THE INTERIOR OF THE NAVE, LOOKING EAST
Standing in the south-west corner of the nave, we get a view of the interior of the church in its full extent as far as the east window. Behind this we know, from our previous survey of the outside, is the Chapel of Henry VII., and below, hidden from sight by the organ screen, is the high altar, with the shrine of the founder, St. Edward the Confessor, beyond. Formerly the rood was suspended from the nave roof between us and the present wooden screen, which, although the stone below is of fourteenth-century workmanship, is only about a hundred years or so old. Just beyond the rood were also the Jesus altars, above and below, but no trace of these nor of the wall or screen upon which they stood is left. We see now only two large monuments on either side of the choir screen, which, as we approach nearer, prove to be those of the great philosopher, Sir Isaac Newton, and of a less renowned personality, Earl Stanhope.
Although practically impossible to stand at the west end and discourse at any length on the history and architecture, it is well to get some idea of the shape of the building and the period of each portion before we start. On either side are the lower parts of the towers, behind us is the great west window, finished, as we heard before, in the reign of King Henry VII. The bells hang in the belfry, the south-west tower, and the north-west tower is still called the baptistery, because baptisms used to take place there. The font is now in Henry VII.'s Chapel. The glass of the window over our heads dates only from George II.'s time; the two smaller ones, left and right, are filled with fragments of ancient glass, as is also the east window, which we see at the other end of the church. The building itself is in the usual cruciform shape, and we stand now, as it were, at the foot of the cross, the nave and ritual choir forming the beam, the transepts the arms, and the apse, with its circle of small chapels, the head. Behind the apse, we know from our previous survey, is the Chapel of Henry VII., which takes the place of the old Lady Chapel. The nave is divided into twelve bays, intersected at the eighth by the choir screen, upon which is placed the organ. At the twelfth bay, where the nave properly so called ends, the ritual choir begins, and we can see the sanctuary and high altar through the open gates. On either side of the nave beyond the screen are the aisles, now included, as is all this part at the present time, in the choir. Look first at the graceful arcading of the triforium, then higher still from the clerestory windows carry the eye to the roof, 100 feet above our heads, and thence along the clustered columns and arches straight in front. The whole resembles that magnificent and peculiarly English beauty, an ancient beech avenue with its arching and interlacing boughs reaching up to heaven. Except to the student of architecture, the church might have risen from the ground in a single night, so harmonious and perfectly proportioned are the lines, so carefully did the old builders follow out the ideas of the thirteenth-century designers. Henry the Third himself probably supervised the plans, and we know that the King had already seen and admired Salisbury Cathedral, then quite a new building, before he arranged to rebuild Westminster in the same style. As a fact, no less than two and a half centuries passed from the year 1245, when Henry gave orders for the demolition of the whole of the eastern end—the same part which the Confessor had watched grow up and had caused to be consecrated before his death,—till the reign of his collateral descendant, the first Tudor king, when the last bay was quite finished. Only an observant eye can detect the slight differences, chiefly in the vaultings of the roof, which mark the different stages of the western part, and it is difficult to realise that the old Norman nave, divided by a wall from the new Gothic church, existed long after Henry's death, and was taken down bit by bit as the building slowly proceeded. Edward the First's period is marked by metal rings round the columns, and only extended one bay west of the present screen, where formerly the Jesus altars and rood loft stood, with a stone wall behind, which is now concealed by the wooden casing of the modern screen. Services for the ordinary worshippers, the parishioners so to speak, were held by the monks at these altars, above and below the rood screen, but the lesson, which was read from above, was the only part of the High Mass celebrated in the choir intended for the congregation in the nave. With the early fourteenth century the beautiful diaper work which decorated the triforium arcades ceased, and this helps us to fix the date of the later part. During the century which followed, the building practically stood still for a long time. Edward II. gave the monks no help, and Edward III. was too poor and too busy with his numerous wars to occupy himself with pious donations. But at the end of his reign Archbishop Langham, formerly the Abbot here, left a large bequest, primarily intended for the completion of the nave, which was diverted by his successor Litlington to more pressing needs, such as the rebuilding of the monastery, enlarging the cloisters, and, with the help of gifts from Richard II., the addition of a rich porch outside the north front. Henry IV. died in the precincts, but we have no record of any generosity on his part; his son Henry V., however, gave an annual sum to the work on the nave, which during his short reign progressed well. The pious Henry VI., who loved the Abbey and often walked here with the Abbot and Prior, no doubt helped as long as he had the power, but the civil wars soon put a stop to his aid. We know that he presented the wrought-iron gates which divide his father's mortuary chapel from the shrine, and the stone screen to the west of the shrine probably belongs to his time. His supplanter, Edward IV., when settled on the throne, granted oaks and lead for the roof, while his wife, and the little son who was born in the Abbot's house, gave thank-offerings of money. Another gap followed during the troublous reign of Richard III., but by the end of the fifteenth century, when Henry VII. felt his title absolutely secure, and his dynasty established, the west end was quite finished, within and without, while then, and then only, the last remains of the old nave were cleared away.
