SALISBURY, June 1 The White Hart Inn.
We left Winchester on the 1.06 train yesterday, and here we are within sight of another superb and ancient pile of stone. I wanted so much to stop at the Highflyer Inn in Lark Lane, but aunt Celia said that if we were destitute of personal dignity, we at least owed something to our ancestors. Aunt Celia has a temperamental distrust of joy as something dangerous and ensnaring. She doesn't realize what fun it would be to date one's letters from the Highflyer Inn, Lark Lane, even if one were obliged to consort with poachers and cockneys in order to do it.
We attended service at three. The music was lovely, and there were beautiful stained-glass windows by Burne-Jones and Morris. The verger (when wound up with a shilling) talked like an electric doll. If that nice young man is making a cathedral tour, like ourselves, he isn't taking our route, for he isn't here. If he has come over for the purpose of sketching, he wouldn't stop at sketching one cathedral. Perhaps he began at the other end and worked down to Winchester. Yes, that must be it, for the Ems sailed yesterday from Southampton.
We intended to go to Stonehenge this morning, but it rained, so we took a "growler" and went to the Earl of Pembroke's country place to see the pictures. Had a delightful morning with the magnificent antiques, curios, and portraits. The Van Dyck room is a joy forever. There were other visitors; nobody who looked especially interesting. Don't like Salisbury so well as Winchester. Don't know why. We shall drive this afternoon, if it is fair, and go to Wells to-morrow. Must read Baedeker on the bishop's palace. Oh dear! if one could only have a good time and not try to know anything!
Memoranda: This cathedral has the highest spire. Remember: Winchester, longest nave; Salisbury, highest spire.
The Lancet style is those curved lines meeting in a rounding or a sharp point like this
[drawing like two very circular n's next to each other]
and then joined together like this:
the way they used to scallop flannel petticoats. Gothic looks like triangles meeting together in various spots and joined with beautiful sort of ornamented knobs. I think I know Gothic when I see it. Then there is Norman, Early English, fully developed Early English, Early and Late Perpendicular, and Transition. Aunt Celia knows them all apart.
