Reading: maps and guidebooks

Moving: walked some

10 September 2001: Trafalgar, Westminster, National Gallery

We had originally planned to do the British Museum Monday, but the weather was good and who knew how long that would last, so we walked to Westminster and the Houses of Parliament. The day was lovely, blowy sun and clear skies, perfect for walking.

Oh, but first. Breakfast.

I'm a convert.

We stayed at the Radisson Edwardian Kennilworth on Great Russell Street and Bloomsbury, and I want to commend this place on their breakfasts. From innumerable books I knew about kippers; from at least Ghosts I Have Been I knew about baked beans. These, clearly, were mistakes. RDC later spoke of the English breakfast as being solely protein, but he should just be grateful that the quantities of scrambled eggs--a well-known toxin--that he ate did not kill him. From September I knew about grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, and that's what I helped myself to from the buffet, along with quantities of fruit and a croissant. At the table we were served coffee or tea, and toast. Here the English breakfast breaks down. Toast should be eaten piping hot, and it has no chance of that when it is first toasted only on one side (Sting be damned) and then served in a rack. This kitchen cut it into triangles instead of rectangles, so they're not completely beyond hope, but tepid toast is just Not On. But I made do. English breakfasts are great.

Also at the table, I wrote my first postcards, to Beth and Shelley. I'd looked for a postcard of Lady Jane at the Tower for Shelley but that doomed female probably believed portraiture was papist and idolatry. So I bought Edward VI. Also a picture of Traitor's Gate for Beth, because I know she likes "Elizabeth." I wrote those two postcards. We returned to our room for a moment before heading out, and this is where I discovered I have no hope of ever being Organized. After Christmas cards last year I decided that all future cards will be labeled, not printed. For this trip I decided labels would save valuable time--mine, in scrawling addresses, and the post offices of three countries, for not having to decipher my handwriting. I even had two labels apiece for our several parents and my sister. But in the room I couldn't find my labels. So much for that.

Really the hotel was ideally located. We walked along Tottenham Court Road to where it decided to be Charing Cross instead. We both walked past the bookstores to where Charing Cross decided to be Whitehall instead. We passed St. Martin-the-Fields and RDC got very excited about the possibility of seeing a concert while in London (to save anyone suspense, I'll say now we didn't see one). Where Charing Cross becomes White Hall is Trafalgar Square with the National Gallery on the north side. We had our first glimpse of the tower at the Houses of Parliament. I became enamored of the lions guarding Nelson's Column.

Trafalgar Square is what I remember from my sister's first trip to England in 1981. I often forget her first trip was then and not in 1989, but the earlier trip was only to London, not all around Europe, and with her friend, not alone, and chaperoned by parents, because she was 16, not 24. The 1989 trip was the more life-altering for her. Perhaps I remember it because this is when her ornithophobia--I exaggerate--crystalized: the pigeons. They were not nearly as bad as I expected them to be.

Onward. We hooked west to the Mall, and I see I missed by one block walking on Pall Mall, which I now can pronounce. We saw the Admiralty Arch and walked under another building (name? No, let me guess--Whitehall?) from the Horse Guard yards to Whitehall, and in Whitehall (the street), we saw the Queen's Life Guard. I liked how the uniforms matched the horses. The other shift of guards wears red, but I doubt any roan horses they have match their scarlet coats quite that well. I completely forget the name of the tower attached to the Houses of Parliament with the clock with the bell called Big Ben in it. Parliament, all gilt and rococo, made me gasp, and then Westminster Abbey.

Nearly every single monarch since William the Bastard--sorry, Conqueror--was crowned in this building. Westminster Abbey.

First we looked through St. Margaret Chapel, which is on the north side. I couldn't take off a hat, but I tucked my sunglasses into my purse instead of wearing them atop my skull where I usually shove them going inside. There's something critical I wasn't doing yet, which is why I can remember nothing.

We had no line to enter Westminster Abbey. I spotted a sandwich board propped in a corner of the vestibule to be set out on the sidewalk and inform throngs: "If the queue has reached this point, it is unlikely you will gain access to the Abbey today." Or, I should think, give it more than the Chevy Chase in Grand Canyon once-over once in. So here we were, in Westminster Abbey. Here, unlike in St. Paul's--I hope only because I was so exhausted--I felt awe. Perhaps it has better stained glass. Photography is not allowed and I was still forgetting to do a vital thing, so all I can say is that we walked slowly through the entire place, reading and being shocked. We didn't take a tour, so we didn't get to go into the Sanctuary with the shrine of Edward the Confessor and probably the better views of some monarchs' graves, but we saw plenty.

Henry III, Edward I, Edward III, Richard II, Henry V, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I, James I, Charles II, Mary II, William III, Anne. Mary Stuart (which surprised me, but James I, feeling apparently a shred of guilt, had her reinterred here). Anne of Cleves. Children and siblings. Henry VII's chapel. The Royal Air Force chapel. The coronation throne.

In the south transept is Poet's Corner. Plaques to lots of folks, though not many are buried there. Someone is, though. RDC said, "Chaucer's behind you." I leapt about three feet in the air as I spun to see him. It.

