An American Girl in London

'Certainly, moddam! Will you take a seat, moddam? Something quite simple I think you said, moddam, and in muslin. I'll be with you in one moment, moddam.' And the young woman crawled away with the negligence that became the dearest place. After an appreciable time she returned with her arms full of what they used to call, so very correctly, 'furbelows,' in spotted and flowered muslins.

'Dearie me!' said Lady Torquilin. 'That's precisely what I wore when I was a girl!'

'Yes, moddam!' said the young woman, condescending to the ghost of a smile. 'The old styles are all comin' in again' – at which burst of responsiveness she suddenly brought herself up sharply, and assumed a manner which forbade you to presume upon it.

I picked up one of the garlanded muslins and asked the price of it. It had three frills round the bottom and various irrelevant ribbon-bows.

'Certainly, moddam! One moment, moddam!' as she looked at the ticket attached.

'This one is seventeen guineas, moddam. Silk foundation. A Paris model, moddam, but I dare say we could copy it for you for less.'

Lady Torquilin and I made a simultaneous movement, and looked at each other in the expressive way that all ladies understand who go shopping with each other.

'Thanks!' I said. 'It is much too expensive for me.'

'We have nothing of this style under fifteen guineas, moddam,' replied the young woman, with a climax of weary frigidity. 'Then, shall we go?'

I asked Lady Torquilin – and we went.

'What a price!' said Lady Torquilin, as we left the dearest place behind us.

I said I thought it was an insult – eighty-five dollars for a ready-made sprigged muslin dress! – to the intelligence of the people who were expected to buy it. That, for my part, I should feel a distinct loss of self-respect in buying anything at the dearest place. What would I be paying for?

'For being able to say that it came from the dearest place,' said Lady Torquilin. 'But I thought you Americans didn't mind what anything cost.'

That misconception of Lady Torquilin's is a popular one, and I was at some pains to rectify it. 'We don't,' I said, 'if we recognise the fairness of it; but nobody resents being imposed upon more than an American, Lady Torquilin. We have our idiots, like other nations, and I daresay a good many of them come to London every year and deal exclusively at the dearest place; but as a nation, though we don't scrimp we do like the feeling that we are paying for value received.'

'Well,' said Lady Torquilin, 'I believe that is the case. I know Americans talk a great deal about the price of things – more, I consider, than is entertaining sometimes.' I said I knew they did – it was a national fault – and what did Lady Torquilin think the dress I had on cost, just to compare it with that muslin, and Chicago was by no means a cheap place for anything. Lady Torquilin said she hadn't an idea – our dollars were so difficult to reckon in; but what did I think hers came to – and not a scrap of silk lining about it. And so the time slipped away until we arrived in the neighbourhood of Cavendish Square, at what Lady Torquilin called 'the happy medium,' where the windows were tempting, and the shopwalker smiled, and the lady-in-waiting was a person of great dignity, in high, black sleeves, with a delightful French accent when she talked, which she very seldom forgot, and only contradicted when she said ''Ow' and ''elliotrope,' and where things cost just about what they did in America.

I have gone very patiently ever since to the happy medium, partly to acquire the beautiful composure of the lady-in-waiting, partly to enjoy the respect which all Americans like so much in a well-conducted English shop, and partly because at the happy medium they understand how to turn shopping into the pleasant artistic pastime it ought to be, which everybody in America is in far too much of a hurry to make a fortune and retire to do for his customers. I am on the most agreeable footing with the lady in the sleeves now, and I have observed that, as our acquaintance progresses, her command of English consonantal sounds remarkably increases. But I have never been able to reconcile myself, even theoretically, either to the cheapest place, in the Edgware Road, or the dearest place, in Bond Street.

XIII

AS a nation I can't bear 'em – individually, I like 'em fairly well,' read out Lady Torquilin from a letter at breakfast. 'Bless me!' my friend went on, 'she's talking about Americans, and she's coming to see "your specimen" – meaning you, child – this very afternoon.'

