Canada Slim and the Secret Beauty

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Saturday 2 May 2020 (Lockdown Day #47)

Easter, 1916 is a poem by W. B. Yeats describing the poet’s torn emotions regarding the events of the Easter Rising staged in Ireland against British rule on Easter Monday 24 April 1916.

 

The uprising was unsuccessful and most of the Irish republican leaders involved were executed for treason.

The poem was written between May and September 1916, but first published in 1921 in the collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer.

 

 

Even though a committed nationalist, Yeats usually rejected violence as a means to secure Irish independence, and as a result had strained relations with some of the figures who eventually led the uprising.

 

 

The deaths of these revolutionary figures at the hands of the British, however, was as much a shock to Yeats as it was to ordinary Irish people at the time, who did not expect the events to take such a bad turn so soon.

Yeats was working through his feelings about the revolutionary movement in this poem, and the insistent refrain that “a terrible beauty is born” turned out to be prescient, as the execution of the leaders of the Easter Rising by the British had the opposite effect to that intended.

The killings led to a reinvigoration of the Irish Republican movement rather than its dissipation.

An independent Ireland was a needed and beautiful thing, but it came at a terrible Price.

Because it came at a terrible price, freedom was and remains a precious and beautiful thing worth understanding, worth remembering, worth preserving.

 

Above: William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

 

This idea of beauty emerging out of ugliness, of something positive reborn from something horrific, of a quiet and ceaseless survival regardless of what occurs, sums up somewhat both these days of lockdown in much of Switzerland that is still ongoing, and a visit a few years ago to an oasis where one should not be in the heart of the great metropolis of London.

 

 

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

The disease was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province, and has since spread globally, resulting in the ongoing 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic.

As of 29 April 2020, more than 3.11 million cases have been reported across 185 countries and territories, resulting in more than 217,000 deaths.

More than 932,000 people have recovered.

 

 

The 2019–2020 coronavirus pandemic was confirmed to have spread to Switzerland on 25 February 2020 when the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed following a COVID-19 outbreak in Italy.

A 70-year-old man in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino which borders Italy, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

The man had previously visited Milan.

Afterwards, multiple cases related to the Italy clusters were discovered in multiple cantons, including Basel-City, Zürich and Graubünden.

Multiple isolated cases not related to the Italy clusters were also subsequently confirmed.

 

 

On 28 February, the national government, the Federal Council, banned all events with more than 1,000 participants.

 

 

On 16 March, schools and most shops were closed nationwide, and on 20 March, all gatherings of more than five people in public spaces were banned.

 

 

Additionally, the government gradually imposed restrictions on border crossings and announced economic support measures worth 40 billion Swiss francs.

 

 

As well, the Federal Council announced further measures, and a revised ordinance.

Measures include the closure of bars, shops and other gathering places until 19 April, but leaves open certain essentials, such as grocery shops, pharmacies, (a reduced) public transport and the postal service.

 

 

The government announced a 42 billion CHF rescue package for the economy, which includes money to replace lost wages for employed and self-employed people, short-term loans to businesses, delay for payments to the government, and support for cultural and sport organizations.

 

 

On 20 March, the government announced that no lockdown would be implemented, but all events or meetings over five people were prohibited.

Economic activities would continue including construction.

Those measures were prolonged until 26 April 2020.

 

 

On 16 April 2020, Switzerland announced that the country will ease restrictions in a three-step, gradual way.

The first step will begin on 27 April, for those who work in close contact with others, but not in large numbers.

Surgeons, dentists, day care workers, hairdressers, massage and beauty salons can be opened with safety procedures applied.

DIY stores, garden centres, florists and food shops that also sell other goods can also be opened.

 

 

The second step will begin on 11 May, assuming the first step is implemented without problems, at which time other shops and schools can be opened.

 

 

The third step begin on 8 June with the easing of restrictions on gastronomy, vocational schools, universities, museums, zoos and libraries.

 

 

Since St. Patrick’s Day 2020, I have been, for the most part, housebound, with no real place to go, no borders to cross, no planes to catch, no books to buy or borrow, no workplace to work at.

 

(My wife has been more fortunate in that she is a medical doctor so her services are not only wanted but crucial.)

 

With nowhere to go, planes are grounded and highways have less traffic than they once did and trains ride the rails half empty.

 

 

We are in lockdown because it is believed that we can “flatten the curve” and reduce the numbers of people getting infected by the pandemic.

 

 

People are sick, some are dying or have died, hospitals are full and people have become paranoid about social distancing and germ transmission – the more cases in a canton, the more extreme the caution.

 

 

These are dark days and times that try a man’s temperament, but there is an upside to all of this.

The worldwide disruption caused due to the 2019–20 corona virus pandemic has resulted in numerous impacts on the environment and the climate.

The severe decline in planned travel has caused many regions to experience a drop in air pollution.

 

In China, lockdowns and other measures resulted in a 25% reduction in carbon emissions, which one Earth systems scientist estimated may have saved at least 77,000 lives over two months.

 

 

However, the outbreak has also disrupted environmental diplomacy efforts, including causing the postponement of the 2020 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and the economic fallout from it is predicted to slow investment in green energy technologies.

 

 

Up to 2020, increases in the amount of greenhouse gases produced since the beginning of the industrialization epoch caused average global temperatures on the Earth to rise, causing effects including the melting of glaciers and rising sea levels.

In various forms, human activity caused environmental degradation, an anthropogenic impact.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, measures that were expected to be recommended to health authorities in the case of a pandemic included quarantines and social distancing.

Independently, also prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers argued that reduced economic activity would help decrease global warming, air and marine pollution, allowing the environment to slowly flourish.

Due to the corona virus outbreak’s impact on travel and industry, many regions experienced a drop in air pollution.

Reducing air pollution can reduce both climate change and COVID-19 risks but it is not yet clear which types of air pollution (if any) are common risks to both climate change and COVID-19.

 

Above: Schematic drawing, causes and effects of air pollution: (1) greenhouse effect, (2) particulate contamination, (3) increased UV radiation, (4) acid rain, (5) increased ground-level ozone concentration, (6) increased levels of nitrogen oxides.

 

 

The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air reported that methods to contain the spread of the corona virus, such as quarantines and travel bans, resulted in a 25% reduction of carbon emission in China.

In the first month of lockdowns, China produced approximately 200 million fewer metric tons of carbon dioxide than the same period in 2019, due to the reduction in air traffic, oil refining, and coal consumption.

As aforementioned, one Earth systems scientist estimated that this reduction may have saved at least 77,000 lives.

However, Sarah Ladislaw from the Center for Strategic & International Studies argued that reductions in emissions due to economic downturns should not be seen as beneficial, stating that China’s attempts to return to previous rates of growth amidst trade wars and supply chain disruptions in the energy market will worsen its environmental impact.

 

 

Between 1 January and 11 March 2020, the European Space Agency observed a marked decline in nitrous oxide emissions from cars, power plants and factories in the Po Valley region in northern Italy, coinciding with lockdowns in the region.

The reduction in motor vehicle traffic has led to a drop in air pollution levels.

NASA and ESA have been monitoring how the nitrogen dioxide gases dropped significantly during the initial Chinese phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The economic slowdown from the virus drastically dropped pollution levels, especially in cities like Wuhan, China by 25%.

NASA uses a ozone monitoring instrument (OMI) to analyze and observe the ozone layer and pollutants such as NO2, aerosols and others.

This instrument helped NASA to process and interpret the data coming in due to the lockdowns worldwide.

 

 

According to NASA scientists, the drop in NO2 pollution began in Wuhan, China and slowly spread to the rest of the world.

The drop was also very drastic because the virus coincided with the same time of year as the lunar year celebrations in China.

For this festival, factories and businesses close for the last week of January to celebrate the lunar year festival.

The drop in NO₂ in China did not achieve an air quality of the standard considered acceptable by health authorities.

 

 

Other pollutants in the air such as aerosol emissions remained.

 

In Venice, the water in the canals cleared and experienced greater water flow and visibility of fish.

The Venice mayor’s office clarified that the increase in water clarity was due to the settling of sediment that is disturbed by boat traffic and mentioned the decrease in air pollution along the waterways.

Demand for fish and fish prices have both decreased due to the pandemic,and fishing fleets around the world sit mostly idle.

Rainer Froese has said the fish biomass will increase due to the sharp decline in fishing and projected that in European waters, some fish such as herring could double their biomass.

As of April 2020, signs of aquatic recovery remain mostly anecdotal.

 

 

Nature is returning, but it took a pandemic to make this terrible beauty possible.

 

A COVID-19 vaccine is a hypothetical vaccine against corona virus disease 2019 (COVID‑19).

Although no vaccine has completed clinical trials, there are multiple attempts in progress to develop such a vaccine.

 

 

In late February 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it did not expect a vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative virus, to become available in less than 18 months.

 

 

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) – which is organizing a US $2 billion worldwide fund for rapid investment and development of vaccine candidates – indicated in April that a vaccine may be available under emergency use protocols in less than 12 months or by early 2021.

 

 

A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease.

A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins.

The agent stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to further recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future.

 

 

Vaccines can be prophylactic (to prevent or ameliorate the effects of a future infection by a natural or “wild” pathogen), or therapeutic (e.g., vaccines against cancer, which are being investigated).

The administration of vaccines is called vaccination.

Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing infectious diseases.

Widespread immunity due to vaccination is largely responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the restriction of diseases such as polio, measles and tetanus from much of the world.

 

Above: Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh where he developed the first polio vaccine

 

The effectiveness of vaccination has been widely studied and verified.

For example, vaccines that have proven effective include the influenza vaccine, the HPV vaccine and the chicken pox vaccine.

 

Above: A child with measles, a vaccine-preventable disease

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that licensed vaccines are currently available for twenty-five different preventable infections.

 

The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from Variolae vaccinae (smallpox of the cow), the term devised by Edward Jenner to denote cowpox.

He used it in 1798 in the long title of his Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae Known as the Cow Pox, in which he described the protective effect of cowpox against smallpox.

 

Above: Jenner’s handwritten draft of the first vaccination

 

In 1881, to honor Jenner, Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895) proposed that the terms should be extended to cover the new protective inoculations then being developed.

 

 

If (and this is a big IF) I understand the concept of vaccines and vaccinations at all, it is necessary to somehow find microbes that can invade a body, inducing its immune system to fight them by releasing antibodies.

After infection, the immune system “remembers” those microbes and if it encounters them again it quickly produces antibodies to prevent the body from attack.

Vaccination induces immunity artificially by imitating an infection, but without causing illness.

 

 

An essential part of modern medicine, vaccines have been developed against many dangerous infectious diseases.

It was widely known in ancient times that the body develops natural resistance to diseases.

The earliest attempts to induce immunity artificially may date back more than 2,000 years in India, but the idea of vaccination as an established legitimate treatment did not rise to popular consciousness until Edward Jenner.

 

Above: Edward Jenner (1749 – 1823)

 

Jenner was a successful country physician-surgeon in Berkeley, Southwest England, as well as a talented naturalist.

He had undergone variolation – wherein an infection is rubbed into cuts in the skin of an uninfected person – in his youth, which had made him ill for a time.

 

As a country doctor, Jenner was aware of the common belief that catching cowpox somehow gave protection against smallpox.

Very few milkmaids and cattle herdsmen seemed to suffer from the latter.

In 1798, Jenner published An Enquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae: A Disease Discovered in Some of the Western Counties of England, Particularly Gloucestershire, and Known by the Name of the Cow Pox, which described his treatment of 23 patients by first vaccinating them with cowpox material and then giving them smallpox.

He noted that after the cowpox vaccine his patients did not catch smallpox.

 

Above: Jenner’s discovery of the link between cowpox pus and smallpox in humans helped him to create the smallpox vaccine

 

So, in essence, researchers are looking for a similar solution.

They need to discover the source of the original outbreak, develop a variant of the virus and hope that it builds an immunity to the particular corona virus that plagues the planet at present.

This will take a lot of time, effort and money.

 

 

The smallpox vaccine did not come from herbal remedies or old wives’ recipes of certain food or drink, but from a variation of the disease itself.

But nevertheless it was partially the role of Jenner as naturalist – a man who studies nature – I believe to be beneficial in defeating and eradicating this infamous disease in history.

Smallpox has featured in all of recorded history, killed billions and inflicted lasting suffering on billions more.

By studying nature Jenner became a legend in the field of medicine.

 

Above: This young girl in Bangladesh was infected with smallpox in 1973.

Freedom from smallpox was declared in Bangladesh in December, 1977 when a WHO International Commission officially certified that smallpox had been eradicated from that country.

 

The ability of viruses to cause devastating epidemics in human societies has led to the concern that viruses could be weaponised for biological warfare.

Further concern was raised by the successful recreation of the infamous 1918 influenza virus in a laboratory.

Smallpox virus devastated numerous societies throughout history before its eradication.

There are only two centres in the world authorised by the WHO to keep stocks of smallpox virus: the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR in Russia and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States.

It may be used as a weapon, as the vaccine for smallpox sometimes had severe side-effects, it is no longer used routinely in any country.

 

Thus, much of the modern human population has almost no established resistance to smallpox and would be vulnerable to the virus.

 

 

The corona virus is primarily spread between people during close contact, often via small droplets produced by coughing, sneezing, or talking.

The droplets usually fall to the ground or onto surfaces rather than remaining in the air over long distances.

People may also become infected by touching a contaminated surface and then touching their face.

In experimental settings, the virus may survive on surfaces for up to 72 hours.

It is most contagious during the first three days after the onset of symptoms, although spread may be possible before symptoms appear and in later stages of the disease.

 

 

In the case of the corona virus, it is suspected that the virus is zoonotic in nature – that it may have travelled from animal to man.

The question then is:

How did the animal that first infected a person itself get infected?

But where did the first animal catch the disease?

 

Above: Possibilities for zoonotic disease transmissions

 

Some scientists speculate that animals catch viruses by eating – perhaps food fouled by other animal feces.

So, an examination of the animals around Wuhan and their diet might give us a better notion of what caused the virus in them and perhaps offer a partial solution towards its prevention.

 

 

Imagine a cave of bats and one bat infected one farmer and the farmer took the disease to Wuhan.

Where did the bat catch the virus?

Was only the one bat infected?

If so,why?

Was it something it ate?

 

 

It is through the study of both plant and animal life (flora and fauna) that mankind has learned much about medicine as well as the causes and cures of disease.

The profession of apothecary – the formulation and dispensation of drugs to the sick – dates back to at least 2500 BC.

Skilled medics in their own right, apothecaries prepared medical remedies with herbs stored on their own premises.

 

 

We must be careful to distinguish what a virus is.

A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism.

Viruses can infect all types of life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.

 

 

Since Dmitri Ivanovsky’s 1892 article describing a non-bacterial pathogen infecting tobacco plants, and the discovery of the tobacco mosaic virus by Martinus Beijerinck (1851 – 1931) in 1898, more than 6,000 virus species have been described in detail, of the millions of types of viruses in the environment.

 

 

Viruses are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most numerous type of biological entity.

 

The study of viruses is known as virology, a subspeciality of microbiology.

When infected, a host cell is forced to rapidly produce thousands of identical copies of the original virus.

When not inside an infected cell or in the process of infecting a cell, viruses exist in the form of independent particles, or virions, consisting of:

(i) the genetic material, i.e. long molecules of DNA or RNA that encode the structure of the proteins by which the virus acts

(ii) a protein coat, the capsid, which surrounds and protects the genetic material

and in some cases

(iii) an outside envelope of lipids.

The shapes of these virus particles range from simple helical and icosahedral forms to more complex structures.

Most virus species have virions too small to be seen with an optical microscope as they are one hundredth the size of most bacteria.

 

Above: Transmission electron microscope image of a recreated 1918 influenza virus

This negative stained transmission electron micrograph (TEM) showed recreated 1918 influenza virions that were collected from the supernatant of a 1918-infected Madin-Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK) cell culture 18 hours after infection.

In order to sequester these virions, the MDCK cells were spun down (centrifugation), and the 1918 virus present in the fluid was immediately fixed for negative staining.

Dr. Terrence Tumpey, one of the organization’s staff microbiologists and a member of the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID), recreated the 1918 influenza virus in order to identify the characteristics that made this organism such a deadly pathogen.

Research efforts such as this enables researchers to develop new vaccines and treatments for future pandemic influenza viruses.

 

 

The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic was caused by an influenza A (H1N1) virus, killing more than 500,000 people in the United States and up to 50 million worldwide.

The possible source was a newly emerged virus from a swine or an avian host of a mutated H1N1 virus.

Many people died within the first few days after infection and others died of complications later.

Nearly half of those who died were young, healthy adults.

 

 

Influenza A (H1N1) viruses still circulate today after being introduced again into the human population in the 1970s.

 

 

The origins of viruses in the evolutionary history of life are unclear:

Some may have evolved from plasmids—pieces of DNA that can move between cells—while others may have evolved from bacteria.

 

 

In evolution, viruses are an important means of horizontal gene transfer, which increases genetic diversity in a way analogous to sexual reproduction.

 

Viruses are considered by some biologists to be a life form, because they carry genetic material, reproduce, and evolve through natural selection, although they lack key characteristics (such as cell structure) that are generally considered necessary to count as life.

Because they possess some but not all such qualities, viruses have been described as “organisms at the edge of life” and as replicators.

 

 

Viruses are the most abundant biological entity in aquatic environments. 

There are about ten million of them in a teaspoon of seawater.

 

 

The corona virus is described as novel, because we ain’t seen nothing like it before.

 

 

Viruses spread in many ways.

 

One transmission pathway is through disease-bearing organisms known as vectors:

For example, viruses are often transmitted from plant to plant by insects that feed on plant sap, such as aphids.

 

 

Viruses in animals can be carried by blood-sucking insects.

 

 

Influenza viruses (which the corona virus is) are spread by coughing and sneezing.

 

 

Norovirus and rotavirus, common causes of viral Gastroenteritis (stomach flu), are transmitted by the faecal–oral route, passed by contact and entering the body in food or water.

 

 

HIV is one of several viruses transmitted through sexual contact and by exposure to infected blood.

 

 

The variety of host cells that a virus can infect is called its “host range“.

 

This means a virus is capable of infecting a few species or many.

 

Viral infections in animals provoke an immune response that usually eliminates the infecting virus.

 

 

Immune responses can also be produced by vaccines, which confer an artificially acquired immunity to the specific viral infection.

 

 

Some viruses, including those that cause AIDS, HPV infection, and viral hepatitis, evade these immune responses and result in chronic infections.

Several antiviral drugs have been developed.

 

Antiviral drugs are a class of medication used for treating viral infections.

Most antivirals target specific viruses, while a broad-spectrum antiviral is effective against a wide range of viruses.

Unlike most antibiotics, antiviral drugs do not destroy their target pathogen.

Instead they inhibit their development.

 

 

Antiviral drugs are one class of antimicrobials, a larger group which also includes antibiotic (also termed antibacterial), antifungal and antiparasitic drugs, or antiviral drugs based on monoclonal antibodies (aka the Jenner method).

Most antivirals are considered relatively harmless to the host, and therefore can be used to treat infections.

 

 

They should be distinguished from viricides, which are not medication, but deactivate or destroy virus particles, either inside or outside the body.

Natural viricides are produced by some plants, such as eucalyptus and Australian tea trees.

 

 

So, as important as it is to find – and find it fast – a vaccine to combat this virus using the virus against itself, I think it is also a good idea – afterwards or concurrently – if greater study of plant life is done to prevent and treat viruses of this and other types.

 

What if we could identify infected plants?

What if we could find plants that help fight viruses along with vaccines?

 

Let me frank.

I am no botanist, chemist, or any type of scientist, no farmer or even florist.

 

 

For me, generally a plant is edible or inedible, functional or decorative.

I eat fruit and vegetables.

I eat animals that eat fruit and vegetables.

I see trees and lawns and flowerpots from my window.

I see wildflowers and farmers fields and orchards during my daily walks.

 

 

When florists resume business I shall occasionally buy my wife a floral arrangement, either as a curative against some stupidity I have done or as a preventative to avoid drama during an emotional time in her life.

I do this for myself as much as for her!

 

 

It would be a lie to suggest that I give flora the full attention, respect and praise that it is due.

But for one moment on one vacation when my wife brought me to London to play tourist while she mostly attended a medical conference, I began to consider an amazing universe I had previously ignored.

 

 

London, England, Thursday 26 October 2017

The world continued to circle the sun and men do what men do wherever they may be found.

 

 

While my wife was attending her medical conference and I was exploring the city on my own…..

 

 

Meanwhile:

• Twitter banned all ads from Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik, based on US intelligence’s conclusion that both attempted to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election on behalf of the Russian government.

 

 

• An explosion in a fireworks plant, located west of the Indonesian capital Jakarta killed at least 47 and injured 35.

 

 

• Four people (three military conscripts and a train passenger) were killed and four conscripts injured after a passenger train collided with an off-road military truck in Raseborg, Finland.

 

 

• A Russian Mi-8 helicopter crashed into the sea off Svalbard with eight people reported missing.

 

 

 

• At least two Catalan officials defected from the ruling Junta pel Si party as Catalan President Carles Puigdemont cancelled a speech regarding snap elections and planned to draw back from declaring independence from Spain.

 

 

• Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte presented his 3rd cabinet, which took a record of 225 days of negotiations to form the government composed of VVD, D66, CDA and CU parties.

 

 

• The Trump Administration’s Department of Justice settled two lawsuits which alleged that the Obama Administration’s Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups.

 

 

• Nearly 3,000 files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 were released, while US President Donald Trump ordered others to be withheld citing national security concerns.

 

 

• Voters to Kenya went to the polls following the annulment of the results in the Kenyan general election – President Uhuru Kenyatta won with a 98% majority following an opposition boycott.

 

 

• Venezuela’s democratic opposition won the Sakharov Prize, the European Union’s top human rights award.

 

 

I search for simple pleasures for the simple man that I am.

 

I find myself in the London neighbourhood of Chelsea and I find it hard to imagine that until the 16th century Chelsea was nothing more than a tiny fishing village on the banks of the Thames centred around Chelsea Old Church.

 

 

It was royal advisor Thomas More (1478 – 1535) who started the upward trend by moving here in 1520, followed by members of the nobility, including King Henry VIII himself.

 

 

In the 18th century, Chelsea acquired its riverside houses along Cheyne Walk, which gradually attracted a posse of literary and intellectual types.

However, it was not until the late 19th century that the area began to earn its reputation as London’s very own Left Bank.

 

 

In the 1960s, Chelsea was at the forefront of “swinging London“, with the likes of David Bailey, Mick Jagger, George Best and the “Chelsea Set” hanging out in the boutiques and coffee bars.

 

 

Later, King’s Road became a catwalk for hippies and in the late 1970s it was the unlikely epicentre of the punk explosion.

Men wearing red trousers is about as countercultural as it gets in Chelsea nowadays, with franchise fashion rather than cutting edge couture the order of the day, though some of its residents like to think of themselves as a cut above the purely moneyed types of Kensington.

 

 

That said, King’s Road remains one of the better, more interesting shopping streets outside the West End and is well stocked with restaurants, while at its eastern end are two champions of contemporary and undiscovered art and theatre, the Saatchi Gallery and Royal Court Theatre respectively.

 

 

The area’s other aspects, oddly enough considering its reputation, is a military one, with the former Chelsea Barracks, the Royal Hospital and the National Army Museum.

 

 

And so, it is the litterati and artists, musicians and the military that grab the gaze of most London visitors.

Here in Chelsea the visitor can find:

• the Royal Court Theatre, a bastion of new theatre writing since John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger sent tremors through the Establishment in 1956.

 

 

• the Peter Jones department store, London’s finest glass curtain building

 

 

• Holy Trinity, the finest arts and crafts church in London.

 

 

• Saatchi Gallery, with changing exhibitions of contemporary art, much of it by largely unknown young artists, in 15 equally proportioned, whitewashed rooms.

 

 

• Number 30 Wellington Square, the fictional address of a comfortable ground floor flat of one “Bond, James Bond“.

 

 

• World’s End, once upon a time 1970s Let It Rock renamed SEX and then renamed again Seditionaries,  with its landmark backwards running clock, continues to offer the eclectic to the eccentric.

 

 

• Royal Hospital Chelsea is so odd that it fits perfectly within Chelsea, for here:

• • Scarlet and navy blue army veterans (the Chelsea Pensioners) parade up and down King’s Road

 

• • • (And on 29 May – wearing tricorn hats and carrying a gilded statue of Charles I festooned with oak leaves –  commemorate the day after the disastrous 1651 Battle of Worchester, when the future King hid in an oak tree to escape his pursuers)

 

 

(1 May 2020: Sadly, four Pensioners have died from the corona virus pandemic.)

 

• • Here one finds a fresco in the hospital chapel of Jesus patriotically bearing the flag of St. George, the standard of England

 

 

• • Here in the hospital’s Ranelagh Gardens (once called “London’s pleasure gardens“) is held the world’s finest horticultural event, the Chelsea Flower Show, with over 150,000 visitors over two days.

 

 

(1 May 2020: Both the Pensioners’ Parade and the Flower Show will not happen this year of the Pandemic.)

 

• Cheyne (pronounced “chainy“) Walk boasts the most blue plaques in a single street, for here lived:

 

• • Novelist Henry James (#21)(1843 – 1916)

 

 

• • Novelist Mary Ann Evans (better known by her penname “George Eliot“)(1819 – 1880)(#4)

 

 

• • Poet / playwright Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)(#1 and #34)

 

 

• • Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 – 1958)(#13)

 

 

• • Rolling Stone Mick Jagger (#48)

 

 

• • Rolling Stone Keith Richards (#3)

 

 

• • Painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903)(#96)

 

 

• • Engineer Marc Isambard Brunel (1769 – 1849) and his son, engineer Isambard  Kingdom Brunel (1806 – 1859)(#99)

 

Above: Marc Isambard Brunel

 

Above: Isambard Kingdom Brunel

 

• • Painter J.M.W. (Joseph Mallord William) Turner (1775 – 1851)(#119)

 

 

• • Historian Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881)(#24)

 

 

(Caryle’s House is a museum today.)

 

 

• Chelsea Old Church, where one finds a garish gilded statue of Thomas More (“Scholar, Statesman, Saint“), Lady Cheyne’s memorial and More’s first wife’s (Jane Colt) memorial.

 

 

 

 

 

• Crosby Hall, once owned by More and once occupied by the future King Richard III (1452 – 1485)(and used as a setting by William Shakespeare) is now privately owned but visible from Cheyne Walk.

 

 

Above: King Richard III (1452 – 1485)

 

• Nearby Brompton Cemetery, close to the Chelsea Football Club, here one can find the graves of:

 

• • Frederick Richards Leyland (1831 – 1892)(president of the National Telephone Company)(His final resting place resembles a bizarre copper green jewel box on stilts, smothered with swirling wrought ironwork)

 

 

 

• • Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst (1831 – 1892)

 

• • Henry Cole (1808 – 1882)(the man behind the Great Exhibition and the V & A Museum / inventor of the first commercial Christmas card)

 

 

 

 

• • Fanny Brawne (1800 – 1865)(the love of poet John Keats’ life)

 

 

 

• • John Snow (1813 – 1858)(Queen Victoria’s anaesthetist)

 

 

 

• • And the now empty gravesite of Long Wolf (1843 – 1923)(a Sioux Indian chief who died in London while on tour with Buffalo Bill Cody’s travelling Wild West Show)(The Chief’s body has since been returned to his descendants in America.).

