Читать книгу Impressions of England; or, Sketches of English Scenery and Society - A. Cleveland Coxe - Страница 7

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Arrival in London, and first two days.

In early life I had always promised myself a first view of London, either approaching the Tower by water, and taking in the survey of steeples, bridges, and docks, or else descending from Hampstead, on the top of a rapid coach, and beholding the great dome of St. Paul’s, arising amid a world of subordinate roofs, and looming up through their common canopy of cloud-like smoke. Alas! for all such visions, we have reached the age of the rail: and, consequently, I found myself, one afternoon, set down in a busy, bustling station-house, with a confused sensation of having been dragged through a long ditch, and a succession of dark tunnels, and with a scarcely less confused conception of the fact, that I was in London. A few policemen loitering about, and a line of cabs and ’busses of truly English look, confirmed the conviction, however, that I was really in the Metropolis, and I soon found myself looking up my luggage, in the business way of one accustomed to the place, and without a single rapture or emotion of the marvellous. Some things were very different from an American station-house; as, for example, the dignity of an ecclesiastical gentleman emerging from the first-class carriages in cocked-hat, and solemn cravat and surtout, his short-clothes eked into pantaloons by ponderous leggings, buttoned about his black stockings, and his whole deportment evincing a reverend care of his health and personal convenience—the inevitable umbrella especially, neatly enveloped in varnished leather, and tucked under the consequential arm; or again, the careful avoidance of the crowd evinced by a dignified lady, accompanied by her maid, and watching with an eye-glass the anxious manipulations of a footman, in showy livery, piling up a stack of trunks, hat-boxes, and what not, all inscribed, “Lady Dashey, Eaton Place, Belgrave Square.” Getting into a cab, with my very democratic luggage safely rescued from the vans, and forcing an exit through vehicles of all ranks, from the dog-cart up to the lumbering coach, with footman behind, and my lord inside, I emerge at length into London streets from the Euston Square Station, and begin to make my way towards the focus of the world. How mechanically I jog along, just as if I had lived here all my life, and without the least conformity to the fact that my pulse is quickening, and mine eye straining to realize a long ideal, which in a few minutes will be substantial fact! Every street-sign arrests my eye, “Paddington New Road,” “Gower Place,” “Torrington Square,” “Keppell Street,” “Bedford Square,” “Great Russell Street,” “Bloomsbury,” “Bond Street,” “Seven Dials,” “St. Martin’s Lane,” and now I begin to know where I am. There is St. Martin’s—there the lion with a long tail on Northumberland House—here is Trafalgar Square—I see Charles First on horseback, at Charing Cross—and here old George Third, with his queue, at the head of Cockspur Street—and here the Haymarket and Pall Mall, and here I am set down at the hospitable door of a friend, first known in America, and who has kindly insisted on my spending my first few days in London as his guest. It was an unexpected pleasure, but a great one, to receive my first impressions of London in the agreeable company of the Reverend Ernest Hawkins, a person singularly qualified to share the feelings of a stranger, but upon whose valuable time I should not have ventured to trespass, except at his own friendly instance. After renewing the acquaintance, formed during his short visit to our country in 1849, the question was, Where shall we begin? A fine day was already clouded over, and alternate light and shade were inviting and again discouraging out-door amusements. However, a turn through St. James’s Park to Whitehall was practicable enough, and at Whitehall I was resolved to begin. Forth we go, step into the Athenæum Club House, and descend into the Park, by the Duke of York’s Column, descrying through the mist the towers of Westminster Abbey, and soon passing through the Horse-Guards, stand “in the open street before Whitehall.” There is the Banqueting-room—there the fatal window—here is the very spot, where the tide turned between old and new, and parted on an axe’s edge. That martyrdom! What that has happened in Church and State, not only among Anglo-Saxons, but in the greater part of Europe, since 1649, has not resulted from the deed of blood done here!

