The Fast and Slow of the M1

Today was a driving day as we travelled from York back to our point of origin, London. While for the first hours, the traffic moved at a fairly brisk pace, as we drove closer to the M25, the ring road around London, we encountered stop-and-go traffic caused by an accident. (This might be an appropriate point at which to note that for those of us who think gasoline is expensive in the States, we paid about $8.00 per gallon while in Britain.) We finally arrived at our bed and breakfast, The Forest, around 2:30, and we were greeted by our hosts with slices of fresh spice cake with hot tea, which we enjoyed in the "summerhouse," an outdoor room that looked out onto the Tilbury Forest, a government-owned park that could not have been more beautiful. We had thought about taking a walk in the forest after our tea, but the rain began and did not abate for the remainder of the evening. And so we settled into our room and enjoyed beautiful views and the sound of the falling rain as we read and recuperated from our busy trip. The location was nothing short of idyllic.

Our hosts recommended a nearby pub for our dinner, and so about 6:30, we headed to the Royal Oak Inn, a quick drive up the road into the village of Horsham. We knew we were going to like the place when we opened the door to a beautiful black lab sleeping in front of the fireplace. We were the only tourists, but we felt at home among the locals in this homey pub with its low ceilings (Michael bumped his head before remembering to duck when passing between rooms.) and candlelit tables. Michael enjoyed fish cakes with the standard chips and peas, and I indulged in one of the specials, the fisherman's pie, which included several kinds of fish, squid, and shrimp covered with mashed potatoes and cheese. It was wonderful, and the perfect meal for a cold, rainy, and windy night. Had it not been for the green-leafed trees just outside the window, one would have guessed that it was November, not July. Fully satisfied, we returned to our bed and breakfast for a night's sleep before our morning departure. We very much enjoyed our final day in London, though it was more relaxing than adventurous. After so many wonderful adventures during our trip, it was the perfect opportunity to rest and reflect before returning home.

England's Second City

It was a pleasant feeling to awake and know that we did not have to get into the car today. Instead, we took the leisurely riverside walk from our bed and breakfast into York for more touring. Because of the immense amounts of rain in England this summer, the River Ouse has overflowed its banks, making it a bit more of a precarious trip to the city center than we had anticipated. Once at the walls of the city, we walked atop them for a mile skirting the western side of the city on our way to the Castle Museum. The museum houses not art or archaelogical treasures, but items of everyday life from roughly the seventeenth century to the present. Though organized in a somewhat haphazard fashion, the collection contained interesting tidbits realting to furniture, appliances, cleaning, bathing, cooking, fashion, and even warfare. Often, the letters or diaries of the items' original owners were placed alongside the exhibits to add more of a human context to the collection. I found the displays of "family rooms" throughout the centuries to be quite interesting, and these displays helped me to imagine characters from English novels in their "natural" habitats. Another unique part of the museum was the recreated Victorian street, which was a cobblestone lane filled with shops, wagons, carriages, and even homes. Some of the museum staff were actually in costume to lend a more authentic feel to the gaslit street. It was a bit "Disneyesque," but I enjoyed it noentheless. Though these displays might seem trivial when ompared to some of the masterpieces and relics we have seen on our travels through England, this museum is more of a tribute to everyday life, and we could see why it was highly recommended in our guide books.

After lunch and more exploratrion of the city, including the beautiful Holy Trinity Church with its uneven floor and quirky post-Reformation styled interior that included pew boxes, we made our way to the National Railway Museum. Located in a former roundhouse and workshop of the National Rail Service, the museum houses many trains, old and new, including the beautiful teal, steam -powered Mallard, which in the 1930s set a speed record of 126 miles per hour. We also saw a demonstration of the roundhouse's turntable in use and the interiors of British passneger trains from different eras. The highlight of the museum for me was viewing the various interiors of the royal trains, the "palaces on wheels" that have transported monarchs through the UK since Queen Victoria's time. With their sycamore, mahogany and pweter paneled walls, the living rooms were sumptuous, and the bathrooms were larger than the ones we have in our home.

Upon leaving the Railway Museum, we were ready for a break, and we walked back into the heart of York to the Royal Oak pub. The rain poured outside as we sat on our padded bench, and after relaxing for a time and seeing the meals enjoyed by other patrons, we decided to order dinner. Michael had the very British beef and Yorkshire pudding, which seemed an appropriate meal given the city, and I decided to go British as well with my "bangers and mash," which is sausages with mashed potatoes. Well, I must say that I was not completely authentic in my choice as I did choose the vegatarian sausage, but I was glad that I did as it was really delicious. Both meals came with plenty of vegetables, and we certianly ate our fill. I must say, Michael and I have really enjoyed the pubs in England. With their padded benches and chairs, they are usually quite comfortable, not at all stuffy or rushed, and the food has been unpretentious and surprisingly good. The less commercialized establishments filled with locals have been consistently good choices, and the menus have been more varied than I would have expected. We will hope for more of the same in Crawley, just south of London, where we will spend the night before catching our return flight home form Gatwick.

In Bronte Country

Unfortunately, the rain was falling with determination as we ventured out, but we forged back into the moors nonetheless. After a brief hike to the Bronte Falls and a last look at the countryside in what was appropriately cool, foggy, and wet weather, we ducked into the warmth of the Bronte Parsonage. Though the Austen’s home in Chawton was well done, this presentation of the Brontes’ home and life were outstanding. Almost all of the furniture in the house was owned and used by the Brontes, which made the experience seem more authentic. The highlights of the home were as follows:

1. The dining room houses the table where the three sisters did much of their writing late into the night, and also read aloud to each other excerpts of their work to solicit feedback. The green couch on which Emily died is also there.

2. Charlotte’s old room held many treasures, including a dress, boots (tiny feet), and a shawl belonging to Charlotte, a copy of the New Testament filled with the doodling of a young Charlotte, her spectacles, and one of her very detailed drawings. Many materials drawn on by Elizabeth Gaskell in her biography of Charlotte (including the original handwritten manuscript of the biography) were also there. This was the room that provided Charlotte with her last views of this world.

3. The Exhibition Room housed Charlotte ’s trunk from when she traveled to Brussels as a young woman, her funeral veil from when her three siblings – Anne, Branwell, and Emily – all died within a year of each other, her writing desk, and a lock of her auburn hair. A cupboard painted with the heads of the twelve apostles is also part of the exhibition. Charlotte mentioned this cupboard in Jane Eyre when Jane is tending to Mr. Mason while awaiting Rochester ’s return.

