The Tower is full of lovely "bits" for the sketcher. The succession of fine old gates that span the entrance-road, and the ring of encircling towers called the "Inner Ward," though necessarily restored in places, have still a fine air of antiquity; which air of antiquity the massive walls, narrow window-slits, and the close-growing mantle of ivy that, in places, adds a welcome note of greenery, do much to maintain. The effect, at any rate, is complete. In the Tower precincts you seem to be really in mediæval London. Just so, you imagine, in all essentials, only still grassy and not quite so shut in by houses, must "Tower Green" have looked on that terrible day so dramatically described by Froude:
"A little before noon, on the 19th of May, Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, was led down to the green where the young grass and the white daisies of summer were freshly bursting in the sunshine. A little cannon stood loaded on the battlements, the motionless cannoneer was ready with smoking linstock at his side, and when the crawling hand upon the dial of the great Tower clock touched the midday hour, that cannon would tell to London that all was over."
On this same spot, so fatal to youth and beauty, two other young women,—mere girls, indeed,—died; poor silly Katherine Howard, and, later, Lady Jane Grey, a child of eighteen,—the "queen of nine days," a victim of others' offences,—who "went to her death without fear or pain." Neither age nor youth were, indeed, spared in those cruel days; for the grey hairs of the aged Countess of Salisbury, last of the Plantagenets, were here also brought to the same block. This was the private execution spot, reserved for special victims and near relations, in contrast to the public one on Great Tower Hill outside; the exact place is enclosed, and marked by a square patch of darker stone. In the little adjoining chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula—the Prisoners' Chapel,—aptly dedicated to St. Peter-in-the-Chains,—were buried all these poor dishonoured bodies; Queen Anne Boleyn's, so short a time ago so loved, so adulated, thrown carelessly into an old arrow-chest, and flung beneath the altar. This chapel,—which is, by the way, a royal chapel, and therefore under no bishop's jurisdiction,—is very much restored, but it has a few good monuments; and its list of victims, numbered on a brass tablet inside the door, is sufficiently affecting: "In truth," says Macaulay:
"there is no sadder spot on earth than this little cemetery. Hither have been carried through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts."
"No, I can't say I've ever seen any ghosts," said the affable Warder who showed me the chapel: "though an American family lately, they were so anxious to see Queen Anne Boleyn's ghost, that they went and sat opposite the execution-spot, at all hours, day-and-night; but they must have got disappointed, for I never heard that anything came of it.... Being from America," he added thoughtfully, "I suppose they felt they'd like to see all there was to be seen.... No, ghosts don't trouble us much; we all live in the Towers and round about, and the worst you can say of our lodgin's is that they're a bit draughty-like, in winter and spring, having them slits of winders all round. And then they don't allow you to paper the walls, or stick up a picture nail, or anything to make the place look a bit homely! One does get a bit tired, too," he confessed, "of them dark stone walls, and even of prisoners' inscriptions; but there it is, you mayn't so much as touch 'em, or even cover 'em up.... However," he continued magnanimously, "I own that we're lucky to live in the days we do; our 'eds is our own, at any rate!"
Between Tower Green and the outer moat, on the western side of the gravelled square, are the old-fashioned and comfortable-looking dwelling houses of the Tower officials; the residences of the Governor, the doctor, the Chaplain, &c.; houses mainly of darkened brick,—like the citadel itself,—fitted in between the "Beauchamp" and the "Bell" towers. The greater part of the fortress is, as we have seen, utilised as arsenal, barracks, or private dwellings; and thus, of its many towers, the "White Tower," (the "Keep" of the ancient castle), and the "Beauchamp Tower," are the only ones now viewed by the general public; though other antiquities and places worthy of a visit may, on application to the Governor, be shown to those "really interested." The Beauchamp Tower, though "restored" in 1854 (when all its inscriptions were placed together in one room), is still most interesting. Certainly, the draughts, on a windy day, of that room, go far to suggest the justice of my friend the warder's complaint. And the poor prisoners of old days did not know the modern comfort of "slow-combustion" stoves! Poor creatures! torn by the rack and torture, crushed by long, hopeless imprisonment, with no friend to turn to in their need, they have left us, deeply cut into the prison walls, their most pathetic complaint. Philosophy, on the whole, seems here to have been of the most availing comfort. Like Socrates, the wretched victims tried hard to be stoical. "The most unhappie man in the world," runs one inscription, "is he that is not pacient in adversitie." Then, in old Norman-French: "Tout vient apoient, quy peult attendre." "A passage perillus maketh a port pleasant." It was here, in the Beauchamp Tower, that the five Dudley brothers, sons of the Duke of Northumberland, were imprisoned for their share in the Lady Jane Grey rebellion; here are their pictured emblems and hieroglyphics; also the word "Jane," supposed to have been cut by her husband, Lord Guildford. To the longer victims of the Tower, time must have passed hardly. Was it agony of mind that guided the stroke, or did they find it some solace in their anguish? Poets, philosophers, men of science, all the best and noblest in the land; hours of solace after torture, no doubt, were theirs, given by that good Angel who,
"Brought the wise and great of ancient days
To cheer the cell where Raleigh pined alone."
Had they books, journals, writing materials? Probably but rarely. There was Raleigh, who spent such a large part of a chequered life in prison here, dying here too at last, and writing his "History" with admirable stoicism, in the face of death. But Lady Jane Grey, imprisoned in the "Brick Tower," had, we know, to inscribe her last message to her sister Katherine, on the blank leaves of her Greek Testament. What vivid, what painful interest would attach to a "Tower" diary, such as Pepys's, in cipher, could one have been written by any of these prisoners!
The wonderful collection of historic armour in the imposing "White Tower" is, even to those who are not connoisseurs on the subject, of great interest and beauty. It is true that there are a great many very narrow and steep stone stairs to be climbed; but in the end you are duly rewarded for your trouble. The ancient chapel of St. John, at the top of the winding stairway, is most strikingly picturesque, and especially so on a sunny day, when the light plays among the bare stone columns. This "most perfect Norman chapel in England" is striking in its unadorned severity of style; and the stilted horseshoe arches of its apse are somewhat like those of St. Bartholomew the Great, at Smithfield. The chapel dates from the year 1078, and has been the scene of many royal pageants and lyings-in-state. The Banqueting Hall adjoins it; here are to be seen, among other curiosities, models of the rack and thumbscrew, and the block used for the execution of old Lord Lovat, with Lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock—the last Royalists executed here—in 1745. The hall contains also much armour and many weapons. Above is the "Council Chamber," where King Richard II. abdicated his throne in favour of his cousin Henry Bolingbroke.
"I think men must really have got bigger since these old days," remarked a burly policeman, to whom I was communicating my impressions: "Now, you wouldn't think it, but there's only two suits of armour in the whole place that I could even manage to get on me, that's old Henry VIII.'s, and his brother-in-law what's beside 'im, Charles Brandon, Dook o' Suffolk—you see 'em? over there, in the middle. Not but what they must have been strong too, of their size, to bear all that there weight of steel on 'em. I'd be sorry to do it myself, I know that. It's a wonder they didn't faint, and their poor horses, too!"