MARGINAL COMMENTS
By E. L. WOODWARD
WAS looking in the London Library at a repro- duction of the Sforza book of hours. This book is. a curious fifteenth-century jumble ; the liturgy of the Church in a setting of playful Cupids and the pornps and vanities of the Renaissance. Yet among the Italian illu- minations there are some graver Flemish pictures with a Christian content. One of these miniatures shows the Three Kings bringing their gifts. The setting, as a matter of course, is contemporary. Two Flemish grandees are' standing, and a black king is kneeling, in a gabled fifteenth-century house. The thatched roof is open to the sky, and a ray of light from the star of the Nativity falls across the centre of the picture. A rich eastern stuff hangs, between two pillars, sheltering the Mother and Child, and dividing off the stable. You can see the heads of two oxen, a little disturbed by the commotion. In the distance there are horsemen with spears and pennants.
I can never think of the legend Of the Three Kings without transmuting the story of the Nativity into iny own time and my own surroundings. I wonder. what would happen if the travellers to the inn at Bethlehem knocked at the doors of the, houses I may be passing- Today, as I crossed St. James's Square, 1,-thought; suppose these travellers asked for shelter in the basement of one of the clubs in Pall Mall. Suppose they had come to my own-house. I -imagine I should have-given them a ticket for the Church Army, and telephoned next morning about them to a local charitable organisation: - As I was walking with these thoughts in my mind, I passed another Nativity scene, dexteronsly. arranged, but infinitely incongruous ; an advertisement of. Christmas in Bavaria (with winter sports). Jewish shepherds coming to worship the Child of a Jewish Mother. Venite adoremete. How many of these Bavarian hotels' would- -have found room for the Travellers ?. 'And the eeleStial music . . drowned in the bawling at-Nuremberg, and the tranpl'of Herod's Arialy. • Herod's officers are not going to make a mistake this time.
. I went down the subway to Piccadilly Underground station ; a hateful place, full of shadows ; can nothing be done to make it less like one of the outer circles of hell, or the Shape of Things to Come .for these thousands of people hurrying down the. years of their lives ? . I was still thinking of the-Three Kings and the Shepherds. For a few seconds I had a sudden fancy that some of the ticket Machines and kiosks had been moved aside; and that, in their place, I saw the stable and the manger.. Mother and Child. Were unconscious of the noise,. the incessant beat of-footsteps, the clink of the machines: The cattle were munching away at their feed.
For some reason there must have come into my mind Thomas Hardy's poem about "The Oxen," and par- ticularly the last line of the poem-" hoping it might he sci " ; but I Shall not see Piccadilly station again without remembering this illumination Of its sunless passages. I took my ticket, and followed the crowd of hurrying men and women. I was jolted down the drab 'stakeà . belo* the level of the dead bodies in churchyards.: ..
The Shepherds, the Three Kings, went to find some- thing of infinite value ; and here -was I, in this aimless procession towards the glow-worm, trains in the tunnels. An aimless procession ? Yet, for the Wise -Men in their search, for the Child in the manger, every figure- on this moving stairway had 'a value beyond naming. I had failed' to notice this. It is a common, failure. 'Years ago at a .tinie when fields bordered the' City of Westminster, the people of England had a song about ending With the words, "The King's Sop of Heaven shall pay for-all."
Previous page
