they only represent margins or whether they may have come from vertical
strips. A piece of plaster from Silchester shows a broad band of red,
then two white lines separated by one of black, and then a surface of
grey, except for other thin black lines. A piece of plaster at the
Guildhall had a dark green band, probably 3 in. or 4 in. wide, then a
strip of rather transparent crimson 1½ in. wide, finished against a
yellow line, then an interval of white 1 in. wide, followed by the green
again 1¼ in. wide and a yellow line, then 2 in. of white and a single
yellow line followed by a white area. This was certainly a margin, and
here we get an example of a method of gradating the border into the
general field. In 1785 “some large pieces of painted stucco” were found
in Lombard Street (_Archæol._ viii.). Drawings made at the time are in
the Guildhall library. A piece was banded green and black, with the
addition of thin marginal lines. Two of the pieces were from borders
having lines with additional touches. One had merely groups of
comma-like hooks springing from the line [illustration], and the other,
little fleur-de-lis forms on a white band edging a bright blue space.
These were, I think, coarser variants of the treatment shown in 6, Fig.
104. The margins were sometimes “shaded” like mouldings; there are one
or two examples of this treatment at Silchester.
_Pilasters._—In some cases the ornamental vertical strips may not have
been contained within pilaster-like forms. A fragment in the British
Museum, which has an umbrella-like calyx to a number of springing
stalks, may be one of these (Fig. 106). It is on a brown-red ground, and
there are some other small fragments with leaves on a similar colour.
The cast-shadows make me think that it was independent of a pilaster.
The colour and workmanship appear very similar to the festoon of foliage
from Southwark, described below; probably such uprights usually upheld
festoons. The head rising from a calyx illustrated by Roach Smith came
from another similar vertical composition (8, Fig. 104). Two small
pieces at the Guildhall represent a similar upright (Fig. 107). Again,
in the British Museum is a very simple vertical upright, something like
a prolonged ear of corn (9, Fig. 104).
[Illustration:
FIG. 106.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 107.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 108.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 109.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 110.
]
Figs. 108, 109, 110, at the British Museum, are from pilasters. Fig. 110
is a restoration of 3, Fig. 104. Fig. 111 is a small fragment at the
Society of Antiquaries; this, too, probably came from a vertical stem or
a pilaster. Sometimes the pilasters imitated marble.
_Dadoes._—A sketch at the Society of Antiquaries shows the walls of a
plain little room found in Leadenhall Street, which had pink margin
bands along the skirting and up the angles, and another pink stripe
about 2 ft. above the floor. The general surface was white.
[Illustration:
FIG. 111.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 112.
]
Other dadoes seem to have been divided up into small plain “panels” or
diagonal lattices. At Silchester there is a fragment with a green band,
about 1¼ in. wide, crossing another at right angles, having a red line
parallel with the green band with a “blob” at the angle. This seems to
have represented a dado treatment (Fig. 112). At the British Museum are
pieces of plaster painted with narrow red bands on a green ground,
apparently parts of a plain lattice pattern. At the Guildhall is a small
piece of plaster having a blue band edged by a white line and with a
yellow line beyond the red ground, and another at right angles (Fig.
113). This is probably part of a dado; there may have been little
subjects or sprigs in the square spaces. This is a notable example of
adding “pearling” to the edges of bands or the lines, a favourite method
of the painters of Londinium, as several of the other sketches show.
[Illustration:
FIG. 113.
]
A large fragment of decoration at the British Museum imitates marble. A
circle of green speckled “porphyry” has a margin of red “porphyry,” with
figured “marble” of pink-yellow beyond. The circle is defined by
scratched lines drawn on the plaster by a compass as a guide for the
decorator. This was doubtless part of a dado for which the size of the
circle is entirely suitable. Further, fragments of a similar dado were
found at Cirencester in position at the foot of a wall. This is
described by Buckmann and Newmarch, but they did not recognise the
marbling as such. One square panel contained a circle speckled “dark
pink and black”; the panels on either band were yellow with wavy
markings. Here, again, porphyry and marble were imitated. At Silchester,
fragments of marbling have been found, and in the Rochester Museum are
many other pieces. Most of these would have been from dadoes. A wall was
discovered in January 1922, in the centre of Gracechurch Street, the
plaster of which “still retained the lower part of square panels painted
in black outline, with a simple ornamentation around, and the painted
plaster gave the impression that it had been coloured in imitation of
marble.”
