London in 12, part 2

Cool Old Stuff

Tuesday, May 15

As Americans in London, we have to stay true to our disobedient—dare I say?—revolutionary roots. It’s OK that a statue of George Washington, almost as large as life and looking better than a dollar bill, stands in front of the National Gallery overlooking Trafalgar Square.

But today Joanna and I were going for even more fundamental stuff, the Magna Carta. Damn, it’s so important that it’s in Latin. In the old days it was at the British Museum, but now it is housed in the British Library, a few blocks away from Russell Square and next to the St. Pancras railroad station. The over-the-top Victoriana of St. Pancras is worth the walk by itself.

The top of St. Pancras station behind the British library.

In addition to the Magna Carta, there are all kinds of wonders in the Treasures of the British Library room. Early editions of Chaucer, manuscripts of Beatles songs, books in which authors have made notes for a second edition—you get the idea.

Outside the library is a monumental statue dedicated to Isaac Newton. The figure is based on a print by William Blake that depicts “The Great Artificer,” God making the world. This, then, is Newton figuring it out.

St. Bartholomew the Great is a spectacular place. We were there in the afternoon because it is near Smithfield market, and Smithfield market is close to the place where I had made dinner reservations a week earlier, when I was still in the States. We were going to St. John, which is so popular I couldn’t get near the place last year, and at the time I was trying to get a table two weeks in advance. But that’s another story, and you can read about that in the series of blog entries I called “London’s 11.”

St. Bartholomew’s, for you Ben Jonson fans, is connected with St. Bartholomew’s Fair. There is a St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in this neighborhood, too, and as I understand it, they were both founded by a member of Henry I’s court. Henry I didn’t get a Shakespeare play or kill Thomas a Beckett, so I don’t know a whole lot about him.

The courtier’s name was Rahere, and the story at the church is that he had malaria (didn’t know the Europeans had it back then) and was cured by the intercession of St. Bartholomew. He was, or became, a priest and founded the hospital and the church, which had a priory, which I learned is a monastery of priests, rather than brothers. There is a rumor, often denied by parishioners at St. Bartholomew’s, that Rahere, whose tomb is near the church altar, had been a jester at Henry’s court. It would be very cool indeed if that were true. but then, I’m an American, and therefore a revolutionary.

I had visited St. Bartholomew’s briefly on my first visit to London 16 years ago. But I had forgotten the details. It was wonderful to walk around inside while the thunder, lightning, and rain echoed outside. The weather had been threatening on and off all day, but this was the only serious rain. We were in a church, so God kept us dry.

We were told that the original church was much bigger, but when Henry VIII disbanded the priory, the original nave was torn down and the space was used as a burying ground. The current church consists of the quire, the place beyond the nave where the congregation of the priory used to worship.

One of the many entertaining things about St. Bartholomew the Great is that it has been used for a number of movies, including one of my favorites, “Shakespeare in Love.” There is a scene where Joseph Fiennes is on his knees in church, In the background there is a colorful tomb with an effigy, but you can only see the very bottom of it. From the first time I saw the film, I thought it was Southwark Cathedral and Gower’s tomb. In fact, the church is St. Bartholomew’s and the tomb is Rahere’s.

[Editor’s note: When Joanna and Harry returned to the States, the first movie they watched was “Shakespeare in Love.” Harry is reported to have laughed out loud when he recognized Rahere’s elbow at the top edge of the frame.]

We passed through a drizzle to Smithfield market. I had an idea of where to go but thought to stop and have a glass of wine first, giving me time to kind of mull and ponder. Great wine bar in Smithfield right across the street from the market.

I asked directions to St. John’s Lane and advice on using the public phone—the change I’d need, anything I’d need to know. The bartender told me exactly where the St. John restaurant was, about 50 yards on the other side of the market, and gave me his cell phone so I could call. There are three St. John’s in London and I wanted to be sure I was headed for the right one.

St. John Smithfield is fantastic. The restaurants serve food to go with the wine—Joanna had braised rabbit; I had venison—with Chateau Lascaux Coteaux de Languedoc, Le Clos Domaine Boudau Roussillon, La Chaussee Rouge la Grange aux Belles Anjou. Don’t ask me to describe them. Don’t ask me to pronounce them. They were overwhelmingly beautiful.

