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About Andrew Cusack
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Patrick in Parliament
The Mosaic of Saint Patrick in the Palace of Westminster
This feast of St Patrick marks the hundredth anniversary of the mosaic of Saint Patrick in the Central Lobby of the Houses of Parliament. At the heart of the Palace of Westminster, four great arches include mosaic representations of the patron saints of the home nations: George, David, Andrew, and Patrick.
The joke offered about these saints and their positioning is that St George stands over the entrance to the House of Lords, because the English all think they’re lords. St David guards the route to the House of Commons because, according to the Welsh, that is the house of great oratory and the Welsh are great orators. (The English, snobbishly, claim St David is there because the Welsh are all common.) St Andrew wisely guards the way to the bar (a place where many Scots are found), while St Patrick stands atop the exit, since most of Ireland has left the Union.
The mosaic of Saint Patrick came about thanks to the munificence of Patrick Ford, the sometime Edinburgh MP, in honour of his name-saint. Saint George had been completed in 1870 with Saint David following in 1898.
Sir William Raeburn MP commissioned the artist Robert Anning Bell (depicted right) to design the mosaic of Saint Andrew in 1922, which so impressed Patrick Ford that he decided to commission the same artist to depict the patron saint of Ireland.
Anning Bell had earlier completed the mosaic on the tympanum of Westminster Cathedral from a sketch by the architect J.F. Bentley. Following his work in Central Lobby he also did a mosaic of Saint Stephen, King Stephen, and Saint Edward the Confessor in Saint Stephen’s Hall — the former House of Commons chamber.
In the mosaic, Saint Patrick is flanked by saints Columba and Brigid, with the Rock of Cashel behind him. As by this point Ireland had been partitioned, heraldic devices representing both Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State are present.
On St Patrick’s Day in 1924, the honour of the unveiling went to the Father of the House of Commons, who happened to be the great Irish nationalist politician T.P. O’Connor, then representing the English constituency of Liverpool Scotland (the only seat in Great Britain ever held by an Irish nationalist MP).
“That day,” The Times reported T.P.’s words at the unveiling, “in quite a thousand cities in the English-speaking world, Saint Patrick’s name and fame were being celebrated by gatherings of Irishmen and Irishwomen. Certainly he was the greatest unifying force in Ireland.”
“All questions of great rival nationalities were forgotten in that ceremony. From that sacred spot, the centre of the British Empire, there went forth a message of reconciliation and of peace between all parts of the great Commonwealth — none higher than the other, all coequal, and all, he hoped, to be joined in the bonds of common weal and common loyalty.”
T.P.’s remarks were greeting with cheers.
The Most Honourable the Marquess of Lincolnshire, Lord Great Chamberlain, accepted the ornamental addition to the royal palace of Westminster on behalf of His Majesty the King.
Articles of Note: 13 March 2024
My then-flatmate was getting married the next day and much pottering-about sorting things was required but the idiosyncratic beauty of this building captured my imagination — part Norman, part Moorish. I was almost insulted that I hadn’t come across it in any of my bookish explorations.
The historian Edmund Harris covers Chideock in his lusciously illustrated post on Recusancy in Dorset and the ‘other tradition’ of Catholic church-building.
■ Generations ago it was said that the three institutions no British politician dared offend were the trade unions, the Catholic Church, and the Brigade of Guards. In 2020s Britain there is only one caste which must always be obeyed: the ageing, moneyed homeowners.
Not only do these “NIMBYs” (“Not In My Back Yard”) jealously guard their freeholds, they do whatever they can to prevent more houses being built to guard the value of their prize possessions, vastly inflated by a combination of lacklustre housebuilding and irresponsible leap in migration. As old people vote and young people don’t — and when they do, vote badly — few sensible people can find a way out of this quagmire.
It might be worth looking to the Mediterranean, where Tal Alster tells us How Israel turned urban homeowners into YIMBYs.
■ It’s disappointingly rare to see intelligent outsiders give a considered impression of the current state of play in the Netherlands — that’s Mother Holland for us New Yorkers. Too often commentators in English are either rash cheerleaders for the hard right or bien-pensant liberals eager to castigate and chastise. Both rush to judgement.
