When I cleared out Carol's desk last year after she passed, I found seventeen journals that she had kept over the years. I am currently editing these for publication, and expect to finish the project in 2027. The first volume was atypical, in that it documented our travel to England in 1979 in celebration of the completion of her Ph.D. and was intended for a general readership. The remaining volumes were more personal and designed for her eyes only. They document her internal and intensely personal journey and contain strategies that may be useful to others, especially young women, dealing with her demons.
The layout of this transcription may seem a bit odd, as for some reason when I converted the text to .PDF format many of the formatting commands and all of the footnotes--there are 25 in the original--were deleted. She underlined the text frequently, which I dutifully transcribed as italics, and right-justified the date and sometimes the time of each new entry. All of these are missing from the present version. Rather than taking the time to correct these deficiencies I present Carol's Journal, May 15, 1979-June 15, 1979, documenting in her distinctive style our trip to England.
Wednesday, May 16, 1979
Yesterday and today may be two of the most different days we’ve ever experienced. Yesterday was a usual at-home-and-getting-ready-for-a-trip-day, sunny and mild—and naturally, we’d not started packing. All things considered, it’s nearly a miracle we got off when we did, though I think if we’d realized how heavy these bags were, we’d have packed a good deal lighter. Laura came by for keys and instructions at around 11:00, and Ron was there at one to take us first to the bank and then to the post office, and finally to the Windsor Airport with nearly an hour to spare. We did really cash in all the pennies--$47 worth, and we had to wrap around $10 worth. Lunch at a Burger King on the way to Windsor (we thought it would be Dave’s last fast food fix, but we passed a Burger King today!). Ron saw us on the plane, and we arrived in Toronto at about 5:00. Had a really nice dinner in the airport restaurant (I was groggy and Dramamine-fogged) called Dorothy, and caught out plane (Air Canada 747) at 8:50.
The flight was lovely. Attendants solicitous, service excellent, meals well-prepared. Dave ate a steak dinner (I passed it up to help my system get accustomed to the change) and we both enjoyed breakfast of fruit, juice, muffins and Danish followed the hot towels for our faces—most refreshing— and there were pillows and blankets. Very comfortable. Pleasant conversation with our seatmate, formerly of Woodstock, now of western Ontario. A dental ceramicist with a strong liking for SF and fantasy. (He wished us well at the airport later.)
Sunrise was beautiful—first pale band along the horizon, the sky turning from black to royal blue and the dawn more gold than red except for a thin strip along the horizon.
London sunny and warm; in the terminal, breezed through customs and immigration (Immigration officer called me “A person of definite plans.”)
Six calls at the airport to find a room in Bloomsbury, near the university—the Garth Hotel in Gower Street. We found our way in on the Tube from Heathrow, glimpses of green squares and flowering lilacs, thanks to a computer terminal that shows routes easily, with changes and lines clearly marked. Garth Hotel faded, dingy and cramped, but the hostess solicitous—though we were told the room would not be ready til midday, she had the German au pair boy get it ready early—had a hunch we’d be tired and want it sooner, took one look at us and told us to go up and lie down. The room is 12.50 for the two of us, including breakfast—not cheap by any means—come Saturday, we’ll look for some place cheaper. Oh, and our “Go as you please” tickets were validated by a funny little man who didn’t seem to know quite what he was doing but who got there just fine in the end.
After a nap and a wash-up, we headed out to wander down to the theatre district via Trafalgar Square, with a stop to look at the Church of St. Martins-in-the-Fields, though the only remnants of the fields are, I’m afraid, innumerable pigeons. At the Lyric on Shaftsbury Avenue, saw a play, “Filumena,” starring Joan Plowright and Frank Findlay and directed by Franco Zefferelli—we paid 7.50 each for seats in the first row of the Gallery, leaning forward to watch the play over the lights. Cheap and filling supper at “the Happy Eater”—steak and kidney pie for me, chopped steak for Dave. Walking back from our trip to the theatre district, a square with benches, trees, and tulips. Shaftsbury Avenue and the Tottenham Court Road. My 13-year-old map is still useful. Tomorrow we’ll find that Penguin bookstore, and replace Secret Water, which Dave left on the plane, alas.
Once more to Shaftsbury Avenue (to see the play), this time by bus, and also very easy, lots of foreigners, but they’re all English (i.e., many of the people we see working are not Anglo-Saxon in origin). One Indian stopped us to ask directions. But mostly, definitely English. I’m babbling. Past time to go to bed.
17 May 1979
. . . And I forgot to mention that yesterday, as we crossed under Tottenham Court Road by the subway, a man stood by the wall in the corridor playing Irish-sounding tunes on his violin, which sounded oddly mellow in that space.
Breakfast this morning, and David got up for it—though, poor dear, it’s only 5:15 now and he, exhausted & napping, still has to get up so that we can go to see Congreve’s The Double Dealer at the Olivier. Took the bus across Waterloo Bridge to get there, and Dave got his first look at the Thames, the Houses of Parliament, and Big Ben. I must admit that the sight misted me over—both of us. I don’t want to lose any of today’s impressions. The people at the National Theatre—very helpful and kind—we booked tickets for tonight without difficulty. Missed the tour, though, and booked tickets for tomorrow for that.
From there to Piccadilly Circus, to catch our coach tour. We missed the first one, so we wandered down Piccadilly to the Burlington Arcade, with a vague hope of getting to #110 but no luck. The town . . . tantalizing glimpses—of nearly everything we’ve heard of or seen in photographs—Marble Arch (getting ready for one of its traffic jams), Hyde Park (the Speaker’s Corner), the bombed out ruins of Christ Church, parts of the old Roman city wall, the arch at Moorgate still intact after all those centuries—the guard—we followed them, to Buckingham Palace, nearly. St. Clement Danes (“oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s”). The Abbey, which has seen nearly a thousand years (give or take a century or two) of English coronations. Dave wept, very nearly, and I’m not ashamed to admit I joined him. The Tower, with a glimpse of Traitor’s Gate, chilling even in the sunlight and with an innocuous Sea Scouts training vessel moored before it. Funny shop names—a curry restaurant called “The Holy Cow” and a boutique named “This is Bedlam.” A tiny dog cemetery, in Kensington Road, I believe. The gaily colored Chelsea Bridge—I guess now I know why “It’s a Chelsea morning.” Number 10 Downing, and a crowd waiting for the new Prime Minister (to whom Dave has been referring irreverently as “Maggie.”) Eaton Square, subdued Georgian Fronts on a huge square laid with walks, trees, and gardens. Easy to imagine the Bellamys living their sedate existence somewhere nearby with only the clogging of horses and rumble of carriages to disturb them. The rush of buses and taxis seemed incongruous. Cleopatra’s needle, a glimpse of the Mansion House, and attendant description of The Lord Mayor’s Carnival. St. Paul’s Dome, seeming almost to float above the cathedral.
Lunch, booking of a room til Monday (we stay here, but move to room 6) and then the British Museum—through printed books and manuscripts to apply for readers’ cards, a process which took only a few moments, then back out to the manuscripts—a long and loving look at the Lindisfarne gospels, open to a magnificent carpet page done with reds dominating, facing the Initial Capital for the Gospel of Mark. Others . . . Blackfriars Mortgage deed, signed by William Shakespeare (Wm Shakspr?), a collection of autograph manuscripts—Wyatt, Spenser, Ben Jonson (The Queene’s Masque?), a note scribbled to a friend by the imprisoned John Donne, and yes—a copy of “Hydriotaphia” in [Sir Thomas] Browne’s almost illegible hand with all the crossings out that are still giving scholars headaches over variant readings. Fragments of a burned copy of Magna Charta, with the King’s seal reduced to a shapeless lump of wax. “Creechies,” grotesques bordering one strange illuminated manuscript. Out at closing, past Bedford Square, and past the Ivanhoe Hotel where Amy Charles will be in a week’s time. The room again, where Dave slept for an hour.
May 18, 7:20 a.m.
To the National Theatre last night to see Congreve’s The Double Dealer—a vibrant and energetic and very funny production. We were fortunate to get very fine seats—because of the labor difficulties at the theatre, the stalls ticket holder were admitted to the circle, so our 2.00 tickets seated us five rows from the stage, and labor troubles notwithstanding, the production was fully mounted. We had the great good fortune to be seated next to Mrs. Elizabeth Webby, a lady from Australia, English & Library Science teacher, who is in England on a 10-month research leave to work on history of theatre in Australia. We enjoyed a pleasant chat before the performance and during the interval, and she very kindly invited us to her flat in Hampstead for lunch on Sunday. After our play, we stopped at the Pizzaland to share a pepperoni and mushroom pizza and enjoy a glass of lager before getting in somewhere near midnight. Dave bathed (a pulled muscle was bothering him) and then we went to bed. Today, we tour the National Theatre, then go to the Tower, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey.
20 May, 10:20 p.m.
We are in, tired and damp, after a long and mostly lovely day. It rained on and off—the first full day of rain we’ve had since we’ve been here—despite people’s comments about English weather! We finished breakfast (or at least I did—Dave couldn’t manage it, which seemed to bother our landlady). Then our first experience with the tube—a much more efficient means of getting around than the buses. We went to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard, only they canceled it because of rain. So we walked to Eaton Square and then to Eaton Place, both lovely in the rain—got lost going to Elizabeth Webby’s flat. We finally called, then got lost again (or misdirected) and finally asked directions at the police station. When at last we got to Fitzjohn Ave., she was waiting for us. We had passed a flower vendor and bought a bunch of irises and one of tulips for 75 p., so we didn’t get empty handed. We met her two children, Richard and Rosalind, and an aunt, who is going to be with her for a month, and who is an artist—she was sketching a vase of tulips when we arrived—the flat was pleasant and opened out into a garden—profusion of larkspurs, tulips, a blossoming tree (flowering crabapple, I think) and green grass. It was a very English Sunday afternoon—roast lamb dinner, excellently cooked, and a flan with huge fresh strawberries and cream (the meal cooked by Elizabeth, the flan from a bakery down the street). We talked work, and politics, and [ ], and schools (Richard is just getting ready for high school; just reading Swallows and Amazons, & loves Narnia). Elizabeth’s husband is a paleontologist currently working in Norway—Elizabeth is going to Berlin to deliver a conference paper soon (June 17, actually—the same day I leave for Berkeley). After lunch we walked past Keats’s house to Hampstead Heath and wandered around in the mist—climbed Parliament Hill and glimpsed the spires of London faintly through the fog, walked past John Constable’s house. All in all two hours or so of vey pleasant wandering.
