Belike, returning from a long pilgrimage, in which you have seen many
strange men and strange cities, and have had your imagination stirred
by marvellous experiences, you have never, at the very end of your
journey, almost in sight of your home, felt suddenly that all you had
been seeing and learning was as naught--a pack of negligible illusions,
faint and forgotten. From me, however, this queer sensation has not
been withheld. It befell me a few days ago; in a cold grey dawn, and in
the Buffet of Dover Harbour.
I had spent two months far away, wandering and wondering; and now I had
just fulfilled two thirds of the little tripartite journey from Paris
to London. I was sleepy, as one always is after that brief and twice
broken slumber. I was chilly, for is not the dawn always bleak at
Dover, and perforated always with a bleak and drizzling rain? I was
sad, for I had watched from the deck the white cliffs of Albion coming
nearer and nearer to me, towering over me, and in the familiar drizzle
looking to me more than ever ghastly for that I had been so long and so
far away from them. Often though that harsh, chalky coast had thus
borne down on me, I had never yet felt so exactly and lamentably like a
criminal arrested on an extradition warrant.
In its sleepy, chilly shell my soul was still shuddering and
whimpering. Piteously it conjured me not to take it back into this
cruel hum-drum. It rose up and fawned on me. 'Down, Sir, down!' said I
sternly. I pointed out to it that needs must when the devil drives, and
that it ought to think itself a very lucky soul for having had two
happy, sunny months of fresh and curious adventure. 'A sorrow's crown
of sorrow,' it murmured, 'is remembering happier things.' I declared
the sentiment to be as untrue as was the quotation trite, and told my
soul that I looked keenly forward to the pleasure of writing, in
collaboration with it, that book of travel for which I had been so
sedulously amassing notes and photographs by the way.
This colloquy was held at a table in the Buffet. I was sorry, for my
soul's sake, to be sitting there. Britannia owns nothing more crudely
and inalienably Britannic than her Buffets. The barmaids are but
incarnations of her own self, thinly disguised. The stale buns and the
stale sponge-cakes must have been baked, one fancies, by her own heavy
hand. Of her everything is redolent. She it is that has cut the thick
stale sandwiches, bottled the bitter beer, brewed the unpalatable
coffee. Cold and hungry though I was, one sip of this coffee was one
sip too much for me. I would not mortify my body by drinking more of
it, although I had to mortify my soul by lingering over it till one of
the harassed waiters would pause to be paid for it. I was somewhat
comforted by the aspect of my fellow-travellers at the surrounding
tables. Dank, dishevelled, dismal, they seemed to be resenting as much
as I the return to the dear home-land. I suppose it was the contrast
between them and him that made me stare so hard at the large young man
who was standing on the threshold and surveying the scene.
He looked, as himself would undoubtedly have said, 'fit as a fiddle,'
or 'right as rain.' His cheeks were rosy, his eyes sparkling. He had
his arms akimbo, and his feet planted wide apart. His grey bowler
rested on the back of his head, to display a sleek coating of hair
plastered down over his brow. In his white satin tie shone a dubious
but large diamond, and there was the counter-attraction of geraniums
and maidenhair fern in his button-hole. So fresh was the nosegay that
he must have kept it in water during the passage! Or perhaps these
vegetables had absorbed by mere contact with his tweeds, the subtle
secret of his own immarcescibility. I remembered now that I had seen
him, without realising him, on the platform of the Gare du Nord. 'Gay
Paree' was still written all over him. But evidently he was no repiner.
Unaccountable though he was, I had no suspicion of what he was about to
do. I think you will hardly believe me when I tell you what he did. 'A
traveller's tale' you will say, with a shrug. Yet I swear to you that
it is the plain and solemn truth. If you still doubt me, you have the
excuse that I myself hardly believed the evidence of my eyes. In the
Buffet of Dover Harbour, in the cold grey dawn, in the brief interval
between boat and train, the large young man, shooting his cuffs, strode
forward, struck a confidential attitude across the counter, and began
to flirt with the barmaid.
Open-mouthed, fascinated, appalled, I watched this monstrous and
unimaginable procedure. I was not near enough to overhear what was
said. But I knew by the respective attitudes that the time-honoured
ritual was being observed strictly by both parties. I could see the ice
of haughty indifference thawing, little by little, under the fire of
gallant raillery. I could fix the exact moment when 'Indeed?' became 'I
daresay,' and when 'Well, I must say' gave place to 'Go along,' and
when 'Oh, I don't mind you--not particularly' was succeeded by 'Who
gave you them flowers?'... All in the cold grey dawn...
