London Travelogue
Hello everybody,
Yesterday morning, Sunday,
Londoners woke up to about three inches of snow--fluffy snow, not the heavy
pavement adhesive snow that falls in Iowa.
It was gone by noon. Today is not as warm as other days, mid 50s I'd
say. Okay, I have much to tell you about our activitities over the past
few weeks. I'll begin with last Wednesday's fieldtrip: a walking tour of
the old City of London,
led by Bob Craig, whom met met at Bank tube station in the heart of the
city. This part of London
was heavily bombed during The Blitz and many of the
buildings are new. Actually, a German bomb plummeted down a ventilation
shaft at Bank station and killed hundreds of commuters, who'd just come up the
escalators and emerged into the entrance way. We could see marks left by
shrapnel and flying debri from the bomb blast on the walls of buildings
and monuments roundabout: Mansion House (the lord mayor's
residence) a statue of The Iron Duke on horseback(Wellington) that stands
in front of Cornhill Exchange.
This
part of London
was once a den of debauchery--a warren of taverns, brothels, and cheap
lodging houses, populated by footpads, thieves, pickpockets,
whores, gamblers, lawyers, clerks, rakes, and dissolute noblemen
looking for a good time. So Bob Craig, our guide, informed us. I
thought of Charles Dickens' Fagin and Bill Sykes as we walked down narrow
passageways and back alleys that link streets and buildings. The
place definitely has a Dickensian redolence. And sure enough, in an
alleyway behind Cornhill Exchange stands The George and Vulture, a
tavern immortalized in Pickwick Papers, where Dickens' Mr.
Pickwick frequently dropped in for a glass of ale and a hearty
meal. Now there was a man who was fond of food and drink. A man of capacious girth.
From
there we walked to the Lloyd's of London building--a hideous monstrosity
erected during Maggie Thatcher's ascendancy, a time of avarice and guile, when
money and bad taste over-ruled any aesthetic sensibility. It's totally
self-sufficient and has all its internal organs on the outside. Hard to
believe such an ugly building exists so close to some that are bordering on
antiquity. It's straight out of Ridley Scott's Bladerunner
(a movie I liked quite a bit) and doesn't belong in London--a
futuristic Los Angeles,
yes.
Nearby stands Norman Foster's 30 Saint Mary's Axe, more commonly known as The
Gherkin, which it closely resembles. I rather liked this
building--although from a distance it does tend to dominate the skyline.
Standing right in front of it, I couldn't see more that 30 floors up,
and the all glass building does seem to embrace and blend in
somewhat with those that surround it. I asked Bob Craig why it
was called Saint Mary's Axe?
The
original building that stood on the site was a church named Saint Mary's, he
told us, that burned down in the Great Fire of London, in 1666.
The church housed a sacred relic--an axe. Well, some time before, in the
mid 300s, a British Princess, Ursula, betrothed to a Gallic Prince, Conan, set
out on a pan-European pilgrimage with 11,000 virginal handmaidens. They
saw the Pope in Rome, and later while on their
way to Cologne in Germany the procession was set upon
by Attila the Hun. A dreadful massacre unsued. The Huns raped and
beheaded all the virgins with axes. Over time one of these axes was
brought to London and found its way to the church of Saint Mary's, a sacred relic, where it
remained until the Great Fire. Well, that's the story Bob told us.
In
the foreground, facing Saint Mary's Axe, stands Saint Helen's, a 12th Century
church that survived the Great Fire and The Blitz. The church
appears frail, tilts to one side, and has gray mottled walls. I
looked at it closely. Then I turned to Bob. "Looks like
two building joined together?"
"You're absolutely right, Dive-id."
He
went on to tell us that one half of the church was first a
nunnery. Often the nobility of England had many daughters, too
many, and those fathers who were stingy often balked at providing the
necessary dowry. Instead, they forced their daughters--many
unwilling--to take the veil. Now, you have to remember that these were
all young girls, undoubtedly spirited, full of life and passion, with
no real religious convictions. Imagine what it must have been like for
them--stuck in a nunnery (a convent) their heads shorn, forced to
take vows of chastity, obedience, a denial of all worldly goods. Brides of Christ. Shut off from the
world--forever. Well, apparently, some of these ladies had minds of their
own. Their were rumors of nocturnal parties,
men, kissing, dancing, and a few of the nuns were found to be with
child! Good grief. What a scandal. Soon the Pope heard about
it Next thing you know the nunnery was shut
down. All the sisters were turfed out, seperated, packed off to
faraway nunneries. Some to foreign lands.
"And that is why there are two buildings." Bob turned to us,
smiling. "The nunnery and the church...joined together."
I
felt a bit strange standing there. In the foreground Saint Helen's, a
12th Century church, in the background 30 Saint Mary's Axe, now a 21st Century
monolith: The Gherkin.
Well, that was our most recent excursion.
