University of Virginia Library

1. [From the Author's Unpublished English Notes.]
A MEMORABLE MIDNIGHT EXPERIENCE.

“Come along—and hurry. Few people
have got originality enough to think of the
expedition I have been planning, and still
fewer could carry it out, may be, even if
they did think of it. Hurry, now. Cab
at the door.”

It was past eleven o'clock, and I was just
going to bed. But this friend of mine was
as reliable as he was eccentric, and so
there was not a doubt in my mind that his
“Expedition” had merit in it. I put on
my coat and boots again, and we drove
away.

“Where is it? Where are we going?”

“Don't worry. You'll see.”

He was not inclined to talk. So I
thought this must be a weighty matter.
My curiosity grew with the minutes, but I

kept it manfully under the surface. I
watched the lamps, the signs, the numbers,
as we thundered down the long streets, but
it was of no use—I am always lost in London,
day or night. It was very chilly—
almost bleak. People leaned against the
gusty blasts as if it were the dead of winter.
The crowds grew thinner and thinner, and
the noises waxed faint and seemed far
away. The sky was overcast and threatening.
We drove on, and still on, till I
wondered if we were ever going to stop.
At last we passed by a spacious bridge
and a vast building with a lighted clocktower,
and presently entered a gate-way,
passed through a sort of tunnel and stopped
in a court surrounded by the black outlines
of a great edifice. Then we alighted,
walked a dozen steps or so, and waited.
In a little while foot-steps were heard,
and a man emerged from the darkness
and we dropped into his wake without
saying anything. He led us under an archway
of masonry and from that into a roomy
tunnel, through a tall iron gate, which he
locked behind us. We followed him down
this tunnel, guided more by his footsteps
on the stone flagging than by anything we
could very distinctly see. At the end of it
we came to another iron gate, and our conductor
stopped there and lighted a little
bull's-eye lantern. Then he unlocked the
gate—and I wished he had oiled it first, it
grated so dismally. The gate swung open
and we stood on the threshold of what
seemed a limitless domed and pillared
cavern carved out of the solid darkness.
The conductor and my friend took off their
hats reverently, and I did likewise. Thus
for the moment that we stood there, there
was not a sound; and the silence seemed
to add to the solemnity of the gloom. I
looked my inquiry. He answered:

“It is the tomb of the great dead of
England—Westminster Abbey!”

!

(One cannot express a start—in words.)
Down among the columns—ever so far
away, it seemed—a light revealed itself like
a star, and a voice came echoing through
the spacious emptiness:

“Who goes there?”

“W——!”

The star disappeared and the footsteps
that accompanied it clanked out of hearing
in the distance. Mr. W—— held up his
lantern, and the vague vastness took something
of form to itself—the stately columns
developed stronger outlines, and a dim
pallor here and there marked the places of
lofty windows. We were among the
tombs; and on every hand dull shapes of
men, sitting, standing, or stooping, inspected
us curiously out of the darkness—
reaching out their hands toward us—some
appealing, some beckoning, some warning
us away. Effigies, they were—statues
over the graves; but they looked human
and natural in the murky shadows. Now
a little half-grown black and white cat
squeezed herself through the bars of the
iron gate and came purring lovingly about
us, unawed by the time or the place—unimpressed
by the marble pomp that sepulchres
a line of mighty dead that ends with
a great author of yesterday and began with
a sceptred monarch away back in the dawn
of history more than twelve hundred years
ago. And she followed us about and
never left us while we pursued our work.
We wandered hither and thither, uncovered,
speaking in low voices, and stepping
softly by instinct, for any little noise rang
and echoed there in a way to make one
shudder. Mr. W—— flashed his lantern
first upon this object and then upon that,
and kept up a running commentary that
showed that there was nothing about the
venerable Abbey that was trivial in his
eyes or void of interest. He is a man in
authority, being superintendent of the
works, and his daily business keeps him
familiar with every nook and corner of the
great pile. Casting a luminous ray, now
here, now yonder, he would say:

