My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day Twenty-five

Reinspired (and shamed) by Whisker's accounts of her recent trip to Paris, and having decided that this evening is shot for patching holes in woodwork anyway, I've typed up another day's worth of my Europe '88-'89 journal and now post it here.

When we last saw our heroine, she was dozing late at night in a First Class compartment of the Venice-Vienna train and had just crossed over into Austria . . .

Friday, 30 December, 1988
Wien

Sleeping sitting up is fun. But doing so in the 2nd class car would’ve been even more entertaining.

To Wien by 7:00 AM. Usual activities at the station-- get some Austrian coins, change for the remaining Italian bills, a public transportation pass, and a map of the city at the information office; find a locker and stash my stuff in; find a john and decide in this case I had to swallow my pride and pay the money, though I’m customarily against that sort of thing. Then I consulted the map and headed for the city to find a hotel.

Going out the door of the station I had my perfect record broken. A Turk or some other Middle Eastern type at the door offered to sell me a newspaper and, when he noticed my German wasn’t up to par, said, in English, "Oh, you are a visitor! American?"

What did I do wrong?

But the day promised to be clear and beautiful, so I wasn’t too devastated. Walked up Prinz Eugenstrasse towards the inner city ring, then over to the west a bit, to around Margaretenstrasse, to find the Pensionen [rooms to let] described in the Frommer.

Well. Of the three in that general area, one was booked up and I couldn’t find the other two. Around 8:30 I had some tea and rolls in a nearby Konditorei [pastry shop] and endeavored to recruit my strength. Walked around some more after that looking for a place to stay but couldn’t locate anything that looked like I could afford it. I was too tired to mess with it so I decided to go to the reservation bureau at the Opernpassage.

On the way there I came across one of the reasons I came to Wien-- J. M. Olbrich’s Seccession building. The sun was shining on the closed coppery-bronze doors and the gilding on the facade and the dome and it looked just lovely.

Out of the confusion and crush at the reservation office and despite my limited German I emerged with a room at the Hotel Drei Könige (appropriate for this time of year, I think!) on Schleifmühlgasse (near where I’d been looking before) for ÖS 440, with shower. A job for the Visa card again.

Back to the Südbahnhof (this time by U-Bahn) for my bags, but I couldn’t recall where my locker was. Another Middle Eastern type, this one more middle class looking in a suit and tie, asked me what I was looking for. I told him, he directed me to the right spot, but then thought this entitled him to invite me out for a drink. Nein, nein, danke. Had to tell him two or three times before he got the point.

Busses to the hotel. (Wien’s Underground isn’t as extensive as Paris’s.) The entrance is nice enough, leaded glass in the door and a clerk on duty at the desk, but the room is the usual monastery cell. It has an outside window, though.

The desk clerk said they had to keep my passport at the desk. That’s a first.

I did a little better than I did in Paris. Changed my clothes and did not sit staring catatonically at the walls. Instead, took my camera and blundered my way back to the Secession building, where for the first time I was able to use my International Student ID to get a discount on the admission.

I was amused to see Rollo’s*† model of the building put together and stuck up on the wall in the entrance lobby.

The current exhibits are all new work except for Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze downstairs. There were some colossally-sized mezzotints upstairs that are abstract in format but which can’t help but be interpreted as having cosmotological implications. There were some things about them that made me consider what needs to be done for my Quid Sum Miser painting-- which needs to be executed, along with the rest of the Requiem series,‡ no way around it.

There was some deconstructivist work, arranged piles of broken concrete blocks and such, in another room. I think it was supposed to be a commentary on the destruction of WWII.

I have to confess I had never heard of Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, now restored and remounted in the room downstairs. And at first I couldn’t figure out what it had to do with Beethoven, though when I saw it I remembered seeing some of the figures. But I found out it was done for the exhibition of Max Klinger’s Beethoven statue and is Klimt’s interpretation of the music and text of the Ninth Symphony.

The sketches were displayed in a case in the center of the room and I really think that in some cases the sketches are better than the finished paintings.

Especially the one for "Dieses Küss für ganzen Welt" ["This kiss for the whole world]. Klimt’s interpretation of that phrase is not at all what I would have chosen, as I don’t see Schiller talking about that sort of privatized man-woman love, but something much broader and all-encompassing. But since Klimt chose to express the idea with the former image, I do say that in the painting his lovers are rather stiff and uncomfortable-looking. The embrace in the sketch is much more fluid and free and poetic.

My favorite part of the frieze is the one entitled "Die Sehnsucht nach Glücklich findet Stillung im Poesie" ["The yearning for happiness finds surcease in poetry"]. Do you think so? I hope it. At least I have to try . . .

Back in the entry foyer I purchased the usual lot of postcards and a book, in English, that tells where all the Secessionist/Jungenstil works are located in Vienna. I asked the girl at the cash desk how sales were going on Rollo’s model. She said, not so great, actually . . . Me, I think he needs better color on the thing. It’s rather washed out and boring as it is.

Hungry, so after I left there I went across to a booth in the Nasch Markt and had two open-faced sandwiches, herring and black caviar. Isn’t that a kill? A 90¢ caviar sandwich.

While I was eating there I read in my new book that Otto Wagner’s Majolica House was not too far away, down the Linke Wienzeile, so I went down to look before the light faded. The buildings have been nicely kept up and it was a wonderful thing to find them there in the middle of everything, as a real apartment residences, and not just as illustrations in an art book.

Back down through the Nasch Markt but didn’t buy anything. Went on to Karlsplatz and took the U-Bahn over to Schwedensplatz, to find Wagner’s Postal Savings Bank (Postsparkasse), which is in that neighborhood. By the time I did it was getting pretty dark so I’ll have to come back to really get a look at it.

Wandered over and looked at the Donau Kanal with the city lights reflected in it, then caught the subway back to Karlsplatz.

Stopped at a grocery store in the Wiedner Hauptstrasse for some shampoo and also picked up some crackers that turn out to be like Carr’s wheatmeal biscuits and some positively decadent chocolate meringue things, that I must stop inhaling.

Crossing the street after leaving the store, I noticed a couple of Middle Eastern newsvendors standing on the corner. And one of them-- I'm thinking the same one who spoke to me this morning at the train station-- saw me and called out, "Eh, Americana!"

Rats! When it comes it comes with a vengeance, doesn’t it?

At the hotel in the lobby, the desk clerk asked what my plans were for New Year’s Eve (Silvesterabend), because the hotel had a package tour to Grinzing for ÖS 650, all inclusive. But if I wanted to be in on it I had to reserve a place within the next half hour.

Oh. That meant this was a good time to pay my respects to Rollo Schipfner’s mother. Maybe she might have some suggestions. So using the phone at the desk, I dialled her number.

Well. This is a surprise. Rollo and Connie†† are here, in Wien, even as we speak. Frau Schipfner put Rollo on and as we were trying to figure out when we might be able to get together, his mother suggested I come to her house tomorrow night for the New Year's Eve get together she was having with Rollo and Connie and a few of her friends. This sounded better than going drinking with a bunch of total strangers so I accepted the kind invitation and got directions about the U-Bahn and tram from Rollo.

Just before we rang off, he suggested I go over to the Staatsoper tonight and try to get a standing room ticket to Lucia di Lammermoor. But there was no way. Nervous energy lasts only so long. I was falling asleep on top of my Vienna 1900 guidebook. I roused myself long enough to redo my fingernails but that was it. I’m gone.

_______________________
†The man I'm calling Rollo Schipfner was a twenty-something Vienna native and architect then living in the States. Up to the time I'd left Kansas City for my Oxford sabbatical year, we'd worked at the same architecture firm. Before he'd left Austria he'd designed a model kit of the Secession Building (der Goldener Kohl) and they had it for sale there.
‡A projected series of ten oil paintings I had since college planned to do on the movements of the Berlioz Requiem. Alas, in all these years I've only finished the first one.
††Rollo's American wife.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Twenty-one

Monday, 26 December, 1988
St. Stephen’s Day
Löhenthal* to Hapsburg to Königsfelden to Zürich to Löhenthal

I’d intended to take off for Florence this morning but it didn’t seem time yet to go. And Lukas’s* parents suggested a trip along a scenic route in the process of returning Frau Heimdorfer* to Zürich.

So we visited the castle which is the actual first seat of the Hapsburg family (who were originally from Alsace-Lorraine, it turns out) and then a church where one of the later Hapsburgs was assassinated,† Königsfelden. It was closed and we couldn’t go in.

