Like
many young persons brought up with no other religion than
they can pick up for themselves, she was curious and somewhat
learned in the matter of ecclesiastical music and ritual, which she
approached, owing to her education, with unbiased mind.
many young persons brought up with no other religion than
they can pick up for themselves, she was curious and somewhat
learned in the matter of ecclesiastical music and ritual, which she
approached, owing to her education, with unbiased mind.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v04 - Bes to Bro
His novels are easy reading, and do not con-
tain an obscure sentence. As art is an expression of the artist's
mind, and not a rigid ecclesiastical canon, it may be expressed in as
many formulas as there are artists. Therefore, while to few readers
life casts the rosy reflection that we have learned to call Besantine,
one would not wish it to disappear nor to be discredited.
## p. 1838 (#28) ############################################
1838
WALTER BESANT
It was in the year 1869 that Walter Besant, by a happy chance,
made the acquaintance of James Rice, the editor of Once a Week,
and became a contributor to that magazine. In 1871 that literary
partnership between them began, which is interesting in the history
of collaboration. Mr. Rice had been a barrister, and added legal
lore to Mr. Besant's varied and accurate literary equipment. The
brilliant series of novels that followed includes 'Ready-Money Morti-
boy,' 'My Little Girl,' With Harp and Crown,' 'The Golden Butter-
fly,' 'The Seamy Side,' and 'The Chaplain of the Fleet. ' The latter
story, that of an innocent young country girl left to the guardian-
ship of her uncle, chaplain of the Fleet prison, by the death of
her father, is delicately and surprisingly original. The influence of
Dickens is felt in the structure of the story, and the faithful, almost
photographic fidelity to locality betrays in whose footsteps the
authors have followed; but the chaplain, though he belongs to a
family whose features are familiar to the readers of Little Dorrit ›
and 'Great Expectations,' has not existed until he appears in these
pages, pompous, clever, and without principle, but not lacking in
natural affection. The young girl whose guileless belief in everybody
forces the worst people to assume the characters her purity and
innocence endows them with, is to the foul prison what Picciola was
to Charney. Nor will the moralist find fault with the author whose
kind heart teaches him to include misfortune in his catalogue of
virtues.
―――
Mr. Rice died in 1882, and All Sorts and Conditions of Men,'
Mr. Besant's first independent novel, appeared the same year. It
is a novel with a purpose, and accomplished its purpose because an
artist's hand was necessary to paint the picture of East London that
met with such a response as the People's Palace. The appeal to
philanthropy was a new one. It was a plea for a little more of the
pleasures and graces of life for the two million of people who
inhabit the east end of the great city. It is not a picture of life in
the lowest phases, where the scenes are as dramatic as in the
highest social world, but a story of human life; the nobility, the
meanness, the pathos of it in hopelessly commonplace surroundings,
where the fight is not a hand-to-hand struggle with bitter poverty or
crime, but with dullness and monotony. The characters in 'All Sorts
and Conditions of Men' are possibly more typical than real, but one
hesitates to question either characters or situation. The "impossible
story has become true, and the vision that the enthusiastic young
hero and heroine dream has materialized into a lovely reality.
'The Children of Gibeon' (1884) and The World Went Very Well
Then (1885) are written with the same philanthropic purpose; but if
Sir Walter Besant were not first of all a story-teller, the possessor of
## p. 1839 (#29) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1839
a living voice that holds one spellbound till he has finished his tale,
the read would be more sensible of the wide knowledge of the
novelist, and his familiarity with life in its varied forms.
Here are about thirty novels, displaying an intimate knowledge
of many crafts, trades, and professions, the ways of landsman and
voyager, of country and town, of the new world and the old, of
modern charlatanism as shown in Herr Paulus,' of the "woman
question" among London Jews as in the 'Rebel Queen,' and the
suggestion of the repose and sufficiency of life's simple needs as told
in 'Call Her Mine' and 'Celia's Arbor. '
In the Ivory Gate' the hero is the victim of a remarkable hallu-
cination; in the story of The Inner House' the plummet of sugges-
tion plunges into depths not sounded before, and the soul's regeneration
is unfolded in the loveliest of parables.
The range of Sir Walter Besant reaches from the somewhat con-
ventionalized 'Dorothy Forster' to 'St. Katharine's Tower,' where
deep tragedy approaches the melodramatic, or from the fascination of
"The Master Craftsman' to the Wapping Idyll' of the heaps of
miser's treasure. There is largeness of stroke in this list, and a wide
prospect. His humor is of the cheerful outdoor kind, and the laugh
is at foibles rather than weakness. He pays little attention to fashion
in literature, except to give a good-natured nod to a passing fad.
It would be difficult to classify him under any school. His stories
are not analytical, nor is one conscious of that painstaking fidelity to
art which is no longer classed among the minor virtues. When he
fights, it is with wrong and oppression and the cheerless monotony
of the lives of the poor; but he fights classes rather than individuals,
although certain characters like Fielding the plagiarist, in 'Armorel
of Lyonesse,' are studied from life. The village of bankrupts in All
in a Garden Fair' is a whimsical conceit, like the disguise of Angela
in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' and the double identity of
Edmund Gray in 'The Ivory Gate. ' In reading Besant we are con-
stantly reminded that humanity is wider than the world; and though
its simplest facts are its greatest, there is both interest and edification
in eccentricities.
In 1895 he was made a baronet, and is president of the Society of
Authors, of whom he has been a gallant champion against the pub-
lishers.
## p. 1840 (#30) ############################################
1840
WALTER BESANT
OLD-TIME LONDON
From Sir Walter Besant's 'London': copyrighted 1892, by Harper and Brothers
HE London house, either in Saxon or Norman time, presented
no kind of resemblance to the Roman villa.
It had no
THE
cloisters, no hypocaust, no suite or sequence of rooms.
This unlikeness is another proof, if any were wanting, that the
continuity of tenure had been wholly broken. If the Saxons
went into London, as has been suggested, peaceably, and left the
people to carry on their old life and their trade in
way, the Roman and British architecture
no new thing, but a
style grown up in course of years and found fitted to the cli-
mate would certainly have remained. That, however, was not
the case.
The Englishman developed his house from the patri-
archal idea.
-
―
First, there was the common hall; in this the household lived,
fed, transacted business, and made their cheer in the evenings.
It was built of timber, and to keep out the cold draughts it was
afterwards lined with tapestry. At first they used simple cloths,
which in great houses were embroidered and painted; perches of
various kinds were affixed to the walls, whereon the weapons,
the musical instruments, the cloaks, etc. , were hung up. The
lord and lady sat on a high seat; not, I am inclined to think, on
a dais at the end of the hall, which would have been cold for
them, but on a great chair near the fire, which was burning in
the middle of the hall. This fashion long continued. I have
myself seen a college hall warmed by a fire in a brazier burn-
ing under the lantern of the hall. The furniture consisted of
benches; the table was laid on trestles, spread with a white
cloth, and removed after dinner; the hall was open to all who
came, on condition that the guest should leave his weapons at
the door.
The floor was covered with reeds, which made a clean, soft,
and warm carpet, on which the company could, if they pleased,
lie round the fire. They had carpets or rugs also, but reeds were
commonly used. The traveler who chances to find himself at
the ancient and most interesting town of Kingston-on-Hull, which
very few English people, and still fewer Americans, have the
curiosity to explore, should visit the Trinity House. There,
among many interesting things, he will find a hall where reeds.
## p. 1841 (#31) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1841
are still spread, but no longer so thickly as to form a complete
carpet. I believe this to be the last survival of the reed carpet.
The times of meals were: the breakfast at about nine; the
"noon-meat," or dinner, at twelve; and the "even-meat," or sup-
per, probably at a movable time, depending on the length of the
day. When lighting was costly and candles were scarce, the
hours of sleep would be naturally longer in winter than in the
summer.
In their manner of living the Saxons were fond of vege-
tables, especially of the leek, onion, and garlic. Beans they also
had (these were introduced probably at the time when they com-
menced intercourse with the outer world), pease, radishes, turnips,
parsley, mint, sage, cress, rue, and other herbs. They had
nearly all our modern fruits, though many show by their names,
which are Latin or Norman, a later introduction. They made
use of butter, honey, and cheese. They drank ale and mead.
The latter is still made, but in small quantities, in Somerset and
Hereford shires. The Normans brought over the custom of
drinking wine.
In the earliest times the whole family slept in the common
hall. The first improvement was the erection of the solar, or
upper chamber.
This was above the hall, or a portion of it, or
over the kitchen and buttery attached to the hall.
The arrange-
ment may be still observed in many of the old colleges of Oxford
or Cambridge. The solar was first the sleeping-room of the lord
and lady; though afterward it served not only this purpose, but
also for an ante-chamber to the dormitory of the daughters and
the maid-servants. The men of the household still slept in the
hall below. Later on, bed recesses were contrived in the wall,
as one may find in Northumberland at the present day. The
bed was commonly, but not for the ladies of the house, merely
a big bag stuffed with straw. A sheet wrapped round the body
formed the only night-dress. But there were also pillows, blan-
kets, and coverlets. The early English bed was quite as luxuri-
ous as any that followed after, until the invention of the spring
mattress gave a new and hitherto unhoped-for joy to the hours
of night.
