One must be hard to satisfy if one is not satisfied with Durham Castle,
and its interior contented me as fully as the exterior of the Cathedral.
I went a walk, after leaving the castle, for a further feast of the
Cathedral from the paths along the shelving banks of the beautiful
Weare. There, at a certain point, I met a studious-looking gentleman who
I am sure must have been a professor of Durham University hard by; and
I asked him, with due entreaty for pardon, “What river was that.” He
quelled the surprise he must have felt at my ignorance and answered
gently, “The Weare.” “Ah, to be sure! The Weare,” I said, and thanked
him, and longed for more talk with him, but felt myself so unworthy that
I had not the face to prompt him further. He passed, and then I met a
man much more of my own kind, if not probably so little informed. That
rich, chill gale was still tossing and buffeting the tree tops, and he
made occasion of this to say, “This is a cold wynd a-blowin’, Mister.”
“It is, rather,” I assented. “I was think-in’,” he observed from an
apparent generalization, “that I wished I was at home.” Then he suddenly
added, “Help a poor man!” I was not wholly surprised at the climax,
and I offered him, provisionally, a penny. “Will that do?” He hesitated
perceptibly; then he allowed, with a subtle reluctance, “Yes, that’ll
do,” and so passed on to satisfy, I hope, the wish he thought he had.
[Illustration: DURHAM CATHEDRAL--ITS MATCHLESS SEAT ON THE BLUFFS OF THE
RIVER]
I pursued my own course, as far as the bridge which spans the Weare near
a most picturesque mill, and then I stopped a kindly-looking workman
and asked him whether he thought I could find a fly or cab anywhere near
that would take me into the town. He answered, briefly but consistently
with his looks, “Ah doot,” and as he owned that it was a long way to
town, I let his doubt decide me to go back to the station.
I felt that I ought to have driven from there into the town, and seen
it, and taken to York a later train than the one I had in mind. In the
depravity induced by my neglect of this plain duty, I went, with my
third class return ticket conscious in my pocket, into the first class
refreshment room, and had tea there, as if I had been gentry at the very
least, and possibly nobility. Then, having a good deal of time still
on my hands, I loitered over the book-stall of the station, and stole a
passage of conversation with a kindly clergyman whom I found looking at
the pretty shilling editions filling the cases. I said, How nice it was
to have Hazlitt in that green cloth; and he said, Yes, but he held for
Gibbon in leather; and just then his train came in and he ran off to
it, and left me to my guilt in not having gone to see Durham. It was now
twilight, and too late; but there the charming old town still is, and
will long remain, I hope, with its many memories of war and peace, for
whoever will visit it. Certainly there had been no lack of adventures in
my ample hour. It was as charming to weave my conjectures, about the
two gentlemen with whom I had so barely spoken, as to have carried
my acquaintance with them further, and I cannot see how it would have
profited me to know more even of that fellow-man who, in the cold wynd
a-blowing, had just been thinking he wished he was at home.
* * * * *