Day Four-Westminster Abbey

So when I had planned to come to the conference, there was a glaring part of the afternoon and evening where there were no talks of interest.   So I had previously decided that this was my big day to go touring.  Based on conversation with my brother TD, I had decided that I should prioritize going inside Westminster Abbey over the Tower of London.  So I took the tube to Westminster, paid my L16 and took the tour of the abbey.  The Abbey is incredibly beautiful on the inside.  Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures.  

So all the pictures posted here come from the Abbey website . (And probably without AM’s camera, I couldn’t have captured it very well anyway.) 

From the V&A I had come to appreciate how good the British were with stained glass and the Abbey has extremely beautiful examples throughout.  The glass with the incredibly high gothic arches is really just incredibly beautiful.  Although I could see several electric lights, almost all the lighting came from natural sunlight. It was simply spectacular.

I also really like the choir section.  (There was no choir when I was there.  Before I ended up with enough time to take the tour, I had considered just going to EvenSong so I could at least go inside the Abbey.)

 

The Abbey is perhaps most famous as the place where Kings and Queens are crowned and buried, as well as notable people.   The High Alter shown is were these coronations and weddings take place. The actual coronation chair is kept in a room at the back of the nave, and is clearly very, very old.  The Stone of Scone is returned from Scotland and placed in the chair when coronations take place. The words on the back of the alter says "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ".  Since Henry VIII, of course, the King or Queen serves as the head of the Anglican Church, so I'm sure that Henry or one of his descendants is responsible for that quote.

 

The Abbey is the final resting place of literally hundreds of extremely famous people and then there are monuments to even more.  One thing for sure, there are lot people (baron, dukes, etc…) who have huge monuments who I think few remember or care about and then there are really important people who didn’t need someone to put up a million pounds to get them into the elite Westminster Abbey club and have much more modest tombstones or monuments.

Henry VII Lady's Chapel surrounded by seats for Knights of the Bath

Edward the Confessor tomb

 Of course the biggest monuments are for the royals: Edward the Confessor, Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots (Lizzy's rival that Lizzy executed but her son restored to a prominent monument), Henry III, Charles the first (Longshanks), etc..  One effect of going through the Abbey is that after going through the Abbey, I found I actually cared to get to know much more about these people who I had longed ignored. So I picked up a little red book that gave an incredibly condensed version of the history of English royalty.  I found this quite interesting and suddenly a whole bunch more of history made sense.  The book gave a great summary of the slow evolution of democracy in Great Britain and changes in the power of the royalty in response to the various issues, challenges, and external threats the nations of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland faced.

 Before becoming actually interested in the royalty, I was mostly focusing on those whose meritorious achievement gained them burial in Westminster. Some graves and monuments that I took particular note of:  Charles Darwin (early in the tour and slightly separated from all the other scientists...kind of like the Abbey wasn’t sure what to do with him...although in thinking about it now, he is not actually that separated, its more of how the tour goes thru that makes it seem that way.) Isaac Newton (who gets a huge monument as well on the outer section of the choir screen.) Lord Kelvin, Thomson (discover of the electron), Lyell, Maxwell (Maxwell equations relating the six quantum mechanical properties).

Scientist's Corner is on the left, near the Newton monument of the choir screen. Each black "tile" is a tombstone.

 In poet's corner, Geoffrey Chaucer, Handel (of Handel’s Messiah fame), Tennyson, Samuel Johnson, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and Rudyard Kipling are buried here.  Others with memorials (they are buried elsewhere, usually their home village) include Milton, William Blake, W.H. Auden, Lewis Carroll (this triggered me to eventually buy a copy of Alice in Wonderland from the Tate Museum), T.S. Elliot and of course, an enormous one to Shakespeare (he is buried at Stratford).

 

A couple of other really moving places, the English equivalent to the Tomb of the Unknown solider at the far end of the Nave where an unknown solider from World War I and tons of soil from the battlefields of France were placed at the end of the   

 

Another place that was particularly moving was the RAF chapel. 

 

Interestingly, Oliver Cromwell was originally buried in this room of the abbey (for two years) until the Royalist and King Charles II came back to power and then they dug him up and post-humorously beheaded him. (The English certainly seem to have a lot of power issues.)

James Cook memorial is in together with Francis Drake and another explorer I had not heard of, kind of hard to see how he merited being with the other two.

I felt sorrow for those whose tomb stones have been stepped on so much that you can no longer read the names.  Some of these people have been there for 600-700 years.

I am not sure I can express very well how profoundly my tour through Westminster Abbey changed my view of the United Kingdom.  I had never really cared much for its continuing loyalty to royalty and thought of the rise of its Parliament as a simply a short transition to our far better constitutional government that they eventually have come to. Yet in walking through this living historical monument, and then in visiting other sites later in the evening, I became profoundly aware how much the history of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland is in fact the history of the United States and that we two nations are in fact simply cousins playing out the same historical background on two different continents.  So beyond just the pre-history, the shared heritage between what really are the modern worlds two oldest democracies became profoundly apparent.  It is no surprise that there is a large FDR memorial at the far end of Westminster Abbey.  In many ways, Roosevelt was as much an Englishman as Churchill.  A band of brothers.