What a rare diversion then to read Christopher Caldwell — the only thinking neo-con? — attempt to explore and explain the success of Geert Wilders in the recent Dutch elections.
■ One in ten of Lusitania’s inhabitants are now immigrants, and this discounts those — many from Brazil and other former parts of the once-world-spanning Portuguese empire — who have managed to acquire citizenship through various routes.
Ukrainian number-plates are now frequently be seen on the roads of Lisbon, as far in Europe as you can get from Big Bad Uncle Vlad.
Vasco Queirós asks: Who is Portugal for?
■ Speaking of world-spanning empires, in true andrewcusackdotcom fashion, we haven’t had enough of the Dutch — but we have had enough of their wicked wayward heresies.
Historian Charles H. Parker explores the legacies of Calvinism in the Dutch empire.
■ The City of New York itself is the best journalism school there is. Jimmy Breslin dropped out of LIU after two years, eventually taking up his pen. Pete Hamill left school at fifteen, apprenticed as a sheet metal worker, and joined the navy.
William Deresiewicz argues that a dose of working-class realism can save journalism from groupthink.
■ The New Yorker tells us how a Manchester barkeep found and saved a lost (ostensible) masterpiece of interwar British literature.
■ Our inestimable friend Dr Harshan Kumarasingham explores David Torrance’s history of the first Labour government on its hundredth anniversary.
■ And finally, one for nous les normandes (ok, ok, celto-normandes): Canada’s National Treasure David Warren briefly muses that the Norman infusion greatly refined Anglo-Saxon to give us the superior English tongue we speak today.
Taken on Trust
There is much talk these days of the nature of “high trust” societies and the many benefits which they bring, or once brought in the case of countries like Great Britain that, until relatively recently, fell into this category.
The young Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015) was astounded when he exited the Underground station at Piccadilly Circus and saw a pile of newspapers and a box of coins and notes, with passers-by being trusted to pay for their own newspaper and calculate their own change. He determined that Singapore must emulate the high trust society that Britons had inherited.
In his excellent book, Britain Against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory 1793-1815, about the logistics of Britain’s fight against Old Boney, Roger Knight writes of how much trade and agriculture across Great Britain relied upon this trust.
Drovers, for example, would take on thousands of pounds worth of animals — pigs, cattle, etc. — from farmers to drive down to London en masse, not returning for weeks, and usually with little or no paper record.
Citing Bonser’s The Drovers: Who They Were and How They Went, An Epic of the English Countryside, Knight relays the following story:
Perhaps the most impressive demonstration of trust was the tradition of dogs being sent home to Scotland or Wales from London on their own. One story involved a Welsh dog named Carlo who journeyed all the way back to Wales from Kent. His owner sold the pony that he had ridden on the outward journey, intending to go home by coach. He fastened the pony’s harness to the dog’s back and attached a note to it, addressed to each of the inns on the route they had followed, to request food and shelter for the dog, to be repaid on a subsequent journey. Carlo reached home in Wales alone in a week.
Even dogs benefited from a high-trust society.
‘Knights of Massawa?’ Lecture
This will take place in the Chapter Room of the Grand Priory of England at 7.00 pm on Tuesday 19 March 2024.
All are welcome, and a voluntary contribution of £10 will be collected.
A Happy Home in Maida Vale
Her ‘Nurse Matilda’ series of children’s books was illustrated by her cousin, Edward Ardizzone RA, and was later adapted for the silver screen as the Nanny McPhee films starring Emma Thompson.
Brand and her husband lived in this rather happy looking home in leafy Maida Vale which has now come up for sale.
Built in 1822 (and Grade II-listed), the house was also deployed as a setting by the author — sometime chair of the Crime Writers’ Association — in her book London Particular.
As Brand described the story:
It is set in a London house and everybody is either a member or close friend of the family – it is a doctor’s house, a Regency house in Maida Vale; in fact, it is my own house with all my own family and animals and things in it just for fun.
Maida Vale has also been the setting for mysteries written by PD James and Ruth Rendell — and of course the ‘M’ in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Dial M for Murder’ stand for Maida Vale itself.
Messing About in Old New York
In the collections of the New-York Historical Society there is a photograph deposited amidst the archives of the Seventh Regiment Gazette.
