But I recouped myself, as they say, by stopping afterwards at
Chichester. In this dense and various old England two places may be
very near together and yet strike a very different note. I knew in
a general way that this one had for its main sign a cathedral, and
indeed had caught the sign, in the form of a beautiful spire, from the
window of the train. I had always regarded an afternoon in a small
cathedral-town as a high order of entertainment, and a morning at
Portsmouth had left me in the mood for not missing such an exhibition.
The spire of Chichester at a little distance greatly resembles that
of Salisbury. It is on a smaller scale, but it tapers upward with
a delicate slimness which, like that of its famous rival, makes a
picture of the level landscape in which it stands. Unlike the spire
of Salisbury, however, it has not at present the charm of antiquity.
A few years ago the old steeple collapsed and tumbled into the church,
and the present structure is but a modern facsimile. The cathedral is
not of the highest interest; it is rather inexpressive, and, except
for a curious old detached bell-tower which stands beside it, has
no particular element of unexpectedness. But an English cathedral of
restricted grandeur may yet be a very charming affair; and I spent an
hour or so circling round this highly respectable edifice, with the
spell of contemplation unbroken by satiety. I approached it, from the
station, by the usual quiet red-brick street of the usual cathedral
town—a street of small, excellent shops, before which, here and there,
one of the vehicles of the neighbouring gentry was drawn up beside
the curbstone while the grocer or the bookseller, who had hurried out
obsequiously, was waiting upon the comfortable occupant. I went into
a bookseller’s to buy a Chichester guide, which I perceived in the
window; I found the shopkeeper talking to a young curate in a soft
hat. The guide seemed very desirable, though it appeared to have been
but scantily desired; it had been published in the year 1841, and a
very large remnant of the edition, with a muslin back and a little
white label and paper-covered boards, was piled up on the counter.
It was dedicated, with terrible humility, to the Duke of Richmond,
and ornamented with primitive woodcuts and steel plates; the ink
had turned brown and the page musty; and the style itself—that of a
provincial antiquary of upwards of forty years ago penetrated with the
grandeur of the aristocracy—had grown rather sallow and stale. Nothing
could have been more mellifluous and urbane than the young curate: he
was arranging to have the “Times” newspaper sent him every morning
for perusal. “So it will be a penny if it is fetched away at noon?”
he said, smiling very sweetly and with the most gentlemanly voice
possible; “and it will be three halfpence if it is fetched away at four
o’clock?” At the top of the street, into which, with my guide-book, I
relapsed, was an old market-cross of the fifteenth century—a florid,
romantic little structure. It consists of a stone pavilion, with open
sides and a number of pinnacles and crockets and buttresses, besides
a goodly medallion of the high-nosed visage of Charles I, which was
placed above one of the arches, at the Restoration, in compensation
for the violent havoc wrought upon the little town by the Parliamentary
soldiers, who had wrested the place from the Royalists and who amused
themselves, in their grim fashion, with infinite hacking and hewing
in the cathedral. Here, to the left, the cathedral discloses itself,
lifting its smart grey steeple out of a pleasant garden. Opposite to
the garden was the Dolphin or the Dragon—in fine the most eligible
inn. I must confess that for a time it divided my attention with the
cathedral, in virtue of an ancient, musty parlour on the second floor,
with hunting-pictures hung above haircloth sofas; of a red-faced
waiter, in evening dress; of a big round of cold beef and a tankard of
ale. The prettiest thing at Chichester is a charming little three-sided
cloister, attached to the cathedral, where, as is usual in such places,
you may sit upon a gravestone amid the deep grass in the middle and
measure the great central mass of the church—the large grey sides, the
high foundations of the spire, the parting of the nave and transept.
From this point the greatness of a cathedral seems more complex and
impressive. You watch the big shadows slowly change their relations;
you listen to the cawing of rooks and the twittering of swallows; you
hear a slow footstep echoing in the cloisters.
