The elder had mentioned that she had read in a magazine that the best account of the great plague was in a book written by Defoe, and she wondered if the other girl knew what book it was in. The other shook her head, saying—
“You need not ask me; the only book of Defoe's that I ever read was The Pilgrim's Progress, and I never finished it.”
“I thought you might chance to know,” said the other complacently, evidently not seeing her way into any side issue in respect of the authorship of The Pilgrim's Progress. “I'm tremendously interested in something I have been reading on tropical diseases, and I thought that I should like to learn something about the old plagues.”
I fancy that both young women went through a course of English literature at their expensive school, and they probably would reply to your assurance that you knew the difference between Daniel Defoe and John Bunyan and their works when you were twelve years of age, that they could have done the same. What chance has Defoe against golf or Bunyan against badminton. If a girl only puts her heart into it she can forget between eighteen and twenty-four much that she has learned previously—at a cost of a couple of thousand pounds or thereabout.
But, I repeat, there is a great deal of intelligence to be found in all circles in Broadminster, and now and again one is confronted by some strong piece of evidence of original investigation on a historical as as well as a literary subject. Seldom, however, does one have an important logical conclusion to an apparently trivial incident enforced upon one with the same lucidity as characterised a lady's expression of surprise that the hallucinations of the great Duke of Wellington in the latter years of his life had not been commented on by any of his biographers. People were accustomed to laugh at the assertion of the Prince Regent that he had been present at the battle of Waterloo, and at the Duke's reply to him when appealed to for confirmation: “Indeed, I have frequently heard your Royal Highness say so.” But what about the Duke's own hallucination? Is it not recorded of him that upon one occasion, when watching the playing fields at Eton, he declared that the battle of Waterloo had been fought there? Yet although everyone knew that Waterloo was in Belgium, no one seemed to have noticed the extraordinary mental lapse on the part of a man who might reasonably be supposed to have the chief features of the locality impressed upon him. She added that she feared, if the error were not pointed out in time, the Duke's statement might become generally accepted, and so posterity might be led to believe that Napoleon's career had been brought to a close on the banks of the Thames, which was not a fact.
VI.—THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE MINSTER
The effect of residing for some time in such a town as Broadminster—a community on which the shadow of an ancient Minster has rested for nearly six hundred years—is noteworthy. One breathes of the atmosphere that clings about the old stonework, and, in time, one is conscious of one's ideas and aspirations becoming assimilated with the traditions of the place. On a fine morning in summer even an Irishman feels himself to be an English Conservative—a genuine Tory of the good old days when boys were taught to touch their hats to a “passon,” and when it was a matter of common knowledge that the finest vintage ports were reposing in the cellars of the Close.
An instance of the insidious influences of an atmosphere too strongly charged with Anglozone—one must invent a word to express this particular elixir of the cathedral town—came under my notice some years ago. A young American lady, after travelling about a good deal, settled in a beautiful old house in Broadminster. Rooms panelled with old oak, an oak staircase with well-carved newels and finials, and a room on the wall of which some frescowork of the fourteenth century had been discovered, completed the charm which the Minster bells began in the mind of the young woman, and she began to speak English as incorrectly as if she had been born in England.