the Tyndals and Mrs. Senter.

At nine I had the pleasure of meeting the fair Gwendolen again, in one
of the most remarkable rooms you can imagine. Sir Lionel had engaged it
in advance, to be our private sitting-room, but it is as celebrated as
it is interesting. Only think, Charles Kingsley wrote "Westward Ho!" in
it, and it is such a quaint and beautiful room, it must have given him
inspiration. You see, the hotel used to be the house of a merchant
prince who was a great importer of tobacco in Queen Elizabeth's days; so
it isn't strange that it should have many fine rooms; but the one where
Kingsley wrote is the best. It's sad that the oak panelling should be
ruined with paint and varnish; but nothing short of an earthquake could
spoil the ceiling, which is the famous feature. The merchant prince
hired two Italians to come to England and make the wonderful mouldings
by hand. That was long before the days of cement, so the fantastic
shapes had to be fastened to each other and the ceiling with copper
wire. When the skilled workmen had finished their fruits and flowers and
leaves, and all the weird fancies which signified the evolution of Man,
the canny merchant prince promptly packed the Italians back again to
their native land, lest other merchant princes should employ them to
repeat the marvellous ceiling for their houses! By this thoughtful act,
he secured for himself the one and only specimen of the kind; and to
this day nobody has ever been able to copy it, though the attempt has
often been made. The marvellous part is the startlingly high relief of
the mouldings, and the quaintness of the evolutionary ideas, all those
centuries before Darwin.

It was rather disappointing to find out that the beautiful ceiling had
nothing to do with Charles Kingsley's wish to use the room as a study.
It was in the time of the present landlord's grandfather, who owned a
quantity of rare old books, records of Bideford's past, and Mr. Kingsley
wanted to refer to them. But their owner valued them too much to lend,
even to such a man as Charles Kingsley. "You must come and write in the
room," said he. So Kingsley came and wrote in the room, and liked it and
the books so much that he gave a glowing account of both to Froude, who
presently arrived and used the remarkable room for _his_ study, too.

The books are there still, carefully put away; and a portrait of the
good Mayor of Westward Ho! (the novel, not its namesake town) which was