YORK, _June_ 26
High Petersgate Street.
My taste is so bad! I just begin to realize it, and I am feeling my
"growing pains," like Gwendolen in "Daniel Deronda." I admired the
stained glass in the Lincoln Cathedral, especially the Nuremberg window.
I thought Mr. Copley looked pained, but he said nothing. When I went to
my room, I looked in a book and found that all the glass in that
cathedral is very modern and very bad, and the Nuremberg window is the
worst of all. Aunt Celia says she hopes that it will be a warning to me
to read before I speak; but Mr. Copley says no, that the world would lose
more in one way than it would gain in the other. I tried my quotations
this morning, and stuck fast in the middle of the first.
Mr. Copley says that aunt Celia has been feeing the vergers altogether
too much, and I wrote a song about it called "The Ballad of the Vergers
and the Foolish Virgin," which I sang to my guitar. Mr. Copley says it
is cleverer than anything he ever did with his pencil, but of course he
says that only to be agreeable.
We all went to an evening service last night. Coming home, aunt Celia
walked ahead with Mrs. Benedict, who keeps turning up at the most
unexpected moments. She's going to build a Gothicky memorial chapel
somewhere. I don't know for whom, unless it's for Benedict Arnold. I
don't like her in the least, but four is certainly a more comfortable
number than three. I scarcely ever have a moment alone with Mr. Copley;
for go where I will and do what I please, aunt Celia has the most perfect
confidence in my indiscretion, so she is always _en evidence_.
Just as we were turning into the quiet little street where we are lodging
I said, "Oh dear, I wish that I knew something about architecture!"
"If you don't know anything about it, you are certainly responsible for a
good deal of it," said Mr. Copley.
"I? How do you mean?" I asked quite innocently, because I couldn't see
how he could twist such a remark as that into anything like sentiment.
"I have never built so many castles in my life as since I've known you,
Miss Schuyler," he said.
"Oh," I answered as lightly as I could, "air-castles don't count."
"The building of air-castles is an innocent amusement enough, I suppose,"
he said, "but I'm committing the folly of living in mine. I"--
Then I was frightened. When, all at once, you find you have something
precious you only dimly suspected was to be yours, you almost wish it
hadn't come so soon. But just at that moment Mrs. Benedict called to us,
and came tramping back from the gate, and hooked her supercilious,
patronizing arm in Mr. Copley's, and asked him into the sitting-room to
talk over the "lady chapel" in her new memorial church. Then aunt Celia
told me they would excuse me, as I had had a wearisome day; and there was
nothing for me to do but to go to bed, like a snubbed child, and wonder
if I should ever know the end of that sentence. And I listened at the
head of the stairs, shivering, but all that I could hear was that Mrs.
Benedict asked Mr. Copley to be her own architect. Her architect indeed!
That woman ought not to be at large!
DURHAM, _July_ 15
At Farmer Hendry's.
We left York this morning, and arrived here about eleven o'clock. It
seems there is some sort of an election going on in the town, and there
was not a single fly at the station. Mr. Copley walked about in every
direction, but neither horse nor vehicle was to be had for love nor
money. At last we started to walk to the village, Mr. Copley so laden
with our hand-luggage that he resembled a pack-mule. We made a tour of
the inns, but not a single room was to be had, not for that night nor for
three days ahead, on account of that same election.
"Hadn't we better go on to Edinburgh, aunt Celia?" I asked.
"Edinburgh? Never!" she replied. "Do you suppose that I would
voluntarily spend a Sunday in those bare Presbyterian churches until the
memory of these past ideal weeks has faded a little from my memory?
What, leave out Durham and spoil the set?" (She spoke of the cathedrals
as if they were souvenir spoons.) "I intended to stay here for a week or
more, and write up a record of our entire trip from Winchester while the
impressions were fresh in my mind."
"And I had intended doing the same thing," said Mr. Copley. "That is, I
hoped to finish off my previous sketches, which are in a frightful state
of incompletion, and spend a good deal of time on the interior of this
cathedral, which is unusually beautiful." (At this juncture aunt Celia
disappeared for a moment to ask the barmaid if, in her opinion, the
constant consumption of malt liquors prevents a more dangerous indulgence
in brandy and whiskey. She is gathering statistics, but as the barmaids
can never collect their thoughts while they are drawing ale, aunt Celia
proceeds slowly.)
"For my part," said I, with mock humility, "I am a docile person who
never has any intentions of her own, but who yields herself sweetly to
the intentions of other people in her immediate vicinity."
"Are you?" asked Mr. Copley, taking out his pencil.
"Yes, I said so. What are you doing?"
"Merely taking note of your statement, that's all.--Now, Miss Van Tyck, I
have a plan to propose. I was here last summer with a couple of Harvard
men, and we lodged at a farmhouse half a mile from the cathedral. If you
will step into the coffee-room of the Shoulder of Mutton and Cauliflower
for an hour, I'll walk up to Farmer Hendry's and see if they will take us
in. I think we might be fairly comfortable."
"Can aunt Celia have Apollinaris and black coffee after her morning
bath?" I asked.
"I hope, Katharine," said aunt Celia majestically,--"I hope that I can
accommodate myself to circumstances. If Mr. Copley can secure lodgings
for us, I shall be more than grateful."
So here we are, all lodging together in an ideal English farmhouse.
There is a thatched roof on one of the old buildings, and the dairy house
is covered with ivy, and Farmer Hendry's wife makes a real English
courtesy, and there are herds of beautiful sleek Durham cattle, and the
butter and cream and eggs and mutton are delicious; and I never, never
want to go home any more. I want to live here forever, and wave the
American flag on Washington's birthday.
I am so happy that I feel as if something were going to spoil it all.
Twenty years old to-day! I wish mamma were alive to wish me many happy
returns.
Memoranda: Casual remark for breakfast table or perhaps for luncheon,--it
is a trifle heavy for breakfast: "Since the sixteenth century and despite
the work of Inigo Jones and the great Wren (not Jenny Wren--Christopher),
architecture has had, in England especially, no legitimate development."