confronting with massy contrast the lighter, older, more fantastically
shrouded one named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown Office Row (place
of my kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream which washes
the garden foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters and seems but
just weaned from Twickenham Na?es! A man would give something to have been
born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan
hall where the fountain plays which I have made to rise and fall how many
times, to the astonishment of the young urchins my contemporaries, who,
not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were tempted to hail
the wondrous work as magic." Though its courts may have been "magnificent"
and "ample" to the contemplation of the kindly Lamb, they would scarce be
so accounted now.
[Footnote A: Paper Buildings.]
The "great Cham of Literature," Dr. Samuel Johnson, resided for some time
at No. 1, Inner Temple Lane. Indeed, it was while the doctor was living in
the Temple that the world-famous "Literary Club" was founded. The faithful
and receptive Boswell, too, as might be expected, lived within easy
distance of the object of his veneration, at the foot of Inner Temple
Lane. It was in 1763 that Boswell first made the acquaintance of the
"Great Bear" and called on him in his Temple chambers.
Cowper the poet, as the reader doubtless remembers, at first embraced the
law as his profession. He was duly articled to a solicitor of some
eminence; but with how little ardor he devoted himself to the study may be
inferred from the following candid confession: "I did actually live three
years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor,--that is to say, I slept three years
in his house, but I lived, I spent my days, in Southampton Row. Here was I
and the future Lord Chancellor [Thurlow] constantly employed from morning
till night in giggling and making giggle instead of studying law." It is
not surprising, as one of his biographers remarks, that when, at the age
of twenty-one, he proudly became the occupant of a set of chambers in the
Middle Temple, "he neither sought business nor business sought him."
While domiciled here, the hideous malady which darkened his manhood began
to cast its gloomy pall on his mind. In the year 1759 he removed from the
Middle Temple to better quarters in the Inner Temple. For a time the
change seemed beneficial, but in 1763 what had hitherto been mere morbid
melancholy became something very near the dreaded insanity. "I was struck,
" he says, "not long after my settlement in the Temple, with such
dejection of spirits as none but they who have felt the same can have the
least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in
horror and rising up in despair." His residence at the Temple extended in
all through eleven years. The year above mentioned, the last of that term,
found the poet in straitened circumstances. The twin offices of
reading-clerk and clerk of committees in the House of Lords became vacant
at this juncture, and both were at the disposal of a cousin of Cowper's.
They were duly conferred on the poet. But the duties of these positions
necessitated frequent attendance before the Peers, and to one who suffered
from a morbid nervousness this prospect was most distasteful. Hence,
almost immediately after having accepted them, Cowper resigned these posts
and took instead that of clerk of the journals. Now another difficulty
intervened. It was necessary, in order to qualify for this place, that he
should undergo an examination at the bar of the House of Peers; and thus
"the evil from which he seemed to have escaped again met him."
"A thunderbolt," he writes, "would have been as welcome to me as this
intelligence. To require my attendance at the bar of the House, that I
might there publicly entitle myself to the office, was in effect to
exclude me from it. In the mean time, the interest of my friend, the honor
of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances, all urged me forward,
all urged me to undertake what I saw to be impracticable." The mental
agony he suffered was wellnigh unbearable. He even contemplated with some
calmness the coming of mental derangement, that thereby he might have good
reason for throwing up the appointment. He made many attempts to destroy
himself. "He purchased laudanum, but threw it away. He went down to the
Custom-House Quay to throw himself into the river. He tried to stab
himself." Finally, the most desperate attempt of all to extinguish the
lamp of life took place in his Temple chambers. Thrice he essayed to hang
himself by his garter,--first on his high canopy bedstead, and then on the
door.
The public way which, starting at Fleet Street, runs between the Temple
Church and Goldsmith Buildings, is a curious thoroughfare,--street it
cannot be called. It inclines somewhat toward the river, with a very
narrow foot-walk, scarcely wide enough for two to pass abreast. On one
side is the hoary sanctuary, and on the other a row of gloomy,
flat-fronted houses, whose dirty windows blink drowsily on the flagged way
beneath.
The pavement of a part of this thoroughfare is unique. It consists of old
tombstones. In 1842, the entire available space in the churchyard being
covered with graves, the benchers decided to permit no more interments
there, and ordered it to be paved over. A path now runs directly across
the old cemetery, where rest the bones of the Knights Templar and their
dependants, and many of the sculptured stones have become paving-flags.