Utterly exhausted, we left Hampstead (and Elizabeth, with Donna’s and Priscilla’s addresses, in addition to that of Theatre Journal) to go on to the concert at Royal Festival Hall. We ate a fairly reasonable supper in the Festival Hall Cafeteria (cold veal and ham pie and salad for me, roast lamb again for David) and went in to hear the U.K. concert premiere of the 2nd movement of Szymanowski’s Symphony No. 2 in B flat, followed by John Williams (yes Kathy, yes Ken, the John Williams) playing (yes Kathy, yes Ken) Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez—it was magnificent—lovely and balanced, delicate and sweeping at the same time. At intermission, Dave went out for coffee, watched the Thames and Big Ben in the mist. When he came back we settled in to Tchaikovski’s Symphony No. 4.
21 May 1979
Bags stored, a room booked for our return on Wednesday week, we went yesterday to the Euston Square station and took the tube to Paddington. We had our Britrail passes validated, found the platform (#11) our train was leaving from and got a cart for our bags. Then I went off to the “loo” where, much to my amazement, I met “Tittles,” a 26-poundf cat, male, who lives in the Paddington Station ladies’ room, coddled by the attendants and ogled by admirers. He’s a pretty beast, in spite of being that fat, and according to the sign above his quilt-padded wicker basket, can actually move fairly quickly when he wants to, which is quite hard to believe. The 2nd class carriage to Oxford (no smoking) was comfortable and clean, with ample space for luggage, and a table on which I wrote air letters to Mom and Kathy while Dave alternately dozed and watched the countryside (much more heavily industrialized than it used to be, complete, alas, with atomic power station cooling towers) slip past. We took the bus into Oxford, coming a few blocks out of the way, and toted suitcases, huffing & puffing, to the Visitors’ Center in St. Aldales, after our arrival in Oxford (spires seen by train in the distance—like no other view in the world and still, after all these years, improbably lovely. The Visitors’ Center booked us in to a room in the Wilton Guest House, out Cornmarket to Beaumont and John Walton, not far from St. Mary Magdalen Church and directly across the street from Worcester College, very convenient for Dave to see about the Inigo Jones drawings. Then out for a walk—an excellent cold lunch in the Nosebag, out to find Cherwell Edge, still there but part of Linacre College. Down St. Cross Road past the St. Cross Building (which still houses at least the law library) out Longwell Street to Magdalen Bridge and tower (the tower, its spires encased in scaffolding, still lovely as it undergoes renovation). Over Magdalen Bridge and out St. Clements, but not quite out to Headington Hill Park. Then back to the bridge, to look down at the Botanical Garden and, on the other side, brightly painted punts crowded together. In to Magdalen quadrangles and gardens, the Cloister, the deer park (its beautiful old elms sadly gone, victims of Dutch elm blight, an irreparable loss) with many yearlings grazing, one of them coming up to us, tame and almost unafraid, to beg food—gives the expression “doe eyes” an entirely new meaning. Oxford has changed. It’s busier and, like most places, a bit touristier, but the essential parts are still there, and it is still possible to leave the noise and bustle of the street behind to enter the cool serenity of green grass and living stone. As I have said to David over and over again, it is very strange to be here as a tourist.
Back to our hotel to sort laundry, which we could not do (though we found the launderette recommended by our housekeeper without difficulty) because of lack of change. Without many regrets, we decided to skip it for the evening and indulged in a very good Indian dinner at the Standard Restaurant, very near the launderette. (Dave had a very mild Chicken Cashmir made with bananas and cream; I had a hot Madras meat curry, and mango chutney, and finished the meal with glasses of strong, sweet coffee served with thick cream floating on top.) Replete, we went out to walk it off, timing ourselves to arrive in St. Aldate’s just as Great Tom began tolling his nightly 101 strokes. Out of the High, past All Souls, Mary the Virgin Church, University College, Queens. Into Catte Street and up toward Longwall, where Dave and I played Lord Peter and Harriet, asking and answering in Latin. Over the cobblestones of Merton Street. Then back to our room, full of plans for the next day.
22 May 1979
I can’t write it all down fast enough to keep from losing it, I’m afraid. Yesterday we both went down to breakfast and did some chatting about plans. Then purely by chance, as we were leaving the dining room we spotted a copy of Vade Mecum, the student’s guide to Oxford. In the list of events for fourth week of term, we noticed that the OU Society of Change Ringers was practicing last evening at St. Mary Magdalen Church. This was simply too much to pass up, so (David indulgently looking on) I wrote a note to Graham Naylor, President of the Society, asking if we might come along to watch and listen and perhaps lean in a bit—we then went out to drop the note off with the porter at Magdalen College, and walked back to Carfax and to the Visitors’ Centre to book for the 10:45 walking tour. Dave’s leg was bothering him, so we went into the coffee shop behind the St. Aldate’s bookshop. Pleasant, friendly people who were not dismayed that we passed over their astonishing array of good food in favor of a cup of tea and one of coffee.
Then back to the Visitors’ Centre for a walking tour of Oxford, with Mrs. Wilmot, beginning at the Bulldog, a pub—one side of its sign a bowler-hatted Victorian university policeman giving chase to a gowned undergraduate, the other a genuine English bulldog. Bits of history followed one another so rapidly I can hardly recall them now. The new buildings of Lincoln College, with an open space left by the architect to link them with the other buildings of the college. The Bear Inn, a very old pub. Yellow and red wallflowers in the gardens. The twin tower of All Souls’, Christ Church and Great Tom, part of the pillar chipped away when they built the platform for Cranmer to read his recantation (and when he refused to do so, requested that the hand that signed it go into the flames before the rest of his body). The beautiful first quadrangle of Oriel College, the fine sundial. The Sheldonian Theatre—Wren’s first public building. The Radcliffe Camera, its lower levels glassed in. An image of books on conveyor belts running below the streets of the city, Jesus College—quadrangles, fellows’ garden, dining hasll, and chapel. Recounting of the early town-gown riots—how St. Mary the Virgin was the beginning of it all. The Bodleian—Duke Humphrey (Humphrey Duke of Gloucester who built the original library and Thomas Bodley who refurbished and expanded it). Our first glimpse of the Dorothy Sayers exhibit, including the manuscript of Lord Peter’s proposal. Dave to the Worcester College library, where they were very good about the Inigo Jones.
The change-ringing. A call from Graham Naylor, late yesterday afternoon, inviting us to “St. Mary Mags” to hear the ringers practice. After the Turf, down Cornmarket to the church. Into the main entrance, to the left, behind a curtain and up a narrow winding stone stair. The ringers—young, earnest, varying degrees of experience. Rounds-ringing each of the eight bells in sequence. Then short touches of grandsire triples, Cambridge, Cornwell, and London Surprise. “Treble’s going, she’s gone,” calling, “Stand,” as the bells came back into rounds. My first time in a chamber. Plaques to commemorate the peals. The group’s young secretary, freshly returned from a 20-mile walk for “Save the Children,” collecting pledges between the ringing. Beer in a pub, the Golden Cross, with some of the ringers—one, David Jenkins, from New College, who’d been ringing for eight years in Worcester. He volunteered information on books and recordings, and said to mention his name if I wanted to listen to the ringers at the Cathedral in Worcester. Caroline Trim, a post-graduate student from Linacre College, only ringing since October, two weeks out of the “practice ringers only” sessions—reading History of Science and interested in Sir Thomas Browne on plant regeneration. Then home and to bed.
23 May
Another overwhelming day in this lovely city. I got up for breakfast, Dave slept in. Then together we walked to the Bodleian and up the stairs into Duke Humphrey, signed the pledge, presented out letters, and became readers. That in itself was exhilarating. Then downstairs to the Divinity School, where we saw a letter (poem) in verse from John Donne to Lady Carew, the wandering Shakespeare first folio, manuscript of The Wind in the Willows, a letter from George Washington requesting the loan of five bushels of clover seed. A magnificent Michael Drayton exhibit. And of course the Dorothy Sayers—he baptismal record, entered buy her father, her matriculation and degrees, some schoolgirl poetry, the essay “On the Lost Art of Learning,” a letter with sketches for staging “The Zeal of Thy House,” the manuscript of Lord Peter’s proposal to Harriet—many bits from Gaudy Night accompanied by photos of their referred-to places from the period of the novel. I cried, of course. The Sheldonian Theatre—Christopher Wren’s first public building. The crumbling sandstone heads of the Caesars replaced by modern copies—quite good, if a bit oversized. The interior—painted ceilings, the chancellor’s and proctor’s chairs, paintings of several Eucaenia ceremonies & processions. Up to the cupola—no longer the original Wren one, but lovely, bathed in sunlight, for a panoramic view of the spires of Oxford. The green of Shotover Hill visible in the distance. More tears, quickly dried, and happy ones, then back to “The Nosebag” for tea/coffee and cakes. In the afternoon, to the Ashmolean. Roman and Greek antiquities, including some tragic Janos-masks, Egyptian artifacts—endless vases, scarabs, amulets, seals. Dave photographed painted vases and urns. A disappointing though mildly interesting exhibit of classical and medieval board games, mostly replicas and modern copies. The Tradescant Room, with Powhatan’s mantle, covered with shells, a large pair of white kid gloves intended for but unclaimed by Elizabeth. Very fine Italian old masters, a few French paintings, some nineteenth-century English, including a Dante Gabriel Rossetti, unmistakable. (In the Bodleian, Dave reminds me, C.S. Lewis’s original map of Narnia, sent to Pauline Baynes.) Collections of early rings and watches. A lovely 18th C. clock, with delicate music box chimes, still keeping perfect time and making gentle music. Home to rest, as I was very tired, with a two-hour side trip to Blackwells, where we made the largest purchase of our trip, 10.90, and were still exercising enormous self-restraint. I found a two-volume copy of Pendennis for 50 p., and a library copy of a Dorothy Sayers collection of essays I’d never seen for 25 p. I napped for a bit, while Dave made plans for Stratford, and we talked about going to Wales on Sunday. A couple of new-to-us P.G. Woodhouses, the Penguin edition of Sir Thomas Browne, a book on English folk customs . . . we wanted much more, alas!