I am now currently reading "The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, and The Triumph of Anglo-America" by Kevin Phillips. His underlying thesis is that the Revolutionary War and the Civil War were simply continuations of an older power struggle of the English Civil War. Although some of his thesis makes sense, some seems harder to swallow, since French Catholicism was one of the main things Cromwell fought against, and clearly the American Revolutionary invited France into an alliance, the very thing the Cromwell and the Parliament had fHe also argues that it was the dynamic interaction of the old monarchical based government and the new populist based government that made it possible for both nations to end up dominating the modern world. 

Day Three-The V&A Museum

This day was mostly spend at the conference, but during one of the afternoon sessions when there were no interesting talks, I decided to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum which was adjacent to Imperial College where the conference was being held.  

 

The building is again pretty interesting architecturally, but what I found most interesting was the holes left from the German bombing.  

 

 The V&A hosts a wide number of collections and exhibits.  Here are some of the ones I found fascinating. 

  For JA sake, I was drawn to an exhibition on the Lolita look in Japan (a cross between Hello Kitty cuteness and the punk rock movement, go figure!) 

 Samurai warriors, which turn out to be kind of short.

Various Japanese vases

The music room below was taken wholesale from the house of the Duke of Norfolk when it was being torn down.  The room was really quite incredibly beautiful and clearly required enormous amounts of wealth to built.  So like many things in London, there is a sense of ambiguity about its treasures. Amazed at the beauty we humans can create, but balanced by a recognition of the societal cost that such concentration of wealth by the ancient class system incurred. King George III was born at the Norfolk house. So perhaps the room serves as a reminder that simply being able to accrue great wealth and power does not in any way indicate whether one can govern effectively.  Although in fairness to HRH George III, he was only clearly insane in later years after the American Revolutionary and Parliment probably bears the greatest responsibility for driving the American colonies from the British Empire.

 The British rooms also had these incredibly beautiful stain glass windows.  I have become a big fan of stained glass and am wondering how we might add some to our home.

I took a picture of the ceiling art below for Jonathan.  All of the instruments were once working instruments that were smashed flat by the hydraulic pumps of Tower Bridge.

Dale Chihuly glass art is everywhere! This artist first came to our attention at the Indianapolis Children's Museum, but I have now seen his art all over the world...

 This heart looks like lace, but its actually made of etched metal.  I found the metalwork section particularly interesting.

 

Your standard Renaissance lawn decor for the upper class.

 The casting room.  I guess in the old days, the way that art students learned was on cast of the original art objects.  So this is not the real David, just the cast that London's aspiring artist would learn from.

 These Morlaix stair cases were retrieved from French mansions of the 1500s.

Some other sections I didn't take pictures in because I wasn't sure if I was allowed to after being called out by the museum staff while taking a picture of this really interesting temporary collection by a guy in a lunatic asylum.   There was a whole collection of dresses from Elizabethan times and then ball gowns from the 1950s to current day.

After returning to the conference and the remaining sessions, I went to dinner with a colleague from France.  The streets were more crowded at 10 pm than they were at 8 pm.  Lots and lots of people.

Day Two-Hyde Park and the Serpentine

My second day in London. The conference registration started at 7 am, and the actual conference started at 8 am, with speakers asked to have their talks downloaded before then.  If I had been time zone acclimated, this would not be much of a problem, but I was still trying to time switch.  But I had done the whole fly overnight, stay awake when you land, take melatonin 30 minutes before bedtime on day of arrival, make the room as dark as possible, etc... routine, so  I actually did pretty well with jet lag (not like the first time I went to Sweden).  Still, it was pretty hard to get up at 6:15 in order to try to get to the conference registration early.  I was also very worried because I hadn’t been able to get internet very well, and I hadn’t downloaded all the details of where the conference rooms were.  I knew my talk was in the Huxley building on the Imperial College campus, but that the conference registration and speaker room was in a different building.  Turned out, having access to the internet didn’t really help, except to say that it was in the Sheffeld building, but no room number or directions.  So I wandered past  Baden Powell again and wandered around the campus until I found where I needed to go, getting my talk loaded with sufficient time to talk with some colleagues before the meeting started. The satellite meeting of the conference was the main reason I came and was good.  I didn’t speak until the afternoon, and had to fight off falling asleep a few times right before lunch, but then after lunch was my talk so I was too hyped up to worry about going to sleep again.  I thought my talk went well.

Since the satellite session ended at 5 pm, I had time to wander the city again.

Since all the nearby museums were closed, I decide that I would wander Hyde Park which was not very far away and was the site of the incredibly exciting Olympic triathlons.  But before I made my way to the swim course on the Serpentine, I first went up to Kensington Palace and the Prince Di Memorial Playground.   

Kensington Palace

It turns out that the week before had been the 12^th anniversary of Lady Di’s death during the car chase by paparazzi.  So the gates to Kensington Palace were completely covered in pictures, letters, flowers, etc to Lady Di. (I understand this occurs at every anniversary of her death).   

