248 PRÆTERITA-II

asked to Oxford that autumn, to see their spoiled Johnnie carrying all before him: and the good couple being seated in Christ Church Cathedral under the organ, and seeing me walk in with my companions in our silken sleeves, and with accompanying flourishes by Mr. Marshall¹ on the trumpet stop, and Rembrandtesque effects of candlelight upon the Norman columns, were both of them melted into tears; and remained speechless with reverent delight all the evening afterwards.

7. I have left too long without word the continual benevolence towards us of the family at Widmore,² Mr. Telford and his three sisters; the latter absolutely well-educated women-wise, without either severity or ostentation, using all they knew for the good of their neighbours, and exhibiting in their own lives every joy of sisterly love and active homeliness. Mr. Henry Telford’s perfectly quiet, slightly melancholy, exquisitely sensitive face, browned by continual riding from Bromley to Billiter Street, remains with me, among the most precious of the pictures which, unseen of any guest, hang on the walls of my refectory.

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Cockburn,³ as the years drew on, became more and more kindly, but less and less approvingly, interested in our monastic ways at Herne Hill; and in my partly thwarted and uncomfortable, partly singular development of literary character. Mrs. Cockburn took earnest pains with my mother to get her to send me more into society, that I might be licked a little into shape. But my mother was satisfied with me as I was: and besides, Mrs. Cockburn and she never got quite well on together. My mother, according to her established manner, would no more dine with her than with any one else, and was even careless in returning calls; and Mrs. Cockburn-which was wonderful in a woman of so much sense-instead of being merely sorry for my mother’s shyness, and trying

¹ [William Marshall (1806-1875), organist at Christ Church and St. John’s College, Oxford; Mus. Doc. Oxford, 1840; composer.]

² [See i. § 27; above, p. 27.]

³ [See i. § 117; above, p. 102.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]