The bayeux tapestry, decay, and the human struggle against mortality

“ When we contemplate the fate that has befallen other nations, whether we cast our eyes back into the remotest ages of antiquity, or derive instruction from those examples which modern times have presented to our view, and observe how prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their checks and totally dissolve ”

“ A universal departure of this kind, on the part of man, from his fundamental instincts, such universal decadence of the valuing judgment, is the note of interrogation par excellence, the real riddle, which the animal "man" sets to all philosophers.
40.
The notion "decadence":—Decay, decline, and waste, are, per se, in no way open to objection; [Pg 33] they are the natural consequences of life and vital growth. The phenomenon of decadence is just as necessary to life as advance or progress is: we are not in a position which enables us to suppress it. ”

“ Objects later than the Turkish conquest, and coins of Byzantine or later times, are not deemed to be antiquities. All undiscovered antiquities of movable character are the property of the Government; all immovable antiquities are also the property of the Government, unless some person shall be the owner of them. All antiquities must be reported by the person in possession of them to the Museum Committee, on pain of confiscation ”

“ The donkey-boy pulls the strings of pathos for his backsheesh, having no beauty to use; he says, “Father and mother all dead.” Seems to have belonged to a harem.
Before we can gain space or quiet either to examine or enjoy a temple, we have to free ourselves of a crowd of adhesive men, boys, and girls, who press upon us their curiosities, relics of the dead, whose only value is their antiquity. The price of these relics is of course wholly “fancy,” and I presume that Thebes, where the influence of the antique is most strong, is the best market in the world for these trifles ”

“ very many, on the contrary,7 maintain that all we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown; nor do philosophers pin their faith to others’ precepts in such wise that they lose their liberty, and cease to give credence to the conclusions of their proper senses. Neither do they swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity, that they openly, and in sight of all, deny and desert their friend Truth. ”

“ A most faithful and valuable record of costumes and manners at the time of the Conquest is to be found in the remarkable work known as the Bayeux Tapestry. It has been already stated that in the days of the Conqueror the Anglo-Saxon ladies were remarkable for their skill in ornamental needlework, and the embroidery of their manufacture was celebrated throughout Europe under the name of English work.
The Saxon nobles who accompanied William to the Continent after the battle of Hastings, are supposed to have taken with them their wives and daughters. ”

“ The arrival of Harold in Normandy, his stay with William, his swearing of loyalty, his return to England, the death of Edward the Confessor, the subsequent election of Harold to the throne of England, with the expedition itself culminating in the Battle of Hastings, are all shown in the course of the story. It is as much a defence of William’s conduct as a history of his triumph.
The Tapestry is generally considered to be contemporary, or almost contemporary, with the events it portrays, and it is evident that if such be the case it is an historical document of the very first importance. ”

“ Homer frequently describes tapestry hangings, as when he alludes to the cloth of purple [9] wool with a hunting scene in gold thread, woven by Penelope for Ulysses. Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, says, "Speech is like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs."
The oldest tapestry now in existence is the set of pieces known as the Bayeux Tapestry, preserved in the library at Bayeux, near Caen, in France, and said to be the work of Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror. ”

“ There is not a school child in England who has not heard of the marvellous piece of work supposed to have been wrought by Queen Matilda and the ladies of her court; but until the tapestry is actually seen, the conception of it is as vague as that of giants and fairies. As a matter of fact, the work is not tapestry at all, but crewel work. Real tapestry resembles carpet, and is closely worked, and the background is all filled in ”

“ We are then immersed in the depths of antiquarian lore, and the problems of archaeology which arise are only equalled by the diversity of methods brought forward for keeping the object intact. Conservation is a science as well as an art, but even so it is difficult to obtain unanimity of opinion from experts when work is contemplated. ”

“ The atmosphere of eternity alone befits a nature which feels itself living in the companionship of God. Everything subject to decay cowers into oblivion from before the idea of that august, incorruptible presence. The fear of death is but the recoil of the immortal from mortality. When man voluntarily faces death without fear, even courting martyrdom with a radiant joy, it is because there is in him, deeper than consciousness, a mystic knowledge that he is essentially eternal and cannot perish. He who freely sacrifices anything thereby proves himself superior to that which he sacrifices. ”

“ The instinctive reverence of the peasantry has hitherto been a great preservative; but the spread of education has to a considerable extent impaired this kindly sentiment, and the progress of scientific farming, and the anxiety of the Royal Irish Academy to collect antiquarian trifles, have already led to the reckless destruction of too many. I think that no one who reads the first two volumes of this history would greatly care to bear a hand in the destruction of that tomb at Tara, in which long since his people laid the bones of Cuculain ”

“ But the mass of “Men and Women,” that unexampled gallery of portraits of the inmost hearts and secret minds of priests, prigs, princes, girls, lovers, poets, painters, must survive immortally, while civilization and literature last, while men care to know what is in men.
No perversity of humour, no voluntary or involuntary harshness of style, can destroy the merit of these poems, which have nothing like them in the letters of the past, and must remain without successful imitators in the future. ”

