The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon

by Washington Irving

  WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

  When I behold, with deep astonishment, To famous Westminster how there resorte, Living in brasse or stoney monument, The princes and the worthies of all sorte; Doe not I see reformde nobilitie, Without contempt, or pride, or ostentation, And looke upon offenselesse majesty, Naked of pomp or earthly domination? And how a play-game of a painted stone Contents the quiet now and silent sprites, Whome all the world which late they stood upon Could not content nor quench their appetites. Life is a frost of cold felicitie, And death the thaw of all our vanitie. CHRISTOLERO'S EPIGRAMS, BY T. B. 1598.

  ON one of those sober and rather melancholy days in the latter part ofautumn when the shadows of morning and evening almost mingle together,and throw a gloom over the decline of the year, I passed several hoursin rambling about Westminster Abbey. There was something congenial tothe season in the mournful magnificence of the old pile, and as I passedits threshold it seemed like stepping back into the regions of antiquityand losing myself among the shades of former ages.

  I entered from the inner court of Westminster School, through a long,low, vaulted passage that had an almost subterranean look, being dimlylighted in one part by circular perforations in the massive walls.Through this dark avenue I had a distant view of the cloisters, withthe figure of an old verger in his black gown moving along their shadowyvaults, and seeming like a spectre from one of the neighboring tombs.The approach to the abbey through these gloomy monastic remains preparesthe mind for its solemn contemplation. The cloisters still retainsomething of the quiet and seclusion of former days. The gray walls arediscolored by damps and crumbling with age; a coat of hoary moss hasgathered over the inscriptions of the mural monuments, and obscured thedeath's heads and other funeral emblems. The sharp touches of the chiselare gone from the rich tracery of the arches; the roses which adornedthe keystones have lost their leafy beauty; everything bears marks ofthe gradual dilapidations of time, which yet has something touching andpleasing in its very decay.

  The sun was pouring down a yellow autumnal ray into the square ofthe cloisters, beaming upon a scanty plot of grass in the centre,and lighting up an angle of the vaulted passage with a kind of duskysplendor. From between the arcades the eye glanced up to a bit of bluesky or a passing cloud, and beheld the sun-gilt pinnacles of the abbeytowering into the azure heaven.

  As I paced the cloisters, sometimes contemplating this mingledpicture of glory and decay, and sometimes endeavoring to decipher theinscriptions on the tombstones which formed the pavement beneath myfeet, my eye was attracted to three figures rudely carved in relief,but nearly worn away by the footsteps of many generations. They werethe effigies of three of the early abbots; the epitaphs were entirelyeffaced; the names alone remained, having no doubt been renewed in latertimes (Vitalis. Abbas. 1082, and Gislebertus Crispinus. Abbas. 1114,and Laurentius. Abbas. 1176). I remained some little while, musing overthese casual relics of antiquity thus left like wrecks upon this distantshore of time, telling no tale but that such beings had been and hadperished, teaching no moral but the futility of that pride which hopesstill to exact homage in its ashes and to live in an inscription. Alittle longer, and even these faint records will be obliterated and themonument will cease to be a memorial. Whilst I was yet looking downupon the gravestones I was roused by the sound of the abbey clock,reverberating from buttress to buttress and echoing among the cloisters.It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time soundingamong the tombs and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow,has rolled us onward towards the grave. I pursued my walk to anarched door opening to the interior of the abbey. On entering here themagnitude of the building breaks fully upon the mind, contrasted withthe vaults of the cloisters. The eyes gaze with wonder at clusteredcolumns of gigantic dimensions, with arches springing from them to suchan amazing height, and man wandering about their bases, shrunk intoinsignificance in comparison with his own handiwork. The spaciousnessand gloom of this vast edifice produce a profound and mysterious awe.We step cautiously and softly about, as if fearful of disturbing thehallowed silence of the tomb, while every footfall whispers along thewalls and chatters among the sepulchres, making us more sensible of thequiet we have interrupted.

  It seems as if the awful nature of the place presses down upon the souland hushes the beholder into noiseless reverence. We feel that we aresurrounded by the congregated bones of the great men of past times, whohave filled history with their deeds and the earth with their renown.

  And yet it almost provokes a smile at the vanity of human ambitionto see how they are crowded together and jostled in the dust; whatparsimony is observed in doling out a scanty nook, a gloomy corner, alittle portion of earth, to those whom, when alive, kingdoms could notsatisfy, and how many shapes and forms and artifices are devised tocatch the casual notice of the passenger, and save from forgetfulnessfor a few short years a name which once aspired to occupy ages of theworld's thought and admiration.

