THE TOWER
_Prince Edward_: "Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord?"
_Buckingham_: "He did, my gracious lord, begin that place;
Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified...."
_Richard of York_: "What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord?...
... I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower."
_Gloucester_: "Why, what should you fear?"
_Richard of York_: "Marry, my uncle Clarence' angry ghost:
My grandam told me he was murder'd there."
--_King Richard III., Act iii, Scene 1._
"Death is here associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and
Saint Paul's, with genius and virtue, with public veneration
and imperishable renown; not with everything that is most
endearing in social and domestic charities; but with
whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny,
with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the
inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with
all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted
fame."--_Macaulay_: "_History of England._"
"Place of doom,
Of execution too, and tomb."--_Scott._
What Londoner has not, from earliest childhood, been acquainted with
the Tower? In the Christmas holidays it presented, as a "treat," rival
attractions with Madame Tussaud's and the "Zoo." When not presented
under the too-informing care of over-zealous pastors and
masters,--when not imbibed as too flagrant material for that
fly-in-the-ointment, a holiday task,--when not made, in a word, too
suggestive of the unpleasant, but necessary paths of learning,--it
offered great fascinations to the youthful mind. The warders, in their
picturesque "Beefeater" dress, were ever an unfailing joy; the
surprise, indeed, with which I first saw one of these mighty beings
descend from his pedestal, and deign to hold simple conversation with
ordinary mortals, is still fresh in my memory. Then, the towers and
dark passages, up which one could run and clatter joyfully, with all
the entrancing and horrid possibility of meeting somebody's headless
ghost; the attractive thumbscrew, model of the rack, and headsman's
mask, all so appealing to the innocent brutality of childhood; the
very wooden and highly coloured "Queen Elizabeth", riding in full
dress, with a page, to Tilbury Fort; the stiff effigies of the
mail-clad soldiers, in rows inside the White Tower,--the live soldiers
drilling in the sun-lit square outside;--the inspiring music of the
band, the roll of the drum, the flocks of wheeling pigeons; how
charming it all was! My first knowledge of Tower history was derived
from a Cockney nursemaid, who had, I suspect, strong affinities with
the before-mentioned "pretty soldiers" (are not "pretty soldiers,"
by-the-way, usually the first words that London children learn to
lisp?). Tragedies, I knew, were connected with that sun-lit square.
Two beautiful ladies, I was told, had had their heads cut off here by
their cruel husband, a gentleman called "'Enery the Eighth," (I
naturally thought of this "'Enery" as Bluebeard); "because they was
that skittish like, and fond of singin' and dancin' on Sundays, which
'e for one never could abear; and so 'e 'ad their 'eds orf, and grass
adn't never grown on the place sence." Which fact I identified as
true, at least for the time being; though how far grass can grow
through paving-stones, is always matter for speculation. And Mary-Anne
further went on to relate how she "'ad a friend who knew a young woman
who was a 'ousekeeper somewhere here, who 'ad seen 'orrible things in
the way of ghostisses, and 'ad the screamin' 'sterrics somethin'
awful;--quite reg'ler, too,--after it!"
[Illustration: _A Beefeater._]
Yet I myself think that it is a pity to treat the classic Tower on
such familiar terms! It should be approached with respect, and not
merely introduced as a juvenile appendix to Madame Tussaud's! The
charm of the old fortress, as of its immediate surroundings, is, in
any case, only realised in maturer years. This has always been the
riverside stronghold of London. Tradition, and poetic license, name,
indeed, Julius Caesar as its founder; however that may be, the Romans
probably had a fort here, as Saxon Alfred after them. The White Tower,
or Keep, raised by William the Conqueror, is built upon a Roman
bastion; and Roman relics have been dug up at intervals in its near
precincts. Nevertheless, the Roman tradition here is but visionary;
the interest of the Tower is bound up with the evolution of the
English race. It is the most interesting mediaeval monument that we
possess, a still vivid piece of English history; a stranded islet of
Time, left forgotten by the raging tide of surrounding London.
