The Romance of Zion Chapel

The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d
ed.]
by Richard Le Gallienne

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Title: The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.]
Author: Richard Le Gallienne
Release Date: February 5, 2004 [EBook #10949]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE ROMANCE OF
ZION CHAPEL

By
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
1898

TO
TWO IN HEAVEN
AND
TWO ON EARTH.

Contents
I. OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES II. INTRODUCES
MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL III. OF ELI MOGGRIDGE
AND THE NEW SPIRIT IV. ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY V.
OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS VI. OF A
WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN VII. THE LITERARY AND
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER. VIII. THE PLOT
AGAINST COALCHESTER IX. "THE DAWN" X. HOW THEY
BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO
COALCHESTER XI. A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY XII. HOW THE
RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION XIII. IN
WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE XIV. THE GREAT
EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE XV. JENNY'S BOTTOM
DRAWER XVI. THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME XVII. "O THAT 'T
WERE POSSIBLE..." XVIII. ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS
XIX. PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS XX.
IN WHICH JENNY CRIES XXI. IN WHICH JENNY IS
MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED XXII. THE TRYST LETHEAN
XXIII. JENNY'S LYING IN STATE XXIV. THE BEGINNING OF
THE PILGRIMAGE--A MESSAGE FROM JENNY XXV. JENNY'S

POSTE RESTANTE XXVI. FURTHER CONCERNING
THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY XXVII.
ISABEL CALLING XXVIII. BACK IN ZION PLACE XXIX. AND
SUDDENLY THE LAST

The Romance of Zion Chapel
CHAPTER I
OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES
On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty,
hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there
stands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region of
disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway
embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely
obscuring the few meadows and trees that in this desolate land do duty
for a countryside. The dull workmen's streets that here abruptly present
unfinished ends to the universe must console themselves with the
gasometer. And indeed they seem more than content. For a street
boasting the best view, as it runs out its sordid line longer than the rest,
is proudly called Gasometer Street. Some of the streets that are denied
the gasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years
perhaps, yet long since drearily old,--with the unattractive antiquity of
old iron and old clothes,--round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can
only describe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased in
weather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words
"New Zion," and the streets about it are named accordingly: Zion
Passage, Zion Alley, Zion Walk, Zion Street. There is a house too
which had been lucky enough to call itself Zion View, the very
morning before the house at the corner had contemplated doing the
same. At Zion View lived and still lives Mr. Moggridge, the huge,
good-natured, guffawing pillar of New Zion,--on whom, at the moment,
however, we will not call.
A nice dull place, you may say, from which to issue invitations to a

romance. Well, of course, it must seem so if pretty places are the
reader's idea of romance. Curiously enough, the preference of the Lady
Romance herself is for just such dull places. These dreary,
soot-begrimed streets are the very streets she loves best to appear in, on
a sudden, some astonished day, with a sound of silk skirts and a spring
wind of attar of roses. Contrast, surprise,--these are her very soul. Dull
places and bright people,--these she loves to bring together, and watch
for laughter and tears. You are never safe from Romance, and the place
to seek her is never the place where she was last found.
Well, at all events, it is to Gasometer Street and New Zion that you are
respectfully invited, and before you decline the invitation with a shrug,
I will tell you this about the gasometer. The romantic eyes of one of the
greatest French poets once looked on that gasometer! I won't pretend
that they dwelt there, but look on it they once did--the eyes of that great,
sad, scandalous, religious French poet--on a night of weary rain that set
someone quoting,--also in that