On one of those sober and rather melancholy days in the latter part of
Autumn, when the shadows of morning and evening almost mingle together and
throw a gloom over the decline of the year, I passed several hours in
rambling about Westminster Abbey. I spent some time in Poet's Corner,
which occupies an end of one of the transepts or cross aisles of the
abbey. The monuments are generally simple; for the lives of literary men
afford no striking themes for the sculptor. Shakespeare and Addison have
statues erected to their memories; but the greater part have busts,
medallions, and sometimes mere inscriptions. Notwithstanding the
simplicity of these memorials, I have always observed that the visitors to
the abbey remained longest about them. A kinder and fonder feeling takes
the place of that cold curiosity or vague admiration with which they gaze
on the splendid monuments of the great and heroic. They linger about these
as about the tombs of friends and companions; for indeed there is
something of companionship between the author and the reader. Other men
are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is
continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the
author and his fellow men is ever new, active and immediate.
From Poet's Corner I continued my stroll toward that part of the abbey
which contains the sepulchers of the kings. I wandered among what once
were chapels, but which are now occupied by the tombs and monuments of the
great. At every turn I met with some illustrious name; or the cognizance
of some powerful house renowned in history. As the eye darts into these
dusky chambers of death, it catches glimpses of quaint effigies; some
kneeling in niches, as if in devotion; others stretched upon the tombs,
with hands piously prest together; warriors in armor, as if reposing after
battle; prelates with croziers and miters; and nobles in robes and
coronets, lying, as it were, in state. In glancing over this scene, so
strangely populous, yet where every form is so still and silent, it seems
almost as if we were treading a mansion of that fabled city where
everything had been suddenly transmuted into stone.
In the opposite transept to Poet's Corner stands a monument which is among
the most renowned achievements of modern art, but which to me appears
horrible rather than sublime. It is the tomb of Mrs. Nightingale, by
Roubillac. The bottom of the monument is represented as throwing open its
marble doors, and a sheeted skeleton is starting forth. The shroud is
falling from its fleshless frame as he launches his dart at his victim.
She is sinking into her affrighted husband's arms, who strives, with vain
and frantic effort, to avert the blow. The whole is executed with terrible
truth and spirit; we almost fancy we hear the gibbering yell of triumph
bursting from the distended jaws of the specter. But why should we thus
seek to clothe death with unnecessary terrors, and to spread horrors round
the tombs of those we love? The grave should be surrounded by everything
that might inspire tenderness and veneration for the dead; or that might
win the living to virtue. It is the place, not of disgust and dismay, but
of sorrow and meditation.
I continued in this way to move from tomb to tomb, and from chapel to
chapel. The day was gradually wearing away; the distant tread of loiterers
about the abbey grew less and less frequent; the sweet-tongued bell was
summoning to evening prayers; and I saw at a distance the choristers, in
their white surplices, crossing the aisle and entering the choir. I stood
before the entrance to Henry the Seventh's chapel. A flight of steps lead
up to it, through a deep and gloomy but magnificent arch. Great gates of
brass, richly and delicately wrought, turn heavily upon their hinges, as
if proudly reluctant to admit the feet of common mortals into this most
gorgeous of sepulchers.
On entering, the eye is astonished by the pomp of architecture and the
elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. The very walls are wrought into
universal ornament, incrusted with tracery and scooped into niches,
crowded with statues of saints and martyrs. Stone seems, by the cunning
labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density,
suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the
wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb.
Along the sides of the chapel are the lofty stalls of the Knights of the
Bath, richly carved of oak, tho with the grotesque decorations of Gothic
architecture. On the pinnacles of the stalls are affixt the helmets and
crests of the knights, with their scarfs and swords; and above them are
suspended their banners, emblazoned with armorial bearings, and
contrasting the splendor of gold and purple and crimson with the cold gray
fretwork of the roof. In the midst of this grand mausoleum stands the
sepulcher of its founder--his effigy, with that of his queen, extended on
a sumptuous tomb, and the whole surrounded by a superbly wrought brazen
railing....
When I read the names inscribed on the banners, they were those of men
scattered far and wide about the world, some tossing upon distant seas;
some under arms in distant lands; some mingling in the busy intrigues of
courts and cabinets; all seeking to deserve one more distinction in this
mansion of shadowy honors; the melancholy reward of a monument.
Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present a touching instance
of the equality of the grave; which brings down the oppressor to a level
with the opprest, and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemies together.
In one is the sepulcher of the haughty Elizabeth; in the other is that of
her victim, the lovely and unfortunate Mary. Not an hour in the day but
some ejaculation of pity is uttered over the fate of the latter, mingled
with indignation at her oppressor. The walls of Elizabeth's sepulcher
continually echo with sighs of sympathy heaved at the grave of her rival.
