Gloucester Cathedral - June 28th, 1856

Gloucester Cathedral, June 28th 2022

 June 29th 1856

Lime St Station, 1850, architect William Tite

image via @vrsimility

— Yesterday, 28th, I left Liverpool from the Lime Street station; an exceedingly hot day for England, insomuch that the rail carriages were really uncomfortable. I have now passed over the London and Northwestern Railway so often that the northern part of it is very wearisome, especially as it has few features of interest even to a new observer.

At Stafford — no, at Wolverhampton — we diverged to a track which I have passed over only once before. We stopped an hour and a quarter at Wolverhampton, and I walked up into the town, which is large and old, — old, at least, in its plan, or lack of plan, — the streets being irregular, and straggling over an uneven surface. Like many of the English towns, it reminds me of Boston, though dingier. The sun was so hot that I actually sought the shady sides of the streets; and this, of itself, is one long step towards establishing a resemblance between an English town and an American one.

English railway carriages seem to me more tiresome than any other; and I suppose it is owing to the greater motion, arising from their more elastic springs. A slow train, too, like that which I was now in, is more tiresome than a quick one, at least to the spirits, whatever it may be to the body.

Gloucester Station (possibly been rebuilt since Hawthorne's day)

We loitered along through afternoon and evening, stopping at every little station, and nowhere getting to the top of our speed, till at last, in the late dusk, we reached GLOUCESTER, and I put up at the Wellington Hotel  . . .

Station Hotel, formerly New Wellington Hotel,

built on the site of the Wellington Hotel of Hawthorne's day

. . .  which is but a little way from the station. I took tea and a slice or two of ham in the coffee-room, and had a little talk with two people there; one of whom, on learning that I was an American, said, “But I suppose you have now been in England some time?” He meant, finding me not absolutely a savage, that I must have been caught a good while ago… .

The next morning I went into the city, the hotel being on its outskirts, and rambled along in search of the cathedral. Some church-bells were chiming and clashing for a wedding or other festal occasion, and I followed the sound, supposing that it might proceed from the cathedral, but this was not the case.

down at the docks

It was not till I had got to a bridge over the Severn, quite out of the town, that I saw again its tower, and knew how to shape my course towards it.

I did not see much that was strange or interesting in Gloucester.

It is old, with a good many of those antique Elizabethan houses with two or three peaked gables on a line together; 

 

several old churches, which always cluster about a cathedral, like chickens round a hen; 

Site of the Blue Coat Hospital

a hospital for decayed tradesmen; another for bluecoat boys; a great many butcher’s shops, scattered in all parts of the town, open in front, with a counter or dresser on which to display the meat, just in the old fashion of Shakespeare’s house.

It is a large town, and has a good deal of liveliness and bustle, in a provincial way. In short, judging by the sheep, cattle, and horses, and the people of agricultural aspect that I saw about the streets, I should think it must have been market-day.

Site of the old Bell Inn

I looked here and there for the old Bell Inn, because, unless I misremember, Fielding brings Tom Jones to this inn, while he and Partridge were travelling together. It is still extant; for, on my arrival the night before, a runner from it had asked me to go thither; but I forgot its celebrity at the moment.

 

forgotten celebrity, the old Bell Inn, now a Costa

I saw nothing of it in my rambles about Gloucester, 

but at last I found THE CATHEDRAL, though I found no point from which a good view of the exterior can be seen. 

It has a very beautiful and rich outside, however, 

and a lofty tower, very large and ponderous, but so finished off, and adorned with pinnacles, and all manner of architectural devices, — wherewith these old builders knew how to alleviate their massive structures, — that it seems to sit lightly in the air.

The porch was open, and some workmen were trundling barrows into the nave; so I followed, and found two young women sitting just within the porch, one of whom offered to show me round the cathedral.

There was a great dust in the nave, arising from the operations of the workmen. They had been laying a new pavement, and scraping away the plaster, which had heretofore been laid over the pillars and walls.

The pillars come out from the process as good as new, — great, round, massive columns, not clustered like those of most cathedrals; they are twenty-one feet in circumference, and support semicircular arches.

I think there are seven of these columns, on each side of the nave, which did not impress me as very spacious; and the dust and racket of the work-people quite destroyed the effect which should have been produced by the aisles and arches; so that I hardly stopped to glance at this part, though I saw some mural monuments and recumbent statues along the walls.

