Highways and Byways in London Part 13

And now for the other side of the picture. I was once, on a "sixpenny day," in the north aisle of Henry VIIth's chapel, admiring the quaint cradle-tomb of that "royal rosebud" of three days old,--Princess Sophia,--and pondering over that strange curse of Stuarts and Tudors, when up came a couple, 'Arry and 'Arriet, of the usual c.o.c.kney honey-mooning type. They were evidently "doing" the London monuments in style, and eschewed free days. The bride seemed tired and somewhat apathetic; she evidently had to be kept severely up to the mark.

"Funny little nipper," said the young man peeping into the cradle: "It's a won'erful big child for three days old," said the bride, with some faint show of interest; and, "my! how silly it _is_ dressed! only fancy, a cap like that there for a byby!" Then they turned to Queen Elizabeth's effigy: "I don't like the looks of 'er," said the lady, with something between a shudder and a giggle: "I come over jes' now so faint," she continued, her pink colour fading: "it's 'ardly' 'elthy in 'ere with all these corpses, is it?.... Wax-works is much nicer; they don't give yer the creeps so. Let's go and 'ave a 'bus ride, an'

give the old Johnny the slip. I think we've 'ad our sixpennorth." So they went, but alas! they had left me their desecration.

Strange, indeed, are Fate's ironies! Queen Elizabeth and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, rest in the two side aisles of Henry VIIth's chapel in stately tombs, much resembling one another, erected, with praiseworthy impartiality, to his "dearest mother" and his "dear sister," by King James I. In the Stuart vault, close to the unhappy Queen of Scots, is buried Lady Arabella Stuart, "childe of woe"; that poor prisoner of the Tower, separated from her loved and just-wedded husband and kept by her cousin James I. in durance vile, till "her reason left her," and she died. Even in death her disgrace followed her, when, for fear of being thought too respectful to one "dying out of royal favour," the authorities dared not even provide her poor body with an adequate coffin! Poor "Ladie Arbell!" Of all the tragedies of English history, none are sadder or more cruel than hers, or reflect, more vividly, the inhumanity of the time.

The interior of Henry VIIth's Chapel,--in its darkened glory of golden light, with its fretted roof, its "walls wrought into universal ornament," its many statues and sculptures, and contrasted dark oak choir stalls, with the banners of their owners, the Knights of the Bath, hanging overhead,--is very fine. In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent tomb of Henry VII., the third founder of the Abbey, who, with much of the feeling of the men who built the Pyramids, determined this as the splendid mausoleum of his race. The monument, enclosed by a screen, or "closure," of gilt copper, is by Torregiano.

Here, with Henry, is buried his wife, Elizabeth of York, in marriage with whom the king finally united the York and Lancaster cause. Hither was brought in state, in 1502, the body of this last Queen of the House of York, dead at twenty-seven, her waxen effigy, with dishevelled hair and Royal robes, lying outside her coffin:

"The first stone of the splendid edifice founded by Henry VII., and which was to contain all the glory of his race, had only been laid a month when his wife, Elizabeth of York, died. She lies in its first grave. More wrote an elegy on the Queen, who died in giving birth to a child in the Tower:--

"Adieu, sweetheart! my little daughter late, Thou shalt, sweet babe, such is thy destiny, Thy mother never know; for here I lie.

At Westminster, that costly work of yours, Mine own dear lord, I now shall never see."

In front of the chantry of his grandparents, is the altar-tomb of Edward VI., the boy-king of sixteen, "flower of the Tudor name"; a small portion of the frieze of his ancient monument, also by Torregiano, has survived Republican zeal, and has been let into the more modern structure.

In one of the five small apsidal chapels at the eastern extremity of the Abbey is Dean Stanley's fine monument, a rec.u.mbent figure, by Boehm. Here, in the "farthest east" of the Abbey that they so loved and lived in, he and his wife, Lady Augusta, "devoted servant of her Queen," rest until the judgment day. The Duke of Buckingham's huge tomb, that almost blocks another of these small chapels, is picturesque: and near it, on the floor of the main building, is a blue slab simply inscribed with the name of "Elizabeth Claypole." Close to the great shrine of Henry and Elizabeth rests peacefully this favourite daughter of Oliver Cromwell, the only member of her family suffered to remain in the Abbey after the Restoration, when the mouldering bodies of her father and his myrmidons were exhumed and hanged at Tyburn, showing the furious brutality, unconquered even by death, of the

--"foolish people, unsounde and ever untreue."

