Books: Our Old Home
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Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Our Old Home
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Not to spend a whole summer's day upon the voyage, we will suppose
ourselves to have reached London Bridge, and thence to have taken another
steamer for a farther passage up the river. But here the memorable
objects succeed each other so rapidly that I can spare but a single
sentence even for the great Dome, through I deem it more picturesque, in
that dusky atmosphere, than St. Peter's in its clear blue sky. I must
mention, however (since everything connected with royalty is especially
interesting to my dear countrymen), that I once saw a large and beautiful
barge, splendidly gilded and ornamented, and overspread with a rich
covering, lying at the pier nearest to St. Paul's Cathedral; it had the
royal banner of Great Britain displayed, besides being decorated with a
number of other flags; and many footmen (who are universally the grandest
and gaudiest objects to be seen in England at this day, and these were
regal ones, in a bright scarlet livery bedizened with gold-lace, and
white silk stockings) were in attendance. I know not what festive or
ceremonial occasion may have drawn out this pageant; after all, it might
have been merely a city-spectacle, appertaining to the Lord Mayor; but
the sight had its value in bringing vividly before me the grand old times
when the sovereign and nobles were accustomed to use the Thames as the
high street of the metropolis, and join in pompous processions upon it;
whereas, the desuetude of such customs, nowadays, has caused the whole
show of river-life to consist in a multitude of smoke-begrimed steamers.
An analogous change has taken place in the streets, where cabs and the
omnibus have crowded out a rich variety of vehicles; and thus life gets
more monotonous in hue from age to age, and appears to seize every
opportunity to strip off a bit of its gold-lace among the wealthier
classes, and to make itself decent in the lower ones.
Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now wearing as decorous a
face as any other portion of London; and, adjoining it, the avenues and
brick squares of the Temple, with that historic garden, close upon the
river-side, and still rich in shrubbery and flowers, where the partisans
of York and Lancaster plucked the fatal roses, and scattered their pale
and bloody petals over so many English battle-fields. Hard by, we see
tine long white front or rear of Somerset House, and, farther on, rise
the two new Houses of Parliament, with a huge unfinished tower already
hiding its imperfect summit in the smoky canopy,--the whole vast and
cumbrous edifice a specimen of the best that modern architecture can
effect, elaborately imitating the masterpieces of those simple ages when
men "builded better than they knew." Close by it, we have a glimpse of
the roof and upper towers of the holy Abbey; while that gray, ancestral
pile on the opposite side of the river is Lambeth Palace, a venerable
group of halls and turrets, chiefly built of brick, but with at least one
large tower of stone. In our course, we have passed beneath half a dozen
bridges, and, emerging out of the black heart of London, shall soon reach
a cleanly suburb, where old Father Thames, if I remember, begins to put
on an aspect of unpolluted innocence. And now we look back upon the mass
of innumerable roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers, columns, and
the great crowning Dome,--look back, in short, upon that mystery of the
world's proudest city, amid which a man so longs and loves to be; not,
perhaps, because it contains much that is positively admirable and
enjoyable, but because, at all events, the world has nothing better. The
cream of external life is there; and whatever merely intellectual or
material good we fail to find perfect in London, we may as well content
ourselves to seek that unattainable thing no farther on this earth.
The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old town endowed with a
prodigious number of pothouses, and some famous gardens, called the
Cremorne, for public amusement. The most noticeable thing, however, is
Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Greenwich, was founded, I believe,
by Charles II. (whose bronze statue, in the guise of an old Roman, stands
in the centre of the quadrangle,) and appropriated as a home for aged and
infirm soldiers of the British army. The edifices are of three stories
with windows in the high roofs, and are built of dark, sombre brick, with
stone edgings and facings. The effect is by no means that of grandeur
(which is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of Greenwich Hospital), but
a quiet and venerable neatness. At each extremity of the street-front
there is a spacious and hospitably open gateway, lounging about which I
saw some gray veterans in long scarlet coats of an antique fashion, and
the cocked hats of a century ago, or occasionally a modern foraging-cap.