 

 

 

• By Putney Bridge, Fulham Palace, once the largest moated site in all of England, (sadly the moat was filled in in 1921) was the residence of the Bishop of London from 704 to 1973 and features a museum containing a mummified rat, as well as a garden with a maze made of miniature box hedges.

 

 

I will say no more of these things, for I know no more of these things having not seen them myself.

What I have seen and thus the subject of this post was a botanical bounty near the banks of the Thames, the Chelsea Physic Garden.

Horticulturalists and herbalists will delight in this enchanting walled garden containing around 5,000 plant species from all over the world.

It is a rather small garden and a little too close to the Chelsea Embankment to be a peaceful oasis, but it is enjoyable nonetheless even for those uninterested in botany.

 

 

Plants are everywhere.

They live in almost every surface on Earth, from the highest mountains to the lowest valleys, from the coldest and driest environments to some of the hottest and wettest places on our planet.

Nobody knows for certain how many species of plants there actually are.

So far, scientists have counted about 425,000, but more are being discovered every day.

There are clear patterns as to where on Earth plants thrive best and the conditions they need.

 

 

Understanding these patterns is crucial to preserving all forms of life on Earth, including us.

 

 

Because without plants there would be no humans.

 

 

Plants create and regulate the air we breathe.

They provide us with food, medicines, textiles to make our clothes and materials to build our homes.

 

 

So how did the Earth reach the diversity and variety of plant life we see today?

What did the first plants look like?

What are the biggest, smallest, weirdiest and smelliest plants on the planet?

 

 

Wander through the Chelsea Physic Garden and all will be revealed!

 

 

The Garden’s collection was founded in 1673 by the Society of Apothecaries to study the medicinal properties of plants and was jealously guarded until 1983 it became a registered charity and was opened to the general public for the first time.

It is the oldest botanical garden in the country after Oxford’s and Edinburgh’s.

The Garden is a member of the London Museums of Health and Medicine and is listed in the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England by English Heritage.

The first cedars grown in England were planted here in 1683.

 

 

Cotton seed was sent from here to the American colonies in 1732.

 

 

England’s first rock garden was constructed here in 1773.

 

 

Britain’s oldest and largest olive tree is here, protected by the Garden’s heat-trapping high brick walls, along with what is probably the world’s northernmost grapefruit growing outdoors.

 

 

This extraordinary place has had a wide-reaching impact around the world, becoming at its peak, during the 1700s, the most important centre for plant exchange on the planet.

 

 

The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries initially founded the Garden on a leased site of Sir John Danvers’ well-established garden in Chelsea, London.

This house, called Danvers House, adjoined the Mansion that had once been the house of Sir Thomas More.

Danvers House was pulled down in 1696 to make room for Danvers Street.

The site was chosen for its proximity to the river, which at the time was the most important transport route in London and allowed the Apothecaries to moor their barge and carry out botanising expeditions to surrounding areas.

The site also offered a south-facing aspect and well-managed soil, having been within an area of market gardens.

 

 

 

The Apothecaries appointed John Watts as their first Curator in 1680 and charged him with growing and maintaining the recognized medicinal herbs of the day.

During Watts’ stewardship the first greenhouse appeared in the Garden, which was heated with an external stove and glazed on one side.

As the first greenhouse of this kind in England, it allowed the Garden to grow hitherto unknown rare tropical and tender species.

 

 

That same year a young apprentice from Ireland named Hans Sloane began his studies at the Garden.

Little did the Apothecaries know that Sloane would one day become responsible for ensuring the Garden’s survival to this day.

 

Above: Hans Sloane (1660 – 1753)

 

After qualifying in 1687 Sloane travelled to Jamaica to serve as private physician to the second Duke of Albemarle.

 

 

Two years later, Sloane returned to London armed with a special recipe and bottles of a compound, sourced from plants, which would go on to make him a fortune.

The recipe was for milk chocolate – a drink he had seen Jamaican mothers give to children with colic – and the compound, sourced from the tropical tree Cinchona pubescens, quinine – a medicine capable of preventing and curing malaria.

Sloane quickly established himself back in London, making considerable sums from his chocolate recipe (cocoa with milk) and sales of quinine.

 

 

Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort (1630 – 1715) (also known by her other married name of Mary Seymour, Lady Beauchamp and her maiden name Mary Capell) was an English noblewoman, gardener and botanist.

 

 

On 28 June 1648, Mary married her first husband Henry Seymour, Lord Beauchamp, and they had one son and one daughter.

Her husband was a Royalist, imprisoned during the English Civil War.

 

 

Her second husband, whom she married on 17 August 1657 was Henry Somerset (1629 – 1700), who became 1st Duke of Beaufort, by whom she had six children.

 

 

During the Popish Plot, she was required in her husband’s absence to call out the militia, to deal with a false alarm of a French invasion at the Isle of Purbeck, and did so “in a state of deadly fear“.

 

 

(The Popish Plot was a conspiracy invented by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 gripped the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria.

 

Above. Titus Oates (1649 – 1705)

 

Oates alleged that there was an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate King Charles II, accusations that led to the executions of at least 22 men and precipitated the Exclusion Bill (which sought to exclude the King’s brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland because he was Roman Catholic) Crisis.

Eventually Oates’s intricate web of accusations fell apart, leading to his arrest and conviction for perjury.)

 

Above: King Charles II (1630 – 1685)

 

The supposed invasion, like much that happened (or failed to happen) during the Plot, was simply the result of public hysteria.

Despite this moment of panic, in general she maintained a detached and rational attitude to the Plot, expressing her amazement that the informer William Bedloe (1650 – 1680), whom she knew to be “a villain whose word would not have been taken at sixpence“, should now have “power to ruin any man“.

 

 

She attended the trial of the Catholic barrister Richard Langhorne, presumably in case Bedloe, a bitter enemy of her husband, made any charges against him, and took notes of the evidence.

 

Above: Richard Langhorne (1624 – 1679)

 

When Bedloe protested at her presence, the Lord Chief Justice, William Scroggs, pointed out that the trial was open to the public, and asked irritably what a woman’s notes amounted to anyway:

“No more than her tongue, truly“.

 

Above: William Scroggs (1623 – 1683)

 

Mary was a notoriously exacting employer “striking terror in the hearts of her servants“:

Every day she would do a tour of the house and grounds (Beaufort House), and any servant not found hard at work was instantly dismissed.

Even neighbouring landowners held her in awe, and were anxious not to cross her.

 

Above: Beaufort House, Chelsea, today

 

The Duchess of Beaufort was one of Britain’s earliest distinguished lady gardeners.

She began seriously to collect plants in the 1690s and her interest in gardening intensified in her widowhood.

She had the assistance of such well-known gardeners and botanists as George London (1640 – 1714) and Leonard Plukenet (1641 – 1706).

 

 

Seeds came to her from the West Indies, South Africa, India, Sri Lanka, China and Japan.

 

In 1702, she engaged the services of William Sherard (1659 – 1728) as tutor for her grandson, “he loving my diversion so well“.

Sherard helped introduce more than 1,500 plants, most of them greenhouse subjects, to her collection, at Badminton House or at Beaufort House, Chelsea.

 

 

Sir Robert Southwell, Sir Hans Sloane and Jacob Bobart are all known to have sought her assistance in growing and identifying plants from unidentified seeds, some of which had come to them through the Royal Society of London.

 

 

In 1712, Dr. Hans Sloane, as wealthy physician, purchased the entire Manor of Chelsea.

 

 

Mary’s London house was next to that of Sir Hans Sloane, making her a neighbour of the Chelsea Physic Garden.

Her herbarium, in twelve volumes, ‘gathered and dried by order of Mary Duchess of Beaufort‘, she bequeathed to Sir Hans Sloane, by whose bequest it came to the Natural History Museum.

Her two-volume set of drawings of her most choice exotics remains in the library at Badminton.

Among her introductions to British gardening, most of which were greenhouse plants, are Pelargonium zonale one of the parents of the zonal pelargoniums of gardens, ageratum and the Blue Passion Flower (Passiflora caerulea).

She is also notable for being one of the earliest women known to have her own collection of the Philosophical Transactions, the journal of the Royal Society of London.

 

 

In 1722, Sloane leased four acres (1.6 hectares) of land to the Apothecaries for five pounds a year in perpetuity – a bargain even back then.

The deed of covenant is on display, stating the Garden’s purpose, that “apprentices and others may the better distinguish good and useful plants from those that bear resemblance to them and yet are hurtful“.

He also required the Apothecaries to provide 50 pressed plant specimens a year to the Royal Society until 2,000 had been received.

This process continued for many years under the direction of Head Gardeners or Curators and quickly exceeded the numbers required by Sloane.

A statue of Sloane stands at the centre of the garden.

 

 

Notable among the annual consignments were those sent in 1724, which contained 50 species from the Geraniaceae family (geraniums) – the first record of the Garden’s long association with these plants.

 

 

James Sherard (1666 – 1738) was an English apothecary, botanist and amateur musician.

On 7 February 1682, apothecary Charles Watts, who served as curator of Chelsea Physic Garden, took him in as an apprentice.

 

 

After honing his craft with Watts, Sherard moved to Mark Lane, London, where he started his own very successful business.

 

 

In time, Sherard came into contact with Wriothesley Russell, 2nd Duke of Bedford through his brother, who had once served as a tutor in Russell’s family.

Sherard dedicated his first set of trio sonatas to Russell.

One surviving copy of the work was owned by an apothecary named William Salter.

He wrote commentary in the margins, including a note that Sherard was friends with George Frideric Handel (1685 – 1759).

 

 

Sherard published a second set of trio sonatas in 1711.

Sherard’s extensive collection of manuscripts of vocal and instrumental music is preserved in the Bodleian Library (Oxford) and includes unique copies of German church music among other items.

 

 

In 1711, around the time Sherard finished composing his second set of sonatas, the Duke died, and Sherard’s interest in music seems to have died with him.

He also fell ill with gout, which prevented him from playing the violin.

 

 

Instead, he turned to botany.

He wrote in August 1716 that “of late the love of botany has so far prevailed as to divert my mind from things I formerly thought more material“.

 

Upon retiring from his business in Mark Lane in the 1720s, he had already acquired an ample fortune.

He purchased two manors in Leicestershire and a property at Eltham in Kent, near London, where he largely resided.

Sherard soon found himself maintaining a growing collection of rare plants at Eltham.

 

Above: Eltham Palace

 

Despite his ill health, he made several trips to continental Europe in search of seeds for his garden, which soon became recognized as one of the finest in England.

 

In 1721, in order to help with a projected revision of Caspar Bauhin’s Pinax of 1623, William Sherard brought the German botanist Johann Jacob Dillenius (1684 – 1747) to England.

In 1732, James published Dillenius’ illustrated catalog of the collection at Eltham.

According to Blanche Henrey, it was “the most important book to be published in England during the 18th century on plants growing in a private garden” and a major work for the pre-Linnaean taxonomy of South African plants, notably the succulents of the Cape Province.

Dillenius’ herbarium specimens from Eltham are preserved in the herbarium of the Oxford Botanical Garden.

 

Above: Johann Jacob Dillenius

 

Samuel Doody (1656–1706) was an early English botanist.

The eldest of the second family of his father, John Doody, an apothecary in Staffordshire who later moved to London where he had a shop in The Strand, Samuel was born in Staffordshire.

He went into his father’s business, to which he succeeded in 1696.

 

 

He undertook the care of the Apothecaries’ Garden at Chelsea in 1693, at a salary of £100, which he continued until his death.

 

 

His sole contribution as an author seems to be a paper in the Philosophical Transactions (1697), on a case of dropsy (fluid retention / swelling) in the breast.

 

Doody had given some attention to botany before 1687, the date of a commonplace book, but his help is first acknowledged by John Ray in 1688 in the second volume of the Historia Plantarum.

 

(John Ray (1627 – 1705) was an English naturalist widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists.

He published important works on botany, zoology and natural theology.

His classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy.

Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division by which species were classified according to a pre-conceived, either/or type system, and instead classified plants according to similarities and differences that emerged from observation.

He was among the first to attempt a biological definition for the concept of species.)

 

Above: John Ray

 

Doody was intimate with the botanists of his time: Ray, Leonard Plukenet, James Petiver (1665 – 1718) and Hans Sloane.

Doody devoted himself to cryptogams – (A cryptogam – scientific name Cryptogamae – is a plant (in the wide sense of the word) that reproduces by spores, without flowers or seeds. “Cryptogamae” (Greek: “hidden” + “to marry”) means “hidden reproduction“, referring to the fact that no seed is produced, thus cryptogams represent the non-seed bearing plants.) – at that time very little studied, and became an authority on them.

The results of his herborisations round London were recorded in his copy of Ray’s ‘Synopsis,’ now in the British Museum.

 

Above: A cryptogam fern (Polystichum setiferum)

 

Mark Catesby (1683 – 1749) was an English naturalist.

Between 1729 and 1747 Catesby published his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, the first published account of the flora and fauna of North America.

It included 220 plates of birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, mammals and plants.

 

 

An acquaintance with the naturalist John Ray led to Catesby becoming interested in natural history.

 

The death of his father left Catesby enough to live on, so in 1712, he accompanied his sister Elizabeth to Williamsburg, Virginia.

She was the wife of Dr. William Cocke, who had been a member of the Council and Secretary of State for the Colony of Virginia.

According to their father’s will, Elizabeth had married Dr. Cocke against her father’s wishes.

 

Catesby visited the West Indies in 1714, and returned to Virginia, then home to England in 1719.

Catesby had collected seeds and botanical specimens in Virginia and Jamaica.

He sent the pressed specimens to Dr Samuel Dale of Braintree in Essex, and gave seeds to a Hoxton nurseryman Thomas Fairchild as well as to Dale and to the Bishop of London, Dr Henry Compton.

Plants from Virginia, raised from Catesby’s seeds, made his name known to gardeners and scientists in England, and in 1722 he was recommended by William Sherard to undertake a plant-collecting expedition to Carolina on behalf of certain members of the Royal Society.

From May 1722, Catesby was based in Charleston, South Carolina, and travelled to other parts of that colony, collecting plants and animals.

 

 

He sent preserved specimens to Hans Sloane and to William Sherard, and seeds to various contacts including Sherard and Peter Collinson.

 

 

(Peter Collinson (1694 – 1768) was a Fellow of the Royal Society, an avid gardener and the middleman for an international exchange of scientific ideas in mid-18th century London.

He is best known for his horticultural friendship with John Bartram and his correspondence with Benjamin Franklin about electricity.)

 

 

Consequently, Catesby was responsible for introducing such plants as Catalpa bignonioides and the eponymous Catesbaea spinosa (lilythorn) to cultivation in Europe.

 

 

Catesby returned to England in 1726.

Catesby spent the next twenty years preparing and publishing his Natural History.

Publication was financed by subscriptions from his “Encouragers” as well as an interest-free loan from one of the fellows of the Royal Society, the Quaker Peter Collinson.

Catesby learnt how to etch the copper plates himself.

The first eight plates had no backgrounds, but from then on Catesby included plants with his animals.

Catesby’s original preparatory drawings for Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands are in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, and selections have been exhibited in the US, Japan and various places in England.

 

 

On 5 March 1747, Catesby read a paper entitled “Of birds of passage” to the Royal Society in London and he is now recognised as one of the first people to describe bird migration.

 

 

Philip Miller was appointed Head Gardener at Sloane’s suggestion in 1722 and served the Garden for nearly 50 years.

During his long tenure Miller firmly established the Garden as the world’s leading centre for botanical plant exchange.

This seed-exchange programme was established following a visit in 1682 from Dutch botanist Paul Hermann (1646 – 1695) of the Hortus Botanicus Leiden and still continues.

 

 

The seed exchange program’s most notable act may have been the introduction of cotton into the colony of Georgia and more recently, the worldwide spread of the Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus).

 

 

Johann Amman (or Johannes Amman or Иоганн Амман) (1707 in Schaffhausen – 1741 in St Petersburg), was a Swiss-Russian botanist, a member of the Royal Society and professor of botany at the Russian Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg.

He is best known for his Stirpium Rariorum in Imperio Rutheno Sponte Provenientium Icones et Descriptiones published in 1739 with descriptions of some 285 plants from Eastern Europe and Ruthenia (now Ukraine).

 

 

The plates are unsigned, though an engraving on the dedicatory leaf of the work is signed “Philipp Georg Mattarnovy“, a Swiss-Italian engraver, Filippo Giorgio Mattarnovi (1716-1742), who worked at the St. Petersburg Academy.

Amman was a student of Herman Boerhaave at Leyden from where he graduated as a physician in 1729.

 

(Herman Boerhaave (1668 – 1738) was a Dutch botanist, chemist, Christian humanist, and physician of European fame.

 

 

He is regarded as the founder of clinical teaching and of the modern academic hospital and is sometimes referred to as “the father of physiology“.

Boerhaave introduced the quantitative approach into medicine and is best known for demonstrating the relation of symptoms to lesions.

He was the first to isolate the chemical urea from urine.

He was the first physician to put thermometer measurements to clinical practice.

His motto was Simplex sigillum veri:

‘Simplicity is the sign of the truth’.

He is often hailed as the “Dutch Hippocrates“.)

 

Amman came from Schaffhausen in Switzerland in 1729 to help Hans Sloane curate his natural history collection.

Sloane was founder of the Chelsea Physic Garden and originator of the British Museum.

 

 

Amman went on to St Petersburg at the invitation of Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-1755) and became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, regularly sending interesting plants, such as Gypsophila paniculata (baby’s breath), back to Sloane.

 

Above: Gypsophila paniculata (baby’s breath)

 

Carl Linnaeus maintained a lively correspondence with Amman between 1736 and 1740.

 

(Carl Linnaeus or Carl von Linné (1707 – 1778) was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms.

 

 

He is known as the “father of modern taxonomy“.

He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730.

He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands.

He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala.

In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals.

In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, while publishing several volumes.

 

He was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe at the time of his death.

 

Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message:

“Tell him I know no greater man on Earth.”

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote:

“With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly.”

 

Swedish author August Strindberg wrote:

“Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist.”

 

Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum (Prince of Botanists) and “The Pliny of the North“.

 

He is also considered as one of the founders of modern ecology.

 

In botany and zoology, the abbreviation L. is used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for a species’ name.

Linnaeus’s remains comprise the type specimen for the species Homo sapiens following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the sole specimen that he is known to have examined was himself.)

 

 

William Houstoun (occasionally spelt Houston) (1695 – 1733) was a Scottish surgeon and botanist who collected plants in the West Indies, Mexico and South America.

Houstoun was born in Houston, Renfrewshire.

He began a degree course in medicine at St Andrew’s University, but interrupted his studies to visit the West Indies, returning in 1727.

On 6 October 1727, he entered the University of Leyden to continue his studies under Boerhaave, graduating M.D. in 1729.

It was during his time at Leyden that Houstoun became interested in the medicinal properties of plants.

 

 

After returning to England that year, he soon sailed for the Caribbean and the Americas employed as a ship’s surgeon for the South Sea Company.

 

 

He collected plants in Jamaica, Cuba, Venezuela and Veracruz, despatching seeds and plants to Philip Miller, head gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London.

 

 

Notable among these plants was Dorstenia contrayerva, a reputed cure for snakebite, and Buddleja americana, the latter named by Linnaeus, at Houstoun’s request, for the English cleric and botanist Adam Buddle, although Buddle could have known nothing of the plant as he had died in 1715.

 

Above: Dorstenia contrajerva (Theodor Dorsten’s anti-snakebite plant)

 

Above: Buddleja americana (American Butterfly bush)

 

Houstoun published accounts of his studies in Catalogus plantarum horti regii Parisiensis.

When Houstoun returned to London in 1731, he was introduced to Sir Hans Sloane by Miller.

Sloane commissioned him to undertake a three-year expedition, financed by the trustees for the Province of Georgia ‘for improving botany and agriculture in Georgia‘, and to help stock the Trustee’s Garden planned for Savannah.

Houstoun initially sailed to the Madeira Islands to gather grape plantings before continuing his voyage across the Atlantic.

However he never completed his mission as he ‘died from the heat‘ on 14 August 1733 soon after arriving in Jamaica.

He was buried at Kingston.

 

Above: Modern Kingston, Jamaica

 

 

Isaac Rand, a member and a fellow of the Royal Society published a condensed catalogue of the Garden in 1730, Index plantarum officinalium, quas ad materiae medicae scientiam promovendam, in horto Chelseiano.

 

 

Isaac Rand (1674–1743) was an English botanist and apothecary, who was a lecturer and director at the Chelsea Physic Garden.

Isaac was the son of James Rand, who in 1674 agreed, with thirteen other members of the Society of Apothecaries, to build a wall round the Chelsea Botanical Garden.

 

 

Isaac Rand was already an apothecary practising in the Haymarket, London, in 1700.

 

 

In Leonard Plukenet’s Mantissa, published in that year, Rand is mentioned as the discoverer, in Tothill Fields, Westminster, of the plant now known as Rumex palustris, and was described as “stirpium indagator diligentissimus … pharmacopœus Londinensis, et magnæ spei botanicus.’

 

Above: Rumex palustrus (Marsh dock)

 

He seems to have paid particular attention to inconspicuous plants, especially in the neighbourhood of London.

 

Thus Samuel Doody records in a manuscript note:

“Mr. Rand first showed me this beautiful dock Rumex maritimus, growing plentifully in a moist place near Burlington House.”

 

 

Adam Buddle, in his manuscript Flora, which was completed before 1708, attributes to him the finding of Mentha pubescens “about some ponds near Marybone” and of the plant styled by James Petiver “Rand’s Oak Blite” (Chenopodium glaucum).

 

Above: Mentha pubescens (hairy mint)

 

Above: Chenopodium glaucum (oak-leaved goosefoot)

 

In 1707 Rand, and nineteen other members, including Petiver and Joseph Miller, took a lease of the Chelsea Garden, to assist the Society of Apothecaries, and were constituted trustees.

For some time prior to the death of Petiver in 1718, Rand seems either to have assisted him or to have succeeded him in the office of demonstrator of plants to the Society.

 

 

In 1724, Rand was appointed to the newly created office of præfectus horti, or director of the Garden.

 

 

 

Among other duties, Rand had to give at least two demonstrations in the garden in each of the six summer months, and to transmit to the Royal Society the fifty specimens per annum required by the terms of Sir Hans Sloane’s donation of the Garden.

Lists of the plants he sent for several years are in the Sloane Manuscripts.

 

Philip Miller was gardener throughout Rand’s tenure of the office of præfectus and it was in 1736 that Carl Linnæus visited the Garden.

 

Dillenius’s edition of John Ray’s Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum (1724) contains several records by Rand, whose assistance is acknowledged in the preface.

Rand is specially mentioned by the illustrator Elizabeth Blackwell as having assisted her with specimens for her Curious Herbal (1737–39), which was executed at Chelsea.

Rand is one of those who prefix to the work a certificate of accuracy and a copy in the British Museum Library has manuscript notes by him.

 

 

Rand prompted botanical artists like Blackwell and Georg Dionysius Ehret, to make illustrations of the living herbaceous plants produced by the Garden.

 

(Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708 – 1770) was born in Germany to Ferdinand Christian Ehret, a gardener and competent draughtsman, and Anna Maria Ehret.

 

 

 

Beginning his working life as a gardener’s apprentice near Heidelberg, he became one of the most influential European botanical artists of all time.

His first illustrations were in collaboration with Carl Linnaeus and George Clifford in 1735-1736.

Clifford, a wealthy Dutch banker and governor of the Dutch East India Company was a keen botanist with a large herbarium.

He had the income to attract the talents of botanists such as Linnaeus and artists like Ehret.

Together at the Clifford estate, Hartecamp, which is located south of Haarlem in Heemstede near Bennebroek, they produced Hortus Cliffortianus in 1738, a masterpiece of early botanical literature.)

 

 

 

Rand was friends with Mark Catesby, receiving seeds he collected in the Americas and a subscriber to his seminal Natural History of the region.

Rand produced two catalogues of the Garden and coöperated with the Leiden Physic Garden via Herman Boerhaave.

In 1730, perhaps somewhat piqued by Philip Miller’s issue of his Catalogus in that year, Rand printed the aforementioned Index plantarum officinalium in horto Chelseiano.

 

In a letter to Samuel Brewer, dated ‘Haymarket, 11 July 1730‘, Rand says that the Apothecaries’ Company had ordered the Index to be printed.

In 1739 Rand published ‘Horti medici Chelseiani Index Compendiarius,’ an alphabetical Latin list occupying 214 pages.

 

Rand’s widow presented his botanical books and an extensive collection of dried specimens to the company, and bequeathed 50s a year to the præfectus horti for annually replacing twenty decayed specimens in the latter by new ones.

This herbarium was preserved at Chelsea, with those of Ray and Dale, until 1863, when all three were presented to the British Museum.

Linnæus retained the name Randia, applied by William Houston in Rand’s honour to a genus of tropical Rubiaceæ.

 

Above: Randia (Indigo berry)

 

 

 

Jacob van Huysum (1688 – 1740) was an 18th-century botanical painter from the northern Netherlands.

Both his father Justus van Huysum (1659–1716) and his brother Jan van Huysum (1682–1749) were celebrated flower painters.

His manner of painting was very like that of his brother.

His approach to botanical illustration, while preserving botanical accuracy, captured a more artistic aspect of his subject.

This contrasts with the meticulously exact mode of Georg Dionysius Ehret, his contemporary colleague.

He produced most of the 50 illustrations for John Martyn’s Historia Plantarum Rariorum (London: 1728-38), and all the drawings for Catalogus Plantarum, an index of trees, shrubs, plants and flowers (London: 1730).

 

 

Historia Plantarum Rariorum depicted plants from the Chelsea Physic Garden and the Cambridge Botanic Garden.

These plants had come from the Cape of Good Hope, North America, the West Indies and Mexico.

Each plate was dedicated to a patron and showed an engraved coat-of-arms or monogram.

The work was published in five parts of ten plates each between 1728 and 1737, and was sold by subscription.

The venture was not a financial success and publication ceased in 1737.

 

Above: Solidago virga-aurea (European goldenrod)

 

Meanwhile, so extensive was Miller’s impact on gardening that between 1731 and 1768 he doubled the number of plants cultivated in Britain.

In 1731 Miller published his Gardeners Dictionary, the most complete work on gardening of its time.

 

 

 

James Lee (1715 – 1795) was a Scottish gardener who had apprenticed at the Chelsea Physic Garden.

James Lee was a correspondent with Carl Linnaeus, through Lee’s connection with the Chelsea Physic Garden.