The "great Temple of Silence and Reconciliation," that had condoned so many even greater wrongs, has, here alone, failed to protect its dead.

Henry VIIth's Chapel is now mainly used for such functions as the yearly convocation of the bishops, and for early bi-weekly services for the deanery and its precincts, &c. Its banners are decaying, its stalls are no longer used by the "Knights of the Bath"; and the last banner placed here was that of the Duke of Wellington, in 1804.

As Henry VIIth's Chapel is the mausoleum of the Tudors, so is Edward the Confessor's Chapel that of the Plantagenets. Here the whole s.p.a.ce, indeed, is "paved with kings, queens, and princes, who all wished to rest as near as possible to the miracle-working shrine." In the royal ring of tombs, the treasure, the jewels, the gilt-bronze accessories, and, in some cases, the arms and even the heads of the effigies have been raided at some past time. The beautiful effigy of Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I, that "queen of good memory" who accompanied her lord to the Crusades, and in honour to whom nine monumental crosses were erected in London, still, however, remains intact. "The beautiful features of the dead queen are expressed in the most serene quietude; her long hair waves from beneath the circlet on her brow."

Edward I, the greatest of the Plantagenets, lies near on a bare altar-tomb of grey marble; a plain monument for so great and glorious a being. On the north side are the words: "Scotorum Malleus" (the Hammer of the Scots). At the head of Eleanor, his daughter-in-law, lies Henry III., the "second founder" of the Abbey; "quiet Henry III., our English Nestor," who reigned fifty-six years; his effigy is of gilt bra.s.s. Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V., the ancestress of the Tudor line, rests under the altar of her husband's chantry; she it was whose mummified corpse Pepys records that he kissed in 1668, "reflecting upon it that I did kiss a queene." Queen Philippa of Hainault, her husband Edward III., and the luckless Richard II., complete the royal circle.

Just in front of the screen that stands at the foot of the Confessor's shrine, are the Coronation Chairs. The most battered and ancient of these is the old coronation chair of Edward I, enclosing the famous "Prophetic Stone" or "Stone of Destiny," of Scone; concerning which the Scots believed, that wherever it was carried the supreme power would go with it. Edward I. brought it from Scotland in 1297, in token of the complete subjugation of that country. Every English monarch since then has been crowned in this chair, and Queen Victoria used it at her Jubilee service. The second coronation chair, (made for Queen Mary II., wife of William III.), is only used when kings and queens are crowned together: it was used for Queen Adelaide in 1831; and lately for Queen Alexandra.

Opposite the wooden staircase that descends from the Confessor's Chapel to the ambulatory below, a small doorway leads to the Islip Chapel; where on "free" days, the "Wax Effigies" may be seen. This curious and ghoul-like collection is the outcome of a custom dating from ancient times; the custom of carrying in funeral procession, first, the embalmed body open on the bier, and subsequently, the wax effigy, or portrait model, for the crowd to gaze at; the effigy to rest beside the tomb or monument. Remains of such effigies, broken, mutilated and often unrecognisable, are extant even as far back as Queen Philippa's time; these ghastly fragments are however, not on general view. Eleven wax figures still remain; dirty, but in a tolerable state of preservation; they suggest a very grimy and antiquated Chamber of Horrors. Presumably taken from life, or, in some cases, from a cast after death, they are invaluable as contemporary likenesses. Charles II., an unpleasantly yellow, ogling creature in wig and feathered hat, a ghoulish dandy with the well-known "drop" in his cheeks, confronts us at the top of a narrow wooden stair. If it be difficult to imagine his fascinations,--those of his neighbour, "La Belle Stuart," are a trifle more suggestive; yet here the lady is, surely, no longer very young; and we can hardly connect her with the figure of "Britannia" on our pence, for which it is said she consented to sit as model. Queen Anne's effigy (she died at fifty) is, possibly, flattering; or it may be a more youthful portrait. Her sad, pale face, in her gorgeous dress, suggest remembrances of her eighteen dead children, buried in the Stuart Vault of Henry VIIth's chapel, about the coffin of the Queen of Scots; "pressing in and around, with their acc.u.mulated weight, the ill.u.s.trious dust below." Strange doom of the Stuart race! Were these people merely human and not royal, would not such afflictions win our sympathy? We hear of James II.'s faults--history is reticent about his eleven dead children; of "Good Queen Anne's" virtues,--hardly a word as to her maternal grief. Poor, kindly, amiable queen! as she sits here in her tarnished grandeur, she seems, of a truth, overpowered by the "load,"

--"wellnigh not to be borne, Of the too great orb of her fate."