The choir is separated from the nave by the usual screen, and now by a sailcloth or something of that kind, drawn across, in order to keep out the dust, while the repairs are going on.

When the young woman conducted me hither, I was at once struck by the magnificent eastern window, the largest in England, which fills, or looks vast enough to fill, all that end of the cathedral, 

— a most splendid window, full of old painted glass, 

which looked as bright as sunshine, though the sun was not really shining through it.

The roof of the choir is of oak and very fine, and as much as ninety feet high. There are chapels opening from the choir, and within them the monuments of the eminent people who built them,

and of benefactors or prelates, or of those otherwise illustrious in their day.

tomb of Edward II, murdered at Berkeley Castle, twenty miles away, 

tis said that his screams could be heard at the Cathedral

My recollection of what I saw here is very dim and confused; more so than I anticipated. I remember somewhere within the choir the tomb of Edward II. with his effigy upon the top of it, in a long robe, with a crown on his head, and a ball and sceptre in his hand; 

likewise, a statue of Robert, son of the Conqueror, carved in Irish oak and painted. He lolls in an easy posture on his tomb, with one leg crossed lightly over the other, to denote that he was a Crusader.

There are several monuments of mitred abbots who formerly presided over the cathedral. A Cavalier and his wife, with the dress of the period elaborately represented, lie side by side in excellent preservation; and it is remarkable that though their noses are very prominent, they have come down from the past without any wear and tear. The date of the Cavalier’s death is 1637, and I think his statue could not have been sculptured until after the Restoration, else he and his dame would hardly have come through Cromwell’s time unscathed.

Civil War damage, left unrepaired

Here, as in all the other churches in England, Cromwell is said to have stabled his horses, and broken the windows, and belabored the old monuments.

The Lady's Chapel

There is one large and beautiful chapel, styled the Lady’s Chapel, which is, indeed, a church by itself, being ninety feet long, and comprising everything that appertains to a place of worship. 

Here, too, there are monuments, 

and on the floor are many old bricks and tiles, with inscriptions on them, or Gothic devices, 

and flat tombstones, with coats of arms sculptured on them; as, indeed, there are everywhere else, except in the nave, where the new pavement has obliterated them.

After viewing the choir and the chapels, the young woman led me down into the crypts below, where the dead persons who are commemorated in the upper regions were buried.

The low ponderous pillars and arches of these crypts are supposed to be older than the upper portions of the building. They are about as perfect, I suppose, as when new, but very damp, dreary, and darksome; and the arches intersect one another so intricately, that, if the girl had deserted me, I might easily have got lost there.

FYI, not actually in the Crypt

These are chapels where masses used to be said for the souls of the deceased; and my guide said that a great many skulls and bones had been dug up here. No doubt a vast population has been deposited in the course of a thousand years. I saw two white skulls, in a niche, grinning as skulls always do, though it is impossible to see the joke.

These crypts, or crypts like these, are doubtless what Congreve calls the “aisles and monumental caves of Death,” in that passage which Dr. Johnson admired so much. They are very singular, — something like a dark shadow or dismal repetition of the upper church below ground.

Ascending from the crypts, we went next to the cloisters, which are in a very perfect state, 

and form an unbroken square about the green grass-plot, enclosed within. 

Here also it is said Cromwell stabled his horses; but if so, they were remarkably quiet beasts, for tombstones, which form the pavement, are not broken, nor cracked, nor bear any hoof-marks.

Since Hawthorne visited there is now painted glass in the apertures

All around the cloisters, too, the stone tracery that shuts them in like a closed curtain, carefully drawn, remains as it was in the days of the monks, insomuch that it is not easy to get a glimpse of the green enclosure. Probably there used to be painted glass in the larger apertures of this stonework; otherwise it is perfect.

These cloisters are very different from the free, open, and airy ones of Salisbury; but they are more in accordance with our notions of monkish habits; and even at this day, if I were a canon of Gloucester, I would put that dim ambulatory to a good use.

The library is adjacent to the cloisters, and I saw some rows of folios and quartos. I have nothing else to record about the cathedral, though if I were to stay there a month, I suppose it might then begin to be understood.

It is wicked to look at these solemn old churches in a hurry.

By the by, it was not built in a hurry; but in full three hundred years, having been begun in 1188 and only finished in 1498, not a great many years before Papistry began to go out of vogue in England.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Southampton