After dropping Granny off, Herr Renzberger* took us up to a restaurant overlooking Zürich for coffee and cake. Unfortunately yesterday was much nicer; today’s fog rather obscured the view, a fact Lukas’s mother continued to apologise for.

Thereafter we drove around the city of Zürich a bit, looking at their Christmas decorations.

Then we headed back to Löhenthal. A couple times Max* got a little spacy at the wheel and let the car drift over the righthand white line. "Achtung, Max!" says Greti*, and each time he insists he’s awake . . .

That's right, Herr Renzberger, keep the car on the road . . . I may have been getting more and more depressed today but it would not be a good day to die. Any way you look at it, I couldn’t and wouldn’t choose Lukas for my leading man in a tragic and romantic death scene, especially the way he was behaving. It’d be absurd.

On our return I got out my train schedule and began to figure out what’s happening in the next week and a half. I’ve decided to go back to Oxford the 6th. My train pass ends that day anyway.

They asked me when I was leaving and seemed surprised when I said tomorrow. But I think it’s a good idea. If I stay any longer I’m liable to allow myself to blow up at Lukas when he says or does (or doesn’t do) some little thing, just to try to get some interaction out of him.

I went to his room this morning and talked to him about his thesis paper on pastoral counselling. He didn’t invite me in and we conducted the conversation with me standing in the doorway. Still, happily, I got him to do the talking. But it felt more like an interview than a conversation.

And I discovered he’s not the person to ask when trying to find out how he knows he has a call to the ministry. That sort of thing apparently isn’t Done in the Reformed church. They seem more hyper-intellectual than a pile of bleeding Presbyterians.

Maybe I’ll ask Nigel*. It’s important, because I’m looking for that sort of certainty for myself.

Did something decadent after everyone went to bed. Pulled out one of Lukas’s English language books and read it through. A work of fiction, not all that well written, but still I needed something of the sort.

Yeah, I know that sounds strange. I don't mean I needed a badly-written book; what I needed what something in English that gave me something to think about besides Lukas's inexplicable behaviour and how uncomfortable it's making me.

It was an older book called In His Steps by a guy named Charles Sheldon. It starts out all right, with a pastor and some of his church members resolving to live their lives according to the maxim, "What would Jesus do?" But the author has everyone in the town eventually jumping on board and the whole town being gloriously transformed and the movement eventually spreading to Chicago and points beyond. Sure, it'd be nice, but is it real? I mean, even if some people could be consistent about keeping this up, is it really believable that there would be no hold-outs at all?

By the time I finished it, it was making me uncomfortable in its own way. If you can think of God as the Author of human history, it's almost like Sheldon is standing there confronting the Lord with his hands on his hips, saying, "Hey, God, I can make my characters be totally virtuous and godly-- why can't You?"

But as I say, it was a change.
______________________
†I've learned subsequently that the Habsburg in question wasn't actually murdered in the church building. King Albert I was killed on that particular spot in 1308, and the church was later erected over the site in his honor.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Six

Sunday, 11 December, 1988
La Côte St. André

HÔTEL FRANCE-- Hector’s birthday dawned cloudy and gray, which has become typical . . . The sun peeked out only once: oddly, when I was reading in the Mémoires about what a sunny spring day it was when he had his first Communion.

That was after church, when I was waiting for the hotel dining room to open for Sunday dinner.

The salle à manger was filled with jolly family parties this afternoon. Interestingly, at a nearby table there was a young man who had a look of la famille Berlioz about him, especially about the nose and mouth and in his abundant mop of curling light brown hair. But he lacked Hector’s poetry and gravity of countenance. I wonder if there are collateral lines extant around here . . .

I also noticed what I think was the cause of that squeaking noise I heard last night. They have a set of Western-salon swinging louvre doors between the kitchen and dining room, and they give out a creech every time a waiter or waitress passes through.

I shall say something about dinner, since I can’t afford many such, at 125F plus wine. It began with an amuse-guele in an egg cup. Layered, with aspic glaze. First bit tasted of chicken stock then as you ate lower with the tiny spoon there was a kind of vegetable puree mixed in. Carrot and tomato, I think.

Then came a nice bit of pâté chaud en croûte.

The fish course was a cold lobster pâté with a dollop of creme dressing with chives. The slice of pâté was very prettily decorated with chives and red and black caviar. On the side was a decorative lattice of haricots verts with tiny carrot balls inside the squares. A garnish more than anything, but it was cute. This was all quite delicious.

The only real disappointment was the main course. It was bits of duck that came drowned in a brown sauce, served in a copper skillet. The meat was rather overdone and the sauce reminded me too much of the omnipresent stuff the cooks at Coverdale* make from a mix. There were scalloped potatoes on the side and they did come off, however.

I’d pretty well eaten myself into a coma by then but still sampled four kinds of fromage off the cheese board.

And then there were little bonbon affairs and then the dessert I chose, a passion fruit mousse. Thought that was appropriate for celebrating Hector’s birthday . . .

Couldn’t finish any of these, and the waitress asked if I wanted to take it with me. With my bad French I gave her the impression I didn’t and as ungodly stuffed as I was I didn’t make any effort to correct that. Rather wish I had, now.

Chose a white Savoie for the wine. Fine with the lobster pâté but I think a red would have worked better with the duck.

I’m afraid I let my gourmandizing laissez-faire run away with me, however. I know the French take their eating seriously, especially Sunday dinner, and I can spend three hours over a multi-course meal with the best of them, which this afternoon I did. However, my sitting there patiently between courses letting the waiting folk assume I had nothing to do here in La Côte except pack in their cooking really reamed me for time. I barely was able to see the Musée Berlioz and then get back to the church for the concert. And I was late at that, making it for only the last two Faurés. They were the pieces I wanted to hear, but still I had no time to wander around the town and take pictures, at all. And the bus leaves at 9:13 AM tomorrow, which in this land of eternal daylight savings time means it will be just barely light.

As Mr. Chenley† said in his letter, the director of the Musée was most friendly and courteous. He even came downstairs (after I had explained that I was a member of the London Berlioz Society) to where I was looking at the chronology to give me a keyring and medal made for the 1969 centenary of Hector’s death.

What he did not give me was his name, nor I mine. For that matter, I am not even signed in here at the hotel. Madame says last night, oh, it can wait till morning. Very nice and trusting, but I don’t really care for the idea that if I croaked up here this evening they’d only know who I was by rummaging through my baggage.

Anyway, at the Musée it’s hard to tell what room is what, as there’s no way of knowing if the furniture is arranged as it was in Berlioz’s time or if it was just put in to look pretty.‡ I did ask which one was where Dr. Berlioz taught his son Latin. It’s the room opposite the kitchen.

There’s a chair in there that was Hector’s. Forgive me, mon bien-aime, but I’m afraid I was so far within myself that it was only my intellect that moved itself to realize, "He actually sat there."

It’s a charming house, however. Very nice marble fireplaces. And a stone sink in the kitchen. And plaster walls with painted designs.

The music isn’t piped anywhere but into the reception room, to the left of the entry, but you can hear it dimly upstairs. Bits of Harold, the Hamlet Funeral March, the Waverly and Le Corsair overtures . . . Nothing vocal or they might’ve gotten something live.

I had Volume I of my 1878 edition of the Mémoires with me, and showed it to the people on the desk. I didn’t understand all their comments but I gathered it was a reasonably good find.

They gave me a copy of the Bulletin of the French Society. And I bought a monograph on Hector’s childhood and adolescence (plus a few postcards). Tout en française, à bien sûr, meaning I’m in for the long haul with this language . . . but I would dearly love to have a companion with me to whom I could speak English and who could maybe supplement my French . . .

Got back to the hotel (where I dropped off my camera) then over to the church just before they were to do the Cantique de Jean Racine. The director of the Musée was there and very kindly made sure I got in on a student ticket and found me a seat closer to the front. The choir, who I think are called "À Coeur Joie," and the orchestra, the Orchestre de Chambre du Dauphine, did a positively luminous job on the prayer. The Fauré Requiem was lovely, too, but the men were just a tad harsh in places and the baritone soloist was choppy in his phrasing. Still, they did lots better than we did in Hector’s Te Deum last Saturday. And the audience liked it. Set up a rhythmic clapping afterwards . . . but there were to be no encores ce soir.