Almost all of them moved with a rheumatic gait, two or three stumped on
wooden legs, and here and there an arm was missing. Inquiring of one of
these fragmentary heroes whether a stranger could be admitted to see the
establishment, he replied most cordially, "O yes, sir,--anywhere! Walk
in and go where you please,--up stairs, or anywhere!" So I entered, and,
passing along the inner side of the quadrangle, came to the door of the
chapel, which forms a part of the contiguity of edifices next the street.
Here another pensioner, an old warrior of exceedingly peaceable and
Christian demeanor, touched his three-cornered hat and asked if I wished
to see the interior; to which I assenting, he unlocked the door, and we
went in.
The chapel consists of a great hall with a vaulted roof, and over the
altar is a large painting in fresco, the subject of which I did not
trouble myself to make out. More appropriate adornments of the place,
dedicated as well to martial reminiscences as religious worship, are the
long ranges of dusty and tattered banners that hang from their staves all
round the ceiling of the chapel. They are trophies of battles fought and
won in every quarter of the world, comprising the captured flags of all
the nations with whom the British lion has waged war since James II.'s
time,--French, Dutch, East Indian, Prussian, Russian, Chinese, and
American,--collected together in this consecrated spot, not to symbolize
that there shall be no more discord upon earth, but drooping over the
aisle in sullen, though peaceable humiliation. Yes, I said "American"
among the rest; for the good old pensioner mistook me for an Englishman,
and failed not to point out (and, methought, with an especial emphasis of
triumph) some flags that had been taken at Bladensburg and Washington. I
fancied, indeed, that they hung a little higher and drooped a little
lower than any of their companions in disgrace. It is a comfort,
however, that their proud devices are already indistinguishable, or
nearly so, owing to dust and tatters and the kind offices of the moths,
and that they will soon rot from the banner-staves and be swept out in
unrecognized fragments from the chapel-door.
It is a good method of teaching a man how imperfectly cosmopolitan he is,
to show him his country's flag occupying a position of dishonor in a
foreign land. But, in truth, the whole system of a people crowing over
its military triumphs had far better he dispensed with, both on account
of the ill-blood that it helps to keep fermenting among the nations, and
because it operates as an accumulative inducement to future generations
to aim at a kind of glory, the gain of which has generally proved more
ruinous than its loss. I heartily wish that every trophy of victory
might crumble away, and that every reminiscence or tradition of a hero,
from the beginning of the world to this day, could pass out of all men's
memories at once and forever. I might feel very differently, to be sure,
if we Northerners had anything especially valuable to lose by the fading
of those illuminated names.
I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may have been a little
affectation in it) a magnificent guerdon of all the silver I had in my
pocket, to requite him for having unintentionally stirred up my patriotic
susceptibilities. He was a meek-looking, kindly old man, with a humble
freedom and affability of manner that made it pleasant to converse with
him. Old soldiers, I know not why, seem to be more accostable than old
sailors. One is apt to hear a growl beneath the smoothest courtesy of
the latter. The mild veteran, with his peaceful voice, and gentle
reverend aspect, told me that he had fought at a cannon all through the
Battle of Waterloo, and escaped unhurt; he had now been in the hospital
four or five years, and was married, but necessarily underwent a
separation from his wife, who lived outside of the gates. To my inquiry
whether his fellow-pensioners were comfortable and happy, he answered,
with great alacrity, "O yes, sir!" qualifying his evidence, after a
moment's consideration, by saying in an undertone, "There are some
people, your Honor knows, who could not be comfortable anywhere." I did
know it, and fear that the system of Chelsea Hospital allows too little
of that wholesome care and regulation of their own occupations and
interests which might assuage the sting of life to those naturally
uncomfortable individuals by giving them something external to think
about. But my old friend here was happy in the hospital, and by this
time, very likely, is happy in heaven, in spite of the bloodshed that he
may have caused by touching off a cannon at Waterloo.
Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of Chelsea, I remember
seeing a distant gleam of the Crystal Palace, glimmering afar in the
afternoon sunshine like an imaginary structure,--an air-castle by chance
descended upon earth, and resting there one instant before it vanished,
as we sometimes see a soap-bubble touch unharmed on the carpet,--a thing
of only momentary visibility and no substance, destined to be
overburdened and crushed down by the first cloud-shadow that might fall
upon that spot. Even as I looked, it disappeared. Shall I attempt a
picture of this exhalation of modern ingenuity, or what else shall I try
to paint? Everything in London and its vicinity has been depicted
innumerable times, but never once translated into intelligible images; it
is an "old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told. While writing
these reminiscences, I am continually impressed with the futility of the
effort to give any creative truth to ink sketch, so that it might produce
such pictures in the reader's mind as would cause the original scenes to
appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have other writers often
been more successful in representing definite objects prophetically to my
own mind. In truth, I believe that the chief delight and advantage of
this kind of literature is not for any real information that it supplies
to untravelled people, but for reviving the recollections and reawakening
the emotions of persons already acquainted with the scenes described.
Thus I found an exquisite pleasure, the other day, in reading Mr.
Tuckerman's "Month in England," fine example of the way in which a
refined and cultivated American looks at the Old Country, the things that
he naturally seeks there, and the modes of feeling and reflection which
they excite. Correct outlines avail little or nothing, though truth of
coloring may be somewhat more efficacious. Impressions, however, states
of mind produced by interesting and remarkable objects, these, if
truthfully and vividly recorded, may work a genuine effect, and, though
lint the result, of what we see, go further towards representing the
actual scene than any direct effort to paint it. Give the emotions that
cluster about it, and, without being able to analyze the spell by which
it is summoned up, you get something like a simulacre of the object in
the midst of them. From some of the above reflections I draw the
comfortable inference, that, the longer and better known a thing may be,
so much the more eligible is it as the subject of a descriptive sketch.
On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side-entrance in the
time-blackened wall of a place of worship, and found myself among a
congregation assembled in one of the transepts and the immediately
contiguous portion of the nave. It was a vast old edifice, spacious
enough, within the extent covered by its pillared roof and overspread by
its stone pavement, to accommodate the whole of church-going London, and
with a far wider and loftier concave than any human power of lungs could
fill with audible prayer. Oaken benches were arranged in the transept,
on one of which I seated myself, and joined, as well as I knew how, in
the sacred business that was going forward. But when it came to the
sermon, the voice of the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts, and
both seemed impertinent at such a time and place, where he and all of us
were bodily included within a sublime act of religion, which could be
seen above and around us and felt beneath our feet. The structure itself
was the worship of the devout men of long ago, miraculously preserved in
stone without losing an atom of its fragrance and fervor; it was a kind
of anthem-strain that they had sung and poured out of the organ in
centuries gone by; and being so grand and sweet, the Divine benevolence
had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof of auditors unborn. I
therefore came to the conclusion, that, in my individual case, it would
be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander about the edifice than
to fasten them and my thoughts on the evidently uninspired mortal who was
venturing--and felt it no venture at all--to speak here above his breath.
The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader recognized it, no
doubt, the moment we entered) is built of rich brown stone; and the whole
of it--the lofty roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the pointed
arches--appears to be in consummate repair. At all points where decay
has laid its finger, the structure is clamped with iron or otherwise
carefully protected; and being thus watched over,--whether as a place of
ancient sanctity, a noble specimen of Gothic art, or an object of
national interest and pride,--it may reasonably be expected to survive
for as many ages as have passed over it already. It was sweet to feel
its venerable quietude, its long-enduring peace, and yet to observe how
kindly and even cheerfully it received the sunshine of to-day, which fell
from the great windows into the fretted aisles and arches that laid aside
somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome it. Sunshine always seems
friendly to old abbeys, churches, and castles, kissing them, as it were,
with a more affectionate, though still reverential familiarity, than it
accords to edifices of later date. A square of golden light lay on the
sombre pavement of the nave, afar off, falling through the grand western
entrance, the folding leaves of which were wide open, and afforded
glimpses of people passing to and fro in the outer world, while we sat
dimly enveloped in the solemnity of antique devotion. In the south
transept, separated from us by the full breadth of the minster, there
were painted glass windows of which the uppermost appeared to be a great
orb of many-colored radiance, being, indeed, a cluster of saints and
angels whose glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole emanating
from a cross in the midst. These windows are modern, but combine
softness with wonderful brilliancy of effect. Through the pillars and
arches, I saw that the walls in that distant region of the edifice
were almost wholly incrusted with marble, now grown yellow with time,
no blank, unlettered slabs, but memorials of such men as their
respective generations deemed wisest and bravest. Some of them were
commemorated merely by inscriptions on mural tablets, others by
sculptured bas-reliefs, others (once famous, but now forgotten generals
or admirals, these) by ponderous tombs that aspired towards the roof of
the aisle, or partly curtained the immense arch of a window. These
mountains of marble were peopled with the sisterhood of Allegory, winged
trumpeters, and classic figures in full-bottomed wigs; but it was strange
to observe how the old Abbey melted all such absurdities into the breadth
of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself by what would elsewhere have
been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test of Gothic sublimity to
overpower the ridiculous without deigning to hide it; and these grotesque
monuments of the last century answer a similar purpose with the grinning
faces which, the old architects scattered among their most solemn
conceptions.