However, we travelled by coach to Bath
on Friday, March 14. I'm racking my brains now to see what I can
remember. Bath--a natural spring--was discovered by the Celts, who
wallowed in the mud and hot springs, which apparently had curative powers they
attributed to the Pagan God Sule, whom they worshipped. Along came the
Romans in 45 A.D. They named the springs Aquasul, and their Godess was
Minerva. Jump ahead to the early 1700s. Bath became fashionable and was frequented by
royalty and nobility--the Prince Regent and Queen Anne.
Anne
became Queen after William III--commonly known as William of Orange--died without
producing a male heir. Actually, he was gay and sired no children at
all. This is the same William--King Billy--that defeated James II, his
father-in-law, at the Battle of the Boyne, 1690,
in County Meath, Ireland. He was a Dutch
Protestant, who'd married Mary, one of James II's daughters, and was
asked by English Protestants to invade England and overthrow Catholic
James, after James' wife had given birth to a male child. James was no
spring chicken, and the English Protestants were willing to put up with him
being a Catholic--that is until his queen produced a healthy male child.
They just wouldn't tolerate another Catholic on the throne. Actually,
after William was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey, Parliament
passed a law that no Catholic could sit on the throne of England.
The law stands to this very day.
Oh,
one more thing and I'll get back to Bath--after the Battle of the Boyne in
1690, when James's Irish supporters were defeated and he fled to France, you
had the Plantation of Ulster, the Plantation of William and Mary it's called,
whereby the Irish Catholic majority were dispossessed of their lands, murdered,
or fled into the mountains. Their land was given to Protestants and
Presbyterians who remained in the minority and held all the power. This
situation eventually led to all the trouble and bloodshed that's part of the
history of Northern Ireland.
Where was I? Oh yeah, Queen Anne...she had many many pregnancies, 17 I
believe, several miscarriages, produced several daughters, but no
boys--none that lived anyway. She would immerse herself in the warm
waters of Bath, sit there for hours, believing that so doing would
help her produce a male child. Lots of aristocratic women believed in the
same myth, so Bob Craig told us when we were there. The town of Bath itself sits on a river--Avon--as does Stratford and several other towns in England.
However, these are all different rivers--all called by the same name: Avon. Why so I asked Bob our guide?
He
explained that Avon derives from the Celtic
word for river: Awha. Or as we say in Ireland Abhainn,
which is the Gaelic word for river. Interesting I
thought.
After that Friday in Bath, we got up early
Saturday morning and caught a coach to Stratford-Upon-Avon and Warwick (pronounced War-ick) Castle. I
have to tell you that I was most disappointed by Shakespeare's
birthplace. The town is completely commercialized and looks more like a
place you'd find in Disneyland: souvenier shops, cafes, pizza parlours,
boutiques, restaurants, Subways, MacDonalds, Burger Kings, you name
it--all shallow artificial and characterless. Yes, Stratford does have some antiquity,
Shakespeare's house, school, Anne Hathaway's cottage, and many Tudor
houses, but all these are dwarfed and surrounded by tasteless
trite tourist traps. I was quite disappointed. I really hadn't
expected that.
Warwick Castle was a revelation. It was
originally a Saxon stronghold built to repel the Vikings and later rebuilt as a
motte and bailey fort by William the Conqueror to control that part of western England
and put down rebellions. Today, it's open to the public--for a
not-so-small fee of £15--and you can walk around downstairs and imagine
yourself in medieval times, particularly because there are life-like wax
figures performing various tasks throughout the castle. Upstairs in the
big wide rooms are various historical figures, hobnobbing--Winston
Churchill, Edward VII, Dukes, Duchesses, Lords and Ladys, Field Marshalls,
etc. We passed a few hours there, and all of us were most impressed.
I'm
afraid that I'm running out of time here, so I'll send this along to
Sharran, who'll post it on the DMACC webpage. We now have less than two
weeks left here in London.
I'm pretty sure that all the students have enjoyed their time here, but I
also know that when the time comes they'll be ready to go home.
I don't know right now if I'll be sending you another update, but if I
don't, and I probably won't, I want to thank all of you for reading what I've
managed to send. All the best from Bloomsbury.
David Gavin
London Travelogue: Week Five
Hello
everybody,
Horror of
horrors--I just now lost about three pages of the travelogue I'd sat down and
writtten because I accidentally unplugged a connection under the desk with my
foot. My computer screen went blank and at first I thought it'd crashed,
but no, I'd done it with my foot. I don't want to go back and write it
all over again, not right now anyway, so I'll just tell you what
happened recently.
I just returned last night from Galway,
Ireland, where
I spent Easter Break, and three of the students accompanied me: Stephanie,
Bobbikae, and Jessica. It was their first time in Ireland, and I
was able to show them around the town and point out places of interest. Ireland today is completely different than the Ireland I grew
up in. It has gone from being a poor country to a very rich country,
second richest country in Europe, second only
to the principality of Lichenstein, which by comparison is tiny and has a very
small population. There are tens of thousands of foreign workers in
Ireland, where the minimum wage is about $14 an hour--Poles, Lithuanians,
Bosnians, Brazilians, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, to name but a few.