On the south side are the cloisters, in which photography is allowed. I really liked the seahorse that (not quite this big) serves as a weathervane. The plaques around the cloisters were as poignant as the monuments to monarchs and poets inside the abbey, commemorating men lost in war and children lost at cruelly young ages. Just as we entered the Abbey, the clock strung eleven. A (deacon?) in a pulpit at one corner of the sanctuary spoke, asking for a minute of silence as she and anyone who wished could pray, for families and friends, for children, for those embroiled in war. We heard the prayer again at noon but left before one. I wondered if, in the days afterward, she changed her prayer or more people respected the request for stillness and quiet.

We gave the Houses of Parliament a miss, opting instead to spend the afternoon in the National Gallery. We had a bite to eat while planning our course of attack, which was the Sainsbury wing and some rooms in the West and East Wings, paintings from 1250 to 1500, 1500 to 1600, and 1700 to 1900. Then we had a shock: museums in England are free. They request donations but do not require them as the Metropolitan does. We opted for the audio tour, and those were free too. What a great country.

There was so much that in most rooms I listened to the introduction to the room and studied one or two works per room. Beginning to get the right idea, I began to scrawl on my map the titles of those pieces that struck me:

In Tintoretto's The Origin of the Milky Way, there are humans, peacocks, eagles, other birds, and, in the midst of chaos and stars and birth and awe, one parrot (lower right, on angel's shoulder), completely unconcerned with its surroundings: it is preening. Parrot priorities.

Crivelli, Annunciation with St. Emidius. Here, the history of the town is in the story of the Annunciation: the town received independence on Annunciation. It shows the angel Gabriel alit on terrace, which is a rare thing. He's usually aloft. The Wilton Diptych--amazing blues, impossibly costly at the time. The Introduction of the Cult of Cybele into Rome (which is a painting whose image looks even more three-dimensional in life than electronically. An altarpiece whose name I now forget that shows Christ on the cross and, over the two arms, the moon and sun, which symbolized how the Old Testament can only be understood in the light of the new. This I like, because the New Testament god is a much kindlier, more loving and merciful incarnation. Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin of the Rocks, and a cartoon, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and John the Baptist. Jan van Eyck, Arnolfini Portrait, or How Lisa Learned about Iconography in high school history.

Finally I remembered what I was carrying in my bag besides just the pen. I opened the journal my sister bought me eleven years ago.

I turned from Camille Pissarro's portraits of Cezanne and his son Félix to confront one of van Gogh's Sunflowers. I also discovered my new favorite van Gogh, possibly my new favorite painting ever at all, even overtaking Starry Night and O'Keeffe's Jack-in-the-Pulpit IV and V: A Wheatfield with Cypress Trees.

One Dégas that I particularly liked is not on the website, Russian Dancers, in which his strokes complement the dancers' own movement. Seurat, Le Bec du Hoc. I liked this because I like ocean, but glory, we were there, in Normandy, at Point du Hoc, eight days later. There's no such monolith left. Seurat, Bathers at Asnieres. Now the website is hurting my feelings, because it doesn't have a painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, who was Finnish and also known by the Swedish version of his name, Axel Callenidge, Lake Keitele.

We closed the National Gallery, dizzied and overawed, retreated to our hotel, and walked south again, through Covent Garden, to an alleged pub called Porter's Bar and Restaurant. On the way, we passed a street whose name elicited from me a cry like Marianne Dashwood's: "Willoughby!" RDC pointed out an imaginary sign like the one in the guitar store in "Wayne's World" that forbad "Stairway to Heaven": "No Jane Austen!" Ha. I was in London!

We were too late in the day to see any buskers, but the market itself never moves. My Chinese History professor used to assert that the Field House at UConn looked exactly like some important building or other in Beijing, though which one I forget. He would sometimes get postcards from former students of that Chinese building with nothing in the message field but "You were right." SEM has such a picture himself. Well. Anyone who's been to Boston's primary tourist traps should recognize Covent Garden. It's Faneuil Market to a T. (Well, not to a T. In Covent Garden, it's called the tube.) There's a Faneuil Hall at one end facing three long rectangular buildings. Hmm, searching, I see that one of my own pages comes up with "Fanueil." Ooops. But Boston doesn't have this pink building. Also, Boston now has a seven-storey Express at the Hall end and a Sharper Image (I think) and similar things at the other, but my memory of the Market pre-chains is stronger.

Porter's was a disappointment except for the beer, about which I take RDC's word. I had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding because I love Yorkshire pudding and this place said it specialized in Brit comfort food. It is owned by the seventh lord of somewhere, and I instantly and unflatteringly pictured a man who inherited a title whose trappings he couldn't afford and on whose prestige he decided to trade. We Yanks are suckers for titles, though we two didn't know about the owner when we got there. The place caters to U.S. tourists, though: on the menu under Spotted Dick it says "Not what you think!" The roast beef was gray and the pudding the sort of popover I'm used to getting with prime rib in the U.S. Perhaps the eggy concoction my mother used to make with drippings is something else entirely. RDC's steak and mushroom pie disappointed him too. I got to lord--hahaha, the place was owned by a lord!--over him another literary trivium. He asked what "swedes" are. Watership Down to the rescue, via Merriam-Webster: it is a rutabaga, which is a turnip.

I sound like Hamlet. "You are a fishmonger."