Of an End

The Program closed officially yesterday evening. Of course, we've already desensitized to the awesomeness of three-course meals after growing fat off of five weeks of them, but we had one last belt buster for the road.

We ended the final evening with two hours of Regency dance-- the quadrille, the cotillion, English country dances-- according to our hired guide, who seemed very legitimate when she appeared in a period costume and fancy up do, these are early phases of the waltz. Some of the waiters were enlisted to participate, but the room was predominantly female. Thus, I spent the majority of the evening as a male (albeit the most beautiful boy you've ever seen). We were all equally bad and got caught up in the spirit of the event.

Today I've walked all around and through Oxford in a farewell... and I've packed. I will dream tonight of weighing my suitcase at check-in tomorrow, only to discover that it's 52 pounds. It was a magical 49.5 pounds on the way over, but that was before I spent a month and a half shopping. I've tried to be crafty and shift some stuff. It also helps that I blew out an alarm clock and a blow dryer after problems arose between the converter, the adaptor plug, and myself, so that's a pound or two that I can (and did) replace with other stuff.

I leave with a couple of others at 5:45 am tomorrow morning in the hope of catching a 6am bus to Heathrow. My flight departs at 11:15, and I'm supposed to arrive (10 and a half hours later) at 3:30 in Houston. 

Lyme Regis

The trip to get to Lyme involved nearly seven hours on a bus, but only one hour in Lyme. Worth it? Yes: Cold, bleak, and forbidding, with the ferocity of a brooding sea providing mood music. Absolutely worth it.

Hard to believe that I'm down to one week! Less than!

Chawton

Jane Austen wrote or polished all six of her novels in Chawton, a cottage on her brother's property. She lived in this house from her thirties until her family sent her to Winchester (I believe) to get specialized treatment for a debilitating illness. She had Addison's disease, in case you didn't know-- I didn't. In laymen's terms, that means her liver shut down. She was poisoned to death by slowly accumulating toxins. 

Addison's was not understood/ discovered in the early nineteenth century, so whatever treatment that doctor in Winchester thought he was prescribing, it certainly wasn't going to do any good.

Edinburgh Castle

Running out of time on Sunday afternoon, and almost castled out, ran all the way back uphill to Edinburgh Castle--to differentiate for you-- Holyrood: stately, grand, comfortable. Edinburgh: grim, fortified, militarized. As soon as they felt halfway safe, guess where the royalty all chose to live? Mm-hmm, Holyrood. Mary, Queen of Scots, was the last to live in Edinburgh-- and only while she was pregnant with James VI of Scotland, who would eventually be crowned James I of England-- what a place to live while pregnant. Isn't that supposed to be a time for nesting? 

No nesting would be going down in Edinburgh Castle.

Ticket line was an hour long. Heard all sorts of different accents-- French, German, British. Had to scramble from the Castle to get back to the station in time for a train.

Holyrood House

After a night of unrest in a backpacking hostel-- as soon as I entered the coed toilet to spy a skinny, shirtless, bald man shaving, I realized I was in trouble-- I began the morning on my one day in Scotland at Holyrood House. The tour was done in the style of Buckingham Palace-- which is to say, the tour was done in a Queenly fashion.

Again, no one in kilts. But everyone was in tartan.

Holyrood is the Queen's house in Scotland. So there were triumphal bagpipes on an audio recording of a pleasant British woman speaking ( I liked the volunteer Scotsman with his roaring burr at Stirling much better).

Stirling Castle

Fell in with a silver haired bantam of a tour guide; heard the first Scottish brogue of the trip. The tour guide made the castle, with both a) steely eyed, burred "hatred of the English!" and b) charmingly cocked hat.

He wore no kilt, but that's alright. We can't have everything, and, really, that might have been too much.

Stirling Castle, to sum up, briefly, briefly: Braveheart.

Haltwhistle

Pictures are worth a thousand words, or so they say. That truth may not hold true for all vacations, but does so very nicely here.

Kenilworth & Hamlet

After a rousing discussion of Persuasion, the program took off for our fourth and final Shakespearean play, Hamlet. En route to Stratford-Upon-Avon and the RSC Theatre, we stopped for an hour at ruined Kenilworth Castle.

Kenilworth is associated with Queen Elizabeth and Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Elizabeth gave him the estate, and then visited him-- staying for nearly a month during her initial visit. In his desire to entertain her lavishly, he almost bankrupted himself.