The acoustics in the eglise St.-André are pretty good. Apparently the nave used to have a wooden roof but it’s rough plaster now. The aisles are ribbed groin vaulted. The nave piers are great fat round Romanesque ones but the arches are all pointed. The architecture is in general rather klutzy and uncoordinated (nothing aligns or matches), but it’s solid and substantial nonetheless.

In spite of or because of what I experienced this afternoon and evening, I’m afraid I feel a bit depressed. The weather has a lot to do with it and so does the language. I can get my physical needs met in it but none of my emotional ones. I hope I pop out of this before the 23rd or else I’m going to make a pest of myself when I see Lukas*. He’s liable to get a hug whether he wants one or not.

Perhaps I would feel differently if I’d been more inspired by what I’ve seen today. But perhaps the voice and presence of men of vision speak more loudly in their works than in the sites and artifacts that knew them in their physical presence. Meaning I wasn’t as moved as I’d expected to be seeing the house where Berlioz grew up and learned Virgil and the first elements of music.

But I just had a rather alarming thought. Over the last fourteen and a half years since I learned and sang the Requiem, Hector's music has become internalized for me. It's become part of my personality as much as of his, and to a degree that’s also happened with the places and things he described in the Mémoires. So when I see them in person and their reality doesn’t fit the concept I had of them in my head, they seem somewhat irrelevant. Worse, they seem to take this person to whom my soul feels so close and remove him from me, to make him a stranger like all the strangers here.

Fortunately, I brought the music along. Oh God, let it not abandon me!

I think I should take advantage of the bathtub again this evening. Heaven knows when I shall have another chance . . .

A silly note here. My missing glove you know about. But here’s the further tally of items lost so far: My luggage keys and their neck chain, pulled off somewhere between Caen and Chartres (nothing was locked, fortunately). My Youth Hostel pass which I left at the desk at Chartres (they’re supposed to be sending it to the PO at Toulouse, poste restante). And I appear to have left my slip at the Auberge in Chartres as well. Now this is really too bad. It was good enough for me to wear but with its shot elastic and safety pins, it’s really no good to anyone else. I shall have to buy another, too. Pestiferous.

I can't hear that squeaky door below me tonight, so I guess the restaurant isn't open Sunday evenings. That's a blessing, at least.
__________________________
†The then-secretary of the London Berlioz Society
‡The Musée was renovated in 2002-03 for the Berlioz birth bicentennial, so this state of affairs may well have changed.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Five

Saturday, 10 December 1988
Lyon to La Côte St. André

LYON-- Slept last night at the Hotel Alexander†, within schlepping distance-- just barely-- from the Perrache station. Turns out I may have reamed myself if the object was to avoid carrying things-- the interurban bus station is at Part-Dieu. The local one is at Perrache.

However, considering that the bus for La Côte doesn’t leave till 5:00 pm, and that the sights worth seeing here are closer to la Gare Perrache (such as Vieux Lyon), maybe it’s ok.

Terribly tired and stressed and not having such an easy time determining the bus schedules. I really think I’m going to have to rethink my itinerary. Allow a full day in Toulouse, perhaps, just to sit on my rear and recruit my strength. I’m getting to the point where I can’t cope in English, let alone in French. Tempted to cry or get bitchy in public which is not Christian.

At the moment I’m sitting in a salon de thé in la Vieille Ville . . . Nursing a pot of tea after dejeuner. Charcuterie, I learn, is cold cuts and not a lot of them, either. But the salad was good, as was the cheese dressing for it, and the bit of gateau chocolat generous. And the orange amère is quite flavorful.

They have little glass pitchers pour le vin which are quite attractive. Williams-Sonoma should pick them up.

The young lady doing the serving was taking her sweet time about bringing the rest of my order after the initial entrée. This was all right in its way: I thus had no compunction about sitting there getting the tiredness out.

And I had the opportunity to listen to a sextet of Britons who walked in about the time I was tucking into the cake. It was good to hear a British voice again. Couldn’t identify all the accents but one woman sounded northern Irish and one of the men like a Liverpudlian. They knew even less French than I do and were discussing what the really useful phrases for the English-French phrasebooks would be. When one of the men wryly suggested, "‘I am an idiot!’" ("Je suis un idiot!"), I couldn’t help but smile. They must’ve noticed my reaction, for one said, sotto voce, "I think the lady’s English."

Well, not quite, but that’ll do.

(Funny about that. No one’s nailed me as an American yet. Or else, that’s considered a bit of an insult around here and it’s politer to ask first if one is British, even if you think otherwise.)

After awhile, the dilatory service stopped being an advantage. It was 3:05 and I had a train to catch at 4:08. Pried the bill out of the girl, though I had to go to the kitchen door to get it, and paid it. Service charge tacked on top of the food here. Not sure if that included gratuity; if it didn’t, tant pis. (I am rotten.) Au revoir, merci, I’m gone.

The old city looks like a great place to come on a sunny day with more energy and a lighter (in terms of weight, not money) purse. Myriad cobbled streets with the drains down the middle. I mainly stuck to the Rue St. Jean, which extends from the Cathedral.

I’m growing quite used to walking in the middle of streets like that, along with everyone else. Always liked that sort of thing. Not on the boulevards, of course. Not that wild and crazy.

(What’s the term for when you state the obvious and it sounds inane? I think I just did it.)

Most French cars have yellow headlights. A lot easier to see. Although there may be a white or yellow option, because in the country they’re mostly white.

They drive on the right side of the road (with allowances for the feelings of my British friends, who prefer to keep left). But there is a street just before the rue Victor Hugo here where they were doing it the British way. Most odd.

Anyway, I’d passed a couple of old bookshops in my ramblings before lunch. They’d been closed then (lunchtime is lunchtime here. Period.) but were open now. Ducked into one; asked if they had any books by or about Berlioz. No, they did not. A bit further on, tried the other one. The proprietor indicated a lower shelf. And there were two little volumes of the Mémoires, en française, à bien sûr, with very nice leather spines and inscribed 1882 by their original owner. Second or third edition, 1878, but still tantalizingly close to the original publication date. It’s a good thing this wasn’t one of those places where one bargains, because I pounced on those things like a starving man on food. The price would’ve gone straight up.

As it was, the marked price was pretty high: 500F, or around £45. I realize that’s not so bad, when you compare it with those Oxford U Press volumes I priced at £30.

Oh, well, they didn’t take Visa and if I’d spent my cash I’d never make it out of La Côte. "Trop cher," je dis, et je pars.

It’s wonderful how I have the chutzpah to say in French things I never would in English. I’d never tell a British or American shopkeeper I couldn’t afford something. Anything else but.

I took off-- it was 3:25 by now-- but just as I was rounding the corner towards the Pont Bonapart I saw that the Credit Agricole was still open. Oh God! Hector, the things I’ll do for you!

And I went in and changed another £60 of traveller’s cheques. They took an ungodly amount of time about it, though there was no line. And I'd already eaten up several minutes finding a private nook in the bank where I could discreetly extricate my waist wallet from under my clothes and lay hands on the cheques.

Finally the transaction was done. I took the money and ran, back to the Diogenes Librairie. Cash on the barrelhead (or the chair seat), take the books in a plastic bag, and pray we get that 4:08 train.

Plan was to find a taxi, but the only one I saw was occupied. Ran like the dickens. Fortunately felt better having eaten. Bypassed Place Bellecour, down the first stretch of rue Victor Hugo, past the statue to M. Ampere (electrifying), down more of Victor Hugo to the hotel entrance opposite the charming McDonald’s. Collected my bags from the hotel closet and began limping for the station. Across Place Carnot, up the stairs (ascenseur broken, of course), through the shopping mall, across the pedestrian bridge, through the station entry mall, and in.

OK, there’s my train on the board. Track 5. So I got down there and the conductor tells me the train to Lyon-Part Dieu is on Track #1! He very graciously shouldered my heaviest bag and got me over there in time to catch the 4:08 to get the bus at the other station.


ON THE TRAIN TO LYON-PART DIEU-- Something else odd I’ve noticed here in France. About half the time, I’ve observed, nobody ever comes to take tickets on the trains. And though you do have to validate your ticket each time (not passes, though) in a machine before you enter the platform area, it’s not like there’s a turnstile. I suppose the penalties for travelling without a ticket are great? Or could you just say, Oh, I was running late, and buy one from the conductor?