Though a bit out of the way and thus beyond the reach of many visitors to England , Haworth is most definitely a trip worth making. While one can vicariously experience life on the moors through photographs or paintings (or the writings of the Brontes), neither art nor literature can do justice to their rugged yet pastoral beauty, something that can be fully appreciated only by direct experience. Heathcliff’s stormy and tempestuous personality are as if an extension of the land from whence he comes, the personified embodiment of the environment of the north moors. Though Charlotte traveled farther and more frequently than Jane Austen, I was also able to sense how the former might have felt the confining tedium of daily life pressing in upon her, and the restrictive confines of life in a small, isolated community. Even now, and certainly in the Brontes’ time, Haworth seems cut off from the rest of the world. But the Bronte home was not without its comforts, and though they experienced much hardship and death there, I can see how it would have been a peaceful and sometimes even happy life.

Below is one of the photos that we took during our morning hike:

After purchasing several items for classroom use, Michael and I visited the church to see the resting place of the entire family (except Anne, who was buried in Scarborough ). The church was dark and solemn, and we were its lone visitors. Heavy rain poured down on us as we returned to the car, cold, wet, and (at least in Catherine’s case) none too pleased with the overcast skies. In the car and with the heat on full, we headed for York , land of cathedrals and pudding.

We arrived in York in the early afternoon, and after stopping by the Bloomsbury Bed and Breakfast to deposit our luggage and park the car, we walked straight into the ancient walls of England ’s “Second City.” The name “York” traces its etymological origins to the Vikings, and York , probably more than any other city in England , has a strong Scandinavian heritage. Our first stop was Yorkminster Cathedral, the largest Gothic cathedral north of the Alps . We explored this massive cathedral on our own for a few minutes, but then made the regrettable mistake of going on a free guided tour, which, I might add, was worth every penny of it. Our guide was Mr. Hodgeson, an elderly gentleman who spent almost as much time trying to remember what he wanted to tell us as the did telling us. This was alternately endearing and frustrating, but as the tour progressed, the scales began to tip heavily towards the latter. Giving away his age, he shared a vivid memory that he had of a fire in the cathedral in the 1930’s. The width of the nave gives to it a lightness and brightness that most other cathedrals from this time period. Also contributing to this, no doubt, were the windows as the cathedral is home to more medieval stained glass than the rest of the cathedrals in England combined. One window is made of over 100,000 pieces of glass, mostly in muted and somber grays and whites, and another was over the size of a tennis court. As with most windows in cathedrals, these were not mere decorations, but conveyed various stories and allegories, and here our guide proved to be somewhat instructive. The amount of preserved glass in the cathedral is all the more impressive when one considers that during the Great War and World War II all of it was removed by locals and stored away so as to avoid it being damaged by German air raids. After the tour, we visited the Chapter House, an octagonal room whose walls are mostly glass, and with no center support for its towering roof, a feat that seems almost architecturally impossible.

The evening’s other activities included a tour of the city and a later dinner at a French bistro. The tour focused on the city’s walls, which date back to the Romans and then later were built on top of by medieval inhabitants. The Roman walls are visible only in small parts of the city, the medieval additions are almost entirely intact, and in fact, are the most extensive and complete set of medieval walls remaining in England. Our guide explained how the soil levels have risen throughout the centuries, and it is amazing to think how the ground level has been raised simply from the detritus of daily living. In a secluded part of the Museum Gardens , we also saw the remains of St. Mary’s Abbey. Though not as old as St. Augustine ’s Abbey in Canterbury , this one was better preserved, still including a number of standing walls. The walk along the top of the walls afforded us good views of the Minster and of the city, and we also were able to have a look inside the towers along the walls. We tried to imagine the sentries at their posts (within shouting distance of the next post) and the archers firing through the specially designed openings in the walls. The walls certainly add to the character of York , and I am glad that the city has decided to go to the trouble and expense of maintaining them instead of destroying them as many other cities have done.

Our tour also took us into the streets of the city, including a charming, narrow street called “The Shambles,” which used to house the city’s butchers, who would display their meat on the still-remaining hooks and board called “shammels.” A unique location among the shops and tea rooms of this street is the shrine of Saint Margaret, who was pressed to death during the reign of Elizabeth I for refusing to give up her Catholic faith. The shrine is located in the saint’s former home, which was located on this street because of her husband’s occupation as a butcher. We also saw the oldest homes in York , which date back to 1480. Upon the completion of the tour, we ate a very late dinner at a French-style café before making a late return to our lodgings. With nine rooms, it was the largest in which we stayed during our trip.

From the Midlands to the Moors

After a breakfast that included fresh berries, cherries, a wonderful "Linda McCartney" vegetarian sausages, we started the day's touring in Stratford at the Shakespeare exhibition and Shakespeare's birthplace. Anxious to see Shakespeare's original home, I was tempted to rush through the exhibition, but there were a few interesting pieces in the exhibition. One was the original register that records both the birth and death of the famous playwright. It also displayed informative family trees and and maps of Stratford as it would have been during Shakespeare's time. After passing through the exhibition, we passed through a garden before entering the home. In one of the first rooms that we entered, we walked on the oldest stone floors in the house, and the guide said it is likely that the Shakespeare's walked on those very floors. The father's workroom (He was a glover.) and the girls' bedroom were interesting, but even more noteworthy was Shakespeare's birthroom. The bed had a cradle and a pullout trundle for the smaller children, who, according to the guide, were not allowed to move out of their parents' room until they were able to prove that they could light and put out their own candles. The boys would also have to be able to climb the ladder to the attic room where they slept. The museum was careful to point out that it has welcomed many famous visitors over the years. Thomas Carlyle etched his name in the window, while John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both signed the register. Other well-known guests have included John Keats and Thomas Hardy.

Our next stops were at Hall's Croft, Nash's House, and the New Place. Hall's Croft was the home built Shakespeare's oldest and apparently favorite daughter, Susanna, and her husband John Hall, a prominent physician. It is a beautiful timber frame house with impressive furniture from that period. We spoke with a guide about why Susanna and not Shakespeare's other daughter, Judith, seemed to be the favorite. She told us that Judith married a "n'er do well" and perhaps may not have been very intelligent. (She always signed documents with a cross instead of her name, indicating that she may have been illiterate.) We also learned that Shakespeare's knowledge of medical practices likely came from his association with his son-in-law. The New Place, which is really more of a garden with the outlines of a former house, marks the location of Shakespeare's last home in Stratford. It was a very large home, built after he had become a successful playwright. This was the home at the time of his death, but unfortunately, it was torn down by a later owner who was enraged by the number of adoring admirers coming to see the home in the centuries after Shakespeare's death. Nash's Place is the home of Shakespeare's granddaughter (Susanna's daughter, Elizabeth). She was Shakespeare's last surviving descendant. The highlight of this home was seeing Shakespeare's publications throughout the centuries, from the originally published quartos, to the First Folio, to the 1986 definitive (or so says the exhibition) version of the bard's works. I was able to view of copy of Keats' annotated copy of the complete works, in which I read a handwritten poem by Keats, composed after reading King Lear. Of course, he expressed his admiration of the playwright in beautiful and flowery language.