In the Tower precincts,--if you are careful not to choose a Monday or
Saturday, which are free days, for your visit--you may enjoy yourself
in your own way and to your heart's content. The warders,--old
soldiers,--are pleasant and unobtrusive people, with manners of really
wonderful urbanity, considering the very mixed, and generally
unwashed, character, of a large portion of their public. The Tower,
apart from the charm of its lurid and romantic history, is a
picturesque place. In winter, it is somewhat exposed to the elements,
and in summer, owing to its proximity to the Temple of the Fisheries,
it is perhaps a trifle odoriferous; but on a fine spring or autumn
morning,--a spring morning uncursed by east wind, an autumn morning
undimmed by river-mist,--you will realise all the beauty, as well as
the interest, of the place. Part of its attraction lies in the fact
that it is neither a ruin nor a fossil; it is a living place still,
and serves for use as well as for show. In old days by turn palace,
state prison, inquisition, and "oubliette," it is now a barrack and
government arsenal. Its threatening ring of walled towers, witnesses
of so many scenes of blood and cruelty, re-echo now to the merry
voices of little School-Board boys, playing foot-ball in the drained
and levelled moat below; its paved courts and gravelled enclosures
still ring to the tramp of soldiers' feet, but soldiers of a newer and
a more humane era. In days when men suffered cheerfully for faith's
sake, when queens and princes passed naturally to the throne through
the blood of their nearest relations, when self-denial, conscience,
and uprightness of life were reckoned as crimes, the Tower was the
place of doom and death. Here, not only political plotters and state
prisoners, guilty of "high treason," were punished, but also children,
young men and maidens, playthings of an unkind fate, were condemned,
unheard, to an early death. Here, also, at the Restoration, perished,
bravely as they had lived, many of the sturdy and loyal followers of a
bad cause, who might say, with Macaulay's typical "Jacobite":
"To my true king I offered, free from stain,
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain."
Later, the martyr annals of the Tower were in a measure defiled by the
introduction of real and noteworthy criminals, and the imprisonment
within its walls of such wretches as the Gunpowder Plot conspirators,
the infamous murderers of Sir Thomas Overbury, and the notorious Judge
Jeffreys. But the desecration of these is past; the Tower has long
ceased to be a State Prison, and the halo of its earlier victims still
is paramount there. The very names of certain localities recall their
tragedies: "Bloody Tower," commemorating the murder of the young
princes, sons of Edward IV., whose bones were found here under a
staircase; Traitor's Gate,--the gate of the doomed,--the grim disused
archway, with a portcullis, looking towards, and in ancient times
opening on to, the river.
The Tower is full of lovely "bits" for the sketcher. The succession of
fine old gates that span the entrance-road, and the ring of encircling
towers called the "Inner Ward," though necessarily restored in places,
have still a fine air of antiquity; which air of antiquity the massive
walls, narrow window-slits, and the close-growing mantle of ivy that,
in places, adds a welcome note of greenery, do much to maintain. The
effect, at any rate, is complete. In the Tower precincts you seem to
be really in mediaeval London. Just so, you imagine, in all essentials,
only still grassy and not quite so shut in by houses, must "Tower
Green" have looked on that terrible day so dramatically described by
Froude:
"A little before noon, on the 19th of May, Anne Boleyn,
Queen of England, was led down to the green where the young
grass and the white daisies of summer were freshly bursting
in the sunshine. A little cannon stood loaded on the
battlements, the motionless cannoneer was ready with smoking
linstock at his side, and when the crawling hand upon the
dial of the great Tower clock touched the midday hour, that
cannon would tell to London that all was over."
On this same spot, so fatal to youth and beauty, two other young
women,--mere girls, indeed,--died; poor silly Katherine Howard, and,
later, Lady Jane Grey, a child of eighteen,--the "queen of nine days,"
a victim of others' offences,--who "went to her death without fear or
pain." Neither age nor youth were, indeed, spared in those cruel days;
for the grey hairs of the aged Countess of Salisbury, last of the
Plantagenets, were here also brought to the same block. This was the
private execution spot, reserved for special victims and near
relations, in contrast to the public one on Great Tower Hill outside;
the exact place is enclosed, and marked by a square patch of darker
stone. In the little adjoining chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula--the
Prisoners' Chapel,--aptly dedicated to St. Peter-in-the-Chains,--were
buried all these poor dishonoured bodies; Queen Anne Boleyn's, so
short a time ago so loved, so adulated, thrown carelessly into an old
arrow-chest, and flung beneath the altar. This chapel,--which is, by
the way, a royal chapel, and therefore under no bishop's
jurisdiction,--is very much restored, but it has a few good monuments;
and its list of victims, numbered on a brass tablet inside the door,
is sufficiently affecting: "In truth," says Macaulay:
"there is no sadder spot on earth than this little cemetery.