So she did. She came to see me that very afternoon – the lady who couldn't bear us as a nation, but individually liked us fairly well. Her name was Corke, and she belonged, Lady Torquilin said, to the Corkes. I heard all about her before she came. She was a lady of moderate income, unmarried, about ten years older than I was. She knew all about everything.

'You never saw such a reader, my dear! I won't say it happens often, for that it does not, but Peter Corke has made me feel like a perfect ignoramus.'

'Peter Corke?' I said, with some surprise.

'Too ridiculous, I call it! Her proper name is Catharine Clarissa, but she hates her proper name – sensible girl as she is in every other way – prefers Peter! And if she happens to take a fancy to you, she will tell you all manner of interesting things. For old holes and corners, I always say, go to Peter Corke.'

'I'm glad,' I said, 'that she likes us, individually, fairly well – it's the only way in which I would have any chance! But she won't like my accent.'

'If she doesn't,' Lady Torquilin said, 'I promise you she'll tell you. And you won't mind a bit.'

When Miss Corke arrived I forgot entirely about the doubtfulness of her liking me – I was too much absorbed in liking her. She was rather a small person, with a great deal of dignity in her shoulders and a great deal of humour in her face – the most charming face I have seen in England, and I can't even make an exception in favour of the Princess of Wales. I may tell you that she had delightful twinkling brown eyes, and hair a shade darker, and the colour and health and energy that only an English woman possesses at thirty, without being in the least afraid that you could pick her out in the street, or anywhere – she would not like that – and being put in print, so that people would know her, at all; it's a thing I wouldn't do on any account, knowing her feelings. It is only because I am so well convinced that I can't tell you what she was like that I try, which you may consider a feminine reason, if you want to. Miss Peter Corke's personality made you think at once of Santa Claus and a profound philosopher – could you have a more difficult combination to describe than that? While you listened to a valuable piece of advice from her lips you might be quite certain that she had an orange for you in the hand behind her back; and however you might behave, you would get the orange. Part of her charm was the atmosphere of gay beneficence she carried about with her, that made you want to edge your chair closer to wherever she was sitting; and part of it was the remarkable interest she had in everything that concerned you – a sort of interest that made you feel as if such information as you could give about yourself was a direct and valuable contribution to the sum of her knowledge of humanity; and part of it was the salutary sincerity of everything she had to say in comment, though I ought not to forget her smile, which was a great deal of it. I am sure I don't know why I speak of Miss Peter Corke in the past tense, however. She is not dead – or even married; I cannot imagine a greater misfortune to her large circle of friends in London.

'Two lumps, please,' begged Miss Corke of me in the midst of a succession of inquiries about Lady Torquilin's cough, whether it could possibly be gout, or if she had been indulging in salmon and cucumber lately, in which case it served her perfectly right. 'What a disappointment you are! Why don't you ask me if I like it with all the trimmings?'

'The trimmings?' I repeated.

'Certainly! the sugar and milk! Fancy being obliged to explain Americanisms to an American!' said Miss Corke to Lady Torquilin.

'Is trimmings an Americanism?' I asked. 'I never heard it before. But I dare say it is an expression peculiar to Boston, perhaps.'

'You had better not have any doubt,' said Miss Corke, with mock ferocity, 'of anything you hear in England.'

'I've heard fixings often at home,' I declared, 'but never trimmings.'

'Oh!' remarked Miss Corke, genially; 'then fixings is the correct expression.'

'I don't know,' I said, 'about its being the correct expression. Our washerwoman uses it a good deal.'

'Oh!' said Miss Corke, with an indescribable inflection of amusement; and then she looked at me over the top of her teacup, as much as to say, 'you had better not go too far!'