Supper (and more ale) at the Turf where we were joined by Johnathan Thomas, a Welsh post-graduate student from Jesus College, currently doing work on Celtic mythology and set to go to Ireland next week. He overheard our tentative plans to go to Wales and gave us some information—very useful—about Swansea and Cardiff, and advised us, bank holiday weekend or no, to make directly for the Pembroke coast, and for an island off the coast where there was quite a fine monastery (Calney? Colby?). The castle at Caerphilly is quite fine, we are told, and worth a side-trip. Jonathan was joined eventually by Mary Canary, an Australian nurse doing work at the Ratcliffe Infirmary. Lively discussion of television, automobiles, Welsh folklore and modern adaptations, regional accents. We left regretfully at ten, having swapped addresses, since Mary plans to visit the states and Johnathan knows a linguistics student who corresponded with Tolkien. Home & to bed to prepare for the trip to Stratford.
24 May 1979
Up at 6:15 a.m., dressing hurriedly in the chill and with rain splattering the window. A knock on the door at 6:50—the housekeeper, concerned that we’d be missing breakfast because of the early departure, brought us a pot of coffee. A hurried walk to the train station, then a brief wait for the train to Leamington. On the train, sunshine breaking through the clouds. The English countryside, impossibly green, crowned with hills and crossed with hedge rows, dotted with sheep, horses, and cows. A 45-minute wait at Leamington—which we are taking advantage of to eat breakfast in the station.
The train on to Stratford-upon-Avon, on a small shuttle train. A short walk to the visitors’ information center first, to pick up a map, and a stop to cash a traveler’s check, and then on to the theatre, somewhat more weathered than I remember it being thirteen years ago, but still exciting, and with the same swans, ducks, and boats in the river I remember from then. Since we arrived at the theatre half an hour before the box office opened, we were second in line for tickets for Cymbeline. The girl who was first is from just outside Washington, D.C. The lady just behind us, a marvelous retired school teacher (lives in Leicester, trained at Cambridge) is going to the States this summer (San Diego) and traveling first to Mexico and then across the U.S. Her name is Florence Baldock, she’s quite an adventurous lady, having traveled all over Europe, to South America, Australia, Alaska—some places by tramp steamer. “Life is so short, and the world is so beautiful,” she says, and we quite agree. She reminds me a great deal of Miss White in some ways. She told us that when we go to Cambridge we must have honey for tea (a la the Rupert Brooke poem). We swapped addresses, a thing we seem to be doing rather more frequently these days than we usually do, and then went off, having purchased our 2.20 seats for the matinee, to visit Shakespeare’s birthplace and then to have lunch at a coffee shop—orange juice, steak-and-kidney pie, salad, cream pastries, and coffee—before going back to the theatre to see a production of Cymbeline, a play we’d never read before as far as we could remember—though the plot is similar to those of other high Romances, in particular Pericles as regards the dream intervention of the gods and the extended recognition scene. It was well performed—the actors who played Iachimo and Cloten were especially good, and the set worked very well. Our seat mates happened to be Miss Baldock and her friend, in Stratford celebrating the friend’s birthday. She passed us chocolates, and when Dave declined, insisted that he put one in his pocket for later, “since they’re nicely wrapped and all.” The school kids got a chuckle out of the plastic head used for the beheading of Cloten, and there was a chorus of the British equivalent of “yuck” when they brought the headless body out and laid it next to Imogen/Fidelia (for her to wake and think it’s Leonatus, of course!).
After the play we wandered through the showers to Holy Trinity Church, and entered the chancel to gaze at Shakespeare’s grave—the inscription worn but still visible, and surprisingly upside-down. In the church-yard, lilies of the valley growing by a 19th C. tombstone. We wandered by the river, watching the sun play hide-and-seek, then back through the RSC Gardens to supper in the cafeteria overlooking the river. Then a leisurely window-shopping walk back to the station, and so “home.”
25 May 1979
. . . And what a day! Dave slept in; I went down to breakfast, chatting briefly with out landlord on the way back up. “People rush through Oxford,” he said, “but I think there’s really more to see here than almost anywhere else.” Then when Dave got up, we went together up St. Aldale’s to the entrance to Christ Church meadow, along the Broad Walk past the backs of Christ Church, Corpus Christi and Merton, to the Cherwell, and up to the Rose Lane entrance. An elderly clergyman, smiling. Thense to Magdalen Bridge and the Botanical Garden—warm, damp smell, flowering trees and shrubs, the River Cherwell again, the college punts sort of squashed together on the banks. A sunny morning; we came up from the gardens to enjoy coffee in the Queen’s coffee house, then decided to walk out to the Wolvercote Cemetery to visit Tolkien’s grave. Out Cornmarket Street to St. Giles (with a side stop in the sights and smells of the market) and on . . . and on out the Woodstock Road. A brief stop at Somerville to purchase tickets for the centenary celebration play, William Wycherly’s “Love in a Wood.” Then out into the suburbs—over an hour, then across the Five-Mile Road to the Banbury Road. We found the cemetery, large and very green, many old trees, rolling hills and lots of space. Past the front portion, past the Jewish cemetery, all the way to the back, where we found the simple, single granite headstone marked “Edith Mary Tolkien Luthien 1889-1971 John Ronald Revel Tolkien [Beren] 1891-1973.” The grave was simple, surrounded by a low granite curb, well-tended rose bushes planted there and just coming into bud, a simple small glass jar for cut flower, forget-me-nots growing very blue against the grey granite of the stone. We were the only people there—though Jonathan had told us that sometimes American students leave quite touching notes, there was nothing on the grave this time but the plantings. I have mentioned. It was simple, quiet and very peaceful—just as I think he would have wanted it.
Back out to the bustle of Woodstock Road, we caught a bus into Woodstock, had lunch at the “Tiffany Tea Shop” and walked to Blenheim Palace in the pouring rain, rescued a little way into the walk by an American couple, he from Texas, she from Iowa, who offered us a lift the rest of the way in. (Her resemblance to Penny Wymer so astonishing I took a snapshot just to see if I really believed it when the picture was developed.)
Blenheim—magnificent. Stunning vista of lake, bridge, pillar of victory. Overwhelming-ness of the palace, like some massive decorated subtlety for a baroque wedding. (Indeed the icing-sugar replica of the palace we later found in the Long Library looked not at all inappropriate. Guided tour called attention to the painted ceilings, some of them gilt with 22-Karat gold, a set of mahogany doors so carefully fitted that when all the doors in that hall are closed one can look through the keyhole at one end and see clear through to the keyhole of the other. A view outside one drawing room to the Tower of Bladon Church where Winston Churchill’s grave lies. His recorded voice and a sampling of mementoes (including valentine, birthday, and Christmas cards). A bronze statue of the current Duke of Marlborough on exhibit in another drawing room—rather embarrassing, like the “baby on a bearskin” pictures people’s grandmothers trot out.
There is a theatre, 18th C. now converted to other uses, which we did not see but which Dave would like to look into sometime.
The water gardens—magnificent fountains and formal hedges, huge clay pots of red tulips, glimpses of the 2000 or so acres of parks and woodland surrounding, open to anyone who wanted a ramble. Then back to the bus stop and into Oxford, a breathless walk to cash a traveler’s check before the bank holiday weekend begins and back to our rooms to read, where we found a note from Jill, the housekeeper, offering to do laundry for us.
27 May 1979
In the rail station at Oxford. The weather cleared off nicely for Friday night. We ate a sumptuous full dinner at the Taj Mahal—much more extravagant than we should have been, then walked out Cornmarket and St. Giles, past the Eagle and Child sign (wonder if that’s where Tolkien got the idea for Gwaihir) and past St. Aloysius to Somerville College, where we sat in the evening light and watched a spirited (if flawed) production of Wycherly’s “Love in a Wood, or St. James’s Park” in the Fellows’ Garden—part of the celebration of the Somerville Centenary. It was quite chilly, and my dinner hadn’t settled very well, so we came away, rather regretfully, between the third and fourth acts, but the setting was lovely—birds singing, flowering trees surrounding us, the performers on a little patch of green before a stone wall (part of the chapel, I think), the audience on risers in a V-shape around them. Birds singing in the twilight, the lights coming up slowly as the daylight faded. Then yesterday, I went down to breakfast, got a carton from Jill, then went first to the Post Office and then to Woolworths, to buy brown paper, twine, and labels to mail a parcel of books back to the states. Dave came out with me to the Post Office on the second trip. He’s feeling rather miserable, between soreness at both ends and a cold. The books weighed just over the limit of five kilos, which necessitated unwrapping the parcel, removing some of the contents and then carefully re-wrapping in the same paper to avoid a trip back to the guest house. From there, lunch at The Nosebag—the omnipresent spaghetti Bolognaise, with garlic bread fresh from the oven and a fresh salad too large for either of us to finish.
Then to the train station, where we were lucky enough to get a through train to Coventry, in the pouring rain and chill—unquestionably the worst all-day spell of bad weather we’ve had since we came. The cathedral—choir practicing for Evensong, the many-colored baptistry window towering above the rough-hewn stone from a hillside in Bethlehem which serves as the font. The choir stalls, surmounted by an abstract flight of birds. The glittering mosaic of an angel offering the chalice in the Chapel of Gethsemane. The tapestry of Christ in glory, the tiny figure of man nestled at his feet, behind the high altar. Endless displays—of the choir boys, parish activities, the “Cross of Nails” community, the destruction and rebuilding. The Workers’ Chapel, the altar a simple wooden bench, the sculpture above it suggesting tools, the windows clear glass looking outdoors. Net to it, the Chapel of the Word, shaped like a crusader’s tent, towering, with thin strips of stained glass in the recesses. An open bible on a lectern in the center. Out into the rain—the Jacob Epstein statue of St, Michael triumphant over Satan, and then into the magnificent ruins of the old 15th C. cathedral, their eloquent simplicity marred by the addition of a brass-rubbing centre and signs advertising “Coventry plays programs and ‘T’-shirts.” The statue of Lady Godiva in the town square. Tea in a crowded “Elizabeth the Chef,” with two English women obviously out shopping. Back to Oxford for supper once more at the Turf, then back to the room so that David could curl up with a hot water bottle. Since it had cleared off, I went for a walk. Out the Broad, to Longwall Street, down to Magdalen to “send my love to London River,” and back up the High to Carfax before coming out Cornmarket to Beaumont St. and then home.
