Tales from Westminster Abbey: Told to Children by Mrs. Frewen Lord
Millicent Frewen Lord
9781465657657
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
A great many years ago, when I was quite a small child, I was taken with some other children over Westminster Abbey by Dean Stanley, who was then the Dean of Westminster. Some of you may have read a book called “Tom Brown’s School Days,” and if so you will remember Tom’s great friend, Arthur, who began his school life a lonely and home-sick little boy, but who as the years went on came to be looked up to and liked almost more than any other boy at Rugby. “George Arthur” this boy is called in the book, but his real name was Arthur Stanley, and when he grew up he became a clergyman, and was for many years Dean of Westminster. He wrote a great many books, and one all about Westminster Abbey; for he knew every corner and part of this great church, and was full of stories about the great people who are buried here, and the kings and queens who were crowned here. There was nothing he liked better than taking people over the Abbey, and any one who had the happiness of going with him, as I did, and of hearing him, would always remember some, at any rate, of the stories he told. He died in 1881, and as none of you can ever see or hear him, standing in the Abbey surrounded by children, and telling them all that he thought would interest them, I am going to take out of my memory, and out of this book of his, just as much of what he used to say as I hope will help you to enjoy what you will see there. When one goes to visit any place for the first time, there is always a great deal that one wants to have explained; and what I myself most enjoy is to read or be told beforehand something about what I am going to see, and then I understand it much better—I do not waste so much time in asking questions, and have all the more time to look about. If we go and stand at the great West Door, as it is called, of Westminster Abbey, and look down Victoria Street, it is difficult to believe that this very same place was, hundreds of years ago, quite wild country. Where there are now houses and streets and churches, there used to be only marshy land and forests. Where there are now endless streams of carriages, carts, and omnibuses, and people hurrying along, there were in the far-off time, when the Abbey Church of Westminster was first begun, only wild oxen or huge red deer with towering antlers which strayed from the neighbouring hills and roamed about in this jungle. It used to be called “the terrible place,” so wild and so lonely was it.