'Are your father and mother living?' she asked; and just then I noticed that it was twenty minutes past four by the clock. I answered Miss Corke in the affirmative, and naturally I was glad to be able to; but I have often wondered since why that invariable interest in the existence or non-existence of a person's parents should prevail in England as it does. I have seldom been approached by any one in a spirit of kindly curiosity with a different formula. 'Any brothers and sisters?' Miss Corke went on. 'When did you come? Where did you go first? How long do you mean to stay? What have you seen? Did you expect us to be as we are, or do we exceed your expectations? Have you ever travelled alone before? Are you quite sure you like the feeling of being absolutely independent? Don't you love our nice old manners and customs? and won't you wish when you get back that you could put your President on a golden throne, with an ermine robe, and a sceptre in his right hand?'

Miss Corke gave me space between these questions for brief answers, but by the time I looked at the clock again, and saw that it was twenty-five minutes past four, to the best of my recollection, she had asked me twelve. I liked it immensely – it made conversation so easy; but I could not help thinking, in connection with it, of the capacity for interrogation, which I had always heard credited exclusively to Americans.

'Peter,' said Lady Torquilin at last, a little tired of it, 'ask something about me; I haven't seen you for weeks.'

'Dear lady,' said Peter, 'of course I will. But this is something new, you see, so one takes an ephemeral – very ephemeral! – interest in it.'

Lady Torquilin laughed. I Well!' said she, 'there's nothing more wonderful than the way it gets about alone.'

Then I laughed too. I did not find anything in the least objectionable in being called an 'it' by Miss Corke.

'So you've been in England a whole month!' said she. 'And what do you think you have observed about us? Basing your opinion,' said Miss Corke, with serio-comicality, 'upon the fact that we are for your admiration, and not for your criticism, how do you like us?'

I couldn't help it. 'Individually,' I said, 'I like you fairly well – as a nation, I can't – '

'Oh!' cried Miss Corke, in a little funny squeal, rushing at Lady Torquilin, 'you've gone and told her – you wicked woman!' – and she shook Lady Torquilin, a thing I didn't see how she dared to do. 'I can't bear it, and I won't! Private correspondence – I wonder you're not ashamed!' – and Miss Corke sank into a chair, and covered her face with her hands and her handkerchief, and squealed again, more comically than before.

By the time I had been acquainted with Miss Corke a fortnight I had learned to look for that squeal, and to love it. She probably will not know until she reads this chapter how painfully I have tried to copy it, and how vainly, doubtless owing to the American nature of my larynx. But Miss Corke had a way of railing at you that made you feel rather pleased that you had misbehaved. I could see that it had that effect upon Lady Torquilin, though all she did was to smile broadly, and say to Miss Peter, 'Hoity-toity! Have another cup of tea.' In the course of further conversation, Miss Corke said that she saw my mind must be improved immediately if she had to do it herself; and where would I like to begin. I said almost anywhere, I didn't think it much mattered; and Miss Corke said, Well, that was candid on my part, and augured favourably, and was I architectururally inclined? I said I thought I was, some; and out came Miss Peter Corke's little shriek again. 'Tell her,' she said, prodding Lady Torquilin, 'that we say "rather" over here in that connection; I don't know her well enough.' And I was obliged to beg Lady Torquilin to tell her that we said 'some' over there in that connection, though not in books, or university lectures, or serious-minded magazines.

'Oh, come!' said Miss Corke, 'do you mean to say you've got any serious-minded magazines?'

'I'll come anywhere you like,' I responded. 'Have you got any light-minded ones?'

Whereat Miss Corke turned again to Lady Torquilin, and confided to her that I was a flippant young woman to live in the same house with, and Lady Torquilin assured her that there wasn't really any harm in me – it was only my way.

'H'm!' remarked Miss Peter, perking up her chin in a manner that made me long to be on kissing terms with her – 'the American way!' As I write that it looks disagreeable; as Peter Corke said it, it was the very nectar and ambrosia of prejudiced and favourable criticism. And I soon found out that whatever she might say, her words never conveyed anything but herself – never had any significance, I mean, that your knowledge of her delightful nature did not endorse.

