ABSTRACT
This is a serious room, sturdy and solid, with a slightly musty smell like a certain kind of old Victorian church. You breathe in more deeply and you can tell that it’s not a church, it is just a similar smell to it, highly evocative in the way that some smells are. It almost controls your emotions, in a way that Marcel Proust would surely recognise. You find yourself lowering the tone of your voice as you go through the door, quite unconsciously; as if you know that you are entering a solemn place, perhaps more a court rather than a church. This is Victorian splendour, in that modern Gothic style, presumably designed to remind you of order and position and hierarchy. The smell alone sees to that.