Two fragments at the British Museum, which were illustrated by Roach
Smith and Wright, are covered with a diaper arranged thus,
× × ×
× × ×
with little flowers and figures in the intervals. These must, I think,
have come from a dado. The little figure on one of the pieces is now
broken, but a sketch by Fairholt in the Victoria and Albert Museum shows
it complete with a level band at the top. It is so engraved by Thomas
Wright, and I think that part must have been broken off since it was
drawn rather than that the drawing was restored. Wright says that these
fragments were from a large building near Crosby Square. This pattern is
on a fine red ground.
At the Guildhall Museum is a piece which is fortunately larger than
ordinary, and allows for the pattern to be restored (Fig. 114). The
ground was covered with circles, small and great, the latter containing
sprigs of flowers, all on a dark ground. This, I suppose, was also from
a dado. The larger outer circle is made up of curious forms, which
comparison shows were rose-petals. A fragment found in the Lombard
Street excavations of 1785, of which there is a drawing in the Guildhall
Library, shows segment of two circles, one within the other, red on
bright blue, and apparently part of a powdering of small double circles.
In the cloister of Lincoln Cathedral there used to be preserved, or at
least kept, a large piece of a dado having a big rhombus with
Amazon-shield forms at the ends, set within a long rectangular panel;
this was of good workmanship and possibly of the second century.
[Illustration:
FIG. 114.
]
_Foliage._—In the London Museum is a morsel of pilaster, about as big as
an open hand, having small leafage painted on a brown-red ground. The
leaves are sharp and struck in in a masterly way; it is really beautiful
(Fig. 115). The leaves spread from a central stem or line, and it is a
part of a suspended festoon, I think, rather than of a growth of
foliage. This must be the fragment found in Southwark. “The débris of
Roman villas, with pavements, ornamental bowls, and pieces of painted
plaster have been found. One of these last, in Mr. Syers Cuming’s
museum, has on it a slender stem with green leaves on a dull red field”
(Mrs. E. Boger, _Southwark_, 1895. Mr. Cuming was a well-known
antiquary).
[Illustration:
FIG. 115.
]
In the British Museum are, as said above, two fragments of a scheme of
decoration, which seems to have consisted of festoons hanging from
slender uprights (6 and 7, Fig. 104). Fig. 116, from the Guildhall, is,
I suppose, a variety of vertical stem, but it may be part of a festoon.
_Figures._—Some walls had figures in panels or set singly on the general
ground. At the Guildhall is a morsel of plaster containing parts of two
small dancing figures, which occupied a panel not more than 8 or 9 in.
high (Fig. 117). From the composition it appears that there would have
been three figures altogether, filling a square panel (Fig. 118). The
central figure is of a darker hue than the others, and apparently the
face is male; probably it is a faun with two nymphs. The painting of
this is of high competence, and in full Pompeian tradition. The little
panel, one of a series, would have been set at the centre of a wall
division. Roach Smith illustrated the head of a figure of Mercury on a
red ground; this was probably a single figure painted on a general
ground and not included in a panel. Evidences for figures of full size
have also been found.
[Illustration:
FIG. 116.
]
A good foot on a blue ground and a piece of drapery of large scale of
fine execution are in the British Museum: these are said to have come
from Leadenhall Street (The Basilica?). Wright describes some fragments
found at Great Chesterford, Essex. “A considerable variety of rather
elegant patterns, among which were some representing portions of the
human figure. The most remarkable of the latter was the foot of a
female, as large as life, with drapery flowing round it. In one of the
larger rooms of the villa at Combe End, in Gloucestershire, the lower
part of the wall remained covered with fresco painting, on which were a
row of feet, also as large as life, which had belonged to some grand
paintings.”