This ghostly, historic ramble inspired me to watch the pixellized, cloudy version of ELIZABETH (with Cate Blanchett) available on YouTube.

This is the view available from one of the turrets. 

There was a group of little kids running around, with their mothers following along behind-- to pull them out of the lake-like puddles they kept finding and wading out into-- and to yell every now and again not to jump off of that, that was dangerous. 

After Kenilworth, we continued on our way to the RSC. Kathleen and I ate at a little pub we found, and the bartender promptly put us out of our wits with his brash greeting. There was no hello-- as our eyes adjusted to the dim interior, he yelled, "Ah, there you are! Didn't I just see you last night?"-- to which we just kind of shook our heads in confusion, and he continued on in a genial fashion, "Ah, of course, it must have been your sister"-- and we hemmed and hawed and laughed and he complimented our beauty as he came around the bar to seat us.

The place was nearly empty, and he seemed determined to pursue a conversation. Usually I have a male around-- like, oh, say Dad-- to handle situations like these. To strike off on manly topics, like firefighting or fishing or something-- but no. There was no man to fill that office, so I laughed, and then laughed again, and then coughed up another laugh every time a silence seemed like it might be about to fall.

It was good pizza. And an adventurous experience with a local. I always knew I would make something fabulously awkward out of such an interview-- but, really. What do you do when someone quite determined decides to be gallant?

Well, I laugh.
Hamlet was cool. As cool as Hamlet can be, at any rate, when the spectator is me and I'm faced with hours of insanity and severely messed up relationships. The actor cast as Hamlet played the young Barty Crouch in Harry Potter movie number four, which I'm familiar with-- both characters are insane; he's obviously forming a niche for himself in the character market-- he played both roles with the same manic touch. I kept waiting for his tongue to flicker out during the play (but it didn't). He's also Dr. Who, according to the Dr. Who fans in the program, who seemed like good authorities on the matter.

Patrick Stuart played both the ghost and King Claudius. That was certainly an experience, being so close to a famous actor. He played the part with great dignity and grave solemnity. I find that I prefer the comedic Falstaff character from Merry Wives.
We returned to Brasenose a bit before 1am. I dreamed of kings and queens, and castles and things. 

The Tower of London and Greenwich

This was a day of dashing about-- of running into walls-- of running into people-- of running into people's luggage-- and of stubbing my toes all to pieces because my eyes were everywhere but where I was going. This was a day of maximum efficiency. Not a second of it was wasted, and nothing was conquered to my satisfaction.

Perhaps I had been looking forward to the Tower of London a trifle too much. I had really wanted to take a guided tour with a yeoman-warder; they were free, offered with the admission fee, but only given every hour. We would have had to wait fifteen minutes, and the other two were off and running before I had a chance to sell my heart's desire to them. 

Kathleen was bound and determined to get us to Greenwich, so we purchased River Roamer Passes on Thames clippers, which was a cool experience. The clipper system is set up very much like a metro, except that the boat is less crowded and there's a nice, stinging salt spray to refresh one when feeling crowded. They should bottle that feeling up and sell it; it's priceless.

In Greenwich, we went to a Naval Museum. Kathleen had wanted the Naval museum, and Liz the Imperial War Museum, but as the Naval was closest, and we were down to an hour and a half before we absolutely had to begin the journey back to Oxford, we went with Kathleen's preference. 

There wasn't much time to admire the collections on display, and not enough time to actually straddle the prime meridian, but we did get to see a lot.

Personally, I came to the conclusion that Admiral Nelson was a very small man while observing an undershirt of his. Skinny, but many men are skinny; he had to have had arms like pencils in order to wear the shirt the plaque says he wore. I also saw the dirty stockings he wore when shot. I thought them very legitimate looking.

Because I chose to leave my rain jacket wadded on my couch in disgrace, it rained; it rained quite hard, and for quite long, and I got quite wet several times over before reaching the relative safety of staircase no. 12. We did manage to make it in time for dinner, but only because we flat out ran through Paddington to make the high speed train.

Stonehenge

We set off for the Oxford train station at 8 in the morning. It took two changes, one at Reading and one at Basingstoke, to get us to bustling little Salisbury, where we caught a bus out to Stonehenge.

The surrounding countryside is astounding-- golden fields stretching out as far as the eye can see-- and with the added bonus of a gloomy sky and a light drizzle, we could not have asked for a better setting for our Stonehenge experience.