We have thus briefly sketched the building of the church in which we stand, and now must turn our attention to the historic names which are all around us on the walls and pavement. The very earliest monument, the only tolerably artistic one in the nave, was put up in 1631 to a certain Mistress Jane Hill, and till nearly the end of the seventeenth century few others were added. But unfortunately from that time the custom grew apace of covering the wall space, even the floor itself, with memorials of soldiers, sailors, statesmen, physicians, men of science, and, in fact, a truly miscellaneous collection of people, till not a vacant spot is left, and the ancient arcading is completely or partially covered up, in some cases even cut away. The committee of taste appointed to assist the Chapter were of some use here, for by their advice the Dean moved one or two monuments from the centre to the wall, and the iron railings in front of all of them were taken away. Dean Stanley, more than a century later, curtailed some of the most aggressive memorials, but none have been removed, for there would be no end to such a difficult undertaking, and in any case the ancient arcading was already ruined.
Thus we start on our pilgrimage with some idea of the shape and the history of the church which lies before us. First let us look into the baptistery called Little Poets' Corner, where Wordsworth's seated statue and some memorials of literary men are to be seen, such as the great teacher, Dr. Arnold, who is close to his gifted son Matthew, in the company of three notable divines, Maurice, Kingsley, and Keble. The entrance is blocked by two huge eighteenth-century erections, the one to Cornewall, a valiant sea-captain, put up by Parliament, the other to Craggs, a young statesman, whose posthumous fame was sullied by his share in the South Sea Bubble. The elder Craggs committed suicide when the Bubble burst, but the son died first, and Pope wrote a wordy epitaph and superintended the erection of the monument. From this side we turn to the other tower, but make no exhaustive survey of the "Whig Corner," for statesmen galore are to be found in the north transept, and we mention the chief of these in connection with their contemporaries there. The latest name here is that of General Charles Gordon, a bronze given by the Royal Engineers seven years after the fall of Khartoum, but before the fall of the Mahdi wiped out England's dishonour. It is not likely that a Chinaman has joined our party; were one with us we would point out Gordon's services to the Chinese government and the honours he received from the Emperor. There is only one other memorial connected with China (in the north choir aisle), put up a century ago to Sir George Staunton, who went as Secretary on our first embassy to China. His son, a boy of eleven, accompanied him, and actually learned enough Chinese on the voyage to interpret for the party; he afterwards became a learned Chinese scholar. We linger yet a moment to point out one of the few German names in the Abbey, William Horneck, whose father, a Westminster Prebendary, was a German by birth; he was himself one of the earliest of our Engineers, and won honour in the Duke of Marlborough's campaigns. When we reach the south transept we shall see a more familiar German name on the bust of Grabe, the well-known Oriental scholar.
We pass out now by the statue of a modern philanthropist, Lord Shaftesbury, who fought as energetically for the freedom of the white slave as did Zachary Macaulay, whose tablet is behind us in the tower, for that of the black. Shaftesbury's efforts on behalf of the overworked women and of the children in mines and factories will never be forgotten, nor is the distinguished statesman Charles James Fox, whose connection with the abolition of slavery is marked by the tasteless monument before our eyes, in any danger of oblivion. The life-size group represents Fox's dying agony in the arms of Liberty; a negro slave is kneeling at his feet.
If there be any one interested in astronomy amongst us, he should turn round to the tablet at the extreme west end, which commemorates young Benjamin Horrocks, the first observer of the transit of Venus in 1639, who was praised by Sir John Herschel as the pride and boast of modern astronomy. Herschel's own bust is on the north wall; he lies side by side with Charles Darwin, near the iron gate. We now leave the west end and progress up the centre of the nave, noticing on our way eastward the old wooden pulpit, which has been brought here from Henry VII.'s Chapel and replaces a heavy marble one given in Dean Trench's time to commemorate the opening of the nave for evening services. Trench himself passed from Westminster, as Archbishop of Dublin, to Ireland, his native country, whither the pulpit has gone, but his body was brought back to England, and his grave is beneath our feet. Behind it the name of the American philanthropist, George Peabody, whose mortal remains rested in the Abbey for a few days only, reminds all Londoners of the original Peabody buildings, the first working-class dwellings on the block system, which were founded by him and called after his name.
