Last evening, I returned safely from Baltimore, and my brothers and my older brother’s family arrived safely from New York and Denver.
All of us arrived later than expected—late Friday afternoon/early Friday evening is just about the most unfavorable time to fly, and Northwest has been having lots of problems of late, which only added to an already-bad situation—but my parents were prepared for that eventuality. They kept checking our flight statuses online, and we kept calling them, and we kept sending them email messages, apprising them of our progress. As a result, my parents did not have to go to the airport until shortly before our arrivals, which saved them lots of unnecessary waiting.
We had a late but grand dinner last night in honor of everyone’s arrival—stuffed roast chickens, homemade butter noodles, mashed potatoes, fresh peas, glazed carrots, fried okra, and homemade cranberry-orange relish, with homemade apple pie and homemade ice cream for dessert—and my uncle had his first opportunity to see my brothers in many, many years. We had a lovely and long dinner, sitting around the dining table and talking long after everyone was done eating.
Today my brothers and Josh and I went to play racquetball, and then we went swimming, but otherwise we remained home all day, playing with my nephew and helping my mother get everything ready for our trip up to the lake.
There is a lot of food to get ready and packed, because it will take a lot of food to feed nine persons and one dog for seven days. We have the hampers packed, but we will not pack the coolers until tomorrow, shortly before we depart.
Because of the number of persons and the amount of provisions involved, we will be driving three vehicles up to the lake tomorrow--in what Joshua has termed “a wagon train”. My parents and my uncle will go in my father’s car, my older brother and his family will go in my mother’s car, and Joshua and my middle brother and I will go in my car.
We three will take the dog with us.
I think we will let the dog drive, as surely he knows the way by now.
We will leave early tomorrow afternoon, after church and after lunch.
I cannot wait.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
London Itinerary Completed
After much deliberation and much planning, my parents and my middle brother and Joshua and I have our London itinerary for September fully prepared.
We believe that we have prepared an itinerary that will be pleasing to everyone: plenty of art for my mother to enjoy, and plenty of historical and military things for my brother to enjoy. As for my father and Joshua and me, we three will be happy to do anything as long as it does not involve shopping.
On this trip, we will be focusing mainly on London attractions that hug the northern bank of the Thames, from the Adelphi area of London (near Waterloo Bridge) to Chelsea. This will keep us from running here, there and yonder, in a breathless fashion, spending a very short time at each of a plethora of attractions.
However, we have not totally restricted ourselves, geographically, to a narrow strip of the northern bank of the Thames. We will visit most attractions within walking distance of our hotel in Kensington, except for the South Kensington museums, which are so overwhelming that we will, by and large, avoid them on this trip. We will spend only one hour in the South Kensington museums, and that hour will be devoted to viewing The Raphael Cartoons at The Victoria And Albert Museum.
In addition, we will spend one day exploring a few attractions on the South Bank, and we will spend another day exploring a few attractions in the King’s Cross area.
Otherwise, however, we will be visiting virtually everything there is to see and do in Chelsea, Westminster, and the very center of London south of Leicester Square. We shall save other areas of London for a future trip.
My brother and I have already seen everything on our itinerary--in many cases, more than once--with a lone exception: he and I have never visited Leighton House. However, he and I are happy to go back to each and every one of the attractions we plan to visit, and show them to Josh, and enjoy them with our parents, who either have not visited these sights recently or have not visited them at all.
We have tried to arrange our days so that they involve several different--and contrasting--things to see and do. We have also tried to arrange our days so that most days are spent in one fairly-constricted geographical area. This has been done, among other reasons, in order for us to minimize the number of subway journeys we must endure.
One item beyond our control is the fact that all concert-going will occur in the first week of our stay, and all theater-going will occur in the second week of our stay. This was a function of Proms scheduling more than anything else, and there is nothing we can do about that.
From a theater-opera-ballet perspective, we will be visiting London precisely at the wrong time. From a Buckingham Palace-Palace Of Westminster perspective, we will be visiting London precisely at the right time.
We believe that we have prepared an itinerary that will be pleasing to everyone: plenty of art for my mother to enjoy, and plenty of historical and military things for my brother to enjoy. As for my father and Joshua and me, we three will be happy to do anything as long as it does not involve shopping.
On this trip, we will be focusing mainly on London attractions that hug the northern bank of the Thames, from the Adelphi area of London (near Waterloo Bridge) to Chelsea. This will keep us from running here, there and yonder, in a breathless fashion, spending a very short time at each of a plethora of attractions.
However, we have not totally restricted ourselves, geographically, to a narrow strip of the northern bank of the Thames. We will visit most attractions within walking distance of our hotel in Kensington, except for the South Kensington museums, which are so overwhelming that we will, by and large, avoid them on this trip. We will spend only one hour in the South Kensington museums, and that hour will be devoted to viewing The Raphael Cartoons at The Victoria And Albert Museum.
In addition, we will spend one day exploring a few attractions on the South Bank, and we will spend another day exploring a few attractions in the King’s Cross area.
Otherwise, however, we will be visiting virtually everything there is to see and do in Chelsea, Westminster, and the very center of London south of Leicester Square. We shall save other areas of London for a future trip.
My brother and I have already seen everything on our itinerary--in many cases, more than once--with a lone exception: he and I have never visited Leighton House. However, he and I are happy to go back to each and every one of the attractions we plan to visit, and show them to Josh, and enjoy them with our parents, who either have not visited these sights recently or have not visited them at all.
We have tried to arrange our days so that they involve several different--and contrasting--things to see and do. We have also tried to arrange our days so that most days are spent in one fairly-constricted geographical area. This has been done, among other reasons, in order for us to minimize the number of subway journeys we must endure.
One item beyond our control is the fact that all concert-going will occur in the first week of our stay, and all theater-going will occur in the second week of our stay. This was a function of Proms scheduling more than anything else, and there is nothing we can do about that.
From a theater-opera-ballet perspective, we will be visiting London precisely at the wrong time. From a Buckingham Palace-Palace Of Westminster perspective, we will be visiting London precisely at the right time.
Day One In London
Friday, August 31
Leicester Square
The Church Of Notre Dame De France
Trafalgar Square
The Church Of Saint Martin-In-The-Fields
Whitehall
Horse Guards
Horse Guards Parade
Banqueting House
Downing Street
The Cenotaph
Parliament Square
We will arrive in London very, very early in the morning. Once we clear customs, and retrieve our luggage, and take the subway to our hotel, it should be 9:00 a.m. or so.
We will check our luggage at the hotel, because our rooms are unlikely to be ready so early in the day. We will remain at the hotel for an hour or so in order to eat a full breakfast—according to my parents, the hotel has a very, very fine breakfast, with everything from eggs and ham and sausages and English bacon and American bacon and Canadian bacon to a full array of pancakes, toasts and waffles—and then we shall set out on our first day of exploration.
Most of this first day will see us outside, out and about, moving around, in order for us to ward off fatigue.
We will take the subway to Leicester Square Station, and walk to Leicester Square, an excellent starting point for a first day in London. Leicester Square is in the center of the theater district, and the location of London’s half-price theater-ticket booth. It is an historic square, and features statues of William Shakespeare and Charlie Chaplin, as well as busts of Isaac Newton and painters William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds, all three of whom once lived on the square.
Immediately north of the square is an interesting church, The Church Of Notre Dame De France, London’s French-language Roman Catholic Church. The original building was circular, purpose-built to show panoramas. Once panoramas fell from fashion in the 1850’s, the building was turned over to London’s French population for Roman Catholic worship. The original building was destroyed in 1940, but a new structure, in a modern Beaux-Arts style, was built in the 1950’s. The rebuilt church was designed in a circular shape, too, in order to pay tribute to the church’s heritage. The church is very beautiful, inside and out, and very unique, and well worth a visit. We will go inside, and enjoy the interior, and examine the sanctuary and side chapels, one of which is decorated with a Jean Cocteau mural.
When we are done visiting the church, we will walk south until we reach Trafalgar Square, the most famous of London squares. One of my favorite views in the entire world is from the north side of the square, looking southward and westward toward the spires of Westminster Abbey and The Houses Of Parliament. We will enjoy this awe-inspiring view, and walk around the square, and examine the many surrounding buildings, and observe the giant column with the enormous statue of Admiral Lord Nelson at its peak. We will examine the other statues on the square, too, and we will locate the busts of Admiral Beatty and Admiral Jellicoe, of The Battle Of Jutland, for my father and Josh.
Then we will cross the street and visit The Church Of Saint Martin-In-The-Fields, an English Baroque church. We will explore the interior, and then we will explore and encircle the entire exterior. Afterward, we will explore the crypt, which may or may not have a small exhibit on display. We will rest for a while in the crypt café, and have some coffee, and a light lunch, before we continue our sightseeing.
When we leave the crypt cafe, we will cross Trafalgar Square and walk the length of Whitehall, the street that connects Trafalgar Square with Parliament Square.
We will stop at Horse Guards, the symbolic entry to Saint James’s Palace and Buckingham Palace, and view the horse-mounted guards, and examine the Whitehall facade of the building.
Then we will explore the interior archways and courtyards, and walk through the building to the other side to examine the facade facing Saint James’s Park, and to explore Horse Guards Parade, the public parade ground that separates Horse Guards from Saint James’s Park.
When we are finished, we will retrace our steps to Whitehall, and cross the street, and visit the main feature of our day: Banqueting House.
Banqueting House, once part of Whitehall Palace, long the largest palace in Europe, is one of the greatest buildings in London. It is the only portion of Whitehall Palace that survived the 1698 fire that destroyed the great complex, a series of buildings that occupied what is now the entire south side of Whitehall, from Trafalgar Square to Parliament Square. Banqueting House is the greatest Classical building in London proper, and perhaps architect Inigo Jones’ greatest masterpiece.
We will first visit the museum on the first floor, viewing the exhibits and viewing the film. Afterward, we will go upstairs to visit the magnificent hall, perfectly proportioned, with rows of double Corinthian and Ionic columns, and a ceiling painted by Peter Paul Rubens on commission from Charles I. This is the only place in the world where visitors may view a large-scale Rubens project in its intended, original setting.
We will spend an hour or so in the hall, looking at the Rubens ceiling panels, and marveling at this magnificent space, and then we will look out the particular window from which Charles I stepped onto a scaffold for his 1649 execution, exactly twenty years after he had knighted Rubens for the artist’s work on the ceiling.
After we complete our visit to Banqueting House, we will return to Whitehall, and continue walking toward Parliament Square. We will pass Downing Street, closed to visitors, and try to catch a glimpse of Number 10.
We will stop at The Cenotaph, one of my favorite war memorials anywhere. Erected in 1920 in the middle of Whitehall to commemorate the dead of World War I, The Cenotaph now honors those sacrificed in both World Wars. It is a memorial of the most remarkable simplicity and dignity and beauty, and I have always found it to be immensely moving.
Continuing down Whitehall, we will examine the Whitehall facades of The Foreign Office and The Home Office, two buildings in entirely different styles, but both the work of architect George Gilbert Scott.
Our final stop will be Parliament Square, which provides one of the most dramatic views in London, surrounded, as it is, by Westminster Abbey, The Houses Of Parliament, and Saint Margaret’s Church. We will explore the square, and explore the many statues, including the statue of Abraham Lincoln, as well the statues of Oliver Cromwell, Winston Churchill, William Gladstone and others. There is no statue in honor of Benjamin Disraeli in the square, despite the fact that numerous guidebooks assert, incorrectly, that Disraeli is among those whose likenesses are represented in the square.
After our exploration of Parliament Square is completed, we will go to Westminster Station and take the subway back to our hotel, where we will check in and eat dinner in the hotel’s dining room. After dinner, we plan to turn in very early. We hope to be in bed by 7:00 p.m. or so, and we should be able to sleep twelve hours or more, and wake, fully rested, at 7:00 a.m. the following morning.
Leicester Square
The Church Of Notre Dame De France
Trafalgar Square
The Church Of Saint Martin-In-The-Fields
Whitehall
Horse Guards
Horse Guards Parade
Banqueting House
Downing Street
The Cenotaph
Parliament Square
We will arrive in London very, very early in the morning. Once we clear customs, and retrieve our luggage, and take the subway to our hotel, it should be 9:00 a.m. or so.
We will check our luggage at the hotel, because our rooms are unlikely to be ready so early in the day. We will remain at the hotel for an hour or so in order to eat a full breakfast—according to my parents, the hotel has a very, very fine breakfast, with everything from eggs and ham and sausages and English bacon and American bacon and Canadian bacon to a full array of pancakes, toasts and waffles—and then we shall set out on our first day of exploration.
Most of this first day will see us outside, out and about, moving around, in order for us to ward off fatigue.
We will take the subway to Leicester Square Station, and walk to Leicester Square, an excellent starting point for a first day in London. Leicester Square is in the center of the theater district, and the location of London’s half-price theater-ticket booth. It is an historic square, and features statues of William Shakespeare and Charlie Chaplin, as well as busts of Isaac Newton and painters William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds, all three of whom once lived on the square.
Immediately north of the square is an interesting church, The Church Of Notre Dame De France, London’s French-language Roman Catholic Church. The original building was circular, purpose-built to show panoramas. Once panoramas fell from fashion in the 1850’s, the building was turned over to London’s French population for Roman Catholic worship. The original building was destroyed in 1940, but a new structure, in a modern Beaux-Arts style, was built in the 1950’s. The rebuilt church was designed in a circular shape, too, in order to pay tribute to the church’s heritage. The church is very beautiful, inside and out, and very unique, and well worth a visit. We will go inside, and enjoy the interior, and examine the sanctuary and side chapels, one of which is decorated with a Jean Cocteau mural.
When we are done visiting the church, we will walk south until we reach Trafalgar Square, the most famous of London squares. One of my favorite views in the entire world is from the north side of the square, looking southward and westward toward the spires of Westminster Abbey and The Houses Of Parliament. We will enjoy this awe-inspiring view, and walk around the square, and examine the many surrounding buildings, and observe the giant column with the enormous statue of Admiral Lord Nelson at its peak. We will examine the other statues on the square, too, and we will locate the busts of Admiral Beatty and Admiral Jellicoe, of The Battle Of Jutland, for my father and Josh.
Then we will cross the street and visit The Church Of Saint Martin-In-The-Fields, an English Baroque church. We will explore the interior, and then we will explore and encircle the entire exterior. Afterward, we will explore the crypt, which may or may not have a small exhibit on display. We will rest for a while in the crypt café, and have some coffee, and a light lunch, before we continue our sightseeing.
When we leave the crypt cafe, we will cross Trafalgar Square and walk the length of Whitehall, the street that connects Trafalgar Square with Parliament Square.
We will stop at Horse Guards, the symbolic entry to Saint James’s Palace and Buckingham Palace, and view the horse-mounted guards, and examine the Whitehall facade of the building.
Then we will explore the interior archways and courtyards, and walk through the building to the other side to examine the facade facing Saint James’s Park, and to explore Horse Guards Parade, the public parade ground that separates Horse Guards from Saint James’s Park.
When we are finished, we will retrace our steps to Whitehall, and cross the street, and visit the main feature of our day: Banqueting House.
Banqueting House, once part of Whitehall Palace, long the largest palace in Europe, is one of the greatest buildings in London. It is the only portion of Whitehall Palace that survived the 1698 fire that destroyed the great complex, a series of buildings that occupied what is now the entire south side of Whitehall, from Trafalgar Square to Parliament Square. Banqueting House is the greatest Classical building in London proper, and perhaps architect Inigo Jones’ greatest masterpiece.
We will first visit the museum on the first floor, viewing the exhibits and viewing the film. Afterward, we will go upstairs to visit the magnificent hall, perfectly proportioned, with rows of double Corinthian and Ionic columns, and a ceiling painted by Peter Paul Rubens on commission from Charles I. This is the only place in the world where visitors may view a large-scale Rubens project in its intended, original setting.
We will spend an hour or so in the hall, looking at the Rubens ceiling panels, and marveling at this magnificent space, and then we will look out the particular window from which Charles I stepped onto a scaffold for his 1649 execution, exactly twenty years after he had knighted Rubens for the artist’s work on the ceiling.
After we complete our visit to Banqueting House, we will return to Whitehall, and continue walking toward Parliament Square. We will pass Downing Street, closed to visitors, and try to catch a glimpse of Number 10.
We will stop at The Cenotaph, one of my favorite war memorials anywhere. Erected in 1920 in the middle of Whitehall to commemorate the dead of World War I, The Cenotaph now honors those sacrificed in both World Wars. It is a memorial of the most remarkable simplicity and dignity and beauty, and I have always found it to be immensely moving.
Continuing down Whitehall, we will examine the Whitehall facades of The Foreign Office and The Home Office, two buildings in entirely different styles, but both the work of architect George Gilbert Scott.
Our final stop will be Parliament Square, which provides one of the most dramatic views in London, surrounded, as it is, by Westminster Abbey, The Houses Of Parliament, and Saint Margaret’s Church. We will explore the square, and explore the many statues, including the statue of Abraham Lincoln, as well the statues of Oliver Cromwell, Winston Churchill, William Gladstone and others. There is no statue in honor of Benjamin Disraeli in the square, despite the fact that numerous guidebooks assert, incorrectly, that Disraeli is among those whose likenesses are represented in the square.
After our exploration of Parliament Square is completed, we will go to Westminster Station and take the subway back to our hotel, where we will check in and eat dinner in the hotel’s dining room. After dinner, we plan to turn in very early. We hope to be in bed by 7:00 p.m. or so, and we should be able to sleep twelve hours or more, and wake, fully rested, at 7:00 a.m. the following morning.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Day Two In London
Saturday, September 1
Saint Mary Abbots Church, Kensington
The Royal Albert Hall
The Albert Memorial
The Wellington Arch
Hyde Park Corner
Apsley House
Our second day in London will be spent within walking distance of our hotel.
We will have breakfast at our hotel, and try to start out at 9:00 a.m.
Our first stop will be a nearby church, Saint Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, a beautiful and large Neo-Gothic church designed by George Gilbert Scott. This church is filled with many interesting monuments and murals and paintings and sculptures, and it is a very pleasant and gratifying church to visit. It is situated in the middle of a city block, with peaceful gardens surrounding the church on two sides. My brother and I happened upon this church once by chance, and we both instantly loved it.
After visiting the church, we will stroll the entire length of the street that borders the southern end of Hyde Park, along which are several key London monuments.
Our first stop along the street will be at The Royal Albert Hall, in which we will attend four Proms concerts later in the week. We will walk around this 1871 monstrosity, and examine the architecture, and the friezes, and the exterior terra cotta decorations.
At the rear of The Royal Albert Hall is a beautiful, terraced plaza, surrounded by several beautiful Victorian buildings: The Royal College Of Music, The Royal College Of Art, The Royal College Of Organists (which no longer occupies its original building), The Royal Geographical Society and Imperial College, London. At the top of the plaza, near The Royal Albert Hall, is a memorial to The Great Exhibition Of 1851, with a statue of its organizer, Prince Albert, at the top.
When we are completed exploring the plaza behind The Royal Albert Hall, we will cross the street in front of the Hall and examine another, much more imposing statue of Prince Albert, the statue that is part of The Albert Memorial, a very peculiar but magnificent shrine to The Prince Consort, planned and erected after his early death.
The Albert Memorial is another Neo-Gothic edifice designed by the ubiquitous George Gilbert Scott. Scott’s inspiration for the monument was, oddly, medieval miniature shrines, the shrines that often cradled mummified corpses or body parts.
The Albert Memorial is one of the very greatest sculptural achievements of The Victorian Era. It is also an over-the-top, almost indescribable, eyesore. For sheer scale, opulence and complexity, it is hard to find a match anywhere in the world. Even by the standards of the time, contemporary Victorians thought that The Albert Memorial was a brutal and tasteless conceit on the part of the Queen.
The Memorial is amazingly complicated. There are several levels of the monument, which is 180-feet tall from base to peak. The monument is constructed of granite, marble, cast iron, lead, bronze, glass, mosaics and gold. At its center, a fourteen-foot statue of Albert stands under a canopy, with the statue and canopy encased in a vast Gothic shrine.
Each of its four pillars is made from a single stone, each weighing seventeen tons. The base is decorated with 169 different life-size figures of poets, architects, composers and sculptors. At its four inner corners are marble groups representing agriculture, manufacturing, commerce and engineering. At its four outer corners are tableaux representing the four continents of The British Empire, then at its zenith.
The whole thing is crass. It is also riveting.
When we are done exploring The Albert Memorial, we will proceed to The Wellington Arch, London’s answer to The Arc De Triomphe.
The Arch was originally erected to serve as a grand inner entrance to Buckingham Palace during the reign of George IV, but it was moved to its present location in the very center of Hyde Park Corner, a small park, in 1882. Britain’s largest bronze statue—depicting the angel of peace descending upon the chariot of war--rests atop The Arch.
The interior of The Arch was never opened to the public until 2001, but it now houses three levels of new and interesting displays. The displays—one on each level—address ceremonial arches throughout the world, London’s statues and monuments and memorials, and London’s “Blue Plaques” scheme. We will visit the displays, and we will also go to the viewing platform at the top of The Arch, and enjoy the marvelous views of London.
After we have completed our visit to The Arch, we will stroll through Hyde Park Corner and examine the many statues and monuments that line the park’s edge.
We will try to find a nearby take-out place to buy sandwiches for a light lunch, which we plan to take back with us to Hyde Park Corner, where we will eat on one of the many benches in the park.
After lunch, we will cross the street for the main event of our day: a visit to Apsley House, the former home of the first Duke Of Wellington. Apsley House is one of London’s very, very greatest attractions, and we will spend the remainder of our day there.
There is so much to enjoy at Apsley House that it is almost overwhelming.
First and foremost is the painting collection. While masterpieces adorn the walls of the entire mansion, the very finest paintings are hung in the magnificent Waterloo Gallery, specifically built to display the most renowned works from The Duke Of Wellington’s great collection.
Two hundred of Wellington’s paintings were formerly part of The Spanish Royal Collection. During The Peninsular War, in the midst of The Battle Of Vittoria, British troops came upon a train of wagons carrying paintings northward from Madrid to France. The paintings were masterpieces from The Spanish Royal Collection, stolen by Joseph Bonaparte, who was transporting them to Paris. Wellington requisitioned the paintings and had them shipped to London, into his personal care, and Wellington kept the paintings himself after the conclusion of The Peninsular Campaign (with The Spanish Crown’s belated and grudging consent, given many years after the fact).
Most of the paintings at Apsley House are Spanish and Dutch Old Master paintings, but there are a few Italian and French paintings as well. Some of the works are simply breathtaking, such as Velazquez’s masterpiece, “The Waterseller Of Seville”, Goya’s great equestrian portrait of Wellington (painted during The Peninsular Campaign), and one of the very greatest Correggio paintings in existence.
There are also many legendary British paintings on display, including David Wilkie’s masterpiece, “The Chelsea Pensioners Reading The Waterloo Dispatches”, and Thomas Lawrence’s famed portrait of Wellington, painted immediately after Wellington’s return to London after The Battle Of Waterloo. In the Lawrence portrait, Wellington positively sneers and gloats with self-importance and pride—and yet the Lawrence portrait reveals Wellington’s great charm, too.
The paintings in Apsley House are worth several hours.of examination, but they are not the only reason to visit Apley House.
Wellington used his home to entertain on the grandest possible scale, and he owned one of the world’s very greatest collections of dinner and dessert services, as well as an astonishing number of porcelain and silver commemorative pieces, almost all of which were given to him by grateful European ruling houses, restored to their thrones after The Napoleonic Era had ended.
Wellington, for instance, was the owner of The Egyptian Sevres Service, one of the world’s very greatest dinner and dessert services. The Egyptian Sevres Service was Napoleon’s gift to Josephine to commemorate their divorce (Josephine refused to accept the gift). After The Battle Of Waterloo, The Egyptian Sevres Service was presented to Wellington by a relieved France, happy to be rid of the Bonaparte clan at last.
The Egyptian Sevres Service is of the most amazing beauty and complexity. The centerpiece, alone, makes a visit to Apsley House worthwhile. The centerpiece is over twenty feet long, and it recreates Egypt’s pyramids, sphinxes and other landmarks on the most lavish scale. It is so large and so detailed and so elaborate that, from a practical point of view, it makes a most unsuccessful centerpiece for a dining table—there is no way that diners would be able to eat, or to converse with each other, with such a jaw-dropping work of art immediately before their eyes.
Wellington was also the owner of The Prussian Service, one of the two greatest Meissen porcelain dinner and dessert services ever created (the other is The Furstenberg Service, owned by The British Royal Family). Each item of The Prussian Service is hand-painted with a different scene from one of Wellington’s many military campaigns during The Napoleonic Wars. The Prussian Service is so beautiful, and the painting so fine, that it almost defies belief.
Wellington further owned The Portuguese Service, a vast dinner and dessert service made entirely of silver, and presented to him by the rulers of Portugal. It is the greatest silver dinner and dessert service ever created. Its elaborate centerpiece is almost twenty-five feet long, and almost as impressive as the centerpiece of The Egyptian Sevres Service.
While most of Wellington’s porcelain is on display in the porcelain gallery on the first floor of Apsley House; The Portuguese Service is on display upstairs in the dining room, where it rests on the grand dining table, laid out as if a banquet is scheduled to be held that very evening.
Wellington was a great collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and much of this collection is on display throughout the mansion. Wellington owned many, many notable items formerly belonging to Napoleon, including Napoleon’s sword and including Antonio Canova’s great colossal nude statue of Napoleon, eleven feet tall, which rests at the base of the grand central staircase at Apsley House. (A bomb exploding nearby during World War II dislodged Napoleon’s fig leaf, causing great consternation at Apsley House, according to the current Duke Of Wellington, a child at the time of the event.)
Apsley House was the grandest private residence in London during its day, and the interiors of its grand State Rooms, alone, warrant a visit. The interiors were restored to their original splendor, consistent with designer Robert Adams’ original plans, in the 1990’s. Ten of the magnificent second-floor State Rooms are open to the public, in addition to the first floor’s museum-like display galleries as well as the galleries in the basement, which are devoted to Wellington’s personal memorabilia.
Apsley House is one of the finest attractions to visit in London, and it is never crowded. My parents and Joshua will love visiting Apsley House, what with its plethora of art and history.
We shall probably remain at Apsley House until it closes for the day, at which point we shall walk back to our hotel. On our way, we shall locate a nice restaurant at which to have an early dinner.
We plan to get back to our hotel no later than 7:30 p.m., so that we all can turn in early for a second consecutive night. By the following morning, we should be entirely free from any vestiges of jet lag.
Saint Mary Abbots Church, Kensington
The Royal Albert Hall
The Albert Memorial
The Wellington Arch
Hyde Park Corner
Apsley House
Our second day in London will be spent within walking distance of our hotel.
We will have breakfast at our hotel, and try to start out at 9:00 a.m.
Our first stop will be a nearby church, Saint Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, a beautiful and large Neo-Gothic church designed by George Gilbert Scott. This church is filled with many interesting monuments and murals and paintings and sculptures, and it is a very pleasant and gratifying church to visit. It is situated in the middle of a city block, with peaceful gardens surrounding the church on two sides. My brother and I happened upon this church once by chance, and we both instantly loved it.
After visiting the church, we will stroll the entire length of the street that borders the southern end of Hyde Park, along which are several key London monuments.
Our first stop along the street will be at The Royal Albert Hall, in which we will attend four Proms concerts later in the week. We will walk around this 1871 monstrosity, and examine the architecture, and the friezes, and the exterior terra cotta decorations.
At the rear of The Royal Albert Hall is a beautiful, terraced plaza, surrounded by several beautiful Victorian buildings: The Royal College Of Music, The Royal College Of Art, The Royal College Of Organists (which no longer occupies its original building), The Royal Geographical Society and Imperial College, London. At the top of the plaza, near The Royal Albert Hall, is a memorial to The Great Exhibition Of 1851, with a statue of its organizer, Prince Albert, at the top.
When we are completed exploring the plaza behind The Royal Albert Hall, we will cross the street in front of the Hall and examine another, much more imposing statue of Prince Albert, the statue that is part of The Albert Memorial, a very peculiar but magnificent shrine to The Prince Consort, planned and erected after his early death.
The Albert Memorial is another Neo-Gothic edifice designed by the ubiquitous George Gilbert Scott. Scott’s inspiration for the monument was, oddly, medieval miniature shrines, the shrines that often cradled mummified corpses or body parts.
The Albert Memorial is one of the very greatest sculptural achievements of The Victorian Era. It is also an over-the-top, almost indescribable, eyesore. For sheer scale, opulence and complexity, it is hard to find a match anywhere in the world. Even by the standards of the time, contemporary Victorians thought that The Albert Memorial was a brutal and tasteless conceit on the part of the Queen.
The Memorial is amazingly complicated. There are several levels of the monument, which is 180-feet tall from base to peak. The monument is constructed of granite, marble, cast iron, lead, bronze, glass, mosaics and gold. At its center, a fourteen-foot statue of Albert stands under a canopy, with the statue and canopy encased in a vast Gothic shrine.
Each of its four pillars is made from a single stone, each weighing seventeen tons. The base is decorated with 169 different life-size figures of poets, architects, composers and sculptors. At its four inner corners are marble groups representing agriculture, manufacturing, commerce and engineering. At its four outer corners are tableaux representing the four continents of The British Empire, then at its zenith.
The whole thing is crass. It is also riveting.
When we are done exploring The Albert Memorial, we will proceed to The Wellington Arch, London’s answer to The Arc De Triomphe.
The Arch was originally erected to serve as a grand inner entrance to Buckingham Palace during the reign of George IV, but it was moved to its present location in the very center of Hyde Park Corner, a small park, in 1882. Britain’s largest bronze statue—depicting the angel of peace descending upon the chariot of war--rests atop The Arch.
The interior of The Arch was never opened to the public until 2001, but it now houses three levels of new and interesting displays. The displays—one on each level—address ceremonial arches throughout the world, London’s statues and monuments and memorials, and London’s “Blue Plaques” scheme. We will visit the displays, and we will also go to the viewing platform at the top of The Arch, and enjoy the marvelous views of London.
After we have completed our visit to The Arch, we will stroll through Hyde Park Corner and examine the many statues and monuments that line the park’s edge.
We will try to find a nearby take-out place to buy sandwiches for a light lunch, which we plan to take back with us to Hyde Park Corner, where we will eat on one of the many benches in the park.
After lunch, we will cross the street for the main event of our day: a visit to Apsley House, the former home of the first Duke Of Wellington. Apsley House is one of London’s very, very greatest attractions, and we will spend the remainder of our day there.
There is so much to enjoy at Apsley House that it is almost overwhelming.
First and foremost is the painting collection. While masterpieces adorn the walls of the entire mansion, the very finest paintings are hung in the magnificent Waterloo Gallery, specifically built to display the most renowned works from The Duke Of Wellington’s great collection.
Two hundred of Wellington’s paintings were formerly part of The Spanish Royal Collection. During The Peninsular War, in the midst of The Battle Of Vittoria, British troops came upon a train of wagons carrying paintings northward from Madrid to France. The paintings were masterpieces from The Spanish Royal Collection, stolen by Joseph Bonaparte, who was transporting them to Paris. Wellington requisitioned the paintings and had them shipped to London, into his personal care, and Wellington kept the paintings himself after the conclusion of The Peninsular Campaign (with The Spanish Crown’s belated and grudging consent, given many years after the fact).
Most of the paintings at Apsley House are Spanish and Dutch Old Master paintings, but there are a few Italian and French paintings as well. Some of the works are simply breathtaking, such as Velazquez’s masterpiece, “The Waterseller Of Seville”, Goya’s great equestrian portrait of Wellington (painted during The Peninsular Campaign), and one of the very greatest Correggio paintings in existence.
There are also many legendary British paintings on display, including David Wilkie’s masterpiece, “The Chelsea Pensioners Reading The Waterloo Dispatches”, and Thomas Lawrence’s famed portrait of Wellington, painted immediately after Wellington’s return to London after The Battle Of Waterloo. In the Lawrence portrait, Wellington positively sneers and gloats with self-importance and pride—and yet the Lawrence portrait reveals Wellington’s great charm, too.
The paintings in Apsley House are worth several hours.of examination, but they are not the only reason to visit Apley House.
Wellington used his home to entertain on the grandest possible scale, and he owned one of the world’s very greatest collections of dinner and dessert services, as well as an astonishing number of porcelain and silver commemorative pieces, almost all of which were given to him by grateful European ruling houses, restored to their thrones after The Napoleonic Era had ended.
Wellington, for instance, was the owner of The Egyptian Sevres Service, one of the world’s very greatest dinner and dessert services. The Egyptian Sevres Service was Napoleon’s gift to Josephine to commemorate their divorce (Josephine refused to accept the gift). After The Battle Of Waterloo, The Egyptian Sevres Service was presented to Wellington by a relieved France, happy to be rid of the Bonaparte clan at last.
The Egyptian Sevres Service is of the most amazing beauty and complexity. The centerpiece, alone, makes a visit to Apsley House worthwhile. The centerpiece is over twenty feet long, and it recreates Egypt’s pyramids, sphinxes and other landmarks on the most lavish scale. It is so large and so detailed and so elaborate that, from a practical point of view, it makes a most unsuccessful centerpiece for a dining table—there is no way that diners would be able to eat, or to converse with each other, with such a jaw-dropping work of art immediately before their eyes.
Wellington was also the owner of The Prussian Service, one of the two greatest Meissen porcelain dinner and dessert services ever created (the other is The Furstenberg Service, owned by The British Royal Family). Each item of The Prussian Service is hand-painted with a different scene from one of Wellington’s many military campaigns during The Napoleonic Wars. The Prussian Service is so beautiful, and the painting so fine, that it almost defies belief.
Wellington further owned The Portuguese Service, a vast dinner and dessert service made entirely of silver, and presented to him by the rulers of Portugal. It is the greatest silver dinner and dessert service ever created. Its elaborate centerpiece is almost twenty-five feet long, and almost as impressive as the centerpiece of The Egyptian Sevres Service.
While most of Wellington’s porcelain is on display in the porcelain gallery on the first floor of Apsley House; The Portuguese Service is on display upstairs in the dining room, where it rests on the grand dining table, laid out as if a banquet is scheduled to be held that very evening.
Wellington was a great collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and much of this collection is on display throughout the mansion. Wellington owned many, many notable items formerly belonging to Napoleon, including Napoleon’s sword and including Antonio Canova’s great colossal nude statue of Napoleon, eleven feet tall, which rests at the base of the grand central staircase at Apsley House. (A bomb exploding nearby during World War II dislodged Napoleon’s fig leaf, causing great consternation at Apsley House, according to the current Duke Of Wellington, a child at the time of the event.)
Apsley House was the grandest private residence in London during its day, and the interiors of its grand State Rooms, alone, warrant a visit. The interiors were restored to their original splendor, consistent with designer Robert Adams’ original plans, in the 1990’s. Ten of the magnificent second-floor State Rooms are open to the public, in addition to the first floor’s museum-like display galleries as well as the galleries in the basement, which are devoted to Wellington’s personal memorabilia.
Apsley House is one of the finest attractions to visit in London, and it is never crowded. My parents and Joshua will love visiting Apsley House, what with its plethora of art and history.
