glimpse of the new world as it were that opens upon us, or rather we
should say the old world of seven hundred years ago that has passed
away. Everything is solemn, grand, and apparently eternal. Those
immense pillars that we look upon have lost nothing as yet of their
original strength; there is no token that they will ever lose it.
Within the porch are the remains of a very elegant pointed arch in
the right wall, leading we presume into the cloisters, but of an
older date than those glorious Norman pillars to which some, of as
peculiarly slender make, belonging to another and opposite arch, appear
to have been attached, somewhat we think to the injury of their simple
character. One of the most interesting features of the choir is the
long-continued aisle, or series of aisles, which entirely encircle it,
opening into the former by the spaces between the flat and circular
arch-piers of the body of the structure. It is about twelve feet wide,
with a pure arched and vaulted ceiling in the simplest and truest
Norman style, with windows of different sizes slightly pointed. The
pillars against the wall opposite the entrance into the choir are flat.
One of the most beautiful little architectural effects of a simple
kind that we can conceive is to be found at the north-eastern corner
of the aisle. Between two of the grand Norman pillars projecting from
the wall is a low postern doorway; and above, rising on each side from
the capitals, a peculiarly elegant arch, something like an elongated
horse-shoe. The connexion between two styles so strikingly different in
most respects as the Moorish, with its fantastic delicacy and variety
and richness, and the Norman with its simple (occasionally uncouth)
grandeur, was never more apparent. That little picture is alone worth a
visit to St. Bartholomew’s.
Let us now enter the Choir, and, ascending the gallery to the side of
the organ, gaze on the impressive and characteristic work before us,
which seems scarcely less fresh and solid than when Rahere beheld in
its vast piers and beautiful arches the realization of the vision for
which he had so long yearned. We are standing in the centre of four
arches of the most magnificent span, fit bearers of the great tower
that they lifted so airily, as it were a thing of nought, into the air.
Two of these are round and two slightly pointed. The last (which were
originally open and formed the commencement of the transepts) have
been referred to as among the various instances of the occasional use
of pointed arches by the Normans before their systematic introduction
as a style. In each of the spandrels formed by these arches is a
small lozenge-shaped panel containing ornaments which bear a striking
resemblance to the Grecian honeysuckle, and deserve notice from their
singularity. Behind us are arches showing the original continuation
of the church into the nave. The roof is very ancient, and not
particularly handsome looking. It consists of massy timbers, some of
them braced up in the middle, apparently to prevent their falling.
Prior Bolton’s elegant oriel window in the second story appears to
have been built as a kind of pew or seat, from which the Prior could
overlook the canons when he pleased, without their being aware of his
presence, as it communicated with his house at the eastern extremity of
the church. The piers which support the range of pointed arches forming
the uppermost story are pierced longitudinally, so as to leave open a
passage all round the upper part of the building. The dimensions of
the church are stated somewhat differently by different writers, and
we have no means of reconciling the discrepancy. According to Malcolm,
the height is about forty feet, the breadth sixty feet, and the length
one hundred and thirty-eight feet; to which if we add eighty-seven feet
for the length of the nave, we have two hundred and twenty-five feet as
the entire length of the Priory church within the walls. Osborne, in
his _English Architecture_, gives the height as forty-seven feet,
the breadth fifty-seven feet, and the length of the present church one
hundred and thirty-two feet. We may here observe that when the fire
broke out in 1830, the interior of the church was much injured, and the
entire pile had a narrow escape from destruction.
