A LOOKER-BACK.
"For as he forward mov'd his footing old
So backward still was turn'd his wrinkled face."—Faerie Queene.
There are some people in the world who, like the sad mourners that come up through Dante's hollow vale with heads reversed, have not the power to see before them. Their eyes are always peering into the past, they go groping in the dim twilight of bygone days; they wander off the highway of ordinary life, till they lose their place in its sphere; they have no knowledge but legendary lore, no wisdom but that of past generations. And when, by some accident, they cross the current of the present age, they grasp at the very first relic of the past as a link with the receding shore.
It was such a one that found himself adrift on the high tide at Charing Cross—which Dr. Johnson so loved; and, amazed and confused by the incessant, tumultuous flow of a life in which he had no part, took refuge in the thousand sanctuaries of the past to be found in London. Belonging by a peculiar grace, as one born out of due time, to the ancient church—for ever ancient, for ever new!—he turned particularly to those old Catholic foundations around which cluster so many associations, at once religious, historical, and poetic. Having read of them from childhood, and learned to connect them with the past glory of the church, and familiar with all the romantic and legendary lore concerning them, when he found himself in their midst his heart and soul and imagination were at once aflame. It was then to such places as Westminster Abbey, Christ's Hospital, the Charter-House, and the Temple that his heart instinctively turned on his arrival in London.
Not that he actually visited them first. The Divine Presence, alas! no longer dwells in them incarnate; and it was of course, as became one with pilgrim-staff and scallop-shell, to the foot of the Tabernacle he hastened, the first time he issued from his lodgings, to offer up his prayer of thanksgiving to Jésus-Hostie for a safe voyage across the Atlantic. But at his very threshold he could see a spot associated with many terrible memories, marked by a stone: "Here stood Tyburn Gate." Here the last prior of the Charter-House was executed, and Robert Southwell, the Jesuit poet of Queen Elizabeth's time, whose last words were expressive of his attachment to the Society of Jesus and his happiness to suffer martyrdom. Many others, too, of religious and historic memory, ascended here from earth to heaven. Close beside the spot is the Marble Arch of Hyde Park. "Beyond Hyde Park all is a desert!" said our pilgrim with Sir Fopling Flutter, glad to be diverted from memories too sad for one's first impressions of a foreign city. Two serene-looking "Little Sisters of the Poor," providentially crossing the path, directed him to the French chapel—a modest sanctuary, but where such men as Lacordaire, De Ravignan, and other distinguished French pulpit-orators have been heard. The way thither was through Portman Square, once the property of the Knights of S. John of Jerusalem. Here the celebrated Mrs. Montague once lived. In one corner of the square stands apart—in a large yard, a square old-fashioned brick house with an immense portico in front, and a two-story bow window at the end—one of those houses that we at once feel have a history. This is Montague House, where Mrs. Montague used to give an annual dinner to the London chimney-sweeps, "that they might enjoy one happy day in the year"—a house frequented by the literary celebrities of the time—where Miss Burney was welcomed, and Ursa Major grew tame.
A short distance from the French chapel is the Spanish church, dedicated to S. James, with its S. Mary's aisle lighted from above, giving a fine chiaro-oscuro effect to the edifice. It was pleasant to find an altar to the glorious Patron of Spain in a city where he was once so venerated, and whose name has been given to one of its social extremes. The devotion of the English to S. Jago di Compostella was extraordinary in the Middle Ages. So general was it, that the Constable of the Tower, in the time of Edward II., used to receive a custom of two-pence from each pilgrim to Spain going or returning by the Thames. Rymer mentions 916 licenses to visitors to that shrine in the year 1428, and 2,460 in 1434. And here, in this modern English church, is a statue of the saint, with the scallop-shell on his cape, first assumed by pilgrims to Compostella as a token that they had extended their penitential wanderings to that sainted shore. English Catholics of the olden time seemed to have had a special love for pilgrimages, and we hail a renewed taste for such a devotion as a revival of the spirit of the past.