The second step in advance was the ladies' bower, a room
or suite of rooms set apart for the ladies of the house and their
women. For the first time, as soon as this room was added, the
women could follow their own vocations of embroidery, spinning,
IV-1J6
## p. 1842 (#32) ############################################
1842
WALTER BESANT
and needlework of all kinds, apart from the rough and noisy
talk of the men.
The main features, therefore, of every great house, whether
in town or country, from the seventh to the twelfth century,
were the hall, the solar built over the kitchen and buttery, and
the ladies' bower.
There was also the garden. In all times the English have
been fond of gardens. Bacon thought it not beneath his dignity
to order the arrangement of a garden. Long before Bacon, a
writer of the twelfth century describes a garden as it should be.
"It should be adorned on this side with roses, lilies, and the
marigold; on that side with parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood,
coriander, sage, savery, hyssop, mint, vine, dettany, pellitory,
lettuce, cresses, and the peony. Let there be beds enriched with
onions, leeks, garlic, melons, and scallions. The garden is also
enriched by the cucumber, the soporiferous poppy, and the daffo-
dil, and the acanthus. Nor let pot herbs be wanting, as beet-
root, sorrel, and mallow. It is useful also to the gardener to
have anise, mustard, and wormwood.
A noble garden
will give you medlars, quinces, the pear main, peaches, pears of
St. Regle, pomegranates, citrons, oranges, almonds, dates, and
figs. "
The latter fruits were perhaps attempted, but one doubts
their arriving at ripeness. Perhaps the writer sets down what he
hoped would be some day achieved.
·
The in-door amusements of the time were very much like our
own. We have a little music in the evening; so did our fore-
fathers. We sometimes have a little dancing; so did they, but
the dancing was done for them. We go to the theatres to see
the mime; in their days the mime made his theatre in the great
man's hall. He played the fiddle and the harp; he sang songs,
he brought his daughter, who walked on her hands and executed
astonishing capers; the gleeman, minstrel, or jongleur was al-
ready as disreputable as when we find him later on with his
ribauderie. Again, we play chess; so did our ancestors. We
gamble with dice; so did they. We feast and drink together;
so did they. We pass the time in talk; so did they. In a word,
as Alphonse Karr put it, the more we change, the more we
remain the same.
Out-of-doors, as Fitz-Stephen shows, the young men skated,
wrestled, played ball, practiced archery, held water tournaments,
baited bull and bear, fought cocks, and rode races. They were
## p. 1843 (#33) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1843
also mustered sometimes for service in the field, and went forth
cheerfully, being specially upheld by the reassuring consciousness
that London was always on the winning side.
The growth of the city government belongs to the history
of London. Suffice it here to say that the people in all times.
enjoyed a freedom far above that possessed by any other city of
Europe. The history of municipal London is a history of con-
tinual struggle to maintain this freedom against all attacks, and
to extend it and to make it impregnable. Already the people
are proud, turbulent, and confident in their own strength. They
refuse to own any other lord but the king himself; there is no
Earl of London. They freely hold their free and open meetings,
their folk-motes, in the open space outside the northwest corner
of St. Paul's Churchyard. That they lived roughly, enduring
cold, sleeping in small houses in narrow courts; that they suf-
fered much from the long darkness of winter; that they were
always in danger of fevers, agues, "putrid" throats, plagues,
fires by night, and civil wars; that they were ignorant of letters,
-three schools only for the whole of London, all this may
very well be understood. But these things do not make men
and women wretched. They were not always suffering from pre-
ventable disease; they were not always hauling their goods out
of the flames; they were not always fighting. The first and
most simple elements of human happiness are three; to wit, that
a man should be in bodily health, that he should be free, that
he should enjoy the produce of his own labor. All these things
the Londoner possessed under the Norman kings nearly as much
as in these days they can be possessed. His city has always
been one of the healthiest in the world; whatever freedom
could be attained he enjoyed; and in that rich trading town all
men who worked lived in plenty.
The households, the way of living, the occupations of the
women, can be clearly made out in every detail from the Anglo-
Saxon literature. The women in the country made the garments,
carded the wool, sheared the sheep, washed the things, beat the
flax, ground the corn, sat at the spinning-wheel, and prepared
the food. In the towns they had no shearing to do, but all the
rest of their duty fell to their province. The English women
excelled in embroidery. "English" work meant the best kind of
work. They worked church vestments with gold and pearls and
precious stones. "Orfrey," or embroidery in gold, was a special
-
## p. 1844 (#34) ############################################
1844
WALTER BESANT
art. Of course they are accused by the ecclesiastics of an over-
weening desire to wear finery; they certainly curled their hair,
and, one is sorry to read, they painted, and thereby spoiled their
pretty cheeks. If the man was the hlaf-ord [lord],- -the owner
or winner of the loaf, -the wife was the hlaf-dig [lady], its dis-
tributor; the servants and the retainers were hlaf-oetas, or eaters
of it. When nunneries began to be founded, the Saxon ladies in
great numbers forsook the world for the cloister. And here they
began to learn Latin, and became able at least to carry on corre-
spondence specimens of which still exist-in that language.
Every nunnery possessed a school for girls. They were taught
to read and to write their own language and Latin, perhaps also
rhetoric and embroidery. As the pious Sisters were fond of
putting on violet chemises, tunics, and vests of delicate tissue,
embroidered with silver and gold, and scarlet shoes, there was
probably not much mortification of the flesh in the nunneries of
the later Saxon times.
This for the better class. We cannot suppose that the daugh-
ters of the craftsmen became scholars of the nunnery. Theirs
were the lower walks-to spin the linen and to make the bread
and carry on the housework.
## p. 1845 (#35) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1845
"A
THE SYNAGOGUE
From The Rebel Queen': copyrighted 1893, by Harper and Brothers
"D'un jour intérieur je me sens éclairé,
Et j'entends une voix qui me dit d'espérer. ”— Lamartine.
RE you ready, Francesca ? »
――――
Nelly ran lightly down the narrow stairs, dressed for
Sabbath and Synagogue. She was dainty and pretty at all
times in the matter of dress, but especially on a summer day,
which affords opportunity for bright color and bright drapery and
an ethereal appearance. This morning she was full of color and
light. When, however, she found herself confronted with Fran-
cesca's simple gray dress, so closely fitting, so faultless, and her
black-lace hat with its single rose for color, Nelly's artistic sense
caused her heart to sink like lead. It is not for nothing that one
learns and teaches the banjo; one Art leads to another; she who
knows music can feel for dress. "Oh! " she cried, clasping her
hands. "That's what we can never do! "
"What?
"That fit! Look at me! Yet they call me clever. Clara gives
me the new fashions and I copy them, and the girls in our street
copy me
- poor things! —and the dressmaker comes to talk things
over and to learn from me. I make everything for myself. And
they call me clever! But I can't get near it; and if I can't
nobody can. "
A large detached structure of red brick stood east and west,
with a flat façade and round windows that bore out the truth of
the date 1700-carved upon the front. A word or two in that
square character-that tongue which presents so few attractions
to most of us compared with other tongues-probably corrobo-
rated the internal evidence of the façade and the windows.
"This is the synagogue," said Nelly. She entered, and turn-
ing to the right, led the way up-stairs to a gallery running along
the whole side of the building. On the other side was another
gallery. In front of both was a tolerably wide grill, through
which the congregation below could be seen perfectly.
"This is the women's gallery," whispered Nell-there were
not many women present. "We'll sit in the front. Presently
they will sing. They sing beautifully. Now they're reading
## p. 1846 (#36) ############################################
1846
WALTER BESANT
prayers and the Law.
They've got to read the whole Law
through once a week, you know. " Francesca looked curiously
through the grill. When one is in a perfectly strange place, the
first observations made are of small and unimportant things. She
observed that there was a circular inclosure at the east end, as if
for an altar; but there was no altar: two doors indicated a cup-
board in the wall. There were six tall wax-lights burning round
the inclosure, although the morning was fine and bright. At the
west end a high screen kept the congregation from the disturb-
ance of those who entered or went out. Within the screen was
a company of men and boys, all with their hats and caps on their
heads; they looked like the choir. In front of the choir was a
platform railed round. Three chairs were placed at the back of
the platform. There was a table covered with red velvet, on
which lay the book of the Law, a ponderous roll of parchment
provided with silver staves or handles. Before this desk or table
stood the Reader. He was a tall and handsome man, with black
hair and full black beard, about forty years of age. He wore a
gown and large Geneva bands, like a Presbyterian minister; on
his head he had a kind of biretta. Four tall wax candles were
placed round the front of the platform. The chairs were occu-
pied by two or three elders. A younger man stood at the desk
beside the Reader. The service was already begun-it was, in
fact, half over.