  I passed some time in Poet's Corner, which occupies an end of one ofthe transepts or cross aisles of the abbey. The monuments are generallysimple, for the lives of literary men afford no striking themes forthe sculptor. Shakespeare and Addison have statues erected to theirmemories, but the greater part have busts, medallions, and sometimesmere inscriptions. Notwithstanding the simplicity of these memorials,I have always observed that the visitors to the abbey remained longestabout them. A kinder and fonder feeling takes place of that coldcuriosity or vague admiration with which they gaze on the splendidmonuments of the great and the heroic. They linger about these as aboutthe tombs of friends and companions, for indeed there is something ofcompanionship between the author and the reader. Other men are knownto posterity only through the medium of history, which is continuallygrowing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author andhis fellowmen is ever new, active, and immediate. He has lived for themmore than for himself; he has sacrificed surrounding enjoyments, andshut himself up from the delights of social life, that he might the moreintimately commune with distant minds and distant ages. Well may theworld cherish his renown, for it has been purchased not by deeds ofviolence and blood, but by the diligent dispensation of pleasure.Well may posterity be grateful to his memory, for he has left it aninheritance not of empty names and sounding actions, but whole treasuresof wisdom, bright gems of thought, and golden veins of language.

  From Poet's Corner I continued my stroll towards that part of the abbeywhich contains the sepulchres of the kings. I wandered among what oncewere chapels, but which are now occupied by the tombs and monumentsof the great. At every turn I met with some illustrious name or thecognizance of some powerful house renowned in history. As the eyedarts into these dusky chambers of death it catches glimpses of quainteffigies--some kneeling in niches, as if in devotion; others stretchedupon the tombs, with hands piously pressed together; warriors in armor,as if reposing after battle; prelates, with crosiers and mitres; andnobles in robes and coronets, lying as it were in state. In glancingover this scene, so strangely populous, yet where every form is so stilland silent, it seems almost as if we were treading a mansion of thatfabled city where every being had been suddenly transmuted into stone.

  I paused to contemplate a tomb on which lay the effigy of a knight incomplete armor. A large buckler was on one arm; the hands were pressedtogether in supplication upon the breast; the face was almost covered bythe morion; the legs were crossed, in token of the warrior's having beenengaged in the holy war. It was the tomb of a crusader, of one of thosemilitary enthusiasts who so strangely mingled religion and romance,and whose exploits form the connecting link between fact and fiction,between the history and the fairytale. There is something extremelypicturesque in the tombs of these adventurers, decorated as they arewith rude armorial bearings and Gothic sculpture. They comport with theantiquated chapels in which they are generally found; and in consideringthem the imagination is apt to kindle with the legendary associations,the romanti
c fiction, the chivalrous pomp and pageantry which poetry hasspread over the wars for the sepulchre of Christ. They are the relicsof times utterly gone by, of beings passed from recollection, of customsand manners with which ours have no affinity. They are like objects fromsome strange and distant land of which we have no certain knowledge,and about which all our conceptions are vague and visionary. There issomething extremely solemn and awful in those effigies on Gothic tombs,extended as if in the sleep of death or in the supplication of the dyinghour. They have an effect infinitely more impressive on my feelingsthan the fanciful attitudes, the over wrought conceits, the allegoricalgroups which abound on modern monuments. I have been struck, also, withthe superiority of many of the old sepulchral inscriptions. There was anoble way in former times of saying things simply, and yet sayingthem proudly; and I do not know an epitaph that breathes a loftierconsciousness of family worth and honorable lineage than one whichaffirms of a noble house that "all the brothers were brave and all thesisters virtuous."

  In the opposite transept to Poet's Corner stands a monument which isamong the most renowned achievements of modern art, but which tome appears horrible rather than sublime. It is the tomb of Mrs.Nightingale, by Roubillac. The bottom of the monument is representedas throwing open its marble doors, and a sheeted skeleton is startingforth. The shroud is falling from his fleshless frame as he launches hisdart at his victim. She is sinking into her affrighted husband's arms,who strives with vain and frantic effort to avert the blow. The wholeis executed with terrible truth and spirit; we almost fancy we hearthe gibbering yell of triumph bursting from the distended jaws of thespectre. But why should we thus seek to clothe death with unnecessaryterrors, and to spread horrors round the tomb of those we love? Thegrave should be surrounded by everything that might inspire tendernessand veneration for the dead, or that might win the living to virtue. Itis the place not of disgust and dismay, but of sorrow and meditation.

  While wandering about these gloomy vaults and silent aisles, studyingthe records of the dead, the sound of busy existence from withoutoccasionally reaches the ear--the rumbling of the passing equipage, themurmur of the multitude, or perhaps the light laugh of pleasure. Thecontrast is striking with the deathlike repose around; and it has astrange effect upon the feelings thus to hear the surges of active lifehurrying along and beating against the very walls of the sepulchre.