“Observe the height of the Abbey—one
hundred and three feet to the base of the
roof—I measured it myself the other day.
Notice the base of this column—old, very
old—hundreds and hundreds of years; and
how well they knew how to build in those
old days! Notice it—every stone is laid
horizontally—that is to say, just as nature
laid it originally in the quarry—not set up
edgewise; in our day some people set them
on edge and then wonder why they split and

flake. Architects cannot teach nature anything.
Let me remove this matting—it is
put there to preserve the pavement: now
there is a bit of pavement that is seven
hundred years old; you can see by these
scattering clusters of colored mosaics how
beautiful it was before time and sacrilegious
idlers marred it. Now there, in the
border, was an inscription, once; see,
follow the circle—you can trace it by the
ornaments that have been pulled out—here
is an A, and there is an O, and yonder
another A—all beautiful old English capitals—there
is no telling what the inscription
was—no record left, now. Now move
along in this direction, if you please. Yonder
is where old King Sebert, the Saxon,
lies—his monument is the oldest one in the
Abbey; Sebert died in six hundred and
sixteen, and that's as much as twelve
hundred and fifty years ago—think of it!
—twelve hundred and fifty years. Now
yonder is the last one—Charles Dickens—
there on the floor, with the brass letters on
the slab—and to this day the people come
and put flowers on it. Why, along at first
they almost had to cart the flowers out,
there were so many. Could not leave them
there, you know, because it's where everybody
walks—and a body wouldn't want
them trampled on, anyway. All this place
about here now, is the Poet's Corner.
There is Garrick's monument; and Addison's,
and Thackeray's bust—and Macaulay
lies there. And here, close to Dickens
and Garrick, lie Sheridan and Dr. Johnson—and
here is old Parr—Thomas Parr
—you can read the inscription:

“Very old man indeed, and saw a deal
of life—come off the grave, Kitty, poor
thing, she keeps the rats away from the
office, and there's no harm in her—her and
her mother. And here—this is Shakspeare's
statue—leaning on his elbow and
pointing with his finger at the lines on the
scroll:

“That stone there covers Campbell the
poet. Here are names you know pretty
well—Milton, and Gray who wrote the
Elegy, and Butler who wrote Hudibras,
and Edmund Spenser, and Ben Jonson—
there are three tablets to him scattered
about this Abbey, and all got `O Rare Ben
Jonson' cut on them—you were standing
on one of them just now—he is buried
standing up. There used to be a tradition
here that explains it. The story goes that
he did not dare ask to be buried in the
Abbey, so he asked King James if he
would make him a present of eighteen
inches of English ground, and the King
said yes, and asked him where he would
have it, and he said in Westminster Abbey.
Well, the King wouldn't go back on his
word, so there he is, sure enough—stood
up on end! Years ago, in Dean Buckland's
time—before my day—they were digging a
grave close to Jonson, and they uncovered

him and his head fell off. Toward night
the clerk of the works hid the head to keep
it from being stolen, as the ground was to
remain open till next day. Presently the
dean's son came along, and he found a
head, and hid it away for Jonson's. And
by-and-by along came a stranger, and he
found a head, too, and walked off with it
under his cloak, and a month or so afterward
he was heard to boast that he had Ben
Jonson's head. Then there was a deal of
correspondence about it in the Times, and
everybody distressed. But Mr. Frank
Buckland came out and comforted everybody
by telling how he saved the true head,
and so the stranger must have got one that
wasn't of any consequence. And then up
speaks the clerk of the works, and tells
how he saved the right head, and so Mr.
Buckland must have got a wrong one.
Well, it was all settled satisfactorily at last,
because the clerk of the works proved his
head. And then I believe they got that
head from the stranger—so now we've got
three. But it shows you what regiments
of people you are walking over—been collecting
here for twelve hundred years,—in
some places no doubt the bones are fairly
matted together.

“And here are some unfortunates.
Under this place lies Annie, Queen of
Richard III and daughter of the Kingmaker,
the great Earl of Warwick—murdered
she was—poisoned by her husband.
And here is a slab which you see has once
had the figure of a man in armor on it in
brass or copper, let into the stone. You
can see the shape of it—but it is all worn
away now, by people's feet—the man has
been dead five hundred years that lies
under it. He was a Knight in Richard II's
time. His enemies pressed him close and
he fled and took sanctuary here in the
Abbey. Generally a man was safe when
he took sanctuary in those days, but this
man was not. The Captain of the Tower
and a band of men pursued him and his
friends, and they had a bloody fight here
on this floor; but this poor fellow did not
stand much of a chance, and they butchered
him right before the altar.”

