On Everything

by Hilaire Belloc

He asked me, to begin with, the name of the building upon our left, and I told him it was the Cathedral, to which his immediate answer was, was I sure? How could there be a cathedral in such a little town?

I said that it just was so, and I remembered the difficulty of the explanation and said no more. Then he looked up at the three spires and said: “Wondurful; isn’t it?” And I said: “Yes.”

Then I said to him that we would go in, and he seemed very willing; so we went towards the Close, and as we went he talked to me about the religion of those who served the Cathedral, and asked if they were Episcopalian, or what. So this also I told him. And when he learnt that what I told him was true of all the other cathedrals, he said heartily: “Is thet so?” And he was silent for half a minute or more.

We came and stood by the west front, and looked up at the height of it, and he was impressed.

He wagged his head at it and said: “Wondurful, isn’t it?” And then he added: “Marvlurs how they did things in those old days!” but I told him that much of what he was looking at was new.

In answer to this (for I fear that his honest mind was beginning to be disturbed by doubt), he pointed to the sculptured figures and said that they were old, as one could see by their costumes. And as I thought there might be a quarrel about it, I did not contradict; but I let him go wandering round to the south of it until he came to the figure of a knight with a moustache, gooseberry eyes, and in general a face so astoundingly modern that one did not know what to say or do when one looked at it. It was expressionless.

My companion, who had not told me his name, looked long and thoughtfully at this figure, and then came back, more full of time and of the past of our race than ever; he insisted upon my coming round with him and looking at the image. He told me that we could not do better than that nowadays with all our machinery, and he asked me whether a photograph could be got of it. I told him yes, without doubt, and what was better, perhaps the sculptor had a duplicate, and that we would go and find if this were so, but he paid no attention to these words.

The amount of work in the building profoundly moved this man, and he asked me why there was so much ornament, for he could clearly estimate the vast additional expense of working so much stone that might have been left plain; though I am certain, from what I gathered of his character, he would not have left any building wholly plain, not even a railway station, still less a town hall, but would have had here and there an allegorical figure as of Peace or of Commerce—the figure of an Abstract Idea. Still he was moved by such an excess of useless labour as stood before him. Not that it did not give him pleasure—it gave him great pleasure—but that he thought it enough and more than enough.

We went inside. I saw that he took off his hat, a custom doubtless universal, and, what struck me much more, he adopted within the Cathedral a tone of whisper, not only much lower than his ordinary voice, but of quite a different quality, and I noticed that he was less erect as he walked, although his head was craned upward to look towards the roof. The stained glass especially pleased him, but there was much about it he did not understand. I told him that there could be seen there a copy of the Gospels of great antiquity which had belonged to St. Chad; but when I said this he smiled pleasantly, as though I had offered to show him the saddle of a Unicorn or the tanned skin of a Hippogriff. Had we not been in so sacred a place I believe he would have dug me in the ribs. “St. Who?” he whispered, looking slily sideways at me as he said it. “St. Chad,” I said. “He was the Apostle to Mercia.” But after that I could do no more with him. For the word “Saint” had put him into fairyland, and he was not such a fool as to mix up a name like Chad with one of the Apostles; and Mercia is of little use to men.

However, there was no quarrelsomeness about him, and he peered at the writing curiously, pointing out to me that the letters were quite legible, though he could not make out the words which they spelled, and very rightly supposed it was a foreign language. He asked a little suspiciously whether it was the Gospel, and accepted the assurance that it was; so that his mind, sceptical to excess in some matters, found its balance by a ready credence in others and remained sane and whole. He was again touched by the glass in the Lady Chapel, and noted that it was of a different colour to the other and paler, so that he liked it less. I told him it was Spanish, and this apparently explained the matter to him, for he changed his face at once and began to give me the reason of its inferiority.