Really, there's not that much to actually DO at Stonehenge, besides walk around taking pictures of it, and of you, and of you and it, and of you and it and friends, and buying stuffed sheep in the gift shop. There was an audio guide-- all I can say of it is that it took an astounding load of time to explain how little we know.



After exploring this site as closely as we could ever wish to, we returned to Salisbury. Again, because the town has nothing to do with Austen, I had little knowledge of the area. I hadn't even considered it beforehand, except as a means to achieving Stonehenge. 

The city is beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. Quaint and blooming and sweet.
We toured Salisbury Cathedral, which is famous for its exhibit of an original manuscript of the Magna Carta. That turned out to be vaguely disappointing-- being in scripted Latin-- and there was a woman who refused to budge from the case. I patiently waited behind her for at least ten minutes; I have no idea what she was doing-- for all intents and purposes, she must have been translating. They have microfilms for that sort of thing.

The Cathedral itself was not at all a disappointment; it is... is... well, words fail. Its spire is leaning, however, that's not just my amateur photography skills showing through.
Do you see what I mean? The Cathedral is beautiful. It puts Notre Dame to shame, given this cathedral has no hunchback to haunt its history.
We had an afternoon tea in Salisbury, because this is a town made for afternoon tea if ever there was one.

Buckingham

After the late night, this Friday morning definitely began with a burnt cup of coffee.

After class, Kathleen, Liz and I began the journey to Buckingham Palace. We took the high speed train to Paddington in London, then the metro to very nearly the Buckingham basement. There began the spending of our reserves of patience, because lines were long and the systems were down and we had to change our vouchers for tickets before we could even wait in the ticket line, which was before the baggage checking line, which was before the audio tour head-set line.

Luckily, we all three had vast reserves ready and at hand. I amused myself by snapping pictures, and Liz amused herself by smiling for them.

We weren't allowed to take pictures in the Palace, one of the few working Palaces left in the world, so I took a few of the outside. This is the back, where we exited.
Not very much of the Palace would fit in a picture because the place is so large, so we had to walk several minutes away and try again.
We got to walk about half a mile through the Buckingham gardens. The rest was roped off; what we could see was pretty, though.
After Buckingham, we wandered the streets of London for a while. There were monuments in every direction. Every time I put my camera away to try to pretend that I wasn't really a tourist, whatever the Buckingham Palace gift shop bag on my arm might say, I would see another monument that really needed to have a picture taken of it.
Trafalgar Square: monuments in all directions, and crazy traffic careening from all the monuments. Traffic rules, backwards or foreign or otherwise, do not seem to apply in this Square.

So, after walking about for a while, Kathleen and I left Liz to try to make it back to Oxford and our three course dinner. We left ourselves two hours; the high speed train only takes one, and we had forty minutes to get to the train station. More than enough time. More than enough.

You know already where this is headed.

First, a line was down, the Baker-Loo line, the line we needed. So we had to run around the Underground like rats in a warren with a whole stream of other harried passengers to the Northern Line, which we THOUGHT would take us to the proper change for the Circle Line, but instead took us to the change for the Victoria Line, so we had to get on a different metro to take us to King's Cross, where we finally achieved our Circle Line metro.

One stop, one sweet, sweet stop from Paddington, the metro stopped for nearly ten minutes. Of course we were all squashed against one another like sardines in an airtight can, and we were one station away from Paddington, and so that is why the driver's shift ended. That is why.

Those ten minutes made us miss our train, something we should perhaps have accepted as inevitable from the moment a cheery voice announced over the speakers that, so sorry for the inconvenience, but the Baker-Loo is temporarily down.

We caught a train to Oxford ten minutes later, but it was not high speed and took two hours to get us home. We arrived in the Oxford train station, a half hour walk from the college, as the starter course was served.

This sort of situation is what McDonald's were created for.

Merry Wives of Windsor

The image is from dailymail.co.uk; photos are not allowed during the performance, being unnatural-like devices.

The entire program went to see Merry Wives at the Globe, which is just off of the Thames in London. We set off on our trusty chartered Jeffs bus at noon-- were within the city limits an hour later-- and then proceeded to slug along for approximately half an hour on a busy city street. Pedestrians were to us what a Harley Davidson is to a bicycle. Which is to say: way, way faster. 