High Rent Districts

Wednesday, May 16

We got into Westminster Abbey this time. It seems the royal wedding fever has burned off. There were only two dozen or so people in line this morning.

It’s a great place. It is very old and very strange, right from the start and it keeps going.

One of the tombs near the entrance is for the loyal Duke of Newcastle and his second wife, “by whom he had no issue.” She was the Duke of Colchester’s daughter and of a good family, we are assured, because “all the sons were valiant and all the sisters virtuous.” Now, how did they really know that? She was witty and learned, and the epitaph makes reference to her books, but it isn’t clear if she wrote or merely owned them.

She was with her husband during his banishment and miseries. Say what? Turns out, he was with King Charles II in France when Cromwell ran England.

The abbey has another tomb of a knight who was involved in one of the plots against Henry IV that Shakespeare wrote about. The epitaph calmly reports that he had his head cut off at the Tower. But he still got a spot in the abbey with the generals and the dukes. I noticed that it seemed to be a short tomb.

Then there is this one: “Beneath this stone was buried the body of the blind scholar Ambrose Fisher, 1617, author of ‘A Defence of the Liturgy.’ “

The public restrooms in Westminster Abbey are appropriately sited just outside Poets’ Corner. When you get out there, you find more good stuff. A flying buttress, for instance. There is also a plaque on the wall that says “1476. Near this place William Caxton set up the first printing press in England.”

Pissoirs, poets, and printing. There’s something very appropriate about associating all that. And not only because they all start with “P.” It’s great how nature finds a way to have things fall into place.

The royal tombs are fun, too. There is the shrine of Edward the Confessor, the sainted king who founded the abbey in the middle of the 11th century. The original building, now long gone, was finished a few days before he died in 1065. You can’t go into the shrine now because it is considered a “delicate area.”

The sarcophagi of several kings are arranged around him and they are close enough to the aisle that you can see them. The kings include Henry VII. Henry IV got rid of Richard II and had himself buried at Canterbury near St. Thomas a Beckett, just to be safe. Henry VII knocked off Richard III and had himself put near St. Edward the Confessor for the same reason. Henry V of “once more into the breach, dear friends,” is also there.

Elizabeth I is around the back in another room, and near her is Mary Queen of Scots, whom Elizabeth beheaded. Mary’s is also short tomb.

So after all this funereal jollity, Joanna and I decided to head for the blue-blood country. We walked up Horse Guards Road and made our way to Piccadilly. It was mid-afternoon, and breakfast was in the remote past, so we went to the 1707 wine bar at Fortnum & Mason for a few appetizers and a selection of Italian wines. There was a light-hearted red called Dolcetto d’Alba that was mild but nice, another red called Terre de Talarato that was earthier and a little sharper, and white Bolettano Lugano that was spicy with a touch of sweet and made me think of another Italian white called Soave.

The store still sells the hampers of wine and delicacies that the gentlemen explorers were supposed have taken with them for sustenance in the heart of Africa.

Half a block from Fortnum & Mason is St. James’s Street. You turn left and there’s St. James’s Palace. Around the corner from there is the Mall, which leads to Buckingham Palace and is partly closed to traffic right now.

Everything here is under construction, as it was last year. Not only are the Olympics coming in July, but this is Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee year. She has been queen for 60 years. Crews are working on cleaning the Queen Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace. Others are putting up bleachers and light stands across from the palace. I guess there’s going to be one hell of a ceremony here in the first week of June.

There is a sign behind the palace fence about the changing of the guard. They do it every day from spring to autumn, but in the cold weather they change the guard every other day. Maybe that’s because they don’t sweat as much, but do they make those guys stand outside for 48 hours at a stretch in the winter?

I will fortunately miss the jubilee. Just as I missed the royal wedding (although not some of its fallout) last year. I am a lucky traveler,

The water fowl in the lake at St. James’s Park include storks.

Another travel tip: Gordon’s Wine Bar is worth a visit, but it can be tricky to find. It’s on Villiers Street, which is clearly marked, but you will miss it if you are looking at Charing Cross station instead.

So if you do go too far, and the Strand ends, remember that you are in the Temple, where all the lawyers are. You go up to any clutch of people in black outside a pub and tell them you want to go to Gordon’s. They’ll get you right there.