He compiled an introduction to the Linnaean system, An Introduction to Botany, published in 1760, which passed through five editions.

 

 

 

John Bartram (1699 – 1777) was an early American botanist, horticulturist and explorer.

 

 

Carl Linnaeus said he was the “greatest natural botanist in the world.”

Bartram was born into a Quaker farm family in colonial Pennsylvania.

He considered himself a plain farmer, with no formal education beyond the local school.

He had a lifelong interest in medicine and medicinal plants, and read widely.

His botanical career started with a small area of his farm devoted to growing plants he found interesting.

Later he made contact with European botanists and gardeners interested in North American plants and developed his hobby into a thriving business.

Bartram came to travel extensively in the eastern American colonies collecting plants.

 

In 1743 he visited the shores of Lake Ontario in the north and wrote Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals, and other Matters Worthy of Notice, made by Mr. John Bartram in his Travels from Pennsylvania to Onondaga, Oswego, and the Lake Ontario, in Canada.

During the winter of 1765 – 1766 he visited East Florida in the south and an account of this trip was published with his journal.

He also visited the Ohio River in the west.

 

 

Many of his acquisitions were transported to collectors in Europe.

In return, they supplied him with books and apparatus.

Bartram, sometimes called the “father of American botany“, was one of the first practicing Linnaean botanists in North America.

 

 

His plant specimens were forwarded to Linnaeus, Dillenius and Gronovius, and he assisted Linnaeus’ student Pehr Kalm during his extended collecting trip to North America from 1748 to 1750.

 

(Laurens Theodoor Gronovius (1730 – 1777), also known as Laurentius Theodorus Gronovius or Laurens Theodoor Gronow, was a Dutch naturalist born in Leiden.

 

 

Throughout his lifetime Gronovius amassed an extensive collection of zoological and botanical specimens.

He is especially remembered for his work in the field of ichthyology, where he played a significant role in the classification of fishes.

In 1754 he published the treatise Museum ichthyologicum, in which he described over 200 species of fish.

He is also credited with developing a technique for preservation of fish skins.

Today, a number of these preserved specimens are kept in the Natural History Museum in London.)

 

Bartram was aided in his collecting efforts by colonists.

In Bartram’s Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, a trip taken from 1 July 1765 to 10 April 1766, Bartram wrote of specimens he had collected.

 

 

In the colony of British East Florida he was helped by Dr. David Yeats, secretary of the colony.

His 8-acre (32,000 m²) botanic garden, Bartram’s Garden in Kingsessing on the west bank of the Schuylkill, about 3 miles (5 km) from the center of Philadelphia is frequently cited as the first true botanic collection in North America.

 

 

He was one of the co-founders, with Benjamin Franklin, of the American Philosophical Society in 1743.

 

 

Bartram was particularly instrumental in sending seeds from the New World to European gardeners:

Many North American trees and flowers were first introduced into cultivation in Europe by this route.

 

 

Beginning in 1733, Bartram’s work was assisted by his association with the English merchant Peter Collinson.

Collinson, himself a lover of plants, was a fellow Quaker and a member of the Royal Society, with a familiar relationship with its president, Sir Hans Sloane.

 

 

Collinson shared Bartram’s new plants with friends and fellow gardeners.

Early Bartram collections went to Lord Petre, Philip Miller at the Chelsea Physic Garden, Mark Catesby, the Duke of Richmond, and the Duke of Norfolk.

 

 

In the 1730s, Robert James Petre, 8th Baron Petre of Thorndon Hall, Essex, was the foremost collector of North American trees and shrubs in Europe.

Earl Petre’s untimely death in 1743 led to his American tree collection being auctioned off to Woburn, Goodwood and other large English country estates.

Thereafter Collinson became Bartram’s chief London agent.

 

Bartram’s Boxes, as they then became known, were regularly sent to Peter Collinson every fall for distribution in England to a wide list of clients, including the Duke of Argyll, James Gordon, James Lee and John Busch, progenitor of the exotic Loddiges nursery in London.

The boxes generally contained 100 or more varieties of seeds, and sometimes included dried plant specimens and natural history curiosities as well.

Live plants were more difficult and expensive to send and were reserved for Collinson and a few special correspondents.

 

 

In 1765 after lobbying by Collinson and Benjamin Franklin in London, King George III rewarded Bartram a pension of £50 per year as King’s Botanist for North America, a post he held until his death.

With this position, Bartram’s seeds and plants also went to the royal collection at Kew Gardens.

Bartram also contributed seeds to the Oxford and Edinburgh botanic gardens.

 

Above: King George III (1738 – 1820)

 

Most of Bartram’s many plant discoveries were named by botanists in Europe.

He is best known today for:

• the discovery and introduction of a wide range of North American flowering trees and shrubs, including kalmia, rhododendron and magnolia species
• introducing the Dionaea muscipulia or Venus flytrap to cultivation

 

 

• the discovery of the Franklin Tree (Franklinia alatamaha) in southeastern Georgia in 1765, later named by his son William Bartram.

 

 

Bartram’s name is remembered in the genera of mosses, Bartramia, and in plants such as the North American serviceberry, Amelanchier bartramiana, and the subtropical tree Commersonia bartramia (Christmas Kurrajong) growing from the Bellinger River in coastal eastern Australia to Cape York, Vanuatu and Malaysia.

 

Above: Amelanchier bartramiana (Bartram’s mountain juneberry)

 

Above: Commersonia bartramia (Bartram’s Christmas kurrajong)

 

 

Elizabeth Blackwell (1707 –1758)(née Blachrie) was a Scottish botanical illustrator and author who was best known as both the artist and engraver for the plates of “A Curious Herbal“, published between 1737 and 1739.

The book illustrated many odd-looking and unknown plants from the New World, and was designed as a reference work on medicinal plants for the use of physicians and apothecaries.

 

 

Elizabeth Blachrie was the daughter of a successful Scottish merchant in Aberdeen and was trained as an artist.

 

She secretly married her cousin, Alexander Blackwell (1709 – 1747), a Scottish doctor and economist and settled in Aberdeen where he maintained a medical practice.

Although his education was sound, his qualifications were questioned, leading to the young couple’s hasty move to London, fearing charges that Alexander was practicing illegally.

In London, Alexander became associated with a publishing firm, and having gained some experience, established his own printing house, despite not belonging to a guild nor having served the required apprenticeship as a printer.

He was charged with flouting the strict trade rules, and heavily fined, forcing him to close his shop.

 

By now Elizabeth was destitute.

Because of Alexander’s lavish spending and the fines that had been imposed, the couple were heavily in debt – Alexander found himself in debtor’s prison.

 

With her husband in gaol, a household to run, a child to care for, and with no income, the situation was desperate.

 

She learned that a herbal was needed to depict and describe exotic plants from the New World.

She decided that she could illustrate it, and that Alexander, given his medical background, could write the descriptions of the plants.

 

 

As she completed the drawings, Elizabeth would take them to her husband’s cell where he supplied the correct names in Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and German.

Unlike her husband, Elizabeth was untrained in botany.

 

 

To compensate for this, she was aided by Isaac Rand, then curator of the Chelsea Physick Garden, where many of these new plants were under cultivation.

At Rand’s suggestion, she relocated near the Garden so she could draw the plants from life.

 

 

In addition to the drawings, Elizabeth engraved the copper printing plates for the 500 images and text, and hand-coloured the printed illustrations.

 

 

The first printing of A Curious Herbal met with moderate success, both because of the meticulous quality of the illustrations and the great need for an updated herbal.

 

 

Physicians and apothecaries acclaimed the work and it received a commendation from the Royal College of Physicians.

 

 

A second edition was printed 20 years later in a revised and enlarged format in Nuremberg by Dr. Christoph Jacob Trew, a botanist and physician, between 1757 and 1773.

 

Above: Christoph Jacob Trew (1695 – 1769)

 

Revenue from the book led to Alexander’s release from prison.

However, within a short while debts again accumulated, forcing the couple to sell some of the publication rights to the book.

Alexander also became involved in several unsuccessful business ventures, and eventually left the family to start a new life in Sweden.

 

Alexander Blackwell arrived in Sweden in 1742 and carried on with agricultural experiments he had started when in Aberdeen.

These included the breeding of horses and sheep and dairy management.

His achievements were recognised and he was appointed court physician to Frederick I of Sweden.

 

Above: Frederick I (1676 – 1751)

 

Blackwell attempted to strengthen the diplomatic ties between Great Britain, Denmark and Sweden.

As Great Britain had no ambassador in Sweden, he contacted a Minister in Denmark.

On circumstantial evidence he was accused of conspiracy against the Crown Prince.

He was tried and sentenced to be decapitated.

He remained in good spirits to the last – at the block, having laid his head wrong, he remarked that since it was his first beheading, he lacked experience and needed instruction.

On 9 August 1747 he was executed as his wife was leaving London to join him.

 

Little is known of Elizabeth Blackwell’s later years.

She was buried on 27 October 1758 and her grave is at All Saints Church in Chelsea.

 

 

 

Blackwell’s “A Curious Herbal“ has featured on the British Library website as a “classic of botanical illustration.”

 

 

William Hudson (1730 – 1793) was a British botanist and apothecary based in London.

Hudson was apprenticed to a London apothecary.

Hudson obtained the prize for botany given by the Apothecaries’ Company, a copy of John Ray’s Synopsis.

But he also paid attention to mollusca and insects.

 

 

In Thomas Pennant’s British Zoology, Hudson is mentioned as the discoverer of Trochus terrestris.

 

 

(Thomas Pennant (1726 – 1798) was a Welsh naturalist, traveller, writer and antiquarian.

He was born and lived his whole life at his family estate, Downing Hall near Whitford, Flintshire, in Wales.

 

 

As a naturalist he had a great curiosity, observing the geography, geology, plants, animals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish around him and recording what he saw and heard about.

 

 

Pennant wrote acclaimed books including British Zoology, the History of Quadrupeds, Arctic Zoology and Indian Zoology although he never travelled further afield than continental Europe.

He knew and maintained correspondence with many of the scientific figures of his day.

His books influenced the writings of Samuel Johnson.

 

Above: Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784)

 

As an antiquarian, Pennant amassed a considerable collection of art and other works, largely selected for their scientific interest.

Many of these works are now housed at the National Library of Wales.

 

As a traveller he visited Scotland and many other parts of Britain and wrote about them.

Many of his travels took him to places that were little known to the British public and the travelogues he produced, accompanied by painted and engraved colour plates, were much appreciated.

 

 

Each tour started at his home and related in detail the route, the scenery, the habits and activities of the people he met, their customs and superstitions and the wildlife he saw or heard about.

 

 

Pennant travelled on horseback accompanied by his servant, Moses Griffith, who sketched the things they encountered, later to work these up into illustrations for the books.

He was an amiable man with a large circle of friends and was still busily following his interests into his sixties.

He enjoyed good health throughout his life and died at Downing at the age of seventy two.)

 

Above: Thomas Pennant (1726 – 1798)

 

 

From 1757 to 1768. Hudson was resident sub-librarian of the British Museum and his studies in the Sloane herbarium enabled him to adapt the Linnean nomenclature to the plants described by Ray far more accurately than did Sir John Hill in his Flora Britannica of 1760.

 

 

 

In 1761 Hudson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in the following year appeared the first edition of his Flora Anglica, which, according to Pulteney and Sir J. E. Smith, “marks the establishment of Linnean principles of botany in England.”

Hudson, at the time of its publication, was practising as an apothecary in Panton Street, Haymarket, and from 1765 to 1771 acted as ‘praefectus horti’ to the Apothecaries’ Company at Chelsea.

 

 

A considerably enlarged edition of the Flora appeared in 1778, but in 1783 the author’s house in Panton Street took fire, his collections of insects and many of his plants were destroyed, and the inmates narrowly escaped with their lives.

Hudson retired to Jermyn Street.

In 1791 he joined the newly established Linnean Society.

He died in Jermyn Street from paralysis on 23 May 1793, being, according to the Gentleman’s Magazine, in his 60th year.

He bequeathed the remains of his herbarium to the Apothecaries’ Company.

Linnaeus gave the name Hudsonia to a North American genus of Cistaceae.

 

Above: Hudsonia tomentosa (Hudson’s heather / golden heather / poverty grass / beach heath)

 

 

John Fraser (1750 – 1811) was a Scottish botanist who collected plant specimens around the world, from North America and the West Indies to Russia and points between, with his primary career activity from 1780 to 1810.

 

 

Fraser was a commissioned plant collector for Catherine, Czarina of Russia in 1795, Paul I of Russia in 1798 and for the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in 1806.

Fraser issued nursery catalogues in 1790 and 1796, and had an important herbarium that was eventually sold to the Linnean Society.

 

In 1770, five years before the American War of Independence and coincident with Captain James Cook’s discovery of the eastern Australian coast, Fraser arrived in London as a young man to make his way in the city, at first following the trade of a hosier (a draper working with linen).

 

Above: James Cook (1728 – 1779)

 

Fraser soon came to know the Chelsea Physic Garden, and it was through his visits there that he became inspired with a desire to advance horticulture in England.

 

 

He married Frances Shaw on 21 June 1778 and settled down in a small shop in Paradise Bow, Chelsea.

 

Not long content with life in London, Fraser soon began to quit the mercantile counter as often as he could to watch the gardeners at work.

 

 

He befriended William Forsyth who at that time had charge of the Apothecaries’ Garden.

 

 

Through that acquaintance Fraser would have become familiar with his predecessor Mark Catesby’s travels, as some of Catesby’s specimens from his travels were housed at the Chelsea Physic Garden, and Catesby’s writings and engravings on the flora of the Americas were also published by the time Fraser moved to London.

Fraser took up botanical collecting and, two years after the United States of America had named itself, departed England for Newfoundland in 1780 with Admiral Campbell.

 

Above: Campbell’s ship, the HMS Victory

 

Upon returning to England, Fraser sailed again in 1783 to explore the New World with his eldest son John Jr.

Fraser’s early expeditions were financed by William Aiton of Kew Gardens, William Forsyth, and James Edward Smith of the Linnean Society.

In the 1780s Fraser established the American Nursery at Sloane Square, King’s Road, which his sons continued after his death in partnership from 1811 to 1817.

The nursery was on the east side of the Royal Military School and extended over twelve acres.

 

 

As the 18th century came to a close, botanists who hunted plants afar were adventurers and explorers, John Fraser among them, fielding shipwrecks, sieges, slavery, pirates, escaped convicts and hostile natives.

Fraser travelled extensively, from Scotland to England, the Americas, the West Indies, Russia, and points between.

He began by collecting in Newfoundland from 1780 to 1784, and then moved on to the Appalachian Mountains in eastern North America, all without the benefit of railroads or well-established highways.

By the time he completed his journeys, John Fraser had introduced about 220 distinct species of plants from the Americas to Europe and beyond.

 

 

Fraser made his first trip to the American south, and specifically to Charleston, South Carolina in 1784, sending home consignments of plants to Frank Thorburn of Old Brompton.

 

Returning to England in 1785 with the expectation of recompense for his labour and risk, Fraser was astonished to learn that all the valuable plants he had forwarded were dead, and the survivors, which were common, could not be disposed of.

Vexed, Fraser subsequently entered into a lawsuit over the matter, a suit long and very expensive to both parties, but sailed again for South Carolina in the autumn nonetheless.

 

On his return trip that autumn Fraser made his way north through Berkeley County to the Santee River, befriending Thomas Walter along the way.

Fraser continued on to the Piedmont region of the Appalachians, discovering Phlox stolonifera (creeping phlox) in Georgia along the southeastern edge of the southern Blue Ridge, and in 1787 he arrived in Pickens County near Chickamaua Cherokee land during the Cherokee–American wars.

 

 

 

There he collected what became known later as Magnolia fraseri.

Fraser gave his contemporary William Bartram his original specimen of Magnolia fraseri.

The specimen is housed in the Walter Herbarium in the British Museum of Natural History collection.

 

Above: Magnolia fraseri (Fraser’s mountain magnolia)

 

The Hortus Kewensis recorded 16 new plants as having been introduced by Fraser in 1786 and five more in 1787.

 

Fraser trekked the Allegheny Mountains in 1789 when trans-Allegheny travel was limited to indigenous peoples’ trails and one military trail, Braddock Road, built in 1751 and too far north of his journeys to be of help.

He travelled with François André Michaux, and on the summit of the Great Roan was the first European to discover the Rhododendron catawbiense, now cultivated in many varieties.

 

Above: Francois André Michaux (1770 – 1855)

 

Of the rhododendrons Fraser wrote:

“We supplied ourselves with living plants, which were transmitted to England, all of which grew, and were sold for five guineas each.”

 

Above: Rhododendron catawbiense (Catawba or mountain rosebay or rhodendron or purple laurel)

 

In 1795 Fraser made a first visit to Saint Petersburg where he sold a choice collection of plants to the Empress Catherine.

To his delight she requested he set his own price.

 

Above: Catherine the Great (1729 – 1796)

 

While there, he bought Black and White Tartarian cherries in 1796, thereafter introducing them for the first time to England.

 

 

In 1797 Czar Paul I ordered that Fraser be paid 4,000 rubles for his plants that year, and by the next spring, Fraser had received £500 sterling for his efforts.

In 1798 Fraser travelled again to Russia, returning afterward with the commission Botanical Collector to the Emperor Paul, under the signatures of both Paul and Catherine and dated Pavlovskoe (Pavlov Palace) August 1798.

 

Above: Paul I (1754 – 1801)

 

Based on his trust in the Imperial commission and in furtherance of carrying out the duties it imposed upon him, Fraser and his eldest son John started out once more in 1799, bound for America and the West Indies.

They visited with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello and made an extended journey through Kentucky, eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia, returning to Charleston in December 1800.

 

Above: Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)

 

Above: Monticello

 

From there they set out for Cuba, but the sailing was a perilous one since between Havana and the United States they were shipwrecked on a coral reef, about 40 miles (64 km) from land and 80 miles (130 km) from Havana, escaping only with great difficulty.

“For six days they, with sixteen of the crew, endured the greatest privations until picked up by a Spanish boat and conveyed to land.“

The trip was nearly disastrous and the men barely escaped with their lives.

 

 

While collecting specimens in Cuba, “a time when the sea was swarming with pirates“, Fraser met the explorers Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland on their circuitous journey from the Amazon to Cartagena.

 

(Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) was a Prussian polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science.

Humboldt’s quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography.

Humboldt’s advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.

Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a modern scientific point of view.

His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years.

Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular).

Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multivolume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture.

This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.

He was the first person to describe the phenomenon and cause of human-induced climate change, in 1800 and again in 1831, based on observations generated during his travels.)

 

Above: Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859)

 

(Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland (1773 – 1858) was a French explorer and botanist who traveled with Alexander von Humboldt in Latin America from 1799 to 1804.

He co-authored volumes of the scientific results of their expedition.

Having befriended Alexander von Humboldt, Bonpland joined him on a five-year journey through the Canary Islands, Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico and the United States, as well as the Orinoco and Amazon basins.

During this trip, Bonpland collected and classified about 6,000 plants that were mostly unknown in Europe up to that time.

His account of these findings was published as a series of volumes from 1808 to 1816 entitled Equatorial Plants (French: Plantes equinoxiales). )

 

Above: Aimé Bonpland (1773 – 1858)

 

 

Fraser’s son returned to England first, transporting a large botanical collection of Humboldt’s after he had kindly intervened on their behalf during their sojourn to keep them safe.

Fraser returned from Cuba to America and then to England in 1802 with “a goodly collection of rarities”, one of which was his discovery (as a European) of Jatropha pandurifolia.

 

Above: Jatropha integerrima (spicy nettle splurge)

 

In 1807, both father and son again sailed for North America and the West Indies.

On his next trip to London after collecting in Matanzas, Fraser brought home a tropical palm with silvered leaves, Corypha miraguama, and made a manufacturing proposal for hand-weaving of hats and bonnets from its leaves.

 

 

When Fraser made his next visit to the Romanov court in 1805 expecting remuneration, to his great disappointment he discovered that the new Emperor would have nothing to do with him.

Undaunted, he repeated the trip, visiting both Moscow and Saint Petersburg, but in vain.

After the Emperor Paul I’s assassination in March 1801, the new Emperor Alexander I declined to recognise Fraser’s appointment.

 

Above: Alexander I (1777 – 1825)

 

Fraser petitioned his cause for two years, finally resorting to seeking assistance from the British ambassadorial corps, and was ultimately paid 6,000 rubles by royal decree in April 1803.

The Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, an enthusiastic amateur botanist herself, supported his efforts, giving him a diamond ring and commissioning him for specimens for the Imperial Gardens of Gatchina and Pavlovsk Palace.

 

Above: Maria Feodorovna (1847 – 1928)

 

The director of the Imperial Botanic Garden at Saint Petersburg catalogued 18 of Fraser’s North American species in the early years of the 19th century, with some of the specimens surviving as of 1997 in the Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

After the Romanov affair, Fraser faced severe financial difficulty, though again he sailed to America.

While successful in his research there, his nursery at home fell into neglect through his absence and money problems.

 

Fraser made his seventh and last voyage to the United States in 1807.

Near Charleston he fell from his horse and broke several of his ribs, an injury from which he never fully recovered.

His final voyage before returning to England was from America to Cuba in 1810 for a last visit to a country that welcomed him despite the nationalistic differences of the day, and from which he had a richly rewarding collecting history.

 

Above: Abies frasieri (Fraser Fir), named for John Fraser, is native to the southeastern Appalachian Mountains.

 

Although he was known to his contemporaries as “John Fraser, the indefatigable“, owing to his business and travel vexations and possibly also to exhaustion from his injuries after his fall, and his frequent and fatiguing journeys, his life was shortened — though a robust man, he died in April 1811 in London, Sloane Square, at only 60.

Throughout his travels, Fraser sent his collections to his nursery in London for reproduction and general sale to gardeners and architects coming to London to look for plants, to his herbarium (later becoming that of the Linnean Society) for further study, and to his clients, including Catherine the Great, the Emperor Paul I, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, the Chelsea Physic Garden, William Aiton (head gardener of Kew Gardens), Sir James Edward Smith (founder of the Linnean Society) and others.

 

William Roscoe wrote of him:

“John Fraser brought more plants into this Kingdom than any other person.”

 

Fraser was hailed early on by his biographers as “one of the most enterprising, indefatigable, and persevering men that ever embarked in the cause of botany and natural science.”

 

 

John Graefer (or Johann Andreas Graeffer)(1746 – 1802) was a German botanist nurseryman born in Helmstedt.

Graefer is remembered by garden historians as having introduced a number of exotic plants to British gardens and to have worked for the King of Naples at the Palace of Caserta.

Trained by Philip Miller at the Chelsea Physic Garden, London, one of the most prominent botanical gardens of Europe during the 18th century, Graeffer was subsequently gardener to the Earl of Coventry at Croome Court, Worcestershire, which was being landscaped by Capability Brown, and then to James Vere, of Kensington Gore, a founder of the Royal Horticultural Society.

 

 

Graeffer struck out on his own as a partner with Archibald Thompson and the prominent nurseryman James Gordon in Gordon’s long-established Mile End nursery near the New Globe, Stepney, just beyond the East End of London.

After Gordon’s retirement and his death in 1780, the nursery at Mile End was inherited by Gordon’s three sons.

 

In August 1781, it was reported in L’ésprit des Journaux, that MM Grœffer et Bessel had been issued a royal patent (dated 30 December 1780) for their preparation of cooked and preserved vegetables for the Royal Navy and the use of those on sea voyages.

 

 

It was the first recorded patent for preserving vegetables by drying them.

 

For that purpose, it was reported, they had purchased 200 arpents of land near the “nouvelle Globe“, Mile End, for plantings, which appears to be Gordon’s long-established plant nursery.

The patent was issued for preserving “a vegetable of the Brassica kind, generally known by the name of green and brown borecole, scotch or other kale with a salt solution and drying so it will keep for up to a year.“

 

 

Among Graeffer’s introductions to British horticulture by far the most familiar was the variegated form of Aucuba japonica, the loved and loathed “Spotted Laurel” of gardens, which he introduced to British horticulture in 1783, at first as a plant for a heated greenhouse.

It became widely cultivated as the “Gold Plant” by 19th century gardeners.

 

 

According to John Claudius Loudon, Graeffer was also responsible for the introduction of Pyrus bollwylleriana, the Bollwyller pear (later called Shipova), and Pyrus baccata (later called Malus baccata), the Siberian wild crab apple.

 

 

 

Another of his introductions was Sideroxylon melanophloeos (later called Rapanea melanophloeos), the Cape beech from the Cape Province, 1784.

 

 

Not all his introductions took:

 

In 1783 Graeffer introduced Fumaria nobilis (fumewort : smoke of the Earth), a little alpine plant native to the Altai in Siberia, but it was subsequently lost to horticulture and reintroduced.

 

 

He catalogued 80 species of plants suitable for rock gardens in 1789.

 

Graham Stuart Thomas who knew the 1794 edition, found it “certainly the first ‘quick reference’ book on alpines that I have come across:

He gives full particulars of descriptions and cultivation in a tabulated list.

I think he was entitled to claim:

‘The author proposes in his use of his great variety of herbaceous plants a more constant and uniform and gay attraction of gardens than has been hitherto pointed out or adopted’“.

 

Above: Graham Stuart Thomas (1909 – 2003)

 

Graeffer also issued A Descriptive Catalogue of Upwards of Eleven Hundred Species and Varieties of Herbaceous Or Perennial Plants that same year.

 

 

Miller was replaced as Head Gardener in 1771 by William Forsyth, one of the founders of the Royal Horticultural Society, who among other notable achievements at the Garden, created the Pond Rockery, which today stands as the oldest rock garden in Europe.

 

 

William Forsyth (1737 – 1804) was a Scottish botanist.

He was a royal head gardener and a founding member of the Royal Horticultural Society.

A genus of flowering plants, Forsythia, is named in his honour.

 

Forsyth was born at Oldmeldrum in Aberdeenshire, and trained as a gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden as a pupil of Philip Miller, the chief gardener.

He took over the chief gardening position in 1771 and became a mentor to John Fraser.

 

 

In 1784, he was appointed superintendent of the royal gardens at Kensington and St James’s Palace, a position he kept until his death.

 

In 1774 he created one of the first rock gardens while curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden.

His garden consisted of 40 tons of assorted stone collected from the roadside outside of the Tower of London, some flint and chalk from nearby downland, and some pieces of lava collected from Iceland.

The garden failed to produce much serious growth.

 

 

Forsyth created a ‘plaister‘ in 1789 made of lime, dung, ashes, soapsuds, urine and other various components that was claimed to cure defects in trees and heal “where nothing remained but the bark.”

He received a grant of 1,500 pounds from the British Parliament to continue the creation of the plaister, as the nation was at war in 1789 with Napoleon and needed sound timber to build ships, as much of the Royal Forests were in poor condition.

 

 

Alexander Anderson (1748 – 1811) was a Scottish surgeon and botanist.

Anderson studied at the University of Edinburgh.

