e Islip
Chapel has no cheerful intent. It is, indeed, a place set aside, with
all reverence, to preserve certain relics of a grim, yet not unlovely,
old custom. These fearful images are no stock-in-trade of a showman; we
are not invited to 'walk-up' to them. They were fashioned with a solemn
and wistful purpose. The reason of them lies in a sentiment which is as
old as the world--lies in man's vain revolt from the prospect of death.
If the soul must perish from the body, may not at least the body itself
be preserved, somewhat in the semblance of life, and, for at least a
while, on the face of the earth? By subtle art, with far-fetched
spices, let the body survive its day and be (even though hidden beneath
the earth) for ever. Nay more, since death cause it straightway to
dwindle somewhat from the true semblance of life, let cunning
artificers fashion it anew--fashion it as it was. Thus, in the earliest
days of England, the kings, as they died, were embalmed, and their
bodies were borne aloft upon their biers, to a sepulture long delayed
after death. In later days, an image of every king that died was
forthwith carved in wood, and painted according to his remembered
aspect, and decked in his own robes; and, when they had sealed his
tomb, the mourners, humouring, to the best of their power, his hatred
of extinction, laid this image upon the tomb's slab, and left it so. In
yet later days, the pretence became more realistic. The hands and the
face were modelled in wax; and the figure stood upright, in some
commanding posture, on a valanced platform above the tomb. Nor were
only the kings thus honoured. Every one who was interred in the Abbey,
whether in virtue of lineage or of achievements, was honoured thus. It
was the fashion for every great lady to write in her will minute
instructions as to the posture in which her image was to be modelled,
and which of her gowns it was to be clad in, and with what of her
jewellery it was to glitter. Men, too, used to indulge in such
precautions. Of all the images thus erected in the Abbey, there remain
but a few. The images had to take their chance, in days that were
without benefit of police. Thieves, we may suppose, stripped the finery
from many of them. Rebels, we know, broke in, less ignobly, and tore
many of them limb from limb, as a protest against the governing
classes. So only a poor remnant, a 'ragged regiment,' has been rallied,
at length, into the sanctuary of Islip's Chapel.