Gordon’s is very crowded, but we squeezed into one of the main attractions. The bar is in the cellar of an 18th century building that used to be a warehouse. There is a cellar hand-carved from the living rock that used to be a storage space. Now it is a dining room about 5 feet high. It is crammed with tables and there is no electricity, just candles on the tables. The atmosphere gets a little close with all the people and no ventilation.

Joanna and I shared a red Cotes du Rhone out in the alley, where they have more tables and fresh air.

Grabbed a quick bit of pie and a cab home.

That was a lot of walking, so I’m getting tired.

Good night, everyone.

Harry

London in 12

Getting started

May 12, Saturday.

This is Harry in London. Again.

So far, this trip has been full of surprises. And they began right from the start.

First surprise was when the car driver passed the entrance to the Garden State Parkway south and continued toward the City of Newark on Bloomfield Avenue. OK, Harry, you’re about to learn something new. This guy drives a car for a living, and he’s trying something different. He must know something you don’t know.

After we got stuck in a rush-hour backup aggravated by emergency vehicles in the road, he turned and asked me if there were any highways he could take. He was using GPS that was taking him through Newark at rush hour to get onto the old McCarter Highway. Looks good to a computer, because a computer doesn’t have to drive. Or make a scheduled boarding time.

Anyway, it turned out that the driver did know something I didn’t know. He knew he hadn’t a clue how to get to Newark Liberty Airport. But I’m a fast learner, so I started giving him directions. Go back to Bloomfield—about four or five miles—and take the Parkway to I-280. No, I-78. Then follow the signs to the airport.

I told him, when you get to the Parkway, you have to make a right turn off Bloomfield Avenue to get to the southbound lanes. We were nowhere near the Parkway, but he started to make the next right.

Next time it was my fault. I misspoke and said yes when he asked if we should take I-280.

We got back on the Parkway a mile or so later. We took the correct exit this time, but he started to head west, ignoring the airport-this-way sign pointing to the east-bound exit.

From that point on, it was easy. No one hurt, nothing broken, and plenty of time to get the plane, I even had time for a beer and a bowl of chili at the airport. Joanna had a salad.

The airplane ride was uneventful. I slept through much of it. We even got in five or ten minutes early.

My Oyster card didn’t work at the Underground station. After a couple of false starts, we had to get onto a train to go to the main terminal and wait on line at a ticket office. The man at the window confirmed the card wasn’t working, called a number on his cell phone, and issued me another. He confirmed that Joanna’s card was working fine. Problem solved.

But I learned something: I bought the Oyster cards online from a British-government tourist site. They cost me $45 a piece before I was done. They would have been cheaper by a few dollars and less time-killing if I’d waited and bought them at Heathrow.

The Underground service at Heathrow is the Piccadilly Line, and that stops at Russell Square, which is one of the many convenient things about the President Hotel. From the station, you emerge onto the street, turn left, and when you go left again into the first side street, you can see the hotel.

We went out to eat at the Night & Day Bar around the corner. A Cornish pasty is a meat-and-potato filling wrapped in a flaky pastry. It’s OK, but the seasoning seemed to be on the sweet side.

I had that with a cup of coffee, because this was essentially breakfast, and if I don’t have at least one cup of coffee a day, I go into serious withdrawals. Headaches, drowsiness, mood swings. It can be fun, but I try to avoid it.

After the coffee I had a pint of Green King India pale ale, which has a nice herbal edge. It went very well with the pasty and peas.

Later, after the man came to the room and got the toilet working, we went for a serious walk. past Russell Square to Bloomsbury Square, a couple of blocks away.

I was headed for Trafalgar Square when I saw a sign pointing to the Seven Dials. I was there on my first visit to London, 16 years ago. This is a 20th century replica of an elaborate sun dial that gave its name to a notorious neighborhood. In Dickens’ time the Seven Dials neighborhood was a slum that harbored thieves, muggers, and above all counterfeiters. It was one of the places where the police were at risk to go

Of course, now it’s gentrified. The seven dials consist of six conventional dials mounted vertically at the top of an obelisk, which is itself the seventh dial. The original was torn down because an urban legend said someone had buried treasure under it.

Then Joanna saw a sign for Chinatown. So we bought toffee from a street vendor, a custard pastry from a Chinese patisserie (No kidding; that’s what was on the sign), and got really lost.

That was OK, because if we hadn’t been lost, we wouldn’t have stumbled onto the birthday party for Buddha in Leicester Square. He is 2,556.