It was the good fortune of our modern pilgrim to hear the Archbishop of Westminster preach a few days after in the Spanish church on the state of the soul after death—a preacher that harmonizes at once with the past and the present—full of sympathy with the present, full of the spirit of the past. A S. Jerome from his cave, a S. Anthony from the desert! is the first thought, and his wonderfully solemn style of preaching is in harmony with his ascetic appearance. Nothing could be more impressive and affecting. Neither did our wanderer forget the ivy-clad oratory at Kensington, still perfumed with holy memories of F. Faber. He felt the need of thanking him here for the thousand precious words he had spoken to his soul through his beautiful hymns and invaluable works on the inner life; soothing it in sorrow, and arming it against the transitory evils of life. Such evils follow every one, even the pilgrim, and it was good to repeat here Faber's lines:
"These surface troubles come and go
Like rufflings of the sea;
The deeper depth is out of reach
To all, my God, but thee!"
What a round of sweet devotions in this church, with the taper-lighted oratory of Mary Most Pure! Oh! how near to heaven one gets there!—the beautiful shrine-like chapel of S. Philip Neri, and the solemn Calvary where, between the two thieves, the Divine Image is outstretched on the huge cross, embalming the wood—
"Image meet
Of One uplifted high to turn
And draw to him all hearts in bondage sweet."
Many pious hearts seem drawn here to meditate on the Passion, and, one after another, go up to kiss the blood-stained cross. Oh! how many ways the church has of leading the soul to God! Guido declared he had two hundred ways of making the eyes look up to heaven. The church has many more with its multiplied popular devotions, each peculiarly adapted to some cast of soul. It would be heaven enough below to have a cell somewhere near this sweet school of S. Philip's sons and the beautiful altars they have set up.
While thus gratifying the devotional instincts of his heart, some religious monument of bygone ages was constantly falling in our pilgrim's way. How could he pass S. Pancras-in-the-Fields without falling into prayer, as Windham in his diary tells us Dr. Johnson did, recalling the Catholic martyrs burnt here at the stake in Queen Elizabeth's time? The bell of S. Pancras—O funeral note of woe!—was the last to ring for Mass in England at the time of the so-called Reformation. A wonder it did not break in twain as it sounded that last elevation of the Host! Has it ever uttered one joyful note since that sad morn, when the altars were stripped, the lights one by one put sorrowfully out, and the Divine Presence faded away? No, no; it has the saddest tone of any bell in London, at least to the Catholic ear. As it was here he was laid away, it is no wonder that faithful Catholics, down to the present century, were in the habit of coming to S. Pancras at early morning hour to seek some trace of their buried Lord. Perhaps he sometimes appeared to such devout souls, as of old to his Mother and Magdalen. It is certain that, at least, he spoke to their hearts as they lingered here to pray—pray that he might rise again! And here they wished to rest after death, till they were again allowed to have a cemetery apart. This was the burial-place of the Howards and Cliffords, and others of high lineage, both foreign and native. One old friend lies here, John Walker—well known from his Dictionary, once extensively used in America, a convert to the Catholic Church, and a friend of Dr. Milner's, who calls him "the Guido d'Arezzo of elocution, who discovered the scale of speaking sounds by which reading and delivery have been reduced to a system."
S. Pancras was once a popular saint. The boy-martyr of Rome, whose blood was shed in the cause of truth, was regarded in the middle ages as the avenger of false oaths. The kings of France used to confirm treaties in his name. The English, with their natural abhorrence of lying, so honored him as to give his name to one of the oldest churches in London. Cardinal Wiseman has popularized his memory in these days through Fabiola.
Again, what a flood of recollections comes over the pilgrim in passing through Temple Bar, or going across London Bridge, first built by the pious brothers of S. Mary's Monastery in 994. The old bishops and monks were truly the pontifices of the middle ages—not only as builders of
"The invisible bridge
That leads from earth to heaven,"
but good substantial arches of stone over stream and flood. The Pont Royal over the Seine was built by a Dominican. So was the Carraja at Florence. The old bridges of Spain were mostly due to the clergy.
Bridge-building was esteemed a good work in those times, and prayers were offered for those engaged in it. At the bidding of the beads, the faithful were thus invited: "Masters and frendes, ye shall praye for all them that bridges and streets make and amend, that God grant us part of their good deeds, and them of ours."
