The Children's Story of Westminster Abbey

by G. E. Troutbeck

Here, next to Dr. Johnson, we find the grave of the brilliant play-writer and parliamentary orator, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the author of the Rivals and The School for Scandal. Sheridan died in 1816, the year after the Battle of Waterloo.

Against the wall, close to the door of St. Faith’s Chapel, is the bust of the great novelist, Sir Walter Scott, who died in 1832. His Waverley Novels are too famous to need any description. We need only speak of Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, The Antiquary, and Kenilworth, in order to remind English people of all ages of many hours of interest and delight. The particular position was expressly chosen for the bust of Sir Walter Scott, because it is close to the monument of the Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, the same Duke of Argyll who appears in Scott’s famous story, The Heart of Midlothian. The bust was placed in the Abbey only a few years ago; it is a copy of the bust by Chantrey at Abbotsford.

Above Shakspeare’s monument are busts of two celebrated poets of the early part of the nineteenth century—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of “The Ancient Mariner,” “Christabel,” and other well-known poems, and Robert Southey, Poet-Laureate, author of “Thalaba,” “The Curse of Kehama,” and the poem on the Waterfall at Lodore. Coleridge died in 1834, and Southey in 1843, in the reign of Queen Victoria. Neither Coleridge nor Southey is buried in the Abbey. Southey was one of the famous group of “Lake poets,” and is buried in the lake country, at Crosthwaite, near Keswick.

Close by Shakspeare’s monument is the statue of Thomas Campbell, who wrote “The Pleasures of Hope,” “The Battle of the Baltic,” “Ye Mariners of England,” and other poems.

Under the South-West Tower, in the former Baptistery, is the monument of the great poet, William Wordsworth, who lived through the time of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and died in 1850. He was the chief of the “Lake poets.” Wordsworth is not buried in the Abbey, but in Grasmere churchyard, in that English lake-country where he was born and which he loved so dearly. Wordsworth’s chief poems are “The Excursion,” “The White Doe of Rylstone,” “Tintern Abbey,” the “Ode on Immortality,” and the “Ode to Duty.” But there are many others, great and small, which are part of the heritage he has left to his fellow-countrymen.

In the Baptistery, just opposite Wordsworth’s monument, is a memorial portrait bust of Charles Kingsley, the great preacher and writer, author of Alton Locke, Westward Ho!, Hypatia, and of many well-known poems. Charles Kingsley is remembered with especial interest and affection at the Abbey, as he was Canon of Westminster for two years. He died in 1875, and is buried at Eversley, in Hampshire, where he was rector for so long.

Next to Kingsley is a bust of Matthew Arnold, the poet, essayist, and critic. Next to him again is a bust of Frederick Denison Maurice, a great religious teacher of the nineteenth century. Opposite to these, and next to Wordsworth, is the monument to John Keble, author of The Christian Year. Next to that is the monument of the famous Dr. Thomas Arnold, who was headmaster of Rugby, and who did much to improve the whole life in the public schools of England. Matthew Arnold, of whom we have just heard, was his son.

In Poets’ Corner, close to the grave of Chaucer, lie two other famous poets of the Victorian age, Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning.

Tennyson will always be remembered as the poet of In Memoriam and The Idylls of the King, and also of many splendid patriotic poems which all English boys and girls ought to know. He died in 1892, and when his grave was being dug in Poets’ Corner a skull and leg-bone were found, which were evidently those of Geoffrey Chaucer, who had been buried here nearly five hundred years before. By Tennyson’s own wish the Union Jack was wrapped round his coffin and buried with him. A fine bust of Tennyson has been placed against a pillar near his grave.

Robert Browning, author of The Ring and the Book, Pippa Passes, By the Fireside, and many other famous poems, died at Venice in 1889. His body was brought back to be buried in the Abbey. His wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, well known as a poetess, is buried in Florence.