Worn and polished by the passage of many feet, the epitaphs are entirely
defaced. Here and there a few letters of antique cut may with difficulty
be deciphered; but soon no sign will survive to tell of this painful
desecration.
A little outside the roadway the ground is slightly elevated, and near to,
but outside of, the gilt-tipped railings which enclose the Temple Church
lies a very unpretending slab of marble. Rising but a few inches above the
level, one corner sunken and green with earth-mould, it is but a single
remove from the general decay around it. No fence protects it, children
play and fight their mimic battles thereon, and when last we saw it a
group of workmen employed near by were discussing their noontide bread and
cheese and beer in various lounging attitudes upon it. The slab is sadly
chipped, yet it is not nearly so old as the years of the century. Surely
the man whose death it commemorates departed this life
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.
Not so. Let us scrape aside the accumulated dirt, and trace with
finger-tip the fast-vanishing inscription. It says, "Here lies Oliver
Goldsmith." This, then, is the way the world reveres its great ones. Of
what avail a monument to the poet in Westminster Abbey, dignified by the
celebrated epitaph of Dr. Johnson, when his tomb is thus relegated to the
domain of neglect and oblivion? Even the site at present indicated is
"entirely conjectural:" the precise position of the poet's grave has been
long forgotten.
Goldsmith Buildings, of course, take their name from the erratic poet and
playwright. In one of them he lived and died, just above the rooms
tenanted by the learned Blackstone, who, at that time engaged in penning
the fourth volume of his "Commentaries," was often grievously annoyed by
the dancing- and drinking-parties, the games of blind-man's-buff, and the
noisy singing of "poor Noll" and his boon companions. Goldsmith took up
residence in the Temple in the spring of the year 1764, in a very shabby
set of rooms, which he shared with Jeffs, the butler of the society. Here
Dr. Johnson visited him, says Mr. Forster, "and on prying and peering
about in them after his short-sighted fashion, flattening his face against
every object be looked at, Goldsmith's uneasy sense of their deficiencies
broke out. 'I shall soon be in better chambers, sir, than these,' he said.
'Nay, sir,' answered Johnson, 'never mind that: _nil te quaesiveris
extra_.'"
In 1765, his purse having become somewhat more plethoric, he removed to
Garden Court, then, as now, one of the choice spots in the Temple Area.
Here he sported a man-servant, and ran head over ears in debt to his
trades-people. Three years later, in 1768, we find the happy-go-lucky
spendthrift squandering four hundred of the five hundred pounds which the
partial success of "The Good-Natured Man" netted him in the purchase of a
set of chambers in No. 2 Brick Court, much to the sorrow of the studious
Blackstone, whose fellow-tenant he thus became. The nocturnal revelries of
Goldy and his intimates are happily described in Mr. Forster's biography.
Supper-parties were frequent, "preceded by blind-man's-buff, forfeits, or
games of cards, when Goldsmith, festively entertaining them all, would
make frugal supper for himself off boiled milk." He would "sing all kinds
of Irish songs," and with special enjoyment "gave them the Scotch ballad
of 'Johnny Armstrong' (his old nurse's favorite);" with great cheerfulness
"he would put the front of his wig behind, or contribute in any other way
to the general amusement;" and to an "accompaniment of uncontrolled
laughter he once danced a minuet with Mrs. Seguin," the wife of an Irish
merchant.
A volume would not contain the thrilling story of the trials and triumphs,
the struggles and successes, of the dead-and-gone generations whose feet
have polished the cool gray flags of the purlieus of the Temple. Comedy
and tragedy have been enacted within its walls; penury and prodigality
have dwelt beneath the same rafters; the versatile genius and the plodding
dullard have taken their maiden flights toward fame in its halls. Soldiers
and statesmen, poets and playwrights, courtiers, wits, and adventurers,
have herein acted their various parts. Yet, despite the checkered lives
that have run their course within its pale, and notwithstanding the lustre
shed upon its history by the many great jurists nurtured there, the Temple
gains its greatest renown from the residence therein of that famous trio,
Johnson, Goldsmith, and Lamb.
