Afoot in England

by W. H. Hudson

I also found an increasing charm in the interior, and made the discovery that I could go oftener and spend more hours in this cathedral without a sense of fatigue or depression than in any other one known to me, because it has less of that peculiar character which we look for and almost invariably find in our cathedrals. It has not the rich sombre majesty, the dim religious light and heavy vault-like atmosphere of the other great fanes. So airy and light is it that it is almost like being out of doors. You do not experience that instantaneous change, as of a curtain being drawn excluding the light and air of day and of being shut in, which you have on entering other religious houses. This is due, first, to the vast size of the interior, the immense length of the nave, and the unobstructed view one has inside owing to the removal by the "vandal" Wyatt of the old ponderous stone screen—an act for which I bless while all others curse his memory; secondly, to the comparatively small amount of stained glass there is to intercept the light. So graceful and beautiful is the interior that it can bear the light, and light suits it best, just as a twilight best suits Exeter and Winchester and other cathedrals with heavy sculptured roofs. One marvels at a building so vast in size which yet produces the effect of a palace in fairyland, or of a cathedral not built with hands but brought into existence by a miracle.

I began to think it not safe to stay in that place too long lest it should compel me to stay there always or cause me to feel dissatisfied and homesick when away.

But the interior of itself would never have won me, as I had not expected to be won by any building made by man; and from the inside I would pass out only to find a fresh charm in that part where Nature had come more to man's aid.

Walking on the cathedral green one morning, glancing from time to time at the vast building and its various delicate shades of colour, I asked myself why I kept my eyes as if on purpose away from it most of the time, now on the trees, then on the turf, and again on some one walking there—why, in fact, I allowed myself only an occasional glance at the object I was there solely to look at. I knew well enough, but had never put it into plain words for my own satisfaction.

We are all pretty familiar from experience with the limitations of the sense of smell and the fact that agreeable odours please us only fitfully; the sensation comes as a pleasing shock, a surprise, and is quickly gone. If we attempt to keep it for some time by deliberately smelling a fragrant flower or any perfume, we begin to have a sense of failure as if we had exhausted the sense, keen as it was a moment ago.

There must be an interval of rest for the nerve before the sensation can be renewed in its first freshness. Now it is the same, though in a less degree, with the more important sense of sight. We look long and steadily at a thing to know it, and the longer and more fixedly we look the better, if it engages the reasoning faculties; but an aesthetic pleasure cannot be increased or retained in that way. We must look, merely glancing as it were, and look again, and then again, with intervals, receiving the image in the brain even as we receive the "nimble emanation" of a flower, and the image is all the brighter for coming intermittently. In a large prospect we are not conscious of this limitation because of the wideness of the field and the number and variety of objects or points of interest in it; the vision roams hither and thither over it and receives a continuous stream or series of pleasing impressions; but to gaze fixedly at the most beautiful object in nature or art does but diminish the pleasure. Practically it ceases to be beautiful and only recovers the first effect after we have given the mind an interval of rest.

Strolling about the green with this thought in my mind, I began to pay attention to the movements of a man who was manifestly there with the same object as myself—to look at the cathedral. I had seen him there for quite half an hour, and now began to be amused at the emphatic manner in which he displayed his interest in the building. He walked up and down the entire length and would then back away a distance of a hundred yards from the walls and stare up at the spire, then slowly approach, still gazing up, until coming to a stop when quite near the wall he would remain with his eyes still fixed aloft, the back of his head almost resting on his back between his shoulders. His hat somehow kept on his head, but his attitude reminded me of a saying of the Arabs who, to give an idea of the height of a great rock or other tall object, say that to look up at it causes your turban to fall off. The Americans, when they were chewers of tobacco, had a different expression; they said that to look up at so tall a thing caused the tobacco juice to run down your throat.

His appearance when I approached him interested me too. His skin was the color of old brown leather and he had a big arched nose, clear light blue very shrewd eyes, and a big fringe or hedge of ragged white beard under his chin; and he was dressed in a new suit of rough dark brown tweeds, evidently home-made. When I spoke to him, saying something about the cathedral, he joyfully responded in broadest Scotch. It was, he said, the first English cathedral he had ever seen and he had never seen anything made by man to equal it in beauty. He had come, he told me, straight from his home and birthplace, a small village in the north of Scotland, shut out from the world by great hills where the heather grew knee-deep. He had never been in England before, and had come directly to Salisbury on a visit to a relation.

"Well," I said, "now you have looked at it outside come in with me and see the interior."

But he refused: it was enough for one day to see the outside of such a building: he wanted no more just then. To-morrow would be soon enough to see it inside; it would be the Sabbath and he would go and worship there.