Francesca observed next that all the men wore a kind of
broad scarf, made of some white stuff about eight feet long and
four feet broad. Bands of black or blue were worked in the
ends, which were also provided with fringes. "It is the Talleth,"
Nelly whispered. Even the boys wore this white robe, the effect
of which would have been very good but for the modern hat, tall
or pot, which spoiled all. Such a robe wants a turban above it,
not an English hat. The seats were ranged along the synagogue
The place was not full, but there were a good
many worshipers. The service was chanted by the Reader. It
was a kind of chant quite new and strange to Francesca.
Like
many young persons brought up with no other religion than
they can pick up for themselves, she was curious and somewhat
learned in the matter of ecclesiastical music and ritual, which she
approached, owing to her education, with unbiased mind. She
knew masses and anthems and hymns and chants of all kinds;
never had she heard anything of this kind before. It was not
east and west.
## p. 1847 (#37) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1847
congregational, or Gregorian; nor was it repeated by the choir
from side to side; nor was a monotone with a drop at the
end; nor was it a florid, tuneful chant such as one may hear in
some Anglican services. This Reader, with a rich, strong voice,
a baritone of great power, took nearly the whole of the service
it must have been extremely fatiguing— upon himself, chanting
it from beginning to end. No doubt, as he rendered the read-
ing and the prayers, so they had been given by his ancestors in
Spain and Portugal generation after generation, back into the
times when they came over in Phoenician ships to the Cartha-
ginian colonies, even before the dispersion of the Ten Tribes.
It was a traditional chant of antiquity beyond record- not a
monotonous chant. Francesca knew nothing of the words; she
grew tired of trying to make out whereabouts on the page the
Reader might be in the book lent her, which had Hebrew on
one side and English on the other. Besides, the man attracted
her-by his voice, by his energy, by his appearance. She closed
her book and surrendered herself to the influence of the voice
and the emotions which it expressed.
There was no music to help him. From time to time the
men in the congregation lifted up their voices-not seemingly
in response, but as if moved to sudden passion and crying out
with one accord. This helped him a little, otherwise he was
without any assistance.
A great Voice. The man sometimes leaned over the Roll of
the Law, sometimes he stood upright, always his great Voice
went up and down and rolled along the roof and echoed along
the benches of the women's gallery. Now the Voice sounded a
note of rejoicing; now, but less often, a note of sadness; now
it was a sharp and sudden cry of triumph. Then the people
shouted with him- it was as if they clashed sword on shield
and yelled for victory; now it was a note of defiance, as when
men go forth to fight an enemy; now it sank to a murmur, as
of one who consoles and soothes and promises things to come;
now it was a note of rapture, as if the Promised Land was
already recovered.
-
Was all that in the Voice? Did the congregation, all sitting
wrapped in their white robes, feel these emotions as the Voice
thundered and rolled? I know not. Such was the effect pro-
duced upon one who heard this Voice for the first time. At first
it seemed loud, even barbaric; there was lacking something which
## p. 1848 (#38) ############################################
1848
WALTER BESANT
the listener and stranger had learned to associate with worship.
What was it? Reverence? But she presently found reverence
in plenty, only of a kind that differed from that of Christian
worship. Then the listener made another discovery. In this
ancient service she missed the note of humiliation. There was
no Litany at a Faldstool. There was no kneeling in abasement;
there was no appearance of penitence, sorrow, or the confession
of sins. The Voice was as the Voice of a Captain exhorting his
soldiers to fight. The service was warlike, the service of a peo-
ple whose trust in their God is so great that they do not need
to call perpetually upon Him for the help and forgiveness of
which they are assured. Yes, yes- she thought- this is the
service of a race of warriors; they are fighting men: the Lord is
their God; He is leading them to battle: as for little sins, and
backslidings, and penitences, they belong to the Day of Atone-
ment - which comes once a year. For all the other days in the
year, battle and victory occupy all the mind. The service of a
great fighting people; a service full of joy, full of faith, full of
assurance, full of hope and confidence-such assurance as few
Christians can understand, and of faith to which few Christians
can attain. Perhaps Francesca was wrong; but these were her
first impressions, and these are mostly true.
In the body of the synagogue men came late. Under one
gallery was a school of boys, in the charge of a graybeard, who,
book in hand, followed the service with one eye, while he
admonished perpetually the boys to keep still and to listen. The
boys grew restless; it was tedious to them -the Voice which
expressed so much to the stranger who knew no Hebrew at all
was tedious to the children; they were allowed to get up and
run into the court outside and then to come back again; nobody
heeded their going in and out. One little boy of three, wrapped,
like the rest, in a white Talleth, ran up and down the side aisle
without being heeded - even by the splendid Beadle with the
gold-laced hat, which looked so truly wonderful above the Ori-
ental Talleth. The boys in the choir got up and went in and
out just as they pleased. Nobody minded. The congregation,
mostly well-to-do men with silk hats, sat in their places, book in
hand, and paid no attention.
―――
Under the opposite gallery sat two or three rows of worship-
ers, who reminded Francesca of Browning's poem of St. John's
Day at Rome. For they nudged and jostled each other; they
## p. 1849 (#39) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1849
whispered things; they even laughed over the things they whis-
pered. But they were clad like those in the open part in the
Talleth, and they sat book in hand, and from time to time they
raised their voices with the congregation. They showed no rev-
erence except that they did not talk or laugh loudly. They were
like the children, their neighbors, just as restless, just as unin-
terested, just as perfunctory. Well, they were clearly the poorer
and the more ignorant part of the community. They came here
and sat through the service because they were ordered so to do;
because, like Passover, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and the
Fast of Atonement, it was the Law of their People.
The women in the gallery sat or stood. They neither knelt
nor sang aloud; they only sat when it was proper to sit, or stood
when it was proper to stand. They were like the women, the
village women, in a Spanish or Italian church, for whom every-
thing is done. Francesca, for the moment, felt humiliated that
she should be compelled to sit apart from the congregation, railed
off in the women's gallery, to have her religion done for her,
without a voice of her own in it at all. So, I have heard, indig-
nation sometimes fills the bosom of certain ladies when they
reflect upon the fact that they are excluded from the choir, and
forbidden even to play the organ in their own parish church.
The chanting ceased; the Reader sat down. Then the Choir
began. They sang a hymn-a Hebrew hymn - the rhythm and
metre were not English; the music was like nothing that can be
heard in a Christian Church. "It is the music," said Nelly, "to
which the Israelites crossed the Red Sea:" a bold statement,
but - why not? If the music is not of Western origin and char-
acter, who can disprove such an assertion? After the hymn the
prayers and reading went on again.
There came at last-it is a long service, such as we poor
weak-kneed Anglicans could not endure- the end.
the end. There was a
great bustle and ceremony on the platform; they rolled up the
Roll of the Law; they wrapped it in a purple velvet cloth; they
hung over it a silver breastplate set with twelve jewels for the
Twelve Tribes-in memory of the Urim and Thummim. Fran-
cesca saw that the upper ends of the staves were adorned with
silver pomegranates and with silver bells, and they placed it in
the arms of one of those who had been reading the law; then a
procession was formed, and they walked, while the Choir sang
one of the Psalms of David-but not in the least like the same
-
## p. 1850 (#40) ############################################
1850
WALTER BESANT
Psalm sung in an English Cathedral-bearing the Roll of the
Law to the Ark, that is to say, to the cupboard, behind the rail-
ing and inclosure at the east end.
The Reader came back. Then with another chanted Prayer –
it sounded like a prolonged shout of continued Triumph — he
ended his part of the service.
And then the choir sang the last hymn-a lovely hymn, not
in the least like a Christian, or at least an English hymn-a
psalm that breathed a tranquil hope and a perfect faith. One
needed no words to understand the full meaning and beauty and
depth of that hymn.
The service was finished. The men took off their white scarfs
and folded them up. They stood and talked in groups for a few
minutes, gradually melting away. As for the men under the
gallery, who had been whispering and laughing, they trooped
out of the synagogue all together. Evidently, to them the serv-
ice was only a form. What is it, in any religion, but a form,
to the baser sort?
The Beadle put out the lights. Nelly led the way down the
stairs. Thinking of what the service had suggested to herself-
all those wonderful things above enumerated - Francesca won-
dered what it meant to a girl who heard it every Sabbath morn-
ing. But she refrained from asking. Custom too often takes
the symbolism out of the symbols and the poetry out of the
verse. Then the people begin to worship the symbols and make
a fetich of the words. We have seen this elsewhere-in other
forms of faith. Outside they found Emanuel. They had not
seen him in the congregation, probably because it is difficult to
recognize a man merely by the top of his hat.
"Come," he said, "let us look around the place.
Afterwards,
perhaps, we will talk of our Service. This synagogue is built on
the site of the one erected by Manasseh and his friends when
Oliver Cromwell permitted them to return to London after four
hundred years of exile. They were forced to wear yellow hats
at first, but that ordinance soon fell into disuse, like many other
abominable laws. When you read about mediæval laws, Fran-
cesca, remember that when they were cruel or stupid they were
seldom carried into effect, because the arm of the executive was
weak. Who was there to oblige the Jews to wear the yellow hat?