The scene is the Appleton Mess of the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue, where Company B of the “Silk-Stocking Regiment” was celebrating its one-hundred-and-thirty-fourth birthday.
It was May 1940. The other side of the Atlantic Ocean, British troops were evacuating from Norway, sparking the debate in the House of Commons that would lead to Winston Churchill being appointed Prime Minister.
But on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, all was still peaceful and calm.
With a packed calendar of events, the social life of B Company was as much of a whirl as any other in the Seventh Regiment.
“The members of the Second Company greeted the onrushing spring with a cocktail party and dance on the afternoon of February 11th,” the Gazette reported. “The time-stained rafters of the Veterans Room echoed back as melodious a medley of sweet, swing, and hot as these old ears have heard in many a year.”
“The spaghetti lovers are still meeting down at Tosca’s on Tuesdays,” the Gazette continued. “All members who drop in on this crowd are warned beforehand to eat fast and keep an eye on their plate. A darting fork awaits all unwatched portions and men have been known to sit down to a full dish of Italian cable only to arise half famished.”
Company B’s Entertainment Committee also found time for a Supper Dance at the end of March that year: “When Charley Botts heard ‘In The Mood’ he gathered up the jitterbugs and sent them scampering around in a breathless Big Apple, much to the delight of the wiser and unbruised amongst us who resisted his wiles.”
“Several of the more energetic members closed the evening by visiting that well-known late spot, the Kit-Kat Club, and are now offering mortgages on the family homestead to settle future bills.”
All the faces, the mode of dress — it’s a picture of a vanished New York, a year and a half before the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Incidentally, December 7, 1941 was also the day Col. Cusack — aka ‘Uncle Matt’ — was baptised.)
On another level, it looks just like the Seventh Regiment Mess I knew from my childhood, when it was in the firm but welcoming hands of Linda MacGregor.
The building has been restored physically but since the military was kicked out it is a beautiful but lifeless hulk, preserved as if in formaldehyde and reduced to being a mere “venue”.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
ICAA Videos on Architecture
The Institute of Classical Architecture and Art is one of the absolute gems of American civic society.
As part of their remit of promoting traditional architecture and its many associated arts they have a good many videos on their website covering numerous subjects and in a variety of depths and lengths of time.
Here are just a handful.
Die kleine dorpie Betlehem
JA JA JA, ons onthou: die Amerikaanse Episcopaalse biskop Phillips Brooks was nie ’n bolwerk van ortodoksie nie. Hy het die ryk van gevoel bo die waarheid verhef, maar nie noodwendig teen die waarheid nie — hulle het in die negentiende eeu nog ’n bietjie politesse gehad.
Soos R.R. Reno geskryf het: Brooks “het geen moeilike teologiese kwessies gedink of enige nuwe intellektuele grond gebreek nie.” In Nieu-Engeland was hy “heeltemal afgeleide en uiters invloedryk”.
Reg genoeg… en vandag leef ons in Brooks se nawêreld. Maar hy het ’n klein geskenk aan die wêreld gegee, en sy klein geskenkie was ’n lofsang — ’n Kersfees liedtjie.
Die wysie wat in Amerika gebruik word, is sakkarien. Maar die Britse een — “Forest Green” — is melodieus en goed. (’n Video hieronder, en Engels, gesing deur die koor van St George’s in Windsor-kasteel.)
lê rustig daardie nag,
terwyl dié wonderwerk gebeur
waarvoor die wêreld wag.
verskyn ’n nuwe dag
vir almal wat in nood verkeer
en op sy redding wag.
Toe God se Seun gebore is,
was daar geen plek vir Hom;
so word ’n donker dierestal
’n helder heiligdom.
verskyn ’n Koningster,
wat ewig lig en vrede straal
na mense wyd en ver.
O Koningskind daar in die krip,
U kom hier by ons woon.
Net U versoen ons sondeskuld
en maak ons lewe skoon.
want U kom ons herstel.
O Vredekoning, God met ons,
U is Immanuel.
Whitechapel Library
There are precious few suitable uses for former church buildings.
At the worst end of the spectrum is nightclub, though bar or restaurant often doesn’t fall terribly far behind either. To my mind, I can hardly think of a more suitable use for an elegant and beautiful former church than to be turned into a library.
