ENGLISH MURAL MONUMENTS AND TOMBSTONES.* Tim is a book of
pure delight, dealing exclusively as it does with beautiful examples, all of a date anterior to the fifteenth century. It is, as it ought to be, almost entirely a picture book, containing very
-• Bligliab Mural Monuments and Tombstones. Ily Herbert Batsford. With an Introduction by Walter II. Godfrey, F.S.A. London: B. T. Botsford. tits. Od. net.J excellent photographs of subjects entirely worthy, with only some dozen or so pages of pointed comment and constructive criticism by way of introduction. Mr. Herbert Batsford is to be congratulated as well as thanked for this his labour of love, his searching out and photography of what is typical of the best throughout the length and breadth of England. The capital, the Home Counties, and the Cotswolds supply between them (and well they may) the greater bulk of the examples thought worthy of presentment. But only the heart of England has been laid under con- tribution, and that but lightly bled. Scotland, Wales, and Ireland still remain untouched; their simpler, sterner products would fill yet other books at least as interesting as this first. Where rude materials and a staunch tradition both dictated simple, solid forms—conditions such as held for long in Cornwall and across the Tweed—there will be found archaic strivings after elegance : marble motifs, modified and gruffly rendered with all the tough intractability of granite, that somehow make a strange appeal beyond the power, the suave urbanity, of "storied urn and animated bust." The Celtic cross, the rough-hown Runic block, are rather archaeology than architecture, and rarely profitable ae inspiration for a modern monument. To belie the actual written date by affecting the mannerisms, and by dully aping the peculiarities and limitations, of another age in the plastic setting of our legend is a sorry confession of inventive bankruptcy. History is to be remembered, not mimicked. An inspiration should inspire afresh, and not be laboriously and lifelessly " reproduced "—a death-mask of the living thing. Certain conditions in a certain place made such-and-such a development possible, perhaps inevitable. The conditions pass, and with them the natural existence of the product—be it ichthyosaurus, highwayman, or " Little Englander." The artificial synthetic reproduction of any one of these extinct phenomena in a new and uncongenial world would be a pre- posterous anachronism, even were it possible. The right way to profit by the works of the past, or by a book presenting them, is quietly to absorb the essence and the idea that underlie and animate those works, to extract and store its inspiration, to keep it and treasure it in the cells of a receptive brain, but to forget its little details and accidentals. Then, on a day, out will come the idea—an idea of which you are at least the foster-parent, and which, if you be worthy, you will so modify, develop, and vivify, according to your genius and your bias, that it becomes indeed your own, though owing its origin and being to an immemorial ancestry as much as does the child that you thoughtlessly call " yours." Take an acorn from the great tree of architecture ; take it and plant it and cherish it in a new time and a new soil. Grow your own oak, a natural plant adapted to its environment. Don't think to avoid trouble and mistakes by lopping off an ancient bough from the age-old parent tree and thrusting it arbitrarily into the astonished ground, saying : " Lo ! hero is a bit of real authentic architecture— straight from the wood—correct in every detail." It cannot be done. The thing is dead before you plant it, having no roots in the past, no place in the present, no hold on the future—a thing absurd, derisory. Artistic Whiggery is what is pled for—eyes toward the future, but a sympathetic hand on the two great pulses that are one, those of the Present and the Past. Shun Toryism, for, vid Wardour Street, it leads laboriously nowhere. Avoid Radicalism, for beyond the whimsy anarchy-and-water of Fitzroy Square lie the boundless wastes of the Cubist desert. Across this desert perhaps there lies a track—a sane and safe short-cut towards the progressing sky-line. Perhaps there are oases—pleasant places for a halt, or places where the tracks divide, some better and some worse. There may be such—firm, pleasant routes across the shifting sand ; but if there are, they are still to seek. Meanwhile, God-speed the honest seeker and confound the ninety-and-nine !