From these distant wanderings (it was my first visit to Westminster
Abbey, and I would gladly have taken it all in at a glance) my eyes came
back and began to investigate what was immediately about me in the
transept. Close at my elbow was the pedestal of Canning's statue. Next
beyond it was a massive tomb, on the spacious tablet of which reposed the
full-length figures of a marble lord and lady, whom an inscription
announced to be the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle,--the historic Duke of
Charles I.'s time, and the fantastic Duchess, traditionally remembered by
her poems and plays. She was of a family, as the record on her tomb
proudly informed us, of which all the brothers had been valiant and all
the sisters virtuous. A recent statue of Sir John Malcolm, the new
marble as white as snow, held the next place; and near by was a mural
monument and bust of Sir Peter Warren. The round visage of this old
British admiral has a certain interest for a New-Englander, because it
was by no merit of his own (though he took care to assume it as such),
but by the valor and warlike enterprise of our colonial forefathers,
especially the stout men of Massachusetts, that he won rank and renown,
and a tomb in Westminster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, a huge mass of marble
done into the guise of a judicial gown and wig, with a stern face in the
midst of the latter, sat on the other side of the transept; and on the
pedestal beside him was a figure of Justice, holding forth, instead of
the customary grocer's scales, an actual pair of brass steelyards. It is
an ancient and classic instrument, undoubtedly; but I had supposed that
Portia (when Shylock's pound of flesh was to be weighed) was the only
judge that ever really called for it in a court of justice. Pitt and Fox
were in the same distinguished company; and John Kemble, in Roman
costume, stood not far off, but strangely shorn of the dignity that is
said to have enveloped him like a mantle in his lifetime. Perhaps the
evanescent majesty of the stage is incompatible with the long endurance
of marble and the solemn reality of the tomb; though, on the other hand,
almost every illustrious personage here represented has been invested
with more or less of stage-trickery by his sculptor. In truth, the
artist (unless there be a divine efficacy in his touch, making evident a
heretofore hidden dignity in the actual form) feels it--an imperious law
to remove his subject as far from the aspect of ordinary life as may be
possible without sacrificing every trace of resemblance. The absurd
effect of the contrary course is very remarkable in the statue of Mr.
Wilberforce, whose actual self, save for the lack of color, I seemed to
behold, seated just across the aisle.
This excellent man appears to have sunk into himself in a sitting
posture, with a thin leg crossed over his knee, a book in one hand, and a
finger of the other under his chin, I believe, or applied to the side of
his nose, or to some equally familiar purpose; while his exceedingly
homely and wrinkled face, held a little on one side, twinkles at you with
the shrewdest complacency, as if he were looking right into your eyes,
and twigged something there which you had half a mind to conceal from
him. He keeps this look so pertinaciously that you feel it to be
insufferably impertinent, and bethink yourself what common ground there
may be between yourself and a stone image, enabling you to resent it. I
have no doubt that the statue is as like Mr. Wilberforce as one pea to
another, and you might fancy, that, at some ordinary moment, when he
least expected it, and before he had time to smooth away his knowing
complication of wrinkles, he had seen the Gorgon's head, and whitened
into marble,--not only his personal self, but his coat and small-clothes,
down to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth. The ludicrous
result marks the impropriety of bestowing the age-long duration of marble
upon small, characteristic individualities, such as might come within the
province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should give permanence to the
figure of a great man in his mood of broad and grand composure, which
would obliterate all mean peculiarities; for, if the original were
unaccustomed to such a mood, or if his features were incapable of
assuming the guise, it seems questionable whether he could really have
been entitled to a marble immortality. In point of fact, however, the
English face and form are seldom statuesque, however illustrious the
individual.