'I suppose we'd better begin with the churches, don't you think?' said Miss Corke to Lady Torquilin. 'Poor dear! I dare say she's never seen a proper church!'

'Oh, yes!' I said, 'you have never been in Chicago, Miss Corke, or you wouldn't talk like that. We have several of the finest in America in our city; and we ourselves attend a very large one, erected last year, the Congregational – though momma has taken up Theosophy considerably lately. It's built in amphitheatre style, with all the latest improvements – electric light, and heated with hot water all through. It will seat five thousand people on spring-edged cushions, and has a lovely kitchen attached for socials!' 'Built in the amphitheatre style! repeated Miss Corke. 'To seat five thousand people on spring-edged cushions – with a kitchen attached! And now, will you tell me immediately what a "social" is?'

'There are different kinds, you know,' I replied. 'Ice-cream socials, and oyster socials, and ordinary tea-meetings; but they nearly always have something to eat in them – a dry social with only a collection never amounts to much. And they're generally held in the basement of the church, and the young ladies of the congregation wait.'

Miss Corke looked at me, amused and aghast. 'You see, I was quite right,' she said to Lady Torquilin. 'She never has! But I think this really ought to be reported to the Foreign Missions Society! I'll take you to the Abbey to-morrow,' she went on. 'You like "deaders," don't you? The time between might be profitably spent in fasting and meditation! Good-bye, dear love!' – to Lady Torquilin. 'No, you will not come down, either of you! Remember, young lady, three-thirty, sharp, at the entrance everybody uses, opposite Dizzy's statue – the same which you are never on any account to call Dizzy, but always Lord Disraeli, with the respect that becomes a foreigner! Good-bye!'

XIV

WHAT do you mean?' asked Miss Corke, indicating the Parliament House clock with a reproachful parasol, as I joined her a week from the following afternoon outside the south cloister of the Abbey. We had seen a good deal of her in the meantime, but the Abbey visit had been postponed. Her tone was portentous, and I looked at the clock, which said ten minutes to four. I didn't quite understand, for I thought I was in pretty good time. 'Didn't you say I was to come about now?' I inquired. Miss Corke made an inarticulate exclamation of wrath.

'Half-past three may be "about now" in America!' she said, 'but it isn't here, as you may see by the clock. Fancy my having made an appointment with a young person who had an idea of keeping it "about" the time I had condescended to fix!' – and Miss Corke put down her parasol as we entered the cloisters, and attempted to wither me with a glance. If the glance had not had the very jolliest smile of good-fellowship inside it I don't know what I should have done, but as it was I didn't wither; though I regretted to hear that I had missed the Jerusalem Chamber by being late, where King Henry died – because he always knew he should expire in a place of that name, and so fulfilled prophecy, poor dear, by coming to kneel on the cold stone at St. Edward's shrine, where he would always say his prayers, and nowhere else, immediately after a number of extraordinary Christmas dinners – and Miss Corke was not in the least sorry for me, though it was a thing I ought to see, and we positively must come another day to see it.

We walked up past the little green square that you see in wide spaces through the side pillars, where the very oldest old monks lie nameless and forgotten, whose lives gathered about the foundations of the Abbey – the grey foundations in the grey past – and sank silently into its history just as their bodily selves have disappeared long ago in the mosses and grasses that cover them. 'No, Miss Mamie Wick, of Chicago, I will not hurry!' said Miss Corke, 'and neither shall you! It is a sacrilege that I will allow no young person in my company to commit – to go through these precincts as if there were anything in the world as well worth looking at outside of them.'

I said I didn't want to hurry in the very least.

'Are you sure you don't – inside of you?' she demanded. Certain you have no lurking private ambition to do the Abbey in two hours and get it over? Oh, I know you! I've brought lots of you here before.'

'I know,' I said, I as a nation we do like to get a good deal for our time.'