They're able to save most of their wages and return to their home countries,
flush with euros, where the minimum wage is about $2 an hour--and often
less. It's great for them. However, it's tough on Americans because
Irish prices are roughly three times those of the US--higher
than London or Paris! There's been a huge influx of
people to Ireland
because it's so prosperous, some from remote parts of the world.
Yesterday, while I was waiting in the departure lounge at Shannon
airport, I struck up a conversation with a young man who'd served me a cup of coffee.
He spoke perfect English, but with an accent I'd never heard
before.
"Where are yeh from?" I asked. He placed the cup on the
counter, looked at me, smiled. "Mauritius,"
he said, "you know where it is?" I had to think for a
minute. "Off the east coast of Africa...isn't
it?"
Turns out he's been working in Ireland,
Shannon airport to be exact, for three years,
where all the people serving food, working behind bar counters,
or in the shops are from foreign countries. The young man told me that by
Mauritius'
standards he's making a fortune and that soon he plans to return home, marry,
and open his own restaurant. That's pretty much the same story you hear
everywhere.
While I was waiting at the departure gate to board my flight, I noticed a long
line of people--about 120 I'd say--boarding a flight
to Kaunos. I did a double take. Kaunos! I thought for a minute it
read Kansas.
Where was Kaunos? In Lithuania
a fellow traveller told me. "Yeh see all them people in the
queue? Sure, they're Lithuanians...heading back home...after working here
for a few months."
Yes, Ireland
today is a multi-cultural country. You see it everywhere. When I
was growing up in Galway, there were always
plenty of tourists around, Americans especially--never foreign workers
though. There was no work in Ireland--period. That's why
everybody had to emigrate. Nowadays, Ireland has to import foreign
workers. The country is incredibly prosperous. It all seems so
strange to me--having lived in America
for almost 32 years. The country has utterly changed.
Let me get back to the three young women, though: Stephanie, Jessica, and
Bobbikae. I managed to find them a cheap bed-and-breakfast, Killowen
House, 10 minutes from the city center, the proprietor of which,
"Mouse" Colbert (even his own mother called him "Mouse") is
an old friend. First thing Saturday morning I brought them to the
Saturday market, situated right next to Saint Nicholas' cathedral, where in
1492 Christopher Columbus attended mass before sailing to the "New World." General Ludlow stabled his horses
in the same church during the English Civil War, the 1640s, when Oliver
Cromwell became Lord Protector, and Charles I was beheaded. Cromwell, England's
one and only dictator, never set foot in Ireland,
but his army--a murderous horde of Puritan zealouts--slaughtered men, women,
and children with mercy, until the streets ran red with blood.
But that's another story.
I also pointed out Lynch's Castle, now a bank in the middle of town, to the
three girls. And later on when we passed Lynch's Doorway, I told them the
story of what happened there in the late 15th Century. The local
magistrate's son was found guilty of murder by a jury of his peers--he stabbed
a Spaniard in a quarrel over a woman--and because of the young man's
popularity, a hangman could not be found. Nobody was willing to hang
young Lynch. So his own father, the magistrate who'd imposed the death
sentence, had to do the job, hang his own son--thus the term "Lynch"
or "Lynch Mob."
Speaking of executions--there's a pub at the top of High Street in Galway
called The King's Head, which legend has it owes its name to Charles I.
The axeman came from Galway, apparently, and
after he'd chopped off the King's head, he returned home and bought the pub
with the money the Cromwellians paid him for doing the job.
Oh, one more thing--the girls met my cousin Maura and took pictures of the wild
heron that flies up the estuary every morning at daybreak and alights on the
quayside outside her front door. He hangs about for most of the morning
and afternoon, preening, having his picture taken, and scorfing down whatever
food passers-by feed him. I feed him sausages and bits of cooked chicken,
which he's especially fond of, and he perches on the roofs of parked cars
or stands outside the open doorway peering in. He's been coming now for
over 10 years the next-door neighbors say, and he's definitely the most
photographed bird in Western Europe--I'd
say.
Well, that's all I've got time for now. However, I will tell you about
Stratford-Upon-Avon, Bath, Warwick
Castle, and the Tower of London
next week when I write again. All the best from Bloomsbury.
David Gavin
London Travelogue: Week Four
Hello
everybody,
It's just
coming up to one o'clock here on Sunday, and I popped into my office to send
you an update of happenings in London.