An example: the former Anglican parish church of St Philip, Stepney, in Whitechapel. Designed by Arthur Cawston, of whom I know little, it reminds me of J.L. Pearson’s Little Venice church for the eccentric “Catholic Apostolic Church”.
St Philip’s was declared redundant in 1979, at which time the neighbouring London Hospital still had its own medical school. This has since merged with that of St Bartholomew’s into “Barts and the London” or “Barts” or “BL”, under the auspices of Queen Mary University of London.
As St Philip’s sat pretty much smack dab in the middle of the campus of the London Hospital (augmented to the Royal London Hospital from 1990) and the college was surviving in cramped accommodation, it was decided to restore the fabric of the church and convert it to a library and study centre. The crypt of the church was adapted to house computer, teaching, and storage rooms as well as the museum of the Royal London Hospital.
Rather than preserve it in aspic, the medical school decided to keep this as a living building by commissioning eight new stained-glass windows to replace plain glass. They are completed along rather forthright German modernist designs and are dedicated to such themes as Gastroenterology and Molecular Biology. They will not be to everyone’s taste, but it is admirable for a medical school to commission stained glass windows at the turn of the millennium.
The Survey of London’s Whitechapel Project has a typically thorough entry on QMUL’s Whitechapel Library / the former church, including these applaudable photographs the Survey commissioned from Derek Kendall.
Articles of Note: 29 January 2024
A lively Doubleyoo-Ess once took me to lunch at the New Club and, in whispered tones, pointed out a gentleman sitting at another table.
“He is the world’s leading expert on the Scots tongue,” my friend explained.
“But he was excommunicated by all the other experts on Scots when he pointed out that eighty per cent of Scots words are interchangeable with Northumbrian English.”
Scots is fascinating for its closeness to English and its distinction. Those who’ve had the pleasure of tarrying awhile in the Netherlandic world (whether in Europe, the Cape of Good Hope, or elsewhere) can detect the odd affinities to Dutch and Afrikaans — reminding you that the North Sea was once a highway, not a barrier.
Luka Ivan Jukic has written an enlightening exploration of how and why Scotland lost its tongue.
Jukic contends there are no signs of revival, which I dispute. There is a much increased interest in the use of Scots, but it feels contrived and falls somewhat flat. If you take a look at the Scots column in The National newspaper, it comes across as the ravings of a kook something akin to Anglish.
■ Amongst the many of Scotland’s joys is the pleasure of just looking at its buildings.
Witold Rybczynski pleads “Give us something to look at!” in his account of why ornament matters in architecture.
■ The New York Post — founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801 and thus the Empire State’s oldest and most venerable newspaper — reports that the world’s oldest and most venerable forest has been discovered right in the heart of the Catskill Mountains.
This is one of the most beautiful places in America, especially when the leaves begin to turn in autumn, and features widely in the old stories transcribed by Washington Irving and others.
The name of the Catskills is believed to be from the catamounts that used to roam the woods and bergs when our Dutch forefathers of old first arrived in the valley of the Hudson. Our earliest record of it is on a map by Nicolaes Visscher père from 1656 — and pleasingly the local magazine retains the old spelling in its name of Kaatskill Life.
This fossilised forest within the Catskills is believed to date from 385 million years ago (for those who doubt the Ussher chronology — and we remain open-minded ourselves) and was discovered at the bottom of an old quarry.
■ As a precocious teenager I remember a visit to the maritime museum in Rochefort on France’s Atlantic coast that included a fascinating display of the intricacies and accomplishments of global shipping, housed in the long old ropeworks that kept France’s navy afloat in the era of sail.
It’s all been kicking off in the Red Sea, which inspired Wessie du Toit to write that the shipping container is an uncanny symbol of modern life
■ Some people claim there is no life outside of NW3, but as much a fan of Hampstead as I am, my first loyalty in London neighbourhoods is firmly lodged in Southwark. (Pimlico is high on the list, too.)
Many will pine for those precious late summer afternoons idly dawdling on the Heath, but Hampstead in winter has its distinct pleasures. For me, it’s curdling up with a pile of books beside the coal fire in the Old White Bear.
