Wednesday, July 20, 2016

A Cathedral Courtship - Kate Douglas Wiggin


What a charming little book this is.  My friend Katrina had mentioned it a while ago and it was available from Project Gutenberg, so I downloaded it and forgot about it.  But I recently felt the need to read something old, something not new, I guess you could say I borrowed this from Gutenberg, and definitely not something blue.  I was already feeling that.  Then I remembered this.

A young woman and her aunt are on a tour of English cathedrals.  They meet a young architect from Boston who is also touring cathedrals and making drawings of them.  The two young people are attracted to each other, but are hesitant to admit that to each other.  And they are cautious not to let the aunt know how they feel until she gets to know the young man.

There are sweet scenes, like the one where Kitty is frightened by a bull in a field and flees to the young man's arms.  It is only a cow, but neither will admit that.  Kitty is instructed to enter impressions and facts about the cathedrals into the notebook her aunt gave her, but she seldom has much to say about them.  All her attention in on the young man.

This book is quite short, a novella really.  But it was a lovely intermission in my reading and life.


4 comments:

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    1. It was a sweet book. Sometimes I just need that kind of thing.

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  2. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I always worry that other people might really dislike the really old obscure books I sometimes read.

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    1. Oh, everyone has their own tastes. I like a lot of those old obscure books. If nothing else, they're quaint. I plan to read other Kate Douglas Wiggin books, some of which seem to be in a similar vein.

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