This morning breakfast and then packing to catch the 11:12 train for Didcot to change for Cardiff, then Caerphilly. The weather sunnier and warmer, as we sit watching holiday crowds board trains for Brighton.
28 May 1979
As I sit warming up and drying out to the glow of an electric fire I hardly know where to begin. Like most adventures our trip to Wales has thus far had its “dull spots”—waiting for trains (or riding in them with rowdy youngsters), carting around heavy bags, and trying to find a place to stay when we were tired and not thinking very clearly. But those have been minor parts of the trip indeed.
The train ride was magnificent. While the towns were often industrialized and dreary, the countryside was mostly hilly and green, and the weather was, fortunately, sunny and fairly warm—fortunate, since we arrived in Caerphilly tired and with no place to stay. Directly across from Caerphilly Castle was a car park and a tourist information “caravan” which ran a room-booking service. We were booked into a room at Watford Farm, on Watford Road past the Miners’ Hospital, halfway up Caerphilly Mountain. We struggled up the hill, hot, tired, David in pain, to reach a farmhouse built in the 1700s run by a hospitable couple named Mary and Roger Cooper. They clucked sympathetically over out having made the climb up without luggage.
30 May 1979
I’m afraid I’ve been rather lax in keeping this diary. Such a mixed bag of experiences it’s been. The woman with two little girls, eating sweets and throwing the wrappers on the ground, who told us that Americans had too high a standard of living and that the Welsh would survive by “going to the ground.” Our guest house room, twin-bedded but with down quilts. The landlady, Mrs. Cooper, chatty and with good suggestions for touristing. She was a good cook and fixed a very pleasant supper, but overcharged for it rather outrageously. The assumption made quite frequently, that we must be on research grants of some kind or other.
After tea our first day we climbed the rest of the way to the top of Caerphilly Mountain—spectacular view, worth the climb. Back to have supper, relax, and read by the electric fire in the lounge. Spoke briefly with a man who is coming to Cardiff to work running a concert hall. He and Dave chatted for over two hours, before we finally called it a night. In the morning, Caerphilly Castle—the second largest fortress in Europe, grim, moated—one tower still leaning from the time when several centuries after it was built, Cromwell’s men tried to blow it up. We spent an hour or two wandering around the ruins, climbed one battlement, and imagined what it would have been like under siege.
Then the train into Cardiff. Lunch at a diner-type cafeteria across the street from the station, then Castle Cardiff. The tower—a clock tower done in the worst 19th Century Gothic revival style imaginable, astrological signs, cupids and all. Definitely worth seeing though. And we climbed to the top of the genuinely ancient Norman keep of the castle, which Owein Glyndowr once scaled to capture a lord and lady to hold them for ransom. (We keep running into him everywhere!) Our greatest adventure of the day, though, was taking the #32 bus from Cardiff Central (Caertydd Canalog, the signs say—as opposed to Caerdydd heol y Franhines Cardiff Queen Street) to the Welsh folk museum—a lovely old house owned by a local family now given with all its grounds, to be a museum of Welsh daily life. Carved furniture, period Jacobean crewel embroidery on a 17th Century bedstead, 18th C. tapestries. A kitchen with enormous ovens—great, huge fireplaces with heavy black iron utensils. Pheasants and rabbits hanging from the rafters. Out and into the grounds—beautifully laid out formal gardens, terraced down to deep ponds where ducks quacked and swam, and up paths into the woods to see cottage haystacks, a dovecote, and (which I think excited David the most) a cockpit. Welsh visitors (we were the only Americans) as far as we could see—or hear—talking excitedly about having seen a similar one in the film “Mandingo.” Two elderly ladies, our companions waiting for the bus in Cardiff, chattering excitedly to us, then telling the ticket-taker at the museum (as they used their senior citizen cards to get in free) that “Americans go in half-price.” There are some places we’ve been I’d be glad of that, but we willingly paid the 10 p. each to go in.
Yesterday (Tuesday) morning, after settling our bill (with overcharge) and accepting a ride from our host to the train station (which we did not tip him for) we set out from Caerphilly to Tenby on the Pembrokeshire coast. Caerphilly to Cardiff, then Cardiff to Swansea, Swansea to Whitland, and Whitland to Tenby. On the Cardiff to Swansea portion of the trip, a mother from London with her daughter Katrina, on half-term holiday from school, going to visit grandparents at the Mumbles. Pleasant hour’s conversation—prices, things to see and do, Katrina’s learning a bit of Japanese—so both mother and daughter appreciated the story of “Bakka Books” in Toronto. Unlike our friend Miss Balcock from Leicester, this lady does not care for travel except for an occasional vacation in the south of France. Pleasant people, varied people, willing to chat.
Arrival in Whitland to board a surprisingly crowded train for Tenby-approval of the beaming conductor. Glimpses of salt flats and tidal inlets as we sped along the coastline. Dave thinking constantly of “Swallows and Amazons”. Arrived in Tenby and Dave went off (after we’d each visited rest room) to find us a place to stay. He came back, very proud, having located a B&B half a block from the rail station where we had a lovely, airy pink and white room at the top of the house for 3.75 pounds each including breakfast.
Immediately after settling into the room, out to explore Tenby—sort of a Welsh “Ocean City, N.J.” but much less flashy. Families on holiday, enjoying the sunshine. Some children even bathing, despite the chill—temperatures in the 50s. Pastel houses and hotels, clinging to the rolling coastline. Hill with an old and crumbling fortress on it, and a statue of Prince Albert at the very crest. St. Margaret’s—at high tide an island, but when we saw it, a rock sticking up from the sand with along stone stairway up to the “fort”. Gulls crying. Open sea—Caldy Island visible in the distance. I took off my shoes and socks and dabbled my toes in the rather chilly surf—then off to find a restaurant and have dinner.
Found myself later wishing that we had postponed dinner, since a lovely bright evening was wasted to my tummy ache. After “the worst” happened, though, I did feel better and Dave tucked me up with the hot water bottle and a coke to relax for the rest of the evening.
Morning was dismal in weather, but certainly not in spirit. Dave came down to breakfast, and we met the other inhabitants of the house—an entire family, grandparents, married children, and grandchildren, including one fat, adorable, smiling 12 week old named Katie whose grandparents were obviously very proud of her. The pater familias, after breakfast, began chatting about his experiences in the war. I have a feeling he and Dad would get on just fine. We stowed out luggage in the lounge, inquired after buses to St. David’s, and finding that there were none, walked down to the shore (marveling at the change at high tide), past the Harbormaster’s Office, to the ticket window for the launch to Caldy Island. Down to the dock to be helped aboard, sitting on a wooden bench, watching the hill we’d climbed the day before recede into the distance.
Landing at Caldy Island—wild and lovely with gorse and heather, tidy shops selling souvenir jewelry and pottery, perfumes and sachets made by the monks, and chocolate made by them as well. We walked past the monastery to the Old Priory—St. Iltud’s Church, parts of which may have been there since the 6th Century, as far as anyone knows. Climbed up a stone stairway into a dark, desolate room with a lovely view out a window over the gorse and rocks and past a simple cross to the coast. The simple stone spire, leaning from the perpendicular. The Caldy Stone, parts of which are said to have been inscribed by St. Iltud himself. Up the paths to the lighthouse, shining white and lovely on the seaside of the island, looking out to open water beyond. Then back down the path to stop and pick out a necklace for myself, a siler and tiger eye pendant. It began to rain, gently at first, harder and driving as we boarded the launch for the trip back to the mainland. In spite of the wet and chill, the atmosphere was definitely holiday. Dave and I cuddled under one umbrella and lent out other to a young couple with two children. Both children seemed to be enjoying things enormously, though one little boy in his enthusiasm nearly got fed to the fish! The group in general had the kind of spontaneous camaraderie which seems to develop in adverse conditions sometimes. After all, no one was on the boat who was not on holiday, and on holiday one may as well enjoy every adventure that happens.
And speaking of adventure, the trip back to London seems to be turning into an adventure of its own. Dave figured to lead us on a short cut back to our hotel (mind, we never really learned the name of the place or the street it was on!) expecting that the streets in a city which dates back to the middle ages would run logically! We did, however, make it to the platform for the train with nearly quarter of an hour to spare, and the changes in Whitland and Swansea went smoothly. But we’ve had an enormous stretch of switches and waits.
From Swansea into Cardiff went rather smoothly, if noisily, with a group of rather rowdy adolescent boys. Outside Cardiff we sat for a very long time before being redirecte4d to the British Temple Mead station. A touring group managed to reserve an entire coach on a very crowded train, with their guides doing all sorts of shuttling around and mother-henning, standing in line at the buffet car and so forth. We had a brief glimpse of Bath as the train went through. More waits, and some pleasant diversions talking to a young law student whose undergraduate degree is from London and to several passengers who had been. Hoping to get into London in time to watch the European Cup finals on telly tonight. Since it’s now 9:30 and we’ve only just pulled out of Reading (we were due in London three hours ago) I dare say they’ll not make it. Flooding around Bristol must have been very severe. We’ve passed several creeks and streams which had risen to their banks if not over them and seen several flooded fields. One viaduct was covered with water to the tops of its arches. But overall, the glimpses of countryside—spires and churches in Bath, viaducts and meadows—have been green and lovely in the mist. Still, I’ll be ready for bed when we get in.
1 June
. . . and our trip is more than half over. We got into Paddington Station at after 10:00. Travelers stayed in good spirits to the end of the very long journey, and we were able to get the tube back to the Garth Hotel. We were, however, unable to contact Amy Charles as we’d planned. May was, of course, waiting for us. I’m glad we’d turned up after all, since she’d held our room for us though they’re full up and she and her husband are sleeping in the lounge, having, we believe, given their own room up to paying guests.