LA CÔTE ST. ANDRÉ, 11:50 PM-- Everything turned out ok with the busses. A tourist information lady showed me where to wait. And though the posted schedules were no help, the bus driver was able to give me a schedule of the route to Grenoble. Turns out it originates in Vienne, which was why my referring to the "Lyon-Grenoble bus" was so confusing to everyone in Lyon.

Travelling to La Côte, the bus takes a little two lane highway that all of a sudden shoots into these little villages. The road narrows to a lane and a half and that great big bus has to negotiate the tightest turns against the houses. It’s a miracle they have any walls left.

I took the time on the road to verify that I don’t need a seat reservation for the TGV between Narbonne and Montpelier Monday. And that I shall either have to punt my side-trip to Aurillac or rent a car from Toulouse. The train schedule won’t let me get there and back to Toulouse again in a single day.

It was raining on the way down here. It’s raining everywhere in this country. Je pense que il pleuvra toujours.

Well, it’s December. And at least it wasn’t actively dripping when I was set down by la Place Berlioz here. It is not exactly in the center of town. So I shouldered my load and took off. The things I do for Hector, again!

Lost one of my lightweight leather gloves in all that running about in Lyon. Missed it as I was assembling my things to get off the bus.

Found the rue de la Republique within a couple of blocks. And there on my right, up the street a ways, was the solid but unprepossessing facade of the Birthplace. Funny, but I don’t think I expected it to be smack in the middle of town like that. But then I guess I don’t expect small towns to be all rowhouses like this, either.

Checked the opening hours but didn’t stay around to pay my devotions. Bags too heavy. Crossed the street to a stationer’s (still open, at 7:15, thank God) and asked the way to the two hotels I knew of.

Hotel Europe, recommended by Brian Chenley‡ in his letter, was closed for the season. So I trudged on up the hill to the Hotel France, aupres de l’eglise. It, as Michelin states, is a restaurant with rooms. A very nice girl and an elderly lady are running the place; I’m afraid my French abandoned me at the crucial moment. N’importe! They discerned what I was after and showed me upstairs immediately, never mind, I could register later.

I’m spending the money (Visa, since I have to make up for the books I’ve bought) on a room with a bathtub. I am just too grubby otherwise. I think I perspired all the way through my coat. How else did the inner face of my backpack get wet?

Nice little room with a table that, covered with the spare blanket, made an adequate ironing board for my dark gray dress. Thank goodness that B&D travel iron does work and didn’t blow any fuses.

Only problem with this place (ignoring the insufficiency of hangers and no hooks in the bathroom, which is par for the course all over cette pays and besides, these people do provide towels) is the presence of a high-pitched, irregularly intermittent sound, like a sign swinging in the breeze or maybe a swinging door opening and shutting . . . Whatever it is I shall have to endeavor to ignore it and try not to get a headache from tension.

Over to the eglise first thing after getting established. Mass at 10:30 in the morning. And there’s a Berlioz birthday celebration concert there at 5:00. Wonderful, think I, we shall hear some of Hector’s music in his hometown. Then I saw the poster. All Debussy and Fauré! OK, so it is the Fauré Requiem, which I love, but still.

Maybe they don’t have the forces around here to do a decent job of most Berlioz. They could tackle L’Enfance du Christ and Les Nuits d’Été, I should think, but maybe they’ve been done recently.

Feels a little odd being here. Wonder what the townspeople think of people coming in just to honor their most unusual native son. Do they regard us as oddities? But then they found him rather odd, too, didn’t they?
_______________________
†Having done some Web research, I find I gave my Lyon hotel an inadvertent sex change! It's really the Hotel Alexandra, and it's still there at 49 rue Victor Hugo and is still quite reasonable.
‡The then-secretary of the London Berlioz Society

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Three

Thursday, 8 December, 1988
Chartres

I know it sounds like blasphemy†, but the cathedral was rather a disappointment.

It was a very gray, heavily overcast day today, and the church was so dark you could see almost nothing. The vaults were lost in the gloom and the windows badly needed cleaning. I kept praying the sky would clear up but that wasn’t in the divine plan.

I could see the importance of light in bringing about the proper effect here. Mont-St.-Michel was a religious experience. Here I had to play art historian and approach the cathedral intellectually. Not the best way.

Shot the south and north portals using the flash. Wouldn’t dream of using it inside. I did photograph some of the windows inside. We’ll see how they come out.

There was a plan with all the windows keyed on it posted at the west end. I found the one of the life of St. Nigel‡ and headed for that apse chapel. Not a particularly popular saint: it was quite dark, partly because the window was opaque with grime. N’importe. There were people-- or a person-- who deserved to be prayed for there and so it came to pass.

Chartres is definitely an urban cathedral. It’s in use daily by the townspeople who employ its nave and transepts as thoroughfares and as places to greet and gather. They treat it, it appears, familiarly if respectfully (most of the time). But oy, it needs cleaning! That familiarity is verging on neglect.

I’m afraid I didn’t throw all that much into the restoration coffer myself. The francs go awfully fast.

I greatly enjoyed going up the stairs and along the buttresses to climb the north tower. You can see all over Chartres from there and in the tower see the great bells and the late Gothic stonework details.

I think the cathedral looked best today early in the evening. And when I came by at 6:30 to bid it farewell before heading back to the Auberge de Jeunesse the bells began to ring. That was grand.

Bought Malcolm Miller’s official guide in the cathedral bookstore, along with various cartes postales. Blew 350F (£35 +/-; $70 +/-) on a book on the stained glass at a bookstore across the street. The things I’ll do to write decent essays!

There was a little problem at lunch, my first meal of the day, when I was so tired and hungry I couldn’t decide what I wanted at the restaurant. Problem really was, the only thing I could afford was an omelet-- again. This one was cooked through. The real problem came when I found I’ve been confusing five-centime pieces with five-franc ones. I went to pay and found I was 5F short. Fortunately, they didn’t call the gendarmerie to run me in. No, I was allowed to go across to the Credit Lyonnaise, cash some traveller’s cheques, and bring back the balance.

(Something interesting I noticed in the restaurant: People had their dogs in there with them, no problem, and the sign posted on the subject only asked that patrons not allow them up on the chairs!)

As far as emotional satisfaction goes, I think I liked the town better than the cathedral. The streets of Chartres are a great deal of fun. I wouldn’t mind spending several days there just exploring. They teem with interesting shops, most of them too expensive for me (will the French really pay around $60 or $70 for a little nine-color watercolor paint set?), and a myriad of boulangeries, patisseries, and confiseries. It was very lively and colorful, especially after dark with the windows lit up with a golden glow and the Christmas decorations festooning from facade to facade overhead. There were all sorts of people out and it was pleasant just to wander around with them.

It’d be even more pleasant to do it with less to carry. That camera bag is good for the long haul but during the days, walking around, it’s a pain. The new document case bag is better as of today, though. Not that the clasp is fixed, but I was directed to a place where they put some new holes in the strap. It hangs about five inches shorter now and is much more comfortable. No longer banging against my thigh.

I have discovered that useful as that satchel is (and how much in vogue here), it’s heavy even unloaded. Not a lot to be done about it.

At about 5:45, I had a cup of chocolate at a shop across from the north flank of the cathedral. Wrote postcards. Funny, I don’t realize how damn tired I am until I sit down. Then I absolutely vibrate. Being hungry and exhausted does nothing for my French, either. I don’t speak such hot English in such states, but the people around here don’t know that.

Otherwise, my French is adequate. Or at least good enough to make people think I speak it and so go right over my head.

Second night at the Auberge de Jeunesse. It’s a nice place, in a modern way. Reminds me of something a young, bright architectural firm would do. It is rather annoying, though, for the management to be so pointed about the low-budget basis of the place. I mean, at least they could put waste bins in the rooms. Even people travelling on the cheap generate trash.

I didn’t really expect them to provide towels, and they didn’t. I would love to travel light, she said, but it’s hard when you have to carry your own linens with you.

I almost think that if I get tireder and not stronger, I may blow the money to send a few things back, sacrificing one kind of comfort for another; that is, sacrifice comfort in place to comfort in motion. Like, I’m beginning to think I could do without my jeans. They’re not really right for the kinds of places I’m visiting. And the hairdryer won’t work in the outlets here, even with the adaptor.
___________________
†I'd studied the cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Chartres at KU under the great Prof. Lou Michel, and had conceived the sentiment, "See Chartres and die!"
‡Yes, I know there is no "St. Nigel"; at least, I doubt any such is commemorated in any French cathedral. Never mind, you get the point!