We shall probably remain at Apsley House until it closes for the day, at which point we shall walk back to our hotel. On our way, we shall locate a nice restaurant at which to have an early dinner.
We plan to get back to our hotel no later than 7:30 p.m., so that we all can turn in early for a second consecutive night. By the following morning, we should be entirely free from any vestiges of jet lag.
Day Three In London
Sunday, September 2
Saint Mary Abbots Church, Kensington
The National Army Museum
Carlyle’s House
All Saints Church
Crosby Hall
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
We will, again, have breakfast at our hotel, and we will leave the hotel at 8:30 a.m.
We will attend morning service at Saint Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, the church we visited and examined the previous morning. After service, we will take the subway to Sloane Square Station.
From Sloane Square, we will walk over to The National Army Museum, our main visit of the day. We will visit this museum three times during our stay in London, and we will see almost all of the collection.
My mother will enjoy this museum, in part because the historical displays are so excellent and in part because so much art is on display throughout the museum. Paintings with military themes are hung in the exhibition rooms, in the hallways, in the stairwells, and in a special art gallery devoted exclusively to great painters of the Hanoverian Period.
On this first visit to the museum, we will only visit the exhibitions covering the 18th and 19th Centuries. In particular, we will focus on the exhibition rooms addressing The American Revolution and The Napoleonic Wars, since these are the finest and most interesting rooms from this portion of the collection.
One of the highlights of the museum is the grand, scaled model of The Battle Of Waterloo. It is a very impressive model, constructed shortly after the event, and it features the entire topography of the battle area, replete with buildings, trees, soldiers, horses and cannon. The model is accompanied by sound and lighting effects that may be activated by the visitor, and these special effects enhance the visitor’s ability to trace the course of that day’s Europe-altering events. When my brother and I visited this exhibit in 2004, we spent forty-five minutes examining the model, and we activated the entire sequence of special effects three or four times in succession.
When we have completed our visit to the museum exhibits covering the 18th and 19th Centuries, we will have a light lunch in the museum café, which apparently has been greatly expanded since 2004, the last time my brother and I ate there.
After lunch, we will walk through Chelsea, examining some of the lovely historic houses that line Cheney Walk, and noting some of the many historic personages that once resided in these various homes.
When our stroll through Chelsea is complete, we will visit Carlyle’s House, home of Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle, who lived the final forty-seven years of his life in this house.
We will visit all five levels of the townhouse, in which Carlyle wrote his great history of The French Revolution and his great biography of Frederick The Great Of Prussia. Everything on display in the house actually belonged to Carlyle: the furnishings, the books, the paintings, the photographs, the china, the curtains, the personal possessions, the mementos. For admirers of Carlyle, this is a great place to visit.
When my brother and I visited Carlyle’s House in 2004, one of the vectors told us that almost all visitors to Carlyle’s House are American—not British, not Canadian, not Australian, not New Zealander, but American. This makes me wonder whether Carlyle is no longer read in other English-speaking countries. In the United States, Carlyle’s books have never gone out of print since the dates of their initial publications.
During that 2004 visit, my brother and I only intended to visit this historic residence for an hour or so. However, the vector was so enthused about our elementary knowledge of Carlyle that he veritably made us his prisoners, opening drawers all over the house and bringing out all sorts of things to show to us, from old books to old postcards to old letters to old underwear. My brother and I had to engage in military-like maneuvers in order to make our escape after three hours.
From Carlyle’s House, we will walk to nearby All Saints Church, an ancient church affiliated with Thomas More. Also known as Chelsea Old Church, All Saints Church was the More family church. One of the chapels is devoted exclusively to Thomas More, and many other church monuments are dedicated to More and his family. Several of More’s relatives are buried in the church. It is a small, but richly-rewarding church.
After visiting All Saints Church, we will walk to nearby Crosby Hall, the immense stone house in which Thomas More and his family lived for many years. The house is now privately-owned, and not open to the public, but its exterior is a wonderful example of Tudor stone architecture, and it is one of the last such buildings in London. Crosby Hall was not situated on its current site during More’s lifetime—the structure was dismantled and moved, stone by stone, to its current location in 1910.
From Crosby Hall, we will take taxis back to Kensington—it will almost be too far for us to walk back to the nearest tube station, Sloane Square Station, from which we commenced our tour of Chelsea—and we will request to be dropped at The Royal Albert Hall.
When we arrive at the Hall, we will get an early and light dinner in one of the Hall’s dining venues prior to the evening’s Proms concert, which we will attend. We will hear the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, under Michael Tilson Thomas, perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7.
After the concert, we will walk back to our hotel. We will find a place to get a light supper en route.
Saint Mary Abbots Church, Kensington
The National Army Museum
Carlyle’s House
All Saints Church
Crosby Hall
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
We will, again, have breakfast at our hotel, and we will leave the hotel at 8:30 a.m.
We will attend morning service at Saint Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, the church we visited and examined the previous morning. After service, we will take the subway to Sloane Square Station.
From Sloane Square, we will walk over to The National Army Museum, our main visit of the day. We will visit this museum three times during our stay in London, and we will see almost all of the collection.
My mother will enjoy this museum, in part because the historical displays are so excellent and in part because so much art is on display throughout the museum. Paintings with military themes are hung in the exhibition rooms, in the hallways, in the stairwells, and in a special art gallery devoted exclusively to great painters of the Hanoverian Period.
On this first visit to the museum, we will only visit the exhibitions covering the 18th and 19th Centuries. In particular, we will focus on the exhibition rooms addressing The American Revolution and The Napoleonic Wars, since these are the finest and most interesting rooms from this portion of the collection.
One of the highlights of the museum is the grand, scaled model of The Battle Of Waterloo. It is a very impressive model, constructed shortly after the event, and it features the entire topography of the battle area, replete with buildings, trees, soldiers, horses and cannon. The model is accompanied by sound and lighting effects that may be activated by the visitor, and these special effects enhance the visitor’s ability to trace the course of that day’s Europe-altering events. When my brother and I visited this exhibit in 2004, we spent forty-five minutes examining the model, and we activated the entire sequence of special effects three or four times in succession.
When we have completed our visit to the museum exhibits covering the 18th and 19th Centuries, we will have a light lunch in the museum café, which apparently has been greatly expanded since 2004, the last time my brother and I ate there.
After lunch, we will walk through Chelsea, examining some of the lovely historic houses that line Cheney Walk, and noting some of the many historic personages that once resided in these various homes.
When our stroll through Chelsea is complete, we will visit Carlyle’s House, home of Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle, who lived the final forty-seven years of his life in this house.
We will visit all five levels of the townhouse, in which Carlyle wrote his great history of The French Revolution and his great biography of Frederick The Great Of Prussia. Everything on display in the house actually belonged to Carlyle: the furnishings, the books, the paintings, the photographs, the china, the curtains, the personal possessions, the mementos. For admirers of Carlyle, this is a great place to visit.
When my brother and I visited Carlyle’s House in 2004, one of the vectors told us that almost all visitors to Carlyle’s House are American—not British, not Canadian, not Australian, not New Zealander, but American. This makes me wonder whether Carlyle is no longer read in other English-speaking countries. In the United States, Carlyle’s books have never gone out of print since the dates of their initial publications.
During that 2004 visit, my brother and I only intended to visit this historic residence for an hour or so. However, the vector was so enthused about our elementary knowledge of Carlyle that he veritably made us his prisoners, opening drawers all over the house and bringing out all sorts of things to show to us, from old books to old postcards to old letters to old underwear. My brother and I had to engage in military-like maneuvers in order to make our escape after three hours.
From Carlyle’s House, we will walk to nearby All Saints Church, an ancient church affiliated with Thomas More. Also known as Chelsea Old Church, All Saints Church was the More family church. One of the chapels is devoted exclusively to Thomas More, and many other church monuments are dedicated to More and his family. Several of More’s relatives are buried in the church. It is a small, but richly-rewarding church.
After visiting All Saints Church, we will walk to nearby Crosby Hall, the immense stone house in which Thomas More and his family lived for many years. The house is now privately-owned, and not open to the public, but its exterior is a wonderful example of Tudor stone architecture, and it is one of the last such buildings in London. Crosby Hall was not situated on its current site during More’s lifetime—the structure was dismantled and moved, stone by stone, to its current location in 1910.
From Crosby Hall, we will take taxis back to Kensington—it will almost be too far for us to walk back to the nearest tube station, Sloane Square Station, from which we commenced our tour of Chelsea—and we will request to be dropped at The Royal Albert Hall.
When we arrive at the Hall, we will get an early and light dinner in one of the Hall’s dining venues prior to the evening’s Proms concert, which we will attend. We will hear the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, under Michael Tilson Thomas, perform Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7.
After the concert, we will walk back to our hotel. We will find a place to get a light supper en route.
Day Four In London
Monday, September 3
Pall Mall
Saint James’s Palace
The Friary Court
The Queen’s Chapel
The Queen Alexandra Memorial
Canada House
The Admiralty Arch
The Mall
Carlton House Terrace
Carlton House Terrace Gardens
The Duke Of York Steps And The Duke Of York Memorial
The Queen Victoria Memorial
Buckingham Palace
The Buckingham Palace State Rooms
Saint James’s Park
Queen Anne’s Gate
Vienna Philharmonic
This day will be our most ambitious day by far, as it involves a great deal of walking and a great deal of standing, and a great deal of non-stop activity from 7:00 a.m. until well past 10:00 p.m. This day will also be one of our most stimulating and rewarding days in London.
We plan to leave our hotel at 7:00 a.m.--without eating breakfast--and take the subway to Charing Cross Station.
By 7:30 a.m., we should have arrived at Trafalgar Square, and we will begin walking the length of Pall Mall, the street that runs between Trafalgar Square and Saint James’s Palace, and one of the most historic streets in London. This is my very favorite street in all of London, and this is my very favorite walk in all of London.
On our stroll on Pall Mall, we will pass the famous Gentlemen’s Clubs, and the famous headquarters of The P & O Line, with ship models in the windows, and the Pall Mall frontages of Marlborough House and York House and Lancaster House. We will see the exterior of Saint James’s Palace, one of London’s greatest Tudor buildings, with its noted gatehouse still guarded by a soldier in Tudor attire.
We will visit The Friary Court of Saint James’s Palace, the courtyard that affords the public’s closest permitted access to the Palace.
Across the street from The Friary court, we will examine the exterior of The Queen’s Chapel, a Classical building contemporaneous with Banqueting House, and designed by the same architect, the great Inigo Jones.
We also will examine The Queen Alexandra Memorial nearby, a memorial and fountain erected in memory of the much-beloved and much-respected consort of Edward VII.
Before we retrace our steps on Pall Mall back to Trafalgar Square, we will explore a few of the charming side streets in the immediate vicinity of Saint James’s Palace. In the coven of small, narrow streets on the north side of the Palace are many intriguing shops and antiquaries and restaurants and cafes.
Among them is an excellent café that serves an unusual and excellent English breakfast, composed solely of English sausages, and English bacons, and English hams, and English pork roasts, all served, sandwich-style, on English rolls. The café serves what must be the finest meats in all of London. My brother and I happened upon this cafe once by chance, and we loved the food, the English pork roasts most of all.
We will have breakfast at the cafe, and have some coffee, and rest a bit. We will need to do so, because we will be on our feet for the next several hours, with no place to sit and no place to buy food or drink.
Once we return to Trafalgar Square via our second traversal of Pall Mall, we will briefly visit the sumptuous public rooms of Canada House, restored to their original Classical splendor a few years ago. Many visitors to London do not realize that Canada House is open to the public, and that visitors need not be Canadian in order to visit the many splendid interiors (although visitors must proceed through an airport-style security screening in order to gain admittance).
From there, we will examine and pass through The Admiralty Arch, which marks one end of The Mall, the great ceremonial way that leads to Buckingham Palace.
Once we find ourselves on The Mall, we will walk the full length of this grand promenade.
Along The Mall, our first stop will be Carlton House Terrace, a series of handsome Regency structures, designed by the great architect and urban designer and interior designer, John Nash. Carlton House Terrace is situated on the north side of The Mall. We will also explore the Carlton House Terrace Gardens adjacent to Carlton House Terrace.
Our next stop on The Mall will be The Duke Of York Steps and The Duke Of York Memorial, also on the north side of The Mall. The Duke Of York was the second son of George III, and he was Commander Of The British Army during The French Revolution. Clustered around the memorial is a series of statues of prominent persons, such as Queen Victoria, Captain Scott of the Antarctic, and Florence Nightingale.
Continuing along The Mall, we will pass The Mall facades of Marlborough House and Clarence House and Saint James’s Palace and Lancaster House, and this will take us to The Queen Victoria Memorial, located in the great traffic circle in front of Buckingham Palace. We will explore this enormous monument, and its many levels and statues and friezes, and sit down and rest a bit on one of the monument’s ledges, after which we will proceed to the main event of our day: Buckingham Palace.
First, we will examine the exterior of Buckingham Palace.
Following our examination of the Palace’s exterior, we will make an inside visit to The Buckingham Palace State Rooms, one of the very greatest things to see and do in London.
Late each summer, twenty or twenty-one of The State Rooms are opened to the public while the Queen is in Scotland at Balmoral. The State Rooms, of the greatest architectural and design distinction, and virtually unchanged since they were designed in the 1820’s by John Nash, are filled with some of the world’s very greatest paintings, sculptures, furniture and porcelain.
Each State Room has a different design, a different theme, a different purpose, a different color scheme, a different shape, a different ceiling. Each room is furnished with what is considered to be the world’s very finest collection of French and British furniture from the 17th, 18th and very early 19th Centuries (but there is also Italian pietra dura furniture and German furniture to die for). Each room is accented with Sevres porcelain of such rarity and beauty as to make the visitor weak-kneed. Except for The Picture Gallery (which displays only Old Master paintings), each room’s walls are lined with canvases—royal portraits and history paintings--by Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley and Johan Zoffany and Allan Ramsay and Thomas Gainsborough and David Wilkie and Thomas Lawrence and Angelica Kauffmann and Franz Xaver Winterhalter and Luke Fildes and other masters. Each room contains busts and statues by Benvenuto Cellini and Antonio Canova and Louis Francois Roubillac and Hubert Le Sueur. Each room is breathtaking. Each room is overwhelming. Each room is unforgettable.
It takes approximately four hours to go through The State Rooms, several of which are extremely large and almost all of which are filled with dozens of artworks, each one of which is entitled to the most serious and intense examination.
Happily, halfway through the prescribed route, visitors enter The State Ballroom, where visitors are allowed to sit and rest and, if they like, view a series of films. This is the only room in the Palace in which visitors are permitted to sit--and visitors always make use of it.
The Picture Gallery, alone, makes a visit to The State Rooms essential. The largest room in the palace, The Picture Gallery is lined on both sides with Old Master Paintings, double-hung, of the very, very, very highest quality. The paintings are changed each year, and Queen Elizabeth owns so many top-level masterpieces that I have yet to see displayed many of Queen Elizabeth’s very greatest paintings, such as her great Vermeer painting, perhaps the finest Vermeer painting in the world.
My mother will be in bliss while visiting The State Rooms, and so will my father, and so will Joshua. The State Rooms are fascinating, and exhausting, and overwhelming.
Upon the conclusion of our visit to The State Rooms, I fear that we may all be on the verge of collapse, so afterward we will all cross the street and have a grand and long and leisurely late lunch in one of the restaurants of The Rubens At The Palace Hotel. We will need a long and leisurely lunch to recuperate, given how much walking and standing we will have accomplished since 7:00 a.m., and lunch at The Rubens At The Palace should provide us with a welcome and luxurious respite.
After lunch, we will stroll through Saint James’s Park, and explore some of the monuments and statues that grace the park, as well as examine the Park façade of The Foreign Office, a fascinating (and successful) George Gilbert Scott structure designed in an elaborate Italian Renaissance style.
While walking through and around Saint James’s Park, we will take a side excursion to Queen Anne’s Gate, a charming street with 18th-Century houses and a statue of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs.
In the very late afternoon/very early evening, we will take cabs to The Royal Albert Hall, where we will hear another Proms concert. Before the concert, we will eat dinner in one of the dining venues of the Hall.
On this evening, we will hear the Vienna Philharmonic, under Daniel Barenboim, perform Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4.
After the concert, we will return to our hotel and, no doubt, go straight to bed, a necessity after such a long and event-filled day.
Pall Mall
Saint James’s Palace
The Friary Court
The Queen’s Chapel
The Queen Alexandra Memorial
Canada House
The Admiralty Arch
The Mall
Carlton House Terrace
Carlton House Terrace Gardens
The Duke Of York Steps And The Duke Of York Memorial
The Queen Victoria Memorial
Buckingham Palace
The Buckingham Palace State Rooms
Saint James’s Park
Queen Anne’s Gate
Vienna Philharmonic
This day will be our most ambitious day by far, as it involves a great deal of walking and a great deal of standing, and a great deal of non-stop activity from 7:00 a.m. until well past 10:00 p.m. This day will also be one of our most stimulating and rewarding days in London.
We plan to leave our hotel at 7:00 a.m.--without eating breakfast--and take the subway to Charing Cross Station.
By 7:30 a.m., we should have arrived at Trafalgar Square, and we will begin walking the length of Pall Mall, the street that runs between Trafalgar Square and Saint James’s Palace, and one of the most historic streets in London. This is my very favorite street in all of London, and this is my very favorite walk in all of London.
On our stroll on Pall Mall, we will pass the famous Gentlemen’s Clubs, and the famous headquarters of The P & O Line, with ship models in the windows, and the Pall Mall frontages of Marlborough House and York House and Lancaster House. We will see the exterior of Saint James’s Palace, one of London’s greatest Tudor buildings, with its noted gatehouse still guarded by a soldier in Tudor attire.
We will visit The Friary Court of Saint James’s Palace, the courtyard that affords the public’s closest permitted access to the Palace.
Across the street from The Friary court, we will examine the exterior of The Queen’s Chapel, a Classical building contemporaneous with Banqueting House, and designed by the same architect, the great Inigo Jones.
We also will examine The Queen Alexandra Memorial nearby, a memorial and fountain erected in memory of the much-beloved and much-respected consort of Edward VII.
Before we retrace our steps on Pall Mall back to Trafalgar Square, we will explore a few of the charming side streets in the immediate vicinity of Saint James’s Palace. In the coven of small, narrow streets on the north side of the Palace are many intriguing shops and antiquaries and restaurants and cafes.
Among them is an excellent café that serves an unusual and excellent English breakfast, composed solely of English sausages, and English bacons, and English hams, and English pork roasts, all served, sandwich-style, on English rolls. The café serves what must be the finest meats in all of London. My brother and I happened upon this cafe once by chance, and we loved the food, the English pork roasts most of all.
We will have breakfast at the cafe, and have some coffee, and rest a bit. We will need to do so, because we will be on our feet for the next several hours, with no place to sit and no place to buy food or drink.
Once we return to Trafalgar Square via our second traversal of Pall Mall, we will briefly visit the sumptuous public rooms of Canada House, restored to their original Classical splendor a few years ago. Many visitors to London do not realize that Canada House is open to the public, and that visitors need not be Canadian in order to visit the many splendid interiors (although visitors must proceed through an airport-style security screening in order to gain admittance).
From there, we will examine and pass through The Admiralty Arch, which marks one end of The Mall, the great ceremonial way that leads to Buckingham Palace.
Once we find ourselves on The Mall, we will walk the full length of this grand promenade.
Along The Mall, our first stop will be Carlton House Terrace, a series of handsome Regency structures, designed by the great architect and urban designer and interior designer, John Nash. Carlton House Terrace is situated on the north side of The Mall. We will also explore the Carlton House Terrace Gardens adjacent to Carlton House Terrace.
Our next stop on The Mall will be The Duke Of York Steps and The Duke Of York Memorial, also on the north side of The Mall. The Duke Of York was the second son of George III, and he was Commander Of The British Army during The French Revolution. Clustered around the memorial is a series of statues of prominent persons, such as Queen Victoria, Captain Scott of the Antarctic, and Florence Nightingale.
Continuing along The Mall, we will pass The Mall facades of Marlborough House and Clarence House and Saint James’s Palace and Lancaster House, and this will take us to The Queen Victoria Memorial, located in the great traffic circle in front of Buckingham Palace. We will explore this enormous monument, and its many levels and statues and friezes, and sit down and rest a bit on one of the monument’s ledges, after which we will proceed to the main event of our day: Buckingham Palace.
First, we will examine the exterior of Buckingham Palace.
Following our examination of the Palace’s exterior, we will make an inside visit to The Buckingham Palace State Rooms, one of the very greatest things to see and do in London.
Late each summer, twenty or twenty-one of The State Rooms are opened to the public while the Queen is in Scotland at Balmoral. The State Rooms, of the greatest architectural and design distinction, and virtually unchanged since they were designed in the 1820’s by John Nash, are filled with some of the world’s very greatest paintings, sculptures, furniture and porcelain.
Each State Room has a different design, a different theme, a different purpose, a different color scheme, a different shape, a different ceiling. Each room is furnished with what is considered to be the world’s very finest collection of French and British furniture from the 17th, 18th and very early 19th Centuries (but there is also Italian pietra dura furniture and German furniture to die for). Each room is accented with Sevres porcelain of such rarity and beauty as to make the visitor weak-kneed. Except for The Picture Gallery (which displays only Old Master paintings), each room’s walls are lined with canvases—royal portraits and history paintings--by Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley and Johan Zoffany and Allan Ramsay and Thomas Gainsborough and David Wilkie and Thomas Lawrence and Angelica Kauffmann and Franz Xaver Winterhalter and Luke Fildes and other masters. Each room contains busts and statues by Benvenuto Cellini and Antonio Canova and Louis Francois Roubillac and Hubert Le Sueur. Each room is breathtaking. Each room is overwhelming. Each room is unforgettable.
It takes approximately four hours to go through The State Rooms, several of which are extremely large and almost all of which are filled with dozens of artworks, each one of which is entitled to the most serious and intense examination.
Happily, halfway through the prescribed route, visitors enter The State Ballroom, where visitors are allowed to sit and rest and, if they like, view a series of films. This is the only room in the Palace in which visitors are permitted to sit--and visitors always make use of it.
The Picture Gallery, alone, makes a visit to The State Rooms essential. The largest room in the palace, The Picture Gallery is lined on both sides with Old Master Paintings, double-hung, of the very, very, very highest quality. The paintings are changed each year, and Queen Elizabeth owns so many top-level masterpieces that I have yet to see displayed many of Queen Elizabeth’s very greatest paintings, such as her great Vermeer painting, perhaps the finest Vermeer painting in the world.
My mother will be in bliss while visiting The State Rooms, and so will my father, and so will Joshua. The State Rooms are fascinating, and exhausting, and overwhelming.
Upon the conclusion of our visit to The State Rooms, I fear that we may all be on the verge of collapse, so afterward we will all cross the street and have a grand and long and leisurely late lunch in one of the restaurants of The Rubens At The Palace Hotel. We will need a long and leisurely lunch to recuperate, given how much walking and standing we will have accomplished since 7:00 a.m., and lunch at The Rubens At The Palace should provide us with a welcome and luxurious respite.
After lunch, we will stroll through Saint James’s Park, and explore some of the monuments and statues that grace the park, as well as examine the Park façade of The Foreign Office, a fascinating (and successful) George Gilbert Scott structure designed in an elaborate Italian Renaissance style.
While walking through and around Saint James’s Park, we will take a side excursion to Queen Anne’s Gate, a charming street with 18th-Century houses and a statue of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs.
In the very late afternoon/very early evening, we will take cabs to The Royal Albert Hall, where we will hear another Proms concert. Before the concert, we will eat dinner in one of the dining venues of the Hall.
On this evening, we will hear the Vienna Philharmonic, under Daniel Barenboim, perform Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4.
After the concert, we will return to our hotel and, no doubt, go straight to bed, a necessity after such a long and event-filled day.
Day Five In London
Tuesday, September 4
Tate Britain
The Church Of Saint James The Less, Westminster
Westminster Cathedral
Evensong Service At Westminster Abbey
The Victoria Embankment
The Victoria Embankment Gardens
York Watergate
Cleopatra’s Needle
Covent Garden
Seven Dials
Neal’s Yard
We will start our explorations a little later this day. We want to make sure that we have had an opportunity to enjoy plenty of rest, given how much we accomplished the previous day.
We will not leave our hotel until 9:30 a.m. We will first have breakfast at our hotel, after which we will take the subway to Pimlico Station.
We will begin our day at Tate Britain. This will be the first of three visits to Tate Britain on this trip, and we intend to explore the entire collection.
Tate Britain is interesting, to me, not because of the quality of the art on display, which is not particularly high, but because of what that art reveals about the British character and the British people, and because of how that art comments, unintentionally, on so many aspects of British history and British society. For me, Tate Britain is more of a history museum than an art museum--and my brother holds precisely the same view about Tate Britain. The museum utterly fascinates him.
I have never been an admirer of British art. Britain’s greatest period of painting, I believe, coincided perfectly with the Hanoverian Period, which began with the reign of George I in 1714 and ended with the reign of William IV in 1837.
This period witnessed the lives and works, in order, of Allan Ramsay (1713-1784), Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), George Stubbs (1724-1806), Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), George Romney (1734-1802), Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), John Constable (1776-1837) and David Wilkie (1785-1841), all but two of whom were born and died during this period (Ramsay was born one year before the Hanoverian Period began; Wilkie outlived the Hanoverian Period by four years).
This group of painters was as good as any in the world at the time, even though it operated entirely outside the prevailing artistic movements of the time.
On the continent, during this period, three movements were in force: Rococo art, which held sway in France and Italy; Neo-Classical art, which swept aside Rococo art in France from 1790 onward; and Neo-Romantic art, which dominated German art from 1800.
During the Hanoverian Period, British art held itself separate and apart from these continental trends. This turned out to be a good thing, because Britain enjoyed its greatest flowering in the field of painting during this century-and-a-quarter Hanoverian Period--but never before, and never since, has British art been anything other than of provincial quality and of local interest.
Prior to this group of Hanoverian painters, Britain had no important painters at all, relying entirely upon foreign artists to provide the monarchy and the ruling classes with the portraits and landscapes and “conversation pieces” they so loved. Subsequent to this group of Hanoverian painters, Britain suffered through the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and the Victorian painters working in a realist style, and a pallid group of 20th-Century painters offering watered-down versions of French and German and American art.
As a result, apart from the Hanoverian-Period paintings, much of the art on display at Tate Britain is simply meretricious—and yet this meretricious art is fascinating for historical reasons. In fact, Tate Britain is one of the most rewarding art museums in the entire world to visit, if one examines the artworks purely from an historical perspective and if one is not looking for purely artistic rewards.
In 2005, my brother and I went through the entire Tate Britain collection, and we were completely captivated by this museum. It took us four three-hour visits to get through everything, but our visits in 2005 were lengthened due to the fact that we began each visit with a one-hour guided tour of the particular section of the collection we planned to visit that day.
We will not repeat that mistake this trip.
First, the Tate Britain guided tours were not particularly good.
Second, on one of our four guided tours, I narrowly escaped being murdered.
The particular guided tour that nearly cost me my life covered British art between 1800 and 1900, and this period included, of course, the group of Pre-Raphaelite painters, whose work I abhor (and whose most prominent current collector, fittingly, is Andrew Lloyd Webber).
In 2005, while the Tate Britain guide was discussing John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia”, considered to be one of the key works of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, I turned to my brother and I involuntarily uttered the word “kitsch”. The guide heard me, and I thought that she was going to execute me for my offense.
She was livid, with a frightening look of hatred on her face, and she stopped her presentation and glared at me. I am 6’1”, and my brother is 6’2”, but she was much taller and much heavier than either one of us, and she could have dealt both of us lethal blows any time she wanted. I was truly frightened--and the guide’s unflattering lime-green pants suit only added to her aura of maliciousness.
She stared at me for the longest time, and then she grandly proclaimed “Not everyone appreciates the Pre-Raphaelites” and returned to her presentation, at which point my brother whispered into my ear “Try not to get us killed, OK? You be a good boy, now. If you’re a good boy, I’ll get you some ice cream.”
This made me laugh, of course, which only made the Tate Britain guide even more infuriated. She halted her presentation again and she glared at me, for at least a full minute. Finally, she asked me “Is there anything more you would like to say before I continue?”
A question deserves a response, quite naturally, or so I have always believed. So I asked her, very innocently, and very sweetly, “What did Charles Dickens have to say about the Pre-Raphaelites?”
Of course, I already knew the answer to that question. And so did she—and she was enraged.
She looked at me like a maddened bull preparing to charge, with blind hatred in her eyes. She would happily have killed me, I believe, if she thought she could have got away with it. Finally, she gritted her teeth and she snarled at me “He didn’t like them. Is that enough for you?”
“Yes, and thank you” I politely answered, and she continued, once again, with her presentation, while my brother, from behind, put his arms around my waist and very slowly pulled me to the very outer edge of the group participating in the guided tour.
From that point, members of the tour group started to wander away, one by one. It was in a room devoted exclusively to the paintings of G. F. Watts—“the Rothko of the 19th Century”, according to the Tate Britain guide—that most of the members of the group abandoned the tour. (The Watts room is no longer on view--it was installed only for a few months in 2005. It recreated an installation from the World War I years, when Watts reached the zenith of his popularity.) Despite the fact that I despise Watts, I behaved myself perfectly in the Watts room, primarily because my brother kept his hand over my mouth much of the time.
My brother wanted to leave the tour, too, but I firmly believed, under the circumstances, that it would have been pointedly impolite, if not outright unforgivable, for us to have walked away while the guide was still in the midst of her presentation. Accordingly, I stuck it out, and so did my brother, to the very end. By the time the group had reached the final room of paintings on the tour, there were only four members of the original group remaining: a married couple from Texas, and my brother and I.
The final room was filled with maudlin Victorian paintings, some of the most sentimental claptrap to be seen anywhere, and the final painting the guide discussed was Luke Fildes’ 1891 “The Doctor”, one of the most famous and emblematic of all Victorian paintings.
I swear that I was not making faces, but the guide stopped her presentation, and she said to me “I see that you do not like this one, either”.
Actually, that was not true, because that painting is very good—of its kind—and I said “I am happy to see this painting. Our grandfather had an old print of this painting, and I am pleased to see the original at last.”
This was not enough for the guide, however. She wanted to know whether I LIKED the painting, and she pressed me on this issue.
“It’s a fine example of late-Victorian realist narrative painting” was the best I could get out, to which she retorted “Aha! I knew you didn’t like it!”
Shortly after, she completed her presentation to the group, after which the two Texas visitors departed, leaving the guide and my brother and me together, uncomfortably, in the middle of the room.
The guide looked at us for a while, with contempt plastered all over her face, and then she said, acidly, “I am always so happy to explain art to you Americans”, after which she swiveled and started to walk out of the room. When she was a few steps away, I said to my brother, loud enough for her to hear, “Well, the 19th Century was not a TOTAL loss for British art—at least Whistler and Sargent were working here some of that time.”
The guide stopped in her tracks for a moment, clearly trying to decide whether or not to turn around and blast me, but she thought better of it, and she resumed walking from the room.
I think we will skip the Tate Britain guided tours on this visit.
For our first Tate Britain visit, we will explore the rooms that address British art from 1500 to 1800. Many of the greatest paintings from this period are not at Tate Britain—they are at the nearby National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery—but these rooms are nonetheless of great interest. Portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, “conversation pieces” and historical paintings line the pertinent rooms, and almost all of these paintings are fascinating for their historical content.
Furthermore, Tate Britain owns so many works that its paintings are changed every few months, so there should be lots and lots of paintings from this period that my brother and I have not already examined.
Happily, most of the major, major paintings owned by Tate Britain are kept on more-or-less continuous display, and I look forward to seeing again John Singleton Copley’s giant and grand 1783 history painting, “The Death Of Major Peirson 6 January 1781”, as well as Allan Ramsay’s “Thomas, Second Baron Mansel Of Margam, With His Blackwood Half-Brothers And Sister”, Thomas Gainsborough’s “The Baillie Family” and George Stubbs’ “The Haymakers” and “The Reapers”.
After we have completed seeing this day’s rooms at Tate Britain, we will have lunch at the Tate Britain café, the museum’s informal eating venue.
After lunch, we will make the short walk to one of London’s very greatest churches, virtually unknown and virtually never visited, and one of the greatest masterpieces of 19th-Century ecclesiastical architecture: The Church Of Saint James The Less, Westminster.
Completed in 1861, Saint James The Less is the most perfect and successful example of Tractarian architecture I have ever seen. The exterior is of red and black patterned brick, in a unique and decorative (but understated) style. Standing apart from the main structure, campanile-style, is a large tower with a short steeple. To the rear and side of the church proper is a large and complex vestry.
It is a magnificent structure.
The interior features red, black and white brickwork, elaborate arches and vaulting, and pillars made from marble, stone and granite. Stone inlays, murals, mosaics and angled brickwork line the church walls. The church has striking stained-glass windows, a painted ceiling, and a G. F. Watts mosaic on the chancel wall. And yet all of this decoration, seemingly overwrought, is incorporated into the church’s structural elements, with the greatest possible taste and restraint and refinement. The result is one of the most beautiful church interiors in the world. This church is an essential destination for any visit to London.
From Saint James The Less we will walk to Westminster Cathedral, the main Roman Catholic Church in England. The giant exterior was completed in 1904. The Cathedral was designed in a fearless Byzantine style, inspired by Saint Sophia in Istanbul and Saint Mark’s in Venice, and its interior and many side chapels are decorated with brilliant mosaics and colored marble (over 100 different marbles were used in the Cathedral’s interior). The Cathedral is a wonderful and inspiring building to visit and explore. Edward Elgar’s “The Dream Of Gerontius” premiered in the Cathedral.
When we are done exploring the Cathedral’s interior, we will take the elevator to the top of the Campanile, and enjoy the breathtaking views over London.
After our visit is complete, we will walk to Victoria Station and take the subway to Westminster Station, and from there walk over to Westminster Abbey for Evensong Service. Evensong Service is a remarkable experience—if the tourists in attendance behave themselves--and it generally features the Westminster Abbey Choir and one of the Abbey organs.
After Evensong, we will take a leisurely stroll along The Victoria Embankment, which lines the Thames, from Parliament to the Adelphi area of London. This is a beautiful and pleasant walk, and it offers excellent views of the South Bank.
At our destination, we will walk through The Victoria Embankment Gardens, and enjoy the flowers and many statues and monuments in the gardens (everyone is honored, from Robert Burns to Arthur Sullivan to “The Imperial Camel Corps” to “The People Of Belgium”).
Inside the gardens, we will examine York Watergate, the triumphal river entrance to the former York House. York Watergate is all that remains of what was once one of London’s most notable and splendid private residences.
Near the gardens, we will examine Cleopatra’s Needle, an Egyptian obelisk carved in 1450 B.C. The obelisk is surrounded by pseudo-Egyptian benches and sphinxes added during the 19th Century. Bombing damage from a World War I zeppelin raid may still be observed on the obelisk’s plinth and on the nearby sphinxes and stonework.
From Cleopatra’s Needle we will walk to the Covent Garden area. We will walk around the opera house, and walk around the plaza, and probably sit down somewhere and have some coffee, and probably enter a shop or two, and explore the area.
