Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE TOWER OF LONDON.

THERE is something very pleasant in the appearance of a new house. The walls are so clean, the roof so perfect, the windows so cheerfullooking, and the very doors seeming so ready to open without any noise or difficulty on their hospitable hinge. And yet we are forced to confess that, though a new house gives one very agreeable ideas of comfort and convenience, it is not so picturesque as an old one. The scenery of England would lose very much of its beauty if its fields and parks were not dotted over with quaint, gable-ended mansions, ornamented with tall chimneys, and steep red-tiled roofs, grown grey with the rains and sunshine of two or three hundred years. Castles, also, perched like a robber on some eminence, to command a view of the public road at its foot, lifting their towers and turrets up into the sky, form a beautiful feature in the landscape, and add a new sort of interest to the tract of country we are journeying through. But does it ever strike one traveller out of ten, what is the cause of the interest we take in these old dwellings? It can't be their mere shape and position, for it is possible to devise more regular plans, and to discover more fitting situations. No-it is the history of the human feelings, of which these places have been the theatre, that involuntarily rises to our minds; it is the cares, the loves, the joys and sorrows of which those old walls have been the witnesses, that invest them, to the thoughtful heart, with a far deeper and more enduring interest than ever can attach themselves to stone and lime. Not a house in all England that has stood for two hundred years, that has not a tale to tell that would astonish the writers of romance; not a room that has not its memory of death or marriage-of the bride coming into it in the splendour of her beauty, of the same, when fifty years have past, being carried out of it, mourned by her descendants of the third generation; or, perhaps, neglected and forgotten as one who has lived too long. But who is there

that can chronicle all the deeds of cruelty or of kindness, the vicissitudes of misery or happiness, that have occurred in those old houses? It must be sufficient for the traveller to know, that wherever men and women have resided these incidents must have occurred-children must have been born, must have died-in their youth, in their manhood, in their old age-and sights and sounds, hopes and disappointments and sorrows, must have been as profusely scattered along the devious paths that conducted them from the cradle to the grave, as we ourselves find them in our daily progress from the same starting point to the same end. It is the recollections, then (if we may call them so, since they are not of any particular incident, but only of the inevitable events that we may venture to take on trust)—it is the memory of the past, and not the architectural style of the building, that gives such a charm to the queer corners and innumerable windows of a mansion of the days of old. In themselves, many people have maintained that those broken lines and fantastic ornaments are not half so beautiful as the plain solidity of the Grecian architecture and the massive solemnity of the palaces of Italy; but to us English they assume a higher character than any mere beauty of collocation can bestow, for they are treasuries of English feelings-English history-English life. Elizabeth rises before us as she stood when the Armada was defeated. Charles I. with his ceremonious statelinessthe Cavaliers and the Roundheadsthe burly figure and unconquerable will of Oliver Cromwell-the resolute independence of Hampden-the chivalrous courage of Walter Raleigh, and the sweet feminine grace of Lucy Hutchinson, or Lady Russell. These are the thoughts and associations that make an old house so charming; but first-for one doesn't like even to be pleased on false pretences-is the house old? Has it stood in cloud and sunshine all those years? Is it contemporary with the historic men

whose time its style of architecture recalls? If so-all hail, old farm and manor!-walled castle and moated grange!-for humanity has breathed its spirit into your stones, and you grow half human yourselves from having sheltered so many generations of men. But if it is not in reality an old house-if it was built yesterday, and pretends to have stood, as we now see it, grey with artificial mosses, crumbling even, in some parts, with artificial ruinwhat are we to say?