My Great Britannic Adventure, Day Fourteen

Thursday, 30 March, 1989
Fitz to Shrewsbury to Caernarfon
Day Fourteen

Whole party assembled at breakfast in the main dining room in the morning, including Ted* and Susanna's* 17 month old baby, Timothy*. Intelligent child, even if not speaking intelligibly yet. The baby’s tone of voice and inflection made it sound as if he had something important to say, if only he could get his tongue around the syllables. Reminded me of the children at Coverdale*.

I thought about mentioning the mice, but refrained because I was only there the one night and Mr. and Mrs. Baly probably couldn’t do anything about it at the moment anyway.

After breakfast Harry* and Elspeth* and I adjourned to the sitting room to see a video on Shropshire the Balys had. It was a little boosteristic in places (I kept my mouth shut, though appallingly I was tempted to make cynical comments) but it did me the favor of showing me what Shrewsbury Abbey looks like.

Went upstairs thereafter and took a bath and all the rest of it, then packed up and was ready to go by 11:00.

I never know how it is with people. Last night Mrs. Baly was very kind and even motherly with me; this morning she was perfunctory and mainly concerned that I pay my £12.50 and let her get on with her business. I suppose that had something to do with it, since Fitz Manor is a working farm and they had had some Welsh sheep pastured on their land this winter, since Shropshire had grass while Wales (NE part) didn’t. And today the Welsh shepherd was come to collect his flock.

Still, my hostess’s change in manner had me wondering for much of the rest of the day what I could possibly have done or said. Maybe I’m oversensitive . . . but I’m afraid that if I blow that sort of thing off all the time, I’ll be in danger of being inconsiderate of someone I really have hurt. [I've recently learned something about the practice of overwintering the young mountain lambs on lowland farms and what a major undertaking it is to gather them all in to return them home. So yes, I was being oversensitive.]

Took off for Shrewsbury along the not-so-well sign-posted lanes. Arrived there from the north, driving in from the castle side and went round and round from awhile, trying to find a carpark. No luck, till I found myself on the Wyle Cop (familiar name, that), going eastward across the bridge over the Severn, and heading up the Abbey Foregate towards the red sandstone front of the formerly Benedictine abbey church of St. Peter and St. Paul. I haven’t read all those Brother Cadfael mysteries for nothing.

Located a free carpark south of the church, reflecting ruefully that this expanse of broken tarmac and its attendant fenced-in spare parts yards were once part of the abbey grounds and gardens. The Meole Brace, which still exists under a different name, was completely obscured among the jumble of decaying modern buildings. The millpond still exists as a stagnant pool next to some archeological diggings sponsored by the University of Birmingham, but looking long unworked.

The abbey church is a stout Norman building with a Gothic choir and narthex added at either end. Along the south side you can see the jagged masonry where the demolished abbey walls and buildings used to join its fabric.

The interior is of three storeys, with round piers with plain banded capitals supporting no-nonsense rounded arches at the nave arcade and triforium levels. Above that the clerestory is a mural surface pierced by round-headed windows.

As I passed through the nave, I constantly had to stop myself from saying things to myself like, "This is the part that Brother Cadfael knew." He is, after all, only an invention of the writer Ellis Peters. Still, it was helpful to think of his character as I walked through "his" church. Though sometimes perplexed by them, the sins and foibles of man do not shake his faith in God. Whatever evil man can do, Cadfael is assured that God can do greater good still, and he rests in the confidence that God can make right, here or beyond the grave, whatever messes we make of our lives and the lives of others. Only a fictional character, true, but when so many evil fictional characters are influencing people to the bad, why not rejoice in the fact that an author has seen fit to invent one who can confirm one in the good?

It was funny-- they had a supply of the Brother Cadfael novels for sale in the little postcard shop. I peeked in one or two just long enough to look at Peters’ sketch maps of the abbey and its environs to reconcile them with the 20th century cityscape outside. Actually, that’s why I stopped in Shrewsbury in the first place.

There’s a road running south of the church as well as to the north, now. It’s called the Abbey Foregate as well.

They had a little pamphlet there, locating the places around Shrewsbury that Peters features in her novels. But it cost 60p and that seemed a little steep for a mimeographed sheet that would only serve to satisfy a literary fancy.

Headed for the Severn, and walked a bit in a little garden that marks the approach to the Gaye. The Severn is a little river here, like most English rivers I’ve seen (when they aren’t estuaries).

The English Bridge as it stands is an 18th century production, reworked and widened in 1924.

Crossed it and walked up the Wyle to the main square and ye olde tourist information office. Needed to know where the local NatWest is so I could cash in some traveller’s cheques, and learn where I could find Butchers’ Row, to see the 15th century house I’d read of in Margaret Wood.

While I was there at the tourist office I, quite lazily, decided to make use of their "Book a room ahead" service. The man told me they’d find me a place in Carnarfon and would tell about it if I’d come back in a half hour. £1.50.

Found the NatWest, got the cash, and remembered to ask about the check I’d discovered missing the other day. The computer had a record of the amount-- £45--but none of the endorsee. I’d have to call Oxford for that.

So I went and found a phonecard booth and had the Cornmarket branch on the line, when it came to me that the check is one I wrote out of order before I left Oxford. So all is well.

Found Butchers’ Row. It has 15th century timbered and jettied houses at both ends, dragon beams and all.

Bought a cheese savory and a cream pastry at a baker’s shop and returned to the tourist office by 2:30 or so. They’d gotten me a place at a Mrs. Hughes’, in a house with a Greek name-- Pros Kairon-- and the man wrote out the directions for me.

Sat out in the square then and wrote the Mackintosh postcard to Jim* and Annie* [our brilliant furniture makers back in Kansas City]. Shrewsbury’s a pleasant town but could do with fewer agglomerations of foul-mouthed pre-teenaged boys. They’re on school holiday, too, and were hanging around the square trading insults and voicing threats of what they were going to do to some other gangs of boys, their chorus sometimes augmented by solos from one or two local drunks who found the square a convenient place to pass the time as well.

Posted the card, then went to the street leading to the Castle and stopped at Boots, for some vitamins. I’m out. And got some shampoo, as well.

Didn’t go into the castle keep (it’s a military museum now, which didn’t particularly interest me), but you can come into the walls and admire the garden and climb the tower all you wish.

The neck of land that falls between the two sides of the loop of the Severn in front of the castle is spanned now by the BritRail terminal and its platforms. It’s disappointingly, monumentally ugly.

Walked back to the carpark another way, more or less. Took note of the Norman south door on St. Mary’s. Then a little later, turned off the Wyle to follow the lane of St. Julian’s Friars. No remains of a friary to photograph, though, so I just walked along the Severn north to the English Bridge and back to the carpark.

Pulled out around 4:15. Back across the Severn, around the southern bypass (or what passes for one in this town), across the Welsh bridge and through Frankwell, and thence to the A5 and Llangollen.

Into Wales at Chirk. First thing you notice is that the Welsh are very serious about Welsh. I determined not to get into any accidents along these twisty roads-- I could never cope with an argument in such an unintelligible tongue.

But I had the fun of seeing the region for which so many Philadelphia suburbs are named. Passed by the turnoffs for both Bala and Cynwyd.

For one stretch I had the exquisite pleasure of forming part of a parade behind a very wide house trailer that was being moved. Police escort and all. They occasionally had to stop oncoming traffic so the trailer could go by.

After awhile the mist set in and it began to rain a little. Along the A4086, before the rail line for the top of Snowdon, I passed through a valley that was grand even in its grim bleakness. There was no vegetation to be seen, and great black rocks lay in tumbled heaps and spills along the mountain faces, below nightmarish crags. I said to myself, "Mordor. It's Mordor. This is where Tolkien got it for Lord of the Rings. It's Mordor!" And the mist made it seem bleaker-- and therefore more romantic-- still.

Into Carnarfon by 6:45, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. Directions were fine-- to a point. Said take the second right after turning left at the firestation. Second right was a One Way Do Not Enter onto the motorway. Went back to the Shell Station near the firehouse, to ask directions.

Filled up the car while I was there, since the radio had said Texaco would be raising their petrol prices to £1.878, up by 7p a gallon, and I could just see Shell following suit.

Inside, everyone was speaking Welsh. Momentary fear: what if they’re so militant they’re not bilingual? But they were. I started to explain what my directions had said but the woman cut me off with a perfunctory "Listen!" which brooked no nonsense from idiot foreigners. In her opinion I was to turn left after the left by the fire station.