In the Christmas issue of The Oldie, Peter York wrote about the rise and fall of arty Hampstead.
■ One of our Hampstead mates is originally a West Country man and now finds himself even further west, studying law in California.
For a New Yorker, California is The Great Other. If not quite a rival, then certainly something we are always being compared against.
Naturally, one looks down on California, but also with a certain envy. If ever America had a golden moment when imperial might was combined with the simple goodness of life, it must have been coastal California from the 1930s to 1960s — with a hint of survival into the 1980s.
California’s decline is evident to all, though its power and influence is still vast (as the iPhone in your pocket proves). The Manhattan Institute recently devoted an entire issue to the question of Can California Be Golden Again?
I haven’t had a chance to read much of it, but I did enjoy Jordan McGillis’s article on how San Diego retains many of the qualities that once made California the envy of the world.
■ Peter Viereck ranks amongst the names of slightly neglected thinkers in the agora of American conservatism. Reading him always brings some insight, but I never knew much about the man himself.
Samuel Rubinstein supplies a fascinating account of the man and his thinking in Peter Viereck: Psychoanalyst of Nazism.
■ National treasure Peter Hitchens has spent his life hating the ogre Ted Heath, destroyer of worlds. I will never forgive him for what he did to England’s ancient counties and boroughs.
But Hitchens the Heath Hater, with his typically thoughtful approach, offers a reconsideration of the man.
■ All politics is local: Fred de Fossard writes about how EU-obsessed Lib Dems are ruining Bath rather than guarding one of the most precious jewels of English cities.
■ We leave you with this six-colour lithograph from the Pretoria-based artist Nina Torr entitled ‘Here we go again’ (an edition of thirty, available from the Artists’ Press):
Architectural Exhibitions
The Architecture Association is renowned as the most pedantic of training schools for the profession. Housed as it is in an immaculate set of Georgian townhouses in Bedford Square, its students are rigorously trained to avoid anything that might be beautiful, expressive of the inherited tradition of millennia, or pleasing to the human condition.
Nonetheless, I love architectural models, and the AA is having an exhibition of a handful of models of the various places in which the Warburg Institute has been housed across its peripatetic and tumultuous history until it found its thus-far permanent home in Woburn Square in Bloomsbury.
“Architecture and interiors were crucial for Aby Warburg’s interrogation of culture,” the AA opaquely tells us.
“Between 1923 and 1958, designs were commissioned for buildings, interiors, and exhibitions, as the Warburg Library and Institute moved through a series of homes, first in Hamburg and then in London,” they more helpfully inform.
“This exhibition, an itinerant archive of models and drawings that portray the seven different spaces the Warburg Institute has occupied, sheds new light on Warburg’s involvement with architecture.”
19 January 2024 to 7 March 2024
Mon-Sat, 11h00-19h00
Gallery, Architectural Association (free)
Connectedly, the University of London is hosting an exhibition looking at Charles Holden’s masterplan for that institution’s Bloomsbury campus.
This show “celebrates the architect’s vision of what a modern university could be through displays of detailed architectural models, archival documents, photo albums, and other mixed media”.
Senate House is an amazing building but I think we can be glad the full scale of its original plan — stretching all the way up towards Gordon Square — was never completed.
17 Jan 2024 to 17 March 2024
Mon-Fri, 09h00-17h00
Senate House, University of London (free)
Articles of Note: 6 January 2024
■ I had the great privilege of studying French Algeria under the knowledgeable and congenial Dr Stephen Tyre of St Andrews University and the country continues to exude an interest. The Algerian detective novelist Yasmina Khadra — nom de plume of the army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul — has attracted notice in Angledom since being translated from the Gallic into our vulgar tongue.
Recently the columnist Matthew Parris visited Algeria for leisurely purposes and reports on the experience.
■ While you’re at the Spectator, of course by now you should have already studied my lament for the excessive strength of widely available beers — provoked by the news that Sam Smith’s Brewery have increased the alcohol level of their trusty and reliable Alpine Lager.
■ This week Elijah Granet of the Legal Style Blog shared this numismatic gem. It makes one realise quite how dull our coin designs are these days. I don’t see why we shouldn’t have an updated version of this for our currently reigning Charles.
