A Cathedral Courtship

SheBath, June 7,The Best Hotel.

I met him at Wells and again this afternoon here. We are always being ridiculous, and he is always rescuing us. Aunt Celia never really sees him, and thus never recognises him when he appears again, always as the flower of chivalry and guardian of ladies in distress. I will never again travel abroad without a man, even if I have to hire one from a feeble-minded asylum. We work like galley-slaves, Aunt Celia and I, finding out about trains and things. Neither of us can understand Bradshaw, and I can’t even grapple with the lesser intricacies of the A B C Railway Guide. The trains, so far as I can see, always arrive before they go out, and I can never tell whether to read up the page or down. It is certainly very queer that the stupidest man that breathes, one that barely escapes idiocy, can disentangle a railway guide when the brightest woman fails. Even the boots at the inn in Wells took my book, and, rubbing his frightfully dirty finger down the row of puzzling figures, found the place in a minute, and said, ‘There ye are, miss.’ It is very humiliating. I suppose there are Bradshaw professorships in the English universities, but the boots cannot have imbibed his knowledge there. A traveller at table d’hôte dinner yesterday said there are three classes of Bradshaw trains in Great Britain: those that depart and never arrive, those that arrive but never depart, and those that can be caught in transit, going on, like the wheel of eternity, with neither beginning nor end. All the time I have left from the study of routes and hotels I spend on guide-books. Now, I’m sure that if any one of the men I know were here, he could tell me all that is necessary as we walk along the streets. I don’t say it in a frivolous or sentimental spirit in the least, but I do affirm that there is hardly any juncture in life where one isn’t better off for having a man about. I should never dare divulge this to Aunt Celia, for she doesn’t think men very nice. She excludes them from conversation as if they were indelicate subjects.

But to go on, we were standing at the door of Ye Crowne and Keys at Wells, waiting for the fly which we had ordered to take us to the station, when who should drive up in a four-wheeler but the flower of chivalry. Aunt Celia was saying very audibly, ‘We shall certainly miss the train, if the man doesn’t come at once.’

‘Pray take this cab,’ said the flower of chivalry. ‘I am not leaving for an hour or more.’

Aunt Celia got in without a murmur; I sneaked in after her, not daring to lift my eyes. I don’t think she looked at him, though she did vouchsafe the remark that he seemed to be a civil sort of person.

I was walking about by myself this afternoon. Aunt Celia and I had taken a long drive, and she had dropped me in a quaint old part of the town that I might have a brisk walk home for exercise. Suddenly it began to rain, which it is apt to do in England, between the showers, and at the same moment I espied a sign, ‘Martha Huggins, Licensed Victualler.’ It was a nice, tidy little shop, with a fire on the hearth and flowers in the window, and I thought no one would catch me if I stepped inside to chat with Martha until the sun shone again. I fancied it would be delightful and Dickensy to talk quietly with a licensed victualler by the name of Martha Huggins.

Just after I had settled myself, the flower of chivalry came in and ordered ale. I was disconcerted at being found in a dramshop alone, for I thought, after the bag episode, he might fancy us a family of inebriates. But he didn’t evince the slightest astonishment; he merely lifted his hat, and walked out after he had finished his ale. He certainly has the loveliest manners, and his hair is a more beautiful colour every time I see him.

And so it goes on, and we never get any further. I like his politeness and his evident feeling that I can’t be flirted and talked with like a forward boarding-school miss; but I must say I don’t think much of his ingenuity. Of course one can’t have all the virtues, but if I were he, I would part with my distinguished air, my charming ease—in fact, almost anything, if I could have in exchange a few grains of common-sense, just enough to guide me in the practical affairs of life.

I wonder what he is? He might be an artist, but he doesn’t seem quite like an artist; or just a dilettante, but he doesn’t look in the least like a dilettante. Or he might be an architect; I think that is the most probable guess of all. Perhaps he is only ‘going to be’ one of these things, for he can’t be more than twenty-five or twenty-six. Still, he looks as if he were something already; that is, he has a kind of self-reliance in his mien—not self-assertion, nor self-esteem, but belief in self, as if he were able, and knew that he was able, to conquer circumstances.

