DOI Artikel:
Harland, Henry: Cousin Rosalys
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26392#0040
36 Cousin Rosalys
that epoch, for both of us, Aunt Elizabeth’s lightest words were
in the nature of decrees, she was such a terrible old lady.
I’m sure I don’t know why she was terrible, I don’t know how
she contrived it; she never said anything, never did anything,
especially terrifying ; she wasn’t especially wise or especially witty
—intellectually, indeed, I suspect she might have passed for a
paragon of respectable commonplaceness : but I do know that
everybody stood in awe of her. I suppose it must simply have
been her atmosphere, her odylic force; a sort of metaphysical chill
that enveloped her, and was felt by all who approached her—
“some people are like that.” Everybody stood in awe of her,
everybody deferred to her : relations, friends, even her Director,
and the cloud of priests that pervaded her establishment and gave
it its character. For, like so many other old ladies who lived in
Rome in those days, my Aunt Elizabeth was nothing if not
Catholic, if not Ecclesiastical. You would have guessed as much,
I think, from her exterior. She looked Catholic, she looked Eccle-
siastical. There was something Gothic in her anatomy, in the
architecture of her face : in her high-bridged nose, in the pointed
arch her hair made as it parted above her forehead, in her promi-
nent cheek-bones, her straight-lipped mouth and long attenuated
chin, in the angularities of her figure. No doubt the simile must
appear far-sought, but upon my word her face used to remind me
of a chapel—a chapel built of marble, fallen somewhat into decay.
I’m not sure whether she was a tall woman, or whether she only
had a false air of tallness, being excessively thin and holding her-
self rigidly erect. She always dressed in black, in hard black silk
cut to the severest patterns. Somehow, the very jewels she wore
—not merely the cross on her bosom, but the rings on her fingers,
the watch-chain round her neck, her watch itself, her old-fashioned,
gold-faced watch—seemed of a mode canonical.
She
that epoch, for both of us, Aunt Elizabeth’s lightest words were
in the nature of decrees, she was such a terrible old lady.
I’m sure I don’t know why she was terrible, I don’t know how
she contrived it; she never said anything, never did anything,
especially terrifying ; she wasn’t especially wise or especially witty
—intellectually, indeed, I suspect she might have passed for a
paragon of respectable commonplaceness : but I do know that
everybody stood in awe of her. I suppose it must simply have
been her atmosphere, her odylic force; a sort of metaphysical chill
that enveloped her, and was felt by all who approached her—
“some people are like that.” Everybody stood in awe of her,
everybody deferred to her : relations, friends, even her Director,
and the cloud of priests that pervaded her establishment and gave
it its character. For, like so many other old ladies who lived in
Rome in those days, my Aunt Elizabeth was nothing if not
Catholic, if not Ecclesiastical. You would have guessed as much,
I think, from her exterior. She looked Catholic, she looked Eccle-
siastical. There was something Gothic in her anatomy, in the
architecture of her face : in her high-bridged nose, in the pointed
arch her hair made as it parted above her forehead, in her promi-
nent cheek-bones, her straight-lipped mouth and long attenuated
chin, in the angularities of her figure. No doubt the simile must
appear far-sought, but upon my word her face used to remind me
of a chapel—a chapel built of marble, fallen somewhat into decay.
I’m not sure whether she was a tall woman, or whether she only
had a false air of tallness, being excessively thin and holding her-
self rigidly erect. She always dressed in black, in hard black silk
cut to the severest patterns. Somehow, the very jewels she wore
—not merely the cross on her bosom, but the rings on her fingers,
the watch-chain round her neck, her watch itself, her old-fashioned,
gold-faced watch—seemed of a mode canonical.
She