The Tower of London

by Arthur Poyser

Shakespeare brings us to the Tower four times in the course of the three parts of King Henry VI. and four times during King Richard III. In the former play we witness the death of the imprisoned Edmund Mortimer; in the fourth act of Part II. there is a short Tower scene of a dozen lines; the sixth scene of Part III. Act IV., headed “A room in the Tower,” brings us to King Henry asking the Lieutenant of the Tower what fees incurred during his (the King’s), captivity are due to him; and in the sixth scene of the last act of the same part, we are again in “A room in the Tower,” where “King Henry is discovered sitting with a book in his hand, the Lieutenant attending.” Here, in the course of the scene, Henry is stabbed by Gloucester, and with the words, “O, God forgive my sins, and pardon thee!” dies. In Richard III. when, in the first act, we are taken into the “room in the Tower” in which Clarence is murdered, and see the evil deed performed as, later in the play, we are again in the Tower at the smothering of the sleeping Princes, we feel that Shakespeare has in these moving scenes brought before our eyes the grim reality of two evil deeds done in secret within the prison-house set up by William the Norman and Henry III. But here, again, our dramatist is only telling over again the story told in England’s records, and it is all a tale of unrelieved gloom. That is why we have come to associate the Tower with murder, torture, and evil passions. We forget that the sun shone on the Royal Palace, on the Green, and even sent a beam of its rays into many a dreary cell; that flowers grew in the constable’s garden and made fragrance there as sweetly as in the cottage gardens deep down in the quietude of the shires; that jailors and warders had not invariably hearts of stone; that prisoners by taking thought and snatching an instant opportunity had found a way through the walls, then to a boat on the river, and so to liberty. In describing the shifts and hopes and disappointments that at last reached their close in so happy a “curtain,” we would wish our dramatist had been moved to write another All’s Well That Ends Well, with a Tower background.

When we discover Prince Henry, Poins, and old Sir John at their “deep drinking” at the Boar’s Head Tavern, we feel we have the Eastcheap of the early fifteenth century re-created for us, and

that is because Shakespeare is allowing his fancy free play and is not bound down to the repetition of mere historical facts. So would we have gained had he dealt thus with the Tower and laid a stage-romance there, as well as the portions of the strictly historical plays we have already referred to. The history of the Tower, as the history of other places, will give us names of famous men and the numbering of years in plenty, but of the inner everyday life of some early century there—nothing. It is only the skilful in stagecraft and romance that dare touch the Tower to turn its records to such uses; men of less skill fail, and give us novels and plays that make weary reading and weary sitting-out. Many a tale has been penned of the times of the Papist prosecution, for instance, into which the people of the Tower have been brought, but so feeble has the grasp of the subject been that we turn to actual history for the “real romance” and exclaim, with greater conviction than ever, that fact is more wonderful than fiction.

It has been said that “the distinctive charm of the historical novel is that it seems to combine fact and fiction in a way that tickles the intellectual palate. In conversation we are interested in a story if some one we know is an actor in it. Historical fiction has a like piquancy because it mingles men and women known to tradition and history with fictitious heroes and heroines and minor characters. Then life is large and important; we learn what it is to be of some service to the State; we feel the fascination of great causes and great leaders, the reviving influence of the liberty of wide spaces in time and distance. There we breathe an ampler ether, a diviner air,” and in spite of Sir Leslie Stephen, who characterises the historical romance as “pure cram or else pure fiction,” we prefer to have our history made living for us by the touch of a Shakespeare or a Scott.