Hither have been carried through successive ages, by the
rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the
bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies,
the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the
ornaments of courts."
"No, I can't say I've ever seen any ghosts," said the affable Warder
who showed me the chapel: "though an American family lately, they were
so anxious to see Queen Anne Boleyn's ghost, that they went and sat
opposite the execution-spot, at all hours, day-and-night; but they
must have got disappointed, for I never heard that anything came of
it.... Being from America," he added thoughtfully, "I suppose they
felt they'd like to see all there was to be seen.... No, ghosts don't
trouble us much; we all live in the Towers and round about, and the
worst you can say of our lodgin's is that they're a bit draughty-like,
in winter and spring, having them slits of winders all round. And then
they don't allow you to paper the walls, or stick up a picture nail,
or anything to make the place look a bit homely! One does get a bit
tired, too," he confessed, "of them dark stone walls, and even of
prisoners' inscriptions; but there it is, you mayn't so much as touch
'em, or even cover 'em up.... However," he continued magnanimously, "I
own that we're lucky to live in the days we do; our 'eds is our own,
at any rate!"
Between Tower Green and the outer moat, on the western side of the
gravelled square, are the old-fashioned and comfortable-looking
dwelling houses of the Tower officials; the residences of the
Governor, the doctor, the Chaplain, &c.; houses mainly of darkened
brick,--like the citadel itself,--fitted in between the "Beauchamp"
and the "Bell" towers. The greater part of the fortress is, as we have
seen, utilised as arsenal, barracks, or private dwellings; and thus,
of its many towers, the "White Tower," (the "Keep" of the ancient
castle), and the "Beauchamp Tower," are the only ones now viewed by
the general public; though other antiquities and places worthy of a
visit may, on application to the Governor, be shown to those "really
interested." The Beauchamp Tower, though "restored" in 1854 (when all
its inscriptions were placed together in one room), is still most
interesting. Certainly, the draughts, on a windy day, of that room, go
far to suggest the justice of my friend the warder's complaint. And
the poor prisoners of old days did not know the modern comfort of
"slow-combustion" stoves! Poor creatures! torn by the rack and
torture, crushed by long, hopeless imprisonment, with no friend to
turn to in their need, they have left us, deeply cut into the prison
walls, their most pathetic complaint. Philosophy, on the whole, seems
here to have been of the most availing comfort. Like Socrates, the
wretched victims tried hard to be stoical. "The most unhappie man in
the world," runs one inscription, "is he that is not pacient in
adversitie." Then, in old Norman-French: "Tout vient apoient, quy
peult attendre." "A passage perillus maketh a port pleasant." It was
here, in the Beauchamp Tower, that the five Dudley brothers, sons of
the Duke of Northumberland, were imprisoned for their share in the
Lady Jane Grey rebellion; here are their pictured emblems and
hieroglyphics; also the word "Jane," supposed to have been cut by her
husband, Lord Guildford. To the longer victims of the Tower, time must
have passed hardly. Was it agony of mind that guided the stroke, or
did they find it some solace in their anguish? Poets, philosophers,
men of science, all the best and noblest in the land; hours of solace
after torture, no doubt, were theirs, given by that good Angel who,
"Brought the wise and great of ancient days
To cheer the cell where Raleigh pined alone."
Had they books, journals, writing materials? Probably but rarely.
There was Raleigh, who spent such a large part of a chequered life in
prison here, dying here too at last, and writing his "History" with
admirable stoicism, in the face of death. But Lady Jane Grey,
imprisoned in the "Brick Tower," had, we know, to inscribe her last
message to her sister Katherine, on the blank leaves of her Greek
Testament. What vivid, what painful interest would attach to a "Tower"
diary, such as Pepys's, in cipher, could one have been written by any
of these prisoners!
