The effect of residing for some time in such a town as Broadminster--a
community on which the shadow of an ancient Minster has rested for nearly
six hundred years--is noteworthy. One breathes of the atmosphere that
clings about the old stonework, and, in time, one is conscious of one's
ideas and aspirations becoming assimilated with the traditions of the
place. On a fine morning in summer even an Irishman feels himself to be
an English Conservative--a genuine Tory of the good old days when boys
were taught to touch their hats to a “passon,” and when it was a matter
of common knowledge that the finest vintage ports were reposing in the
cellars of the Close.
An instance of the insidious influences of an atmosphere too strongly
charged with Anglozone--one must invent a word to express this
particular elixir of the cathedral town--came under my notice some years
ago. A young American lady, after travelling about a good deal, settled
in a beautiful old house in Broadminster. Rooms panelled with old oak,
an oak staircase with well-carved newels and finials, and a room on
the wall of which some frescowork of the fourteenth century had been
discovered, completed the charm which the Minster bells began in the
mind of the young woman, and she began to speak English as incorrectly
as if she had been born in England.
I met her one day wearing mourning--not exemplary mourning, but enough
to induce a mild and conventional expression of sympathy.
Oh no, it was not for any near relation, she said; but surely I had
forgotten that the day was the anniversary of the execution of the
Earl of Strafford. What Strafford was that? Why, of course, Charles the
First's Strafford. How could Englishmen be so neglectful of the memory
of one of the greatest of Englishmen?
“If you go into mourning for Strafford, I suppose you fast upon the
anniversary of the death of Charles the First?” I suggested.
“The martyrdom of King Charles is commemorated in some parts of the
States in the most solemn manner,” she replied. “Oh yes, I can assure
you that we are Stuart in every fibre of our bodies. I am President of
the White Rose Society of Chillingworth County, Massachusetts.”
“But you are not, I hope, active Jacobites?” said I.
“Well, no--not just yet; but we can never acknowledge the Hanoverian
succession. We owe the Hanoverians a grudge: it was a king of that house
who brought about our separation from Great Britain. That old wound
rankles still.”