A MEMORABLE MIDNIGHT EXPERIENCE(1872)
“Come along--and hurry. Few people have got originality enough to think of the expedition I have been planning, and still fewer could carry it out, maybe, even if theydidthink of it. Hurry, now. Cab at the door.”
It was past eleven o’clock and I was just going to bed. But this friend of mine was as reliable as he was eccentric, and so there was not a doubt in my mind that his “expedition” had merit in it. I put on my coat and boots again, and we drove away.
“Where is it? Where are we going?”
“Don’t worry. You’ll see.”
He was not inclined to talk. So I thought this must be a weighty matter. My curiosity grew with the minutes, but I kept it manfully under the surface. I watched the lamps, the signs, the numbers, as we thundered down the long streets, but it was of no use--I am always lost in London, day or night. It was very chilly--almost bleak. People leaned against the gusty blasts as if it were the dead of winter. The crowds grew thinner and thinner and the noises waxed faint and seemed far away. The sky was overcast and threatening. We drove on, and still on, till I wondered if we were ever going to stop. At last we passed by a spacious bridge anda vast building with a lighted clock tower, and presently entered a gateway, passed through a sort of tunnel, and stopped in a court surrounded by the black outlines of a great edifice. Then we alighted, walked a dozen steps or so, and waited. In a little while footsteps were heard and a man emerged from the darkness and we dropped into his wake without saying anything. He led us under an archway of masonry, and from that into a roomy tunnel, through a tall iron gate, which he locked behind us. We followed him down this tunnel, guided more by his footsteps on the stone flagging than by anything we could very distinctly see. At the end of it we came to another iron gate, and our conductor stopped there and lit a little bull’s-eye lantern. Then he unlocked the gate--and I wished he had oiled it first, it grated so dismally. The gate swung open and we stood on the threshold of what seemed a limitless domed and pillared cavern carved out of the solid darkness. The conductor and my friend took off their hats reverently, and I did likewise. For the moment that we stood thus there was not a sound, and the silence seemed to add to the solemnity of the gloom. Ilookedmy inquiry!
“It is the tomb of the great dead of England--Westminster Abbey.”
(One cannot express a start--in words.) Down among the columns--ever so far away, it seemed--a light revealed itself like a star, and a voice came echoing through the spacious emptiness:
“Who goes there!”
“Wright!”
The star disappeared and the footsteps that accompanied it clanked out of hearing in the distance. Mr. Wright held up his lantern and the vague vastness took something of form to itself--the stately columns developed stronger outlines, and a dim pallor here and there marked the places of lofty windows. We were among the tombs; and on every hand dull shapes of men, sitting, standing, or stooping, inspected us curiously out of the darkness--reached out their hands toward us--some appealing, some beckoning, some warning us away. Effigies, they were--statues over the graves; but they looked human and natural in the murky shadows. Now a little half-grown black-and-white cat squeezed herself through the bars of the iron gate and came purring lovingly about us, unawed by the time or the place--unimpressed by the marble pomp that sepulchers a line of mighty dead that ends with a great author of yesterday and began with a sceptered monarch away back in the dawn of history more than twelve hundred years ago. And she followed us about and never left us while we pursued our work. We wandered hither and thither, uncovered, speaking in low voices, and stepping softly by instinct, for any little noise rang and echoed there in a way to make one shudder. Mr. Wright flashed his lantern first upon this object and then upon that, and kept up a running commentary that showed that there was nothing about the venerable Abbey that was trivial in his eyes or void of interest. He is a man in authority--being superintendent of the works--and his daily business keeps him familiarwith every nook and corner of the great pile. Casting a luminous ray now here, now yonder, he would say:
“Observe the height of the Abbey--one hundred and three feet to the base of the roof--I measured it myself the other day. Notice the base of this column--old, very old--hundreds and hundreds of years; and how well they knew how to build in those old days. Notice it--every stone is laid horizontally--that is to say, just as nature laid it originally in the quarry--not set up edgewise; in our day some people set them on edge, and then wonder why they split and flake. Architects cannot teach nature anything. Let me remove this matting--it is put there to preserve the pavement; now, there is a bit of pavement that is seven hundred years old; you can see by these scattering clusters of colored mosaics how beautiful it was before time and sacrilegious idlers marred it. Now there, in the border, was an inscription once; see, follow the circle--you can trace it by the ornaments that have been pulled out--here is an A, and there is an O, and yonder another A--all beautiful old English capitals--there is no telling what the inscription was--no record left, now. Now move along in this direction, if you please. Yonder is where old King Sebert the Saxon, lies--his monument is the oldest one in the Abbey; Sebert died in 616, and that’s as much as twelve hundred and fifty years ago--think of it!--twelve hundred and fifty years. Now yonder is the last one--Charles Dickens--there on the floor with the brass letters on the slab--and to this daythe people come and put flowers on it. Why, along at first they almost had tocartthe flowers out, there were so many. Could notleavethem there, you know, because it’s where everybody walks--and a body wouldn’t want them trampled on, anyway. All this place about here, now, is the Poet’s Corner. There is Garrick’s monument, and Addison’s, and Thackeray’s bust--and Macaulay lies there. And here, close to Dickens and Garrick, lie Sheridan and Doctor Johnson--and here is old Parr--Thomas Parr--you can read the inscription:
“Tho: Par of Y Covnty of Sallop Borne A :1483. He Lived in Y Reignes of Ten Princes, viz: K. Edw. 4 K. Ed. 5. K. Rich 3. K. Hen. 7. K. Hen. 8. Edw. 6. QVV. Ma. Q. Eliz. K. IA. and K. Charles, Aged 152 Yeares, And Was Buryed Here Novemb. 15. 1635.
“Tho: Par of Y Covnty of Sallop Borne A :1483. He Lived in Y Reignes of Ten Princes, viz: K. Edw. 4 K. Ed. 5. K. Rich 3. K. Hen. 7. K. Hen. 8. Edw. 6. QVV. Ma. Q. Eliz. K. IA. and K. Charles, Aged 152 Yeares, And Was Buryed Here Novemb. 15. 1635.
“Very old man indeed, and saw a deal of life. (Come off the grave, Kitty, poor thing; she keeps the rats away from the office, and there’s no harm in her--her and her mother.) And here--this is Shakespeare’s statue--leaning on his elbow and pointing with his finger at the lines on the scroll:
“The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,Leave not a wrack behind.
“The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,Leave not a wrack behind.
“The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,Leave not a wrack behind.
“The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wrack behind.
“That stone there covers Campbell the poet. Here are names you know pretty well--Milton, and Gray who wrote the ‘Elegy,’ and Butler who wrote ‘Hudibras,’ and Edmund Spencer, and Ben Jonson--there are three tablets to him scattered about theAbbey, and all got ‘O Rare Ben Jonson’ cut on them--you were standing on one of them just now--he is buried standing up. There used to be a tradition here that explains it. The story goes that he did not dare ask to be buried in the Abbey, so he asked King James if he would make him a present of eighteen inches of English ground, and the king said yes, and asked him where he would have it, and he said in Westminster Abbey. Well, the king wouldn’t go back on his word, and so there he is sure enough--stood up on end. Years ago, in Dean Buckland’s time--before my day--they were digging a grave close to Jonson and they uncovered him and his head fell off. Toward night the clerk of the works hid the head to keep it from being stolen, as the ground was to remain open till next day. Presently the dean’s son came along and he found a head, and hid it away for Jonson’s. And by and by along comes a stranger, andhefound a head, too, and walked off with it under his cloak, and a month or so afterward he was heard to boast that he had Ben Jonson’s head. Then there was a deal of correspondence about it, in theTimes, and everybody distressed. But Mr. Frank Buckland came out and comforted everybody by telling how he saved the true head, and so the stranger must have got one that wasn’t of any consequence. And then up speaks the clerk of the works and tells howhesaved the right head, and soDean Bucklandmust have got a wrong one. Well, it was all settled satisfactorily at last, because the clerk of the worksprovedhis head. And then I believe they got that head from thestranger--so now we have three. But it shows you what regiments of people you are walking over--been collecting here for twelve hundred years--in some places, no doubt, the bones are fairly matted together.