  I continued in this way to move from tomb to tomb and from chapelto chapel. The day was gradually wearing away; the distant tread ofloiterers about the abbey grew less and less frequent; the sweet-tonguedbell was summoning to evening prayers; and I saw at a distance thechoristers in their white surplices crossing the aisle and enteringthe choir. I stood before the entrance to Henry the Seventh's chapel. Aflight of steps leads up to it through a deep and gloomy but magnificentarch. Great gates of brass, richly and delicately wrought, turn heavilyupon their hinges, as if proudly reluctant to admit the feet of commonmortals into this most gorgeous of sepulchres.

  On entering the eye is astonished by the pomp of architecture and theelaborate beauty of sculptured detail. The very walls are wrought intouniversal ornament encrusted with tracery, and scooped into nichescrowded with the statues of saints and martyrs. Stone seems, by thecunning labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight anddensity, suspended aloft as if by magic, and the fretted roof achievedwith the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb.

  Along the sides of the chapel are the lofty stalls of the Knights ofthe Bath, richly carved of oak, though with the grotesque decorationsof Gothic architecture. On the pinnacles of the stalls are affixed thehelmets and crests of the knights, with their scarfs and swords,and above them are suspended their banners, emblazoned with armorialbearings, and contrasting the splendor of gold and purple and crimsonwith the cold gray fretwork of the roof. In the midst of this grandmausoleum stands the sepulchre of its founder--his effigy, with that ofhis queen, extended on a sumptuous tomb--and the whole surrounded by asuperbly-wrought brazen railing.

  There is a sad dreariness in this magnificence, this strange mixture oftombs and trophies, these emblems of living and aspiring ambition,close beside mementos which show the dust and oblivion in which allmust sooner or later terminate. Nothing impresses the mind with a deeperfeeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene offormer throng and pageant. On looking round on the vacant stalls ofthe knights and their esquires, and on the rows of dusty but gorgeousbanners that were once borne before them, my imagination conjured up thescene when this hall was bright with the valor and beauty of the land,glittering with the splendor of jewelled rank and military array, alivewith the tread of many feet and the hum of an admiring multitude. Allhad passed away; the silence of death had settled again upon the place,interrupted only by the casual chirping of birds, which had foundtheir way into the chapel and built their nests among its friezes andpendants--sure signs of solitariness and desertion.

  When I read the names inscribed on the banners, they were those of menscattered far and wide about the world--some tossing upon distant seas:some under arms in distant lands; some mingling in the busy intriguesof courts and cabinets,--all seeking to deserve one more distinction inthis mansion of shadowy honors--the melancholy reward of a monument.

  Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present a touching instanceof the equality of the grave, which brings down the oppressor to alevel with the oppressed and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemiestogether. In one is the sepulchre of the haughty Elizabeth; in the otheris that of her victim, the lovely and unfortunate Mary. Not an hour inthe day but some ejaculation of pity is uttered over the fate ofthe latter, mingled with indignation at her oppressor. The walls ofElizabeth's sepulchre continually echo with the sighs of sympathy heavedat the grave of her rival.

  A peculiar melancholy reigns over the aisle where Mary lies buried. Thelight struggles dimly through windows darkened by dust. The greater partof the place is in deep shadow, and the walls are stained and tinted bytime and weather. A marble figure of Mary is stretched upon the tomb,round which is an iron railing, much corroded, bearing her nationalemblem--the thistle. I was weary with wandering, and sat down torest myself by the monument, revolving in my mind the chequered anddisastrous story of poor Mary.

  The sound of casual footsteps had ceased from the abbey. I could onlyhear, now and then, the distant voice of the priest repeating theevening service and the faint responses of the choir; these paused fora time, and all was hushed. The stillness, the desertion, and obscuritythat were gradually prevailing around gave a deeper and more solemninterest to the place;

  For in the silent grave no conversation, No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers, No careful father's counsel--nothing's heard, For nothing is, but all oblivion, Dust, and an endless darkness.

  Suddenly the notes of the deep-laboring organ burst upon the ear,falling with doubled and redoubled intensity, and rolling, as it were,huge billows of sound. How well do their volume and grandeur accordwith this mighty building! With what pomp do they swell through its vastvaults, and breathe their awful harmony through these caves of death,and make the silent sepulchre vocal! And now they rise in triumphantacclamation, heaving higher and higher their accordant notes and pilingsound on sound. And now they pause, and the soft voices of the choirbreak out into sweet gushes of melody; they soar aloft and warble alongthe roof, and seem to play about these lofty vaults like the pureairs of heaven. Again the pealing organ heaves its thrilling thunders,compressing air into music, and rolling it forth upon the soul. Whatlong-drawn cadences! What solemn sweeping concords! It grows more andmore dense and powerful; it fills the vast pile and seems to jar thevery walls--the ear is stunned--the senses are overwhelmed. And now itis winding up in full jubilee--it is rising from the earth to heaven;the very soul seems rapt away and floated upwards on this swelling tideof harmony!

