English Cathedrals Illustrated: Second and Revised Edition

The following pages are an attempt to make the study of the English cathedrals more interesting. Every ancient building has a life-history of its own, and should be studied biographically. But open a guide-book, or visit the different portions of a cathedral (Winchester, for example,) in the regulation order, and what you read of or see will probably be, first, what was done in the nave in the latter part of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth century; then the work done in the crossing in the twelfth century; then work done in the transepts in the eleventh century; then the work in the choir in the first half of the fourteenth century; then the work done in the retro-choir early in the thirteenth century; finally, sixteenth-century work in the Lady chapel. To the reader this hop, skip, and jump method—if it deserves to be called a method—is simply maddening. For the visitor it has one merit, and one merit only: it saves his legs. I do not propose to save the visitor’s legs; I must candidly confess that the biographical method of studying a cathedral involves a certain amount of marching and countermarching. But I venture to hope that there are some visitors who will not be deterred by a little additional bodily fatigue from studying the cathedrals aright. With what horror a reader would study a biography of the Great Duke which commenced with the Peninsular War, then described his school-days at Eton, followed these up by the battle of Waterloo, digressed into a description of his childhood and ancestry, described his career as a Tory Prime Minister, and wound up with his campaigns in India! Yet that is how the English cathedrals are studied. But it is not sufficient to study the different parts of a cathedral in chronological order. It would be a dull biography of a man, and a dull history of a people, which put events correctly in chronological order, but did not point out the causal connection between them. It is just when we reach this point that the real interest begins. It does not interest one much to hear that an acquaintance whom we saw in London in the spring is now in the Australian bush: it does interest one when one hears that he had to leave the country because three months ago he was detected cheating at cards. So, in a cathedral, it is not enough to know that such a vault was put up or such a row of windows inserted in the fifteenth century. We want to know why the cathedral people constructed the vault or the windows just then; also, why they were not satisfied with what was there before; also, what was there before. And with the latter query comes in a fine field of action for what I believe is called the “constructive imagination.”

On the motives which influenced mediæval builders I have laid considerable stress throughout the book, simply because, if it has occurred at all to writers to ask why such and such a change was made, the answer usually has been—I quote from an article on one of the cathedrals—“simply a desire for what was thought a far superior kind of beauty led to the alteration of this work”: i.e., the Gothic builders were æsthetic dilettanti, striving after prettiness for prettiness’ sake; on a level with painters and poets and musicians. Now, some changes were due, I admit, to æsthetic considerations simply: e.g., the substitution of the present choir for the former Transitional choir at York; so also one of every pair of towers at the west end of a cathedral; and every spire in the country.