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.

I met her one day wearing mourning—not exemplary mourning, but enough to induce a mild and conventional expression of sympathy.

Oh no, it was not for any near relation, she said; but surely I had forgotten that the day was the anniversary of the execution of the Earl of Strafford. What Strafford was that? Why, of course, Charles the First's Strafford. How could Englishmen be so neglectful of the memory of one of the greatest of Englishmen?

“If you go into mourning for Strafford, I suppose you fast upon the anniversary of the death of Charles the First?” I suggested.

“The martyrdom of King Charles is commemorated in some parts of the States in the most solemn manner,” she replied. “Oh yes, I can assure you that we are Stuart in every fibre of our bodies. I am President of the White Rose Society of Chillingworth County, Massachusetts.”

“But you are not, I hope, active Jacobites?” said I.

“Well, no—not just yet; but we can never acknowledge the Hanoverian succession. We owe the Hanoverians a grudge: it was a king of that house who brought about our separation from Great Britain. That old wound rankles still.”