Hooded figure with cross on forearm

You will laugh when I tell you the bishop's man came round again about the figure for the Hallam chapel. He wanted the hood lowered and the hands made to look less like a fist, as if the penitent were a boxer. I told him the hands are clasped because the man is praying, and a praying man's hands do look a bit like a fist if you have never sat in a pew. He did not care for that. Still, the oak was good, the grain running straight from crown to hem, and I have carved the cross behind him from the same plank so the two stand together.

The blue cloth was the difficulty. Mr Asquith's girl, Ada, who is to be married at Michaelmas, came to the workshop with a bolt of indigo wool she had been dyeing for her trousseau and asked if she might paint the drape herself. I said no, then I said yes, because her hands were steadier than mine that week. She sat on the shavings for three afternoons with a brush no thicker than a hair and laid the blue in thin layers, letting each dry, the way you would iron a shirt. When she finished, the folds looked wet.

The rosary goes across his waist in beads of boxwood. Ada asked me to leave one bead loose so it would click when the chapel door opened. I thought it fussy until the wedding morning, when I stood at the back with my cap in my hands and the door swung and that one small bead knocked against the chain. The whole church turned to look at the figure rather than the bride, which Ada said was exactly what she wanted.

Come up at Easter. The figure goes in on Friday and the blue will be dry by then.

Your brother, Edwin