Aunt Celia wouldn’t stay at Ye Olde Bell and Horns here. She looked under the bed (which, I insist, was an unfair test), and ordered her luggage to be taken instantly to the Grand Pump Room Hotel.

Memoranda: Bath became distinguished for its architecture and popular as a fashionable resort in the 17th century from the deserved repute of its waters and through the genius of two men, Wood the architect and Beau Nash, Master of Ceremonies. A true picture of the society of the period is found in Smollett’s ‘Humphry Clinker’, which Aunt Celia says she will read and tell me what is necessary. Remember the window of the seven lights in the Abbey Church, the one with the angels ascending and descending; also the rich Perp. chantry of Prior Bird, S. of chancel. It is Murray who calls it a Perp. chantry, not I.

She June 8.

It was very wet this morning, and I had breakfast in my room. The maid’s name is Hetty Precious, and I could eat almost anything brought me by such a beautifully named person. A little parcel postmarked Bath was on my tray, but as the address was printed, I have no clue to the sender. It was a wee copy of Jane Austen’s ‘Persuasion,’ which I have read before, but was glad to see again, because I had forgotten that the scene is partly laid in Bath, and now I can follow dear Anne and vain Sir Walter, hateful Elizabeth and scheming Mrs. Clay through Camden Place and Bath Street, Union Street, Milsom Street, and the Pump Yard. I can even follow them to the site of the White Hart Hotel, where the adorable Captain Wentworth wrote the letter to Anne. After more than two hundred pages of suspense, with what joy and relief did I read that letter! I wonder if Anne herself was any more excited than I?

At first I thought Roderick Abbott sent the book, until I remembered that his literary taste is Puck in America and Pick-me-up and Tit-Bits in England; and now I don’t know what to think. I turned to Captain Wentworth’s letter in the last chapter but one—oh, it is a beautiful letter! I wish somebody would ever write me that he is ‘half agony, half hope,’ and that I ‘pierce his soul.’ Of course, it would be wicked to pierce a soul, and of course they wouldn’t write that way nowadays; but there is something perfectly delightful about the expression.

Well, when I found the place, what do you suppose? Some of the sentences in the letter seem to be underlined ever so faintly; so faintly, indeed, that I cannot quite decide whether it’s my imagination or a lead-pencil, but this is the way it seems to look:

‘I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in

‘F. W.’

Of course, this means nothing. Somebody has been reading the book, and marked it idly as he (or she) read. I can imagine someone’s underlining a splendid sentiment like ‘Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman!’ but why should a reader lay stress on such a simple sentence as ‘You alone brought me to Bath’?

HeGloucester, June 10,The Golden Slipper.

Nothing accomplished yet. Her aunt is a Van Tyck, and a stiff one, too. I am a Copley, and that delays matters. Much depends upon the manner of approach. A false move would be fatal. We have seven more towns (as per itinerary), and if their thirst for cathedrals isn’t slaked when these are finished, we have the entire Continent to do. If I could only succeed in making an impression on the retina of Aunt Celia’s eye! Though I have been under her feet for ten days, she never yet has observed me. This absent-mindedness of hers serves me ill now, but it may prove a blessing later on.

I made two modest moves on the chessboard of Fate yesterday, but they were so very modest and mysterious that I almost fear they were never noticed.

SheGloucester, June 10,In Impossible Lodgings chosen by Me.

Something else awfully exciting has happened.

When we walked down the railway platform at Bath, I saw a pink placard pasted on the window of a first-class carriage. It had ‘van tyck: reserved,’ written on it, after the English fashion, and we took our places without question. Presently Aunt Celia’s eyes and mine alighted at the same moment on a bunch of yellow primroses pinned on the stuffed back of the most comfortable seat next the window.

‘They do things so well in England,’ said Aunt Celia admiringly. ‘The landlord must have sent my name to the guard—you see the advantage of stopping at the best hotels, Katharine—but one would not have suspected him capable of such a refined attention as the bunch of flowers. You must take a few of them, dear; you are so fond of primroses.’