From Covent Garden we will walk north to Seven Dials and explore this charming square.
Then we will explore the equally-charming adjacent area, Neal’s Yard, and perhaps enter a shop or two.
When we are done walking around, we will have dinner at a Belgian restaurant near Neal’s Yard. My brother and I discovered this restaurant in 2003, and we have eaten there a few times, and we have always liked it. The food is good, and it will be a nice way to end the day.
After dinner, we shall go to Covent Garden Station and take the subway back to our hotel. We should be able to turn in early on this day, by 10:00 p.m. or so.
Tate Britain
The Church Of Saint James The Less, Westminster
Westminster Cathedral
Evensong Service At Westminster Abbey
The Victoria Embankment
The Victoria Embankment Gardens
York Watergate
Cleopatra’s Needle
Covent Garden
Seven Dials
Neal’s Yard
We will start our explorations a little later this day. We want to make sure that we have had an opportunity to enjoy plenty of rest, given how much we accomplished the previous day.
We will not leave our hotel until 9:30 a.m. We will first have breakfast at our hotel, after which we will take the subway to Pimlico Station.
We will begin our day at Tate Britain. This will be the first of three visits to Tate Britain on this trip, and we intend to explore the entire collection.
Tate Britain is interesting, to me, not because of the quality of the art on display, which is not particularly high, but because of what that art reveals about the British character and the British people, and because of how that art comments, unintentionally, on so many aspects of British history and British society. For me, Tate Britain is more of a history museum than an art museum--and my brother holds precisely the same view about Tate Britain. The museum utterly fascinates him.
I have never been an admirer of British art. Britain’s greatest period of painting, I believe, coincided perfectly with the Hanoverian Period, which began with the reign of George I in 1714 and ended with the reign of William IV in 1837.
This period witnessed the lives and works, in order, of Allan Ramsay (1713-1784), Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), George Stubbs (1724-1806), Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), George Romney (1734-1802), Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), John Constable (1776-1837) and David Wilkie (1785-1841), all but two of whom were born and died during this period (Ramsay was born one year before the Hanoverian Period began; Wilkie outlived the Hanoverian Period by four years).
This group of painters was as good as any in the world at the time, even though it operated entirely outside the prevailing artistic movements of the time.
On the continent, during this period, three movements were in force: Rococo art, which held sway in France and Italy; Neo-Classical art, which swept aside Rococo art in France from 1790 onward; and Neo-Romantic art, which dominated German art from 1800.
During the Hanoverian Period, British art held itself separate and apart from these continental trends. This turned out to be a good thing, because Britain enjoyed its greatest flowering in the field of painting during this century-and-a-quarter Hanoverian Period--but never before, and never since, has British art been anything other than of provincial quality and of local interest.
Prior to this group of Hanoverian painters, Britain had no important painters at all, relying entirely upon foreign artists to provide the monarchy and the ruling classes with the portraits and landscapes and “conversation pieces” they so loved. Subsequent to this group of Hanoverian painters, Britain suffered through the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and the Victorian painters working in a realist style, and a pallid group of 20th-Century painters offering watered-down versions of French and German and American art.
As a result, apart from the Hanoverian-Period paintings, much of the art on display at Tate Britain is simply meretricious—and yet this meretricious art is fascinating for historical reasons. In fact, Tate Britain is one of the most rewarding art museums in the entire world to visit, if one examines the artworks purely from an historical perspective and if one is not looking for purely artistic rewards.
In 2005, my brother and I went through the entire Tate Britain collection, and we were completely captivated by this museum. It took us four three-hour visits to get through everything, but our visits in 2005 were lengthened due to the fact that we began each visit with a one-hour guided tour of the particular section of the collection we planned to visit that day.
We will not repeat that mistake this trip.
First, the Tate Britain guided tours were not particularly good.
Second, on one of our four guided tours, I narrowly escaped being murdered.
The particular guided tour that nearly cost me my life covered British art between 1800 and 1900, and this period included, of course, the group of Pre-Raphaelite painters, whose work I abhor (and whose most prominent current collector, fittingly, is Andrew Lloyd Webber).
In 2005, while the Tate Britain guide was discussing John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia”, considered to be one of the key works of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, I turned to my brother and I involuntarily uttered the word “kitsch”. The guide heard me, and I thought that she was going to execute me for my offense.
She was livid, with a frightening look of hatred on her face, and she stopped her presentation and glared at me. I am 6’1”, and my brother is 6’2”, but she was much taller and much heavier than either one of us, and she could have dealt both of us lethal blows any time she wanted. I was truly frightened--and the guide’s unflattering lime-green pants suit only added to her aura of maliciousness.
She stared at me for the longest time, and then she grandly proclaimed “Not everyone appreciates the Pre-Raphaelites” and returned to her presentation, at which point my brother whispered into my ear “Try not to get us killed, OK? You be a good boy, now. If you’re a good boy, I’ll get you some ice cream.”
This made me laugh, of course, which only made the Tate Britain guide even more infuriated. She halted her presentation again and she glared at me, for at least a full minute. Finally, she asked me “Is there anything more you would like to say before I continue?”
A question deserves a response, quite naturally, or so I have always believed. So I asked her, very innocently, and very sweetly, “What did Charles Dickens have to say about the Pre-Raphaelites?”
Of course, I already knew the answer to that question. And so did she—and she was enraged.
She looked at me like a maddened bull preparing to charge, with blind hatred in her eyes. She would happily have killed me, I believe, if she thought she could have got away with it. Finally, she gritted her teeth and she snarled at me “He didn’t like them. Is that enough for you?”
“Yes, and thank you” I politely answered, and she continued, once again, with her presentation, while my brother, from behind, put his arms around my waist and very slowly pulled me to the very outer edge of the group participating in the guided tour.
From that point, members of the tour group started to wander away, one by one. It was in a room devoted exclusively to the paintings of G. F. Watts—“the Rothko of the 19th Century”, according to the Tate Britain guide—that most of the members of the group abandoned the tour. (The Watts room is no longer on view--it was installed only for a few months in 2005. It recreated an installation from the World War I years, when Watts reached the zenith of his popularity.) Despite the fact that I despise Watts, I behaved myself perfectly in the Watts room, primarily because my brother kept his hand over my mouth much of the time.
My brother wanted to leave the tour, too, but I firmly believed, under the circumstances, that it would have been pointedly impolite, if not outright unforgivable, for us to have walked away while the guide was still in the midst of her presentation. Accordingly, I stuck it out, and so did my brother, to the very end. By the time the group had reached the final room of paintings on the tour, there were only four members of the original group remaining: a married couple from Texas, and my brother and I.
The final room was filled with maudlin Victorian paintings, some of the most sentimental claptrap to be seen anywhere, and the final painting the guide discussed was Luke Fildes’ 1891 “The Doctor”, one of the most famous and emblematic of all Victorian paintings.
I swear that I was not making faces, but the guide stopped her presentation, and she said to me “I see that you do not like this one, either”.
Actually, that was not true, because that painting is very good—of its kind—and I said “I am happy to see this painting. Our grandfather had an old print of this painting, and I am pleased to see the original at last.”
This was not enough for the guide, however. She wanted to know whether I LIKED the painting, and she pressed me on this issue.
“It’s a fine example of late-Victorian realist narrative painting” was the best I could get out, to which she retorted “Aha! I knew you didn’t like it!”
Shortly after, she completed her presentation to the group, after which the two Texas visitors departed, leaving the guide and my brother and me together, uncomfortably, in the middle of the room.
The guide looked at us for a while, with contempt plastered all over her face, and then she said, acidly, “I am always so happy to explain art to you Americans”, after which she swiveled and started to walk out of the room. When she was a few steps away, I said to my brother, loud enough for her to hear, “Well, the 19th Century was not a TOTAL loss for British art—at least Whistler and Sargent were working here some of that time.”
The guide stopped in her tracks for a moment, clearly trying to decide whether or not to turn around and blast me, but she thought better of it, and she resumed walking from the room.
I think we will skip the Tate Britain guided tours on this visit.
For our first Tate Britain visit, we will explore the rooms that address British art from 1500 to 1800. Many of the greatest paintings from this period are not at Tate Britain—they are at the nearby National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery—but these rooms are nonetheless of great interest. Portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, “conversation pieces” and historical paintings line the pertinent rooms, and almost all of these paintings are fascinating for their historical content.
Furthermore, Tate Britain owns so many works that its paintings are changed every few months, so there should be lots and lots of paintings from this period that my brother and I have not already examined.
Happily, most of the major, major paintings owned by Tate Britain are kept on more-or-less continuous display, and I look forward to seeing again John Singleton Copley’s giant and grand 1783 history painting, “The Death Of Major Peirson 6 January 1781”, as well as Allan Ramsay’s “Thomas, Second Baron Mansel Of Margam, With His Blackwood Half-Brothers And Sister”, Thomas Gainsborough’s “The Baillie Family” and George Stubbs’ “The Haymakers” and “The Reapers”.
After we have completed seeing this day’s rooms at Tate Britain, we will have lunch at the Tate Britain café, the museum’s informal eating venue.
After lunch, we will make the short walk to one of London’s very greatest churches, virtually unknown and virtually never visited, and one of the greatest masterpieces of 19th-Century ecclesiastical architecture: The Church Of Saint James The Less, Westminster.
Completed in 1861, Saint James The Less is the most perfect and successful example of Tractarian architecture I have ever seen. The exterior is of red and black patterned brick, in a unique and decorative (but understated) style. Standing apart from the main structure, campanile-style, is a large tower with a short steeple. To the rear and side of the church proper is a large and complex vestry.
It is a magnificent structure.
The interior features red, black and white brickwork, elaborate arches and vaulting, and pillars made from marble, stone and granite. Stone inlays, murals, mosaics and angled brickwork line the church walls. The church has striking stained-glass windows, a painted ceiling, and a G. F. Watts mosaic on the chancel wall. And yet all of this decoration, seemingly overwrought, is incorporated into the church’s structural elements, with the greatest possible taste and restraint and refinement. The result is one of the most beautiful church interiors in the world. This church is an essential destination for any visit to London.
From Saint James The Less we will walk to Westminster Cathedral, the main Roman Catholic Church in England. The giant exterior was completed in 1904. The Cathedral was designed in a fearless Byzantine style, inspired by Saint Sophia in Istanbul and Saint Mark’s in Venice, and its interior and many side chapels are decorated with brilliant mosaics and colored marble (over 100 different marbles were used in the Cathedral’s interior). The Cathedral is a wonderful and inspiring building to visit and explore. Edward Elgar’s “The Dream Of Gerontius” premiered in the Cathedral.
When we are done exploring the Cathedral’s interior, we will take the elevator to the top of the Campanile, and enjoy the breathtaking views over London.
After our visit is complete, we will walk to Victoria Station and take the subway to Westminster Station, and from there walk over to Westminster Abbey for Evensong Service. Evensong Service is a remarkable experience—if the tourists in attendance behave themselves--and it generally features the Westminster Abbey Choir and one of the Abbey organs.
After Evensong, we will take a leisurely stroll along The Victoria Embankment, which lines the Thames, from Parliament to the Adelphi area of London. This is a beautiful and pleasant walk, and it offers excellent views of the South Bank.
At our destination, we will walk through The Victoria Embankment Gardens, and enjoy the flowers and many statues and monuments in the gardens (everyone is honored, from Robert Burns to Arthur Sullivan to “The Imperial Camel Corps” to “The People Of Belgium”).
Inside the gardens, we will examine York Watergate, the triumphal river entrance to the former York House. York Watergate is all that remains of what was once one of London’s most notable and splendid private residences.
Near the gardens, we will examine Cleopatra’s Needle, an Egyptian obelisk carved in 1450 B.C. The obelisk is surrounded by pseudo-Egyptian benches and sphinxes added during the 19th Century. Bombing damage from a World War I zeppelin raid may still be observed on the obelisk’s plinth and on the nearby sphinxes and stonework.
From Cleopatra’s Needle we will walk to the Covent Garden area. We will walk around the opera house, and walk around the plaza, and probably sit down somewhere and have some coffee, and probably enter a shop or two, and explore the area.
From Covent Garden we will walk north to Seven Dials and explore this charming square.
Then we will explore the equally-charming adjacent area, Neal’s Yard, and perhaps enter a shop or two.
When we are done walking around, we will have dinner at a Belgian restaurant near Neal’s Yard. My brother and I discovered this restaurant in 2003, and we have eaten there a few times, and we have always liked it. The food is good, and it will be a nice way to end the day.
After dinner, we shall go to Covent Garden Station and take the subway back to our hotel. We should be able to turn in early on this day, by 10:00 p.m. or so.
Day Six In London
Wednesday, September 5
Westminster Abbey
Central Hall
Dean’s Yard
Gewandhaus Orchestra Of Leipzig
We will have breakfast at our hotel again. We plan to depart our hotel at 9:15 a.m., and take the subway to Westminster Station.
Our entire day will be devoted to Westminster Abbey.
We intend to arrive at 9:45 a.m., when the Abbey opens for the day. We plan to walk around on our own, exploring the Abbey, for an hour or so. Then at 11:00 a.m., we will take a verger-led guided tour, which provides access to parts of the Abbey otherwise closed to the public. For instance, the chapel and shrine of Edward The Confessor, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, may only be visited as part of a verger tour. At the conclusion of the verger tour, we will continue to explore the Abbey proper on our own for another hour or so, until it is time to get something to eat.
For a lunch break, we will walk over to Central Hall, owned and operated by the Methodist Church, and have lunch in the cafeteria in the basement. It is the best place to have lunch in Westminster.
After lunch, we will take a short tour of the interior of Central Hall, and visit the chapels, and visit the large, historic main hall, where so many notable and historic events have occurred. When we leave the building, we will examine the exterior, London’s finest example of Beaux-Art architecture, and one of the greatest Beaux-Art buildings in the world.
Afterward, we will return to the Abbey and explore the Cloisters, and the magnificent Chapter House, and the Museum, which is excellent. Then, if they are open that day, we will explore the Abbey’s three gardens. The gardens are very simple, and very peaceful, and very quiet, and visitors to the gardens are hardly aware that the gardens are situated in the very center of noisy and bustling Westminster.
When we have completed our visit to the Abbey, we will walk through adjacent Dean’s Yard, and see Westminster School.
Afterward, we will go to Westminster Station and take the subway back to our hotel.
On this day, we will all have a chance to rest for three hours or so before the evening’s Proms concert. Josh and my brother and I will probably go swimming in the hotel pool, but my parents will probably welcome an opportunity to rest, and to enjoy some peace and quiet.
Early in the evening, we will walk over to The Royal Albert Hall for a Proms Concert. We probably will get a little something to eat in one of the Hall’s dining venues before the concert.
This evening’s concert will feature the Gewandhaus Orchestra Of Leipzig, under Riccardo Chailly, performing the “Coriolan” Overture and Violin Concerto of Beethoven, and the Symphony No. 4 of Brahms. The violin soloist will be Sergey Khachatryan.
After the concert, we will walk back to our hotel, and we will find a suitable place to have a late supper en route.
Westminster Abbey
Central Hall
Dean’s Yard
Gewandhaus Orchestra Of Leipzig
We will have breakfast at our hotel again. We plan to depart our hotel at 9:15 a.m., and take the subway to Westminster Station.
Our entire day will be devoted to Westminster Abbey.
We intend to arrive at 9:45 a.m., when the Abbey opens for the day. We plan to walk around on our own, exploring the Abbey, for an hour or so. Then at 11:00 a.m., we will take a verger-led guided tour, which provides access to parts of the Abbey otherwise closed to the public. For instance, the chapel and shrine of Edward The Confessor, the last of the Anglo-Saxon kings, may only be visited as part of a verger tour. At the conclusion of the verger tour, we will continue to explore the Abbey proper on our own for another hour or so, until it is time to get something to eat.
For a lunch break, we will walk over to Central Hall, owned and operated by the Methodist Church, and have lunch in the cafeteria in the basement. It is the best place to have lunch in Westminster.
After lunch, we will take a short tour of the interior of Central Hall, and visit the chapels, and visit the large, historic main hall, where so many notable and historic events have occurred. When we leave the building, we will examine the exterior, London’s finest example of Beaux-Art architecture, and one of the greatest Beaux-Art buildings in the world.
Afterward, we will return to the Abbey and explore the Cloisters, and the magnificent Chapter House, and the Museum, which is excellent. Then, if they are open that day, we will explore the Abbey’s three gardens. The gardens are very simple, and very peaceful, and very quiet, and visitors to the gardens are hardly aware that the gardens are situated in the very center of noisy and bustling Westminster.
When we have completed our visit to the Abbey, we will walk through adjacent Dean’s Yard, and see Westminster School.
Afterward, we will go to Westminster Station and take the subway back to our hotel.
On this day, we will all have a chance to rest for three hours or so before the evening’s Proms concert. Josh and my brother and I will probably go swimming in the hotel pool, but my parents will probably welcome an opportunity to rest, and to enjoy some peace and quiet.
Early in the evening, we will walk over to The Royal Albert Hall for a Proms Concert. We probably will get a little something to eat in one of the Hall’s dining venues before the concert.
This evening’s concert will feature the Gewandhaus Orchestra Of Leipzig, under Riccardo Chailly, performing the “Coriolan” Overture and Violin Concerto of Beethoven, and the Symphony No. 4 of Brahms. The violin soloist will be Sergey Khachatryan.
After the concert, we will walk back to our hotel, and we will find a suitable place to have a late supper en route.
Day Seven In London
Thursday, September 6
The Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street
Cadogan Hall
Sloane Square
The Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Hospital, Chelsea
The National Army Museum
Peter Jones
We will have breakfast at our hotel again, and at 8:30 a.m. we plan to take the subway to Sloane Square Station.
We will begin our day by visiting The Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, a large and flamboyant structure melding English Perpendicular architecture with architecture from The Arts And Crafts Movement--with architectural elements from The Italian Renaissance thrown in for good measure! It is a bizarre building, inside and out, and yet it somehow works.
The interior is a riot of color and texture, with bold and fearless statuary carving, decorative metal work and stone work, and stained glass. Much of the interior decoration was designed by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.
Holy Trinity is an unusual and rewarding church to visit, and we plan to spend an hour exploring the church interior, and walking around the full church exterior.
Behind the church, in the next block, we will examine the exterior of Cadogan Hall, long London’s principal Christian Science Church until it fell into disuse. Cadogan Hall was recently restored and has now reopened as London’s newest concert venue, home of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
From Cadogan Hall, we will proceed to Sloane Square and walk around the square, viewing the many buildings that surround the square, including The Royal Court Theatre.
From Sloane Square we will walk to The Royal Hospital, Chelsea, founded in the late 17th Century as a home for old and disabled soldiers. The Royal Hospital still serves its original function.
The entire series of buildings was designed by Christopher Wren. I find the exteriors to be entirely unremarkable. Wren supposedly was inspired by the architecture of The Invalides in Paris, but the exteriors of The Royal Hospital, Chelsea, in no way approach the splendor and interest and distinction of The Invalides.
One of the buildings at The Royal Hospital was destroyed by German bombs, dropped from a zeppelin, during World War I. The building was not reconstructed until shortly before World War II, and the same building was destroyed a second time by a V-2 rocket in the latter months of the latter war. It was not rebuilt a second time until the late 1960's.
We will visit the various courtyards and gardens of The Royal Hospital, and then visit the only portions of the main building open to the public: the Octagon, the Great Hall, and the Chapel, which is the most beautiful part of The Royal Hospital.
The chapel of The Royal Hospital is my very favorite Wren church interior. Of unique design and unique proportions, with an unusual interior semi-dome painted by Sebastiano Ricci, it is a beautiful exploration of space and light and color, and yet it is somber and devotional. The chapel has unique and beautiful woodwork, perhaps the finest woodwork of any Wren church, and the woodwork defines and divides up the space beautifully.
After visiting the chapel, we will visit the small Royal Hospital Museum.
Once our visit to The Royal Hospital is complete, we will go next door and continue our exploration of The National Army Museum.
We will first have lunch in the museum café (this will be our second lunch in the museum café, but we truly have little choice, because this is a residential area, and there are no suitable dining venues nearby), and after lunch we will explore the museum exhibitions addressing both World Wars. The World War displays are quite detailed, and they are excellent.
Late in the afternoon, we will retrace our steps from The National Army Museum to Sloane Square.
At the square, we will enter the large department store that resides on the west side of the square, Peter Jones. We will proceed to the store’s seventh floor and have coffee and cakes in the restaurant, which provides excellent views of the skyline of Kensington to the north. The roofs of the South Kensington museums and The Brompton Oratory may be observed, as well as a large number of church spires. It is a very charming view.
After eating, we will spend an hour or two wandering through this enormous store, which occupies an entire city block. The building was recently renovated, at considerable expense (107 million pounds!), and it is a very pleasant department store to explore. We will remain in the store until closing time, at which point we will walk to the nearby home of my older brother’s in-laws, where we will be dinner guests.
After dinner, my brother and Josh and I will take the subway back to our hotel, but my older brother’s in-laws, no doubt, will insist upon driving my parents back to our hotel.
The Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street
Cadogan Hall
Sloane Square
The Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Hospital, Chelsea
The National Army Museum
Peter Jones
We will have breakfast at our hotel again, and at 8:30 a.m. we plan to take the subway to Sloane Square Station.
We will begin our day by visiting The Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, a large and flamboyant structure melding English Perpendicular architecture with architecture from The Arts And Crafts Movement--with architectural elements from The Italian Renaissance thrown in for good measure! It is a bizarre building, inside and out, and yet it somehow works.
The interior is a riot of color and texture, with bold and fearless statuary carving, decorative metal work and stone work, and stained glass. Much of the interior decoration was designed by William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.
Holy Trinity is an unusual and rewarding church to visit, and we plan to spend an hour exploring the church interior, and walking around the full church exterior.
Behind the church, in the next block, we will examine the exterior of Cadogan Hall, long London’s principal Christian Science Church until it fell into disuse. Cadogan Hall was recently restored and has now reopened as London’s newest concert venue, home of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
From Cadogan Hall, we will proceed to Sloane Square and walk around the square, viewing the many buildings that surround the square, including The Royal Court Theatre.
From Sloane Square we will walk to The Royal Hospital, Chelsea, founded in the late 17th Century as a home for old and disabled soldiers. The Royal Hospital still serves its original function.
The entire series of buildings was designed by Christopher Wren. I find the exteriors to be entirely unremarkable. Wren supposedly was inspired by the architecture of The Invalides in Paris, but the exteriors of The Royal Hospital, Chelsea, in no way approach the splendor and interest and distinction of The Invalides.
One of the buildings at The Royal Hospital was destroyed by German bombs, dropped from a zeppelin, during World War I. The building was not reconstructed until shortly before World War II, and the same building was destroyed a second time by a V-2 rocket in the latter months of the latter war. It was not rebuilt a second time until the late 1960's.
We will visit the various courtyards and gardens of The Royal Hospital, and then visit the only portions of the main building open to the public: the Octagon, the Great Hall, and the Chapel, which is the most beautiful part of The Royal Hospital.
The chapel of The Royal Hospital is my very favorite Wren church interior. Of unique design and unique proportions, with an unusual interior semi-dome painted by Sebastiano Ricci, it is a beautiful exploration of space and light and color, and yet it is somber and devotional. The chapel has unique and beautiful woodwork, perhaps the finest woodwork of any Wren church, and the woodwork defines and divides up the space beautifully.
After visiting the chapel, we will visit the small Royal Hospital Museum.
Once our visit to The Royal Hospital is complete, we will go next door and continue our exploration of The National Army Museum.
We will first have lunch in the museum café (this will be our second lunch in the museum café, but we truly have little choice, because this is a residential area, and there are no suitable dining venues nearby), and after lunch we will explore the museum exhibitions addressing both World Wars. The World War displays are quite detailed, and they are excellent.
Late in the afternoon, we will retrace our steps from The National Army Museum to Sloane Square.
At the square, we will enter the large department store that resides on the west side of the square, Peter Jones. We will proceed to the store’s seventh floor and have coffee and cakes in the restaurant, which provides excellent views of the skyline of Kensington to the north. The roofs of the South Kensington museums and The Brompton Oratory may be observed, as well as a large number of church spires. It is a very charming view.
After eating, we will spend an hour or two wandering through this enormous store, which occupies an entire city block. The building was recently renovated, at considerable expense (107 million pounds!), and it is a very pleasant department store to explore. We will remain in the store until closing time, at which point we will walk to the nearby home of my older brother’s in-laws, where we will be dinner guests.
After dinner, my brother and Josh and I will take the subway back to our hotel, but my older brother’s in-laws, no doubt, will insist upon driving my parents back to our hotel.
Day Eight In London
Friday, September 7
Saint Margaret’s Church
Jewel Tower
The Houses Of Parliament
Saint John’s, Smith Square
Tate Britain
Boston Symphony Orchestra
This day marks the mid-point of our time in London.
We will have breakfast at our hotel, and start out at 9:00 a.m., taking the subway to Westminster Station.
Our first visit of the day will be to Saint Margaret’s Church, the small church adjacent to Westminster Abbey. The church is filled with historic monuments, many of the greatest interest.
The finest feature of the church is its stained glass. One set of windows commemorates Walter Raleigh, who was executed nearby and who is buried in the church. Another set of windows was commissioned to mark the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine Of Aragon. This latter set of windows is one of the finest examples of Pre-Reformation Flemish glass in the world.
Outside the church, in a niche, is a bust of Charles I, looking toward The Houses Of Parliament and seemingly staring at the statue of Oliver Cromwell, the man who ordered his execution.
From Saint Margaret’s, we will walk over to Jewel Tower, erected in the 14th Century to house the jewels and treasures of the sovereign. Along with Westminster Hall, Jewel Tower is all that remains of the original Palace Of Westminster, destroyed by fire in 1834.
Jewel Tower is surrounded by the remains of a medieval moat and quay, and it is interesting primarily because of its stonework and its old, narrow stairways. The tower houses an unremarkable exhibit about the history of Parliament.
Hardly any tourists visit Jewel Tower. When my brother and I visited Jewel Tower in 2005, we the only visitors. After we had made our way up to the topmost level, we were approached by the ticket clerk, who had climbed up to the top to ask us whether we minded if he locked us in and departed for fifteen minutes in order to get some lunch. We told him that it was fine with us, as long as he promised to return—it would take us a while, we told him, to dig through the six-foot stone walls if we had to get out on our own.
The main event of our day will be a tour of The Houses Of Parliament, compliments of my sister-in-law’s father, who works in The Palace Of Westminster and at whose home we will have dined the previous evening. He will start at the Victoria Tower end, and take us through the entire building—in turn, The Queen’s Robing Room, The Royal Gallery, The Prince’s Chamber, The House Of Lords Chamber, The Peers’ Lobby, The Peers’ Corridor, The Central Lobby, The Commons Corridor, The “No” Lobby, The House Of Commons Chamber, Saint Stephen’s Hall, Westminster Hall, New Palace Yard—until we reach the other side. This is one of the greatest experiences in London, and Josh and my father will be in heaven. At the conclusion of our tour, we plan to have coffee in the Parliament café.
From Parliament, we will walk over to Saint John’s, Smith Square, London’s greatest example of English Baroque architecture, an absolute masterpiece of the style. This large church features four towers, one at each corner, and it is said to resemble an upturned footstool. We will examine the exterior, but the only way to view the interior--quite magnificent indeed--is to attend an evening concert (the church has been de-consecrated, and it is now home to one of London’s finest concert venues).
We will go into the church crypt at Saint John’s, Smith Square, however, and have a late lunch in the excellent restaurant. It is named, fittingly, “Footstool”.
After lunch, we will walk over to Tate Britain for our second visit. During this visit, we will view the rooms displaying 19th-Century art.
Despite my dislike for so much 19th-Century British art, I find this art to be utterly fascinating—and, in addition to the piles and piles of junk that will be on display at Tate Britain, there will be many, many fine works from this period on view.
John Constable’s last major painting, “The Valley Farm” from 1835, is almost always on display at Tate Britain, as is J.M.W. Turner’s “The Shipwreck” from 1805, the only Turner painting I have ever seen that I greatly like. Minor masterpieces like David Wilkie’s “The Blind Fiddler” and William Mulready’s “The Last In” are also generally kept on display.
Tate Britain also owns many essential James Abbott McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent canvases, including Whistler’s “Harmony In Grey And Green: Miss Cicely Alexander”, one of his very greatest masterworks, and Sargent’s “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose”, his enchanting painting of two young girls hanging Japanese lanterns in a flower garden at twilight. In the latter painting, Sargent captures, perfectly, the mixture and blending of natural and artificial light, just as Renoir did in his great “Dance At Le Moulin De La Galette”.
Tate Britain owns several paintings from Sargent’s series of Wertheimer family portraits, and I have always greatly liked the Wertheimer portraits.
“Ena And Betty—The Daughters Of Asher and Mrs. Wertheimer” is my single favorite Sargent painting. In his painting, Sargent identifies, precisely, the contrasting personalities of these two beautiful young women—Elizabeth, reticent and shy and retiring and bookish, dressed in an elegant and beautiful deep-red velvet gown; Helena, lively and outgoing and vivacious, dressed in a brilliant and equally-beautiful white damask gown—and he places them alongside an enormous Chinese vase, whose colors perfectly complement the colors of the gowns. This painting always overwhelms all other paintings in any room in which it hangs.
Sargent obviously was enamored with Helena Wertheimer—and who would not be? Helena was known to be a delightful and captivating young woman—and he painted her more than once. Sargent painted her again in another Tate Britain work, “Portrait Of Ena Wertheimer: A Vele Gonfie”, a portrait in which Helena, in mock dramatic pose, playfully models a judge’s robes left behind by another sitter, while wearing a ridiculously impractical hat decorated with what must be the largest and most preposterous feathers ever seen. It is an enchanting portrait of an enchanting woman.
I hope that all of these Sargent works will be on display, so that my mother may see them. She will love them, I know.
We will remain at Tate Britain until very late afternoon, when we will take a cab to The Royal Albert Hall for our fourth and final Proms concert. Before the concert, we will probably get something light to eat at one the Hall’s dining venues.
This evening’s concert will feature the Boston Symphony Orchestra under James Levine. The concert will consist of Elliott Carter’s Three Occasions For Orchestra, Bartok’s Concerto For Orchestra, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1.
After the concert, we will walk back to our hotel, stopping along the way for a light supper.
Saint Margaret’s Church
Jewel Tower
The Houses Of Parliament
Saint John’s, Smith Square
Tate Britain
Boston Symphony Orchestra
This day marks the mid-point of our time in London.
We will have breakfast at our hotel, and start out at 9:00 a.m., taking the subway to Westminster Station.
Our first visit of the day will be to Saint Margaret’s Church, the small church adjacent to Westminster Abbey. The church is filled with historic monuments, many of the greatest interest.
The finest feature of the church is its stained glass. One set of windows commemorates Walter Raleigh, who was executed nearby and who is buried in the church. Another set of windows was commissioned to mark the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine Of Aragon. This latter set of windows is one of the finest examples of Pre-Reformation Flemish glass in the world.
Outside the church, in a niche, is a bust of Charles I, looking toward The Houses Of Parliament and seemingly staring at the statue of Oliver Cromwell, the man who ordered his execution.
From Saint Margaret’s, we will walk over to Jewel Tower, erected in the 14th Century to house the jewels and treasures of the sovereign. Along with Westminster Hall, Jewel Tower is all that remains of the original Palace Of Westminster, destroyed by fire in 1834.
Jewel Tower is surrounded by the remains of a medieval moat and quay, and it is interesting primarily because of its stonework and its old, narrow stairways. The tower houses an unremarkable exhibit about the history of Parliament.
Hardly any tourists visit Jewel Tower. When my brother and I visited Jewel Tower in 2005, we the only visitors. After we had made our way up to the topmost level, we were approached by the ticket clerk, who had climbed up to the top to ask us whether we minded if he locked us in and departed for fifteen minutes in order to get some lunch. We told him that it was fine with us, as long as he promised to return—it would take us a while, we told him, to dig through the six-foot stone walls if we had to get out on our own.
The main event of our day will be a tour of The Houses Of Parliament, compliments of my sister-in-law’s father, who works in The Palace Of Westminster and at whose home we will have dined the previous evening. He will start at the Victoria Tower end, and take us through the entire building—in turn, The Queen’s Robing Room, The Royal Gallery, The Prince’s Chamber, The House Of Lords Chamber, The Peers’ Lobby, The Peers’ Corridor, The Central Lobby, The Commons Corridor, The “No” Lobby, The House Of Commons Chamber, Saint Stephen’s Hall, Westminster Hall, New Palace Yard—until we reach the other side. This is one of the greatest experiences in London, and Josh and my father will be in heaven. At the conclusion of our tour, we plan to have coffee in the Parliament café.
From Parliament, we will walk over to Saint John’s, Smith Square, London’s greatest example of English Baroque architecture, an absolute masterpiece of the style. This large church features four towers, one at each corner, and it is said to resemble an upturned footstool. We will examine the exterior, but the only way to view the interior--quite magnificent indeed--is to attend an evening concert (the church has been de-consecrated, and it is now home to one of London’s finest concert venues).
We will go into the church crypt at Saint John’s, Smith Square, however, and have a late lunch in the excellent restaurant. It is named, fittingly, “Footstool”.
After lunch, we will walk over to Tate Britain for our second visit. During this visit, we will view the rooms displaying 19th-Century art.
Despite my dislike for so much 19th-Century British art, I find this art to be utterly fascinating—and, in addition to the piles and piles of junk that will be on display at Tate Britain, there will be many, many fine works from this period on view.
John Constable’s last major painting, “The Valley Farm” from 1835, is almost always on display at Tate Britain, as is J.M.W. Turner’s “The Shipwreck” from 1805, the only Turner painting I have ever seen that I greatly like. Minor masterpieces like David Wilkie’s “The Blind Fiddler” and William Mulready’s “The Last In” are also generally kept on display.
Tate Britain also owns many essential James Abbott McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent canvases, including Whistler’s “Harmony In Grey And Green: Miss Cicely Alexander”, one of his very greatest masterworks, and Sargent’s “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose”, his enchanting painting of two young girls hanging Japanese lanterns in a flower garden at twilight. In the latter painting, Sargent captures, perfectly, the mixture and blending of natural and artificial light, just as Renoir did in his great “Dance At Le Moulin De La Galette”.
Tate Britain owns several paintings from Sargent’s series of Wertheimer family portraits, and I have always greatly liked the Wertheimer portraits.
“Ena And Betty—The Daughters Of Asher and Mrs. Wertheimer” is my single favorite Sargent painting. In his painting, Sargent identifies, precisely, the contrasting personalities of these two beautiful young women—Elizabeth, reticent and shy and retiring and bookish, dressed in an elegant and beautiful deep-red velvet gown; Helena, lively and outgoing and vivacious, dressed in a brilliant and equally-beautiful white damask gown—and he places them alongside an enormous Chinese vase, whose colors perfectly complement the colors of the gowns. This painting always overwhelms all other paintings in any room in which it hangs.