Our final Shakespeare-related stops were just outside of Stratford at Anne Hathaway's Cottage, the family home of Shakespeare's wife, and Mary Arden's House, the home of Shakespeare's mother. Both properties were lovely, though the Hathaway Cottage had a stunning garden. The Arden Home is really a farm, and we enjoyed seeing longhorn cattle, donkeys, pigs, and birds there. We were even able to see an exhibition by the falconer.
From the Arden homestead, we hopped onto the A46and headed for the M1, the major north-south motorway in England, for out trip to Haworth. Lasting approximately three hours, it was our longest trip yet, and there were plenty of other cars and semi-trucks alongside of us. We skirted the cities of Leicester, Sheffield, and Nottingham, and we drove through portions of Sherwood Forest. This part of the country certainly has a more industrial feel to it. As we drove away from the main motorway and into Haworth, however, the landscape changed, and the sloping hills crossed with walled enclosures and dotted with goats dominated our views.

Once at our bed and breakfast, which was located on a beautiful hilltop street in the heart of the tiny town, we chatted with the owners, Philomena and David, before setting out for a short hike on the moors. We used a footpath to cross a field beside the Bronte Parsonage before taking a trail further up the hill for an expansive view of the valley below us. The scenery was phenomenal - the best of the trip so far, I think. The weather had finally turned sunny, and though a breeze was blowing, we were not chilly. On our return to the village, we enjoyed dinner at The White Lion, a restaurant/pub recommended by Philomena. It sits just across the street from The Black Bull, where Branwell Bronte used to drink on a too-regular basis. With its timbered roof, dark red velvet upholstery , and dark wood furniture, it was everything a comfortable pub should be, but with really good food. It was a lovely end to a great day.

Note: I am now a day behind with my posting, so this is actaully a hurried (And probably error-filled) post about yesterday's adventures. We are now in York, and I'll be back as soon as possible with more updates.

In Fashionable Bath

After another hearty breakfast only slightly smaller than the one Michael described in the last post, we drove to Bath, passing through several beautiful villages along the way. Our sightseeing began with a two-hour tour that was given by an older Bath native, who clearly loves his city. He led us through most of the major parts of town, and we were introduced to the details of the city's architecture as well as the persons who were instrumental in its eighteenth-century revival and buildings. The highlights of the tour were seeing the additional baths that we had not already seen yesterday when we visited the Roman baths, the Crescent, and the Circus, the latter two being the primary places for walking while displaying oneself and one's clothing as Austen describes in her novels. Of course, the guide also did a great job in pointing our the many locations in the city that are mentioned by Austen in her works, which I appreciated.

At the conclusion of the tour, Michael and I thanked the guide before going our separate ways; Michael went to find an internet cafe to post the previous entry (He also graciously authored the post last night as I needed a break.) while I visited the Jane Austen Centre on my own. Because I had already visited her home in Chawton, there were very few new Austen artifacts to see here, but the fifteen-minute introductory talk helped me to review some key information about her family, and it also added to my minimal knowledge about her life in Bath. And this was the real value of the Centre; it showed the addresses and pictures of all of her homes in Bath and focused on the details of her time there, which she ultimately did not enjoy. Perhaps because of her unhappiness, she was not productive while living here, though the city did seem to provide her with plenty of raw material for her novels. This reminded me of the great gift that Austen had to create so many varied characters and situations when she had seen so little of the world herself. In that respect, I suppose she was a bit like Dickinson, and coming here to visit her small part of the world has helped me to realize that.

Incidentally, the Jane Austen Centre had a great gift shop where I was able to buy several items to be enjoyed by both my students and me. I purchased a unique map of Bath from Austen's time, and I also found a small hardcover book called Austen's England with great pictures of houses and towns with which she is connected. Many are of places we have visited on the trip; others are places we did not get to, like Steventon, her birthplace (the house no longer stands). I also found a copy of one of her earliest works that she wrote as a teenager. I have read excerpts from her early works, but I have never seen a complete text of any of them. Another Austen tidbit I have heard from several Austen experts while in England: The new movie, Finding Jane, is "rubbish." Some have said that while it tells a good story, the story is so far from the truth as to render the movie worthless as a biographical piece. We'll have to see how it does in the American theaters.

While as a city, Bath was not a favorite of either Michael's or mine, having recently read Northanger Abbey and being a huge fan of Persuasion, I enjoyed immensely seeing the Assembly Rooms and the Pump Room as well as the Georgian streets and buildings of the city. Because it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it has strict (Michael called them "draconian.") building codes so that its buildings remain architecturally consistent, and it is not at all difficult to imagine Austen's characters making their way though the crowded Pump Room, dancing in the Assembly Rooms, or strolling down Milsom Street during a day of shopping. The town is so very conscious of itself and its appearance that it is easy to see how it would inspire Austen's characters to feel the same.

Here is a photo of Bath Abbey, whose bells were vigorously ringing as our tour began at 10:30. The Roman baths are to the right :

From Bath, we pressed on into Warwickshire and to Stratford. While most of the Shakespearian sites were closing for the day as we arrived, we did squeeze in a visit to Holy Trinity Church, Shakespeare's burial place, before checking into the "Hermia" room at our bed and breakfast and having dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in town.

We are glad to have internet access tonight, but we are having difficulty getting consistent wireless access. And we hate to spend too much of the time we could be using to experience England in an internet cafe. As we will be in the tiny town of Haworth tomorrow night, I will likely not be able to post, but I'll try again from York.

Pictures

Here are some pictures from the past couple of days, and we have inserted two additional pics in our last post (Stonehenge and Bath):

Jane Austen's house in Chawton

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Salisbury Cathedral:

Saturday June 30

The day started with a quintessential British institution, one that many Brits are convinced underpinned the rise of their once global empire: the English breakfast. Catherine and I opted for the "vegetarian" version with toast, fruit, yogurt, eggs, vegetable sausage, mushrooms, broiled tomatoes, and the lynch pin of any proper English breakfast, baked beans. Yes, baked beans, the kind that most Americans would eat only with barbecue. Thus fortified and having gained confidence after a day of driving with no life-threatening injuries sustained, we set off to see a very different facet of England and its long history: its pre-historical and Roman heritage. We had high hopes, and the sites did not disappoint.

Few landmarks in the world are as instantly recognizable as our first stop, Stonehenge. Dating back some 5000 years, its precise function still remains shrouded in mystery, though it clearly had some astronomical purpose and was related to the solstices, as well as being an important religious site. Catherine and I arrived ten minutes before opening and hence before the tourists hordes had descended. We did, not, however, manage to evade the rain. Even so, the grandeur of this ancient monument was not diminished. Situated atop a hill affording stunning vistas of the Salisbury plain, our audio tour traced the steps that would have been taken by those approaching the site thousands of years ago, and what might have transpired once they arrived. The sense of awe evoked by such a structure is almost ineffable.





