This past week I was in Chichester for a couple of hours for reasons that had nothing to do with the 17th century but I thought that I might as well keep up my search of all things related to the English Civil War. Or maybe this was an afterthought - for when I stepped inside Chichester's cathedral my only thoughts were for my love of these buildings and of poetry. Maybe one has to be a convinced atheist like me to be as much in love with cathedrals and churches as I am. Because when you take God out of the equation you are left alone with the truth of these beautiful, almost impossible places.
The building of the cathedral started on 1076, after the Council of London decided to move the cathedral from nearby Sesley to Chichester. Small for a cathedral, Chichester was when constructed a typical example of Norman style, but after the fire of 1187 Early Gothic elements were added. We are in Early Gothic country then and I must say that's where I feel most at ease. I like transition art forms and traces of more primitive styles to show up, specially in architecture. Chichester is a weird place, though, in that it mixes this very old enviroment with a lot of nods to modern - indeed modernist - art: there's a stunning tinted window by Marc Chagall, tapestries by John Piper and a painting by Graham Sutherland. All of this resting perfectly besides the Tudor painting of Kings and Queens of England and past bishops by Lambert Barnard that dominate the transepts. Wonderful incongruences. The most famous piece in the cathedral, though, is a medieval tomb for a knight and his wife. This particular sculpture depicts the couple holding hands, an unusual show of public affection for the times (and the status of the knight as well). Even if there has been some controversy around this tomb (is the hand-holding a later addition and not the astonishing medieval rarity all believed it to be?) one can't help to be a little in awe at the sight, specially if one keeps in mind (there's a reproduction by the side of the tomb, in case you forget) Philip Larkin's unbearably beautiful poem:
‘ Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would no guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-littered ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigures them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love. ’
(The tomb and the poem got me thinking a lot. I confess to being very shaken by it - I was fascinated by the fact that this very private gesture - the tomb was not meant to be seen by strangers, it was in the knight's house until it was destroyed, never meant to be displayed in a cathedral - ends up being spied on and reinterpreted by those who come upon it. It might as well have been all an invention: love is not there until we invent it. It got me thinking about private affections being transformed by and into stories. Yes, of course, it got me thinking about my novel.)
I would have been perfectly content with all this: it's a small, wonderful cathedral. But I also discovered some Civil War connections that sparked my imagination.
When the Civil War broke out in 1942 Chichester declared for the King but the Parliament being strong in the South the army seiged the city. The cathedral itself was a dramatic site, ocuppied and plundered during the siege. (I already have Model Army soldiers sleeping in a desecrated church in the beginning scenes of my book but I wouldn't be surprised if Chichester cathedral ends up getting its way into my story as well somehow). The leader of the Parliamentarian forces in Chichester was William Cawley, son of a wealthy brewer and three times mayor of Chichester, John Cawley - pictured, remembered in this portrait in the cathedral. Fascinatingly so William Cawley was one of the men who signed Charles I's death sentence, and he had to flee England come the Restoration.
So, Civil War connections indeed. I got more than I bargained for. Thank you, Chichester.
Epilogue: Simon Armitage's new book came out while I was in Chichester, and since I always make a point of buying a book whenever I can if I visit a new city or town, and since I couldn't wait to read my favourite living poet's new volume, I was glad to pick up a copy:
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