Sargent obviously was enamored with Helena Wertheimer—and who would not be? Helena was known to be a delightful and captivating young woman—and he painted her more than once. Sargent painted her again in another Tate Britain work, “Portrait Of Ena Wertheimer: A Vele Gonfie”, a portrait in which Helena, in mock dramatic pose, playfully models a judge’s robes left behind by another sitter, while wearing a ridiculously impractical hat decorated with what must be the largest and most preposterous feathers ever seen. It is an enchanting portrait of an enchanting woman.
I hope that all of these Sargent works will be on display, so that my mother may see them. She will love them, I know.
We will remain at Tate Britain until very late afternoon, when we will take a cab to The Royal Albert Hall for our fourth and final Proms concert. Before the concert, we will probably get something light to eat at one the Hall’s dining venues.
This evening’s concert will feature the Boston Symphony Orchestra under James Levine. The concert will consist of Elliott Carter’s Three Occasions For Orchestra, Bartok’s Concerto For Orchestra, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1.
After the concert, we will walk back to our hotel, stopping along the way for a light supper.
Day Nine In London
Saturday, September 8
Saint James’s Park
The Wellington Barracks Guards Museum
The Wellington Barracks Guards Chapel
The Cabinet War Rooms And The Churchill Museum
The National Portrait Gallery
“The Woman In Black”
On this day, after breakfast at our hotel, we will set out at 9:30 a.m., a bit later than usual.
We will take the subway to Saint James’s Park Station, and walk around Saint James’s Park again. This park is a lovely place, and well worth a second stroll.
Adjacent to the park is The Wellington Barracks Guards Museum, a small museum that traces the history of The Queen’s Guard from the reign of Charles II to the present.
We will visit the museum, and examine the displays. This is the one item on our London itinerary that I fear may be of no interest whatsoever to my mother, but she will not mind spending an hour or so there, I believe.
Afterward, we will visit The Wellington Barracks Guards Chapel, a post-war structure whose predecessor was destroyed by a V-2 rocket during the war. Tragically, the rocket struck the chapel during chapel service, killing all 144 worshipers.
The primary attraction of our day will be a visit to The Cabinet War Rooms And The Churchill Museum, the underground headquarters of the British government during World War II.
The Cabinet War Rooms have been continuously expanded since Margaret Thatcher caused them to be restored and opened to the public in the 1980’s. When my brother and I visited The Cabinet War Rooms in 2004, nine new rooms had just been opened. Since 2004, The Churchill Museum has been added.
The Cabinet War Rooms are fascinating. The portion of the complex open to the public is enormous—there are dozens of rooms, and my brother and I spent almost four hours going through them in 2004, and nevertheless we felt rushed at the end of our visit, because closing time was approaching.
The Cabinet War Rooms are of the greatest possible interest to those concerned with the history of that period. The restoration is excellent, the exhibits are excellent, and the audio guide is excellent (although the commentary cannot always be heard over the roar of almost continual sound effects, mimicking the sounds of air raid sirens and bomber engines and bombs exploding above ground).
Halfway through our visit, we will stop at the museum café and sit down and have a light lunch. The cafe is strategically placed precisely where visitors need a place to sit and rest before continuing through the maze of hallways and rooms. We will have coffee and a light lunch before we continue exploring the remainder of the complex.
When we are done visiting The Cabinet War Rooms, we are going to proceed to Trafalgar Square and visit The National Portrait Gallery.
The National Portrait Gallery is a magnificent museum. My brother and I, both great lovers of British history, slowly and meticulously went through the entire museum in 2005. It required nine three-hour visits for us to complete our traversal of the entire collection, and we loved every single minute of our many visits.
For this late-afternoon visit, we are going to concentrate only on a handful of key works from the collection: Hans Holbein’s “The Whitehall Mural”, a portrait of Henry VIII taken from life; Holbein’s miniature portrait of Thomas Cromwell, The Earl Of Essex; Lucas Horenbout’s miniature portrait of Catherine Of Aragon; Anthony Van Dyck’s “Venetia, Lady Digby”; John Singleton Copley’s grand history painting, “The Collapse Of The Earl Of Chatham In The House Of Lords 7 April 1778”, a portrayal of the heart attack and collapse of Chatham (a former Prime Minister, better known as William Pitt, or Pitt The Elder) during the House Of Lords’ single most important debate on the subject of The American Revolution (Chatham died a month later); Copley’s portrait of Lord Mansfield, the founder of commercial law; Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of the actress Sarah Siddons as well as his portraits of fellow American painters Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley; Thomas Lawrence’s great portrait of George IV; and three paintings by John Singer Sargent: his portrait of Henry James (once attacked by a madwoman), his portrait of Lord Balfour, and his grand history painting, “The General Officers Of The Great War”, once termed “Still Life With Boots” by a former director of The National Portrait Gallery who intensely disliked the painting.
When we are done seeing these works, we will go upstairs, to the top floor of The National Portrait Gallery, and have dinner in the restaurant, which is very, very fine, and which affords glorious views across Trafalgar Square down Whitehall to Parliament.
After dinner, we will walk to The Fortune Theatre and attend a performance of “The Woman In Black”, a mystery play that has been running, continuously, since 1989. My brother and I thought about seeing this play several times over the last several years, but we always identified what we believed to be superior alternatives to attend, so we never bothered to see this play.
We have no idea whether this play will be any good or not—it may be too “English”—but London’s September theater offerings are pretty slim, so we thought that we might as well give this play a try on this trip. We shall all probably either like it a lot or hate it a lot.
After the play, we will go to Covent Garden Station and take the subway back to our hotel.
Saint James’s Park
The Wellington Barracks Guards Museum
The Wellington Barracks Guards Chapel
The Cabinet War Rooms And The Churchill Museum
The National Portrait Gallery
“The Woman In Black”
On this day, after breakfast at our hotel, we will set out at 9:30 a.m., a bit later than usual.
We will take the subway to Saint James’s Park Station, and walk around Saint James’s Park again. This park is a lovely place, and well worth a second stroll.
Adjacent to the park is The Wellington Barracks Guards Museum, a small museum that traces the history of The Queen’s Guard from the reign of Charles II to the present.
We will visit the museum, and examine the displays. This is the one item on our London itinerary that I fear may be of no interest whatsoever to my mother, but she will not mind spending an hour or so there, I believe.
Afterward, we will visit The Wellington Barracks Guards Chapel, a post-war structure whose predecessor was destroyed by a V-2 rocket during the war. Tragically, the rocket struck the chapel during chapel service, killing all 144 worshipers.
The primary attraction of our day will be a visit to The Cabinet War Rooms And The Churchill Museum, the underground headquarters of the British government during World War II.
The Cabinet War Rooms have been continuously expanded since Margaret Thatcher caused them to be restored and opened to the public in the 1980’s. When my brother and I visited The Cabinet War Rooms in 2004, nine new rooms had just been opened. Since 2004, The Churchill Museum has been added.
The Cabinet War Rooms are fascinating. The portion of the complex open to the public is enormous—there are dozens of rooms, and my brother and I spent almost four hours going through them in 2004, and nevertheless we felt rushed at the end of our visit, because closing time was approaching.
The Cabinet War Rooms are of the greatest possible interest to those concerned with the history of that period. The restoration is excellent, the exhibits are excellent, and the audio guide is excellent (although the commentary cannot always be heard over the roar of almost continual sound effects, mimicking the sounds of air raid sirens and bomber engines and bombs exploding above ground).
Halfway through our visit, we will stop at the museum café and sit down and have a light lunch. The cafe is strategically placed precisely where visitors need a place to sit and rest before continuing through the maze of hallways and rooms. We will have coffee and a light lunch before we continue exploring the remainder of the complex.
When we are done visiting The Cabinet War Rooms, we are going to proceed to Trafalgar Square and visit The National Portrait Gallery.
The National Portrait Gallery is a magnificent museum. My brother and I, both great lovers of British history, slowly and meticulously went through the entire museum in 2005. It required nine three-hour visits for us to complete our traversal of the entire collection, and we loved every single minute of our many visits.
For this late-afternoon visit, we are going to concentrate only on a handful of key works from the collection: Hans Holbein’s “The Whitehall Mural”, a portrait of Henry VIII taken from life; Holbein’s miniature portrait of Thomas Cromwell, The Earl Of Essex; Lucas Horenbout’s miniature portrait of Catherine Of Aragon; Anthony Van Dyck’s “Venetia, Lady Digby”; John Singleton Copley’s grand history painting, “The Collapse Of The Earl Of Chatham In The House Of Lords 7 April 1778”, a portrayal of the heart attack and collapse of Chatham (a former Prime Minister, better known as William Pitt, or Pitt The Elder) during the House Of Lords’ single most important debate on the subject of The American Revolution (Chatham died a month later); Copley’s portrait of Lord Mansfield, the founder of commercial law; Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of the actress Sarah Siddons as well as his portraits of fellow American painters Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley; Thomas Lawrence’s great portrait of George IV; and three paintings by John Singer Sargent: his portrait of Henry James (once attacked by a madwoman), his portrait of Lord Balfour, and his grand history painting, “The General Officers Of The Great War”, once termed “Still Life With Boots” by a former director of The National Portrait Gallery who intensely disliked the painting.
When we are done seeing these works, we will go upstairs, to the top floor of The National Portrait Gallery, and have dinner in the restaurant, which is very, very fine, and which affords glorious views across Trafalgar Square down Whitehall to Parliament.
After dinner, we will walk to The Fortune Theatre and attend a performance of “The Woman In Black”, a mystery play that has been running, continuously, since 1989. My brother and I thought about seeing this play several times over the last several years, but we always identified what we believed to be superior alternatives to attend, so we never bothered to see this play.
We have no idea whether this play will be any good or not—it may be too “English”—but London’s September theater offerings are pretty slim, so we thought that we might as well give this play a try on this trip. We shall all probably either like it a lot or hate it a lot.
After the play, we will go to Covent Garden Station and take the subway back to our hotel.
Day Ten In London
Sunday, September 9
The Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street
The National Army Museum
The Raphael Cartoons At The Victoria And Albert Museum
The Brompton Oratory
We will have breakfast at our hotel and leave the hotel at 8:30 a.m.
We shall begin the day by taking the subway to Sloane Square Station and attending morning service at The Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, the church we will have visited and toured, in depth, the previous Thursday.
After service, we will walk over to The National Army Museum for our third and final exploration of the collection.
We will first visit the large art gallery on the top floor, which contains dozens of magnificent portraits of historic military figures by Allan Ramsay, Benjamin West, Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, and Henry Raeburn. No one ever visits this gallery, whose portraits are superior to comparable portraits by the same artists at Tate Britain and at The National Portrait Gallery. This is one of the great rooms of art in London, and no one seems to know about it. The best Benjamin West painting I have ever seen is in this gallery.
We will next visit the museum’s special exhibition on the Falklands War, which opened not long ago. It is supposed to be excellent.
When we have completed viewing the special exhibition, we will send my parents in a cab to The Victoria And Albert Museum. My brother and Josh and I will take a long walk through back streets to The Victoria And Albert, seeing neighborhoods no one but locals ever visit. While we are making our way there, my parents will have an hour to explore the giant Victoria And Albert on their own.
We will meet up with my parents in the large café of The Victoria And Albert Museum, and we will all have a late lunch there.
After lunch, we will visit one room, and one room only, of this overwhelming museum: the giant hall in which hang The Raphael Cartoons.
These are the giant paintings Raphael painted, on orders from the Pope, to be used as models for Flemish tapestry-weavers, who created giant tapestries (now lost) to line the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Only seven of the original ten Raphael paintings survive, and these seven paintings, all owned by Queen Elizabeth, have been on loan to The Victoria And Albert Museum for over 140 years. They are among the greatest masterpieces of Western Art.
We will spend an hour with the paintings, time truly necessary in order to enjoy them fully. The light levels are kept deliberately low in order not to damage these masterworks, and it takes some time for eyes to adjust to the light levels. Happily, long benches are placed before each of the giant paintings, so visitors may sit and examine the paintings at leisure and in comfort.
When we have completed our time with the cartoons, we will leave The Victoria And Albert and go next door to The Brompton Oratory.
The Brompton Oratory is the second-largest Roman Catholic house of worship in London--only Westminster Cathedral is larger. The Brompton Oratory was founded by John Henry, Cardinal Newman, and it is a purely Italianate Baroque marble structure, inside and out. It reminds me of countless Baroque churches in Rome.
Many of The Oratory’s treasures were imported from Italy, with the Siena Cathedral providing much of the statuary, including twelve marble apostles sculpted in 1680. The Brompton Oratory is a great building, entirely atypical of London, and well worth the visitor’s time.
When we leave The Oratory, we will walk to a nearby Polish restaurant, which my brother and I discovered, and which is truly excellent, and have a nice dinner.
On this evening, we will have dinner guests--a musician friend of my parents, and his wife, visiting from the continent, will be joining us for dinner.
After dinner, we shall walk back to our hotel, and make it an early evening.
The Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street
The National Army Museum
The Raphael Cartoons At The Victoria And Albert Museum
The Brompton Oratory
We will have breakfast at our hotel and leave the hotel at 8:30 a.m.
We shall begin the day by taking the subway to Sloane Square Station and attending morning service at The Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, the church we will have visited and toured, in depth, the previous Thursday.
After service, we will walk over to The National Army Museum for our third and final exploration of the collection.
We will first visit the large art gallery on the top floor, which contains dozens of magnificent portraits of historic military figures by Allan Ramsay, Benjamin West, Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, and Henry Raeburn. No one ever visits this gallery, whose portraits are superior to comparable portraits by the same artists at Tate Britain and at The National Portrait Gallery. This is one of the great rooms of art in London, and no one seems to know about it. The best Benjamin West painting I have ever seen is in this gallery.
We will next visit the museum’s special exhibition on the Falklands War, which opened not long ago. It is supposed to be excellent.
When we have completed viewing the special exhibition, we will send my parents in a cab to The Victoria And Albert Museum. My brother and Josh and I will take a long walk through back streets to The Victoria And Albert, seeing neighborhoods no one but locals ever visit. While we are making our way there, my parents will have an hour to explore the giant Victoria And Albert on their own.
We will meet up with my parents in the large café of The Victoria And Albert Museum, and we will all have a late lunch there.
After lunch, we will visit one room, and one room only, of this overwhelming museum: the giant hall in which hang The Raphael Cartoons.
These are the giant paintings Raphael painted, on orders from the Pope, to be used as models for Flemish tapestry-weavers, who created giant tapestries (now lost) to line the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Only seven of the original ten Raphael paintings survive, and these seven paintings, all owned by Queen Elizabeth, have been on loan to The Victoria And Albert Museum for over 140 years. They are among the greatest masterpieces of Western Art.
We will spend an hour with the paintings, time truly necessary in order to enjoy them fully. The light levels are kept deliberately low in order not to damage these masterworks, and it takes some time for eyes to adjust to the light levels. Happily, long benches are placed before each of the giant paintings, so visitors may sit and examine the paintings at leisure and in comfort.
When we have completed our time with the cartoons, we will leave The Victoria And Albert and go next door to The Brompton Oratory.
The Brompton Oratory is the second-largest Roman Catholic house of worship in London--only Westminster Cathedral is larger. The Brompton Oratory was founded by John Henry, Cardinal Newman, and it is a purely Italianate Baroque marble structure, inside and out. It reminds me of countless Baroque churches in Rome.
Many of The Oratory’s treasures were imported from Italy, with the Siena Cathedral providing much of the statuary, including twelve marble apostles sculpted in 1680. The Brompton Oratory is a great building, entirely atypical of London, and well worth the visitor’s time.
When we leave The Oratory, we will walk to a nearby Polish restaurant, which my brother and I discovered, and which is truly excellent, and have a nice dinner.
On this evening, we will have dinner guests--a musician friend of my parents, and his wife, visiting from the continent, will be joining us for dinner.
After dinner, we shall walk back to our hotel, and make it an early evening.
Day Eleven In London
Monday, September 10
The Queen’s Gallery
The Royal Mews
“Awake And Sing”
We are going to leave our hotel, without eating breakfast, at 8:30 a.m., and take the subway to Victoria Station.
Upon our arrival, we are going to have breakfast at a café midway between Victoria Station and Buckingham Palace, a cafe my brother and I discovered and liked in 2005. It will be a welcome change from breakfast in the hotel dining room.
After breakfast, we will walk the short distance to The Queen’s Gallery, a wing of Buckingham Palace separate and apart from the main body of the Palace. The Queen’s Gallery is a year-round museum, housed in the portion of the Palace that was bombed during World War II and later rebuilt. It presents temporary art exhibitions taken from the Queen’s hoard of artworks.
One of the best exhibitions I ever saw was at The Queen’s Gallery. My brother and I visited the stupendous 2004 exhibition, “George III and Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting And Court Taste”, an unbelievably rich exhibition, spectacularly displayed, that addressed the artworks collected during the long reign of George III.
My brother and I loved that exhibition, and we had wanted to buy the exhibition catalog for our mother. We could not do so in 2004, however, because the catalog was too large—we had not allowed enough room in our luggage for it—so we had to wait until the next year, when we deliberately HAD allowed enough room in our luggage for the catalog, to buy it and give it to our mother as a much-delayed gift.
That catalog is the best exhibition catalog I have ever read. It is comprehensive, detailed, scholarly and beautiful. The catalog is a work of art in and of itself, and our mother loves it.
British art critics frequently remark that art exhibitions at The Queen’s Gallery are perhaps the very finest in all of Europe. Exhibition artworks are imaginatively selected, splendidly-well displayed, and meticulously documented. The Queen obviously has a very large and very talented staff of curators.
The special exhibition we will visit is “The Art Of Italy In The Royal Collection”, a selection of paintings, drawings, statuary, furniture, objects d’art and illuminated manuscripts collected by the Stuart Kings, Charles I and Charles II.
Charles I was the greatest royal collector in the history of the British monarchy—among other things, he purchased, outright, the collection of the Gonzaga dynasty of Mantua—and The Royal Collection’s assortment of Italian paintings and drawings may, in large part, be traced back to Charles I. It is one of the greatest such collections in the world.
There will be 90 paintings and 85 drawings in the exhibition, and all of the major names in Italian painting, from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, will be represented: Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Sebastiano Del Piombo, Pontormo, Bronzino, Correggio, Parmigianino, Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Lorenzo Lotto, Jacopo Bassano, Veronese, Annibale Carracci, Caravaggio, Cristofano Allori, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Domenico Fetti, Guercino, both Gentileschi’s and Bernardo Strozzi.
A handful of these works my brother and I saw in 2004, when they were hung in The Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace—we have already seen one of the Lorenzo Lotto paintings, and one of the Annibale Carracci paintings, and the Cristofano Allori, and the Guido Reni, and the Guercino, and one of the Gentileschi paintings—but most of these paintings will be new to us, and all of them will be new to my parents and to Joshua.
We will love this exhibition, I know, and I cannot wait for my mother to see this exhibition.
When we have completed viewing the exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, we shall walk back to the same café at which we had breakfast, and have a light lunch.
After lunch, we will walk back to Buckingham Palace, and visit The Royal Mews. The Royal Mews houses the many royal carriages—including the magnificent Gold State Coach—used by The Royal Family for assorted functions and occasions. We shall see the carriages, and the stables, and the Windsor Greys and the Cleveland Bays, as well as some of the motorized vehicles used by The Royal Family.
Once we complete our visit to the Mews, we will go back to Victoria Station and take the subway back to our hotel. My parents will rest for a couple of hours, and my brother and Josh and I will go swimming in the hotel pool.
In the early evening, we will take the subway to Angel Station and find a restaurant in Islington for dinner.
After dinner, we will attend a performance of Clifford Odets’ “Awake And Sing”, with Stockard Channing, at the historic Almeida Theatre.
We will take the subway back to our hotel after the theater performance.
The Queen’s Gallery
The Royal Mews
“Awake And Sing”
We are going to leave our hotel, without eating breakfast, at 8:30 a.m., and take the subway to Victoria Station.
Upon our arrival, we are going to have breakfast at a café midway between Victoria Station and Buckingham Palace, a cafe my brother and I discovered and liked in 2005. It will be a welcome change from breakfast in the hotel dining room.
After breakfast, we will walk the short distance to The Queen’s Gallery, a wing of Buckingham Palace separate and apart from the main body of the Palace. The Queen’s Gallery is a year-round museum, housed in the portion of the Palace that was bombed during World War II and later rebuilt. It presents temporary art exhibitions taken from the Queen’s hoard of artworks.
One of the best exhibitions I ever saw was at The Queen’s Gallery. My brother and I visited the stupendous 2004 exhibition, “George III and Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting And Court Taste”, an unbelievably rich exhibition, spectacularly displayed, that addressed the artworks collected during the long reign of George III.
My brother and I loved that exhibition, and we had wanted to buy the exhibition catalog for our mother. We could not do so in 2004, however, because the catalog was too large—we had not allowed enough room in our luggage for it—so we had to wait until the next year, when we deliberately HAD allowed enough room in our luggage for the catalog, to buy it and give it to our mother as a much-delayed gift.
That catalog is the best exhibition catalog I have ever read. It is comprehensive, detailed, scholarly and beautiful. The catalog is a work of art in and of itself, and our mother loves it.
British art critics frequently remark that art exhibitions at The Queen’s Gallery are perhaps the very finest in all of Europe. Exhibition artworks are imaginatively selected, splendidly-well displayed, and meticulously documented. The Queen obviously has a very large and very talented staff of curators.
The special exhibition we will visit is “The Art Of Italy In The Royal Collection”, a selection of paintings, drawings, statuary, furniture, objects d’art and illuminated manuscripts collected by the Stuart Kings, Charles I and Charles II.
Charles I was the greatest royal collector in the history of the British monarchy—among other things, he purchased, outright, the collection of the Gonzaga dynasty of Mantua—and The Royal Collection’s assortment of Italian paintings and drawings may, in large part, be traced back to Charles I. It is one of the greatest such collections in the world.
There will be 90 paintings and 85 drawings in the exhibition, and all of the major names in Italian painting, from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, will be represented: Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Sebastiano Del Piombo, Pontormo, Bronzino, Correggio, Parmigianino, Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Lorenzo Lotto, Jacopo Bassano, Veronese, Annibale Carracci, Caravaggio, Cristofano Allori, Domenichino, Guido Reni, Domenico Fetti, Guercino, both Gentileschi’s and Bernardo Strozzi.
A handful of these works my brother and I saw in 2004, when they were hung in The Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace—we have already seen one of the Lorenzo Lotto paintings, and one of the Annibale Carracci paintings, and the Cristofano Allori, and the Guido Reni, and the Guercino, and one of the Gentileschi paintings—but most of these paintings will be new to us, and all of them will be new to my parents and to Joshua.
We will love this exhibition, I know, and I cannot wait for my mother to see this exhibition.
When we have completed viewing the exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, we shall walk back to the same café at which we had breakfast, and have a light lunch.
After lunch, we will walk back to Buckingham Palace, and visit The Royal Mews. The Royal Mews houses the many royal carriages—including the magnificent Gold State Coach—used by The Royal Family for assorted functions and occasions. We shall see the carriages, and the stables, and the Windsor Greys and the Cleveland Bays, as well as some of the motorized vehicles used by The Royal Family.
Once we complete our visit to the Mews, we will go back to Victoria Station and take the subway back to our hotel. My parents will rest for a couple of hours, and my brother and Josh and I will go swimming in the hotel pool.
In the early evening, we will take the subway to Angel Station and find a restaurant in Islington for dinner.
After dinner, we will attend a performance of Clifford Odets’ “Awake And Sing”, with Stockard Channing, at the historic Almeida Theatre.
We will take the subway back to our hotel after the theater performance.
Day Twelve In London
Tuesday, September 11
Saint Pancras Old Church
The British Library
Saint Pancras New Church
Saint Aloysius Church
The Petrie Museum
“The Last Confession”
This day will be devoted to exploring several attractions that my brother and I visited in past years, and described in detail to our parents. Our parents were so intrigued by our descriptions of these attractions that our parents wanted to experience these same things themselves, just as we experienced them. My parents will be able to experience these attractions on this day. I hope they will not be too disappointed.
All of these attractions are in the King’s Cross area.
This day will also be a very early day for us. We will leave our hotel at 7:00 a.m., without breakfast, and take the subway to King’s Cross Station.
From King’s Cross Station, we will take a pleasant but long walk through a residential neighborhood to Saint Pancras Old Church, an ancient church situated on one of the oldest Christian sites in Europe. The present church building, a small and simple stone structure, is almost a thousand years old. It is filled with ancient monuments and relics, and it is seldom visited by tourists. The church is only open very early each morning, when local residents use the church for prayer.
The church building is in the middle of a large and beautiful churchyard. The churchyard is notable for its large variety of monuments, as well as for two other prominent features.
The first of these features is the mausoleum of Sir John Soane’s wife, in a unique shape of Soane’s own design, which later was to become famous when it was adopted as the model for London’s public telephone booths (now in the process of becoming extinct).
The second is a giant and ancient tree, around which centuries-old tombstones have been artfully arranged, the handiwork of Thomas Hardy at the time Hardy worked as a construction laborer. While groundwork was being laid for the railroad tracks leading into Saint Pancras Station, then under construction, Hardy was assigned the task of disposing of old headstones (the new railroad track was being laid over the site of an ancient cemetery). Hardy’s solution was to arrange the gravestones around an ancient tree on the church grounds.
From Saint Pancras Old Church, we will walk to The British Library, the British equivalent of the Library Of Congress. On the way, we will locate a local restaurant in which to have breakfast.
The treasures on display in the main gallery of The British Library are overwhelming—The Diamond Sutra, the manuscript of Beowulf, The Lindisfarne Gospels, The Luttrell Psalter, The Sherborne Missal (my personal favorite), The Sforza Hours, the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Shakespeare’s first folio, the original score to Handel’s “Messiah”—and these historic treasures are among the most important such works in the world. My mother, especially, will love examining all of these things.
The British Library also houses the great library of George III, on display behind glass walls, as well as an unexpectedly interesting series of galleries on the history of printing, which my brother and I visited in 2005 and, to our surprise, found to be fascinating.
From The British Library, we will make the short walk to Saint Pancras New Church, London’s most remarkable Greek Revival building. This is one of my favorite London churches. The building is an architectural masterpiece, inside and out.
Saint Pancras New Church was inspired by the Erectheum, although the church’s octagonal tower was modeled after The Temple Of The Winds. At the rear of the church’s exterior are two caryatid porches, one on each side, of great beauty and distinction. The caryatid porches somehow heighten and complete the structure’s perfection.
The interior of the church is splendid, beautifully but simply designed and decorated, consistent with the Greek Revival style.
In 2003 and 2004 and 2005, my brother and I attended Sunday service at this church many times. We did so because our hotel was nearby. On our first visit, we were asked if we would read the responses during service. We were very surprised that we had been asked, but we agreed to do so, and we continued to do so at each successive service we attended. Our parents will enjoy visiting this church very much. They want to visit the church where their sons, total strangers to the congregation, from halfway around the world, participated in worship service so many times.
From Saint Pancras New Church, we will walk the short distance to Saint Aloysius Church, another of London’s churches founded by French immigrants, in this case those who fled from the Revolution. The current building, from the late 1960’s, is worth visiting only for its interior. Like the interior of Notre Dame De France, which we will have visited on our first day in London, this church’s interior is circular (although the exterior is not).
From Saint Aloysius, we will walk to University College London. Along the way, we will have lunch at Friends House, a Quaker center, which my brother and I have visited many times in order to have a decent lunch. This is another of those places our parents heard us talk about, and which they want to experience for themselves.
At University College London we will visit The Petrie Museum, housed on the second floor of one of the university libraries. The Petrie Museum is one of London’s most unusual museums, because the premises are entirely inadequate for its astonishing collection of Egyptian Antiquities, one of the largest and most important such collections in the world.
The museum is dark and dim and dirty, and the displays are wretched--cramped and poorly-organized and poorly-lighted (flashlights are freely handed out to visitors, happily)--but the artifacts on display make a visit to the museum essential. Among other items in its vast holdings, the museum owns the world’s largest and finest collection of Roman-Period Egyptian Funerary Portraits.
A new building for The Petrie Museum is scheduled to open next year. The new building will be most welcome, because not only is the current museum a total mess, but it also has space to display less than ten per cent of its amazing collection.
In 2004, my brother and I visited The Petrie Museum, and my brother pretended to be “dismayed” that I had “dragged” him to such a dirty and gloomy place. In fact, he loved the museum—when I told him that we should leave if he disliked the museum, he said “No, I haven’t seen everything yet”, and he then spent more than two hours happily peering into cabinets and drawers and display cases--and he welcomes the prospect of returning. It will be our final visit before the old, inadequate premises are closed forever. The Petrie Museum is another of London’s attractions that our parents want to experience just as my brother and I experienced them.
Late in the afternoon, we will leave the museum and walk to the central theater district.
In the theater district, we will have dinner at a very, very inexpensive dining establishment my brother and I came upon by chance several years ago. It is named “The Stockpot” and it must be London’s least expensive restaurant in which the food is good. My brother and I liked the place, and we have eaten there many, many times on evenings in which we attended theater performances in the West End. Our parents want to eat at this place where their sons ate so many times in the past.
After dinner, we will walk around the corner to The Haymarket Theatre to attend a performance of “The Last Confession”, a new play by Roger Crane, a New York-based attorney.
“The Last Confession” is Crane’s first play, and it had its first production earlier this year at the Chichester Festival Theatre. The production and the play were greatly acclaimed, and the production has since transferred to the West End.
The cast is a large and distinguished one—Michael Jayston and David Suchet are the most famous names in the cast—and the play addresses the circumstances of the death of Pope John Paul I, a death which has never been adequately explained in the minds of many Vatican-watchers.
After the performance, we will walk to Piccadilly Circus Station, and take the subway back to our hotel.
Saint Pancras Old Church
The British Library
Saint Pancras New Church
Saint Aloysius Church
The Petrie Museum
“The Last Confession”
This day will be devoted to exploring several attractions that my brother and I visited in past years, and described in detail to our parents. Our parents were so intrigued by our descriptions of these attractions that our parents wanted to experience these same things themselves, just as we experienced them. My parents will be able to experience these attractions on this day. I hope they will not be too disappointed.
All of these attractions are in the King’s Cross area.
This day will also be a very early day for us. We will leave our hotel at 7:00 a.m., without breakfast, and take the subway to King’s Cross Station.
From King’s Cross Station, we will take a pleasant but long walk through a residential neighborhood to Saint Pancras Old Church, an ancient church situated on one of the oldest Christian sites in Europe. The present church building, a small and simple stone structure, is almost a thousand years old. It is filled with ancient monuments and relics, and it is seldom visited by tourists. The church is only open very early each morning, when local residents use the church for prayer.
The church building is in the middle of a large and beautiful churchyard. The churchyard is notable for its large variety of monuments, as well as for two other prominent features.
The first of these features is the mausoleum of Sir John Soane’s wife, in a unique shape of Soane’s own design, which later was to become famous when it was adopted as the model for London’s public telephone booths (now in the process of becoming extinct).
The second is a giant and ancient tree, around which centuries-old tombstones have been artfully arranged, the handiwork of Thomas Hardy at the time Hardy worked as a construction laborer. While groundwork was being laid for the railroad tracks leading into Saint Pancras Station, then under construction, Hardy was assigned the task of disposing of old headstones (the new railroad track was being laid over the site of an ancient cemetery). Hardy’s solution was to arrange the gravestones around an ancient tree on the church grounds.
From Saint Pancras Old Church, we will walk to The British Library, the British equivalent of the Library Of Congress. On the way, we will locate a local restaurant in which to have breakfast.
The treasures on display in the main gallery of The British Library are overwhelming—The Diamond Sutra, the manuscript of Beowulf, The Lindisfarne Gospels, The Luttrell Psalter, The Sherborne Missal (my personal favorite), The Sforza Hours, the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Shakespeare’s first folio, the original score to Handel’s “Messiah”—and these historic treasures are among the most important such works in the world. My mother, especially, will love examining all of these things.
The British Library also houses the great library of George III, on display behind glass walls, as well as an unexpectedly interesting series of galleries on the history of printing, which my brother and I visited in 2005 and, to our surprise, found to be fascinating.
From The British Library, we will make the short walk to Saint Pancras New Church, London’s most remarkable Greek Revival building. This is one of my favorite London churches. The building is an architectural masterpiece, inside and out.
Saint Pancras New Church was inspired by the Erectheum, although the church’s octagonal tower was modeled after The Temple Of The Winds. At the rear of the church’s exterior are two caryatid porches, one on each side, of great beauty and distinction. The caryatid porches somehow heighten and complete the structure’s perfection.
The interior of the church is splendid, beautifully but simply designed and decorated, consistent with the Greek Revival style.
In 2003 and 2004 and 2005, my brother and I attended Sunday service at this church many times. We did so because our hotel was nearby. On our first visit, we were asked if we would read the responses during service. We were very surprised that we had been asked, but we agreed to do so, and we continued to do so at each successive service we attended. Our parents will enjoy visiting this church very much. They want to visit the church where their sons, total strangers to the congregation, from halfway around the world, participated in worship service so many times.
From Saint Pancras New Church, we will walk the short distance to Saint Aloysius Church, another of London’s churches founded by French immigrants, in this case those who fled from the Revolution. The current building, from the late 1960’s, is worth visiting only for its interior. Like the interior of Notre Dame De France, which we will have visited on our first day in London, this church’s interior is circular (although the exterior is not).
From Saint Aloysius, we will walk to University College London. Along the way, we will have lunch at Friends House, a Quaker center, which my brother and I have visited many times in order to have a decent lunch. This is another of those places our parents heard us talk about, and which they want to experience for themselves.
At University College London we will visit The Petrie Museum, housed on the second floor of one of the university libraries. The Petrie Museum is one of London’s most unusual museums, because the premises are entirely inadequate for its astonishing collection of Egyptian Antiquities, one of the largest and most important such collections in the world.
The museum is dark and dim and dirty, and the displays are wretched--cramped and poorly-organized and poorly-lighted (flashlights are freely handed out to visitors, happily)--but the artifacts on display make a visit to the museum essential. Among other items in its vast holdings, the museum owns the world’s largest and finest collection of Roman-Period Egyptian Funerary Portraits.
A new building for The Petrie Museum is scheduled to open next year. The new building will be most welcome, because not only is the current museum a total mess, but it also has space to display less than ten per cent of its amazing collection.
In 2004, my brother and I visited The Petrie Museum, and my brother pretended to be “dismayed” that I had “dragged” him to such a dirty and gloomy place. In fact, he loved the museum—when I told him that we should leave if he disliked the museum, he said “No, I haven’t seen everything yet”, and he then spent more than two hours happily peering into cabinets and drawers and display cases--and he welcomes the prospect of returning. It will be our final visit before the old, inadequate premises are closed forever. The Petrie Museum is another of London’s attractions that our parents want to experience just as my brother and I experienced them.
Late in the afternoon, we will leave the museum and walk to the central theater district.
In the theater district, we will have dinner at a very, very inexpensive dining establishment my brother and I came upon by chance several years ago. It is named “The Stockpot” and it must be London’s least expensive restaurant in which the food is good. My brother and I liked the place, and we have eaten there many, many times on evenings in which we attended theater performances in the West End. Our parents want to eat at this place where their sons ate so many times in the past.
After dinner, we will walk around the corner to The Haymarket Theatre to attend a performance of “The Last Confession”, a new play by Roger Crane, a New York-based attorney.