Our tour of pre-historic England continued with a stop at Silbury Hill, about 16 miles from Stonehenge. This man-made earth mound rises to 134 feet, making it the largest burial mound from all of pre-historic Europe. From here it was a fifteen-minute walk (by this time the rain had let up) to West Kennet Long Barrow, a religious site even older than Stonehenge. Catherine and I were able to climb into the tomb, and I am glad to report that she let me back out. (There have been times in the car when she might have decided differently.) Since one has to park on the side of the road and trek several minutes from there to get to West Kennet, this too was uncluttered with tourists. The solitude, grey skies, and chilly breeze provided an apt ambiance. Back in the car and farther up the road was our last visit from this time period, this one to Avebury. This covered hundreds of acres and included as many stones, often surrounded by grazing goats. Despite the large number of stones and its expansive coverage, this did not quite compare to the splendor of Stonehenge or, in our judgment, West Kennet.

From pre-history we travelled to ancient history, specifically to Bath, so named because of its . . . baths. The mineral hot springs (116 degrees F) led the Romans to build a complex of bath houses and temples here around 100 AD. All of this, on the far flung western edge of their territory. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, Bath was a magnet for the well-heeled and affluent, and the Georgian architecture (all built in Bath limestone) shows it. We toured the ancient Roman bath house, which felt more like a Roman circus because of the unruly tourists. From there we went to the Museum of Costume and Assembly Rooms. As I was in a stupefied daze for most of this, I cannot tell you what precisely was here, but judging from its name and the ubiquity of clothes in the building, I am reasonably confident that it had something to do with the history of fashion, and Catherine has confirmed this for me. Here is a part of Bath as Jane Austen would have seen it.


I am typing this on Sunday morning as Catherine tours the Jane Austen Center here in Bath. Because our laptop is not interfacing with the wireless connections at the various B&B's at which we are staying, these posts will likely become less frequent and more concise. As for the recent events in the UK, Catherine and I are mostly in the backwoods now, and will not be returning to London at all. We hope all is well on the other side of the Atlantic.

A Day in the Hampshire Countryside

As we left London today, the biggest part of our adventure was renting a car and driving it out of London. With our British atlas in hand, Michael and I navigated the M25 around London and fought our way through the always-just-up-the-road roundabout. They can be quite the challenge for those used to the overpass and entrance and exit ramp routine. Michael did a great job of staying on the "wrong" side of the road, and I was in charge of charting our course from the passenger seat.

With surprisingly little difficulty, we made it to our first stop, Chawton, the home of Jane Austen during her most productive years. I saw a lock of her hair, some of jewelry, items she sewed, and letters she wrote, all tastefully displayed in the various rooms of the home she shared with her mother and sister. The highlight of the home was seeing her writing desk, where she recorded many of her most brilliant ideas. We were also able to tour the gardens, and we saw the donkey cart that she and her sister used to take to the market. It seemed like a happy home, and I can see how she might have been so productive here.

Before lunch, we drove forty miles to Winchester to the capital of Alfrede the Great's Wessex kingdom. We spent most of our time at the impressive cathedral, which was built over a period of three hundred years, resulting in a somewhat haphazard layout. It does, however, have the longest nave of any Gothic churc in Europe. Its impressive library includes a ninth-century manuscript of the Bible, the 1000 pages of which were copied by a single monk over the course of five or six years. The church's museum also housed the chair in which Mary Tudor sat when she married King Phillip of Spain in 1554. Finally, the cathedral houses Jane Austen's tomb. She was buried in Winchester after having moved there only months earlier in order to be closer to her doctor. We also saw her last home, which is near Winchester College, a tony and prestigious school that began as a school for the poor. Our final stop in Winchester was at the Great Hall, the remains of Henry IV's thirteenth-century castle, where the purported Round Table of King Arthur can be viewed.

After leaving Winchester, we travelled further into Hampshire towards Salisbury, an important location in England since the time of the Romans. The cathedral here was our favorite of the trip, perhaps because of its austere nature, and perhaps because it was completed in a mere 33 years (fast by cathedral standards), giving to it a uniform architectural style. It boasts the tallest spire and cloister of all cathedrals in England. Uncrowded by tourists and with the organ playing during our visit, it provided a more authentic ambience than most crowd-packed cathedrals. The Chapter House contains the best-preserved original version of the Magna Carta, much better than the other two remaining originals that we saw in the British Library in London.

We very much enjoyed our travels through the rolling hills in this part of the country. There are no cities in the area we passed through, and most of the time we spent looking out at sloping farmland and grazing land for sheep and goats. I imagine this is similar to Hardy's Dorset, and I can feel a bit of the idyllic landscapes sometimes found in their fiction as we pass through. We look forward to more natural beauty on our travels tomorrow to some very ancient sites: Stonehenge and Avebury.

Note: Because of technical difficulties, we are unable to post pictures today, and we may have difficulty blogging during other days of our journey as well. The entries may also be shorter. I regret this, but find that they may be the price we will pay for being able to experience the beauty of the country outside of London.

Up the Thames to Hampstead Palace

Today we travelled outside of London in a different direction from yesterday's trip. Therefore, we departed from the Waterloo Station and saw different suburbs on our way to Molesey, the small town where Henry VIII's Hampstead Court Palace is located. Actually, the palace belonged to one of the king's close advisors, Cardinal Wolsey, first, but Wolsey later handed it over to the king when he had fallen out of favor and was trying to get back into Henry's good graces. Apparently, it did not help much since historians say he would have later been executed if he had not died first.

After our forty-minute train ride, we arrived at the Palace fairly early and ahead of most of the tourists. We began our visit with a tour of the Tudor Kitchens. Many-chambers of various purposes were connected by hallways that were specially designed to serve their own special functions as well. For instance, on passageway was small and almost totally enclosed so as to block the sun and thus keep the passage (and the storerooms on either side of it) as cool as possible. It was like a big Tudor refrigerator. We also saw the enormous hearths where men would turn roasting slabs of meat that would weigh as much as they did. The tour was quite informative and shed much light on the complicated nature of keeping 600 people fed on a daily basis. After this first tour, we visited King Henry's State Apartments, the most impressive being the large Great Hall. It had an impressively high ceiling for its time, and secret doorways were hidden behind tapestries so that servants could slip easily in and out. When King William and Queen Mary moved into the palace many years later, they added on an entirely separate wing, which we also toured. Along with describing the rooms, the audio tour described how William's misanthropic demeanor and lack of popularity with the English people changed the relationship between the nobility and the monarchy in many ways. The activities of court no longer centered so much on the ruling monarch and his or her royal residence, but instead the court spent more of its time at their own homes. Finally, we viewed the part of the palace added by its last permanent royal resident, George III and his wife Caroline.

