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Updated: June 12, 2025
There came to me, with a kind of ironic sentimentality, the picture of the drawing-room at home in Polchester, the corner where the piano stood with a palm in an ugly brass pot just behind it, the table near the door with a brass Indian tray and a fat photograph-book with, gilt clasps, the picture of "Christ being Scourged" above the fireplace, and the green silk screen that stood under the picture in the summer.
One looks back, you know, to one of those old average afternoons at Polchester, my father coming back from golf, I myself going into the old red-walled garden for tea, with some novel under my arm, the cathedral bell ringing for Evensong just over the wall across the Green, then slowly dropping to its close, then the faint murmur of the organ.
It happened naturally then that the majority of the Polchester children had never set their inquisitive noses within the doors of a theatre, and although the two eldest daughters of the Dean, aged ten and eleven, had been once to London and to Drury Lane Theatre, their sense of glory and distinction so clouded their powers of accuracy and clarity that we were no nearer, by their help and authority, to the understanding of what a pantomime might really be.
Her headaches were a feature of Polchester life, and those who were old enough to understand pitied her and offered her many remedies. But the young cannot be expected to realise that there can be anything physically wrong with the old, and Mrs.
In Polchester thirty years ago there were no cinematographs, no theatre save for an occasional amateur performance at the Assembly Rooms and, once and again, a magic-lantern show. On this particular day, moreover, Mr. and Mrs. Cole were immensely busied with preparations for some parochial tea. Miss Trefusis had calls to make, and, of course, Uncle Samuel was invisible.
Ronder, although no one believed less in Utopias than he, did believe in the Zeitgeist simply for comfort's sake if for no stronger reason. Well, the Zeitgeist was descending upon Polchester, and Ronder was its agent. Progress? No, Ronder did not believe in Progress. But in the House of Life there are many rooms; once and again the furniture is changed.
That may be or no; the fact remains that Polchester sniffed the sea from afar, was caught with sea breezes and bathed in reflected sea-lights; again and again of an evening the Cathedral sailed on dust and shadow towards the horizon, a great white ghost of a galleon, and the young citizens of the town with wondering eyes, watched it go.
I cannot pretend to disentangle and produce in proper sequence all the thoughts and memories that floated into my vision and away again, but I know that whereas before thoughts had attacked me as though they were foul animals biting at my brain, now I seemed myself gently to invite my memories. Many scenes from my Polchester days that I had long forgotten came back to me.
Some said that a ship from the East had arrived at Drymouth, and that certain jugglers and Chinese and foreign merchants, instead of going on to London as they had intended, turned to Polchester. How do I know at this time of day? How do we, any of us, know how anything gets here, and what does it matter?
Born in 1100, Henry of Arden had been the first Bishop to give Polchester dignity and power. What William of Wykeham was to Winchester, that Henry of Arden was to the See of Polchester. Through all the wild days of the quarrel between Stephen and Matilda he had stood triumphant, yielding at last only to the mad overwhelming attacks of his private enemies. Of those he had had many.
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