You could hear the bus driver grumbling all the way back where Kathleen and I were sitting. He hates driving in London, he said. It's always like this, he said. And what he said next was obscured by his prolonged honks at the cabbies that were cutting him off.

We were dropped off near the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Gallery. I had forgotten my camera, but that turned out to be a boon. Neither Gallery allows cameras. They want you to buy their posters.

At the NPG, I got to see Cassandra Austen's little watercolor of her sister. It was about two inches by two inches, nonexistent by the grandiose standards of the rest of the portraits, and her sister had gotten tired after half water-coloring Austen's face. There's a tad of sallow color about the face, brown at the hair and the eyes, and then pencil lines squiggle off to denote shoulders and hands and a cap. Yes, Cassandra was an amateur at best, she was. (Though she put love into it, and one can imagine the two sisters giggling about it. Or I can.)

I was also interested in the Tudor paintings. Henry VIII looked like Humpty Dumpty in quite a few of the pieces-- they may have been caricatures. They weren't complete paintings. Anne Boleyn looked like a nondescript; the blurb said the painting had been done years after her death, going off of the description that she had "an unusually long neck." Catherine of Aragon looked noble-- and almost exactly like Anne. Perhaps their portraits were done by the same artist; I can't remember what Catherine's blurb said.

At the National Gallery, I got to see a bit of Da Vinci, a smidgen of Van Gogh, a dollop of Botticelli, a tad of Monet, and a room of Degas. The National Gallery is like... a sequel to the Louvre. It was beautiful, of course, and, as usual, I didn't have anywhere near enough time to see everything that I wished to see.

From the Gallery, we wended our way towards the Globe, eating dinner at a little pub along the way. 

So, this play was an experience. A stiff, knee-locked, claustrophobic experience, pressed shoulder to shoulder in a crowd of standing adults. We were "yardlings" because, as the Shakespeare professor kindly explained, we can go and sit any time we please in America. Sitting is what movie theaters are for. For this play, however, we were going to interact-- we were going to stand. Why? Because this is SHAKESPEARE at the GLOBE.

Yes, that could be true, but the tickets were five pounds. And there is a reason that they were five pounds. 

After looking threatening all day, five minutes into the performance it began to rain. I was flattened into a wall before I even knew it was raining as people surged towards the slight overhang (seats are covered; the yard is not. There's a couple foot margin of error where the yard is slightly covered). 

The rain ceased soon after it had begun and never got too heavy, fortunately, and after intermission I moved so that I had some breathing/ fidgeting room.

The actors were extremely talented-- I was disappointed in King Lear last week, so this amusement came as a wonderful surprise. The overweight Sir Falstaff was a particular uproar-- he must have used prosthetics, heavy makeup, or a combination of the two, because his expressions were clear even from my far-off stolen glances over the shoulder of the man in front of me. 

Bath

We went to Bath on one of our class field trips (only three more left now). 

If you didn't know, large parts of two of Austen's novels are set in Bath. In Northanger Abbey, one enjoys Bath from the visitor's perspective, spending a great deal of time in the Assembly Rooms and Pump Room. Seeing. Being seen. The protagonist, suitably, is an ingenue on the cusp of maturity.

 In Persuasion, one enjoys Bath from the resident's, learning the socio-economic undercurrent of a city that focuses on fashion and wealth. The protagonist is an older woman, one who has made mistakes and lived with the regret of them.

 Austen herself visited Bath, staying with her Aunt Leigh-Perrot. Aunt Leigh-Perrot was a bit of a character-- she knew and traced the Perrot lineage for anyone that would listen from an ancient Anglo-Saxon tribe who took their name from a river, then migrated to Normandy to give their name to a river there, but returned to Enland with the Conqueror, down through the blood of Henry VIII, and into the relatively poor Austen family. (Fabrications. By the way.)

She, Austen, was forced to move there for several years in her late 20s, as her father's health faded. She didn't write while she lived in Bath, but her experiences and observations shaped her writing. Directly after leaving Bath, over a period of roughly six years, she finished and published the majority of her works.

(On a side note, I like to think of her not-writing in her 20s. It gives me hope for myself; all hope is not lost. Austin is my version of Bath, that's all.)

Austen did not like Bath, in case you wondered-- especially in the sunlight. The brilliance of the sun rebounding from white stone bothered her eyes-- well, she did live before sunglasses. She said that she saw the city better through the rain-- figuratively as well, I'm sure.