Mr. Batsford's book is full of suggestion. That should be its office- r° suggest. Probably no one would deplore it more than he if it were regarded or used as a " crib," though—out of school—it is at least arguable that it is better to crib than to make an original unaided howler. Space will not allow a detailed description of the monuments depicted ; but there they are, some fourscore of them, all good, each with its suggestions, each with an individuality of its own. Pilasters, architraves, pediments, urns, cherubs, swags, cartouches, heraldry— all the elements of the architectural cosmos. In these eighty compounds, some complex, some simple, but all reasonable and all satisfying, there are many happy manifestations of what a monument may be. There are, to be sure, difficulties not always successfully met, but there are also others that are triumphantly turned to happy account. A common stumbling-block would seem to be the finishing off of the bracket or under-piece of a mural tablet. It is very rarely managed with entire success. Some leave off too abruptly, some trail off into meaningless triviality. It seems hard to choose the psychological moment at which to quit—as with a shy man taking his leave. The importance of the epitaph, both in composition and execution, is properly emphasized :- " It is round practice, in designing a tablet, to consider the inscription first, to settle upon the shape of the panel which will best suit it and to spend infinite care in choosing and executing the lettering. Ilost of the examples in this book will show the value of a skilful use of the many beaut ful types which various alphabets can afford us. Wo do not forget, what is of course of chief importance in an inscription, its literary composition. The inscription that is to be dignified and sincere, yet adequate and truly appropriate, can seldom be written by one who is not a past master in pregnant language."
So good and clear are the photographs in Mr. Batsford's book that the legend can generally be easily road. A charming tablet at St. Albans to Strong the Master-Builder thus opens its epitaph :- " Near this place are deposited the remains of EDWARD STRONG, citizen and Mason of LONDON, whose Masterly abilities and skill in his Profession The Many Publick Structures He was employed in Raising Will most justly manifest to late Posterity. In erecting the Edifice of ST. Pate. several years of his life were spent Even from the Foundation to His laying the last Stone And herein (equally with its Ingenious Architect) Sr CHRISTOPHER WREN And its truly Pious Diocesan (Bishop Cornrow) He shared the Felicity of Seeing both the Beginning and Finishing of that Stupendous Fabrick."
A very good example, this, of the right style and spirit for lapidary inscription. Certain peerages from this part of Mr. Batsford's book deserve quotation in their entirety :— " The duty incumbent upon our descendants to preserve the memorials of the past involves a corresponding duty on our part towards posterity, to invest with fitness and with beauty the monuments which we bequeath to them. In the years to come, moreover, the artistic excellence of the memorial will be its chief claim to attention and the best guarantee of its preservation. Not that this is the prime motive that should prompt us to execute some worthy design ' • art needs no crutch of this kind upon which to lean. Yet it may be wholesome to remind ourselves that a deficiency in beauty and a lack of grace and charm, besides being in themselves lamentable, will probably defeat the very purpose of the memorial and bring upon it the contempt of a latter age. . . . Although there has been a serious break in the artistic tradition of the country it is not too late to win our way back to the paths from which we have strayed. Indeed, there are happily still many churches and churchyards where the shameless stones born of a century of indifference to beauty are in a small minority and appear as strangers among the assembled memorials of more grace-loving ages. There is still time to save the restful character of many of our sacred enclosures, and to redress the balance in favour of comeliness and propriety in others, if only we can awake in timo and open our eyes to the wanton mischief that is so unintentionallyand so piously done. To-day our temptation is to fall into one of two evils, for we seek either a high artistic excellence, which by its very originality and aloofness threatens the harmony which should preside over the resting places of the dead, or we thought. lessly purchase a commercial product which is frankly fashioned without regard to the simple principles which it should obey. Just enough humility to learn of past achievements, enough invention to vary their detail and still please the eye, and some desire to preserve a unity of effect with the setting and the companions among which the memorial is to be placed, would ensure the continuance of that charm which threatens to pass from us through our indolence or excessive waywardness."
Mr. Batsford's pleading may not bo new, but it is so eloquent as to deserve the widest hearing.
Previous page
