Archives for April 2022

For whatever reason I was wide awake at 2am, then slept in until 8:30. My plan was to go back to the V&A followed by the Natural History Museum. Crossing my fingers I’d have enough energy left.

That was the plan. Here’s how it turned out.

I bagged this visit to V&A and went shopping. Don’t judge. I’ve wanted to find sources for baguettes, good tea, and chocolate, plus stock my hotel mini fridge with butter and jam since the day I got here. The place I grabbed milk on day one was a dingy, cramped joint in a tube station that reminded me of a gas station Quik Stop.

After some frisking of Google maps, I realized I’ve been trudging past what I needed every time I walked to and from the British Museum. Somehow I had the impression that Covent Garden was just pricey cafés and tourist trinkets. I am so glad to be so wrong. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still pricey, but it has the goods.

I followed my Google map to the end of the rainbow; Le Pain Quotidien. Fabulous. The baguettes were still warm. I splurged on mini sandwich rolls (chicken/bacon/cheese, roasted vegetables, smoked salmon/ cucumber) and a pear upside-down tart (a sort of spice cake with pears). That was lunch and dinner sorted. Purchased shampoo at a parfumerie, salted caramel chocolates at Hotel Chocolate, and sachets of Earl Grey Imperial at Mariage Frères. YOLO. Picked up butter, sugar, prosciutto, apples, and bananas at a lovely Sainsburys.  

Back at the hotel, I ate a sandwich and called Uber. By two o’clock I was making my way into the magnificent building that houses the National History Museum. I meandered around until 5pm, with one break to draw. The pleasure in viewing a wide range of life forms was tempered by the constant reminder of species on the brink of extinction, along with those we have already wiped out.

I’m thinking they can add mirrors and can put humanity on that list, given the damage we are doing to the planet’s ecosystem.

The dinosaur section was more Jurassic Park than Paleontology, thanks to animatronics and moody lighting.

Elsewhere the overhead suspension of immense articulated skeletons is oddly elegant. The building itself is truly glorious. The vast entry hall is a space so grand it accommodates a blue whale skeleton with ease.

Elsewhere, the display of whales, dolphins, and sharks in midair offers a snorkel-eye view of sea creatures.

The amphibians and turtles were well represented. First hairy frog I ever saw.

The mineralogy wing features rows of the original 1881 oak display cabinets and is filled with light and calm. That’s priceless in a museum swarming with excitable tykes and restive school groups. There’s a section of precious gemstones of unusual size, which doesn’t blow my skirt up, but the Martian meteor that glittered like fool’s gold is as close to outer space as I’ll ever be.

I stayed until closing time, called Uber, and was back at the hotel by 6. Put together dinner from the supplies I bought this morning.
Now I’m yawning. Going to stay up until 10:30, then lights out. Tomorrow is the Virtual Veronese tour at the National, and if the weather is fair, a visit to the Lambeth Palace gardens and adjacent garden museum.

London weather is fickle, one minute a cloudless blue, blink, and there’s an icy wind and sleet. April Fool, indeed.

Nothing went the way I expected, the way I planned, but everything worked out.

My first stop was the Virtual Veronese at the National Gallery. I was excited for this. I pictured gazing around aged stone walls flicking in candlelight and seeing the rich colors of the painter’s hand in vibrant detail. Nope. Total Fail.

To be fair, I’ve never had any kind of virtual experience. Between wearing progressive lenses and having limited vision in one eye, I wasn’t the best candidate for this.  Inside the headset I couldn’t see anything well. The virtual monks explaining why the painting was commissioned did not improve the experience . The goggles pressed on my sinuses and the Velcro caught in my hair. The virtual environment looked like an unconvincing Hollywood set. Let’s just say I’m glad the experience was short.

Yet directly afterward, walking into the galleries of actual paintings felt like being embraced by a cherished and trusted friend. And the quality of the art! Ye gods. Gallery after gallery, room after room of iconic masterworks.

I recognized many of them which added to the pleasure.

In honor of April 15th, Two Tax-Gatherers.

I paused at this painting because so many elements spoke to me; drapery, education, terracotta pots, watering. My people! I took a seat, started drawing, and began to settle down, be present, to look and really see. Time flew by.