The police? There were no police. The people? What did the
people care about the yellow hat? When the Fire burned down
## p. 1851 (#41) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1851
London, sparing not even the great Cathedral, to say nothing of
the Synagogue, this second Temple arose, equal in splendor to
the first. At that time all the Jews in London were Sephardim
of Spain and Portugal and Italy. Even now there are many of
the people here who speak nothing among themselves but Span-
ish, just as there are Askenazim who speak nothing among them-
selves but Yiddish. Come with me; I will show you something
that will please you. "
He led the way into another flagged court, larger than the
first. There were stone staircases, mysterious doorways, paved
passages, a suggestion of a cloister, an open space or square,
and buildings on all sides with windows opening upon the court.
"It doesn't look English at all," said Francesca. "I have
seen something like it in a Spanish convent. With balconies and
a few bright hangings and a black-haired woman at the open
windows, and perhaps a coat of arms carved upon the wall, it
would do for part of a Spanish street. It is a strange place to
find in the heart of London. "
"You see the memory of the Peninsula. What were we say-
ing yesterday? Spain places her own seal upon everything that
belongs to her- people, buildings, all. What you see here is the
central Institute of our People, the Sephardim-the Spanish part
of our People. Here is our synagogue, here are schools, alms-
houses, residence of the Rabbi, and all sorts of things. You can
come here sometimes and think of Spain, where your ancestors
lived. Many generations in Spain have made you-as they have
made me a Spaniard. "
―
They went back to the first court. On their way out, as they
passed the synagogue, there came running across the court a girl
of fifteen or so. She was bareheaded; a mass of thick black hair
was curled round her shapely head; her figure was that of an
English girl of twenty; her eyes showed black and large and
bright as she glanced at the group standing in the court; her
skin was dark; she was oddly and picturesquely dressed in a
grayish-blue skirt, with a bright crimson open jacket. The color
seemed literally to strike the eye. The girl disappeared under a
doorway, leaving a picture of herself in Francesca's mind a
picture to be remembered.
"A Spanish Jewess," said Emanuel. "An Oriental. She
chooses by instinct the colors that her great-grandmother might
have worn to grace the triumph of David the King. "
## p. 1852 (#42) ############################################
1852
BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES
BY L. OSCAR KUHNS
NE of the marked features of literary investigation during
the present century is the interest which it has manifested
in the Middle Ages. Not only have specialists devoted
themselves to the detailed study of the Sagas of the North and the
great cycles of Romance in France and England, but the stories of
the Edda, of the Nibelungen, and of Charlemagne and King Arthur
have become popularized, so that to-day they are familiar to the
general reader. There is one class of literature, however, which was
widespread and popular during the Middle Ages, but which is to-day
known only to the student,- that is, the so-called Bestiaries and
Lapidaries, or collections of stories and superstitions concerning the
marvelous attributes of animals and of precious stones.
The basis of all Bestiaries is the Greek Physiologus, the origin of
which can be traced back to the second century before Christ. It
was undoubtedly largely influenced by the zoology of the Bible; and
in the references to the Ibex, the Phoenix, and the tree Paradixion,
traces of Oriental and old Greek superstitions can be seen.
It was
from the Latin versions of the Greek original that translations were
made into nearly all European languages. There are extant to-day,
whole or in fragments, Bestiaries in German, Old English, Old
French, Provençal, Icelandic, Italian, Bohemian, and even Armenian,
Ethiopic, and Syriac. These various versions differ more or less in
the arrangement and number of the animals described, but all point
back to the same ultimate source.
The main object of the Bestiaries was not so much to impart
scientific knowledge, as by means of symbols and allegories to teach
the doctrines and mysteries of the Church. At first this symbolical
application was short and concise, but later became more and more
expanded, until it often occupied more space than the description of
the animal which served as a text.
Some of these animals are entirely fabulous, such as the siren,
the phoenix, the unicorn; others are well known, but possess certain
fabulous attributes. The descriptions of them are not the result of
personal observation, but are derived from stories told by travelers
or read in books, or are merely due to the imagination of the author;
these stories, passing down from hand to hand, gradually became
accepted facts.
These books were enormously popular during the Middle Ages, a
fact which is proved by the large number of manuscripts still extant.
## p. 1853 (#43) ############################################
BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES
1853
Their influence on literature was likewise very great. To say noth-
ing of the encyclopædic works,- such as 'Li Tresors' of Brunetto
Latini, the 'Image du Monde,' the 'Roman de la Rose,'—which con-
tain extracts from the Bestiaries,— there are many references to them
in the great writers, even down to the present day. There are
certain passages in Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, that would be
unintelligible without some knowledge of these medieval books of
zoölogy.
Hence, besides the interest inherent in these quaint and childish
stories, besides their value in revealing the scientific spirit and
attainments of the times, some knowledge of the Bestiaries is of
undoubted value and interest to the student of literature.
Closely allied to the Bestiaries (and indeed often contained in the
same manuscript) are the Lapidaries, in which are discussed the
various kinds of precious stones, with their physical characteristics,-
shape, size, color, their use in medicine, and their marvelous talis-
manic properties. In spite of the fact that they contain the most
absurd fables and superstitions, they were actually used as text-
books in the schools, and published in medical treatises. The most
famous of them was written in Latin by Marbode, Bishop of Rennes
(died in 1123), and translated many times into Old French and other
languages.
The following extracts from the Bestiaries are translated from 'Le
Bestiaire' of Guillaume Le Clerc, composed in the year 1210 (edited
by Dr. Robert Reinsch, Leipzig, 1890). While endeavoring to retain
somewhat of the quaintness and naïveté of the original, I have
omitted those repetitions and tautological expressions which are so
characteristic of mediæval literature. The religious application of the
various animals is usually very long, and often is the mere repetition
of the same idea. The symbolical meaning of the lion here given
may be taken as a type of all the rest.
4. Os CarKuhne.
## p. 1854 (#44) ############################################
1854
BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES
THE LION
IT
T IS proper that we should first speak of the nature of the lion,
which is a fierce and proud beast and very bold. It has three
especially peculiar characteristics. In the first place it always
dwells upon a high mountain. From afar off it can scent the
hunter who is pursuing it. And in order that the latter may not
follow it to its lair it covers over its tracks by means of its tail.
Another wonderful peculiarity of the lion is that when it sleeps
its eyes are wide open, and clear and bright. The third charac-
teristic is likewise very strange. For when the lioness brings
forth her young, it falls to the ground, and gives no sign of life
until the third day, when the lion breathes upon it and in this
way brings it back to life again.
The meaning of all this is very clear. When God, our Sov-
ereign father, who is the Spiritual lion, came for our salvation
here upon earth, so skillfully did he cover his tracks that never
did the hunter know that this was our Savior, and nature mar-
veled how he came among us. By the hunter you must under-
stand him who made man to go astray and seeks after him to
devour him. This is the Devil, who desires only evil.
When this lion was laid upon the Cross by the Jews, his ene-
mies, who judged him wrongfully, his human nature suffered
death. When he gave up the spirit from his body, he fell asleep
upon the holy cross. Then his divine nature awoke. This must
you believe if you wish to live again.
When God was placed in the tomb, he was there only three
days, and on the third day the Father breathed upon him and
brought him to life again, just as the lion did to its young.
THE PELICAN
THE
HE pelican is a wonderful bird which dwells in the region
about the river Nile. The written history* tells us that
there are two kinds,- those which dwell in the river and
eat nothing but fish, and those which dwell in the desert and eat
only insects and worms. There is a wonderful thing about the
pelican, for never did mother-sheep love her lamb as the pelican
*The reference here is probably to the Liber de Bestiis et Aliis Rebus'
of Hugo de St. Victor.
## p. 1855 (#45) ############################################
BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES
1855
loves its young.
When the young are born, the parent bird
devotes all his care and thought to nourishing them. But the
young birds are ungrateful, and when they have grown strong
and self-reliant they peck at their father's face, and he, enraged
at their wickedness, kills them all.
On the third day the father comes to them, deeply moved
with pity and sorrow. With his beak he pierces his own side,
until the blood flows forth. With the blood he brings back life
into the body of his young. "
THE
*
THE EAGLE
HE eagle is the king of birds.
When it is old it becomes
young again in a very strange manner. When its eyes are
darkened and its wings are heavy with age, it seeks out a
fountain clear and pure, where the water bubbles up and shines
in the clear sunlight. Above this fountain it rises high up into
the air, and fixes its eyes upon the light of the sun and gazes
upon it until the heat thereof sets on fire its eyes and wings.
Then it descends down into the fountain where the water is
clearest and brightest, and plunges and bathes three times, until
it is fresh and renewed and healed of its old age. †
The eagle has such keen vision, that if it is high up among
the clouds, soaring through the air, it sees the fish swimming
beneath it, in river or sea; then down it shoots upon the fish
and seizes and drags it to the shore. Again, if unknown to the
eagle its eggs should be changed and others put into its nest,—
when the young are grown, before they fly away, it carries them
up into the air when the sun is shining its brightest. Those
which can look at the rays of the sun, without blinking, it loves
and holds dear; those which cannot stand to look at the light, it
abandons, as base-born, nor troubles itself henceforth concerning
them.
*There are many allusions in literature to this story. Cf. Shakespeare,—
"Like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood. "- Hamlet,' iv. 5.
