Part 38 (1/2)

The bible 'of larger volume,' as directed in Lord Cromwell's injunctions, and in the Canons of 1751[906], venerable with age, might sometimes be seen still chained to its desk[907], as in the old days. In Pope's time, church bibles were very commonly in black-letter type[908].

Litany desks were a great rarity. One in Exeter Cathedral appears to have been disused about 1740[909].

Everyone knows what a neglected aspect the font usually bore during the whole of the Georgian period; how it was often thrust into some corner of the church, as if it were a kind of enc.u.mbrance that could not be absolutely done away with, and very frequently supplanted by some basin or pewter vessel placed inside it. In 1799 Carter recorded with indignation that in Westminster Abbey the font had been altogether removed, to make s.p.a.ce for some new monument, and was lying topsy-turvy in a side room[910]. In this, however, as in other respects, the neglect that was too generally prevalent must of course not be spoken of as if it were by any means universal.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, and in the reign of Queen Anne, there was some little discussion, in which Bishop Beveridge and others took part[911], as to the propriety of retaining or renovating chancel screens. In mediaeval times, these 'cancelli,' from which the chancel took its name, had been universal; and a few had been put up under the Stuart sovereigns, notwithstanding the offence with which they were regarded by those who looked upon them as one of 'the hundred points of popery.'

We find Archbishop Secker expressing his regret, not without cause, that chancels were not, as a rule, kept in much better order than other parts of the building. Inc.u.mbents were by no means so careful as they should be, and lay impropriators, whether private or collegiate, were generally strangely neglectful. 'It is indispensably requisite,' he added, 'to preserve them not only standing and safe, but clean, neat, decent, agreeable; and it is highly fit to go further, and superadd, not a light and trivial finery, but such degrees of proper dignity and grandeur as we are able, consistently with other real obligations[912].'

The condition and decoration of the Lord's Table differed widely, especially in the earlier years of the period, in accordance with varieties of opinion and feeling in clergymen and in their congregations. For the most part it was insignificantly and meanly furnished, and hemmed closely in by the Communion rails. At the beginning of the century, it would appear that in the London churches a great deal of care and cost had been lately expended on 'altar-pieces.'

In one church after another, Paterson records the attraction of a 'fine'--a 'beautiful'--a 'stately'--a 'costly' altar-piece[913]. Many of these, however, would by no means approve themselves to a more cultivated taste than that which then prevailed. Instead of the Greek marbles and rich baldachino which Wren had intended for the east end of St. Paul's, the authorities subst.i.tuted imitation marble, and fluted pilasters painted with ultramarine and veined with gold[914]. The Vicar of Leeds, writing to Ralph Th.o.r.esby in 1723, tells him that a pleasing surprise awaits his return, 'Our altar-piece is further adorned, since you went, with three flower-pots upon three pedestals upon the wainscot, gilt, and a hovering dove upon the middle one; three cherubs over the middle panel, the middle one gilt, a piece of open carved work beneath, going down towards the middle of the velvet.' If, however, the reader cannot altogether admire the picture thus summoned before his eyes, he will at all events agree with the words that follow: 'But the greatest ornament is a choir well filled with devout communicants[915].' The painted 'crimson curtains' at the east end of Battersea Church, 'trimmed with amber, and held up by gold cord with heavy gold ta.s.sels,'[916] may serve as another representative example of the kind of 'altar-piece'

which commended itself to eighteenth-century Churchmen.

Nothing, it might be imagined, could be more inoffensive than the use of the sacred monogram. But there were some at the beginning of the period, both Dissenters and Puritan Churchmen, who looked very suspiciously at it. They ranked it, together with bowing at the name of Jesus and turning eastward at the Creed, among Romish proclivities. 'What mean,'

Barnes had said towards the close of the previous century, 'these rich altar-cloths, with the Jesuits' cypher embossed upon them?'[917] So also that worthy man, Ralph Th.o.r.esby, had expressed himself 'troubled' to see at Durham, among other 'superst.i.tions' 'richly embroidered I.H.S. upon the high altar.'[918]

In Charles the First's time the Ritualistic party in the Church of England used sometimes to place upon the altars of their churches crucifixes and an array of candlesticks.[919] After the Restoration the former were never replaced. The two candles, however, interpreted as symbolical of the divine and human nature of the Lord, were by no means unfrequent in the churches of the last century, especially during its earlier years. Mr. Beresford Hope speaks of an old picture in his possession, of Westminster Abbey, referred to the beginning of the eighteenth century, in which candles are represented burning upon the altar.[920] This, at all events, was most unusual. Bishop Hoadly, writing against the Ritualistic practices of some congregations, speaks of 'the over-altars and the never-lighted candles upon them.'[921] In Durham Cathedral, which by traditional custom retained throughout the century a higher Ritual in some respects than was to be found elsewhere, the 'tapers' of which Th.o.r.esby speaks[922] were probably more than two in number.

The credence, or side table, upon which the sacramental elements are placed previously to being offered, in accordance with the rubric, upon the Lord's Table, had been objected to by many Puritan Churchmen.