The museum caption for this one reads in part, ‘Cupid, who holds an arrow suggestively.’ A fine example of British understatement.

Clouds were boiling up in the sky when it was time to leave to see something of the Lambeth Palace gardens. The clouds spit rain, then hail. Though I doubt there is much in bloom this time of year, it’s only open to the public for three hours on the first Friday. Made it to the Garden Museum just in time. Glad I didn’t hurry too much because entry to the Lambeth Palace garden was postponed until May.

Just outside the Garden Museum entrance was a warning to not walk under large trees because of the danger of falling limbs. It was posted directly underneath just such a tree. Talk about mixed messages.

Inside the Garden Museum’s garden is the final resting place of Captain Bligh, who brought back Breadfruit to England. The Captain Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame. Yikes!

Being a passionate gardener myself I found the hand-drawn garden plans, the implements, the oral history and the special rose exhibition compelling.

I was delighted by vintage photographs celebrating the rose across genders and social ranks.

Walked back alongside the Thames River.

There I discovered an unexpected memorial to Covid victims along the southbank, between the bridges. Hundreds of hearts with hand-drawn notes of remembrance and grief, all the different signatures of loss.

Halfway back I knew I’d overdone it. It’s hard to enjoy the delights of London when your body is calling you an idiot. Tomorrow will be better because I will make it so by not walking further than my wonky leg can comfortably handle.

Up, out, and over to the British Museum for an early Introduction to the British Museum tour. We were a small group led by a woman who delivered an entertaining account of the origins of the museum from its inception to the edifice we are visiting today. Two young and curious boys were with our group and they became a focus for the guide. The simplicity of her explanations benefitted us all.

The entire tour took place in the Enlightenment rooms. Although our guide acknowledged that the museum’s initial collection was built and sustained on the fortune Hans Sloane acquired through marriage to a Jamaican plantation heiress, she skirted deftly around the taint of riches reaped from slavery, referring to instead to wealth that flowed from the commodity of sugar. Moving on, she explained the context of specifics pieces in a lively and engaging way, especially the copy of the Rosetta Stone and the Holy Thorn Reliquary.

At the end of the tour she pointed out some vintage postcards collected in North Africa

and suggested postcards are soon to become obsolete artifacts in our own time because everyone uses text and emails.

Afterward, I paused for coffee and a croissant and drew the first postcard of the trip. I had to buck the trend.

I’m looking forward to other museum tours I’ve booked, especially since audio guides, once a reliable source of context for me, are unavailable (thanks, Covid). Trying to pick up commentary online at different sites was hit or miss. Luckily I have enjoyed listening to A History of the World in 100 Objects since it first aired in 2010, and have listened to it many times over. I was able to recognize objects and find the podcast episodes.

Warren Cup (detail)

Every bit as exquisitely rendered and sexually explicit as described, it fairly shimmers with a potent homoerotic charge. Lift this cup up and you’d feel these repoussé images of beautiful naked men in the palm of your hand.

The Lewis Chesspieces

Always referred to as Chessmen, but it’s the queen I can’t forget. She puts me in mind of Lady Macbeth; ambitious, intense, and grim. She’s fighting a battle, recall, and a clever strategy is her only hope. Who to sacrifice next?

Sutton Hoo Helmet

You see at once how this hollow stare captured the public imagination. What made it come alive for me was seeing the bird in flight created by the shapes of nose, eyebrows, and mustache. I relate not so much to the warrior, as I do to his funerary artisan.

It is very different to experience these things directly instead of through a photograph. Three dimensional, fine details in context, and the frequently shocking reality of scale are the reasons I travel thousands of miles for these moments.

 A few other things that caught my eye –

A Thomas à Becket reliquary casket. I’m enamored by metalwork caskets and even made a few myself. There are hundreds of these, Becket must have been cut into very small fragments.

A mother/goddess/bird holding her child.

