A MEMORABLE MIDNIGHT EXPERIENCE
(1872)
“Come along--and hurry. Few people have got originality enough to think
of the expedition I have been planning, and still fewer could carry it
out, maybe, even if they _did_ think of it. Hurry, now. Cab at the
door.”
It was past eleven o’clock and I was just going to bed. But this friend
of mine was as reliable as he was eccentric, and so there was not a
doubt in my mind that his “expedition” had merit in it. I put on my coat
and boots again, and we drove away.
“Where is it? Where are we going?”
“Don’t worry. You’ll see.”
He was not inclined to talk. So I thought this must be a weighty matter.
My curiosity grew with the minutes, but I kept it manfully under the
surface. I watched the lamps, the signs, the numbers, as we thundered
down the long streets, but it was of no use--I am always lost in London,
day or night. It was very chilly--almost bleak. People leaned against
the gusty blasts as if it were the dead of winter. The crowds grew
thinner and thinner and the noises waxed faint and seemed far away. The
sky was overcast and threatening. We drove on, and still on, till I
wondered if we were ever going to stop. At last we passed by a spacious
bridge and a vast building with a lighted clock tower, and presently
entered a gateway, passed through a sort of tunnel, and stopped in a
court surrounded by the black outlines of a great edifice. Then we
alighted, walked a dozen steps or so, and waited. In a little while
footsteps were heard and a man emerged from the darkness and we dropped
into his wake without saying anything. He led us under an archway of
masonry, and from that into a roomy tunnel, through a tall iron gate,
which he locked behind us. We followed him down this tunnel, guided more
by his footsteps on the stone flagging than by anything we could very
distinctly see. At the end of it we came to another iron gate, and our
conductor stopped there and lit a little bull’s-eye lantern. Then he
unlocked the gate--and I wished he had oiled it first, it grated so
dismally. The gate swung open and we stood on the threshold of what
seemed a limitless domed and pillared cavern carved out of the solid
darkness. The conductor and my friend took off their hats reverently,
and I did likewise. For the moment that we stood thus there was not a
sound, and the silence seemed to add to the solemnity of the gloom. I
_looked_ my inquiry!
“It is the tomb of the great dead of England--_Westminster Abbey_.”
(One cannot express a start--in words.) Down among the columns--ever so
far away, it seemed--a light revealed itself like a star, and a voice
came echoing through the spacious emptiness:
“Who goes there!”
“Wright!”
The star disappeared and the footsteps that accompanied it clanked out
of hearing in the distance. Mr. Wright held up his lantern and the vague
vastness took something of form to itself--the stately columns developed
stronger outlines, and a dim pallor here and there marked the places of
lofty windows. We were among the tombs; and on every hand dull shapes of
men, sitting, standing, or stooping, inspected us curiously out of the
darkness--reached out their hands toward us--some appealing, some
beckoning, some warning us away. Effigies, they were--statues over the
graves; but they looked human and natural in the murky shadows. Now a
little half-grown black-and-white cat squeezed herself through the bars
of the iron gate and came purring lovingly about us, unawed by the time
or the place--unimpressed by the marble pomp that sepulchers a line of
mighty dead that ends with a great author of yesterday and began with a
sceptered monarch away back in the dawn of history more than twelve
hundred years ago. And she followed us about and never left us while we
pursued our work. We wandered hither and thither, uncovered, speaking in
low voices, and stepping softly by instinct, for any little noise rang
and echoed there in a way to make one shudder. Mr. Wright flashed his
lantern first upon this object and then upon that, and kept up a running
commentary that showed that there was nothing about the venerable Abbey
that was trivial in his eyes or void of interest. He is a man in
authority--being superintendent of the works--and his daily business
keeps him familiar with every nook and corner of the great pile. Casting
a luminous ray now here, now yonder, he would say:
“Observe the height of the Abbey--one hundred and three feet to the base
of the roof--I measured it myself the other day. Notice the base of this
