_Arrival in London, and first two days._
In early life I had always promised myself a first view of London,
either approaching the Tower by water, and taking in the survey of
steeples, bridges, and docks, or else descending from Hampstead, on the
top of a rapid coach, and beholding the great dome of St. Paul’s,
arising amid a world of subordinate roofs, and looming up through their
common canopy of cloud-like smoke. Alas! for all such visions, we have
reached the age of the rail: and, consequently, I found myself, one
afternoon, set down in a busy, bustling station-house, with a confused
sensation of having been dragged through a long ditch, and a succession
of dark tunnels, and with a scarcely less confused conception of the
fact, that I was in London. A few policemen loitering about, and a line
of cabs and ’busses of truly English look, confirmed the conviction,
however, that I was really in the Metropolis, and I soon found myself
looking up my luggage, in the business way of one accustomed to the
place, and without a single rapture or emotion of the marvellous. Some
things were very different from an American station-house; as, for
example, the dignity of an ecclesiastical gentleman emerging from the
first-class carriages in cocked-hat, and solemn cravat and surtout, his
short-clothes eked into pantaloons by ponderous leggings, buttoned about
his black stockings, and his whole deportment evincing a reverend care
of his health and personal convenience—the inevitable umbrella
especially, neatly enveloped in varnished leather, and tucked under the
consequential arm; or again, the careful avoidance of the crowd evinced
by a dignified lady, accompanied by her maid, and watching with an
eye-glass the anxious manipulations of a footman, in showy livery,
piling up a stack of trunks, hat-boxes, and what not, all inscribed,
“Lady Dashey, Eaton Place, Belgrave Square.” Getting into a cab, with my
very democratic luggage safely rescued from the vans, and forcing an
exit through vehicles of all ranks, from the dog-cart up to the
lumbering coach, with footman behind, and my lord inside, I emerge at
length into London streets from the Euston Square Station, and begin to
make my way towards the focus of the world. How mechanically I jog
along, just as if I had lived here all my life, and without the least
conformity to the fact that my pulse is quickening, and mine eye
straining to realize a long ideal, which in a few minutes will be
substantial fact! Every street-sign arrests my eye, “Paddington New
Road,” “Gower Place,” “Torrington Square,” “Keppell Street,” “Bedford
Square,” “Great Russell Street,” “Bloomsbury,” “Bond Street,” “Seven
Dials,” “St. Martin’s Lane,” and now I begin to know where I am. There
is St. Martin’s—there the lion with a long tail on Northumberland
House—here is Trafalgar Square—I see Charles First on horseback, at
Charing Cross—and here old George Third, with his queue, at the head of
Cockspur Street—and here the Haymarket and Pall Mall, and here I am set
down at the hospitable door of a friend, first known in America, and who
has kindly insisted on my spending my first few days in London as his
guest. It was an unexpected pleasure, but a great one, to receive my
first impressions of London in the agreeable company of the Reverend
Ernest Hawkins, a person singularly qualified to share the feelings of a
stranger, but upon whose valuable time I should not have ventured to
trespass, except at his own friendly instance. After renewing the
acquaintance, formed during his short visit to our country in 1849, the
question was, Where shall we begin? A fine day was already clouded over,
and alternate light and shade were inviting and again discouraging
out-door amusements. However, a turn through St. James’s Park to
Whitehall was practicable enough, and at Whitehall I was resolved to
begin. Forth we go, step into the Athenæum Club House, and descend into
the Park, by the Duke of York’s Column, descrying through the mist the
towers of Westminster Abbey, and soon passing through the Horse-Guards,
stand “in the open street before Whitehall.” There is the
Banqueting-room—there the fatal window—here is the very spot, where
the tide turned between old and new, and parted on an axe’s edge. That
martyrdom! What that has happened in Church and State, not only among
Anglo-Saxons, but in the greater part of Europe, since 1649, has not
resulted from the deed of blood done here!