We wandered over to another part of
the Abbey, and came to a place where the
pavement was being repaired. Every
paving stone has an inscription on it and
covers a grave. Mr. W—— continued:

“Now you are standing on William Pitt's
grave—you can read the name, though it is
a good deal worn—and you, sir, are standing
on the grave of Charles James Fox.
I found a very good place here the other
day—nobody suspected it—been curiously
overlooked somehow—but it is a very nice
place indeed, and very comfortable”
(holding his bull's-eye to the pavement and
searching around)—“Ah, here it is—this is
the stone—nothing under here—nothing
at all—a very nice place indeed—very
comfortable.”

Mr. W—— spoke in a professional way,
of course, and after the manner of a man
who takes an interest in his business, and
is gratified at any piece of good luck that
fortune favors him with; and yet with all
that silence and gloom and solemnity around
us, there was something about his idea of
a nice comfortable place that made the cold
chills creep up my back. Presently we
began to come upon little chamber-like
chapels, with solemn figures ranged around
the sides, lying apparently asleep, in
sumptuous marble alcoves, with their hands
placed together above their breasts—the
figures and all their surroundings black
with age. Some were dukes and earls,
some were kings and queens, some were
ancient abbots, whose effigies had lain
there so many centuries and suffered
such disfigurement that their faces were
almost as smooth and as featureless as
the stony pillows their heads reposed
upon. At one time, while I stood looking
at a distant part of the pavement, admiring
the delicate tracery which the now flooding
moonlight was casting upon it through a
lofty window, the party moved on and I
lost them. The first step I made in the
dark, holding my hands before me, as one
does under such circumstances, I touched
a cold object, and stopped to feel its shape.
I made out a thumb, and then delicate fingers.
It was the clasped, appealing hands
of one of those reposing images—a lady, a
queen. I touched the face—by accident,
not design—and shuddered inwardly, if not
outwardly; and then something rubbed

against my leg, and I shuddered outwardly
and inwardly both. It was the cat. The
friendly creature meant well, but as the
English say, she gave me “such a turn.”
I took her in my arms for company and
wandered among the grim sleepers till I
caught the glimmer of the lantern again,
and then put her down. Presently, in a
little chapel, we were looking at the
sarcophagus, let into the wall, which contains
the bones of the infant princes who
were smothered in the Tower. Behind us
was the stately monument of Queen Elizabeth,
with her effigy dressed in the royal
robes, lying as if at rest. When we turned
around, the cat, with stupendous simplicity,
was coiled up and sound asleep upon the
feet of the Great Queen! Truly this was
reaching far toward the millennium, when
the lion and the lamb shall lie down together.
The murderer of Mary and Essex, the
conqueror of the Armada, the imperious
ruler of a turbulent empire, become a
couch, at last, for a tired kitten! It was
the most eloquent sermon upon the vanity
of human pride and human grandeur that
inspired Westminster preached to us that
night.

We would have turned puss out of the
Abbey, but for the fact that her small body
made light of railed gates, and she would
have come straight back again. We walked
up a flight of half a dozen steps, and stopping
upon a pavement laid down in twelve
hundred and sixty, stood in the core of
English history, as it were—upon the
holiest ground in the British Empire, if
profusion of kingly bones and kingly
names of old renown make holy ground.
For here in this little space were the ashes,
the monuments and the gilded effigies of
ten of the most illustrious personages who
have worn crowns and borne scepters in
this realm. This royal dust was the slow
accumulation of four hundred years. The
latest comer entered into his rest four hundred
years ago, and since the earliest was
sepulchred, more than eight centuries have
drifted by. Edward the Confessor, Henry
the Fifth, Edward the First, Edward the
Third, Richard the Second, Henry the
Third, the queens Eleanor and Philippa
—it was like bringing the colossal myths
of history out of the forgotten ages and
speaking to them face to face. The
gilded effigies were scarcely marred—the
faces were comely and majestic; old Edward
the First looked the King—one had no impulse
to be familiar with him. While we
were contemplating the figure of Queen
Eleanor lying in state, and calling to mind
how like an ordinary human being the great
King mourned for her six hundred years
ago, we saw the vast illuminated clock-face
of Parliament-House tower glowering at us
through a window of the Abbey and pointing
with both hands to midnight. It was a
derisive reminder that we were a part of
this present sordid, plodding, commonplace
time, and not august relics of a by-gone
age and the comrades of kings—and then
the booming of the great bell tolled twelve,
and with the last stroke the mocking clock-face
vanished in sudden darkness and left
us with the past and its grandeurs again.