First thing Thursday we got directions to the launderette. I scribbled a quick note to Amy Charles, we packed up a huge load of laundry, and made our way to it. Dave left me with the machines running and went over to American Express to check for mail. I settled in to do laundry and write a letter to Dr. Virginia and to listen to the chatter in the laundromat—the attendant who called everyone “luv” and insisted on wiping out the inside of my dryer with a damp cloth because “otherwise you’d be findin’ yourself another wash now, wouldn’t you love?”
When Dave got back he had a surprising lot of mail—a letter from Steve Archer about the man at the Aldwych we’re to get in touch with, full of delightful side comments. One from Dr. Virginia—John is graduating after all, hooray, and they were scribbling a note as they waited to Pilgrim Airlines to take them to New Haven. A note from the housing service at Berkeley—very nice, helpful and efficient. A letter from Martha—Jory is in training pants, Katie can dress herself, Laurence is working on his dissertation, and Martha writes articles and gives Tupperware parties on her “research time”—6-8 hours per week. A sad letter from Kathy—rather lonely, and upset at falling out with Carol Berge. Dave a letter of permission to reproduce the Inigo Jones drawings from the Worcester College library in Oxford.
I should have known better than to send Daid off on his own. Naturally he came back with theatre tickets, this time for “Crucifer of Blood”, a Sherlock Holmes mystery he’d heard was very good. We left the note (unamended, thoughtlessly, to include our evening plans) for Amy Charles, which caused some inconvenience to her that I regret, had lunch at a pizza place near the hotel, and hopped on the tube to Pimlico to visit the Tate Gallery for the afternoon.
The Tate—Rodin’s “The Kiss”—infinitely lovelier and far more erotic than it seems in the replicas and photos I’ve seen. Rooms full of Constable and Gainsborough. The Turners—illustrating the entire range of his career, and including highly detailed, finished works as well as rough compositions, sketchbooks, even a few of them delicate, perhaps watercolors from the British Museum’s collection. Some of the light so blinding it almost hurt one’s eyes to look at it. Dave ecstatic over several de Loutherbourgs, and wistful that none of his stage scenery (or, I suppose, lighting effects) have been preserved. The fortuitous discovery, made while buying postcards, that the Tate was exhibiting the entire set of Beatrix Potter’s illustrations for The Tailor of Gloucester—each a tiny, perfect-in-every-detail and lovely watercolor miniature. The exhibit had a step running the length of it, to allow younger viewers to get up close, and of course the illustrations were accompanied by the text.
From the Tate we walked back to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, to enable Dave to replace some of the photos that he took on the roll that was spoiled. He snapped away to his heart’s content for half an hour or so—the statue of Richard the Lion-Hearted, the one of Cromwell, Big Ben, the Abbey, Winston Churchill. Then we hopped on the tube again, this time for Piccadilly, dinner at the Arizona Steak House (what a lovely muddle) of seftali kebab and dolma, and the show at the Haymarket Theatre—a very well-preserved 18th Century theatre of considerable importance in London theatre history, it having been the first to break the royal patent successfully. (Dave has just informed me that the building is actually an 1820-ish rebuilding of the original.)
2 June
The play “Crucifer of Blood” was marvelous. I had not realized that the lead actor and actress were Keith Mitchell (he of “6 Wives of Henry VIII”) and Susan Hampshire (she of “The Palisers”)—King Henry and Glencora Paliser respectively. Needless to say, they infused the production with a good deal of energy, he as Sherlock Holmes, she as the daughter of an ex-officer of the Indian uprising who makes a pact with two others concerning some stolen jewels. The special effects—eerie music, thunder rumbling in the distance, a full-scale storm with brilliant, jagged flashes of lightning, were nothing short of incredible. We came out, Dave says, whistling them. The production itself was just the right combination of 19th Century melodrama and modern split second comic timing. (And my handwriting seems to be degenerating rapidly.)
Yesterday was one of the most special days of the trip so far. The weather turned warm and lovely, and we went up to Cambridge. We called the Ivanhoe Hotel first (Dave stunned May and Mr. Walters by coming down for breakfast. When he’s serious about an early start, he’s really serious) to try getting in touch with Amy Charles once more, but found that she had checked out—we assumed to go to Cambridge. Since we had left the day’s outing, Canterbury or Cambridge, up in the air, we opted for Cambridge, and so, on a sunny, mild day, we set off for Liverpool Street Station. The ride to Cambridge itself is mostly pretty dull—there is some pretty scenery as you get farther out, but it’s mostly industrial cooling towers for atomic power stations, warehouses, and factories. We did pass through Hackney Downs, to a rousing chorus of “from Putney, Hackney Downs and Bow,/ with Courage high and hearts aglow/ They galloped roaring through the town,/ ‘Matilda’s house is burning down!’” But what a long gallop it must have been. And I hope it wasn’t as dull then as it is now.
At the train station we purchased a guide book from the travel center (we later found a cheaper and better at the tourist center; we live and learn) and set off, first to find the Garden House, where we thought Amy Charles was staying from June 1. They had no record of her, though, so we came away.
June 3
Bits of sunlight gleaming through the clouds in Edinburgh as, at 11:00 in the morning we sit in our guest house lounge and wait for our room to be vacated.
June 4
12:30 p.m.
On a train somewhere
between Edinburgh
and Inverness.
Our one day in Cambridge was lovely. We walked past the Fitzwilliam Museum, but did no, alas, go in. Found a pub, the Anchor, on the banks of the Rivers Granta and Cam, sat in the golden sunlight watching punters go under the bridge with varying degrees of grace or skill. Overheard a young woman who had just passed her first set of examinations discuss “digs” with her mother—preparing for the years in Cambridge that she now knows she will have.
The “round church”, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, dating back to the 11th Century and still used for worship. “See our angels,” said the verger, “in the new bit”—the 13th Century addition, he meant—a row of carved-oak winged angel heads supporting the roof beams. “They’ve looked after us for over 600 years,” he said, “and I guess they’ve done a pretty good job.” We also saw there two stone 19th Century carvings of faces—one the happiest-looking fellow we’ve ever seen in a church, the other, rather more dour, perhaps feeling the weight of the roof a bit more.
King’s College chapel, sunlight glinting through the glass, Rubens’ lovely “Adoration of the Magi” adorning the altar, lit subtly (and alas, guarded by alarms, necessarily, since it was slashed last year and had to be repaired.) A side chapel, a shrine to the dead of World War I, Rupert Brooke’s name inscribed second on the list of choir who fell, the manuscript draft of “The Soldier” in a glass case before the alcove containing the roll of honor.
Peterhouse, the oldest foundation in Cambridge—a very dim chapel of dark oak, small and hushed, in a marked contrast to the bustle of Kings.
Back to the Anchor, to share a “Chaufferpunt” with an elderly woman, another lady—her daughter, perhaps?—and a father with two children. The boy, Roger-like, experimenting with fingers and a variety of sticks to see what would happen to the water. Rowdy undergraduates celebrating the end of examinations, loud and needling our punter a bit, but not malicious, though one of them did end up in the river—the water really does chuckle under the bows of a punt—the punter commenting quietly on the history of various foundations as we passed along “the backs”. Many of the Cambridge colleges, like the Oxford ones, are now co-residential. Sunlight glinting on water—the greens and bright splashes of color in the college gardens. Bridges—the Bridge of Sighs, the Mathematical Bridge, sometimes also called “Newton’s Bridge”, that has nothing to do with Newton at all. The story (spurious) that it was originally put together without nails or pegs and that some undergraduates decided to take it apart one night to see how it was done. They couldn’t get it back together, the story runs, which is why there are pegs in the bridge today. The story is undoubtedly false, since the original sketches for the bridge do show pegs. A lovely 16th Century bridge topped with fourteen stone balls, one of them with an orange-segment shaped piece missing. The river crowded with rowboats, kayaks, and, of course, other punts, but surprisingly quiet in some stretches. Off the punt, our knees surprisingly wobbly, for a walk down narrow, crooked streets, still retaining much of their haphazard medieval flavor. A modern “shopping precinct” with “conveniences”. We stopped to climb the tower of Great St. Mary’s—up the narrow winding stair, past the bell-chamber with its wire mesh gate. The bells, some of them left mouths up, presumably to ring for evening service. Lovely views of the spires and hills. A pair of young lovers noticing only each other,
Down the stairs and back to Kings, to queue with the others hastening toward Evensong—filing in to the candlelit nave, being seated next to the choir stalls. The unaccompanied service, simple and dignified, with the boys’ lovely voices, moving me to tears as they often do. The retiring collection, unpressured, a simple plate placed on a stand near the door.
The search for a place to have dinner—our working-class background asserting itself as we had difficulty finding a place open for dinner before seven. “Corndolly” souvenirs in the cases at the tourist center.
6 June
Only four more days to go on Britrail, and nine more to this trip. We would have been back in London at 7:30 this morning, except that there was a derailment outside Creve—freight cars carrying explosives, that the armory had to move out. So we’ve been re-routed all over the north of England—it’s pushing eleven a.m. and we’re still just barely outside Coventry.
One overnight in London before we headed for Scotland, since I had a bad headache, we packed up to vacate our room, then Dave went to King’s Cross station to check our two shoulder bags. (The people at the. Garth Hotel stored the other two for us again.) Lunch—pizza for me, double hamburger for Dave—then off to the Victoria and Albert for a pleasant Saturday afternoon. We saw the costume collection, some very good medieval things, more English painters (lots of John Constable, more Turners, and another de Loutherbourg or two. Exquisite needlework from the 17th Century on carefully-preserved rich garments. The Great Bed of Ware, resplendent in red hangings. The theatre collection was, alas, closed—very disappointing for Dave, although understandable, since at present they lack a curator. They may arrange, though, to give Dave access to the collection—he has to figure out what he needs, first, though. And where to find the time to do it.