Okay, background-- check. You're up to speed on the city of Bath.

Now-- for my experience. The bus driver first took us to Prior Park, where the entire program hiked about for nearly an hour. After what is becoming the usual, which is to say, after climbing rocky precipices like a mountain goat, all attention trained on the ground and the delicacy of my ankles, I stumbled upon a sudden grassy plateau, looked up, and was overawed by-- this.

The city in the background is Bath. I couldn't believe there were even cows-- couldn't ask for a more 18th century setting, really.

We half-skidded down the hill to the little bridge you see in the picture above-- one of the four surviving Palladian bridges in the entire world according to the National Heritage woman (3 in England, 1 in Russia). Amy, Alisa, and Rachel grace the bridge with further beauty.
I look so proud, as though I had something to do with the bridge, or the setting-- well, I did skid successfully down a stony, uneven cliff on flip-flops, so that is something to be proud of, if not something particularly monumental.
After our walk, the bus picked us up and moved us to Bath proper. First things first: a couple of us went to tour the Roman Baths.

And, when they say "Roman Baths," they mean Roman. This building (given there have been restorations and renovations over the millenia) survives from that brief period in time when the Romans bathed in Britain. They were civilized, you know. A quote from a Roman emperor on why he bathes once a day reflects a sentiment held by many an American: "Because I haven't the time to bathe twice."

The clashing contrast of the Roman bath with a medieval abbey (Bath Abbey) rising behind, caught by yours truly: a combination as delicious and impractical as peanut butter and jelly.
One of the Roman bath areas. Kathleen and Prithi, two of the girls I wandered about with, actually drank some of it, and came away with twisted expressions. Evidently it has a metallic tang, though it's also supposed to have healing powers. Of course, leeches and letting blood were also supposed to have healing effects, back in the day.
A sign that I shall graciously allow to explain itself.
The west baths; now a wishing pool. 
After lunch, at my persistent demand, we went to the Jane Austen Centre.  Do we look alike, do you think? No? 

The tour was actually a bit of a disappointment-- we sat in a stifling room and listened to our guide speak. Furthermore, I knew the majority of what the guide shared already, having read a 400 page biography earlier in the summer. 

Given a) I was determined to enjoy this. and b) I'd never heard the information in a British accent before, and that adds something elemental to the story.

There were painted pigs all over the city-- everywhere. It reminded all of us of the painted cows that appear (around Livestock Show & Rodeo time is it? Periodically, anyway) in Houston. Someone said there are "Pigs of Bath," and this painted pig parade plays off the phrase-- When I asked what that meant, no one had an answer. 

If you know, please tell me. In the meantime, there are painted pigs all over the city.
Piccadilly Circus: where the rich live. Significantly, none of Austen's characters live in this part of town, not a one.
The Assembly Rooms and, tellingly, now a Museum of Fashion. Notice how the sky begins to grow a trifle threatening.
One of the Assembly Rooms. Up to a 1000 people in evening dress would gather here to play cards, gossip, dance, etc. I believe this is one of Catherine Morland's first stops when she arrives in Bath in Northanger Abbey, and the passage describes a claustrophobic crowd of people. It's not like the rooms, beautifully appointed as they are, had AC.
When we left to hunt for the parking lot and our Jeffs bus, it was pouring rain. We got soaking wet and dashed back into the Jane Austen Centre-- given that, this time, there was a man in period costume standing in the doorway and advising us to be careful and not to slip.
As we left on the bus, I saw a fire station! This is the Avon Station in the Bath District, according to the sign.

Sorry if this entry is rather garbled. Bath is such a confusion of connotations for me-- stories from Austen's life, scenes from two of her books, and now my own memories-- And not enough time to get around everywhere and see everything! Really, I wouldn't be satisfied in leaving until I had remained in Bath a month. At least.

But we had dinner waiting for us at Brasenose, and even with the bus driver running yellow lights and threatening pedestrians as she careened down the main streets of Oxford, we all had to scamper to the dining hall to make it in time for the starter (tonight, cheese and asparagus wrapped in thin slices of ham. Twas followed by the main course, a delightful chicken and potato dish trumping anything that I could make myself-- and a dessert-- sticky toffee pudding, according to Liz, which I should have refused, not having walked that much-- and yet... and yet ate the whole thing. They feed us well here, that is for sure).