The immortal pump, so often alluded to in the Temple annals, stands in the
centre of Hare Court,--not in Pump Court, as might not unreasonably be
expected. It yields a copious supply of the coolest spring-water, and the
office-lads of the surrounding chambers make many pilgrimages hither,
stone pitcher in hand, during the sultry summertime. Charles Lamb, in an
epistle to Coleridge, in his happiest vein, says, "I have been turned out
of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself;
but I have got others at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and
roomy.... The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare
Court, where there is a pump always going; just now it is dry. Hare
Court's trees come in at the window,--so that it's like living in a
garden." Again, writing from the Temple in 1810 to his friend Manning, who
is in China, Lamb says, "The household gods are slow to come, but here I
mean to live and die. Come, and bring any of your friends the mandarins
with you. My best room commands a court in which are trees and a pump, the
water of which is excellent cold--with brandy, and not very insipid
without." At about the same time we find Mary Lamb recording that her
genial brother had suddenly taken to living like an anchorite. He tabooed
all alcoholic drinks, and confined himself to cold water and cold tea. But
the beverage drawn from Hare Court did not agree with his internal
economy: he suffered in consequence from cramps and rheumatism, and his
abstention from generous fluids was, we are forced to infer, exceedingly
brief.
The poet Garth, who exposed the apothecaries of London to reprobation and
ridicule in his satirical poem "The Dispensary," also humorously alludes
to Hare Court's pump:
And dare the college insolently aim
To equal our fraternity in fame?
Then let crabs' eyes with pearls for virtue try,
Or Highgate Hill with lofty Pindus vie;
So glowworms may compare with Titan's beams,
And Hare Court pump with Aganippe's streams.
The one structure in the Temple area that overshadows all others in point
of interest is the famous round church, consecrated to St. Mary by
Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in the year 1185. This prelate's
presence in England was on an errand to invoke the assistance of Henry II.
against Saladin, who had recently inflicted several disastrous defeats on
the Templars in the Holy Land.
The church was finished about 1240. It is one of the four round churches
still remaining in England. Its plan is that of a central round tower,
supported by six beautiful clustered columns, crossed by a nave and
transepts. Notwithstanding the lapse of ages, and although its beauties
were for centuries hidden beneath a variety of hideous excrescences, it
remains to-day one of the best specimens of early Gothic architecture
extant. In 1682, 1695, 1706, 1737, and 1811 extensive repairs were made.
In 1828 the exterior was thoroughly restored and recased with stone, and
several unsightly structures that impeded the view of the church were
removed. All of these so-called restorations were, however, but partial in
extent. Many outrageous additions and much meretricious ornamentation,
added at various epochs, were allowed to remain.
Finally, in 1845, steps were taken looking to a thorough renovation and
restoration of the venerable pile. The purity of the marble columns had
been sullied by several coats of paint and whitewash, while many of the
foliated capitals of the columns supporting the "Round" bore traces of
gilding. These latter were scraped and cleaned; an eight-feet-high oak
wainscot was removed; light, movable seats were substituted for the heavy
pews of Charles II.'s time that encumbered the Round; the pavement was
lowered to its original level, thus revealing the bases of the columns;
the organ (built by the famous Father Smith in the reign of Charles II.)
was removed to its present position in the choir, and the whole interior,
by means of these and other extensive changes, was exhibited in its
pristine purity.
It is difficult to understand the crass stupidity which blocked up
exquisite Norman windows, covered carved capitals with a thick coat of
cement, closed many of the arches with wooden partitions, planted a
cumbrous pulpit and reading-desk immediately under the dome, and hid the
noble groined ceiling behind a shell of flat, whitewashed boarding. In the
course of these repairs much of the marble-work was found to require
renewal, for replacing which some old quarries in the Isle of Purbeck,
unworked for generations, were reopened.
On the pavement, immediately under the Round, are several marble effigies
of mail-clad knights,--"Associates of the Temple." Those that have been
identified represent Geoffry de Magnaville, Earl of Essex, one of the
barons who fought against King Stephen; another, having clean-cut features
and clad in chain-armor, commemorates William Marshall, who was Protector
during the reign of Henry III,; and by his side rests his son, a leader of
the Barons in their memorable struggle against King John. The effigy of
Gilbert Marshall, third son of the Protector, reposes near the western
door-way, and hard by is the figure of a warrior in the act of prayer,
supposed to be intended for Robert, Lord of Ros. Five or six other figures,
some of remarkable beauty, and all in good preservation, two of heroic
stature, are unidentified.
