Q. "We should like to know something of the nature of the old foundations which were found under the Quire in the 1904 excavations, also whether any light can be thrown upon the subterranean piers, their date and purpose?"
"... The window was straight as we knew it, but[18] was somewhat changed by Abbot Beere when he made the chapell. Ye are right about ye end walls. Johannes saw to the building thereof for they were five years before they builded the last part because there was nothing in the coffers—so the church was perfect without the new parts.
"What was it Beere performed? We will remember. The olde church had a chapell going east like to Edgar's and the corners were cut off most like. The foundations ye mean remain. We know but that which we heard and that which they who followed after did, we know not, save only we can enquire.
"Beere, Abbot, is not with us now. He has a work to perform. There are others who build in your England and he hath to lead them as they should be led. They who builded in our day and were masters, lead ye now.
"ROBERT. ANNO 1334. GLASTON."
NOTE ON SITTING XXIX.
The blending of influences is again very marked, but the dominant thought is that of one of the inmates of the great abbatial House. The signature "Robert" (anno 1334) does not help us. This was the year that witnessed the election of John de Breynton as Abbot, vice Adam de Sodbury, and it was an era of great building activities. But Robert speaks, or is made to speak, for those of an era two hundred years later, or nearly, and it is strange to find a voice from the fourteenth century recalling the "window" as it then was, and going on to describe alterations made at the beginning of the sixteenth.
And the allusion to Abbot Beere's living influence is of peculiar interest. Among the best modern exponents of the Gothic English styles, the call of the past, and the influence of the past, is vital as an element in their work, and it is precisely in the measure in which they are able to translate the spirit of the past, that they can claim inspiration in what they strive to produce.[19] Occasionally a sincere student will obtain some mental pictures of a bygone time of singular clearness and fidelity, whence, he knows not; only that they are spontaneously apparent to him when in a state of mental passivity after intellectual exertion in the particular direction needed. It may be of interest here to quote an experience once related to the writer by an old friend, W., now retired from practice, but who in the 80's of the last century was responsible for a good deal of scholarly restoration work in the west country. W. was very partial to the Early English forms, and if he had a fault, it was the fault of his day, when restorers were a little ruthless, as we should think nowadays, in substituting Early English detail for the fifteenth century "vernacular" of the district. On one occasion he was called upon to undertake "restoration"—which, in this case, meant a partial rebuilding—of a decayed church in the very decayed town of I. The south wall of the nave, a work of the ordinary "Perpendicular" sort, had to be rebuilt, and he had to construct a new arcade for the aisle adjoining. Somehow he felt disinclined to do this in the fifteenth-century style, but was prompted to design afresh, in the manner of the thirteenth. And for his pillars he imagined a form of capital having rather a complex moulding. There was nothing visible to guide him, but it appealed to him as suitable. Nor was it a local type—at least, this would be the writer's recollection of the impression he derived from the drawing which W. showed him.
The capitals were provided of this pattern, the old wall was pulled down, and hidden within it and built into its substance was found a pier-capital of a moulding identical in detail. I myself was satisfied that he had never seen any particle of this early work, and he allows me to retell the story here. As to the story of Johannes, the truant monk and nature-lover, it takes the form of an interpretation of his memory-record by another. Whether we are dealing with a singularly vivid imaginative picture or with the personality of a man no one can really decide. But later examples will elucidate the part he plays in the scheme, and it is one of much interest from the psychological point of view.
SITTING XXIX.—Continued. 20th April, 1908.
"Ye crypt was mere a chamber under the stairs and it was at the west end of the chapel. It was not for sepulture and it is gone long syne by reason of the fall of the floor of ye chapel.
"Yt wasne underground and was low—a man might hardly walk sans stooping."
The work of excavation commenced shortly after the receipt of this communication.
SITTING XXXII. 16th June, 1908 (after excavation No. 4).