Eustace Talbot : born 1 Sept. 1873. Died 26 May 1905 some recollections / [Gwendolen Stephenson, Walter Morley Fletcher, M. R. J].

  • Stephenson, Gwendolen.
Date:
[1908]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Eustace Talbot : born 1 Sept. 1873. Died 26 May 1905 some recollections / [Gwendolen Stephenson, Walter Morley Fletcher, M. R. J]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    This was in 1894 when I visited some French cathedrals with him and A. B. Ramsay. Nobody could be more entirely satisfactory than Eustace in such circumstances. He took to the churches at once; and it may be imagined how he entered into all the little incidents which an expedition of that kind produces. He rarely expressed himself in the language of the country, save in one con- vei-sation with the hotel cook at Bourges, who took his fancy. Him he beckoned to him, and spoke with him for some time in a very mixed dialect, of which I have often tried to remember specimens, but without avail. He was what I may call impish at a wedding upon which we happened at Bourges Cathedral; borrow- ing money of me when a collection was being made, and refusing to contribute it at the proper moment, or to return it subsequently. I have not often enjoyed him more than during that fortnight. In everything, serious or light, his perception of what was good commended itself. The greatest music, or architecture, or poetry, and the best fun of the last five years; Chartres Cathedral and Dan Leno; he knew them both for what they. were. Ready to acknowledge excellence wherever he saw it, he found no necessity to condemn Wagner because he liked Handel, or Dickens because he loved Meredith. “What is best he firmly lit upon, as birds on sprays:” and how full his life was the pages that precede these have amply shown. I have said nothing about his attitude towards religion, except that it could be divined. The fact is, that only on the rarest occasions was it spoken of between us. One such occasion was the eve of Walter Fletcher’s marriage, when Eustace and I, late in the evening, walked about the garden of Ellergreen, and spoke of James McBryde, then quite recently dead. He then told me something of what he thought and had seen of death: how easy