“The Last Confession” is Crane’s first play, and it had its first production earlier this year at the Chichester Festival Theatre. The production and the play were greatly acclaimed, and the production has since transferred to the West End.
The cast is a large and distinguished one—Michael Jayston and David Suchet are the most famous names in the cast—and the play addresses the circumstances of the death of Pope John Paul I, a death which has never been adequately explained in the minds of many Vatican-watchers.
After the performance, we will walk to Piccadilly Circus Station, and take the subway back to our hotel.
Day Thirteen In London
Wednesday, September 12
Leighton House
The Museum Of The Royal College Of Music
Saint Mary-Le-Strand Church
Saint Clement Danes Church
Saint Paul’s Church
The Sainsbury Wing Of The National Gallery Of Art
We will begin this day much later than usual. We will do so because the previous day started so early, and ended so late, and because the first attraction we intend to visit this day does not open until 11:00 a.m.
We will have a very late breakfast at our hotel—we will not eat breakfast until 9:30 a.m.—and at 10:30 a.m. we will leave our hotel and walk to our first attraction of the day.
That attraction is Leighton House, home of painter Frederick Leighton. Leighton House is within easy walking distance of our hotel.
Leighton House is supposed to be one of London’s finest and most unusual 19th-Century residences. According to art experts, the architecture and interior design of Leighton House exemplify the Victorian Aesthetic Movement. The high point of the house is supposed to be the fabulous Arab Hall, with a fountain and cupola, friezes and mosaics, and Islamic tiling collected by Leighton on trips to the Middle East.
The house also has many paintings on display, including almost 100 of Leighton’s own canvases, as well as paintings by other late-19th-Century British painters.
Myself, I cannot stand Leighton’s works, but his house is supposed to be truly extraordinary, and I very much want to visit it, and so do my parents. Josh and my brother are lukewarm about visiting Leighton House, but they are happy to go for a visit--once.
From Leighton House, we will take a long and leisurely walk through Kensington, stopping en route for lunch somewhere, until we reach The Museum Of The Royal College Of Music.
The Museum Of The Royal College Of Music is small and musty, and its displays are cramped and not well-presented, but it is sort of an interesting museum, and it is only open on Wednesday afternoons. It is worth 60 or 90 minutes, and my father is certain to enjoy the museum.
On display, mostly, are musical instruments, the oldest of which dates back to 1460. The museum owns keyboards formerly owned by Handel and Haydn, as well as brass instruments allegedly once owned by Elgar and Holst. An amazing number of lutes and guitars may be viewed, including the guitar of David Rizzio, secretary and advisor of Mary, Queen Of Scots, brutally murdered in 1566 while attending the Queen.
When we exit the museum, we will walk to South Kensington Station and take the subway to Temple Station, right on the Thames.
From Temple Station, we will walk to Saint Mary-Le-Strand Church, situated in the middle of The Strand. This is a small but gravely beautiful church, designed by the same architect that designed The Church Of Saint Martin-In-The-Fields. Some architecture critics believe this church to be London’s very finest church from the English Baroque, an honor I accord to Saint John’s, Smith Square, which has far greater originality and flair, I believe. Saint Mary-Le-Strand is, nevertheless, a small and perfect masterpiece. Two very fine Mather Brown paintings are hung near the altar.
From Saint Mary-Le-Strand, we will walk The Strand until we reach Saint Clement Danes Church, another church situated in the middle of The Strand. We will make a lengthy visit to this church.
Saint Clement Danes is a large Christopher Wren church (with a steeple later added during the Baroque period) that was entirely destroyed during the war, only to be rebuilt in the 1950’s.
Saint Clement Danes is the principal church of The Royal Air Force, and it contains many relics of British and American air divisions, as well as a very moving commemorative book containing the names of the 1900 American airmen killed during World War II.
It is an extremely beautiful church, with a galleried interior, Corinthian columns and a circular apse.
My brother and I have visited this church many, many times, and over the years we have befriended the church vector, who always remembers us and who always heartily welcomes us, and we go see him every time we are in London. We hope that he is still there, so that we may introduce him to our parents.
We will explore the church’s exterior, and interior, and crypt, and examine the many artifacts on display. This is one of my favorite London churches, and I am always deeply moved whenever I visit this church.
Outside the church is a statue of Arthur Harris, on which German visitors routinely spray graffiti. There is also a statue of Air Chief Marshall Lord Dowding, on which German visitors do NOT spray graffiti, presumably because they are not as familiar with Lord Dowding as they are with Arthur Harris.
Incredibly, on two occasions, my brother and I have witnessed German visitors berate British citizens over the issue of World War II air campaigns.
In 2003, we observed a German visitor berate the vector of Saint Clement Danes over the bombing of Dresden. The vector would have none of it, telling the German fellow, pointedly and dismissedly, that the Germans had reaped what they had sowed.
In 2004, we observed a German visitor berate an old pensioner working as a guide at the museum of The Royal Hospital, Chelsea. The old Chelsea pensioner gave as good as he got, and the German visitor began screaming—literally screaming—at him. My brother walked over to the German visitor and stared the guy down. The German stopped screaming, and left the museum.
From Saint Clement Danes, we will walk over to Covent Garden and visit Saint Paul’s Church, also known as “The Actor’s Church” because of its many thespian affiliations.
Saint Paul’s Church is filled with monuments to famous actors, including recently-deceased ones, and it is a beautiful church, of great simplicity, designed by Inigo Jones. The back of the church faces Covent Garden's plaza. The church entrance is located in the middle of a city block, almost hidden from public view. There are sizable gardens at the church entrance, and the gardens are beautiful and peaceful.
From Saint Paul’s Church, we will walk over to Trafalgar Square and enter The National Gallery Of Art’s Sainsbury Wing and have dinner in The National Gallery restaurant.
Afterward, we will tour The Sainsbury Wing of The National Gallery Of Art. The Sainsbury Wing displays paintings from 1300 to 1500, and it is open until 9:00 p.m. on Wednesdays.
We will not spend our time going through the entire Sainsbury Wing, because we will already have seen a great deal of art earlier in the day at Leighton House.
Instead, we will focus our attention on a handful of key masterpieces: the legendary “The Wilton Diptych” by an unknown British or French artist; Duccio’s “Virgin And Child, With Saints Dominic and Aurea”; Ugolino Di Nerio’s “The Way To Calvary”; Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “A Group Of Poor Clares”, a fresco painting taken from The Chapter House of Siena Cathedral; Giovanni Bellini’s “The Dead Christ Supported By Angels” and “The Doge Leonardo Loredan”; Antonello Da Messina’s “Portrait Of A Man”, which generally hangs next to “Leonardo Loredan”; Robert Campin’s “Portrait Of A Woman”; and Jan Van Eyck’s “The Arnolfini Portrait”, one of my very favorite paintings in the entire world (and one of my brother’s, too). My brother and I never go to London without visiting and paying our respects to “The Arnolfini Portrait”, which has become an old friend to us.
When we have completed our concentrated tour of The Sainsbury Wing, we will go to Charing Cross Station and take the subway back to our hotel.
It will be an early evening for us, and I suspect that all of us will welcome this.
Leighton House
The Museum Of The Royal College Of Music
Saint Mary-Le-Strand Church
Saint Clement Danes Church
Saint Paul’s Church
The Sainsbury Wing Of The National Gallery Of Art
We will begin this day much later than usual. We will do so because the previous day started so early, and ended so late, and because the first attraction we intend to visit this day does not open until 11:00 a.m.
We will have a very late breakfast at our hotel—we will not eat breakfast until 9:30 a.m.—and at 10:30 a.m. we will leave our hotel and walk to our first attraction of the day.
That attraction is Leighton House, home of painter Frederick Leighton. Leighton House is within easy walking distance of our hotel.
Leighton House is supposed to be one of London’s finest and most unusual 19th-Century residences. According to art experts, the architecture and interior design of Leighton House exemplify the Victorian Aesthetic Movement. The high point of the house is supposed to be the fabulous Arab Hall, with a fountain and cupola, friezes and mosaics, and Islamic tiling collected by Leighton on trips to the Middle East.
The house also has many paintings on display, including almost 100 of Leighton’s own canvases, as well as paintings by other late-19th-Century British painters.
Myself, I cannot stand Leighton’s works, but his house is supposed to be truly extraordinary, and I very much want to visit it, and so do my parents. Josh and my brother are lukewarm about visiting Leighton House, but they are happy to go for a visit--once.
From Leighton House, we will take a long and leisurely walk through Kensington, stopping en route for lunch somewhere, until we reach The Museum Of The Royal College Of Music.
The Museum Of The Royal College Of Music is small and musty, and its displays are cramped and not well-presented, but it is sort of an interesting museum, and it is only open on Wednesday afternoons. It is worth 60 or 90 minutes, and my father is certain to enjoy the museum.
On display, mostly, are musical instruments, the oldest of which dates back to 1460. The museum owns keyboards formerly owned by Handel and Haydn, as well as brass instruments allegedly once owned by Elgar and Holst. An amazing number of lutes and guitars may be viewed, including the guitar of David Rizzio, secretary and advisor of Mary, Queen Of Scots, brutally murdered in 1566 while attending the Queen.
When we exit the museum, we will walk to South Kensington Station and take the subway to Temple Station, right on the Thames.
From Temple Station, we will walk to Saint Mary-Le-Strand Church, situated in the middle of The Strand. This is a small but gravely beautiful church, designed by the same architect that designed The Church Of Saint Martin-In-The-Fields. Some architecture critics believe this church to be London’s very finest church from the English Baroque, an honor I accord to Saint John’s, Smith Square, which has far greater originality and flair, I believe. Saint Mary-Le-Strand is, nevertheless, a small and perfect masterpiece. Two very fine Mather Brown paintings are hung near the altar.
From Saint Mary-Le-Strand, we will walk The Strand until we reach Saint Clement Danes Church, another church situated in the middle of The Strand. We will make a lengthy visit to this church.
Saint Clement Danes is a large Christopher Wren church (with a steeple later added during the Baroque period) that was entirely destroyed during the war, only to be rebuilt in the 1950’s.
Saint Clement Danes is the principal church of The Royal Air Force, and it contains many relics of British and American air divisions, as well as a very moving commemorative book containing the names of the 1900 American airmen killed during World War II.
It is an extremely beautiful church, with a galleried interior, Corinthian columns and a circular apse.
My brother and I have visited this church many, many times, and over the years we have befriended the church vector, who always remembers us and who always heartily welcomes us, and we go see him every time we are in London. We hope that he is still there, so that we may introduce him to our parents.
We will explore the church’s exterior, and interior, and crypt, and examine the many artifacts on display. This is one of my favorite London churches, and I am always deeply moved whenever I visit this church.
Outside the church is a statue of Arthur Harris, on which German visitors routinely spray graffiti. There is also a statue of Air Chief Marshall Lord Dowding, on which German visitors do NOT spray graffiti, presumably because they are not as familiar with Lord Dowding as they are with Arthur Harris.
Incredibly, on two occasions, my brother and I have witnessed German visitors berate British citizens over the issue of World War II air campaigns.
In 2003, we observed a German visitor berate the vector of Saint Clement Danes over the bombing of Dresden. The vector would have none of it, telling the German fellow, pointedly and dismissedly, that the Germans had reaped what they had sowed.
In 2004, we observed a German visitor berate an old pensioner working as a guide at the museum of The Royal Hospital, Chelsea. The old Chelsea pensioner gave as good as he got, and the German visitor began screaming—literally screaming—at him. My brother walked over to the German visitor and stared the guy down. The German stopped screaming, and left the museum.
From Saint Clement Danes, we will walk over to Covent Garden and visit Saint Paul’s Church, also known as “The Actor’s Church” because of its many thespian affiliations.
Saint Paul’s Church is filled with monuments to famous actors, including recently-deceased ones, and it is a beautiful church, of great simplicity, designed by Inigo Jones. The back of the church faces Covent Garden's plaza. The church entrance is located in the middle of a city block, almost hidden from public view. There are sizable gardens at the church entrance, and the gardens are beautiful and peaceful.
From Saint Paul’s Church, we will walk over to Trafalgar Square and enter The National Gallery Of Art’s Sainsbury Wing and have dinner in The National Gallery restaurant.
Afterward, we will tour The Sainsbury Wing of The National Gallery Of Art. The Sainsbury Wing displays paintings from 1300 to 1500, and it is open until 9:00 p.m. on Wednesdays.
We will not spend our time going through the entire Sainsbury Wing, because we will already have seen a great deal of art earlier in the day at Leighton House.
Instead, we will focus our attention on a handful of key masterpieces: the legendary “The Wilton Diptych” by an unknown British or French artist; Duccio’s “Virgin And Child, With Saints Dominic and Aurea”; Ugolino Di Nerio’s “The Way To Calvary”; Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “A Group Of Poor Clares”, a fresco painting taken from The Chapter House of Siena Cathedral; Giovanni Bellini’s “The Dead Christ Supported By Angels” and “The Doge Leonardo Loredan”; Antonello Da Messina’s “Portrait Of A Man”, which generally hangs next to “Leonardo Loredan”; Robert Campin’s “Portrait Of A Woman”; and Jan Van Eyck’s “The Arnolfini Portrait”, one of my very favorite paintings in the entire world (and one of my brother’s, too). My brother and I never go to London without visiting and paying our respects to “The Arnolfini Portrait”, which has become an old friend to us.
When we have completed our concentrated tour of The Sainsbury Wing, we will go to Charing Cross Station and take the subway back to our hotel.
It will be an early evening for us, and I suspect that all of us will welcome this.
Day Fourteen In London
Thursday, September 13
Tate Britain
The Eleanor Cross
The Savoy Chapel
Somerset House
The Historic Naval Rooms
The Courtauld Institute Of Art
“In Celebration”
We will have breakfast at our hotel, and leave for the day at 9:30 a.m.
We will take the subway to Pimlico Station and begin our day with our third and final visit to Tate Britain.
Today’s Tate Britain visit will be devoted to J.M.W. Turner, a painter I have never learned to appreciate. Turner has always struck me as bargain-basement Claude Lorrain (Turner admired Lorrain above all other painters, and borrowed from Lorrain shamelessly).
Tate Britain owns the largest cache of Turner paintings and watercolors and drawings in the world, and an entire wing of the museum is devoted exclusively to Turner. We will explore the many Turner rooms, and I will be keen to learn what my mother and father think of Turner, after seeing so many of Turner’s most-loved and most–respected works in a single, concentrated setting.
I also think that it will be interesting to see what Josh thinks of Turner, especially since Josh dislikes Claude Lorrain. (However, Josh will have an opportunity to change his mind about Claude Lorrain if Queen Elizabeth’s great Claude Lorrain painting, “Coast Scene With The Rape Of Europa”, is on display at Buckingham Palace. That painting is widely considered to be Lorrain’s masterpiece. If Josh does not like that Lorrain painting, there is no other Lorrain painting that will change his mind.)
When we are completed viewing the Turner rooms, we will take a quick swing through Tate Britain’s rooms of 20th-Century British art. We will not have to worry about making our way through crowds of onlookers in these rooms, because Tate Britain’s 20th-Century rooms are always empty. This is quite understandable--there are only so many Stanley Spencer paintings that art lovers can view without breaking out with a case of the giggles.
When we are done with our art-viewing, we will have lunch in the Tate Britain restaurant, the museum’s formal dining venue, and after lunch we will proceed up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square and nearby Charing Cross Station.
In front of Charing Cross Station, we will examine The Eleanor Cross, a memorial that marks the point from which road distances from London are measured. Named after Eleanor Of Castile, wife of Edward I, The Eleanor Cross is a 19th-Century creation, built to resemble a medieval monument. Seventy feet high, with eight statues of Eleanor on the top, and eight statues of angels on the bottom, The Eleanor Cross is a Neo-Gothic conceit much akin to the contemporaneous Albert Memorial.
Eleanor died in 1290, and she died outside of London (she died in Canterbury, I believe). Her funeral cortege to Westminster Abbey was marked with twelve commemorative crosses, each cross representing one of the twelve stopping places for the cortege on its journey to London.
From The Eleanor Cross, we will walk to The Savoy Chapel, a private chapel of the Queen that has a very lengthy history--and very constricted opening hours. Portions of the building date from 1502, but much of the structure was aggressively reconstructed during the 19th Century. The Savoy Chapel has a few interesting monuments, and a beautiful adjoining garden, and it is a nice church to visit.
From The Savoy Chapel, we will walk over to Somerset House, the great Classical building that is William Chambers’ masterpiece.
We will first explore the Thames-side exterior before entering the building.
Inside the building, we will explore The Historic Naval Rooms, which have been restored to their original splendor.
There are lots of things to see in The Historic Naval Rooms. We shall visit the gallery that explains the history of Somerset House, and the gallery that describes the magnificent palace that formerly occupied this ground, and the gallery that houses The Royal Barge. We shall also visit The King’s Barge House, and The Seamen’s Hall, and visit and climb The Nelson Stair, one of the world’s most unusual (and frightening) staircases. If it is open, we will visit The Navy Board Room, perhaps the most beautiful room in Somerset House.
Afterward, we will cross the main courtyard of Somerset House and visit The Courtauld Institute Of Art.
The Courtauld is a very frustrating museum, because the artworks are not well-displayed, because many of the greatest works from the collection are seldom, if ever, on view, and because the premises are shabby and dilapidated (the interiors of this portion of Somerset House were fully restored in the 1980’s, but they look like they have not been refurbished since the 1880’s).
I believe that The Courtauld needs a new home, and a new governing body, and new curators. It is one of the most irritating, if not depressing, museums in the world.
We will not attempt to see the entire collection, both because we will have spent our entire morning viewing art at Tate Britain and because trying to view the entire collection would take more time than we will have at our disposal.
Instead, we will make a swing through the first two levels, concentrating on a handful of works, and spend most of our time on the third level, where most of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings are located.
In all, we plan to view only a couple of dozen paintings (assuming that these paintings will even be on display).
On the first two levels, we hope to find on display: Cimabue’s “Virgin And Child”; Lucas Cranach’s “Adam And Eve”; Correggio’s self-portrait; Lorenzo Lotto’s “Portrait Of A Man With A Skull”; Titian’s “Cameria, Daughter Of Suleiman The Magnificent, As Saint Catherine”; Rogier Van Der Weyden’s portrait of Guillaume Fillastre; Rubens’ “The Family Of Jan Bruegel The Elder”, perhaps the most restrained work Rubens ever painted (and one of my very favorite Rubens paintings, and painted entirely in his own hand); Jan Woutersz’s “Woman Weighing Gold”; Claude Lorrain’s “Landscape With An Imaginary View Of Tivoli”; Francesco Guardi’s “Landscape—Capriccio”; Allan Ramsay’s “Captain Sir William-Peer Williams Of The 16th Light Dragoons”; and George Romney’s “Georgiana, Lady Greville”.
On the third floor, we hope that the greatest of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings will be on display: Renoir’s “La Loge”; Manet’s “A Bar At The Folies-Bergere” (which should have returned from the Getty Museum, where it will have been on display through September 9); Seurat’s “The Bridge At Courbevoie” and “Young Woman Powdering Herself”; Van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear” and “Peach Blossoms In The Crau”; and Cezanne’s “Montagne Saint-Victoire”, “Man With A Pipe” and “The Card Players”.
At the conclusion of our Courtauld visit, we will walk over to historic Simpson’s-In-The-Strand and have a nice dinner at this London institution.
After dinner, we will go to The Duke Of York’s Theatre and attend a performance of David Storey’s 1969 play, “In Celebration”.
After the play, we will walk to Leicester Square Station and take the subway to our hotel.
Tate Britain
The Eleanor Cross
The Savoy Chapel
Somerset House
The Historic Naval Rooms
The Courtauld Institute Of Art
“In Celebration”
We will have breakfast at our hotel, and leave for the day at 9:30 a.m.
We will take the subway to Pimlico Station and begin our day with our third and final visit to Tate Britain.
Today’s Tate Britain visit will be devoted to J.M.W. Turner, a painter I have never learned to appreciate. Turner has always struck me as bargain-basement Claude Lorrain (Turner admired Lorrain above all other painters, and borrowed from Lorrain shamelessly).
Tate Britain owns the largest cache of Turner paintings and watercolors and drawings in the world, and an entire wing of the museum is devoted exclusively to Turner. We will explore the many Turner rooms, and I will be keen to learn what my mother and father think of Turner, after seeing so many of Turner’s most-loved and most–respected works in a single, concentrated setting.
I also think that it will be interesting to see what Josh thinks of Turner, especially since Josh dislikes Claude Lorrain. (However, Josh will have an opportunity to change his mind about Claude Lorrain if Queen Elizabeth’s great Claude Lorrain painting, “Coast Scene With The Rape Of Europa”, is on display at Buckingham Palace. That painting is widely considered to be Lorrain’s masterpiece. If Josh does not like that Lorrain painting, there is no other Lorrain painting that will change his mind.)
When we are completed viewing the Turner rooms, we will take a quick swing through Tate Britain’s rooms of 20th-Century British art. We will not have to worry about making our way through crowds of onlookers in these rooms, because Tate Britain’s 20th-Century rooms are always empty. This is quite understandable--there are only so many Stanley Spencer paintings that art lovers can view without breaking out with a case of the giggles.
When we are done with our art-viewing, we will have lunch in the Tate Britain restaurant, the museum’s formal dining venue, and after lunch we will proceed up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square and nearby Charing Cross Station.
In front of Charing Cross Station, we will examine The Eleanor Cross, a memorial that marks the point from which road distances from London are measured. Named after Eleanor Of Castile, wife of Edward I, The Eleanor Cross is a 19th-Century creation, built to resemble a medieval monument. Seventy feet high, with eight statues of Eleanor on the top, and eight statues of angels on the bottom, The Eleanor Cross is a Neo-Gothic conceit much akin to the contemporaneous Albert Memorial.
Eleanor died in 1290, and she died outside of London (she died in Canterbury, I believe). Her funeral cortege to Westminster Abbey was marked with twelve commemorative crosses, each cross representing one of the twelve stopping places for the cortege on its journey to London.
From The Eleanor Cross, we will walk to The Savoy Chapel, a private chapel of the Queen that has a very lengthy history--and very constricted opening hours. Portions of the building date from 1502, but much of the structure was aggressively reconstructed during the 19th Century. The Savoy Chapel has a few interesting monuments, and a beautiful adjoining garden, and it is a nice church to visit.
From The Savoy Chapel, we will walk over to Somerset House, the great Classical building that is William Chambers’ masterpiece.
We will first explore the Thames-side exterior before entering the building.
Inside the building, we will explore The Historic Naval Rooms, which have been restored to their original splendor.
There are lots of things to see in The Historic Naval Rooms. We shall visit the gallery that explains the history of Somerset House, and the gallery that describes the magnificent palace that formerly occupied this ground, and the gallery that houses The Royal Barge. We shall also visit The King’s Barge House, and The Seamen’s Hall, and visit and climb The Nelson Stair, one of the world’s most unusual (and frightening) staircases. If it is open, we will visit The Navy Board Room, perhaps the most beautiful room in Somerset House.
Afterward, we will cross the main courtyard of Somerset House and visit The Courtauld Institute Of Art.
The Courtauld is a very frustrating museum, because the artworks are not well-displayed, because many of the greatest works from the collection are seldom, if ever, on view, and because the premises are shabby and dilapidated (the interiors of this portion of Somerset House were fully restored in the 1980’s, but they look like they have not been refurbished since the 1880’s).
I believe that The Courtauld needs a new home, and a new governing body, and new curators. It is one of the most irritating, if not depressing, museums in the world.
We will not attempt to see the entire collection, both because we will have spent our entire morning viewing art at Tate Britain and because trying to view the entire collection would take more time than we will have at our disposal.
Instead, we will make a swing through the first two levels, concentrating on a handful of works, and spend most of our time on the third level, where most of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings are located.
In all, we plan to view only a couple of dozen paintings (assuming that these paintings will even be on display).
On the first two levels, we hope to find on display: Cimabue’s “Virgin And Child”; Lucas Cranach’s “Adam And Eve”; Correggio’s self-portrait; Lorenzo Lotto’s “Portrait Of A Man With A Skull”; Titian’s “Cameria, Daughter Of Suleiman The Magnificent, As Saint Catherine”; Rogier Van Der Weyden’s portrait of Guillaume Fillastre; Rubens’ “The Family Of Jan Bruegel The Elder”, perhaps the most restrained work Rubens ever painted (and one of my very favorite Rubens paintings, and painted entirely in his own hand); Jan Woutersz’s “Woman Weighing Gold”; Claude Lorrain’s “Landscape With An Imaginary View Of Tivoli”; Francesco Guardi’s “Landscape—Capriccio”; Allan Ramsay’s “Captain Sir William-Peer Williams Of The 16th Light Dragoons”; and George Romney’s “Georgiana, Lady Greville”.
On the third floor, we hope that the greatest of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings will be on display: Renoir’s “La Loge”; Manet’s “A Bar At The Folies-Bergere” (which should have returned from the Getty Museum, where it will have been on display through September 9); Seurat’s “The Bridge At Courbevoie” and “Young Woman Powdering Herself”; Van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear” and “Peach Blossoms In The Crau”; and Cezanne’s “Montagne Saint-Victoire”, “Man With A Pipe” and “The Card Players”.
At the conclusion of our Courtauld visit, we will walk over to historic Simpson’s-In-The-Strand and have a nice dinner at this London institution.
After dinner, we will go to The Duke Of York’s Theatre and attend a performance of David Storey’s 1969 play, “In Celebration”.
After the play, we will walk to Leicester Square Station and take the subway to our hotel.
Day Fifteen In London
Friday, September 14
The National Theatre
The South Bank Centre
The Royal Festival Hall
The Imperial War Museum
Our final day of sightseeing in London will begin early.
We will leave our hotel at 8:00 a.m. without eating breakfast.
We will take the subway to Embankment Station, and have breakfast at a café near the station that my brother and I discovered. It serves the best English bacon that he and I have ever tasted, and we want our parents and Josh to sample it.
After breakfast, we will walk across Hungerford Bridge, a footbridge that connects The Victoria Embankment with the South Bank. The bridge offers some of the finest views in London, up and down the Thames—everything from The Houses Of Parliament to the Dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral may be seen, free from any obstructions.
On the South Bank, we will go to The National Theatre and take the first guided tour of the morning. The guided tour escorts visitors to all three theater auditoriums, as well as to the backstage areas, and to the scenery shops, and costume shops, and props shops. It is a good tour, and my mother will like it very much.
After the guided tour, we will spend time strolling the public areas of the building, and visiting the several small changing exhibitions that are spread throughout the building, tucked into surprising corners.
From The National Theatre, we will walk over to The South Bank Centre and explore the exteriors of The Hayward Gallery and The Queen Elizabeth Hall. We will also go inside The Queen Elizabeth Hall and explore the public areas.
From The Queen Elizabeth Hall, we will proceed to The Royal Festival Hall, recently refurbished and recently re-opened, and visit this building, finally free of the warren of shops and restaurants that had ruined its grand open spaces since shortly after the hall was opened in the early 1950’s.
When we have completed examining the refit Royal Festival Hall, we will walk to The Imperial War Museum, where we will first have lunch at the museum café (my brother and I have eaten at the café countless times, and the food is quite good).
After lunch, we will visit the art galleries of the museum, solely to see three giant canvases, each commissioned by the British Government in the final year of World War I, each of the precise same size, each portraying a scene from the War, each painted in 1919, and each of the greatest possible interest: John Singer Sargent’s legendary “Gassed”; Paul Nash’s “The Menin Road”; and C. R. W. Nevinson’s “The Harvest Of Battle”. Each of these works is breathtaking, and terrifying, and I hope that all three paintings will be on display.
Once we have viewed these paintings, we will visit a special exhibition at the museum: “The Children’s War”, a giant, two-level exhibition addressing World War II from the perspectives and experiences of children. It is supposed to be a stupendous exhibition, and I fear that we will not be able to get through it in one afternoon. We will remain at the exhibition until the museum closes for the day.
Leaving the museum, we will go to Lambeth North Station and take the subway to South Kensington Station.
From the station, we will walk to the Polish restaurant at which we dined the previous Sunday.
We will have dinner at the restaurant, and my older brother’s in-laws will be our dinner guests for our final evening in London. We will show them the same hospitality they showed us the previous week.
After dinner, we will walk back to our hotel and get our packing done for the following day’s flight home.
The National Theatre
The South Bank Centre
The Royal Festival Hall
The Imperial War Museum
Our final day of sightseeing in London will begin early.
We will leave our hotel at 8:00 a.m. without eating breakfast.
We will take the subway to Embankment Station, and have breakfast at a café near the station that my brother and I discovered. It serves the best English bacon that he and I have ever tasted, and we want our parents and Josh to sample it.
After breakfast, we will walk across Hungerford Bridge, a footbridge that connects The Victoria Embankment with the South Bank. The bridge offers some of the finest views in London, up and down the Thames—everything from The Houses Of Parliament to the Dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral may be seen, free from any obstructions.
On the South Bank, we will go to The National Theatre and take the first guided tour of the morning. The guided tour escorts visitors to all three theater auditoriums, as well as to the backstage areas, and to the scenery shops, and costume shops, and props shops. It is a good tour, and my mother will like it very much.
After the guided tour, we will spend time strolling the public areas of the building, and visiting the several small changing exhibitions that are spread throughout the building, tucked into surprising corners.
From The National Theatre, we will walk over to The South Bank Centre and explore the exteriors of The Hayward Gallery and The Queen Elizabeth Hall. We will also go inside The Queen Elizabeth Hall and explore the public areas.
From The Queen Elizabeth Hall, we will proceed to The Royal Festival Hall, recently refurbished and recently re-opened, and visit this building, finally free of the warren of shops and restaurants that had ruined its grand open spaces since shortly after the hall was opened in the early 1950’s.
When we have completed examining the refit Royal Festival Hall, we will walk to The Imperial War Museum, where we will first have lunch at the museum café (my brother and I have eaten at the café countless times, and the food is quite good).
After lunch, we will visit the art galleries of the museum, solely to see three giant canvases, each commissioned by the British Government in the final year of World War I, each of the precise same size, each portraying a scene from the War, each painted in 1919, and each of the greatest possible interest: John Singer Sargent’s legendary “Gassed”; Paul Nash’s “The Menin Road”; and C. R. W. Nevinson’s “The Harvest Of Battle”. Each of these works is breathtaking, and terrifying, and I hope that all three paintings will be on display.
Once we have viewed these paintings, we will visit a special exhibition at the museum: “The Children’s War”, a giant, two-level exhibition addressing World War II from the perspectives and experiences of children. It is supposed to be a stupendous exhibition, and I fear that we will not be able to get through it in one afternoon. We will remain at the exhibition until the museum closes for the day.
Leaving the museum, we will go to Lambeth North Station and take the subway to South Kensington Station.
From the station, we will walk to the Polish restaurant at which we dined the previous Sunday.
We will have dinner at the restaurant, and my older brother’s in-laws will be our dinner guests for our final evening in London. We will show them the same hospitality they showed us the previous week.
After dinner, we will walk back to our hotel and get our packing done for the following day’s flight home.
Time To Kill
I am at Baltimore's BWI airport, with almost four hours to kill before my flight to MSP is scheduled.
I am going to post our itinerary for our September trip to London.
I will post in reverse order, so that it may be read chronologically.
I am going to post our itinerary for our September trip to London.
I will post in reverse order, so that it may be read chronologically.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Both A Family Member And A Stranger
Joshua and I went over to my parents’ house this evening to have dinner and to see my uncle, who I had not seen in fourteen years.
My uncle looked quite well, I thought—certainly healthier and more robust than I had expected, perhaps because I had prepared myself for the worst—and he seemed to be fairly strong and energetic and vital. According to my parents, my uncle has made a remarkable recovery since his treatments ended in April. I am very happy for that.
As I suspected (and as I noted in April), my uncle had never once visited my parents’ house until today—despite the fact that my parents have lived in the same house for over thirty years. He was not at all self-conscious about this fact, however, and he seemed to be at home, and happy to be present, at my parents’ house, and my parents seemed to be genuinely pleased to have him as their house guest.
My uncle likes my mother’s food, and he does not object to the presence of my parents’ dog (which is good, because the dog runs my parents’ household with an iron paw), and he seems to have settled in comfortably. My uncle will be happy there for the duration of his visit, I believe, and I know that my parents will do everything possible to make his visit as relaxing and enjoyable as possible.
On Thursday, my parents plan to take my uncle into Minneapolis, and drive him around, and show him some of the more notable buildings in the center of the city, but otherwise my parents and my uncle are going to do little else for the rest of the week but stay home and visit.
My uncle was very, very happy to see me, and I was very happy to see him. He said he could not wait until Friday to see my brothers, too, and my nephew, and my sister-in-law.
My uncle tried to joke with me, telling me that every heiress in Minneapolis must be in mourning, knowing I am unavailable, and he wanted to know how many heiresses had set their sights upon me as their intended, only to have their hopes turned into tears. “Zero” was my truthful answer.
My uncle also joked with my father, telling him that he was not surprised that my father lived in the “Library Of Congress, Minnesota Division”, because my father was always a great reader from the time he was a child. My uncle was referring to all of the books in my parents’ home, filling bookshelves in practically every room of the house, including bookshelves on the landing of one of the staircases. In jest, my uncle asked to be directed to the “Russian History” section, and my father told him, truthfully, that he would find the books on Russian history in my middle brother’s bedroom upstairs.
My uncle asked my father how he kept track of books, and compact discs, and LP’s, and how he knew where each item was located, and how he avoided duplication. My father told him that I had cataloged all books and compact discs and LP’s in the household when I was in high school and that, between him and my mother and me, we kept the catalog up-to-date on the computer.
My uncle told me that he could have guessed, fourteen years ago, when I was only twelve years old, that I would be the son who would share my father’s love for history and music. He also told me that he could have guessed, fourteen years ago, that I would be the son who would follow in my father’s footsteps and engage in the practice of law.
Then my uncle turned to my father and he said to him “Boy, I can't help but see how much this one loves you. Do the other ones love you as much as this one does?”
I was miffed at that question, and I jumped in and I answered on behalf of my Dad. I told my uncle “No, my brothers love him even more than I do.”
My uncle and my father did not talk—at least in the presence of Josh and me—about their other siblings, nor did they talk about their parents and their childhoods, nor did they speak about the absence of my uncle’s wife. I wonder whether they talk about these things when they are alone.
We did not eat dinner until 8:15 p.m., out of courtesy to my uncle, who no doubt is still operating on West Coast time. At dinner, I asked my uncle what he was going to do in order not to be bored next week when he will be with us up at the lake. He said that he planned to do absolutely nothing except to try to get to know my brothers and me. I wanted to tell him that we had lived at the same address, and had had the same telephone number, since the day I was born, and that he had squandered over a quarter of a century in which to try to get to know us, but I said nothing.
My mother had prepared a magnificent dinner for my uncle’s first night in Minneapolis. She had prepared a special Norwegian soup made with fresh seafood, followed by a special Dutch vegetable salad in which some of the vegetables, such as carrots and potatoes and beets and turnips, cubed, have to be soaked in special brines for several hours, followed by an Amish pot roast, and cheddar potatoes, and fresh parsnips, and fresh lima beans, and a special tomato salad, and a special apple salad. For dessert, she had made one of her most complicated chocolate cakes.
