Of Philip Quarles's father old John Bidlake used to say that he was like one of those baroque Italian churches with sham facades. High, impressive, bristling with classical orders, broken pedimenta and statuary, the facade seems to belong to a great cathedral. But look more closely and you discover that it is only a screen. Behind the enormous and elaborate front there crouches a wretched little temple of brick and rubble and scabby plaster. And warming to his simile, John Bidlake would describe the unshaven priest gabbling the office, the snotty little acolyte in his unwashed surplice, the congregation of goitrous peasant women and their brats, the cretin begging at the door, the tin crowns on the images, the dirt on the floor, the stale smell of generations of pious humanity.
"Why is it," he concluded, forgetting that he was making an uncomplimentary comment on his own successes, "that women always needs must love the lowest when they see it -- or rather him? Curious. Particularly in this case. One would have given Rachel Quarles too much sense to be taken in by such a vacuum."
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