Parts of inscriptions have also been discovered. A morsel was found on
Tower Hill of “white wall painting with the letters [large capitals] S V
P in reddish colour.” At Woodchester, some fragments “were painted with
large capital letters which had formed part of inscriptions” (Wright, p.
195).
_Cast-Shadows._—It was the practice in figure and foliage painting to
boldly reinforce the forms with cast-shadows (see a fragment of a figure
in Roach Smith’s _Illustrations_, pl. 14). A piece of a foliage tendril
or festoon in the Rochester Museum, from the villa at Darenth, has
cast-shadows. This is of long, delicate, grey-green olive leaves on a
red ground, and the sharp shadow below forces it into prominence.
Several of the ornamental patterns found in London were reinforced by
shadows. A striking example is the large scroll foliage pattern from
Leadenhall Market, where separate shadow lines and touches are laid
almost like a secondary pattern. This, I think, from the scale of the
work, must have been part of the decorations of the Civil Basilica
described in Chapter II.
[Illustration:
FIG. 117.
]
Provincial Roman painting is not fine as compared with the great things
in either Greek or Gothic art, but we must remember, in comparing it
with anything we can obtain to-day, that it was the ordinary journeyman
decorator’s work of the time. It is certainly far beyond the standard of
common work which we reach to-day; and Roman London, on the testimony of
the arts, must have been quite a civilised place. A full study of the
fragments in country museums ought to make an interesting subject for a
student who is prepared to take up a definite piece of research on the
history of art in Britain. Further, suggestions for enlarging the scope
of work undertaken by present-day “painters and decorators” might be
gathered from these ancient paintings. Our workmen are capable of much
better work than is ordinarily demanded of them. Their skill in graining
was noticeable; it was the last field where any freedom was left the
workmen, and it was probably for that very reason (unconsciously
functioning) that architects have tried to kill it. It is our duty to
demand free and interesting work. A point to be thought of in regard to
the Roman decorations is the character of the designs. These are not
laboriously set out, transferred from a full-sized drawing, and
painfully “executed”; they are swiftly painted in masterly brush strokes
and varied at will for the fun of the thing.
[Illustration:
FIG. 118.
]
_Marble Wall-Linings._—In London, at Silchester, and elsewhere,
fragments of coloured marbles, and even of porphyries, have been found,
which suggest that they were parts of wall-linings, or rather of dadoes.
Wright says, of the Great Villa at Woodchester: “Several slices of
marble, of different sorts, but chiefly foreign, were also found. These
had, perhaps, been employed to encrust the walls. Some of these pieces
were not more than a quarter of an inch thick.” At Silchester pieces of
porphyry have been found not more than three-sixteenths of an inch
thick, and also pieces of fine white marble. At Colchester, fragments of
Purbeck and white marble and porphyry have just been dug up. At the
British Museum there are many small pieces of marble of various colours,
and some of red and green porphyry. A piece of white marble at the
British Museum has a shallow edge moulding such as I have frequently
seen on dado-slabs in Rome. Such moulding is an excellent way of joining
up continuous slab work. The pieces of green porphyry at the British
Museum are from the site of East India House (where the Bacchus pavement
was found), and they were given by Sir W. Tite in 1884, who, about that
time, wrote on the mosaic pavement. These pieces are cut into forms—a
part of a circular band and a triangle; they must have belonged to some
handsome piece of work, like an Opus Alexandrinum pavement. It looks as
if this building, close by the Forum and Basilica, was of special
importance—perhaps the governor’s palace.
There must have been skilled marble workers in London. This is proved by
the fact that fragments of polished native marbles have been found.
Roach Smith, as before said, speaks of “native green marble.” Fragments
of Purbeck are common.
