We have been much interested in what is called the Gothic revival. We
have spent I don't know how many evenings in looking over Herbert's
plans for a cottage, and have been amused with his vain efforts to cover
with Gothic roofs the vast number of large rooms which the Young Lady
draws in her sketch of a small house.
I have no doubt that the Gothic, which is capable of infinite
modification, so that every house built in that style may be as
different from every other house as one tree is from every other, can be
adapted to our modern uses, and will be, when artists catch its spirit
instead of merely copying its old forms. But just now we are taking the
Gothic very literally, as we took the Greek at one time, or as we should
probably have taken the Saracenic, if the Moors had not been colored.
Not even the cholera is so contagious in this country as a style of
architecture which we happen to catch; the country is just now broken
out all over with the Mansard-roof epidemic.
And in secular architecture we do not study what is adapted to our
climate any more than in ecclesiastic architecture we adopt that which
is suited to our religion.
We are building a great many costly churches here and there, we
Protestants, and as the most of them are ill adapted to our forms of
worship, it may be necessary and best for us to change our religion in
order to save our investments. I am aware that this would be a grave
step, and we should not hasten to throw overboard Luther and the right
of private judgment without reflection. And yet, if it is necessary to
revive the ecclesiastical Gothic architecture, not in its spirit (that
we nowhere do), but in the form which served another age and another
faith, and if, as it appears, we have already a great deal of money
invested in this reproduction, it may be more prudent to go forward than
to go back. The question is, "Cannot one easier change his creed than
his pew?"
I occupy a seat in church which is an admirable one for reflection, but
I cannot see or hear much that is going on in what we like to call the
apse. There is a splendid stone pillar, a clustered column, right in
front of me, and I am as much protected from the minister as Old Put's
troops were from the British, behind the stone wall at Bunker's Hill. I
can hear his voice occasionally wandering round in the arches overhead,
and I recognize the tone, because he is a friend of mine and an
excellent man, but what he is saying I can very seldom make out. If
there was any incense burning, I could smell it, and that would be
something. I rather like the smell of incense, and it has its holy
associations. But there is no smell in our church, except of bad
air,--for there is no provision for ventilation in the splendid and
costly edifice. The reproduction of the old Gothic is so complete that
the builders even seem to have brought over the ancient air from one
of the churches of the Middle Ages,--you would declare it had n't been
changed in two centuries.
I am expected to fix my attention during the service upon one man, who
stands in the centre of the apse and has a sounding-board behind him in
order to throw his voice out of the sacred semicircular space (where the
altar used to stand, but now the sounding-board takes the place of
the altar) and scatter it over the congregation at large, and send it
echoing up in the groined roof I always like to hear a minister who is
unfamiliar with the house, and who has a loud voice, try to fill the
edifice. The more he roars and gives himself with vehemence to the
effort, the more the building roars in indistinguishable noise and
hubbub. By the time he has said (to suppose a case), "The Lord is in
his holy temple," and has passed on to say, "let all the earth keep
silence," the building is repeating "The Lord is in his holy temple"
from half a dozen different angles and altitudes, rolling it and
growling it, and is not keeping silence at all. A man who understands
it waits until the house has had its say, and has digested one passage,
before he launches another into the vast, echoing spaces. I am expected,
as I said, to fix my eye and mind on the minister, the central point
of the service. But the pillar hides him. Now if there were several
ministers in the church, dressed in such gorgeous colors that I could
see them at the distance from the apse at which my limited income
compels me to sit, and candles were burning, and censers were swinging,
and the platform was full of the sacred bustle of a gorgeous ritual
worship, and a bell rang to tell me the holy moments, I should not mind
the pillar at all. I should sit there, like any other Goth, and enjoy
it. But, as I have said, the pastor is a friend of mine, and I like
to look at him on Sunday, and hear what he says, for he always says
something worth hearing. I am on such terms with him, indeed we all are,
that it would be pleasant to have the service of a little more social
nature, and more human. When we put him away off in the apse, and set
him up for a Goth, and then seat ourselves at a distance, scattered
about among the pillars, the whole thing seems to me a trifle unnatural.
Though I do not mean to say that the congregations do not "enjoy their
religion" in their splendid edifices which cost so much money and are
really so beautiful.
A good many people have the idea, so it seems, that Gothic architecture
and Christianity are essentially one and the same thing. Just as many
regard it as an act of piety to work an altar cloth or to cushion a
pulpit. It may be, and it may not be.