Weather's still extraordinarily good, although yesterday was stormy and
overcast, with some rain spells. What have we been up to? Well, a
week ago today, while everybody was in Scotland,
I and Lisa--she didn't go--visited Leeds
Castle and Canterbury, both are in
Kent,
an hour and a half's drive. We traveled by coach. Leeds Castle
is really a sight to behold: originally a Saxon lodge, which, after the Norman
Conquest in 1066, was rebuilt into a castle in 1119, by a Norman baron
named Robert de Crevecoeur--which, if my scant knowledge of French is right,
means brokenheart. Could
he be a progenitor of the famous Frenchman who traveled throughout America after
the Revolutionary War and wrote about life in the new country? I don't
know. Can't remember the title of his famous
bestsellering work either. Anyway, Leeds
castle is surrounded by water, much wider than a mere moat, and a stone bridge
leads past a medieval gatehouse to the interior rooms, halls, and
passageways. The rooms are furnised in Tudor style, probably because
Henry VIII stayed there a number of times en-route to France, with
his then Queen, Catherine of Aragon. The room I found most impressive is
the Henry VIII Banqueting Hall: large bay windows overlook the lake and
parkland, a floor made of ebony, big wide fireplace and mantel, and on the
wall hangs a painting of the king and queen on horseback along with an enormous
retinue of mounted courtiers, all on their way to the tournament of the Field
of the Cloth of Gold in France. Don't ask me what it all means--meant to
look it up, but forgot! The most recent owner of Leeds Castle,
Lady Baillie, heiress to her American mother--a Whitney--family's millions,
bought the castle in 1926, and lived there until she died in 1974. Her
sister was the renowned and infamous Dorothy Paget, who hated all men,
unless they were jockeys or trainers, wore trousers, smoked cigars, and
kept a stable of great racehorses, the most famous of which, Golden Miller, won
the Cheltenham Gold Cup 5 times, and the Liverpool Grand National carrying the
massive burden of 13 stone--both races in the space of ten days. A feat unequaled in equine history. Thirteen stone, by
the way, is 182 pounds, an absolutely appalling burden for a steeplechaser to
carry in a race like the Grand National, a distance of 4 and a half miles and
over 28 fences! Pardon that hardly pertinent digression.
Nowadays Leeds Castle hosts international meetings,
most notably the Arab-Israeli peace talks in 1978, and is frequently the
venure for political party conferences.
We
spent a few hours there and then the coach took us to Canterbury. I'd last visited Canterbury in the summer of
1971, but it looked exactly the same: winding cobbled streets, medieval-looking
shops, pubs, restaurants, and houses, many with warped and tilted roofs and
gables. Truly an extraordinary place. The
cathedral, of course, is what all people want to see--gothic and resembling
Salisbury's
where we'd been a few weeks before. It's famed throughout the ages
because of what happened there in 1170, and also because it's the destination
of the pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales, who go there to pray and make offerings at the shrine of
St.Thomas a Beckett. They set out from an Inn called The Tabard on the south bank of the
Thames in the mid-to-late 1300s, and each pilgrim tells his/her tale as they
journey southwards. The work is written in English, Middle English if I
remember correctly, and many of the character's stories are particularly
funny, raunchy, and bawdy-- two especially:The Wife of Bath's Tale, and The
Miller's Tale. I forgot to mention that Canterbury
Cathedral is also where the Black Prince,
son of King Edward III, hero of battles at Crecy
and Poitiers during the 100 years war between England and France, is entombed.
However,
my long and abiding interest in Canterbury
relates to Henry II, great-grandson of William the Conqueror, King of England
and France, and his fiery and, I suppose you could call it,
loving relationship with Thomas a Beckett. Not
homosexual, mind you. No, you see, Beckett was Henry's friend and
companion, drinking and wenching buddy, until he appointed him Archbishop of
Canterbury, making him the most powerful prelate in all of England.
Henry's idea was that with Beckett head-man of the Catholic Church
of England--his own man--he could control all ecclesiastical
matters. Beckett, unfortunately for Henry, saw things
differently. He became a religious zealot, a nut really, a
masochist, took to fasting and wearing a hairshirt embedded with lice
under his clerical robes. He pissed off the king so much that he had to
seek refuge in France
for a while--six years in all I believe. Upon Beckett's return to England he was
as recalcitrant as ever and blocked the king pretty much on all matters
dealing with the church. This went on for a while. One night in France, Henry
lost control and said to a group of his Norman knights--it was late at night
and they'd consumed a lot of drink--"Will no one rid me of this turbulent
priest?" The knights, all four, mounted up, rode to Calais, sailed to Dover,
and when they landed set out for Canterbury.
They arrived there early in the morning, broke into the cathedral while Beckett
was on the high altar celebrating mass. A struggle ensued. The
knights left. However, they returned later the same day at evensong,
confronted Beckett again, and this time hacked him to death in full view of the
congregation. The murder sent shock waves throughout Europe--all
of which was Catholic, long before the Reformation. Henry fled to Ireland, went there under the pretext of
religion, carrying a scroll he'd gotten from the Pople in Rome, Nicholas Breakespeare, coincidentially
an Englishman, the only English Pope--ever. The manuscript or scroll was
written in Latin, a papal bull--Bulla
Laudabiliter--and the gist of it was that the Irish Bishops weren't
towing the line, so Henry had permission from the Pope, the English Pope
Breakspeare, mind you, to straighten them out. He spent about a year in Ireland--until the storm of Beckett's murder
blew over--then returned to England,
Canterbury,
actually. He had to do public penance. He was flogged by the
monks and spent a day or two praying and fasting at Beckett's shrine. It
all blew over in time. Beckett was canonized by the Pope--not
Breakspeare, some other Pope, and Canterbury
became a place of pilgrimage throughout the middle ages.