Mary II., a big woman, nearly six feet in height, towers over her small husband, William III., who, nevertheless, stands on a footstool beside her. Most witch-like of all is the effigy of Queen Elizabeth, (a restoration of the Chapter, in 1760, of the original figure carried at her funeral, which had by then fallen to pieces). The portrait is evidently from a cast taken after death, for it suggests the wasting of disease, the anguish of suffering. The Queen seems haunted and hag-ridden; the wizened and weird appearance of the figure is in horrid contrast with its gay attire; the high-heeled, gold shoes with rosettes, stomacher covered with jewels, and huge ruff of the time. A strange experience, indeed, is this "Islip Chapel"; and one that leaves a lasting impression!

The small chapels round the Confessor's shrine, separated from it by the Ambulatories, are filled with interesting mediaeval tombs, and some bra.s.ses of great beauty. In one of them is the eighteenth-century monument of Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, by Roubiliac, so popular among the Abbey sightseers. This theatrical figure of the skeleton Death hurling a dart at the dying lady, so affrighted, says tradition, an intending robber, that he fled in terror, leaving his crowbar behind.

And I can never leave the Abbey without admiring that lovely figure of the beggar girl holding a baby, in the North Transept, that commemorates, among surrounding politicians and soldiers, the charities of a certain Mrs. Elizabeth Warren, dead in 1816.

How dazzlingly the sunlight of London gleams upon us, as we leave the twilight of the Abbey! We may quit it by the small door of "Poet's Corner," that door where poor, ill-used, foolish Queen Caroline beat in vain and undignified effort for admittance to and partic.i.p.ation in her cruel husband's coronation; dying, one short fortnight afterwards, "of a broken heart." From Poet's Corner we enter upon a pleasant green sward, diversified by the flying b.u.t.tresses that, in grand blackness of London smoke, support the Chapter-House; emerging, presently, into the strange twentieth-century bustle and din of Victoria-Street. Or, going out through the front entrance in the North Transept, ("Solomon's Porch,") we come upon St. Margaret's Church, that building which, beautiful in itself, renders such service to the Abbey, by presenting it to the eye in its true proportions. The ancient cloisters, part of which date from the early conventual buildings here, (a Benedictine house connected with the foundation of the first minster), may be reached, either through a door from the South Aisle, or through the neighbouring "Dean's Yard," a pleasant square of old-fas.h.i.+oned houses, where from time immemorial the merry Westminster boys have played. If the visitor be of an antiquarian, or historical, turn of mind, he may now penetrate to the old "Chapel of the Pyx," a remnant of the earliest times, and the ancient treasure-house of England's Kings; or to the Chapter-House, an octagonal chamber, now restored to its pristine beauty by judicious restoration. If, on the contrary, he merely prefer to wander vaguely, every turn of the cloisters will present to him a new and charming picture. Especially in spring are these cloisters delightful, when the old trees of the courts and closes put on their early green, an innocent green that contrasts so poetically with the crumbling grime of the ancient walls. It is the eternal contrast of Life and of Death.

In this favoured spot, the Canons' houses, the old School of Westminster, and the ecclesiastical precincts generally, are all entangled in a labyrinth of cloisters, difficult to thread, save to the elect. School and church buildings, cloisters, picturesque byways and back streets, seem all here inextricably confused; but this only renders the locality the more attractive. Suddenly, you come upon a bra.s.s door, announcing, in spotless metal, "The Deanery." It is in a quiet court, built up under the Abbey's very shadow; and here, facing you, is the famous "Jerusalem Chamber," a most picturesque building outside, with ancient, crumbling, (happily not "restored,") stones, and painted gla.s.s windows. Here, as told in Shakespeare, King Henry IVth died:

_King Henry_: "Doth any name particular belong Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?"

_Warwick_: "'Tis called Jerusalem, my n.o.ble lord."