■ Meanwhile Chris Akers of Investors Chronicle and the Financial Times has gone on retreat to Scotland’s ancient abbey of Pluscarden and written up the experience for the FT. As he settled into the monastic rhythm, Chris found he was unwinding more than he ever has on any tropical beach.
Pluscarden is Britain’s only monastic community now in its original abbey, the building having been preserved — albeit greatly damaged until it was restarted in 1948. The older Buckfast is also on its original site but was entirely razed by 1800 or so and rebuilt from the 1900s onwards. (Pluscarden also has an excellent monastic shop.)
■ An entirely different and more disappointing form of retreat in Scottish religion is the (Presbyterian) state kirk’s decision to withdraw from tons of their smaller churches. St Monans is one of the mediæval gems of Fife, overlooking the harbour of the eponymous saint’s village since the fourteenth century, and built on the site of an earlier place of worship.
Cllr Sean Dillon pointed out the East Neuk is to lose six churches — some of which have been in the Kirk’s hands since they were confiscated at the Reformation, including St Monans.
John Lloyd, also of the FT, reported on this last summer and spoke to my old church history tutor, the Rev Dr Ian C. Bradley. More on the closures in the Courier and Fife Today.
What a dream it would be for a charitable trust to buy St Monans and to restore it to its appearance circa 1500 or so, available as a place of worship and as a living demonstration of Scotland’s rich and polychromatic culture that was so tragically destroyed in the sixteenth century. You could open with a Carver Mass conducted by Sir James MacMillan.
■ And finally, on the last day of MMXXIII, the architect Conor Lynch reports in from Connemara with this scene of idyllic bliss:
Regnum, Ecclesia, Studium
The threefold division of the world
As such he might be expected to have ideas about the idea of a university, and he wrote about them in The Spectator in August 1983.
Mister Grimond (as he still was then, only just), suggested those interested in the subject “might turn to a lecture by Ronald Cant, sometime Reader in Scottish History in the University of St Andrews”:
[…]
A vital aspect of this tripartite organisation, as Cant says, was that each should serve and support the other. But the studium, while interacting with the regnum and ecclesia, must maintain its independence.
It was certainly the business of the studium to advance knowledge, but that was not to be the end of the matter. Knowledge was linked to public service. The learned man had a duty to the community as well as a right to pursue his intellectual quarry. In fact he pursued the quarry on behalf of the community.
The tripartite division of the world, although old-fashioned, seems to me a useful concept, emphasising that government, morality, and higher education are separate but intertwined.
It seems to me that if we expel the regnum and the ecclesia utterly from the world of the university we shall end up paradoxically with universities totally dependent upon the state… but as subservient as those in Rome.
The liberal spirit gave birth and sustenance to universities; if its progeny does not foster it in the regnum they may indeed end up as purely vocational colleges.
De Gaulle on the Market
It forces people to stretch themselves, it gives a bonus to the best, it encourages you to surpass others and to surpass yourself.
But, at the same time, it creates injustices, it establishes monopolies, it favours cheaters.
So don’t be blind to the market. You should not imagine that it will solve every problem on its own.
The market is not above the nation and the state. It is the nation, it is the state which must oversee the market. »
Horseshoe for Quebec’s Salon bleu
Refit will change seating plan in Quebec’s parliament chamber
An upcoming renovation to the Hôtel du parlement in Quebec City will also bring a change in the seating plan of the Assembly’s parliamentary chamber. Deputés agreed a moderate alteration to the current Westminster-style seating plan: a horseshoe shape will replace the crowded back two rows of desks with a curved arrangement.
The original clerks’ table designed by the building’s architect, Eugène-Étienne Taché, in 1886 will also be returned to centre-stage in the Salon bleu (formerly the Salon vert) of Quebec’s National Assembly. The room is also, I believe, the only parliamentary chamber to feature in a film by Alfred Hitchcock.
Renovations are scheduled to begin in January of next year, when deputés will start convening in the Salon rouge that formerly housed Quebec’s Legislative Council, abolished in 1968. (Quebec was the last Canadian province to abolish the upper house of its parliament.)
“The Salon bleu has a strong symbolic value for the Quebec nation,” claims Éric Montigny, professor of political science at Laval University (founded 1663).
