The Evening Star TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1927. HANDS OFF THE ABBEY.

Evening Star, Issue 19708, 8 November 1927, Page 6

The Evening Star TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1927. HANDS OFF THE ABBEY.

It is not surprising that the proposal of a coiumission to enlarge tho structure of Westminster Abbey Ims roused strong opposition at Home. The plea for enlarging it is that tho Abbey is crowded; that more room must be made in it somehow if tho noble dead are to continue to find a resting place there in the future as they have done in tho past. The argument takes lor grankgl that there will be more famous men for whom no other burial place would bo fitting. Dr Butler, of America, who was lamenting recently his failure to find even one man of genius in the present age,.-might have had his doubts even of that prospect.With all the propensity for selfdepreciation which it has shown of late, the British race is not so pessimistic of tho future. Nor need the doubts felt by some of tho Abbey’s adequacy, with very small alterations, to serve all its present uses for at least many generations to come, cause us any acute alarm. Tho Abbey has always been crowded. At least it was declared to lie so, us early s tho eighteenth century, in a “ petition from posterity ” which was presented to the Dean and Chapter entreating that their case might bo considered. At tile same time a French traveller observed that tho monuments of the dead were pressed as closely together there as tho living in the streets of London. Yet the Abbey has gone on receiving tho dust and the memorials of many famous men since then. Its form is tho gift of the ages to millions yet unborn. Wo cannot lightly add to it, because most indubitably wc have lost the art of such architecture. Sixty years ago Dean Stanley suggested that if a new cloister was erected, which would make the least alteration to its external appearance, enough room would bo provided for the graves and memorials of another thousand years. There can be no need, therefore, for any drastic alterations to tho structure of tho Abbey which would destroy its familiar form.

An alternative suggestion for making more room is by clearing out the monuments and ignoring the graves of “many unworthy people and even disreputable characters ” who have been too much honored in being commemorated there. The presence of these is an old complaint. Sir Godfrey Knoller, who was not such a great painter as ho thought himself or as his age thought him, sent for Pope before he died. “He began by telling me,” says the poet, “ho was now convinced he could not live, and fell into a passion of tears. I said I hoped he might, but if not he knew that it was the will of God. Ho answered ‘No, no; it is the Evil Spirit.’ The next word he said was this: ‘By God, I will not be buried in Westminster!’ 1 asked him why. He answered ‘ They do bury fools there.’ ” He was buried, therefore, m the garden of his own manor, bub a monument to him was placed later in the Abbey, for which Pope wrote an epigram, described by Dr Johnson as “the worst thing he ever wrote in his life.” “ After this unfortunate beginning,’ says Dean Stanley, “no painter has been, or probably ever will be, interred within the Abbey.” The place of sepulture for the greatest of that art has been St. Paul’s Cathedral. Kings and their attendants made the first burials of the Abbey. Some of the Royal favorites who were admitted to its sanctity before it came to bo' recognised as the national pantheon were neither beautiful nor useful in their lives. And in later days all sorts of characters were given a place there, according to the influence of authorities and the vagaries of opinion of their times. Many were thought great men when they were interred there whowould hardly be so considered to-day. One of the graves in the cloisters is that of John Broughton, who was the “prince of prize-fighters” in his time. He was also one of the Yeomen of the Guard. After his name on tho gravestone is a space, which was to have been filled up with the words “Champion of England,” but the Dean objected, and the blank remains. The Abbey had no place for Byron owing to the obliquities of his moral life, but its guardian deans have more often been very kindly to genius, leaving morality to God. Tho graves and memorials of the national shrine are themselves the greatest monument to the tolerance of tho British National Church and national character, as well as to tho peculiar closeness of association which has always existed between the British rulers and their subjects, though there have been no Royal burials in the Abbey since the reign of George 111. The styles and characters of the monuments are as various as the careers which they commemorate. Some that are only “stones of offence” today, monstrosities of false taste which almost everybody would be glad to see abolished, were admired the most at the time when they were erected. Tho monument to Sir Cloudesly Shovel is an example. Though he was neither a beau nor an ancient Roman, but a brave, rough sailor, he is represented as an eighteenth-century dandy in a huge periwig with flowing curls, and below as a half-naked Roman. The effigies are in all sorts of positions—recumbent, sitting, standing, and pointing morals. There have been alterations before. Graves have been opened or closed, and memorials removed for others, from the most various feelings of different times. A rare clearance could be made if all tbe unsightly monuments, or all those which but servo _ | To give a deathless lot To names ignoble, born to be forgot, were to bo destroyed, to make sure of providing room for future worth. But the Abbey would lose its character as a memorial of all ages and opinions if only the taste and greatness which have been finally accepted were to be retained. There must be no rash interference with the Abbey.