My kind friend took me out upon Hungerford Bridge, and bade me use my
eyes, and tell the different objects if I could. I turned towards
Lambeth, saw the old towers through the gray mist, and began with
indescribable pleasure to single out St. Mary’s, Lambeth, the New
Parliament Houses, Westminster Hall, the Abbey, St. Margaret’s, and so
forth, till turning round, I descried St. Paul’s, (vast, sublimely so,
and magnificently tutelary,) and nearer by, Somerset House and the
bridges, and the little steamers shooting to and fro beneath their noble
arches. Enough for a first glimpse! We went into Regent Street, and by
Burlington Arcade into Piccadilly, and turning into St. James’s Street,
I first saw the old Palace at its extremity, looking just as one sees it
in Hogarth’s picture of “the Rake going to Court,” in the last century,
old and shabby, and venerable altogether. Such was my first ramble in
London and Westminster.
I was so happy as to meet at dinner that evening, a small party of the
clergy of the Metropolis, in whose company the hours went rapidly and
delightfully by, with many warm, and, I dare say, heartfelt expressions
of interest in America and her Church; the whole presided over by my
reverend entertainer, with the most animating spirit of dignified
cordiality. The general desire which prevails to know something of a new
Bishop of the Church, may excuse my particularizing the Rev. John
Jackson, Rector of St. James’s, Westminster, and Chaplain in Ordinary to
the Queen, who was one of the party, as a person of very unassuming, but
attractive manners, of whose subsequent elevation to the See of Lincoln,
it has given me no little pleasure to learn.
With what a world of new and confused emotions, I tried to drop to sleep
after such a day! The roof beneath which I was reposing was an historic
one. Standing in the precincts of St. James’s, it had once been the
abode of the beautiful but unhappy Nell Gwynne, the one of all those
wretched creatures who disgraced the Court of the Second Charles, for
whom one feels more pity than scorn; and for whom, remembering the
comparative goodness of her natural qualities, and her own plaintive
lament over her education in a pot-house to fill glasses for drunkards,
there must have been compassion from the Father of Mercies, and possibly
pardon from the blood that cleanseth from all sin, her penitent death
being more than probable. It is certainly gratifying that a mansion once
given up to such associations is now turned into an abode of piety and
benevolence, and made the head quarters of the operations of the
venerable S. P. G. In the chamber where I was lodged, had lately rested
those estimable missionaries, Bishops Field, and Medley, and Gray, and
Strachan; and I felt unworthy to lay my head where such holy heads had
been pillowed. But a blessing seemed to haunt the spot which they, and
many like them, had reconciled to virtue, and hallowed by their pure
repose; and I slumbered sweetly, dreaming of Lud’s town, and King Lud,
and of divers men of divers ages, who had come to London, upon manifold
errands, to seek their fortunes there, and there to flourish and wax
great, or to rise and fall, until now it was my lot to mingle with its
living tides, and then to pass away again to my far-off home, as “a
guest that tarrieth but a night.”
When I rose in the morning, I looked out into the park, and now for the
first time, gained a clear idea of that strange scene described in
Evelyn’s Memoirs, as occurring between King Charles and Mistress Nelly,
while the grovelling monarch was walking with him in the Mall. The
wretched woman was standing on a terrace, at the end of her garden, and
looking over into the park, when the king turns from Evelyn, and going
towards her, holds a conversation with her in that public place and
manner. “I was heartily sorry at this scene,” says the pure-minded
journalist; and indeed it forboded no little evil to both Church and
nation, as well as to the miserable Prince who could thus debase his
crown and character, in the face of the open day, and of a virtuous man.
And now, having a whole day before me, I began by attending divine
service in Westminster Abbey. Through the park and Birdcage-walk, I went
leisurely to old Palace Yard, passing round the Abbey and St.