Lastly, and as we began, so should we end, with Rahere, who is the
presiding spirit of the place, we find the monument of the founder in
the north-eastern corner, almost immediately opposite the beautiful
oriel window which Prior Bolton there erected, in order, perhaps that
when he sat in it the home of the ashes of his illustrious predecessor
might be forever before him. This is a work in every way worthy of
the man whom it enshrines. It is one of the most elegant specimens of
the pointed style of architecture, consisting mainly of a very highly
wrought stonework screen, enclosing a tomb on which Rahere’s effigy
extends at full length. The roof of the little chamber, as we may
call it, is most exquisitely groined. At what period the monument was
erected is uncertain; but the style marks it as of a later date than
that of the founder’s decease. But it was most carefully restored by
Bolton; and the fact is significant of its antiquity. As the latter
found, no doubt, a labour of love in making these reparations, so
Time itself seems to have seconded his efforts, and to have shared
in the hopes of its builders that a long period of prosperity should
be granted to it, by touching it very gently. Here and there the
pinnacles have been somewhat diminished of their fair proportions,
and that is pretty well the entire extent of the injury the work has
experienced. The monument, it must be added, is richly painted as well
as sculptured, and shows us the black robes of Rahere and of the
monks who are kneeling at his side--the ruddy features of the former,
and the splendid coats-of-arms on the front of the tomb below. Each
of the monks has a Bible before him, open at the fifty-first chapter
of Isaiah. And often and often, no doubt, has Rahere, as he read such
verses as that (the third) we are about to transcribe, received fresh
accession of strength to complete his arduous task, until what he had
first looked upon as holy words of encouragement only became to his
rapt fancy a prophecy which he was chosen to fulfil. When others spoke
of the all but impossible task (for such it was generally esteemed)
he had undertaken, of cleaning and building upon the extensive marsh
allotted, he smiled in his heart to think what One had said greater
than they:--“The Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste
places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert
like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein,
thanksgiving and the voice of melody.”
KUTB MINAR
G. W. STEEVENS
Delhi is still seamed with the scars of her spoilers, and still
jewelled with remnants of the gems they fought for. If you take them in
order, you will go first, not into the city, but eleven miles south,
to the tower Kutb Minar. Through the dust of the road, rising out of
the springing wheat, among the mud-and-mat huts before which squat the
brown-limbed peasants, you see the country a litter of broken walls,
tumbling towers, rent domes. There are fragments of seven cities built
by seven kings before the present Delhi was. Eleven miles of them bring
you to the tower and mosque of Kutb.
Kutb-ed-Din was a slave who raised himself to Viceroy of Delhi when
the Mussulmans took it, then to Emperor of Hindustan and founder of a
dynasty. Whether he or his son or the last of the Hindu kings built the
tower, antiquaries are undecided and others careless. It is enough that
here is one landmark in Delhi’s history, one splendid monument reared
for a symbol of triumph by a victor whom now nobody can certainly
identify. It is a colossal, five-storied tower, two hundred and forty
feet high, of nearly fifty feet diameter at the base, and tapering
to nine feet at the top. Tiny balconies with balustrades mark the
junctions of the stories: the three lower are red stone, the two
upper--dwarfed just under the sky--faced with white marble. All the red
part is fluted into alternate semicircles and right angles, netted all
over with tracery, and belted with inscriptions under the balconies.
But the details strike you little: the vertical lines of the fluting
only give the impression that this is one huge pillar with a red
shaft and a white capital--a pillar that might form part of the most
tremendous temple in the world, yet stands quite seemly alone by reason
of its surpassing bigness.
[Illustration: THE KUTB MINAR, INDIA.]
Pant to the top. It will do you good, though the view is nothing. The
country is an infinite green-and-brown chess-board of young corn and
fallow, dead-flat on every side, ugly with the complacent plainness of
all very rich country. Beyond the sheeny ribbon of the Jumna, north,
south, east, west, into the blurred horizon, you can see only land and
land and land--a million acres with nothing on them to see--except the
wealth of India and the secret of the greatness of Delhi.
Then look down past your toes and you will see the evidence of some of
Delhi’s falls. From the ground you will have noticed ruins about you;
but there the Kutb Minar dwarfs everything. Now you see that you stand
above a field of broken arches, solitary pillars, stumps of towers, and
in the middle of what must once have been a town of mosques and tombs.
Before it was that, it was a town of Hindu temples and palaces. In the
court of the ruined mosque stands a solid wrought-iron pillar--little
enough to look at, but curious, because it is at least fifteen hundred
years old, and there is nothing else quite like it in the world. It
bears a Sanskrit inscription to the effect that this is “the Arm of
Fame of Raja Dhava, who conquered his neighbours and won the undivided
sovereignty of the earth.”
