Under St Paul's: A Romance — Story, Setting & Ideas

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Authors: Dowling, Richard, 1846-1898 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2013 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; St. Paul's Cathedral (London, England) -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 110,929

Reading time 483 min

Text sections 11

For Under St Paul's: A Romance — Story, Setting & Ideas, the stored edition analysis reports 110,929 words, 8 hr 3 min estimated reading time, and 11 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 14.0 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Man-woman relationships -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #42600

Richard Dowling's 1885 romance opens with a New York boarding-house reunion, then shifts to London's St. Paul's precincts. The narrative voice alternates between brisk dialogue and philosophical debate, notably in a lengthy exchange on Newton and poetry that reveals contrasting temperaments.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg42600

Read the Text

A LESSON IN FLIRTATION,

FROM WESTMINSTER TO THE CRITERION,

FROM STRATFORD TO PETER'S ROW,

AN IDLE EVENING AND NIGHT,

AN OLD FRIEND AND A NEW ACQUAINTANCE,

THE PILGRIMAGE TO ST PAUL'S,

MARIE'S PROMISE TO MRS OSBORNE,

AFTER DINNER AT HOME,

CONSERVATORY CONSPIRATORS,

OSBORNE'S FINAL RESOLUTION,

WHEN MY GEORGE IS AWAY,

_SATURN SHALL BE KING_.

'"Roast beef, roast pork, mutton pie, or hash?" Ah, I thought so! When we last met-for we have met three or four times, if I am not mistaken--we were more familiar with those words than good Mrs Barclay's hospitable inquiry. Have you been much around since we sat at that boarding-house mahogany in New York?'

The beautiful head was raised, the brilliant face was turned to the speaker, the dark eyes were fixed upon his face, and the girl answered, with good-humoured ease,--

'Yes, I have travelled a good deal since we met at New York last year.'

'Ah, so have I!' said the thin, dark, restless young man opposite her, who had spoken first. The company had been only a few minutes seated at the Sunday dinner of Mrs Barclay's private hotel, situate in Peter's Row, hard by the Cathedral of St Paul's, London. 'I have been,' continued the lank, dark-faced man, speaking with assurance and rapidity, 'all over the States, all over Canada, in Spain and Algiers, since. I am going to India and China; and then I am going--' He paused.

'Into a gas retort, to get cremated.'

'How horrible!' cried white-haired Mrs Barclay, from the head of the table.

'How dreadful!' cried the other ladies, four in number.

'Alive, of course! There is no fun in going anywhere when one is dead.'

'Do you speak from experience?' she asked.

'No--observation. Look at all the mutton-headed, numskull, leaden-blooded, dead dolts you find crawling through life everywhere you go, and particularly in England; you don't mean to say they have any fun, do you?'

The girl laughed again, a low soft laugh, that fell upon the ear like a message of comfort.

'Pray, sir,' said a solid-looking man at the foot of the table, 'is your knowledge of England so large that you are able to describe the character of the people in such flattering terms?'

'I have been about a good deal in England; altogether a couple of years. But, my dear sir, you are not to judge by time alone; you must take into account the capacity of the observer as well. Now I am very quick at observing.'

'So I _perceive_,' said the other, at which there was a faint titter.

The dark man did not heed the interruption, beyond smiling a good-humoured welcome to the slight repartee, and went on. 'I am a cosmopolite. I belong to the family of man. My native country is the earth; and I have been a good bit over my native country. This is my tenth visit to London. I have been three weeks in London this time.' Looking across the table at the dark-eyed girl, he said,--'I do think it was a fair specimen of observation that I knew you when you came into the room. You arrived this morning, I believe?'

'I arrived last night.'

It seemed she could not speak without smiling.

'Stop. I have a memory for facts as well as for faces. I can recall your name. Taking into account all the people I have met since, I do think it good to be able to recall your name. Your name is Irish--O'Connor.'

'No, Scotch--Gordon.'

'Ah! And your Christian name is Italian--Luigia.'

There was a general laugh.

'Wonderfully accurate!' said the gentleman at the foot of the table.

