I was cheered to find that St. Paul's looked quite firm and permanent
when I walked up Ludgate Hill the other morning. How deceptive are
the works of man! Who would have guessed that this mountain was
feeling its age a bit, moving ever so slightly under the weight of
its Dome?
The pigeons wheeled in flight. A girl stood covered in them, while
less bold birds walked, nodding quickly, round her feet pecking
crumbs. Up the fine, bold sweep of the steps walked many people. I
think that they were perhaps Londoners paying their first visit,
hoping that they would get it over before the cathedral collapsed,
for they looked up warily as they advanced as though alarmed by
accounts of splitting piers, and then, finding nothing unusual, they
went on their way, maybe surprised to find no cant to the Dome or any
visible fissure!
As I walked over the black and white diamonds of the nave I realized
that although I have attended services normal and national in St.
Paul's I had never climbed to the Whispering Gallery. When Americans
had talked to me about it I had lied and had pretended that I knew
it. So I determined to wipe out my shame.
I walked down the south aisle admiring the gold shafts of light
striking through the dusk of the church, noting the number of young
women who go there to sit quietly and read sacred and profane
literature, and remarking how one appreciative beam of light had
caught a splendid head of Burne-Jones's hair, making it blaze in the
comparative darkness like fire in a lovely thorn bush. I met all
kinds of people wandering on tiptoe with that vague, lost air people
assume in churches; and then I came to a little office near the south
transept in which I paid sixpence for a ticket--the best
sixpennyworth, as I afterwards found, in all London.
"I thought," I said to the verger, "that I'd better go up there
before it comes down here."
"That won't be for a long time, sir," he said with a reassuring
smile, a sentiment I passed on at step two hundred and forty-one to a
charming old lady, who asked if I thought it was "quite wise" to go
right to the top!
What a climb it is! If ever I go foolishly walking or climbing in
Switzerland again I will get into training on this spiral staircase.
Once up and once down every day and no mountaineer's muscles would be
firmer, no walker's wind less treacherous. It is a fine, free, and
uncrowded gymnasium!
Half-way up is a museum and a library, where I, puffing slightly,
prodded about among old stones, the ruins of Old St. Paul's. I know
no greater thrill than sightseeing. Then up, up, up and round and
round again till I came to a little door at which a quiet, churchy
man said it was the Whispering Gallery and told me to walk right
round it.
In the Whispering Gallery I was not so impressed by the man in
occupation as I was by the astonishing bird's-eye view of tiny people
walking far below on a little chess-board of a pavement. Then
suddenly I heard a whisper. I looked across to the other side of the
gallery. The guide was whispering against the wall. His message
came to me like a spirit voice from the Beyond, rather terrifying and
sepulchral: "The diameter of the dome is a hundred and eight feet,"
said the Voice, and then it plunged into an account of Sir
Christopher Wren. I walked away, congratulated the Voice, which
seemed gratified, and said, "How dissatisfied and hard of hearing
some people are!"
High up below the dome of St. Paul's you have thrills. As you walk
out on a large stone platform London lies below in a huddle of
buildings and smoking chimneys. You pick out landmarks. How narrow
even the widest streets look. To the east over the big black bulk of
Cannon Street is the faint outline of Tower Bridge in the mist. Only
the broad Thames has size. Men are midgets, an omnibus is blotted
out from time to time by the flight of three pigeons; your eye rakes
offices, exploring all floors at a glance, floors packed with
typists. You feel like a beemaster looking into a hive; and all the
time a rumble reaches you, the restless voice of the city.
* * *
Almost as wonderful as the smoky map of London spread below is the
feeling that you, so leisurely examining St. Paul's while the rest of
London is rushing about trying to pay the rent, are having a holiday
in a foreign city.
You feel a superiority over all those poor harassed people. You
perceive a new angle to London life. You join the idle drifting
population of sightseers and you feel rather sorry you did not bring
your camera with you, just to help out the illusion that you are in a
Florentine mood.
Vergers, too, observe towards you the courtesy extended to strangers
within the gate. There is a subtle difference in their manner. In
their "Yes, sirs," and "No, sirs," and in their pointing and smiling
you can feel the affection which churches have always, and quite
rightly, extended to pilgrims. One man obviously considered me a
distinguished visitor from foreign parts. He went out of his way to
instruct me in history that I know quite well, and I wondered whether
the only straight and honourable thing to do was to make a clean
breast of it and stop him with:
"Look here, I live in Knightsbridge and work in Fleet Street, and I'm
frightfully sorry about it, and all that. I know it's most unusual
and you won't believe me, but there it is."
I had not the courage. I gazed insincerely into his enthusiastic
eyes and said "Really!" and "By Jove!" and "How interesting," at
appropriate pauses, so that when eventually I left him I went
surrounded, for him, with all the beauty of a bird of passage.