ALFRED AND THE ARTS

By Rev. W. J. Loftie

ALFRED AND THE ARTS

The story of the life of King Alfred connects his name with the practice of three arts. He was an architect, a writer, and a musician. We so often hear of the art of war that when we remember his proficiency as a soldier we are inclined to forget that fortification, fighting, fishing, and hunting, if they may be called arts, are not fine arts. Alfred’s noble defence of England against the Danes has ever since his day been an example to his countrymen of later generations. He first taught them the negative virtue that consists in not knowing when they are beaten. But our concern, in the particular chapter that has fallen to my lot, is with Alfred and the fine arts: and as you cannot enjoy painting or music without a house, it behoves us to inquire first as to the state of architecture in the ninth century, and as to the part taken by Alfred in building houses, churches, and cities. We must remember that though, as we know, writing and the illumination of manuscripts had attained a very high pitch of excellence, Alfred had no maps to guide him. His workmen may have been able to scratch their diagrams on stones, and in other similar ways to obtain guidance in carrying out such buildings as the king required. But he had traversed all that part of England over which he reigned, and was as well acquainted with the marshes of Somerset as with the wooded valley of the Lea and the chalk cliffs of his southern shore. He knew how to build and how to handle the ships of his time, and was able to defeat the Danes on what might be called their own element. Tradition has always and plausibly assigned to him a further feat of naval warfare. When his enemies had sailed up to Hertford and prepared to rest for the winter and mend their boats, he, so to speak, drew the water from under them by the knowledge which prompted him to divide the channels. The object of this and other achievements of the kind was his anxiety to obtain the command of the great estuary into which the Fleet, the Wallbrook, the Lea, and the creeks about Barking fell. To gain this region was one thing, to hold it another. The Saxons before his time disliked the use of walls in warfare. Still more they disliked the trouble of building and maintaining them. But Alfred possessed whatever was known of fortification, and by this knowledge he was able to raise the first permanent impediment in the way of future invaders.

The best authorities agree that to Alfred rather than to the Romans must be ascribed the foundation of London as it was during the Middle Ages, and as, in a sense, it is still. Stow, as far back as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, citing some long-lost document or tradition, tells us that Alfred found London empty. He, to use a very modern expression, “restored” the walls. He rebuilt them with the material at hand, namely, the material with which another Saxon king had built the church of St. Alban. The Saxons had disdained to fight behind walls in their conquest of the degenerate and Romanised Britons. But the Danes were as fighting men equal to the Saxons. Some advantage was needed before the Saxons could overcome their formidable invaders. He saw two important points to be gained by the restoration of London: first, that his new city would be virtually impregnable by the Danes; secondly, that the situation would be that from which he could best defend the whole valley of the Thames. As the Thames rises in Gloucestershire, and runs thence to Essex and Kent, this was to defend all his English dominions. We say now that to hold the Nile is to hold all Egypt and much more. In those days, when the river was the chief highway, to protect the Thames was to protect Kent, Wessex, and Mercia. I have mentioned hunting as an art. Alfred had an eye for a hunting country, as we say now. London was seen by him as we see Pevensey, a ruined wall enclosing nothing. There may have been vestiges of a church. There may have been the piers of a bridge. There can have been little else. Alfred made the bridge into a fortress, renewing the great timbers which had connected the piers. The bridge stood a long way farther down the stream than the modern London Bridge, and to defend it the king built a tower at the south-east corner of the restored wall. William the Conqueror, like Alfred, saw the advantages of the site, and here he placed the tower which still stands, a relic of his reign, a reminiscence of that of his great predecessor. The Roman roads through the city, and the gates by which they made their exit, no longer existed, or, at best, were ruined and useless. He made one road diagonally from the bridge across his market-place to Westgate, which we know as Newgate. A second road led to what we still call Bishopsgate, some distance westward from the site of a Roman gate which opened on the old roads to Lincoln and into Essex. His corn-market, where there was a weighing-stone for wheat, stood to the west of the Market Place or Cheap. A road along the northern side of the Cheap was in existence so soon after Alfred’s time that it must have been planned if it was not made by him. We call it Cheapside, and here there are traditions of a king’s palace near the spot where, centuries later, the great men of the city began to assemble in their Guildhall.