Fellow Aberdonian William Forsyth briefly employed him at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, prior to Anderson’s emigration to New York in 1774, where he stayed with his brother John, a printer.

He was appointed in 1785 superintendent of the government botanic garden at St. Vincent (an island in the Caribbean), where he showed much activity.

He was a correspondent of Sir Joseph Banks, through whom he contributed to the Royal Society in 1789 an account of a bituminous (asphalt) lake on St. Vincent, which was afterwards published in the Philosophical Transactions for that year.

In 1791 he went into Guiana on a botanising expedition.

The plants he obtained and sent to Banks are now in the herbarium of the British Museum.

 

 

William Curtis (1746 – 1799) was an English botanist and entomologist, who was born at Alton, Hampshire, site of the Curtis Museum.

Curtis began as an apothecary, before turning his attention to botany and other natural history.

The publications he prepared effectively reached a wider audience than early works on the subject had intended.

At the age of 25 he produced Instructions for collecting and preserving insects; particularly moths and butterflies.

 

 

Curtis was demonstrator of plants and Praefectus Horti at the Chelsea Physic Garden from 1771 to 1777.

 

 

He established his own London Botanic Garden at Lambeth in 1779, moving to Brompton in 1789.

He published Flora Londinensis (6 volumes, 1777–1798), a pioneering work in that it devoted itself to urban nature.

 

 

Financial success was not found, but he went on the publish The Botanical Magazine in 1787, a work that would also feature hand coloured plates by artists such as James Sowerby and Sydenham Edwards.

Curtis was to gain wealth from the ventures into publishing, short sales on Londinensis were offset by over 3,000 copies of the magazine.

Curtis said they had each brought ‘pudding or praise‘.

The genus Curtisia is named in his honour.

 

Above: Curtisia (Assegai tree)

 

His publication was continued as the esteemed botanical publication, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine.

The noted natural history illustrators, James Sowerby and Sydenham Edwards both found a start with the eminent magazine.

 

 

He is commemorated in a stained glass window at St. Mary’s Church, Battersea, as many of his samples were collected from the churchyard there.

 

 

 

Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet (1743 – 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences.

 

 

Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador.

Banks took part in Captain James Cook’s first great voyage (1768–1771), visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and after six months in New Zealand and Australia, returning to immediate fame.

 

 

Banks advised King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, and by sending botanists around the world to collect plants, he made Kew the world’s leading botanical gardens.

He is credited for bringing 30,000 plant specimens home with him.

Amongst them, he discovered 1,400.

 

 

Banks advocated British settlement in New South Wales and colonisation of Australia, as well as the establishment of Botany Bay as a place for the reception of convicts, and advised the British government on all Australian matters.

He is credited with introducing the eucalyptus, acacia, and the genus named after him, Banksia, to the Western world.

 

 

Around 80 species of plants bear his name.

 

He was the leading founder of the African Association – dedicated to the exploration of West Africa, with the mission of discovering the origin and course of the Niger River and the location of Timbuktu, the “lost city” of gold – effectively the “beginning of the age of African exploration” – and a member of the Society of Dilettanti – a British society of noblemen and scholars that sponsors the study of ancient Greek and Roman art and the creation of new work in the style –  which helped to establish the Royal Academy.

 

 

Banks worked with Chelsea’s head gardener and curator John Fairbairn from 1780 to 1814.

Fairbairn specialized in growing and cultivating plants from around the world.

 

 

The early 1800s were challenging times for the Garden as the Apothecaries’ attention was focused on preserving their own future as an institution.

By the 1830s they had changed their own access requirements and made the site available to all medical students and lecturers in London, not just their own apprentices.

Overseeing the site during this difficult period between 1815 to 1846 was William Anderson.

He managed the Garden on a greatly reduced budget but ran into conflict with John Lindley who was appointed Praefectus Horti (Demonstrator of Plants) in 1836.

 

 

 

Henry Field (1755 – 1837) was an English apothecary.

 

The eldest son of John Field, an apothecary with an extensive practice on Newgate Street, London, and his wife, Anne, daughter of Thomas Cromwell, grocer and a grandson of Henry Cromwell, lord deputy of Ireland.

Henry succeeded his father in his profession, and in 1807 was elected apothecary to Christ’s Hospital, a post which he continued to fill until within a short time of his death.

 

 

As a member of the Society of Apothecaries, Field promoted its interests.

Field gave with Joseph Hurlock  (1715 – 1793) free courses of lectures on materia medica (history of pharmacy) at their hall to the apprentices and students, which resulted in the regular establishment of lectures by the Society.

 

 

In 1815 his efforts helped obtain the Act of Parliament which enforced an examination into the education and professional attainments of candidates for practising as an apothecary in England and Wales.

 

 

Field also filled for a long period the office of deputy-treasurer, and later of treasurer, of the branch of the affairs of the Society of Apothecaries originally instituted for the supply of the members of their own body with genuine drugs and medicines, but which ultimately extended to the service of the navy, the East India Company, and the general public.

 

 

In 1831 Field was nominated by Sir Henry Halford, 1st Baronet, on the part of the General Board of Health, as one of the medical officers attached to the City of London Board of Health for the adoption of precautions against the threatened outbreak of cholera in the metropolis.

In common with his colleagues Field afterwards received the thanks of the corporation and a piece of plate.

 

Above: Henry Halford (1766 – 1844)

 

Field was also for many years the treasurer of the London Annuity Society for the benefit of the widows of apothecaries, in Chatham Place, Blackfriars, of which institution his father was the founder in 1765.

Field’s portrait, by Henry William Pickersgill, was hung at Apothecaries’ Hall.

Another, by Samuel Lane, was painted for the London Annuity Society.

 

Besides contributing professional remarks to medical journals, Field wrote a history of the Chelsea Physic Garden: Memoirs, historical and illustrative, of the Botanick Garden at Chelsea, belonging to the Society of Apothecaries of London, in 1820.

It was printed at the expense of the Society, to whom the manuscript had been presented.

 

 

Meanwhile, Anderson’s conflict with Lindley continued.

He wanted the Garden to be a collection of medicinal plants.

Lindley won the battle and Anderson was eventually replaced in 1846 by the renowned and prolific plant hunter Robert Fortune.

Although Fortune’s tenure at the Garden was little more than two years he made sweeping changes including the new Order Beds, Glasshouses and the Tank Pond which remain to this day.

 

 

Robert Fortune (1812 – 1880) was a Scottish botanist, plant hunter and traveller, best known for introducing around 250 new ornamental plants, mainly from China, but also Japan, into the gardens of Britain, Australia, and the US.

He also played a role in the development of the tea industry in India in the 19th century.

 

 

After completing his apprenticeship, Fortune was then employed at Moredun House, just to the south of Edinburgh, before moving on to the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.

In 1840, Fortune and his family moved to London to take up a position at the Horticultural Society of London’s garden at Chiswick.

 

Following the Treaty of Nanking, in 1843 Fortune was commissioned by the HS to undertake a three year plant collection expedition to southern China.

His travels resulted in the introduction to Europe, Australia and the US of many new, exotic, beautiful flowers and plants.

 

 

His most famous accomplishment was the successful theft of Chinese tea plants (Camellia sinensis) from China to India in 1848 on behalf of the British East India Company.

 

 

Robert Fortune worked in China for several years in the period from 1843 to 1861.

 

 

Similar to other European travellers of the period, such as Walter Medhurst, Fortune disguised himself as a Chinese merchant during several, but not all, of his journeys beyond the newly established treaty port areas.

 

 

Not only was Fortune’s purchase of tea plants reportedly forbidden by the Chinese government of the time, but his travels were also beyond the allowable day’s journey from the European treaty ports.

 

 

Fortune travelled to some areas of China that had seldom been visited by Europeans, including remote areas of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces.

 

Above: The remote Wuyi Mountains in Fujian Province, one of the important tea regions to which Fortune travelled.

 

Fortune employed many different means to obtain plants and seedlings from local tea growers, reputedly the property of the Chinese empire, although this was some 150 years before international biodiversity laws recognised state ownership of such natural resources.

It is also widely reported that Fortune took skilled workers on contract to India who would facilitate the production of tea in the plantations of the East India Company.

 

 

With the exception of a few plants which survived in established Indian gardens, most of the Chinese tea plants Fortune introduced in the north-western provinces of India perished.

The other reason for the failure in India was that the British preference and fashion was for a strong dark tea brew, which was best made from the local Assam subspecies and not the selection that Fortune had made in China.

 

The technology and knowledge that was brought over from China was, however, instrumental in the later flourishing of the Indian tea industry in Assam and Sri Lanka.

In subsequent journeys Fortune visited Formosa (modern day Taiwan) and Japan, and described the culture of the silkworm and the manufacture of rice.

 

 

Fortune introduced many trees, shrubs and flowers to the West, including the cumquat, a climbing double yellow rose (‘Fortune’s Double Yellow‘ (or Gold of Ophir) which proved a failure in England’s climate) and many varieties of tree peonies, azaleas and chrysanthemums.

 

 

A climbing white rose that he brought back from China in 1850, believed to be a natural cross between Rosa laevigata and Rosa banksiae, was dubbed Rosa fortuniana (or Rosa fortuneana) in his honour.

This rose, too, proved a failure in England, preferring warmer climates.

Today, both of these roses are still widely grown by antique rose fanciers in mild winter regions.

Rosa fortuniana also serves as a valuable rootstock in Australia and the southern regions of the United States.

 

 

The incidents of his travels were related in a succession of books.

He died in London in 1880 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery.

Financial and managerial difficulties have beset the Garden since its inception and the mid to late 1800s were no different.

The Garden became embattled on every front with the creation of the Embankment cutting it off from the River Thames, the threat of a rail line running through it and the Apothecaries struggling to manage it.

Thomas Moore took over from Fortune in 1848 and and was forced to run the Garden on an ever smaller budget.

By 1850 financial difficulties and other challenges led the Apothecaries to attempt to relinquish the Garden to one of the institutions determined by Sloane in his covenant.

They were not successful.

 

 

 

Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791 – 1868) was an English doctor who popularised a case for growing and transporting plants which was called the Wardian case.

 

 

Ward was born in London to Stephen Smith Ward, a medical doctor.

Little is known of his early years and family life, but he is believed to have been sent to Jamaica at the age of 13 where he may have taken an interest in plants.

He practised medicine in a poor area of the East End of London and took an interest in botany and entomology in his spare time or when on vacation in Cobham, Kent.

 

Tytler Whittle in his book, The Plant Hunters, describes the area where he lived:

What is known is that Wellclose Square, that part of dockland where he lived, was a Sherlock Holmes sort of place; not exactly producing lepers, abominable lascars and wicked Chinamen, but giving that impression all the same.

And had Holmes and Watson been acquainted with their contemporary, Dr. Nathaniel Ward, undoubtedly they would have admired his scientific method of observing and deducing.

 

 

Ward qualified as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London in 1814.

 

Ward first noticed the effects of a hermetically sealed glass container in 1829.

He had placed a chrysalis of a sphinx moth in damp soil at the bottom of a bottle and covered it with a lid.

A week later he noticed that a fern and grass seedling had sprouted from the soil.

His interest piqued, he saw that evaporated moisture condensed on the walls of the bottle during the day and ran back down into the soil towards evening, maintaining a constant humidity.

The glass case that he used to rear butterflies and grow plants was used widely during the time for introducing plants into the British colonies.

His first experiments with plants inside glass cases started in 1830.

 

 

In 1833 George Loddiges (1786 – 1846) used Wardian cases for shipping plants from Australia and said that “whereas I used formerly to lose nineteen out of the twenty of the plants I imported during the voyage, nineteen out of the twenty is now the average of those that survive”.

Loddiges was the vice-president of the Horticultural Society and Wardian cases became popular.

 

 

Ward attempted to make a greenhouse at the Clapham garden on the principle of the Wardian case.

 

 

This was however critiqued by fellow botanist John Lindley (1799 – 1865) in the Gardeners’ Chronicle, who wrote that “when it is opened and shut from day to day, it has no more right to the name of Wardian case than a common greenhouse”.

Lindley also wrote saying that Ward had an inordinate vanity and a desire to be “recognised as a second Newton”.

 

 

Dr Ward delivered a lecture on his discovery of a way to preserve plants in 1854 to the Royal Society at the Chelsea Physic Garden.

He also worked on microscopy and helped in the development of the Chelsea Physic Garden as a member of the board.

 

 

In 1877, the number of medical students regularly visiting the Garden leapt from a few hundred in previous years to 3,500.

The sudden rise in numbers was largely due to the Apothecaries allowing women to study medicine for the first time in their history.

 

 

Lilian Clarke (1866–1934) was a botany teacher at James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich, South London from 1896 to 1926, where she developed botanical gardens, which became known as ‘The Botany Gardens‘.

 

 

At the age of 19 she was awarded the Society of Apothecaries gold medal for her botanical studies undertaken at Chelsea Physic Garden and completed her BSc. Degree in 1893, after studying botany under Professor F.W. Oliver at University College London.

 

 

Clarke become a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, elected in one of the first groups of women Fellows during the period 1904–1905, following the announcement to admit women and she was also active in the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

 

 

In 1917 the degree of Doctor of Science, for a thesis on the botanical education she had developed at James Allen’s Girls’ School, was conferred on Clarke by the University of London.

The Botany Gardens were an outdoor laboratory, the first such at a school in the UK, where subjects such as plant growth and pollination could be observed.

 

Clarke encouraged her pupils to make their own books rather than use textbooks.

 

When the ecology of plants took precedence over knowledge of ‘the natural orders‘ in examinations, Clarke, supported by the eminent British ecologist Arthur George Tansley, created a new series of beds in her garden to replicate examples of British habitats, such as salt marsh and pebble beach.

 

(Sir Arthur George Tansley (1871 – 1955) was an English botanist and a pioneer in the science of ecology.

He was a pioneer of the science of ecology in Britain, being heavily influenced by the work of Danish botanist Eugenius Warming, and introduced the concept of the ecosystem into biology.

Tansley was a founding member of the first professional society of ecologists, the Central Committee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation, which later organised the British Ecological Society, and served as its first president and founding editor of the Journal of Ecology.

Tansley also served as the first chairman of the British Nature Conservancy.)

 

Above: Arthur Tansley

 

The support of William Hales, curator of Chelsea Physic Garden from 1899-1937 to Clarke is recorded in her publication, The Botany Gardens Of The James Allen’s Girls’ School, Dulwich: Their History And Organisation, published by the London Board of Education.

Clarke describes the plants at the edge of the pond:

Forget-Me-Knots, Brooklime, Musk, Water-Mint, Yellow Iris, Water Plantain, Arrowhead, etc.

A little farther in are partially submerged plants such as Water Lilies, Floating Pondweed, and totally submerged plants such as Elodea.

Some of the pond plants were given by Mr. Hales, Curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden, to whom many thanks are due for valuable help in designing the pond and in other matters.

— Clarke

Clarke goes on to say that:

‘The pond has proved a great success and of the utmost value in our lessons.”

 

 

Significantly, for contemporary botanical educators, Clarke also stated, in a book published posthumously, that the gardens ‘have become, in many cases, out-of-door laboratories, and the work indoors and out of doors is one.’

Clarke communicated with representatives of the professional botanical community and worked hard to be visible in the wider scientific milieu of her time.

 

 

By 1895 the Apothecaries had decided that they no loger needed the Garden as the study of plants had been dropped from the medical syllabus.

The Garden’s future was again in peril but in 1899 a solution was found in the form of the City Parochial Foundation.

The charity took over running the Garden with a new remit to support students studying botany in London.

William Hales oversaw the Garden at this time and reorganized the Order Beds, installed the Glasshouses (which remains today) and made other improvements, financed by selling off a strip of land to the north of the site.

 

 

The Garden’s role shifted again in the 1820s as it took on important agricultural research work, including developing winter wheat yield and disease resistance in potatoes.

This continued until the 1970s when the Agricultural Research Council relocated their trials and laboratories.

The Garden was still sending plant specimens to universities and colleges, but these institutions steadily began growing their own.

 

 

By the late 1970s the City Parochial Foundation was considering withdrawing from the Garden, so a symposium on its future was held.

None of the institutions noted by Sloane were able to take over the Garden leading to a fresh crisis.

Employees, friends and associates of the Garden rallied, raising significant reserve funds and creating the registered charity, Chelsea Physic Garden Company, in 1984.

Visitor numbers increased rapidly from this point as the “secret garden” was finally available to the wider public.

 

 

The last three decades have seen the Garden develop its role as a conservator and demonstrator of medicinal, useful and economically important plants.

Today, the collection totals some 5,000 plants including endangered and unusual species rarely seen elsewhere.

Notable among the plants that benefit from the Garden’s unique microclimate are the UK’s largest outdoor fruiting olive and grapefruit trees, and a five meter tall pomegranate.

 

 

The Garden still provides services to a number of research institutions and runs its own horticultural trainee programme and courses along with welcoming some 3,000 school children and 50,000 visitors a year.

Five gardeners and two trainees tend the site year-round, assisted by loyal volunteers who work as guides, gardeners, event organizers, seed processors, education assistants and growers.

 

 

Seasonal events such as the Christmas Fair and Snowdrop Openings, along with numerous other activities in the Garden, are also supported by our volunteer teams.

 

 

Regular visits reveal the sites’ ever-changing flora, temporary exhibitions, seasonal show gardens and extraordinary plants that only bloom for a matter of days before disappearing below ground until the following year.

The role fulfilled by this small riverside botanic garden may have evolved over the centuries but today,as in the past, education is always at its heart.

 

 

The Garden is divided into 12 sections:

• the Garden of Medicinal Plants
  • the Garden of World Medicine (with medicinal plants arranged by the culture which uses them)
  • the Pharmaceutical Garden (with plants arranged according to the ailment they are used to treat)
• the Pond Rockery
• the Dicotyledon Order Beds
• the Atlantic Island Collection
• the Garden of Edible Plants
• the British Natives
• the Garden of Useful Plants
• the South American Plants section
• the World Woodland Garden
• the Monocotyledon Order Beds
• the History Beds
• Glasshouses

 

 

In the Garden of Medicinal Plants, where the Garden began and its raison d’être, for when the Chelsea Physic Garden was established in 1673 its role was to provide a living medicine chest in which young apothecaries could learn to identify key medicinal plants.

Throughout the centuries that role has evolved but to this day medicinal students still visit the Garden, now to learn about the history of plant-based medicine.

In this section the visitor can see over 400 medicinal plants of the past, present and future on display, with three beds dedicated to modern herbal remedies as well as an area of plants which the Apothecaries would have grown in the 17th and 18th centuries.

 

 

Here one learns how Ricinus communis (the castor oil plant) is widely distributed as a source of castor oil and the toxin ricin.

 

 

The name Ricinus is a Latin word for tick.

The seed is so named because it has markings and a bump at the end that resemble certain ticks.

The common name “castor oil” comes from its use as a replacement for castoreum, a perfume base made from the dried perineal glands of the beaver (castor in Latin).

It has another common name, palm of Christ, or Palma Christi, that derives from castor oil’s reputed ability to heal wounds and cure ailments.

 

 

Its seed is the castor bean, which, despite its name, is not a true bean.

 

 

Castor is indigenous to the southeastern Mediterranean Basin, Eastern Africa, and India, but is widespread throughout tropical regions (and widely grown elsewhere as an ornamental plant).

 

 

Castor seed is the source of castor oil, which has a wide variety of uses.

The seeds contain between 40% and 60% oil that is rich in triglycerides, mainly ricinolein.

The seed also contains ricin, a water-soluble toxin, which is also present in lower concentrations throughout the plant.

 

 

Castor oil has many uses in medicine and other applications.

 

 

It can protect the liver from damage from certain poisons and there are antihistamine and anti-inflammatory properties to be found in ethanolic extracts of the Ricinus communis root bark.

 

Extracts of Ricinus communis can kill ticks and mosquitoes.

 

Members of the Bodo tribe of Bodoland in Assam, India, use the leaves of this plant to feed and rear the larvae of muga and endi silkworms.

 

 

Ricinus communis is the host plant of the common castor butterfly (Ariadne merione), the eri silkmoth (Samia cynthia ricini), and the castor semi-looper moth (Achaea janata).

It is also used as a food plant by the larvae of some other species.

 

 

Castor oil is an effective motor lubricant and has been used in internal combustion engines, including those of World War I airplanes, some racing cars and some model airplanes.

It has historically been popular for lubricating two-stroke engines due to high resistance to heat compared to petroleum-based oils.

It does not mix well with petroleum products, particularly at low temperatures, but mixes better with the methanol-based fuels used in glow model engines.

In total-loss-lubrication applications, it tends to leave carbon deposits and varnish within the engine.

It has been largely replaced by synthetic oils that are more stable and less toxic.

 

 

Jewelry is often made of castor beans, particularly necklaces and bracelets.

 

 

The toxicity of raw castor beans is due to the presence of ricin.

Although the lethal dose in adults is considered to be four to eight seeds, reports of actual poisoning are relatively rare.

 

According to the Guinness World Records, this is the world’s most poisonous common plant.

 

 

Symptoms of overdosing on ricin, which can include nausea, diarrhea, tachycardia, hypotension and seizures, persist for up to a week.

 

 

However, the poison can be extracted from castor by concentrating it with a fairly complicated process similar to that used for extracting cyanide from almonds.

 

If ricin is ingested, symptoms commonly begin within 2–4 hours, but may be delayed by up to 36 hours.

These include a burning sensation in the mouth and throat, abdominal pain, purging and bloody diarrhea.

Within several days there is severe dehydration, a drop in blood pressure and a decrease in urine.

Unless treated, death can be expected to occur within 3–5 days.

 

 

However, in most cases a full recovery can be made.

 

Poisoning occurs when animals, including humans, ingest broken castor beans or break the seed by chewing:

Intact seeds may pass through the digestive tract without releasing the toxin.

The toxin provides the castor oil plant with some degree of natural protection from insect pests such as aphids.

 

 

Ricin has been investigated for its potential use as an insecticide.

The castor oil plant is also the source for undecylenic acid, a natural fungicide.

 

Commercially available cold-pressed castor oil is not toxic to humans in normal doses, either internal or externally.

 

 

Ricin, a lectin (a carbohydrate-binding protein) produced in the seeds of the castor oil plant, Ricinus communis, is a highly potent toxin.

 

A dose of purified ricin powder the size of a few grains of table salt can kill an adult human.

 

 

Ricinus is extremely allergenic and has an OPALS (Ogren Plant Allergy Scale – an allergy rating system for plants that measures the potential of a plant to cause allergic reactions in humans) rating of 10 out of 10.

 

 

The plant is also a very strong trigger for asthma and allergies to Ricinus are commonplace and severe.

The castor oil plant produces abundant amounts of very light pollen, which easily become airborne and can be inhaled into the lungs, triggering allergic reactions.

The sap of the plant causes skin rashes.

Individuals who are allergic to the plant can also develop rashes from merely touching the leaves, flowers, or seeds.

 

 

Ricin has been involved in a number of incidents.

 

In 1978, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by Bulgarian secret police who surreptitiously shot him on a London street with a modified umbrella using compressed gas to fire a tiny pellet contaminated with ricin into his leg.

He died in a hospital a few days later and his body was passed to a special poison branch of the British Ministry of Defence that discovered the pellet during an autopsy.

The prime suspects were the Bulgarian secret police:

Georgi Markov had defected from Bulgaria some years previously and had subsequently written books and made radio broadcasts that were highly critical of the Bulgarian communist regime.

However, it was believed at the time that Bulgaria would not have been able to produce the pellet, and it was also believed that the KGB had supplied it.

The KGB denied any involvement, although high-profile KGB defectors Oleg Kalugin and Oleg Gordievsky have since confirmed the KGB’s involvement.

 

 

Earlier, Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008) also suffered (but survived) ricin-like symptoms after an encounter in 1971 with KGB agents.

 

 

Ten days before the attack on Georgi Markov another Bulgarian defector, Vladimir Kostov, survived a similar attack.

Kostov was standing on an escalator of the Paris Metro when he felt a sting in his lower back above the belt of his trousers.

He developed a fever, but recovered.

After Markov’s death the wound on Kostov’s back was examined and a ricin-laced pellet identical to the one used against Markov was removed.

 

 

Several terrorists and terrorist groups have experimented with ricin and caused several incidents of the poisons being mailed to US politicians.

For example, on 29 May 2013, two anonymous letters sent to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg contained traces of it.

 

 

Another was sent to the offices of Mayors Against Illegal Guns in Washington DC.

 

 

A letter containing ricin was also alleged to have been sent to American President Barack Obama at the same time.

Actress Shannon Richardson was later charged with the crime, to which she pleaded guilty that December.

On 16 July 2014, Richardson was sentenced to 18 years in prison plus a restitution fine of $367,000.

 

 

 

On 2 October 2018, two letters suspected of containing ricin were sent to The Pentagon:

• one addressed to Secretary of Defense James Mattis
• the other to Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson.

 

 

A letter was received on 23 July 2019 at Pelican Bay State Prison in California which claimed to contain a suspicious substance.

Authorities later confirmed it contained ricin.

No detrimental exposures were identified.

 

 

In 2020, some media in the Czech Republic reported (based on intelligence information) that a person carrying a Russian diplomatic passport and ricin had arrived in Prague with an intention to assassinate three politicians, however Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, called it fake.

The targets should have been:

• Zdeněk Hřib, the mayor of Prague (capital of the Czech Republic), who was involved in renaming the Prague’s square “Pod Kaštany”, where the Russian Embassy is situated, to the Square of Boris Nemtsov, an opposition politician assassinated in the Kremlin in 2015.
• Ondřej Kolář, the mayor of the Prague 6 municipality, who was involved in removing the controversial statue to the Soviet-era Marshal Konev.
•  Pavel Novotný, the mayor of Prague’s southwestern Řeporyje district.

All three politicians received police protection.

 

 

Ricin has been used as a plot device, such as in the television series Breaking Bad.

The popularity of Breaking Bad inspired several real-life criminal cases involving ricin or similar substances.

 

 

Kuntal Patel from London attempted to poison her mother with abrin (a toxin similar to ricin, but found in rosary peas) after the latter interfered with her marriage plans.

 

 

Daniel Milzman, a 19-year-old former Georgetown University student, was charged with manufacturing ricin in his dorm room, as well as the intent of “using the ricin on another undergraduate student with whom he had a relationship“.

 

 

Mohammed Ali from Liverpool, England was convicted after attempting to purchase 500 mg of ricin over the dark web from an undercover FBI agent.

He was sentenced on 18 September 2015 to eight years imprisonment.

 

 

Nonetheless, global castor seed production is around two million tons per year.

Leading producing areas are India (with over three-quarters of the global yield), China and Mozambique, and it is widely grown as a crop in Ethiopia.

 

 

Consider the Melaenca alternifolia, commonly known as tea tree, a species of tree or tall shrub in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae.

 

 

Endemic to Australia, it occurs in southeast Queensland and the north coast and adjacent ranges of New South Wales where it grows along streams and on swampy flats, and is often the dominant species where it occurs.

Tea tree has been used as an alternative medicinal treatment for almost a century in Australia.

