It is said that Dr. Henson has had to fight his way into notice, and
that he has never lost the defect of those qualities which enabled him
so victoriously to reach the mitred top of the ecclesiastical tree. He
has climbed. He has loved climbing. Perhaps he has so got into this
bracing habit that he may even "climb down," if only in order once more
to ascend--a new rendering of _reculer pour mieux sauter_. I do not
think he has much altered since he first set out to conquer fortune by
the force of his intellect, an intellect of whose great qualities he has
always been perhaps a little dangerously self-conscious.
Few men are more effective in soliloquy. It is a memorable sight to see
him standing with his back to one of the high stone mantelpieces in
Durham Castle, his feet wide apart on the hearth-rug, his hands in the
openings of his apron, his trim and dapper body swaying ceaselessly from
the waist, his head, with its smooth boyish hair, bending constantly
forward, jerking every now and then to emphasise a point in his
argument, the light in his bright, watchful, sometimes mischievous eyes
dancing to the joy of his own voice, the thin lips working with pleasure
as they give to all his words the fullest possible value of vowels and
sibilants, the small greyish face, with its two slightly protruding
teeth on the lower lip, almost quivering, almost glowing, with the
rhythm of his sentences and the orderly sequence of his logic.
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