The monuments are few and the names on them unknown. There are no ghosts with claims for recollection on one's affection or homage. Those obscure citizens who lie buried within the church or outside it, in what one might call the church's little "back garden," are content to be forgotten, but some of their names figure in the parish records, and in the paper-covered book which one can buy in the church there are such entries as:—
"John de Weston, called 'de St. Ives,' brewer of Colmanstrete, left 13s. 4d. for the repair of the belfry in 1374, and Matilda Balsham left 10s. for the building of a porch over the entrance in the year before!" Ten shillings for building a porch! Money must have gone farther then than now! Witness the fact that in 1570 the "little shop" on the south side of the porch was let at a rent of 5s. a year!
Rents, however, went up, even in those days, and in 1577 a certain George Clarke paid 6s. 8d. a year for the same premises, whilst in 1616 a Mr. John Miller, the sexton, paid £1. Meanwhile the shop on the north side had been built in 1615, and let at a rent of £4. One would like to know the character of the business carried on by the numerous tenants mentioned, but save for one reference to "the eye-man" (which looks as if the present spectacle-makers are carrying on the traditions), another to the "little shop," in 1832, as the "Gold Beater's House," and the mention, 1592, of "Samuel Aylesworde, a glover," no light is thrown on the subject.
In this same paper-covered book there is recorded the loss of "a curious sculptured figure of stone," which a few years ago was removed from the tower to "serve as a guide to the modeller in the preparation of a silver figure which now crowns the beadle's staff". Who could have stolen the old figure? What was the motive? Where is it now? Huddled in a dusty corner in the shop of some dealer in antiques perhaps. Or was it seized by some zealous Roman Catholic as lawful booty? The ghosts maybe themselves have appropriated it? I shall never think of St. Ethelburga's without pausing to speculate, with a pleasant little thrill, on the fate of "the curious sculptured figure of stone". To find it would be an adventure after my own heart. One would take up such a quest as a hobby and continue it until it became an obsession. Think of the hunt for antique shops where such a thing would be likely to make a temporary halt. The more obscure the shop, the more heterogeneous its contents, the more likely to contain the treasure. "Imidges," as Mrs. D. calls them, would haunt one's dreams by night and lure one to strange journeys by day. The particular "imidge" which had bewitched you would take on the attributes of the Philosopher's Stone, and the pursuit of it become what the winning number in a lottery is to the gambler who hopes with every fresh stake to retrieve his fortunes. Then, one day, perhaps, success (which in your heart you had never expected, or, let me whisper it, really wanted) comes. The solution of the riddle was quite ordinary, the——
In the middle of my meditations the old lady, who had been making a tour of the church examining the pictures, tapped me on the back, announcing she had seen all there was to be seen and that, judging from my looks, I must have gone out that morning before I got up. The interruption was not unwelcome, arriving as it did at the moment of disillusionment, and I followed her out of the church.
Being in the neighbourhood of St. Mary Axe, it occurred to me we might go on to St. Andrew Undershaft to see Stow's monument. The church is open from 12 to 2, and I asked Mrs. D. whether she would have lunch before, or after, the visit. She said she thought "two churches running" might be "rather dry," and, taking the hint, I came to a halt at the nearest restaurant.
The beefsteak was tough but the ale was good, and Mrs. D. declared, as we rose from the table, that she felt quite equal to another church, but she hoped it was not an underground one. She seemed to connect the word "Undershaft" with coal mines, and I hastened to tell her the story of the Maypole, which used, on May Day, to be set up hung with flowers opposite the south door of St. Andrew's. It must have been a very tall one, for Stow says of it that the "shaft when it was set on end and fixed in the ground was higher than the church steeple".
St. Andrew's is spacious, dignified, and rather chill. The windows are a special feature, and some of them display the coats of arms of various of the city guilds. I never, by the way, think of those guilds without smelling in imagination that odour reminiscent of centuries of past dinners, which hangs about their old halls, remembering, too, Hallam's words, "The common banquet and the common purse". Here is the coat of arms of the Merchant Tailors, the Haberdashers, Wool Staplers, and Merchant Adventurers. (I should have liked to have been a "Merchant Adventurer".) There you have the ideal mingling of Commerce with Romance—Romance, with nothing behind it, is as evanescent as the rainbow, a lopsided article which satisfies no one for long, but that Romance which is an integral part of the business of living makes for a solid happiness that wears well.
I am afraid John Stow did not achieve it. His work could not have been of a lucrative nature seeing that, at the age of 78, he obtained from James I a licence to beg! There, in the far corner at the east end of the church, he sits at his writing table, the implement of his craft, a quill pen, in his hand. A funny little squat figure with a ruff, framing a small, delicate face, not the face of one able to battle successfully with a hard world. I wondered how his widow, who erected the monument, found the necessary cash. But Mrs. D. remarked that no matter how the poor lived, they always contrived the means to pay respect to their dead with the "insurance money". Her husband had had three coaches, with a pair of horses in each, to follow him to the grave, although, on account of his long illness, she owed two months' rent at the time of his death, and had pawned the parlour clock and the fire-irons. Such talk seemed to savour of bad taste, under the circumstances, and I sent an apprehensive glance in Stow's direction, but he was too absorbed with his task to look up. How often must he have sat thus in his lifetime writing those endless pages without which we should know so little of the intimate history of the middle ages! In his love of detail he was, like Pepys, chosen to preserve for future generations living documents made of small homely details. The sculptured face gives testimony to the patience and concentration of the historian who wrote "The Survey of London". It is the face of one who, if he made up his mind to discover the difference between two blades of grass, would pursue that study with the world tumbling about his ears. It is consistent with the neglect with which he was treated in life that in 1732 his body was removed from its resting place "to make way for another". Who that "other" was I don't know, but this much I am sure—he was a beastly interloper who had no more right to usurp poor old Stow's last resting place than has the cat to turn me out of my armchair.
We left the painstaking worker at his task, the white feather of the quill being the last thing I saw as I turned my head for a parting look. Does the quill move sometimes in the silence and darkness of the long nights in the old church? and could I, if I had the eyes, read what it writes?