London Bridge was rebuilt of stone nearly two centuries later. Peter of S. Mary's, Colechurch, began it. Henry II. gave towards it the tax on wool, which led to the saying that "London Bridge was built on wool-packs." Peter did not live to complete it. That was done by Isenbert, master of the schools at Xainctes—a builder of bridges in his own country. He finished London Bridge in 1280. Near the middle of it was a Gothic chapel, dedicated to S. Thomas à Becket, and under the wool-packs—that is to say, in the crypt—a tomb was hollowed out of a pier of the bridge for Peter of Colechurch. When this pier was removed in 1832, his remains were found where they had lain nearly six hundred years. On the Gate-house of London Bridge was hung the head of Sir William Wallace. Bishop Fisher's (of Rochester) was hung here the very day his cardinal's hat arrived at Dover; and two weeks after, that of his friend, Sir Thomas More. Here, too, were suspended the heads of F. Garnet, of the Society of Jesus, and scores of Catholic priests in Queen Elizabeth's time.
Yes, London is full of Catholic memories. Bridewell, Bedlam, Mincing Lane, Tooley St., and many more are names of Catholic origin, now corrupted, the derivation of which it is pleasant to recall as they meet the eye. One strolls through Paternoster Row, and Ave Maria Lane, and by Amen Corner, out of love for their very names, reminding us of the Catholic processions around Old S. Paul's. Shall it be confessed?—profaner thoughts here mingle with such memories. Passing through Paternoster Row, one naturally looks up, expecting to see the splendid Mrs. Bungay come forth to take her drive with a look of defiance at the chaise-less Mrs. Bacon at the opposite window!
Not far from here is Christ's Hospital, so familiar to us all through Lamb, Coleridge, and Leigh Hunt. It is at once recognized by the bust of Edward VI. over the entrance. It is pleasant to be allowed to wander through the arcades and quadrangles at one's pleasure, with no guide to disturb the delightful memories evoked by such a place. Going into a quadrangle, surrounded by a kind of cloister hung with memorial tablets, the first thing noticed is a marble slab on the wall to the right, inscribed:
"In memory of the Rev. James Boyer, who for many years was head grammar-master of this Hospital. He died July 28, 1814, aged seventy-nine years."
One could not help pausing to read and copy this tribute to so old an acquaintance. To be sure, "J. B. had a heavy hand," which was rather too familiar with a rod of fearful omen, but he ground out some fine scholars, and has been immortalized by the great geniuses that expanded under his tuition. I can see Master Boyer now, as Charles Lamb describes him, calling upon the boys with a sardonic grin to see how neat and fresh his rod looked!—see him in his passy, or passionate wig, make a precipitate entry into the school-room from his inner den, and, with his knotty fist doubled up, and a turbulent eye, single out some unhappy boy, roaring: "Od's my life, sirrah! I have a mind to whip you"; and then, with a sudden retracting impulse, return to his lair, and, after a lapse of some moments, drive out headlong again with the context which the poor boy almost hoped was forgotten: "And I will, too!"—treating the trembling culprit to a sandwich of alternate lash and paragraph till his rabidus furor was assuaged.
Lamb, in his delightful essay, Recollections of Christ's Hospital, dwells on some of his fellow-pupils whose memory one cannot help recalling while lingering under these arches. And chief among them, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge, logician, metaphysician, bard—who in these cloisters unfolded in deep and sweet intonations the mysteries of Jamblichus or Plotinus, or recited Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity boy." He tells us, too, of Thomas Fanshawe Middleton, "a scholar and a gentleman in his teens," but said afterwards to have borne his mitre rather high as the first Protestant bishop of Calcutta, though a more humble and apostolic bearing "might not have been exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with reverence for home institutions and the church which such fathers watered." There is a monument to the memory of Bishop Middleton at S. Paul's, where he is represented, in his robes of office, in the act of confirming two East Indians, but the hand raised over their heads has all the fingers broken off but one. Let us hope what apostolic authority he possessed was centred in that digit!