At Silchester evidence has been found that mosaics were applied to the
walls of a chamber in the Baths; and at Wroxeter a considerable fragment
of wall mosaic was found in place many years ago.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
+CHAPTER IX+
LETTERING AND INSCRIPTIONS
_LETTERS._—Fine lettering is the most perfect thing in the art of the
Romans. For one thing, it was developed on a field where they were not
obsessed with the idea of imitating Greek art; it was their very own,
and it was swiftly carried to an apex of perfection in the first century
A.D. It is a constant phenomenon on all the fields of Art that it is the
_first_ great flow of development which chiefly matters; all things of
life and growth are like this, and, as I once heard a fine old
Devonshire farmer say, “You can’t have two forenoons in one day.” The
Romans, not the Greeks, had the forenoon of the day of their manner of
lettering. This manner is clear, sharp, confident; it is like Greek art
only in being free.
[Illustration:
FIG. 119.—Inscription from the front of a Roman Tomb found at
Westminster Abbey in 1869: now by the entrance to the Chapter House.
MEMORIAE·VALER·AMAN
DINI·VALERI·SVPERVEN
TOR·ET·MARCELLVS·PATRI·FECER·
]
Early inscriptions had for the most part been cut on stone. Then from
about 300 B.C. came a time of writing with a pen. Rome took this over
from Alexandria and Pergamon, and these _written_ characters became the
foundation of a new style of monumental inscription. In pen-written
characters the thick and thin strokes make themselves without there
being any design in the matter. It seems equally natural in large clear
writing to finish off the strokes with a thin touch of the pen to
sharpen the forms. This procedure was taken over so exactly into
inscriptions cut on stone that, for the most part, it seems these must
first have been written on the stone with an implement like a wide brush
and cut in afterwards by a mason. The chisel, like the pen, is thin and
wide, and thus perfectly fitted to develop the habit of the pen. The cut
letters were themselves usually finished by painting. Whoever wishes to
design inscriptions must begin on the writing basis, and I should like
to advise every student who may read these words to take up the practice
of writing capital and small letters with single strokes of the pen, not
“touching up” or “painting” the letters, and, above all, not “designing”
them with high-waisted bars, swollen loops, little-headed S curves, and
other horrors of ignorance and vulgarity, but learning once for all a
central standard style. Half an hour a day for one week would teach much
to any one who was ready to learn and did not want to do everything by
genius.
We have in England a great number of fine Roman inscriptions, and it
would be an excellent piece of work to gather a selection into an
example-book of illustrations based on corrected rubbings. Even the
inscriptions of London carefully studied would be subject-matter for a
delightful and valuable essay.
1. The finest London inscription is that on a tomb front in the British
Museum (Fig. 120). This must be a first-century work nearly contemporary
with the famous inscription of the Trajan column. The letters are large,
deep, clearly cut, and of quite perfect form. It is something of a
puzzle that such an artist as the author of this tomb should have been
working in London only a few years after the Claudian Conquest. The
letters of this inscription are still wonderfully sharp; the thick
strokes of the big letters are about an inch wide, and the “serifs” are
light and free as the stroke of a pen. Notice especially the beautiful
curve of S, the square touch at the apex of N and A, and the sharp
little triangular division point after the second letter in the last
line (Fig. 121. See also Figs. 66 and 67).
[Illustration:
FIG. 120.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 121.
]
2. Another very fine inscription is on the tomb front of Valerius at
Westminster Abbey. The letters are smaller, the stone is rather decayed
on the surface, and it is not seen in a good light. The beauty of the
lettering and spacing has consequently hardly been remarked. Here the
lines are longer, and the letters seem to follow one another
rhythmically, trippingly; it is an extraordinarily vivid and elegant
piece of work, which, I think, should be dated in the second century
A.D. The letters A M and N have cross touches at the apex of the angles,
and the stops are little triangles as in the inscription before
described. Here it can just be seen that lines were ruled (scored) on
the stone as guides for ranging the letters (Figs. 119 and 122).
[Illustration:
FIG. 122.
]
3. In the London Museum is a small tablet of white marble, which has
similar lines, lettering and stops, and must be nearly of the same age.
I give in Fig. 123 a very rough sketch of this excellent little slab. I
have felt some doubt as to whether this was a London antiquity indeed,
but the many resemblances to other inscriptions have fully convinced me
that it is.
4. At the Guildhall there is another small slab, having only a few
letters, but these of fine early style (Fig. 124). Both these little
tablets and others probably were set on the wall of some burial chamber
of the Columbarium type.