column--old, very old--hundreds and hundreds of years; and how well they
knew how to build in those old days. Notice it--every stone is laid
horizontally--that is to say, just as nature laid it originally in the
quarry--not set up edgewise; in our day some people set them on edge,
and then wonder why they split and flake. Architects cannot teach nature
anything. Let me remove this matting--it is put there to preserve the
pavement; now, there is a bit of pavement that is seven hundred years
old; you can see by these scattering clusters of colored mosaics how
beautiful it was before time and sacrilegious idlers marred it. Now
there, in the border, was an inscription once; see, follow the
circle--you can trace it by the ornaments that have been pulled
out--here is an A, and there is an O, and yonder another A--all
beautiful old English capitals--there is no telling what the inscription
was--no record left, now. Now move along in this direction, if you
please. Yonder is where old King Sebert the Saxon, lies--his monument is
the oldest one in the Abbey; Sebert died in 616, and that’s as much as
twelve hundred and fifty years ago--think of it!--twelve hundred and
fifty years. Now yonder is the last one--Charles Dickens--there on the
floor with the brass letters on the slab--and to this day the people
come and put flowers on it. Why, along at first they almost had to
_cart_ the flowers out, there were so many. Could not _leave_ them
there, you know, because it’s where everybody walks--and a body wouldn’t
want them trampled on, anyway. All this place about here, now, is the
Poet’s Corner. There is Garrick’s monument, and Addison’s, and
Thackeray’s bust--and Macaulay lies there. And here, close to Dickens
and Garrick, lie Sheridan and Doctor Johnson--and here is old
Parr--Thomas Parr--you can read the inscription:
“Tho: Par of Y Covnty of Sallop Borne A :1483. He Lived in Y Reignes
of Ten Princes, viz: K. Edw. 4 K. Ed. 5. K. Rich 3. K. Hen. 7. K. Hen.
8. Edw. 6. QVV. Ma. Q. Eliz. K. IA. and K. Charles, Aged 152 Yeares,
And Was Buryed Here Novemb. 15. 1635.
“Very old man indeed, and saw a deal of life. (Come off the grave,
Kitty, poor thing; she keeps the rats away from the office, and there’s
no harm in her--her and her mother.) And here--this is Shakespeare’s
statue--leaning on his elbow and pointing with his finger at the lines
on the scroll:
“The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wrack behind.
“That stone there covers Campbell the poet. Here are names you know
pretty well--Milton, and Gray who wrote the ‘Elegy,’ and Butler who
wrote ‘Hudibras,’ and Edmund Spencer, and Ben Jonson--there are three
tablets to him scattered about the Abbey, and all got ‘O Rare Ben
Jonson’ cut on them--you were standing on one of them just now--he is
buried standing up. There used to be a tradition here that explains it.
The story goes that he did not dare ask to be buried in the Abbey, so he
asked King James if he would make him a present of eighteen inches of
English ground, and the king said yes, and asked him where he would have
it, and he said in Westminster Abbey. Well, the king wouldn’t go back on
his word, and so there he is sure enough--stood up on end. Years ago, in
Dean Buckland’s time--before my day--they were digging a grave close to
Jonson and they uncovered him and his head fell off. Toward night the
clerk of the works hid the head to keep it from being stolen, as the
ground was to remain open till next day. Presently the dean’s son came
along and he found a head, and hid it away for Jonson’s. And by and by
along comes a stranger, and _he_ found a head, too, and walked off with
it under his cloak, and a month or so afterward he was heard to boast
that he had Ben Jonson’s head. Then there was a deal of correspondence
about it, in the _Times_, and everybody distressed. But Mr. Frank
Buckland came out and comforted everybody by telling how he saved the
true head, and so the stranger must have got one that wasn’t of any
consequence. And then up speaks the clerk of the works and tells how
_he_ saved the right head, and so _Dean Buckland_ must have got a wrong
one. Well, it was all settled satisfactorily at last, because the clerk
of the works _proved_ his head. And then I believe they got that head
from the stranger--so now we have three. But it shows you what regiments
of people you are walking over--been collecting here for twelve hundred
years--in some places, no doubt, the bones are fairly matted together.