Oh! I am having a delicious time abroad! I do think England is the most interesting country in the world; and as for the cathedral towns, how can anyone bear to live anywhere else?

SheOxford, June 12,The Mitre.

It was here in Oxford that a grain of common-sense entered the brain of the flower of chivalry; you might call it the dawn of reason. We had spent part of the morning in High Street, ‘the noblest old street in England,’ as our dear Hawthorne calls it. As Wordsworth had written a sonnet about it, Aunt Celia was armed for the fray—a volume of Wordsworth in one hand, and one of Hawthorne in the other. (I wish Baedeker and Murray didn’t give such full information about what one ought to read before one can approach these places in a proper spirit.) When we had done High Street, we went to Magdalen College, and sat down on a bench in Addison’s Walk, where Aunt Celia proceeded to store my mind with the principal facts of Addison’s career, and his influence on the literature of the something or other century. The cramming process over, we wandered along, and came upon ‘him’ sketching a shady corner of the walk.

Aunt Celia went up behind him, and, Van Tyck though she is, she could not restrain her admiration of his work. I was surprised myself; I didn’t suppose so good-looking a youth could do such good work. I retired to a safe distance, and they chatted together. He offered her the sketch; she refused to take advantage of his kindness. He said he would ‘dash off’ another that evening and bring it to our hotel—‘so glad to do anything for a fellow-countryman,’ etc. I peeped from behind a tree and saw him give her his card. It was an awful moment; I trembled, but she read it with unmistakable approval, and gave him her own with an expression that meant, ‘Yours is good, but beat that if you can!’

She called to me, and I appeared. Mr. John Quincy Copley, Cambridge, was presented to her niece, Miss Katharine Schuyler, New York. It was over, and a very small thing to take so long about, too.

He is an architect, and, of course, has a smooth path into Aunt Celia’s affections. Theological students, ministers, missionaries, heroes, and martyrs she may distrust, but architects never!

‘He is an architect, my dear Katharine, and he is a Copley,’ she told me afterwards. ‘I never knew a Copley who was not respectable, and many of them have been more.’

After the introduction was over, Aunt Celia asked him guilelessly if he had visited any other of the English cathedrals. Any others, indeed!—this to a youth who had been all but in her lap for a fortnight. It was a blow, but he rallied bravely, and, with an amused look in my direction, replied discreetly that he had visited most of them at one time or another. I refused to let him see that I had ever noticed him before—that is, particularly.

I wish I had had an opportunity of talking to him of our plans, but just as I was leading the conversation into the proper channels, the waiter came in for breakfast orders—as if it mattered what one had for breakfast, or whether one had any at all. I can understand an interest in dinner or even in luncheon, but not in breakfast; at least not when more important things are under consideration.

* * * * *

Memoranda: ‘The very stones and mortar of this historic town seem impregnated with the spirit of restful antiquity.’ (Extract from one of Aunt Celia’s letters.) Among the great men who have studied here are the Prince of Wales, Duke of Wellington, Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel, Sir Philip Sidney, William Penn, John Locke, the two Wesleys, Ruskin, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Otway. (Look Otway up.)

HeOxford, June 13,The Angel.

I have done it, and if I hadn’t been a fool and a coward I might have done it a week ago, and spared myself a good deal of delicious torment. ‘How sweet must be Love’s self possessed, when but Love’s shadows are so rich in joy!’ or something of that sort.

I have just given two hours to a sketch of Addison’s Walk, and carried it to Aunt Celia at the Mitre. Object, to find out whether they make a long stay in London (our next point), and, if so, where. It seems they stop only a night. I said in the course of conversation:

‘So Miss Schuyler is willing to forego a London season? Marvellous self-denial!’

‘My niece did not come to Europe for a London season,’ replied Miss Van Tyck. ‘We go through London this time merely as a cathedral town, simply because it chances to be where it is geographically. We shall visit St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, and then go directly on, that our chain of impressions may have absolute continuity and be free from any disturbing elements.’