Poor Raja Dhava! The temples of generations that had already forgotten
him are swept utterly away; the mosque of their conquerors stands now
only as a few shattered red arches and pillars with defaced flowers
wilting on them. Beyond that is the base of what was once to be a tower
more than twice as high as the Kutb Minar, but was never even finished.
The very tower you stand on has been buffeted by earthquake, and great
part of it is mere restoration. And Delhi, which in the year One
stood here, has drifted away almost out of sight from the summit and
left these forlorn fragments to decay without even the consolation of
neighbourhood.
KUTB MINAR
ANDRÉ CHÉVRILLON
I take a carriage to visit the Kutb Minar, the great tower that rears
itself up about ten miles from Delhi.
This is Asia’s Appian Way. Ruins from every century, left by three
races and three religions, are scattered over a large and dismal plain.
The remains of ancient Hindu Delhi, of Afghan Delhi, and of Mogul
Delhi, cover a dead expanse of seventy square miles. Slowly, during the
flow of centuries, the city has changed its site, as a river changes
its bed. As far as the eye can reach, dilapidated domes and broken
columns reveal themselves in the midst of the dry brushwood. These
yellowish hillocks are the ruins of Indra-Partha, the city of Indra,
for which the five brothers of Mahabarata fought three thousand years
ago. Farther away a granite pillar, covered with Pali characters,
proclaims the edicts of the Buddhist King Asoka. Everywhere, like
tombs in a cemetery, the _débris_ of Mongolian art, monumental
mausoleums and domes surrounded by kiosks are heaped together, all
corroded by time and merged into the uniform tint of the sad and dry
vegetation that Nature provides. Several tombs are as large as those of
Akbar at Secundra and rise up solitary upon the arid steppe. The blue
peacocks that are roaming about are the only living things that haunt
the place. Generations have swarmed here and of their living past
this almost imperceptible residue is all that is left, just as ancient
forests have had to exist in order to make a little piece of coal. The
Vedic age, the Brahmanical age, the Buddhist age, the first Mussulman
dynasties, the Mogul Empire,--each historical period has left here a
small deposit.
You can gather this history around the Kutb: four old Hindu forts,
still quite recognizable, once surrounded a large city and some
Buddhist temples where the monks in yellow robes with shaven heads
walked about peacefully; there remains a large iron post charged with
some Sanskrit inscriptions. About the year 1000, over the wall of the
Himalayas overflowed the first hordes of the Mussulmans. The city was
razed and from the stones of the great temple a mosque was built, the
ruins of which now lie around us. Here is a triple colonnade where
you recognize the old Buddhist pillars, and the patient, complicated,
confused work of the poor Hindu workman, with all of its childish
indecency. They are deeply worked, overcharged with chisellings
that time has made almost illegible; here and there, figures of a
symbolical obscenity appear, a few mutilated by the moral superiority
of the conqueror. Little by little, you accustom yourself to read what
the eaten away stone has to say, the lines form themselves afresh.
You recognize processions of gods surrounded by guards and faithful
followers, animals, tigers, lewd monkeys and elephants, which, from a
very early period, occupy the Hindu mind. These thousands of stones,
which ought to be arranged in irregular chapels and leafy roofs,
the Mussulmans have erected into columns, rectangular galleries,
or in geometrical and simple rows. Upon the great bare walls,
cabalistic numbers and letters that look like the tracks of birds are
directed against the unbelievers. Above all, dominating the immense
cemetery-like plain, inviolate through time, the Kutb throws its
straight rocket of red stone and white marble, two hundred and fifty
feet into the sky. Six centuries ago, from its top the sharp chant of
the Muezzin broke the silence of the great plain when the sun dropped
behind the horizon.