Here's a view of an section of one of the later additions of the palace:

I posed with some of the palace "locals" in Clock Court at Hampton Court Palace:

After a busy morning, we returned to the town just outside of the palace gates for our lunch. We decided upon a pub called Albion, which has been around since the 1600's. It was a great choice as we were able to get piping hot pies (Michael had a steak pie with ale sauce, and I selected one with chicken, ham, and leeks.), which were warming on what had turned into a bit of a chilly day. We sat in a cozy alcove, and Michael enjoyed a dark ale with his pie. We were glad to have sampled these delicious, traditional English pies though they were quite a caloric indulgence, especially for a mid-day meal. We were also glad that we would be returning to the palace grounds for a walk through the gardens afterwards. Our walk enabled us to burn off a few of the excessive calories.

While not as large as the grouds at some palaces, like Versailles, these were quite beautiful and varied. We started our walk in the Tiltpole Garden, which is the area where Henry would host jousting tournaments, watching from one of the towers above the field. The area is now covered with some trees and bushes, but it is fairly easy to imagine how it would have looked filled with soldiers and members of court out for a day of fun. Next, we proceeded to the maze, which was much easier than I expected. Michael and I just always stayed to the right, and we were able to pop out the other side without a problem.

I snapped a picture of Michael pretending to be confused in the maze. Perhaps his brain was overstimulated by too many calories and too much ale at lunch:

Like on many other days, we saw students out on field trips from school, and it was easy to tell them all apart as their uniforms were all distinctive. A group of upper elementary-school-age boys were in the maze with us, and even when we could not see them, we could always here them. They were having much fun pretending to have grenades and other sorts of weapons while on some sort of military mission. Beacuse of their accents, uniforms (longer grey shorts with white shirts and dark, striped ties), and general demeanor ("playing war"), they reminded me of Golding's schoolboys from Lord of the Flies, though because of their chaperones waiting just outside the maze, society still seemed to have a firm hold on them. After successfully navigating the maze, we continued on to the other parts of the gardens, including the ornamental gardens with its orderly yew trees and fountains, the Sunken Pond Gardens, with its enclosed pond-filled spaces, and the bowery, a tree-lined walkway where our tour told us that Queen Caroline and her ladies liked to sew.

I am standing just outside one of the Sunken Pond Gardens:

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Touring the gardens also gave us an opportunity to see the various sides (and additions) of the palace from the outside. Just as we had discovered on the inside, there are certainly many contrasts. Once we had our fill of the grounds, we caught the train back to London, where we are spending a quiet evening packing and relaxing for the next part of our England adventure. We have certainly enjoyed being in London, a city about which Virginia Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway said: "In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, the motorcars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands, barrell organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June." We have also had some wonderful moments in London in June.

Our Pilgrimage to Canterbury

Today began with a quick ride on the number 11 bus to Victoria Station, where we hopped on the train that would take us to Canterbury. Along the way, we saw the suburbs of southeast London and the smaller towns and countryside of Kent. We even saw orchards and an occasional flock of sheep. Though this was not exactly the way that Chaucer's Pilgrims made their now famous pilgrimage, the trains are nice, and the ride was smooth, so it was a fairly gentle start to the morning. Alas, we told no tales to each other or our fellow train riders along the way.

Once in Canterbury, it was immediately obvious that we were no longer in London, and in some ways that was a good thing. The town is really quite small, and the center is totally enclosed by walls that were rebuilt atop the old Roman walls. That isn't to say that some of the wall portions are not old; some date back to the late eleventh century. We walked for a bit along the wall and then dipped into the city, noting that the people of Canterbury are also quite different from Londoners. They are certainly less smooth and polished, and we saw many who not only did not seem rushed, but were drinking beer before midday. The pace began to quicken as we reached the city center area, which is more commercial. Wednesday's weekly market made the area even mor crowded. We passed by the site of an old church that was the place of Christopher Marlowe's baptism, and we traversed a few of the tiny, crowded lanes before arriving at the Canterbury Cathedral.

Because of a ceremony honoring British veterans of the Normandy invasion, we toured among plenty of older, medaled gentlemen and their wives. We first saw the soaring nave of the cathedral before touring the darker and somewhat smaller choir (the Brits call it a quire) and chapel. The most interesting sights were probably the location of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas of Becket, the tombs of Henry IV and his wife, Joan of Navarre, and the original clothing worn by the great warrior Edward the Black Prince, son of Edward III, during his funeral procession in the fourteenth century. It is in suprisingly fine condition given its age. Prince Edward's tomb was also impressive.

After wandering around the gardens and buildings near the cathedral, we made our way north to the location of Greyfriars, the first Fransician Friary in England. All that now remians is a small house that sits alongside Canterbury's river, the River Stour. The other buildings were all destroyed after Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church and decided to destroy many of the religious centers in the country and put an end to monasticism in order to strengthen his own power and seize the riches and even the building materials of the churches. (More on this theme in a moment.) Sitting just above the tiny river and surrounded by flower gardens, the small building had a quiet beauty in a town dominated by a much larger cathedral.

After a great lunch (inventive takeout sandwiches - mine was a maple smoked chicken panini - from a small shop recommended by our Rough Guides guidebook) eaten on a bench at the remains of the Church of Saint Mary Magdelene, which was built in the eleventh century, we headed to a site just outside the city walls, Saint Augustine's Abbey. This was not the abbey of Saint Augustine of Hippo, but a priest chosen by Pope Gregory to spread Christianity in England. Because of good old King Henry VIII, almost nothing of this monastery now remains, most of it having been sold off stone by stone after Henry's break with Rome. He did keep this church around for a few years, however, as he needed a place to stay when traveling around the country, and further, he chose it as a spot to build a new palace for his fifth wife, Ann of Cleaves. But eventually, it was destroyed, and all that remains today is a beautifully preserved site that houses the ruins of this once important and powerful place. Though the abbey is listed in all of the guidebooks, we were the only tourists for much of our visit. The audio tour was lengthy, but informative, and we enjoyed traipsing among the old tombs and stones while imagining life for the friars and preists who lived and worked here. Interestingly, four ancient Kentish kings are entombed here, along with Saint Augustine and other priests and abbots who were important to this place. Michael took this picture of me sitting in the remains of the old Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, which still contains some old, colored tiles from over a thousand years ago:

We count this sacred place as one of our favorites on the trip, and we would recommend it to other Canterbury visitors.

Our last stop in Canterbury was another 250 yards outside of town at the oldest church in continuous use in England, St. Martin's Church. When the pagan King Ethelbert married the Christian Bertha of France, he gave her an old Roman building to use as a chapel. When Saint Augustine first came to Canterbury in 597, he needed a place to have mass, and the king gave him permission to use Bertha's church. (By the way, later Ethelbert was baptised by Augustine.) The church was expanded and parts were rebuilt over the years, but bits of the structure from all eras can still be seen today. The church is surrounded by a beautiful if crowded, cemetary, where most of the headstones seem to date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Again, we were the only visitors to the church, and the overcast skies coupled with the dense tree overhang made this spot seem especially peaceful while perhaps also a bit somber.

