Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present

by Thomas Miller

Here, in the Pix-office, we are surrounded by Saxon architecture. How massive, plain, solid, and majestic, is this portion of the venerable pile! As it stands now, so it stood before the shores of England were startled by the sound of Norman trumpets—a monument worthy of the descendant of Alfred the Great! The beautiful Mosaic pavement that lies before the altar in the choir, was brought from Rome by the good old Abbot Ware, about the close of the reign of the third Henry—a king to whose liberality we are indebted for a great portion of the erection of the Abbey: for the completion of the whole was the work of many eventful years; and before its towers rose, as they do now, pointing to the sky, many a crowned head sunk in succession into the dark quietude of the tomb. Suns rose and set, and the mighty work grew up; and amid the trump and thunder of a thousand battles, it has stood unshaken: it is too strong for the destroying hand of man; and Time, as if in reverence, has trod lightly as he stepped over it.

Amid such an assemblage of architectural grandeur as the Abbey presents, the mind is filled with a rich confusion of imagery, as if incapable of grappling with the whole. It seems like the sunlight that flames in through the deep-dyed windows; we stand amid a dazzle of blaze and brightness that appears to have neither beginning nor end; here flashing like gold, there stealing into the dim purple twilight, and gilding as it passes a shrine or a stony shroud; then settling down amid the vaulted shadows of the tombs, or just lighting faintly in its passage the uplifted hands of the recumbent image, that have been clasped for centuries in the attitude of silent prayer. We know not whether to start from the shrine of Edward the Confessor, or the coronation-chair, to count our footsteps through the long chapters of history; for the forms of the actors themselves come crowding around us; gazing upon the one, then seating themselves in the other—a rapid succession of phantoms, each dazzling the eye for a moment by its splendour, then sinking down again into the cold stony image that is doomed to hold its hands in the mute, meek penance of unceasing prayer, as it has done through the grey old years of departed centuries. How beautiful is the figure which graces the tomb of Queen Eleanor! Gaze on the calm loveliness of that matchless countenance, and you will fancy that a sweet sleep has stolen over it—that it has but laid down to rest awhile, and while dreaming, its beauty burst forth and dispelled every shade of sorrow, as if Time himself had kept watch over it, and sheltered it from dust and ruin with his wings, and guarded it with his scythe, allowing no mortal finger to touch the hallowed shrine over which he has long kept jealous watch. Death seems never to have entered that cold grey marble palace of beauty. Here lie the remains of Richard II. and his Queen; and while we gaze upon his monument, and recal his “sad, eventful history,” we think of the undying poetry in which Shakspeare has enshrined him, and feel as if we could sit for hours upon the pavement and tell “sad stories about the death of kings.” Bolingbroke ought to have been buried by his side; and for the sake of Shakspeare there would be no feeling outraged, nor no disrespect shewn to the dead, if his remains were exhumed and placed side by side of the monarch he dethroned. How rich and magnificent is Henry the Fifth’s monument, every way worthy of the hero of Agincourt! Strange that even amid the solemnity of death, the eye of an Englishman kindles while he recals the splendid achievements of this brave king, that neither the horrors of war, nor the blood shed at that victorious banquet, throw a sickening sensation over the heart while we gaze upon the tomb of the conqueror. The far past seems to deaden these sympathies; and we look upon the actors as we do upon the words on a time-worn monument, which tell how those who sleep below once lived and were famous in their day, that they died, and were buried: and we read and pass on with a feeling of pride, respect, or sorrow; and the next moment finds us gazing with similar thoughts and sympathies upon the grave of another. Above hangs the helmet which the warrior king wore in battle, shewing by the deep dents which are imprinted upon it, that it was borne into the very thickest of the strife, and had its share of blows dealt heavily, when men lived but to “conquer or to die.”