If the builder's receipt is not yet dry, and it pretends notwithstanding to whisper to us about Henry VIII. and Bloody Mary, and James I., what shall we think of it? Why, that it is an impostor,-that it is like a London beggar of thirty or forty years old, who turns up the whites of his eyes, and totters as he walks, leaning heavily on a stick, with a placard on his bosom, bearing in large letters," Thomas Tudor, an old man of a hundred and five, past work and totally blind." It ought to be looked on as extorting admiration from us under false pretences, and not a bit more respectable than any other deceiver. A house of the Nineteenth century should be a house for the Nineteenth century to live in. The Fifteenth century was a blustering, quarrelsome fellow, and lived in a house with strong barricades all round it, his walls pierced with narrow holes, through which he could shoot his visitors, if he did not think they were approaching him in a friendly manner. The Sixteenth century improved a little on this, but still flanked his house with turrets that commanded the entrance-door, and had an immense gate studded with iron nails, and insurmountable walls round his courtyard. The Seventeenth grew still more civilised. He turned the ramparts of his house into a shrubbery, and the dried-up bed of the moat into a bowlinggreen. But the house was still on the look-out for dangers, and had a tower where a sentinel took note of what was passing within his range. The Eighteenth was a remarkably peaceful individual, and took down his turrets, and made his guardroom into the dairy, and the dungeons

into wine and beer cellars. He also introduced straight walks into his garden, turned the moat into a fishpond, and cut all his trees into the shapes of men, and peacocks, and elephants, and other objects of natural history. He also discharged his warder, and paid for protection by a subscription to the county police. He was a smug, careful, pushing fellow, and laid out more money on his warehouses than on his private dwelling, for he began to smell from afar the spices of India, and the cotton-fields of America, and the commerce of the world, and the empire of the seas. And then came in the Nineteenth century, such a being as has never been seen before. He upset all the thrones of Europe in his youth, and kicked them about as if they were really nothing but old chairs. He put a little water into a pot, and put some coals under it, and by the aid of a few wheels and axles, he careers up rivers where civilised man never penetrated before; he crosses the Atlantic at fifteen miles an hour against wind and tide; he beats the farthest waters of the Pacific into a white foam around his paddles. But he does more. He makes the sun himself draw his landscapes. He makes the lightning itself carry his messages, and he pauses at this moment on the top of the elevation he has reached, not to rest contented with the contemplation of the valleys at his feet, but to take a wider survey of the lands still to be discovered-the powers yet to be evoked from the cells in which they have been hidden from every eye but his. And now this Nineteenth century-this "Heir of all the Ages in the foremost files of time"-can't find out a style of architecture stamped with his own image and character, to be transmitted to his descendants as a sample of his genius and disposition, but is forced to go back and hide his poverty of invention in a large, highturretted, square-towered, moated, draw-bridged, narrow-windowed, winding staired, long passaged, windy, gusty, out-and-in, up-anddown, old Gothic castle, exactly the same as would have been built for his great-great-grandfather, while

Warwick the kingmaker and other turbulent barons were fighting with Henry VI.

Now what do we of these peaceful days, when two policemen dressed in blue keep a whole district in order what do we want with drawbridges, and portcullises, and donjon towers, and bartisans, and turrets? There was a fitness for all these things in the days of old. The lord of the mansion dined in his hall with all his friends and retainers. When the meals were over, the serving-men, the men-at-arms, the dependants of the household, lay down upon the straw with which the floor was covered, and the hall became the dormitory of the family. No wonder, therefore, the hall was the largest apartment in the house, with the handsomest and widest fireplace, the greatest appearance of comfort, and the most habitable look. It is a fit subject for laughter to see a new house rising with a prodigious hall. It is a great waste of space-it is a reproduction of a fashion when the significancy of it is worn out. Things ought always to be in keeping with each other, and when a worthy citizen retires from trade, and builds him a feudal fortalice instead of a cottage ornée, he ought certainly to exchange his taglioni or comfortable great-coat, for a cuirass of steel, or at least for a buff jerkin. His black hat, or if he is a wise man, his wide-awake, must give place to helm and visor. He must dine in the great hall on a boar roasted whole, and never take a quiet ride on his shooting pony without an immense sword by his side, and a spear in his hand, wherewith to hack to pieces and trausfix any of his tenants with whom he is not altogether pleased. These observations, however, are meant to apply only to houses of recent date. The old should by all means be continued in the enjoyment of every original feature; repairs must be conducted in the taste and spirit of the primitive building. If it be of Henry the Eighth's time, let not one alteration be made so as to confound it with the cognate style of Elizabeth and James. If it is still earlier, keep to it in all its external design. Show us the complete mansion of the he

roes of the Crusades of the men who fought at Crecy and Poictiersof the conquerors at Agincourt, of the adherents of the rival Roses, and they will be pictorial representations to us of great historic periods, landmarks to guide us in our inquiries into the state of architecture, and thence of manners, at different times. Now we have seen that preceding ages have built up monuments for themselves in stone and lime, from which, without any inscription, we can read their epitaphs with the utmost ease. Is this to be the only age that is to die and make no sign? Having done everything else, can't we build a Nineteenth Century house?

