of the towers and arches of which we had already had a glimpse from our
parlor window.
Our journey from Boston hitherward was through a perfectly level
country,--the fens of Lincolnshire,--green, green, and nothing else, with
old villages and farm-houses and old church-towers; very pleasant and
rather wearisomely monotonous. To return to Peterborough. It is a town
of ancient aspect; and we passed, on our way towards the market-place, a
very ancient-looking church, with a very far projecting porch, opening in
front and on each side through arches of broad sweep. The street by
which we approached from our hotel led us into the market-place, which
had what looked like an old Guildhall on one side. On the opposite side,
above the houses, appeared the towers of the cathedral, and a street
leads from the market-place to its front, through an arched gateway,
which used to be the external entrance to the abbey, I suppose, of which
the cathedral was formerly the church. The front of the cathedral is
very striking, and unlike any other that I have seen; being formed by
three lofty and majestic arches in a row, with three gable peaks above
them, forming a sort of colonnade, within which is the western entrance
of the nave. The towers are massive, but low in proportion to their
bulk. There are no spires, but pinnacles and statues, and all the rich
detail of Gothic architecture, the whole of a venerable gray line. It is
in perfect repair, and has not suffered externally, except by the loss of
multitudes of statues, gargoyles, and miscellaneous eccentricities of
sculpture, which used to smile, frown, laugh, and weep over the faces of
these old fabrics.
We entered through a side portal, and sat down on a bench in the nave,
and kept ourselves quiet; for the organ was sounding, and the choristers
were chanting in the choir. The nave and transepts are very noble, with
clustered pillars and Norman arches, and a great height under the central
tower; the whole, however, being covered with plaster and whitewash,
except the roof, which is of painted oak. This latter adornment has the
merit, I believe, of being veritably ancient; but certainly I should
prefer the oak of its native hue, for the effect of the paint is to make
it appear as if the ceiling were covered with imitation mosaic-work or an
oil-cloth carpet.
After sitting awhile, we were invited by a verger, who came from within
the screen, to enter the choir and hear the rest of the service. We
found the choristers there in their white garments, and an audience of
half a dozen people, and had time to look at the interior of the choir.
All the carved wood-work of the tabernacle, the Bishop's throne, the
prebends' stalls, and whatever else, is modern; for this cathedral seems
to have suffered wofully from Cromwell's soldiers, who hacked at the old
oak, and hammered and pounded upon the marble tombs, till nothing of the
first and very few of the latter remain. It is wonderful how suddenly
the English people lost their sense of the sanctity of all manner of
externals in religion, without losing their religion too. The French, in
their Revolution, underwent as sudden a change; but they became pagans
and atheists, and threw away the substance with the shadow.
I suspect that the interior arrangement of the choir and the chancel has
been greatly modernized; for it is quite unlike anything that I have seen
elsewhere. Instead of one vast eastern window, there are rows of windows
lighting the Lady Chapel, and seen through rows of arches in the screen
of the chancel; the effect being, whoever is to have the credit of it,
very rich and beautiful. There is, I think, no stained glass in the
windows of the nave, though in the windows of the chancel there is some
of recent date, and from fragments of veritable antique. The effect of
the whole interior is grand, expansive, and both ponderous and airy; not
dim, mysterious, and involved, as Gothic interiors often are, the
roundness and openness of the arches being opposed to this latter effect.
