THE CHARM OF THE SUNDIAL
" Noiseless falls the foot of time, Which only treads on flowers."
—W. H. SPENCER.
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71E simplicity, combined with the mystery of a sundial, makes its charm irresistible. There is nothing mysterious about a clock. " What a dead thing," wrote Charles Lamb, " is a clock with its ponderous - embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication compared with the simple, altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old sundial." And the simpler the dial the more mysterious it is, for then there is nothing to distract the mind from the element of mystery connected with the imperceptible . flight of time. "•The sly shadow steals away upon the . dial and the quickest eye can discover no more but that • it is gone." It is impossible to visualize an Elizabethan or Stuart garden without its dial in keeping with the formal beauty of the flower-beds around it. Sundials seem. to have varied in shape from the simplest block of stone or wood to the magnificence of a dial such as that at Glamis Castle. And it is interesting to remember that wooden dials in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were painted, blue and gold being the favourite colours, for blue and gold symbolized eternity. " Sorrows are mixed with joys ; shadows with sunshine. So is the life of man, so is the measure of our days," and perhaps that is why it is impossible, to dissociate the dials in those old gardens from butterflies and birds, and quaintly apparelled children with demure little faces.
" United in Time, parted in Time, to be reunited when . Time shall be no more," ran the sad prophetic motto on the dial Charles I. gave his Queen, and how many tragedies must countless dials have witnessed in those troublous times ? One forgets the King's endless changes of fortune during the Civil Wars, but who does not remember that he always carried a silver pocket-dial about with him ? And that on the night preceding his execution he entrusted it to his servant Hubert, to be his last gift to his younger son, the Duke of York ? His taste for sundials was inherited by Charles II., who set up in the privy garden at Whitehall what must have been one of the most remarkable sundials erected in this country. Before this there had been a great square stone sundial in the garden. Presumably this was the sundial in Queen Elizabeth's privy garden, admired and noted in the account of his travels by Leopold von Wedel.
Father Hall described the dial set up by Charles II. in a book entitled An Explication of the Diall sett up in the King's Garden at London, an. 1669. In which many sorts of Dyalls are conteined ; by which, besides the Howres of all kinds diversely expressed, many things also belonging to Geography, Astrology, and Astronomy, are by the Sunnes shadow made visible to the eye. Amongst which very many DiaIls, Especially the most curious, are new inventions, hitherto divulged by None. That dial must have been an enchanting toy and there were numerous conceits. On ordinary dials, for instance, the shade of the style or gnomon passes over the hour-lines, but in these, animals were painted at the bottom of the glass boxes, and conse- quently the shade of the hour-lines passed over the gnomon. Further, the dial showed the time at Jerusalem, Constantinople, Jamaica and so forth, and also according to other methods of reckoning time. " Soe that for ex- ample," he writes, " yf at the beginning of July (at what time the Sunne rises at 4 o'clock and setts at 8) I find by looking on the usual) Dyall, that it is just 8 o'clock in the morning I shall find at the same time by the Ancient or Judaicall Dyall to be just 3 o'clock : by the Babylonian to be 4, by the Italian 12, and by the Astronomical) to be 20." There were also portraits of the King and Catherine of Braganza, the Queen Mother and Prince Rupert. " In his Majestyes picture the Hour is shewne by the shade of the Hour-lines passing over the top of the Scepter ; In the pictures of the two Queens, it is shewn by the like shade passing over the top of a Flower ; and in the other three, by passing over the end of a troncheon, which each of them hold in their hands." Under each picture was written a chronograph for the year 1669 (the year in which the dial was set up) and suitable to the person. The King ordered the dial to be covered in the winter, but, alas! this order was forgotten, and the dial was " much endamaged by the snow lying long frozen upon it."
During the latter years of the seventeenth century it became the fashion to lay out a small garden in the form of a sundial, the figures being of box, yew, or any other suitable shrub. There are illustrations of these sundials in Loggan's Cantabrigia Illustrata and Oxonia Illustrata, the plans showing sundials laid out thus in the gardens of New College, Oxford, and Queen's College and Pembroke, Cambridge. William Hughes, in the 1692 edition of his Flower Garden gives full instructions for the making of these sundials. He suggests the figures being cut in rosemary, hyssop, thyme or box, and he gives the inter- esting information that these living sundials were much in favour in the West Indies, where they were planted with myrtle or cypress.
St. Paul's Cathedral was rebuilt, unfortunately, just when sundials were beginning to go out of fashion, and how the citizens must have missed the " goodly dial " destroyed in the Great Fire. This dial was " made with all the splendour that might be, with its angel pointing to the hour, both of the day and night." It is curious that Sir Christopher Wren should not have adorned his masterpiece with a sundial, for in his youth he was accounted " an ingenious dialler," and Evelyn records that when he dined with Dr. Wilkins at Wadham College, his host showed him a wonderful collection of sundials, and beehives built like miniature palaces, complete in every detail of their exteriors, even to wind-vanes and sundials. Most of these curiosities were of his own, workmanship and of " that prodigious young scholar Mr. Chr. Wren."
St. Paul's was but one of several Cathedral dials where an angel pointed the hour. Over the doors of the south entrance of York Minster there was formerly an old dial on each side of which two " images " beat the quarters on small bells. Both at Chartres and Laon angels hold the dials, and who can forget that strong, beautiful angel at Chartres, which for over three hundred years has pointed the hour ? ELEANOUR SINCLAIR ROHDE.
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