A peculiar melancholy reigns over the aisle where Mary lies buried. The
light struggles dimly through windows darkened by dust. The greater part
of the place is in deep shadow, and the walls are stained and tinted by
time and weather. A marble figure of Mary is stretched upon the tomb,
round which is an iron railing, much corroded, bearing her national
emblem--the thistle. I was weary with wandering, and sat down to rest
myself at the monument, revolving in my mind the chequered and disastrous
story of poor Mary....
Suddenly the notes of the deep-laboring organ burst upon the ear, falling
with doubled and redoubled intensity, and rolling, as it were, huge
billows of sound. How well do their volume and grandeur accord with this
mighty building! With what pomp do they swell through its vast vaults, and
breathe their awful harmony through these caves of death, and make the
silent sepulcher vocal! And now they rise in triumph and acclamation,
heaving higher and higher their accordant notes, and piling sound on
sound. And now they pause, and the soft voices of the choir break out into
sweet gushes of melody; they soar aloft, and warble along the roof, and
seem to play about these lofty vaults like the pure airs of heaven. Again
the pealing organ heaves its thrilling thunders, compressing air into
music, and rolling it forth upon the soul. What long-drawn cadences! What
solemn, sweeping concords! It grows more and more dense and powerful--it
fills the vast pile, and seems to jar the very walls--the ear is
stunned--the senses are overwhelmed. And now it is winding up in full
jubilee--it is rising from the earth to heaven--the very soul seems rapt
away and floated upward on this swelling tide of harmony!...
I rose and prepared to leave the abbey. As I descended the flight of steps
which lead into the body of the building, my eye was caught by the shrine
of Edward the Confessor, and I ascended the small staircase that conducts
to it, to take from thence a general survey of this wilderness of tombs.
The shrine is elevated upon a kind of platform, and close around it are
the sepulchers of various kings and queens. From this eminence the eye
looks down between pillars and funeral trophies to the chapels and
chambers below, crowded with tombs; where warriors, prelates, courtiers
and statesmen lie moldering in their "beds of darkness." Close by me stood
the great chair of coronation, rudely carved of oak, in the barbarous
taste of a remote and Gothic age. The scene seemed almost as if contrived,
with theatrical artifice, to produce an effect upon the beholder. Here was
a type of the beginning and the end of human pomp and power; here it was
literally but a step from the throne to the sepulcher. Would not one think
that these incongruous mementos had been gathered together as a lesson to
living greatness, to show it, even in the moment of its proudest
exaltation, the neglect and dishonor to which it must soon arrive; how
soon that crown which encircles its brow must pass away, and it must lie
down in the dust and disgraces of the tomb, and be trampled upon by the
feet of the meanest of the multitude?...
The last beams of day were now faintly streaming through the painted
windows in the high vaults above me; the lower parts of the abbey were
already wrapt in the obscurity of twilight. The chapels and aisles grew
darker and darker. The effigies of the kings faded into shadows; the
marble figures of the monuments assumed strange shapes in the uncertain
light; the evening breeze crept through the aisles like the cold breath of
the grave; and even the distant footfall of a verger, traversing the
Poet's Corner, had something strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly
retraced my morning's walk, and as I passed out at the portal of the
cloisters the door, closing with a jarring noise behind me, filled the
whole building with echoes.
I endeavored to form some arrangement in my mind of the objects I had been
contemplating, but found they were already fallen into indistinctness and
confusion. Names, inscriptions, trophies, had all become confounded in my
recollection, tho I had scarcely taken my foot from off the threshold.
What, thought I, is this vast assemblage of sepulchers but a treasury of
humiliation; a huge pile of reiterated homilies on the emptiness of renown
and the certainty of oblivion! It is, indeed, the empire of death; his
great shadowy palace, where he sits in state, mocking at the relics of
human glory, and spreading dust and forgetfulness on the monuments of
princes. How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name! Time
is ever silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed by the
story of the present, to think of the characters and anecdotes that gave
interest to the past; and each age is a volume thrown aside to be speedily
forgotten. The idol of to-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of our
recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of
to-morrow.
"Our fathers," says Sir Thomas Browne, "find their graves in our short
memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors."
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy;
the inscription molders from the tablet; the statue falls from the
pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and
their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust? What is the security
of a tomb, or the perpetuity of an embalmment? The remains of Alexander
the Great have been scattered to the wind, and his empty sarcophagus is
now the mere curiosity of a museum. "The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses
or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth; Mizraim cures wounds, and
Pharaoh is sold for balsams." [Footnote: Sir Thomas Browne.]
What, then, is to insure this pile which now towers above me from sharing
the fate of mightier mausoleums? The time must come when its gilded
vaults, which now spring so loftily, shall lie in rubbish beneath the
feet; when, instead of the sound of melody and praise, the wind shall
whistle through the broken arches, and the owl hoot from the shattered
tower--when the garish sunbeam shall break into these gloomy mansions of
death, and the ivy twine round the fallen column; and the foxglove hang
its blossoms about the nameless urn, as if in mockery of the dead. Thus
the man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his
history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin.
THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT [Footnote: From "English Note Books." By
arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers of Hawthorne's
works, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1870-1898.]