City and Suburban
By JOHN BETJEMAN
IT TRESPASSED behind the red curtain at the east of St. Paul's Cathedral to have a look at the stained glass which has been inserted there. When the new baldachino is revealed the stained glass beyond it is likely to be the focal point of the whole Cathedral, so that its design and colour are most important. Wren intended that his organ screen should shut off the choir from the dome and nave, and many would like to see the organ case put back in its original position. But since, for some unknown reason, this cannot be, the stained glass must be something to which Wren would not have objected—though he never put stained glass in any of his city churches, nor in St. Paul's. I do not think he would have ob- jected to the glass Mr. Brian Thomas has de- signed. It has a seventeenth-century flavour about it in 'both its colour and texture. It has rich golds and purples and reds, a modern equivalent of the work of the Van Linges in the college chapels at Oxford. The Crucifixion in the middle window of the apse should be visible from the west end of the Cathedral. It is a great relief that this glass is dark and seventeenth-century-looking, for I had feared we were going to see anemic modern patterns isolated in seas of clear glass, such as deface many old churches in the city and elsewhere which have been restored since the war. St. Paul's has set a better example.
THE FLOUNCE OF A SEA WAVE
Mr. Maxwell Knight, the naturalist, has made me a present of a large, live millipede from Africa. Except that it has to be kept in a tempera- ture of seventy degrees, its gives no trouble. It lives on lettuce leaves and apple cores and pieces of fruit. It has a charming face, rather like a seal, with two large black eyes, and the move- ments of its legs are a wonder to watch, like the flounce of a gea wave undulating over a long shore. It is quite harmless and does not sting. When it is frightened it gives off rather a nasty smell and I do not yet know how much it can be tamed. When I think of the trouble and ex- pense people go to over tropical fish I cannot understand why millipedes should not be equally popular as pets.
FORTUNATE WELLS
It is good to learn from the Wells Journal that the city of Wells is thinking of buying Stoberry Park on its outskirts. This is probably because a quite unworthy speculative building estate in red brick, clashing in scale and texture with the old stone city and destroying fine trees, has risen in a vulnerable part of its outskirts. Wells is for- tunate in being surrounded by real country which creeps up to its streets just as it did when Dean Alford apostrophised it a century ago from the Mendip Hills :
How grand beneath the feet that company
Of steep gray roofs and clustering pinnacles Of the massy lane, brooding in majesty
Above the town that spreads among the dells.
To destroy the countrified character of its setting with red-brick suburbs would be to damage the tourist trade of the city, which must be con- siderable.
ENVOI
This is the last paragraph I shall be writing in 'City and Suburban.' I have not been sacked, but the effort, week after week, of compiling this column is proving too much for me. I am ex- tremely grateful to so many correspondents who have told me of projected destructions and van- • dalisms all over the country to which I have been able to draw attention. I am even grateful to those many correspondents I have infuriated, for at least I have stirred them enough to write and their letters have generally been published. I was particularly glad at one time to have stirred so placid a writer as Mr. Graham Hough into a positively interesting fury. Goodbye to you all.
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