Oh, but she is lovely, is Aunt Celia! London a cathedral town!

Now, for my part, I should like to drop St. Paul’s for once, and omit Westminster Abbey for the moment, and sit on the top of a bus with Miss Schuyler or in a hansom jogging up and down Piccadilly. The hansom should have bouquets of paper-flowers in the windows, and the horse should wear carnations in his headstall, and Miss Schuyler should ask me questions, to which I should always know the right answers. This would be but a prelude, for I should wish later to ask her questions to which I should hope she would also know the right answers.

Heigho! I didn’t suppose that anything could be lovelier than that girl’s smile, but there is, and it is her voice.

I shall call there again to-morrow morning. I don’t know on what pretext, but I shall call, for my visit was curtailed this evening by the entrance of the waiter, who asked what they would have for breakfast. Miss Van Tyck said she would be disengaged in a moment, so naturally I departed, with a longing to knock the impudent waiter’s head against the uncomprehending wall. Breakfast indeed! A fellow can breakfast regularly, and yet be in a starving condition.

HeOxford, June 14,The Angel.

I have just called. They have gone! Gone hours before they intended! How shall I find her in London?

HeLondon, June 15,Walsingham House Hotel.

As a cathedral town London leaves much to be desired. There are too many hotels, too many people, and the distances are too great. For ten hours I kept a hansom galloping between St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, with no result. I am now going to Ely, where I shall stay in the cathedral from morning till night, and have my meals brought to me on a tray by the verger.

SheEly, June 15,At Miss Kettlestring’s lodgings.

I have lost him! He was not at St. Paul’s or Westminster in London—great, cruel, busy, brutal London, that could swallow up any precious thing and make no sign. And he is not here! They say it is a very fine cathedral.

Memoranda: The Octagon is perhaps the most beautiful and original design to be found in the whole range of Gothic architecture. Remember also the retrochoir. The lower tier of windows consists of three long lancets, with groups of Purbeck shafts at the angles; the upper, of five lancets, diminishing from the centre, and set back, as in the clerestory, within an arcade supported by shafts. (I don’t believe even he could make head or tail of this.) Remember the curious bosses under the brackets of the stone altar in the Alcock Chapel. They represent ammonites projecting from their shells and biting each other. (If I were an ammonite I know I should bite Aunt Celia. Look up ammonite.)

HeEly, June 18,The Lamb Hotel.

I cannot find her! Am racked with rheumatic pains sitting in this big, empty, solitary, hollow, reverberating, damp, desolate, deserted cathedral hour after hour. On to Peterborough this evening.

ShePeterborough, June 18.

He is not here. The cathedral, even the celebrated west front, seems to me somewhat overrated. Catherine of Aragon (or one of those Henry the Eighth wives) is buried here, also Mary Queen of Scots; but I am tired of looking at graves, viciously tired, too, of writing in this trumpery note-book. We move on this afternoon.

HePeterborough, June 19.

A few more days of this modern Love Chase will unfit me for professional work. Tried to draw the roof of the choir, a good specimen of early Perp., and failed. Studied the itinerary again to see if it had any unsuspected suggestions in cipher. No go! York and Durham were double-starred by the Aunt Celia’s curate as places for long stops. Perhaps we shall meet again there.

Lincoln, June 22,The Black Boy Inn.

I am stopping at a beastly little hole, which has the one merit of being opposite Miss Schuyler’s lodgings, for I have found her at last. My sketch-book has deteriorated in artistic value during the last two weeks. Many of its pages, while interesting to me as reminiscences, will hardly do for family or studio exhibition. If I should label them, the result would be something like this:

1. Sketch of a footstool and desk where I first saw Miss Schuyler kneeling.

2. Sketch of a carved oak chair, Miss Schuyler sitting in it.

3. ‘Angel choir.’ Heads of Miss Schuyler introduced into the carving.