KENILWORTH CASTLE
SIR JAMES D. MACKENZIE
Apart from the great historical interest attaching to these magnificent
ruins, they deserve, architecturally, the closest examination and
study, containing, as they do, elaborate specimens of the best
constructions, in both military and domestic branches, during the
different periods of the art in this country. We find first the
massive square Norman keep, which had its protecting moat. This was
the work of the original grantee, Geoffrey de Clinton, the treasurer
and chamberlain of Henry I. Next comes an era, from 1180 to 1187, when
we find entries for building and repairs to walls and fortifications;
and again, from 1212 to 1216, the castle being then in the hands of
King John, vast sums were expended upon the outer line of walls, with
their flanking defences of Lunn’s Tower and the Water Tower, and upon
a chamber and other accommodation for the King, most of which still
remains, though the timber constructions inside and against the walls
have, of course, not survived. The next development is in the Late
Decorated or Perpendicular style including the ruins of the great Hall
and some other buildings at the west end of the inner court still
called Lancaster’s Buildings, of the Fourteenth Century, rather late in
the reign of Edward III., being some of the additions made by John of
Gaunt, after he obtained Kenilworth by his first wife.
[Illustration: KENILWORTH CASTLE, ENGLAND.]
After this portion come the various alterations and insertions of
the Elizabethan period, the beautiful gatehouse on the north side,
and the towers and works added by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester
and called the Leicester Buildings. Here are, therefore, examples
of four different periods in each of which the particular work is
capable of proof by existing documents, showing the gradations and
changes which these buildings underwent, according to the requirements
of the different ages, in passing from the barbarism of a military
despotism to the comforts and splendour of later civilization. It is
a magnificent specimen, and one easy of access. As we have said, the
Manor of Kenilworth was bestowed by Henry I. upon Geoffrey de Clinton,
who founded here a castle and a monastery; deriving, doubtless, from
a Norman follower of Duke William, he must have been of worth and
eminence among the barons, since besides the Royal posts which he
occupied, the King appointed him to the Chief Justiceship of England.
He was succeeded by his son Geoffrey, married to Agnes, daughter of
Roger, Earl of Warwick, whose son, Henry, parted with Kenilworth, most
probably on compulsion, to King John, who made it a Royal residence.
One of the rebellious sons of Henry II. had taken possession of it, and
held it for a time. Henry III., on his sister, the Princess Eleanor,
marrying Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, settled Kenilworth on
her for life but in 1254 it was granted for the joint lives of the
Earl and Countess of Leicester, and they made their home here. During
the Baron’s War which followed, this castle was made the base of
operations by de Montfort, who provided it with warlike engines of
defence not then known in England, and stores of all sorts, and after
the battle of Lewis, Richard, King of the Romans, Henry’s brother,
with his youngest son, Edmund, was sent prisoner to Kenilworth, under
the care of Leicester’s second son Simon. In 1265, after effecting
his escape from the custody of the barons at Hereford, Prince Edward,
by a daring night attack, beat up the quarters of young de Montfort
at Kenilworth, and took temporary possession of the place, making
prisoners thirteen knights bannerets, with their followers, who were
unguardedly sleeping in houses around the castle perhaps for the sake
of an early bath. Young de Montfort and his pages narrowly escaped
capture and only did so by a headlong race “some stark naked, some in
breeches or drawers, some in shirts and many with their clothes under
their arms.” Departing thence Prince Edward rapidly effected a junction
with his friends in the West, and overwhelmed and slaughtered the Earl
of Leicester at the battle of Evesham. After this the Royal forces
returned to Kenilworth which still held out manfully under the Earl’s
second son Simon and underwent a close siege that lasted for six months.
Trenches were cut on the land side of the castle and huge wooden
towers, holding slingers and archers, were advanced against the wall,
while barges, transported overland from Chester maintained the attack
across the castle lake; but the garrison which numbered 1,200 men, met
these assaults with the mangonels and other engines of de Montfort,
and only gave in when reduced by famine, when, with the surrender of
Kenilworth, the Civil War came to an end in December, 1265.