_King Henry_: "Laud be to G.o.d! even there my life must end; It hath been prophesied to me many years I should not die but in Jerusalem, Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land; But bear me to that chamber; there I'll lie; In that Jerusalem shall Harry die."

_Henry IVth_, Act IV, Sc. 4.

The Deanery is a low gabled building, with a charming old-world air.

Further on is a small enclosure called "Little Cloisters;" a tiny secluded court where the clergy of the Abbey live. Here is a curious tablet that records the death of a poor sufferer "who through ye spotted veil of ye smallpox rendered up his pure and unspotted soul."

Reached from Dean's Yard by a vaulted pa.s.sage and an ancient gate, is Little Dean's Yard, where is the cla.s.sic gateway to Westminster School.

The cloisters, like the Abbey itself, contain many monuments and inscriptions. One in particular, "Jane Lister, dear childe, 1688"

charmed Dean Stanley, as recalling, in its simplicity, the early monuments of the catacombs.

The blackened, time-honoured houses of Dean's Yard are now varied by some new private mansions. Part of the square is now occupied by "Church House," a kind of large ecclesiastical club and office. Its main portion, which extends far back into neighbouring streets and purlieus, is of cheerful red brick.

The narrow streets of Westminster are curious and interesting, if occasionally just a trifle "slummy." They are generally old, tortuous, and picturesque; but the old, as in other parts of London, is gradually being displaced by the new. Westminster is now much sought after as a residential neighbourhood; building is increasing there, and rents are proportionately rising. The houses are often much shadowed and built up to, yet, here and there, charming views of the Abbey and its precincts almost compensate for want of light. The too ubiquitous "flats" and "mansions" are multiplying here as elsewhere; but Cowley Street has still an old world charm, and Queen Anne's Gate has its attractions. On the Whitehall side, the late removal of the obstructing Parliament Street, and the rebuilding of Government offices, have made great structural alterations.

Just outside the Abbey is "Broad Sanctuary," a name that commemorates the ancient rights and powers of the Church in protecting political victims and offenders from the law. "The Sanctuary" in mediaeval times was a square Norman tower, containing two cruciform chapels. Here did that poor Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV., seek refuge twice in her chequered and mournful life; it was on her second flight hither, in her widowhood, with all her children, that her "young princes, her tender babes," were dragged away from her to be murdered by their uncle Richard of Gloucester.

In all the structural alterations of Westminster, its old Hall, built first by William Rufus, has always mercifully been spared. It was rebuilt by Richard II., who, if only for the sake of such a monument, deserved of England a better fate. This Hall, which has witnessed more tragedies than any other London building, is princ.i.p.ally famous to us as the place of trial of Charles Stuart, King of England, 1649. Here, with the Naseby banners hanging over his devoted head, Charles showed all that firmness and control that had been so conspicuously lacking in his life. Macaulay describes it thus:

"The great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings: the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers; the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment; the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Victoria Tower, Westminster._]

On Barry's enormous Gothic Palace, the Houses of Parliament--Time, which does so much both for the London buildings and for the opinions of Londoners,--will no doubt deliver a favourable verdict. Its florid richness of decoration, unsuitable, say art critics, to such a vast building, was in imitation of Henry VIIth's miniature chapel opposite.

Its galleries and courts, almost as labyrinthine as the Westminster cloisters, require a long experience to understand and unravel. That Sir Charles Barry has worked Westminster Hall into his newer palace, ent.i.tles him to our respect and grat.i.tude. In Old Palace Yard is that equestrian statue of Richard Coeur-de-Lion that has won so much praise from the greatest of our art critics. Old Palace Yard, too, has tragic a.s.sociations. It was here that the Gunpowder Plot conspirators suffered death, opposite the windows of the house through which they had carried the gunpowder into the cellars under the threatened House of Lords. Here, also, Sir Walter Raleigh was executed in 1618.

Where Barry's palace now stands, stood, from Anglo Saxon days till Henry VIIIth's time, the ancient palace of the English Kings; and here, in their very palace, grew the germ of those Houses of Parliament that gradually came to occupy the entire area. The Star Chamber, the Painted Chamber, St. Stephen's Chapel, were parts of the old building made familiar to us by a.s.sociation and by history. The ancient palace was safe under the shadow of its abbey and sanctuary, till Henry VIII., who defied both abbey and sanctuary, actuated by Naboth-like desire of possession, moved his residence to Whitehall.

