The Youth of Parnassus, and Other Stories

by Logan Pearsall Smith

He wrote, in another letter, of the Oxford bells. More and more he was conscious of them, sounding always in the near or distant sky; and if ever he woke up in the night, restless with his dreams, he had only to wait a little and they would ring out—first the silver voices of the Colleges, and then the slow booming tones of the great church, so near at hand. And he found a comfort, he said, in the nearness of the churches, and their wakefulness through the night.

Although of course he did not approve, he said, of a religion of external forms, yet he confessed that he had come to take a certain interest in noticing how, almost every time he went out, he discovered some new symbol of the old Catholic religion—old stone crosses, statues gazing out from the towers, images of the Virgin, hands raised in prayer, the adoration of kings and queens in the painted windows; and even in the gardens stone fragments, covered with ivy, of old saints—everywhere tokens of ancient faith, and intimations of another world, shining and immanent, about this world of sense. It was curious, but he had never noticed these things when he had first come to Oxford! Indeed, he grew to love all the antiquity of the place; was no longer oppressed or frightened by it; and for the old portraits in the hall and library, the tombstones in the cloisters, with their quaint epitaphs and names, he felt a certain fondness, he said, looking on the dead now, not as enemies, frowning on his creed and life, but as friends rather, and kindly predecessors.

XV.

The lives of many of those old scholars and worthies had become familiar to him, since he had read Anthony à Wood's Athenae Oxonienses, and he had gone sometimes with his friend on antiquarian walks about Oxford, and the colleges Wood described. Or Gerard would lend him a horse, and they would ride out to visit the historic places and villages that lie in the old country about—Woodstock, Cumnor, Abingdon—the names were familiar to him of long date; had he not first read of some of them, and the scenes they were famous for, in Jones' Excelsior Reader, out in Indiana as a boy?

He spoke of the village churches, that seemed so beautiful on those June afternoons, as they stood among their old trees and flowers, with the white clouds in the sky above, a shiver of wind in the long grass over the graves. And then, through the scent of roses about the open door, the dim interior, with its white Norman arches, and light falling from painted windows on the crusaders' tombs—on all the many monuments of the dead. The dead! Sutton wrote that he had always known of the times gone by, and the faith of the Middle Ages, but only in an unreal way, through books. And it made such a difference—to him at least—if he saw the proof of a thing, actually existing with the daylight on it!

"Once, Gerard says, these churches were filled in the morning and evening light with labouring people kneeling in silent prayer. But that, of course, was in the Dark Ages. Gerard thinks that the world has done nothing but go back since the Middle Ages; certainly he does hate everything that is modern. How he will detest Parnassus City, if he comes to see me there, as he says he will. It has been bad for him, I am sure, living out of the world, as he has lived, among old memories and dreams of his own. He is a Catholic, you know, but he respects my religion; he knows, of course, what my views are, and we never talk about theology. There is a friend of his I meet sometimes a priest, and I suppose a Jesuit. But he seems really quite a cultivated person."

Foley took up another letter: They had ridden out, Sutton wrote, to an old country house and park, where Charles I. had stayed once, while Parliament was being held in Oxford. The house, all save one wing, now a farm-house, had been torn down; but on the hill overlooking the lake, in the midst of the green shade of beeches, the chapel was still standing, abandoned now, and almost untouched, save by decay and time, since the polite court of the Stuarts had said their worldly devotions there. What rich brocades, what hushed gallantries and frivolous prayers had once rustled and whispered under the graceful high arches of those pews! But birds had their nests there now, he said, while through the decaying roof the rain dripped down on the frail woodwork, the classic columns and fading colours of this deserted place of elegant worship and old fashion.

The American Puritan confessed to a certain tenderness for the generous lost cause, for the fine futile courage of the gay Cavaliers and lovely forgotten ladies. And as they rode homeward through the twilight, his companion sang snatches of some old Cavalier songs—tunes with a certain pathos and grace in their gallant wistful music.

XVI.

Then there was a long letter, dating from the autumn after this delightful summer, in which he wrote again about Anthony à Wood, the old Oxford antiquary. He had been reading Wood's diaries, finding in them, he said, in spite of their old-fashioned pedantry and long genealogies, a vivid picture of the University and Wood's life in it, two hundred years ago. A calm life, Sutton described it, in curious contrast to the times in which Wood lived, when the academic quiet was so often disturbed by armies, and royal visits, and great events; and the noise of tumults in the Oxford streets, and troops marching by, reaching the old antiquary's ears, would draw him from the chronicles of the past, to look with blinking eyes from his library window on the turmoil and disquiet of contemporary history. For his life was spent in his own study, or in "Bodlie's Library," or among the dusty archives of the Colleges, reading and transcribing the monastic registers, the old manuscripts and histories. Sutton quoted from his diary a sentence in which he speaks of the exceeding pleasure he took in "poring on such books."