A curse tablet, condemning thieves to suffer, was a private vengeance arranged with the help of the God Mercury. One such curse tablet, inscribed and meticulously folded, read “Honoratus to the holy god Mercury, I complain to your divinity that I have lost two wheels and four cows and many small belongings from my house. I would ask the genius of your divinity that you do not allow health to the person who has done me wrong. Not allow him to lie or sit or drink or eat whether he is a man or woman, whether boy or girl, whether slave or free unless he brings my property to me and is reconciled with me. With renewed prayers, I ask your divinity that my petition may immediately make me vindicated by your majesty.”

I had a lovely light lunch of Welsh rarebit and crab in the museum’s restaurant.

I left in search of a post office, following the path of Google Maps laid out. This is where it led me.

Ha.

I held onto Emily’s arm and she got me through the streets and into the tube and out again safely, explaining as we went her hacks for keeping Google maps up even underground, and ways to double-check the different lines to make sure you’re going the right way.

London streets were shut down for a marathon so we changed our plans. Instead of returning to the V&A, we went to Brompton Cemetery.

It was a beautiful sunny day. The turf was starred with daisies and spangled with grape hyacinths. Daffodils were everywhere. I dawdled down different paths and read inscriptions and let the sweet melancholy and peace seep in.

All the stones monuments and statuary lean as if they are on the billows of a wave. Many inscriptions are lost to the depredations of time and weather. We took our time.

We spent a couple of hours wandering down the path and around the graves. The words on the stones are a kind of shorthand, haikus packed with grief and pain and appreciation, pleas for mercy instead of judgment, and sometimes a glimpse of deep attachment and love. You know a child was cherished when his parents call him their darling little sputnik.

There were the usual complements of angels, standing guard over the souls of the departed.

Many headstones were in the shape of open books. I love this.

Truly it was an exceptionally peaceful morning. If you haven’t been there, I recommend it.

Afterward, Emily looked up somewhere for lunch nearby via Google. The first prospect was too small and crowded, the second had a notice on the door that the kitchen was unexpectedly closed, but the third was just right. The Goldilocks option.

Inside The Troubadour, a long-time music venue, it was weathered and intimate, with a decor of memorabilia. Perfect for my daughter who’s in the band Dehd. Did you know their single ‘Bad Love’ is #1 on SIRIUS XMU? Now you do. Just sayin’.

Instruments hung from the ceiling and the music was from the seventies – Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. It’s what all the photographers were playing back in the day when I lived and worked in London. It was like being inside a time capsule. All this and poached eggs, streaky bacon, sourdough toast, and a mocha. The service wasn’t fast but it was friendly. I needed the rest.

We returned to the hotel the way we came.  I was barely limping. She went back to her hotel for a nap and some quiet time to draw, I took a nap and worked on my blog. A fine day.

A drizzly day of getting things sorted out. Emily took the laundry to a place that will give it back tomorrow. We went to the nearest post office for stamps and to mail a card, and upon leaving found ourselves in Covent Garden. We walked under a flower arch – my ideal photo op.

The Jubilee Market featured rows of tables selling vintage bits and bobs; silverware, beaded reticules, costume jewelry, and, befitting season 2 of Bridgerton, an ivory dance card. It had a high-end Estate Sale vibe. I bought a commemorative coin for a friend and Em found a ring she liked.

Picked up a baguette from le Pain Quotidian. We got takeout Thai coconut soup and I popped what I thought was a baby carrot in my mouth. Wrong. A hotter than the surface of the sun pepper. I spit it out but not before a few vigorous chews ignited the inside of my mouth and burned like holy hellfire. Yikes.

After a restorative nap, I trotted over to the National and stopped in front of this painting of Venus at her toilet.

I noticed not only the luscious pearl earring held aloft in Cupid’s fingers, but precisely how it corresponds to Venus’s anatomy.

Was it intended as a pictorial guide for the fumbling males of the aristocracy? I know it was not placed there by accident. I could argue it’s the intentional focus of the entire work. Welcome to the Devil’s doorbell, gentlemen. I’ll leave it there.

This man has a stern expression, but it’s completely at odds with the small dog gazing up at him worshipfully, wearing a jaunty red bow. And are those bells on his collar?

Just before I left for the day. I watched the media installation by Kehinde Wiley, Prelude, 2021: a six-channel digital film shot in Norway of black men and women in snowy fjords. They traipsed through a frigid glacial landscape pelted with snowflakes – a compelling metaphor for living as a black person in a world controlled mainly by whites. “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”
I’m still thinking about it.