Above all, at Christ's Hospital one recalls the gentle Elia himself. Perhaps in yonder dim corner he furtively ate the griskin brought from the paternal kitchen by his aunt. "I remember the good old relative," he says (in whom love forbade pride), "squatting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite), and the contending passions of L. at the unfolding. There was love for the bringer, shame for the thing brought and the manner of its bringing."
Under these pillared arches, so shadowy to-day with the heavy London fog, Richardson perhaps conceived his first dramatic scenes, and Leigh Hunt began to weave the delicious fancies that have since charmed us all. Yonder was the dormitory the young ass was smuggled into, which waxed fat, and proclaimed his good fortune to the world below, setting concealment any longer at defiance.
While thus musing, an instalment of the eight hundred boys at the Hospital came out to their sports in their quaint costume of black breeches, long yellow stockings to the knees, and a dark-blue gown down to the heels, garnished with bright buttons bearing the likeness of Edward VI., and confined by a leather belt. White bands at the neck give them a clerical look by no means at variance with so monastic a place. They had innocent, open faces, such as we find in our monastic schools, reminding one of Pope Gregory's well-known exclamation: "Non Angli sed angeli." They tucked up their skirts and betook themselves most heartily to their sports. It was queer to see their long yellow-stockinged legs flying across the quadrangle. They have caps, it is said, about the size of a saucer, which they dislike so much that they prefer going bare-headed, but they did not mind the fog, now almost amounting to rain. Children, we all know, are, as Lamb says, "proof against weather, ingratitude, meat under-done, and every weapon of fate." One of them stopped to pump some water for the visitor to offer as a libation to the memory of Charles Lamb.
"Pierian spring!" scornfully shouted Master Boyer to a young writer of a classical turn: "the cloister pump, you mean!"
The school-room visited bore marks that would have done credit to a Yankee jack-knife, and revived pleasant reminiscences of youthful achievements in a New England school-house. The chapel, too, with its mural tablets, and flag tombstones, and painted window, of Christ blessing little children, is interesting. At the right of the chancel is a remnant of old monastic charity. An inscription in yellow letters on a claret-colored ground announces that "the bread here given weekly to the poor of the parish of S. Leonard's is from a bequest of Sir John Trott and other benefactors," and on the other side in equally glaring characters: "Praise be to thee, O Lord God, for this thy gift unto the poor!" There is rather a more amusing inscription of a similar nature at S. Giles', Cripplegate, opposite the monument to Milton:
"This Bvsbie, willing to reeleve the poore with fire and withe breade,
Did give that howse whearein he dyed then called ye Queene's heade,
Fovr fvlle loades of ye best charcoales he wovld have brovght each yeare,
And fortie dosen of wheaten breade for poore howseholders heare:
To see these thinges distribvted this Bvsby pvt in trvst
The Vicar and Chvrch wardenes thinking them to be IVST:
God grant that poore howseholders here may thankfvll be for svch,
So God will move the mindes of moe to doe for them as mvch:
And let this good example move svch men as God hath blest
To doe the like before they goe with Bvsby to there rest:
Within this chappell Bvsbie's bones in dvst a while mvst stay,
Till He that made them rayse them vp to live with Christ for aye."
The said Busby is represented above this curious inscription, in bold relief, as a be-ruffed man of jovial type, holding a bottle in one hand, and a death's-head in the other, so that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. It would be more reasonable to cry over the grave of that dreadful prevaricator Fox, called the Martyrologist, said to be buried in the same church, only one does not know where to weep, as the precise spot is not known. So one has to be satisfied with sighing before a huge stone set up to his memory at the end of the church, and thinking with Lessing that "if the world is to be held together by lies, the old ones which are already current are as good as the new." What a pity Fox had not belonged to S. Pancras' parish! However, that saint seems to have kept an eye on him, and avenged the cause of truth. We do not suppose there are many now who are credulous enough to accept Fox as reliable authority concerning the history of those sad times. And if we stop to look at his tablet here, it is with something of the same feeling that we turn down Fetter Lane to see where "Praise God Barebones" and his brother "Damned Barebones" lived, and wonder how any one house could hold them both.