I've probably
gone on too long here. A few more things, then I'll shut up. The
Sunday Lisa and I were in the cathedral, the Archbishop was there to celebrate Evensong and appoint honorary
Canons. We stuck around to see it all. What can I
say? We knelt in a pew facing the high altar, surrounded
by other people, and opposite us stood a group of young boys wearing red
soutanes and white surplices, all red-cheeked and tousle-haired, singing psalms
in high clear voices. It was unforgettable, moving, quite
unlike any experience I've had before.
Monday, all
the students had returned from Scotland,
and we met a 8:45am under Big Ben, right next to the
Houses of Parliament. We had the grand tour, saw the House of Lords
first, then the House of Commons. It felt a little strange to be walking
through these chambers, a place steeped in history, a place where many
famous men and women, too, made rousing and legendary speeches.
I thought particulary of Winston Churchill. Our guide pointed out a large
wooden table on the floor of the House of Commons, which Churchill liked to
pound with his fist, while ramming home some point. I walked over and
looked down. I could see clearly dents in the wood made by his
signet ring. The sight of this caused me to break out in
goosebumps. I imagined Churchill remonstrating Neville Chamberlain
over his appeasement policy towards Hitler and the Nazi Party, pounding the
table with his knuckles, the Lion of England in full
roar. Afterwards, we had a meeting with an M.P. (Member of
Parliament). Graham Brady, Conservative M.P. for Manchester met us in Committee room 7.
I must say I was a bit surprised that he was a Tory...and from Manchester to boot.
I would've expected him to be Labour. Still he was most impressive,
looked like a member of the ruling class, stood well over six feet tall,
ramrod straight, had an aquiline nose, white prominent teeth, thick wavy
hair, and wore a dark suit and an Etonian tie. He spoke much the way I
expected, clear upper-middle-class accent, an occassional facial tic, and
seemed much pleased with himself, if not downright
conceited. He expounded at great length about the British
parliamentary system, answered a few questions, which took him forever, but I
suppose it was decent enough of him to give us some of his time. Keep an
eye out for him--Graham Brady, another politician of the rise.
Midweek we
visited London Zoo. However, I'm going to save that for another
time. That's about it for now. All the best from Bloomsbury.
David Gavin
London Travelogue: Week Three
Hello
Everybody,
Well,
another eventful week has gone by here, and I need to recap on what we've been
up to. It's already Tuesday, so I'd better get started. Oh, it's
bright and cold and there's been snow in the North and in Scotland, where the students
just spent a four-day weekend--more about that later. First, let me try
and describe what happened last week. On Monday, we visited The London
Eye, a giant ferris wheel, located on the south bank of the Thames, close to Big
Ben, The Houses of Parliament, and Westminster. We
all climbed into a big glass bubble--I know no other way to describe
it--that had room for 25 passengers. Slowly, almost
imperceptibly, the ferris wheel turned, and we
began to ascend. The entire revolution took about 30 minutes, and we had
a bird's-eye view of London. The
day was clear and bright. I looked north and could see Buckingham Palace,
The Mall, and over towards the left, I had a clear view of The National
Gallery, St. Martin's in the Fields, Trafalgar Square,
and Nelson's Column in the foreground. Directly beneath us and to the
left stood Big Ben, Westminster, the Houses of
Parliament, and London
Bridge. Mind you,
we were looking down on from a height of 600 feet, and our view was extraordinary,
kaledioscopic, I guess, you could say, and many of the students took
pictures. I didn't bother to bring a camera here, and much of what I've
seen and experienced will remain freeze-dried in my memory. I hope!
Tuesday,
after class, we visited The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. We wandered from
room to room taking in the pictures hanging on the wall. I was struck by
a painting by Hans Holbein of Anne of Denmark, which really belongs next door
in the National Portrait Gallery. She's tall, blue-eyed, and
fair-skinned, and apparently the picture was painted by Holbein for Henry VIII,
when he traveled around Europe painting
portraits of suitable noblewomen that Henry might consider marrying.
Henry, apparently, was quite taken by Anne's picture and offered
marriage. She responded, "Tell the king that I'd happily marry
him if I had two heads. But as I have just one head, I'll have to
refuse." Of course, Henry did eventually find a bride from
one of Holbein's paintings: Anne of Cleaves. Her picture really caught
his attention too. The painter, Holbein, had made Anne look seductive and
attractive--when she was neither. She came from some principality in
the Netherlands or Germany, sailed to England, an unsafe
perilous mode of travel, rather than travel by land, which would have
taken weeks longer. Why? Well, Henry couldn't wait that long--he
had the hots so bad after seeing the picture. However, when she
walked down the gangplank at Southampton, the
king was dismayed. Anne of Cleaves, apparently, had bad body odor, was
dowdy, thickset and plain, if not downright ugly. The King
balked, but there was no way he could back out of the marriage, which after
much delay on Henry's part did take place and, despite his reluctance, was
eventually consummated. That's best left to the imagination.