“We must respect this tradition and evolve in a very, very gradual manner,” Professor Montigny told the Journal de Québec. “A parliament is not trivial.”
The Assembly numbered only sixty-five members when Taché’s edifice was completed in 1886, while today 125 deputés have to fit into the parliamentary chamber.
The new arrangement would make room for as many as 130 legislators, plus the Président in the speaker’s chair. It will also allow for a good number of the historic desks in the chamber to be retained.
Other potential arrangements were considered and rejected, including introducing a half-moon hemicycle akin to Paris, Washington, and other republican legislatures.
Prof Montigny dismissed claims that semicircular arrangements lead to more collaborative dialogue and constructive work between government and opposition parties:
“It’s an argument that is raised regularly, but I don’t know of any studies that will support this theory.”
The most significant change to the chamber in recent years was the removal of the crucifix from above the président’s chair, first installed in 1936 by the giant of Quebec politics, premier Maurice Duplessis.
That crucifix, and its 1982 replacement, were removed in 2019 and are now displayed as historical artefacts in an ancillary part of the parliament building.
[NDLR: I wrote about the crucifix back in 2008.]
The horseshoe seating plan seems a happy compromise: Westminster-style parliaments — even those that are unicameral like Quebec’s — are honest about the antagonism between government and opposition, and the horseshoe preserves the antiphonal arrangement conducive to this, while rounding it off with a curve at the end.
For my part, I will be happy to see the removal of the arbitrary trapezoid of the modern clerks’ table (below) and its replacement by its historic predecessor.
St Paul’s: Before and After the War
Wren’s post-Fire St Paul’s Cathedral was an icon of resistance to German aggression and an emblem of survival during the Blitz, but while the dome survived the church did suffer damage: A bomb fell threw the roof of the east end on the evening of 10 October 1940, tumbling masonry and destroying the high altar.
Despite the reredos remaining largely intact, as can be seen in the photograph above, it was decided to remove it and rebuild the High Altar under a baldacchino as Sir Christopher Wren had intended.
In 1958 the new High Altar, designed by W Godfrey Allen and Steven Dykes Bower, was dedicated with an American Memorial Chapel behind it.
This was proposed by the Dean of St Paul’s and General Eisenhower volunteered to raise money for it in the United States.
The Dean turned down the Supreme Commander’s offer, saying that this would be paid for by Britons as an appreciation of the American sacrifice during our common struggle.
A roll of honour lists the names of the 28,000 Americans who gave their lives while stationed from Great Britain.
Perhaps more intriguing than either view is the one below of the interior of St Paul’s before the Victorian scheme for the High Altar was executed.
The Ukrainians’ Secret Weapon
For those looking for an explanation as to the notable success of the Ukrainians on the battlefield in the current unpleasantness taking place in their country, look no further.
In a thread of tweets, the biblophile Incunabula reveals the Ukraine’s secret weapon: the Peresopnytsia Gospels (Пересопницьке Євангеліє).
“All six Ukrainian Presidents since 1991,” Incunabula writes, “including Volodymyr Zelensky, have taken the oath of office on this book: the sixteenth-century Peresopnytsia Gospels, one of the most remarkably illuminated of all surviving East Slavic manuscripts.”
“The Peresopnytsia Gospels were written between 15 August 1556 and 29 August 1561, at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Iziaslav, and the Monastery of the Mother of God in Peresopnytsia, Volyn.”
“This manuscript is the earliest complete surviving example of a vernacular Old Ukrainian translation of the Gospels. Its richly ornamented miniatures belong to the very highest achievements of the artistic tradition of the Ukrainian and Eastern Slavonic icon school.”
“The Peresopnytsya Gospels were commissioned in 1556 by Princess Nastacia Yuriyivna Zheslavska-Holshanska of Volyn, and her daughter and her son-in-law, Yevdokiya and Ivan Fedorovych Czartoryski. After its completion the book was kept in the Peresopnytsya Monastery.” (more…)
Irving’s Sunnyside
From the Westchester Herald (as reprinted in the Times of London, 24 April 1835):
On the premises just mentioned there is still standing an old stone house, built in the ancient Dutch style of architecture, during the French war, by Wolfred Acker, and afterwards purchased by Van Tassel, one at least of whose descendants has been immortalized in story by the racy pen of its present gifted proprietor.
