A DISAPPOINTMENT 263 building that had an ancient look, though perhaps not exactly one's ideal of a haunted house-still it would do. Having introduced ourselves to the rector, and having explained the purport of our visit, just when our expectations were raised to the utmost pitch, we received a dire disappointment, for the rector, with a smile, informed us that he had only recently come there and, so far, he had never seen the ghost, or been troubled by it in any way. He had a dim sort of a recollection that he had heard something about it from some one, and he would be glad to learn further particulars. He did not even know which the haunted room was, or whether it was the whole house that was supposed to be haunted and not a particular chamber. "I am afraid," he said, "your introduction must have been intended for my predecessor, who possibly was well posted up in the matter." Certainly our introduction was of a very informal nature, our antiquarian friend had simply written on the back of his card, “Call on the rector of Wrangle, make use of my card, and he will tell you all about the ghost." Truly we felt just a trifle disappointed. We had been on the trail of a ghost so often, yet had never been able to run one to earth, and again it had eluded us! Possibly the rector divined our feelings, for he cheerily exclaimed, "Well, I am sorry I cannot show you what you want, but I can show you a very interesting church." Now we had not come to Wrangle to see a church, but a haunted house, and a material ring left by an immaterial spirit, and we felt somehow, if unreasonably, aggrieved at not finding these. The church was truly interesting, though I fear we were hardly in the mood to properly appreciate it. The rector pointed out to us in the east window some old stained glass that had been reset in fragments there, which he declared to be the finest old stained glass in Lincolnshire; then he led us to the south porch, where he pointed out to us the quaint and beautiful external carvings round the Early English south doorway, which we observed was curiously trefoiled and decorated with dog-tooth mouldings. It is a specimen of carving that any church might be proud to possess; here, little seen and possibly never admired except by chance comers like ourselves, it is wasting its beauty in the wilderness, for the doorway is simply the entrance to the graveyard and appears not to be much, if at all used, the congregation entering the church by the north porch. On the north wall we observed a fine, not to say ostentatious, altar-tomb to Sir John Read and his lady dated 1626. This takes up, profitably .or unprofitably, a good deal of room. Below on a verse we read the following tribute to the underlying dead : Whom love did linke and nought but death did dessever, Like turtle doves they livd Chaste pure in mind, Fewe, O, too few such couples we shall find. You have to get used to the archaic spelling of some of these old tombstone inscriptions, but this one is comparatively clear. Our ancestors evidently did not set much score on spelling, for on a stately CURIOUS GARGOYLES 265 seventeenth-century monument I have actually noticed the same word spelt in three different ways. Above Sir John Read's fine altar-tomb is suspended a helmet with a crest coloured proper, only the helmet is not a genuine one, being of plaster! and the plaster has got cracked, and therefore the sham is revealed to the least observant; so the whole thing looks ridiculous! Possibly, however, this was merely intended for a temporary funeral helmet, and would have been removed in due course but had been forgotten. In the pavement we noticed a slab containing an interesting brass dated 1503, to "Iohn Reed marchant of ye stapell of Calys, and Margaret his wyfe." Their eight sons and five daughters are also shown upon it. it. Round this slab run portions of an inscription in old English. It is unfortunate that this is incomplete, for it appears to be quaint. On leaving the church we observed with pleasure that the ancient and curious gargoyles that project from its roof still serve the purpose for which they were originally constructed, and have not been improved away, or suffered the common indignity of being converted into rain - water heads. Who invented the gargoyle, I wonder? A monk, I'll wager, if I have read past ecclesiastical architecture aright. And all lovers of the quaintly decorative are under great obligations to the unknown monk, for gargoyles offered an irresistible opportunity for the medieval craftsman to outwardly express his inmost fancies and the artistic spirit that consumed his soul, and must somehow be visibly revealed. He was jocular at times, even to the verge of profanity. Possibly because gargoyles were outside the sacred edifice, he felt more at liberty to do as he would, so he created wonderful monsters, grinning goodnatured-looking demons in place of saints; demons that seemed verily to exist and breathe and struggle in stone; his subtle art contrived to make even the hideous delightful and to be desired. So great was his genius, so cunning his chisel that when I look upon his handiwork, oftentimes I gaze with astonished admiration at his rare skill and inventive faculties, and I sadly wonder whether we shall ever look upon his like again. His art was the outcome of love. Our modern art seems of unhappy necessity imbued with the commercial spirit of the age. Men now paint and sculpture to live, the medieval art craftsman lived to work; the one labours to live, the other loved to labour. The highest art, the worthiest work, cannot be produced for gold, it comes alone from love, love that is unembarrassed with the thought of having to provide the necessaries of life. Where anxiety steps in, art suffers, then withers and dies! Some years ago I was showing a now popular artist an old picture by Francesco Francia on panel that I possess, and asked him how it was, apart from the almost painful truthfulness of the drawing, that the colours had remained so fresh and pure in tint, after all the years it had existed, whilst so many modern pictures lose so much of their first brilliancy in comparatively so short a time. He replied, after examining the picture, that it had been painted, then smoothed down, and re-painted many AN ARTIST'S TALE 267 times, each after an interval to allow the pigments to dry hard, and that it had taken years in place of months to complete. "Now were I to paint like that I should simply starve, and possibly be called a fool for my pains-and man must live, you know, to say nothing of rent, rates, and taxes. When I began life I was young and enthusiastic, and, as you know, painted in a garret for love and possible fame which came too tardily" (I have a painting the artist did in those happy early days, pronounced by competent critics to be worthy of a great master); "but love did not butter my bread nor provide me with a decent home, so at last I was compelled to paint for popularity and profit. Now I possess a fine studio and fashionable patrons, whose portraits I paint without pleasure but I live at ease-yet sometimes I sigh for those old times when things were otherwise." |