THE OLD LADY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20703, 29 April 1929, Page 18

THE OLD LADY.

It is neither for sermon nor for music, for stained glass or for architecture that I go to a certain church in Dublin, hut to see the old lady. For the old lady is in herself a benediction. She is, too, a mystery. I haVe no idea who she is; I, have passed her once or twice and she has looked at me so ■ benignly,''so shrewdly, so whimsically, that I knew she recognised me from those glances in church, for we sit at - right'angles; she in the nave and I in a transept. The old lady is like- Tennyson’s “Maud,” she; “ sits by a pillar alone.” She never seems to have any relations with her, hut she always makes room, so Jvindly, so suavely for the couple who share her pew. They are always late and she is always in good time. Indeed, I have never seen her arrive for I am usually late, too.I do not think she is classically beautiful or handsome. But I know that Franz Hals would have loved to paint her. He would, have given every wrinkle its due value. He would have brought out that whimsical, benignant shrewdness in her eyes, for you feel that she would see all your faults at the 'moment that she saw their excuses, or the feeble little virtues that oppose them. - One would declare that she is a grandmother, for she seems the ideal grandmother. Children should be about her skirts and at her knee, listening to stories and rhymes and quaint sayings of which it seems certain she has a store. And yeh it Is possible that she is childless, even imaginable that she never married; that instead she is a grandmother in spirit, giving herself out to all children. To sec her sing is as lovely as to watch her pray. Often when I have thought the hymn stupid and commonplace, and the tune insipid, I have caught sight of the old lady, and seen her rapt, standing at Heaven’s gate, looking within. Her voice when it reaches those gates must he beautiful as a lark’s. And when she prays she speaks to God. For her there is no need to change the Prayer Book, she puts her own heart and soul into the familiar collects. Then in the sermon she is all kind attention. I think, she must always be wiser than the preacher, for her face has the light of wisdom on it and she looks very old in experience and thought. She has heeded George Herbert’s “ Church Porch.” I am certain she says “ Judge not the Preacher.” But still that humorous mouth must smile at times over the foibles of clergy and congregation. One feels that nothing could escape her. She is no sentimentalist. I believe she could be.ironic if one deserved it. The old lady’s dress is one of the delights of church-going. She sets her own fashion, and I am sure she has her own dressmaker-who understands “Madam’s style.” I believe, too, that Madam is very careful and particular about the details of her Sunday drosses. There is the purple velvet pelisse trimmed with soft dark fur. She wears it with a velvet bonnet trimmed with purple pansies. She has strings tied, under her chin. And there is the grey mantle, made in a style quite her own, with a bonnet with soft feathers at one side. Her dresses are rich and pleasing. She wears them to please. I invent endless stories about the old lady. I wonder where she lives, what she is like out of church, who she knows, what she does. Is she fond of Bridge, or does she play Patience in the evening? I could find out all these things by describing her to the rector of the church and asking him about her. But I hesitate. Should 1 spoil my own romance? Isow.'l have the excitement of wonder. She remains unique—“the old lady,” pattern for all grandmothers, an inspiration to artists, a modern Franz Hals. It may be that you have, seen my old lady. W. M. Letts, in the Spectator.