[Illustration: CHICHESTER CROSS]
V
If Oxford were not the finest thing in England the case would be
clearer for Cambridge. It was clear enough there, for that matter, to
my imagination, for thirty-six hours. To the barbaric mind, ambitious
of culture, Oxford is the usual image of the happy reconciliation
between research and acceptance. It typifies to an American the union
of science and sense—of aspiration and ease. A German university
gives a greater impression of science and an English country-house
or an Italian villa a greater impression of idle enjoyment; but in
these cases, on one side, knowledge is too rugged, and on the other
satisfaction is too trivial. Oxford lends sweetness to labour and
dignity to leisure. When I say Oxford I mean Cambridge, for a stray
savage is not the least obliged to know the difference, and it suddenly
strikes me as being both very pedantic and very good-natured in him
to pretend to know it. What institution is more majestic than Trinity
College? what can affect more a stray savage than the hospitality
of such an institution? The first quadrangle is of immense extent,
and the buildings that surround it, with their long, rich fronts of
time-deepened grey, are the stateliest in the world. In the centre
of the court are two or three acres of close-shaven lawn, out of the
midst of which rises a grand gothic fountain, where the serving-men
fill up their buckets. There are towers and battlements and statues,
and besides these things there are cloisters and gardens and bridges.
There are charming rooms in a kind of stately gate-tower, and the
rooms, occupying the thickness of the building, have windows looking
out on one side over the magnificent quadrangle, with half a mile or
so of Decorated architecture, and on the other into deep-bosomed trees.
And in the rooms is the best company conceivable—distinguished men who
are thoroughly conversible, intimately affable. I spent a beautiful
Sunday morning walking about the place with one of these gentlemen and
attempting to _débrouiller_ its charms. These are a very complicated
tangle, and I do not pretend, in memory, to keep the colleges apart.
There are none the less half a dozen points that make ineffaceable
pictures. Six or eight of the colleges stand in a row, turning their
backs to the river; and hereupon ensues the loveliest confusion
of gothic windows and ancient trees, of grassy banks and mossy
balustrades, of sun-chequered avenues and groves, of lawns and gardens
and terraces, of single-arched bridges spanning the little stream,
which is small and shallow and looks as if it had been turned on for
ornamental purposes. The thin-flowing Cam appears to exist simply as an
occasion for these brave little bridges—the beautiful covered gallery
of John’s or the slightly collapsing arch of Clare. In the way of
college-courts and quiet scholastic porticoes, of grey-walled gardens
and ivied nooks of study, in all the pictorial accidents of a great
English university, Cambridge is delightfully and inexhaustibly rich.
I looked at these one by one and said to myself always that the last
was the best. If I were called upon, however, to mention the prettiest
corner of the world, I should draw out a thoughtful sigh and point the
way to the garden of Trinity Hall. My companion, who was very competent
to judge (but who spoke indeed with the partiality of a son of the
house), declared, as he ushered me into it, that it was, to his mind,
the most beautiful _small_ garden in Europe. I freely accepted, and
I promptly repeat, an affirmation so magnanimously conditioned. The
little garden at Trinity Hall is narrow and crooked; it leans upon the
river, from which a low parapet, all muffled in ivy, divides it; it has
an ancient wall adorned with a thousand matted creepers on one side,
and on the other a group of extraordinary horse-chestnuts. The trees
are of prodigious size; they occupy half the garden, and are remarkable
for the fact that their giant limbs strike down into the earth, take
root again and emulate, as they rise, the majesty of the parent stem.
The manner in which this magnificent group of horse-chestnuts sprawls
about over the grass, out into the middle of the lawn, is one of the
most heart-shaking features of the garden of Trinity Hall. Of course
the single object at Cambridge that makes the most abiding impression
is the famous chapel of King’s College—the most beautiful chapel in
England. The effect it attempts to produce within is all in the sphere
of the sublime. The attempt succeeds, and the success is attained by a
design so light and elegant that at first it almost defeats itself. The
sublime usually has more of a frown and straddle, and it is not until
after you have looked about you for ten minutes that you perceive the
chapel to be saved from being the prettiest church in England by the
accident of its being one of the noblest. It is a cathedral without
aisles or columns or transepts, but (as a compensation) with such a
beautiful slimness of clustered tracery soaring along the walls and
spreading, bending, and commingling in the roof, that its simplicity
seems only a richness the more. I stood there for a quarter of an hour
on a Sunday morning; there was no service, but in the choir behind the
great screen which divides the chapel in half the young choristers
were rehearsing for the afternoon. The beautiful boy voices rose
together and touched the splendid vault; they hung there, expanding
and resounding, and then, like a rocket that spends itself, they faded
and melted toward the end of the building. It was positively a choir of
angels.
[Illustration: ABBEY GATEWAY, BURY ST. EDMUNDS]