I napped during our trip back to London, and when we arrived, we braved the quick, but strong downpour that came upon as we waited for our bus to take us back to Chelsea. We had dinner at home tonight, and we are beginning to make some preparations for our early Friday departure from London. We will be sad to leave it, but other adventures in the English countryside lie ahead.

Torture, Executions, and Churches (of Christopher Wren)

Today was a great day! While still a bit chilly outside, it rained not at all. We braved rush hour on the tube to be among the first visitors at the Tower of London this morning. We saw the Crown Jewels first, and then we headed to the White Tower, the oldest part of the complex, which actually comprises 20 towers total. White Tower is now used primarily to display weapons from the armory, and we saw a vast collection of guns, swords, battle axes, maces, and other horrible instruments. The collection includes the chopping block used for the last execution performed on Tower Hill in the eighteenth century. So that was kind of a grisly piece of history. Then we took a Yeoman Warder’s tour, which I would highly recommend to anyone visiting the Tower. Our warder, Mitch Jones, was most entertaining, and he kept us laughing while teaching us about British history and the use of the Tower. After the tour, we wandered around the large complex, seeing inscriptions and graffiti left by prisoners (some famous) in the towers, Isaac Newton’s former home when he was in charge of the Royal Mint, and the Bloody Tower, where the two young princes were supposedly executed on the orders of the evil King Richard, who wanted no challengers to the throne. We ended our visit with a walk along the top of the Tower wall near the Thames, which gave us an excellent view of Tower Bridge. Michael said that this site was his favorite on our trip so far.

Next, we saw one of my favorite places on the trip, the Church of St. Stephen Waldorf. This church was designed by Christopher Wren before he designed St. Paul’s, and some folks say it was his “warm up.” St. Paul’s is amazing, but St. Stephan Waldorf’s is a place I would actually want to go to church. Its simple and modern pews are a nice contrast to the ornate nature of the small dome, and they are circled around a simple center altar. As Michael commented, it is a very democratic design.

We visited many other churches today, including St. Mary-le-Bow and St. Bride’s, both of which were designed by, you guessed it, Christopher Wren. St. Bride’s was unique because of the Roman and Saxon ruins we were able to see in the crypt, which were only revealed after the bombings during World War II. One can still see the mosaic tile floor laid by the Romans in about 180 A.D.

After a brisk walk along Fleet Street, we stopped for a moment at the former house of Samuel Johnson, which is tucked back behind the much taller and more modern buildings of Fleet Street. Johnson said, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford,” and Michael and I are finding on our trip that we certainly agree. We are not at all tired of London, and life is very good.

We also visited St. Paul’s, Wren’s masterpiece. With one of the largest domes in the world, it is amazing in scope. We first viewed the dome from the ground level, and then we headed to the crypt to see the tombs of famous individuals, including Lord Horatio Nelson, William Blake, and Florence Nightengale. But the big challenge for today was our climb to the highest level of the cathedral, some 532 steps up. The views of London were spectacular, and we were shocked by the number of cranes hovering over the tops of the buildings, an indication of the amount of growth and development London is currently experiencing.






An amusing part of our visit was that we seemed to shadow a group of 13-year-old girls who were away from school completing what they refer to as “field work.” They did know what I was talking about when I asked them if they were on a filed trip. The girls were all in matching school uniforms, and they flocked around their teacher while completing their “field work” activity sheets. Of course, we laughed when one expressed concern that her group would be “told off” for getting too far ahead of the group on their climb to one of the upper viewing galleries. Luckily, this did not seem to happen. The picture below shows Michael and me before we took a walk across the modern Millenium Bridge leading into Southwark:




After leaving the center of London, we took the tube to the Kensington Palace area. We first took a walk by the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. After continuing north and seeing Royal Albert Hall, we headed into Kensington Park, where we enjoyed seeing active locals (and their dogs) before seeing the actual palace. After viewing the palace, we walked in a neighborhood called Palace Green, the poshest we’ve seen here in London -- some homes selling for close to $100 million. We saw the Romanian embassy and the heavily guarded Israeli Embassy (no pictures allowed). Then we returned to some main streets where we saw beautiful apartment buildings and row houses as we walked back to our own row house in Chelsea. Below is a picture of me in front of Kensington Palace:





We took about an hour break before heading back to King’s Road to visit our local pub for a couple of pints of ale and some fish and chips (and peas – the dish is always served with peas). Everyone at The Chelsea Potter was really nice, and most were just getting off work and stopping in for a few drinks and some good company. While Michael was at the bar getting our drinks, two young women asked if they could sit at the other side of our table for a few moments until another table opened. They said they were regulars who visit the pub several times a week, and they were lamenting the fact that they, like all people in London, only have four days remaining to smoke in public places before this practice is outlawed on July 1st. There has been much talk of this new limitation during our visit, and interestingly, our tour guide on last night’s Westminster tour told us that the lawmakers in Parliament would still be allowed to smoke. When I shared this information with my tablemate, she was quite upset, and she immediately texted a friend who works in the Parliament buildings to verify the information. I do not know the result of her inquiries. In any case, both women had quite a bit of spunk, and I was glad to have had a brief chat with them.

Michael and I are spending the night at home this evening after our comparatively early dinner, and we will leave early tomorrow to travel to Canterbury.

Among the Tourist Hordes in Royal London

As much as yesterday did not feel like a “touristy” day, today we went to the heart of London tourism, and we really liked it. Setting out amid a partly sunny sky, we took the #11 bus from Chelsea toward Westminster. I enjoyed taking the bus instead of the subway because even though it took a bit longer, we were able to see many interesting sights, only some of which were outside the bus. The people on the bus were a mixture of suited commuters, including the ladies sitting behind us, who sounded like they may have been characters out of recent British fiction aimed at the female crowd. (Has anyone read anything from the Shopaholic series by Kinsella?) Their conversation about the dissatisfaction that comes after finally getting older and “settling down” was amusing if not original. The boys dressed in their snappy school uniforms just in front of us were also interesting, though I could not hear their conversation. I could see, however, that one of them, who couldn’t have been more then twelve or thirteen, stole his friend’s newspaper in a very schoolboy way before sitting down to seriously read it. I was impressed by this reading behavior in one so young. By the way, from our upper-level seats, we also saw other exciting places outside the bus, but I better get on with this, or I’ll be up all night.