'Well,' said the dark man, 'I admit I am not good at names, but I am at facts. Now, I remember that in New York you had a maid.'

'I have her still. She goes everywhere with me. She is Irish. Her name is O'Connor--Judith O'Connor.'

'I knew there was something Irish and O'Connorish about you. She has black hair and dark eyes, and a pert nose and perter manner.'

'Yes; but it would not be prudent for you to say these things about her nose and her manner to herself.'

'I'm not very prudent, but I know that. Let me see if I cannot remember something more of you. You are a kind of specimen woman of humanity.'

Continue Reading →

The novel begins not under St. Paul's but in a New York boarding-house, where a young woman and a restless man recognize each other across a Sunday dinner table. The opening line—'Roast beef, roast pork, mutton pie, or hash?'—immediately establishes a tone of mundane familiarity, yet the conversation quickly turns to travel and displacement. The narrative voice is brisk, relying on sharp dialogue to advance character and situation. Within the first pages, the setting shifts to London's Peter's Row, hard by St. Paul's Cathedral, grounding the romance in a specific urban geography.

Dowling's prose is efficient, favoring direct speech over descriptive exposition. The early chapters move at a conversational pace, with characters defined by what they say and how they say it. The voice is neither ornate nor plain, but attentive to social nuance and the rhythms of polite exchange.

Dialogue as Driver

The excerpts reveal a novel propelled by talk. The opening scene is almost entirely dialogue, with minimal narrative intrusion. Characters are introduced through their manner of speaking: the 'thin, dark, restless young man' speaks first, his words marked by a knowing familiarity ('Ah, I thought so!'). The woman responds with 'good-humoured ease,' her tone measured. Dowling uses dialogue to convey backstory, social position, and temperament without authorial commentary. The boarding-house setting—Mrs Barclay's private hotel—is sketched only through the menu and the mahogany table, leaving the reader to infer atmosphere from the exchange. This technique creates a sense of immediacy but also of restraint; the narrator rarely steps in to interpret. The effect is a narrative that feels theatrical, dependent on the interplay of voices.

A Philosophical Interlude

Later in the excerpts, the pace shifts dramatically. A character named Parkinson delivers a sustained monologue on Newton, science, and poetry, spanning several paragraphs. The language becomes more formal and abstract: 'gigantic solar landscapes,' 'mountains of flaming hydrogen springing two thousand miles into space.' The conversational rhythm gives way to a lecture-like cadence. Osborne, the listener, responds with 'uneasy' interjections, and the exchange ends with a deflation—Parkinson 'lay back in his chair with the air of fatigue.' This section is markedly different in voice from the opening: less concerned with social realism, more with intellectual debate. The contrast suggests a novel that alternates between drawing-room naturalism and discursive set-pieces, a structural feature worth noting.

Changes in Pace and Register

The excerpts show Dowling modulating between two registers: the clipped, idiomatic dialogue of the opening and the elevated, argumentative prose of the Newton discussion. The latter includes a quotation from Newton ('I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore') and a rebuttal of its conventional interpretation. The vocabulary becomes Latinate ('prodigious history,' 'firmament'), and the sentences lengthen. This shift is not merely stylistic but signals a change in narrative purpose—from establishing character to exploring ideas. The reader must adjust to these tonal shifts, which may recur throughout the novel. The presence of such a sustained philosophical passage in the early chapters suggests that Dowling uses digression as a deliberate device, perhaps to deepen character or to introduce themes of faith, science, and imagination.

Readers should attend to how Dowling manages transitions between conversational and discursive modes. The novel's voice is not uniform; it moves between the particular and the general, the social and the speculative. The excerpts offer no resolution, but they establish a pattern of contrast—between characters, between registers, between the intimate and the cosmic. This editorial note is based solely on the supplied text; the full work may complicate or confirm these observations.

Under St Paul's has that old boarding-house warmth, that talk of Newton and poetry between friends, which always makes me think of those German emigrants and their quieter wanderings. Both carry that sense of people finding their footing in unfamiliar places. There is a kinship there, a shared patience. The wanderings and fortunes of some German emigrants — Context and Discussion sits beside it on my shelf, a gentle echo.