The Cathedral Town

What is it about those small cathedral towns, which in England are by definition cities, no matter how tiny? Recalling those idealized places of perpetually mild weather and well-mannered people brings peace of mind. The small English town, typically with or nearby a cathedral, is the setting of many popular novels and PBS-broadcasted dramas. In such a series, there might be a murder or two, but the understated, even genteel violence is a small splash caused by a perfectly rounded stone skimmed across a pond.

A town like this that I most recently visited was Dorchester, on the River Thames. It doesn’t have a cathedral, but it is the site of an abbey. We were on our way to somewhere else, but we stopped in because my partner Laura’s father fondly remembered its abbey from his time serving with the USAAF in the forties. We studied the abbey’s interior, talked to some people, then returned to the car. We didn’t exactly rush, but we also didn’t linger. Even so, the feel of that afternoon stays with me, along with all the small English communities that preceded it in my experience, my reading and television viewing.

Geographical locations endure in our lives as physical representations for our states of mind. We aren’t granted lasting stays in any one of them, not even our mental cathedral towns. Most of us would get bored if we actually lived in such a place. Why else do tales set in small English towns so often involve murder? And how else did I end up, after growing up in the suburbs, here in the heart of New York City? We may be seekers after peace, but we are driven by drama. Still, I’m always glad when I find myself back in the cathedral town in my mind.

This will be my last post for a month or more as we prepare for our upcoming trip to northeast Italy. I’ve never been to Italy before, though I’ve read any number of novelists and poets from that once fragmented peninsula, as well as listened to its music. I wonder what new places will establish themselves in my mind’s geography.