Our earliest ancestors in this island lived in beehives; that is, on three crossed sticks was put a little thatch, which reached to the ground, leaving only an opening on the surface for the inhabitant to creep in by. What stone and lime, polished deals and smooth slates were to them, let some new and hitherto unused material be to us. Let us take the glazed and hollow bricks in the meantime, as an advance on our previous ways; but let us persevere in availing ourselves of anything that ingenuity suggests, and a moderate experience warrants, and not many years will elapse before we talk of the period of poor, tasteless, shapeless stone cottages and tile roofs, as we now talk of the period of the Ichthyosaurus and the Megatherion, and other extinct monsters of frightful ugliness and very little use. Nobody denies that in every district there are many comfortable looking and pretty dwellings-houses of a pleasant, habitable appearance, that tell you the occupiers are very well off in the world-people with pleasant balances at their bankers, regular appetites at five o'clock, and the bedroom candles brought in punctually at half-past ten. This is a style of house that fulfils one of the purposes for which we contend-namely, that the outside of a mansion should give you some idea of what sort of being the inhabitant of it is; and what may be called the middle class dwellinghouse, being adapted for a middle class such as never existed before, does certainly bear the impress of the

middle class for whom it is designed. There would be no mistaking its comfortable boiled beef and turnip sort of expression, for the "foray or starve" look of a Scotch tower; but a modern antiquity is like a false date, it is apt to mislead, and has the same amount of fitness as if a sane man were to raise a house for himself according to the plan and elevation of a lunatic asylum; or a gentleman at large were to build an exact imitation of a model prison.

But there is one style of building which it is to be hoped will never change, and that is the Ecclesiastical. The church that is built to-day should always have the same distinctive features as the churches that first uprose in this island in the light of Christianity. There is no false date here, no assumption of antiquity, nothing that misleads the observer. And the reason is this. There is a sameness in the purpose to which it is devoted. The worship now carried on within it, though of a purer form, is addressed to the same unchangeable and Almighty Being who heard the first prayers of the converted heathen in this land. There is no change of manners here, as has occurred in the inhabitant of the modern feudal castle, and therefore there is no impropriety in preserving the same style of building, which has become consecrated in our minds by the one unvarying use to which it has been applied. To show how completely this is the case, we have only to imagine how absurd the appearance would be of a dwelling-house built on this model a little library in the bell-tower, or a bedroom in the steeple. Churches and chapels were equally deficient some years ago, in the application of the Ecclesiastical style. You rode through a village, and you saw a barn at one end of it, with a belfry, and a barn at the other without a belfry. One was the church and the other the chapel; both applied to the one holy purpose of teaching and prayer, and both utterly destitute of the outward appearance of a place of worship at all. In both a great improvement has taken place. The poorest of dissenting bodies endeavour to bestow some adornment on the outside of their temple,-a

lance-window or a peaked gable-end; the most outlying parishes are ambitious also of showing some outward sign of their Christian profession in the repairing and amending of their churches. In all, you will see an approach to the old Ecclesiastical style, a divergence, as far as possible, from the appearance of an inhabited house-of a town-hall- of a shop-or of a feudal tower. People need not worship with less devotion that their meetings are held in a chapel which can no longer be mistaken for a cow-shed, nor that their parish-church is no longer allowed to have one of the transepts walled off and used as a pig-stye.