“And here are some unfortunates. Under this place lies Anne, queen of Richard III, and daughter of the Kingmaker, the great Earl of Warwick--murdered she was--poisoned by her husband. And here is a slab which you see has once had the figure of a man in armor on it, in brass or copper, let into the stone. You can see the shape of it--but it is all worn away now by people’s feet; the man has been dead five hundred years that lies under it. He was a knight in Richard II’s time. His enemies pressed him close and he fled and took sanctuary here in the Abbey. Generally a man was safe when he took sanctuary in those days, but this man was not. The captain of the Tower and a band of men pursued him and his friends and they had a bloody fight here on this floor; but this poor fellow did not stand much of a chance, and they butchered him right before the altar.”
We wandered over to another part of the Abbey, and came to a place where the pavement was being repaired. Every paving stone has an inscription on it and covers a grave. Mr. Wright continued:
“Now, you are standing on William Pitt’s grave--you can read the name, though it is a good deal worn--and you, sir, are standing on the grave of Charles James Fox. I found a very good place here the other day--nobody suspected it--been curiouslyoverlooked, somehow--but--it is a very nice place indeed, and very comfortable” (holding his bull’s eye to the pavement and searching around). “Ah, here it is--this is the stone--nothing under here--nothing at all--a very nice place indeed--and very comfortable.”
Mr. Wright spoke in a professional way, of course, and after the manner of a man who takes an interest in his business and is gratified at any piece of good luck that fortune favors him with; and yetwithwithall that silence and gloom and solemnity about me, there was something about his idea of a nice, comfortable place that made the cold chills creep up my back. Presently we began to come upon little chamberlike chapels, with solemn figures ranged around the sides, lying apparently asleep, in sumptuous marble beds, with their hands placed together above their breasts--the figures and all their surroundings black with age. Some were dukes and earls, some where kings and queens, some were ancient abbots whose effigies had lain there so many centuries and suffered such disfigurement that their faces were almost as smooth and featureless as the stony pillows their heads reposed upon. At one time while I stood looking at a distant part of the pavement, admiring the delicate tracery which the now flooding moonlight was casting upon it through a lofty window, the party moved on and I lost them. The first step I made in the dark, holding my hands before me, as one does under such circumstances, I touched a cold object, and stopped to feel its shape. I made out a thumb, and then delicatefingers. It was the clasped, appealing hands of one of those reposing images--a lady, a queen. I touched the face--by accident, not design--and shuddered inwardly, if not outwardly; and then something rubbed against my leg, and I shuddered outwardly and inwardly both. It was the cat. The friendly creature meant well, but, as the English say, she gave me “such a turn.” I took her in my arms for company and wandered among the grim sleepers till I caught the glimmer of the lantern again. Presently, in a little chapel, we were looking at the sarcophagus, let into the wall, which contains the bones of the infant princes who were smothered in the Tower. Behind us was the stately monument of Queen Elizabeth, with her effigy dressed in the royal robes, lying as if at rest. When we turned around, the cat, with stupendous simplicity, was coiled up and sound asleep upon the feet of the Great Queen! Truly this was reaching far toward the millennium when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together. The murderer of Mary and Essex, the conqueror of the Armada, the imperious ruler of a turbulent empire, become a couch, at last, for a tired kitten! It was the most eloquent sermon upon the vanity of human pride and human grandeur that inspired Westminster preached to us that night.
