The Retrospect

by Ada Cambridge

I suppose it would be sinking to the deeps of drivel to say "How beautiful Exeter is," but such is my opinion, all the same. And I walked about it, as I did about most places that I visited in England, with invisible companions, whose presence enhanced its charms. Years and years ago—when I was at B——, between '75 and '78—a dear friend of mine was an old lady of about eighty, the first English lady on the goldfields, who was said to be, and must have been, the handsomest and most delightful woman of that age known to Australian history. She was Devonshire born, and her old husband—a solicitor, who had returned to the practice of his profession when goldfields went out of fashion with his class—told me she had been known as the "Belle of Exeter" in the long ago when he had married her. She loved to talk to me of the Australian "old days," but also she loved to go further back, and tell me of Devonshire and her native city, always winding up with injunctions to me to go there if I ever returned to my native land again. And here I was at last, finding all her loving pride in the place justified.

Could anything in city planning be happier in effect than the position of the cathedral in its quiet oasis amid the streets? And what a cathedral, inside and out! I have a cathedral that I call my own, and never thought I should so overcome the power of patriotic prejudice as to admit it could be surpassed by another. But when I returned to Ely last time, looking for my shrine of all perfection, I got a shock to my housewifely sensibilities from its ill-kept condition that wholly unhinged the long-established point of view. The beautiful brasswork was black and green, the beautiful oak carving outlined in grey dust, and in that state I could not take pleasure in looking at them, even for old time's sake. Perhaps they were waiting for some restorations to be done with before turning to with the pails and brooms and chamois-leathers. But all service-time I used to be catching myself absorbed, not in prayers and sermon, but in anxious inward debate as to whether it was not already too late ever to make those brass gates bright again.

There was no dirt in Exeter Cathedral to dim its complete and finished loveliness, and all its surroundings were in character and keeping with it, "composed" by time and circumstance to make the picture perfect—especially on a golden autumn day. What should be the cast of mind of a bishop privileged to live in such a house and grounds as lie, peaceful and stately and exquisite, under the shadow of the south tower? I like to remember that one bishop of Exeter had a son who was the father of my Eden Phillpotts, whose intellectual inheritance is the love of beauty, uncloistered, unsophisticated; beauty at its primal source in the breast of Mother Nature. M. and I pottered about these precincts, still thinking we were going on to Ottery St Mary, until the spirit of the place so possessed me that I could not tear myself away.

"Oh, this is enough for one day!" I said to M.

She understood, and we stayed, and let Exeter soak in.

She took me to one place and another, and one was the old "Mol's Coffee House" that flourished as such in the sixteenth century, but had been a private house at the time of the Armada. It is now in the occupation of a firm of picture-dealers, who also have the sole right of selling a certain pottery ware of local manufacture. M. was interested in a collection of water-colours they had on view—she is herself a charming water-colourist—but the setting of those pictures was the picture of them all. We climbed a little, dark, twisty oaken staircase that had echoed to the tread of Drake and Raleigh—the self-same stairs, just as when they clattered up and down; and we stood in the self-same oak-panelled chamber where they met their fellow-defenders of England's shores, to discuss and arrange plans for circumventing the enemy. I looked up from the water-colours of to-day to the age-bleached colours of their shields of arms in the age-blackened oak, and thought of those bygone committee meetings. Nothing changed since then, except the living air, and those who breathed it, and their use of the old place. It could not be put to better use. The firm in possession, who deal in art, are artistic enough to respect the relic in their care. The spirits of Drake and Monk and Raleigh, and the rest, might come o' nights to the old rendezvous, and not feel they had no business to be there. In that room I bought a packet of picture post cards—views of Exeter—that, artistically considered, are the best I found in England. Whenever I took one out to scribble on, I put it back in the envelope again, as too good to be defaced in the post and thrown away, and the package is still intact.

Then we went to a shop and I bought an umbrella. Does that seem an incongruous association of ideas? Nothing of the sort. The pleasure I have had, and still have, out of that umbrella, because of the place I bought it in, you would not believe. My hand fondles it every time I wrap its folds around its stick; I cannot put the loop over the button, or take it off, without all the loveliness of Exeter flooding my soul, the memories of that day.

Between luncheon and tea we attended a missionary festival service in the cathedral. It was a Pan-Anglican side-show, not to speak irreverently, with the usual miscellaneous assortment of bishops in attendance. One met the swarming prelates here and there, in the houses of their hostesses, and in places remote from the London centre which had lately been the seething whirlpool of episcopal affairs; and, without going to one of their great programme meetings, I came to know a few, one from the other, and to take an interest in some. For instance, in an American bishop, one of the most vigorous and alert-minded, as he was one of the youngest, a "live" man, who seemed eloquent in his own person of the country he came from; in a black bishop from Africa, who one day waited with me for a long time in the outer shop of a firm of clerical tailors, while my husband (frightfully particular about the cut and set of coats) was being attended to within; above all, in a nice man from India, with whom I spent an evening, mostly on a sofa-for-two, in a London drawing-room. It has been my good fortune to make friends with several bishops, never as bishops, always as unprofessional men. They are bishops who talk shop to me before they are my friends, not afterwards. And I can say of each one of the few who have honoured me by meeting me on my own ground, that as men they are (were, in the case of one long dead and two at the end of life) delightful. You would not think it, viewing bishops, as one does, altogether from the outside; but so it is. On this occasion at Exeter, it was one of our own Australasian prelates who preached the sermon. I did not know him, as bishop or man, and there was not much in his discourse, and I do not like sermons anyhow; rather, I feel that they have outstayed their usefulness, which was doubtless great when the preachers were more learned than those they preached to; but it was an hour and a half of physical repose and spiritual contentment, and I much enjoyed it.

Straight from the cathedral we went to our tea, the—— But no, I will not say it again. After this refreshment we walked about a little more, and there comes to mind a delicious little shop in an alley leading out of the cathedral yard; it sold Devonshire junket and cream and butter, as well as other dairy dainties, some of which were handed to us in card boxes with ribbon handles that were a pleasure to carry the long way home. Also I recall a moment of astonishment at finding that prawns in England were considered cheap at tenpence a dozen. They were exposed on an Exeter market stall at that figure. "Goodness gracious! Do you mean to say those we had at lunch yesterday were that price?" I questioned M., horror-stricken to think how lightheartedly I had ladled them on to my plate, as mere prawns such as went by the name at home, only bigger. Then she told me that her domestic fishmonger charged a penny apiece. And when you think of the importance of pennies in England! I made a mental calculation that at least seven shillings had been sunk in the little dishful that I had reckoned as worth sixpence perhaps—because the prawns were so exceptionally fine.

It was dark when we reached Exeter station, and we had to wait there for our train. We sat down to dinner, without dressing, at a few minutes to nine.