The Tower itself is the most precious jewel in the nation’s Crown. It is the epitome of English history. From the Norman Conquest to the day that has just dawned we have something here to remind us of our storied past. It might be the most interesting spot in England to young and to old alike. In these days of rush and turmoil and ceaseless activities, it might be the one corner of modern London where the present is quelled in its noise, and stayed in its hurry, to contemplate the past. These buildings might well be revered by those who are hardly yet conscious of their value; they, at least, might be spared the impertinent aggressions of to-day. A commercial age has committed one unforgivable crime in pulling down Crosby Hall to erect a bank, and we may well ask ourselves if the Tower itself is safe from such vandalism. Again, it is want of imagination. Our city magnates can appreciate a bank, with its hideous granite pillars and its vapid ornamentations, but an ancient hall which Shakespeare has touched with his magic pen is of no “practical” use, mark you! It is a result of the detestable gospel of get-on-or-get-out, and as our old buildings are incapable of going-on they must go-out.
Our fear may well be lest the modernising of the Tower, and the erection within the walls of wholly characterless piles that would be considered unworthy of place even in a rising suburb, will in time destroy our sense of the value of any of the buildings bequeathed to us from earliest times. Little by little the boys of to-day, who will be the citizens of the day after to-morrow, will come to look at the Tower as a very ill-painted showroom, or as none too spacious a place to accommodate a garrison. It must, we may hear them say when they become men of importance, either be brought up to date as an exhibition of antiquities, or be rebuilt to meet increasing military requirements. All this is conceivable; few things are held sacred nowadays, as we know to our sorrow.
The spirit of the twentieth century is alien from the spirit still brooding over the Tower, and which has not been quite dispelled by latter-day encroachments. Yet, when we find the great dungeon under the White Tower wired for electric light, we begin to wonder what the end will be. May we not hope that wiser counsels will prevail and that we shall have the Tower restored—in the better sense of the term—to something of its appearance in Elizabethan and Jacobean times? How refreshing it would be to leave the traffic of Great Tower Street behind and pass into the tranquillity of Shakespeare’s day, as we entered the Tower gateway. The modern policeman should no longer repeat the irritating cry, “Get your tickets! Get your tickets!” at the foot of Tower Hill; the wretched refreshment shed, which all visitors are compelled to pass through, should no longer assail us on our entry with its close atmosphere savouring of stale buns. Even on “free days” this “ticket” procedure has to be gone through solemnly, and the turnstiles to be pushed round to satisfy some mystic regulation. It is all very suggestive of a circus, and reminds us that, as a nation, we are singularly lacking in the sense of humour. The stage-lighting effects in connection with the Crown Jewels in the Wakefield Tower certainly charm the glitter-loving multitude, but this dazzling cageful of royal gold plate stands, we are apt to forget, in a room where Henry VI. had an oratory, and where, tradition tells, he was “murdered in cold blood as he knelt before the altar that stood in the recess of the south-east corner” of the chamber. Here was committed “one of the most barbarous murders that even the Tower has recorded in its blood-stained annals,” as one authority has it; but who to-day has leisure to think of this when told to “move on,” as one of the crowd surging round the regalia cage, by yet another policeman who might have just come in from the duties of regulating motor omnibuses in the Strand?
I dwell on these points in order to show how hopeless it is to catch any of the real spirit and message of the Tower when to-day, to-day, to-day, is ever intruding itself. We ask for leisure to contemplate a far-off yesterday, and to teach the boys and girls we take to the Tower something of the value of the Tower buildings as concrete embodiments of England’s noble history; but we are only permitted to walk hurriedly in one specified direction, and illusion is destroyed at every point. I should like, however, to say, lest I may be misunderstood, that from the Tower officials one receives nothing but courtesy. They are not to blame. They are performing the duties imposed on them from without. The pity is that the restless spirit of the age should have found its way within walls hallowed to memories of England’s kings, and the sufferings of her greatest and worthiest men. Were that spirit denied all access to this one spot, lying in the heart of modern London, a visit to the Tower would mean to young and old alike very much more than it means to-day. The feeling of reverence, which is so sadly lacking in people of all ranks of life, might once again be shown by all who entered these solemn portals.
It is in the hope that a record of Tower history and romance presented anew, in the form which this volume takes, may deepen the interest in and the love for the Tower of London, that this book was written. It does not attempt within its narrow limits to give a detailed and exhaustive account of occurrences; that has been admirably done by others before now. But it does attempt, by the aid of carefully prepared pictures, to recreate not only what has been bequeathed to us from a fascinating past, but also the life and colour of the Tower as it stands to-day, in its less-spoiled aspects.
A dry repetition of facts and dates may make an accurate history for the scholar’s shelves, but it would remain unread by all else. Such books have their place, and a worthy place, but they would not convey to the mind of one who has never seen the Tower, a really adequate conception of its past and present. This book may fail to bring the Tower in all its strange charm to the heart and mind of a lonely reader on the prairies of Manitoba or in the Australian bush, but the attempt has been made, and it is not for writer or artist to say whether it has been achieved or not.
As I look from my window day by day across Tower Hill at the noble old buildings lying beyond, and watch them when silhouetted against a morning sky or lit up by the glow of evening sunshine, I often wonder if justice can ever be done to them now that we have no Shakespeare and no Walter Scott. While walking in the garden, wherein is set the stone that records the last execution in 1747 on that blood-stained spot, one cannot but contemplate the possibility of even this solemn place being some day violated by the hands of those who scheme out city “improvements.” Still, one may hope that England in her heart will ponder these things, and will save the Tower and Tower Hill from vandalism; that she will realise more and more as years roll on what a precious heritage she has here—a heritage that was born at her birth, has grown with her growth, and may not be destroyed while she breeds strong sons to guard her treasures.
CHAPTER II
HISTORICAL SKETCH
’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
Omar Khayyam.
The protoplasm from which the present Tower grew was a rude Celtic fort on the river slope of Tower Hill. Then came the Romans and built their London Wall, at the angle of which, commanding the Thames seawards, they also constructed a fortress. A portion of this Arx Palatina can still be seen to the east of the White Tower. But no part of this Roman work remains in the present Tower, though Shakespeare speaks of Julius Cæsar’s Tower in Richard II.