When the chanting came to a close, one verger took his stand at the
entrance of the choir, and another stood farther up the aisle, and then
the door of a stall opened, and forth came a clerical dignity of much
breadth and substance, aged and infirm, and was ushered out of the choir
with a great deal of ceremony. We took him for the bishop, but he proved
to be only a canon. We now engaged an attendant to show us through the
Lady Chapel and the other penetralia, which it did not take him long to
accomplish. One of the first things he showed us was the tombstone, in
the pavement of the southern aisle, beneath which Mary, Queen of Scots,
had been originally buried, and where she lay for a quarter of a century,
till borne to her present resting-place in Westminster Abbey. It is a
plain marble slab, with no inscription. Near this, there was a Saxon
monument of the date 870, with sculpture in relief upon it,--the memorial
of an Abbot Hedda, who was killed by the Danes when they destroyed the
monastery that preceded the abbey and church. I remember, likewise, the
recumbent figure of the prelate, whose face has been quite obliterated by
Puritanic violence; and I think that there is not a single tomb older
than the parliamentary wars, which has not been in like manner battered
and shattered, except the Saxon abbot's just mentioned. The most
pretentious monument remaining is that of a Mr. Deacon, a gentleman of
George I.'s time, in wig and breeches, leaning on his elbow, and resting
one hand upon a skull. In the north aisle, precisely opposite to that of
Queen Mary, the attendant pointed out to us the slab beneath which lie
the ashes of Catharine of Aragon, the divorced queen of Henry VIII.
In the nave there was an ancient font, a venerable and beautiful relic,
which has been repaired not long ago, but in such a way as not to lessen
its individuality. This sacred vessel suffered especial indignity from
Cromwell's soldiers; insomuch that if anything could possibly destroy its
sanctity, they would have effected that bad end. On the eastern wall of
the nave, and near the entrance, hangs the picture of old Scarlet, the
sexton who buried both Mary of Scotland and Catharine of Aragon, and not
only these two queens, but everybody else in Peterborough, twice over. I
think one feels a sort of enmity and spite against these grave-diggers,
who live so long, and seem to contract a kindred and partnership with
Death, being boon companions with him, and taking his part against
mankind.
In a chapel or some side apartment, there were two pieces of tapestry
wretchedly faded, the handiwork of two nuns, and copied from two of
Raphael's cartoons.
We now emerged from the cathedral, and walked round its exterior,
admiring it to our utmost capacity, and all the more because we had not
heard of it beforehand, and expected to see nothing so huge, majestic,
grand, and gray. And of all the lovely closes that I ever beheld, that
of Peterborough Cathedral is to me the most delightful; so quiet it is,
so solemnly and nobly cheerful, so verdant, so sweetly shadowed, and so
presided over by the stately minster, and surrounded by ancient and
comely habitations of Christian men. The most enchanting place, the most
enviable as a residence in all this world, seemed to me that of the
Bishop's secretary, standing in the rear of the cathedral, and bordering
on the churchyard; so that you pass through hallowed precincts in order
to come at it, and find it a Paradise, the holier and sweeter for the
dead men who sleep so near. We looked through the gateway into the lawn,
which really seemed hardly to belong to this world, so bright and soft
the sunshine was, so fresh the grass, so lovely the trees, so trained and
refined and mellowed down was the whole nature of the spot, and so shut
in and guarded from all intrusion. It is in vain to write about it;
nowhere but in England can there be such a spot, nor anywhere but in the
close of Peterborough Cathedral.
May 28th.--I walked up into the town this morning, and again visited the
cathedral. On the way, I observed the Falcon Inn, a very old-fashioned
hostelry, with a thatched roof, and what looked like the barn door or
stable door in a side front. Very likely it may have been an inn ever
since Queen Elizabeth's time. The Guildhall, as I supposed it to be, in
the market-place, has a basement story entirely open on all sides, but
from its upper story it communicates with a large old house in the rear.