“ For what is implied in the word 'recollection,' but the departure of knowledge, which is ever being forgotten and is renewed and preserved by recollection, and appears to be the same although in reality new, according to that law of succession by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutely the same, but by substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving another new and similar existence behind—unlike the divine, which is always the same and not another? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal anything, partakes of immortality ”

“ How have their authors buried themselves in the solitude of cells and cloisters, shut themselves up from the face of man, and the still more blessed face of Nature; and devoted themselves to painful research and intense reflection! And all for what? To occupy an inch of dusty shelf—to have the titles of their works read now and then in a future age by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like myself, and in another age to be lost even to remembrance. Such is the amount of this boasted immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a local sound ”

“ Tear down temple and stronghold; sweep away the marble palace and log-house! sweep away infancy and youth, manhood and old age; wipe out old memories, and pass the sponge over cherished recollections. The energy and the ingenuity of man are an over-match even for time. From the ruins of the past, from the desolations of decay, new structures will rise, and a new harvest, more abundant than the old, will spring up from the stubble over which Time's sickle has passed. Recuperation is a law stronger than decay, and it is written all over the face of the earth. ”

“ Let the words youth, growth, maturity, decay—hitherto, and to-day more than ever, used to express subjective valuations and entirely personal preferences in sociology, ethics and æsthetics—be taken at last as objective descriptions of organic states. Set forth the Classical Culture as a self-contained phenomenon embodying and expressing the Classical soul, put it beside the Egyptian, the Indian, the Babylonian, the Chinese and the Western, and determine for each of these higher individuals what is typical in their surgings and what is necessary in the riot of incident. ”

“ If a person, says Dr. Burton, expects to find at Rome such magnificent remains, as he has read of in Athens, he will be grievously disappointed. It is highly necessary to know, that whatever exists at Rome as a monument of ancient times has suffered from various calamities.
Gibbon states four causes of decay:—The injuries of time and nature; the hostile attacks of the barbarians and christians; the use and abuse of the materials; and the domestic quarrels of the Romans. There is great truth in Pope’s remark—
Some felt the silent strokes of mouldering age ”

“ Decay, renovation, change, and reformation, have been so busy with this seat of government, from the era of its infancy until the present time, that no small degree of ingenuity must be needed to unravel the twistings and turnings, and comprehend the inharmonious groupings that have sprung up about it, the divers offsprings of various ages, that mark the progress and growth of the municipal constitution.
Without doubt, the first claim to antiquity is justly assigned to the lower dungeons and cells, some of which still serve as lock ups for offenders awaiting magisterial examination ”

“ "Don't you want to preserve old things?"
"But you can't, Anthony. Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay. And just as any period decays in our minds, the things of that period should decay too, and in that way they're preserved for a while in the few hearts like mine that react to them. That graveyard at Tarrytown, for instance. The asses who give money to preserve things have spoiled that too. Sleepy Hollow's gone; ”

“ Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law. ”

“ For the decay of vegetation in winter is readily interpreted by primitive man as an enfeeblement of the spirit of vegetation; the spirit has (he thinks) grown old and weak and must therefore be renovated by being slain and brought to life in a younger and fresher form. ”

“ The later chapters of the Book of the Dead take us back to the earth. They are concerned with the mummy and its resting-place, with the charms and amulets which preserved the body from decay, or enabled the soul to inspire it once more with life. They form a sort of appendix, dealing rather with the beliefs and superstitions of the people, than with the ideas of the theologians, about the gods and the future life.159
The order in which I have referred to the chapters of the book are those of the Theban texts as edited by Dr. Naville. ”

“ But we have seen that the very value attached to the life of the man-god necessitates his violent death as the only means of preserving it from the inevitable decay of age. The same reasoning would apply to the King of the Wood; he, too, had to be killed in order that the divine spirit, incarnate in him, might be transferred in its integrity to his successor. The rule that he held office till a stronger should slay him might be supposed to secure both the preservation of his divine life in full vigour and its transference to a suitable successor as soon as that vigour began to be impaired. ”

“ I viewed, with a mixture of pity and horror, these beings training to be sold to slaughter, or be slaughtered, and fell into reflections on an old opinion of mine, that it is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of the Deity throughout the whole of Nature. ”

“ On an Assyrian sculpture at the British Museum is seen Assurbanipal on a couch, the queen opposite to him, under an arbour of jewelled vines; unless it represents a rural entertainment, which is unlikely.
[449] The art of the “tapezziere,” “tapissier,” “tapestry-hanger,” is not a recognized one with us, though it is in Italy and France, where the hangings for special occasions in churches and houses are stored away, treasured for hundreds of years, cleaned and mended, and hung and placed to the best advantage by men educated for the purpose. ”