Gleanings in Europe

by James Fenimore Cooper

The House of Lords is a very different place. The room may be about the size of St. Stephen’s, though I think it a little smaller, and there is no gallery.[1] The throne, by no means a handsome one, is a little on one side, and the peers sit on benches covered with red cloth, in the centre, and within a railing. These benches occupy three sides of an area in the centre, while the throne stands on the fourth. In front of the latter are the wool sacks, which are a species of divan that do not touch a wall. Every thing is red, or rather crimson, from throne down. There is a table, and places for the clerks, in the area. The chancellor is by no means as much cared for as the speaker. The seat of the latter is quite luxurious, but the former would have rather a hard time of it, were it not for a sort of false back that has been contrived for him, and against which he may lean at need. It resembles a fire-skreen, but answers its purpose.

The celebrated tapestry is a rude fabric. It must have been woven when the art was in its infancy, and it is no wonder that such ships met with no success. It is much faded, which, quite likely, is an advantage rather than otherwise. “The tapestry which adorns these walls” was a flight of eloquence that must have required all the moral courage of Chatham to get along with. Like so much of all around it, however, one looks at it with interest, and not the less for its very faults.

I can tell you little of the adjuncts of the two houses of parliament. The rooms were all sufficiently common, and are chiefly curious on account of their uses, and their several histories. The eating and drinking part of the establishment struck me as being altogether the most commodious, for there is a regular coffee-house, or rather tavern, connected with them, where one can, at a moment’s notice, get a cup of tea, a chop or a steak, or even something better still. In this particular, parliament quite throws congress and the chambers into the back ground. A dinner is too serious a thing with a Frenchman to be taken so informally, and then both he and the American are content with legislating in the day time. The late hours frequently drive the members of parliament to snatch a meal where they can. Tea is a blessed invention for such people, and Bellamy’s is a blessed invention for tea.

After visiting Westminster, we gave part of a day to St. Paul’s. This is truly a noble edifice. Well do I remember the impression it made on me, when, an uninstructed boy, fresh from America, I first stood beneath its arching dome. I actually experienced a sensation of dizziness, like that one feels in looking over a precipice. When I returned home, and told my friends, among other traveller’s marvels, that the steeple of Trinity could stand beneath this dome, and that its vane should not nearly reach its top, I was set down as one already spoilt by having seen more than my neighbours! It is surprisingly easy to get that character in America, especially if one does not scruple to tell the truth. I was much within the mark as to feet and inches, but I erred in the mode of illustrating. Had I said that the dome of St. Paul’s was a thousand feet high, I should have found a plenty of believers, but the moment I attempted to put one of our martin’s boxes into it, self-love took the alarm, and I was laughed at for my pains. This was two-and-twenty years ago: have we improved much since that time?

Although I no longer looked on St. Paul’s with the fresh and unpractised eyes of 1806, it appeared to me now, what in truth it is, a grand and imposing edifice. In many respects it is better than St. Peter’s, though, taken as a whole, it falls far short of it. When the richness of the materials, the respective dimensions, the details, and the colonnade of St. Peter’s are considered, it must be admitted that St. Paul’s is not even a first class church, St. Peter’s standing alone; but I am not sure that the cathedral of London is not also entitled to form a class by itself, although one that is inferior.

The architecture of St. Paul’s is severe and noble. There is very little of the meretricious in it, the ornaments, in general, partaking of this character, both in their nature and distribution. A pitiful statue of Queen Anne, in front of the building, is the most worthless thing about it, being sadly out of place, without mentioning the monstrosity of the statue of a woman in a regular set of petticoats, holding a globe in her hand, and having a crown on her head. I am not quite sure she is not in a hoop. Had she been surrounded by a party of “the nobility and gentry,” dressed for Almacks, the idea would have been properly carried out. Ladies who are not disposed to go all lengths, had better not be ambitious of figuring in marble.

The interior of St. Paul’s was too naked, perhaps, until they began to ornament it with monuments. I remember it nearly in that state, not more than half a dozen statues having been placed, at my first visit to London. There are now many, and as they are all quite of the new school, they are chaste and simple. This church promises to throw Westminster Abbey, eventually, in the shade.

Of course we ascended to the whispering gallery. The effect is much the same as it is in all these places. I do not think Sir James Thornhill, who painted the dome, with passages from the life of St. Paul, a Michael Angelo, or even a Baron Gros, though, like the latter, he painted in oil. The colours are already much gone, which, perhaps, is no great loss.

I ought to have said that we came up, what our cicerone called a “geometry stair-case,” of which the whole secret appeared to be, that the steps are made of stones of which one end are built into a circular wall. This “geometry stair-case” greatly puzzled my friend, the traveller, Mr. Carter, who agreed with the cicerone that it was altogether inexplicable. It is a wonder to be classed with that of the automaton chess-player. The effect, however, is pleasing.