The wonderful collection of historic armour in the imposing "White
Tower" is, even to those who are not connoisseurs on the subject, of
great interest and beauty. It is true that there are a great many very
narrow and steep stone stairs to be climbed; but in the end you are
duly rewarded for your trouble. The ancient chapel of St. John, at the
top of the winding stairway, is most strikingly picturesque, and
especially so on a sunny day, when the light plays among the bare
stone columns. This "most perfect Norman chapel in England" is
striking in its unadorned severity of style; and the stilted horseshoe
arches of its apse are somewhat like those of St. Bartholomew the
Great, at Smithfield. The chapel dates from the year 1078, and has
been the scene of many royal pageants and lyings-in-state. The
Banqueting Hall adjoins it; here are to be seen, among other
curiosities, models of the rack and thumbscrew, and the block used for
the execution of old Lord Lovat, with Lords Balmerino and
Kilmarnock--the last Royalists executed here--in 1745. The hall
contains also much armour and many weapons. Above is the "Council
Chamber," where King Richard II. abdicated his throne in favour of his
cousin Henry Bolingbroke.
"I think men must really have got bigger since these old days,"
remarked a burly policeman, to whom I was communicating my
impressions: "Now, you wouldn't think it, but there's only two suits
of armour in the whole place that I could even manage to get on me,
that's old Henry VIII.'s, and his brother-in-law what's beside 'im,
Charles Brandon, Dook o' Suffolk--you see 'em? over there, in the
middle. Not but what they must have been strong too, of their size, to
bear all that there weight of steel on 'em. I'd be sorry to do it
myself, I know that. It's a wonder they didn't faint, and their poor
horses, too!"
One of the most beautiful pieces of armour in the collection is that
made for Henry VIII. on his marriage with Katharine of Arragon. It is
of German manufacture, with deep and heavy skirts, on the edge of
which is a pierced border, with the initials "H" and "K" entwined in a
true-love knot. This suit of armour is, further, adorned with
elaborate designs, probably from Hans Burgmair or one of his school,
from the lives of St. George and St. Barbara, patron saints of England
and of armourers. In Stuart times the suits of mail, and armour
generally, became less heavy; and vizors and breastplates are often of
open-work; most picturesque of all, perhaps, is the dress of the
link-bearers of Charles I.'s time. The armour, and arms generally, are
kept in a fine state of polish, wonderful to see in a land of fog and
river mist. "The soldiers, you see, they have a turn at the spears and
things when they want a job; but, of course, the armour, and such as
that, is left to two or three people's special business."
There is a certain barbaric splendour about the State vessels and
Coronation jewels, commonly called the "Regalia," kept in the "Record"
or "Wakefield" Tower. These, like the menagerie formerly exhibited
here are separated (and quite as necessarily) from the outer world by
strong railings. This shining treasure of gold-plate and precious
stones recalls the story of Colonel Blood's famous and nearly
successful attempt at robbery, in the time of Charles II., for which
he was, somewhat inconsistently, rewarded by a landed estate and "cash
down." History is a sad series of injustices, and Colonel Blood's
crime was, for reasons of state possibly, suppressed. Certain it is
that the kings of England have not always been above stealing, or, at
any rate, pledging their own treasure.
If the Tower looks a grim enough fortress now, it must have seemed
grimmer still in ancient times, when every murder and cruelty--every
crime that blackens the page of English history--took place within
its gloomy walls. Surely, in old days, the bloody reputation of the
Tower may well have made those shrink and tremble who passed under its
doomed gateways! By the "Traitor's Gate," that waterway now disused,
but which then opened directly on to the river highway, was brought
that living freight of illustrious persons destined here to suffer and
to die:
"That gate misnamed, through which before
Went Sidney, Russell, Raleigh, Cranmer, More."
So far, indeed, from being a "traitor's" way, all the valour and
chivalry of mediaeval England seem, at one time and another, to have
passed that dreadful gate. Here, the "Lieutenant" or "Constable" of
the Tower, "receipted" the arrival of the yet living bodies of men and
women, soon to be bleeding and dismembered corpses.... Such a
"receipt," given for the person of the condemned Duke of Monmouth,
"the people's darling," is still extant. The "Traitor's Gate" had,
moreover, an added horror; for in its walls are certain loopholes,
through which the Lieutenant of the Tower could watch, unseen, the
prisoner's arrival from his trial at the House of Lord's, and could
ascertain, as he ascended the stone steps, whether the fatal Axe of
Office, carried in front of him, were reversed or otherwise--reversal
signifying death. Here, when Sir Thomas More was being led back to
prison with the reversed axe carried before him, his beloved daughter
Margaret burst through the guarding soldiers and embraced him,
beseeching his blessing--a scene that melted even those stern guards
to tears.
