The heart of London

by H. V. Morton

That Sad Stone

In two thousand years' time will there be brambles growing on Ludgate Hill, I wonder, and will a shepherd graze his sheep in Piccadilly Circus? It happened to Thebes and Carthage....

If the tamarisks should come back to town I desire to be reincarnated at that time in order that I may join in archæological speculation on the fragment of an extinct animal ("probably a lion") dug up on the site of Trafalgar square! It would also be jolly to reconstruct the plan of Bush House on the strength of three window-sills, a lift bell, and a typewriter key. There are great days in store for those who will shake up our dust and worry our ghosts, and even attempt to discover our gods. I can see Macaulay's New Zealander having the time of his life among the ruins of London; and surely one of his most splendid adventures will take place at the base of Cleopatra's Needle. Did you know that beneath this famous stone is buried a kind of Victorian Tutankhamen's treasure, placed there to give some man of the future an idea of us and our times? Did you realize that the London municipal authorities could do anything so touching?

Under the obelisk sealed jars were placed in 1878 containing a man's lounge suit, the complete dress and vanities of a woman of fashion, illustrated papers, Bibles in many languages, children's toys, a razor, cigars, photographs of the most beautiful women of Victorian England, and a complete set of coinage from a farthing to five pounds. So the most ancient monument in London stands guard over this modernity, rather like an experienced old hen, waiting for Time to hatch it.

Poor sad old stone....

* * *

I went down to look at it yesterday when the Thames, in full tide, dancing in the sunlight, was giving the Embankment great slapping kisses. Tugs were chugging upstream with their ugly duckling barges; and the jet-black finger of Ancient Egypt pointed to the sky, so slim and beautifully proportioned, so tall that when I looked up it seemed to be falling against the wheeling clouds.

Two little boys were riding a sphinx. Men and women stopped, looked up at the monument, saw the pale sunlight finding its way into those funny little carvings, a few moved round to the rear of the platform and gazed with open mouths, seeing an incomprehensible stone, wondering about it perhaps, maybe feeling that there was a story behind it somewhere, somehow.

A story? Heavens! What a story. Shall I tell you what I saw as I stood there with the tramcars speeding past and the criss-cross traffic busy on its way?

* * *

I saw a great tunnel of Time three thousand four hundred years long. Imagine the time that separates us to-day from the Spanish Armada and then multiply it by ten: that is almost three thousand and four hundred years. London was unknown. We were probably beating our wives in the Thames marshes and eating an occasional aunt. Greece was unborn, and there was no Rome on the Seven Hills. But Egypt had thrashed its way through the mumps and measles of civilization and was already ancient. In this distant blaze of light moved epicures and artists, soldiers and priests, and in the great palace of Thebes sat the most powerful man in that time of the world, the Pharaoh Thothmes III, Lord of the Two Lands, giver of life and death.

And Pharaoh decided to perpetuate his greatness in the eye of Time. In other words, he probably remarked after dinner one night: "I want obelisks for the temple at Heliopolis. That pylon looked rather bare, I thought, the last time I was there. You might see to it, will you?"

Whereupon chariots were harnessed and messengers sped south to the red-hot granite quarries of Assuan.

* * *

Now see the architect drawing the shape of Cleopatra's Needle in the virgin rock. See hundreds of naked backs bent over the stone, pounding, pounding, pounding month after month in the savage heat with no tools but hard balls of dolomite; and the whips crack over the sweating bodies and flicker in the heat and hiss like the tongues of serpents.

In a year the whim of Pharaoh is bashed from the quarry in blood and tears. His titles are set upon it, and it stands, painted and glorious, fronting the Temple of the Sun in Heliopolis. On its tip is a cap of electrum that catches the sun, so that travellers in the desert looking towards the city of On see a pillar with a fire blazing upon it.... Look!

A cloud of dust; and in the heart of it gilded chariots. The white horses are pulled up on their haunches, the nodding ostrich plumes on their head collars rise and fall, the fan bearers come forward, the troops stand at ease, and above the kneeling priests is the Pharaoh, that ancient superman, inspecting his monument from a burnished car.

"Quite good. The god is pleased."

* * *

Time passes. Moses, who was a priest in Heliopolis, sees the obelisk every day. The frogs of the Plagues hop and chirrup on its plinth. Over a hundred years pass, and Rameses the Great, who loved himself dearly, carves his name on the column, usurping it. A thousand years pass, and it is moved to Cleopatra's capital at Alexandria! Here it survives four great empires. Thrones rock and fall, dynasties fade like mists. The world changes. Two thousand years pass by, and a new race of men come to power. They pick Cleopatra's Needle out of the sand, enclose it in a huge steel cylinder, give it a deck, a keel, a rudder, put a crew aboard and tug it across the sea towards England. Prosperous winds favour the voyage for the first few weeks; then, in the dreaded Bay of Biscay, Cleopatra's Needle pitches with such violence that the tug's captain cuts her adrift with her crew aboard her. How different from her last voyage three thousand years previously, when the Egyptian slaves floated her on the sunlit Nile for the delight of Pharaoh! As she rolls and tosses five sailors from the tug volunteer to go out to the abandoned obelisk ship. They are swept under and are drowned. Eventually the Cleopatra's crew are saved and the tug watches her drift away over the stormy seas. Sixty days pass and then news is received that Cleopatra's Needle was tugged into Vigo by a ship whose owners received two thousand pounds for their services. Eventually, tugged by an M.P.'s yacht the Egyptian stone arrives in England.

Here, forty-seven years ago, they placed it beside a cold, grey river, and some unknown hand penned the following epitaph to it in the morning:

This monument as some supposes
Was looked on in old days by Moses;
It passed in time to Greeks and Turks,
And was stuck up here by the Board of Works.

* * *

Here it has remained beside the Thames, with the last great adventure still in store. One night the wrath of Ra, the fury of Set, the god of evil, descended like thunderbolts from a dark sky. Chips of the granite pediment flew away. The plinth was bruised as a city is bruised in war, and overhead in the shaft of a searchlight lay a silver fish in the sky—a fish that hummed like a hornet and laid most devilish eggs. What a strange night for ancient Egypt....

* * *

Sad, cold stone—the saddest monument in all London. We are killing it. It was once red granite. Now it is coal black and its glory is being eaten away year by year. Forty-seven years of London have done it greater hurt than the three thousand years that went before. It did not deserve this; for round it centres the splendour and glory of the past and under its feet is a message for the future.

And it seems to me that its experienced black finger is pointing to something which may make you laugh or cry.