[Illustration:
FIG. 123.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 124.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 125.
]
5. Another inscription of much the same character, but in smaller
letters, is that on the hexagonal pedestal in the Guildhall Museum, of
which a sketch was given in an earlier part. This provides an example of
a group of tied letters (Fig. 125). The writers of Roman inscriptions
allowed themselves much freedom in contracting words, in setting a small
letter within a big one, as in Fig. 119, and in combining two or three
letters together. In Fig. 126 I have noted one or two other examples not
all from London.
[Illustration:
FIG. 126.
]
6. In a fragment of inscription from Greenwich Park at the British
Museum, the letters were much compressed, and many of them were linked
together (Fig. 127).
[Illustration:
FIG. 127.
]
It is difficult to draw out any general rules of form and spacing;
generally o and c were very round in form, N of square proportion, and M
wider than a square. The round letters were usually thickened, not where
the curves would touch vertical tangents, but a little under and over,
just as is natural in writing the letters. The loops of D and R do not
become horizontal at top and bottom, but bend freely. A, N and M usually
have square terminations at the upper angles. Initial letters are not
larger than the rest.
[Illustration:
FIG. 128.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 129.
]
One or two examples of rapid cursive writing have been preserved on
bricks and tiles. Fig. 128 gives some letters of interesting form from a
tile at the Guildhall. The A, G and M are on the way to be transformed
into—a, g and m; apparently the hook of the “a” had its origin in the
overlapping termination at the apex in the monumental inscriptions. Fig.
129 is from a still more rapid scribble; L, T and E here approach our
modern handwriting forms. These examples are enough to show how the more
cursive writing styles and our own handwriting have been developed from
the Roman capitals.
Roman books and correspondence were written in such hands, and Dr.
Haverfield has pointed out, as such scribblings on tiles were obviously
in many cases by labourers in the brickfields, it follows that the
common people in British towns had come to talk Latin. Dr. Haverfield
went on to question whether town workmen even _spoke_ Celtic. “Had they
known Celtic well, it is hardly credible that they should not have
sometimes written in that language. No such scrawl has been found in
Britain. This total absence of Celtic cannot be mere accident”
(_Romanization_). This argument overlooks a probability that Latin was a
_written_ language, while Celtic was not. We hardly realise our direct
and full classical inheritance, and the fact that Londinium was a Roman
city for three and a half centuries. Here the Latin Pantheon must have
been completely absorbed into the common texture of traditional thought;
here boys would have carried texts of Virgil in their satchels, and
here, again, the story of the Gospel must have been brought in its first
westward expansion.
_Inscriptions._—In the notes which follow, I am more than ever off my
proper ground, and, moreover, they are likely to be very dreary to any
one who does not feel the romance of early London and Britain through
all the dryasdust detail in which we have to work.
An important inscription was found in 1850 under St. Nicholas Lane. It
was described in the same year (_Gent. Mag._ xi. p. 104): “A large slab
with the following Roman inscription in well-cut letters 5 in. or 6 in.
in length:
N V M C
P R O V
B R I T A
It is doubtful if the fourth letter in the first line be C or O. The
stone is in fine preservation, and others ought to have been discovered,
but the excavators were not permitted to turn either to the right or to
the left, notwithstanding a gentleman offered to pay any expense.” This
must have been Roach Smith, who, as the practical repetition of the
phrases given below shows, must have been the author of the note. An MS.
letter, which is in my possession, is as follows:
“STROOD, _Wednesday_, P.M.
“MY DEAR FAIRHOLT,—I have given Richards £10 for you.... In the
Guildhall is a fragment of a large inscription from Nicholas
Lane which we should give rather large. It lay just within the
lower door of the Library. The letters are deeply cut and should
be shown clear. Can you see if the stone be _broken_? [Sketch.]
Note if letter 4, line 1, be a C, and please measure it. It is
most important. I suppose it is half the original length.—Yours
sincerely,
“C. R. SMITH.”
[Illustration:
FIG. 130.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 131.
]