Joanna met the embodiment of three Buddhist virtues.

So we walked back, more or less retracing our steps from there, and came to Charing Cross Road. That becomes St. Martin’s Lane just before you get to Trafalgar Square. The London Symphony was rehearsing for an open-air concert.

The piece they were working on was a little too modern and academic for my taste, but it was a nice touch among the construction fences. (London’s fixup for the Olympics is still incomplete. The city still looks like the Germans have bombed it again.)

From there we went through Westminster, across the bridge to the South Bank, and bought tickets at the Globe to see “Henry VI, Part 2” played in Albanian tomorrow at four.  I had to see something there, and Joanna’s never been inside.

The other choice was Part 1, done in Serbian. I saw that in English last year. It’s the one where Joan of Arc is the bad guy.

We walked past the site of the old Clink Prison, saw the replica of Drake’s ship, saw Gower’s tomb at Southwark Cathedral, but passed having a beer at the Anchor Bankside. They were four deep at the bar waiting to put in an order. too much like New York and there are too many good taps here to put up with that.

Shortly after we saw the London Stone (which becomes significant tomorrow) on Cannon Street, we hailed a cab. We want to go the President Hotel on Guilford Street.

The President? He’s never there.

The fare came to ten and change. I handed the driver three fives, to include a tip. He handed one of the bills back. Ten is enough, he said.

They have a carvery in the hotel, and we were so tired from lack of sleep and abundance of walking that we decided to go there for dinner. Joanna had lamb with an herbed mint jelly. I had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with a pint of John Smith bitter on the side.

I had about four hours’ shut-eye on the plane. I’m getting sleepy. It must be the beer.

Good night.

Harry

Globalization

May 13, Sunday

A jet contrail meets the flagpole over the British

Museum. (I'm proud of this one.

I got the timing right.)

London is a great place to walk. You’re always coming across something interesting. So Joanna and I walked from to the British Museum first, where we saw some Anglo-Saxon relics, Chinese antiquities, and a hall devoted to how the Enlightenment saw the world.

In the last room, there were cases on cases of herbs, simples, and artifacts collected by Sir Hans Sloane, who seems to have collected just about everything and then gave it all to the British government. Those collections, we were told, are the start of the British Museum.

Then we came back to the hotel and walked from Russell Square to the Globe. We crossed the Blackfriars Bridge and got to the theater with a few minutes to spare.

Shakespeare in just about any language is always good. Even in Albanian. I expected we would see part of the play, tire of not being able to follow the dialogue, and leave early. Not so. In fact, the conniving Duke of York and the rebel Jack Cade stole the show.

There was a monitor on the wall giving a brief synopsis of what was going on. The audience was full of Albanians.

There’s a stage direction that Jack Cade enters and strikes his sword on London Stone. London Stone was a painted wooden cylinder that almost rolled off the stage. But that kind of thing is part of the fun of staging without a curtain. The props roll in; the props roll out. Sometimes they roll too far.

After the show, we had dinner in the Swan, the restaurant connected to the Globe. They served what they call English tapas. We had sardines on toast, soft goat cheese with toast, hummus served with romaine lettuce, and a sausage roll. Joanna had a nice fruity house red, which came from Languedoc, and I had half-pints of Globe Ale, a house brand; Conqueror Sussex stout (very chocolatey), and Heyworth blonde lager, which was all right for a lager. The bartender didn’t know who made house ale.

After that, we went bar-hopping, which is a novel experience for Joanna. The only other time she did that was when were in Philadelphia. We went to a place called the George. The sign claims it was established in1723, so that must be George I, but I’m not sure. That’s where I had Sharp’s Own Rock Cornwall, amber and very hoppy.

The pub had been taken over by soccer fans who were singing an anthem for the team.

They were all sloshed and very happy. They may have been Manchester City fans because that team had beaten the heavily favored team, Manchester United, that day.

Joanna and I got bumped by a couple of them who were wrestling by the door as we went out.

We got to the Night and Day Bar (or is it Day and Night?), where I had Belhaven Scottish stout. It was surprisingly dry and creamy, more like Guinness than like the sweeter stouts I often drink. I usually expect Scottish brews to be on the sweet side.

The Night and Day is in the Imperial Hotel, right around the corner form the President, and owned by the same outfit. So the next stop was the sports bar, so called because it’s decorated things like with cricket bats and fishing poles.