A few steps further and we stand above the grave of David Livingstone, another ardent worker for the black man's cause, a personality dear to white and black alike. Should some traveller from South Africa be with us, he will be familiar with Livingstone's work amongst the natives and the opposition he met with from the ignorant Boer farmers, who could not understand his enthusiasm for the coloured race. He lost his life for their cause, and so greatly was he loved by his "boys" that two of them carried the body through hardships and dangers innumerable across the continent of Africa to the West Coast, where it was shipped for England and finally brought safely here. Immediately in front, to our left, we see the names of engineers and architects. To the engineers we allude later; of two architects, Scott and Pearson, we have already spoken, and may pass on to the men who crushed the Indian Mutiny, first, however, pointing out the brass of Barry, the designer of the present Houses of Parliament. Sir James Outram, Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde, and John, Lord Lawrence, rest in close proximity to one another, even as they worked together for a common object in India. On Outram's monument, which is against the right-hand wall, near Lawrence's bust, is represented the meeting of the three Generals, Outram, Havelock, and Campbell, when the latter finally relieved the Lucknow Residency, a task bravely attempted by the two former, who were themselves beleaguered after bringing in stores and ammunition to the garrison. Lord Wolseley's recent Autobiography has vividly recalled the whole scene, and bears witness also to the valour of many a forgotten hero, with most of whom he had previously fought in the Crimea. Seven of these officers are commemorated by the very inharmonious painted glass below the rose window of the north transept; amongst them may be mentioned in this connection Lord Clyde's brigadier, Adrian Hope, who took a foremost part in the relief of Lucknow, and was killed during the subsequent reconquest of Oude. While Clyde may be styled the conqueror of Oude, Lord Lawrence, a civilian not a soldier by profession, performed the task of reducing the Punjab. In the north transept is the bust of Sir Herbert Edwardes, who co-operated with the Lawrence brothers at the outbreak of the Mutiny, and continued to support John in his arduous work after Henry's death at Lucknow. Ten years before the Mutiny, Edwardes had already won undying fame in the same district, the Punjab, when he stamped out the Multan rebellion, and prevented that dangerous conflagration from assuming serious proportions. A grave west of Clyde's, that of Sir George Pollock, is a reminder of another part of our Indian Empire—an ever-present source of anxiety—Afghanistan, where Pollock retrieved England's lost prestige after the Cabul disaster.
Buried, as he would have wished, amongst these men of action is a sailor, who resembled the free-booters and fighting seamen of the Elizabethan age. Cochrane's feats of valour when in our navy surpassed those of all his contemporaries, but a charge of betraying the country which he had served so well, drove him into exile in 1814. His activity found new scope abroad, and his memory is honoured by Brazil and Chili alike as the founder of their navies; for the past few years Chilian sailors have laid a wreath annually upon his tomb. The stain was removed from Lord Dundonald's name before his death, and he was laid, as was justly due, amongst his compeers; his banner and arms were long afterwards restored to their places with those of the other Knights of the Bath, in Henry VII.'s Chapel.
Immediately before us now, on either side of the choir screen, two eighteenth-century monuments attract attention. The one to the right commemorates several of the Earls Stanhope, notably the first Earl, whose dashing valour might well be compared with Dundonald's, but whose military career ended in disaster and imprisonment. The feat usually connected with his name is a brilliant charge of cavalry at Almenara, one of the battles in the Peninsular War, when he killed a Spanish general in single combat. On the left is a man of peace, Sir Isaac Newton, whose discovery of the law of gravitation brought him world-wide fame, and whose reputation as a natural philosopher and mathematician was unrivalled in his generation. His funeral was attended by "the chief men of the nation," and many distinguished foreigners; amongst them was the French philosopher, Voltaire, who carried his enthusiasm for Newton to such a height that he placed the English scientist at the head of all the geniuses in the universe. Those who are familiar with Roubiliac's portrait-statue at Trinity College, Cambridge, will note the extreme inferiority of this one (Rysbrack's), which represents the great Newton reclining on a couch, wrapped in a dressing-gown, and surrounded by the allegorical figures and emblems so dear to eighteenth-century artists.
It is well now to shape our course towards the east, turning to the right aisle, but ere we reach the iron gate, one or two memorials call for some remark. Thus our long wars with the Moors are brought to mind by Sir Palmes Fairborne's tablet, upon which is inscribed a bombastic epitaph usually attributed to Dryden. Fairborne, as Governor of Tangier, fought valiantly for a losing cause, and three years after his death, the place, which had passed into the possession of the English Crown as part of the dowry of Charles the Second's queen, Catherine of Braganza, was finally abandoned to the Moors. Fairborne is not the only Englishman in the Abbey whose prowess against these black races is worthy of remembrance, but while he bore a Turk's head for his crest as a proof of his early valour in Candia, the other knight, Sir Bernard Brocas, rests his head upon that of a crowned Moor. No record remains of the doughty deed which caused Edward III. to grant Brocas this special crest, but the vergers in Addison's time used to point out his tomb, which we shall see presently in St. Edmund's Chapel, as that of "the old Knight who cut off the King of the Moors's head."
