THE EXTERIOR
"In England," wrote Mr J.H. Parker, in his Glossary, "Wells affords the most perfect example of a cathedral with all its parts and appurtenances. It was," he continues, after an enumeration of the parts of the church, "a cathedral proper, and independent of any monastic foundation, but with a separate house for each of its officers, either in the Close or in the Liberty adjoining to it. The bishop's palace was enclosed by a separate moat and fortified, being on the south side of the cloister, from which it is separated by the moat; the houses for the dean and for the archdeacon are on the north side of the Close, with some of the canons' houses; the organist's house is at the west end, adjoining to the singing-school and the cloister; the precentor's house is at the east end, near the Lady Chapel. The vicars-choral have a close of their own adjoining to the north-east corner of the canons' close, with a bridge across through the gate-house into the north transept; they were a collegiate body, with their own chapel, library, and hall." One need only add that all these sentences can still, with one exception, be read in the present tense to show that Wells possesses a beauty and interest which gives it an unique place among cathedral foundations. There is no other cathedral city in which so many of the old ecclesiastical buildings remain, or on which the modern world has made so little impression. The church itself, in Fergusson's opinion perhaps the most beautiful, though one of the smallest in England, is but one part of a "group of buildings, which," wrote Professor Freeman, "as far as I know, has no rival, either in our own island or beyond the sea." The little city to which these buildings belong is itself worthy of them, almost a part of them, so quiet and venerable is it, so picturesque in its lovely setting of green hills.
Were size the main distinction of a church, Wells would sink comfortably into the second class; even in some of its best features it has many rivals, but the peculiar charm and glory of Wells lies (to quote again from Freeman's History) "in the union and harmonious grouping of all. The church does not stand alone; it is neither crowded by incongruous buildings, nor yet isolated from those buildings which are its natural and necessary complement. Palace, cloister, Lady Chapel, choir, chapter-house, all join to form one indivisible whole. The series goes on uninterruptedly along that unique bridge, which, by a marvel of ingenuity, connects the church itself with the most perfect of buildings of its own class, the matchless vicars' close. Scattered around we see here and there an ancient house, its gable, its windows, or its turret, falling in with the style and group of greater buildings, and bearing its part in producing the general harmony of all." Thus, in the first place, the group of buildings must be looked at as a whole from the north, from the east, from the south-east; then the superb, unrivalled picture from the rising ground on the Shepton Mallet road,[1] outside the city, must be seen, and, when this little journey has been made, the most hurried visitor must find time at least to peep into the vicars' close, and walk round the moat of the palace. After some such general impression has been gained, the study of the exterior of the church will naturally begin with that part which is a peculiar distinction of Wells Cathedral—the west front.
The West Front of Wells has been universally admired. Long ago, old Fuller wrote—"The west front of Wells is a masterpiece of art indeed, made of imagery in just proportion, so that we may call them vera et spirantia signa. England affordeth not the like." This verdict is but repeated by modern writers; the front is "quite unrivalled," says Fergusson, and comparable only to Rheims and Chartres. Mr Hughes, in Traill's Social England, goes farther and says[2] that "nothing fit to rank with it was then being done in Northern Europe—for the monumental porches of France, formerly supposed to be contemporary, are now recognised as of a later date."
But there has been a discordant note in the general chorus of praise. Professor Freeman, whose admiration for nearly everything in Wells was so intense, could find little to praise in the west front of the cathedral.[3] "It is doubtless," he wrote, "the finest display of sculpture in England; but it is thoroughly bad as a piece of architecture. I am always glad when I get round the corner, and can rest my eye on the massive and simple majesty of the nave and transepts. The west front is bad because it is a sham—because it is not the real ending of the nave and aisles, but a mere mask, devised, in order to gain greater room for the display of statues ... The front is not the natural finish of the nave and aisles; it is a blank wall built up in a shape which is not the shape which their endings would naturally assume. It is therefore a sham; it is a sin against the first law of architectural design, the law that enrichment should be sought in ornamenting the construction ... not in building up anything simply for the sake of effect." He then proceeds to criticise the way in which the windows and doorways "are stowed away as they best may be," as if they were felt to be mere interruptions to the lines of sculpture.
This latter objection to the doorways had often been made before, only that the "rabbit-holes on a mountain side" of earlier critics became "mouse-holes" with Mr Freeman. Mr E.W. Godwin, in a lecture in 1862, had also found fault with the crowding in of the niches over the central doorway, which he declared to be in the highest degree clumsy; with the bald appearance given by the shallowness of the reveals in the principal windows; and with the way in which "the solid work of the base suddenly crops up at the very summit of the two central buttresses, not altogether unlike the dog-kennel of modern Gothic."