In Sir Philip Gerard, whom Foley had known slightly as a youth, of poor
and ancient Catholic family, Sutton, it appeared, had found a congenial
companion; and he described how they would often spend their afternoons
together on the river; rowing up the windings of the Cherwell, past
little woods and garden walks, or between the sliding horizons of meadow
banks, where the tangled edge of grass and flowers fringed the near sky.
"I lie on luxurious cushions in the bow, and Gerard pushes me along,
through sleepy sunshine and shadow, and under the unwilling branches of
trees; and then, anchoring in some secluded place, we read together some
poet or old book, while the endless afternoon glides by, and boats float
down the shady river."
"This sounds dreadfully lazy, I'm afraid! But I am taking a rest; I have
been feeling rather tired, and Dr. Joseph says I had better do nothing
but enjoy myself for a week or two now...."
"... I discovered the other day the old market. I wonder if you know
it? It is a delightful place! People from the villages about Oxford have
stalls there, and you see the ruddy, old-fashioned cottagers' wives,
seated each one behind a fresh bank of vegetables and flowers she
herself has grown at home in her quaint garden. Sweet, old-fashioned
flowers, flags and peonies and roses, made up into tight bouquets and
set out for sale in trim rows, not unlike, I fancy, the trim rows in
which they grew in their formal cottage flower beds...." Letters came
to him from home, he said, telling of all that was going on in Parnassus
City: the Bryant Literary Society they had started, the church bazaar
for the missionary work, the Monday evening prayer meetings at the
College; and he often felt that he ought to be back there, that he was
dreaming away his time. Yes, it was like a dream in Oxford; but such an
enchanted dream!...
He wrote, in another letter, of the Oxford bells. More and more he was
conscious of them, sounding always in the near or distant sky; and if
ever he woke up in the night, restless with his dreams, he had only to
wait a little and they would ring out--first the silver voices of the
Colleges, and then the slow booming tones of the great church, so near
at hand. And he found a comfort, he said, in the nearness of the
churches, and their wakefulness through the night.
Although of course he did not approve, he said, of a religion of
external forms, yet he confessed that he had come to take a certain
interest in noticing how, almost every time he went out, he discovered
some new symbol of the old Catholic religion--old stone crosses, statues
gazing out from the towers, images of the Virgin, hands raised in
prayer, the adoration of kings and queens in the painted windows; and
even in the gardens stone fragments, covered with ivy, of old
saints--everywhere tokens of ancient faith, and intimations of another
world, shining and immanent, about this world of sense. It was curious,
but he had never noticed these things when he had first come to Oxford!
Indeed, he grew to love all the antiquity of the place; was no longer
oppressed or frightened by it; and for the old portraits in the hall and
library, the tombstones in the cloisters, with their quaint epitaphs and
names, he felt a certain fondness, he said, looking on the dead now, not
as enemies, frowning on his creed and life, but as friends rather, and
kindly predecessors.