The cry of 'Take your places, please!' startled me into realisation
that all the other passengers had vanished. I hurried away, leaving the
young man still in the traditional attitude which he had assumed from
the first--one elbow sprawling on the counter, one foot cocked over the
other. My porter had put my things into a compartment exactly opposite
the door of the Buffet. I clambered in.
Just as the guard blew his whistle, the young man or monster came
hurrying out. He winked at me. I did not return his wink.
I suppose I ought really to have raised my hat to him. Pre-eminently,
he was one of those who have made England what it is. But they are the
very men whom one does not care to meet just after long truancy in
preferable lands. He was the backbone of the nation. But ought
backbones to be exposed?
Though I would rather not have seen him then and there, I did realise,
nevertheless, the overwhelming interest of him. I knew him to be a
stranger sight, a more memorable and instructive, than any of the fair
sights I had been seeing. He made them all seem nebulous and unreal to
me. Beside me lay my despatch-box. I unlocked it, drew from it all the
notes and all the photographs I had brought back with me. These, one by
one, methodically, I tore up, throwing their fragments out of the
window, not grudging them to the wind.
'THE RAGGED REGIMENT'
--'commonly called "Longshanks" on account of his great height he was
the first king crowned in the Abbey as it now appears and was interred
with great pomp on St. Simon's and St. Jude's Day October 28th 1307 in
1774 the tomb was opened when the king's body was found almost entire
in the right hand was a richly embossed sceptre and in the left'--
So much I gather as I pass one of the tombs on my way to the Chapel of
Abbot Islip. Anon the verger will have stepped briskly forward, drawing
a deep breath, with his flock well to heel, and will be telling the
secrets of the next tomb on his tragic beat.
To be a verger in Westminster Abbey--what life could be more
unutterably tragic? We are, all of us, more or less enslaved to
sameness; but not all of us are saying, every day, hour after hour,
exactly the same thing, in exactly the same place, in exactly the same
tone of voice, to people who hear it for the first time and receive it
with a gasp of respectful interest. In the name of humanity, I suggest
to the Dean and Chapter that they should relieve these sad-faced men of
their intolerable mission, and purchase parrots. On every tomb, by
every bust or statue, under every memorial window, let a parrot be
chained by the ankle to a comfortable perch, therefrom to enlighten the
rustic and the foreigner. There can be no objection on the ground of
expense; for parrots live long. Vergers do not, I am sure.
It is only the rustic and the foreigner who go to Westminster Abbey for
general enlightenment. If you pause beside any one of the verger-led
groups, and analyse the murmur emitted whenever the verger has said his
say, you will find the constituent parts of the sound to be such
phrases as 'Lor!' 'Ach so!' 'Deary me!' 'Tiens!' and 'My!' 'My!'
preponderates; for antiquities appeal with greatest force to the one
race that has none of them; and it is ever the Americans who hang the
most tenaciously, in the greatest numbers, on the vergers' tired lips.
We of the elder races are capable of taking antiquities as a matter of
course. Certainly, such of us as reside in London take Westminster
Abbey as a matter of course. A few of us will be buried in it, but
meanwhile we don't go to it, even as we don't go to the Tower, or the
Mint, or the Monument. Only for some special purpose do we go--as to
hear a sensational bishop preaching, or to see a monarch anointed. And
on these rare occasions we cast but a casual glance at the Abbey--that
close-packed chaos of beautiful things and worthless vulgar things.
That the Abbey should be thus chaotic does not seem strange to us; for
lack of orderliness and discrimination is an essential characteristic
of the English genius. But to the Frenchman, with his passion for
symmetry and harmony, how very strange it must all seem! How very
whole-hearted a generalising 'Tiens! must he utter when he leaves the
edifice!
My own special purpose in coming is to see certain old waxen effigies
that are here. [In its original form this essay had the good fortune to
accompany two very romantic drawings by William Nicholson--one of Queen
Elizabeth's effigy, the other of Charles II.'s.] A key grates in the
lock of a little door in the wall of (what I am told is) the North
Ambulatory; and up a winding wooden staircase I am ushered into a tiny
paven chamber. The light is dim, through the deeply embrased and narrow
window, and the space is so obstructed that I must pick my way warily.