We have mentioned Alfred’s wall. His outline, we may be sure, was speedily filled up. St. Paul’s Church rose among the wooden and brick houses. Civic institutions began to show themselves where there was security; and Alfred’s brother-in-law, Burgred, the last King of Mercia, had a house in Coleman Street, and gave the cabbage garden to the Bishop of Worcester. Alfred’s daughter, Æthelflæd, married Æthelred, Burgred’s successor, who was called the Alderman of the Mercians. To him, and after his death to his widow, the king committed the charge and governance of the city, and Æthelbert became the first alderman of London. The importance of the place is apparent. It was the easternmost bulwark of Alfred’s kingdom against the settled Danes of East Anglia, as well as against the fresh incursions of pirates and filibusters from over the sea. Alfred’s prescience is proved by one single fact. From that day to this London has never been taken by force of arms. The Danes from the North Sea never got past the Tower—the Danes from the Danelaw never broke through the wall.

With regard to ecclesiastical architecture in Alfred’s time we know very little; with regard to civil architecture scarcely anything. The church of St. Lawrence, Bradford-on-Avon, is assigned by competent judges to as late a date as the ninth century; but Aldhelm, who was Bishop of Sherborn near the beginning of the seventh century, founded a nunnery at Bradford, which was afterwards connected with that of Shaftesbury, and the church is mentioned as early as the time of King Æthelred, just a hundred years after the death of Alfred. Building-stone of the best kind abounds in the neighbourhood, as well as in that of Deerhurst, near Tewkesbury. The stone masonry suggests that wooden buildings set the pattern in both places: while, from the ease with which St. Paul’s in London was burnt, both before and after the Norman Conquest, we may be sure it contained very little brickwork. Deerhurst was built in 1053, so we must not look to it as an example of the architecture of Alfred’s time. At Wing, near Aylesbury, the chancel is Saxon, and not unlike St. Lawrence’s chapel in its peculiar flat panelling. It is very lofty, but less narrow in proportion than Bradford, and has a series of very interesting vaulted crypts, in which we see a good many thin bricks of the kind usually ascribed to the Romans, fragments perhaps of a Roman fortress or a villa at that place. Several towers with early Saxon features remain, but many have lately been destroyed, as at St. Albans, Limpsfield, and other places. A few fragments of Beda’s time may possibly remain in the very ancient church of Jarrow. Saxon building with Roman bricks is to be seen at St. Martin’s, Canterbury, and at Dover, but both falsified by injudicious alterations. Where good building-stone comes to the surface, as in Northamptonshire, we find not far apart examples of churches and towers which may well have existed at the beginning of the tenth century. Barnack and Earls Barton may be named, and with them should be classed St. Michael’s at Oxford, and St. Benedict’s at Cambridge. Traces of Saxon work are often found in old churches, but they can seldom be dated in the age of Alfred. It may, in fact, be laid down as a rule that where there were no fortifications, building was of but a temporary character, and where stone did not greatly abound, churches were made of wood and were very perishable. In a few places towers were built specially, like the Irish round towers, for storage and defence. In these cases we usually find great height in proportion, and an arrangement of the entrance so that it can only be reached by a ladder, such as we may still trace in the Tower of London, the keep of which had no entrance on the ground level before the reign of Henry VIII. Of dwelling-houses we see no examples. In London, as much as two centuries later, ordinances were made for the improvement of town dwellings, but that previously this branch of architecture had been sadly neglected we may infer from reading that even chimneys were usually made of wood.