Forever afterwards, Henry VIII referred to Anne of Cleaves as "The Belgian
Mare." He got his chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, who'd championed this
marriage--and actually was later beheaded because the king blamed him--to
have it annulled or disallowed, something like that, through some legal
wangling. I can't remember which. The upshot of it all was that
Anne of Cleaves got her own palace in Whitehall, could do as she pleased, and
the king never bothered her after that. She did so much better than his
other wives--a few of whom went to the block. Anyway, it's an interesting
story and one that occurred to me as I was looking at the Anne of Denmark
painting, the other one I'd seen the previous week in The National Portrait
Gallery's Tudor Room.
Another
painting that caught my eye was Turner's "Fighting Temeraire,"
probably my favorite of all. The Temeraire was an
old warship--ship-of-the-line--that was part of the British fleet of
1805 that won a great victory against the French at the battle of Trafalgar,
off Cadiz in southwestern Spain. The old
warship is being pulled up the Thames by
a tugboat to its final resting place, where it'll be broken up for scrap.
The entire scene is lit up by the rising sun, which casts flaming red
streaks across the sky that reflect in the river that's shot with silver and
gold. It's an amazing painting. The colors are
extraordinary--a forerunner of impressionism. When I walked outside, I
looked up at Horatio Nelson on top of his column, hero of Trafalgar,
after which, of course, the square is named. He didn't survive
the battle, was shot by a French sniper, from the riggings of a nearby
man-of-war, and died on the deck of his ship: Victory. The British, I thought to myself, have
always had heros, somebody to take charge and lead
them in times of war. I thought of Wellington
and Churchill, whom nobody could accuse of lacking courage. In
the short time we've been here in London,
we've seen several statues of both men.
Well, on Wednesday,
we all went to the Appollo Theater, Charing Cross,
to see Wicked, a spin-off of The Wizard of Oz, which is a big hit here
and also on Broadway. The theater was packed. We were surrounded in
the stalls by an ecstatic clapping rapt audience who loved every minute of
it. I'm not a big fan of musicals, but I was impressed by the individual
singing which was superb, the way the voices just filled up the enormous
theater. All the students loved the show, and afterward as we were leaving
I could see delight shining from their eyes and faces. Our next
theater outing will be next month, when we go to see Alan Bennet's The History Boys.
Thursday,
after class, all the students except two left for a four-day weekend in Scotland,
returning here Sunday night. They all had a marvellous time, so they
told me, and I and Lisa, one of the students who decided not to go, visited
Canterbury and Leeds Castle--the one in Kent just about 70 miles from
here. I'll tell you more about that the next time I write. I'll
also be describing our tour of the House of Commons and House of Lords, which
happened yesterday. Until then I'll say goodbye.
David Gavin
London Travelogue: Week Two
Hello
everybody,
The weather
here is still extraodinarily good, a few drops of rain one night during the
week, and 40s or 50s nearly every day. What have we been up to?
Well, on Monday, we visited the Tate Modern, which is housed in what formerly
was Blackfriars Powerstation. I worked there on a nearby building site
back in the summer of 1964 as a builder's laborer. I felt a little
strange walking over Blackfriars
Bridge. I hadn't
realized where the Tate Modern was situated, and when we went inside, I looked
around for familiar landmarks, since I used to eat lunch there in the canteen
back in 1964. Of course, everything had changed completely. We
paused over many of the exhibits, commented on several--Duchamp's Urinal got
some raunchy comments, as did paintings by Mark Rothko, Jackson
Pollock, and Salvadore Dali. His crufixes, religious figures, and naked
bodies are really a sight to behold. 'What a weird twisted dude he
must've been,' somebody remarked. I'd have to argee, definitely. I
plan to go back there again and visit the Tate Britain, which has
more conventional and--for me--understandable art. Painters such as Gainsborough, Reynolds, Constable, and Turner,
who, if I'm not mistaken, was a native Londoner. Anyway, a good
time was had by all.
Wednesday,
we went to see Tower
Bridge, which was opened
by the Prince of Wales--the future Edward VII--in 1894. I've always
thought he got a raw deal from his mother, Queen Victoria, and from historians,
too. She dithered and dallied, and wouldn't pass on the crown to him, not
until she died in 1900, I believe--very much like the current Queen, and the
Prince of Wales, Charles, who may have to wait a long time too before he gets
his hands on the crown. Edward was a bit of a rake, no doubt about
that, loved drink, women, and horses. Lily Langtry, 'The Jersey Lily,' so
dubbed by another admirer, Oscar Wilde, was one of his mistresses. The
same Lily Langtry that Judge Roy Bean, 'The Law
West of the Pecos, was besotted by, although
he never laid eyes on her. He did, however, name a town after her: Langtry, Texas.