"Those pelican daughters. "- Lear, iii. 4. Cf. also the beautiful metaphor
of Alfred de Musset, in his 'Nuit de Mai.
tain an obscure sentence. As art is an expression of the artist's
mind, and not a rigid ecclesiastical canon, it may be expressed in as
many formulas as there are artists. Therefore, while to few readers
life casts the rosy reflection that we have learned to call Besantine,
one would not wish it to disappear nor to be discredited.
## p. 1838 (#28) ############################################
1838
WALTER BESANT
It was in the year 1869 that Walter Besant, by a happy chance,
made the acquaintance of James Rice, the editor of Once a Week,
and became a contributor to that magazine. In 1871 that literary
partnership between them began, which is interesting in the history
of collaboration. Mr. Rice had been a barrister, and added legal
lore to Mr. Besant's varied and accurate literary equipment. The
brilliant series of novels that followed includes 'Ready-Money Morti-
boy,' 'My Little Girl,' With Harp and Crown,' 'The Golden Butter-
fly,' 'The Seamy Side,' and 'The Chaplain of the Fleet. ' The latter
story, that of an innocent young country girl left to the guardian-
ship of her uncle, chaplain of the Fleet prison, by the death of
her father, is delicately and surprisingly original. The influence of
Dickens is felt in the structure of the story, and the faithful, almost
photographic fidelity to locality betrays in whose footsteps the
authors have followed; but the chaplain, though he belongs to a
family whose features are familiar to the readers of Little Dorrit ›
and 'Great Expectations,' has not existed until he appears in these
pages, pompous, clever, and without principle, but not lacking in
natural affection. The young girl whose guileless belief in everybody
forces the worst people to assume the characters her purity and
innocence endows them with, is to the foul prison what Picciola was
to Charney. Nor will the moralist find fault with the author whose
kind heart teaches him to include misfortune in his catalogue of
virtues.
―――
Mr. Rice died in 1882, and All Sorts and Conditions of Men,'
Mr. Besant's first independent novel, appeared the same year. It
is a novel with a purpose, and accomplished its purpose because an
artist's hand was necessary to paint the picture of East London that
met with such a response as the People's Palace. The appeal to
philanthropy was a new one. It was a plea for a little more of the
pleasures and graces of life for the two million of people who
inhabit the east end of the great city. It is not a picture of life in
the lowest phases, where the scenes are as dramatic as in the
highest social world, but a story of human life; the nobility, the
meanness, the pathos of it in hopelessly commonplace surroundings,
where the fight is not a hand-to-hand struggle with bitter poverty or
crime, but with dullness and monotony. The characters in 'All Sorts
and Conditions of Men' are possibly more typical than real, but one
hesitates to question either characters or situation. The "impossible
story has become true, and the vision that the enthusiastic young
hero and heroine dream has materialized into a lovely reality.
'The Children of Gibeon' (1884) and The World Went Very Well
Then (1885) are written with the same philanthropic purpose; but if
Sir Walter Besant were not first of all a story-teller, the possessor of
## p. 1839 (#29) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1839
a living voice that holds one spellbound till he has finished his tale,
the read would be more sensible of the wide knowledge of the
novelist, and his familiarity with life in its varied forms.
Here are about thirty novels, displaying an intimate knowledge
of many crafts, trades, and professions, the ways of landsman and
voyager, of country and town, of the new world and the old, of
modern charlatanism as shown in Herr Paulus,' of the "woman
question" among London Jews as in the 'Rebel Queen,' and the
suggestion of the repose and sufficiency of life's simple needs as told
in 'Call Her Mine' and 'Celia's Arbor. '
In the Ivory Gate' the hero is the victim of a remarkable hallu-
cination; in the story of The Inner House' the plummet of sugges-
tion plunges into depths not sounded before, and the soul's regeneration
is unfolded in the loveliest of parables.
The range of Sir Walter Besant reaches from the somewhat con-
ventionalized 'Dorothy Forster' to 'St. Katharine's Tower,' where
deep tragedy approaches the melodramatic, or from the fascination of
"The Master Craftsman' to the Wapping Idyll' of the heaps of
miser's treasure. There is largeness of stroke in this list, and a wide
prospect. His humor is of the cheerful outdoor kind, and the laugh
is at foibles rather than weakness. He pays little attention to fashion
in literature, except to give a good-natured nod to a passing fad.
It would be difficult to classify him under any school. His stories
are not analytical, nor is one conscious of that painstaking fidelity to
art which is no longer classed among the minor virtues. When he
fights, it is with wrong and oppression and the cheerless monotony
of the lives of the poor; but he fights classes rather than individuals,
although certain characters like Fielding the plagiarist, in 'Armorel
of Lyonesse,' are studied from life. The village of bankrupts in All
in a Garden Fair' is a whimsical conceit, like the disguise of Angela
in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' and the double identity of
Edmund Gray in 'The Ivory Gate. ' In reading Besant we are con-
stantly reminded that humanity is wider than the world; and though
its simplest facts are its greatest, there is both interest and edification
in eccentricities.
In 1895 he was made a baronet, and is president of the Society of
Authors, of whom he has been a gallant champion against the pub-
lishers.
## p. 1840 (#30) ############################################
1840
WALTER BESANT
OLD-TIME LONDON
From Sir Walter Besant's 'London': copyrighted 1892, by Harper and Brothers
HE London house, either in Saxon or Norman time, presented
no kind of resemblance to the Roman villa.
It had no
THE
cloisters, no hypocaust, no suite or sequence of rooms.
This unlikeness is another proof, if any were wanting, that the
continuity of tenure had been wholly broken. If the Saxons
went into London, as has been suggested, peaceably, and left the
people to carry on their old life and their trade in
way, the Roman and British architecture
no new thing, but a
style grown up in course of years and found fitted to the cli-
mate would certainly have remained. That, however, was not
the case.
The Englishman developed his house from the patri-
archal idea.
-
―
First, there was the common hall; in this the household lived,
fed, transacted business, and made their cheer in the evenings.
It was built of timber, and to keep out the cold draughts it was
afterwards lined with tapestry. At first they used simple cloths,
which in great houses were embroidered and painted; perches of
various kinds were affixed to the walls, whereon the weapons,
the musical instruments, the cloaks, etc. , were hung up. The
lord and lady sat on a high seat; not, I am inclined to think, on
a dais at the end of the hall, which would have been cold for
them, but on a great chair near the fire, which was burning in
the middle of the hall. This fashion long continued. I have
myself seen a college hall warmed by a fire in a brazier burn-
ing under the lantern of the hall. The furniture consisted of
benches; the table was laid on trestles, spread with a white
cloth, and removed after dinner; the hall was open to all who
came, on condition that the guest should leave his weapons at
the door.
The floor was covered with reeds, which made a clean, soft,
and warm carpet, on which the company could, if they pleased,
lie round the fire. They had carpets or rugs also, but reeds were
commonly used. The traveler who chances to find himself at
the ancient and most interesting town of Kingston-on-Hull, which
very few English people, and still fewer Americans, have the
curiosity to explore, should visit the Trinity House. There,
among many interesting things, he will find a hall where reeds.
## p. 1841 (#31) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1841
are still spread, but no longer so thickly as to form a complete
carpet. I believe this to be the last survival of the reed carpet.
The times of meals were: the breakfast at about nine; the
"noon-meat," or dinner, at twelve; and the "even-meat," or sup-
per, probably at a movable time, depending on the length of the
day. When lighting was costly and candles were scarce, the
hours of sleep would be naturally longer in winter than in the
summer.
In their manner of living the Saxons were fond of vege-
tables, especially of the leek, onion, and garlic. Beans they also
had (these were introduced probably at the time when they com-
menced intercourse with the outer world), pease, radishes, turnips,
parsley, mint, sage, cress, rue, and other herbs. They had
nearly all our modern fruits, though many show by their names,
which are Latin or Norman, a later introduction. They made
use of butter, honey, and cheese. They drank ale and mead.
The latter is still made, but in small quantities, in Somerset and
Hereford shires. The Normans brought over the custom of
drinking wine.
In the earliest times the whole family slept in the common
hall. The first improvement was the erection of the solar, or
upper chamber.
This was above the hall, or a portion of it, or
over the kitchen and buttery attached to the hall.
The arrange-
ment may be still observed in many of the old colleges of Oxford
or Cambridge. The solar was first the sleeping-room of the lord
and lady; though afterward it served not only this purpose, but
also for an ante-chamber to the dormitory of the daughters and
the maid-servants. The men of the household still slept in the
hall below. Later on, bed recesses were contrived in the wall,
as one may find in Northumberland at the present day. The
bed was commonly, but not for the ladies of the house, merely
a big bag stuffed with straw. A sheet wrapped round the body
formed the only night-dress. But there were also pillows, blan-
kets, and coverlets. The early English bed was quite as luxuri-
ous as any that followed after, until the invention of the spring
mattress gave a new and hitherto unhoped-for joy to the hours
of night.