Brutal, indeed, were the age and the time. If Plantagenets, Yorkists,
and Lancastrians were frankly murderous, Tudors and Stuarts had more
refinement of cruelty, dignifying it, more or less, under the name of
law. The accession of each fresh sovereign was the signal for arrests,
life-long imprisonments, and executions. Favourites, now deposed from
favour, paid here the penalty for a few years of feverish greatness;
here suffered not only men of unscrupulous self-seeking, but also
those whose chief fault was, like Caesar's, ambition, and who were
condemned to answer for it as grievously as Caesar. Nor did past
affliction teach present mercy. The Princess Elizabeth narrowly
herself escaped a tragic fate in early youth; yet her former
imprisonment in the "Bell" Tower made her scarcely less cruel, in the
after-time, to her real or imaginary enemies. Partly in self-defence,
partly as a question of faith, partly in revenge, both rivals, and
also those suspected of possible rivalry, were effectually suppressed.
Even continuation of the hated race of rivals seemed prohibited. Thus,
Lady Jane Grey's poor sister, Katherine, was imprisoned till her death
for the crime of secret marriage with the Earl of Hertford; Thomas
Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was executed for having aspired to the hand
of the Queen of Scots; Lady Arabella Stuart, James I.'s unhappy
cousin, having married, "with the love that laughs at privy councils,"
Sir William Seymour, was caught while escaping with him through Calais
Roads, and languished here for four years, till her mind left her, and
she died. The elder D'Israeli tells the story:
"What passed in that dreadful imprisonment cannot perhaps be
recovered for authentic history; but enough is known, that
her mind grew impaired, that she finally lost her reason;
and if the duration of her imprisonment (four years) was
short, it was only terminated by her death. Some loose
effusions, often begun and never ended, written and erased,
incoherent and rational, yet remain in the fragments of her
papers. In a letter she proposed addressing to Viscount
Fenton, to implore for her his Majesty's favour again, she
says, 'Good my lord, consider the fault cannot be
uncommitted; neither can any more be required of any earthly
creature but confession and most humble submission.' In a
paragraph she had written, but crossed out, it seems that a
present of her work had been refused by the king, and that
she had no one about her whom she might trust."
Of the few stories of escapes from the Tower, none is more romantic
than that of Lord Nithsdale, saved by his wife's devotion. Failing to
obtain a pardon from King George I. she, in her love and despair,
bethought herself of a desperate plan. Under the pretence of a last
visit, and with the connivance of a faithful servant, she managed to
disguise her husband as her Welsh maid, and got him past the Tower
sentries into safety; the next morning he would have perished with
Lord Derwentwater, "the pride of the North," and the rest of the
Scotch Jacobites.
Yet the Tower, even in mediaeval times, was not all tragedy; for here,
from Henry III.'s era, a royal menagerie was kept,--a menagerie of
which the famous "Tower Lions," that existed here up to 1853, were the
eventual outcome. (From the Tower Lions comes originally the phrase,
"to see the Lions," or the sights, of a place.) The beasts are still
commemorated in the Tower by the "Lions' Gate,"--or principal
entrance. The Tower Moat, the broad ditch that encircled the building,
and added to its mediaeval impregnability, was drained in 1843, and its
banks are now planted, on the north-east, with a pleasant shrubbery;
through which winds a foot-path with comfortable seats and delightful
views, much enjoyed and appreciated by the very poor. Thus, the old
age of the Tower,--Julius Caesar's traditional fortress, and the scene
of England's darkest national crimes,--is, as often that of Man
himself, full of benevolence and serenity. Its brutal youth, its
sanguinary middle life, are alike far behind it; and "that which
should accompany old age, as honour, love, and troops of friends," it
may now look to have. And the long roll of the Tower victims, lying,
many of them, in nameless graves, their very bones sometimes
uncoffined; these have at any rate, by their death often achieved an
immortality greater than any they could ever have gained by their
lives. They were, in a sense, as was that old Roman, Marcus Curtius,
sacrifices to their country's gods; for by such throes as overthrew
them, have all nations reached peace and salvation. "I see," they
might, like Sydney Carton, have cried prophetically at the block,
"I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from
this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in
triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the
evil of this time and of the previous time ... gradually
making expiation for itself."