Since Westminster Abbey did not open until 9:30, we began at Westminster Cathedral, which is farther west on Victoria Street (a very busy business district). This cathedral is much newer than the Abbey (I guess most buildings are.), and it was designed in a neo-Byzantine style with the same green marble that was used at St. Sophia’s in Istanbul. In fact, we were told that some angry Turks chased the folks with the marble because they wanted it back for themselves. As many of the side chapels still do not have mosaic tile adorning their ceilings, small boxes for donations seem omnipresent (though admission was free, unlike the other churches in London). I enjoyed the dark interior, and though quite different from the Abbey, it was a nice warm-up.

There were two highlights of the morning. The first, of course, was the Abbey. The most beautiful part, I think, was both the inside and outside of the Lady Chapel, or the Chapel of Henry II. That is, of course, where we saw his resting place. Other famous monarchs buried there are too many to name, but Michael and I wondered how Protestant Elizabeth would feel about resting next to her Catholic sister, Mary. And Michael commented on the irony of the fact that they must share a side chapel while Queen Mary of Scots (Elizabeth ordered her death.) gets her very own chapel. We spent quite a bit of time at Poet’s Corner, seeing the plaques dedicated to England’s finest authors. The Great Cloisters and the Little Cloisters were the only peaceful spots to get away from the tourist masses, and these were also the only locations where Michael could use the camera. It is an amazing place, and equally amazing was the fact that the sun was shining when we emerged.

With only forty-five minutes until the changing-of-the-guard, we raced towards Buckingham Palace to get a good spot for the show. We were successful, and set up in a good photo location. It was a good show, and we are glad we took the time to wait on the display. The palace itself is not all that attractive, but it was fun to see the regalia and the officers on horseback, and we also saw the British flag atop the palace, meaning that the queen was at home. Here's a picture of Michael and me before the changing:

After a walk up to the corner of Hyde Park, a quick look at the Wellington Arch, and a jaunt through Green Park, we headed back towards Buckingham Palace, walking the Mall leading to the palace gates in order to see what there is to be seen of St. James’s Palace, the former home of Queen Elizabeth I and the current office space for Prince Charles. We had delicious wood-oven pizza during a longer-than-usual lunch break before walking to Trafalgar Square to see Nelson’s Column and the Admiralty Arch. We passed the Old Whitehall Palace and the Cabinet War Rooms as we made our way to the tube station to head home for a break before our evening Westminster by Gaslight tour.

The rain let up completely for the tour, which was a good thing because it was chilly enough with just the breeze. We were with a large group, but Angela, our guide, did a great job. Though very politically liberal and not afraid to show it, she was knowledgeable and entertaining. Some of the highlights of the two-hour tour were seeing the actual gaslights on the streets of the city of Westminster, the stories about the old neighborhoods behind Westminster Abbey, including the signs marking the air-raid shelters from World War II, and the the view of Parliament from the south side of the river.

Michael also enjoyed his ale that he got a our pub stop along the way. It was a great end to an action-packed day, and now we are having a late dinner at our apartment before going to bed and getting ready for another early start as we explore the City Center tomorrow.

From Gritty Brick Lane to Proper Hampstead

Today was a mostly rainy day, which put a bit of a damper on our outdoor adventures. We started our morning in a very different part of town from the one in which we are staying. The East End has no posh stores, but is filled with street side vendors and people of varying ethnicities. We visited Spitalfields Market, which was fortunately covered. Most of the stalls were selling clothing, but we sampled a few tidbits from the food stalls and looked at housewares and crafts as well. Our next stop, Brick Lane, was more interesting. We walked amid street peddlers, beggars, kids in strollers, and perhaps a few other tourists as we passed an amazing variety of shops and ethnic restaurants. It was still too early for lunch, so we were there more for the people-watching than the food:




We left the East End for an entirely different piece of London – Hampstead. If Brick Lane was loud, motion-filled, and crowded, Hampstead is a haven of tree-lined lanes and ivy-covered homes. Even the “commercial” section where we alighted from the tube felt peaceful. After browsing in the shopping area and eating some lunch, we headed into the neighborhoods to find the home where John Keats lived shortly before his death. It is also the location where he wrote his famous “Ode to a Nightingale” under a plum tree in his front yard. That tree is now gone, but I posed for a picture under the small new one that replaced it:




After visiting Keats’ home, we wanted to take advantage of our position above the city to get a panoramic view. Though in Keats’ neighborhood we were immediately adjacent to Parliament Hill in Hampstead Heath, we decided to walk toward Primrose Hill in Regent’s Park instead. As our London map does not cover areas that far north, we had to rely on the not-to-scale map in our guidebook to show us the way. Now, those of you who know Michael and me know that we are in pretty good shape, but this walk was a challenge. We had already walked a great deal earlier in the morning morning, and we added several miles to get to Regent’s Park. Then, yes then, we climbed the hill to see the city. And it was a nice view:



And so we sighed, took some pictures of London’s skyline, and headed back down the hill to the closest tube station to get a ride home. After a thirty-minute tube ride (one connection) and a 15-20 walk to our neighborhood, we had about an hour to rest before heading back to the tube station to make our way to the Globe. As the main lines near our area are still closed for the weekend, we had to go well out of our way and walk from more distant stations to get where we want to go, but I was looking forward to seeing a Shakespearian play performed at the Globe.

Though our tour guide told us yesterday that she felt the groundlings (those who stand just in front of and beside the stage) have the best “seats” in the house, we were glad to be covered in the middle gallery during the rainy performance. I enjoyed the play in some respects, but I was disappointed in the actor playing Iago. He just did not seem like the nefarious villain he is supposed to be. Othello was loud and booming, but perhaps a little overacted. Desdemona and Roderigo did a good job, and like the rest of the crowd, I enjoyed the comical musicians who performed before and during the play.

After a late dinner at an Italian restaurant back in our neighborhood, Michael and I are ready for bed as we have an early start tomorrow. We are hoping the rain lets up!

Up Close and Personal with Shakespeare and the Lord Mayor

We had a rough start to our Southwark day today when we arrived at our local subway station only to learn that the line that we wanted to use (and several others) was closed for the weekend. So we walked a few miles, bussed a few miles, and taxied a few miles to get the Globe over an hour later then we originally planned. But Ruthie’s tour was worth the wait. Spirited and spunky in nature, Ruthie, an actress, led us around the theatre and stage for almost an hour. I loved seeing the painted ceiling over the stage, the two trapdoors for actors who are arriving from either heaven or hell, and the thatch roof, which is now the only one in London. It was also fun to watch the stage crew setting the stage for the performance of The Merchant of Venice, which was performed this afternoon. After the tour, we spent some time in the downstairs exhibition, the highlight of which was the special audio exhibit where we were able to press a button and hear famous actors and actresses performing famous lines from various plays. I listened to several selections from King Lear, including the “Howl, howl, howl…” speech from the end of the play as Cordelia dies. I was able to get a warm-up for our viewing of Othello tomorrow night in listening to Paul Robeson’s and Sam Wannamaker’s renditions of the Moor and evil Iago. Here's a picture of me standing in the middle gallery, close to our
seats for tomorrow night's performance:






Upon leaving the theatre, we explored other parts of Southwark, including the Borough Market, which is known for its Saturday markets. Though its stalls offered many delectable goodies, in the end, we decided to eat lunch at the very old and also well known George Inn. Dickens mentions it in some of his work, and it is supposed that Shakespeare both ate in the pub and possibly performed here in its courtyard, where we ate while enjoying a bit of mid-day sun. Surprisingly, the pub was filled with locals instead of tourists, and it was an enjoyable end to our time in Southwark.

