Time and Again

Once upon a Doorstep....was a Room with a View (upper left)

Walking down the street the other day, I came to this doorway -- 7 Bedford Place.  Looking up and thinking back, I calculated that it was exactly 30 years ago as a graduate student in London I stayed at this place.  What tranquil hours I spent absorbed in my books in the room, upper left.

1984 Wayback Machine: 

Tall Georgian Windows at 7 Bedford Pl.

Beyond reading my books, I was writing in my journal to help crystallize my fuzzy ideas, researching, and writing papers on English history, art, architecture, literature, theatre....  Much time was spent over William Blake, and when an afternoon grew drowsy, I had only to step down the street toward Bloomsbury Square, round the corner to the British Museum, and there find -- among a million other objects of soul-inspiring interest -- originals of Blake's art.  Very handy, that, when writing on the relations between Blake's spiritual vision, his art, and his poetry.  But there were other writers, among them one who worked in Bloomsbury at Faber, whose door was just across Russell Square -- T. S. Eliot:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
.     .     .     .     .
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Indeed, there was time enough.  I value those idyllic days and hours even though I have come to realize that all along I had been preparing my answers to face the questions that I myself, as well as others, dropped on my plate over these past 30 years.

Bear with a little nostalgia?  There was Kurt -- a student/worker at Number 7: when he got free from work late at night, he and I would dash to Holborn tube station, head through two other underground lines to St. Paul's, rush round the back of St. Paul's through the churchyard, across roads dotted with traffic, to the Samuel Pepys' -- a pub in an old, Dickensian-age warehouse on the river -- arriving just in time for a pint or two of Bass Ale on the balcony and some talk over the glimmering lights on the Thames before the pub closed up for the night.

And there was the evening when Peter O'Toole played Professor Higgins to Jackie Smith-Wood's Eliza at the Shaftesbury Theatre.  A young woman-acquaintance joined me, and we delighted in the production -- a liquefied O'Toole nearly slopped himself off the edge of the stage, but was of course still brilliantly acting!

                             (Guardian)                                                (Getty)

(myfavoritepeterotoole.tumblr.com)

And the great John Thaw was playing Eliza's father long before he played Morse.  After the play, I well remember, there was meaningful conversation over pasta in Sicilian Avenue.

Another night there were two salesmen, Mr. Glasgow and Mr. Exeter -- and then a woman who, swaying to the cosmic forces, arrived at the Swan in Cosmo Place to lead us to an overwhelming answer...[Link].

And there was a pigeon (in London?!) who wandered from the balcony into my room through the floor-to-ceiling window while I was writing.  How long he'd been there, who knows?  Upon hearing a noise, I turned, spied him, and invited him to leave.  Deft was his turn and stately his gait as he sauntered out onto the balcony to look back but once and then fly off -- apparently a statue nearby hadn't quite enough poop on its head already.

And the Tube cars still had wooden slats on the floors.

Wooden Floor Slats on the Piccadilly Line (1984)

That was a time.  And again?

When, years later, I brought my students to London -- once, here, to 7 Bedford Place -- I hoped they might try to find their own London, begin finding a face to meet the faces that they'd meet -- if they hadn't already begun.  My hopes were they'd begin to ask and to answer questions for and of themselves, to see what's on the plate.  The poets offer some clues.  The painters offer some as well.  The theatre offers some help.  Studying history offers some direction.  Not least, the pub can offer some help -- if you've both good company and conversation.  Honesty about questions and answers is of the greatest help.

I've mentioned elsewhere in this blog that much of what London was in 1984 is gone -- but much more of it, I'm realizing, is still intact.  A great deal of it remains the same despite being some centuries old -- like Number 7.

It certainly remains, both as it was in 1984 and as it is now, deeply set within me.

Antiques: The Presence of the Past

No Label Necessary Here

Camden Passage. Every Saturday in a little street just outside the Angel tube station is a place where some antique dealers have shops -- and others have card tables set up or even cloths spread on the ground -- to display the residue of human pasts.  You can find anything there: a used light bulb, Victorian door key, 18th-century nautical paintings, Louis XVIII chairs, an early 16th-century whale's tooth with a sex scene carved upon it -- and there's everything between.