The second step in advance was the ladies' bower, a room
or suite of rooms set apart for the ladies of the house and their
women. For the first time, as soon as this room was added, the
women could follow their own vocations of embroidery, spinning,
IV-1J6
## p. 1842 (#32) ############################################
1842
WALTER BESANT
and needlework of all kinds, apart from the rough and noisy
talk of the men.
The main features, therefore, of every great house, whether
in town or country, from the seventh to the twelfth century,
were the hall, the solar built over the kitchen and buttery, and
the ladies' bower.
There was also the garden. In all times the English have
been fond of gardens. Bacon thought it not beneath his dignity
to order the arrangement of a garden. Long before Bacon, a
writer of the twelfth century describes a garden as it should be.
"It should be adorned on this side with roses, lilies, and the
marigold; on that side with parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood,
coriander, sage, savery, hyssop, mint, vine, dettany, pellitory,
lettuce, cresses, and the peony. Let there be beds enriched with
onions, leeks, garlic, melons, and scallions. The garden is also
enriched by the cucumber, the soporiferous poppy, and the daffo-
dil, and the acanthus. Nor let pot herbs be wanting, as beet-
root, sorrel, and mallow. It is useful also to the gardener to
have anise, mustard, and wormwood.
A noble garden
will give you medlars, quinces, the pear main, peaches, pears of
St. Regle, pomegranates, citrons, oranges, almonds, dates, and
figs. "
The latter fruits were perhaps attempted, but one doubts
their arriving at ripeness. Perhaps the writer sets down what he
hoped would be some day achieved.
·
The in-door amusements of the time were very much like our
own. We have a little music in the evening; so did our fore-
fathers. We sometimes have a little dancing; so did they, but
the dancing was done for them. We go to the theatres to see
the mime; in their days the mime made his theatre in the great
man's hall. He played the fiddle and the harp; he sang songs,
he brought his daughter, who walked on her hands and executed
astonishing capers; the gleeman, minstrel, or jongleur was al-
ready as disreputable as when we find him later on with his
ribauderie. Again, we play chess; so did our ancestors. We
gamble with dice; so did they. We feast and drink together;
so did they. We pass the time in talk; so did they. In a word,
as Alphonse Karr put it, the more we change, the more we
remain the same.
Out-of-doors, as Fitz-Stephen shows, the young men skated,
wrestled, played ball, practiced archery, held water tournaments,
baited bull and bear, fought cocks, and rode races. They were
## p. 1843 (#33) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1843
also mustered sometimes for service in the field, and went forth
cheerfully, being specially upheld by the reassuring consciousness
that London was always on the winning side.
The growth of the city government belongs to the history
of London. Suffice it here to say that the people in all times.
enjoyed a freedom far above that possessed by any other city of
Europe. The history of municipal London is a history of con-
tinual struggle to maintain this freedom against all attacks, and
to extend it and to make it impregnable. Already the people
are proud, turbulent, and confident in their own strength. They
refuse to own any other lord but the king himself; there is no
Earl of London. They freely hold their free and open meetings,
their folk-motes, in the open space outside the northwest corner
of St. Paul's Churchyard. That they lived roughly, enduring
cold, sleeping in small houses in narrow courts; that they suf-
fered much from the long darkness of winter; that they were
always in danger of fevers, agues, "putrid" throats, plagues,
fires by night, and civil wars; that they were ignorant of letters,
-three schools only for the whole of London, all this may
very well be understood. But these things do not make men
and women wretched. They were not always suffering from pre-
ventable disease; they were not always hauling their goods out
of the flames; they were not always fighting. The first and
most simple elements of human happiness are three; to wit, that
a man should be in bodily health, that he should be free, that
he should enjoy the produce of his own labor. All these things
the Londoner possessed under the Norman kings nearly as much
as in these days they can be possessed. His city has always
been one of the healthiest in the world; whatever freedom
could be attained he enjoyed; and in that rich trading town all
men who worked lived in plenty.
The households, the way of living, the occupations of the
women, can be clearly made out in every detail from the Anglo-
Saxon literature. The women in the country made the garments,
carded the wool, sheared the sheep, washed the things, beat the
flax, ground the corn, sat at the spinning-wheel, and prepared
the food. In the towns they had no shearing to do, but all the
rest of their duty fell to their province. The English women
excelled in embroidery. "English" work meant the best kind of
work. They worked church vestments with gold and pearls and
precious stones. "Orfrey," or embroidery in gold, was a special
-
## p. 1844 (#34) ############################################
1844
WALTER BESANT
art. Of course they are accused by the ecclesiastics of an over-
weening desire to wear finery; they certainly curled their hair,
and, one is sorry to read, they painted, and thereby spoiled their
pretty cheeks. If the man was the hlaf-ord [lord],- -the owner
or winner of the loaf, -the wife was the hlaf-dig [lady], its dis-
tributor; the servants and the retainers were hlaf-oetas, or eaters
of it. When nunneries began to be founded, the Saxon ladies in
great numbers forsook the world for the cloister. And here they
began to learn Latin, and became able at least to carry on corre-
spondence specimens of which still exist-in that language.
Every nunnery possessed a school for girls. They were taught
to read and to write their own language and Latin, perhaps also
rhetoric and embroidery. As the pious Sisters were fond of
putting on violet chemises, tunics, and vests of delicate tissue,
embroidered with silver and gold, and scarlet shoes, there was
probably not much mortification of the flesh in the nunneries of
the later Saxon times.
This for the better class. We cannot suppose that the daugh-
ters of the craftsmen became scholars of the nunnery. Theirs
were the lower walks-to spin the linen and to make the bread
and carry on the housework.
## p. 1845 (#35) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1845
"A
THE SYNAGOGUE
From The Rebel Queen': copyrighted 1893, by Harper and Brothers
"D'un jour intérieur je me sens éclairé,
Et j'entends une voix qui me dit d'espérer. ”— Lamartine.
RE you ready, Francesca ? »
――――
Nelly ran lightly down the narrow stairs, dressed for
Sabbath and Synagogue. She was dainty and pretty at all
times in the matter of dress, but especially on a summer day,
which affords opportunity for bright color and bright drapery and
an ethereal appearance. This morning she was full of color and
light. When, however, she found herself confronted with Fran-
cesca's simple gray dress, so closely fitting, so faultless, and her
black-lace hat with its single rose for color, Nelly's artistic sense
caused her heart to sink like lead. It is not for nothing that one
learns and teaches the banjo; one Art leads to another; she who
knows music can feel for dress. "Oh! " she cried, clasping her
hands. "That's what we can never do! "
"What?
"That fit! Look at me! Yet they call me clever. Clara gives
me the new fashions and I copy them, and the girls in our street
copy me
- poor things! —and the dressmaker comes to talk things
over and to learn from me. I make everything for myself. And
they call me clever! But I can't get near it; and if I can't
nobody can. "
A large detached structure of red brick stood east and west,
with a flat façade and round windows that bore out the truth of
the date 1700-carved upon the front. A word or two in that
square character-that tongue which presents so few attractions
to most of us compared with other tongues-probably corrobo-
rated the internal evidence of the façade and the windows.
"This is the synagogue," said Nelly. She entered, and turn-
ing to the right, led the way up-stairs to a gallery running along
the whole side of the building. On the other side was another
gallery. In front of both was a tolerably wide grill, through
which the congregation below could be seen perfectly.
"This is the women's gallery," whispered Nell-there were
not many women present. "We'll sit in the front. Presently
they will sing. They sing beautifully. Now they're reading
## p. 1846 (#36) ############################################
1846
WALTER BESANT
prayers and the Law.
They've got to read the whole Law
through once a week, you know. " Francesca looked curiously
through the grill. When one is in a perfectly strange place, the
first observations made are of small and unimportant things. She
observed that there was a circular inclosure at the east end, as if
for an altar; but there was no altar: two doors indicated a cup-
board in the wall. There were six tall wax-lights burning round
the inclosure, although the morning was fine and bright. At the
west end a high screen kept the congregation from the disturb-
ance of those who entered or went out. Within the screen was
a company of men and boys, all with their hats and caps on their
heads; they looked like the choir. In front of the choir was a
platform railed round. Three chairs were placed at the back of
the platform. There was a table covered with red velvet, on
which lay the book of the Law, a ponderous roll of parchment
provided with silver staves or handles. Before this desk or table
stood the Reader. He was a tall and handsome man, with black
hair and full black beard, about forty years of age. He wore a
gown and large Geneva bands, like a Presbyterian minister; on
his head he had a kind of biretta. Four tall wax candles were
placed round the front of the platform. The chairs were occu-
pied by two or three elders. A younger man stood at the desk
beside the Reader. The service was already begun-it was, in
fact, half over.
Francesca observed next that all the men wore a kind of
broad scarf, made of some white stuff about eight feet long and
four feet broad. Bands of black or blue were worked in the
ends, which were also provided with fringes. "It is the Talleth,"
Nelly whispered. Even the boys wore this white robe, the effect
of which would have been very good but for the modern hat, tall
or pot, which spoiled all. Such a robe wants a turban above it,
not an English hat. The seats were ranged along the synagogue
The place was not full, but there were a good
many worshipers. The service was chanted by the Reader. It
was a kind of chant quite new and strange to Francesca.