Tried that, and it ultimately worked, even if the street had no name plate, in Welsh or English, and I had to ask a passerby if I was in the right place.

All this is giving me an entirely new insight on Jonah 4:11. I used to think that bit about the people of Nineveh not knowing their right hands from their left was a metaphor for a kind of moral blindness. But now I see it simply means they couldn’t give accurate directions! It’s a good thing for them the way through the city was obvious, for if Jonah had had to rely on the directions of such people as around here, he’d’ve been preaching only in one small corner of the city those three days, not enough people would have repented, and Nineveh would’ve been destroyed.

Found "Pros Kairon" by parking the car and walking down and then up the street till I spotted a B&B sign. Mrs. Hughes, a little elderly Welshwoman, was ready to answer my ring; she said she’d been looking out for me.

Room was upstairs at the back, overlooking a bit of garden. Small, but nice, with an electric blanket on the bed and a space heater.

Since it was relatively early, I decided to be reckless with my cash and get a pub meal in the town center. The Hugheses directed me to a pub they recommend and I set off.

They live in a part of Carnarfon outside the Edwardian [Edward I--13th century] walls. The houses here are all pretty modern: Victorian or newer than that, marching in mostly-gray ranks up and down the hills.

To get to the town center you have to go down the hill, across the motorway via a pedestrian underpass, along a street or two, and then you’re in the castle square. The city still focusses there, it seems.

The castle, which I cannot do better than describe as a formidible pile (though Carcassonne on its hill is more aesthetically impressive), lies at the point where the River Seiont empties into the Menai Strait. The boats moored in the river mouth looked, in the mist-filled drizzly twilight, as if they were sitting on a water preternaturally calm.

There were many people about, even though not a lot of places seemed to be open. Everyone was speaking Welsh and most of the signs were in that language, or that and English both. I am beginning to pick out words here and there, written, but have no idea how the grammar works.

The directions I’d received at the B&B didn’t work too effectively, for lack of street signs. I finally found the pub, The Black Boy (and was it a racist act to go there?) via the offices of another pub, who weren’t serving evening meals but were happy to direct me to one that was-- the aforementioned B. B.

Ordered a plate of garlic mussels and sat down at a table to wait for them. The TV was on, showing some BBC evening soap opera, which soon ended. Then a program about some British man’s travels in Arizona came on. And I confess that the sight of all those cars driving on the righthand side made me a little queasy.

Pretty soon, the set was turned off and the juke box came on. It was highly incongruous, hearing the pounding background of those English rock songs laid beneath the general flow of Welsh conversation. You’d think they’d have some Welsh pop bands by now. Even funnier was when a Welsh tune did come on-- it was obviously meant to be some heart-stirring romantic or nationalistic ballad, and was sung dramatically by the Welsh version of Lawrence Welk’s inevitable Irish tenor-- and amongst the Welsh in the pub you could hear the very English expression from the brave young men of Wales: "Squelch it! Squelch it!!"

Some people don’t got no culcha.

One of the guys at the next table asked me, in English, what I was reading. At first my impulse was to give him the cold shoulder-- as in "I don’t talk to strangers"-- but decided not to be such a jerk. So we had a mild amount of chitchat, until he was called to join a darts match with some of his mates. The reason I felt odd about it is not that here I was an American in a Welsh pub, but that here I am 34 and surely he took me for someone closer to his age (mid-20s), or he wouldn’t have spoken to me . . . But why should I assume that? Maybe because I’m that way myself. Anyway, I felt odd, as if I were sailing under false colors.

The mussels were good, though they could’ve used a bit more salt. I had a half pint of Worthington’s bitter to go with them. Not the best combination, but the ale itself was palatable and not bitter to the extent of Guinness dark, say.

Satiated my chocolate craving with a bar bought at an off-license on the way back to the B&B. Went back without loitering or rubbernecking, because although it was hardly 9:00 PM, with the mist the streets were a little surreal.

Pros Kairon has a guest sitting room downstairs so I brought my journal down there to sit in front of the nice electric fire and work on it. But instead I talked to the other guests and let myself be distracted by the television. The others were a couple from Australia. They’d already been to Israel and Egypt before coming to England, and were labelling their photographs. We told trip stories, not neglecting ones about driving around the UK (especially in those winds last week), until they retired about 10:00.

I followed shortly, to work on the journal a little more but more to read Walter Scott.

My Great Britannic Adventure, Day Thirteen

Wednesday, 29 March, 1989 Glasgow to Fitz (near Shrewsbury) Day Thirteen Elected not to eat the hostel’s soggy breakfast this morning. I did have a little bit of chore duty down in the members’ kitchen before I could get my card back and leave, though. Not sure how that works but I figured it was better just to get it over with and not take the time to enquire. Got a freebie parking space in a garage on the fringe of the center city when someone who’d gotten an all-day sticker left early and the garage attendant gave it to me as I was pulling in. Not strictly kosher, I gather, and so I was a good child and made sure to park on the proper level, even if it did mean driving around till a space became vacant. Had my bit of breakfast at the Willow Tea Rooms on Sauchiehall Street. I hear rumors that they’re not precisely as Mackintosh designed them (I’m referring to the tea room itself, not to the jewellery store downstairs) but I don’t really care at this point. Shared a table with a nice Scots couple who have a neighbor who’s going to go study in Moscow. Which should tell you something about Scottish communicativeness. There was a bit of fumbling around over culinary terminology with the waitress, as I ordered a crumpet, meaning an English muffin, but got what I call a pancake, but what the Scots call a crumpet. Confused? So I ordered a muffin instead, and got what I’d call an English muffin, but what the English would term a crumpet. Right. But it was what I wanted, anyway. Asked for more boiling water but the waitress brought me another pot of tea. And left it off the tab. I reminded her of it when I went to pay the bill but she said to forget it. Well. Decided to make it to Shropshire before night, skipping the Lake District. Called and made a booking at a B&B near Shrewsbury. Walked down and saw Mackintosh’s Daily Record Building in its little alley, then got the car and drove back to the University area to see the Glasgow Style exhibit at the Kelvingrove Museum. By now even Mackintosh was beginning to become too much of a good thing and it was getting late. So I just ran back to the Hunterian to get a postcard to send Jim and Annie Schoenmacher* [our custom furniture makers in Kansas City] and took off south down the A74 to Carlisle. But not before stopping at a Jessop’s in Glasgow and spending another £48 or so on ten rolls of film . . . 10% off if you get ten, you see. Misty and foggy today. Raining in places. Traffic not too bad, though. Saw many beautiful things in the landscape on the way south. The Scottish Lowlands are rolling hills, now seen through a mist, bluish on either side of the carriageway. Passed the turn-off for Lockerbie . . . Wonder how long before that will once again be just the name of a nice holiday town and not be known primarily as the site of that tragic terrorist-induced plane crash last December? Picked up the M6 north of Carlisle, and so into Cumbria. The fields from time to time manifested, even through the closed car windows, quite an odor of cowpies. Cundry smells! At first I thought it was only from herds of grazing cattle but it occurs to me that the farmers may be manuring their fields, this time of year. Well, what do you expect? The mountains of the Lake District, though not attaining to the heights of the Rockies or the Swiss Alps, have a towering stark grandeur that is awe-instilling even as you merely race through at 80 [or sometimes 90] mph. I am continually amazed at the geographical and topographical diversity of this comparatively small island. Filled up the car and bought some cookies to tide me over just past Lancaster. Checked the map for my route. I’m getting better at remembering the road numbers and towns but a little paranoia doesn’t hurt. Thought I might hit some heavy traffic along the turnoffs for Liverpool and Manchester, but it wasn’t too bad. Jumped off the M6 at Crewe and went through there and so along the A530 southwest through Nantwich and Whitchurch towards Wem and Shrewsbury. Whitchurch is a goodsized town (by which I mean, it has a Boots). You pick up the B5476 there. I found the brick and timbered houses and the hedge-lined lanes of Shropshire peaceful compared to the gray harled houses and the stone walls of Scotland. But here you still have people ahead of you going 30 in a legal 60 zone or people behind wanting to do 60, on a road that any sensible Missouri highway engineer would tell you was for 45 mph, tops. And the frustration of having nowhere to stop and take a picture of all the excruciatingly typically-English pastoral harmony you’re seeing through your windshield. The directions I had worked wonderfully until, at around 8:00 PM, I got to a kind of flattened Y-junction on a one and a half lane road past Harmer Hill. I’d been told to turn left at a T-junction and thought that must be it, since the lollipop at the top of the sign said "Bomere Heath," the name of the biggest village near Fitz Manor. But I went much farther than the called for 100 yards and saw no sandstone cross, the landmark I was to watch for. Turned around at first opportunity, drove back through the junction, and off along and into Bomere Heath.† Big enough village to have mercury street lights. Tried calling the B&B but the village phonebox wasn’t working. So I got directions from the clerk in a nearby grocery store and set off again. Major frustration-- it was dark by now, there were no such turn-offs as the woman had described, and I had a train of other cars behind me who couldn’t pass on this narrow, hilly, twisting lane. I could’ve screamed. Turned around again, tried to find the junction where I’d gone wrong before. No, I did that first . . . Seems I hadn’t gone far enough. At any rate, I couldn’t find it and ended up the other side of Bomere Heath, at a nameless hamlet with a pub by the name of the Romping Cat. Cute, but not where I’m headed. Turn around again. Anyway, I’d tried the clerk’s directions, they didn’t fly. But on the way back to the village I found the signs she’d referred to-- but on the other side of the road. She’d told me left when it should’ve been right. I was all right thereafter. Found the cross-- a WWI memorial-- and ticked off the mile on the odometer and so found the lodge and the drive to Fitz Manor. Arrived a little after 9:00. It was nice to have the illustration in the Staying Off the Beaten Track book, because that way I knew I was in the right place. Drove up in the yard and two dogs, a border collie and small, smooth haired creature, came running up, barking their greetings. I didn’t mind and if I had thought to be concerned, I was too tired to expend energy on it. Got out, and attended by the dogs, addressed myself to the front door. I was glad of the dogs’ noise, since I couldn’t find the doorbell and my knocking wasn’t having much effect. And pretty soon, Mrs. Baly, the lady of the house, answered the door and let me in. She was actually surprised I’d made it down from Glasgow in such good time, even considering my meanderings in the immediate neighborhood. When it came out I hadn’t had lunch or dinner, she made me a sandwich and brought it to me in the sitting room, where the other guests were gathered. There was a log fire in the fireplace, which was a pleasant sight to see and even pleasanter to sit before. The other people there were Harry and Elspeth*, a middle-aged couple from Middlesex, and Ted and Susanna*, who are from near Cambridge. Ted’s* an Anglican curate and we all talked for awhile on the difference, if any, between a priest and a vicar and how the curacy works. He was acquainted with some people from Coverdale* two or three years ago but is sure none of them is there still. Tea was brought and served round and I was treated to a serving of the trifle that had been the dessert at dinner. The party broke up around 10:00 and everyone retired to their rooms. Mine was a cheerfully decorated chamber at the front of the house, made more cheerful by Mrs. Baly’s introduction of an "electric fire," as they call a space heater here. The coal grate was no longer in use, and just as well. I dislike the odor. There was also a shelf-full of books, and considering how very tired I was I sat up ridiculously late, till past midnight, reading vignettes out of one of James Herriot's. After I turned off the light I realized my encounters with animals might be more firsthand. I could hear the unmistakeable squeak and rustle of mice in the baseboards. I very much wished for my cat, as Didon would make short work of any rodents that ventured out. But lacking her, I told myself to buck up and go to sleep. The house is around 530 years old and I’m sure people have been sleeping here for centuries with the sound of mice in the walls, and have been jolly glad to know it wasn’t Something Worse. ________________________________ †Thanks to the modern wonders of Google Earth and Google Maps, I see now that the original directions were perfectly fine. The problem was how I interpreted them. That, and letting a large chunk of them slip my mind. The funniest thing has been learning that given the nature of British country roads, that if I'd kept on, the "wrong" turns would have got me where I wanted to be sooner and in a shorter distance, vs. turning around and retracing my route. Oh, well!

