Chapter 8

In another place we have already dwelt at some length upon these makers of our Empire in war and peace alike, whose names may be seen upon the walls on every side. While the tariff question is the topic of the hour, and Cobden, the original champion of free trade, is constantly appealed to by our modern politicians, we must not omit to look at that statesman's bust, which will be found, with a number of other interesting memorials, at the back of Chatham's monument. Near this the tablet to Warren Hastings records a page in the history of {116} our Indian Empire which it is best to leave unturned, for it is stained with the life-blood of a man's broken heart, a heart broken by a trial dragged out interminably till the culprit, whether he were innocent or guilty, was punished far beyond his deserts. Macaulay's famous description of Hastings's trial is well known, and we are reminded of his no less familiar essay on Lord Clive by the monuments of two men, a soldier and a sailor, who co-operated with Clive in the foundation of our Indian Empire. The East India Company is responsible for the inartistic, grotesque erections which traduce the memory of these gallant men, Admiral Watson and Sir Eyre Coote, while they also perpetrated the scarcely less offensive, although smaller monument which commemorates Major Stringer Lawrence, Clive's intimate friend and valued comrade, the hero of Trichinopoly, which is near the west end of the nave. The Admiral sits unclothed, save for a Roman toga, amongst palm-trees and allegorical figures above the ancient doorway, while his chief achievements are recorded in the inscriptions "Calcutta freed," "Ghereah," and "Chandernagore taken," with the dates 1756 and 1757. Coote expelled the French from the Coromandel coast in 1761, and twenty years later {117} defeated them again with their ally, Hyder Ali, in the Carnatic. The General masquerades as a Roman warrior, with a native captive and a figure of Victory on either hand. Such was, in fact, the taste of the period when these preposterous groups were all the fashion. We turn from this with pleasure to the fine bust of Richard Kane, which is against the opposite wall, and single him out for a passing mention on account of his connection, as Governor, with the Island of Minorca, one of "the lost possessions" of England.

Facing us now, as we make our way westward, is the seated figure of Sir Fowell Buxton, and a little further to the left Joseph's extraordinarily vivid but unpleasing figure of William Wilberforce. Both men are indissolubly connected in our minds with the abolition of Slavery. With them are associated the pioneer of the anti-slavery agitation, Granville Sharp, and their fellow-worker, Zachary, father of Lord Macaulay. Sharp's tablet is not far from the latter's bust in the south transept, and we have already noticed the elder Macaulay in the Whigs' Corner. Between the philanthropists is Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, a man no less zealous than they in the struggle for the suppression of slavery. To us Londoners his name {118} must ever be dear, for we owe the Zoological Gardens to his initiative.

We are standing now in the aisle dedicated to the memory of that great English composer, Henry Purcell, and thus often called the "Musicians' Aisle," although the memorials to musicians are comparatively few. Purcell's modest tablet with the well-known epitaph, "Here lyes Henry Purcell, Esq., who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place, where only his harmony can be exceeded," hangs against the pillar near Raffles. We passed a modern one hard by to Balfe, a composer of many popular ballads; while on the north wall are the monuments of Purcell's master, Dr. Blow, who first preceded and then succeeded his young pupil at the Abbey organ, and Dr. Croft, who followed after Blow. Stones in the floor mark the graves of Dr. Samuel Arnold, another Abbey organist, and Sterndale Bennett, who is considered by some authorities worthy to rank with Purcell as a musical composer. A tablet to Dr. Burney detains us for a moment, while we remind the lovers of literature in our party of his daughter, the novelist, Fanny Burney, and of their friendship with Dr. Johnson, whose grave we saw in Poets' Corner. Other memorials, chiefly those to sailors, are upon this {119} wall, but we cannot tarry much longer, our friends are craving mercy for tired brains and aching limbs. Just before the iron gate the portrait medallion of Charles Darwin, which is closely companioned by tablets to three other modern scientists, Joule, Adams, and Stokes, attracts notice, and the next moment we tread upon the graves of Darwin and Herschel, all placed purposely in the vicinity of Sir Isaac Newton. Doctors of medicine as well as men of science will be found in the nave. We have already referred to the fashionable Dr. Mead, and his no less popular intimate, Dr. Freind, is also here. Freind's brother was headmaster of Westminster School, and many of the Latin inscriptions on contemporary monuments were written by him, including the one under his brother's bust; so many in fact that Pope, whose own pen was ever busy commemorating his cronies with fulsome laudations, such as those on Kneller and Craggs, wrote the following mocking lines:--

Freind, for your epitaphs I'm grieved Where still so much is said, One half will never be believed, The other never read.

