Rambles in an Old City / comprising antiquarian, historical, biographical and political associations

by Susan Swain Madders

pillars,” is now left us as a subject for our investigation.

The order of Black Friars owe their origin to the famous Dominick, notorious for his zeal in the persecution of the Albigenses. He figures also in the “Golden Legend,” as a miraculously endowed infant; his god-mother perceiving on his forehead a star, which made the whole world light. The common seal of the Black Friars, still preserved, commemorates another miracle concerning him: “Being grown to man’s estate, he became a great preacher against heretics; and once upon a time, he put his authorities against them in writing, and gave the schedule into the hands of a heretic, that he might ponder over its contents. The same night, a party being met at a fire, the man produced the schedule, upon which he was persuaded to cast it into the flames, to test its truth; which doing, the schedule sprung back again, after a few minutes, unburnt; the experiment was repeated thrice, with the same results; but the heretics refused to be convinced, and pledged themselves not to reveal the matter;—but one of them, it seems, afterwards did so.”

Many other marvellous tales are extant of holy St. Dominick, but we hasten on to take a look at the church of his followers. The present building bears date of the fifteenth century, and would seem to have been materially enriched by the famous Sir Thomas

Erpingham, who takes such prominent place in the city, and church walls, and gateways, his arms figuring here in the stone-work between every two of the upper story of windows. In its primitive condition the church boasted of three chapels, one of them subterranean, three altars, two lights, and an image of St. Peter of Malayn; the choir was decorated with panel paintings, which found their way at the Reformation to the parlour of some private dwelling-house close by, whose walls they yet adorn. Two guilds were held there, the guild of St. William and the Holy Rood. In 1538, when the axes and hammers of King Henry were busy over the face of the land, and bonfires of libraries were being made in the precincts of every monastery, the house and church of the Black Friars was saved. Deputations to his majesty from the corporation of the city, successfully negotiated the transfer of the building to its possession, on consideration of the sum of eighty-one pounds being paid into the Royal Treasury. Mention is made in old records of a handsome library belonging to this as well as the Carmelite Monastery; their fate perhaps may be conjectured by that of many others of the time. Bale mentions the fact of a merchant buying the contents of two noble libraries for forty shillings, to be used as waste paper, and ten years were occupied in thus consuming them. The chancel of the church has retained its character

as a place of worship almost unvaryingly until the present day, at one time being leased to the Dutch, and in later times used as a chapel by the inmates of the workhouse; occasionally, however, it has served the purpose of a playhouse; as we find on record, injuries sustained by the breaking down of partitions at the performance of “interludes” in it upon Sundays, in the thirty-eighth of Henry the Eighth. The king’s players we also find similarly occupying the nave or hall in Edward the Sixth’s reign, during Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday before Christmas. The cloisters and other portions of the monastery were in the reign of Anne, upon the first establishment of workhouses for the poor, appropriated to that purpose, the groined roofings to this day forming the ceilings of pauper kitchens and outhouses. The sole trace of ecclesiastical furniture lingering in the nave is a stone altar in one corner, much more noted as the place of gathering in after-times for the brethren of the St. George’s Guild than for any religious associations in the minds of the people. A gallery, now hidden by the gigantic orchestra built over it, savours also strongly of the primitive dedication of the building, else it has retained little more than its architectural beauties of outline to testify its original consecration. And now to trace its history, since, wrested from the mendicants, and deprived of its rights as a cemetery for the wealthy and beneficent

dead, it first became the banquet chamber for municipal feasts, its walls shone gorgeously with tapestry hangings, and its tables groaned beneath the weight of luscious dainties. The kitchens and monster chimneys, with their long rows of spit-hooks and fire-places, that now stand gaping in silent desolation at the empty larders and boiling-houses in out-of-the-way corners of the premises, look like giant ghosts of ancient civic gastronomy, lurking about in dark places, mocking the shadowy forms of latter-day epicurism, that may be satisfied with the achievements to be performed by modern “ranges,” on ever so improved a scale. But the glories of the St. George’s feast are likewise departed from it; the corn-merchants, to whom its limits were awhile devoted, have built unto themselves an exchange; the assizes, once held in it, have been transferred to the little castellated encrustation that has grown out of one side of the real castle mound, and reft of all regular employment, the Hall now stands at the mercy of the city mayor, by him to be lent to whom he wills, for any or every purpose his judgment may deem consistent with propriety; hence the same walls echo one day the eloquent pleadings of a league advocate, the next to the cries of the distressed agriculturist; now to the advantages of temperance or peace societies, and the musical streams of eloquence that an Elihu Burritt can send forth, or

witness the fires of enthusiasm a Father Matthew can elicit. Another week shall see it thronged with eager listeners to the reports of missionary societies, Church, London, or Baptist; the next with ready auditors to the claims of the Jews and the heathen calls for Bibles; interspersed among them shall be lectures on every branch of art and science, and every fashionable or unfashionable doctrine under the sun that can find advocates, down to Mormonism or Bloomerism itself. But prior to all in its claims upon the services of the magnificent old structure stands music—why else are its proportions hid by the unsightly tiers of benches that, empty, make one long for magic power to waft them all away, but which, once tenanted by their legitimate occupants, banish every murmur from one’s heart and mind?

Thanks to the enterprise and spirit of the lovers of harmony, this is not seldom; concerts for the rich and concerts for the poor, for the hundreds and the “millions,” have risen up to meet the calls of humanity for heart-culture by other inspirations than may be got from alphabets and primers, or intellectual disquisitions. And, triennially, arrive the great epochs of the city’s glory, when she asserts her claims upon the world of music, to be classed high among the nursing mother of genius, and foster-parents of art. Then is the hour of triumph for the Black Friars’ solemn and grand old nave, when

its roofs and pillars tremble at the thunders of the Messiah’s “Hallelujah,” and resound to the electrifying crash, uttering “Wonderful;” or when they echo the sweet melodies of Haydn, Mozart, and Spohr; the refined harmonies of a Mendellsohn’s “Elijah,” the magic strains of his “Loreley,” or reflect the wondrous landscape painting of the mystic Beethoven. Nor was the day a small one when its orchestra gave utterance to the outpourings of a genius cradled and nurtured in its bosom, whose work is acknowledged to be great and good, albeit “a prophet” is not without honour save in his own country. And all praise be given as due to the generous help yielded to the son of the stranger as to the son of the soil. The world may yet live to be grateful to the city that in one year brought before it two such conceptions and creations as “Israel Restored” and “Jerusalem.” And so would we take our farewell of the old “Hall,” while our eyes are yet dazzled with the bright glitter of its thronged benches, galleries, and aisles, and our ears and hearts vibrating to the mighty “concert of sweet sounds” and peals of harmony poured forth from the almost matchless orchestra and benches of choristers, that lend their powers to complete the glories of the great “Festival.”

The festival suggests thoughts on music, its history and progress, and of the minds that have fostered