It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this mood of half-jocose
criticism in describing my first visit to Westminster Abbey, a spot which
I had dreamed about more reverentially, from my childhood upward, than
any other in the world, and which I then beheld, and now look back upon,
with profound gratitude to the men who built it, and a kindly interest, I
may add, in the humblest personage that has contributed his little all to
its impressiveness, by depositing his dust or his memory there. But it
is a characteristic of this grand edifice that it permits you to smile as
freely under the roof of its central nave as if you stood beneath the yet
grander canopy of heaven. Break into laughter, if you feel inclined,
provided the vergers do not hear it echoing among the arches. In an
ordinary church you would keep your countenance for fear of disturbing
the sanctities or proprieties of the place; but you need leave no honest
and decorous portion of your human nature outside of these benign and
truly hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness will take care of itself.
Thus it does no harm to the general impression, when you come to be
sensible that many of the monuments are ridiculous, and commemorate a mob
of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves, and few of whom ever
deserved any better boon from posterity. You acknowledge the force of
Sir Godfrey Kneller's objection to being buried in Westminster Abbey,
because "they do bury fools there!" Nevertheless, these grotesque
carvings of marble, that break out in dingy-white blotches on the old
freestone of the interior walls, have come there by as natural a process
as might cause mosses and ivy to cluster about the external edifice; for
they are the historical and biographical record of each successive age,
written with its own hand, and all the truer for the inevitable mistakes,
and none the less solemn for the occasional absurdity. Though you
entered the Abbey expecting to see the tombs only of the illustrious, you
are content at last to read many names, both in literature and history,
that have now lost the reverence of mankind, if indeed they ever really
possessed it.
Let these men rest in peace. Even if you miss a name or two that you
hoped to find there, they may well be spared. It matters little a few
more or less, or whether Westminster Abbey contains or lacks any one
man's grave, so long as the Centuries, each with the crowd of personages
that it deemed memorable, have chosen it as their place of honored
sepulture, and laid themselves down under its pavement. The inscriptions
and devices on the walls are rich with evidences of the fluctuating
tastes, fashions, manners, opinions, prejudices, follies, wisdoms of the
past, and thus they combine into a more truthful memorial of their dead
times than any individual epitaph-maker ever meant to write.
When the services were over, many of the audience seemed inclined to
linger in the nave or wander away among the mysterious aisles; for there
is nothing in this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which always
invites you deeper and deeper into its heart both by vast revelations and
shadowy concealments. Through the open-work screen that divides the nave
from the chancel and choir, we could discern the gleam of a marvellous
window, but were debarred from entrance into that more sacred precinct of
the Abbey by the vergers. These vigilant officials (doing their duty all
the more strenuously because no fees could be exacted from Sunday
visitors) flourished their staves, and drove us towards the grand
entrance like a flock of sheep. Lingering through one of the aisles, I
happened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone inscribed with this
familiar exclamation, "O rare Ben Jonson!" and remembered the story of
stout old Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright,--not, I presume,
on account of any unseemly reluctance on his part to lie down in the
dust, like other men, but because standing-room was all that could
reasonably be demanded for a poet among the slumberous notabilities of
his age. It made me weary to think of it!--such a prodigious length of
time to keep one's feet!--apart from the honor of the thing, it would
certainly have been better for Ben to stretch himself at ease in some
country churchyard. To this day, however, I fancy that there is a
contemptuous alloy mixed up with the admiration which the higher classes
of English society profess for their literary men.
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