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!
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