I have all the light bulbs I need, no door for the key, no place for the chairs to fit in, appreciate the painting, but the whale's tooth says something: things (and maybe sailors) don't change much over centuries, do they?

While it is true that the antique market on Saturdays has diminished in quality and size over the last decade, there was a section of Camden Passage years back where you could find military paraphernalia.  I mean, for £11,000 (this is a little expensive: today that is $18,040), you could purchase a First World War DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross) awarded to a man who did some unheard-of stunts in a kite made of cloth and wood that had a heavy, metal dynamo with a fan on the front and which hurled him past bullets (or not) at the amazing top speed of 115 miles per hour.

A 1918 DFC

Bits, pieces, flotsam and jetsam: antiques.  The things that flow in and out of people's lives.  Sometimes, obviously, people internally move away from the things they owned, selling them as they grow beyond the import of the objects.  At other times survivors of the deceased are left to figure out what to do with the objects left behind.  But the objects indicate one thing that the Modernists knew very well: the past is always present with us.

T. S. Eliot put it this way (in Burnt Norton):

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

In buying an antique, there is the hope that collecting an item of someone's past may give our own present a missing element -- and make our future moments more blissful.  True, no?  Well, that's bleak.  But is it solely our own discontents that force us to purchase?

I'm not so certain.  Some years back I bought a brass, black-powder cannon in Camden Passage and built a heavy carriage for it so I wouldn't harm the more delicate, original carriage when I fired it.

On New Year's Eve, I load the little noise-maker with black powder and a paper wad, take it out onto the deck over the snow, and light the fuse.  The fire and the bang bring in the new year with a lively POP replete with a flash of light; the cannon rolls back, and the neighborhood echoes the report.  On the 4th of July (which the English here would rather not mention), it's the same -- but without the snow.

Cannon from Camden Passage, with Heavy Carriage (above)

In firing the cannon, I don't think so much about the person who made this exquisite little object, nor about who sold it to the antique dealer in Camden Passage; I'm thinking of the miniature marvel of how it works.  But there's this: the previous owners' past has made a number of my present moments a delightful (and brightly noisy) place.

Other objects bring more somber thought.  For instance, in Camden Passage years back, there was a section of the market where Nazi paraphernalia was sold -- swastika flags, busts of Hitler, WWII iron crosses with swastikas on them (which WWI iron crosses did not have).  These things I do not want to see, touch, nor -- obviously -- own.  They are illegal to sell or purchase on the continent.  Some people, then, come to the UK to purchase them.  Still, in Germany two years ago, I found some of these items being sold at an outdoor antique market despite the laws.

I like my celebratory cannon.  It makes a humbly grand sound on a holiday.  In thinking of it going off this New Years' Eve with friends present, I anticipate its happy influence in future, even while it sits this present moment at my home gathering a little dust.  And in its past....who knows where it was?

Eliot was right about external time even though he was speaking about the internal significance of the past on our present moments.  Perhaps head to an antique market.  Find something of the past for your present and, in consequence, enjoy a unique moment in your future.

Tattershall Castle

 From Kenneth Graham's Wind in the Willows:

   The [Water] Rat sculled smartly across and made fast. Then he held up his forepaw as the Mole stepped gingerly down. `Lean on that!' he said. `Now then, step lively!' and the Mole to his surprise and rapture found himself actually seated in the stern of a real boat.

     This has been a wonderful day!' said he, as the Rat shoved off and took to the sculls again. `Do you know, I've never been in a boat before in all my life.'

      `What?' cried the Rat, open-mouthed: `Never been in a--you never--well I--what have you been doing, then?'

     `Is it so nice as all that?' asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

     `Nice? It's the ONLY thing,' said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. `Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING--absolute nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,' he went on dreamily: `messing--about--in--boats; messing----'

One place that over the years represents London life for me is the Tattershall Castle [link], a ship moored in the Thames.  No, you can't row her.  She's too big.  And she's permanently moored at the embankment.  She bobs in the waves, rises and falls with the tide, pitches in her moorings, and...doesn't go anywhere.  But she's fun to board on a social journey for all that.  After all, messing about in boats is the ONLY thing!

She has a nice restaurant below decks and two pubs above, fore and aft.  On nice days, you sit above decks on thick, varnished mahogany benches (as should be on a ship), and there are brass fittings (polished) studding the rails and gunwales.  You sit in the sun and watch boats working up and down the river.  On a rainy day, you can sit below in the restaurant and watch the river traffic out the windows.