All around are deep wooden cupboards, faced with glass; and I become
dimly aware that through each glass some one is watching me. Like
sentinels in sentry-boxes, they fix me with their eyes, seeming as
though they would challenge me. How shall I account to them for my
presence? I slip my note-book into my pocket, and try, in the dim
light, to look as unlike a spy as possible. But I cannot, try as I
will, acquit myself of impertinence. Who am I that I should review this
'ragged regiment'? Who am I that I should come peering in upon this
secret conclave of the august dead? Immobile and dark, very gaunt and
withered, these personages peer out at me with a malign dignity,
through the ages which separate me from them, through the twilight in
which I am so near to them. Their eyes... Come, sir, their eyes are
made of glass. It is quite absurd to take wax-works seriously.
Wax-works are not a serious form of art. The aim of art is so to
imitate life as to produce in the spectator an illusion of life.
Wax-works, at best, can produce no such illusion. Don't pretend to be
illuded. For its power to illude, an art depends on its limitations.
Art never can be life, but it may seem to be so if it do but keep far
enough away from life. A statue may seem to live. A painting may seem
to live. That is because each is so far away from life that you do not
apply the test of life to it. A statue is of bronze or marble, than
either of which nothing could be less flesh-like. A painting is a thing
in two dimensions, whereas man is in three. If sculptor or painter
tried to dodge these conventions, his labour would be undone. If a
painter swelled his canvas out and in according to the convexities and
concavities of his model, or if a sculptor overlaid his material with
authentic flesh-tints, then you would demand that the painted or
sculptured figure should blink, or stroke its chin, or kick its foot in
the air. That it could do none of these things would rob it of all
power to illude you. An art that challenges life at close quarters is
defeated through the simple fact that it is not life. Wax-works, being
so near to life, having the exact proportions of men and women, having
the exact texture of skin and hair and habiliments, must either be made
animate or continue to be grotesque and pitiful failures. Lifelike?
They? Rather do they give you the illusion of death. They are akin to
photographs seen through stereoscopic lenses--those photographs of
persons who seem horribly to be corpses, or, at least, catalepts;
and... You see, I have failed to cheer myself up. Having taken up a
strong academic line, and set bravely out to prove to myself the
absurdity of wax-works, I find myself at the point where I started,
irrefutably arguing to myself that I have good reason to be frightened,
here in the Chapel of Abbot Islip, in the midst of these, the Abbot's
glowering and ghastly tenants. Catalepsy! death! that is the atmosphere
I am breathing.
If I were writing in the past tense, I might pause here to consider
whether this emotion was a genuine one or a mere figment for literary
effect. As I am writing in the present tense, such a pause would be
inartistic, and shall not be made. I must seem not to be writing, but
to be actually on the spot, suffering. But then, you may well ask, why
should I stay here, to suffer? why not beat a hasty retreat? The answer
is that my essay would then seem skimpy; and that you, moreover, would
know hardly anything about the wax-works. So I must ask you to imagine
me fighting down my fears, and consoling myself with the reflection
that here, after all, a sense of awe and oppression is just what one
ought to feel--just what one comes for. At Madame Tussaud's exhibition,
by which I was similarly afflicted some years ago, I had no such
consolation. There my sense of fitness was outraged. The place was
meant to be cheerful. It was brilliantly lit. A band was playing
popular tunes. Downstairs there was even a restaurant. (Let fancy
fondly dwell, for a moment, on the thought of a dinner at Madame
Tussaud's: a few carefully-selected guests, and a menu well thought
out; conversation becoming general; corks popping; quips flying; a
sense of bien-etre; 'thank you for a most delightful evening.')
Madame's figures were meant to be agreeable and lively presentments.
Her visitors were meant to have a thoroughly good time. But the Islip
Chapel has no cheerful intent. It is, indeed, a place set aside, with
all reverence, to preserve certain relics of a grim, yet not unlovely,
old custom. These fearful images are no stock-in-trade of a showman; we
are not invited to 'walk-up' to them. They were fashioned with a solemn
and wistful purpose. The reason of them lies in a sentiment which is as
old as the world--lies in man's vain revolt from the prospect of death.