Tea and a cream sweet for Dave, and grapefruit juice for me in the V & A self-service, and then we went down to the gift shop, which proved a disastrous temptation. Dave got leaflets on figures in theatre and a book on the Curtain Theatre. We got a Cinderella cut-out theatre for Vinessa, and some Victorian greeting cards and nursery rhymes notes,
Then a walk through Hyde Park around the Serpentine, where we sat and watched young boys sail dinghies and brave bathers in the chill water. One Irish setter optimistically trying to wriggle under a fence to chase birds, Young lovers in the grass, behaving as they usually do. Back up through Kensington Gardens, exquisite with flowers and fowl, to the statue of Peter Pan, surrounded when we first saw it, by children. I was a bit amazed at how much like a little boy he really does look. A quiet rest by the fountain, then a walk to Marble Arch, where we were panhandled for the first time in this trip, and decided to move on to a Kentucky Pancake House (!) for a fried-chicken-and-chips dinner. Then to King’s Cross Station to wait for our train to Edinburgh. (I bought some cheese-and-biscuits, which came in unexpectedly handy a couple of days later, and some soda.) There we were accosted, as we waited in line, by a drunken Glaswegian, who clapped his arms around both of us and gave us advice about our trip to Scotland—which we actually wound up taking, notwithstanding the source, since it coincided with our own plans. We both suspect him of being a pickpocket, but if he was we managed to frustrate him. At any rate, he was a legitimate traveler to Edinburgh, since I saw him at a phone booth in Waverly Station the next morning.
The sleeper—small, somewhat cramped, but an interesting experience. In some ways, an entirely new one for both of us! Being awakened in the morning by our red-headed, bearded Scots porter, who brought coffee and biscuits to our berths at seven-thirty.
First views of Edinburgh for Dave—the Waverly Bridge, the Walter Scott monument, the Castle, perched on an outcropping of rock high above the city, looking out toward the Firth of Fourth and the North Seas. Since the tourist office was closed, we called a number in Arthur Frommer and wound up at the Winkler guest house, a pleasant place where the current owner (Italian?) served us tea and toast while we waited for out room. Out for a rather mediocre Lothian Transport tour of places associated with Scott and Stevenson—we did get a glimpse of a small tower by a lake where Scott often visited a minister more interested in painting landscapes than in looking after his flock. Also the village kirk where Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather was the minister. The school for the deaf where Alexander Graham Bdell, working to improve hearing aids, perfected the invention of the telephone. But on the whole, the driver seemed much more interested in pointing out modern blocks of flats and housing developments, and in touting the advantages of the city’s sports and recreational complex.
After the coach tour, Edinburgh Castle—so much history in such a small place. Mons Meg, aimed out over the ramparts. St. Margaret’s chapel, dating from the 12th Century. The Scottish War Memorial, with its red-leather-bound, huge volumes in which were inscribed the names of all the Scottish war dead from WW I and II. The impact, especially of the first World War, coming home to us over and over again. The tiny, [ ] chamber, part of a larger apartment in which Queen Mary gave birth to James.
A walk from the Royal Mile, to the Palace of Holyrood House—closed until the 11th of June, but we did get a glimpse of the palace exterior and grounds. Dave indulged my passion for Indian food before we headed back to our guest house in a heavy fog which had come rolling in swiftly from the sea while we were eating dinner. The eerie loveliness of the city, monuments, landmarks, and street lamps showing dimly through the mist. David succumbing to the same spell I fell under thirteen years ago.
7 June 1979
Next morning we left Edinburgh, somewhat regretfully, for Inverness and a first look at the Scottish Highlands for both of us. There were thunderstorms and rain—appropriate somehow as the country changed from gently rolling hill to forbidding mountains. The train climbed steadily nearly the whole trip, past the tree line, to a pass about 1500 feet above it, snow still lying in the hollows and crevices, even in June. Glimpses of bright yellow gorse, heather not yet in bloom, trout streams and an occasional loch. I don’t think I’ll forget soon the look on David’s face as we passed through Birnham—astonishment, delight, even awe—to see the names that have been only names for so many years come suddenly alive and very real.
Our arrival at Inverness—very weary, so we located the tourist information center and booked a room through their service—it turned out to be at Rosemont, a place recommended in Frommer after all. No coach or boat tours for Monday evening, so after checking in with Mrs. Morrow, a young, round-faced, dark-haired and incorrigibly cheerful woman, we went out to shop—and shop we did. At the tourist center, where we went to book on the Scot II cruise of the Caledonian Canal and Loch Ness (!). I saw some graphics made at the Muir of Ord and thought what a lovely gift for Priscilla, so after making suitable inquiries we went off to Betty Mae Diarmid’s shop, where a cheerful, tweed-clad elderly woman opened up the shop next door—quite willing to do so for a 70 p. sale. But while we were in the tweed shop, we also spotted a lovely fabric for Kathy’s suit—a heather tweed in shades of brown, blue, and green that should look lovely on her. So we got four yards of the stuff—extravagant but worth it—then bought a blackwatch kilt for me. In a tiny craft shop nearby, a lovely Arran sweater for Dave—we’ve wanted to get him one for years, and now he has one.
Inverness—a jewel of a northern city surrounded by hills, the river Ness flowing wide and swift and clear over stones through the heart of the city. A nineteenth century castle built on the site where Malcom, in the 11th Century, built his own castle after having burned Macbeth’s to the ground. The site of Macbeth’s castle on a hill to the east, now covered with 19th Century houses, the history surviving only in the fact that that area of the city is named “Auldcastle”. The old well, recently restored, and very deep. At 7:30, a piper, kilted and carrying pipes covered in green velvet, drove up Castle Hill in a battered dark blue sedan, and flashing a quiet smile at those of us who’d come to hear him, began playing his pipes as he trod steadily back and forth before the castle gate. He played for half an hour in the evening light, beginning with a tune that sounded very like “Amazing Grace” and not at all inappropriate on bagpipes. When he had finished, he acknowledged the applause of the scattered crowd with smiles, nods, and “Good evenings”, walked swiftly to his car, and drove away.
We walked down the hill to still more shopping—in a Kiltmaker shop, we saw a gorgeous floor-length evening wrap skirt in the Mackenzie dress tartan, modern colors. Dave insisted that I try it on. Except for length, of course, it looked lovely, and when a salesman offered to have one made-to-measure and shipped, it was too much to resist, though it is horribly extravagant. Now to find excuses for wearing it (when it arrives, of course).
Back out into the evening light. We came into the hotel at twilight—after ten p.m.—and it finally dawned on us precisely how far north we were. I had some trouble sleeping, and so got up to write to Kathy. The birds started singing for dawn at three-thirty, and it was full twilight when I fell back asleep at five. We got up at eight, dressed, packed, and came down to breakfast to find that everyone else had breakfasted early and gone. Mrs. Morrow’s little boy, who on returning from school yesterday, insisted on admiring my hair—he must not see long hair very often, and mine was down for comfort—indulging in a few minutes’ play before leaving for school again. Mrs. Morrow readily allowed us to leave our bags while we touristed, and so we went off to catch the Limetree Avenue bus to the Muirtown Docks, where having arrived anal-retentively early, we waited half-an-hour before exchanging our reservation slips for tickets and boarding our boat for a leisurely cruise down the Caledonian Canal. People with dogs walked along the towpath, boats moored along the sides of the canal, the weather misty and chilly, the tops of the hills shrouded in clouds. Up to a canal lock, where we waited to be lifted up to the level of Loch Ness, and then—swiftly—into the Loch—a huge expanse of water, wild image of white-capped waves rushing toward us, rugged mountains, dim in mist, sloping right down to the water’s edge, a small sailboat ahead of us in the distance, the only other craft in sight. Desolate, improbably remote, forbidding—mist swirling to create fantastic images on the hillside—easy to see how legends grew up about the place. Watching it out of sight as the boat turned to head back into the canal, to meet another cruise steamer heading into the Loch.
The countryside along the canal, not gentle by any stretch, seemed curiously tame by comparison with all that wild magnificence. We came back into the cruiser cabin to warm up with hot tea and shortbread biscuits, then, when the boat docked, caught a bus back to the train station, where, on impulse, we cancelled our sleeper reservation from Edinburgh to London and decided not to catch the 2:15 train to Edinburgh. Instead, we booked the sleeper leaving Inveness at 8:55—the “Royal Scotsman”—I rather liked the sound of that—and decided to invest the rest of the time in being tourists in the highlands—so we rushed to the tourist center and booked on to a coach tour of Fort George, Cawdor Castle, and the battlefield at Colloton. Then back to Rossmount to get our bags, a rushed trip to the train setation to put them in lockers, and to the bud station in the ten minutes to spare, so we rushed to buy ham sandwiches to east on the bus—all our touristing had left us with no time for lunch.
On the bus, the countryside slipping past—at what seemed breakneck speed for the narrowness of the roads—the driver pointing out sights as we went along, pleasantly anecdotal. Fort George, a military museum, near the site of a garrison where Cromwell and his men once lived. On a lock, desolate, isolated. Double moated, walls and earthworks rising far above our heads. We climbed the ramparts to look at the countryside, empty, stretching away. Troops still garrisoned at Fort George—the reminder that it is still, in fact, a military post present in the security warning signs.
From Fort George to Cawdor Castle—a “murder hole” in the castle a reminder that thought the tale of Duncan’s murder by Macbeth here was a tarradiddle on Shakespeare’s part, there must have been other doings equally grim. The thorn-tree room, an old guardroom thought perhaps to be the site of the castle’s foundation, with an old thorn-tree rising through the middle of it. Legend has it that the first Thane of Cawdor was told to build his castle where a certain donkey lay down and it would stand forever. The donkey, as to story runs, lay down under the thorn tree and refused to budge, so the Thane built his castle around the tree. A dungeon, recently discovered, in one corner. Information signs, written by someone with a sense of humor, pointing out such things as a “medieval loo”—which had to be explained to one group of visiting Americans. The castle, feeling actually quite homey and lived in, an 18th Century (?) bedstead, in its original, tattered silk hangings, with a pile of current reading material on the stand beside it, the walls completely hung, in the medieval manner, with tapestries. Towers and battlements, a modern kitchen and an old-fashioned one, cellars, with some curious displays—stones and bones, a stuffed bird, another bird’s tomb, complete with brass plate, snowshoes, Victorian fire extinguishers and water buckets, snowshoes (for the gamekeeper to get around on in the wintertime). Doorways containing the admonition to duck “unless you are a Papuan pygmy” though a wine cellar was the only one Dave and I both had to suck for. Out into the castle gardens—a kitchen garden: most of the produce used in the castle is apparently actually grown here. Huge and beautifully-laid-out formal gardens, surrounded by a high stone wall, with gates into the “wild garden” and nature walks beyond. Vision of wildflowers—violets, lilies-of-the-valley and others which I cannot name, tall trees, rocky hillsides sloping steeply down to a clear and rushing stream—stepping away from the civilized world of the castle into an almost ethereally beautiful “enchanted forest”. Dave seized with a sudden and impossible-to-fulfill desire to stay there and camp.