Service is held daily in the Temple Church, and admission is practically
free. On Sunday mornings, however, the introduction of a bencher is
requisite to secure admittance. The music is of the best of its kind, and
the organ, though of great age, is renowned as one of the purest-and
sweetest-toned instruments in London.
No account of the Temple would be complete without some mention of its
many curious sundials. Each garden possesses a plain pillar-dial. There is
one in Temple Lane with the motto, "_Pereunt et imputantur_," and
"_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_" appears on another in Essex Court. In Pump
Court, high up on the front of a house is a large, rectangular dial, with
gilt figures and stile, bearing the inscription, "Shadows we are and like
shadows depart." Over the dial is the traditional Temple lamb bearing a
cross.[A] In Brick Court there is a dial with the apt legend, "Time and
tide tarry for no man." In the year 1828 an ancient building on Inner
Temple Terrace was demolished, and with it a sundial bearing the strange
but not inappropriate inscription, "Begone about your business." The story
runs that, many years before, a crusty old bencher had promised the
dial-maker to provide a motto for the then new dial. The messenger,
however, arrived at an inopportune time, received the above curt dismissal
in answer to his request, and conveyed it to his master as the legend to
be engraved.
[Footnote A: The devices of the Middle and Inner Temple are a lamb and a
horse respectively, and they may be frequently seen blazoned on window and
wall. An irreverent wit once scrawled these lines on the Temple gate:
As by the Templars' hold you go,
The horse and lamb displayed
In emblematic figures show
The merits of their trade.
The clients may infer from thence
How just is their profession:
The lamb sets forth their innocence,
The horse their expedition.
O happy Britons, happy isle,
Let foreign nations say,
Where you get justice without guile,
And law without delay!
In answer and in ridicule of which, a second scribbler penned the
following stanzas beneath:
Deluded men, these holds forego,
Nor trust such cunning elves:
These artful emblems tend to show
Their _clients_, not _themselves_.
'Tis all a trick; these are all shams
By which they mean to cheat you:
But have a care,--for you're the lambs,
And they the wolves that eat you.
Nor let the thought of "no delay"
To these their courts misguide you:
'Tis you're the showy horse, and they
The jockeys that will ride you.]
The din and devastation of civil strife and the smoke and flame of
conflagration have more than once surged high and furious in and around
the Temple. In Wat Tyler's rebellion many of the houses were razed by the
rioters, books and parchments were carried away and fed to bonfires, and
it was the intention of the rebels to destroy the precinct and the lawyers
together, for thus, they said, they would obliterate both unjust laws and
corrupt law-makers. The "No-Popery" rioters in 1780 marched to attack the
Temple, but were awed into flight by the apparently determined front
presented by the lawyers and students, who were really in desperate fear
themselves. Street-fights with the lawless Alsatians of the adjoining
Whitefriars region were at one time frequent.[B] In 1553, and again in
1669, the mayor of the city essayed to "pass through the cloisters with
drawn sword." The Temple claimed immunity from civic control, and on both
occasions the mayor's weapon was beaten down and a bloody affray resulted.
An appeal growing out of this event was made to Charles II. by Heneage
Finch in behalf of the Temple, but the question is still unsettled. Hence
the modern Templars close their gates at ten o'clock every night, and when
the "charity children" of the adjacent parishes "beat the bounds" on
Ascension Day, redouble their vigilance. The rich rental of the property
pays no local taxes, though repeated efforts have been made to assess it.
[Footnote B: Salisbury Court, Whitefriars, enjoyed for centuries the
privilege of a sanctuary--at first for criminals, but finally for debtors
only--until 1697, when it was abolished by royal warrant. It was nicknamed
"Alsatia," in imitation of the frontier province of the same name, which
was long a cause of contention and familiarly known to English soldiers in
the long Continental wars. As Cunningham observes, "In the Temple students
were trying to keep the law, and in Alsatia, adjoining, debtors to avoid
and violate it. The Alsatians were troublesome neighbors to the Templars,
and the Templars as troublesome neighbors to the Alsatians."]
