Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Pater, Walter, 1839-1894
The further court, to the south, which is entered by a flagged arched
passage under the southern wing of the first court, is an irregular
place, having been of late years considerably extended. The Chapel
at once attracts the eye. It is a Renaissance building, of the same
crumbling Headington stone, with broad classical pilasters, and windows
of a clumsy Gothic tracery. The designer appears to have wished the
tone to be classical, with a Gothic flavour. The very incongruity
has a certain sober charm. A beautiful Renaissance porch admits to
the ante-chapel; a fine classical screen of dark wood, with large
smooth columns, supports an organ, into the carved woodwork of which
are worked gilded swans and peacocks. There is a noble classical
western window, under which is set the memorial to Pater. This is not
wholly satisfactory, looking like a little tray of coins. It has four
medallions—Leonardo, Michel Angelo, Dante, and Plato—with a fifth in
the centre containing a bas-relief of Pater’s head; but the expression
is irritable and the chin is exaggeratedly protruded. The mottoes
above and below, in uncial Greek, are beautiful and appropriate: ΩС •
ΦΙΛΟСΟΦΙΑS • ΟΥСΗС • ΤΗС • ΜΕΓΙСΤΗС • ΜΟΥСΙΚΗС (since philosophy is the
greatest music) above; and ΟСΑ • ΕСΤΙΝ • ΑΛΗΘΗ • ΟСΑ • СΕΜΝΑ • ΟСΑ •
ΑΓΑΘΑ below (whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are holy,
whatsoever things are pure).
The interior of the chapel has the same simple gravity. There is
a plain marble reredos; the stall-work is Jacobean of dark wood,
the heavy cornice and the balls which serve for poppy-heads being
conspicuous. There is a great brazen chandelier and a noble eagle
lectern. The roof, taken from the destroyed chapel of St. Mary’s
College, which stood on the site now occupied by Frewin Hall, is of
a rich Gothic, brightly painted. The east window is a fine piece of
classical glass, but there are some poor ecclesiastical windows at the
side; of which it may be recorded that when the question of replacing
them was mooted, Pater said that he would not have them removed, as
they provided a document of taste. The velvet cushions, the tall
prayer-books, give a dignified eighteenth-century air to the whole.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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