Читать книгу I Travel the Open Road - Classic Writings of Journeys Taken around the World - Various - Страница 10

It is the middle of August, and there is nobody in London—except, of course, some four millions of people who do not count. There is nobody in London; and, most specially and noticeably, there is nobody in Church. Be it far from me to suggest that the Country Cousin and the Transatlantic Brother, who flood London in August and September, are persons of indevout habits. But they have their own methods and places of devotion (of which I may speak anon), and do not affect the Parish Churches, with which I am now concerned. I have excellent opportunities of judging; for, year in year out, in tropical heat or Arctic cold, my due feet never fail to walk the round of our Stuccovian churches, and I can testify that in August and September Vacancy and Depression reign unchallenged. Seats are empty. Galleries are locked. Collections sink to vanishing-point. The Vicar of St. Ursula's, Stucco Gardens, accompanied by his second wife, is sitting under a white umbrella at Dieppe, watching the aquatic gambols of his twofold family. The Senior Curate is climbing in the Alps. The Junior Curate, who stroked his College Boat last year and was ordained at Trinity, officiates in agonies of self-conscious shyness which would draw tears from a stone. A temporary organist elicits undreamt-of harmonies. The organ-blower is getting his health in the hopfields. The choirboys are let loose—

"On Brighton's shingly beach, on Margate's sand,

Their voice out-pipes the roaring of the sea."

The congregation represents the mere dregs and remnants of Stuccovia's social prime. Poor we have none, and our rich are fled to Scotland or Norway, Homburg or Marienbad. The seats are sparsely tenanted by "stern-faced men" (like those who arrested Eugene Aram), whom business keeps in London when their hearts are on the moors; over-burdened mothers, with herds of restless schoolboys at home for the holidays and craving for more ardent delights than Stucco Gardens yield; decayed spinsters of the type of Volumnia Dedlock, who, having exhausted the hospitable patience of their ever-diminishing band of friends, are forced to the horrid necessity of spending the autumn in London. The only cheerful face in the church belongs to the Pewopener, who, being impeded in the discharge of her function by arthritic rheumatism, is happiest when congregations are smallest and there are no week-day services to "molest her ancient solitary reign."

* * * * * *

Evensong is over. The organist is struggling with an inconceivable tune from "The English Hymnal" (for at St. Ursula's we are nothing if not up to date). The Curate, sicklied o'er with that indescribable horror which in his boating days he would have described as "The Needle," is furtively reperusing his manuscript before mounting the pulpit, and does not detect my craven flight as I slip through the baize door and disappear. It is characteristic of St. Ursula's that, even when empty, it is fusty; but this need surprise no one, for the architect was strong on a "scientific system of ventilation," and that, as we all know, means very little ventilation and an overwhelming amount of system.

However, my courageous flight has delivered me from asphyxiation, and, before returning to my modest Sunday supper of Paysandu Ox-tongue and sardines, I think that I will reinflate my lungs by a stroll round Hyde Park. There is a lovely redness in the western sky over the Serpentine Bridge, but it is still broad daylight. The sere and yellow turf of the Park is covered by some of those four millions who do not count and do not go to church, but who, apparently, are fond of sermons. At the end of each hundred yards I come upon a preacher of some religious, social, or political gospel, and round each is gathered a crowd of listeners who follow his utterances with interested attention. When I think of St. Ursula's and the pavid Curate and my graceless flight, I protest that I am covered with shame as with a garment. But the wrong done in the church can be repaired in the Park. I have missed one sermon, but I will hear another. Unluckily, when these compunctious visitings seized me I was standing by a rostrum of heterodoxy. For all I know the preacher may have followers among my readers; so, as I would not for the world wound even the least orthodox susceptibilities, I forbear to indicate the theory which he enounced. As he spoke, I seemed to live a former life over again; for I had once before been present at an exactly similar preaching, in company, either bodily or spiritual, with my friend Mr. James Payn, and his comments on the scene revived themselves in my memory, even as the remote associations of Ellangowan reawoke in the consciousness of Harry Bertram when he returned from his wanderings, and gazed, bewildered, on his forgotten home. (Henceforward it is Payn that speaks.) The preacher of Heterodoxy was entirely without enthusiasm, nor did his oratory borrow any meretricious attractions from the Muse. It was a curious farrago of logic without reason and premisses without facts, and was certainly the least popular, though not the least numerously attended, of all the competing sermons in the Park. Suddenly the preacher gave expression to a statement more monstrous than common, on which an old lady in the crowd, who had heretofore been listening with great complacency, exclaimed in horror, "I'm sure this ain't true Gospel," and immediately decamped. Up to that point, she had apparently been listening under the impression that the preacher belonged to her own blameless persuasion, and was in the blankest ignorance of all that he had been driving at.

But Sunday in London has religious attractions to offer besides those purveyed by St. Ursula's and Hyde Park. I said at the outset that the Country Cousin and the Transatlantic Brother have their own methods and places of devotion—their Mecca is St. Paul's Cathedral. One of the pleasantest ways of spending a Sunday evening in London is to join the pilgrim-throng. The great west doors of the Cathedral are flung wide open, as if to welcome the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Lord Mayor, and all at once we find ourselves, hushed and awestruck, in the illimitable perspective. Even the staunchest believer in Gothic as the only religious architecture may admit, with disloyalty to his faith, that every year St. Paul's becomes more like a place of Christian worship and less like a glorified Council-hall or an Imperial Senate-house. And it is seen at its best in twilight. The shadows temper the garish splendour of mosaic and gold and electricity, and enhance the dominant sense of vastness and grandeur. And prayer ascends on the wings of music and sweet boy-voices ring, and the distant altar, with its gleaming lights, focuses the meaning and purpose of the whole. And then the great "Communion of Hymns" unites us all, American and English, Londoner and countryman, as citizens of a city not built with hands, patriots of a country which is not marked on the terrestrial globe. Bernard of Cluny and William Cowper and John Keble all contribute of their best. "Brief life is here our portion" seems to utter the real heart's desire of a tired-looking mechanic who stands by my side. "Hark, my soul!" seems to communicate its own intensity to the very tone and look of the people who are singing it. "Sun of my soul" is an evening prayer which sounds just as natural and as fitting in the inmost heart of London's crowd and grind and pressure as in the sweet solitude of the Hursley fields. In the pulpit a pale preacher, himself half worn-out before his prime by ten years' battle in a slum, is extolling the Cross as the test and strength and glory of human life—

"While at his feet the human ocean lay,

And wave on wave rolled into space away."

A human stream indeed, of all sorts and conditions—old men and maidens, young men and children, rich and poor, English and foreigners, sightseers and citizens, dapper clerks and toil-stained citizens and red-coated soldiers—all interested, and all at ease, and all at home at what Bishop Lightfoot called "the centre of the world's concourse"—under the cross-crowned Dome of St. Paul's.

A chapter from

Seeing and Hearing, 1868