Once outside the Tower precincts, all is changed, and you are, again,
in the bustle and the din of modern London. "Great Tower Hill," on the
rising ground north of the Tower, and close to Mark Lane Station, is
hardly an idyllic spot, or one at all suitable to meditation, being
generally much invaded by the shouts of draymen and the rumble of
van-wheels. Close by, in Trinity Square gardens, marked by a stone, is
the spot which for some centuries shared with "Tyburn" the honour, or
dishonour, of being the public execution-place; but, while Great Tower
Hill was mostly the last bourne of political and state prisoners,
Tyburn (the present "Marble Arch"), was reserved for common murderers,
robbers, and their like. England, in those days, must have enjoyed
rare galas in the way of executions! Of that old rogue, Lord Lovat,
beheaded here in 1747, it is recorded, that just before the fatal axe
fell, a scaffolding, containing some thousand persons, set there to
enjoy the spectacle, collapsed, killing twelve of them; a sight at
which, the old man, even at that terrible moment, chuckled merrily,
"enjoying, no doubt, the downfall of so many Whigs."
Trinity Square has still a pleasant, old-fashioned air of seclusion;
although all around and about it are grimy lanes and warehouses,
suggesting the close proximity of wharves and docks. Yet Trinity
Square, like Charterhouse Square, is no longer residential; the look
of "home," of comfortable family life, about its sober brick houses,
is merely a hollow sham; they are mainly offices. Near by is the Royal
Mint, "where," so Mark Tapley informed his American friends, "the
Queen lives, to take care of all the money." At the end of the big,
noisy street called the Minories, leading from the Tower to Aldgate,
rises the tall, black, three-storied spire of St. Botolph's Church,
built by Dance in 1744, on an old site. This church is hardly
beautiful in itself; yet its effect, as seen from the Minories, is
good. The jurisdiction of St. Botolph, always a popular London saint,
is now extended to the tiny Church of Holy Trinity, in the Minories, a
small yellowish building, somewhat like St. Ethelburga in Bishopsgate
Street, with the same kind of abbreviated turret. When you have
succeeded in finding this church (which is difficult, as it is hidden
down a side street off the Minories, and, as usual in London, no
single inhabitant appears to know where it is), you then usually find
it locked, with a saddening notice to the effect that the keys are in
some equally unknown and distant region. Yet you must not despair.
Such drawbacks are inseparable from the pursuit of historical
antiquities in London. It seems, however, a pity to have recently
changed the identity of this small church, thus rendering it still
more difficult to find. Originally, it gave its name to the whole
district; having belonged to an abbey of "Minoresses," or nuns of the
order of St. Clare; the living, and also the name, are amalgamated
with that of St. Botolph, Aldgate, which now possesses also its chief
claim to fame. For, though the little church still possesses some good
monuments, the relic formerly shown here, the dessicated head of a
man, said to be the Duke of Suffolk, father of Lady Jane Grey, is now
removed to the larger church. The decapitated head is certainly
sufficiently ghastly, with the neck still showing the usual first
stroke of the bungling executioner, and the loose teeth, yellow skin,
and mouth with "the curve of agony" to which attention is usually
drawn. The evidence for the head being that of the Duke of Suffolk
rests mainly on the fact that the Church of "Holy Trinity" was the
chapel of the Duke of Suffolk's town-house, and the place whither his
head would naturally be brought after decapitation on Tower-hill.