My kind friend took me out upon Hungerford Bridge, and bade me use my eyes, and tell the different objects if I could. I turned towards Lambeth, saw the old towers through the gray mist, and began with indescribable pleasure to single out St. Mary’s, Lambeth, the New Parliament Houses, Westminster Hall, the Abbey, St. Margaret’s, and so forth, till turning round, I descried St. Paul’s, (vast, sublimely so, and magnificently tutelary,) and nearer by, Somerset House and the bridges, and the little steamers shooting to and fro beneath their noble arches. Enough for a first glimpse! We went into Regent Street, and by Burlington Arcade into Piccadilly, and turning into St. James’s Street, I first saw the old Palace at its extremity, looking just as one sees it in Hogarth’s picture of “the Rake going to Court,” in the last century, old and shabby, and venerable altogether. Such was my first ramble in London and Westminster.

I was so happy as to meet at dinner that evening, a small party of the clergy of the Metropolis, in whose company the hours went rapidly and delightfully by, with many warm, and, I dare say, heartfelt expressions of interest in America and her Church; the whole presided over by my reverend entertainer, with the most animating spirit of dignified cordiality. The general desire which prevails to know something of a new Bishop of the Church, may excuse my particularizing the Rev. John Jackson, Rector of St. James’s, Westminster, and Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, who was one of the party, as a person of very unassuming, but attractive manners, of whose subsequent elevation to the See of Lincoln, it has given me no little pleasure to learn.

With what a world of new and confused emotions, I tried to drop to sleep after such a day! The roof beneath which I was reposing was an historic one. Standing in the precincts of St. James’s, it had once been the abode of the beautiful but unhappy Nell Gwynne, the one of all those wretched creatures who disgraced the Court of the Second Charles, for whom one feels more pity than scorn; and for whom, remembering the comparative goodness of her natural qualities, and her own plaintive lament over her education in a pot-house to fill glasses for drunkards, there must have been compassion from the Father of Mercies, and possibly pardon from the blood that cleanseth from all sin, her penitent death being more than probable. It is certainly gratifying that a mansion once given up to such associations is now turned into an abode of piety and benevolence, and made the head quarters of the operations of the venerable S. P. G. In the chamber where I was lodged, had lately rested those estimable missionaries, Bishops Field, and Medley, and Gray, and Strachan; and I felt unworthy to lay my head where such holy heads had been pillowed. But a blessing seemed to haunt the spot which they, and many like them, had reconciled to virtue, and hallowed by their pure repose; and I slumbered sweetly, dreaming of Lud’s town, and King Lud, and of divers men of divers ages, who had come to London, upon manifold errands, to seek their fortunes there, and there to flourish and wax great, or to rise and fall, until now it was my lot to mingle with its living tides, and then to pass away again to my far-off home, as “a guest that tarrieth but a night.”

When I rose in the morning, I looked out into the park, and now for the first time, gained a clear idea of that strange scene described in Evelyn’s Memoirs, as occurring between King Charles and Mistress Nelly, while the grovelling monarch was walking with him in the Mall. The wretched woman was standing on a terrace, at the end of her garden, and looking over into the park, when the king turns from Evelyn, and going towards her, holds a conversation with her in that public place and manner. “I was heartily sorry at this scene,” says the pure-minded journalist; and indeed it forboded no little evil to both Church and nation, as well as to the miserable Prince who could thus debase his crown and character, in the face of the open day, and of a virtuous man.

