. Colourful images Sir: I enjoyed Patrick Skene Catling's arti-
cle (5 February) but none of the examples he gave of novelists' use of colour can com- pare with an extract from the second chapter of Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, where colour is actually evoked as a living force, The scene is the Stadhouse in Rotterdam, the occasion an evening celebration for the Duke of Burgundy (and Earl of Holland) where Gerard the hero, a manuscript illuminator and future father of Erasmus, comes to compete in his art.
`The courtyard was laid, out in tables loaded with rich meats, and piled with gorgeous plate. Guests in rich and various costumes sat beneath a leafy canopy of fresh-cut branches fastened tastefully to golden, silver, and blue silken cords that traversed the area; and fruits of many hues, including some artificial ones of gold,- silver, and wax, hung pendant, or peeped like fair eyes among the green leaves of plane-trees and lime-trees. The evening sun darted its fires through those bright and purple wine spouts, making them jets and cascades of molten rubies; then passing on, tinged with the blood of the grape, shed crimson here and there on fair faces, snowy beards, velvet, satin, jewelled hilts, glowing gold, gleaming silver and sparkling glass.'
Caroline Ackroyd
Nutfield, Weald, Sevenoaks, Kent
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