But we will now put an end to this disquisition on architecture, and ask the reader's attention to the short and simple annals of a real old building the best known, and perhaps the most characteristic in England-with more tales of terror and interest about it than ever clustered, like ill-omened ravens, round a building before,-a building that, in all the changes of our history, has still borne its bad pre-eminence as the home of despair and sorrow. The groans that have resounded through those dismal chambers, the screams that have startled the sentinel on

guard, proceeding from tortured prisoners-the broken hearts that beat their last in those dungeons- the agonies, the fears that have thrilled human bosoms in that awful dwelling-invest it with a gloomy horror that was never equalled in the pages of fiction. The Castle of Otranto, and the mysterious Udolpho, are mere commonplace habitations compared to it. For eight centuries it has shown its haggard and grim face to the world; and we are now going to recall some particulars of its history, which will perhaps make us not quite so much in love, as some people are, or pretend to be, with the chivalrous grandeur of our ancestors, and the superiority of the "good old times."

On the left bank of the river Thames, just below where the Custom-House is, in convenient juxtaposition with the magnificent docks. which, with their crowded tiers of shipping, their innumerable flags,

and vast variety of languages, place modern trade and universality of interest at once face to face with ancient isolation and power,-is seen as we go down in a steamboat for a day's holiday to Greenwich, a squarebuilt, low and dingy pile, which has no feature of attraction either from grandeur or beauty of design, but which all turn to look at when they are told it is the Tower of London. Who originally built it is not known. Some, of course, say Julius Cæsar; others are more modest, and say it was built in the time of Constantine the Great; and there are certainly some very strong proofs that on this site stood a fortress, a mint, or other building of the Romans in the time of Honorius, or 395 years after Christ. But however this may be, the first historic record of its erection is in the reign of William the Conqueror, who built the White Tower to curb the rebellious Saxons, under the superintendence of his architect Gundulf, who, besides handling the measuring-line, found time to exercise the duties, or at least to spend the emoluments, of the Bishopric of Rochester.

In the course of time it offered such security against attack, that it became an object of great importance to the factions into which this kingdom was divided. It was strengthened by walls and bastions. Kings fled to it for safety, or intrusted it to the favoured of their vassals. Armed men were ready to be let loose with fire and sword on the disobedient or discontented citizens of London; dungeons were added to the other chambers of the castle; prisoners of consequence were committed to its impenetrable walls; Jews were tortured, till they sur rendered the last farthing of their hard-earned gains. Patriots like the Scottish Wallace, or the Welsh Llewellyn, expiated their hatred of oppression with their blood in these miserable dens; and by the time it had arrived at its greatest strength, and very nearly at its present form and extent, in the reign of Edward III., it was a name which created an involuntary shudder in the stoutest hearts. From it went in procession on their coronation days, all the

kings of England, from Richard II. till James II., a period of three hundred years. The Tower, throughout the life of the first of these potentates, played a very conspicuous part. It was the scene of the grandeur and magnificence of his youthful days. Festivals and assemblies were held in it, that eclipsed the magnificence of the Court of France. The flood of splendour was indeed so great, that it overflowed into a place, which is certainly not connected in our minds either with floods or splendour. Where thousands of cattle were lately penned up, for the weekly sustenance of two millions and a half of hungry Cocknies; where the bellowing of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting of pigs, and the baaing of calves, were the only sounds that disturbed the serenity of Smithfield, knightly trumpets uttered their inspiring notes, summoning the great and gay to tournament and revel, and ladies whispered words of encouragement in the ears of their favourite champions. The first day of these ostentatious rejoicings in the year 1390, was termed the Feast of Challenge; and "about three o'clock in the afternoon," says the old Chronicler of their doings, "there issued out of the Tower of London, first three score of coursers appareled for the juistes, and on every one an esquier of honor ridyng a soft pace, and then issued out threescore ladies of honor, mounted on fayre palfreys, riding on the one side, richly appareled; and every lady ledde a knight with a cheyne of sylver, which knights were appareled to juiste; and thus they came riding alonge the streetes of London with great number of trumpettes and other mynstrelles, and so came to Smithfield, where the King and Queen and many ladies and demoiselles were ready in chambers richly adorned to see the juistes." But the Tower was spectator of a very different scene in which the same king was a performer. The same streets that were witnesses of the glories of his Smithfield shows, were witnesses also of his fall. He was taken as a prisoner to the Tower, by his successful rival, Henry of Bolingbroke, and

« PreviousContinue »