4. Altar screen. A row of full-length Miss Schuylers holding lilies.

5. Tomb of a bishop, where I tied Miss Schuyler’s shoe.

6. Tomb of another bishop, where I had to tie it again because I did it so badly the first time.

7. Sketch of the shoe, the shoe-lace worn out with much tying.

8. Sketch of the blessed verger who called her ‘Madam’ when we were walking together.

9. Sketch of her blush when he did it; the prettiest thing in the world.

10. Sketch of J. Q. Copley contemplating the ruins of his heart.

‘How are the mighty fallen!’

* * * * *SheLincoln, June 23,At Miss Smallpage’s, Castle Garden.

This is one of the charmingest towns we have visited, and I am so glad Aunt Celia has a letter to the Canon in residence, because it may keep her contented.

We walked up Steep Hill this morning to see the Jews’ house, but long before we reached it I had seen Mr. Copley sitting on a camp-stool, with his easel in front of him. Wonderful to relate, Aunt Celia recognised him, and was most cordial in her greeting. As for me, I was never so embarrassed in my life. I felt as if he knew that I had expected to see him in London and Ely and Peterborough, though, of course, he couldn’t know it, even if he looked for, and missed, me in those three dreary and over-estimated places. He had made a most beautiful drawing of the Jews’ House, and completed his conquest of Aunt Celia by presenting it to her. I should like to know when my turn is coming; but, anyway, she asked him to luncheon, and he came, and we had such a cosy, homelike meal together. He is even nicer than he looks, which is saying a good deal more than I should, even to a locked book. Aunt Celia dozed a little after luncheon, and Mr. Copley almost talked in whispers, he was so afraid of disturbing her nap. It is just in these trifling things that one can tell a true man—courtesy to elderly people and consideration for their weaknesses. He has done something in the world; I was sure that he had. He has a little income of his own, but he is too proud and ambitious to be an idler. He looked so manly when he talked about it, standing up straight and strong in his knickerbockers. I like men in knickerbockers. Aunt Celia doesn’t. She says she doesn’t see how a well-brought-up Copley can go about with his legs in that condition. I would give worlds to know how Aunt Celia ever unbent sufficiently to get engaged. But, as I was saying, Mr. Copley has accomplished something, young as he is. He has built three picturesque suburban churches suitable for weddings, and a State lunatic asylum.

Aunt Celia says we shall have no worthy architecture until every building is made an exquisitely sincere representation of its deepest purpose—a symbol, as it were, of its indwelling meaning. I should think it would be very difficult to design a lunatic asylum on that basis, but I didn’t dare say so, as the idea seemed to present no incongruities to Mr. Copley. Their conversation is absolutely sublimated when they get to talking of architecture. I have just copied two quotations from Emerson, and am studying them every night for fifteen minutes before I go to sleep. I’m going to quote them some time offhand, just after matins, when we are wandering about the cathedral grounds. The first is this: ‘The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone, subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish as well as the aerial proportion and perspective of vegetable beauty.’ Then when he has recovered from the shock of this, here is my second: ‘Nor can any lover of nature enter the old piles of English cathedrals without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw and plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, pine, and spruce.’

Memoranda: Lincoln choir is an example of Early English or First Pointed, which can generally be told from something else by bold projecting buttresses and dog-tooth moulding round the abacusses. (The plural is my own, and it does not look right.) Lincoln Castle was the scene of many prolonged sieges, and was once taken by Oliver Cromwell.

* * * * *HeYork, June 26,The Black Swan.

Kitty Schuyler is the concentrated essence of feminine witchery. Intuition strong, logic weak, and the two qualities so balanced as to produce an indefinable charm; will-power large, but docility equal, if a man is clever enough to know how to manage her; knowledge of facts absolutely nil, but she is exquisitely intelligent in spite of it. She has a way of evading, escaping, eluding, and then gives you an intoxicating hint of sudden and complete surrender. She is divinely innocent, but roguishness saves her from insipidity. Her looks? She looks as you would imagine a person might look who possessed these graces; and she is worth looking at, though every time I do it I have a rush of love to the head. When you find a girl who combines all the qualities you have imagined in the ideal, and who has added a dozen or two on her own account, merely to distract you past all hope, why stand up and try to resist her charm? Down on your knees like a man, say I!