Indigenous Australians of eastern inland areas use “tea trees” as a traditional medicine by inhaling the oils from the crushed leaves to treat coughs and colds.

They also sprinkle leaves on wounds, after which a poultice is applied.

In addition, tea tree leaves are soaked to make an infusion to treat sore throats or skin ailments.

 

 

Characteristic of the myrtle family Myrtaceae, it is used to distill essential oil.

It is the primary species for commercial production of tea tree oil (melaleuca oil), a topical antibacterial.

Tea tree oil is commonly used as a topical antiseptic agent because of its antimicrobial properties, especially in the treatment of acne.

It is also known to reduce inflammation and may be effective in the treatment of fungal infections such as Athlete’s foot.

Tea tree oil should not be ingested in large amounts due to its toxicity and may cause skin irritation if used topically in high concentrations.

No deaths have been reported in medical literature.

 

 

Let us look at the Digitalis purpurea (foxglove).

Digitalis purpurea (foxglove, common foxglove, purple foxglove or lady’s glove) is a species of flowering plant in the plantain family Plantaginaceae, native to and widespread throughout most of temperate Europe.

It is also naturalised in parts of North America and some other temperate regions.

The plants are well known as the original source of the heart medicine digoxin (also called digitalis or digitalin).

Due to the presence of the cardiac glycoside digitoxin, the leaves, flowers and seeds of this plant are all poisonous to humans and some animals and can be fatal if ingested.

Extracted from the leaves, this same compound, whose clinical use was pioneered by William Withering, is used as a medication for heart failure.

 

 

Again, a plant that can cure or kill.

 

Wander around and find yourself capitivated by facts fun and fantastic.

• how the Garden’s specimen of Olea europea (olive tree) is the largest olive tree grown outdoors in Britain, though native to the Mediterranean
  • We eat the fruit of the olive tree and the wood is much-prized and durable, with a strong smell similar to bay rum, and is used for fine furniture and turnery (woodcrafting).

 

 

• the Ammi visnaga, a member of the carrot family, is a source of powerful muscle relaxants
  • Known by many common names, including toothpick plant, toothpick weed, bisnaga, khella, or sometimes Bishop’s weed, it is native to Europe, Asia, and North Africa, but it can be found throughout the world as an introduced species.
  • In Egypt, a tea made from the fruit of this species has been used as an herbal remedy for kidney stones.
  • Preparations of Ammi visnaga fruits have also been used for angina pectoris therapy – (Angina is chest pain or pressure due to not enough blood flow to the heart muscle.)

 

 

• how extracts from the Catharanthus roseus (Madagascar periwinkle) are used to treat leukaemia
  • Catharanthus roseus, commonly known as bright eyes, Cape periwinkle, graveyard plant, Madagascar periwinkle, old maid, pink periwinkle, rose periwinkle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Apocynaceae.
  • It is native and endemic to Madagascar, but grown elsewhere as an ornamental and medicinal plant, a source of the drugs vincristine and vinblastine, used to treat cancer.
  • In the wild, C. roseus is an endangered plant – the main cause of decline is habitat destruction by slash and burn agriculture.
  • It is also, however, widely cultivated and is naturalised in subtropical and tropical areas of the world like Australia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
  • It is so well adapted to growth in Australia, that it is listed as a noxious weed in Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory and also in parts of eastern Queensland.
  • The species has long been cultivated for herbal medicine.
  • In Ayurveda (Indian traditional medicine) the extracts of its roots and shoots, though poisonous, are used against several diseases.
  • In traditional Chinese medicine, extracts from it have been used against numerous diseases, including diabetes, malaria and Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

 

 

• Euphorbia peplus (petty spurge, radium weed, cancer weed, or milkweed) is a species of Euphorbia, native to most of Europe, northern Africa and western Asia, where it typically grows in cultivated arable land, gardens, and other disturbed land.
  • Outside of its native range it is very widely naturalised and often invasive, including in Australia, New Zealand, North America, and other countries in temperate and subtropical regions.
  • The plant’s sap is toxic to rapidly replicating human tissue and has long been used as a traditional remedy for common skin lesions (rashes).
  • A pharmaceutical-grade gel from this plant has approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for treatment of actinic keratosis (commonly called old age sores).
  • In Germany, recent studies have linked Euphorbia peplus with the virtual elimination of Bowen disease (a type of skin cancer).

 

 

So much to learn, so much to discover, so much we never think about.

 

Modern medicine’s foundations are built upon the recommendations of healers and shamans, witch doctors and herbalists worldwide over the last 5,000 years.

We in the West think Western medicine is the end-all and be-all of our health care, but many of the first healing systems that were born in China and India continue to this day with traditional herbal medicine the only health care option for 80% of the world’s population.

 

 

In India, Ocimum tenuiflorum (holy basil) is used to treat sore throats, coughs and colds, while Elettaria cardamomum (cardamom) is administered for stomach issues.

 

 

In the Orient, Coptis chinensis (Chinese goldthread) is used against diseases of the digestive tract.

 

 

In Africa, Agapanthus africanus (African lily) is used to aid speedy childbirth.

 

 

The Pond Rockery, the oldest rockery in Europe, built in 1773, has numerous rare, endangered and unusual species from southern Europe and North Africa, and features stone from the Tower of London and basalt from Iceland.

 

 

Here are saffron crocuses, calico Minoans, tubular Spanish foxglove, cliff dwelling purple gromwells, delicate spurge, White peonies, blue Cretan campanola, Egyptian shrubs, Moroccan pale blue squalls…..

 

And what is that?

What is that called?

And, oh, how exotic flora becomes!

 

Nightshade, sweet peas, weeping mulberry…..

 

 

Who could have imagined…..

• a flower that produces a red dye that was used to colour soldiers’ tunics scarlet?
• a thorny tree that was the source of Christ’s crucifixion crown?
• a twining vine that has silently twisted its way across Europe, Asia and Africa?
• a plant so rare it began at this Garden?
• tree poppies, red monocarp, pink candelabra, fine white haired sage?

 

 

And consider what we consume…..

• pickled capers, screw pine rice, dye pancakes, mustard, American ground nuts, Japanese ginger, South American tubers, muscat of Alexandria, rice, rice, baby…..

 

 

To be in Britain one must consider as well what is endemic to Britain:

• the woodlander, viper’s bugloss, corncockle, field poppy, ox dye daisy, yellow waterlily, bog bean, sea kale and home to diverse wildlife such as toads, frogs, newts and dragonflies

 

 

That wicked weed, that slovenly shrub, that brilliant bush, that typical tree, that finicky flower…..

 

So much we see without seeing the possibilities inherant within them.

• marigolds that can treat wounds and swelling and calm fevers
• vervain that can combat jaundice and gout and stimulate lactation in new mothers
• St. John’s wort, a strong anti-inflammatory that conquers back pain
• China rose to treat menstrual disorder
• Saffron used as a sedative or to induce sweating
• Cloves used as an antiseptic and anaesthetic in dentistry
• Hops useful for anxiety, insomnia and stomach pain
• Opium as cough medicine
• Ginger to keep you from coughing, farting or losing your breath
• Garlic against leprosy and smallpox
• Wild celery to help you pee and treat rheumatism and Arthritis
• Mint to ease digestion
• Rosemary to aid memory or to banish bad dreams
• Aloe vera to soothe rashes and itches
• And so on, and so on, and so on…..

 

 

Rarely do most of us consider that plants have been used throughout history to make music, art, perfume, buildings and consumables, along with species used to detoxicate the land, oxidate the air and celebrate different faiths.

• plants that produce dyes, cotton cellulose used in cinema and photography until the 1980s, and roses for perfume…..
• plants that produce fabric and rope and building material and edible oils and paper…..
• plants that can clear radioactivity from the soil
• plants commonly used in research
• plants used in cosmetics
• plants that produce edible fruit and seeds and leaves

 

 

So much diversity in infinite combinations…..

So many forms and features and functions…..

 

Since humans first walked on Earth, we have relied on the wealth of our woods to provide furniture, food, shelter, medicine, fire and tools.

 

 

Consider a visit to the glasshouses where one can see:

• a tree found only on the remote island of St. Helena
• the pride of Madiera that is highly attractive to bees and butterflies
• chocolate – the food of the gods
• coffee – the spark of life
• red roots that remove bronchitis
• Paraguayan perennials that are calorie free sweeteners used in a number of carbonated drinks
• a cactus look-a-like that produces a sticky white latex
• fern fronds that can be used as trail markers in the dark
• edibles once deemed exotic (papaya, guava, pepper, banana)
• staple crops like rice and cassava (this last is the world’s 5th most grown starchy food)
• orchids that produce vanilla
• the Kapok tree used for stuffing pillows…..

 

 

 

And thanks to the Garden, many plants that are under threat in the wild due to relentless urbanization, agriculture, tourism and wildfires are here preserved both as exhibited plants as well as a gene bank of their seeds to ensure future survival.

 

 

The challenges faced by the world’s ever-expanding population make the Garden’s purpose stronger than ever as it strives to promote the conservation of plants and demonstrate the utter dependence we have upon them.

 

 

Sometimes we need a reminder of the fragility, the complexity, the wonder and the splendour of life to truly appreciate what we have.

And given a choice between a perambulation (a walk or a stroll) in a paradise and a visit from a virus, I think most of us prefer the former.

Perhaps it is the latter that forces ackowledgement and appreciation of the terrible beauty all around us…..

 

 

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / The Rough Guide to London / Rachel Howard and Bill Nash, Secret London: An Unusual Guide / Kathy Willis, Botanicum / Chelsea Physic Garden Guide

 

Canada Slim and the Elastic Novice

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Tuesday 17 September 2019

Damn that man!

One man’s writings has had and continue to have a major effect on my life and this has been reflected in my travels and I have already spoken of the man previously in this blog.

 

Above: Charles Dickens, New York, 1867

 

(Please see Canada Slim and the Dickensian Moment – first published as “Goodbye, Charles” on 9 June 2015.)

 

(As one of the shortest and woefully inadequate posts I have ever written, expect to see an updated version of “Goodbye, Charles” as soon as possible and the addition of another post that continues the chronicle of my first travels in Europe last described in Canada Slim and the Promised Land – first published as “That which survives 3: The promised land“.)

 

It was he who made me decide to first enter Britain via Broadstairs.

 

Above: Dickens House Museum, Broadstairs

 

It was he who compelled me to convince my good friends Samantha and Iain to visit his birthplace in Portsmouth.

 

Above: Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum, Portsmouth

 

It was he who inspired me to first find the courage to write.

 

It was he whose footsteps I was determined to trace during my visit to London in the last week of October 2017.

 

 

My wife had purchased for us two London Passes, offering free entry to over 60 attractions, as well as free public transport on buses, on the Tube, and on trains.

She strongly suggested I use mine as much as possible during the time when she was attending her medical conference.

 

 

26 October was the first day that I would have a chance to view London on my own.

I had, following the Passbook alphabetically, already visited the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Manhir that morning, so my next goal was the Charles Dickens Museum in the Bloomsbury district.

 

Above: BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir

 

(For previous posts on London, please see….

Canada Slim….

• and the Paddington Arrival
• and the Street Walked Too Often
• Underground
• and the Outcast
• and the Wonders on the Wall
• and the Calculated Cathedral
• and the Right Man
• and the Queen’s Horsemen
• and the Royal Peculiar
• and the Lamp Ladies
• and the Uncertainty Principle
• and the Museum of Many
• and the Breviary of Bartholew
• and the Body Snatchers
• and the Freudian Slippers
• and the Mandir of Nose Hill )

 

 

London, England, 26 October 2017

Few cities are as closely associated with one writer as London is with Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870).

The recurrent motifs in his novels have become the clichés of Victorian London (though Dickens was active and successful before Queen Victoria came to the throne) – the fog, the slums and alleys, the prisons and workhouses and the stinking river.

Drawing on his own personal experience, Dickens was able to describe  the workings of the law and the conditions of the poor with an unrivalled accuracy.

 

Above: Charles Dickens, 1850

 

Born in Portsmouth (Please see Canada Slim and the Dickensian Moment.), Dickens was the second of eight children.

His father, John Dickens, was a clerk who worked for the Navy and had set up home in Portsmouth with his wife Elizabeth.

 

Above: Old Portsmouth

 

In 1817 John was posted to the dockyard in Chatham.

John and his family took a full part in the life of the community.

They were friendly with neighbours and with the family of a local landlord.

 

Charles and his sister Fanny were frequently set up by their father atop a table in the Mitre Inn to entertain the tavern with songs and ballads of the day.

It was in Chatham that Charles began his education.

 

Above: Chatham Dockyard

 

His widowed aunt Mary Allen married for a second time while the Dickens family were in Chatham.

Above: 2 Ordnance Terrace, Chatham (Dickens’ home: 1817 – 1821)

 

This was to a widowed doctor, Matthew Lambert, who had a son Matthew, a little older than Charles and became a great influence upon this early part of Charles’ life, for it was Matthew who introduced Charles to the wonders of the theatre.

This was the beginning of a lifelong passion.

“I tried to recollect whether I had ever been in any theatre in my life from which I had not brought away some pleasant association, however poor the theatre, and I protest, I could not remember even one.”

In fact, Charles always had a great relish for bad theatre.

 

“Allow me to introduce myself—first negatively.

No landlord is my friend and brother.

No chambermaid loves me.

No waiter worships me.

No boots admires and envies me. 

No round of beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me.

No pigeon pie is especially made for me.

No hotel advertisement is personally addressed to me.

No hotel room tapestried with great coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me.

No house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry. 

When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill.

When I come home from my journeys, I never get any commission. 

I know nothing about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn’t want. 

As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers. 

As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.

And yet—proceeding now, to introduce myself positively—I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road. 

Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. 

Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent Garden, London—now about the city streets: now, about the country by-roads—seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others.

These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller.”

 

 

In The Uncommercial Traveller, he revisited Rochester where he enjoyed the somewhat shaky productions he saw there.

He does not spare the company:

“Many wondrous secrets of Nature had I come to the knowledge of in that sanctuary:

Of which not the least terrific were, that the witches in Macbeth bore an awful resemblance to the Thanes and other proper inhabitants of Scotland, and that the good King Duncan could not rest in his grave, but was constantly coming out of it and calling himself somebody else.”

 

Above: High Street, Rochester

 

John Dickens’ job entitled him and his family to regard themselves as middle class, but the middle classes had little money behind them if things went wrong or if they couldn’t support their large families in seizing the opportunities they had anticipated.

Prosperity could unravel very quickly.

By the time John was recalled to London in 1822, the debts were considerable and his new post meant a drop in salary.

 

Above: John Dickens (1785 – 1851)

 

Such was the family situation in 1823 that the young Charles, age 11, had to go out to work, finding employment in a boot-blacking factory, Warren’s Blacking Warehouse, on the north bank of the Thames, near the site of the modern Charing Cross Station.

Charles and his colleagues had to cover pots of boot polish (blacking) and paste on to them paper labels.

He was paid six shillings a week.

Great numbers of children in early 19th century England would have done similar work – and many, much, much worse.

 

 

“It was a crazy, tumbledown old house, abutting, of course, on the river, and literally overrun with rats.

Its wainscotted rooms and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and the decay of the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again.

The counting house was on the first floor, looking over the coal barges and the river.

There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work.”

 

 

This episode affected Charles profoundly.

He thought his parents had given up on him.

“It is amazing to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age.

It is amazing to me, that, even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough for me … to suggest that something might have been spared, as certainly it might have been, to place me at any common school ….

No one made any sign.

My father and mother were quite satisfied.

They could hardly have been more so, if I had been 20 years of age, distinguished at a Grammar School and going to Cambridge.”

 

Above: Cambridge University coat-of-arms

 

On 20 February 1824 John Dickens was arrested and imprisoned in Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison.

 

Above: Marshalsea Prison Gate

 

Charles was deeply ashamed of his family’s circumstances and hurt further when his mother forced him to keep his blacking job even after his father’s release.

 

Above: Elizabeth Dickens (1789 – 1863)

 

This influenced Dickens’s view that a father should rule the family, and a mother find her proper sphere inside the home:

“I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back.”

His mother’s requesting his return was a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards women.

 

Righteous indignation stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, and it was this unhappy period in his youth to which he alluded in his favourite, and most autobiographical, novel, David Copperfield:

“I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to Heaven!“

 

 

In the end, a number of circumstances brought an opportunity for change.

John inherited some money, began receiving a pension from the Navy and started working as a journalist, thus enabling the family to dispense with the few shillings Charles was adding to the family income.

 

 

Dickens got to school eventually.

He spent two years at Wellington House, which he remembered with little affection.

He did not consider it to be a good school:

“Much of the haphazard, desultory teaching, poor discipline punctuated by the headmaster’s sadistic brutality, the seedy ushers and general run-down atmosphere, are embodied in Mr Creakle’s Establishment in David Copperfield.”

 

 

When he left, at age 15, he was ready for work.

An acquaintance of the family found Charles work as a lawyer’s clerk with the firm of Ellis and Blackmore, which lasted 18 months.

Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court, Gray’s Inn, as a junior clerk from May 1827 to November 1828.

 

Above: Gray’s Inn Square, London

 

Charles was a gifted mimic and impersonated those around him: clients, lawyers, and clerks.

He went to theatres obsessively—he claimed that for at least three years he went to the theatre every single day.

His favourite actor was Charles Mathews and Dickens learnt his monopolylogues (farces in which Mathews played every character) by heart.

 

Above: Charles Matthews (1776 – 1835)

 

Then, having learned Gurney’s system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter.

 

Above: Example of Thomas Gurney (1705 – 1770) shorthand

 

A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors’ Commons and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years.

 

Above: Doctors’ Commons in the early 19th century

 

This education was to inform works such as Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, and especially Bleak House—whose vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system did much to enlighten the general public and served as a vehicle for dissemination of Dickens’s own views regarding, particularly, the heavy burden on the poor who were forced by circumstances to “go to law“.

 

 

Charles had family in journalism.

His father wrote occasional pieces, but Charles also had a maternal uncle, John Henry Barrow, who in 1828 launched The Mirror of Parliament.

It was not long before Charles was part of Barrow’s parliamentary reporting team and was soon striking out writing for other publications, including the radical newspaper The True Sun.

 

 

Sometime before 1830, Dickens fell in love with a young woman called Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a banker.

The relationship between them flashed on and off for around four years, despite hostility from her parents, interference from friends and Maria’s own capricious nature.

The letters that survive show how thoroughly Dickens was absorbed in pursuing her.

Maria’s parents disapproved of the courtship and ended the relationship by sending her to school in Paris.

When the end finally came, he wrote to her, claiming:

“I have never loved and I can never love any human creature breathing but yourself.”

 

Above: Maria Beadnell (1810 – 1886)

 

She is thought to be the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield.

 

Above: David Copperfield and Dora Spenlow

 

Many years later, Dickens got a letter from Maria out of the blue and a short correspondence between them began in which he proclaimed the intensity of his original feelings for her.

The tone of these letters soon changed after he arranged to see her and she turned out to be “toothless, fat, old and ugly” (her words).

 

Above: Miriam Margoyles as Maria Beadnell Winter

 

The Maria romance is interesting because of the marked contrast it makes with Dickens’ engagement and marriage.

Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of his boss at the Evening Chronicle, could hardly have been a more different young woman.

At least Dickens looked at her in a completely different way.

His letters to her are affectionate but occasionally overbearing, as if he was asserting himself to ensure that no more nonsense got in the way of his own ambition.

He was particularly careful to outline the primacy of his work and its demands.

His commitments at this time were extremely heavy.

Catherine and Charles married on 2 April 1836 and went for a week’s honeymoon to Chalk in Kent (during which, true to form, Dickens was busy with The Pickwick Papers).

 

Above: Catherine Hogarth Dickens (1816 – 1879)

 

In August 1834 Charles was given a permanent position on The Morning Chronicle, a liberal paper, to report on all parliamentary matters.

This included elections (there were two in 1835) and political meetings – all around the country, before there were railroads.

Deadlines were nevertheless overwhelmingly important and Dickens experienced many freezing, wet stagecoach journeys, bouncing about, writing on his knees, racing back to London to get his account in before the rival reporters on The Times.

 

 

Dickens’ first published piece of creative work appeared in the Monthly Magazine in 1833.

It was called “A Dinner at Poplar Walk“.

The publication had a circulation of 600 and the young author wasn’t paid, but he knew what it all meant.

 

Above: Monthly Magazine (1796 – 1843) issue, 1 February 1810

 

In the preface of the cheap edition of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens tells us that he practically smuggled the piece into the magazine’s offices:

“It was dropped stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling, into a dark letter box, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street.”

The piece’s emergence into print was an occasion of some emotion:

“I walked down to Westminster Hall and turned into it for half an hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride, that they could not bear the street and were not fit to be seen there.”

 

 

More pieces for the Monthly Magazine followed.

These were comic stories, which owed a lot to the theatrical farces so common on the London stage.

It was at the end of one of these pieces, published in May 1834, that he signed his name as “Boz“, the nom de plume by which he first began to establish his reputation and indeed his brand.

Boz being a family nickname he employed as a pseudonym for some years.

Dickens apparently adopted it from the nickname “Moses“, which he had given to his youngest brother Augustus Dickens, after a character in Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield.

 

Above: Augustus Dickens (1827 – 1866)

 

When pronounced by anyone with a head cold, “Moses” became “Boses“—later shortened to Boz.

As “Boz“, Dickens began to collect readers.

He was given further opportunities to please them.

 

Dickens began to write occasional pieces for the Morning Chronicle in addition to his reporting.

These were his “sketches” – informal surveys of parts of London, London themes or observations of London people, held together by a conversational tone rather than a narrative: a Londoner talking to Londoners.

When an evening sister paper to the Morning Chronicle was launched, Dickens obtained a salary to continue his writing explorations in the same vein.

 

Above: London, 1886

 

The increasing exposure brought Dickens to the attention of Harrison Ainsworth, a writer not much read today, but a real star of the literary scene at this time.

Ainsworth admired Boz‘s work and introduced Dickens to his own publisher John Macrone.

 

Above: William Harrison Ainsworth (1805 – 1882)

 

Soon a collected volume of the newspaper and magazine pieces with drawings of George Cruikshank, the leading illustrator of the day, was published in February 1836.

Sketches by Boz sold so well that a second edition was needed that year and two more in 1837.

 

 

As the first edition of Sketches by Boz emerged in 1836, Dickens was approached by the publishers Chapman and Hall.

They came with an idea that had been proposed to them in turn by a well-known illustrator, Robert Seymour.

The plan went like this:

Seymour would produce a series of engravings depicting the amusing mishaps attending a club of Cockney sportsmen – men from the new middle classes, with money to spend on the aristocratic pursuits of previous generations: hunting, shooting and fishing.

These illustrations would be published as a monthly serial.

Would Dickens care to write some text to help string the images together?

Fourteen pounds a month might be possible.

No one really knows what or how much Dickens saw in this offer at the time.

He liked the money.

He was told that serials were a “low, cheap form of publication” that would ruin him.

The fact that he kept all his other irons in the fire suggests that he did not count too much on the new venture establishing his reputation.

But that is exactly what it did.

He claims, in the preface to The Pickwick Papers, that he recognized that the idea wouldn’t do:

“I objected, on consideration, that although born and partly bred in the country I was no great sportsman, that the idea was not novel, and had already been much used, that it would infinitely better for the plates to arise naturally out of the text, and that I should like to take my own way….”

At first sales were disappointing, but by the end of its run in November 1837,  The Pickwick Papers was selling 40,000 copies per month, it had been adapted for the stage many times over and the words of its characters  seemed to be on everyone’s lips – as was the name of its young author.

 

 

After their 1836 wedding, Charles took Catherine to a set of chambers he was renting in Furnival’s Inn, one of the inns of court, the traditional home of English law practice and accommodation for many non-lawyers too.

 

 

As The Pickwick Papers started bringing in a more secure income, Charles set his sights on more substantial living quarters.

These turned out to be at 48 Doughty Street, into which Catherine and Charles moved with their son Charley in March 1837.

 

Above: 48 Doughty Street, London

 

They took in Catherine’s younger sister Mary Hogarth, who had supported Catherine during her first pregnancy.

It was not unusual for a woman’s unwed sister to live with and help a married couple.

Dickens became very attached to Mary.

She inspired characters in many of his books.

Mary is seen as the inspiration for Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist.

She is also seen as the inspiration for Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop.

Nell had many traits that Dickens associated to Howarth, including describing Nell as “young, beautiful and good“.

Other characters believed to have been inspired by Mary include:

• Kate Nickleby, the 17-year-old sister of the hero of the novel Nicholas Nickleby
• Agnes Wickfield, the heroine in David Copperfield
• Ruth Pinch from Martin Chuzzlewit
• Lilian, the child who appears in Trotty Veck’s visions in The Chimes
• Dot Peerybingle, the sister in The Cricket on the Hearth.

 

Above: Mary Hogarth (1819 – 1837)

 

Unlike Mary, Dickens’ wife Catherine does not appear to have been the inspiration for any of his characters.

 

Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, famed as a fashionable residential area and as the home of numerous prestigious cultural, intellectual and educational institutions.

It is bounded by Fitzrovia to the west, Covent Garden to the south, Regent’s Park and St. Pancras to the north, and Clerkenwell to the east.

Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest museum in the United Kingdom, and numerous educational institutions, including the University College London, the University of London, the New College of the Humanities, the University of Law, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and many others.

 

Above: The British Museum, London

 

Bloomsbury is an intellectual and literary hub for London, as home of world-known Bloomsbury Publishing, publishers of the Harry Potter series, and namesake of the Bloomsbury Set, a group of famous British intellectuals, including author Virginia Woolf and economist John Maynard Keynes, among others.

 

Above: Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941)

 

Bloomsbury began to be developed in the 17th century under the Earls of Southampton, but it was primarily in the 19th century, under the Duke of Bedford, which the district was planned and built as an affluent Regency era residential area by famed developer James Burton.

The district is known for its numerous garden squares, including Bloomsbury Square, Russell Square and Tavistock Square, among others.

Notable residents of Bloomsbury have included J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan), Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Ricky Gervais, Vladimir Lenin, Bob Marley, Catherine Tate (Donna Noble, Doctor Who) and William Butler Yeats.

 

Above: Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924)

 

Despite a plethora of blue plaques, Bloomsbury boasts just one literary museum, the Charles Dickens Museum, the only one of the writer’s fifteen London addresses to survive intact.

 

 

Doughty Street was a well-to-do gated Georgian street when Dickens – flush with the success of his first two published works – moved here in 1837.

The family lived in this light and airy house for two years, during which he completed Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby and worked on Barnaby Rudge.

Catherine gave birth to two children in the bedroom here.

 

 

On Saturday, 6 May 1837, Charles took Catherine and Mary to the theatre.

They returned home in good spirits, enjoyed some supper and a drink together and went to bed at one in the morning.

A few moments later Charles heard a cry from Mary’s bedroom and hurried in to find her still in her day clothes and visibly ill.

Catherine came to see what was wrong.