I hope that my uncle does not expect something this elaborate for dinner every night!
After dinner, my uncle just sat and talked with my parents while Joshua and I cleaned up the kitchen and washed the dinner dishes. When we were done, Josh and I sat and talked with my uncle for a while before it was time for us to come home. My uncle asked me lots of questions about my schooling, my interests, my travels, my career plans and such, and he asked Josh lots of questions, too, about the same things.
It was very, very nice to see him again, and it was even more heartening to learn that he is doing better.
However, it still strikes me as odd that my uncle’s wife did not accompany him to Minneapolis. Further, I find it difficult to understand why he decided that he wanted to attempt to get to know my brothers and me only after having to face serious questions about his mortality. My brothers and I--and my parents, too, for that matter--would all have welcomed the chance to get to know him better long before now.
Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that my uncle has a restful and enjoyable visit with us. I continue to fear that he will be bored out of his mind when we are up at the lake next week.
Late tomorrow afternoon, I must go to Baltimore for a deposition, and Josh will go over to my parents’ house to stay (and he will have my mother’s whitefish for dinner tomorrow night, which I will miss, alas). I return early Friday evening, when my brothers and my older brother’s family will arrive.
I am looking forward to our week together very, very much. I cannot wait to see my brothers, and my sister-in-law, and my nephew. I especially look forward to playing with my nephew on the grass up at the lake.
My uncle looked quite well, I thought—certainly healthier and more robust than I had expected, perhaps because I had prepared myself for the worst—and he seemed to be fairly strong and energetic and vital. According to my parents, my uncle has made a remarkable recovery since his treatments ended in April. I am very happy for that.
As I suspected (and as I noted in April), my uncle had never once visited my parents’ house until today—despite the fact that my parents have lived in the same house for over thirty years. He was not at all self-conscious about this fact, however, and he seemed to be at home, and happy to be present, at my parents’ house, and my parents seemed to be genuinely pleased to have him as their house guest.
My uncle likes my mother’s food, and he does not object to the presence of my parents’ dog (which is good, because the dog runs my parents’ household with an iron paw), and he seems to have settled in comfortably. My uncle will be happy there for the duration of his visit, I believe, and I know that my parents will do everything possible to make his visit as relaxing and enjoyable as possible.
On Thursday, my parents plan to take my uncle into Minneapolis, and drive him around, and show him some of the more notable buildings in the center of the city, but otherwise my parents and my uncle are going to do little else for the rest of the week but stay home and visit.
My uncle was very, very happy to see me, and I was very happy to see him. He said he could not wait until Friday to see my brothers, too, and my nephew, and my sister-in-law.
My uncle tried to joke with me, telling me that every heiress in Minneapolis must be in mourning, knowing I am unavailable, and he wanted to know how many heiresses had set their sights upon me as their intended, only to have their hopes turned into tears. “Zero” was my truthful answer.
My uncle also joked with my father, telling him that he was not surprised that my father lived in the “Library Of Congress, Minnesota Division”, because my father was always a great reader from the time he was a child. My uncle was referring to all of the books in my parents’ home, filling bookshelves in practically every room of the house, including bookshelves on the landing of one of the staircases. In jest, my uncle asked to be directed to the “Russian History” section, and my father told him, truthfully, that he would find the books on Russian history in my middle brother’s bedroom upstairs.
My uncle asked my father how he kept track of books, and compact discs, and LP’s, and how he knew where each item was located, and how he avoided duplication. My father told him that I had cataloged all books and compact discs and LP’s in the household when I was in high school and that, between him and my mother and me, we kept the catalog up-to-date on the computer.
My uncle told me that he could have guessed, fourteen years ago, when I was only twelve years old, that I would be the son who would share my father’s love for history and music. He also told me that he could have guessed, fourteen years ago, that I would be the son who would follow in my father’s footsteps and engage in the practice of law.
Then my uncle turned to my father and he said to him “Boy, I can't help but see how much this one loves you. Do the other ones love you as much as this one does?”
I was miffed at that question, and I jumped in and I answered on behalf of my Dad. I told my uncle “No, my brothers love him even more than I do.”
My uncle and my father did not talk—at least in the presence of Josh and me—about their other siblings, nor did they talk about their parents and their childhoods, nor did they speak about the absence of my uncle’s wife. I wonder whether they talk about these things when they are alone.
We did not eat dinner until 8:15 p.m., out of courtesy to my uncle, who no doubt is still operating on West Coast time. At dinner, I asked my uncle what he was going to do in order not to be bored next week when he will be with us up at the lake. He said that he planned to do absolutely nothing except to try to get to know my brothers and me. I wanted to tell him that we had lived at the same address, and had had the same telephone number, since the day I was born, and that he had squandered over a quarter of a century in which to try to get to know us, but I said nothing.
My mother had prepared a magnificent dinner for my uncle’s first night in Minneapolis. She had prepared a special Norwegian soup made with fresh seafood, followed by a special Dutch vegetable salad in which some of the vegetables, such as carrots and potatoes and beets and turnips, cubed, have to be soaked in special brines for several hours, followed by an Amish pot roast, and cheddar potatoes, and fresh parsnips, and fresh lima beans, and a special tomato salad, and a special apple salad. For dessert, she had made one of her most complicated chocolate cakes.
I hope that my uncle does not expect something this elaborate for dinner every night!
After dinner, my uncle just sat and talked with my parents while Joshua and I cleaned up the kitchen and washed the dinner dishes. When we were done, Josh and I sat and talked with my uncle for a while before it was time for us to come home. My uncle asked me lots of questions about my schooling, my interests, my travels, my career plans and such, and he asked Josh lots of questions, too, about the same things.
It was very, very nice to see him again, and it was even more heartening to learn that he is doing better.
However, it still strikes me as odd that my uncle’s wife did not accompany him to Minneapolis. Further, I find it difficult to understand why he decided that he wanted to attempt to get to know my brothers and me only after having to face serious questions about his mortality. My brothers and I--and my parents, too, for that matter--would all have welcomed the chance to get to know him better long before now.
Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that my uncle has a restful and enjoyable visit with us. I continue to fear that he will be bored out of his mind when we are up at the lake next week.
Late tomorrow afternoon, I must go to Baltimore for a deposition, and Josh will go over to my parents’ house to stay (and he will have my mother’s whitefish for dinner tomorrow night, which I will miss, alas). I return early Friday evening, when my brothers and my older brother’s family will arrive.
I am looking forward to our week together very, very much. I cannot wait to see my brothers, and my sister-in-law, and my nephew. I especially look forward to playing with my nephew on the grass up at the lake.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Lots Of Things On The Calendar
I returned from Indianapolis late yesterday afternoon.
Joshua picked me up at the airport, and he and I went home, and we stayed home for the rest of the day.
While I was in Indianapolis, Josh stayed with my Mom and Dad, so he was well taken care of while I was out of town.
Today, after church, Josh and I went over to my parents’ house to help my mother get things ready for a houseful of people, starting on Tuesday, when my uncle from Oregon will arrive for a visit.
On Tuesday night, if my uncle is up to it, Josh and I will go over to my parents’ house for dinner. I have not seen my uncle for fourteen years, and I look forward to seeing him again.
On Wednesday afternoon, I must travel to Baltimore on business. While I am in Baltimore, Josh will stay with my parents again. I am scheduled to return from Baltimore very early Friday evening, around the same time that my brothers and my older brother’s family will arrive for a ten-day visit, and I will stay at my parents’ house, too, until we all embark northward.
On Sunday afternoon, we will all head up to the lake for a week, and we will remain there until Saturday, July 7. My brothers will fly home the next afternoon, and my uncle will return to Oregon on Monday.
Things are busy with us, clearly.
And things will only get busier for us not long after we return from the lake. Joshua’s family will arrive for a visit that Thursday, and his family will remain until the following Monday morning.
We have lots of things on the calendar, and we are looking forward to everything very much.
Joshua picked me up at the airport, and he and I went home, and we stayed home for the rest of the day.
While I was in Indianapolis, Josh stayed with my Mom and Dad, so he was well taken care of while I was out of town.
Today, after church, Josh and I went over to my parents’ house to help my mother get things ready for a houseful of people, starting on Tuesday, when my uncle from Oregon will arrive for a visit.
On Tuesday night, if my uncle is up to it, Josh and I will go over to my parents’ house for dinner. I have not seen my uncle for fourteen years, and I look forward to seeing him again.
On Wednesday afternoon, I must travel to Baltimore on business. While I am in Baltimore, Josh will stay with my parents again. I am scheduled to return from Baltimore very early Friday evening, around the same time that my brothers and my older brother’s family will arrive for a ten-day visit, and I will stay at my parents’ house, too, until we all embark northward.
On Sunday afternoon, we will all head up to the lake for a week, and we will remain there until Saturday, July 7. My brothers will fly home the next afternoon, and my uncle will return to Oregon on Monday.
Things are busy with us, clearly.
And things will only get busier for us not long after we return from the lake. Joshua’s family will arrive for a visit that Thursday, and his family will remain until the following Monday morning.
We have lots of things on the calendar, and we are looking forward to everything very much.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Without Prompting On My Part . . .
Tomorrow after work, I must fly to Indianapolis on business. I will be in Indianapolis until mid-day on Saturday.
Without any prompting on my part, Joshua asked me "Do you think your parents will mind if I go over there and stay the three nights you will be gone?"
Of course, nothing would please my parents more, and I told Josh to call my mother and to tell her that he wanted to stay over on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. And Josh called my mother, and my mother told him that she was delighted that he wanted to come over and stay, so Josh will be going over to my parents house after work tomorrow.
I really do not care for business travel, and I am glad that this trip is only for three nights, as compared to the fourteen nights I was away in January. Further, next week I must go to Baltimore on business for two nights. I do not like these trips. I prefer to be at home at night.
Without any prompting on my part, Joshua asked me "Do you think your parents will mind if I go over there and stay the three nights you will be gone?"
Of course, nothing would please my parents more, and I told Josh to call my mother and to tell her that he wanted to stay over on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. And Josh called my mother, and my mother told him that she was delighted that he wanted to come over and stay, so Josh will be going over to my parents house after work tomorrow.
I really do not care for business travel, and I am glad that this trip is only for three nights, as compared to the fourteen nights I was away in January. Further, next week I must go to Baltimore on business for two nights. I do not like these trips. I prefer to be at home at night.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
We Will Roll Out The Red Carpet
We all had a nice time at the lake this weekend. It was peaceful, and quiet, and relaxing.
We got the house ready for the week of July 4, which really did not involve much work. We vacuumed, and dusted, and made up the beds, but otherwise there was little to do.
This weekend we read books in preparation for our trip to London in September.
My mother read only one book, a biography of George IV by E. A. Smith. My father and Josh and I had already read the book, and it is a serious biography of a serious man, although somewhat more revisionist in tone than many reviewers were prepared to accept at the time of its publication.
After Charles I, George IV was the greatest of Britain’s royal collectors and--unlike Charles I’s collection, sold and disbursed after his beheading--all of George IV’s collection remains in the hands of the British Royal Family. George IV had astonishing taste and judgment and--unlike his father, George III, another great collector--he did not need to rely upon art experts to advise him what to acquire. He was an acute judge of painting and furniture and porcelain, much of which he had agents in France purchase, at bargain prices, during and after The French Revolution. Much of the artwork George IV acquired remains on display in the Buckingham Palace State Rooms, which we will visit.
The George IV collection of Sevres porcelain, alone, is jaw-dropping. Normally, porcelain is something in which I have no interest whatsoever, but the porcelain George IV acquired from French aristocrats, desperate to sell whatever they could while the Revolution and its aftermath proceeded, is of the greatest possible quality and interest and beauty, one of the two finest such collections in the world (the other is also in London, at Hertford House, home of The Wallace Collection).
My father and Josh and I read three books, which we shared back and forth, none of which was designed necessarily to be read straight through.
One book was V. S. Pritchett’s “London Perceived”, the 1962 classic, recently re-published, a collection of Pritchett essays accompanied by Evelyn Hofer’s black-and-white photographs of London. We read this book on my mother’s recommendation. Pritchett’s essays about London are perceptive and eloquent and beautifully-written, or so I thought, and I enjoyed this book very much, and so did Josh, and so did my father.
Another book was “The Houses Of Parliament: History, Art, Architecture”, a collection of essays and photographs about the current Palace Of Westminster, edited by Christine and Jacqueline Riding. This is a magnificent book, with magnificent essays and magnificent photographs, and an essential publication for anyone interested in the Houses Of Parliament, whether as a building or as an institution. We will be touring the Houses Of Parliament in September, and we enjoyed this book very much. My mother will read it next week.
The third book was “Millais: Portraits”, a publication issued in 1999 in conjunction with a special exhibition of the portraits of John Everett Millais at London’s National Portrait Gallery. This book contains many excellent reproductions of Millais portraits, as well as four excellent, extended essays about Millais’s work in this genre, and I found the book to be fascinating, and so did Josh, and so did my father. There are many, many Millais paintings on display at Tate Britain, and we will be visiting Tate Britain in September. This book is a valuable commentary on Millais’s place among British painters of the Victorian period. My mother had already read the book.
There are two large museums in London that we plan to explore to exhaustion, from soup to nuts, while we are in London, and Tate Britain is one of those museums.
Tonight, when we got home, Josh and I talked to his mother and father, and we learned that his family wants to come to Minneapolis in July to visit us. This is splendid news.
The plan, as it stands now, is for Josh’s Mom and Dad to take Josh’s younger brother and sister on a swing through some baseball cities—in order, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago and Saint Louis—and visit some ballparks, and see some baseball, and see and do some other things along the way.
The trip will have to be in July, because in August Josh’s younger brother starts football practice, which involves grueling twice-daily practice sessions long before the official school term starts.
We are very excited. Josh’s family has never visited us in Minneapolis, and we are exceedingly pleased that they want to come for a visit. For the first time, Josh’s family will get to see where he and I live, and work, and spend our free time.
We will roll out the red carpet.
We got the house ready for the week of July 4, which really did not involve much work. We vacuumed, and dusted, and made up the beds, but otherwise there was little to do.
This weekend we read books in preparation for our trip to London in September.
My mother read only one book, a biography of George IV by E. A. Smith. My father and Josh and I had already read the book, and it is a serious biography of a serious man, although somewhat more revisionist in tone than many reviewers were prepared to accept at the time of its publication.
After Charles I, George IV was the greatest of Britain’s royal collectors and--unlike Charles I’s collection, sold and disbursed after his beheading--all of George IV’s collection remains in the hands of the British Royal Family. George IV had astonishing taste and judgment and--unlike his father, George III, another great collector--he did not need to rely upon art experts to advise him what to acquire. He was an acute judge of painting and furniture and porcelain, much of which he had agents in France purchase, at bargain prices, during and after The French Revolution. Much of the artwork George IV acquired remains on display in the Buckingham Palace State Rooms, which we will visit.
The George IV collection of Sevres porcelain, alone, is jaw-dropping. Normally, porcelain is something in which I have no interest whatsoever, but the porcelain George IV acquired from French aristocrats, desperate to sell whatever they could while the Revolution and its aftermath proceeded, is of the greatest possible quality and interest and beauty, one of the two finest such collections in the world (the other is also in London, at Hertford House, home of The Wallace Collection).
My father and Josh and I read three books, which we shared back and forth, none of which was designed necessarily to be read straight through.
One book was V. S. Pritchett’s “London Perceived”, the 1962 classic, recently re-published, a collection of Pritchett essays accompanied by Evelyn Hofer’s black-and-white photographs of London. We read this book on my mother’s recommendation. Pritchett’s essays about London are perceptive and eloquent and beautifully-written, or so I thought, and I enjoyed this book very much, and so did Josh, and so did my father.
Another book was “The Houses Of Parliament: History, Art, Architecture”, a collection of essays and photographs about the current Palace Of Westminster, edited by Christine and Jacqueline Riding. This is a magnificent book, with magnificent essays and magnificent photographs, and an essential publication for anyone interested in the Houses Of Parliament, whether as a building or as an institution. We will be touring the Houses Of Parliament in September, and we enjoyed this book very much. My mother will read it next week.
The third book was “Millais: Portraits”, a publication issued in 1999 in conjunction with a special exhibition of the portraits of John Everett Millais at London’s National Portrait Gallery. This book contains many excellent reproductions of Millais portraits, as well as four excellent, extended essays about Millais’s work in this genre, and I found the book to be fascinating, and so did Josh, and so did my father. There are many, many Millais paintings on display at Tate Britain, and we will be visiting Tate Britain in September. This book is a valuable commentary on Millais’s place among British painters of the Victorian period. My mother had already read the book.
There are two large museums in London that we plan to explore to exhaustion, from soup to nuts, while we are in London, and Tate Britain is one of those museums.
Tonight, when we got home, Josh and I talked to his mother and father, and we learned that his family wants to come to Minneapolis in July to visit us. This is splendid news.
The plan, as it stands now, is for Josh’s Mom and Dad to take Josh’s younger brother and sister on a swing through some baseball cities—in order, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago and Saint Louis—and visit some ballparks, and see some baseball, and see and do some other things along the way.
The trip will have to be in July, because in August Josh’s younger brother starts football practice, which involves grueling twice-daily practice sessions long before the official school term starts.
We are very excited. Josh’s family has never visited us in Minneapolis, and we are exceedingly pleased that they want to come for a visit. For the first time, Josh’s family will get to see where he and I live, and work, and spend our free time.
We will roll out the red carpet.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The Dangers Of Blogging
I decided today that I am going to cease blogging at the end of the summer.
I decided that it is unhealthy to carry this type of thing on too long.
Two other blogs that I used to read, but stopped reading quite some time ago, were instrumental in my decision. Both of those blogs, which have no connection to each other, are written by persons who have become so immersed in their blogging that they clearly require psychiatric assistance now (which is not to suggest that these individuals did not require psychiatric assistance BEFORE they started blogging).
Neither of the bloggers in question (both strangers to me) is even of above-average intelligence, and yet both of those bloggers have become so totally and irrationally convinced of the quality and invincibility of their opinions, on an astonishing array of topics about which they lack informed--not to speak of penetrating--views, that they have long since lost touch with reality.
This is one of the dangers of blogging, I believe, and I have decided that a good time to end my blog will be at the end of the summer, when we all depart for London. My blog will be ten months old at that time, and it will have served its intended purpose: to provide Joshua and me with a record, of sorts, of our early time together, to which we can look back in future years.
However, things will not end entirely.
When we get back from London, Joshua is going to begin to blog, and he will link his blog to mine. He has been thinking about blogging for the last several months, and he has decided that the year before he starts graduate school will be an opportune time for him to take over, and continue our record of our early life together.
Josh is looking forward to the task, and he says that he plans to set the record straight (Josh accuses me of sugar-coating everything).
Maybe this is not such a good idea after all!
I decided that it is unhealthy to carry this type of thing on too long.
Two other blogs that I used to read, but stopped reading quite some time ago, were instrumental in my decision. Both of those blogs, which have no connection to each other, are written by persons who have become so immersed in their blogging that they clearly require psychiatric assistance now (which is not to suggest that these individuals did not require psychiatric assistance BEFORE they started blogging).
Neither of the bloggers in question (both strangers to me) is even of above-average intelligence, and yet both of those bloggers have become so totally and irrationally convinced of the quality and invincibility of their opinions, on an astonishing array of topics about which they lack informed--not to speak of penetrating--views, that they have long since lost touch with reality.
This is one of the dangers of blogging, I believe, and I have decided that a good time to end my blog will be at the end of the summer, when we all depart for London. My blog will be ten months old at that time, and it will have served its intended purpose: to provide Joshua and me with a record, of sorts, of our early time together, to which we can look back in future years.
However, things will not end entirely.
When we get back from London, Joshua is going to begin to blog, and he will link his blog to mine. He has been thinking about blogging for the last several months, and he has decided that the year before he starts graduate school will be an opportune time for him to take over, and continue our record of our early life together.
Josh is looking forward to the task, and he says that he plans to set the record straight (Josh accuses me of sugar-coating everything).
Maybe this is not such a good idea after all!
Making It Through The Week
Nothing much has been going on this week. Joshua and I have just been going to work each day, and coming home each night, and making it through the week.
Tuesday night Josh and I played racquetball, and Wednesday night we played basketball, but otherwise we have done nothing at all.
This weekend we are going to go up to the lake. My parents are going to come, too. We are going to get the lake house ready for the week of July 4.
Truly, there is not much to do to get the house ready. We will vacuum everything, and dust everything, but otherwise everything in the house is already perfectly clean.
The following weekend we will not go the lake because my parents will be preparing for a visit from my uncle from Oregon. He will arrive the following Tuesday, June 26, three days before my brothers and my older brother’s family will arrive, on the evening of Friday, June 29.
When we gather, we will not go up to the lake until Sunday afternoon, July 1, and we will remain at the lake until early Saturday evening, July 7.
Tonight Joshua and I are getting our gear ready for the weekend, and we are trying to decide, right now, which books to take with us up to the lake.
We are in the mood for something British.
Tuesday night Josh and I played racquetball, and Wednesday night we played basketball, but otherwise we have done nothing at all.
This weekend we are going to go up to the lake. My parents are going to come, too. We are going to get the lake house ready for the week of July 4.
Truly, there is not much to do to get the house ready. We will vacuum everything, and dust everything, but otherwise everything in the house is already perfectly clean.
The following weekend we will not go the lake because my parents will be preparing for a visit from my uncle from Oregon. He will arrive the following Tuesday, June 26, three days before my brothers and my older brother’s family will arrive, on the evening of Friday, June 29.
When we gather, we will not go up to the lake until Sunday afternoon, July 1, and we will remain at the lake until early Saturday evening, July 7.
Tonight Joshua and I are getting our gear ready for the weekend, and we are trying to decide, right now, which books to take with us up to the lake.
We are in the mood for something British.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Bach-Beethoven-Brahms-Debussy-Dutilleux And French Operetta
All last week we listened to music while we were at my parents’ house, trip-planning.
We listened to three discs of basics—Bach, Beethoven and Brahms—and three discs of French music, which my mother loves.
Music of Bach transcribed for guitar, performed by Enno Voorhorst, on the Naxos label
Beethoven’s String Quartets Nos. 15 and 16, performed by the Vermeer Quartet, on the Teldec label
Brahms’ Sonatas For Clarinet And Piano, performed by David Shifrin and Carol Rosenberger, on the Delos label
Debussy Piano Music, performed by Jacques Rouvier, on the Denon label
Dutilleux’s Cello Concerto and Violin Concerto, performed by Truls Mork and Renaud Capucon and the Orchestre Philharmonique De Radio France under Myung-Whun Chung, on the Virgin Classics label
French Operetta Arias, performed by Susan Graham and the City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Yves Abel, on the Erato label
The music of Bach seems to thrive in transcription, and the Bach Naxos disc is very fine, and provides a great deal of listening pleasure. Voorhorst is a Dutch guitarist who made the transcriptions himself, and I thought the transcriptions were quite good. If the listener did not already know the origins of the different pieces, one would think that the works were written for guitar performance.
Some of Bach’s most cherished works are on the disc: Sonata For Violin Solo No. 1 In G Minor, BWV 1001; Partita For Flute Solo In A Minor, BWV 1013; Harpsichord Concerto In D Minor After Allessandro Marcello, BWV 974; Prelude In E, BWV 954 (from The Well-Tempered Clavier); Prelude In C, BWV 939; and the Adagissimo from the Capriccio In B Flat On The Departure Of His Most Beloved Brother, BWV 992.
This is beautiful music that can be listened to, over and over, for a lifetime, and the performances were beautiful, too. Bach is Josh’s very favorite composer, and Josh loves this disc—he said it is one of the most beautiful discs he has ever heard. We listened to it many, many times.
Music of late Beethoven is very difficult to perform, and very difficult to listen to, and very difficult to appreciate. I sometimes think that human beings are unworthy of this music. I often feel inadequate whenever I listen to late Beethoven piano sonatas or late Beethoven string quartets or the Missa Solemnis. Whenever I am not enthralled by the music, or by the performance, I always feel that there must be something wrong with me.
I did not care for the Vermeer performances, which struck me as dull and academic and lifeless--especially the Vermeer reading of Number 16, Beethoven’s final completed work (other than the Grosse Fugue, an appendage to an earlier work)—and I would have ascribed my lack of appreciation solely to myself and my own shortcomings, except that I HAVE heard performances of Number 16 that fully aroused my intellect and my emotion, and except that I HAVE heard comparable performances by the Vermeer Quartet, in other repertory, that I found similarly dull and academic and lifeless.
The Vermeer Quartet is one of those string quartets that is dominated by its first violinist. A quartet with a dominant player always seems to me to fail to give the music enough richness, and texture, and resonance, and character. There is always something one-dimensional about a quartet dominated by a single player.
The Juilliard Quartet was another prominent exponent of this problem. In fact, the Juilliard should always have been named the Robert Mann Quartet, after its first violinist, who dominated that quartet to an extraordinary degree for fifty years. Other than Robert Mann, the lone constant, the Juilliard Quartet changed personnel several times over its first half century, and yet its performances, no matter the personnel, were always the same: lean, energetic, hard-driven, with plenty of surface excitement, with a rough edge to its sound--and very unsatisfactory in music requiring elegance, or reflection, or melancholy, or charm.
In addition to being dominated by one player, the Vermeer Quartet has a second problem: its second violinist is conspicuously weak, and its violist is not much better. This means that, in a Vermeer performance, the first violinist and the cellist are always called upon to carry the full load, and this simply does not work in quartet performance.
The Vermeer Quartet has been around for a long time—since 1969, I think—and I believe that one of the reasons why the Vermeer has not obtained broad recognition is because two of its players have simply not been up to snuff. (Once, I walked out of a Vermeer performance in disgust over the second violinist.)
The Vermeer Quartet recently decided to call it a day, and the group will disband at the end of this year. In residence at Northern Illinois University for many years, the Vermeer will be missed by many concert-goers, I am sure, especially music-lovers in the Chicago area, where it has a loyal following. However, given how many fine quartets there are, everywhere, I cannot say that I will mourn this quartet’s end.
I asked my father what he thought about these Vermeer Beethoven performances. He looked at me, for a very long time, as if he did not know what to say. Finally, he remarked “I’ve heard better . . . much better . . . performances.”
Then he asked me if the Hagen Quartet was still my favorite active quartet, and I told him that it was. Then he asked me if the Italian Quartet was still my favorite quartet from the past, and I told him that it was.
“Then I would not worry about not liking these performances” he said.
I then asked him whether HE liked these Vermeer performances.
His answer to me, after a pause, was “Yes—but primarily because they are so plain.”
And I knew exactly what my father meant. He did not need to explain further. He meant that the Vermeer performances allowed him to think through the music, without getting caught up in, or even distracted by, inspired music-making. And I understood that. At different times one listens to great music for different things, and I understood, precisely, why my father had selected this disc.
And my father saw that I understood what he meant, and he smiled at me, and I smiled at him. I am grateful that music is one of the deep bonds we share.
Beethoven was still exploring, exploring, exploring at the end of his life. Brahms, on the other hand, late in life seemed to be following the admonition Stravinsky was to issue many years later: “Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate”.
I love the spareness of late Brahms, in which everything has been reduced to essentials (and in which the high rhetoric of his earlier years has been abandoned, but without stripping the music of its richness), and I love his Opus 120. In fact, Josh and I listened to the viola version of these works a few months ago, in the splendid Lars Anders Tomter/Leif Ove Andsnes recording.
I happen not to care for the Shifrin/Rosenberger recording. A lot of my dislike is due to Shifrin’s sound. My ideal clarinet sound is that produced by Karl Leister: dark, focused, with clean and clear (but not over-emphatic) articulation.
American clarinetists tend to adopt a broader, more liquid sound, with lots of overtones, and indistinct articulation, in emulation of the human voice. (Richard Stoltzman takes this practice to an extreme.) I happen not to care for this approach, and I happen not to care for America’s current crop of clarinetists, and I happen not to care for David Shifrin.
Pianist Carol Rosenberger, a personal friend of the founder of Delos Recordings, the late Amelia Haygood, was always the Delos “house pianist”, and Rosenberger’s work never impressed me, in any area of the repertory. She always struck me as a pianist who should be on staff at a university, giving lessons to piano students, and offering the occasional faculty recital. Her work on this disc shows that she is not a Brahms player.
This disc also includes Schumann’s Fantaisiestucke For Clarinet And Piano. The order of play on the disc recreates a famous concert in Vienna on November 13, 1894, at which the Brahms works were premiered, with Richard Muhlfeld, Clara Schumann and Brahms as the participating artists: Opus 120, Number 2, followed by Schumann’s Fantasy Pieces, followed by Opus 120, Number 1.
That historic concert provides a nice idea for a disc, and it is disappointing that the performances here are not better. Whenever I hear these works, I always think back to the old Primrose/Firkusny recording, which I do not think has ever been equaled. I first heard that recording when I was a junior in high school, and I have never been able to get those performances out of my mind. The Shifrin/Rosenberger recording does not hold a candle to the old Primrose/Firkusny recording, nor is it anywhere near as good as the much more recent Tomter/Andsnes recording.
The sound quality of the Delos recording is also unsatisfactory. Either the recording venue provided an inhospitable acoustic, or the artists were recorded too closely. There is no sense of space around the clarinet and the piano, and no sense of a natural acoustic, and no sense of a natural balance—both instruments seem to be playing directly into microphones, in a small and airless space, with the final sound picture assigned to the whims of an engineer during the editing process. I have never liked the sound of Delos recordings, none of which suggests a spatial arrangement, and I do not like the sound of this disc, either.
The Debussy disc features the Children’s Corner Suite, as well as several short pieces, including some of Debussy’s most popular piano miniatures: Reverie, La Plus Que Lente, Le Petit Negre, Berceuse Heroique. This is a nice disc to hear, but Rouvier is no Gieseking or Michelangeli. Unlike those two great Debussy pianists of the past, Rouvier’s Debussy does not captivate the ear or bewitch the imagination. Rouvier’s Debussy is tidy and neat, but it is also humdrum and foursquare, and it lacks the subtlety and cool concentration of Gieseking, and the color and blinding virtuosity of Michelangeli.
Rouvier seems to have disappeared from the world’s concert halls. Apparently he was fairly often engaged throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s (this disc was recorded in the late 1980’s, when Rouvier did a lot of work for Denon), but I have never heard him in recital or in concert, nor have I seen his name appear on concert bills anywhere, even in Paris. Rouvier is currently on the faculty of the Paris Conservatoire, and perhaps he now devotes all of his energies to pedagogy—he was one of the teachers of Helene Grimaud and Arcadi Volodos.
The Dutilleux disc was a Christmas present to me from my sister-in-law. She knows that Dutilleux is one of my favorite composers, and my favorite living composer, and she guessed, correctly, that I did not have this disc, since it was only issued last year (however, my sister-in-law checked with my mother, who did a bit of detective work to make sure that I did not already have the disc). Only last week did I at last get around to listening to this disc.
I have liked every piece of music I have ever heard by Dutilleux. I especially like Dutilleux’s Cello Concerto, which I got to know from the Rostropovich recording, and I especially like Dutilleux’s Violin Concerto, which I got to know from the Stern recording. The Virgin Classics recording, I believe, improves upon both of those previous recordings, in large part because the sound is so excellent, and because so much more of the orchestral material comes through.
A Dutch conductor who is a friend of my parents [no, not former Minnesota Orchestra conductor Edo De Waart] once asked me, during a visit with my parents, which living composers I liked. I told him that I liked many living composers, but that the one I liked most of all was Henri Dutilleux.
He seemed surprised by my answer, and he asked me to explain to him, in as much detail as possible, why the music of Dutilleux appealed to me (he was curious about what a young American layman would have to say, nothing more).
I told him that what intrigued me most about Dutilleux’s music was, first and always, the orchestration. Dutilleux’s orchestration was exquisite, I said—elegant, delicate, refined, imaginative. Dutilleux’s sound world was unique to himself, and he clearly took great pleasure in the pure joy of sound, in and of itself. In this respect, I said, Dutilleux reminded me of Ravel, although Dutilleux’s music bore no other similarities to Ravel’s music in the least.
I told him that the second point of entry into Dutilleux’s music, for me, was that it was so perfect, so well-crafted, so fastidious. Dutilleux must be the most self-critical, painstaking composer since Brahms--like Brahms at the end of his life, Dutilleux wrote music that seemed, to me, to exhibit perfection of form, and perfection of content, without a single superfluous note or gesture. I told him that each time I heard a Dutilleux composition for the very first time, I could tell, instinctively, that there were great ordering principles at the root of the composition, ordering principles that were inherently logical, if not immutable, even if I could not articulate what those ordering principles were (and even though I would not think or even care about these principles while listening).
The third thing I liked about Dutilleux’s music, I told him, was that it evolved, organically and naturally, from a few cells and from a few fragments, into a coherent musical journey, with convincing emotional arcs, a journey that captured the listener’s attention and kept it until the composition’s end.
When I was done, the Dutch conductor told me that I had missed two things.
He first asked me whether I was familiar with Arnold Schoenberg’s writings about Brahms, and Brahms’ use of “developing variation”. I told him that I was familiar with that, and he said that Dutilleux uses the cells and fragments I had mentioned in a process that was not much different from Brahms’ “developing variation” technique.
The second thing I had missed, he said, was Dutilleux’s harmonic structures, the most sophisticated and masterful use of harmonic structures of any composer working today.
He told me that my instinctive sense that logic and order were at the root of Dutilleux’s music was more the result of Dutilleux’s sophisticated harmonic organization and his use of developing variation than anything else.
Finally, he told me that my answer had surprised him. He told me that he was surprised that my answer had not been an American composer. In response, I asked “You mean John Adams, don’t you?”, and he laughed. Then I asked him who HIS favorite living composer was. His answer: “Nobody”. Then I asked him who his favorite American composer was. His answer: “Nobody”. (But he has conducted American music in the United States.)
Dutilleux’s music is seldom performed in the United States, so American music-lovers have little opportunity to hear his music other than through recordings. I think, between my father and me, that we have every Dutilleux recording ever issued. Serge Baudo is the finest of today’s Dutilleux conductors, I believe, and Baudo has made several fine Dutilleux recordings for the Harmonia Mundi label. However, the Virgin Classics disc under Chung is awfully good.
Truls Mork is the equal of Mstislav Rostropovich in the Cello Concerto, I believe, and this is probably because Rostropovich’s recording was made immediately after the work’s premiere, while Mork recorded the concerto only after having the work in his active repertory for some time.
Renaud Capucon would not be my ideal candidate to hear in the Violin Concerto. My experience with Capucon has not been positive, and he was the perpetrator of the single worst violin recital I have ever experienced. However, there is not a wide range of recordings from which to choose in this work, and the sound quality of this recording makes it a superior alternative to the Stern version (and Dutilleux was hardly Isaac Stern’s cup of tea, in any case). I would like to hear Anne-Sophie Mutter in this work; I think she would be perfect for this concerto.
Chung is fully involved in this music, and so are the orchestra musicians. The performances are committed, and energetic, and focused, and confident. This disc is a major addition to the Dutilleux discography.
