Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more;
but while those critics are critics only of design and carved stones, who would welcome something in its regular features paralleled by a tip-tilted nose in a human face, Sue was obviously preoccupied by the sense that it, not alone among cathedrals, has outlived the devotional needs that produced it, and is little more than a magnificent museum of architectural antiquities. That magnificence would be even more complete and pronounced had not the egregious James Wyatt been let loose upon the “restoration” of it, towards the close of the eighteenth century, when he cast out and destroyed most of its internal adornments, and pulled down and utterly obliterated the beautiful detached bell tower, coeval with the cathedral itself, which stood, away from it, on the north side.
It is perhaps worthy of remark that there may be noticed in the cathedral the tomb, with somewhat bombastic inscription, of Dr. D’Albigny Turberville, the seventeenth-century oculist, who died, aged 85, in 1696. The flagrant Latin, which tells us that his fame shall perish no sooner than this marble, does not allow for human forgetfulness, nor for the advances of science.
The Normal School in the Close, whence Sue escaped, after being confined to her room as a punishment for her night’s escapade with Jude, is a prominent building, described as “an ancient edifice of the fifteenth century, once a palace . . . with mullioned and transomed windows, and a courtyard in front shut in from the road by a wall.”
From the ever-impending tragedy of Jude’s ambitions it is a relief to turn to the pure comedy of Betty Dornell, the first Countess of Wessex, in that collection of diverting short stories, A Group of Noble Dames. Looking upon those two old inns, the “Red Lion” in the High Street and the “White Hart,” we are reminded that it was to the first-named that Betty resorted with that husband with whom, although married at an early age, she had not lived.
“‘Twice we met by accident,’ pleaded Betty to her mother. ‘Once at Abbot’s Cernel and another time at the “Red Lion,” Melchester.’
“‘O, thou deceitful girl!’ cried Mrs. Dornell. ‘An accident took you to the “Red Lion” whilst I was staying at the “White Hart”! I remember—you came in at twelve o’clock at night and said you’d been to see the cathedral by the light o’ the moon!’
“‘My ever-honoured mamma, so I had! I only went to the “Red Lion” with him afterwards.’”
Nine miles to the north of Melchester stands Stonehenge, reached after their flight through the deserted midnight streets of the city by Tess and Angel Clare, vainly endeavouring to elude justice after the murder of the sham D’Urberville at Sandbourne. The night was “as dark as a cave,” and a stiff breeze blew as they came out upon the black solitudes of Salisbury Plain. For some miles they had proceeded thus, when “on a sudden Clare became conscious of some vast erection close in his front, rising sheer from the grass. They had almost struck themselves against it.