There is a strange want of harmony between the ancient and modern monuments. Our ancestors understood the “keeping” of their subjects within the pale of style, beauty, and order better than we do or have done. They made their ornaments and furniture to correspond with the venerable and costly edifice which their taste and piety had reared; and in the fulfilment of their solemn ceremonies, allowed no meddling undertaker to disfigure the hallowed mansion with his grave mockery. A glance at the tombs of our old kings is the proof—they have become a portion of Westminster Abbey, while the additions made during the last two centuries are, with a few exceptions, sadly misplaced. We look around, and feel as if, while in the midst of some impressive ceremony, a group of strange maskers had suddenly broken in, snapped the train of our thoughts, and by their antics diverted both mind and eye from the imposing subjects with which they were before so earnestly engrossed. Statues or monuments, that would look well in open squares or spacious halls, startle us by their very nakedness, when they step out between the shadowy and solemn crypts, where death itself is roofed over and vaulted in at the foot of the mighty mound whose very majesty is overwhelming. It is as if the eye, while contemplating the grandeur of Parnassus, was disturbed by the white butterflies that are ever crossing each other at its base. Mere inscriptions on some Gothic tablet would be better than these abortions: a list of names would not offend, like many of these pale, inexpressive countenances, that “fright” the aisle “from its propriety” in marble. The name alone in such a place would strike the right chord, while the ... but we are standing amongst the mighty dead.

The beautiful screen erected by Blore is a splendid exception to the mass of modern innovations. Turn to the monument of Sir Francis Vere, in the eastern aisle of the transept, and there you see what true genius can produce.

We will now glance at the Poets’ Corner, a spot haunted by sad and sweet associations. Here stands the massy and solemn-looking tomb of Chaucer, that “morning star” of poetry which first dawned through the long night of Egyptian darkness. He, the earliest child of English song, was the first bard interred within this great national mausoleum; and it now appears that the monument was erected soon after his death: there is an antique look about it which would leave a stranger to conclude that the tomb was almost as old as the Abbey itself. Gentle Spenser, author of the immortal “Faëry Queen,” was the next heir to undying fame interred in this beautiful sanctuary; and Shakspeare and Jonson were no doubt mourners at that great funeral. Beaumont and Drayton were the next successors who sank into this silent city of the dead. “Rare Ben Jonson” soon followed; but he was buried in the northern aisle of the nave—it is supposed, very near to Killigrew’s monument. Cowley, Dryden, Gay, Prior, and Addison, although the latter was buried in another part of the Abbey, may be numbered among the illustrious dead who sleep their long sleep within those ancient walls. Many other monuments stand here erected to the memory of our celebrated poets, whose remains lie far and wide apart—some in the beautiful churches of London, others in the quiet seclusion of the country. The author of the “Pleasures of Hope,” whose mortal part we followed to the shallow grave which was opened near the front of Chaucer’s tomb, was the last true poet consigned to his “narrow cell” in this great graveyard of genius. Grand and solemn were the tones which the mighty organ poured out amid that listening silence—sounds which seemed more allied to heaven than earth; echoes that rolled on, then died away amid the shadowy crypts and pillared recesses, sounding as if the voices of the shrouded dead had found utterance, and were welcoming home another immortal spirit. Never was the funeral service more beautifully or feelingly read than on that occasion, by a brother poet. And that old Jerusalem Chamber in which we assembled, with its ancient tapestry, is itself a history. Here the great have, after death, lain in state; and the “props and pillars” of the nation have here assembled to make war or peace; and here also, stretched upon a pallet before the fire, Henry IV. died: the portrait of the ill-starred Richard II. hangs in this very chamber where Bolingbroke expired.

If one portion of the splendid Abbey more than another calls up the scriptural image of “a temple not made with hands,” it is Henry the Seventh’s Chapel. The opening of those beautiful gates which lead therein seems to reveal such a glimpse of heaven as we sometimes see in our sweetest dreams. The very roof appears buoyed up by the air, as if a thing so light and beautiful needed no more support than its own graceful interlacings, censers held up by invisible hands; a fretwork of innumerable wings, netted and open like those which the gaudy dragon-fly displays, seem as if they were frozen while fluttering over an endless succession of flowers. On each side hang the banners of the Knights of the Bath, drooping without motion over the monuments of the dead, above the head of the once haughty Queen Elizabeth, who sleeps beside her sister Mary in the northern aisle. The brass screen which encloses the tomb of Henry VII. is of exquisite workmanship, and speaks much for the advance of art in this department. In this chapel, the stern Protector, Cromwell, was interred; but his body was afterwards dragged out of its grave by the consent of Charles II., drawn on a hurdle to Tyburn, hanged upon the gallows until sunset, then taken down and beheaded, and afterwards thrown into a pit at the foot of Tyburn-tree, where, “after life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well,” awaiting the same blast of the last trumpet that will arouse his headless victim and heartless persecutor.