“Cambridge Avenue”

“But if there was a street that loudly trumpeted one’s arrival in royal lands, that passed the gates leading into the aristocratic residences, to the locus of wealth and prestige, where a silent decree required that one leave behind any semblance of, or association with, middle-class life before entering the precinct, it was Cambridge Avenue. Saint Dunstan’s Episcopal Church, a tasteful, white-clad building with a traffic-light-red pair of front doors, occupied a prominent site on Cambridge. Here the wealthy elite gathered on Sunday mornings to rise and kneel, kneel and rise; to listen to a patrician-accented Easterner monotonically recite a passage from the Gospels; to hear the billowy-white, silver-pated choristers try their best to wring some feeling out of an insipid hymn that must have been composed by a morose cleric on a soggy Yorkshire winter’s day; and to struggle to keep alert through a sermon whose verbosity and subtle message tested all patience. But they kept coming back, not only because it was de rigueur, one had to go to church and be seen there, but for the coffee hour during which everyone had a chance to drink watery coffee and munch Pepperidge Farm cookies but, more importantly, exchange the latest gossip, admire one another’s fur coats, commiserate about husbands, brag about Caribbean trips, lament the cost of good gardeners, and explore other vital and enriching topics.”