London's 11, part 2.5

“As You Like It” at the Globe was so great that it completely knocked out of my head some other cool observations on Sunday, the 22nd.

I wrote about the inaccessibility of Westminster Abbey on Saturday. Later that day I wound up outside the Temple Church. The Temple is where all the lawyers, like Rumpole, hang out. It is the place where the Knights Templar were based in medieval London. (Not unlike the Hell's angels on Avenue B in New York, they were all over.)

It is also where John Hurt chased Tom Hanks with a pistol and nobody noticed. (Or was that Westminster Abbey? I can’t remember now.)

I wanted to see the effigies of the knights on the floor. I don’t know who these guys are but the names are positively Shakespearean. Some figures have their legs crossed, and there is a rumor that says the crossed legs mean that they went to the Holy Land, but that is not confirmed.

The Temple Church is closed on Saturday.

Now that was two disappointments in one day. I don’t remember now what I did next. Maybe went to a pub to drown my sorrows.

Anyhow, that his how Harry wound up at not one, but two church services the next morning.

I went to the 8 a.m. Eucharist at the Temple, and the 10 a.m. morning prayer service at the Abbey. 

                            Figure outside the Temple Church: 
                            They might kill you, but they were monks.
                            Two to a horse signified brotherhood 
                             and poverty shared by members 
                             of the order.



The Temple is a very old church, and the congregation sits facing each other across the aisle. The altar is way off to the side (from the worshipper’s point of view). The entire service, including the reading of the lessons, was conducted facing the altar, with back to the congregation. Very disconcerting.

The priest came out of his way to greet a couple of other strangers and me after the service. So I know there was nothing personal in all this, but wow, how disappointing. I couldn’t hear a thing.

I did get to see the effigies after the service. They are in the round room of the Temple Church and represent three guys named Marshall who are buried there, or maybe they held the title of marshal, meaning a high military leader, like a field marshal, or maybe the very model of a modern major general. They were the first, second, and fourth Earls of Pembroke. No. 1 died in 1219, No. 2 went 12 years later in 1231, and No. 4 died in 1241, ten years later. They went through four earls in 22 years, so perhaps they were not a long-lived set.

The service at Westminster Abbey must have been especially for tourists. It was not held in the nave but in another area—I forget (if I ever knew) what you call it—that doesn’t exist in any American church I know. It’s behind the nave. Two sets of very fancy bleachers facing each other. It may be where the choir or the aristocrats sit. That section was full and so were the banks of chairs where they led me and the overflow crowd. Get this: It was a plug-together service.

Of course, they have a wonderful choir at the Abbey. It’s a royal chapel, after all. So we got to listen to a recording of it. Then a lady got up to preach a sermon about Confirmation. About what? Where did that come from? Certainly not the day’s lessons. It was probably something prepared for a different occasion, maybe a special Confirmation service, and was recycled for the early matinee crowd.

Understand, actually attend an eccentric parish of the American Episcopal Church at home—St. John’s in Montclair, where I might be the parish heretic except so is everybody else. I enjoy the high literature of the Episcopal service.

So I had gone out hoping to get to speak some of the responses, maybe in an old style, like Bishop Cranmer’s original maybe, or at least in an interesting British-flavored form of English, but no, at the Abbey the choir—recorded or not—does all the heavy lifting. You sit back and listen.

But I did get to see the effigies again and I was sitting in the Abbey nor far from the gate that leads to the royal tombs. I saw the edge of the sarcophagus of Mary Queen of Scots, for instance.

It was a far cry from my first trip, when you could walk in and out of the Abbey at will, churchgoers and tourists alike, and I got into the Temple Church to see the dead knights. I also saw a group of lawyers all in black sitting on the stoop of one of the Temple law buildings to have lunch. At least one of them was eating egg salad.

I had been to a service on that trip, too. It was an evening Eucharist in the middle of the week at the Tower Church. They were using a new prayer book that was being phased in at the time. I went there because a guidebook may have said it was the oldest active parish in London and had been formed in Anglo-Saxon times. One of the arches in the church is built of Roman tiles. There was an Anglo-Saxon era cross, too, but I didn't get to see that because it was in the crypt, which was locked up for the night.

When I came back from that trip, my first to Europe, a long time ago, my sister Jamy gave me a necktie printed with the London Underground map. I still wear it from time to time, and was wearing it that Sunday.

I was wandering between the Abbey and the river. It was sometime after 11, and I had to be at the Globe in Southwark by one. I passed the Embankment station. And then it occurred to me: Does this line connect with Cannon Street, so I can get to the Southwark Bridge? I pulled the tie out of my vest, looked at the blade and yes, Cannon Street was only a couple of stops away.

Thank you, Sis. I was going to get to the bridge and across the river with enough time to stop at the Anchor Bankside for a pint.

As it turns out, Cannon Street station was closed for construction. Anywhere I went that week I saw construction somewhere. One of the two elevators at the Russell Square station was out for repairs. Building facades were wrapped in construction plastic. I don’t think the Germans had been bombing the city again, so I guess it was in preparation for the Olympics this summer.

Anyhow, the next station is Monument, a structure built to mark the eastward extent of the Great Fire of London from the 1660s. Pepys lived through it and his diary has some vivid descriptions. I understand that Admiral William Penn (Quaker William Penn’s father) was instrumental in stopping the fire. He and some others planted explosives and blew a firebreak through the east side so there would be a stretch with nothing to burn.

Monument is near the Southwark Bridge, too. And you know that I got to the Globe on time.