“And here are some unfortunates. Under this place lies Anne, queen of
Richard III, and daughter of the Kingmaker, the great Earl of
Warwick--murdered she was--poisoned by her husband. And here is a slab
which you see has once had the figure of a man in armor on it, in brass
or copper, let into the stone. You can see the shape of it--but it is
all worn away now by people’s feet; the man has been dead five hundred
years that lies under it. He was a knight in Richard II’s time. His
enemies pressed him close and he fled and took sanctuary here in the
Abbey. Generally a man was safe when he took sanctuary in those days,
but this man was not. The captain of the Tower and a band of men pursued
him and his friends and they had a bloody fight here on this floor; but
this poor fellow did not stand much of a chance, and they butchered him
right before the altar.”
We wandered over to another part of the Abbey, and came to a place where
the pavement was being repaired. Every paving stone has an inscription
on it and covers a grave. Mr. Wright continued:
“Now, you are standing on William Pitt’s grave--you can read the name,
though it is a good deal worn--and you, sir, are standing on the grave
of Charles James Fox. I found a very good place here the other
day--nobody suspected it--been curiously overlooked, somehow--but--it is
a very nice place indeed, and very comfortable” (holding his bull’s eye
to the pavement and searching around). “Ah, here it is--this is the
stone--nothing under here--nothing at all--a very nice place indeed--and
very comfortable.”
Mr. Wright spoke in a professional way, of course, and after the manner
of a man who takes an interest in his business and is gratified at any
piece of good luck that fortune favors him with; and yet with all that
silence and gloom and solemnity about me, there was something about his
idea of a nice, comfortable place that made the cold chills creep up my
back. Presently we began to come upon little chamberlike chapels, with
solemn figures ranged around the sides, lying apparently asleep, in
sumptuous marble beds, with their hands placed together above their
breasts--the figures and all their surroundings black with age. Some
were dukes and earls, some where kings and queens, some were ancient
abbots whose effigies had lain there so many centuries and suffered such
disfigurement that their faces were almost as smooth and featureless as
the stony pillows their heads reposed upon. At one time while I stood
looking at a distant part of the pavement, admiring the delicate tracery
which the now flooding moonlight was casting upon it through a lofty
window, the party moved on and I lost them. The first step I made in the
dark, holding my hands before me, as one does under such circumstances,
I touched a cold object, and stopped to feel its shape. I made out a
thumb, and then delicate fingers. It was the clasped, appealing hands of
one of those reposing images--a lady, a queen. I touched the face--by
accident, not design--and shuddered inwardly, if not outwardly; and then
something rubbed against my leg, and I shuddered outwardly and inwardly
both. It was the cat. The friendly creature meant well, but, as the
English say, she gave me “such a turn.” I took her in my arms for
company and wandered among the grim sleepers till I caught the glimmer
of the lantern again. Presently, in a little chapel, we were looking at
the sarcophagus, let into the wall, which contains the bones of the
infant princes who were smothered in the Tower. Behind us was the
stately monument of Queen Elizabeth, with her effigy dressed in the
royal robes, lying as if at rest. When we turned around, the cat, with
stupendous simplicity, was coiled up and sound asleep upon the feet of
the Great Queen! Truly this was reaching far toward the millennium when
the lion and the lamb shall lie down together. The murderer of Mary and
Essex, the conqueror of the Armada, the imperious ruler of a turbulent
empire, become a couch, at last, for a tired kitten! It was the most
eloquent sermon upon the vanity of human pride and human grandeur that
inspired Westminster preached to us that night.
