AFTER FOUR CENTURIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 140, 16 June 1931, Page 11

AFTER FOUR CENTURIES

STATUE OF JOHN STOWE GIFT OF NEW QUILL PEN St. Andrew Undershaft, in Leadenhall Street, London, wore a festive air on a recent morning. The bells were ringing and the notes of the organ vibrated through the building. At the church door stood Bishop Perrin, tho rector, and the Alderman and Dcputy-Oldcnnan of the Ward. They were waiting to welcome the Lord Mayor of London. Sir Phene Neal, when he arrived in state, to present the statue of John Stow with a new quill pen. There is something appealing, as well as unusual, about this ceremony. It is gratifying—writes a Morning Post correspondent—to know that the people of London to-day have not forgotten the groat historian who lived over four hundred years ago. John Stow must have had an attractive personality. Howes describes him as “tall of stature, lean of body and face, eyes small and crystalline, and a pleasant, cheerful countenance.” In later life he was known as “a merry old man,” ever generous, and whose expenditure always exceeded his income. He was born at Cornhill, where his father possessed a small house and garden, and as a small boy, ho related, he would go daily to fetch milk “hot from the kine. ” It was as a tailor that John Stow started life, and on November 25, .1547, he was admitted to tho Freedom of Merchant Taylors. His heart was never in his work, and as time went on he gradually retired from business anil devoted himself to English history, archaeology, and literature. His bestknown works are "Survey of London” and “Tho Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, newly printed with divers additions which wore never in print before.” At the time of his death Mr Stow was engaged on “An History of This Island,” and had he lived a year longer he could have put it into print. As it is. the manuscript was lost and has never been discovered. John Stow was a keen observer. His “Survey of London” is full of vivid touches, and the present generation are indebted to him for countless intimate details of England and its ancestry. The magic of John Stow’s quill pen has dispelled the obscurity of the past, and has shown the present, age history that hut for him it would never have known. His statue stands in a nook in the chancel. Grave and still, he seems to pore over a book that lies open on tho desk, and in his hand is a new. white quill pen.