The Temple
“He didn’t understand the whispers of the Temple
fountain though he passed it every day.”—Dickens.
I know of a public school and university man who has lived all his life in London and protests that he has never seen Westminster Abbey: there are certainly hundreds of people who have never seen the Temple.
It would be a marvel to me that anyone should leave London without having wandered at least once in those courts, if I had not taken so long to find my own way there. One knows vaguely that it is a charming place, but going there is postponed for that fata morgana, a day of leisure, that recedes as it is approached, and time passes and the train whistles and steams slowly out of Euston or Victoria, leaving behind one of the very loveliest corners in old London,—so easy to reach it one had but tried.
You have only to turn through the old gatehouse that Wren built in 1684 to wander about in another world,—a world where it is possible to imagine dear Charles Lamb moving among his guests on a Wednesday evening, with Mary hovering in the background, or Goldsmith giving those rackety supper parties at No. 2 Brick Court that disturbed his studious neighbour Blackstone.
Few places in London are so filled with the memories of brilliant Englishmen as the Temple. If you want to know all about when and where
THE TEMPLE CHURCH. THE ROUND