The two concertos are supplemented on the disc by Mork’s performance of “Trois Strophes Sur Le Nom De Sacher”, a work for solo cello, written for Rostropovich, in honor of Paul Sacher.
Dutilleux continues to compose music, despite the fact that he has now passed his 90th year. He recently completed a new work for Renee Fleming (!), and the work will be premiered in Boston next season.
My parents like Dutilleux, and they liked this disc very much. Josh liked this disc, too, even though it was the first time he had heard any of Dutilleux’s music. I wish Aksnav Omso and the Minnesota Orchestra would program Dutilleux’s two symphonies. It is past time for those symphonies to enter the active American repertory. The attention Aksnav Omso lavishes on Kalevi Aho would be better devoted to Dutilleux, I believe.
The disc of French Operetta Arias is somewhat of a misnomer—the items are actually closer to French musical comedy than French operetta. The selections were written between the Turn Of The Century and the early 1930’s, and are from popular stage shows of the day. Most of the selections were composed by Andre Messager and Reynaldo Hahn; in addition, two of the items are by Moises Simon, with one item each by Arthur Honegger and Maurice Yvain.
Little of this music is well-known, even in France, and yet most of these stage songs are quite charming. The conspicuous exception comes from the finest of the composers represented on the disc, Arthur Honegger, whose included song sounds more like an extract from his “Joan Of Arc At The Stake” than from a Parisian boulevard comedy.
The songs I most enjoyed were by Reynaldo Hahn, who was a very skillful composer of light music. I wish that Hahn’s delightful “Ciboulette” would be staged in the U.S., because it is a minor masterpiece, and would surely be popular here.
We had a lot of fun listening to this music. The music is tuneful, generally well-orchestrated, and much of it is saturated with that singular French melancholy so different from the melancholy of Central European composers. In one of the Reynaldo Hahn numbers, Graham sings, unforgettably, all three parts of a trio.
However, the disc is under-produced. It could have been special—very, very special—if a good recording producer had been in charge of the project, offering suggestions to Susan Graham and Yves Abel about how to make their performances come alive for the microphone.
Graham is too straight with the music, and too straight with the texts, and she should have been encouraged to stretch a musical line here and there, and play with the words more, and heighten her characterizations, and personalize the material she was given. As it is, she is far too bland, and the songs suffer from a certain sameness in her treatment of them. The songs come across as “radio standards”, not as theatrical songs derived from the stage.
Abel seems reluctant ever to take charge of the proceedings. Abel should have been encouraged to make the orchestral accompaniments more expressive, and more suavely colorful, and more theatrical--and more French. And why was the Birmingham orchestra engaged for this project? This was a mistake--the Birmingham orchestra has nothing special to offer in this repertory.
With a little more guidance in the control room, from the right producer, this might have been an historic recording, one to be listened to for the next fifty years, rather than an enjoyably transient one.
We listened to three discs of basics—Bach, Beethoven and Brahms—and three discs of French music, which my mother loves.
Music of Bach transcribed for guitar, performed by Enno Voorhorst, on the Naxos label
Beethoven’s String Quartets Nos. 15 and 16, performed by the Vermeer Quartet, on the Teldec label
Brahms’ Sonatas For Clarinet And Piano, performed by David Shifrin and Carol Rosenberger, on the Delos label
Debussy Piano Music, performed by Jacques Rouvier, on the Denon label
Dutilleux’s Cello Concerto and Violin Concerto, performed by Truls Mork and Renaud Capucon and the Orchestre Philharmonique De Radio France under Myung-Whun Chung, on the Virgin Classics label
French Operetta Arias, performed by Susan Graham and the City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Yves Abel, on the Erato label
The music of Bach seems to thrive in transcription, and the Bach Naxos disc is very fine, and provides a great deal of listening pleasure. Voorhorst is a Dutch guitarist who made the transcriptions himself, and I thought the transcriptions were quite good. If the listener did not already know the origins of the different pieces, one would think that the works were written for guitar performance.
Some of Bach’s most cherished works are on the disc: Sonata For Violin Solo No. 1 In G Minor, BWV 1001; Partita For Flute Solo In A Minor, BWV 1013; Harpsichord Concerto In D Minor After Allessandro Marcello, BWV 974; Prelude In E, BWV 954 (from The Well-Tempered Clavier); Prelude In C, BWV 939; and the Adagissimo from the Capriccio In B Flat On The Departure Of His Most Beloved Brother, BWV 992.
This is beautiful music that can be listened to, over and over, for a lifetime, and the performances were beautiful, too. Bach is Josh’s very favorite composer, and Josh loves this disc—he said it is one of the most beautiful discs he has ever heard. We listened to it many, many times.
Music of late Beethoven is very difficult to perform, and very difficult to listen to, and very difficult to appreciate. I sometimes think that human beings are unworthy of this music. I often feel inadequate whenever I listen to late Beethoven piano sonatas or late Beethoven string quartets or the Missa Solemnis. Whenever I am not enthralled by the music, or by the performance, I always feel that there must be something wrong with me.
I did not care for the Vermeer performances, which struck me as dull and academic and lifeless--especially the Vermeer reading of Number 16, Beethoven’s final completed work (other than the Grosse Fugue, an appendage to an earlier work)—and I would have ascribed my lack of appreciation solely to myself and my own shortcomings, except that I HAVE heard performances of Number 16 that fully aroused my intellect and my emotion, and except that I HAVE heard comparable performances by the Vermeer Quartet, in other repertory, that I found similarly dull and academic and lifeless.
The Vermeer Quartet is one of those string quartets that is dominated by its first violinist. A quartet with a dominant player always seems to me to fail to give the music enough richness, and texture, and resonance, and character. There is always something one-dimensional about a quartet dominated by a single player.
The Juilliard Quartet was another prominent exponent of this problem. In fact, the Juilliard should always have been named the Robert Mann Quartet, after its first violinist, who dominated that quartet to an extraordinary degree for fifty years. Other than Robert Mann, the lone constant, the Juilliard Quartet changed personnel several times over its first half century, and yet its performances, no matter the personnel, were always the same: lean, energetic, hard-driven, with plenty of surface excitement, with a rough edge to its sound--and very unsatisfactory in music requiring elegance, or reflection, or melancholy, or charm.
In addition to being dominated by one player, the Vermeer Quartet has a second problem: its second violinist is conspicuously weak, and its violist is not much better. This means that, in a Vermeer performance, the first violinist and the cellist are always called upon to carry the full load, and this simply does not work in quartet performance.
The Vermeer Quartet has been around for a long time—since 1969, I think—and I believe that one of the reasons why the Vermeer has not obtained broad recognition is because two of its players have simply not been up to snuff. (Once, I walked out of a Vermeer performance in disgust over the second violinist.)
The Vermeer Quartet recently decided to call it a day, and the group will disband at the end of this year. In residence at Northern Illinois University for many years, the Vermeer will be missed by many concert-goers, I am sure, especially music-lovers in the Chicago area, where it has a loyal following. However, given how many fine quartets there are, everywhere, I cannot say that I will mourn this quartet’s end.
I asked my father what he thought about these Vermeer Beethoven performances. He looked at me, for a very long time, as if he did not know what to say. Finally, he remarked “I’ve heard better . . . much better . . . performances.”
Then he asked me if the Hagen Quartet was still my favorite active quartet, and I told him that it was. Then he asked me if the Italian Quartet was still my favorite quartet from the past, and I told him that it was.
“Then I would not worry about not liking these performances” he said.
I then asked him whether HE liked these Vermeer performances.
His answer to me, after a pause, was “Yes—but primarily because they are so plain.”
And I knew exactly what my father meant. He did not need to explain further. He meant that the Vermeer performances allowed him to think through the music, without getting caught up in, or even distracted by, inspired music-making. And I understood that. At different times one listens to great music for different things, and I understood, precisely, why my father had selected this disc.
And my father saw that I understood what he meant, and he smiled at me, and I smiled at him. I am grateful that music is one of the deep bonds we share.
Beethoven was still exploring, exploring, exploring at the end of his life. Brahms, on the other hand, late in life seemed to be following the admonition Stravinsky was to issue many years later: “Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate”.
I love the spareness of late Brahms, in which everything has been reduced to essentials (and in which the high rhetoric of his earlier years has been abandoned, but without stripping the music of its richness), and I love his Opus 120. In fact, Josh and I listened to the viola version of these works a few months ago, in the splendid Lars Anders Tomter/Leif Ove Andsnes recording.
I happen not to care for the Shifrin/Rosenberger recording. A lot of my dislike is due to Shifrin’s sound. My ideal clarinet sound is that produced by Karl Leister: dark, focused, with clean and clear (but not over-emphatic) articulation.
American clarinetists tend to adopt a broader, more liquid sound, with lots of overtones, and indistinct articulation, in emulation of the human voice. (Richard Stoltzman takes this practice to an extreme.) I happen not to care for this approach, and I happen not to care for America’s current crop of clarinetists, and I happen not to care for David Shifrin.
Pianist Carol Rosenberger, a personal friend of the founder of Delos Recordings, the late Amelia Haygood, was always the Delos “house pianist”, and Rosenberger’s work never impressed me, in any area of the repertory. She always struck me as a pianist who should be on staff at a university, giving lessons to piano students, and offering the occasional faculty recital. Her work on this disc shows that she is not a Brahms player.
This disc also includes Schumann’s Fantaisiestucke For Clarinet And Piano. The order of play on the disc recreates a famous concert in Vienna on November 13, 1894, at which the Brahms works were premiered, with Richard Muhlfeld, Clara Schumann and Brahms as the participating artists: Opus 120, Number 2, followed by Schumann’s Fantasy Pieces, followed by Opus 120, Number 1.
That historic concert provides a nice idea for a disc, and it is disappointing that the performances here are not better. Whenever I hear these works, I always think back to the old Primrose/Firkusny recording, which I do not think has ever been equaled. I first heard that recording when I was a junior in high school, and I have never been able to get those performances out of my mind. The Shifrin/Rosenberger recording does not hold a candle to the old Primrose/Firkusny recording, nor is it anywhere near as good as the much more recent Tomter/Andsnes recording.
The sound quality of the Delos recording is also unsatisfactory. Either the recording venue provided an inhospitable acoustic, or the artists were recorded too closely. There is no sense of space around the clarinet and the piano, and no sense of a natural acoustic, and no sense of a natural balance—both instruments seem to be playing directly into microphones, in a small and airless space, with the final sound picture assigned to the whims of an engineer during the editing process. I have never liked the sound of Delos recordings, none of which suggests a spatial arrangement, and I do not like the sound of this disc, either.
The Debussy disc features the Children’s Corner Suite, as well as several short pieces, including some of Debussy’s most popular piano miniatures: Reverie, La Plus Que Lente, Le Petit Negre, Berceuse Heroique. This is a nice disc to hear, but Rouvier is no Gieseking or Michelangeli. Unlike those two great Debussy pianists of the past, Rouvier’s Debussy does not captivate the ear or bewitch the imagination. Rouvier’s Debussy is tidy and neat, but it is also humdrum and foursquare, and it lacks the subtlety and cool concentration of Gieseking, and the color and blinding virtuosity of Michelangeli.
Rouvier seems to have disappeared from the world’s concert halls. Apparently he was fairly often engaged throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s (this disc was recorded in the late 1980’s, when Rouvier did a lot of work for Denon), but I have never heard him in recital or in concert, nor have I seen his name appear on concert bills anywhere, even in Paris. Rouvier is currently on the faculty of the Paris Conservatoire, and perhaps he now devotes all of his energies to pedagogy—he was one of the teachers of Helene Grimaud and Arcadi Volodos.
The Dutilleux disc was a Christmas present to me from my sister-in-law. She knows that Dutilleux is one of my favorite composers, and my favorite living composer, and she guessed, correctly, that I did not have this disc, since it was only issued last year (however, my sister-in-law checked with my mother, who did a bit of detective work to make sure that I did not already have the disc). Only last week did I at last get around to listening to this disc.
I have liked every piece of music I have ever heard by Dutilleux. I especially like Dutilleux’s Cello Concerto, which I got to know from the Rostropovich recording, and I especially like Dutilleux’s Violin Concerto, which I got to know from the Stern recording. The Virgin Classics recording, I believe, improves upon both of those previous recordings, in large part because the sound is so excellent, and because so much more of the orchestral material comes through.
A Dutch conductor who is a friend of my parents [no, not former Minnesota Orchestra conductor Edo De Waart] once asked me, during a visit with my parents, which living composers I liked. I told him that I liked many living composers, but that the one I liked most of all was Henri Dutilleux.
He seemed surprised by my answer, and he asked me to explain to him, in as much detail as possible, why the music of Dutilleux appealed to me (he was curious about what a young American layman would have to say, nothing more).
I told him that what intrigued me most about Dutilleux’s music was, first and always, the orchestration. Dutilleux’s orchestration was exquisite, I said—elegant, delicate, refined, imaginative. Dutilleux’s sound world was unique to himself, and he clearly took great pleasure in the pure joy of sound, in and of itself. In this respect, I said, Dutilleux reminded me of Ravel, although Dutilleux’s music bore no other similarities to Ravel’s music in the least.
I told him that the second point of entry into Dutilleux’s music, for me, was that it was so perfect, so well-crafted, so fastidious. Dutilleux must be the most self-critical, painstaking composer since Brahms--like Brahms at the end of his life, Dutilleux wrote music that seemed, to me, to exhibit perfection of form, and perfection of content, without a single superfluous note or gesture. I told him that each time I heard a Dutilleux composition for the very first time, I could tell, instinctively, that there were great ordering principles at the root of the composition, ordering principles that were inherently logical, if not immutable, even if I could not articulate what those ordering principles were (and even though I would not think or even care about these principles while listening).
The third thing I liked about Dutilleux’s music, I told him, was that it evolved, organically and naturally, from a few cells and from a few fragments, into a coherent musical journey, with convincing emotional arcs, a journey that captured the listener’s attention and kept it until the composition’s end.
When I was done, the Dutch conductor told me that I had missed two things.
He first asked me whether I was familiar with Arnold Schoenberg’s writings about Brahms, and Brahms’ use of “developing variation”. I told him that I was familiar with that, and he said that Dutilleux uses the cells and fragments I had mentioned in a process that was not much different from Brahms’ “developing variation” technique.
The second thing I had missed, he said, was Dutilleux’s harmonic structures, the most sophisticated and masterful use of harmonic structures of any composer working today.
He told me that my instinctive sense that logic and order were at the root of Dutilleux’s music was more the result of Dutilleux’s sophisticated harmonic organization and his use of developing variation than anything else.
Finally, he told me that my answer had surprised him. He told me that he was surprised that my answer had not been an American composer. In response, I asked “You mean John Adams, don’t you?”, and he laughed. Then I asked him who HIS favorite living composer was. His answer: “Nobody”. Then I asked him who his favorite American composer was. His answer: “Nobody”. (But he has conducted American music in the United States.)
Dutilleux’s music is seldom performed in the United States, so American music-lovers have little opportunity to hear his music other than through recordings. I think, between my father and me, that we have every Dutilleux recording ever issued. Serge Baudo is the finest of today’s Dutilleux conductors, I believe, and Baudo has made several fine Dutilleux recordings for the Harmonia Mundi label. However, the Virgin Classics disc under Chung is awfully good.
Truls Mork is the equal of Mstislav Rostropovich in the Cello Concerto, I believe, and this is probably because Rostropovich’s recording was made immediately after the work’s premiere, while Mork recorded the concerto only after having the work in his active repertory for some time.
Renaud Capucon would not be my ideal candidate to hear in the Violin Concerto. My experience with Capucon has not been positive, and he was the perpetrator of the single worst violin recital I have ever experienced. However, there is not a wide range of recordings from which to choose in this work, and the sound quality of this recording makes it a superior alternative to the Stern version (and Dutilleux was hardly Isaac Stern’s cup of tea, in any case). I would like to hear Anne-Sophie Mutter in this work; I think she would be perfect for this concerto.
Chung is fully involved in this music, and so are the orchestra musicians. The performances are committed, and energetic, and focused, and confident. This disc is a major addition to the Dutilleux discography.
The two concertos are supplemented on the disc by Mork’s performance of “Trois Strophes Sur Le Nom De Sacher”, a work for solo cello, written for Rostropovich, in honor of Paul Sacher.
Dutilleux continues to compose music, despite the fact that he has now passed his 90th year. He recently completed a new work for Renee Fleming (!), and the work will be premiered in Boston next season.
My parents like Dutilleux, and they liked this disc very much. Josh liked this disc, too, even though it was the first time he had heard any of Dutilleux’s music. I wish Aksnav Omso and the Minnesota Orchestra would program Dutilleux’s two symphonies. It is past time for those symphonies to enter the active American repertory. The attention Aksnav Omso lavishes on Kalevi Aho would be better devoted to Dutilleux, I believe.
The disc of French Operetta Arias is somewhat of a misnomer—the items are actually closer to French musical comedy than French operetta. The selections were written between the Turn Of The Century and the early 1930’s, and are from popular stage shows of the day. Most of the selections were composed by Andre Messager and Reynaldo Hahn; in addition, two of the items are by Moises Simon, with one item each by Arthur Honegger and Maurice Yvain.
Little of this music is well-known, even in France, and yet most of these stage songs are quite charming. The conspicuous exception comes from the finest of the composers represented on the disc, Arthur Honegger, whose included song sounds more like an extract from his “Joan Of Arc At The Stake” than from a Parisian boulevard comedy.
The songs I most enjoyed were by Reynaldo Hahn, who was a very skillful composer of light music. I wish that Hahn’s delightful “Ciboulette” would be staged in the U.S., because it is a minor masterpiece, and would surely be popular here.
We had a lot of fun listening to this music. The music is tuneful, generally well-orchestrated, and much of it is saturated with that singular French melancholy so different from the melancholy of Central European composers. In one of the Reynaldo Hahn numbers, Graham sings, unforgettably, all three parts of a trio.
However, the disc is under-produced. It could have been special—very, very special—if a good recording producer had been in charge of the project, offering suggestions to Susan Graham and Yves Abel about how to make their performances come alive for the microphone.
Graham is too straight with the music, and too straight with the texts, and she should have been encouraged to stretch a musical line here and there, and play with the words more, and heighten her characterizations, and personalize the material she was given. As it is, she is far too bland, and the songs suffer from a certain sameness in her treatment of them. The songs come across as “radio standards”, not as theatrical songs derived from the stage.
Abel seems reluctant ever to take charge of the proceedings. Abel should have been encouraged to make the orchestral accompaniments more expressive, and more suavely colorful, and more theatrical--and more French. And why was the Birmingham orchestra engaged for this project? This was a mistake--the Birmingham orchestra has nothing special to offer in this repertory.
With a little more guidance in the control room, from the right producer, this might have been an historic recording, one to be listened to for the next fifty years, rather than an enjoyably transient one.
Monday, June 11, 2007
"Where's Otto Klemperer When You Need Him?"
Our weekend was pretty low-key.
Friday night Joshua and I and my parents went to hear the Minnesota Orchestra perform Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2. The orchestra played very, very well, but I simply was not in the mood to hear Mahler that night, and neither was Joshua. I had hoped that something would happen to capture my attention once the performance got under way, but this was not to occur. Once Joshua and I had memorized the program booklet, and memorized the subscription brochure for next season, and memorized the list of this year's "Sommerfest" concerts, there were still another fifty minutes to go before the Mahler ended.
A lady seated next to me was leafing through a book during the performance--the title of the book was "Oceanic Wilderness", and I could see that there were lots and lots of photographs in it--and I was hoping that she would finish the book so that I could ask her whether I might kindly borrow it. "Oceanic Wilderness" is a book that would not normally be of much interest to me, but under the circumstances I found it to be uncommonly appealing. However, the book continued to hold her interest for the remainder of the performance, so I had to entertain myself by trying to decide whether it was more amusing to watch Vanska's choreography or to watch a nearby elderly couple keep nodding off, only to be jarred awake whenever the orchestra erupted in a loud passage.
By the end of the performance, I had identified, through careful study, the source of Vanska's dance moves: they came from Alvin Ailey's "Revelations", and Vanska was, amazingly, spot-on in his duplication of the choreography for the finale of that work. Until Friday night, I had had no idea that Vanska was even a fan of modern dance, let alone such a skilled practitioner at recreating modern-dance choreography from the late 1950's. There was no credit in the program booklet, so I trust that someone from the Alvin Ailey Estate was in attendance, in order that legal proceedings may be initiated, without delay, for copyright infringement.
On our way home Friday night, Josh told me that he never in his life was so happy to see a performance end. I told Josh that the Mahler Second, for me, was one of those works that required a certain frame of mind. In response, Josh said that he hoped never to experience that particular frame of mind, either in him or in me.
Josh likes Osmo Vanska even less than I do. He has taken to calling him Aksnav Omso, which I think is sort of funny, and so do my parents. Aksnav Omso sounds just like the name of a brand of Scandinavian dog food.
My parents were very high on Vanska for his first couple of years in Minneapolis--anyone would have looked good after Eiji Oue--but they are now tiring of Vanska. When we got home Friday night, I asked my parents what they had thought of Vanska's Mahler. My father said that he genuinely could not make up his mind--the surface of the score was fully realized, he said, but every time he started to think that Vanska was penetrating the spirit of the score, Vanska would do something weird to make him change his mind. My mother's opinion: "Where's Otto Klemperer when you need him?"
I wanted to sleep in on Saturday morning, but another member of the household--the one with a wet nose and floppy ears--had other thoughts. He was raring to go, ready to start his day, at 5:45 a.m., so I had to get up and take him to the park. Otherwise, he would have started barking, and wakened everyone.
We got our yard work done on Saturday, and we also did the painting we had planned to do. We had to be very attentive while we painted, because another member of the household--the one with sharp teeth and extremely acute hearing--was very curious about the paint cans, and wanted to stick his nose and tongue into the paint, and create whatever general disorder he could.
Saturday evening we attended Vivica Genaux's recital. She is a fine singer, but she has a habit of craning her head and neck from side to side, and up and down, and back and forth, as if she needs to place her head and neck in a very particular position in order to find a note. I found this to be irritating, and so did Josh, and so did my parents.
I thought that Genaux did a truly excellent job in Haydn's "Arianna A Naxos". I was very impressed.
It was nice to hear Carl Loewe's version of "Frauenliebe", which was entirely pleasant, but I can understand why this version is so seldom heard. It lacks the pathos, and depth of feeling, and emotional range, of the Schumann.
In the second half of her recital, Genaux sang Rossini, and Pauline Viardot, and some zarzuela numbers, and she handled them well, I thought. I wish, however, that someone would work with her on those head-and-neck contortions.
On Sunday, Josh and I were in charge of the dog after church. We entertained him out-of-doors, nonstop, all afternoon. Last night, for dinner, we baked two chickens: one for him and one for us. He got his tummy full, and he was happy, and content.
My parents came by and got him around 8:00 p.m., and they asked Josh and me whether we wanted to go home with them and watch the Tony Awards. We declined--we had watched that award show last year, and had found it to be insufferable--so my parents took the dog home, and Josh and I spent a quiet evening by ourselves.
It was nice.
Friday night Joshua and I and my parents went to hear the Minnesota Orchestra perform Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2. The orchestra played very, very well, but I simply was not in the mood to hear Mahler that night, and neither was Joshua. I had hoped that something would happen to capture my attention once the performance got under way, but this was not to occur. Once Joshua and I had memorized the program booklet, and memorized the subscription brochure for next season, and memorized the list of this year's "Sommerfest" concerts, there were still another fifty minutes to go before the Mahler ended.
A lady seated next to me was leafing through a book during the performance--the title of the book was "Oceanic Wilderness", and I could see that there were lots and lots of photographs in it--and I was hoping that she would finish the book so that I could ask her whether I might kindly borrow it. "Oceanic Wilderness" is a book that would not normally be of much interest to me, but under the circumstances I found it to be uncommonly appealing. However, the book continued to hold her interest for the remainder of the performance, so I had to entertain myself by trying to decide whether it was more amusing to watch Vanska's choreography or to watch a nearby elderly couple keep nodding off, only to be jarred awake whenever the orchestra erupted in a loud passage.
By the end of the performance, I had identified, through careful study, the source of Vanska's dance moves: they came from Alvin Ailey's "Revelations", and Vanska was, amazingly, spot-on in his duplication of the choreography for the finale of that work. Until Friday night, I had had no idea that Vanska was even a fan of modern dance, let alone such a skilled practitioner at recreating modern-dance choreography from the late 1950's. There was no credit in the program booklet, so I trust that someone from the Alvin Ailey Estate was in attendance, in order that legal proceedings may be initiated, without delay, for copyright infringement.
On our way home Friday night, Josh told me that he never in his life was so happy to see a performance end. I told Josh that the Mahler Second, for me, was one of those works that required a certain frame of mind. In response, Josh said that he hoped never to experience that particular frame of mind, either in him or in me.
Josh likes Osmo Vanska even less than I do. He has taken to calling him Aksnav Omso, which I think is sort of funny, and so do my parents. Aksnav Omso sounds just like the name of a brand of Scandinavian dog food.
My parents were very high on Vanska for his first couple of years in Minneapolis--anyone would have looked good after Eiji Oue--but they are now tiring of Vanska. When we got home Friday night, I asked my parents what they had thought of Vanska's Mahler. My father said that he genuinely could not make up his mind--the surface of the score was fully realized, he said, but every time he started to think that Vanska was penetrating the spirit of the score, Vanska would do something weird to make him change his mind. My mother's opinion: "Where's Otto Klemperer when you need him?"
I wanted to sleep in on Saturday morning, but another member of the household--the one with a wet nose and floppy ears--had other thoughts. He was raring to go, ready to start his day, at 5:45 a.m., so I had to get up and take him to the park. Otherwise, he would have started barking, and wakened everyone.
We got our yard work done on Saturday, and we also did the painting we had planned to do. We had to be very attentive while we painted, because another member of the household--the one with sharp teeth and extremely acute hearing--was very curious about the paint cans, and wanted to stick his nose and tongue into the paint, and create whatever general disorder he could.
Saturday evening we attended Vivica Genaux's recital. She is a fine singer, but she has a habit of craning her head and neck from side to side, and up and down, and back and forth, as if she needs to place her head and neck in a very particular position in order to find a note. I found this to be irritating, and so did Josh, and so did my parents.
I thought that Genaux did a truly excellent job in Haydn's "Arianna A Naxos". I was very impressed.
It was nice to hear Carl Loewe's version of "Frauenliebe", which was entirely pleasant, but I can understand why this version is so seldom heard. It lacks the pathos, and depth of feeling, and emotional range, of the Schumann.
In the second half of her recital, Genaux sang Rossini, and Pauline Viardot, and some zarzuela numbers, and she handled them well, I thought. I wish, however, that someone would work with her on those head-and-neck contortions.
On Sunday, Josh and I were in charge of the dog after church. We entertained him out-of-doors, nonstop, all afternoon. Last night, for dinner, we baked two chickens: one for him and one for us. He got his tummy full, and he was happy, and content.
My parents came by and got him around 8:00 p.m., and they asked Josh and me whether we wanted to go home with them and watch the Tony Awards. We declined--we had watched that award show last year, and had found it to be insufferable--so my parents took the dog home, and Josh and I spent a quiet evening by ourselves.
It was nice.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Awaiting The "Resurrection"
This week has been a very slow week at work, and this has been a very welcome change after the last six weeks or so. I did not have to work late a single night this week, and this has been welcome, too.
Of course, Joshua and I have been spending the week at my parents' house, working on our travel itinerary each night, and we have been having a lot of fun, and so have my parents. We love to go through travel books--even old, out-of-date ones--and we have been having a ball, reading such things as London Fodor guides and Michelin guides dating as far back as the early 1970's. It is amazing how much in London has changed since then. There were major museums in London in the 1970's, no longer extant, that I had never even heard of.
This weekend is the final weekend of subscription concerts by the Minnesota Orchestra. Joshua and I were not planning to go, but my parents, who never miss the final weekend, very much wanted us to go with them, so we are going to go tonight in order to please them.
The orchestra will be performing the Mahler Second. We all seem to be getting more than our share of Mahler recently--the Minnesota Orchestra performing the Mahler Sixth under Conlon in October, the Oslo Philharmonic performing the Mahler Fifth under Saraste in Hamburg in November--and I fear that we may be in danger of becoming satiated. A snowstorm caused us to miss the chamber orchestra version of "Das Lied Von Der Erde" by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in February, but we will be hearing the Seventh three months from now.
I think that this is quite a lot of Mahler within such a short period of time, and I am not truly in the mood to hear the Second tonight. I like to hear Mahler in the dead of winter, when the sky is grey and the weather is bleak. Today is beautiful and sunny, and it will still be sunny when we enter Orchestra Hall tonight, and this will not provide favorable Mahler conditions as far as I am concerned.
This week is the first week since before Christmas that someone in my office has not been trying to give away Minnesota Orchestra tickets for the weekend. I waited until today to see if someone here in the office would offer tickets at the last minute, but there have been no offers, so at Noon I called my father to let him know (he had had the orchestra hold back two tickets for Josh and me in the event that I was not offered free tickets here at the office).
I rode to work this morning with my father, and my mother drove Josh to work this morning. Late this afternoon, my mother will pick up Josh and drive downtown, and we will all have dinner together before the concert.
One of tonight's soloists is Jennifer Larmore, who we last heard exactly one year ago in recital in Saint Paul. The other soloist is Helena Juntunen, a Finnish soprano who I have never heard. It will be interesting to hear what Vanska does with the Mahler.
Tomorrow Josh and I are going to do some more yard work, and tend to that painting job we had planned to do last weekend. Tomorrow night we are all going to Saint Paul to hear Vivica Genaux, who will be singing Haydn's "Arianna A Naxos", the great scena that was long a Janet Baker favorite, and Carl Loewe's "Frauenliebe", an 1836 setting of the same Chamisso poems more famously set by Schumann. We are looking forward to that very much.
Sunday, after church, my parents will be spending the day with my mother's relatives, and Josh and I will go home for the first time in a week. Josh and I will take my parents' dog with us, so that he will not have to spend the day by himself. We will take him out and do some running, and take him to the park and play some games with him. He will love it.
Of course, Joshua and I have been spending the week at my parents' house, working on our travel itinerary each night, and we have been having a lot of fun, and so have my parents. We love to go through travel books--even old, out-of-date ones--and we have been having a ball, reading such things as London Fodor guides and Michelin guides dating as far back as the early 1970's. It is amazing how much in London has changed since then. There were major museums in London in the 1970's, no longer extant, that I had never even heard of.
This weekend is the final weekend of subscription concerts by the Minnesota Orchestra. Joshua and I were not planning to go, but my parents, who never miss the final weekend, very much wanted us to go with them, so we are going to go tonight in order to please them.
The orchestra will be performing the Mahler Second. We all seem to be getting more than our share of Mahler recently--the Minnesota Orchestra performing the Mahler Sixth under Conlon in October, the Oslo Philharmonic performing the Mahler Fifth under Saraste in Hamburg in November--and I fear that we may be in danger of becoming satiated. A snowstorm caused us to miss the chamber orchestra version of "Das Lied Von Der Erde" by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in February, but we will be hearing the Seventh three months from now.
I think that this is quite a lot of Mahler within such a short period of time, and I am not truly in the mood to hear the Second tonight. I like to hear Mahler in the dead of winter, when the sky is grey and the weather is bleak. Today is beautiful and sunny, and it will still be sunny when we enter Orchestra Hall tonight, and this will not provide favorable Mahler conditions as far as I am concerned.
This week is the first week since before Christmas that someone in my office has not been trying to give away Minnesota Orchestra tickets for the weekend. I waited until today to see if someone here in the office would offer tickets at the last minute, but there have been no offers, so at Noon I called my father to let him know (he had had the orchestra hold back two tickets for Josh and me in the event that I was not offered free tickets here at the office).
I rode to work this morning with my father, and my mother drove Josh to work this morning. Late this afternoon, my mother will pick up Josh and drive downtown, and we will all have dinner together before the concert.
One of tonight's soloists is Jennifer Larmore, who we last heard exactly one year ago in recital in Saint Paul. The other soloist is Helena Juntunen, a Finnish soprano who I have never heard. It will be interesting to hear what Vanska does with the Mahler.
Tomorrow Josh and I are going to do some more yard work, and tend to that painting job we had planned to do last weekend. Tomorrow night we are all going to Saint Paul to hear Vivica Genaux, who will be singing Haydn's "Arianna A Naxos", the great scena that was long a Janet Baker favorite, and Carl Loewe's "Frauenliebe", an 1836 setting of the same Chamisso poems more famously set by Schumann. We are looking forward to that very much.
Sunday, after church, my parents will be spending the day with my mother's relatives, and Josh and I will go home for the first time in a week. Josh and I will take my parents' dog with us, so that he will not have to spend the day by himself. We will take him out and do some running, and take him to the park and play some games with him. He will love it.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
A Shocking And Depressing State Of Affairs
The Wiener Staatsoper announced today that Franz Welser-Most will assume the post of Music Director in 2010.
Exactly six months ago (December 6), I mentioned on my blog that Welser-Most would be the next Music Director in Vienna. A couple of strangers sent me email messages, telling me that I was wrong. I responded to the email messages, and I told the senders that Welser-Most's appointment had already been arranged, and that it was a mere case of waiting for the final details to be worked out and the public announcement to be issued.
Welser-Most is one of only two top-rank conductors who now regularly works in the United States with American orchestras (the other is Lorin Maazel). Welser-Most will be leaving the Cleveland Orchestra when his current contract expires in 2012, although this will not be publicly announced any time soon. After Welser-Most leaves Cleveland, and after Maazel ends his tenure with the New York Philharmonic, the United States--for the first time--will not have a single top-level conductor working with an American orchestra.
This is a shocking and depressing state of affairs.
I cannot blame Welser-Most for planning to leave Cleveland, as he is not happy with many aspects of musical life in the United States.
He is not happy, for instance, that the local critic in Cleveland, Donald Rosenberg, detests him. He is not happy that American music critics do not recognize the high quality of his work in Cleveland and carp about him, ceaselessly, while simultaneously and unaccountably lavishing praise upon such marginal and unimportant figures as Marin Alsop, Alan Gilbert, Kent Nagano, David Robertson and Robert Spano, none of whom as musicians or as conductors are remotely in Welser-Most's league (but all of whom are American). He is not happy that American listeners and American critics seem uninterested in hearing new European musical compositions, preferring instead to rest their ears with the unthreatening pop-derived music of John Adams. He is not happy that today's finest conductors--Abbado, Barenboim, Chailly, Gatti, Jansons, Rattle, Temirkanov, Thielemann--can no longer be enticed to come to the U.S. and work with American orchestras for any meangingful period of time (if they can be enticed to come at all).
I fear that American musical life is becoming more and more parochial, and I further fear that it is only going to get worse in coming years. This trend toward parochialism is being cheered on by young American music critics in New York and Los Angeles, critics who use their forums, aggressively, to lobby on behalf of third-rate American composers and third-rate American conductors, none of whom measures up to the finest of their European counterparts.
Fifty years ago, American orchestras enjoyed the services of Antal Dorati, Dmitri Mitropoulos, Pierre Monteux, Charles Munch, Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner, William Steinberg and George Szell.
