MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON THE London Survey Committee celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation in 1944: three years after that event it has published a jubilee volume upon the Church of Saint Bride in Fleet Street. The Committee was established in 1894 upon the initiative of Mr. C. R. Ashbee, and with the support of William Morris, for the purpose of compiling a register or record of all the buildings in London or Greater London which were considered to be of historical or architectural importance. As at present constituted, it contains many important names. Lord Norman is its president ; it comprises representatives of honoured institutions, such as All Souls College, the RIBA., the Courtauld Institute and the London Library ; and among those serving upon the Committee are men who have devoted their lives to the active furtherance or protection of our native art, such as Lord Crawford and Mr. Alfred Bossom. Nor is this all. The Committee, it appears, has met once a month ever since its inception. In these fifty years it has published, in con- junction with the London County Council, some fifteen monographs on individual buildings and some twenty registers or " Parish Volumes." These records will prove of the utmost value to future historians and scholars. The Committee cannot in fairness be blamed for not having foreseen the destruction which would be lavished upon central London between 1940 and 1944 ; but it is unfortunate none the less that in its monographs it concentrated at first upon build- ings in outer London, some of which were not of primary importance. It is sad to feel that had the bombardments been foreseen, and had the National Buildings Record been founded before, and not after, the war begafl, we might possess a complete and detailed record of all that has been destroyed. The records which we now possess are fragmentary and incomplete.
* * It cannot be said that the present commemorative volume on Saint Bride's in Fleet Street is worthy, either of the jubilee which it so belatedly celebrates or of the subject with which it deals. The map produced from Stow's Survey of 1755 is on too small a scale ; we are given no indication of the stages by which the approaches to the church, so amply shown in Douswell's engraving of 1753, became so encumbered that the building was rendered invisible until Hitler came to open the perspective. Most of the photographs, which in themselves are below the standard set by modem photography, were taken after, and not before, the destruction of the edifice. There is little information to be derived from these calcined columns and gaping roofs: skeletons may tell some story to the expert, but to the ordinary amateur they are jejune. The members of the London Survey Com- mittee would reply doubtless that it was not their business or inten- tion to produce a beautiful gift-book for the delight of amateurs; their sole purpose was to provide a documentary record of one of Wren's most ambitious creations. I do not doubt that much of the informa- tion contained in this volume is of great importance ; it is, for instance, valuable to have this detailed account of the sums paid by Sir Christopher Wren to Joshua Marshall, the " mason " or con- tractor who did most of the work. But if the public are ever to be made architecture-conscious, if ever the Londoner is to be induced to take an alert interest in the buildings of his own city, then books of this nature should at least pay some attention to the ignorance and lack of understanding of the ordinary citizen. Even the educated amateur is not really entranced by reading long lists of former vicars and benefactors or- long extracts from vestry minutes. The com- pilers of this volume do not seem to have been aware of the sort of audience which they ought to have had in mind.
* * * It was a former Bishop of London who christened Saint Bride's " a cathedral for the Press-man ": it was the late Lord Burnham who called it " the Metropolitan Church of the Printers." Scarcely any reference is made in this volume to the connection between Saint Bride's and the famous street which it adjoins. The compilers have evidently been determined to exclude from their researches all items of human interest. They make no mention of the fact that it was
in St. Bride's that Sir John Denham, the author of that important poem Cooper's Hill, married his first wife Mary Cotton. They do not examine (even if to discard) the legend that Thomas Fuller, author of The Worthies of England, was once rector of St. Bride's ; or that other legend (which I know to be untrue) that the church contained the tomb of the writer of the first English tragedy, Sir Thomas Sackville, Lord Dorset. So intent are they on describing only Wren's building that they do not refer to the fact that Richard Lovelace, one of the most charming of all seventeenth-century poets, was buried in the .west end of the old church. The, to my mind, stimulating fact that Pepys was christened in St. Bride's is only mentioned inci- dentally, and it is only after ploughing through a long list of indifferent tombs that the reader will discover that the church contains the bones of Samuel Richardson. Wynkyn de Worde, who is also buried in the church, is mentioned as having endowed "a yerely solempne obit," but the point is not sufficiently made that this gifted Alsatian took over the business that Caxton had founded and thereby gave a very early origin to the lasting connection between St. Bride's and Fleet Street. Even their own vicars are not treated in a humane manner. John Cardmaker, for instance, was a prominent martyr who was burnt alive at Smithfield in 1555 ; there is much that could have been said about John Cardmaker ; he is •treated as if he were no more than a consignment of lead.
* * * And what about Saint Bride herself? Not a word about her. She cannot have been Saint Birgitta of Sweden, since that lady flourished in the fourteenth century. She cannot have been Princess Brigid of Northumbria, who, with her sister Saint Maura, was murdeied by brigands at Balagny-sur-Therain ; these two saints achieved only local renown. She was of course Saint Brigid, virgin and abbess of Kildare, who dates from the middle of the sixth century. A few words about that eminent patroness might well have increased the interest of this weighty volume. She was born near Dundalk in County Louth, and at an early age she acquired a reputa- tion for miracles. Out of a single barrel she supplied beer to eighteen churches ; she turned water into milk ; she was able to acquire butter from the air. One morning, sitting beside a blind nun, of the name of sister Dara, she watched the sun rise behind the Wicklow mountains ; she prayed that Dara might share in this solemn and lovely spectacle ; and Dara, thereat, suddenly recovered her sight. The achievements of Saint Brigid are recorded with much enthusiasm in the Book of Lismore. She is celebrated also by two lines of Thomas Moore :— " The bright lamp that shone in Kildare's holy fane And burned through long ages of darkness and storm."
There is no doubt that Saint Bride was a historical personage ; that she was a woman of great sanctity and strength of character ; and that she exercised a lasting influence upon the Irish church. But in this commemorative volume she is not even mentioned. I call that unintelligent.
I am not suggesting, of course, that a survey of this nature should be written in popular form. I am suggesting only that it is quite possible, if one applies the mind to it, to be both informative and scholarly without being dull. There is much in this volume which is of lasting interest ; but it is all buried under bones and stones. I am convinced that the people of this country, and especially the younger people, are becoming yearly more interested in the arts. In two generations from now it may happen even that the British public come to realise that architecture is also among the arts. A public conscience will be created which will prevent speculative builders from ruining our streets, our terraces and our squares. But that conscience will never be' created if our architects publish volumes such as this which can appeal to experts only ; I eptreat the London Survey Committee to become less professional and more humane.
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