Back out to the bus, and on to Colloton, where Bonnie Prince Charlie’s forces were defeated and the Hanoverian succession was established., still a source of bitterness for the Scots. The thatched roof cottages, our guide pointing out the house where Prince Charles and his officers stayed the night after the battle. The English buried in a common grave with a single stone to commemorate their fall, the Scots’ graves marked by their clan names. A cairn raised to honor the Scottish dead, with a warning to observers to do nothing unseemly to disturb the rest of those who sleep there. Even two people ignorant of Scottish history as we are could scarcely fail to be moved very deeply by it. We snipped a tiny bit of gorse blossom to bring away as a memento and pressed it in thew souvenir guidebook of Cawdor we’d bought. Back to Inverness, with quick glimpses of raspberry fields and the main-line British Railroad bridge over the valley of the River Ness, its arches so slim and high that they seem to float over the river and the valley rather than to be anchored solidly to it.
Dinner in a restaurant near the river, the radio blaring “Bye-Bye Miss American Pie” from the bar in the next room. We do not appreciate the omnipresence of radios blaring rock and country-and-western at us! Then to the old station to bard our train. We made ourselves quite comfortable—stowed the ladder to the upper berth beneath the lower to give us more space, propped ourselves up to watch the highlands slip by until the light faded. To the last, they remained shrouded in clouds, though faint rays of sunlight came through as we slipped south, and there were still patches of snow in the highest places. Dave, excited, saw a large herd of black-tailed deer grazing on the slope of one hill.
Then to bed. I woke up once, at around four, and caught a glimpse of cathedral and castle as Lancaster rushed past in the early morning light. Not long after we stopped at Creve for an extended delay. Because of an explosive train derailment our train had to be rerouted off the main line—the rerouting was long, but it did afford a glimpse of country we might not have seen otherwise.
Fun to see David’s reactions to Shrewsbury, exactly the same as mine when I came there entirely by accident thirteen years ago. The porter brough coffee and biscuits, explained the delay, brought a paper later on. Pleasant but tiring, and after we’d gotten in to Euston Station, walked carrying our bags to Gower Street and checked in—a much nicer room this time, large, curtained, lamped, with chairs, table, and bureau, and bath just down the hall—rushed to American Express to get our mail (letter from my mother, one from Kathy). I really needed some sleep—as, apparently, did David, for he napped an hour-and-a-half every bit as soundly as I did.
Then out into the evening—sunny and mild, quite the nicest night in London we’d had—to find ourselves a show. We tried the Aldwych first; the were showing Love’s Labours Lost, and the only tickets they had were for 5.30 pounds seats, so we gave it a miss and went away. We debated briefly trying to catch The Mousetrap, then on an impulse rushed to Covent Garden just as the five-minute bell before curtain was sounding, We bought 2 pounds seats for the slips, and heard more than we saw of a magnificent performance of La Boheme by the Royal Opera. By leaning far forward (stretching our necks by two inches, as the Oriental (Korean? Chinese?—his wife’s dress was definitely not Japanese) gentleman sitting next to us observed, we could just see the downstage areas, the stairway, and a bit of the upstage platform. Fortunately we were able to see nearly everything, except for Mimi’s first entrance. Brilliant singing—top-notch view of the orchestra and the conductor, the prompter’s box, and the backstage TV monitor which lets the performers watch the conductor.
It is difficult to talk about Kiri Te Kanawa’s performance except in superlatives. It was delicacy, innocence, strength, fragility all rolled up into one magnificent voice in a beautiful woman. And Diana Reed’s spiritually coquettish Musetta was a perfect foil.
The opera house itself—a beautiful horseshoe theatre, cream-colored tiers of seats, the obligatory bas-relief of Homer above the stage, the sky-blue dome. All cream and gilt and red velvet. Champagne drinkers in boxes, busy at interval, being “seen”. The red velvet curtain, being guided by a periwigged and knee-breeched footman, who also presented a nosegay of pink roses to the star at the final curtain call. The conversation of a pair of would-be “intellectuals”, as we descended the stairs, complaining that the story badly needed beefing up and that the entire second act—the Café Mormus sequence—was gratuitous. (The children in that scene, by the way, played by children from St. Clement Dane’s Grammar School.) Other things about the performances—the spirited dancers before the sharing of that miserable meal of bread and one herring, culminating in a bread fight which saw one fair-sized hunk tossed out into the audience, to the immense delight of the patrons sitting in the area where it landed. Chasing the landlord around the stage waving his wig at him in the first act. Between acts, small cups of rich chocolate ice cream, made with cream from a herd in the north and packaged specially for Covent Garden. With few exceptions, patrons are permitted to take refreshments into the theatres here (the ushers, in fact, sell them at the entrances) and are very careful. Our neighbors in the next seats over trying very hard to remember Beverly Sills’ name. The rows of chauffer-driven limousines waiting in the narrow lane outside the theatre. Musicians rushing out the stage door.
We walked home, as the night was still mild, stopping for a late supper on the way—at a Pizzaland, of all things—slices of pizza, baked potatoes, and coleslaw, accompanied by mugs of lager.
Home and to bed—our room this time was much more comfortable than previous ones at the Garth Hotel. We got up before eight this morning, hurriedly re-packed, breakfasted, and set off for Euston Station to leave for our last round of travel on Britrail Passes—Chester, a glimpse of the Lake District, we hope, to Salisbury, Stonehenge, and Canterbury, before settling in London again.
We are late again—signal failure at Northampton—but the journey has been pleasant—only an occasional warehouse or factory to break the vistas of hill, brook, hedgerow, country church, grazing cattle, horses, sheep men raking the fields. Sun in brief glimpses between clouds, simple lunch of cheese-and-tomato and ham sandwiches purchased from the buffet car. Stands of pine forest. Some of these areas quite heavily wooded, all very green and lovely.
Friday, June 8
8:20 a.m. on a
Train from Chester to
Crewe and bound for
Windermere.
We arrived in Chester nearly an hour late, and stopped at the first place we saw—the Albion Hotel, directly across the street from the rail station, where a seedy-looking man directed us to a seedy-looking room in that distinctly seedy-looking establishment. I succumbed to a fit of irrationality and insisted on paying for the room at once. The man brought our change and promised us a receipt in the morning, which did nothing whatsoever to allay my fears.
But the next day was sunny; we got out of the room immediately, found our way first to the bus station and then to the tourist information center, where we obtained a map and a list of restaurants which came in very handy later on. Chester was bright and cheerful—lively with people shopping, the town festive, hung with blue banners proclaiming “Chester—79 A.D.-1979 A.D.” Once again, that overwhelming sense of continuity and historicity affecting us both so profoundly. We walked along “the rows”, doble tiers of shops which have been there, in similar form, for over 500 years. In the Victorian restored part, we felt as though we’d stepped into another time, seeing the signs—gilt lettering on one door advertising a “high-class butcher”, another advertising fine silks. We gave ourselves up utterly to temptation, and after David had nipped across the street to Barclay’s to cash travelers’ checks, we went into the lounge of the Grosvenor Hotel, and were served tea from a silver service, and a plate of buttered scones, crumbly and delicious, which we gobbled with strawberry jam. I’d like to do it again, dressed as elegantly as the surroundings deserved.
Out again into the sunlight and to Chester Cathedral, parts of which date back to the 12th Century. A fine, vaulted medieval cloister-vestibule, surrounded with stone benches on which visitors waited to see the abbot. And arch, part of the original structure of the building. The original floor of the choir stalls, with medieval tiles laid in the floor—I wonder if the Cathedral’s ghosts walk two feet below the current floor, so that their astral projections are cut off at the knees? Fine carving, some of it 19th Century. One 1967 (?) window—a west window—suddenly lit with brilliant sunshine—definitely modern and yet not at all inharmonious with its surroundings. Five grave slabs—one bearing a foliated cross, another s knight’s sword—difficult, somehow, to believe that they are as old as they are.
A quick trip to the Cathedral bookstore, where we indulged in notecards with brass-rubbing figures, pamphlets on change-ringing and Christmas customs, and a booklet on Chester and the Cathedral, and then visited the lovely Garden of Remembrance.
On to the city wall—we mounted the steps near the ornate Victorian Clock over Eastgate and began our circumlocution, descending once for a look at the Roman Garden with its stately-looking double row of broken columns and ground “strewn with fragrant pink confetti”, then again at the embankment on the River Dee to watch the rapids, the pleasure boats, and the lovely old arched bridge. Much of the wall encloses modern blocks of flats, but most of the old gates and arches remain intact. We glimpsed the castle ruins, and saw the major towers—Charles’s tower, the water tower—there we descended again, to a little park containing the city’s public tennis courts, bowling green (!), and putting green, where we walked around the tower for a closer look, sat on a bench halfway up the stairs again to rest, and then continued, finally coming back to the old city and a view of the Cathedral that was very nearly sufficient reason of itself to have walked the two miles around. Out of curiosity, we climbed down once more to have a look at the new and very modern bell tower of the Cathedral, at the rear of the Garden of Remembrance, near the roses with not-yet-open buds.
Oh, yes, while we were at the Cathedral, Dave stopped a jeans-clad blonde woman who was measuring arrow-slit windows outside the Cathedral with a folding ruler and making notations, and asked her if she was an architecture student. “Thank you, sir,” she replied, “but I’ve been a fully-qualified architect these thirty years.” Dave was a bit embarrassed, but it was a delightful sort of error and gave us a chance for a few minutes’ pleasant conversation on achieving harmony between old and new.