The day began with a quick stop at Somerset House cafe, WatchHouse, for a flat white and, one of my happiest memories of Lisbon, a luscious Pastéis de Nata.

As soon as I entered the first gallery, it was love at first sight. Twenty-two works by Parmigianino. I was enchanted by how easy he makes it look, his economy of line, his sprezzatura.

The tenderness of gesture.

All this, and large magnifying glasses were available to see every mark distinctly. Heaven.

Tiepolo has that same innate bravura. Paint is his servant; loose without being sloppy. His virgins do not simper. This is a Virgin who knows what’s what. 

From triumphant to doomed. This portrait was a heartbreaker. A beauty, young and full of promise. But what does the museum card tell us?

George Romney painted this portrait around the
time Georgiana Peachy married the politician
Lord Greville… Georgiana died on
her first wedding anniversary, aged 19, a few
days after giving birth.

How grim is that?

Another woman whose life doesn’t turn out well as she’d hoped. Eve and a serpent who is more mirror than a reptile.

I’m glad I didn’t miss the photography exhibition in a small room off the stairs. Anthony Kersting’s Kurdistan in the 1940s, vintage photographs of a vanished world.

The expression of this monk. I see compassion, benevolence, and humor. Maybe it’s just the dimples, but I can believe he knows the secret to the meaning of life.

The skeptical gaze of the tribal girl.

From here I skedaddled to the maze of the Tate Modern for the cheese of the perpetually sold-out exhibit of Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life, by Yayoi Kusama. I arrived on time and chose one of the two queues at random. Thus I saw Chandeliers of Grief first, followed by Infinity Room, 19 minutes in each line, two minutes in the rooms. It reminded me of Nabokov’s line from Speak Memory, “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
For me, it was worth it.

I’d booked the lunch that accompanied the exhibition, and Em met me there. Nice view and a fancy meal.

Food delivery was slow as the Troubador, but not as friendly. On the upside, they offer a super fancy delicious sober beverage.

We took an Uber boat back down the Thames to the Embankment. That turned out to be more of a romantic idea than an enjoyable experience. I was queasy from the stink of fuel and pitch and roll of what amounted to a river bus. Nevertheless, I’m glad to have given it a try. I may not have floated down the mighty Thames like the royal barges of yore, but I did get a river’s eye view of the city of London.

A damp rainy morning and by some miracle, no line to speak of. Walked in and down the aisle, my head on a swivel to the left and right. It’s like picking your way through the attic of your powerful and wealthy grandmother, if your grandmother lived for over a thousand years and was venerated as a saint. It’s crammed with treasures, piled alongside, behind, beneath, and on top of each other. Marble effigies and mosaic floors, embroidered cushions and medieval paintings, stained glass and wood carving, and gilding and banners. Piety meets pageantry.

The distinguished and the holy are here, but also those with the cash and connections. Memorials commemorate those who are buried elsewhere.

The first time I looked down, I was standing on Darwin. Charles Darwin! Origin of the species, Voyage of the Beagle Darwin. The vary same Darwin who confessed he lost his faith in a benevolent God after witnessing parasitic wasp larvae devour a caterpillar from the inside out. I was equally delighted and shocked, and that moment set the tone for the day. Nor is he the only man of science honored here. Haley of the eponymous comet. Stephen Hawkins, with a depiction of a black hole. Sir Isaac Newton, with a bevy of putti frolicking at his feet.

All the while the velvet gravel of Jeremy Irons’s voice on the audio guide was murmuring cogent facts about the Abbey in my ears. That’s a lovely experience in and of itself.

Nobility, unless Shakespeare wrote about them, aren’t what thrills me. Writers and poets are another story. The bard has a fancy monument, as he should, but what was most deeply moving to me was finding the names of authors I loved in Poet’s Corner.

It’s a veritable Valhalla of writers. Miss Austen is here, and the Brontë sisters. Chaucer, Dickens, and the poet Gerald Manly Hopkins. Lewis Carrol, and C. S. Lewis, who opened the door into Narnia, humorist P.G. Wodehouse of Jeeves fame. Many more, but these are writers who shaped my worldview.