Having thus recovered possession of the fortress, King Henry bestowed
it and the manor upon his youngest son Edmund, whom he created, two
years later, Earl of Lancaster. In 1279, under the encouragement of
that martial prince, Edward I., a very magnificent tournament was held
at Kenilworth, under Mortimer, Earl of March, for the space of three
days, at which, besides the sports of tilting and the barriers, the
new military game of the Round Table was introduced. King Edward II.,
after his flight and capture, was brought a prisoner here to meet the
commission appointed by Parliament, from whose lips he received the
announcement of his deposition in favour of his son, at hearing which
he fell senseless to the ground. Of the presence chamber, where this
mournful scene was enacted, little remains but fragments of walls and
two large bay windows festooned with ivy. The unfortunate King was
shortly after, on December 5, removed hence to his hideous doom at
Berkeley Castle on January 25. On the accession of Edward III., the
castle again became the seat of baronial splendour under the Earls of
Lancaster, the third of whom, Henry, was created Duke of Lancaster,
but dying s. p. male (35 Edward III.), his two daughters became heirs
to his great estates: Blanche, the younger, inheriting Kenilworth and
bringing it, and afterwards, on her sister’s death the whole property
of her father, in marriage to John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward
III., who shortly after revived in him the title of Duke of Lancaster.
The wealth thus obtained from his father enabled in great measure the
duke’s son and heir, Henry of Bolingbroke, in later days to oust his
cousin, Richard II., from the throne, and to take his place thereon as
King Henry IV., being greatly driven thereto by the King’s treatment of
him in regard to Kenilworth.
The range called Lancaster Buildings was caused to be erected by John
of Gaunt between his accession to the property and his death in 1399.
They lie on the south side of the inner quadrangle and there is a tower
with three stories of arches adjoining the hall on the north, also of
this date; the same origin is given to the Strong, or Mervin’s Tower,
as it is called by Sir Walter Scott. The ancient garden of the castle
was situated near the north-east angle of the outer wall, where the
Swan Tower meets the lake and wet ditch on the north.
Of course on Henry IV. succeeding, the crown resumed the ownership of
the fortress, and thus it continued, often enlivened by the visits
of royalty, until the days of Elizabeth, who bestowed it on her
favourite, Robert Dudley, fifth son of the Duke of Northumberland,
with all the royalties thereto belonging. Without enlarging on the
history of this courtier, it is enough to say that he seems to have
expended the enormous emoluments derived from the many dignities with
which Elizabeth overwhelmed him in his lavish outlay upon Kenilworth.
The additions and alterations made there by this Dudley involved an
expenditure of £60,000--an incredible sum in those days. He erected
the great gatehouse on the north, also the mass of square rooms from
the north-east angle of the upper court, the buildings, called after
him, and the gallery and lower gatehouse towers, together with a
great range of stabling. He removed the Norman windows from the keep,
replacing them by more modern ones; and it is evident that the great
object of his outlay was to provide magnificent accommodation for the
entertainment of his Queen and her Court.
This reception took place in July, 1575, and the festivities were
continued for seventeen days during which every sort of prodigal
extravagance possible at that age was indulged in. It cost Leicester
£1,000 a day. At his death he bequeathed the castle to his brother
Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, for life, and afterwards to his own son Sir
Robert Dudley, upon whose birth and legitimacy the father (who is
certainly one of the dark characters in English history) chose to throw
doubts.
This seems to have incited that greedy monarch, James I., to refuse
the succession to Sir Robert, whom he forced to consent to a nominal
sale of the property to Henry, Prince of Wales, at one-third of its
value, and even that was never paid. Dudley, in disgust, withdrew from
England, and lived in much honour at Florence, when he died about the
year 1650.
When the place fell into the hands of Oliver Cromwell, a sort of
commission of army officers was sent to Kenilworth to divide and share
the property between them, and they, caring nothing for historical
associations, the splendour of the structure, or the richness of the
furniture and plenishing (it was but seventy-five years after the
entertainment of Elizabeth there) proceeded to strip the place, to cut
the timber, kill the deer, and even to sell the walls and roofing, for
the value of the bare materials.
At the restoration, Charles II. granted the reversion of the manor
to Lawrence, Lord Hyde, second son of Chancellor Clarendon, whom he
created Baron Kenilworth and Earl of Rochester. His grandson leaving
only a daughter, the lands and ruins came by marriage to the Essex
family and, afterwards, by marriage to Thomas Villiers, the second son
of the Earl of Jersey, created, in 1756, Baron Hyde, in whose family
they still continue.
At Kenilworth was immured Eleanor Cobham, the wife of Humphrey, Earl
of Gloucester, after the performance of her penance on a charge of
practicing witchcraft against Henry VI. and here she ended her days.