When we descended from the wall at Eastgate where we’d begun, it was nearly seven and, tea and scones notwithstanding, we decided it was time for supper. Consulting the tourist information board’s guide, we chose the Royal Oak, a restored half-timbered pub on Foregate Street, whose dining room features 17th Century linenfold paneling, leaded glass window facing, alas, a modern building under construction, and a restored, white stone fireplace dating from 1601. We enjoyed a pleasant meal served by a willing-to-please waitress, capped it luxuriously with rich Black Forest gateau topped with fresh cream, coffee and more cream, and thin chocolate mint wafers. We set off somewhat regretfully for our hotel., chatting as we did about our sense of regret at having to leave and pipe-dreaming a bit about settling down in Oxford. Dave has fallen under the same spell I did, and oh! I’m glad.
The hotel was no better than we remembered it, and between my visions of being done out of 8 pounds or murdered in our beds or cat-burgled, and a row in the halls sometime after midnight, I did not sleep much and woke up feeling miserable. Breakfast, which was decent, tea, and the prompt delivery of our receipt plus the news from the information center at the train station that we could indeed get earlier connections for Windermere made me feel much better.
We got our train to Crewe, enjoying the sunny ride and a glimpse of Beeston Castle on a hilltop in the not-too-far distance. Much industrialization between Crewe and Preston, where we are waiting for our train to Oxenholme and then to Windermere.
June 9, 1979
On the train from Preston to Oxenholme, for part of the trip we enjoyed the company of a family of four, obviously train buffs, spotting engines by number and type, and looking up their names in a British Rail booklet. The youngest was an angelic-looking little girl a good bit younger than Amanda Lewis, but whose personality reminded me a bit of her, and who was pretend-reading, first her older brother Stephen’s British Rail book, and then, of all things, a Scooby-Doo cartoon book. Both parents seemed equally to be enjoying both children and trains.
The rest of the journey we had the carriage to ourselves, and the Windermere train was waiting for us at Oxenholme, although the day, which had started out sunny, had turned a bit cloudy with occasional sprinkles of rain. The tourist center was just below the rail station at Windermere, and we booked a room without difficulty, just a few blocks from the station. It was a quiet, pretty little house on a side street not far from Lake Road, and Mrs. Holcraft was a quiet, almost shy woman who nonetheless managed to give us quite a lot of help in a very short time. She showed up to our room, which looked freshly painted and papered, skylit, with a spotless flowered chenille spread—a very pleasant place to spend a night and especially so in contrast with the residence of the night before. We’d thought we might book a coach tour—one of the Moutain Goat ones to some Wordsworth places. Our hostess mentioned that her husband also drove for them, and that she thought that he would be up with a picnic group today. She offered to call and get us a provisional booking, and we accepted with pleasure. Then we set off to walk toward Bowness Pier to book an evening cruise as well (how extravagant of us!) but thought better of it, and went first to confirm the booking and then to have lunch. To our dismay, we learned that sic people have to book for the tour to go (only 5 were booked), and we wouldn’t know until it was nearly time to go.
11 June 1979
The sense of time slipping away uncontrolled is overwhelming and a bit depressing, and yesterday an incident marred seriously what had been a nearly perfect holiday. We were in Salisbury, walking out Castle Road to Old Sarum, when a pair of motorcyclists were struck by a car. I still have a vivid image in my mind of one young man flying through the air. Someone called an ambulance and police at once, and they arrived in a matter of moments. Dave and I decided that the best thing to do, since people who were much nearer than we were attending to things as best they could be done, was to walk on and not become gawkers., but I still feel vaguely as if we left something important undone—that we ought to have done something, and I can’t shake the sense of unease. I hope the young man was not seriously injured, though I’m afraid he must have been. He was, we know, at least alive.
I’m not sure how fully I can write of other happenings during the last few days, but for the sake of record at least, and because they were wonderful for their own sakes, I am going to try.
The little bit of time we had in Windermere enabled us to do a great many things. The tour did, in fact, go, as we learned it would after enjoying a bit of the Roast beef of old England in a shop near the booking office. The driver, who gave his name only as Brian, turned out later and unbeknownst to us, to be Brian Holcroft, the husband of Frances Holcroft, our landlady at Lynwood. His first question was, had we been wanting to see Beatrix Potter’s house. (That in itself ought to have tipped us off if I had not been so dense.) Seems the half-day tour we had selected normally doesn’t stop there, as we had just surmised for ourselves from a more careful reading of the description in the brochure. So he promised to try to add it on, and we picked up another six people, including a couple of Britishers who’d transplanted themselves to Australia and were making their first visit back in many years, and realizing as they traveled how much they had missed England.
We went up Lake Windermere, the largest lake in England, ten miles wide, one across and 219 feet (?) deep at its deepest point for the statistics lovers among us, and a perfect and nearly indescribable jewel of a lake, bordered with neat villages, cottages built of blue Silurian slate, bursts of flowers—I remember especially deep, deep pink azaleas, white lilacs, buttercups, bluebells, and everywhere a green beyond describing for its richness. One row of large houses with well-kept gardens Brian called millionaire’s row—a group of showplaces which pre-war kept staffs of butler, cook, gardener, but which now take in paying guests and which operate as bed-and-breakfast places simply so that their owners can hold on to them.
An old, dilapidated factory building, rescued by the National Trust. It once made bobbins for the textile industry in its early stages and will, if the contractors ever complete the work, become a museum of spinning and weaving, displaying old looms, “spinning jennys” etc. Sheep everywhere. Ambleside, and the steamers, two of them 90 years old, two forty, which British Rail has refurbished and operates as pleasure cruisers on Windermere. Three plastic, steel, and fiberglass monstrosities, the Miss Cumbria I, II, and III, imported by a Bowness shipping company at colossal expense.
12 June
I’m sitting near a row of blossoming trees in Headington Hill Park, away from the bustle and clamor of the street in Oxford. Dave should have arrived at last in Birmingham, and if his day is profitable I should see him looking pleased in a few hours.
I lunched inexpensively (75 p. for quiche, tea, and fruit salad at St. Aldate’s Coffee Shop) and then set off down the High Street just as students in sub-fusc and gowns, many of them wearing flowers, carrying bottles of champagne, and looking very pleased with themselves, came out from their examinations. The park is quiet—birds, few people—two mothers pushing babies in prams off in the distance, an elderly couple, a woman in a grey flannel skirt walking a small grey miniature dog of some sort which had very shaggy hair, another woman, clad in slacks and a plaid shirt, on a bench a little way down.
Windermere is starting to fade so quickly I’d like to capture as much of it as I can briefly. The steep ascent up the hill to Little Sawrey in an attempt to visit Beatrix Potter’s house, “Hilltop”, a noble attempt on Brian’s part, although, alas, the house turned out to be closed on Fridays—we did get a little glimpse of it, though, and the lake below it where, Mr. Holcroft claimed, I suspect tongue-in-cheek, “Beatrix Potter’s little frog,” Mr. Jeremy Fisher, lived.
From “Hilltop”, we visited one of the most famous spots in the Lake Country, Tarn Hows. Once three small glacial lakes (Tarn is Norse, I believe, for “tear”, or “small lake”). The streams which fed these [ ] were dammed to create one jewel of a lake nestled amid hills and pine trees. We got off the coach and scrambled to the top of one very high peak where we could see the Hows to one side and Coniston Water on the other. Dave, excited, found traces of deer. (I think that pleased him almost as much as the charcoal burners’ hill above Windermere.)
15 June
We are flying off the coast of Newfoundland, St. John’s below us. I hardly know where to begin summarizing the events of the last few days. The rest of our journey through the Lake District was as lovely as the first—a breathtaking (quite literally) drive through a narrow winding mountain road across the Coniston Falls—the Old Man of Coniston shrouded in mists—gates to keep the sheep from wandering, which our driver had to get out to open and then again to shut. At Hawkshead, Wordsworth’s grammar school—with texts from Wordsworth painted on the walls (hardly authentic, I’m afraid) and Wordsworth’s name carved on a desk carefully preserved under glass. Most of the desk carving was so thorough we wondered where the schoolmaster must have been while it was going on. In Hawkshead also, the parish church, unlike any I have ever seen, exterior sober—once “the white lady of Hawkshead” as Wordsworth called her, plastered over in gray, interior arched and airy, with a ringing chamber on the floor, in view of the congregation. (I wonder if that was a nineteenth-century modification.) Rows of 16th Century-17th Century houses and shops. On the fells, a sheer cliff used for teaching rock-climbing—one young man in an orange cap scaling them, and our resolve to go back and do some fell-walking ourselves. A South African couple on the coach tour. (Dave, eating apple pie with cream in a restaurant in Windermere, had a bit of a tummy-ache when we started the tour, but recovere4d sufficiently to enjoy an ice-cream cone—with flake—in Hawkshead, where we also bought a copy of Mr. Jeremy Fisher as a memento of having been in Hawkshead/Sawrey. He had suspected the cream was going bad; another lady did in fact return one—but he ate his anyway. I wouldn’t mention it except that he specifically asked me to!) The narrow road winding over the fells—so narrow that occasionally car or bus had to back down a steep incline, and so steep that I was afraid once or twice the “mountain goat” (our coach) wouldn’t make it over. Brian, enjoying his joke, dropped us off at the Lynwood, his house. (Dave especially enjoyed having only the name of the house, not a street address—especially as the name of the house was, coincidentally, the same as the name of the street he grew up on.)
We stopped back at the room to freshen up. It was a pleasant, pretty room, white, gold, and pink, with a skylight. The house looked fresh—newly done over, as indeed we learned it had been. And there Frances Holcroft learned—to her surprise and ours—that “her Brian” had been our driver.
Then out for dinner and to the Bowness pier to book for our cruise on Lake Windermere—while the boat was one of the plastic-and-steel Miss Cumbrians, the ride was lovely—along the shores, islands, the sun setting behind the hills, dusk deepening. One or two small sailing boats on the lake. A couple of incongruities—water skiers in wet suits, pupils, apparently, of a water-skiing school. The brass band blaring on one of the Britrail steamers, evidently out for a party cruise.
At this point she breaks off, presumably because the plane was landing. We did, in fact, continue our travels as she indicated above, but she simply did not have time to complete her documentation. Three days after we got home we went to Berkeley, where she had a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship for eight weeks. I returned home to teach a summer class at Oakland University to pay back the load we took out to take the trip. It was probably the most eventful summer of our 55 plus years together.
No comments:
Post a Comment