Today's list of American-born and American-trained podium figures in charge of North American orchestras--Marin Alsop, Keith Lockhart, James Levine, Kent Nagano, David Robertson, Gerard Schwarz, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, Michael Tilson Thomas--is pretty depressing in comparison to a list of their predecessors from fifty years ago. At its best, this current list of American conductors is comprised of a couple of second-raters, with the rest all far worse than that.
Is it any wonder that America's musical public is staying away from concerts in droves?
Exactly six months ago (December 6), I mentioned on my blog that Welser-Most would be the next Music Director in Vienna. A couple of strangers sent me email messages, telling me that I was wrong. I responded to the email messages, and I told the senders that Welser-Most's appointment had already been arranged, and that it was a mere case of waiting for the final details to be worked out and the public announcement to be issued.
Welser-Most is one of only two top-rank conductors who now regularly works in the United States with American orchestras (the other is Lorin Maazel). Welser-Most will be leaving the Cleveland Orchestra when his current contract expires in 2012, although this will not be publicly announced any time soon. After Welser-Most leaves Cleveland, and after Maazel ends his tenure with the New York Philharmonic, the United States--for the first time--will not have a single top-level conductor working with an American orchestra.
This is a shocking and depressing state of affairs.
I cannot blame Welser-Most for planning to leave Cleveland, as he is not happy with many aspects of musical life in the United States.
He is not happy, for instance, that the local critic in Cleveland, Donald Rosenberg, detests him. He is not happy that American music critics do not recognize the high quality of his work in Cleveland and carp about him, ceaselessly, while simultaneously and unaccountably lavishing praise upon such marginal and unimportant figures as Marin Alsop, Alan Gilbert, Kent Nagano, David Robertson and Robert Spano, none of whom as musicians or as conductors are remotely in Welser-Most's league (but all of whom are American). He is not happy that American listeners and American critics seem uninterested in hearing new European musical compositions, preferring instead to rest their ears with the unthreatening pop-derived music of John Adams. He is not happy that today's finest conductors--Abbado, Barenboim, Chailly, Gatti, Jansons, Rattle, Temirkanov, Thielemann--can no longer be enticed to come to the U.S. and work with American orchestras for any meangingful period of time (if they can be enticed to come at all).
I fear that American musical life is becoming more and more parochial, and I further fear that it is only going to get worse in coming years. This trend toward parochialism is being cheered on by young American music critics in New York and Los Angeles, critics who use their forums, aggressively, to lobby on behalf of third-rate American composers and third-rate American conductors, none of whom measures up to the finest of their European counterparts.
Fifty years ago, American orchestras enjoyed the services of Antal Dorati, Dmitri Mitropoulos, Pierre Monteux, Charles Munch, Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner, William Steinberg and George Szell.
Today's list of American-born and American-trained podium figures in charge of North American orchestras--Marin Alsop, Keith Lockhart, James Levine, Kent Nagano, David Robertson, Gerard Schwarz, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, Michael Tilson Thomas--is pretty depressing in comparison to a list of their predecessors from fifty years ago. At its best, this current list of American conductors is comprised of a couple of second-raters, with the rest all far worse than that.
Is it any wonder that America's musical public is staying away from concerts in droves?
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Decision Made
Well, our decision has been made.
Our destination will be London, and our travel period will be the first two weeks of September.
This is pretty much what I expected, actually. This travel period is ideal for my brother's work schedule, and it is also pretty good for my work schedule. As for my Dad and Josh, they can take time off whenever they want (except that Josh does not get paid when he is off). The destination, too, is ideal for everyone, because all of us love London.
There is one downside to London: the theater offerings are pretty meager in September. There are only four plays we want to see, and three of them have not even opened yet. We would like to see "The Woman In Black", a mystery that has been running since 1989. We would also like to see a major new play about the death of Pope John Paul I in a major new production at the Haymarket, a revival of Clifford Odets' "Awake And Sing" with Stockard Channing, and a David Storey play, all of which open between now and the end of summer. If these latter three plays all receive poor reviews and close before September, I guess we shall be out of luck.
We checked the London concert schedules at all the major venues for this two-week period, and we found them to be mostly barren except for Wigmore Hall. Then it dawned on us that the reason that the regular venues were not offering anything was because the Proms would still be going on, and we visited the Proms website and discovered that there were four Proms concerts we wanted to hear during our visit: orchestral concerts by the San Francisco Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony. This fact, I believe, tipped my parents' decision in favor of London--my parents do not get to hear many visiting orchestras in Minneapolis.
Whenever the BBC claims, as it often does, that the Proms is the world's largest music festival, I have to stop myself from gagging. The Proms is, by and large, nothing more than a celebration of Britain's mediocre (if not worse) regional ensembles. There is an alarming number of such ensembles in Britain, and the Proms gives these orchestras an annual opportunity to appear in London. However, visiting orchestras from the U.S. and from the continent tend to be bunched together near the conclusion of the Proms season so as to end the season on a high note, and the high point of the Proms season will--happily--coincide with our time in London. My parents will enjoy going to the Proms very much.
I think that we will stay in Kensington. This is so because my parents stayed at a hotel in Kensington four or five years ago, and they were happy with the hotel. Since my parents were happy there before, we should probably stay there this time, too. London hotels are the costliest in Europe, and well behind U.S. standards, and it is virtually impossible to find a decent hotel in London without paying a fortune. The hotel in Kensington meets my parents' requirements, and yet it is not as expensive as hotels in Mayfair. It is a nicer (and more expensive) hotel than my brother and Josh and I would choose if we were going on our own, but it is not too far out of our budget and we three will bunk together, so it will be manageable for us. In addition, we very much like the fact that the hotel has a large swimming pool, which we will make use of.
Staying in Kensington will also mean that we can avoid, by and large, some of the most-heavily-traveled tube lines and some of the most-heavily-used tube stations in the very center of London. We will be able to skirt the very center of London via the Circle Line during much of our time in London. This will be of some comfort to all of us, I believe.
Staying in Kensington also places us within walking distance of the Royal Albert Hall, site of the Proms. It is also within walking distance of Apsley House, and the Wellington Arch, and The Royal College Of Music, and the Albert Memorial, and Leighton House, and the Victoria And Albert Museum, and the Brompton Oratory, all of which we will visit on this trip.
Our current plan is to depart the Thursday night before Labor Day, arriving in London early the following morning. We intend to spend fifteen days in London, returning on a Saturday (thereby giving us all an opportunity to collect ourselves on Sunday before going back to work on Monday).
Now we have almost three months to put together a schedule of what we want to do, day by day, to make maximal use of our time. It will be fun, and we are already working on it, and we are all very excited.
Our destination will be London, and our travel period will be the first two weeks of September.
This is pretty much what I expected, actually. This travel period is ideal for my brother's work schedule, and it is also pretty good for my work schedule. As for my Dad and Josh, they can take time off whenever they want (except that Josh does not get paid when he is off). The destination, too, is ideal for everyone, because all of us love London.
There is one downside to London: the theater offerings are pretty meager in September. There are only four plays we want to see, and three of them have not even opened yet. We would like to see "The Woman In Black", a mystery that has been running since 1989. We would also like to see a major new play about the death of Pope John Paul I in a major new production at the Haymarket, a revival of Clifford Odets' "Awake And Sing" with Stockard Channing, and a David Storey play, all of which open between now and the end of summer. If these latter three plays all receive poor reviews and close before September, I guess we shall be out of luck.
We checked the London concert schedules at all the major venues for this two-week period, and we found them to be mostly barren except for Wigmore Hall. Then it dawned on us that the reason that the regular venues were not offering anything was because the Proms would still be going on, and we visited the Proms website and discovered that there were four Proms concerts we wanted to hear during our visit: orchestral concerts by the San Francisco Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony. This fact, I believe, tipped my parents' decision in favor of London--my parents do not get to hear many visiting orchestras in Minneapolis.
Whenever the BBC claims, as it often does, that the Proms is the world's largest music festival, I have to stop myself from gagging. The Proms is, by and large, nothing more than a celebration of Britain's mediocre (if not worse) regional ensembles. There is an alarming number of such ensembles in Britain, and the Proms gives these orchestras an annual opportunity to appear in London. However, visiting orchestras from the U.S. and from the continent tend to be bunched together near the conclusion of the Proms season so as to end the season on a high note, and the high point of the Proms season will--happily--coincide with our time in London. My parents will enjoy going to the Proms very much.
I think that we will stay in Kensington. This is so because my parents stayed at a hotel in Kensington four or five years ago, and they were happy with the hotel. Since my parents were happy there before, we should probably stay there this time, too. London hotels are the costliest in Europe, and well behind U.S. standards, and it is virtually impossible to find a decent hotel in London without paying a fortune. The hotel in Kensington meets my parents' requirements, and yet it is not as expensive as hotels in Mayfair. It is a nicer (and more expensive) hotel than my brother and Josh and I would choose if we were going on our own, but it is not too far out of our budget and we three will bunk together, so it will be manageable for us. In addition, we very much like the fact that the hotel has a large swimming pool, which we will make use of.
Staying in Kensington will also mean that we can avoid, by and large, some of the most-heavily-traveled tube lines and some of the most-heavily-used tube stations in the very center of London. We will be able to skirt the very center of London via the Circle Line during much of our time in London. This will be of some comfort to all of us, I believe.
Staying in Kensington also places us within walking distance of the Royal Albert Hall, site of the Proms. It is also within walking distance of Apsley House, and the Wellington Arch, and The Royal College Of Music, and the Albert Memorial, and Leighton House, and the Victoria And Albert Museum, and the Brompton Oratory, all of which we will visit on this trip.
Our current plan is to depart the Thursday night before Labor Day, arriving in London early the following morning. We intend to spend fifteen days in London, returning on a Saturday (thereby giving us all an opportunity to collect ourselves on Sunday before going back to work on Monday).
Now we have almost three months to put together a schedule of what we want to do, day by day, to make maximal use of our time. It will be fun, and we are already working on it, and we are all very excited.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Rewriting Huizinga
I have completed reading Theodore Rabb's "The Last Days Of The Renaissance And the March To Modernity".
I admire Professor Rabb enormously. A very distinguished scholar and a very erudite man, Professor Emeritus Of History at Princeton (where he was instrumental in devising Princeton's Humanities 216-219, a four-course survey of Western Civilization now emulated at other elite institutions of higher learning), author of several important and renowned books on European history, Professor Rabb is one of the few writers today whose work is equally admired by his peers and by the serious reading public. Professor Rabb's previous publications have been exemplars of history writing, demonstrating great learnedness, original analysis, and the vision of a philosopher.
"The Last Days Of The Renaissance" does not, however, represent Professor Rabb at his best.
In essence, Professor Rabb argues, in his latest book, that: (1) the Renaissance may be characterized, above all, by its attempt to recreate the civilizations of the Greeks and the Romans; (2) one of the primary effects of the Renaissance was a diminution of the power of the Roman Catholic Church; (3) the Renaissance provided the foundations for the centralized secular political institutions that were later to emerge in Europe; and (4) the Renaissance ended after little more than two centuries because the 17th Century ushered in new ideas that ended the Renaissance and initiated the Modern Age.
I had many, many problems with the book, which I found to be completely unconvincing and frequently wrong-headed.
The Renaissance is a difficult concept to define, and Professor Rabb uses the term too broadly. The term "Renaissance", if it means anything at all, most specifically refers to the period from 1400 to 1600, the period in which Italy moved away from the Byzantine Era (an era that had lasted almost a thousand years), and the period in which Flanders and France moved away from the Feudal Era (an era that had lasted at least 600 years). The term "Renaissance", strictly speaking, does not mean anything more than the above, although many writers lend all sorts of personal connotations to the term. The concept of a "Renaissance", as applicable to the 15th and 16th Centuries, originated only in the 19th Century, and I believe that the word's usage should be removed from the lexicon, as it has now become a loaded term, with all sorts of highly-variable, if not outright corrupt, meanings.
The Renaissance was not a continent-wide phenomenon in Europe. There was no Renaissance in England. There was no Renaissance in Northern Germany or Scandinavia. There was no Renaissance in Eastern Europe. The Renaissance, as it is most commonly thought of today, happened almost exclusively in Flanders and Italy (and spilling over to portions of what are now France and Southern Germany), from which certain ideas spread and from which other ideas proved not so amenable to export.
The Renaissance meant different things in different locales. The Renaissance in Burgundy, for example, was far different from the Renaissance in Nuremberg. Even in Italy, the Renaissance of Florence differed mightily from the Renaissance of Venice or the Renaissance of Rome. The purest locus of the Renaissance, as we think of it today, was Florence. And yet Florence, throughout the period of the Renaissance, was a poor and provincial city in comparison to Venice, and was ruled by persons whom we would today identify as uncivilized, if not outright barbaric.
The Renaissance had absolutely nothing to do with the Reformation, which was an entirely separate and discrete event. When Martin Luther tacked his theses onto the church door in Wittenberg in 1517, his act was the culmination of 300 years of intra-church conflict within educated circles of Catholicism in France and Germany. The Reformation was an event unrelated to, and unprompted by, the Renaissance.
The Renaissance had nothing to do with the waning powers of the Roman Catholic Church. The Renaissance would have happened on its own, no matter the ebb and flow of church influence over secular life, and this was because of economic and technological forces at work. If the Renaissance was spearheaded by any outside forces, it was the growth of trade and the growth of transportation, as well as the laying of the foundations of modern banking, all of which fostered the spread of goods and ideas. Better ships and better means of preserving food and better coinage ushered in the Renaissance, not the declining powers of the Papacy.
The Renaissance had practically no impact on the political systems of Europe, with entrenched rulers remaining in place throughout the Renaissance and for centuries thereafter. Except for Venice and Genoa, with their elected doges, Italy remained under the rule of localized powerful dynasties, the occasional disruption notwithstanding. Germany remained under the rule of localized nobility. France, Spain and England remained under the rule of monarchs exercising near-unlimited powers. Only the Netherlands and Flanders were in political turmoil during this period, and this was because those lands were under the domination of a foreign power, Spain--and Spain's eventual withdrawal from the Low Countries was an act of realpolitik, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the Renaissance.
The notion of the Renaissance itself is a fluid one, going through many different phases: early, middle, high, late and mannerist. The Renaissance did not so much end as evolve naturally into the Baroque period, and the Baroque period was, fundamentally, nothing more than a mere extension of the Renaissance's mannerist phase.
The Renaissance may have initiated the study of Greek and Roman civilizations after a lapse of almost a thousand years, but it was in the 17th and 18th Centuries, and not during the Renaissance, that the study of Greece and Rome truly flourished, reaching a peak of influence and importance.
The 17th Century hardly coincided with the birth of the Modern Age. The 18th Century provides a much more convincing base for the Modern Age, what with its astonishing scientific advances, and its many political events and reforms, and its many noted (and vastly influential) philosophers. Even the 1830's and 1840's provide a much more solid foundation for the birth of the Modern Age than does the 17th Century--at the very least, those two decades provided the emendation and eventual repeal of the Corn Laws, and the rise of the Industrial Age, and the renewal of nationalism and state-building in Europe, and the advent of Jacksonian Democracy in North America, all of which have far more to do with the Modern Age than anything that occurred in the 17th Century. Selecting the 17th Century as the point of inception for the Modern Age is, I believe, simply perverse.
I think that Professor Rabb made a mistake in publishing this book. I do not believe that this book was a book he wanted to write. I suspect that Professor Rabb's publisher was pressing him for another book, and he leafed through some old essays and lectures, and strung them together into this book, being careful not to repeat any of the work published in his previous volumes. In the process, he made provocative statements and drew questionable conclusions, perhaps because his publisher was pushing for a "new angle". In fact, the entire time I was reading the book, I kept thinking that Professor Rabb had embarked upon a deliberate intellectual exercise to see whether he could rewrite Johan Huizinga.
Unlike Professor Rabb's previous books, this book is not well-written. This book is not well-organized. This book is not well-argued. Its theories are not well-presented. Its conclusions are not based upon careful research. Fundamentally, the book lacks precision, and this lack of precision is the most fatal shortcoming of the book.
I suspect that Professor Rabb would like to have an opportunity to rewrite the book, or to shelve it entirely. Personally, I hope that this book goes out of print as soon as possible--it does not enhance Professor Rabb's previous work on the subject.
I shall have to convince my father and Joshua to read the book, because I am curious about their thoughts. All three of us have re-read Huizinga over the course of the last sixteen months or so--the new, revised, newly-translated and complete edition of the Huizinga--and the Huizinga remains, in my mind, a classic among classics. The Rabb is scattershot by comparison, a Sears catalog of under-focused, under-developed ideas and theories that do not cohere into an artful and convincing whole.
I admire Professor Rabb enormously. A very distinguished scholar and a very erudite man, Professor Emeritus Of History at Princeton (where he was instrumental in devising Princeton's Humanities 216-219, a four-course survey of Western Civilization now emulated at other elite institutions of higher learning), author of several important and renowned books on European history, Professor Rabb is one of the few writers today whose work is equally admired by his peers and by the serious reading public. Professor Rabb's previous publications have been exemplars of history writing, demonstrating great learnedness, original analysis, and the vision of a philosopher.
"The Last Days Of The Renaissance" does not, however, represent Professor Rabb at his best.
In essence, Professor Rabb argues, in his latest book, that: (1) the Renaissance may be characterized, above all, by its attempt to recreate the civilizations of the Greeks and the Romans; (2) one of the primary effects of the Renaissance was a diminution of the power of the Roman Catholic Church; (3) the Renaissance provided the foundations for the centralized secular political institutions that were later to emerge in Europe; and (4) the Renaissance ended after little more than two centuries because the 17th Century ushered in new ideas that ended the Renaissance and initiated the Modern Age.
I had many, many problems with the book, which I found to be completely unconvincing and frequently wrong-headed.
The Renaissance is a difficult concept to define, and Professor Rabb uses the term too broadly. The term "Renaissance", if it means anything at all, most specifically refers to the period from 1400 to 1600, the period in which Italy moved away from the Byzantine Era (an era that had lasted almost a thousand years), and the period in which Flanders and France moved away from the Feudal Era (an era that had lasted at least 600 years). The term "Renaissance", strictly speaking, does not mean anything more than the above, although many writers lend all sorts of personal connotations to the term. The concept of a "Renaissance", as applicable to the 15th and 16th Centuries, originated only in the 19th Century, and I believe that the word's usage should be removed from the lexicon, as it has now become a loaded term, with all sorts of highly-variable, if not outright corrupt, meanings.
The Renaissance was not a continent-wide phenomenon in Europe. There was no Renaissance in England. There was no Renaissance in Northern Germany or Scandinavia. There was no Renaissance in Eastern Europe. The Renaissance, as it is most commonly thought of today, happened almost exclusively in Flanders and Italy (and spilling over to portions of what are now France and Southern Germany), from which certain ideas spread and from which other ideas proved not so amenable to export.
The Renaissance meant different things in different locales. The Renaissance in Burgundy, for example, was far different from the Renaissance in Nuremberg. Even in Italy, the Renaissance of Florence differed mightily from the Renaissance of Venice or the Renaissance of Rome. The purest locus of the Renaissance, as we think of it today, was Florence. And yet Florence, throughout the period of the Renaissance, was a poor and provincial city in comparison to Venice, and was ruled by persons whom we would today identify as uncivilized, if not outright barbaric.
The Renaissance had absolutely nothing to do with the Reformation, which was an entirely separate and discrete event. When Martin Luther tacked his theses onto the church door in Wittenberg in 1517, his act was the culmination of 300 years of intra-church conflict within educated circles of Catholicism in France and Germany. The Reformation was an event unrelated to, and unprompted by, the Renaissance.
The Renaissance had nothing to do with the waning powers of the Roman Catholic Church. The Renaissance would have happened on its own, no matter the ebb and flow of church influence over secular life, and this was because of economic and technological forces at work. If the Renaissance was spearheaded by any outside forces, it was the growth of trade and the growth of transportation, as well as the laying of the foundations of modern banking, all of which fostered the spread of goods and ideas. Better ships and better means of preserving food and better coinage ushered in the Renaissance, not the declining powers of the Papacy.
The Renaissance had practically no impact on the political systems of Europe, with entrenched rulers remaining in place throughout the Renaissance and for centuries thereafter. Except for Venice and Genoa, with their elected doges, Italy remained under the rule of localized powerful dynasties, the occasional disruption notwithstanding. Germany remained under the rule of localized nobility. France, Spain and England remained under the rule of monarchs exercising near-unlimited powers. Only the Netherlands and Flanders were in political turmoil during this period, and this was because those lands were under the domination of a foreign power, Spain--and Spain's eventual withdrawal from the Low Countries was an act of realpolitik, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the Renaissance.
The notion of the Renaissance itself is a fluid one, going through many different phases: early, middle, high, late and mannerist. The Renaissance did not so much end as evolve naturally into the Baroque period, and the Baroque period was, fundamentally, nothing more than a mere extension of the Renaissance's mannerist phase.
The Renaissance may have initiated the study of Greek and Roman civilizations after a lapse of almost a thousand years, but it was in the 17th and 18th Centuries, and not during the Renaissance, that the study of Greece and Rome truly flourished, reaching a peak of influence and importance.
The 17th Century hardly coincided with the birth of the Modern Age. The 18th Century provides a much more convincing base for the Modern Age, what with its astonishing scientific advances, and its many political events and reforms, and its many noted (and vastly influential) philosophers. Even the 1830's and 1840's provide a much more solid foundation for the birth of the Modern Age than does the 17th Century--at the very least, those two decades provided the emendation and eventual repeal of the Corn Laws, and the rise of the Industrial Age, and the renewal of nationalism and state-building in Europe, and the advent of Jacksonian Democracy in North America, all of which have far more to do with the Modern Age than anything that occurred in the 17th Century. Selecting the 17th Century as the point of inception for the Modern Age is, I believe, simply perverse.
I think that Professor Rabb made a mistake in publishing this book. I do not believe that this book was a book he wanted to write. I suspect that Professor Rabb's publisher was pressing him for another book, and he leafed through some old essays and lectures, and strung them together into this book, being careful not to repeat any of the work published in his previous volumes. In the process, he made provocative statements and drew questionable conclusions, perhaps because his publisher was pushing for a "new angle". In fact, the entire time I was reading the book, I kept thinking that Professor Rabb had embarked upon a deliberate intellectual exercise to see whether he could rewrite Johan Huizinga.
Unlike Professor Rabb's previous books, this book is not well-written. This book is not well-organized. This book is not well-argued. Its theories are not well-presented. Its conclusions are not based upon careful research. Fundamentally, the book lacks precision, and this lack of precision is the most fatal shortcoming of the book.
I suspect that Professor Rabb would like to have an opportunity to rewrite the book, or to shelve it entirely. Personally, I hope that this book goes out of print as soon as possible--it does not enhance Professor Rabb's previous work on the subject.
I shall have to convince my father and Joshua to read the book, because I am curious about their thoughts. All three of us have re-read Huizinga over the course of the last sixteen months or so--the new, revised, newly-translated and complete edition of the Huizinga--and the Huizinga remains, in my mind, a classic among classics. The Rabb is scattershot by comparison, a Sears catalog of under-focused, under-developed ideas and theories that do not cohere into an artful and convincing whole.
Tying Up Some Loose Ends
Friday evening, while Joshua and I were cleaning the downstairs family room, my parents came downstairs and said that they needed to talk to us.
My father had just been on the phone with my uncle in Oregon, and my father said that my uncle had expressed an interest in seeing us (my brothers and me) after so many years. My father had told my uncle that he had a chance to see us over July 4, when we would all be home, and that my uncle might not have another chance to see us all together until Christmas.
In response, my uncle had asked my father whether he might come for a visit over July 4, and my father had told him that we would be most pleased to have him as our guest that week. In fact, my father had told my uncle that he should come to Minneapolis early, several days before we departed for the lake, so that my uncle could rest and recuperate from his flight before we all headed northward.
My uncle had accepted the invitation, and my parents wanted to know whether this was acceptable to me, and whether I thought it would be acceptable to my brothers. I told my parents that it was perfectly fine with me if my uncle came for a visit, and I told them that I suspected that it would be perfectly fine with my brothers, too. My only reservation, I said, was that I feared that my uncle and his wife would be bored out of their minds, spending an entire week with us up at the lake.
The response I received from my parents was twofold: that my uncle's wife would not be accompanying him to Minnesota, and that my uncle had so little energy and so little strength that he wanted nothing more than a chance to see us, and to visit with us, and to rest amid lots of peace and quiet.
"Have him come, then" I said.
My parents then telephoned both of my brothers to sound them out on the subject of having my uncle come for a visit. My brothers did not object in the least, but both of them raised the same concern I had raised: they feared that my uncle would be bored. My father assured my brothers that my uncle wanted nothing more than the opportunity to see us again after fourteen years, and to visit with us, and that my uncle neither expected nor wanted an action-filled week.
I asked my parents why my uncle's wife would not be coming with him, and my parents said that they did not know the answer to that question. I also asked my parents whether my uncle had been in contact with any of his siblings besides my father, and my father answered "It appears not".
I thought that this was awfully strange. When my parents traveled to Oregon in April to assist my uncle and his wife, they learned that my uncle and his wife had contacted my father, and only my father, about my uncle's illness and his turn for the worse. While my parents were in Oregon, my father telephoned the rest of the siblings to let them know what was going on with my uncle. However, apparently none of them followed up on my father's call and attempted to visit with, or even to talk by telephone to, my uncle. Either these individuals are all callous and heartless souls, or they are simply incapable of experiencing familial love and devotion.
I asked my mother what she thought about my uncle's visit, and what we could do to make his visit as comfortable as possible, and what we could do to make his visit free from burdens upon her.
"Well, he doesn't think he is going to make it through this, and he wants to tie up some loose ends, I think" was her answer.
She told us how my uncle had asked, over and over, about us (my brothers and me) when she and my father had been in Oregon, and how my uncle had enjoyed listening to my father talk about us. "I think he wants to see you boys one more time before he goes" were her final words.
I looked at my father, but he did not say anything. He just looked at me, and then he rested his hand on the back of my head, and then he smiled at me, which meant that he was OK.
And my parents returned upstairs, and Josh and I went back to work, finishing up the family room.
When Josh and I were done, we went upstairs, and we found my parents in the kitchen, seated at the dining table. My mother was turning pages of a news magazine, and my father was turning pages of a newspaper, but mostly they were talking. They seemed to be perfectly fine.
My parents asked Josh and me what we thought about having a family outing the first weekend my brothers would be home. Specifically, they wondered whether we all might enjoy attending a performance of the musical "1776", which the Guthrie Theater will be staging for a long run this summer.
I told my parents that they should ask my brothers the next time they talked to them. I told my parents that, if my brothers did not want to go, Josh and I would go with them to see "1776", either before or after the week of July 4.
And then I changed the subject, and I asked my parents and Josh to bring me up to date on where our vacation plans stood (the plans seem to change every two hours, and I am having trouble keeping up).
I learned that the prospective destinations have been narrowed down to London, Paris and Munich, the latter being a destination that I did not even know was under current consideration. The prospective time periods have been narrowed down to the first two weeks of September, the last two weeks of September, and the first two weeks of October.
We talked a while longer, and then we had some ice cream, and then we took the dog outside, and then we all turned in for the night.
On Saturday, Josh and I got the lawn mowed, and the other yard work completed, and the cars washed. My parents' dog always keeps a respectful distance when the cars are washed, because he fears that a few stray drops of water may come his way. He does not like getting wet, so he plants himself a few yards away, in the shade of a tree, and he watches intently.
Yesterday Josh and I did not do any painting. Instead, after church, Josh and I and my parents all went out to lunch, and then we went to see "Paris Je T'Aime", which was playing at a nearby cinema. It is not a particularly good film, but we all had read about it, and we all had wanted to see it, and I am glad that we went. It was not the worst way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
On the way back to my parents' house late yesterday afternoon, I asked Josh what he thought about staying at my parents' house during the coming week. I pointed out that all four of us could do some travel research each evening, plowing through guidebooks old and new, and using online resources, in an attempt to figure out where we are going to go. Josh liked the idea, and so did my parents, so all four of us stopped at our apartment so that Josh and I could gather clothes for the week ahead.
We will keep in constant contact with my middle brother every night this week, I am sure, via email messages and instant messages and phone calls, and I suspect that we will all be able to make some decisions about our travel plans before the week is out.
My father had just been on the phone with my uncle in Oregon, and my father said that my uncle had expressed an interest in seeing us (my brothers and me) after so many years. My father had told my uncle that he had a chance to see us over July 4, when we would all be home, and that my uncle might not have another chance to see us all together until Christmas.
In response, my uncle had asked my father whether he might come for a visit over July 4, and my father had told him that we would be most pleased to have him as our guest that week. In fact, my father had told my uncle that he should come to Minneapolis early, several days before we departed for the lake, so that my uncle could rest and recuperate from his flight before we all headed northward.
My uncle had accepted the invitation, and my parents wanted to know whether this was acceptable to me, and whether I thought it would be acceptable to my brothers. I told my parents that it was perfectly fine with me if my uncle came for a visit, and I told them that I suspected that it would be perfectly fine with my brothers, too. My only reservation, I said, was that I feared that my uncle and his wife would be bored out of their minds, spending an entire week with us up at the lake.
The response I received from my parents was twofold: that my uncle's wife would not be accompanying him to Minnesota, and that my uncle had so little energy and so little strength that he wanted nothing more than a chance to see us, and to visit with us, and to rest amid lots of peace and quiet.
"Have him come, then" I said.
My parents then telephoned both of my brothers to sound them out on the subject of having my uncle come for a visit. My brothers did not object in the least, but both of them raised the same concern I had raised: they feared that my uncle would be bored. My father assured my brothers that my uncle wanted nothing more than the opportunity to see us again after fourteen years, and to visit with us, and that my uncle neither expected nor wanted an action-filled week.
I asked my parents why my uncle's wife would not be coming with him, and my parents said that they did not know the answer to that question. I also asked my parents whether my uncle had been in contact with any of his siblings besides my father, and my father answered "It appears not".
I thought that this was awfully strange. When my parents traveled to Oregon in April to assist my uncle and his wife, they learned that my uncle and his wife had contacted my father, and only my father, about my uncle's illness and his turn for the worse. While my parents were in Oregon, my father telephoned the rest of the siblings to let them know what was going on with my uncle. However, apparently none of them followed up on my father's call and attempted to visit with, or even to talk by telephone to, my uncle. Either these individuals are all callous and heartless souls, or they are simply incapable of experiencing familial love and devotion.
I asked my mother what she thought about my uncle's visit, and what we could do to make his visit as comfortable as possible, and what we could do to make his visit free from burdens upon her.
"Well, he doesn't think he is going to make it through this, and he wants to tie up some loose ends, I think" was her answer.
She told us how my uncle had asked, over and over, about us (my brothers and me) when she and my father had been in Oregon, and how my uncle had enjoyed listening to my father talk about us. "I think he wants to see you boys one more time before he goes" were her final words.
I looked at my father, but he did not say anything. He just looked at me, and then he rested his hand on the back of my head, and then he smiled at me, which meant that he was OK.
And my parents returned upstairs, and Josh and I went back to work, finishing up the family room.
When Josh and I were done, we went upstairs, and we found my parents in the kitchen, seated at the dining table. My mother was turning pages of a news magazine, and my father was turning pages of a newspaper, but mostly they were talking. They seemed to be perfectly fine.
My parents asked Josh and me what we thought about having a family outing the first weekend my brothers would be home. Specifically, they wondered whether we all might enjoy attending a performance of the musical "1776", which the Guthrie Theater will be staging for a long run this summer.
I told my parents that they should ask my brothers the next time they talked to them. I told my parents that, if my brothers did not want to go, Josh and I would go with them to see "1776", either before or after the week of July 4.
And then I changed the subject, and I asked my parents and Josh to bring me up to date on where our vacation plans stood (the plans seem to change every two hours, and I am having trouble keeping up).
I learned that the prospective destinations have been narrowed down to London, Paris and Munich, the latter being a destination that I did not even know was under current consideration. The prospective time periods have been narrowed down to the first two weeks of September, the last two weeks of September, and the first two weeks of October.
We talked a while longer, and then we had some ice cream, and then we took the dog outside, and then we all turned in for the night.
On Saturday, Josh and I got the lawn mowed, and the other yard work completed, and the cars washed. My parents' dog always keeps a respectful distance when the cars are washed, because he fears that a few stray drops of water may come his way. He does not like getting wet, so he plants himself a few yards away, in the shade of a tree, and he watches intently.
Yesterday Josh and I did not do any painting. Instead, after church, Josh and I and my parents all went out to lunch, and then we went to see "Paris Je T'Aime", which was playing at a nearby cinema. It is not a particularly good film, but we all had read about it, and we all had wanted to see it, and I am glad that we went. It was not the worst way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
On the way back to my parents' house late yesterday afternoon, I asked Josh what he thought about staying at my parents' house during the coming week. I pointed out that all four of us could do some travel research each evening, plowing through guidebooks old and new, and using online resources, in an attempt to figure out where we are going to go. Josh liked the idea, and so did my parents, so all four of us stopped at our apartment so that Josh and I could gather clothes for the week ahead.
We will keep in constant contact with my middle brother every night this week, I am sure, via email messages and instant messages and phone calls, and I suspect that we will all be able to make some decisions about our travel plans before the week is out.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Taking Care Of Some Things
Joshua and I are going to spend the weekend at my parents' house, taking care of some things for them.
There is the lawn to be mowed, and some other yard work to do, and I think that we are going to wash the cars, too. I also think that we may try to do a little painting--go over a window or two, and have a go at a few shutters. This will save my Dad the trouble of worrying about these things.
Tonight, Josh and I are going to clean the downstairs family room, which my parents really do not use much any more. For years, it was the only room in the house with a television, but now my parents have a television in the kitchen, too. Nowadays, as a result, my parents only use the downstairs family room at Christmas, when my brothers are at home. At Christmas, my brothers like to go downstairs after dinner, and build a fire, and watch ESPN.
Josh and I will clean out the fireplace, and give everything else in the room a good, solid cleaning. This will save my mother the trouble of worrying about cleaning the room before the week of July 4, when my brothers will be home and when they may want to use the room for an evening or two when we are not at the lake.
Josh and I will be well-rewarded for our efforts. We will get plenty of good food from my mother, and plenty of frolicking from the dog.
There is the lawn to be mowed, and some other yard work to do, and I think that we are going to wash the cars, too. I also think that we may try to do a little painting--go over a window or two, and have a go at a few shutters. This will save my Dad the trouble of worrying about these things.
Tonight, Josh and I are going to clean the downstairs family room, which my parents really do not use much any more. For years, it was the only room in the house with a television, but now my parents have a television in the kitchen, too. Nowadays, as a result, my parents only use the downstairs family room at Christmas, when my brothers are at home. At Christmas, my brothers like to go downstairs after dinner, and build a fire, and watch ESPN.
Josh and I will clean out the fireplace, and give everything else in the room a good, solid cleaning. This will save my mother the trouble of worrying about cleaning the room before the week of July 4, when my brothers will be home and when they may want to use the room for an evening or two when we are not at the lake.
Josh and I will be well-rewarded for our efforts. We will get plenty of good food from my mother, and plenty of frolicking from the dog.
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