In the North Transept there is a monument to Jonas Hanway, a philanthropist and traveller, who died in 1786. Hanway was so kind, and worked so hard to help those who were less fortunate than himself, that he was called “the friend and father of the poor.” He is said to have been the first person in England who ever carried an umbrella. It seems curious that such a useful invention was not made until the eighteenth century.
In the West Cloister is a monument to Dr. Benjamin Cooke, who died in 1793, having been organist of the Abbey for thirty years. In the North Aisle of the Choir are the grave and monument of Dr. Samuel Arnold, a well-known Church musician, who succeeded Dr. Cooke as organist of the Abbey, and died in 1802.
Two famous engravers, William Woollett, who died in 1785, and George Vertue, who died in 1756, have monuments in the West Cloister. Vertue is buried in the North Cloister, near one of his family, who was a monk.
Several well-known actors and actresses of the eighteenth century are also buried in the Cloisters.
CHAPTER IX
THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
—”our slowly grown
And crown’d Republic.”
Tennyson (To the Queen).
It is very difficult properly to divide the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because, of course, history does not cut itself up into lengths of a hundred years. But in telling the story of a place like the Abbey it is better to have some division, and as the French Revolution took place nearly at the end of the eighteenth century, a kind of natural division comes at that time, for we know that the French Revolution made a great and lasting change all over Europe.