Next, we crossed the Thames to a place filled with more tourists than locals – the City. This is the original part of the city, which was first settled by the Romans. While a fair amount of time here was spent looking up at unpleasant modern structures (mostly financial institutions), we did see the now dwarfed Monument, a 202-foot tower designed by Christopher Wren to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666. The highlights of our time in the City Center, however, were in the area around St. Paul’s, which was also designed by Wren. Turns out, he designed pretty much everything in this entire section of town. Although we could not actually get into St. Paul’s today because of a special service being held for the Knights of St. John, we were able to see a bit of pageantry as only the British can do it when the Lord Mayor, his wife, and several other important-looking (and wigged, I might add) men exited the cathedral after the service. As he stood not fifteen feet in front of us, he executed a queen-style wave and popped into the back of his Rolls Royce.






We were right up front, and this coincidental experience was worth the loss of personal space as I was jabbed by the hordes of tourists around me. We will return to St. Paul’s on Tuesday, when we were originally supposed to see it anyway.

We finished our afternoon with a walk to the Museum of London, which traces the history of London all the way back to before it was peopled. Of course, the much more interesting exhibits were not about land masses and hill formation, but about Roman London and the Great Fire. I was disappointed that the Victorian section was closed, but we should see a similar exhibit in a museum in York, so I can look forward to that instead.

After returning to our neighborhood, we took a walk along the Thames and enjoyed the beautiful homes and gardens of South Chelsea. Many very stylish older people live in this area, and watching them and all of their very British stodginess was almost as fun as looking at all of the beautiful homes along the way. I am now glad to be back “home” and off of my feet, and as I type, I am looking out our front window at the rainstorm outside. Luckily, we avoided heavy rain today and only experienced brief showers here and there. We will hope for more of the same or even better weather tomorrow.

Checking into Twain's neighborhood

We're here! After a fairly easy flight from Atlanta Hartsfield to London Gatwick, we arrived early this morning to a cloudy and fairly cool London. We got a bit of a surprise before our flight yesterday when our London rental agency called to let us know that the "boiler" (a.k.a. hot water heater) in our original apartment was not working, so we were moved to a different apartment. It is still in the Chelsea area, but we are further south towards the Thames. The neighborhood is quiet and beautiful, and I discovered that Mark Twain lived about eight houses down the street from 1896-1897. There is a beautiful garden just across from his house, and though a peaceful family complete with baby and stroller had claimed the bench there earlier, I plan to park myself there at least a few times this week; perhaps I will imbibe some of his brilliance. Here is a picture I took of Twain's brief home in London:

So you are likely thinking that little tidbit would pretty much be the highlight of any English teacher's day, but don't forget; I'm in London. It just kept getting better. Michael and I ignored our extreme fatigue (We can't sleep on planes.) and hopped on the "tube" to find the British Library. Nestled in a part of town called Bloomsbury, this not particularly attractive building is the home of a room full of appropriately labeled "treasures." While the room contained some of the earliest examples of printed texts and other finds (original copy of Magna Carta, Gutenberg Bible, a copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales from 1410, Shakespeare's First Folio), I was drawn to the original writings of Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, and George Eliot. Bronte's elegantly penned handwritten text of Jane Eyre was on display, and she had made only one "correction" on the pages I viewed. (In case you're wondering, Bronte fans, it is the section of the novel in which Rochester asks Jane to marry him, and she finally reveals her love for him.) In contrast, pages from George Eliot's Middlemarch look much more like they are drafts as there are scratch-outs, inserts, and other marks of a creative genius at work. Though I was disappointed that original pages of Jane Austen's Persuasion are currently out on loan, I enjoyed looking at some of her earliest stories that she wrote as a teen. I am currently reading an Austen biography, and on last night's flight I just read the section about her early creative efforts. I also got a kick out of seeing the original version of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which was written in neat print with occasional special "fonts" and illustrations created by the author as he wrote. I could go on and on, but I am sure there are some of you who are already scrolling past this paragraph. Let's just say it was an awesome place!


After seeing the library, we enjoyed several of the numerous parks/gardens in the Bloomsbury area while making our way toward the British Museum. Suffice it to say that this museum is also a wonderful place, and we saw a wide array of generally non-literary items including the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles. It was nice to see them after noticing their conspicuous absence when in Athens earlier this year. We ended the day's touring with a trip to the Charles Dickens Home Museum, which is also in Bloomsbury. Not being a huge Dickens' fan, I was not troubled by my decision to view only the outside as we only had a few minutes before the museum was to close for the day, and Michael and I were exhausted anyway. We were able to get a good "feel" for that part of town, and I will simply add it to my list for the next trip. After an early night tonight, we should be rested and ready for tomorrow's trip south of the Thames to Southwark and the Globe Theatre!

England bound ...

During the summer of 2007, I will travel to England, a land of traditions that have influenced our past and continue to shape the way we live today. I will visit a variety of literary landmarks, including the homes, colleges, and workplaces of several authors as well as the locations that served as the settings of some of the world’s most respected and enduring works of literature.

I have been a student of literature for most of my life and a teacher of literature for the past ten years. As such, I am aware that setting is an integral part of any piece of prose or poetry. At the most basic level, it serves as a backdrop or a canvas on which the events of the story occur. A closer examination of a work will show, however, that the setting fulfills a much more important function. Setting helps a reader to understand both the state of mind of individual characters and the values of the characters’ societies. It is also the most effective way for authors to demonstrate the atmosphere and mood of any story, which in turn helps the reader to understand theme. Setting can be so important in a work of literature that it can symbolically function as a character in the story, especially when the natural surroundings are shown to be an antagonistic force in the work. Indeed, Eudora Welty once said of setting, "Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else... Fiction depends for its life on place.” I want to better understand these places so as to better understand the role of the settings in the pieces of literature that inspire my students and me each year.

In addition, the creators of fiction depend for their lives on place. Writers are shaped as much by the places of their lives as they are by the events and the people that have touched them. Like their characters, if authors learned and grew in different places, their works would be changed immeasurably. A writer imagines a story to be happening in a place that is rooted in his or her mind, a place that is rooted in his or her history. Exploring England’s literary landmarks will allow me better to understand and appreciate the lives of her revered authors and to examine the effect these writers continue to have on the England of today.