Charles said afterwards that they had no idea there was anything seriously the matter with Mary, but that they sent for medical assistance to be on the safe side.

Whatever Dr. Pickthorn did had no effect, yet still there seemed no cause for alarm.

Mary was, after all, only 17 years old and until then had been in perfect health.

Fourteen hours went by before Mary sank under the attack and died – died in such a calm and gentle sleep, that although Charles had held her in his arms for some time before, when she was certainly living (for she swallowed a little brandy from his hand) Charles continued to support her lifeless form, long after her soul had fled to Heaven.

This was about 3 o’clock on Sunday afternoon.

“Thank God she died in my arms and the very last words she whispered were of me.“, Charles told fellow reporter and friend Tom Beard.

Before Charles laid Mary’s body down he was able to remove a ring from her finger and put it on one of his own.

And there it stayed for the rest of his life.

 

Above: Mary’s bedroom, Charles Dickens Museum

 

Mary’s death is fictionalized as the death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop.

 

 

The building at 48 Doughty Street was threatened with demolition in 1923, but was saved by the Dickens Fellowship, founded in 1902, who raised the mortgage and bought the property.

The house was renovated and the Dickens House Museum was opened in 1925, under the direction of an independent trust, now a registered charity.

 

Above: Study, Charles Dickens Museum

 

48 Doughty Street is presented as far as possible in its inhabited state, the idea being to give the impression that the Dickens family is still resident.

Much of the house’s furniture belonged, at one time or another, to Dickens, and the house also owns the earliest known portrait of the writer (a miniature painted by his aunt Mary Allen in 1830).

 

Above: Charles Dickens

 

Perhaps the best-known exhibit is the portrait of Dickens known as Dickens’s Dream by R. W. Buss, an original illustrator of The Pickwick Papers.

This unfinished portrait shows Dickens in his study at Gads Hill Place surrounded by many of the characters he had created.

The painting was begun in 1870 after Dickens’s death.

 

Above: Dickens’ Dream, Robert William Buss

 

(Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent, sometimes spelt Gadshill Place and Gad’s Hill Place, was the country home of Charles Dickens.

Today the building is the independent Gad’s Hill School.

The house was built in 1780 for a former Mayor of Rochester, Thomas Stephens, opposite the present Sir John Falstaff Public House.

Gad’s Hill is where Falstaff commits the robbery that begins Shakespeare’s Henriad trilogy (Henry IV: Part 1, Henry IV: Part 2 and Henry V). )

 

Above: Gad’s Hill Place, Rochester

 

Other notable artefacts in the Museum include numerous first editions and original manuscripts as well as original letters by Dickens, and many personal items owned by Dickens and his family.

 

 

The only known item of clothing worn by Dickens still in existence is also displayed at the Museum.

This is his Court suit and sword, worn when Dickens was presented to the Prince of Wales in 1870.

 

 

The Charles Dickens Museum also owns the adjacent house, #49, where they stage special exhibitions, house the bookshop and have a lovely café with free Wifi.

 

 

There runs within both London and Rochester (where Charles spent the last years of his life) a Dickens Trail.

On London’s Dickens Trail, there is:

• the Old Curiosity Shop (currently a shoe shop) on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the inspiration of Dickens’ novel of the same name
• the atmospheric Inns of Court (once the headquarters of the Knights Templar) which feature in several Dickens novels
• Nancy’s Steps, where Nancy tells Rose Maylie Oliver’s story in Oliver Twist
• the evocative dockland area east of Shad Thames where Bill Sykes (also of Oliver Twist) had his hide-out.

 

 

(This dockland area, known as China Wharf – today very photogenic with its stack of semicircular windows picked out in red – was once dubbed “the very capital of cholera“.

In 1849, the Morning Chronicle described it thus:

“Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the very raff and refuse of the river, the visitor makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive sights and sounds from the narrow alleys which branch off.”

This was the location of Dickens’ fictional Jacob’s Island, a place with “every imaginable sign of desolation and neglect“, where Bill Sykes met his end in Oliver Twist.)

 

Above: China Wharf, London

 

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic.

He created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.

His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius.

His novels and short stories are still widely read today.

Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer and campaigned vigorously for children’s rights, education and other social reforms.

 

Above: Charles Dickens, 1842

 

Dickens’s literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers.

Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire and keen observation of character and society.

His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.

Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense.

The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience’s reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback.

For example, when his wife’s chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features.

His plots were carefully constructed and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives.

 

Above: Charles Dickens, 1850

 

Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha’pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.

His 1843 novella A Christmas Carol remains especially popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre.

 

 

Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London.

 

 

His 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities (set in London and Paris) is his best-known work of historical fiction.

 

 

The most famous celebrity of his era, public demand saw him undertake a series of public reading tours in the later part of his career.

 

 

Dickens has been praised by many of his fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell, G. K. Chesterton and Tom Wolfe—for his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations and social criticism.

However, Oscar Wilde, Henry James and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing and a vein of sentimentalism.

 

Above: Dickens’ chair, Charles Dickens Museum

 

The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.

 

There is much in Charles Dickens’ life before and up to his residency at 48 Doughty Street that I can relate with.

Charles came from a large family, as did I, but like the titular hero of Oliver Twist it was not until later in my life did I come to realize that I was neither an orphan (nor an only child) as far as my biological heritage went.

 

 

My first work during my school years was labour intensive like Charles’ was.

While his was labouring in a blacking factory, mine was summer employment as a farmhand.

(A position I occasionally returned to when financing my travels.)

 

 

Like Charles, I spent much of the early years of my life outdoors when I wasn’t reading voraciously.

The boy Charles read Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding and The Arabian Nights.

I read Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stephenson and the adventures of the Hardy Boys.

 

 

Charles was separated from his family by mounting debts and living beyond one’s means.

It is said that these were the cause of my biological parents’ break-up and it was the prevention of these to my foster parents that led to my being taken in for the provincial support the government provided for my care.

 

 

Unlike Charles, I was never small for my age and I would by the age of 14 surpass Charles’ adult height of 5’9″ to reach my current height of 6’4″, but, like Charles, I had felt that I was a “not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy“.

 

After my secondary and post-secondary studies, I, like Charles, worked as a clerk, but what for him would be a brief two years would be for me always a position to return to between my travels.

I have worked as a clerk for a customs broker, federal government departments and for a registered charity.

 

 

More akin to George Orwell, I would later work as a teacher and a restaurant worker, but in a Dickensian vein, I have written (sometimes for money, sometimes for exposure) for local newspapers and school publications.

 

 

I have never achieved great fame, but then neither have I greatly sought it to the extent that Dickens did.

 

What I have always admired about Dickens and his works are:

• his humour, satire and keen observation of character and society.
• his carefully constructed plots wherein he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives.
• his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations and social criticism.
• his walking which led to his descriptions of the neglected and forgotten corners of London.

 

 

“Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.“, wrote the poet Rupert Brooke.

London’s own Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, William Blake and Thomas De Quincey were all night time perambulators, but of those who walk the streets at night the supreme nightwalker was Charles Dickens.

 

 

In Great Expectations (1861), Pip at one point visits Miss Haversham in her home in Kent in order to inform her and her ward Estella, with whom he is still madly in love, that he has finally discovered the identity of his benefactor, the convict Magwitch.

Pip confirms that, because he knows Miss Haversham was not responsible for his transformation into a gentleman, he realizes that she and Estella have all along treated him not as their protegé but “as a kind of servant, to gratify a want or whim“.

It is on this occasion, too, that Estella admits she is to be married, as Pip feared, to the odious and oafish aristocrat Bentley Drummle.

Thus discarded, and in a deeply disconsolate state of mind, Pip escapes from Satis House and, as the afternoon light thickens, hides himself for a time “among some lanes and bypaths“.

Then, in a moment of decision, he strikes off “to walk all the way to London“.

“I could do nothing half so good for myself as tire myself out.”, he decides.

It is “past midnight” when he eventually crosses London Bridge.

 

 

Four years later, Dickens made roughly the same journey on foot, in reverse.

 

One night in October 1857, when he was in his mid-forties, Dickens retired to bed in the family home in Bloomsbury, but found himself completely unable to get to sleep.

He had suffered from intermittent insomnia throughout his adult life, but on this occasion he felt particularly agitated.

He did not feel at home at home.

So at 0200 Dickens climbed out of bed, dressed in warm clothes and set off through the gaslit streets of the city.

 

 

Dickens had written more than two decades earlier:

“The streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky winter’s night.

When the heavy, lazy mist, which hangs over every object, makes the gas lamps look brighter.”

 

 

In the damp silence of the autumn night, beneath the scuffing sound of his boots on the stone pavements, Dickens would have heard the gas whispering its secrets in the softly rasping pipes.

Heading south in the direction of the Thames, Dickens walked through London directly to Gad’s Hill Place, his country residence in Kent.

Like Pip’s journey through the night, it was a distance of some 30 miles.

 

 

Catherine and Charles had been….prolific – ten children – “the largest family ever known with the smallest disposition to do anything for themselves” as Dickens later described them – and 15 novels, each published in monthly (or weekly) installments, which were awaited with baited breath by the public.

Then in 1857, at the peak of his career, Dickens fell in love with the actress, Ellen Ternan.

Charles was 45, Ellen just 18.

 

Above: Ellen Ternan (1839 – 1914)

 

On the evening of his nightwalk, Catherine and Charles quarrelled.

They were becoming inrcreasingly estranged, partly because of his relationship with Ellen.

For this reason, Charles visited Tavistock House, their home at this time, only rarely.

 

Above: Tavistock House, London

 

Charles spent most of the autumn of 1857 at Gad’s Hill Place.

When he needed to be in central London, he tended to stay in a bachelor flat at the offices of his periodical, Household Words.

It was shortly after Charles insisted on partitioning the bedroom he shared with Catherine so that they could sleep separately.

 

 

The nighttime journey on foot to Gad’s Hill Place, driven by an acute sense of anguish and guilt, took Dickens little more than seven hours.

(According to present day Google Maps, the same journey normally takes 9.5 hours.)

 

Above: Google Maps logo

 

Dickens was a fast walker, who took pride in the fact that he could sustain a pace of at least four miles an hour across long distances.

(In my walking days my average pace was 3 mph and on a descent 5 mph.)

 

Above: Canada Slim, The Dutton Advance, 6 March 1991

 

His friends frequently complained of the speed and impatience with which he walked.

 

Above: Charles Dickens

 

Edward Johnson, one of his biographers, wrote:

“Sometimes his perspiring companions gave way to blisters and breathlessness.”

 

Charles himself was boastful of his feats as a pedestrian.

He professed in 1860:

“So much of my travelling is done on foot that if I cherished betting propensities, I should probably be found registered in sporting newspapers as the Elastic Novice, challenging all 11-stone mankind to competition in walking.”

 

No doubt he secretly harboured dreams of bettering Captain Barclay, a celebrated athlete who, in 1809, when pedestrianism first became a sporting activity, walked a thousand miles in a thousand hours for a thousand guineas.

 

Above: Captain Robert Barclay-Allardyce (1779 – 1854), the celebrated pedestrian

 

In the late 1850s, Dickens remained a fit man precisely because he insisted on walking, both in London and in the countryside, whenever he could find the opportunity.

Even so, he was increasingly afflicted with ill health at this time.

His symptoms included neuralgic and rheumatic pains.

His feet also troubled him.

 

According to biographer Claire Tomalin:

“First his left foot, and then his right, took to swelling intermittedly, becoming so painful that during each attack he became unable to take himself on the great walks that were essential part and pleasure of his life.”

 

Dickens had gout, though he was reluctant to accept the idea, claiming instead that he contracted the pain because he had incautiously walked in snowy conditions.

This did not deter him from walking in all conditions, clement or inclement.

 

 

G.K. Chesterton, identifiying a “streak of sickness” in Dickens, which he detected in the novelist’s “fervid” intelligence, nonetheless confirmed that “he suffered from no formidable malady and could always through life endure a great deal of exertion, even if it was only the exertion of walking violently all night.”

 

Above: Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 – 1936)

 

For John Hollingshead, who had been apprenticed to Dickens on Household Words, and who therefore saw a good deal of him in the 1850s, this proclivity for “violent walking” was itself a malady.

Hollingshead recalled in retrospect that “when Dickens lived in Tavistock House he developed a mania for walking long distances, which almost assumed the form of a disease.”

“When he was restless, his brain excited by struggling with incidents or characters in the novel he was writing, he would frequently get up and walk through the night over Waterloo Bridge, along the London, New Kent and Old Kent Roads, past all the towns on the old Dover High Road, until he came to his roadside dwelling (Gad’s Hill Place).

His dogs barked when they heard his key in the wicket-gate. 

His behaviour must have seemed madness to the ghost of Sir John Falstaff.”

(Gad’s Hill Place stood opposite the Falstaff Inn, formerly a notorious haunt of robbers and highwaymen.)

 

Above: John Hollingshead (1827 – 1904)

 

It is likely, then, that Dickens conducted his 30-mile nightwalk to Kent on more than one occasion.

But Dickens’ celebrated feat on that night in October 1857 was less about overcoming physical afflictions than capitulating to his psychological ones.

This was a flight both from his everyday life and from his self.

 

 

From an early age Charles had been running away from something, or walking “fast and far” from something.

“Going astray“, he called it.

In an article entitled “Going Astray“, printed in Household Words in 1853, Dickens described how he had “got lost one day in the City of London” as an 8-year-old child and roamed and strayed and strolled through London’s precincts all day and into the night, until he found a watchman.

“I have gone astray since, many times, and farther afield.“, Dickens concludes with a certain sad pride.

 

 

Chesterton argued that Dicken’s originality and genius resided in the fact that he possessed, “in the most sacred and serious sense of the term, the key of the street.”

“Few of us understand the street.

Even we step into it, as into a house or a room of strangers.

Few of us see through the shining riddle of the street, the strange folk that belong to the street only – the street-walker or the street Arab, the nomads, who generation after generation, have kept their ancient secrets in the full blaze of the sun.

Of the street at night many of us know even less.

The street at night is a great house locked up.

But Dickens had, if ever man had, the key of the street.

His stars were the lamps of the street.

His hero was the man in the street.

He could open the inmost door of his house – the door that leads into that secret passage which is lined with houses and roofed with stars.”

 

 

Night Walks, first published in All the Year Round in 1860 and then reprinted in The Uncommercial Traveller in 1861, was Dickens’ finest, most haunting piece of non-fictional prose.

At once impressionistic and replete with intensely related detail, it relates his experiences on the streets of the capital between half past midnight (0030) and the moment when “the conscious gas begins to grow pale with the knowledge that daylight is coming.”

A sense of solitude echoes through his sentences, empty and hollow as the midnight streets through which he walks.

 

 

“When a church clock strikes, on homeless ears in the dead of the night, it may be at first be mistaken for company, but as the spreading circles of vibration echo out into eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of loneliness is profounder.”

Dickens confesses to have discovered a lonely sense of community in the cold depths of the London night, among men defined by “a tendency to lurk and lounge, to be at street corners without intelligible reason“.

“My principal object being to get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into sympathetic relations with people who have no other object every night of the year.”

 

 

These are the everyday casualities of life in the capitalist metropolis – the victims of unemployment, addiction and other symptoms of social and spiritual alienation.

The homeless must conquer time and defend themselves against its blank emptiness, from minute to minute, moment by moment, the shame, desertion, wretchedness and exposure of the great capital, the wet, the cold, the slow hours and the swift clouds of the dismal night.

For the police, the proof of a home, a legal nocturnal place to stay, is the precondition for the recognition of existence.

So the situation of homelessness, roaming the night without aim, without rest, represents exclusion from society.

It is a form of non-existence, non-being, the outer limits of society’s psychological and sociological borderland, the hinterland of humanity, the dark hollow interior of human nature.

 

 

London is a city where 55% of people are not ethnically white British, nearly 40% were born abroad, and 5% are living illegally in the shadows.

Every week 2,000 migrants unload at Victoria Coach Station, tens of thousands of migrants arriving here every year.

But who can trust statistics?

 

 

You will never understand what it means to be a beggar until you have slept on the streets.

They sleep in front of the glare of shop windows, for the light lends a sense of safety.

Crackheads and Roma, street life, disorientation, a jumble of faces, an eternal rumble of traffic, where working girls sell their bodies and throw in their souls for free, the rhythm of the streets, a never sated drumbeat.

 

 

Ute (my wife) and I on London evenings are one of many after-dinner couples strolling along.

I hear others with their contempt and disgust regard the beggars who congregate upon the concrete like lost church mice, like mangy parasites, cosmopolitan cockroaches, best belittled than assisted.

 

 

They are the invisible, because we choose to ignore them.

They are painful reminders of our privileged life that they cannot imagine having or, if once had, reacquiring.

They are the old and the prematurely aged, shuffling and stumbling, snuffling and sniffing, pleading for pennies from those whose hearts are void of compassion.

Washed-up soiled souls marooned, listless and almost lifeless, easy prey to those who would use them for cruel sport, they lie beneath walls smeared in blood and feces upon flattened cardboard boxes that soften the sidewalk.

Human rubbish amidst human refuse, they are gaunt faces with sunken eyes, needing to beg to survive, to live, to exist, but to beg is to break the law.

What is earned is confiscated.

Law and order trumps love and outreach.

They see the beggar as an offense not as a fellow human being.

Those without homes are an invisible city deliberately unseen by the lucky with lodgings.

 

 

Charles Dickens’ home is remembered as I hold my wife’s hand tightly to lend ourselves courage to encounter what we do not comprehend.

Charles feared poverty, was obsessed with money, felt that unease that only those who have raised themselves out from poverty can truly understand.

But his talent, hard work, perseverance and good fortune never required a return to a hand-to-mouth, payment-to-payment survival.

He encountered the homeless and destitute during his night walks but was never reduced to joining their ranks.

 

Above: Charles Dickens

 

My wife and I have London lodgings during our sojourn here and a warm comfortable flat awaiting our return to Switzerland.

 

 

I too have known a poverty of sorts, though my begging was limited to government assistance and hitching rides and seeking emergency overnight shelter in the places where rides left me.

In my long-distance walking days I slept wherever I could and rarely needed the tent I carried upon my backpack.

 

Like those migrants of London for whom hope remains despite their desperate circumstances, I worked where and when I could, sometimes in the safety of the law, sometimes not.

Though I have never been much of an evening perambulator I have nonetheless encountered the homeless in more than a few cities I have visited.

I see it regularly amongst the Roma in Konstanz and I give as prudently as I can when I encounter the beggar Bruno in St. Gallen.

I remember the helpless and hapless of London and Paris, Seoul and Istanbul, Naples and New York.

 

Above: The Old Beggar of Bordeaux, Louis Dewis, 1916

 

I think of Oliver Twist.

“Advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

“Please, sir, I want some more.” ”

 

Above: Mark Lester as Oliver Twist, Oliver!, 1968

 

Everyone’s hungry for something.

 

Sources: The Rough Guide to London / Matthew Beaumont, Night Walking: A Nocturnal History of London / Jeremy Clarke, The Charles Dickens Miscellany / Charles Dickens, Night Walks / Ben Judah, This Is London / Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the Mandir of Nose Hill

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Tuesday 21 May 2019

This Sunday in Switzerland some folks will attend services in either a Reformed Church or a Roman Catholic Church and both groups will call themselves Christian.

 

 

And as the Earth spins around the Sun, from the Dark Continent of Africa to the Canadian tundra, Christians will kneel on this day to receive the elements of their own version of the eternal Eucharist as written in the Bible that speaks of how God sent His Son whose sacrifice somehow saved our wretched souls and whose resurrection conquered death for all of us, despite death being our destiny.

 

 

In Jerusalem and parts of the planet where the Great Diaspora has led them over centuries, others, wrapped in the prayer shawls that their ancestors wore in the desert, recite the Torah, as their Rabbi lovingly guides a wand across sacred text that Yahweh spoke to His Chosen People.

 

 

And within the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and anywhere where the Qu’ran reigns the mind, five times a day, the faithful prostrate themselves towards Mecca, towards Mohammed’s holy city, and show their devotion to Allah, who also remains God the Father of Christianity and Yahweh of the Jews and yet is unrecognizable as the same God of Abraham said to be the originator of all three great religions.

 

 

Same deity, different names, different practices, same intolerance too often seen by those who claim this deity as their own.

 

 

In a tiny house by the Ganges River at the foot of the Himalayas, a Hindu Swami will not speak today, but will continue his devotional silence that, with the exception of three days each year, he has kept for years.

 

 

In Yangon, the monks of Shwedagon sit alone and together with the eternal in the tranquil silence and privacy of their Buddhist shrine, as do the Zen monks in Kyoto, spending most of the day sitting immovable in the lotus position, as they seek to plumb with absolute absorption the Buddha-nature that lies at the centre of their being.

 

 

What a freaky fellowship, an odd misplaced madness, this is, this seeking of something divine that defies description or definition, voices raised in desperate disparate ways, sacrificing precious life to a God of life that cannot be proven not to exist.

Such strange ethereal harmony, each faith claiming superiority over every other belief, no individual religion understanding the others, and yet united in lifting their voices to the heavens in the hopes that what binds the universe will spare a moment for those who are naught more than carbonated stardust.

 

Are the faithful foolish or the unbelieving unredeemable?

 

We cannot know.

 

All we can do is try and listen carefully, with full attention to each voice as it in its turn addresses the divine that lies within and without us.

 

Religions wrap the globe in their comfort, with histories stretching back into the forgotten mists of time, that still motivates more people today than ever before.

Nothing unites us more nor divides us more than religion does.

 

 

Who should we follow?

What should we believe?

 

Should Christians worship in ornate cathedrals bedecked with icons or consider even steeples divine desecrations?

How should Muslims decide between Sunni and Shi’ite or feel about Sufism?

Must a Jew be orthodox to call himself a true Jew?

And let us wonder as Buddhists ponder different traditions of Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana philosophies.

 

Millions live by a faith.

More than three quarters of the world’s population consider that they belong to a religion, however little or much they do about it.

Communities of people who share practices and beliefs gather in special buildings for worship or meditation and seek to live lives in special ways in the world.

Whether we care to acknowledge it or not, religion has been the resource and inspiration for virtually all the most enduring art, architecture, music, drama, dance and poetry that the world has known, in search and expression of that which endures when all else passes away.

 

 

We must decide if faith has relevance in these digital days, our modern minds, our computerized lives.

 

As every religion mixes universal truths with local peculiarities we must lift out the former from the latter and embrace that which speaks to what  is generically human in us all.

 

This is not easy for the irreverent, for religion is rich in rites and laden in legends.

This is not simple for those whose lives are reigned by rationalism, for the claim that the universal principles of faith are more important than rites and rituals is like contending that the trunk of a tree is more important than the branches, leaves or roots of that tree.

I know that when I seek to understand the religious impulse, that I myself lack, this is akin to trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

 

The mind that is mine struggles to grasp how Hindu’s holy Kali Temple in Calcutta revers two million cows to the point of nuisance while fakirs offer their bodies to bedbugs as sacrifice.

 

 

I find myself conflicted between the stillness of Bethlehem and department stores blaring “Silent Night” from stereos above plastic reindeer and overweight Santas.

 

 

I seek to define the divine amidst images of crucified Christs and chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs.

 

 

I wallow in a mire of confusion as to how Crusades can be Christian or Jihads holy, or how a God of love co-exists with witch slaughter in Salem, monkey trials in Tennessee and Grand Inquisitions in Spain.

 

 

I, like billions before me and aeons after me, seek the meaning to my existence in the hope that my short span of life has worth.

 

I am reminded of a Faustian fable of a man who climbed to the top of a mountain and seized hold of the Truth.

Satan, suspecting sedition from this mortal upstart, directed a demon to tail the determined seeker.

When the demon reported with alarm the man’s success, Satan was not in the least bothered by the bulletin.

“Don’t worry.“, Satan yawned.

“I will tempt him to institutionalize the Truth.”

 

 

The empowering theological and metaphysical truth of faith is inspirational, but the religious institutions built around this truth are often not.

Religion is constituted of people with their inbuilt frailities, vices and virtues.

When the vices get compounded by masses, the results are horrifying to the point where one might suggest that faith should be left outside the hands of humanity.

But faith without the faithful would have left no mark upon humanity’s history, for better or for worse.

Had faith remained as only aloof disembodied insight and had not embraced institutions and rituals, then faith could not have established traction on history or upon men’s souls.

What is important is to not get lost in the smoke and ceremony of rite and ritual, but instead we need to sift religion for the truths they try to preserve, the wisdom that maintains our world.

 

 

As T.S. Eliot so wisely phrased it:

“Where is the knowledge that is lost in information?

Where is the wisdom that is lost in knowledge?”

 

Above: Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 – 1965)

 

I categorically reject the premise that one religion is superior to another, for it is this comparison that is the most odious aspect of all institutions, for, as Arnold Toynbee observed:

“There is no one alive today who knows enough to say with confidence whether one religion has been greater than all others.”

 

Above: Arnold Toynbee (1852 – 1883)

 

It must be admitted that though I seek to embrace the world, I am incorrigibly myself and I know that the tale I am about to tell might be quite differently written had I been a Burmese Buddhist, a Turkish Muslim, a Nepalese Hindu, a Serbian Orthodox, a Swiss Catholic or a Polish Jew instead of a Canadian humanist with delusions of fluency.

 

 

We live in a world of wonders.

Lands across the planet are our neighbours, China is around the corner, the Middle East is our backyard, my younger colleagues and close companions with backpacks go everywhere, while I – who often remain at home in this wee hamlet of Landschlacht – have access to an endless parade of books and videos and visitors from abroad.

It isn’t so much that East meets West as it is humanity is being flung at one another, hurled across distances at jet speed, information invading our impatient intelligence within the breath between atoms.

 

 

Diogenes, twenty-five hundred years ago, exclaimed:

“I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world.”

 

Above: Diogenes (412 – 323 BC)

 

Today we have the possibility to not only think of ourselves by the nations we found ourselves born in, but rather we have the opportunity to judge our heartbeat by the pulse of the planet.

We need to understand the faiths of others if we are to meet them as allies or antagonists, so that we can avoid military engagement through diplomacy.

We need to understand one another through our faiths so we can enjoy the world vision it offers us.

 

 

Or put another way….

What do they know of England, who only England know?

 

 

How can we truly understand our beliefs if we never question them by comparison with others?

How truly enriching our lives become when we truly understand what belonging means to the Japanese, to sense with a Burmese grandmother what passes in life and what endures, to comprehend with the Hindu that our personalities mask the Infinite within, to follow the paradox of a Zen monk who assures you that everything is sacred but refrains from acts that are unholy, to feel the comfort that confession offers the devout Catholic….

For as language opens the mind to understanding other people, faith enlarges the heart to compassion and love for humanity.

 

True faith, not a dull habit but a living passion, confronts the individual with the momentous wisdom that life can offer.

Faith calls a soul to the highest adventure, a journey across the landscape of the human spirit.

It is the siren call to confront reality as it is, to master the self.

It is a lonely journey, a personal quest….