To come to our own day, I can imagine no more delightful excursion into the brighter side of Tower romance than the wholly fictitious but happily conceived Savoy opera, The Yeomen of the Guard. Who can look upon the White Tower here, after seeing its model on the Savoy stage, and yet not remember the delicious melodies of the opera? The very spirit of Tower times of long ago, of Tower griefs and joys, of Tower quips and cranks and lilting songs, seems brought before us in the theatre when, on the rising of the curtain, we look across Tower Green, see the gable-end of St. Peter’s Church, and have the huge bulk of the central keep reaching up toward the blue heaven. And the little comedy brings the old Tower nearer to our hearts, and, perhaps, to our understanding. We see it is quite possible for men to love and laugh and dance even if to-morrow they see a comrade meet death on the very spot where they had held merriment with the strolling players. It is all very human, very full of life’s sunshine, though it is felt and known that behind it all there is suffering bravely borne and deeper sorrow yet to come. But we applaud the daring of librettist and musician; complete success has justified all. Here, again, we are safe in master hands. We have been led down a by-way in Tower history by plot and counter-plot, with fragrant music for our cheer. When we come again to the actual Tower of to-day, lying, it may be, under a summer sky, we should like to find Phœbe sitting on the Green at her spinning-wheel, singing “When maiden loves,” or see Jack Point teaching the surly jailor and “assistant tormentor,” Wilfred Shadbolt, to be a jester.

It is by such paths that boys and maidens should be led to the right understanding of Tower history. Appeal to their imagination first; give them a typical day in the old life of the place, and so clothe the mere skeleton of dates and isolated facts. I often wonder what impression of the Tower a child brings away after a hurried Christmas holiday visit on a “free day” when the place is little more than a glorified show. To the child, the Jewel-room can only appeal as something very like the shop-window of a Bond Street jeweller, and much less easy, in the jostling crowd, to get a glimpse of. A benevolent warder will hurry the family party through the dungeons, and keep up a running commentary of dates and names of statesmen, traitors, and kings, covering vast spaces of English history in a single breath. The White Tower will, that night, re-appear in the child’s dreams as a branch of the Army and Navy Stores, where they have nicely polished armour on view; where there is a wonderful collection of swords and bayonets displayed on the walls in imitation of sunflowers; where policemen will allow you to move in one direction only, and forbid you to turn back to see anything you may have omitted or passed too hurriedly; where Queen Elizabeth appears to be preserved in a glass case and wears remarkably well; and where large whitewashed vaults, in which are kept cannons sent by the King, suggest the lower regions of South Kensington Museum and not the torture-chamber of Guy Fawkes. If that child in the air and sunshine of the following morning does not take a dislike to the Tower as a rather gloomy Madame Tassaud’s, and too festive a prison, it will be surprising indeed.

The Tower buildings at the present day have been treated in a manner that destroys all illusion. It is the fault of economy and compromise. The attempt has been made to convert the old buildings into dwelling-places with modern comforts, and to accommodate there not only the families of the warders but also a military garrison. The warders live in the smaller towers, and these, though full of historic interest, are closed to the public. For the convenience of the garrison a paternal War Office has caused to be erected, on the ground where the old Coldharbour Tower stood, the most unsightly building it is possible to conceive within Tower walls. But the putting-up of such a monstrosity convinces one that the greatest want of the present age is imagination. The men who could plan, and then construct in brick and sandstone these “quarters,” must have been those who were hurried through the old fortress in their youth, and who, like the child we have mentioned, took a not unnatural dislike to His Majesty’s Tower. In no other way can the blunder be accounted for.

In spite of the cheapening and vulgarising of the Tower by Governments and State officials, it retains a surprising hold on the people. Even the mill-hands of Lancashire, surging up to London to witness a football “cup-tie,” think their visit to London incomplete until they have walked through the Tower. But whatever impressions may be on their minds when they have “done” the building, these impressions are rudely brushed away in the subsequent excitement at Sydenham. It would be interesting to hear their reply to the question, “And what did you think of the Tower of London?” when they returned to their friends and relations in the North-country. It would certainly give an excellent idea of the result of years of School Board education, of free-library reading, and a visit to the actual scene of historic events. The cell where Raleigh wrote is looked upon with lack-lustre eye by the youth whose one idea of literature is the football edition of the evening papers.