THE WEST FRONT, ELY CATHEDRAL.
The ruins of the missing transept are plain to see, and a huge and ugly buttress props up the tower from this side; but, were that building restored, we should only have again, in its completeness, a curiously childish design. For that is the note of this west front and of this great tower, rising in stage upon stage of masonry until the great blocks of stone, dwarfed by distance, look like so many courses of grey brick. So does a child build up towers and castles of wooden blocks.
We must, however, not accuse the original designers of the tower of this mere striving after enormous height. The uppermost stage, where the square building takes an octagonal form, is an addition of nearly two hundred years later, when the nice perceptions and exquisite taste of an earlier period were lost, and size was the goal of effort, rather than beauty. Those who built at that later time would have gone higher had they dared, but if they lacked something as artists, they must at least be credited with engineering knowledge. They knew that the mere crushing weight of stone upon stone would, if further added to, grind the lower stages into powder and so wreck the whole fabric. So, at a height of two hundred and fifteen feet, they stayed their hands; but, in earnest of what they would have done, had not prudence forbade, they crowned the topmost battlements with a tall light wooden spire, removed a century ago in one of the restorations. It was from the roof of this tower, in 1845, that Basevi, an architect interested in a restoration then in progress, fell and was killed.
The octagonal upper stage of this great western tower was added in the Decorated period, about 1350, when the great central octagon, the most outstanding and peculiar feature of the Cathedral, was built. Any distant view of this vast building that commands its full length shows, in addition to the western tower, a light and fairylike lantern, like some graceful coronet, midway of the long roof-ridge, where choir and nave meet. This was built to replace the tall central tower that suddenly fell in ruins in 1332 and destroyed much of the choir. To an architect inspired far above his fellows fell the task of rebuilding. There are two works among the whole range of ancient Gothic art in these islands that stand out above and beyond the rest and proclaim the hand and brain of genius. They are the west front of Peterborough Cathedral and the octagonal lantern of Ely. We do not know who designed Peterborough's daring arcaded front, but the name of that resourceful man who built the great feature of Ely has been preserved. He was Alan of Walsingham, the sacrist and sub-prior of the monastery. He did not build it in that conventional and deceitful sense we are accustomed to when we read that this or that mediæval Abbot or Bishop built one thing or another, the real meaning of the phrase being that they provided the money and were anything and everything but the architects. No: he imagined it; the idea sprang from his brain, his hands drew the plans, he made it grow and watched it to its completion.
No man dared rebuild the tower that had fallen; not even Alan, or perhaps he did not want to, being possessed, as we may well believe, by this Idea. What it was you shall hear, although, to be sure, no words have any power to picture to those who have not seen it what this great and original work is like. The fallen tower had been reared, as is the manner of such central towers, upon four great pillars where nave and choir and transepts met. Alan cleared the ruins of them away, and built in their stead a circle of eight stone columns that not only took in the width of nave and the central alleys and transepts and choir that had been enclosed by the fallen pillars, but spread out beyond it to the whole width of nave aisles and the side aisles of choir and transepts. This group of columns carries arches and a masonry wall rising in octagonal form above the roofs, and crowned by the timber structure of the lantern itself. The interior view of this lantern shows a number of vaulting ribs of timber spreading inwards from these columns, and supporting a whole maze of open timber-work pierced with great traceried windows and fretted and carved to wonderment. The effect is as that of a dome, "the only Gothic dome in the world" as it has been said. How truly it is a "lantern" may be seen when the sun shines through the windows and lights up the central space in the great church below. Puritan fury did much to injure this beautiful work, and its niches and tabernacles, once filled with Gothic statuary, are now supplied with modern sculptures, good in intention but a poor substitute. The modern stained-glass, too, is atrocious.
To fully describe Ely Cathedral in any but an architectural work would be alike impossible and unprofitable, and it shall not be attempted here: this giant among English minsters is not easily disposed of. For it is a giant. Winchester, the longest, measuring from west front to east wall of its Lady Chapel five hundred and fifty-five feet, is but eighteen feet longer. Even in that particular, Ely would have excelled but for the Lady Chapel here being built to one side, instead of at the end, owing to the necessity that existed for keeping a road open at the east end of the building.
Like the greater number of English minsters, Ely stands in a grassy space. A triangular green spreads out in front, with the inevitable captured Russian gun in the foreground, and the Bishop's Palace on the right. By turning to the south and passing through an ancient gateway, once the entrance to the monastery, the so-called "Park" is entered, the hilly and magnificently wooded southern side of what would in other cathedral cities be named the "Close," here technically "the College," and preserving in that title the memory of the ancient College of Secular Clergy which ruled sometime in that hundred years between A.D. 870 and 970.
It was from this point of view, near the ancient mound of "Cherry Hill," the site of William the Conquerors Castle, that Turner painted his picture. Many remains of the monastic establishment are to be seen, built into charming and comfortable old houses, residences of the Cathedral dignitaries. Here are the time-worn Norman pillars and arches of the Infirmary, and close by is the Deanery, fashioned out of the ancient thirteenth-century Guesten Hall. Quiet dignity and repose mark the place; every house has its old garden, and everyone is very well satisfied with himself. It is a pleasant world for sleepy shepherds, if a sorry one for the sheep.
XLI
Let them sleep, for their activity, on any lines that may be predicated from past conduct, bodes no one good. Times have been when these shepherds themselves masqueraded as wolves, acting the part with every convincing circumstance of ferocity. The last of these occasions was in 1816. I will set forth in detail the doings of that time, because they are intimately bound up with the story of this road between Ely and Downham Market.