up to Cambridge and car
ried of long list of prizes, medals and
scholarships, and then took q Job as
master of his old school; then became
a tutor at oxford and a preacher at
both oxford and Cambridge, and then
broke away from the professional aca-
demic world to become chaplain to q
bishop and presently, vicar in London.
He was professor of divinity at Cam
bridge in 1911, when that massive
statesman scholar, the Earl of oxford
and Asquith. then premier, being desir-
ours of reviving the old traditions of
the deanery as the most literary posi-
ton in the church land not being aVerse
to putting in a fellow YorkShireman) ;,
made him dean of st. Paul's. That
Continued on Fourth Page.)