EXPLORING IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
IT was a very hot, bright Monday morning in August when, having a short time to fill, I wandered into Westminster Abbey. On Mondays you may go where you like in the Abbey, except into the Islip Chapel, where the effigies are. I know the Abbey fairly well ; that is to say, I have wandered about it often enough to know that it will take many more explorations than I an likely to make to exhaust it. I entered the West Door and paused for a moment by the grave of the Unknown Warrior, with its flag and wreaths and fringe of wistful mourners. Will that slab, I wondered, ever merge unnoticed into that pavement as others have done ?
Beyond it, in the Mutiny region of the floor of the nave, lay a wreath, somewhat to my perplexity. As I approached I found that it lay on the grave of Lord Dundonald, who had taken part in the liberation of Peru a hundred years ago, and was placed there by grateful Peruvians. I am afraid most English people have completely forgotten the circumstances of the liberation of Peru and the exploits of Lord Dundonald and his adventurous friends. But Peru has remembered.
I wandered on to the right of the screen, and was pulled up short by a large and ponderous monument to " Thomas Thynne of Longleat, in County Wilts," of whom all the chronicler finds to record is that he was " Barbarously Murdered on Sunday, 12th of February, 1681." Appa- rently, to judge by a bas-relief at the bottom, the poor man was shot by highwaymen when travelling by coach. Nearly opposite 'is Sir Cloudesley Shovel, while near by are slabs to Paoli, the Corsican revolutionary, the Wesleys, Lord Clive, and Canon Barnet, each of them (except Sir Cloudesley's) about a quarter the size of Thomas Thynne's. Just opposite is a small slab to a certain William Strode, Lieutenant-General, " who constantly attended his duty both at home and abroad during a course of upward of ex. years' service, He was a strenuous assertor of both civil and religious liberty established at the glorious Revolution by William III." "Military reader," adds the epitaph, " go thou and do likewise." I like the precise definition of the species of liberty to which this excellent gentleman confined his strenuous assertions. The Abbey at one time showed a wide, even a reckless, hospitality in the matter of graves, so that now it is nearly impossible to bury any more famous people here unless they are first cremated. Nevertheless, there is something friendly and kind in the presence in the poets' corner of a huge slab, next to the monument of Handel, recording the virtues of Mrs. Maria Hope, aged twenty-five, in about a dozen couplets of lapidary verse, placed there by her husband, who is apparently indignant that her actual grave, in the country, is " unnoticed." There is a great splendour in the gloom of the Abbey on a dull day, but there is also a great deal to be said for seeing it in this bright sunshine. Especially is this true of Henry VIL's Chapel, with its abundant carving and statuary. Much of it is only visible on such days, including the beautiful tracery of the roof. I discovered for the first time a delightful stocky, pensive St. Sebastian (or perhaps it was St. Alban) in one of the side chapels, next to a frowning doctor, and identified St. George and St. Catherine and St. James with his cockleshell, up above the banners of the Knights of the Bath ; and learnt that Charles II. and Prince Rupert are both buried in the Abbey, all because there was enough light to see by. It was near these graves that an eager working woman pulled me by the sleeve and asked me to show her the grave of Mary Queen of Scots, and to identify Torrigiano's monu- ment to Lady Margaret Beaufort. This aisle has been called the Stuart Aisle, and a slab at the head of Mary Queen of Scots' monument is almost an epitome of the history of the dynasty. It marks the graves of Mary herself ; Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales ; Arabella Stuart; Charles an infant, Ann an infant and Henry, Duke of Gloucester, children of Charles I.; Mary, Princess of Orange ; Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia ; Prince Rupert ; Anne Hyde, first wife of James IL, and ten of her infant children ; William, Duke of Gloucester, son of Queen Anne, and seventeen of her infant children. Poor queens, poor women ! In a chapel opposite I rediscovered a monument that was a joy to me many years ago. It portrays an elabo- rately dressed lady kneeling—most uncomfortably—in an alcove, and records the virtues of a certain Mrs. Mary Kendal, who died at the age of thirty, and who " was of a severe life, But easy conversation, Courteous to all. Yet strictly sincere. Humble without meanness, Beneficent without Ostentation, Devout without superstition." " These Admirable qualitys," continues the epitaph in a second column of increasing enthusiasm, " in which she was equalled by few of her sex, Surpassed by none, Rendered her in every way worthy of that close union and friendship in which she lived with The Lady Catherine Jones." The Lady Catherine Jones, we learn later in the epitaph, was the daughter of the Countess of Ranelagh, and, because the Countess was buried here, her daughter expected to be also ; and because the Lady Catherine Jones expected to lie here, Mrs. Mary Kendal achieved her niche. Evidently the Captain Kendal who was responsible for this engaging memorial was a man who knew what he wanted to say, and said it.
It is common complaint that the monumental statuary of the Abbey is so bad, but as I wandered and peered I was impressed also by how much fine work there is as well. It is true that the statues of the Victorian statesmen are superlatively denuded of vitality—a difficult matter in the case of Gladstone and Disraeli, but successfully achieved. On the other hand, Chatham, at the apex of a pyramid of dreary symbolism, is fairly lifelike ; and Lord Mansfield, in his wig and robes, looking down " kind, wise, tolerant and sardonic " from his high seat, has an almost uncanny vitality. His monument is by Flaxman, executed, one imagines, in a different mood from that of his Wedgwood plaques and frigid classicisms. These are recalled by the figures of Law and Justice at the base of the monument, and an unexplained semi-nude lady curled up in discreet concealment behind his lordship's chair. Some of the best statuary is Dutch, conspicuously the bust of Dryden, by Scheemakers, that broods disillusioned in Poets' Corner. But much of the finest work is anonymous. Who, for example, carved the two superb Elizabethan monuments, dedicated to forgotten ambassadors, behind the pillars in the North Transept ? The sons that kneel round most Elizabethan tombs give one the impression of having been carved by the dozen after a single bearded and ruffed copy. But every one of these, kneeling in a natural pose, arrayed in splendid chased armour, has vivid indi- viduality. Whose hand preserved for us the undoubted majesty of that formidable and veteran monarch, the Virgin Queen herself I The statue of Mary Queen of Scots is a failure, like all the other portraits of this sovereign charmer. It emphasizes chiefly her forty years and her double chin. Probably the sculptor never saw her I On the other hand, most of the mediaeval statuary is beautiful. And if you want to see the contrast between Mediaeval and Renaissance sculpture, you cannot do better than compare the gracious naive figure of Eleanor of Castile and Tor- rigiano's three statues of Henry VII., his queen and his mother, which are a piece of Florence here in Westminster.
And so out again, past the (atrocious) monument to General Wolfe, and the Anti-Slavery men and Isaac Newton, with his nobly poised head. One other effigy comes back to me : a tiny bust of a forgotten historian, William Sanderson, dead in 1676, full of scholarly pugnacity, leaning forward over the suave and decorous Latin of his epitaph.
LUCY MASTERMAN.
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