Scalene Trinities

Today is (or has been?) Trinity Sunday. And I, being too dumb to know that all self-respecting preachers should be afraid to go anywhere near that doctrine, preached on it anyway.

Actually, it's all the fault of Dorothy L. Sayers. Her book The Mind of the Maker is one of my favorite theological treatises, and the way she demonstrates how the process of human thought and creativity is a little image of the Three-Personhood of God is simply brilliant. The unknowable-in-itself Idea reflects God the Father. The Energy (or Activity/Execution/Word/Image) gives the Idea expression and is a model of God the Son. The Power resulting from the Energy as it expresses the Idea is an earthly demonstration of the work of God the Holy Spirit.

Miss Sayers argues that the doctrine of the Trinity isn't difficult because it's too esoteric and irrelevant, it's difficult because it's so much like what we all do and take for granted every day. I've found I can take her analogy into a church made up of high school and junior college graduates and they get it.

What I can't do in a church on Trinity Sunday or any Sunday is get into Miss Sayers' follow-up discussion of what she calls scalene trinities. But I love it, because I love thinking about art and artistic production and what makes works of art succeed and what makes them fail. God the Holy Trinity is like an equilateral triangle: all the sides and all the angles equal, all working together in perfect, stable balance. But what we make seldom is equilateral. Generally something in our artistic trinity is out of balance. It's scalene.

Scalene, adj (of a triangle) with three unequal sides (The Chambers Dictionary, 1993).

When a work of art-- it could be anything-- a book, a painting, a movie, a piece of music-- is truly great you really don't have to analyse it (unless your prof makes you for Composition and Lit class!). It's there, it's wonderful, and all you have to do is enjoy it and respond to it. If you think about its Idea, its Energy/Expression, or its Power separately, it always takes you back to glorifying the work as a whole.

But when the work isn't quite-quite, it's so much fun to consider which part of its little trinity is out of whack-- and what you wish you could do about it.

Take a movie, for instance. You walked out of the theater and said, "Wellll, no, it wasn't that great." What was wrong?

Was the problem in the Idea, its "Father"? Was its "Father" too weak or nonexistant ("I'll give 20 francs for an Idea!" the young Hector Berlioz used to heckle pedestrian operas)? Was the "Father" idea too strong for the screenwriter to come up with appropriate expression for it? Are there competing "Fathers," too many Ideas at once (artistic polytheism!)? Without a strong, single, unifying Idea, a work of art is doomed from the beginning.

Or is the trouble with the "Son"? Maybe the director had a great Idea, but didn't know how to express it. Or the Idea was a nice little one, but the Energy was grandiose. Maybe the artist picked the wrong form-- tried to Execute his Idea as a musical comedy, say, when it should have been a gritty western. A play where the plot goes nowhere or in ten different conflicting directions, a book where the language is so involved and intricate all it does it draw attention to itself, a movie that knocks you out of its world and makes you exclaim, "Why on earth did the screenwriter do that?!"-- those are all works with "Son" or Energy/Execution/Expression trouble.

Power or "Spirit" deficiencies usually proceed from a weakness in either the creative "Father" or "Son." That is, if the work's Idea is bad or conflicted or is the work is shabbily done, it's going to fall flat. It won't have any Power.

But not always. You can have works that are "Spirit"-ridden, that are all effects and no content. They're the kind of pictures and novels and movies that a lot of people think are really great. They're exciting and entertaining. But when you think about it, there's no Idea, no There there. Movies like that sell popcorn, but that's all they're good for.

A work that's really strong in the "Spirit" department can cover up the fact that there's something ailing with its "Son." Sheridan Le Fanu, the 19th century Anglo-Irish specialist in the supernatural, wrote a thriller called Uncle Silas that I read three separate times before I realized that the way he wound up the plot simply makes no sense. But he got away with it and continues to get away with it, because the novel has a strong Idea and the Effect of his writing is so powerful you're too busy enjoying the shudders it evokes to notice that towards the climax its "Spirit" has bypassed its "Son."

Once you've figured out where in its artistic trinity a work's problem lies, you can entertain yourself thinking what you would do about it, were you the creator's editor, master painter, director, whatever. What strikes me when I play this game is that in art, as in the Godhead, it all comes down to the second person of the trinity. If I determine there's something wrong or deficient with the work's Idea, there's nothing I can do. If the Power is weak, well, as the western version of the Nicene Creed rightly (I affirm) maintains, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified. Or in the case of our out-of-balance trinity, not. You can't make a work of art any stronger by whipping up fancy effects. The only thing an artist or editor can really do anything about is the "Son" aspect of the work, the way the Idea is expressed and executed. Assuming that the "Son's" function is to be the true Word of the "Father," you get that right, and the work of art will be right, powerful, effective, and true.