We know that castles were built by Alfred, and in his time, but in a majority of cases they consisted only of mounds and stockades, strengthened by great beams and balks of timber. To withstand attacks like those of the Danes, sudden and usually brief, these defences may have been very powerful. At a few places like Tamworth, where some supposed Saxon masonry is still pointed out, or at Colchester, where, as at London, Roman walls were restored, a little building took the place of woodwork. Mr. Clark, the best authority about Medieval Military Architecture, says plainly that though “the English were from a remote period conversant with masonry, and constructed churches of stone or timber as suited them best,” they avoided everything but timber where they made a mound or an artificial earthwork of any kind. The Norsemen from the mouth of the Elbe were not very different from the Danes and the Saxons, Jutes and Angles were only earlier immigrants from the same regions. It is not possible now to distinguish the earthworks thrown up by Alfred and his men from those of the Danes which they overthrew. One thing only we can recognise as his peculiar work, namely, the formation in his own mind of clearly devised plans by which, with inferior strength, with fewer men and arms, and in face of frequent disaster, he was able to consolidate his power, to turn even defeat into success, and at last, before his early death, both to obtain a time of respite for his people and to show them how in the future they might always hopefully resist the invader. If the Danish attack was for the moment overwhelming, it was desultory. The defence offered by Alfred was far-seeing, part of a consistent whole, a scheme which must eventually prevail.

In 876 the pirates attacked Wareham successfully, and thence fell upon Exeter: but in 878 Alfred made his famous camp in the Somerset marshes, and by slow degrees drove them northward and eastward, established himself in London, and fortified it, thence expelling them from Gravesend, from Rochester, from Farnham, from their great timber fort at Benfleet, until Hasting, the Danish leader, in 893, submitted to Alfred and was converted and baptized. Finally, in 897 the war was over. The Danes had thrown up a work “on the Lea, twenty miles from London, whereupon Ælfred,” says Mr. Clark, “threw up another work on each bank of that river lower down, and diverted the waters through a number of shallow courses, thus effectually shutting in the Danish ships.” From this time to the end of his life, a brief period of about four years, Alfred devoted himself to the arts of peace. Among them he reckoned ship-building and the codification of the laws, but we chiefly remember his love of books, his establishment of schools, in which writing was practised as a fine art, and his encouragement of skilful work in gold, enamel, and inlay.

Many examples remain to show us that art of this last kind, as well as poetry and music, were largely and successfully practised among the Anglo-Saxons. The great discoveries in grave mounds in Kent, of which the results may be seen in the Mayer Museum at Liverpool, prove that from a very early period there were among the people skilful designers and artificers, not only in jewellery, but in glass. The well-known ornament preserved at Oxford, probably a royal badge, which bears his name, is perhaps the most familiar object which can be connected with him. We may remember of Alfred, as well as of King Edwin of Northumbria and of other law-loving monarchs, that he hung up gold bracelets by the wayside, and that none dared to steal them. Unfortunately for another story connecting Alfred with the fine arts, it is not older than the twelfth century. The fact that such a legend existed shows us what was the popular estimate of the king’s character. We are glad therefore to observe that Freeman finds nothing impossible in the story that “Alfred, wishing to know what the Danes were about and how strong they were, set out one day from Athelney in the disguise of a minstrel or juggler, and went into the Danish camp and stayed there several days, amusing the Danes with his playing, till he had seen all that he wanted, and then went back without any one finding him out.” Alfred’s dealings with the Danes, whether in disguise or otherwise, led to the defeat and conversion of Guthorm, to the peace of Wedmore, and to two incidents in which pictorial art has a place: the capture of the Raven standard, and the cutting of one of the figures of a horse on the side of the chalk downs. There are two such white horses, one near Edington, which has been “restored,” the other near Shrivenham, “which has not been altered at all, but is very old and rude, so that you might hardly know that it was meant for a horse at all.”