We descended, and entered the nave of
the noble chapel of Henry VII. Mr.
W—— said:

“Here is where the order of knighthood
was conferred for centuries; the candidates
sat in these seats; these brasses
bear their coats of arms; these are their
banners over head; torn and dusty, poor
old things, for they have hung there many
and many a long year. In the floor you
see inscriptions—kings and queens that
lie in the vault below. When this vault
was opened in our time they found them
lying there in beautiful order—all quiet and
comfortable—the red velvet on the coffins
hardly faded any. And the bodies were
sound—I saw them myself. They were
embalmed, and looked natural, although
they had been there such an awful time.
One of them, though, was in bad condition
—he burst open and fell out on the floor—
just a mess of stuff that looked like pitch,
as you may say. Now in this place here,
which is called the Chantry, is a curious
old group of statuary—the figures are
mourning over George Villiers, Duke of
Buckingham, who was assassinated by
Felton in Charles I's time. Yonder, Cromwell
and his family used to lie. Now we
come to the south aisle, and this is the
grand monument to Mary, Queen of Scots,

and her effigy—you easily see they get all
the portraits from this effigy. Here in the
wall of the aisle is a bit of a curiosity pretty
roughly carved:

“ `William West, tomb-shower, 1698.'
That fellow carved his name around in
several places in the Abbey.”

This was a sort of revelation to me. I
had been wandering through the Abbey
never imagining but that its shows were
created only for us—the people of the
nineteenth century. But here is a man
(become a show himself, now, and a
curiosity,) to whom all these things were
sights and wonders a hundred and seventy-five
years ago. When curious idlers from
the country and from foreign lands came
here to look, he showed them old Sebert's
tomb, and those of the other old worthies
I have been speaking of, and called them
ancient and venerable; and he showed
them Charles II's tomb as the newest and
latest thing he had; and he was doubtless
present at the funeral. Three hundred
years before his time some ancestor of his,
perchance, used to point out the ancient
marvels in the immemorial way and then
say, “This, gentlemen, is the tomb of his
late Majesty Edward the Third—and I wish
I could see him alive and hearty again, as I
saw him twenty years ago; yonder is the
tomb of Sebert the Saxon King—he has
been lying there well on to eight hundred
years, they say.” And three hundred
years before this party, Westminster was
still a show, and Edward the Confessor's
grave was a novelty of some thirty years'
standing—but old “Sebert” was hoary and
ancient still, and people who spoke of
Alfred the Great as a comparatively recent
man, pondered over Sebert's grave and
tried to take in all the tremendous meaning
of it when the “toome-shower” said, “This
man has lain here well nigh five hundred
years.” It does seem as if all the generations
that have lived and died since the
world was created, have visited Westminster
to stare and wonder—and still found
ancient things there. And some day a
curiously clad company may arrive here in
a balloon-ship from some remote corner of
the globe, and as they follow the verger
among the monuments they may hear him
say: “This is the tomb of Victoria the
Good Queen; battered and uncouth as it
looks, it once was a wonder of magnificence
—but twelve hundred years work a deal of
damage to these things!”

As we turned toward the door, the
moonlight was beaming in at the windows;
and it gave to the sacred place such an
air of restfulness and peace, that Westminster
was no longer a grisly museum
of mouldering vanities, but her better
and worthier self—the deathless mentor
of a great nation, the guide and encourager
of right ambitions, the preserver
of fame, and the home and refuge for the
nation's best and bravest when their work
is done.