Lady Di Memorials

There were lots that still hotly accused the Royal Family of complicity in her death, but most simply relatedly their undying love of her memory.  She was clearly the People’s Princess.  One gathers that Harry and William are deeply loved (perhaps with a wink to their boyish mistakes), as is the Queen, while Charles is looked on as a bloke that nobody wants to become King. 

 

 

My understanding is that HRH Prince William and Princess Kate will be moving into Kensington next year. Kate should have a lovely view from her window.

  

From Kensington Palace I made the long walk through the park to the Serpentine.  One gets the impression that much of Hyde park is wild.  Except along the walkways and specific ball fields, etcc, the grass is uncut and about knee high.  The trees are also clearly not planted, but just grow as they come, so it really has the feel of going back to its original condition except where it is tamed for use.  I think this is in keeping with the notion of a British Garden compared to a French one (if I am remembering my Arcadia right…).  There were lots of groups playing ball.  One group seemed to be playing a sort of softball/cricket.  They had the bases set like softball, but were using what looked to me like a miniature cricket bat and ball, with the bowling type pitch, just no wicket.  And they ran the bases like it was softball.  Maybe its some new version of cricket softball or something. (Sidenote: I have been rereading At Home since returning home, which is incredibly fun now that I have been to London and have personal experience with many of the places he discusses in the book.  Hyde Park and the Glass Palace of the World Exhibition is the opening chapter!) 

Italian Garden at top of Long Waters

Italian Garden

 

Start of Long Waters at top of Serpentine

Long Waters

Made it over to the Italian garden that is at the top of the Long Water, which is the head waters of the Serpentine.  Hyde Park was a gift of Prince Albert  to Queen Victoria.  [Side note: Its sort of hard to imagine being rich enough to just build a huge park with your own land and millions of pounds.  But I guess if you are the king of England, that works.  One thing I think I would like to understand better is the relationship between Royal objects and public financing.  Everything in London seems to be the Royal something.  It’s the Royal Parks, the Royal Post Office, the Royal Guard, the Royal Port.  The college was Imperial College and the original building was built by the King in the Queens name (hence the Queen’s Tower which is its most prominent landmark. ) So does “Royal” now essentially mean the same thing as we mean when we say “National” or “State” or does it mean the thing is actually still owned by the royal family and the public is allowed access?  It makes a difference I think.  If the royal family is seen as titular stewards over national resources, i.e. continuing to hold in the name of the people these national treasures and taken on at least some fundraising leadership, then I can see why the English might be reluctant to completely get rid of the Royal family.  The Queen could essentially be acting as the Fundraiser extrordinare for various causes like Parks and Schools. If instead, the royal family maintain real ownership over these lands, the post-office, etc.. but the public pay for their upkeep, that would seem intolerable.]

 

Along the Serpentine

As I walked along the paths along the Serpentine, I had a strong sense that I had seen these paths before.  And indeed I had, while watching the extremely exciting Men’s and Women’s Triathlons.  One thing I came to appreciate is that there were enough slight up and downhills on the path to explain why certain breaks and bridging up to the lead group occurred when they did.  Its not really flat except right  by the Serpentine.  I had originally brought my swimming suit to London, with the hope of perhaps swimming part of the course, but there were no swimming signs posted everywhere. 

This bridge was the upper boundary of the tri swim course

I have to say based on the amount of swan and geese droppings, etc… that I am not entirely sure that the water was really clean enough to desire swimming in it.

Olympic tri viewing grandstand

The Olympic grandstand was being disassembled, but was still mostly intact. I had not realized how high it was.  I was trying to figure out where exactly the transition area was, but I could only speculate at the time I was walking around.  (I looked it up afterwards, this is exactly where it was.) 

Geese swim where the starting platform had been.

The Paralympics doesn’t include triathlon as an event until 2016 in Rio (as I understand it), so I didn’t get a chance to watch a live triathlon on the course, but it was still like walking around holy sporting ground to me.   

Lower end of swimming course

Far end of the Serpentine

Restaurant at end of Serpentine

By the time I had rounded the far end of the Serpentine, it was completely dark.  

One of my duties I had been charged with in going to London was to get some Olympic souvenirs, and had not seen any shops, so I was excited to see a sign on the Serpentine path indicating that a London 2012 shop was nearby.

 

 I found the very large building/tent/structure that a sign had touted as being one of the London 2012 shops, but apparently it was closed to customers (it was after 8 pm by then). So I was kind of disappointed not to be able to snatch up some souvenirs. 

Since it was now quite dark, I have to admit I started being just a little bit worried in terms of safety since I was entered an area without a lot of people.  Eventually I ran back into the main road and then there were lots of people again.  I saw some signs for some big BBC concert on Friday as part of the Paralympic Festival, which now as I write about, I realized I missed, but I did get to another one that night, so I guess its okay.  At the end of the Park, top of Imperial College sits the Royal Albert Hall, which has very striking architecture. (A recurring theme in my mind.  You pretty much were always tripping over some historic or really great looking building in downtown London.)  Across the street was some nice monument to the King, not sure what exactly.  (It was Queen’s Gate after all, it seems like it should have been a memorial to the Queen.)  From Royal Albert Hall, I walked past Baden Powell again on the way home.