If the soul must perish from the body, may not at least the body itself
be preserved, somewhat in the semblance of life, and, for at least a
while, on the face of the earth? By subtle art, with far-fetched
spices, let the body survive its day and be (even though hidden beneath
the earth) for ever. Nay more, since death cause it straightway to
dwindle somewhat from the true semblance of life, let cunning
artificers fashion it anew--fashion it as it was. Thus, in the earliest
days of England, the kings, as they died, were embalmed, and their
bodies were borne aloft upon their biers, to a sepulture long delayed
after death. In later days, an image of every king that died was
forthwith carved in wood, and painted according to his remembered
aspect, and decked in his own robes; and, when they had sealed his
tomb, the mourners, humouring, to the best of their power, his hatred
of extinction, laid this image upon the tomb's slab, and left it so. In
yet later days, the pretence became more realistic. The hands and the
face were modelled in wax; and the figure stood upright, in some
commanding posture, on a valanced platform above the tomb. Nor were
only the kings thus honoured. Every one who was interred in the Abbey,
whether in virtue of lineage or of achievements, was honoured thus. It
was the fashion for every great lady to write in her will minute
instructions as to the posture in which her image was to be modelled,
and which of her gowns it was to be clad in, and with what of her
jewellery it was to glitter. Men, too, used to indulge in such
precautions. Of all the images thus erected in the Abbey, there remain
but a few. The images had to take their chance, in days that were
without benefit of police. Thieves, we may suppose, stripped the finery
from many of them. Rebels, we know, broke in, less ignobly, and tore
many of them limb from limb, as a protest against the governing
classes. So only a poor remnant, a 'ragged regiment,' has been rallied,
at length, into the sanctuary of Islip's Chapel. Perhaps, if they were
not so few, these images would not be so fascinating.
Yes, I am fascinated by them now. Terror has been toned to wonder. I am
filled with a kind of wondering pity. My academic theory about
wax-works has broken down utterly. These figures--kings, princes,
duchesses, queens--all are real to me now, and all are infinitely
pathetic, in the dignity of their fallen and forgotten greatness. With
what inalienable majesty they wear their rusty velvets and faded silks,
flaunting sere ruffles of point-lace, which at a touch now would be
shivered like cobwebs! My heart goes out to them through the glass that
divides us. I wish I could stay with them, bear them company, always. I
think they like me. I am afraid they will miss me. Perhaps it would be
better for us never to have met. Even Queen Elizabeth, beholding whom,
as she stands here, gaunt and imperious and appalling, I echo the words
spoken by Philip's envoy, 'This woman is possessed of a hundred
thousand devils'--even she herself, though she gazes askance into the
air, seems to be conscious of my presence, and to be willing me to
stay. It is a relief to meet the friendly bourgeois eye of good Queen
Anne. It has restored my common sense. 'These figures really are most
curious, most interesting...' and anon I am asking intelligent
questions about the contents of a big press, which, by special favour,
has been unlocked for me.
Perhaps the most romantic thing in the Islip Chapel is this press.
Herein, huddled one against another in dark recesses, lie the battered
and disjected remains of the earlier effigies--the primitive wooden
ones. Edward I. and Eleanor are known to be among them; and Henry VII.
and Elizabeth of York; and others not less illustrious. Which is which?
By size and shape you can distinguish the men from the women; but
beyond that is mere guesswork, be you never so expert. Time has broken
and shuffled these erst so significant effigies till they have become
as unmeaning for us as the bones in one of the old plague-pits. I feel
that I ought to be more deeply moved than I am by this sad state of
things. But I seem to have exhausted my capacity for sentiment; and I
cannot rise to the level of my opportunity. Would that I were
Thackeray! Dear gentleman, how promptly and copiously he would have
wept and moralised here, in his grandest manner, with that perfect
technical mastery which makes even now his tritest and shallowest
sermons sound remarkable, his hollowest sentiment ring true! What a
pity he never came to beat the muffled drum, on which he was so supreme
a performer, around the Islip Chapel! As I make my way down the stairs,
I am trying to imagine what would have been the cadence of the final
sentence in this essay by Thackeray. And, as I pass along the North
Ambulatory, lo! there is the same verger with a new party; and I catch
the words 'was interred with great pomp on St. Simon's and St. Jude's
Day October 28 1307 in 1774 the tomb was opened when--