Introduction
Fig. 1: Cauer, Howells.
(Fig. 1) The c.1867 – 1888 carved marble and bronze wall panel by now little–known mid–Victorian German sculptor Robert Cauer the Elder (1831 – 1893) to John Howell (4 April 1808 – 1 November 1888) and his wife Anna Howell (8 November 1811 – 4 April 1877) can be found on the right wall of the east end apse in the Chapel of St Dunstan at the northwest end of the Cathedral floor.
St Dunstan’s Chapel
Fig. 2: St. Dunstan’s Chapel.
(Fig. 2) The chapel, first consecrated in 1699, was the second part of Christopher Wren’s building to come into use, after the quire, the first service held there on 1 February 1699. At that point, so close to the Reformation, there was no altar, but the chapel was sumptuously hung with purple and crimson silk hangings and cushions, perhaps partly explaining why silk merchant Howell was ultimately commemorated there (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3: St Dunstan’s Chapel in the 1950s.
In 1905, the Chapel was dedicated to St Dunstan, a Bishop of London who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 959 AD. Before 1905, it was known as the Morning Chapel, because the early morning service of Matins was conducted here, and communion from 1871.
In 1868 – 1871, following the 1864 – 1865 unveiling of spandrel mosaics under the Cathedral dome by G.F. Watts, of St John the Evangelist, and Alfred Stevens, of Isaiah, a Salviati and Co. mosaic, The Women of the Sepulchre was unveiled at the West End of St Dunstan’s Chapel (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4: Salviati, Women of the Sepulchre.
In this, the three Marys approach Christ’s empty tomb, where they are greeted by an angel pointing up to heaven to indicate that Christ has risen. The mosaic was a memorial to Archdeacon of London William Hale, buried in the Crypt, and canon residentiary of the Cathedral (Zech, 14).
In 1886, meanwhile, a mosaic scheme of London firm Powell and Company, centring on Christ in Majesty Flanked by Mary and St John (after Raphael’s Disputation (1509 – 1510) in the Vatican) was set into place at the East End of St Dunstan’s Chapel (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5: Powell, Christ in Majesty.
The Cathedral spandrel mosaics were then completed in 1893, William Edward Britten fashioning both Stevens’ earlier design for Daniel and Watts’s for Matthew, Mark, and Luke, just as the William Blake Richmond mosaics were being installed in the quire (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6: Richmond, St Paul’s mosaics.
Today, the Chapel of St Dunstan is set aside for prayer, and visitors can light a candle or leave the names of those they wished to be remembered in prayer during one of the Cathedral’s services.
The Life and Works of John and Anna Howell
John and Anna Howell remain rather mysterious figures to be commemorated in the Cathedral. (Charles) John Howell was born in London on 4 April 1808. He and his wife Anna had eleven children: Elizabeth (1837 – unknown); Frances Evelyn (1838 – 1920); Clara (1840 – 1890); Edgar Hedley (1842 – 1917), to whom we shall return; Horace (1843 – 1912); Wynn (1845 – 1847); Marion Emily (1847 – 1902); Percy Victor (1849 – 1898); Bulmer (1851 – 1932); Bertha (1853 – 1929); and Reginald (1856 – 1912).
Howell and Company
Howell was a businessman, a partner in the firm of John Howell and Co., wholesale drapers, with specialties, as we have briefly seen, in dresses, silks, and fancy drapery goods. The firm was located in the shadow of the Cathedral, at numbers 1, 2, and 3 of St Paul’s Churchyard, as well as at 1–9 Ludgate Hill, 7–15 Creed Lane, and 40 Carter Lane, warehouse space amounting to some 820,000 cubic feet.
The firm was first established in 1822 by Wynn Ellis, who was for many years Liberal M.P. for Leicester, and who, upon his death, in 1875, bequeathed a large number of pictures to the National Gallery in London, as well as £2000 to the Committee for the Restoration of St Paul’s Cathedral, a legacy perhaps closely overseen by Howell, explaining his commemoration, although Ellis himself is not commemorated (Illustrated London News, 8 January 1876).
Howell had first joined the company in partnership in 1837, when the firm became known as Ellis, Howell, and Co.
In 1851, the firm’s goods were criticised at the Great Exhibition as “somewhat too showy to suit the taste of ladies in general” (Illustrated London News, 19 July 1851).
In 1862, the year of the International Exhibition in London, the firm advertised itself as the purveyors of “Rich and Moderate Price Silks”, with a “variety of New Designs and Colours in Moiré Antique and other Silks, made to their order for display at the Exhibition”, with “Patterns of grenadines, muslins, silks, and all other goods sent post–free” (Illustrated London News, 7 June 1862).
The firm were also advertising their “Family Linen Warehouse”, with “patterns or parcels of damask, linens, sheetings, and every description of household linen sent free of expense” (Illustrated London News, 14 June 1862).
In the Illustrated London News of 2 August 1862, meanwhile, the firm described how they had “for upwards of forty years”, been “celebrated for their rich Silks and other Dresses”, and, more recently, for enlarging their “stock of medium priced goods of every description”. Current featured items included the “Exhibition moiré Antiques, French Figured moirés”, “Organdie Muslins”, and “Black Silk Mantles”.
By 16 May 1863, the firm had diversified their advertising to an “assortment of Square, Norwich, French, and Paisley Shawls, which on account of being all Silk and very finely woven” were “very light for summer wear” (Illustrated London News). In 1871, the firm was incorporated as a limited company.
Philanthropy
Like his former partner Wynn Ellis, Howell was a philanthropist, again perhaps explaining his Cathedral commemoration. The Illustrated London News of 6 March 1869 reported that Howell had presided, at the London Tavern, over the annual festival of the Drapers’ Institution, first established in 1832 “for the relief of people impoverished belonging to the silk mercers, lacemen, haberdashers, and hosiers’ trades”. More than 200 other guests joined Howell, donating some “£720, besides annual subscriptions, together with a legacy of £500” and a second of £1000.
In 1872, Howell was also among the first subscribers to a testimonial to composer and Cathedral organist John Goss (The Times, 12 April 1872), commemorated in the Crypt in a c.1880 memorial by Hamo Thornycroft and John Belcher (Fig. 7).
Fig. 7: Thornycroft and Belcher, Goss.
In 1875, Howard may also have been the person who donated some £10 10s a year for five years to a new National Training School for Music (The Times, 21 July 1875).
Death and Burial
Howell died on 1 November 1888, in Surrey. In 1914, the year in which the Great War commenced, an E.H. Howell, presumably Howell’s son, Edgar Hedley, became the chairman and director of the firm. It is unclear if the Howells were related to John Howell, a more famous vicar choral at the Cathedral, from 1697 (Keene, 393).