Friday, October 01, 2010

12May1873, Bishop's Palace of Chichester

CHICHESTER, Monday, May 12th, 1873.
—Here I am at the Palace of Chichester. Having been put, rather willy-nilly, on the Bishop Otter College Committee, I cd not resist an invitation from Mrs. Durnford to attend a meeting to-morrow. A dream of delight to my Cockney eyes was the Palace as I drove up to it under a "sunbright" sky: the tall glorious cathedral, spire-towering above, the green gardens, the quaint old house....
The Bp. a dear, kind, very episcopal old man, wife nice and homely, daughter lively. Poor old Dean Hook dined ; he is terribly unwieldy and infirm, and can't sit upright. On collapsing into his chair after a prodigious business—"sic a-getting up stair"—he puffed and panted most desperately, and then broke out in a funny laugh at himself.

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