Our Gothic church is likely to prove to us a valuable religious
experience, bringing out many of the Christian virtues. It may have
had its origin in pride, but it is all being overruled for our good. Of
course I need n't explain that it is the thirteenth century ecclesiastic
Gothic that is epidemic in this country; and I think it has attacked the
Congregational and the other non-ritual churches more violently than any
others. We have had it here in its most beautiful and dangerous forms. I
believe we are pretty much all of us supplied with a Gothic church now.
Such has been the enthusiasm in this devout direction, that I should not
be surprised to see our rich private citizens putting up Gothic churches
for their individual amusement and sanctification. As the day will
probably come when every man in Hartford will live in his own mammoth,
five-story granite insurance building, it may not be unreasonable to
expect that every man will sport his own Gothic church. It is beginning
to be discovered that the Gothic sort of church edifice is fatal to
the Congregational style of worship that has been prevalent here in
New England; but it will do nicely (as they say in Boston) for private
devotion.
There isn't a finer or purer church than ours any where, inside and
outside Gothic to the last. The elevation of the nave gives it even that
"high-shouldered" appearance which seemed more than anything else to
impress Mr. Hawthorne in the cathedral at Amiens. I fancy that for
genuine high-shoulderness we are not exceeded by any church in the city.
Our chapel in the rear is as Gothic as the rest of it,--a beautiful
little edifice. The committee forgot to make any more provision for
ventilating that than the church, and it takes a pretty well-seasoned
Christian to stay in it long at a time. The Sunday-school is held there,
and it is thought to be best to accustom the children to bad air before
they go into the church. The poor little dears shouldn't have the
wickedness and impurity of this world break on them too suddenly. If the
stranger noticed any lack about our church, it would be that of a spire.
There is a place for one; indeed, it was begun, and then the builders
seem to have stopped, with the notion that it would grow itself from
such a good root. It is a mistake however, to suppose that we do not
know that the church has what the profane here call a "stump-tail"
appearance. But the profane are as ignorant of history as they are of
true Gothic. All the Old World cathedrals were the work of centuries.
That at Milan is scarcely finished yet; the unfinished spires of the
Cologne cathedral are one of the best-known features of it. I doubt if
it would be in the Gothic spirit to finish a church at once. We can tell
cavilers that we shall have a spire at the proper time, and not a minute
before. It may depend a little upon what the Baptists do, who are to
build near us. I, for one, think we had better wait and see how high the
Baptist spire is before we run ours up. The church is everything that
could be desired inside. There is the nave, with its lofty and beautiful
arched ceiling; there are the side aisles, and two elegant rows of stone
pillars, stained so as to be a perfect imitation of stucco; there is
the apse, with its stained glass and exquisite lines; and there is an
organ-loft over the front entrance, with a rose window. Nothing was
wanting, so far as we could see, except that we should adapt ourselves
to the circumstances; and that we have been trying to do ever since. It
may be well to relate how we do it, for the benefit of other inchoate
Goths.
It was found that if we put up the organ in the loft, it would hide the
beautiful rose window. Besides, we wanted congregational singing, and
if we hired a choir, and hung it up there under the roof, like a cage of
birds, we should not have congregational singing. We therefore left
the organ-loft vacant, making no further use of it than to satisfy our
Gothic cravings. As for choir,--several of the singers of the church
volunteered to sit together in the front side-seats, and as there was no
place for an organ, they gallantly rallied round a melodeon,--or perhaps
it is a cabinet organ,--a charming instrument, and, as everybody knows,
entirely in keeping with the pillars, arches, and great spaces of a real
Gothic edifice. It is the union of simplicity with grandeur, for which
we have all been looking. I need not say to those who have ever heard a
melodeon, that there is nothing like it. It is rare, even in the finest
churches on the Continent. And we had congregational singing. And it
went very well indeed. One of the advantages of pure congregational
singing, is that you can join in the singing whether you have a voice
or not. The disadvantage is, that your neighbor can do the same. It is
strange what an uncommonly poor lot of voices there is, even among good
people. But we enjoy it. If you do not enjoy it, you can change your
seat until you get among a good lot.
So far, everything went well. But it was next discovered that it was
difficult to hear the minister, who had a very handsome little desk in
the apse, somewhat distant from the bulk of the congregation; still, we
could most of us see him on a clear day. The church was admirably built
for echoes, and the centre of the house was very favorable to them. When
you sat in the centre of the house, it sometimes seemed as if three or
four ministers were speaking.