Which is why I spend entirely too much time editing my blog entries, even though the ideas I express in them are very small indeed!

Wonders Untold

Look what I tripped over the other day when I was following a link from a friend's blog:

This is in my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. I read it's the wall around the parking lot of the Main Branch of the KC Public Library.

I had no idea. I was back there last July, and didn't see this. I have a friend who goes to see classic films at the Public Library's new location in a renovated historic bank building, and while she's told me they show the movies in the former vault, she's never told me about this.

Amazing.

The irony is that Kansas City's in a real financial tsimmes right now and will be cutting all sorts of services and jobs to balance the budget. So while my homefolks suffer from their leadership's recent bad decisions, the Wisdom of the Ages will look down on them in their struggles and offer a Word of Hope.

Or else snigger, "We told you so!!"

My Great Britannic Adventure, Day Two

Saturday, 18 March 1987
Cambridge & Saffron Walden
Day Two

The day dawned cloudy, but with that thinness of overcast that allows hope for the sun’s breaking through eventually, especially with a fresh chilly wind that could move things along.

For breakfast Mrs. Payne served me a fried egg on toast, bacon (English style), sausages, two mushroom caps, toast, and cereal, with orange juice and tea. Considering my meagre budget for food, I scoffed the lot, cereal and all.

Called the Europcar agency in Cambridge and they told me certainly, I could bring the Maestro back and exchange it. Still not for an Escort; rather, for a Vauxhall Astra. But hopefully better.

Mrs. Payne gave me directions and a Xerox map of how to get to the correct street in Cambridge, but I got lost anyway. Overshot my turnoff due to not being in the correct lane and went blocks and blocks before I found a place to turn around.

But I arrived on Mill Street eventually and made the exchange. Man had to remove my Cellini tape with a couple of spoon handles. I tried it in the Astra’s player and it got stuck there, too. So maybe it’s the tape.

The stick shift is a little freer on this one, which is the main point.

Found the £1 parking garage opposite Parkers Pieces (a playing field), deposited the vehicle, shouldered my equipment, and set off to explore The Other Place. Headed for King’s College first as I wanted to check the chapel service hours.

The gatehouse tower was swathed in scaffolding, a common infection on this side of the world. And so were a couple bays of the chapel. The rest was visible, though, from the outside at least.

The chapel was closed to visitors today-- the choir was holding rehearsals. I stood on the lawn across the court and listened to the combined harmonies of men, boys, and organ drifting over . . .

I have to admit that Cambridge is a prettier college town than is Oxford. Not that the colleges themselves are nicer, but that here they are more open and hospitable to their surroundings. Oxford colleges tend to suffer from a siege mentality and keep their architectural beauties hidden within. Their Cambridge counterparts make more of a display on the street.

And then, due to the Anglo-Saxons’ original town plan, the colleges at Oxford are not strung out along either of the rivers (excepting Magdalen) and thus cannot boast anything like the Backs. Once I’d passed through King’s court I didn’t go back into the street in front for two or three hours.

Much of the work here is Tudor or Renaissance, in the Christopher Wren style. Clare College is entirely the latter, and despite a silly voice saying, "But it’s out of your period!"--me being a diehard Medievalist-- I rather liked it.

But then, I was disposed to like it; and the pretty bridge over the river and the clipped hedges in the private garden, and the daffodils and crocus all blowing in the breeze added to the happy effect-- but not so much as the knowledge that Nigel* [NB-- an Englishman for whom I bore a hopeless fancy; hopeless, as he'd engaged himself to his long-time sweetheart shortly after I met him. We were platonic friends nevertheless] had spent his undergraduate days here, that he had walked along these paths, seen these walls. This feeling of awe and exultation was not even dampened by my seeing Emily's* [Nigel's* fiancee] name and address on a list of graduate students at the Clare lodge. She is a part of him; any love I bear him must include her as well.

I saw the chapel, with its circular antechapel with the lantern above, and inside, the chapel itself with its classised furnishings, its two organs and choir desks. I found it hard to leave the place, as the sun peeked out and dusted the towers with light: it was like parting with someone I knew, met with again in a foreign realm.

I was not able to see the famous hall where Nigel's* friend had fired a table knife into a wall in a fit of anger (the friend is a now a clergyman, I believe) [I'd misunderstood. The student he'd told me about the previous autumn had been a member of Clare back in the 1700s], as it was already laid for dinner. But I could take pleasure in the smell of apple crisp wafting through the air, appealing to a different sensibility than had the King’s singers, but being no less enjoyable.

I went back and crossed and looked over more bridges, strolled along Burrell’s Walk and the University Library grounds, then came back and went through Trinity College.

The antechapel there is full of statues of Great Cambridge Minds, such as Isaac Newton (his academic robe enveloping him like a rather ponderous toga) and Lord Tennyson and Francis Bacon. The ceiling there is wooden, and Tudor in effect, though I believe the pattern currently there is of Victorian design.

Passing out onto Trinity Street I duly took note of Henry VIII’s chair leg sceptre in the hand of his effigy in its niche over the gatehouse entrance. Serves him right, most likely.

The weather had settled in to being determinedly grey, which was too bad. The Round Church (St. Sepulchre), an Anglo-Saxon edifice, really needs some light to model it.

The congregation seems to be a pretty live one, judging from the tracts and literature they had for sale on the racks. They had a guest book to be signed; I wonder if they have organised prayers for the souls of those who put rude comments in. (I was unable to add anything of any sort, the book being coöpted by a couple who settled in for a long look.)

After that I explored the shopping areas along Sidney Street and St. Andrews Street, stopping for a hot steak and kidney pie at a bakery along there. Ate it sitting on a bench at the east end of St. Andrew's church, watching the people go by. The Cambridge shopping area seems rather nicer and more interesting than Oxford’s, too, but maybe that’s because here I could bum around and explore and didn’t need to run down to Cornmarket then get my rear home.

I was on my way back to Kings Parade, as I hadn’t yet seen Queen’s. Passing through an arcaded shopping area I saw a man juggling flaming torches. This would make a great picture, thought I, and I raised my Minolta. And as I did, I realized that my mechanical crises were not at an end. My Vivitar wide angle lens had slid down as it often does, from its own weight, but this time was stuck both at 70mm telephoto and at macro. I couldn’t budge it from either position.

I do not think I can adequately explain what this does to me. Overwhelmed as I am with study and essays, I don’t get much drawing done these days. Photography is my only real artistic expression anymore. It is my way of seeing and also my way to describing what I’ve seen. You could almost say that without having taken a picture of it I haven’t seen it at all. And the whole point of travelling, of going anywhere, is to take pictures of it. That lens had become an important organ of vision for me and now, the first day back in service since getting it back from being repaired, it had become stiff and useless.

I didn’t totally want to believe this so I spent a great deal of time tramping around to camera stores to see if they could do anything. Sorry, no.

Saw St. Benet’s Church, another Saxon foundation. And went to Queen’s, but they wanted 40p for the tour and from what I could glimpse from the gateway I decided it wasn’t worth it.

Bought an apple and a card to send Mom along Regent Street then at around 4:30 got the car and headed back south, putting the old Rokker 55mm lens on the Minolta first.

Did not get lost this time. Congratulate me.

Drove past Little Chesterford and on down to Saffron Walden. The grayness was quite settled in and it began to rain a little, but I looked at the outside of the parish church and the Market Square and found the houses with the famous 17th Century pargeting on Church Street. And I in one blow negated all today’s economy on food by going into a used book and antique shop and coming out with leather bound and gold tooled editions of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Heart of Mid-Lothian. £4 total.

Wandered around a little more, then retrieved the car and drove back to Bank Cottage in Little Chesterford.

They had a fire burning in the parlor; unfortunately sitting by it isn’t part of the B&B arrangement. I retired upstairs, planned routes for tomorrow, ate the apple (mealy, darn it) and some chocolate, then fooled around till 2:00 in the frigging morning reading the Country Living magazines that were sitting on the night stand and then a book there in the room called How to Be Oxbridge. The scary thing is that according to the author’s criteria I had many of the traits of this species before I ever came to England-- though it would seem the real "Oxbrites" don’t or didn’t share my delusion of Real Scholarship.

Or maybe it does go on but just has no place in a basically humorous book?