Provision was rarely made for this in eighteenth-century churches. It is mentioned as somewhat exceptional on the part of Bishop Bull, that 'he always offered the elements upon the Holy Table himself before beginning the Communion service.'[923]

Puritan feeling had very unreasonably regarded the cross with almost as much jealousy as the crucifix. This idea had, in the last century, so far gained ground, that the Christian emblem was not often to be seen, at all events in the interior of churches, and that those who did use it in their churches or churchyards were likely to incur a suspicion of Popery. An anonymous a.s.sailant of Bishop Butler in 1767, fifteen years after the death of that prelate, made it a special charge against him that he had 'put up the Popish insignia of the cross in his chapel at Bristol.'[924]

Steele, speaking, in one of his papers in the 'Guardian,' of Raphael's picture of our Saviour appearing to His disciples after His resurrection, makes some remarks upon religion and sacred art. 'Such endeavours,' he says, 'as this of Raphael, and of all men not called to the altar, are collateral helps not to be despised by the ministers of the Gospel.... All the arts and sciences ought to be employed in one confederacy against the prevailing torrent of vice and impiety; and it will be no small step in the progress of religion, if it is as evident as it ought to be, that he wants the best sense a man can have, who is cold to the ”Beauty of Holiness.”'[925] Tillotson, and other favourite writers of Steele's generation, had dwelt forcibly, and with much charm of language, upon the moral beauty of a virtuous and holy life. But there had never been a time when the English Church in general, as distinguished from any party in it, had cared less to invest religious wors.h.i.+p with outward circ.u.mstances of attractiveness and beauty. As to the particular point which gave occasion to Steele's remarks, whatever might be said for or against the propriety of painting in churches, there was in his time little disposition to open the question at all.[926] One of the very few instances where a painting of the kind is spoken of, was connected with a very discreditable scandal. At a time when party feeling ran very high, White Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough, the well-known author of 'Parochial Antiquities,' had made himself exceedingly obnoxious to some of the more extreme members of the High Church section, by his answer to Sacheverell's sermon upon 'false brethren.'[927] Dr. Welton, Rector of Whitechapel, put up at this juncture in his church a painted altar-piece in representation of the Last Supper, with Bishop Kennet conspicuous in it as Judas Iscariot. 'To make it the more sure, he had the doctor's great black patch put under his wig upon the forehead.'[928] It need hardly be added that the Bishop of London ordered the picture to be taken down.[929]

Sir Christopher Wren had intended to adorn the dome of St. Paul's with figures from sacred history, worked in mosaic by Italian artists. He was overruled. It was thought unusual, and likely also to be tedious and expensive.[930] But there were some who cherished a hope that some such embellishment was postponed only, not abandoned. Walter Harte, for example, the Nonjuror, in his poem upon painting, trusted that 'the cold north' would not always remain insensible to the claims of religious art. The time would yet come when we should see in our churches,

Above, around, the pictured saints appear,

and when especially the metropolitan cathedral would be radiant with the pictorial glory which befitted it.

Thy dome, O Paul, which heavenly views adorn, Shall guide the hands of painters yet unborn; Each melting stroke shall foreign eyes engage, And s.h.i.+ne unrivalled through a future age.[931]

The question was brought forward in a practical shape in 1773. Two years earlier the State apartments at old Somerset Palace had been granted by the King to the Royal Academy. The chapel was included in the gift; and it was soon after suggested, at a general meeting of the society, 'that the place would afford a good opportunity of convincing the public of the advantages that would arise from ornamenting churches and cathedrals with works of art.'[932] This proposal was highly approved of by the society, and many of its members at once volunteered their services.

Their president, however, Sir Joshua Reynolds, proposed a bolder scheme.

He thought they should 'undertake St. Paul's Cathedral.' The amendment was carried unanimously. Application was accordingly made to the Dean and Chapter, who were pleased with the offer. Dean Newton, Bishop of Bristol, a great lover of pictures, was particularly favourable to the scheme, and warmly advocated it.[933] Sir Joshua promised 'The Nativity'; West offered his picture of 'Moses with the Laws'; Barry, Dance, Cipriani, and Angelica Kauffman engaged to present other paintings; and four other artists were afterwards added to the number.

But the trustees of the building--Cornwallis, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Terrick of London--disapproved. Terrick was especially hostile to the idea, and when the Dean waited upon him and told him, with some exultation, of the progress that had been made, put an absolute veto upon the whole project. 'My good Lord Bishop of Bristol,' he said, 'I have been already distantly and imperfectly informed of such an affair having been in contemplation; but as the sole power at last remains with myself, I therefore inform your lords.h.i.+p that, whilst I live and have the power, I will never suffer the doors of the metropolitan church to be opened for the introduction of Popery into it.'[934]

Bishop Newton says, in his 'Memoirs,' that though there were some objectors, opinion was generally in favour of the offer made by the Academy, and that some churches and chapels adopted the idea. But St.