It is usually so in cathedrals; the Right Reverend So-and-So is
assisted by the very Reverend Such-and-Such, and the good deal Reverend
Thus-and-Thus, and so on. But a good deal of the minister's voice
appeared to go up into the groined arches, and, as there was no one up
there, some of his best things were lost. We also had a notion that some
of it went into the cavernous organ-loft. It would have been all right
if there had been a choir there, for choirs usually need more preaching,
and pay less heed to it, than any other part of the congregation. Well,
we drew a sort of screen over the organ-loft; but the result was not
as marked as we had hoped. We next devised a sounding-board,--a sort of
mammoth clamshell, painted white,--and erected it behind the minister.
It had a good effect on the minister. It kept him up straight to his
work. So long as he kept his head exactly in the focus, his voice
went out and did not return to him; but if he moved either way, he was
assailed by a Babel of clamoring echoes. There was no opportunity for
him to splurge about from side to side of the pulpit, as some do. And if
he raised his voice much, or attempted any extra flights, he was liable
to be drowned in a refluent sea of his own eloquence. And he could
hear the congregation as well as they could hear him. All the coughs,
whispers, noises, were gathered in the wooden tympanum behind him, and
poured into his ears.
But the sounding-board was an improvement, and we advanced to bolder
measures; having heard a little, we wanted to hear more. Besides, those
who sat in front began to be discontented with the melodeon. There are
depths in music which the melodeon, even when it is called a cabinet
organ, with a colored boy at the bellows, cannot sound. The melodeon was
not, originally, designed for the Gothic worship. We determined to have
an organ, and we speculated whether, by erecting it in the apse, we
could not fill up that elegant portion of the church, and compel the
preacher's voice to leave it, and go out over the pews. It would of
course do something to efface the main beauty of a Gothic church; but
something must be done, and we began a series of experiments to test the
probable effects of putting the organ and choir behind the minister. We
moved the desk to the very front of the platform, and erected behind
it a high, square board screen, like a section of tight fence round the
fair-grounds. This did help matters. The minister spoke with more ease,
and we could hear him better. If the screen had been intended to stay
there, we should have agitated the subject of painting it. But this was
only an experiment.
Our next move was to shove the screen back and mount the volunteer
singers, melodeon and all, upon the platform,--some twenty of them
crowded together behind the minister. The effect was beautiful. It
seemed as if we had taken care to select the finest-looking people in
the congregation,--much to the injury of the congregation, of course, as
seen from the platform. There are few congregations that can stand
this sort of culling, though ours can endure it as well as any; yet it
devolves upon those of us who remain the responsibility of looking as
well as we can.
The experiment was a success, so far as appearances went, but when the
screen went back, the minister's voice went back with it. We could not
hear him very well, though we could hear the choir as plain as day. We
have thought of remedying this last defect by putting the high screen in
front of the singers, and close to the minister, as it was before. This
would make the singers invisible,--"though lost to sight, to memory
dear,"--what is sometimes called an "angel choir," when the singers (and
the melodeon) are concealed, with the most subdued and religious effect.
It is often so in cathedrals.
This plan would have another advantage. The singers on the platform, all
handsome and well dressed, distract our attention from the minister,
and what he is saying. We cannot help looking at them, studying all the
faces and all the dresses. If one of them sits up very straight, he is
a rebuke to us; if he "lops" over, we wonder why he does n't sit up; if
his hair is white, we wonder whether it is age or family peculiarity; if
he yawns, we want to yawn; if he takes up a hymn-book, we wonder if he
is uninterested in the sermon; we look at the bonnets, and query if that
is the latest spring style, or whether we are to look for another; if
he shaves close, we wonder why he doesn't let his beard grow; if he has
long whiskers, we wonder why he does n't trim 'em; if she sighs, we feel
sorry; if she smiles, we would like to know what it is about. And,
then, suppose any of the singers should ever want to eat fennel, or
peppermints, or Brown's troches, and pass them round! Suppose the
singers, more or less of them, should sneeze!
Suppose one or two of them, as the handsomest people sometimes will,
should go to sleep! In short, the singers there take away all our
attention from the minister, and would do so if they were the homeliest
people in the world. We must try something else.
It is needless to explain that a Gothic religious life is not an idle
one.