In 1666 the Great Fire of London burnt its way westward as far as the
Temple. After consuming several sets of chambers and a quantity of
title-deeds to many valuable estates, the course of the flames was stayed
just east of the Temple Church. But in 1678-79, in the mouth of January, a
large area was burned over. The fire lasted from midnight till noon of the
ensuing day. Pump Court, Vine Court, part of Brick Court, Elm-Tree Court,
Hare Court, part of Middle Temple Hall, a portion of Inner Temple Hall,
and the old cloisters, were swept away. The season was remarkable for its
severity: the Thames was frozen over, and the supply of water entirely
inadequate. So great hogsheads of ale were hoisted up from the cellars and
the liquor fed to the clumsy hand-engines of the period. When the ale gave
out, recourse was had to gunpowder,--buildings in the track of the flames
being blown up; but in this dangerous work the Temple library was
demolished. In the end, however, the Temple was the gainer by this fire:
much better structures took the place of the old rookeries, and the entire
precinct was purified.
Around the hoary walls of the Temple cluster memories of many a strange
custom or quaint observance. The revels at Yule-tide, St. Stephen's Day,
New Year's Day, and Twelfth Night were not surpassed anywhere in "merrie
England." Feasts, masques, and play-acting at various times greatly
scandalized the more sober and staid among the benchers. Stowe tells us
that the readers of his day "for upwards of three weeks kept a splendid
table, feasting the nobility, judges, bishops, principal officers of state,
and sometimes the king himself, insomuch that it has cost a reader above
one thousand pounds,"--a mint of money in those frugal days. Revelries
grew in frequency and attractiveness as the business of instruction
declined, so much so that we are compelled to believe that at one period
the qualifications for admission were merely nominal. A banquet given by
Sir Heneage Finch the year following the restoration of Charles II. lasted
from the 4th to the 17th of August, and all London was invited and made
welcome.
In one point the Templars of to-day are not a whit behind their
predecessors: they give good dinners. For centuries the benchers of the
two societies have dined in each other's company once a year in the great
hall; and to Mr. Thornbury we are indebted for the following description
of a Temple dinner of to-day:
"An Inner Temple banquet is a very grand thing. At five or half-past five
the barristers and students in their gowns follow the benchers in
procession to the dais; the steward strikes the table solemnly a mystic
three times; grace is said by the treasurer or senior bencher present, and
the men of law fall to. In former times it was the custom to blow a horn
in every court to announce the meal. The benchers observe somewhat more
style at their table than the other members do at theirs. The general
repast is a tureen of soup, a joint of meat, a tart, and cheese to each
mess, consisting of four persons, and each mess is allowed a bottle of
port wine. Dinner is served daily to the members of the Inn during
term-time,--the masters of the bench dining on the dais, and the
barristers and students at long tables extending down the hall. On grand
days the judges are present, who dine in succession with each of the four
Inns of Court. To the parliament chamber, adjoining the hall, the benchers
repair after dinner. The 'loving-cups' used on certain grand occasions are
huge silver goblets, which are passed down the table filled with a
delicious composition, immemorially termed 'sack,' consisting of sweetened
and exquisitely flavored white wine. The butler attends the progress of
the cup to replenish it, and each student is by rule restricted to a sip;
yet it is recorded that once, though the number present fell short of
seventy, thirty-six quarts of the liquid were sipped away. At the Inner
Temple, on May 29, a gold cup of sack is handed to each member, who drinks
to the happy restoration of Charles II."
The Temple has been for generations a favorite abode with men of letters
and others having no leaning toward or connection with the bar. It is a
vast bachelors' hall. Fleet Street and its immediate vicinity is the
centre of the publishing interest of London. Here many of the great
dailies are edited and printed, and "Brain Street," as George Augustus
Sala fitly nicknamed it, is midway between the "city" and the "West End,
"--the "down town" and the "up town" of London, if such a simile is
permissible as applied to a brick-and-mortar polypus whose members radiate
toward every point of the compass. No part of the Temple is more than five
minutes' walk from this centre of intellectual industry, and yet, once
within its walls, the silence and seclusion are complete. The roar and
rattle of Fleet Street and the Strand might be a thousand miles away, for
scarce a murmur penetrates beyond the Temple gates. The quiet, stone-paved
courts, the grassy nooks gemmed with a few choice blossoms, the
soft-plashing fountains, overshadowed by sturdy elm-, plane-, or fig-trees,
the cool stone archways leading from one court to another, the park-like
expanse of the Temple Garden, bounded by the bustling Embankment and the
swift-flowing river, are surroundings favorable alike to the labors of a
busy journalist, to the novelist's weavings of fiction, to the poet's
subtile creations, to the purposeful studies of the patient scholar, or to
the objectless dreamings of the mere "man about town."