Margaret’s, and so entered by Poets’ Corner. Service was going on, and
of course I gave myself as much as possible to its sacred impressions,
but was unable to repress some wandering thoughts, as my eyes caught the
long lines and intersections of nave and aisles, or turned upwards to
the clere-story, where the smoky sunlight of a London morning was
lingering along the old rich tracery and fret-work, to which every
cadence of the chaunt seemed to aspire, and where just so, just such
sunbeams have come and gone as quietly over all the most speaking and
eventful pageants of the British Empire, since William First was crowned
here, in the midst of those Norman and Saxon antagonists whose blood now
runs mingled in the veins of the British people. Nay, we must send back
our thoughts at least so far as Edward the Confessor, who was also
crowned here, and whose sepulchre is hard at hand. What thoughts of
human splendor, and of human nothingness! The anthem was—_Awake up my
Glory_—and as it rose and fell, and tremulously died away, distributing
its effect among innumerable objects of decayed antiquity, I seemed to
catch a new meaning in the strain of the psalmist. How many tongues were
mute, and ingloriously slumbering around me—the tongues of poets and of
princes and of priests: but the living should praise the Lord in their
stead, and in this place that humbles the glory of men, it was good to
sing—“Set up thyself, oh God, above the heavens, and thy glory above
all the earth.” When the service was over, I preferred to leave the
Abbey, with this general effect still upon me, and to take it, at some
other time, in details: and so, with only a few glances at the familiar
objects in Poet’s Corner, I passed thoughtfully through the choir, which
is extended down the nave, and so into the south aisle, and out into the
cloisters. I took passing notice of the Andre monument, and of the
Thynne monument, which I recognized by their sculpture alone. I saw at
once that I was not likely to be satisfied with such ill-placed
memorials, interesting as they may be in themselves. In the cloisters, I
was so fortunate as to meet Lord John Thynne; and on being introduced to
his Lordship, and remarking that “I remembered very well his connection
with the Abbey, as Sub-dean, from Leslie’s Picture of the Coronation,”
(in which he bears the chalice, as the Archbishop gives the Bread of the
Sacrament to Queen Victoria,) he courteously suggested that perhaps I
might think it worth while to look at the coronation robes, which are
not usually seen by visitors, but which were in his custody, and which
he should be happy to have me see. His Lordship then led the way into
the famous Jerusalem Chamber, a place not ordinarily shown, but full of
interest, not only as the scene of the swooning of Henry Fourth, but as
the seat of the Holy Anglican Synod, which has since revived, (“Laud be
to God,”) in the same Jerusalem where Henry died. This place is by no
means such as my fancy had led me to suppose, but has the air of having
been remodeled in James First’s time, although an ancient picture of
Richard Second—I think in tapestry—is sunk in the wainscot. The
chamber is small, and of very moderate architectural merit, but must
always be a place of deep and hallowed associations. Adjoining this is
the Refectory of the Westminster school-boys, into which we were shown,
and where his Lordship reminded us that the tables were made of the oak
of the Spanish Armada. They were full of holes, burned into them by the
Westminster boys, who are always ambitious each to “leave his mark” in
this way: so that as you look at them, you may fancy this to have been
burned by little George Herbert, or Ben Jonson, or John Dryden, or
Willie Cowper, or Bob Southey—all of whom have, in their day, sat on
the forms of Westminster. Until so late as 1845, this refectory was
warmed by the ancient brazier, the smoke escaping through the _louvre_
in the roof. On coming to the Deanery, Dr. Buckland reformed this
ancient thing, and a very ugly stove now reigns in its stead, as a
monument of the Dean’s utilitarianism and nineteenth-century ideas on
all possible subjects.
After we had carefully inspected this interesting hall, Lord John was as
good as his word, and took us to see the robes, but precisely where he
took us, it would be hard for me to say. It was in some room contiguous,
where a fidgety little woman with keys in her hands, attended as
mistress of the robes, and opening the repository of the sacred
vestments, displayed them with such profound obsequiousness to the
mildly dignified ecclesiastic who conducted us, that if she called him
“my lord” once, she did so some twenty times in a single minute. The
readers of Mrs. Strickland’s “Queens of England” will not require me to
enlarge upon these superb vestments, now dimmed and faded in their
splendour by the lapse of nearly two centuries, since they were made for
the coronation of the luckless, and almost brainless, James the Second.
They are worn at coronations only, by the clergy of the Abbey, and we
had the pleasure of seeing our reverend guide in his appropriate cope as
Sub-dean; the same which he wore when Victoria was crowned, and which
has been worn by his predecessors, successively, at the coronations of
William and Mary, Queen Anne, the four Georges, and William the Fourth.
Similar vestments in form, though not in splendour, are to this day the
rubrical attire of the clergy of the English Church in celebrating the
Holy Communion, but I believe they are now never used, although they
were in use at least in Durham Cathedral, so late as the middle of the
last century. Having seen these interesting and historical vestments, we
thanked the amiable dignitary, to whom we had been indebted for so much
polite attention, and took our leave, emerging into Dean’s Yard, and so
finding our way to the New Houses of Parliament.