Anyway, back to Tower
Bridge. Hard to
believe that it was just the second bridge to span the Thames--the main bridge
being London Bridge, built first by the Romans, and later improved by the
Anglo-Saxons, a terribly congested chaotic structure that connected both banks
for hundreds and hundreds of years. The Romans, by the way, chose London because of its accessability--via the Thames. The tidal surge could carry ships and boats
just that far inland from Gravesend. A distance of about 60 miles. Ebb tide would draw them
back to the sea. We had a great view of the river and the embankment from
the two walkways that connect each tower. Afterwards, we walked by the Tower of London, saw Traitors' Gate, but we
didn't go inside. That'll be another time.
Thursday, we
visited the Charles
Dickens Museum,
which is just a 15-minute walk from here. The house is Georgian, one of a
row that stretches along the street. It's three-storied, and the
furniture and decor are Victorian. The rooms are quite small.
However, it's absolutely fascinating. There's
all sorts of bric a brac and memoribilia related to Dickens. He lived
there for just a few years, bought the house with the money he earned from
Pickwick Papers, sales of which really picked up after a slow start. I've
always been an avid reader of Dickens, and I felt moved and curious to be
present in the same rooms in which he once lived. After the students had
left, I lingered from a while, thinking about him, trying to imagine what his
life must have been like--from his days in the Blacking factory, to his success
as a writer, his celebrity status and huge successes in America, where he'd
tour and re-enact scenes from his works. He was always on the go and died
quite young, 58, apparently a stroke, brought on by his peripatetic
lifestyle.
Friday, a
free day, I visited the National Portrait Gallery near Trafalgar Square. The downstairs
exhibited celebrity photographs, drawings, and painting of well-known
people. I skipped the celebrity section. I saw pictures of Iris
Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Harold Pinter, Seamus Heaney,
to name but a few. Upstairs is an entire section devoted to The
Tudors. Beady-eyed, rapacious, reptilian Henry VII really caught my
attention. A painting of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein shows his psychopathic
personality too--suspicious, cold-hearted, thin curled lips, and small
piggy eyes. A positive brute of a man. The
walls of many rooms are hung with various courtiers and adventurers, such as
Essex, Raleigh, and Drake. Thomas Moore I thought has the most humane and
intelligent face. Anne Boleyn looks aloof and
difficult to fathom. And Thomas Walsingham, the spy master, looks exactly
as his name suggests--cunning, devious, resourceful. I
later spent some time looking at paintings of Charles I and Oliver
Cromwell. The kings looks like the epitome of
royalty: dignified, reserved, with a noble face. Hard
to believe that he was only five feet tall. Cromwell looks
unscrupulous, totally untrustworthy, cruel and vindictive, a grave purse
to his lips. No compassion in his face--not one iota. People in Ireland still
shudder at the mention of his name. If an Irish man or woman wants
to vilify someone, they'll say, 'The curse of Cromwell be upon
yeh.' Well, that's about it for now. This upcoming week
the students are off to Scotland.
I'll write again next weekend and fill you in on any other news. Best
wishes from Bloomsbury.
David Gavin
London Travelogue:
Week One
It's
another bright sunny Sunday in London,
not a drop of rain since we arrived, a bit cold at night, blue blue skies
nearly every day--must be global warming. We've been here one week
today. Let me backtrack a little and tell you what we've been
doing. Our flight over was quite uneventful: we made all out connections,
and there were no delays, no air turbulence crossing the Atlantic, not even a
bump, and Corinne Rowland--a delightful woman--met us with a coach at
Heathrow. We stopped here at aifs, picked up travel passes for bus and
tube, then taxied to our lodgings.
Monday
morning we had orientation followed by a coach tour of London. Our guide, Sean, a scot, who
possesses a mellifluous Sean Connery voice, provided a running
commentary that was well informed and extremely witty. We all
laughed a great deal. What did we see? Tower of London, Tower
Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Mayfair, Trafalgar Square, National
Gallery, Picadilly Circus, Soho, Shaftsbury Avenue, Saville Row, West End,
British Museum, St. Paul's, Bank of England ( The Old Lady of Threadneedle St.)
Harrod's, Tate Gallery, Westminster
Abbey. We stopped along the way, and many students took
pictures. There was lots of laughter and
exclamations of awe.
Classes
began on Tuesday. I was still jet-lagged. We have a splendid
classroom: large and airy. Tuesday afternoon from 4-5:30pm Bob Craig
lectured on British Life and Culture. He's absolutely
marvellous--informal, knowledgeable, modest and unassuming. He has an
English accent, of course, but it's not in the least high-faluting or posh, and
he thoroughly enjoys lecturing. It's so evident in his face, mannerisms,
posture, etc. He's a charming gracious man, and we all learned a lot.
Wednesday
after classes we visited the British
Museum, which is just a
five-minute walk down the street. What can I say? It's
overwhelming. There's so, so much to see. I was
gobsmacked. I lingered before glass cases that exhibited items from
antiquity, treasures pillaged by British archaeologists over the centuries--Egyptian
mummies, Chinese art, Greek urns, Roman shields and swords, Viking
paraphernalia, Celtic crosses, etc. I was particularly smitten by
artifacts unearthed at Sutton Hoo: the Anglo-Saxon helmet and face piece, the
jeweled sword, leather jerkin, knives, etc.