Tattershall Castle

What is especially nice about having dinner and a pint on this ship -- and this feature is experienced most immediately by men, I suppose  -- is the helpful sensation one gets while peeing.  Yes.  It's true.

You see, you have a pint, sit talking and boat-watching for any amount of time, and then -- as the need becomes more evident -- head for the head (as they say on a ship).  So you stand there at the urinal, and the Tattershall bobs and rolls on the waves of a passing boat or sways in the strong tidal current moving up or down the river.  And as you sway you think (it's all very logical) -- "No!  No way!  I've only had one pint -- and food with it!"  One bloke along the urinal line pipes up: "Blimey!  Ah'm swayin' like six pints and Ah've only 'ad woone!"  He commented further on his savings -- it's not the cheapest pint in London.

Tattershall Castle in Her Glory Days

Which brings up a question: when exactly were her "glory days"?  She's certainly bringing in more money for her owners now without ever leaving a mooring than she did when underweigh as a lake ferry. And it's pretty soft work these days.

Ironies.

Not to dwell on beer (which is a marked and standard feature of life in England), but..."IPA" bitter stands for "India Pale Ale."  And if I drink one or two of these, you know what happens?  Yes.  I - P - A bitter....  After all, it's good for what Ales you.  Oh my Guinness.

My.  That was stout.

So boats and ships: England being an island has at the center of its collective identity the presence of the sea.  For most of the history of this country, if you wanted to get somewhere else from here, you had to go by ship, and then -- later in English history -- by plane.  Now, of course, there's the amazing Chunnel: the tunnel under the English Channel (or as the French call it, the Pas de Calais).

It's easy to forget England is an island, especially with planes and the Chunnel, but it remains, as Shakespeare called it,

 This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle...

Just think of England as a castle with a great mote round it -- or, it's sort of like a boat you can't row 'cause it's too big...and it's permanently moored.

The Red Thread

 A brief passage from Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway:

"And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by a thin thread, which would stretch and stretch ... as they walked across London; as if one's friends were attached to one's body ... by a thin thread...."

And so it is with friends, is it not?  No matter where you wander, or where I go, we remain connected as we go through our days.

But more.  There's this, from a Wiki:

"According to [a Chinese] myth, the gods tie an invisible red string around the ankles of men and women who are destined to be soul mates and will one day marry each other....  The two people connected by the red thread are destined lovers, regardless of time, place or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break.

"One story featuring the red string of fate involves a young boy. Walking home one night, a young boy sees an old man standing beneath the moonlight (Yue Xia Lao). The man explains to the boy that he is attached to his destined wife by a red thread. Yue Xia Lao shows the boy the young girl who is destined to be his wife. Being young and having no interest in having a wife, the young boy picks up a rock and throws it at the girl, running away. Many years later, when the boy has grown into a young man, his parents arrange a wedding for him. On the night of his wedding, his wife waits for him in their bedroom, with the traditional veil covering her face. Raising it, the man is delighted to find that his wife is one of the great beauties of his village. However, she wears an adornment on her eyebrow. He asks her why she wears it and she responds that when she was a young girl, a boy threw a rock at her that struck her, leaving a scar on her eyebrow. She self-consciously wears the adornment to cover it up. The woman is, in fact, the same young girl connected to the man by the red thread shown to him by Yue Xia Lao back in his childhood."

Some have also seen the thread tied between mothers and daughters; Lucy Kaplansky's CD Red Thread and title song have to do with this myth.

And in Nguyen Du's tale of Kieu, there's this, about two people betrothed, but fates intervene and they are separated:

By the red leaf, the crimson thread,
we're bound for life—our oath proves mutual faith. (ll. 459-460)

It's painful to leave for other places, leaving people behind.  It pulls.  Yeah: we're still connected, but the thread pulls.  And I suppose it's the weight on the pull, the degree of pain, that lets us know who is most precious to us.  Old Mr. Emerson in E. M. Forster's Room with a View perhaps said it best:

The only impossible thing is to love and to part.

In my case, it's not the "for forever" that Emerson meant.

I feel the pull already.  Friends, family...Michael..., but mostly, of course, my love.