And now, having a whole day before me, I began by attending divine service in Westminster Abbey. Through the park and Birdcage-walk, I went leisurely to old Palace Yard, passing round the Abbey and St. Margaret’s, and so entered by Poets’ Corner. Service was going on, and of course I gave myself as much as possible to its sacred impressions, but was unable to repress some wandering thoughts, as my eyes caught the long lines and intersections of nave and aisles, or turned upwards to the clere-story, where the smoky sunlight of a London morning was lingering along the old rich tracery and fret-work, to which every cadence of the chaunt seemed to aspire, and where just so, just such sunbeams have come and gone as quietly over all the most speaking and eventful pageants of the British Empire, since William First was crowned here, in the midst of those Norman and Saxon antagonists whose blood now runs mingled in the veins of the British people. Nay, we must send back our thoughts at least so far as Edward the Confessor, who was also crowned here, and whose sepulchre is hard at hand. What thoughts of human splendor, and of human nothingness! The anthem was—Awake up my Glory—and as it rose and fell, and tremulously died away, distributing its effect among innumerable objects of decayed antiquity, I seemed to catch a new meaning in the strain of the psalmist. How many tongues were mute, and ingloriously slumbering around me—the tongues of poets and of princes and of priests: but the living should praise the Lord in their stead, and in this place that humbles the glory of men, it was good to sing—“Set up thyself, oh God, above the heavens, and thy glory above all the earth.” When the service was over, I preferred to leave the Abbey, with this general effect still upon me, and to take it, at some other time, in details: and so, with only a few glances at the familiar objects in Poet’s Corner, I passed thoughtfully through the choir, which is extended down the nave, and so into the south aisle, and out into the cloisters. I took passing notice of the Andre monument, and of the Thynne monument, which I recognized by their sculpture alone. I saw at once that I was not likely to be satisfied with such ill-placed memorials, interesting as they may be in themselves. In the cloisters, I was so fortunate as to meet Lord John Thynne; and on being introduced to his Lordship, and remarking that “I remembered very well his connection with the Abbey, as Sub-dean, from Leslie’s Picture of the Coronation,” (in which he bears the chalice, as the Archbishop gives the Bread of the Sacrament to Queen Victoria,) he courteously suggested that perhaps I might think it worth while to look at the coronation robes, which are not usually seen by visitors, but which were in his custody, and which he should be happy to have me see. His Lordship then led the way into the famous Jerusalem Chamber, a place not ordinarily shown, but full of interest, not only as the scene of the swooning of Henry Fourth, but as the seat of the Holy Anglican Synod, which has since revived, (“Laud be to God,”) in the same Jerusalem where Henry died. This place is by no means such as my fancy had led me to suppose, but has the air of having been remodeled in James First’s time, although an ancient picture of Richard Second—I think in tapestry—is sunk in the wainscot. The chamber is small, and of very moderate architectural merit, but must always be a place of deep and hallowed associations. Adjoining this is the Refectory of the Westminster school-boys, into which we were shown, and where his Lordship reminded us that the tables were made of the oak of the Spanish Armada. They were full of holes, burned into them by the Westminster boys, who are always ambitious each to “leave his mark” in this way: so that as you look at them, you may fancy this to have been burned by little George Herbert, or Ben Jonson, or John Dryden, or Willie Cowper, or Bob Southey—all of whom have, in their day, sat on the forms of Westminster. Until so late as 1845, this refectory was warmed by the ancient brazier, the smoke escaping through the louvre in the roof. On coming to the Deanery, Dr. Buckland reformed this ancient thing, and a very ugly stove now reigns in its stead, as a monument of the Dean’s utilitarianism and nineteenth-century ideas on all possible subjects.

After we had carefully inspected this interesting hall, Lord John was as good as his word, and took us to see the robes, but precisely where he took us, it would be hard for me to say. It was in some room contiguous, where a fidgety little woman with keys in her hands, attended as mistress of the robes, and opening the repository of the sacred vestments, displayed them with such profound obsequiousness to the mildly dignified ecclesiastic who conducted us, that if she called him “my lord” once, she did so some twenty times in a single minute. The readers of Mrs. Strickland’s “Queens of England” will not require me to enlarge upon these superb vestments, now dimmed and faded in their splendour by the lapse of nearly two centuries, since they were made for the coronation of the luckless, and almost brainless, James the Second. They are worn at coronations only, by the clergy of the Abbey, and we had the pleasure of seeing our reverend guide in his appropriate cope as Sub-dean; the same which he wore when Victoria was crowned, and which has been worn by his predecessors, successively, at the coronations of William and Mary, Queen Anne, the four Georges, and William the Fourth. Similar vestments in form, though not in splendour, are to this day the rubrical attire of the clergy of the English Church in celebrating the Holy Communion, but I believe they are now never used, although they were in use at least in Durham Cathedral, so late as the middle of the last century. Having seen these interesting and historical vestments, we thanked the amiable dignitary, to whom we had been indebted for so much polite attention, and took our leave, emerging into Dean’s Yard, and so finding our way to the New Houses of Parliament.