“I don’t believe you ever received a long letter which I wrote to you from London and directed to Finisterre, for you ought to have had it some days before the date of your last, which is written from some place that I never heard of before, and am not quite sure that I read correctly.
“We have moved from London at last to Scottowe with the
Archdales, arriving all together last
Wednesday. We left rain behind us and arrived in rain; but the fine weather set in on
our arrival, and the glass is now at ‘fair,’ the sky clear,
286 | ELY CATHEDRAL. |
“I had rather a dread of taking so long a journey at one heat;
so I started on the Tuesday, slept at Ely, and proceeded to Norwich by a mid-day train
the next day, in time to meet and accompany my sister and the Archdales to this
place. I was perfectly delighted with Ely. I did not go to the Cathedral on the Tuesday
evening, for I only arrived at my hotel (the ‘Lamb,’ a most comfortable
house), in time for a late dinner; but I was up early the next morning, and spent
several hours in the magnificent building. The restorations are not quite finished, but
all that has been done is wonderfully well done, and though the funds do not come in so
rapidly and liberally as at first they did, they are still progressing with the work.
Nothing can be better than the taste and skill with which Styleman L’Estrange painted the ceiling, and the piece which he
died before completing, and left Gambier Parry to
do, is so well done that no eye could distinguish where the one left off and the other
began. The duty was very well performed; but I hated the intoning till the Dean took it
up at the Lord’s Prayer in the
CATHEDRAL SERVICE. | 287 |
“I have just been reading a novel called ‘Sprung up like a Flower.’ It’s all about a decayed family of L’Estranges, very clever and very heart-breaking.
“It is my intention to stay here till September 30, making, if well enough, a short episodical visit to Clumber; and after my return we must work. I have almost finished the letters of 1838. I shan’t write any more, for I know you’ll never get the letter. But whether you do or not,