[In the nave of Winchester Cathedral. A man stands at a mirror, allowing the viewer to study and admire the vaulting of the ceiling without cracking a vertebra in one’s upper neck. Photo is mine.]

Winchester Cathedral

You’re bringing me down

You stood and you watched as

My baby left town.

~~New Vaudeville Band

It was the mid-afternoon on Monday, October 14, that we stood in the drizzle, at one of the gates that opened to the churchyard of this interesting and very awesome cathedral. Somewhere in the vicinity was a footpath. Not just any path leading from just another lawn in front just another church. No, indeed. This path took off to the east and didn’t end until a weary rambler, or pilgrim, stood at the front door of Canterbury Cathedral. This was the start of the famous route that was immortalized by Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1380 – 1390), one of the most important literary pieces in English Literature.

Try memorizing the Prologue in Middle English if you have nothing to do for a year.

However, we were not in the mood to walk for three months. Maybe someday, but not on this day. We were here, on our way to Wimborne, Dorset, to visit the graves of two people. One was a soldier who did a bad thing on a hot day. The other, a woman who changed the course of literature.

Let’s discuss Thomas Thetcher first, if you don’t mind.

[The tombstone of Thomas Thetcher. As you can read, his death is a cautionary tale. Photo is mine.]

The unfortunate Grenadier should have known better than to drink a small beer on a hot day. Perhaps he was caught off guard by the fact that a day in mid-May, in England, shouldn’t be that hot. But it was and he paid the price for his actions. I’m wondering about his mates. Didn’t they try to stop him? Talk him down? Suggest hard cider? (ick).

Let’s leave poor Thomas out in the chill and rain and go inside, have a gentle argument about why we weren’t willing to go to an ATM to get cash (because the credit card/tap thing was down) just to visit one other grave. In the end we paid the entry fee in pounds. Once inside we headed to her grave. It’s in the floor, to the left of the transept.

[Jane Austen’s brass memorial. Photo taken by Mariam Voutsis]

Of course, this is one of the most popular woman author of the early 19th century. On the floor, in black stone is a large slab over her actual grave. The inscription was likely, but not proven, composed by her father. In it, he gets his name mentioned a few times. He was an important guy, after all. But it says nothing of her writings. Nothing. Makes you wonder.

I left Mariam to write her thoughts in a book while I scoped out the location of the Gents room. On the way back, I saw the entry to the crypt. Standing at the top step of a narrow and steep seven steps below, I felt a cold breeze drifting up the stairs. I went down. Whoa, I thought. It looked like the crypt was flooded. Was that water? It was. And it was as still and silent as a sheet of highly reflective glass. Interesting, I thought. Why the water?

Then I looked further. It was an art exhibit. It was overwhelming in it’s serenity, it’s spooky nature and it’s quiet sublime beauty.

Look for yourself:

[A solitary figure of a man. The crypt of Winchester Cathedral. Photo is mine.]

I would have lingered. Mariam and I, however, had to be miles away to check in at a hotel in Wimborne, Dorset. I used to live there in the 1980s, as many of you know. I wanted to return to that charming town to gather more information and visit a few more places I somehow never got around to see…back in the day.

Here is a last look of the interior of the Cathedral. I love the simple unadorned aspects of Winchester. I’ll come back some day…to visit once again, the grave of poor Thomas, the Grenadier. And, of course, sit beside the last resting place of a woman who changed things for women writers for generations.

[Video is mine]