Evening star., 1924-08-03
byron EXCLUSION
!. BY ABBEY ASSA|LED
Famous Poets Advocates ir
!, Britain Criticize Action
j: Taken at Westminster.

f. Once more the guardians of West
minister Abbeys morals have decided
THAT not even tablet of Byron $
memory may be placed there.
1t is just a century this year since
that decision was first made. When
the poets body was being brought
back from Missolonghi, Col. Leices-
Gter Stanhope, associated with him in
1.-the struggle for Greek freedom, wrote
This executors: With respect to the
funeral ceremony, l am of opinion
!,that his lordship's, family should be
imme ediately consulted and that sane
,tion should be obtained for the pub
lie burial of his body either in the
great Abbey or Cathedral of London"
On reaching England. Byron s
friends found that application had
been made to the dean of West
! minister and that permission had been
refused.
A Classic Contention.
80 Ever since that time the question
has been a classic bone of contention
between champions of Art with d
capital A, and champions of Morals
with capital NJ. Recently 1t was
made news again by petlllon SlSneu
by the Earl of Balfour. Herbert As
quith. Lloyd George, Edmund Gosse'
Thomas Hardy, Rudyard kipling,
Sir Frederick Kenyon, Laurence
Binyon and others that tablet be
placed in Poets Corner. Bishop
Ryle, with the unanimous support of
the Abbey Chapter, denied the petit
ton.
In letter to the London Times.
the bishop said: Byron, partly by
~, lr,fa f.a
partly by the influence of licentiouS
verse, earned worldwide reputation
for immortality. Among English
speaking people, Westminster Abbey
primarily stands to witness for Jesus
Christ.
Outraged Divine Laws.
"A man, who outraged the laws of
our Divine Lord and whose treatment
of women violated Christian princi-
pies of purity and honor. should not
be commemorated in Westminster
Abbey"
SO long as there are two sets of
temperamentS in the world. the QueS-
tion whether recognition of an artists
greatness should be effected by con-
siderations of his morals probably
never will be settled. But whether
an institution that has set itself
precedent of recognizing greatness,
should deny admission to a genius be-
cause he was dissolute, when 1t has
admitted other dissoIute men, some
of whom were far from geniuseS, is
another question and one that is be-
ing bitterly argued since publication
of Bishop Ryle's decision.
Sean Stanley. in his Historical
.~=mortaIs of Westminster Abbey"
admitted the force of this argument
while insisting that the successive
chiefs who have held the keys of St
Peters Abbey have, on the whole
risen to the greatness of their situa-
tion and have endeavored TO mbrace,
within the wide sympathy of their
consecTated precincts, those whom
narrow and Sectarian spirit might
have excluded, but whom the pre-
cepts of their common Master, no less
than the instincts of their common
humanity, should have bid them well
come Even the yet harder
problem of high Intellectual gifts.
united with moral inffTmity or de
pravity, has, on the whole, here met
with the only solution which on earth
can be given. If Byron was turned
from our doors, many a one as ques-
tionable as Byron has been admitted.
Close above the monument of the de-
voted Granville Sharpe is the monu-
nent of the epcurean st. EVremond.
/, Close behind the tablet of the blame
less Wharton lies the licentious Con-
greve."
Buried in Poets Corner.
THE epicurean st. Evremond was
Charles de Marguetei de Saint Denis,
Seigneur de Saint-Evremond, bril-
liant FTenchman, who, when he got
into trouble in France fled to Hol-
land and England. Stanley elsewhere
refers to him as "the old voluptuary
patria rch of Charles lis wits Never
theless, when he died in 1903, he was
buried in Poets Corner.
I, William CongTeve. master of Eng
lish comedy, whose private life was
. as untrameled by morality as his
plays. is generally excused on the
ground that he was not much, if any
worse, than his times
Aphara Dehn.
,,"Aphara Behn, notorious novelist,
! happily has not reached the east clois-
ter" wrote Dean Stanley. Beside her
lies her facetious friend, the scandal
Gus satirist and essayist, Tom Brown,
! who had defiled and defied the Abbey
during his whole literary life"
Aphara Behn was the heroine of
Poe's line Look how loose Astraea
treads the stage She was employed
! by Charles II on secret service in the
. Netherlands during the Dutch war.
She was a dramatist as well as a
novelist and her plays would not be
[ good reading for mixed society.
Nevertheless, though she did not
reach the east cIoister" she is
1 buried within the sacred precincts
close to Tom Brown, whose poems,
letters. lampoons. etc, were outrage