 

“A sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse,

A difficult path is this – the poets declare!”

(Alfred Toynbee, Civilization on Trial)

 

 

Los Alamos, New Mexico, 16 July 1945

Today is the day that the chain reaction of scientific discoveries that began at the University of Chicago and focused here at Site Y has reached the final culmination.

 

 

No one has been more instrumental in this project’s achievement than the director of the Los Alamos Project, Robert Oppenheimer.

All eyes are upon him closely this morning.

 

Above: Robert Oppenheimer (1904 – 1967)

 

“He grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off.

He scarcely breathed.

He held on to a post to steady himself.

When the announcer shouted “Now!”, there came this tremendous burst of light, followed by the deep-growling roar of the explosion, his face relaxed in an expression of tremendous relief.”

The first atomic bomb is a success.

 

 

What flashed through Oppenheimer’s mind during those moments were two lines from the Bhagavad-Gita in which the speaker is God:

“I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds;

Waiting that hour that ripens to their doom.”

 

(The Bhagavad Gita is a discourse between Krishna and Arjuna set in a chariot at the start of the Mahabharata War.)

 

Thus began an age in which violence and peace continue to confront each other more fatefully than ever before.

 

In India, Gandhi’s name became, in the middle of the 20th century, the counterpoint to those of Stalin and Hitler, but not just for the British withdrawl from the Subcontinent in peace, but, more importantly, for his lowering a barrier even more formidable than that of race in America.

Gandhi renamed India’s untouchables harijan – God’s people – and raised them to human stature.

In doing so, Gandhi provided the non-violent strategy and the inspiration for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s civil rights movement in the United States.

Gandhi’s inspiration was revealed in his autobiography:

“Such power as I possess for working in the political field has derived from my experiments in the spiritual field.

Truth is the sovereign principle and the Bhagavad-Gita is the book par excellence for the knowledge of truth.”

 

Above: “Mahatma“(“the Venerable“) Mohandas Gandhi (1869 – 1948)

 

On a grey day in October 2017, a stone’s throw from the grim North Circular, that drab ring road that encircles London’s northern suburbs of Neasden, I would follow my curiosity and thirst for truth eternal to a Hindu temple.

A temple both alien and appropriate in the homeland of English, in the heart of an empire that once dominated my own birth country of Canada and whose sovereign remains our head of state, from a religion with roots in the land of India – that living coalition of religions and languages where one billion congregate and of which 80% call themselves Hindu – with 30 million adherants dispersed throughout the world.

On that day I would visit the largest traditional Hindu temple outside India (as recognized by Guinness World Records), Neasden’s 8th Wonder of the World, the Crown Jewel of Hinduism, one of Reader’s Digest‘s 70 Wonders of the Modern World, Time Out London‘s Seven Wonders….

The BAPS Shri Swamirayan Mandir Hindu temple.

It would not make me a Hindu nor make me feel any more knowledgeable about Hinduism than I felt before, but, nevertheless, my morning visit left impressions with me that still remain….

 

 

London, England, 26 October 2017

Shri Swaminarayan was not my first visit to a Hindu temple (and I have a feeling that it won’t be my last), for on a visit to Singapore in the spring of 2014, en route to the Perth wedding of friends in Western Australia, I visited Sri Mariamman Temple, paradoxically located in the Lion City’s Chinatown district.

Sri Mariamman is the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore and I still remember the temple’s incredible, brightly coloured gopuram (tower) above the entrance, covered in kitsch plaster images of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and (Oppenheimer’s) Shiva the Destroyer, as sacred cow sculptures graze the boundary walls.

 

 

I had a three-day stopover in Singapore and in the process of trying to cram so much into my consciousness in a very short time Sri Mariammen is a blurred memory amongst many that I saw during my short sojourn in the city-state.

I recall also seeing the Peranakan Museum, the Raffles Hotel, the Chinatown Heritage Centre, the Buddha Tooth Relic Museum, the Taoist Temple of Heavenly Happiness (Thian Hock Temp), Little India, Changi Prison, the Night Safari, Sentosa Island and Pulau Ubin.

I remember Little India, not for the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple with images of Kali, wearing a garland of skulls and ripping out the insides of her victims, but rather for the Bismallah Biryani Restaurant’s mutton kebab.

Hindu temples in Singapore were, for me at the time of my visit, only part of a tightly squeezed adventure and a list of must-sees rather than research for right or righteous religion.

 

 

(Thinking of Singapore and Perth I see future posts about them….)

 

I might not have bothered with London’s BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Manhir at all had not my wife purchased for us two London Passes, offering free entry to over 60 attractions, as well as free public transport on buses, tubes and trains, and strongly suggested I use mine as much as possible during the days of the medical conference she would attend that week.

Today would be the first day that I would view London unaccompanied by my spouse during the week.

 

 

It was not my first visit to London….

 

 

(I had spent a couple of days on my own in 1995, mostly walking along the Thames rather than doing much exploring as a lack of money dogged my days then.

I spent a day and an evening in 2010 with my good friend Iain and his beautiful companion – now his spouse since the aforementioned Perth wedding – Samantha, visiting Greenwich Observatory and seeing the show Avenue Q in the Theatre District, with time to enjoy life walking well and dining fine.)

 

 

But this was the first time I would attempt to deliberately explore London on my own without having to worry excessively about money.

I approached the Project alphabetically from the pages of the London Pass Guide.

As the ArcelorMittal Orbit (London’s tallest sculpture), the All Hallows by the Tower Church (where William Penn was baptized, John Quincy Adams was married and Archbishop William Laud was buried), Apsley House (with the oldest surviving grand piano in the UK) and the Arsenal Stadium Tour & Museum – (Football was never so crucial a sport to me as Canadian ice hockey or American baseball.)(Iain, an Everton fan, would never have forgiven me such a sacrilege.) – didn’t strike me as “must-see-before-I-die” / bucket list attractions, BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Manhir seemed the place to start.

 

 

And I must admit the attraction was attractively described:

“BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir is a masterpiece of traditional Hindu design and exquisite Indian workmanship in the heart of London. 

Using 5,000 tonnes of Italian and Indian marble and the finest Bulgarian limestone, it was hand-carved in India before being assembled in London in just 2.5 years. 

Since it opened in 1995, this renowned place of worship has attracted over 400,000 visitors every year. 

Come and marvel at the intricate carvings, experience a traditional Hindu prayer ceremony, or learn about the world’s oldest living faith.“

 

 

I took the Tube from our hotel’s neighbourhood way out to Stonebridge Park Station and wandered lost for an hour until I reached Neasden in the London Borough of Brent.

 

 

It may seem at first thought that Neasden is an unusual spot for a Hindu temple, but then Neasden has always been an unusual spot in its own right.

Neasden’s name meant “nose hill” and referred to the small promontory at the western end of the Dollis Hill Ridge upon which the hamlet sat.

The countryside hamlet land was once owned by St. Paul’s Cathedral and consisted of only several small buildings around a green near the site of the present Neasden roundabout until the mid-19th century.

In 1823 Neasden was no more than a “retired hamlet” with six cottages, four large farms, a pub and a smithy gathered around the green.

 

The Brent Reservoir (aka the Welsh Harp Reservoir from the name of the aforementioned pub) between Henden and Wembley Park, that straddles the boundary between the Boroughs of Brent and Barnet, was completed in 1835 and was breached in 1841.

The breaking of the dam on the River Brent resulted in folks dying and many fields and meadows under water.

Today the Brent Reservoir is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and home to the great crested grebe, the gadwall, the shoveler, the common pochard, the tufted duck and the common tern, as well as eight species of warbler – a total of 253 species of bird life.

As well the Reservoir possesses 31 species of butterfly, 15 species of dragonflies and is also the residence of grey squirrels, red foxes and bats.

In 1960 the Reservoir hosted the Women’s European Rowing Championships.

Today the Welsh Harp Open Space surely sees not only rowboats and sailboats but those of the Hindu faith enjoying the magic of this unglamourous corner of suburban tranquillity.

 

 

(Not fishermen though, as fishing is strictly forbidden.)

 

In 1873 Neasden had a populace of 110 and the horse was the main form of transport.

As London grew, the demand for horses in the capital soared, so in the second half of the 19th century Neasden farms focused on rearing and providing horses for the City.

Town work was exhausting and unhealthy for the horses….

 

 

(It ain’t so wonderful for humans either.)

 

In 1886 the RSPCA formed a committee to set up the Home of Rest for Horses with grounds in Neasden, where, for a small fee, town horses were allowed to graze in the open for a few weeks.

 

The urbanization of Neasden began with the arrival of the railway.

The first railway running through Neasden was opened for goods traffic in 1868 with passenger services following soon after.

 

 

In the 1890s change led to a conscious effort to create a village atmosphere.

At this time, the Spotted Dog became a social centre for local people.

By 1891 Neasden had a population of 930, half of whom lived in the village.

Despite the presence of the village in the west, it was the London end that grew fastest.

 

In 1893 the Great Central Railway got permission to join up its main line from Nottingham with the Metropolitan.

The Great Central set up a depot south of the line at Neasden and built houses for its workers.

 

 

The Great Central village was a “singularly isolated and self-contained community” with its own school and single shop, Branch No. 1 of the North West London Co-operative Society.

It is now part of a conservation area.

There was considerable sporting rivalry between the two railway estates and a football match was played every Good Friday.

By the 1930s the two railways employed over 1,000 men.

 

 

Neasden Hospital was built in 1894 and closed in 1986.

 

Apart from the railways, Neasden was dominated by agriculture until just before the First World War.

In 1911, Neasden’s population had swelled to 2,074.

By 1913, light industry at Church End had spread up Neasden Lane as far as the station.

 

In the 1920s, the building of the North Circular Road, a main arterial route round London, brought another wave of development.

It opened in 1923.

 

 

The 1924 British Empire Exhibition led to road improvements and the introduction of new bus services.

Together with the North Circular Road, it paved the way for a new residential suburb at Neasden.

The last farm in Neasden was built over in 1935.

The Ritz Cinema opened in 1935, and Neasden Shopping Parade was opened in 1936, considered then to be the most up-to-date in the area.

All of Neasden’s older houses were demolished during this period, except for The Grange.

The Spotted Dog was rebuilt in mock-Tudor style.

Industries sprung up in the south of the area, and by 1949, Neasden’s population was over 13,000.

 

The Post Office Research Station was located nearby in Dollis Hill.

 

 

There the Colossus computers, among the world’s first, were built in 1943-1944, and underneath them the Paddock Wartime Cabinet Rooms had been constructed in 1939.

 

 

Neasden Power Station, which was built to provide power for the Metropolitan Railway, was closed and demolished in 1968.

 

The post-war history of Neasden is one of steady decline.

Local traffic congestion problems necessitated the building of an underpass on the North Circular Road that effectively cut Neasden in half and had a disastrous effect on the shopping centre by making pedestrian access to it difficult.

The decline in industry through the 1970s also contributed to the area’s decline.

 

But nonetheless Neasden has somehow survived, largely due to a succession of vibrant immigrant communities keeping the local economy afloat.

 

Neasden Depot continues to be the main storage and maintenance depot for the London Underground’s Metropolitan line (and is also used by trains of the Jubilee line).

It is London Underground’s largest depot and as such it is a major local employer.

The Grange Tavern (previously called The Old Spotted Dog) on Neasden Lane was closed in the 1990s and demolished to make way for a block of flats, bringing to an end the inn that had stood there for around two centuries.

Another old pub, The Pantiles, which stood on the North Circular Road was converted into a McDonald’s restaurant.

 

The Swedish furniture retailer, IKEA opened its second UK outlet in Neasden in 1988.

 

On 14 July 1993, in an MI5 anti-terrorist operation, a Provisional IRA man was arrested in his car on Crest Road carrying a 20 lb bomb.

It came just over a year after the Staples Corner bombing just over 500 yards away, which devastated the junction.

 

 

In 1995, Neasden became the unlikely home of the biggest Hindu temple outside India: the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, known locally as the Neasden Temple.

 

In 2004, the shopping centre area was partially redeveloped by the Council in an effort to reverse its fortunes.

The Grange, which had housed a museum about the people of Brent, was closed by the Council in 2005.

The 2004 redevelopment proved to be unpopular with local businesses, as it changed the layouts of parking, thus forcing customers and local trade to pass by due to the parking restrictions of the redevelopment.

Neasden was once nicknamed “the loneliest village in London” and “God’s own borough“.

Neasden has achieved considerable notoriety thanks to the British satirical magazine, Private Eye.

Since early in its history (when the magazine was actually printed in Neasden) the magazine has used Neasden as an exemplar of the suburban environment in pieces parodying current events, personalities, and social mores (for example, the University of Neasden).

Spoof sports reports in the magazine usually feature the perennially unsuccessful football team, Neasden F.C. with their manager, “ashen-faced” Ron Knee and their only two supporters, Sid and Doris Bonkers.

 

 

Neasden was one of the locations in the TV documentary Metro-land.

In it, Sir John Betjeman described Neasden as “home of the gnome and the average citizen” (the former a reference to the preponderance of gnome statuettes in suburban front gardens, but possibly also a nod in the direction of the Eye’s fictional proprietor, Lord Gnome).

Background music was provided by William Rushton’s recording of Neasden (1972):

(“Neasden

You won’t be sorry that you breezed in.“)

 

 

In a celebrated spoof of the Early Music phenomenon which grew enormously in the late 1960s, Neasden was selected by BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer David Cain as the home of a fictional ensemble dedicated to historically-informed performances on authentic musical instruments from an indeterminate number of centuries ago.

It was thus that in 1968, listeners to BBC Radio 3 were given a recital by the Schola Polyphonica Neasdeniensis whose members performed on the equally fictional Shagbut, Minikin and Flemish Clackett.

 

 

Athletico Neasden was an amateur football team of mostly Jewish players, which played in the Maccabi (Southern) Football League in the 1970s and 1980s and were named after the place, though they didn’t actually play in the area.

The team eventually merged with North West Warriors to form North West Neasden.

 

 

David Sutherland’s children’s novel A Black Hole in Neasden reveals a gateway to another planet in a Neasden back garden.

 

Diana Evans’s 2006 novel 26a details the experiences of twin girls of Nigerian and British descent growing up in Neasden.

Willie Hamilton reported in ‘My Queen and I‘ that the Victorian Order medals were made on a production line in Neasden from used railway lines.

 

 

A pirate radio station, Dread Broadcasting Corporation, credited as Britain’s first black music radio station, was broadcast from a Neasden garden between 1981 – 1984.

 

In the Dangermouse episode “Planet of the Machines“, Dangermouse and Penfold arrive back in Neasden from the planet in the Baron’s space time machine.

 

 

Konnie Huq and Matt Cooke from BBC TV present the Your News programme from Neasden.

 

So all of this begs the question:

 

What in the name of Krishna is a Hindu temple doing here?

 

 

Perhaps there is wisdom to be found in the old Hindu proverb:

“The lotus blooms in splendour, but its roots lie in the dirt.”

 

 

Let me be frank.

Neasden is a glum place, especially after the glamour of the City has been seen, thus the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir seems to rise majestically above the dismal, between-the-world-wars housing like a welcome oasis of sight.

So sudden and grandiose does the Mandir appear that the viewer wonders whether it is a mirage, a shimmering dream, conjured up by one’s overactive imagination.

Here in London’s loneliest village is an experience of India’s glorious tradition and faith, a legacy that seems to have evolved over millennia rather than appearing miraculously on the landscape in a mere 30 months.

 

 

Since the Mandir opened in 1995, this renowned place of worship has attracted over half a million visitors a year.

The inventory of visitors, including your humble blogger, has incorporated prime ministers and presidents, royalty and religious leaders, artists and industrialists, school children and journalists, the devout and the merely curious.

 

It is impossible to catalogue all the appelations, emotions, inspirations and experiences that this Mandir has evoked.

On a personal profound level, the Mandir is a pavilion of peace and promise, a dissolver of disquiet, a messenger dispelling misunderstanding, a statement of hope and faith for the future.

 

 

I am fascinated by the power of belief and teamwork and the spirit of volunteerism that made the Mandir possible.

In June 1970, the first BAPS Mandir in Britain opened in a converted disused church in Islington, North London, by Yogji Maharaj.

In 1982, having outgrown the Islington temple, the congregation moved to a small former warehouse in Neasden.

The present Mandir was designed by Pramukh Swami, a 92-year-old Indian sadhu (holy man) and is made of 2,828 tonnes of Bulgarian limestone and 2,000 tonnes of Italian marble, which was first shipped to India to be carved by a team of 1,526 sculptors.

 

Above: Pramukh Swami (1921 – 2016)

 

It was built and funded entirely by the Hindu community.

The entire project took five years, although the Neasden construction itself was completed in a mere 30 months.

 

In November 1992, the temple recorded the largest concrete pour in the United Kingdom, when 4,500 tons were put down in 24 hours to create a foundation mat 1.8 metres / 6 feet thick.

The first stone was laid in June 1993.

Two years later, the Mandir was complete.

 

 

Designed according to the Shilpa-Shastras, a Vedic text that develops Hindu architecture to metaphorically represent the different attributes of God, it was constructed almost entirely from Indian marble, Italian marble, Sardinian granite and Bulgarian limestone.

No iron or steel was used in the construction, a unique feature for a modern building in the UK.

From the conceptual design and vision of Pramukh Swami, the architect C. B. Sompura and his team created the Mandir entirely from stone.

 

It is a shikharbaddha (or pinnacled) mandir:

Seven-tiered pinnacles topped by golden spires crowd the roofline, complemented by five ribbed domes.

The temple is noted for its profusely carved cantilevered central dome.

Inside, serpentine ribbons of stone link the columns into arches, creating a sense of levitation.

Light cream Vartza limestone from Bulgaria was chosen for the exterior, and for the interior, Italian Carrara marble supplemented by Indian Ambaji marble.

The Bulgarian and Italian stone were shipped to the port of Kandla in Gujarat, where most of the carving was eventually completed, by over 1,500 craftsmen in a workshop specially set up for the project.

More than 26,300 individually numbered stones pieces were shipped back to London and the building was assembled like a giant three-dimensional jigsaw.

 

 

The Mandir was inaugurated on 20 August 1995 by Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the spiritual leader of BAPS – the organisation behind the temple.

The entire Mandir complex represents an act of faith and collective effort.

Inspired by Pramukh Swami Maharaj, more than 1,000 volunteers worked on the building, and many more contributed and solicited donations, or organised sponsored walks and other activities.

Children raised money by collecting aluminium cans and foil for recycling – the biggest can collection in English history – 7 million cans collected by 1,500 children.

 

The Mandir serves as the centre of worship.

Directly beneath each of the seven pinnacles seen from the outside is a shrine.

Each of these seven shrines houses murtis (sacred images) within altars.

Each murti is revered like God in person and devoutly attended to each day by the sadhus (monks) who live in the temple ashram.

 

 

Beneath the Mandir is the permanent exhibition ‘Understanding Hinduism‘.

Through 3-D dioramas, paintings, tableaux and traditional craftwork, it provides an insight into the wisdom and values of Hinduism.

Visitors can learn about the origin, beliefs and contribution of Hindu seers, and how this ancient religion is being practised today through traditions, such as the BAPS Swaminarayan Sampraday.

 

The Mandir is open to people of all faiths and none.

Entrance is free, except to the ‘Understanding Hinduism‘ exhibition where there is a £2 fee, which was covered by the London Pass.

 

 

(A note about BAPS….

Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Sanstha (BAPS) (Bocāsanvāsī Akshar Purushottam Sansthā) is a Hindu religious and social organization within the Swaminarayan branch of Hinduism.

BAPS was established on 5 June 1907 by Shastriji Maharaj after leaving the Vadtal Gadi of the Swaminarayan Sampraday.

It was formed on the founder’s interpretation that Swaminarayan was to remain present on Earth through a lineage of Gunatit Gurus (or Akshar) dating all the way back to Gunatitanand Swami – one of Swaminarayan’s prominent devotees.

Gunatitanand Swami was succeeded by Bhagatji Maharaj, Shastriji Maharaj, Yogiji Maharaj, Pramukh Swami Maharaj and Mahant Swami Maharaj.

Due to the organizational emphasis on the Akshar Purushottam doctrine, it essentially forms the organization’s middle name.

The fundamental beliefs of BAPS include the spiritual guidance through the living Akshar (or Guru) who is believed to have attained oneness with Swaminarayan.

Mahant Swami Maharaj is the current Guru and the president of the organization.

As a global, well-established Hindu organization, BAPS actively engages in a range of endeavors aimed at spirituality, character-building, and human welfare.

The activities span religious, cultural, social, and humanitarian domains.

Through these activities, it aims to preserve Indian culture, ideals of Hindu faith, family unity, selfless service, interfaith harmony and peaceful coexistence.

55,000 volunteers and 3,300 temples serve 3,300 communities around the world.

As of August 2018, BAPS has approximately 1,560 saints (or sadhus), among the most saints in one sanstha in Hinduism.

As part of its efforts towards community outreach, BAPS also engages in a host of humanitarian and charitable endeavors, by which its volunteers serve neighbors and communities.

With total assets of 17.5 billion USD, BAPS is able to contribute to a lot of welfare and public service works.

Through BAPS Charities, a non-profit aid organization, BAPS has spearheaded a number of projects around the world in the arenas of healthcare, education, environmental causes and community-building campaigns.)

 

 

For the Hindu community, the Mandir is a unifying force that installs pride and dignity with a zeal to serve society.

Every week, hundreds of faithful devotees, young and old alike, gather for prayers and services.

The annual Diwali and New Year’s festivals are witnessed by thousands of devotees and well-wishers.

Diwali is a spectacular celebration that falls in the month of November, a festival of lights and fireworks that celebrates the triumph of good over evil.

Every year 35,000 children visit the Mandir.

 

 

What exactly is a Mandir, you ask?

A Mandir is a Hindu place of worship, literally a place where the mind becomes still and the soul floats freely to seek the source of life, bliss and meaning, a place to pause for a moment to pray, reflect and absorb the peaceful ambiance.

 

 

The problem is that the Mandir is a place that takes religion seriously, and though it is listed as a tourist attraction, the Mandir is anything but one.

Here, there is no pandering to curiosity seekers.

It is not a place to go rifling through the Hindu faith to light on what has shock value, for the focus on what is bizarre and outside one’s experience is the crudest kind of vulgarization of faith.

Behind the ceremony and ritual, we seek what is of deepest concern to ourselves, that search for the essential similarity in human nature.

Hinduism is, like true faith, like other religions, not a dull habit but a raging fever, a pounding pulse that gives its adherants all that is startling about life itself.

 

The Mandir in the suburbs of Neasden is as unbelievable to the eyes as a garden in the Sahara.

This spectacular edifice, this the largest Hindu temple outside India, includes seven spires (shikhars), six domes, 193 pillars and 55 different ceiling designs.

The Mandir‘s visual splendour and tranquil atmosphere have spontaneously generated poetic expressions and sentiments.

The media have dubbed the Mandir as “hallucinogenic” and described the profuse carvings as “frothy milk on a cappuccino“.

Deities and motifs representing the Hindu faith spring from the ceilings, walls and windows.

The impressive monument is supported by a 1,070-foot long pageant of extraordinary stone elephants and a 610-foot long ornately carved outer wall.

The Narayan Sarovar, a water body that embraces the monument on three sides, gives the Mandir an aura of a traditional place of pilgrimage.

The Mandir is entered through the richly carved portico of the Grand Haveli (cultural complex), welcoming you into a majestic wooden courtyard with soaring teak columns and oak panels.

Elegant peacocks, delicate lotus flowers and royal elephants beckon in greeting, with the carpet designed to compliment the motifs.

 

 

Wood for the Haveli was sourced from sustainable forests, and for each tree felled, ten saplings were planted.

The Haveli Prayer Hall is a pillar-less assembly area that measures 2,750 square metres and seats over 2,500 worshippers.

The Hall incorporates environment-friendly features such as light wells, energy-saving lighting and a heat exchanger which uses thermal energy dissipated by the congregation to heat other parts of the complex.

Here is the venue for weekly assemblies and regular festivals.

 

 

The heart of the Mandir is its murtis (the sacred images of the deities who are revered as living gods), ritually infused with the presence of the divine.

Hindus worship murtis to express and enhance their loving relationship with that which is holy.

Murtis are the soul of the Mandir, making it a sacred place of worhsip wherein God resides – the home of God.

 

 

The shrine’s foundations are His feet, the pillars His knees, the inner sanctum His stomach, the throne His heart, the murti His soul, the shikhars His shoulders, the bell His tongue, the lamp His breath, the lion His nose, the windows His ears, the ringed stone on the shikhar His neck, the golden pot His head and the flags His hair.

The entire Mandir is revered as a divine manifestation.

In total, there are 11 shrines with 17 murtis, including Ganesh, Hanuman and Swaminarayan – this last to whom the Mandir is dedicated.

 

The murtis are ritually served by dedicated sadhus (monks) who live in the Mandir.

Before sunrise, the murtis are awakened by the sadhus and the shrine doors opened for the first of five daily artis (prayers), the Mangala Arti.

 

 

An arti is a ritual wherein a specific prayer is recited to a poetic format with music while the sadhus wave a lighted lamp in front of the murtis.

The sadhus recite some shlokas (prayers), serve the murtis, offer them food and bathe them and close the shrine doors.

Feeding and bathing of the murtis continues throughout the day.

 

The shrines are opened again for the second aarti, the Shangar Arti, and remain open from 0900 to approximately 1100, when the shrines are closed and offered thal (hymns).

At 1145, the shrines are opened for the midday arti, the Rajbhog Arti, and the thal is recited before the murtis.

The shrines are closed after this to allow the murtis to rest during the afternoon.

The shrines reopen at 1600 until 1830 for darshan.

 

 

The Sandhya Arti (sunset arti) follows at 1900.

Thereafter, a selection of prayers are recited by the devotees including dhun (where the names of God are chanted and verses of praise are sung).

The shrines are closed again for approximately one hour so they can be offered their final meal by the sadhus.

The murtis are then prepared for the night and adorned in their evening attire by the sadhus.

The shrines are opened a final time for the Shayan Arti (night-time arti) with the lights dimmed and music lowered.

The devotees recite a few hymns, gently sending the murtis to sleep, before the shrines are finally closed for the night.

 

The elaborately carved pillars, friezes, ornate ceilings and the magnificent dome provide an aesthetic and elevating atmosphere to the sanctum sanctorum of the Mandir.

 

 

The murtis of the Mandir – Bhagwan Swaminarayan, Guru Parampara, the avatars of Sanatan Dharma, Shri Akshar-Purushottam Maharaj, Shri Radha-Krishna, Shri Sita-Ram, Shri Shiv-Parvati, Shri Ganeshji and Shri Hanumanji – exude a heavenly calm and beauty.

 

Don’t despair if you can’t decipher who is who and what is what, for, to understand all of this, one needs to be steeped in Hindu history and Indian heritage.

 

 

Here prayers are whispered, songs of praise are heightened and the soul rejoices beyond the frontiers of mundane existence to experience the divine peace of God.

