ACCUSING RUINS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 127, 31 May 1941, Page 8

ACCUSING RUINS

THF TFIWPIF DFFIIFf)

WHERE SHADOWS WALK

SAINTS AND SINNERS

(By G. 0.)

The 79th Psalm may have recurred to many this week when they read of the destruction of the Temple Church, of the Halls and other buildings of the Middle and Inner Temple. This defilement, these blackened ruins, dumbly and eloquently testify against the heathenism of the Hun and his abhorrence of the Christian faith and all that it signifies. The round church of the Knights Templars is now "a charred shell." Curiously enough, the origins of that church were associated with the present conflict: Christianity against paganism. The only difference is in the battle standards raised; the Cross opposed to the swastika, not the crescent. The Knights Templars may have been distinguished more for their militancy than piety, but they fought for what they believed to be the right and according to certain rules which owed something to Christian teaching. Here in this ancient church building, from the twelfth century tc the twentieth, their memory has beer jealously preserved; here, also, in records of stonr are remembered other warriors, no less doughty, no less sincere of purpose, who put aside their wigs and gowns and went out to fight, and fall in fighting for the right, in 1914-18.

To this sacred place in our days came pilgrims from far lands to the ancient Knights unknown. Out of the noise and bustle of a great river of traffic they turned into a, still backwater, as it were, and so they came upon the round church. They came>to worship and to wonder at the beauty and dignity of Divine service, to mar vel at the beauty and dignity of the fabric and the marvels of cunning workmanship. They came to gaze upon the recumbent effigies in stone of knights who put their trust in sword and chain mail and shield, as well as in God. The pilgrims did not know and perhaps (excepting antiquaries) they did not care how much undoing of "restoration" the Temple Church has known, but took it all for what it was to them—almost too beautiful to be the handiwork of men. Now it is but a charred shell."

The story of the Temple Church, g< ing back as it does to 1185, is far too long to outline here. It is a story calling for specialists to tell, but it is one exceedingly x rich in incidents, some authentic, some legendary, but all going to make up the stirring history of the English from Norman times. To many having no knowledge of archaeology or architecture or of law-making and all that goes with it, the charm of the Temple and its great houses and lovely gardens and trees was sufficient. Here the imagination could have free play in summoning shadows of innumerable personages, real and fictional, haunting those courts and squares and certain sets of rooms. Doctor Johnson, for instance, could be imagined rolling under the archway out of Fleet Street at the call of Oliver Goldsmith. The trouble was a matter of unpaid rerrt. Besides Oliver, in this brief comedy, was his indignant landlady with a sheriff's officer acting a small but important part. Here, it is said, the doctor read the M.S. of "The Vicar of Wakefield" and was so much impressed by $s merits that he was instrumental in persuading a publisher to pay £60 for the copyright; but this story is apocryphal. Goldsmith lived up to every penny he had and when he hadn't a penny he lived. He liked low company as well as high and he paid a lot of money for his experiences of human nature. Here in the Temple he lived, here he died, and was buried in the* company of Christian knights and gentlemen. His tomb has now been violated. Sheridan knew the Temple well. Could but the red brick walls (the colour of old wine) disclose the thoughts of men passing between them tell what they absorbed, what would they say of Sheridan and Burke? Charles Lamb lived in the Temple and he assured Wordsworth that he would live nowhere else than in his beloved noisy, smokey, grimy London. "Have I not enough," he wrote, "without your mountains?" Here too in the flesh, no doubt, E. V. Lucas wandered in search of shadows cast by Lamb.

It was in Fountain Court that Ruth Pinch met John Westlock and by "the fountain sparkling in the sun." Together the lovers gazed down Garden Court to the Gardens and beyond them to the River. Here also the shadow of Dick Phenyl (not in his cups) could be seen in the mind's eye, expounding his version of the story of Cinderella with "no pumpkin, and no fairy."

The Temple is haunted by shadowsis or was? Perhaps all of them have now been blitzed out of the place, never to return. How could they find their way back to another and possibly greater Temple, rebuilt on "entirely modem lines?"