The Tale of the Second House: Abbotsford
Yesterday, I shared my reaction to “rat house” and the ugliness I saw there. Now with the addition of a lovely stained glass window of Joan of Arc rescued from a modernizing monastery “rat house” is Saint Joan’s!
That summer of first living in Rat House, my wife and I visited England and toured Abbotsford, the home of the great eighteenth century author Sir Walter Scott. He built a castle that only Walt Disney could have surpassed full of odd corners, secrets doors, and historical oddities. It sits on the River Tweed and is surrounded by flowers and green trees.
The older ladies who volunteer cook home-made soup and serve delicious scones with real butter. While buying a book, a woman wearing perfect tweed approached. It was Lady Scott, a direct descendent of Sir Walter himself and I lost the ability to speak. My wife can testify that I have met many celebrities, but had not been at a loss for words, but here was something special. Lady Scott was beautiful and secure in her place. Abbotsford was beautiful and perfectly in tune with the beauty of God’s creation around it.
It was too much beauty to stand.
Just remembering Abbotsford makes me happy. When Lady Scott was alive, it cheered me up just to imagine her quietly serving tea in a cozy, but tasteful room overlooking her great green lawn while sitting in a comfortable, but elegant chair. Just remembering the garage of rat house gives me the shivers.
I don’t think the beauty of Abbotsford was in my mind before I went, but that I recognized it when I saw it. It doesn’t seem likely a normal, healthy person would choose an experience of my garage over Abbotsford. One sight seems beautiful, of God, and the other seems part of the wages of sinful living.
Our Reaction to the Two Houses Suggests Beauty is Real
The images of these two houses are both in my mind . . . and now are in the minds of anyone who reads this. One is an image of great ugliness and the other of serene beauty. I am sure beyond a reasonable doubt that a childhood at Abbotsford would be good for the aesthetic part of the soul. I believe, passionately believe, that children forced to grow up in a Rat House, given things to watch the artistic equivalent of two-dead-rats-in-a-trap-with-maggots every day, would be scarred. More to the point, when I was making my own choices about beauty, assuming that it was all a matter of taste, my sincerity did not protect me from doing the same thing to myself.