GREAT HISTORIC PLACES
There is so much to be seen in London that the pilgrim scarcely knows
where to choose and certainly is perplexed by what Dr. Johnson called
"the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness." One spot to which I have
many times been drawn, and which the mention of Dr. Johnson instantly
calls to mind, is the stately and solemn place in Westminster Abbey
where that great man's ashes are buried. Side by side, under the
pavement of the Abbey, within a few feet of earth, sleep Johnson,
Garrick, Sheridan, Henderson, Dickens, Cumberland, and Handel. Garrick's
wife is buried in the same grave with her husband. Close by, some brass
letters on a little slab in the stone floor mark the last resting-place
of Thomas Campbell. Not far off is the body of Macaulay; while many a
stroller through the nave treads upon the gravestone of that astonishing
old man Thomas Parr, who lived in the reigns of nine princes
(1483-1635), and reached the great age of 152. All parts of Westminster
Abbey impress the reverential mind. It is an experience very strange and
full of awe suddenly to find your steps upon the sepulchres of such
illustrious men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and Grattan; and you come, with a
thrill of more than surprise, upon such still fresh antiquity as the
grave of Anne Neville, the daughter of Warwick and queen of Richard the
Third. But no single spot in the great cathedral can so enthral the
imagination as that strip of storied stone beneath which Garrick,
Johnson, Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, Dickens, Macaulay, and Handel
sleep, side by side. This writer, when lately he visited the Abbey,
found a chair upon the grave of Johnson, and sat down there to rest and
muse. The letters on the stone are fast wearing away; but the memory of
that sturdy champion of thought can never perish, as long as the
votaries of literature love their art and honour the valiant genius that
battled--through hunger, toil, and contumely--for its dignity and
renown. It was a tender and right feeling that prompted the burial of
Johnson close beside Garrick. They set out together to seek their
fortune in the great city. They went through privation and trial hand in
hand. Each found glory in a different way; and, although parted
afterward by the currents of fame and wealth, they were never sundered
in affection. It was fit they should at last find their rest together,
under the most glorious roof that greets the skies of England.
Fortune gave me a good first day at the Tower of London. The sky
lowered. The air was very cold. The wind blew with angry gusts. The rain
fell, now and then, in a chill drizzle. The river was dark and sullen.
If the spirits of the dead come back to haunt any place they surely come
back to haunt that one; and this was a day for their presence. One dark
ghost seemed near, at every step--the ominous shade of the lonely Duke
of Gloster. The little room in which the princes are said to have been
murdered, by his command, was shown, and the oratory where king Henry
the Sixth is supposed to have met a violent death, and the council
chamber, in which Richard--after listening, in an ambush behind the
arras--denounced the wretched Hastings. The latter place is now used as
an armoury; but the same ceiling covers it that echoed the bitter
invective of Gloster and the rude clamour of his soldiers, when their
frightened victim was plucked forth and dragged downstairs, to be
beheaded on "a timber-log" in the courtyard. The Tower is a place for
such deeds, and you almost wonder that they do not happen still, in its
gloomy chambers. The room in which the princes were killed (if killed
indeed they were) is particularly grisly in aspect. It is an inner room,
small and dark. A barred window in one of its walls fronts a window on
the other side of the passage by which you approach it. This is but a
few feet from the floor, and perhaps the murderers paused to look
through it as they went to their hellish work upon the children of king
Edward. The entrance was indicated to a secret passage by which this
apartment could be approached from the foot of the Tower. In one gloomy
stone chamber the crown jewels are exhibited, in a large glass case. One
of the royal relics is a crown of velvet and gold that was made for poor
Anne Boleyn. You may pass across the courtyard and pause on the spot
where that miserable woman was beheaded, and you may walk thence over
the ground that her last trembling footsteps traversed, to the round
tower in which, at the close, she lived. Her grave is in the chancel of
the little antique church, close by. I saw the cell of Raleigh, and that
direful chamber which is scrawled all over with the names and emblems of
prisoners who therein suffered confinement and lingering agony, nearly
always ending in death; but I saw no sadder place than Anne Boleyn's
tower. It seemed in the strangest way eloquent of mute suffering. It
seemed to exhale grief and to plead for love and pity. Yet--what woman
ever had greater love than was lavished on her? And what woman ever
trampled more royally and recklessly upon human hearts?
The Tower of London is degraded by being put to commonplace uses and by
being exhibited in a commonplace manner. They use the famous White Tower
now as a store-house for arms, and it contains about one hundred
thousand guns, besides a vast collection of old armour and weapons. The
arrangement of the latter was made by J. R. Planche, the dramatic
author,--famous as an antiquarian and a herald. [That learned, able,
brilliant, and honoured gentleman died, May 29, 1880, aged 84.] Under
his tasteful direction the effigies and gear of chivalry are displayed
in such a way that the observer may trace the changes that war fashions
have undergone, through the reigns of successive sovereigns of England,
from the earliest period until now. A suit of mail worn by Henry the
Eighth is shown, and also a suit worn by Charles the First. The
suggestiveness of both figures is remarkable. In a room on the second
floor of the White Tower they keep many gorgeous oriental weapons, and
they show the cloak in which General Wolfe died, on the Plains of
Abraham. It is a gray garment, to which the active moth has given a
share of his assiduous attention. The most impressive objects to be seen
there, however, are the block and axe that were used in beheading the
Scotch lords, Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, after the defeat of the
pretender, in 1746. The block is of ash, and there are big and cruel
dents upon it, showing that it was made for use rather than ornament. It
is harmless enough now, and this writer was allowed to place his head
upon it, in the manner prescribed for the victims of decapitation. The
door of Raleigh's bedroom is opposite to these baleful relics, and it is
said that his _History of the World _was written in the room in which
these implements are now such conspicuous objects of gloom.[1] The place
is gloomy and cheerless beyond expression, and great must have been the
fortitude of the man who bore, in that grim solitude, a captivity of
thirteen years--not failing to improve it by producing a book so
excellent for quaintness, philosophy, and eloquence. A "beef-eater,"
arrayed in a dark tunic, trousers trimmed with red, and a black velvet
hat adorned with bows of blue and red ribbon, precedes each group of
visitors, and drops information and the letter h, from point to point.
The centre of what was once the Tower green is marked with a brass
plate, naming Anne Boleyn and giving the date when she was there
beheaded. They found her body in an elm-wood box, made to hold arrows,
and it now rests, with the ashes of other noble sufferers, under the
stones of the church of St. Peter, about fifty feet from the place of
execution. The ghost of Anne Boleyn is said to haunt that part of the
Tower where she lived, and it is likewise whispered that the spectre of
Lady Jane Grey was seen, not long ago, on the anniversary of the day of
her execution [Obiit February 12, 1554], to glide out upon a balcony
adjacent to the room in which she lodged during nearly eight months, at
the last of her wasted, unfortunate, but gentle and noble life. [That
room was in the house of Thomas Brydges, brother and deputy of Sir John
Brydges, Lieutenant of the Tower, and its windows command an
unobstructed view of the Tower green, which was the place of the block.]
It could serve no good purpose to relate the particulars of those
visitations; but nobody doubts them--while he is in the Tower. It is a
place of mystery and horror, notwithstanding all that the practical
spirit of to-day has done to make it trivial and to cheapen its grim
glories by association with the commonplace.
[1] Many of these relics have since been disposed in a different
way.--Raleigh was incarcerated in various parts of the Tower, in the
course of his several imprisonments.