The Children of Westminster Abbey: Studies in English HistoryKingsley, Rose Georgina
History
The Children of Westminster Abbey: Studies in English History
Kingsley, Rose Georgina
Children -- England -- London; Westminster Abbey -- Biography
After the Dean has gone into his stall on the right of the entrance, the
service begins. The monotone of the prayers breaks into rich harmonies
now and again at the responses--the organ re-echoes through the arches
and pillars with thundering of the pedals, and wild, pathetic
reed-notes. The splendid voices of the choir fill the building from end
to end in the Psalms and canticles; or a boy's voice, singing a solo
verse, floats up quivering and throbbing like a nightingale's song in a
still wood at evening. And then--but I am speaking of "the days that are
no more"--a small figure--unutterably dignified, with a pale, refined,
determined face--in his white robes, his scarlet Doctor of Divinity's
hood, and the crimson ribbon of the Order of the Bath with its golden
jewel round his neck--followed the black-robed verger who carried a
silver mace, up from the stalls, through the two walls of human beings,
to the marble pulpit just outside the altar rails. And every face turned
with eager expectation towards the bowed head, and hung breathless on
the eloquent words that rang like a clarion through the great church;
for it was Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, who was preaching.
But we are lingering in the choir, full, to us who know and love it, of
such keen present interest. I must take you back into the Confessor's
Chapel and the remote past.
We go through the iron gates that shut off the chapels from the choir,
and climb the steps out of the ambulatory, for the Confessor's Chapel is
raised several feet above the pavement of the Abbey. It lies, as I have
said, directly behind the altar, only divided from it by the splendid
screen which was erected early in the fifteenth century. This screen on
the western side has been beautified and restored, and forms the reredos
to the altar. But in the Chapel its eastern face is untouched; and, if
you have patience to trace out the quaint carvings along the top, you
will find they are a history of some of the miraculous and wonderful
events of Edward the Confessor's life; the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus;
St. John giving the ring to the Pilgrims; the quarrel between Tosti and
Harold, Earl Godwin's sons, when the king predicted the calamities they
would bring in after years upon England; and many more scenes of like
nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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