'It's promising when you acknowledge it' – Miss Corke laughed. 'All the old abbots used to be buried here up to the time of Henry III.; that's probably one of 'em' – and Miss Corke's parasol indicated a long, thick, bluish stone thing lying on its back, with a round lump at one end and an imitation of features cut on the lump. It lay there very solidly along the wall, and I tried in vain to get a point of view from which it was expressive of anything whatever. 'One of the early abbots?' said I, because it seemed necessary to say something.

'Probably,' said Miss Corke.

'Which particular abbot should you say?' I asked, deferentially, for I felt that I was in the presence of something very early English indeed, and that it became me to be impressed, whether I was or not.

'Oh, I don't know,' Miss Peter Corke replied. 'Postard, perhaps, or Crispin, or maybe Vitalis; nobody knows.'

'I suppose it would have been easier to tell a while ago,' I said. 'There is something so worn about his face, I should think even the other early abbots would find a difficulty in recognising him now. Nothing Druidical, I suppose?'

'Certainly not. If you are going to be disrespectful,' said Miss Corke, 'I shall take you home at once.' Whereat I protested that I did not dream disrespect – that he looked to me quite as much like a Druid as anything else. I even ventured to say that, if she had not told me he was an early abbot, I might have taken him for something purely and entirely geological. The whole of this discussion took place at what stood for the early abbot's feet, and occupied some little time; so that, finally, Miss Corke was obliged to tell me that, if there was one thing she couldn't bear, it was dawdling, and would I be pleased to look at the monumental tablet to Mr. Thomas Thynne, of which she would relate to me the history. So we paused in front of it, while Miss Corke told me how the gentleman in the basrelief chariot was Mr. Thomas Thynne, and the gentleman on horseback, shooting at him with a blunderbuss, was Kônigsmark, accompanied by his brother; and Kônigsmark was in the act of killing Mr. Thomas Thynne, with the horses getting unmanageable, and the two powdered footmen behind in a state of great agitation, because both Mr. Thomas Thynne and Kônigsmark were attached to the same lady – a young widow lady with a great deal of money – and she liked Mr. Thomas Thynne best, which was more than Mr. Kônigsmark could bear. So Mr. Königsmark first swore properly that he would do it, and then did it – all in Pall Mall, when Mr. Thomas was in the very act of driving home from paying a visit to the widow. It was a most affecting story, as Peter Corke told it, especially in the presence of the memorial with a white marble Cupid pointing to it, erected by Mr. Thynne's bereaved relatives; and I was glad to hear that the widow had nothing to do with Mr. Kônigsmark afterwards, in spite of the simplicity and skill of his tactics with regard to his rival. I thought the history of the event quite interesting enough in itself, but Miss Corke insisted that the point about it really worthy of attention was the fact that the younger Mr. Kônigsmark was the gentleman who afterwards went back to Hanover, and there flirted so disgracefully with Sophia Dorothea of Zell that King George said he wouldn't have it, and shut her up in Ahlden Tower for thirty-two years. Miss Corke explained it all in a delightful kindergarten way, mentioning volumes for my reference if I wanted to know more about the incident. 'Although this,' she said, 'is the sort of thing you ought to have been improving your mind with ever since you learned to read. I don't know what you mean by it, coming over here with a vast unbroken field of ignorance about our celebrities. Do you think time began in 1776?' At which I retaliated, and said that far from being an improving incident, I wasn't sure that it was altogether respectable, and I didn't know of a single church in Chicago that would admit a bas-relief of it, with or without a mourning Cupid. In return to which Miss Corke could find nothing better to say than 'Lawks!'

'Don't tell me you've read the "Spectator!"' she remarked a little farther on, 'because I know you haven't – you've read nothing but W. D. Howells and the "New York World!" Oh, you have? Several essays! When, pray? At school – I thought so! When you couldn't help it! Well, I know you've forgotten Sir Roger de Coverley, in the Abbey, stopping Addison here, to tell him that man thrashed his grandfather! His own grandfather, you know, not Addison's!' And we contemplated the studious effigy of Dr. Busby until I told Miss Corke that I wanted to be taken to the Poets' Corner.