Paul's probably suffered no loss through the further postponement of the decorations designed for it. In the first place, paintings--for these, rather than frescoes, appear to have been intended--were not the most appropriate kind of art for such an interior. Besides this, those 'earthly charms and graces,' which made Reynolds' style such an abomination to the delicate spiritual perceptions of the artist-poet Blake,[935] were by no means calculated to create any elevated ideal among his countrymen of what Christian art should be. And if the President of the Academy, the most renowned English painter of his age, was scarcely competent to such a work, what must be said of his proposed coadjutors? 'I confess,' said Dean Milman, 'I shudder at the idea of our walls covered with the audacious designs and tawdry colouring of West, Barry, Cipriani, Dance, and Angelica Kauffman.'[936] Such criticism would be very exaggerated if it were understood as a general condemnation of painters, whose merits in their own province of art were great. But it will universally be allowed that not to them, and scarcely to any other painters of the eighteenth century, could we look for the grandeur of thought or the elevated sentiment which an undertaking of the kind proposed so specially demanded.

Puritanism had been very destructive of the gla.s.s paintings which had added so much glory of colour to mediaeval churches. The art had begun to decline, from a variety of causes, at the beginning of the Reformation.

In Elizabeth's reign, few coloured windows of any note were executed.

Under James I. and Charles I. the taste to some degree revived. A new style of colouring was introduced by Van Linge,[937] a skilful Flemish artist, who appears to have settled in England about 1610, and found many liberal patrons. It was an interval when much activity was displayed throughout the kingdom in the work of repairing and beautifying churches. When he died, or left the country, the art became all but dormant. The Restoration did little to resuscitate it. Religious taste and feeling were at a low ebb. Not only in England, but throughout the Continent also, the gla.s.s painters had no encouragement, and were continually obliged to maintain themselves by practising the ordinary profession of a glazier. And besides, long after the time when painted windows had become secure from Puritanic violence, a feeling lingered on that there was something un-Protestant in them--something inconsistent, it might be, with the pure light of truth. For many years more, few were put up; nor these, for the most part, without much difference of opinion, and sometimes a great deal of angry controversy.[938] It may have stirred the irony of men who had no sympathy with these suspicions, that corporations and private persons who would by no means[939] admit into their churches windows in which scenes from our Saviour's life were pictured in hues that vied with those of the ruby and the sapphire had often no scruples in emblazoning upon them, to their own glorification, the arms of their family or their guild.[940] Winslow speaking of the east window[941] in University College, Oxford, done by Giles of York in 1687, the earliest example of a stained-gla.s.s window after the Restoration, remarks how much the art had deteriorated even in its most mechanical departments.[942] In the first quarter, however, of the eighteenth century, there was some improvement in it. Joshua Price, in the east window of St. Andrew's, Holborn, has 'rivalled the rich colouring of the Van Linges. The painting is deficient in brilliancy, and some of the shadows are nearly opaque; yet these defects may almost be overlooked in the excellence of its composition, and in its immense superiority over all other works executed between the commencement of the eighteenth century and the revival of the mosaic system.'[943]

Joshua Price also executed some of the side windows in Magdalene College, and restored, in 1715, those in Queen's College, Oxford, the work of Van Linge, which had been broken by the Puritans.[944] William Price painted, in 1702, the scenes from the life of Christ, depicted on the lower lights of Merton College Chapel. They are 'weak as regards colour, enamel being used almost to the subst.i.tution of coloured gla.s.s,'[945] and lose in beauty and effect by the glaring yellow in which they are framed. He also painted the windows which were put up in Westminster Abbey by order of Parliament in 1722,[946] and repaired with considerable skill the Flemish windows of Rubens's time, which he purchased and put up on the south side of New College Chapel.[947] It is remarkable that the Prices appear to have been the last who possessed the old secret of manufacturing the pure ruby gla.s.s.[948] After their time, until its rediscovery some forty years ago in France, it was a familiar instance of a 'lost art.'

When nearly fifty years had pa.s.sed, some little attention began to be once more turned, chiefly in colleges and cathedrals, to the adornment of churches with coloured windows. The most memorable examples are in New College Chapel. Pickett, of York, painted between 1765 and 1777 the lower lights of the northern windows in the choir, with much brilliancy of colour, but in a style very inferior to the work of the Flemings and William Price on the other side.[949] The great window in the antechapel, erected a few year later, certainly avoided that uniformity of gaudiness[950] which Warton so greatly complained of in Pickett's work. Its design employed for several years[951] the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The central picture of the Nativity, after Correggio's 'Notte' at Modena, was exceedingly fine as a sketch in colours.

Unfortunately, it was wholly unsuited to gla.s.s, and remains a standing proof that oil and gla.s.s paintings cannot be rivals, their principles being essentially different. A competent critic p.r.o.nounces that had it been executed in coloured gla.s.s, it would still have been unsatisfactory.[952] As it is, the dull stains and enamels employed by Jarvis give it what Horace Walpole called 'a washed-out' effect.