I hastened back to the entrance for the Verger tour (setting the alarm on my phone proved extremely useful). Got lost, was directed to go under the arches, and went the wrong way again. But seriously, under the arches? Look up. There’s nothing but arches. Fortunately, the staff had their eye on me. I was set on the right path and made it in time.

The verger was straight out of Hollywood casting, white-haired, twinkly-eyed, black-cassocked. He efficiently herded his flock from point to point and put the great and good into context with gentle humor.

Some highlights: mosaic was pilfered from King Edward the Confessor’s shine by pilgrims eager for a sanctified souvenir. They plucked the sides of his shrine bare.

It’s even more evident here, where mosaics are missing as high as guilty hands could reach, and intact above.

An unexpected thrill was being seated in the choir stalls, while the Verger explained the significance of who sits where, and the purpose of the elaborate screen that conceals the congregation from the celebrants.

After the tour ended I stayed several hours more, reading inscriptions and looking at faces.

I can tell you what all the inscriptions said in two words.

Remember me.

John Soan (he added the e later) began as a bricklayer like his father before him, but his prodigious talent and his exceptional skills redefined his life.

Soane’s passion for neoclassical architecture formed the scaffolding of his life, but the reason I’m visiting the Soane Museum was his insatiable lust for collecting. Do we say hoarder? Maybe not, but every crevice, every wall, every opening, every corner, and every niche, whether vertical or horizontal, has got some artifact or collectible in it, placed by Soane himself to please himself.

I adored this goddess.

That said, my favorite aspect of the house-turned-museum is not the sculptures, artifacts, models, or paintings. It’s the way he understood the importance of light and the ingenious methods he designed to capture it.

It’s a skill well demonstrated by his breakfast room. That’s where he held meetings with potential clients, the better to impress them with morning light bounced around by four light-intensifying convex mirrors, smaller convex mirrors lining the insides of the arches, and hidden skylights pouring colored light into the room, which is also lit by a window overlooking the Monument Court.  

That said, my favorite fact about Soane is he married a woman with her own opinions, which he appreciated, and she had a little dog, Fanny, that she loved.

By all accounts, Soanes adored her and considered her his most valued confidante. After her death, he kept her rooms untouched for nearly two decades.

What don’t I like? The whole miserable, sordid story of his two sons. I don’t know what kind of father he was but they are on the record as bitter, angry, spiteful, and greedy. You can look up the whole wretched account if you like. I’m turning back to the light.

Fun facts:  The design of K6 phone box, the red public phone box we can still see on the streets of London was based on his design for his wife’s tomb.

He won the gold medal at the Royal Academy for a triumphant bridge he didn’t build.

Mad King George funded his Grand Tour.  

The cheerful yellow paint was originally made of two parts lead based pigments. Hold your breath.

The Picture Room is a puzzle of vertical spaces created to hang nire picture, much like those in the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston. Also walls become windows

The little dog settled so comfortably in Eliza’s lap was a Toy Manchester Terrier.

The abundant hair portrayed on Soane’s marble bust was a toupee.

After an extensive visit, that included an excellent staff-led tour of the museum, we took a breather In the lovely well-maintained park across the street. Em and I watched a group of frisky dogs chase balls across the grass. It was one of the best half hours of the trip.

I thought I’d be up for more art and went back to the Courtauld, but I tapped out after an hour peacefully sketching a Parmigianino drawing.

Back for the Around the World in 70 Minutes tour at the British Museum. Happy to say these volunteer docent tours are amplifying the pleasure the museum has to offer. Not only do you hear the details that bring an object and an era alive but the guides – all volunteers I am told – are on fire with enthusiasm. This spark illuminates what you are seeing in a way a dry text on a museum card cannot. They also walk very briskly.

This guide was really excited about the conservator’s recreation of the Sutton Hoo helmet’s ornamentation.

She marveled at an ornate gold buckle with myriad distinct animal figures, almost too small to see. How did they do it without magnification? Craftsmanship thrills her – me too.