'Of course you do,' said she; 'there are rows of Americans there now, sitting looking mournful and thinking up quotations. If I wanted to find an American in London, I should take up my position in the Poets' Corner until he arrived. You needn't apologise – it's nothing to your discredit,' remarked Miss Corke, as we turned in among your wonderful crumbling old names, past the bust of George Grote, historian of Greece. 'Of course, you have heard of his lady-wife,' she said, nodding at Mr. Grote. I ventured the statement that she was a very remarkable person.

'Well, she was!' returned Miss Corke, 'though that's a shot in the dark, and you might as well confess it. One of the most remarkable women of her time. All the biographers of the day wrote about her – as you ought to know, intimately. I have the honour of the acquaintance of a niece of hers, who told me the other day that she wasn't particularly fond of her. Great independence of character!'

'Where is Chaucer?' I asked, wishing to begin at the beginning.

'Just like every one of you that I've ever brought here!' Miss Corke exclaimed, leading the way to the curious old rectangular grey tomb in the wall. 'The very best – the very oldest – immediately! Such impatience I never saw! There now – make out that early English lettering, if you can, and be properly sorry that you've renounced your claim to be proud of it!'

'I can't make it out, so I'll think about being sorry later,' I said. 'It is certainly very remarkable; he might almost have written it himself. Now, where is Shakespeare?'

'Oh, certainly!' exclaimed Miss Corke. 'This way. And after that you'll declare you've seen them all. But you might just take time to understand that you're walking over "O rare Ben Jonson!" who is standing up in his old bones down there as straight as you or I. Insisted – as you probably are not aware – on being buried that way, so as to be ready when Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning. I won't say that he hasn't got his coat and hat on. Yes, that's Samuel – I'm glad you didn't say Ben was the lexicographer. Milton – certainly – it's kind of you to notice him. Blind, you remember. The author of several works of some reputation – in England.'

'I knew he was blind,' I said, 'and used to dictate to his daughters. We have a picture of it at home.' I made this remark very innocently, and Miss Corke looked at me with a comical smile. 'Bless it and save it!' she said, and then, with an attempt at a reproach, 'What a humbug it is!'

We looked at Shakespeare, supreme among them, predicting solemn dissolution out of 'The Tempest,' and turned from him to Gay, whose final reckless word I read with as much astonishment as if I had never heard of it before.

 
Life's a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, and now I know it,
 

has no significance at all read in an American school-book two thousand miles, and a hundred and fifty years from the writer of it, compared with the grim shock it gives you when you see it actually cut deep in the stone, to be a memorial always of a dead man somewhere not far away.

'That you should have heard of Nicholas Rowe,' said Miss Corke, 'is altogether too much to expect. Dear me! it would be considerably easier to improve your mind if it had ever been tried before. But he was poet-laureate for George the First – you understand the term?'

'I think so,' I said. 'They contract to supply the Royal Family with poetry, by the year, at a salary. We have nothing of the kind in America. You see our Presidents differ so. They might not all like poetry. And in that case it would be wasted, for there isn't a magazine in the country that would take it second-hand.'

'Besides having no poets who could do it properly, poor things!' said Miss Corke – to which I acceded without difficulty.

'Well, Mr. Rowe was a poet-laureate, though that has nothing whatever to do with it. But he had a great friend in Mr. Pope – Pope, you know him – by reputation – and when he and his daughter died, Mr. Pope and Mrs. Rowe felt so bad about it that he wrote those mournful lines, and she had'em put up.

Now listen! —

 
To those so mourned in death, so lov'd in life,
The childless parent and the widowed wife —
 

meaning the same lady; it was only a neat way they had of doubling up a sentiment in those days! —

 
With tears inscribes this monumental stone,
That holds their ashes and expects her own!
 

and everybody, including Mr. Pope, thought it perfectly sweet at the time. Then what does this degenerate widow do, after giving Mr. Pope every reason to believe that she would fulfil his poetry?'