When I’m in the City of London, I’m always running into interesting Doctor Johnson stuff. I can’t abide Samuel Johnson, because he is even more pretentious and pompous than I am. As Boswell put it, he was the preeminent moralist of his time. That’s enough reason to dislike anybody.

But I have to give him credit. He knew everybody of his time. He is the source (perhaps fictitiously) of some classic remarks of bitter irony, he lived in a cool part of town, and he drank in some great places, like the Anchor Bankside, which I have mentioned before, and the Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street. They’re so cool, in fact, that I couldn’t get into either one of them. One was still packed and the other had closed after lunch.

Out of town for a day

May 14, Monday

The 10:22 out of Victoria Station gets to Canterbury around noon or so. You walk out of the station, take the pedestrian bridge over the highway and get onto the city wall near the Dane John, a huge burial mound from pre-Roman times.

The wall has been rebuilt since the old days, and the gun loops in the towers are some of the oldest in England (in case you need to know this some day).

Much of the town has been turned into a pedestrian mall. I don’t know how many of the Tudor-looking overhanging bay windows are original. But they no longer empty their piss pots out the window, at least in this part of town.

Much of the mall is lined with stores, including Clarks, Marks & Spencer, and the Canterbury Cathedral Shop, where Joanna tried to convince me that I needed another tie, one with Chaucer’s pilgrims on it. It also includes the remains of church tower, all that is left, after the blitz, of the church where Christopher Marlowe was christened.

The cathedral is terrific. Except for a few school tours, it was not too full on Monday. We had the run of most of the place. There are cloisters and a crypt, a huge nave, and a large second area up the stairs called the quire. Over the stairs is the Bell Harry Tower—no kidding. Before you get to the quire, there is a wall with six kings (or five and one queen—the docent said nobody’s sure).

Henry IV, one of the many English usurpers, is buried in the cathedral, and one of the images on the right-hand wall has the same face as the tomb effigy, so that is assumed to represent Henry IV. Shakespeare wrote two plays about him.

To his left is a king with a sword, assumed to be Edward the Confessor, who was Henry IV’s patron saint, and to his right may be Henry VI, No. IV’s grandson. He got three plays, one of which we saw done yesterday in Albanian.

On the left-hand wall, the one farthest to the left is assumed, by process of elimination to be Henry V. He had a short reign and only got one play. The rightmost of this trio may be Ethelbert, king of Kent when the missionaries first came to convert the English.  The figure between Henry V and Ethelbert may be Ethelbert’s queen, Bertha, a Frankish princess who was a Christian and had brought a chaplain with her.

When St. Augustine, the apostle to the English, landed in Canterbury, he was relieved to meet Bertha and the bishop who attended to her spiritual welfare. They were using the remains of an old Roman building as a church, and now that is part of the church called St. Martin’s, which is said to be the oldest English-language Christian parish.

It started to rain, so we didn’t hike out to St. Martin’s or to the ruins of St. Augustine’s abbey, which Henry VIII tore down.

There used to be a shrine to St. Thomas in the cathedral. That’s why Henry IV wanted to be  buried there, hoping some of the goodness would rub off. Edward the Black Prince, one of the most popular medieval English heroes, is also buried there. After all, he kicked the French’s ass for years, and then he went and died young, before he could become king.

Edward the Black Prince didn’t get a Shakespeare play, but his son did. He was Richard II, the guy that Henry IV kicked out of office.

I wonder if the ghost of the Black Prince gets up at night to piss on Henry.

Dinner was at Nicholson’s in Canterbury. It’s another traditional style pub with black lacquer front. It don’t know that it’s old, but it’s quirky enough inside to be.  Each room seems to be on a different level, and not always actually level, at that. The way to the restroom is through a narrow door and up a steep narrow staircase.

Dinner for me was a wild boar burger. Joanna had fish pie.  Shipley’s Cornish Trawler was a good mouth-filling drink (probably ale, but am not sure), and so was the Triple F Warthog stout, which had a strong chocolate flavor.

Another travel tip for the next time you’re in London: the No. 73 bus from Victoria Station goes past the Wellington Monument, Hyde Park, and Marble Arch, and past all the stores and crowds on Oxford Street to Tottenham Court Road, which almost puts you back in Bloomsbury. I suggest you ride on the upper deck.