At No. 9, Minories, over the shop of one John Owen, nautical
instrument-maker, is the figure of the "Little Midshipman," described
by Dickens in _Dombey and Son_. But it is difficult to walk in the
Minories; everywhere crates and cranes seem to threaten you, and paper
from printing offices bristles from windows on to your devoted
head.... This must always have been a noisy quarter. In old days it
was famous for its gunsmiths, as witness Congreve's lines:
"The mulcibers who in the Minories sweat,
And massive bars on stubborn anvils beat--"
You leave the Minories without regret, and turn your face again
Citywards. The church of All Hallows, Barking (so called from the nuns
of old Barking Abbey), is further west, in Great Tower Street, close
to the Tower precincts. It is another church that escaped the Great
Fire, and it contains the graves of some of the Tower victims. It has
also some good monumental brasses, one especially, of fine Flemish
workmanship, in the pavement in the centre of the nave. These old City
churches are now most of them well served and tended, the Sunday
services in some of them being much sought after. They are also
probably kept in better repair than in Dickens's time, when,
overgrown, dirty, and isolated in the midst of traffic and bustle,
they struck the novelist only with their weird desolation,--a
desolation as of some sentient and human thing. Thus vividly he
described his feelings while attending service in one of them:
"There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and
while the organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such
fashion that I can hear more of the rusty working of the
stops than of any music, I look at the books, which are
mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They belonged, in
1754, to the Dowgate family; and who were they? Jane Comport
must have married Young Dowgate, and come into the family
that way; Young Dowgate was courting Jane Comport when he
gave her her prayer-book, and recorded the presentation on
the fly-leaf. If Jane were fond of Young Dowgate, why did
she die and leave the book here? Perhaps at the rickety
altar, and before the damp commandments, she, Comport, had
taken him, Dowgate, in a flush of youthful hope and joy, and
perhaps it had not turned out in the long run as great a
success as was expected.
"The opening of the service recalls my wandering
thoughts.... I find that I have been taking a kind of
invisible snuff ... I wink, sneeze and cough ... snuff made
of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth and
something else ... the decay of dead citizens.... Dead
citizens stick on the walls and lie pulverised on the
sounding-board over the clergyman's head, and, when a gust
of air comes, tumble down upon him."
And, further, with regard to the surrounding bustle and merchandise in
the busy streets:
"In the churches about Mark Lane there was a dry whiff of
wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley
out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to
Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was often a subtle
flavour of wine,--sometimes of tea. One church, near Mincing
Lane, smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the Monument,
the service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a
little farther down towards the river, tempered into
herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of
fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church in
the _Rake's Progress_, where the hero is being married to
the horrible old lady, there was no specialty of atmosphere,
until the organ shook a perfume of hides all over us from
some adjacent warehouse."
(The church depicted in Hogarth's _Rake's Progress_ was, however, the
older church of St. Marylebone, now rebuilt.)
The next turning on the right from Great Tower Street is Seething
Lane, leading to Hart Street, noted principally for that ancient
church of St. Olave that was one of the Great Fire's few survivals.
Its little churchyard opens on to the muddy, narrow alley called
Seething Lane, by a picturesque gateway, grimly decorated with carven
skulls; tradition says in the memory of the many plague victims buried
here. Indeed it is a grisly monument of the time when the plague-cart
rumbled in the streets, when a red cross marked the infected houses,
and when the stones echoed to the hoarse and terrible cry, "Bring out
your dead!" Perhaps Seething Lane was less muddy and slummy in Samuel
Pepys's time; for that authority lived here, in a house "adjoining the
Navy Office," where he held the position of "Clerk of the Acts,"--and
surely he was nothing if not fussy. The locality, owing to the
successive distractions of Plague and Fire, cannot have been exactly
peaceful. In his "Diary" entry for January 30th, 1665-6, Pepys says:
"It frighted me indeed to go through the church, more than I
thought it could have done, to see so many graves lie so
high upon the churchyard where people have been buried of
the Plague. I was much troubled at it, and do not think to
go through it again a good while."
The quaint names of old London churches are very attractive. This St.
Olave, or Olaf, was a favourite saint of ancient London; he was an
eleventh-century Scandinavian king, canonised because of his zealous
propagation of Christianity among his people. Three other London
churches, in Southwark, Jewry, and Silver Street (the last two no
longer existing), were called after him. The immediate purlieus of St.
Olave's, Hart Street, are not exactly savoury, its proximity to the
river traffic and warehouses making it occasionally somewhat
odoriferous as well as muddy; it were better, therefore, to choose a
fine, dry day for this excursion. It is not always easy to get inside
the church; on week-days, the street seems to be more or less of a
stagnant back-water; and should your fate compel you to find St.