Thursday after classes we walked over to the British Library, about
15 minutes.
There we saw the Magna Carta (two of the four originals are there), the Beowulf
manuscript, Hardy's Tess of the D,Urberbilles (handwritten with many
corrections), the first Folio of Shakespeare's plays, his sonnets, the
Lindisfarne Gospels, the manuscript of Jane Eyre (in Charlotte Bronte's
handwriting, of course) replete with 'Reader--I married him.' We also saw
the manuscript of Oscar Wilde's 'Ballad of Reading Gaol' and a letter written
by Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra. We walked around for about two
hours. All the students were thrilled and talked about the various things
they'd seen.
At 4
o'clock Bob Craig lectured on British Royalty. Again he was
terrific. I learned things I'd never before known. One story in
particular about Edward VII and his mistress, Alice Keppel, an extraordinarily
witty woman, I wish I could repeat here. However, I'd better not.
Afterwards, I talked to Bob ( he used to be a detective superintendant with
London Metropolitan Police) and told him that he should be making videos, that
he's so, so much better than some of the English historians you see on American
television, on PBS and the History Channel. Genial and
charming, but also passionate. 'I'm serious, Bob,' I said.
He looked at me for a moment, thinking I was winding him up. 'You have a
natural way of making it all so interesting and compelling,' I said, 'unlike
some others I've seen.' Realizing that I wasn't pulling his leg, he said,
'Ow, you really think so, Dive-id?' I told him that I'd look into being
his agent or promoter when I get back to America. And I intend to,
too.
Friday
morning we caught a coach at Gloucester
Road ( pronounced Gloster) for Stonehenge and Salisbury. We left at
8:30 sharp and were down on Salisbury Plain before 11am, walking around the
great stones. Our guide, Nigel Hake, another retired policeman, related
all the history and information that's known about Stonehenge,
the Beaker People, and how the stones were erected over 1000 years. This
all took place (I'm relying on memory) thousands of years before the Celts,
Anglo Saxons, and Romans arrived in Britain. There was a fierce
winter wind blowing and everbody huddled together, trying to stay warm.
Afterwards, we jumped back in the coach and drove to Salisbury, a market town, arriving there at
12 noon. We met up at 2 o'clock and Nigel guided us through the
Cathedral. We saw another copy of the Magna Carta, the fourth being in
Lincoln Cathedral. I was most interested in the stone effigy of the first
Earl of Salisbury and what happened to him. Nigel told me the whole
story. He was the illigitimate son of Henry II, half brother to John and
Richard--both of them kings of England. John's barbarian
behavior was responsible for the Magna Carta, which he was forced by
his Norman barons to sign at Runnymede, an island in the Thames
(pronounced Tems) in 1215. Richard known as Richard Coeur De Lion,
'Lionheart,' is renowned in stories, and many of you know him as the 'good
'king' who forgave his 'bad brother John' upon his return to England from
the Crusades, and also from imprisonment in a tower, where he was held by
Leopold of Austria. Richard was captured on his was back to England from
the Crusades--he'd upset Leopold--and held in the tower with
John's full approval. He even paid Leopold of Austria to keep
him there--his own brother!
Anyway,
back to the Earl of Salisbury--I forgot to ask what his Christian name
was. His surname was Longespee, which of course is French, the spoken
language of the time. He left Old Sarum, a walled town with Castle and
moate, his stronghold, and sailed for France around 1224. Earllier
he'd been present when the foundation stone was laid for Salisbury
Cathedral--about 1 and a half miles from Old Sarum. He was
shipwrecked in the English Channed and after a time given up for
dead. Meantime, his wife Ela, was courted by many suitors, all
of whom she turned down, invoking Magna Carta, which protected the rights of
women, well titled women at least. So this continued for a time.
Then one day--out of the blue--the Earl of Salisbury showed up again in Old
Sarum. Ela wasn't too happy, apparently, as she'd long ago given him up
for dead. A great feast ensued and much celebration. However, two
days later, the Earl died--suddenly, and for no apparent reason. Maybe
one of his wife's lovers--apparently she'd had several--had had him
poisoned. Nobody knew for certain what caused his sudden death. He
was interred in Salisbury Cathedral and lay there under the floor until
architect Gilbert Scott's renovation began in 1860--over 600 years had
passed.
The Earl's
remains were dug up. Inside his skull a rat was discovered--it's there in
the museum--that had eaten away the Earl's brain centuries ago. The
rat, of course, was dead too. The rat had died from arsenic
poisoning. The Earl's brain had been a storehouse for the arsenic, and
when the rat consumer the brain, it too had died. A strange story, I
thought, an unsolved murder that will always remain unsolved. I hope you
all find this macabre tale as interesting as I did. Well, it's now nearly
three o'clock, and if I'm to make it over to Hyde Park Corner to hear what the
'speakers' have to say before dark, I'd better pack it in and get going.
I'll keep you informed of all our adventures, what happens this coming week,
when I write again. Best wishes to you all from Bloomsbury.