We would have turned puss out of the Abbey, but for the fact that her small body made light of railed gates and she would have come straight back again. We walked up a flight of half a dozen steps and, stopping upon a pavement laid down in 1260, stood in the core of English history, as it were--upon theholiest ground in the British Empire, if profusion of kingly bones and kingly names of old renown make holy ground. For here in this little space were the ashes, the monuments and gilded effigies, of ten of the most illustrious personages who have worn crowns and borne scepters in this realm. This royal dust was the slow accumulation of hundreds of years. The latest comer entered into his rest four hundred years ago, and since the earliest was sepulchered, more than eight centuries have drifted by. Edward the Confessor, Henry the Fifth, Edward the First, Edward the Third, Richard the Second, Henry the Third, Eleanor, Philippa, Margaret Woodville--it was like bringing thecolossalcolossalmyths of history out of the forgotten ages and speaking to them face to face. The gilded effigies were scarcely marred--the faces were comely and majestic, old Edward the First looked the king--one had no impulse to be familiar with him. While we were contemplating the figure of Queen Eleanor lying in state, and calling to mind how like an ordinary human being the great king mourned for her six hundred years ago, we saw the vast illuminated clock face of the Parliament House tower glowering at us through a window of the Abbey and pointing with both hands to midnight. It was a derisive reminder that we were a part of this present sordid, plodding, commonplace time, and not august relics of a bygone age and the comrades of kings--and then the booming of the great bell tolled twelve, and with the last stroke the mocking clock face vanished in sudden darkness and left us with the past and its grandeurs again.
We descended, and entered the nave of the splendid Chapel of Henry VII. Mr. Wright said:
“Here is where the order of knighthood was conferred for centuries; the candidates sat in these seats; these brasses bear their coats of arms; these are their banners overhead, torn and dusty, poor old things, for they have hung there many and many a long year. In the floor you see inscriptions--kings and queens that lie in the vault below. When this vault was opened in our time they found them lying there in beautiful order--all quiet and comfortable--the red velvet on the coffins hardly faded any. And the bodies were sound--I saw them myself. They were embalmed, and looked natural, although they had been there such an awful time. Now in this place here, which is called the chantry, is a curious old group of statuary--the figures are mourning over George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was assassinated by Felton in Charles I’s time. Yonder, Cromwell and his family used to lie. Now we come to the south aisle and this is the grand monument to Mary Queen of Scots, and her effigy--you easily see they get all the portraits from this effigy. Here in the wall of the aisle is a bit of a curiosity pretty roughly carved:
Wm. WEST TOOMESHOWER1698
Wm. WEST TOOMESHOWER1698
Wm. WEST TOOME
SHOWER
1698
“William West, tomb shower, 1698. That fellow carved his name around in several places about the Abbey.”
This was a sort of revelation to me. I had been wandering through the Abbey, never imagining but that its shows were created only for us--the people of the nineteenth century. But here is a man (become a show himself now, and a curiosity) to whom all these things were sights and wonders a hundred and seventy-five years ago. When curious idlers from the country and from foreign lands came here to look, he showed them old Sebert’s tomb and those of the other old worthies I have been speaking of, and called them ancient and venerable; and he showed them Charles II’s tomb as the newest and latest novelty he had; and he was doubtless present at the funeral. Three hundred years before his time some ancestor of his, perchance, used to point out the ancient marvels, in the immemorial way and then say: “This, gentlemen, is the tomb of his late Majesty Edward the Third--and I wish I could see him alive and hearty again, as I saw him twenty years ago; yonder is the tomb of Sebert the Saxon king--he has been lying there well on to eight hundred years, they say. And three hundred years beforethisparty, Westminster was still a show, and Edward the Confessor’s grave was a novelty of some thirty years’ standing--but old “Sebert” was hoary and ancient still, and people who spoke of Alfred the Great as a comparatively recent man pondered over Sebert’s grave and tried to take in all the tremendous meaning of it when the “toome shower” said, “This man has lain here well nigh five hundred years.” It does seem as if all the generations that have lived and died since the world wascreated have visited Westminster to stare and wonder--and still found ancient things there. And some day a curiously clad company may arrive here in a balloon ship from some remote corner of the globe, and as they follow the verger among the monuments they may hear him say: “This is the tomb of Victoria the Good Queen; battered and uncouth as it looks, it once was a wonder of magnificence--but twelve hundred years work a deal of damage to these things.”
As we turned toward the door the moonlight was beaming in at the windows, and it gave to the sacred place such an air of restfulness and peace that Westminster was no longer a grisly museum of moldering vanities, but her better and worthier self--the deathless mentor of a great nation, the guide and encourager of right ambitions, the preserver of just fame, and the home and refuge for the nation’s best and bravest when their work is done.