Westminster is made not just by stones and marbles, but words and history

Wall inscription

While Isaac Newton was being carried to Westminster Abbey, Voltaire (being exiled to England at that time) was among the many spectators of Newton’s magnificent funeral in 1727. Voltaire was moved and wrote Newton’s “countrymen honored him in his lifetime, and interred him as though he had been a king, who had made his people happy; . . . the gratitude of the nation to writers and thinkers, believing that it inspired Englishmen to greatness.”

We also read, “We view their statues in that Abbey in the same manner as those of Sophocles, Plato and other immortal personage were viewed in Athens; and I am persuaded that the bare sight of those glorious monuments has fired more than one breast, and been the occasion of their becoming great men.”

This kind of reading helps one to better appreciate the Abbey.  Newton was the first scientist buried among the kings and queens; Rutherford (the New Zealand-born British physicist) was also there.  J.J. Thomson (Rutherford’s teacher; in fact seven of his students went on to become Nobel laureates) is also in the Nave of the Abbey not far from Newton.  These Cambridge Men are all in good company there.

Poet's Corner

I don’t know how many times Nathaniel Hawthorne had visited the Abbey, but I know how he came to see the Poet’s Corner; he wrote, “Approaching it down Whitehall and parliament street, you pass the Abbey, and see ‘Poet’s Corner’ on the corner-house of a little lane, leading up in the rear of the edifice.  The entrance-door is at the south-eastern end of the South Transept – not a spacious arch, but a small, lowly door – and as soon as you are within it, you see the busts of poets looking down upon you from the wall.  Great poets, too . . . .”

So look for the scientists in the Nave and poets/literary figures (Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Macaulay, Alfred Tennyson, etc.) in South Transept.

Remember the Abbey is not built by just stones and marbles, but by words and history.

Janice said, and I agreed, that even the natural beauty, wonder and grandeur can be better appreciated by reading, lest beautiful scenery won’t be just “piles of stones and a pond of water” (幾堆石頭， 一汪子水而已).

Edward Confessor shrine

Elizabeth I's grave

Henry VII chapel

Henry VIII fan vaulting

Mary Queen of Scots

Princess Diana at Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey quire

Unknown Warrior grave at Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

 

Abbey layout