AND ANOTHER THING
What happened when Lord Palmerston was ticked off for smoking
PAUL JOHNSON
Last week, on an expedition concerning carpet underlay, I found myself in a little Somerset town called Burnham on Sea. So I looked around to see what I could find. Sum- mer having set in with its usual severity, as Coleridge put it, the front was windswept. Lowering clouds scudded overhead. A few bedraggled holidaymakers huddled on the rain-sodden beach. Fat ladies waddled past with screaming children. Eight patient don- keys took toddlers on short, chilly trips up and down the beach, and an old cart-horse pulled a wooden train full of mums and babies. There was a rather antiquated plea- sure-den called the Charlie Chaplin Bar and a hostelry, the Duke of Clarence Hotel, with the grinning nautical mug of the future William IV swinging in the wind outside. That more or less completed the amenities. I was reminded of Norman Garstin's master- piece, which also depicts a semi-deserted West Country resort in high summer, and which he entitled 'The Rain It Raineth Every Day' (now to be seen in Penzance). But there is no place in England without an intriguing past, if you dig for it. That, however, requires a sense and knowledge of history. The great archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie used to say that those without history were forced to live in one dimension of time — the present — whereas those who knew history could live in as many as they pleased. The fact is, if you teach little history in schools, as is now almost universally the case, and dismiss the subject as 'nostalgia', as the present government does, you are robbing children not only of their heritage but also of huge future pleasures. Burnham was a fishing village to the west of the main Bridgwater–Bristol road. That is a historic highway to me, for Coleridge, Hazlitt and others of their circle thought nothing of walking all its 40 miles. Thomas de Quincey did it overnight, and left an evocative description of the experience. It was quite an effort for him as he was only four foot ten inches, if that; Dorothy Wordsworth, who was just five foot, said, He is the only gentleman who ever made me feel tall.' They did not pass through Burnham, which was connected to the road by a mere sandy track. In time, however, the speculative creation of seaside resorts, which Jane Austen satirised in the unfinished San- diton, swept the village a few paces along the road to prosperity, and Burnham was con- nected first by road, then by rail. Mineral waters were discovered in early Victorian times, and in 1855 a local entrepreneur put up two classical quadrants, in beautiful Bath stone, at either end of the front. They are still there, time-stained and shabby-genteel. There was a lighthouse, too, and a pier, built to receive steamers from the Bristol Chan- nel. But the pier has gone, leaving only a cavernous hostelry called the Pier Head Arms, and the top of the lighthouse was removed, the remains being incorporated in a weird little whitewashed villa, which stands between the two quadrants, like a white hen between two brown cocks, or an exercise in architectural incongruity. For the waters were found too sulphurous and the carriage trade departed. Poor Burnham has always had to compete with the slightly more up- market Weston, along the coast, which added to its dignity by assuming the title of Weston-super-Mare, rather like its most famous alumnus, who now calls himself Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare. So Burnham added 'on Sea' at some stage, which at least is unpretentious. The locals simply call them Burnham and Weston.
However, in the parish church of St Andrew at Burnham there exists, modestly hidden, a rare treasure. In the mid-1620s, Inigo Jones made a design for the interior of a chapel in St James's Palace, used by Charles I's Catholic queen Henrietta Maria. It was never executed. But, in the 1680s, it was revived and amplified by Wren, on the instructions of James II, who wanted to create a Catholic chapel at Whitehall for his queen, Mary of Modena. This project foundered in the general deba- cle of his reign, but parts of the interior decoration were actually completed. The work was entrusted to Artus Quellin and Grinling Gibbons, who were paid £1,875 for their work — a lot.
When James fled, the decorative pieces were taken out of the palace (thus saving them from destruction in the fire of William III's day) and put into the stone- mason's yard at Westminster Abbey. There they remained disregarded for more than a century until, in the 1820s, they were res- cued by a bishop who doubled up as rector of Burnham and wanted to embellish his church. But his successors did not share his taste and these plainly Catholic objects have been treated with less than the consid- eration their beauty deserves.
They consist of two parts. Under the tower are two magnificent angels, designed to worship the Blessed Sacrament, and pre- sumably by Quellin. Behind the altar at the other end of the church is a set of panels, by Gibbons, of cherubs. Their situation is dark and awkward to get at, but I could see enough to recognise their wonderful vivaci- ty and the superb craftsmanship which brought them to life. One panel shows a cherub censing — naturally an affront to Anglicans — and another two cherubs kneeling in prayer. A third has a chalice, and a fourth displays the Hebrew letters for Jesus in a setting of cherubs' heads. Pevs- ner, alert as ever, spotted this masterpiece, but his advice — 'It would be well worth while to try to re-assemble the scattered parts in something like their original con- text' — has been ignored. Now that reli- gious passions have cooled, this Catholic ensemble should surely be given its due. Maybe some cultural grandee, such as Peter Palumbo or Jacob Rothschild or Grey Gowrie, should intervene, with the Lottery Fund picking up the modest tab. In the meantime, those who find themselves in the neighbourhood should visit this neglect- ed specimen of English carving at its most noble and sophisticated.
And while we are still on Burnham, I sus- pect that its station-master in 1861 was the anti-hero of a new anecdote which has come to light. An old stable at my house in Over Stowey was cleared last week, disgorging an ancient copy of the West Somerset Free Press. It appears that the issue of 7 September 1861 of this admirable paper reported that the master of a certain GWR station, 'noted for self-conceit and flunkeyism', had recently taken a haughty line with men found smok- ing on his platform. He 'abused one gentle- man' and 'ended by pulling the cigar out of his mouth'. He was later horrified to discov- er that the cigar-smoker was none other than Lord Palmerston, the prime minister, en route to visit the Duke of Beaufort. The sta- tion-master hurried to Badminton and offered profuse apologies to His Lordship. Palmerston replied, 'Sir, I respected you because I thought you were doing your duty like an Englishman, but now I see you are nothing but a snob. Cut along!' (Harrovian for 'Piss off!')
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