The pretty story of Alfred’s youth, as to his learning to read, will not, unfortunately, bear critical examination. That it should have been so long believed and so often told is, however, eloquent as to the reputation he acquired as a boy. Some have even doubted if he could read, but in his journey to Rome he learned Latin—at least it is more probable that he knew Latin than that he was ignorant of it. He was certainly desirous, during his scanty leisure from warfare, to further the cause of learning by all means in his power. His monks at Athelney and his nuns at Shaftesbury were expressly devoted to the labours of the scriptorium, and when we observe the number of the books which, in spite of the Danes, were produced in England in the course of the eighth and ninth centuries, we are forced to the conclusion that the powers of the time were unanimously in favour of the art of writing. We may, indeed, go much further than this. After a careful comparison, such as may be made in the British Museum, or any other great public library, we are forced to the conclusion that no country in Europe at that time could boast of the production of such beautiful books, filled with such skilful writing and illustrated with such exquisite pictures, as England in the reign of King Alfred. A well-known manuscript (Addl. MSS. 34, 890) produced by the monks of Alfred’s own monastery at Winchester, or the volume of Gospels and other readings written without illustrations at Canterbury, cannot be surpassed in all the qualities which we admire in manuscripts. Italy itself could do nothing even approaching the Psychomachia of Prudentius, probably written at Shaftesbury in the ninth century. It is filled with figures representing the soul in conflict with evil. They are wrongly described as “tinted,” but the figures and their draperies are drawn in two colours, in outline, in a manner which would not surprise us on a Greek vase of the best period. We admire in a relief by Donatello, or a fresco by Giotto, similar art, centuries later. Of the same period, or earlier, is a book reciting the names of the benefactors of Lindisfarne—St. Cuthbert was Alfred’s special patron—in which the lettering is partly in black, partly in gold, worthy of a Liber Vitæ. In many volumes we see such an initial as that which figures in the story mentioned above, among them copies of Beowulf’s or Cædmon’s poems, such as might very well answer to the book of old songs which Alfred’s mother was said to have shown him. (Cottonian MSS. Vit. A. xv.)

The famous Benedictional written for Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester, some fifty years after Alfred’s time, may be taken to show us to what perfection this art was brought. The style is that to which the artists of his time were tending. Here and there, among older books, we may trace features which occur in this sumptuous volume, both among the figure-subjects and among the ornaments. Sir Digby Wyatt, an excellent judge, is enthusiastic on the manuscript, yet fails to appreciate the figure-subjects, because they show “little classical influence.” I am not inclined to find fault on that account. The opinion of a learned antiquary of the last generation, John Gage, should have great weight. He looked upon the Benedictional as the culmination of the art of the Anglo-Saxon school; and John Young Ottley expressed himself in equally eulogistic terms about the manuscript, which is in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire and which was fully described and in great part engraved by the Society of Antiquaries in 1832 (Archæologia, vol. xxiv.) Ottley points out its chief claim on our admiration thus: “You desire from me a few words on the illuminations in St. Æthelwold’s Benedictionary, with my opinion of their merits as works of art. I feel honoured by the request, and comply with it the more willingly as I can honestly say that I think them in the highest degree creditable to the taste and intelligence of this nation at a period when in most parts of Europe the fine arts are commonly believed to have been at a very low ebb.” Farther on, Ottley speaks of “the justness of the general proportions of the figures.” He especially praises some little angels holding scrolls, which, he says, “have so much gracefulness and animation, are so beautifully draped, and so well adapted in their attitudes to the spaces they occupy, that I hardly know how to praise them sufficiently.”

The mechanical part of the work should be carefully examined. It shows—and not it alone, but many early books as well—that in the time of Alfred artists could command the help of artificers who knew how to make vellum fit for the most delicate painting and writing; that colours were produced worthy of the vellum for which they were prepared; that gold-beating and gilding with the leaf had been carried to a perfection never since surpassed. Godeman, the monk, afterwards, in 970, abbot of Thorney, who wrote the book, must have been born during the reign of Alfred, or soon after, and learned his art from the writers of the great king who, in his English translation of the Pastoral of Gregory, remarks feelingly on the destruction wrought by the Danes, and how before their incursions “the churches throughout Britain were filled with treasures and books.”