We would have turned puss out of the Abbey, but for the fact that her
small body made light of railed gates and she would have come straight
back again. We walked up a flight of half a dozen steps and, stopping
upon a pavement laid down in 1260, stood in the core of English history,
as it were--upon the holiest ground in the British Empire, if profusion
of kingly bones and kingly names of old renown make holy ground. For
here in this little space were the ashes, the monuments and gilded
effigies, of ten of the most illustrious personages who have worn crowns
and borne scepters in this realm. This royal dust was the slow
accumulation of hundreds of years. The latest comer entered into his
rest four hundred years ago, and since the earliest was sepulchered,
more than eight centuries have drifted by. Edward the Confessor, Henry
the Fifth, Edward the First, Edward the Third, Richard the Second, Henry
the Third, Eleanor, Philippa, Margaret Woodville--it was like bringing
the colossal myths of history out of the forgotten ages and speaking to
them face to face. The gilded effigies were scarcely marred--the faces
were comely and majestic, old Edward the First looked the king--one had
no impulse to be familiar with him. While we were contemplating the
figure of Queen Eleanor lying in state, and calling to mind how like an
ordinary human being the great king mourned for her six hundred years
ago, we saw the vast illuminated clock face of the Parliament House
tower glowering at us through a window of the Abbey and pointing with
both hands to midnight. It was a derisive reminder that we were a part
of this present sordid, plodding, commonplace time, and not august
relics of a bygone age and the comrades of kings--and then the booming
of the great bell tolled twelve, and with the last stroke the mocking
clock face vanished in sudden darkness and left us with the past and its
grandeurs again.
We descended, and entered the nave of the splendid Chapel of Henry VII.
Mr. Wright said:
“Here is where the order of knighthood was conferred for centuries; the
candidates sat in these seats; these brasses bear their coats of arms;
these are their banners overhead, torn and dusty, poor old things, for
they have hung there many and many a long year. In the floor you see
inscriptions--kings and queens that lie in the vault below. When this
vault was opened in our time they found them lying there in beautiful
order--all quiet and comfortable--the red velvet on the coffins hardly
faded any. And the bodies were sound--I saw them myself. They were
embalmed, and looked natural, although they had been there such an awful
time. Now in this place here, which is called the chantry, is a curious
old group of statuary--the figures are mourning over George Villiers,
Duke of Buckingham, who was assassinated by Felton in Charles I’s time.
Yonder, Cromwell and his family used to lie. Now we come to the south
aisle and this is the grand monument to Mary Queen of Scots, and her
effigy--you easily see they get all the portraits from this effigy. Here
in the wall of the aisle is a bit of a curiosity pretty roughly carved:
Wm. WEST TOOME
SHOWER
1698
“William West, tomb shower, 1698. That fellow carved his name around in
several places about the Abbey.”
This was a sort of revelation to me. I had been wandering through the
Abbey, never imagining but that its shows were created only for us--the
people of the nineteenth century. But here is a man (become a show
himself now, and a curiosity) to whom all these things were sights and
wonders a hundred and seventy-five years ago. When curious idlers from
the country and from foreign lands came here to look, he showed them old
Sebert’s tomb and those of the other old worthies I have been speaking
of, and called them ancient and venerable; and he showed them Charles
II’s tomb as the newest and latest novelty he had; and he was doubtless
present at the funeral. Three hundred years before his time some
ancestor of his, perchance, used to point out the ancient marvels, in
the immemorial way and then say: “This, gentlemen, is the tomb of his
late Majesty Edward the Third--and I wish I could see him alive and
hearty again, as I saw him twenty years ago; yonder is the tomb of
Sebert the Saxon king--he has been lying there well on to eight hundred
years, they say. And three hundred years before _this_ party,
Westminster was still a show, and Edward the Confessor’s grave was a
novelty of some thirty years’ standing--but old “Sebert” was hoary and
ancient still, and people who spoke of Alfred the Great as a
comparatively recent man pondered over Sebert’s grave and tried to take
in all the tremendous meaning of it when the “toome shower” said, “This
man has lain here well nigh five hundred years.” It does seem as if all
the generations that have lived and died since the world was created
have visited Westminster to stare and wonder--and still found ancient
things there. And some day a curiously clad company may arrive here in a
balloon ship from some remote corner of the globe, and as they follow
the verger among the monuments they may hear him say: “This is the tomb
of Victoria the Good Queen; battered and uncouth as it looks, it once
was a wonder of magnificence--but twelve hundred years work a deal of
damage to these things.”
As we turned toward the door the moonlight was beaming in at the
windows, and it gave to the sacred place such an air of restfulness and
peace that Westminster was no longer a grisly museum of moldering
vanities, but her better and worthier self--the deathless mentor of a
great nation, the guide and encourager of right ambitions, the preserver
of just fame, and the home and refuge for the nation’s best and bravest
when their work is done.