  I sat for some time lost in that kind of reverie which a strain ofmusic is apt sometimes to inspire: the shadows of e
vening were graduallythickening round me; the monuments began to cast deeper and deepergloom; and the distant clock again gave token of the slowly waning day.

  I rose and prepared to leave the abbey. As I descended the flight ofsteps which lead into the body of the building, my eye was caught by theshrine of Edward the Confessor, and I ascended the small staircase thatconducts to it, to take from thence a general survey of this wildernessof tombs. The shrine is elevated upon a kind of platform, and closearound it are the sepulchres of various kings and queens. From thiseminence the eye looks down between pillars and funeral trophies tothe chapels and chambers below, crowded with tombs, where warriors,prelates, courtiers, and statesmen lie mouldering in their "beds ofdarkness." Close by me stood the great chair of coronation, rudelycarved of oak in the barbarous taste of a remote and Gothic age. Thescene seemed almost as if contrived with theatrical artifice to producean effect upon the beholder. Here was a type of the beginning and theend of human pomp and power; here it was literally but a step from thethrone to the sepulchre. Would not one think that these incongruousmementos had been gathered together as a lesson to living greatness?--toshow it, even in the moment of its proudest exaltation, the neglectand dishonor to which it must soon arrive--how soon that crown whichencircles its brow must pass away, and it must lie down in the dust anddisgraces of the tomb, and be trampled upon by the feet of the meanestof the multitude. For, strange to tell, even the grave is here no longera sanctuary. There is a shocking levity in some natures which leads themto sport with awful and hallowed things, and there are base mindswhich delight to revenge on the illustrious dead the abject homage andgrovelling servility which they pay to the living. The coffin of Edwardthe Confessor has been broken open, and his remains despoiled of theirfunereal ornaments; the sceptre has been stolen from the hand of theimperious Elizabeth; and the effigy of Henry the Fifth lies headless.Not a royal monument but bears some proof how false and fugitive is thehomage of mankind. Some are plundered, some mutilated, some covered withribaldry and insult,--all more or less outraged and dishonored.

  The last beams of day were now faintly streaming through the paintedwindows in the high vaults above me; the lower parts of the abbey werealready wrapped in the obscurity of twilight. The chapels and aislesgrew darker and darker. The effigies of the kings faded into shadows;the marble figures of the monuments assumed strange shapes in theuncertain light; the evening breeze crept through the aisles like thecold breath of the grave; and even the distant footfall of a verger,traversing the Poet's Corner, had something strange and dreary in itssound. I slowly retraced my morning's walk, and as I passed out at theportal of the cloisters, the door, closing with a jarring noise behindme, filled the whole building with echoes.

  I endeavored to form some arrangement in my mind of the objects Ihad been contemplating, but found they were already falling intoindistinctness and confusion. Names, inscriptions, trophies, had allbecome confounded in my recollection, though I had scarcely taken myfoot from off the threshold. What, thought I, is this vast assemblageof sepulchres but a treasury of humiliation--a huge pile of reiteratedhomilies on the emptiness of renown and the certainty of oblivion? Itis, indeed, the empire of death; his great shadowy palace where he sitsin state mocking at the relics of human glory and spreading dust andforgetfulness on the monuments of princes. How idle a boast, after all,is the immortality of a name! Time is ever silently turning over hispages; we are too much engrossed by the story of the present to thinkof the characters and anecdotes that gave interest to the past; andeach age is a volume thrown aside to be speedily forgotten. The idol ofto-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection, and will inturn be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow. "Our fathers," says SirThomas Browne, "find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tellus how we may be buried in our survivors." History fades into fable;fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscriptionmoulders from the tablet; the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns,arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand, and their epitaphsbut characters written in the dust? What is the security of a tomb orthe perpetuity of an embalmment? The remains of Alexander the Great havebeen scattered to the wind, and his empty sarcophagus is now the merecuriosity of a museum. "The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or timehath spared, avarice now consumeth; Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh issold for balsams."*

  What then is to ensure this pile which now towers above me from sharingthe fate of mightier mausoleums? The time must come when its gildedvaults which now spring so loftily, shall lie in rubbish beneath thefeet; when instead of the sound of melody and praise the wind shallwhistle through the broken arches and the owl hoot from the shatteredtower; when the garish sunbeam shall break into these gloomy mansions ofdeath, and the ivy twine round the fallen column; and the fox-glove hangits blossoms about the nameless urn, as if in mockery of the dead.Thus man passes away; his name passes from record and recollection; hishistory is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin.

  * Sir T. Browne.