He remembered a white model of the Taj Mahal at Agra, that stood beneath a dome of glass in Mrs. Barrow’s drawing-room, an intricate carving of ivory with a huge dome and many fretted minarets. Edwin remembered that the Taj Mahal was supposed to be one of the wonders of the world; but he could not believe that it was as beautiful as this: it was too fanciful, too complicated in its detail, while this church, for all its delicacy, was so amazingly simple in its design.
“St. Mary Redcliffe,” said Mr. Ingleby. “I always thought it was a fine church, but I don’t think I ever saw it lit up like this before.” He paused, and they gazed at the church for a little while in silence. “It’s a funny thing,” he said at last, “that a great master can sign a picture and the name of a poet be remembered by his writings, while the greatest artists of the Middle Ages, people who planned and built wonderful things like this . . . and I suppose it is more beautiful to-day than when it was first finished . . . should be quite forgotten. A funny thing. . . . I should think the man who made this church must have devoted his life to it.”
Edwin glowed. It came as a delightful surprise to him that his father should think of a thing like this. He was ashamed to confess that he hadn’t believed him capable of it. It was the sort of thing that he would only have expected of his mother. “What a rotten little snob I am,” he thought. And though he happened to know, quite by accident, from the Rowley Poems of Chatterton, that the builder of Redcliffe was William Cannynge, round whose shadowy reputation the work of the wondrous boy had grown, he could not for the life of him reveal this piece of learning, since it would have spoiled the originality of his father’s reflection. He only said, “Yes,” but the train of thought was so strong in him that he couldn’t resist asking Mr. Ingleby if he knew which was the muniment room.
“The muniment room. Why?”
“Because it was in the muniment room that Chatterton pretended that he found the Rowley manuscripts.”
“Chatterton? Ah, yes. . . . Thomas Chatterton, the poet.”
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. I never read any of his poems, but I believe he starved in London and committed suicide with Arsenious Oxide.”
This gleam of professional interest tickled Edwin. Keats: Beatings. Chatterton: Arsenious Oxide.
“They found Arsenic on his lips. He made no mistake about it. The lethal dose is a very small one. A grain or so would have done it. Why, it’s beginning to rain again. We’d better go. I hope it will clear up by to-morrow.”