It is the identical house at which was assembled the memorable tea-party, described in the legend of Sleepy Hollow, on that disastrous night when the ill-starred Ichabod was rejected by the fair Katrina, and also encountered the fearful companionship of Brom Bones in the character of the headless Hessian.
The characters in this delectable drama are mostly known to our readers; but time, that tells all tales, enables us to add one item more, which is, that the original of the sagacious schoolmaster was not the individual generally considered as such, who still resides in this country, but Jesse Martin, a gentleman who bore the birchen sway at the period of which the legend speaks, and who afterwards removed further up the Hudson, and is since deceased.
The location is a most delightfully secluded spot, eminently suited to the musings and mastery of mind; and it is the design of the proprietor, without changing the style or aspect of the premises, to put them in complete repair, and occupy them as a place of retirement and repose from the business and bustle of the world.
St Vincent Ferrer
This week marked the ninetieth anniversary of the consecration of the high altar of the Dominican Church of St Vincent Ferrer in New York — one of the most beautiful churches in Manhattan.
To mark the occasion, a sung requiem Mass was offered in the Dominican rite (under the sponsorship of the New York Purgatorial Society) for the benefactors of the parish.
The parish also shared this explanation of the art and symbolism of the high altar:
The Altar itself, the footpace of which is atop five steps from the presbytery, is in the form of a sepulcher. The Mensa is of Belgian Black marble inlaid with five crosses of Red Verona. It measures 15 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 6 inches thick, weighing about 2 tons.
The Altar Front consists of uprights of Belgian Black and Lepanto Marbles. The Frontal has five panels in a field of Tinos Green surrounded by a border of Mother-of-Pearl and Lapis Lazuli. The three principal panels, left to right, are: the arms of the Dominican Province of Saint Joseph (notice the carpenter’s T-square and the lilies, symbols of Saint Joseph); the shield of the Dominican Order in black and white marble surrounded by a carved inscription of the Dominican motto, “Laudare, benedicere, praedicare” (to praise, to bless, to preach), this is capped with a star; another Dominican shield with the crown, dog, lily, laurel, and star. The carving on the Mensa and the Altar Frontal is finished off in gold.
The Reredos Wall, acting as a back to the Altar and a base for the Reredos, is of Siena Marble. The wall contains a carved inscription of the Eucharistic hymn “Panis angelicas” written by St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P. On each side of the inscription are carved two large corbels the subjects of which are the Last Supper and the Elevation of the Mass.
On the Mensa of the Altar there are also six large candle- sticks of gold-plated bronze. Each candlestick weighs eighty-five pounds. On each candlestick is a medallion containing a symbol of the Passion or the Holy Eucharist, from left to right: Crown of Thorns and Three Nails on a background of blue; silver Rooster; silver Chalice with a Host bering the emblem IHS; three fish on a background of red enamel representing the Holy Trinity; Veronica’s veil; money bag of Judas on a background of red.
The Reredos is a magnificent structure of wood carving which forms the setting for a central painted triptych by Alfredo Mira depicting the miracles of Saint Vincent Ferrer, twenty-four statuettes of saints, and thirty angels of varying sizes. Dominating the entire structure is a majestic figure of Christ the King, approximately eight feet tall. The Reredos, extending forty-four feet above the floor, is of Hungarian oak which is stained to preserve the natural color of the wood. The color work has been done sparingly since it was not intended to destroy the natural finish of the wood by complete polychroming; yet the figure of Christ the King and the tester or canopy above it have been elaborately colored.
The Tabernacle at the center of the Altar is of gold-plated bronze, with twelve panels of symbols and miniature Biblical scenes in colored enamels. On the left door are six images from the Old Testament in which the Eucharist is prefigured. On the right door is the fulfillment of those types in the New Testament and the early Church. The Tabernacle, with its triple crown, is intended to look like a medieval tent, the literal meaning of tabernacle.
The Altar and Reredos were imported from Belgium where they were constructed by Joseph Van Uytvanch of Louvain. Almost two years were required to complete the work. The scheme was conceived by Wilfred Anthony, Bertram Goodhue’s assistant on the project.
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