But to return to Christ's Hospital. It must not be supposed that, meanwhile, it has been forgotten that this institution was originally a Catholic foundation. It was the first thought at entering, nor could the pleasant associations of later years prevent a regret that so monastic a building is no longer peopled by the old Grey Friars. Keats' lines recurred to memory:
"Mute is the matin bell whose early call
Warned the Grey fathers from their humble beds;
Nor midnight taper gleams along the wall,
Or round the sculptured saint its radiance sheds!"
It was on the second of February, 1224, during the pontificate of Honorius III. and the reign of King Henry III., S. Francis of Assisi being still alive, that a small band of Franciscan friars landed at Dover. There were four priests and five lay-brothers. Five of this number stopped at Canterbury to found a house, and the remainder came on to London. The simplicity of their manners and mode of life made them popular at once, and they speedily acquired the means of building a house and church. Among other benefactors, John Ewin, or Iwin, a citizen of London, gave them an estate, as he says in the deed of conveyance, "for the health of my soul, in pure and perpetual alms," and became a lay-brother in the house, leaving behind him, when he died, a holy memory as a strict and devout observer of the rule. A large church adapted to their wants was completed in the year 1327, and dedicated to "the honor of God and our alone Saviour Jesus Christ." It was three hundred feet long, eighty-nine feet broad, and seventy-four feet high. Queen Margaret gave two thousand marks towards it, and the first stone was laid in her name. John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, and his niece, the Countess of Pembroke, gave the hangings, vestments, and sacred vessels. Isabella, the mother of Edward III., and Philippa, his queen, also gave money for its completion. The thirty-six windows were the gifts of various charitable persons. The western window, being destroyed in a gale, was restored by Edward III., "for the repose of the soul" of his mother, who had just been buried before the choir. In 1380, Margaret, Countess of Norfolk, erected new stalls in the choir, at a cost of three hundred and fifty marks. Many nobles were buried here—four queens, four duchesses, four countesses, one duke, two earls, eight barons, thirty-five knights—in all, six hundred and sixty-three persons of quality. Among them was Margaret, the second wife of Edward I., and granddaughter of S. Louis, King of France. She was buried before the high altar. In the choir lay Isabella, wife of Edward II.—
"She-wolf of France with unrelenting fangs,
Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate"—
beneath a monument of alabaster, with the heart of her murdered husband on her breast! Near her lay her daughter Joanna, wife of Edward Bruce of Scotland. Here too was buried Lady Venitia Digby, so celebrated for her beauty, the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, who erected over her a monument of black marble.
In the middle ages the great ones of the world, at the approach of death, the all-leveller, feeling the nothingness of earthly grandeur and riches, often sought to be buried among Christ's poor ones, and not unfrequently in their habit, not thinking "in Franciscan weeds to pass disguised," but as an act of faith in the evangelical counsels, and a recognition of the importance of being clothed with Christ's righteousness. It was a public confession that the vain garments they had worn in the world had been as poisonous to them as the tunic Hercules put on. Dante laid down to die in the cowl and mantle of a Franciscan. Cervantes was buried in the same habit. Louis of Orleans, who was murdered by the Duke of Burgundy, was buried among the Celestin monks in the habit of their order. Anne of Brittany, twice Queen of France, wore the scapular of the Carmelites, and wished it to be sent with her heart in a golden box to her beloved Bretons.
The Grey Friars' church was destroyed at the great fire, and the monastery greatly injured. There are still some portions of it remaining, however, which are at once recognized. Some of the books of the old monastic library are still preserved—a library founded by Sir Richard Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London, the hero of the nursery rhyme, to whom the Bowbells sounded so auspiciously. He laid the foundation of this library in 1421, and gave four hundred pounds towards furnishing it. The remainder of the books were given, or collected by one of the friars.
It seems that, after all, Edward VI. was not the founder of the modern institution of Christ's Hospital. He merely gave it its name, and added to the endowment. When the monastery was suppressed by his father, it was given to the municipality of London, and the city authorities conceived the idea of converting it into a refuge for poor children. It was chiefly endowed by the citizens themselves, though aided by grants from Henry VIII. and Edward VI.