I have not seen an older-looking town than Peterborough; but there is
little that is picturesque about it, except within the domain of the
cathedral. It was very fortunate for the beauty and antiquity of these
precincts, that Henry VIII. did not suffer the monkish edifices of the
abbey to be overthrown and utterly destroyed, as was the case with so
many abbeys, at the Reformation; but, converting the abbey church into a
cathedral, he preserved much of the other arrangement of the buildings
connected with it. And so it happens that to this day we have the
massive and stately gateway, with its great pointed arch, still keeping
out the world from those who have inherited the habitations of the old
monks; for though the gate is never closed, one feels himself in a sacred
seclusion the instant he passes under the archway. And everywhere there
are old houses that appear to have been adapted from the monkish
residences, or from their spacious offices, and made into convenient
dwellings for ecclesiastics, or vergers, or great or small people
connected with the cathedral; and with all modern comfort they still
retain much of the quaintness of the olden time,--arches, even rows of
arcades, pillars, walls, beautified with patches of Gothic sculpture, not
wilfully put on by modern taste, but lingering from a long past; deep
niches, let into the fronts of houses, and occupied by images of saints;
a growth of ivy, overspreading walls, and just allowing the windows to
peep through,--so that no novelty, nor anything of our hard, ugly, and
actual life comes into these limits, through the defences of the gateway,
without being mollified and modified. Except in some of the old colleges
of Oxford, I have not seen any other place that impressed me in this way;
and the grounds of Peterborough Cathedral have the advantage over even
the Oxford colleges, insomuch that the life is here domestic,--that of
the family, that of the affections,--a natural life, which one deludes
himself with imagining may be made into something sweeter and purer in
this beautiful spot than anywhere else. Doubtless the inhabitants find
it a stupid and tiresome place enough, and get morbid and sulky, and
heavy and obtuse of head and heart, with the monotony of their life. But
still I must needs believe that a man with a full mind, and objects to
employ his affection, ought to be very happy here. And perhaps the forms
and appliances of human life are never fit to make people happy until
they cease to be used for the purposes for which they were directly
intended, and are taken, as it were, in a sidelong application. I mean
that the monks, probably, never enjoyed their own edifices while they
were a part of the actual life of the day, so much as these present
inhabitants now enjoy them when a new use has grown up apart from the
original one.
Towards noon we all walked into the town again, and on our way went into
the old church with the projecting portal, which I mentioned yesterday.
A woman came hastening with the keys when she saw us looking up at the
door. The interior had an exceeding musty odor, and was very ancient,
with side aisles opening by a row of pointed arches into the nave, and a
gallery of wood on each side, and built across the two rows of arches.
It was paved with tombstones, and I suppose the dead people contributed
to the musty odor. Very naked and unadorned it was, except with a few
mural monuments of no great interest. We stayed but a little while, and
amply rewarded the poor woman with a sixpence. Thence we proceeded to
the cathedral, pausing by the way to look at the old Guildhall, which is
no longer a Guildhall, but a butter-market; and then we bought some
prints of exterior and interior views of the Minster, of which there are
a great variety on note-paper, letter-sheets, large engravings, and
lithographs. It is very beautiful; there seems to be nothing better than
to say this over again. We found the doors most hospitably open, and
every part entirely free to us,--a kindness and liberality which we have
nowhere else experienced in England, whether as regards cathedrals or any
other public buildings. My wife sat down to draw the font, and I walked
through the Lady Chapel meanwhile, pausing over the empty bed of Queen
Mary, and the grave of Queen Catharine, and looking at the rich and
sumptuous roof, where a fountain, as it were, of groins of arches spouts
from numberless pilasters, intersecting one another in glorious
intricacy. Under the central tower, opening to either transept, to the
nave, and to the choir, are four majestic arches, which I think must
equal in height those of which I saw the ruins, and one, all but perfect,
at Furness Abbey. They are about eighty feet high.
I may as well give up Peterborough here, though I hate to leave it
undescribed even to the tufts of yellow flowers, which grow on the
projections high out of reach, where the winds have sown their seeds in
soil made by the aged decay of the edifice. I could write a page, too,
about the rooks or jackdaws that flit and clamor about the pinnacles, and
dart in and out of the eyelet-holes, the piercings,--whatever they are
called,--in the turrets and buttresses. On our way back to the hotel,
J----- saw an advertisement of some knights in armor that were to tilt
to-day; so he and I waited, and by and by a procession appeared, passing
through the antique market-place, and in front of the abbey gateway,
which might have befitted the same spot three hundred years ago. They
were about twenty men-at-arms on horseback, with lances and banners. We
were a little too near for the full enjoyment of the spectacle; for,
though some of the armor was real, I could not help observing that other
suits were made of silver paper or gold tinsel. A policeman (a queer
anomaly in reference to such a mediaeval spectacle) told us that they
were going to joust and run at the ring, in a field a little beyond the
bridge.