Like
many young persons brought up with no other religion than
they can pick up for themselves, she was curious and somewhat
learned in the matter of ecclesiastical music and ritual, which she
approached, owing to her education, with unbiased mind. She
knew masses and anthems and hymns and chants of all kinds;
never had she heard anything of this kind before. It was not
east and west.
## p. 1847 (#37) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1847
congregational, or Gregorian; nor was it repeated by the choir
from side to side; nor was a monotone with a drop at the
end; nor was it a florid, tuneful chant such as one may hear in
some Anglican services. This Reader, with a rich, strong voice,
a baritone of great power, took nearly the whole of the service
it must have been extremely fatiguing— upon himself, chanting
it from beginning to end. No doubt, as he rendered the read-
ing and the prayers, so they had been given by his ancestors in
Spain and Portugal generation after generation, back into the
times when they came over in Phoenician ships to the Cartha-
ginian colonies, even before the dispersion of the Ten Tribes.
It was a traditional chant of antiquity beyond record- not a
monotonous chant. Francesca knew nothing of the words; she
grew tired of trying to make out whereabouts on the page the
Reader might be in the book lent her, which had Hebrew on
one side and English on the other. Besides, the man attracted
her-by his voice, by his energy, by his appearance. She closed
her book and surrendered herself to the influence of the voice
and the emotions which it expressed.
There was no music to help him. From time to time the
men in the congregation lifted up their voices-not seemingly
in response, but as if moved to sudden passion and crying out
with one accord. This helped him a little, otherwise he was
without any assistance.
A great Voice. The man sometimes leaned over the Roll of
the Law, sometimes he stood upright, always his great Voice
went up and down and rolled along the roof and echoed along
the benches of the women's gallery. Now the Voice sounded a
note of rejoicing; now, but less often, a note of sadness; now
it was a sharp and sudden cry of triumph. Then the people
shouted with him- it was as if they clashed sword on shield
and yelled for victory; now it was a note of defiance, as when
men go forth to fight an enemy; now it sank to a murmur, as
of one who consoles and soothes and promises things to come;
now it was a note of rapture, as if the Promised Land was
already recovered.
-
Was all that in the Voice? Did the congregation, all sitting
wrapped in their white robes, feel these emotions as the Voice
thundered and rolled? I know not. Such was the effect pro-
duced upon one who heard this Voice for the first time. At first
it seemed loud, even barbaric; there was lacking something which
## p. 1848 (#38) ############################################
1848
WALTER BESANT
the listener and stranger had learned to associate with worship.
What was it? Reverence? But she presently found reverence
in plenty, only of a kind that differed from that of Christian
worship. Then the listener made another discovery. In this
ancient service she missed the note of humiliation. There was
no Litany at a Faldstool. There was no kneeling in abasement;
there was no appearance of penitence, sorrow, or the confession
of sins. The Voice was as the Voice of a Captain exhorting his
soldiers to fight. The service was warlike, the service of a peo-
ple whose trust in their God is so great that they do not need
to call perpetually upon Him for the help and forgiveness of
which they are assured. Yes, yes- she thought- this is the
service of a race of warriors; they are fighting men: the Lord is
their God; He is leading them to battle: as for little sins, and
backslidings, and penitences, they belong to the Day of Atone-
ment - which comes once a year. For all the other days in the
year, battle and victory occupy all the mind. The service of a
great fighting people; a service full of joy, full of faith, full of
assurance, full of hope and confidence-such assurance as few
Christians can understand, and of faith to which few Christians
can attain. Perhaps Francesca was wrong; but these were her
first impressions, and these are mostly true.
In the body of the synagogue men came late. Under one
gallery was a school of boys, in the charge of a graybeard, who,
book in hand, followed the service with one eye, while he
admonished perpetually the boys to keep still and to listen. The
boys grew restless; it was tedious to them -the Voice which
expressed so much to the stranger who knew no Hebrew at all
was tedious to the children; they were allowed to get up and
run into the court outside and then to come back again; nobody
heeded their going in and out. One little boy of three, wrapped,
like the rest, in a white Talleth, ran up and down the side aisle
without being heeded - even by the splendid Beadle with the
gold-laced hat, which looked so truly wonderful above the Ori-
ental Talleth. The boys in the choir got up and went in and
out just as they pleased. Nobody minded. The congregation,
mostly well-to-do men with silk hats, sat in their places, book in
hand, and paid no attention.
―――
Under the opposite gallery sat two or three rows of worship-
ers, who reminded Francesca of Browning's poem of St. John's
Day at Rome. For they nudged and jostled each other; they
## p. 1849 (#39) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1849
whispered things; they even laughed over the things they whis-
pered. But they were clad like those in the open part in the
Talleth, and they sat book in hand, and from time to time they
raised their voices with the congregation. They showed no rev-
erence except that they did not talk or laugh loudly. They were
like the children, their neighbors, just as restless, just as unin-
terested, just as perfunctory. Well, they were clearly the poorer
and the more ignorant part of the community. They came here
and sat through the service because they were ordered so to do;
because, like Passover, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and the
Fast of Atonement, it was the Law of their People.
The women in the gallery sat or stood. They neither knelt
nor sang aloud; they only sat when it was proper to sit, or stood
when it was proper to stand. They were like the women, the
village women, in a Spanish or Italian church, for whom every-
thing is done. Francesca, for the moment, felt humiliated that
she should be compelled to sit apart from the congregation, railed
off in the women's gallery, to have her religion done for her,
without a voice of her own in it at all. So, I have heard, indig-
nation sometimes fills the bosom of certain ladies when they
reflect upon the fact that they are excluded from the choir, and
forbidden even to play the organ in their own parish church.
The chanting ceased; the Reader sat down. Then the Choir
began. They sang a hymn-a Hebrew hymn - the rhythm and
metre were not English; the music was like nothing that can be
heard in a Christian Church. "It is the music," said Nelly, "to
which the Israelites crossed the Red Sea:" a bold statement,
but - why not? If the music is not of Western origin and char-
acter, who can disprove such an assertion? After the hymn the
prayers and reading went on again.
There came at last-it is a long service, such as we poor
weak-kneed Anglicans could not endure- the end.
the end. There was a
great bustle and ceremony on the platform; they rolled up the
Roll of the Law; they wrapped it in a purple velvet cloth; they
hung over it a silver breastplate set with twelve jewels for the
Twelve Tribes-in memory of the Urim and Thummim. Fran-
cesca saw that the upper ends of the staves were adorned with
silver pomegranates and with silver bells, and they placed it in
the arms of one of those who had been reading the law; then a
procession was formed, and they walked, while the Choir sang
one of the Psalms of David-but not in the least like the same
-
## p. 1850 (#40) ############################################
1850
WALTER BESANT
Psalm sung in an English Cathedral-bearing the Roll of the
Law to the Ark, that is to say, to the cupboard, behind the rail-
ing and inclosure at the east end.
The Reader came back. Then with another chanted Prayer –
it sounded like a prolonged shout of continued Triumph — he
ended his part of the service.
And then the choir sang the last hymn-a lovely hymn, not
in the least like a Christian, or at least an English hymn-a
psalm that breathed a tranquil hope and a perfect faith. One
needed no words to understand the full meaning and beauty and
depth of that hymn.
The service was finished. The men took off their white scarfs
and folded them up. They stood and talked in groups for a few
minutes, gradually melting away. As for the men under the
gallery, who had been whispering and laughing, they trooped
out of the synagogue all together. Evidently, to them the serv-
ice was only a form. What is it, in any religion, but a form,
to the baser sort?
The Beadle put out the lights. Nelly led the way down the
stairs. Thinking of what the service had suggested to herself-
all those wonderful things above enumerated - Francesca won-
dered what it meant to a girl who heard it every Sabbath morn-
ing. But she refrained from asking. Custom too often takes
the symbolism out of the symbols and the poetry out of the
verse. Then the people begin to worship the symbols and make
a fetich of the words. We have seen this elsewhere-in other
forms of faith. Outside they found Emanuel. They had not
seen him in the congregation, probably because it is difficult to
recognize a man merely by the top of his hat.
"Come," he said, "let us look around the place.
Afterwards,
perhaps, we will talk of our Service. This synagogue is built on
the site of the one erected by Manasseh and his friends when
Oliver Cromwell permitted them to return to London after four
hundred years of exile. They were forced to wear yellow hats
at first, but that ordinance soon fell into disuse, like many other
abominable laws. When you read about mediæval laws, Fran-
cesca, remember that when they were cruel or stupid they were
seldom carried into effect, because the arm of the executive was
weak. Who was there to oblige the Jews to wear the yellow hat?
The police? There were no police. The people? What did the
people care about the yellow hat? When the Fire burned down
## p. 1851 (#41) ############################################
WALTER BESANT
1851
London, sparing not even the great Cathedral, to say nothing of
the Synagogue, this second Temple arose, equal in splendor to
the first. At that time all the Jews in London were Sephardim
of Spain and Portugal and Italy. Even now there are many of
the people here who speak nothing among themselves but Span-
ish, just as there are Askenazim who speak nothing among them-
selves but Yiddish. Come with me; I will show you something
that will please you. "
He led the way into another flagged court, larger than the
first. There were stone staircases, mysterious doorways, paved
passages, a suggestion of a cloister, an open space or square,
and buildings on all sides with windows opening upon the court.