The jibing prophecy has been literally fulfilled, for these Latin epitaphs are most certainly never read, {120} while Pope's verses, which are usually in English, stand a better chance. Close to us on the right-hand wall is the bust of a great modern geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, which stands above the monument of his distinguished forerunner, Woodward, who is often called the founder of English geology. Opposite is that of Dean Buckland, who was twice President of the Geological Society and a distinguished authority in that science. The windows along the north side commemorate celebrated civil engineers, Stephenson, Locke, Brunel, and Trevithick. To the genius of these men and to James Watt, whose statue we saw in St. Paul's Chapel, the wonderful railway and steamship system of modern days was, in the first instance, due. Few, indeed, are the arts, crafts, and sciences of the last two centuries which cannot claim some representative in the Abbey. Thus, as we cross over to the west cloister door on our way out, we tread upon the graves of the father of English watchmakers, Thomas Tompion, and his clever apprentice, George Graham; near them lies Telford, the builder of the Menai Bridge; close to him is Robert Stephenson, the designer of the tubular bridge across the Menai Straits, who was buried beside Telford, twenty-five years later, at his own request.

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We have brought our walk round the inside of the church to a conclusion, but in order to complete the circuit of the outside, such of the monastic buildings which are still extant must be visited on the way out. A narrow doorway opposite Telford's grave leads immediately into the cloisters, which formed the central part of the monastery. Here it was that the busy daily life of a Benedictine brotherhood was carried on: in this, the west walk, the monks kept a school, where the novices and boys from the neighbourhood received the only education obtainable in England before the grammar schools were founded. The adjacent north walk was used as a library in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and divided off by screens at either end. In this part used to be the Prior's seat, and around him were bookcases containing parchment rolls and illuminated missals, to which, after Caxton's time, printed volumes were added. The Consuetudines of Abbot Ware, the Litlington Missal, the Liber Regalis, and the Islip Roll are still extant, but most of the precious manuscripts which the Westminster brethren illuminated and copied with such loving care in this library, each scribe seated in his own alcove, were destroyed or carelessly lost after the Dissolution, when the monks had all been {122} dispersed, and printed books were rapidly superseding the written folios. In the eastern walk beyond this the Abbot sat enthroned on special days, in order to hear complaints and redress grievances. There also it was that he held his Maundy on the Thursday before Good Friday, and washed the feet of beggars. Towards the west in the southern part, which completes the square and was used as a passage-way, is the entrance to the great refectory where the brethren dined. Nothing of the hall is left save the ancient wall, but outside the door are remains of the niches which were used for towels; the lavatory itself was round the corner in the west cloister. The cloisters, and the monastic buildings which surround them, were built at different periods, chiefly by the generosity and energy of the Abbots. The Norman monastery remained intact long after Henry the Third's time, but the new cloister, which was begun by Abbot Byrcheston, was gradually built as the church progressed, and the north end of the eastern arm was practically part of the south transept. Both the east and north walks were completed under Edward I. in the same style, the Early English; but the other two were not begun till Langham's abbacy in the fourteenth century, {123} and the cloister was not entirely finished till the fifteenth. To Langham's generous bequest and Litlington's talent for architectural design the monks owed the completion of this most important part of their monastery. We shall see as we go out the head of Litlington, carved on the archway in Dean's Yard after his death, for he did not live to see the whole work which he had planned carried out. In walking round the cloisters it must be remembered, however, that successive restorations and remodellings of the window traceries have in many instances destroyed all traces of the earlier style, and the more ancient portions are now in so decayed a state that a fresh restoration must soon be undertaken.

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THE SOUTH TRANSEPT AND CHAPTER HOUSE

From Dean's Yard we get the best view of the south transept and the group of buildings which surround it. Thus we see the Chapter House behind the roof of the ancient dormitory, now the Chapter library and the great school, while at the back of the old houses to the left are the leads which cover the cloisters. To the right is the small arch which leads into Little Dean's Yard, and the immediate foreground is filled by the green, where the Westminster boys are allowed to play football between school in winter. The elm trees, themselves of some antiquity, are interesting, for their forerunners were planted by Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster, and gave the name of the Elms to the whole square which is now called Dean's Yard.

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