When she asked if everyone was okay with viewing human remains, I muttered  ‘depends on how recent.’ That was my intro to the Lindow bog man who looked like a deflated human-shaped balloon, skin the color of tea, limbs twisted and floppy. For a 2,000-year-old corpse, he was in extraordinarily good condition. They could even tell his fingernails were manicured, which suggested he wasn’t a manual laborer.

This was a young man in his mid-twenties, in good health, and his last meal was barley bread cooked over a fire. He died from two blows to the skull, strangulation by garotte, and multiple broken ribs. The definition of overkill. Ritual sacrifice was suggested but I don’t know,  it seems personal to me, so maybe a jealous husband? As may be, RIP.

Afterward, I went in search of the Raphael exhibit in the print rooms. Side note: ff you are looking for peace and quiet when the rest of the museum has reached maximum cacophony this is the place to find it. It’s hushed and dimly lit to protect the fragile works on paper from the deteriorating effect of light.

Whilst ooking for Raphael, I found this lovely page of botany and bugs – oh, I miss my garden so much.

My impression of Raphael is he can be just a little bit too polished and sweet, but he won me over with this image of tenderness personified. Exquisitely done by silverpoint on pink prepared paper.

This lively sheet of sketches exploring different angles and gestures speaks to the artist in me.

This copy of Michelangelo’s David – you can see him reaching for muscularity and substance.

A self-possessed virgin. What a cooly assessing gaze.

Limping back to my hotel I saw this sundial and the time checked out. Of course, you need sun for it to work. Not something I’ve been able to count on in London.

A bit further on, I looked up and thought where am I? It’s not Vegas but it’s not the staid, gray London I remember either. It was the theater district, bringing the bling. Well done, you descents of Garrick and SIddons.

Early hours tour of the ancient Greek world, BM style. A few details that caught my eye…

A man tying his sandal.

A hedgehog perfume jar.

Sea nymph in a wet toga, so technically not naked.

Spartan girl dancing or running away from an amorous god, or competing in gymnastics. You decide.

The docent told us brief, memorable versions of Paris abducting Helen of Sparta, how Paris was awarded Helen by Aphrodite, the bizarre circumstances of Athena’s birth, and how Athena persuaded the Greeks to name the city after her, make her their patron, and build her the Parthenon.

I followed the tour with coffee and a little sketching and then hightailed it to British Library.

Eduardo Paolozzi’s bronze statue of Sir Isaac Newton based on an image inspired by William Blake,

I’d nearly given up on fitting this into the trip, but so glad I didn’t miss out. Walking inside was an olfactory hit as evocative as Proust’s taste of a madeleine. The air was laced with the odor of ink and paper. It’s something I’ve missed now that my reading is done on a screen with kindle pixels. The smell went straight to the emotional memory of falling in love with stories and the people who wrote them down.

Here’s just a taste of the Treasures of the British Library. The Magna Carta, the document that established equality before the law,

An Illustrated manuscript page of people making bread.

Christine de Pizan and friends. “Just as women’s bodies are softer than men’s, so their understanding is sharper.”

Here were John Lennon’s lyrics to A Hard Day’s Night, scribbled on the back of his son’s first birthday card, the splash and dash of Dickens’ scrawl penning a page of The Pickwick Papers, the precise copperplate script of Jane Austen on a letter placed on the writing desk her father gave her.

It’s something about knowing their fingers held the quill or pen or pencil. That their wrists pressed against the paper, that they positioned the foolscap just so. If you are not a constant reader like myself, I doubt I can adequately convey the intoxicating sense of connection. Maybe this is how true believers feel about proximity to a saint’s holy relics. I can’t even begin to describe seeing the open folio of Shakespeare. If you know, you know.

On the way out I saw this witty bench. Put me in mind of the restless grimoires in the Unseen University’s library. Ook.

The quality of their postcards was very satisfying. I was a little surprised they had no teeshirt. I would have snapped one up.

A sharp wind waited outside. I Googled nearby restaurants and by pure luck had a marvelous meal of moules frite and panna cotta in a small family-run Italian place.

All the other diners were speaking Italian, a man with a baker’s forearms kneaded his dough and the female waitstaff were so eyewateringly luscious Raphael would have swooned.

It was a long hike back, but Uber did not let me down.