The Whitehall palace is gone as if it had never been; but that of Westminster has risen again from its ashes. This sacred spot was the place of our national liberties; here arose the "Mother of Parliaments."

Not long ago, I was standing on Westminster Bridge in the gathering twilight; the misty glory of a fine winter's day. The river edges were sprinkled with a thin crust of silvery frost, the dulled red sun was going down in splendour behind a galaxy of pink and golden clouds.

Insensibly, as the light faded, and the mist rose, I seemed to lose the forms of the modern buildings, and to see, as though in a vision, the "Thorney Isle" of the dim past. The huge "New Palace of Westminster," with its towers, was for a moment blotted out.... There, in the dreamy haze of sunset, I saw

--"the Minster's outlined ma.s.s Rise dim from the mora.s.s."

--That, surely, was no longer the Terrace of the House of Commons, but a marshy bed of osiers and rushes! The dark shadow yonder, across the broad river, was it any more the grimy, disused Lambeth landing-stage, or had it changed to the rude primitive boats of the Saxon fisher-folk, "moored among the bulrush stems"? The clamour yonder,--was it the shouting of drunken bargees, or merely the voices of simple peasants, busy with their nets, singing the evening hymn?...

And was that a barge being towed up stream, or was it not, rather, a boat crossing to the nearer sh.o.r.e, with its unknown, saintly pa.s.senger? Then, suddenly, a blaze of light irradiating the gloom--is it the miraculous glow from the consecrated Minster, or....

I start, for some one touches me gently on the shoulder. I turn round, half expecting to see a Saxon hind in leather jerkin and thonged sandals.... But a modern lamplighter with tall pole pushes past me, and----

"Please, lydy, gimme suthin' jis' to keep the life in my little byby,"

wails the voice of the professional beggar, breaking the spell, and disclosing an unhappy, shawled, and croupy infant. "I ain't got a place ter sleep in this night. Gawd knows I ain't, dear lydy."

The woman's appearance suggests the public-house, and I realise all the sinfulness of encouraging croupy (and possibly borrowed) babies to be out at unseasonable hours; nevertheless, the simpler Anglo-Saxon mood prevails, and the woman gets my sixpence. She departs with husky blessings ... and a chorus of coughs. "Ah, poor soul," I thought as I watched the wretched creature disappear to the shadow of some yet darker archway, "would not you, and such as you, have found better shrift in old days?--There was the convent;--there the sanctuary; there the gracious, unquestioning succour; there the majestic houses of the Father of Mankind and His special servants.... And ever at the sacred gates sat Mercy, pouring out relief from a never-failing store to the poor and the suffering; ever within the sacred aisles the voices of holy men were pealing heavenwards in intercession for the sins of mankind; and such blessed influences were thought to exhale around those mysterious precincts, that even the poor outcasts of society,--the debtor, the felon, and the outlaw--gathered round the walls as the sick men sought the shadow of the apostles, and lay there sheltered from the avenging hand, till their sins were washed from off their souls...."

But the vision has fled--the present once more dominates.... Now the lights begin, in serried rows and twinkling patterns, to glow along the sh.o.r.es of the vast and deceptive Armida-palace; the "cruel lights of London," hiding so much that is grim, sad, and terrible.... There, grey against a background of rosy opal, the Houses of Parliament rise from the silvery river in misty grandeur.... Then, gradually the "nocturne" changes its key; the darkness deepens, and the Westminster towers begin to loom up blackly against the lurid sky.... Big Ben booms solemnly through the invading mist.... For how many centuries, I wondered, has the evening bell resounded over the marshes of Thorney?

Only in the lapse of time it has somewhat changed its note.... Convent bell,--church bell,--secular bell! It calls now no longer to prayer and devotion, but to business, or, maybe, pleasure ... as the blaze of light that now s.h.i.+nes from its tower flashes forth the might of the Temporal power, not the miraculous workings of the Eternal.... Yet, "the Lord G.o.d of Israel, he slumbers not, nor sleeps." ... How loudly the strokes peal!... One ... two ... three ... four....

"Move on, please," sounds the voice of the burly policeman, evidently suspecting my motives, and accrediting me with suicidal intentions.

"Can't stay 'ere all night, y'know."

So I "move on"; and Night, and the river-mist, between them envelop, as with a pall, the enormous city.

CHAPTER X