Olave's locked, you may stand and knock all day, but nobody will heed
you; or, if they do heed, will probably put you down as a wandering
lunatic. Nevertheless, St. Olave's should be visited; for its
monuments are many and interesting. Samuel Pepys, as parishioner and
near neighbour, used to attend service here, with his pretty wife; and
Mrs. Pepys's bust, in white marble, erected by her husband, stands on
the north side of the chancel, above her tablet and long epitaph. Poor
Elizabeth Pepys! She was only twenty-nine when she died, and that
long, artificial Latin screed seems all too long and laboured for her
lovely and poetic youth. Perhaps her husband, whose pew faces the
monument, liked during his long widowhood to gaze at that charming
memorial, and--who knows?--to enjoy his fine Latin composition. Pepys
himself was buried here later; his own monument, however, only dates
from 1883, when it was raised by public subscription.
In St. Olave's church occurs that curious and often-quoted epitaph of
1584, inscribed to "John Orgene and Ellyne, his wife":
"As I was, so be ye;
As I am, you shall be;
That I gave, that I have;
That I spent, that I had;
Thus I ende all my coste,
That I lefte, that I loste."
Wandering along Great Tower Street,--and Eastcheap, reminiscent of
Falstaff and Dame Quickly,--we reach the ever-fishy region of the
Monument. The Monument is so tall that it is difficult to see it;
indeed, I cannot tell exactly why the Monument seems always as
difficult of discovery as the middle of a maze; you seem continually
close upon it, and yet you hardly ever reach it. No one can ever
direct the pedestrian to it; though this, indeed, may not be the fault
of the Monument, but simply because the average Londoner never does
know anything about the immediate neighbourhood he inhabits. He has
even been known to live in the next street to the British Museum for
years, and then be ignorant that such an institution exists. Such
superiority to external facts is, no doubt, noble; but it has its
drawbacks. And sometimes the individuals questioned take refuge in a
crushing silence. The last time, indeed, that I myself visited the
Monument, I inquired politely of two fishy youths in turn of its
whereabouts, and received no answer. Possibly this was merely their
courteous way of informing me that they were really too busy to attend
to such trivialities. To return, however, to the deluding Monument:
Dickens, it is true, in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ makes Mr. Tom Pinch and
Miss Pecksniff find their way thither (Tom, having lost his way, very
naturally finds himself at the Monument):
"The Man in the Monument was quite as mysterious a being to
Tom as the Man in the Moon. It immediately occurred to him
that the lonely creature who held himself aloof from all
mankind in that pillar, like some old hermit, was the very
man of whom to ask his way.... If Truth didn't live in the
base of the Monument, notwithstanding Pope's couplet about
the outside of it, where in London was she likely to be
found?
"Coming close below the pillar, it was a great encouragement
to Tom to find that the Man in the Monument had simple
tastes; that stony and artificial as his residence was, he
still preserved some rustic recollections; that he liked
plants, hung up bird-cages, was not wholly cut off from
fresh groundsel, and kept young trees in tubs. The Man in
the Monument was sitting outside his own door, the Monument
door; and was actually yawning, as if there were no Monument
to stop his mouth, and give him a perpetual interest in his
own existence.... Two people came to see the Monument, a
gentleman and lady; and the gentleman said, 'How much
a-piece?'
"The Man in the Monument replied, 'A Tanner.'
"It seemed a low expression, compared with the Monument.
"The gentleman put a shilling into his hand, and the Man in
the Monument opened a dark little door. When the gentleman
and lady had passed out of view, he shut it again, and came
slowly back to his chair.
"He sat down and laughed.
"'They don't know what a many steps there is!' he said.
'It's worth twice the money to stop here. Oh, my eye!'
"The Man in the Monument was a Cynic...."
The charge for the Monument is (I may remark _en passant_), now
changed from a "tanner" to the humble threepence. (Its summit gallery
is now closed in, because of the disagreeable mania for committing
suicide from it.) The original inscription on its pedestal, now
effaced, was a curious relic of religious intolerance; showing, by its
absurd reference to the "horrid plott" of "the Popish factio," the
barbarous and primitive state of popular feeling as late as 1681.
Wherefore it was that, as Pope said:
"... London's Column, pointing to the skies,
Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies."
One must not, however, forget that this attempt to attribute the dire
calamity to private malice must have been infinitely comforting to
the public mind, that ever, even in our own enlightened day, needs a
scapegoat. In still older days, the scapegoats took a more
conveniently personal form, and were usually, as we have seen, brought
to the block on Great Tower Hill: which was, of course, a much simpler
mode of dealing with them.