'She marries again,' I said.

'Quite right; she marries again. But you needn't try to impose upon me, miss! To come to that conclusion you didn't require any previous information whatever! She marries again, and you can't think how it vexed Mr. Pope.'

'I know,' I said, 'he declared that was the last of his lending the use of his genius to widows' – for I had to assume some knowledge of the subject.

Miss Corke looked at me. 'You idjit!' she said. 'He did nothing of the sort.'

'Michael Drayton!' I read amongst other names which surprised me by their unfamiliarity; for in America, whatever Peter Corke may say, if we have a strong point, it is names – 'who was Michael Drayton? and why was he entitled to a bust?'

'He wrote the "Polyolbion,"' said Miss Corke, as if that were all there was to say about it.

'Do you know,' I said – 'I am ashamed to confess it, but even of so well-known and interesting a work of genius as the "Polyolbion" I have committed very few pages to memory!'

'Oh!' returned Miss Peter, 'you're getting unbearable! There's a lovely epitaph for you, of Edmund Spenser's, "whose divine spirrit needs noe othir witnesse than the workes which he left behind him." You will kindly make no ribald remarks about the spelling, as I perceive you are thinking of doing. Try and remember that we taught you to spell over there. And when Edmund Spenser was buried, dear damsel, there came a company of poets to the funeral – Shakespeare, doubtless, among them – and cast into his grave all manner of elegies.'

'Of their own composition?' I inquired.

'Stupid! – certainly! And the pens that wrote them!'

I said I thought it a most beautiful and poetic thing to have done, if they kept no copies of the poems, and asked Miss Corke if she believed anything of the kind would be possible now.

'Bless you!' she replied. 'In the first place, there aren't the poets; in the second place, there isn't the hero-worship; in the third place, the conditions of the poetry-market are different nowadays – it's more expensive than it used to be; the poets would prefer to send wreaths from the florist's – you can get quite a nice one for twelve-and-six;' and Peter Corke made a little grimace expressive of disgust with the times. 'We used to have all poets and no public, now we have all public and no poets!' she declared, 'now that he is gone – and Tennyson can't live for ever.' Miss Corke pointed with her parasol to a name in the stone close to my right foot. I had been looking about me, and above me, and everywhere but there. As I read it I took my foot away quickly, and went two or three paces off. It was so unlooked-for, that name, so new to its association with death, that I stood aside, held by a sudden sense of intrusion. He had always been so high and so far off in the privacy of his genius, so revered in his solitudes, so unapproachable, that it took one's breath away for the moment to have walked unthinkingly over the grave of Robert Browning. It seemed like taking an advantage one would rather not have taken – even to stand aside and read the plain, strong name in the floor, and know that he, having done with life, had been brought there, and left where there could be no longer about him any wonderings or any surmises. Miss Corke told me that she knew him, 'as one can say one knows such a man,' and how kindly his interest was in all that the ordinary people of his acquaintance like herself were thinking and doing; but the little, homely stories she related to me from her personal knowledge of him seemed curiously without relevance then. Nothing mattered, except that he who had epitomised greatness in his art for the century lay there beneath his name in the place of greatness. And then, immediately, from this grave of yesterday, there came to me light and definition for all the graves of the day before. It stole among the quaint lettering of the inscriptions, and into the dusty corners of the bas-reliefs, and behind all the sculptured scrolls and laurels, and showed me what I had somehow missed seeing sooner – all that shrined honour means in England; and just in that one little corner how great her possessions are! Miss Corke said something about the royal tombs and the coronation chair, and the wax effigies in the chamber above the Islip Chapel, and getting on; but, I if you don't mind,' I said, 'I should like to sit down here for a while with the other Americans and think.'