"It doesn't look English at all," said Francesca. "I have
seen something like it in a Spanish convent. With balconies and
a few bright hangings and a black-haired woman at the open
windows, and perhaps a coat of arms carved upon the wall, it
would do for part of a Spanish street. It is a strange place to
find in the heart of London. "
"You see the memory of the Peninsula. What were we say-
ing yesterday? Spain places her own seal upon everything that
belongs to her- people, buildings, all. What you see here is the
central Institute of our People, the Sephardim-the Spanish part
of our People. Here is our synagogue, here are schools, alms-
houses, residence of the Rabbi, and all sorts of things. You can
come here sometimes and think of Spain, where your ancestors
lived. Many generations in Spain have made you-as they have
made me a Spaniard. "
―
They went back to the first court. On their way out, as they
passed the synagogue, there came running across the court a girl
of fifteen or so. She was bareheaded; a mass of thick black hair
was curled round her shapely head; her figure was that of an
English girl of twenty; her eyes showed black and large and
bright as she glanced at the group standing in the court; her
skin was dark; she was oddly and picturesquely dressed in a
grayish-blue skirt, with a bright crimson open jacket. The color
seemed literally to strike the eye. The girl disappeared under a
doorway, leaving a picture of herself in Francesca's mind a
picture to be remembered.
"A Spanish Jewess," said Emanuel. "An Oriental. She
chooses by instinct the colors that her great-grandmother might
have worn to grace the triumph of David the King. "
## p. 1852 (#42) ############################################
1852
BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES
BY L. OSCAR KUHNS
NE of the marked features of literary investigation during
the present century is the interest which it has manifested
in the Middle Ages. Not only have specialists devoted
themselves to the detailed study of the Sagas of the North and the
great cycles of Romance in France and England, but the stories of
the Edda, of the Nibelungen, and of Charlemagne and King Arthur
have become popularized, so that to-day they are familiar to the
general reader. There is one class of literature, however, which was
widespread and popular during the Middle Ages, but which is to-day
known only to the student,- that is, the so-called Bestiaries and
Lapidaries, or collections of stories and superstitions concerning the
marvelous attributes of animals and of precious stones.
The basis of all Bestiaries is the Greek Physiologus, the origin of
which can be traced back to the second century before Christ. It
was undoubtedly largely influenced by the zoology of the Bible; and
in the references to the Ibex, the Phoenix, and the tree Paradixion,
traces of Oriental and old Greek superstitions can be seen.
It was
from the Latin versions of the Greek original that translations were
made into nearly all European languages. There are extant to-day,
whole or in fragments, Bestiaries in German, Old English, Old
French, Provençal, Icelandic, Italian, Bohemian, and even Armenian,
Ethiopic, and Syriac. These various versions differ more or less in
the arrangement and number of the animals described, but all point
back to the same ultimate source.
The main object of the Bestiaries was not so much to impart
scientific knowledge, as by means of symbols and allegories to teach
the doctrines and mysteries of the Church. At first this symbolical
application was short and concise, but later became more and more
expanded, until it often occupied more space than the description of
the animal which served as a text.
Some of these animals are entirely fabulous, such as the siren,
the phoenix, the unicorn; others are well known, but possess certain
fabulous attributes. The descriptions of them are not the result of
personal observation, but are derived from stories told by travelers
or read in books, or are merely due to the imagination of the author;
these stories, passing down from hand to hand, gradually became
accepted facts.
These books were enormously popular during the Middle Ages, a
fact which is proved by the large number of manuscripts still extant.
## p. 1853 (#43) ############################################
BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES
1853
Their influence on literature was likewise very great. To say noth-
ing of the encyclopædic works,- such as 'Li Tresors' of Brunetto
Latini, the 'Image du Monde,' the 'Roman de la Rose,'—which con-
tain extracts from the Bestiaries,— there are many references to them
in the great writers, even down to the present day. There are
certain passages in Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, that would be
unintelligible without some knowledge of these medieval books of
zoölogy.
Hence, besides the interest inherent in these quaint and childish
stories, besides their value in revealing the scientific spirit and
attainments of the times, some knowledge of the Bestiaries is of
undoubted value and interest to the student of literature.
Closely allied to the Bestiaries (and indeed often contained in the
same manuscript) are the Lapidaries, in which are discussed the
various kinds of precious stones, with their physical characteristics,-
shape, size, color, their use in medicine, and their marvelous talis-
manic properties. In spite of the fact that they contain the most
absurd fables and superstitions, they were actually used as text-
books in the schools, and published in medical treatises. The most
famous of them was written in Latin by Marbode, Bishop of Rennes
(died in 1123), and translated many times into Old French and other
languages.
The following extracts from the Bestiaries are translated from 'Le
Bestiaire' of Guillaume Le Clerc, composed in the year 1210 (edited
by Dr. Robert Reinsch, Leipzig, 1890). While endeavoring to retain
somewhat of the quaintness and naïveté of the original, I have
omitted those repetitions and tautological expressions which are so
characteristic of mediæval literature. The religious application of the
various animals is usually very long, and often is the mere repetition
of the same idea. The symbolical meaning of the lion here given
may be taken as a type of all the rest.
4. Os CarKuhne.
## p. 1854 (#44) ############################################
1854
BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES
THE LION
IT
T IS proper that we should first speak of the nature of the lion,
which is a fierce and proud beast and very bold. It has three
especially peculiar characteristics. In the first place it always
dwells upon a high mountain. From afar off it can scent the
hunter who is pursuing it. And in order that the latter may not
follow it to its lair it covers over its tracks by means of its tail.
Another wonderful peculiarity of the lion is that when it sleeps
its eyes are wide open, and clear and bright. The third charac-
teristic is likewise very strange. For when the lioness brings
forth her young, it falls to the ground, and gives no sign of life
until the third day, when the lion breathes upon it and in this
way brings it back to life again.
The meaning of all this is very clear. When God, our Sov-
ereign father, who is the Spiritual lion, came for our salvation
here upon earth, so skillfully did he cover his tracks that never
did the hunter know that this was our Savior, and nature mar-
veled how he came among us. By the hunter you must under-
stand him who made man to go astray and seeks after him to
devour him. This is the Devil, who desires only evil.
When this lion was laid upon the Cross by the Jews, his ene-
mies, who judged him wrongfully, his human nature suffered
death. When he gave up the spirit from his body, he fell asleep
upon the holy cross. Then his divine nature awoke. This must
you believe if you wish to live again.
When God was placed in the tomb, he was there only three
days, and on the third day the Father breathed upon him and
brought him to life again, just as the lion did to its young.
THE PELICAN
THE
HE pelican is a wonderful bird which dwells in the region
about the river Nile. The written history* tells us that
there are two kinds,- those which dwell in the river and
eat nothing but fish, and those which dwell in the desert and eat
only insects and worms. There is a wonderful thing about the
pelican, for never did mother-sheep love her lamb as the pelican
*The reference here is probably to the Liber de Bestiis et Aliis Rebus'
of Hugo de St. Victor.
## p. 1855 (#45) ############################################
BESTIARIES AND LAPIDARIES
1855
loves its young.
When the young are born, the parent bird
devotes all his care and thought to nourishing them. But the
young birds are ungrateful, and when they have grown strong
and self-reliant they peck at their father's face, and he, enraged
at their wickedness, kills them all.
On the third day the father comes to them, deeply moved
with pity and sorrow. With his beak he pierces his own side,
until the blood flows forth. With the blood he brings back life
into the body of his young. "
THE
*
THE EAGLE
HE eagle is the king of birds.
When it is old it becomes
young again in a very strange manner. When its eyes are
darkened and its wings are heavy with age, it seeks out a
fountain clear and pure, where the water bubbles up and shines
in the clear sunlight. Above this fountain it rises high up into
the air, and fixes its eyes upon the light of the sun and gazes
upon it until the heat thereof sets on fire its eyes and wings.
Then it descends down into the fountain where the water is
clearest and brightest, and plunges and bathes three times, until
it is fresh and renewed and healed of its old age. †
The eagle has such keen vision, that if it is high up among
the clouds, soaring through the air, it sees the fish swimming
beneath it, in river or sea; then down it shoots upon the fish
and seizes and drags it to the shore. Again, if unknown to the
eagle its eggs should be changed and others put into its nest,—
when the young are grown, before they fly away, it carries them
up into the air when the sun is shining its brightest. Those
which can look at the rays of the sun, without blinking, it loves
and holds dear; those which cannot stand to look at the light, it
abandons, as base-born, nor troubles itself henceforth concerning
them.
*There are many allusions in literature to this story. Cf. Shakespeare,—
"Like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood. "- Hamlet,' iv. 5.
"Those pelican daughters. "- Lear, iii. 4. Cf. also the beautiful metaphor
of Alfred de Musset, in his 'Nuit de Mai.