It is a nucleus of socio-spiritual activities for the benefit and elevation of individuals, families and society.

It inspires a society free from violence, crime and addiction.

It infuses people with a spirit of selfless service, to live in tune with God and in harmony with humanity.

 

Or at least these are the Mandir’s intentions.

 

 

An hour of lost and bewildered walking finally led me to a procession of French teenagers who were scrutinized carefully by the burly security that met us.

 

Here at 105 Brentfield Road, as in most places that devote time and attention to unearthly divinity, apparently God has a strict dress code that must be adhered to before you will be allowed to worship Him.

Clothing must be respectable, respectful.

Shorts and skirts must be below knee-length and footwear removed upon entering the Mandir complex.

No one smokes on the premises.

Video and photography are forbidden upon entry.

Mobile phones must be turned off and no food or beverages are allowed on the premises.

 

 

By the time I reach the security shed where backpacks are stored upon long shelves and make my way into the Mandir I am immediately summoned by personnel into the Prayer Hall where row upon row of folding chairs support a large collection of English senior citizens let loose here on this most unusual excursion.

The film is agonizingly long and as I am not officially a part of this senior set, despite the balding pate and silver mane that is mine, I extrude myself as quietly as I can and find myself lining up to enter the Inner Sanctum with the aforementioned French and some Indian devotees.

 

Hindu worship (puja) involves images (murtis), prayers (mantras) and diagrams of the universe (yantras).

The simplest yantra is a circle within a square within a rectangle, with four gates to represent the four directions of the universe.

Hindu temples are based on this design, although still open to endless additions and variations in decoration.

Central to worship is the icon, or sacred image, which together with the temple, is believed to both house and represent a manifestation of God.

An icon can be worshipped at home or in a temple.

Most Hindu worship at home more often and the majority of Hindu homes have a shrine, where at certain times different members of the family make offerings and say prayers.

Most Hindus worship individually, not in a communal service.

Worship involves mantras (vibrating sounds that summon the murti) and prasad (the offering of gifts).

While many prayers and offerings are made for the fulfillment of wishes, the ultimate objective is the offering of the self to become one with God.

Central to this worship is darshan (seeing and being in the presence of the central murti).

 

 

The best time to visit the Mandir is just before 1145, when the rajbhog arti ceremony is performed.

Lit candles are waved in front of the embodiments of the murtis, accompanied by a musical prayer performed by drums, bells, gongs and a conch shell.

 

It is truly a haunting and uplifting experience.

 

Abhishek is the ancient Hindu practice of pouring water over the sacred image of God to honour Him and to attain His blessings.

In this Mandir, abhishek of the sacred image of Nilkanth Varni (or Bhagwan Swaminarayan) is performed daily to the chanting of Vedic verses, including the ancient prayer of peace (the Shanti Paath) and the recital of the 108 auspicious and liberating names of Varni (the Janmangal Namavali), in a ceremony that lasts 15 minutes.

The abhishek is done by devotees on days of special significance to them or to seek blessings for personal reasons.

 

 

The Abhishek Mandap is a marble chamber on the lower floor of the Mandir, housing the sacred image of Shri Nilkanth Varni, the teenage form of Bhagwan Swaminarayan to whom the Mandir is dedicated.

The chamber is clad in Brazilian and Italian marble and embellished with intricate traditional designs.

At the chamber’s heart lies the murti of Varni in gilded brass.

He is depicted in mid-step, emaciated, yet looking calm and resolute.

With matted hair and a small gutko (handwritten manuscript of excerpts from sacred texts) wrapped in a kerchief around his neck, Varni is wearing nothing but his loincloth tied at the waist by a jute cord.

In his left hand, Varni carries a dand (a wooden staff) and a kamandalu (a drinking pot made from dry gourd), both common marks of Hindu ascetism.

 

 

Who was Varni?

After renouncing his home at the tender age of 11, Bhagwan Swaminarayan embarked upon an epic journey of spiritual awakening that took him around India, into Nepal and Tibet, and through Myanmar and Bangladesh.

During this time, he became to be known as Nilkanth Varni.

Barefoot and alone, Nilkanth walked almost 8,000 miles over seven years, blessing the land and liberating numerous spiritual aspirants along the way.

Carrying no maps, no food and no money, Varni crossed raging rivers, faced ferocious animals and survived the freezing heights of the Himalayas.

His solitary journey is a story of courage, kindness and enlightenment, and the inspiration for the naming of the Mandir.

 

 

But can the non-believer understand Hinduism?

I have tried and what I have concluded is the following….

 

Hinduism is the world’s oldest ongoing living religion, practised as early as 6500 BC.

It has, unlike Christianity or Islam, no one single founder, but is rather a collective of experiences of ancient seers over the centuries.

According to Hinduism’s adherents, Hinduism teaches one to see the presence of God in everything and thus honour the whole of creation.

You can find God in the world of everyday affairs as readily as anywhere else.

 

 

With this perspective, there are no heathens nor enemies.

Many Hindus acknowledge Christ as a divine man, while believing that there have been many as such, including Rama, Krishna and the Buddha.

 

Everyone, even Canada Slim your humble blogger, has the right to evolve spiritually and will, at some time, realise the truth.

 

Hindus believe that souls are not limited to one life – many lives offer many chances for spiritual elevation.

 

 

Like many religions, this faith has rigorous rules.

People are responsible for every action they perform, through the Law of Karma.

 

Hindus believe in one supreme, all-powerful God, the Creator, who has a divine form, is immanent (eternal), transcedent and the grantor of spiritual liberation (moksha).

Jews, Christians and Muslims view the worship of God in the form of one chosen ideal.

Hindus view and represent God in innumerable forms.

 

 

Each form (avatar) is but a symbol that points to something beyond.

No one form can truly encapsulate God’s actual nature, so an entire array is needed to complete the picture of God’s aspects and manifestations.

Each representation’s vocation is to introduce the human heart to what it represents but what it itself is not.

Though each representation points equally to God, the Hindu devotee tends to form a lifetime attachment to one, the ishta, the form of the divine the devotee wishes to adopt.

This worship of sacred images of God is called murti puja.

After all, love assumes different nuances according to the relationship involved.

 

Hindus believe in Karma that the soul reaps fruit – good or bad – which is experienced either in this life or in future lives.

They believe in reincarnation (punar-janma), that the soul is immortal, repeatedly born and reborn in one of millions of lifeforms until it attains spiritual liberation (moksha).

Moksha is the release of the soul from this perpetual cycle of births and deaths, remaining eternally in the blissful presence of God.

 

 

Dharma is how we choose to live our lives according to divine law, which values service, sacrifice, humility, duty, devotion, purpose, fidelity, respect and integrity among other positive practices and virtues.

This divine law is believed to be revealed by the authority of the Vedic scriptures, the four Vedas – the Samhita, the Brahmana, the Aranyaka and the Upanishad.

And in a model of efficiency these are encapsulated in the Shikshapatri, a book of moral conduct in 212 succinct Sanskrit verses.

 

 

In a nutshell of simplicity:

• Do not steal.
• Do not eat meat.
• Do not consume alcohol or other intoxicants.
• Do not commit adultery.
• Maintain purity of conduct.

 

Hindus claim a proud heritage:

• the world’s first university (700 BC), Takshashila, India
• the invention of the Zero, which makes the binary system and computers possible
• the invention of the decimal system
• the invention of geometry and trigonometry
• the value of pi – the ratio of the circumference and diameter of a circle
• the prior formulation of the Pythagorean Theorem (which says that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle equals the sum of the square of the two sides)  (For me, mathematics is as arcane and mysterious as faith.)
• a theory of the revolution of the Earth 1,000 years before Copernicus
• a formulation of the law of gravity 1,200 years before Newton
• an idea of the smallest and largest measures of time from a kratl (34,000th of a second) to a kalpa (4.32 billion years)
• the practice of surgery 2,600 years ago with 125 types of surgical instruments for 300 different operations

 

I did not leave the Mandir of London as a convert to Hinduism, but what my visit showed me was worth the effort.

 

 

Life holds more than what one is experiencing now.

People need to live for something which makes life worthwhile, a quest for meaning and value beyond oneself.

Life holds other possibilities beyond our own experience.

 

Hinduism holds that underlying the human self and animating it is a reservoir of being that never dies, is never exhausted and is unrestricted in consciousness and bliss.

Hinduism sees the mind’s hidden continents as stretching to infinity, infinite in being, infinite in awareness, infinite in joy.

Hindus believe that there are multiple paths to God, each calling for a distinctive mode of travel, each starting from the kind of person one is.

 

 

We all play the roles our personalities dictate, cast in this moment in the greatest of all tragi-comedies, the drama of life itself in which we are all simultaneously co-authors and actors, powered less by reason than by emotion.

To find meaning in this drama, in the mystery of existence, is life’s final and fascinating challenge.

Life is a training ground for the human spirit.

The world is the soul’s gymnasium, both a school and a training field.

 

Hindus believe that the world is lila, God’s plan, that the goal of life is life itself.

 

The various major religions are alternate paths to the same goal to find meaning to our lives beyond ourselves.

The various religions are but different languages through which God, should God exist, speaks to the human heart.

 

“Truth is one.

Sages call truth by different names.”

 

Differences in culture, history, geography and temperament all make for diverse starting points.

Is life not more interesting as a result of its infinite variety in endless combinations?

 

I may not always understand that which is out of my experience, but the benefits of trying to go beyond my experience are boundless.

 

 

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Understanding Hinduism Exhibition Guidebook, BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir / John Bowker, World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored and Explained / Rachel Howard and Bill Nash, Secret London: An Unusual Guide / Huston Smith, The World’s Religions / The Bhagavad-Gita

 

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the Freudian Slippers

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 15 January 2018

I have spoken of Sigmund Freud before.

Above: Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939)

 

And I must confess to a reluctance to like the man and his theories, for the same reason I am reluctant to embrace Charles Darwin and his theories:

Above: Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)

 

Admitting there may be some validity to their theories is to admit to embarrassing revelations about myself.

 

Maybe we did evolve from single cell organisms and apes through a process of millions of millennia, so perhaps a belief in an invisible God that created the world in seven calendar days and could bring me eternal life after death is less plausible than the acceptance that I am just the tiniest particle in the vast expanse of time, space and reality.

 

And maybe, just maybe, there might be more to Freud and his theories than just the scandalous unproven idea that he liked to watch his mother pee, and that some of the ways we think about ourselves and how our unconscious, dreams and sexuality as suggested by Freud’s theories might be somewhat uncomfortably plausible.

 

My wife, the medical doctor in the house, has, of course, had exposure during her studies to the work and thought of Freud in regards to child development.

During her internship in a Vienna practice she visited the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna – there are three Freud Museums, the other two are in Pribor, Czech Republic, and in London – which she immensely enjoyed.

Above: Sigmund Freud Museum, Bergstrasse 19, Vienna

 

Knowing that she had some free time before her medical conference in London in October 2017, Ute was determined that she would visit the Freud Museum here as well.

Above: Freud Museum, London

 

I have already written extensively of some of the many sites we saw in London during our week there together and suffice to say that what I have said is a mere drop in the bucket of all that has been said or could be said by others.

(For more on London, please see:

• Canada Slim and the Body Snatchers /….and the Danger Zone / ….and the Paddington Arrival / ….and the Street Walked Too Often /….Underground / …. and the Outcast /…. and the Wonders on the Wall / …. and the Calculated Cathedral / …. and the Right Man / …. and the Queen’s Horsemen / …. and the Royal Peculiar / …. and the Uncertainty Principle / …. and the Museum of Many / …. and the Lamp Ladies / …. and the Breviary of Bartholomew of this blog. )

 

London, England, 25 October 2017

In North London, perched on a hill to the west of Hampstead Heath, Hampstead Village developed into a fashionable spa in the 18th century and was not much altered thereafter.

Being a sloping site deterred Victorian property speculators and put off the railway companies from destroying much of Hampstead.

Later it became one of the city’s most celebrated literary quartiers and even now retains a reputation as a bolt hole for high-profile intelligentsia and discerning pop stars.

The steeply inclined High Street, lined with posh shops and arty cafés, flaunts the area’s ever-increasing wealth, but far more appealing are the extensive, picturesque and precipitious maze of alleyways and steps radiating both east and west of Heath Street.

Proximity to Hampstead Heath is the true joy of the territory, for this mixture of woodland, smooth pasture and landscaped garden is simply the most exhilirating patch of greenery in London.

Over the years, countless writers, artists and politicos have been drawn to Hampstead, which has more blue plaques commemorating its residents than any London borough.

John Constable lived here in the 1820s, trying to make ends meet for his wife and seven children, painting cloud formations on the Heath.

Above: John Constable (1776 – 1837)

 

John Keats (1795 – 1821) moved into Well Walk in 1817 to nurse his dying brother then moved to a semi-detached villa, fell in love with the girl next door, bumped into Coleridge on the Heath and in 1821 went to Rome to die.

Above: Keats House, Spanish Steps, Rome

(I have visited Keats House in Rome and in London.)

Above: Keats House, Hampstead, North London

 

In 1856, Karl Marx finally achieved respectability when he moved into Grafton Terrace.

Above: Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

 

Robert Louis Stevenson stayed here when he was 23 suffering from tuberculosis and thought Hampstead was “the most delightful place for air and scenery“.

Above: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)

 

Author H.G. Wells (1866 – 1946) lived on Church Row for three years just before World War One, while photographer Cecil Beaton (1904 – 1980) attended primary school and was bullied by author Evelyn Waugh (1903 – 1966) – the start of a lifelong feud.

 

The composer Edward Elgar became a special constable during the war, joining the Hampstead Volunteer Reserve.

Above: Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934)

 

Writer D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930) and his German wife Frieda (1879 – 1956) watched the first Zeppelin raid on London from the Heath in 1915 and decided to leave.

Above: Memorial, Camberwell Old Cemetery, London, to 21 civilians killed by Zeppelin bombings in 1917

 

Following the war, Lawrence’s friend and fellow writer Katherine Mansfield, lived for a couple of years in a big grey house overlooking the Heath, which she nicknamed “the Elephant“.

Above: Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923)

 

Actor Dirk Bogarde was born in a taxi in Hampstead in 1921.

Above: Dirk Bogarde (1921 – 1999)

 

Poet Stephen Spender spent his childhood in “an ugly house” on Frognal and went to school locally.

Above: Stephen Spender (1909 – 1995)

 

Elizabeth Taylor was born in Hampstead in 1932 and came back to live here in the 1950s during her first marriage to Richard Burton.

Above: Elizabeth Taylor (1932- 2011)

 

In the 1930s, Hampstead’s modernist Isokon Building, a block of flats on Lawn Road, became something of an artistic hangout, particularly the drinking den, the Isobar.

Above: Isokon Flats, Hampstead, North London

 

Architect Walter Gropius (1883 – 1969) and artists Henry Moore (1898 – 1986), Barbara Hepworth (1903 – 1975) and her husband Ben Nicholson (1894 – 1982) all lived here.

Another tenant, Agatha Christie (1890 – 1976), compared the exterior of Isokon to a giant ocean liner.

 

Architect Ernö Goldfinger (1902 – 1987) built his modernist family home at 2 Willow Road and local resident Ian Fleming named James Bond’s adversary after him.

Above: 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, North London

 

Mohammed Ali Jinnah abandoned India for Hampstead in 1932, living a quiet life with his daughter and his sister and working as a lawyer.

Above: Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1876 – 1948)

 

George Orwell lived rent-free above Booklovers’ Corner, a bookshop on South End Road, in 1934, in return for services in the shop in the afternoon.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying has many echoes of Hampstead and its characters.

 

Artist Piet Mondrian escaped to Hampstead from Nazi-occupied Paris, only to be bombed out a year later, after which he fled to New York.

Above: Piet Mondrian (1872 – 1944)

 

Nobel Prize-winning writer Elias Canetti (1905 – 1994) was another refugee from Nazi-occupied Europe as was painter/poet Oskar Kokoschka (1886 – 1980).

 

General Charles de Gaulle (1890 – 1970) got first-hand experience of Nazi air raids when he lived on Frognal with his wife and two daughters.

 

Ruth Ellis (1926 – 1955), the last woman to be hanged in Britain in 1955, shot her lover outside Magdala Tavern by Hampstead Heath Train Station.

 

Sid Vicious (1957 – 1979) and Johnny Rotten lived in a squat on Hampstead High Street in 1976.

 

John le Carré lived here in the 1970s and 1980s and set a murder in Smiley’s People on Hampstead Heath.

Above: John le Carré

 

Former Labour leader Michael Foot lived in a house he bought in 1945 with his redundancy cheque from The Evening Standard until the age of 96.

Above: Michael Foot (1913 – 2010)

 

Today comedian Ricky Gervais, director Ridley Scott, footballer Thierry Henry and pop stars Boy George and Harry Styles have homes here.

 

And it was here in Hampstead where the Austrian neurologist and the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud spent the last year of his life, having reluctantly left Vienna following the Nazi Anschluss (annexation).

In January 1933, the Nazi Party took control of Germany and Freud’s books were prominent among those they burned and destroyed.

Freud remarked to Ernest Jones:

“What progress we are making!

In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.

Now, they are content with burning my books.“

Freud was wrong.

The Nazis would have gassed and incinerated him too in one of their death camps – as happened to millions of other Jews.

Freud continued to underestimate the growing Nazi threat and remained determined to stay in Vienna, even following the Anschluss of 13 March 1938, in which Nazi Germany annexed Austria, and the outbreaks of violent anti-Semitism that ensued.

 

Ernest Jones, the president of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), flew into Vienna from London via Prague on 15 March determined to get Freud to change his mind and seek exile in Britain.

Above: Ernest Jones (1879 – 1958)

 

That same month Nazi S.A. men invaded Freud’s home searching for valuables.

Freud’s “Old Testament” frown frightened them away, though daughter Anna was detained by the Gestapo a whole day.

This prospect and the shock of the arrest and interrogation of Anna Freud by the Gestapo finally convinced Freud it was time to leave Austria.

 

Jones left for London the following week with a list provided by Freud of the party of émigrés for whom immigration permits would be required.

Back in London, Jones used his personal acquaintance with the Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, to expedite the granting of permits.

There were seventeen in all and work permits were provided where relevant.

Jones also used his influence in scientific circles, persuading the president of the Royal Society, Sir William Bragg, to write to the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, requesting to good effect that diplomatic pressure be applied in Berlin and Vienna on Freud’s behalf.

 

Freud also had support from American diplomats, notably his ex-patient and American ambassador to France, William Bullitt.

Bullitt alerted US President Roosevelt to the increased dangers facing the Freuds, resulting in the American consul-general in Vienna, John Cooper Wiley, arranging regular monitoring of Berggasse 19.

He also intervened by phone call during the Gestapo interrogation of Anna Freud.

 

The departure from Vienna began in stages throughout April and May 1938.

Freud’s grandson Ernst Halberstadt and Freud’s son Martin’s wife and children left for Paris in April.

Freud’s sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, left for London on 5 May, Martin Freud the following week and Freud’s daughter Mathilde and her husband, Robert Hollitscher, on 24 May.

By the end of the month, arrangements for Freud’s own departure for London had become stalled, mired in a legally tortuous and financially extortionate process of negotiation with the Nazi authorities.

Under regulations imposed on its Jewish population by the new Nazi regime, a Kommissar was appointed to manage Freud’s assets and those of the IPA whose headquarters were nearby Freud’s home.

 

Freud was allocated to Dr. Anton Sauerwald, who had studied chemistry at Vienna University under Professor Josef Herzig, an old friend of Freud’s.

Sauerwald read Freud’s books to further learn about him and became sympathetic towards his situation.

Though required to disclose details of all Freud’s bank accounts to his superiors and to arrange the destruction of the historic library of books housed in the offices of the IPA, Sauerwald did neither.

Instead he removed evidence of Freud’s foreign bank accounts to his own safe-keeping and arranged the storage of the IPA library in the Austrian National Library where it remained until the end of the war.

Though Sauerwald’s intervention lessened the financial burden of the “flight” tax on Freud’s declared assets, other substantial charges were levied in relation to the debts of the IPA and the valuable collection of antiquities Freud possessed.

Unable to access his own accounts, Freud turned to Princess Marie Bonaparte, the most eminent and wealthy of his French followers, who had travelled to Vienna to offer her support and it was she who made the necessary funds available.

This allowed Sauerwald to sign the necessary exit visas for Freud, his wife Martha and daughter Anna.

Above: Anton Sauerwald

 

They left Vienna on the Orient Express on 4 June, accompanied by their housekeeper and a doctor, arriving in Paris the following day where they stayed as guests of Princess Bonaparte before travelling overnight to London arriving at Victoria Station on 6 June.

Freud was immediately Britain’s most famous Nazi exile.

Among those soon to call on Freud to pay their respects were Salvador Dalí, Stefan Zweig, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf and H. G. Wells.

 

 

Representatives of the Royal Society called with the Society’s Charter for Freud, who had been elected a Foreign Member in 1936, to sign himself into membership.

 

Princess Bonaparte arrived towards the end of June to discuss the fate of Freud’s four elderly sisters left behind in Vienna.

 

Above: Princess Marie Bonaparte (1882 – 1962)

 

Her subsequent attempts to get them exit visas failed and they would all die in Nazi concentration camps.

 

In early 1939 Sauerwald arrived in London in mysterious circumstances where he met Freud’s brother Alexander.

He was tried and imprisoned in 1945 by an Austrian court for his activities as a Nazi Party official.

Responding to a plea from his wife, Anna Freud wrote to confirm that Sauerwald “used his office as our appointed commissar in such a manner as to protect my father“.

Her intervention helped secure his release from jail in 1947.

 

In the Freuds’ new home, 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, North London, Freud’s Vienna consulting room was recreated in faithful detail.

He continued to see patients there until the terminal stages of his illness.

He also worked on his last books, Moses and Monotheism, published in German in 1938 and in English the following year and the uncompleted An Outline of Psychoanalysis which was published posthumously.

 

The ground floor of the museum houses Freud’s study, library, hall and the dining room.

Freud’s study and library look exactly as they did when Freud lived here – they were modelled on his Berggasse 19 flat in Vienna:

The large collection of antiquities and the psychiatrist’s couch, sumptiously draped in an opulent Iranian rug, were all brought here from Vienna.

 

Upstairs on the first floor in the video room there is some old footage of the Freud family.

While another room is dedicated to Sigmund’s favourite daughter, Anna Freud, herself an influential child analyst.

 

There is a temporary exhibitions room which hosts alternate contemporary art and Freud-themed exhibitions.

Art installations often use several rooms within the museum, such as the 2001/02 exhibition “A Visit to Freud’s” by an Austrian female photographer Uli Aigner.

 

Many areas such as the kitchen and Anna Freud’s consulting room are out of public view and have been converted into offices.

 

The house had only finished being built in 1920 in the Queen Anne Style.

 

A small sun room (loggia) in a modern style was added at the rear by his architect son Ernst Ludwig Freud that same year so Sigmund could sit out and enjoy the garden.

It has since been enclosed and now serves as the museum shop, which flogs merchandise from silk scarves inspired by his patients’ artwork to novelty Freudian slippers, plus a good selection of books, including those used to research this post.

 

In February 1923, Freud detected a leukoplakia, a benign growth associated with heavy smoking, on his mouth.

Freud initially kept this secret, but in April 1923 he informed Ernest Jones, telling him that the growth had been removed.

Freud consulted the dermatologist Maximilian Steiner, who advised him to quit smoking but lied about the growth’s seriousness, minimizing its importance.

Freud later saw Felix Deutsch who saw that the growth was cancerous.

He identified it to Freud using the euphemism “a bad leukoplakia” instead of the technical diagnosis epithelioma.

Deutsch advised Freud to stop smoking and have the growth excised.

Freud was treated by Marcus Hajek, a rhinologist (nose surgeon) whose competence he had previously questioned.

Hajek performed an unnecessary cosmetic surgery in his clinic’s outpatient department.

Freud bled during and after the operation and may narrowly have escaped death.

Freud subsequently saw Deutsch again.

Deutsch saw that further surgery would be required, but did not tell Freud that he had cancer because he was worried that Freud might wish to commit suicide.

 

Freud had been given just five years to live.

He lasted sixteen, but he was a semi-invalid when he arrived in London and rarely left the house except to visit his pet dog Chun who was held in quarantine for nearly a year.

 

Freud was over eighty at this time.

 

By mid-September 1939, Freud’s cancer of the jaw was causing him increasingly severe pain and had been declared to be inoperable.

 

The last book he read, Balzac’s La Peau de Chagrin, prompted reflections on his own increasing frailty.

Above: Title page of Honoré Balzac’s La Peau de Chagrin (Skin of Sorrow)

 

A few days later he turned to his doctor, friend and fellow refugee, Max Schur, reminding him that they had previously discussed the terminal stages of his illness:

“Schur, you remember our ‘contract’ not to leave me in the lurch when the time had come. Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense.”

When Schur replied that he had not forgotten, Freud said, “I thank you.” and then “Talk it over with Anna, and if she thinks it’s right, then make an end of it.”

Anna Freud wanted to postpone her father’s death, but Schur convinced her it was pointless to keep him alive and on 21 and 22 September administered doses of morphine that resulted in Freud’s death around 3 am on 23 September 1939, age 83.

However, discrepancies in the various accounts Schur gave of his role in Freud’s final hours, which have in turn led to inconsistencies between Freud’s main biographers, has led to further research and a revised account.

This proposes that Schur was absent from Freud’s deathbed when a third and final dose of morphine was administered by Dr Josephine Stross, a colleague of Anna Freud’s, leading to Freud’s death around midnight on 23 September 1939.

 

Above: Freud’s ashes, Golders Green Crematorium

 

The house remained in his family until his youngest daughter Anna Freud, who was a pioneer of child therapy, died in 1982.

 

The house has a well maintained garden which is still much as Freud would have known it.

 

The Freuds moved all their furniture and household effects to London.

There are Biedermeier chests, tables and cupboards and a collection of 18th century and 19th century Austrian painted country furniture.

The museum owns Freud’s collection of Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Oriental antiquities, and his personal library.

Although Freud was not a practising Jew, he was very conscious of his Jewishness, which is reflected in the artifacts he collected, including an etching hanging in his study by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 – 1669) of Menasseh ben Israel (1604 – 1657), who persuaded Oliver Cromwell to allow Jews back into England in 1656.

Above: Rembrandt’s Portrait of Menasseh ben Israel

 

Freud’s “old and grubby gods” as he described his collection in a letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess in 1899 are still on view to visitors, just as he left them.

Freud was an avid and knowledgable collector and often sought expert advice before purchasing.

As his collection grew, his study became a treasure trove of thousands of antiquities from all over the world, ranging from Roman glass objects to wooden Buddha statuettes, terracotta representations of the Greek god Eros, Egyptian gods cast in bronze, Chinese works in jade and a 20th century metal porcupine given to him during a visit to the United States in 1909.

Freud confessed that his passion for collecting was second only to his addiction to cigars.

 

 

The star exhibit in the museum is Freud’s psychoanalytic couch, which had been given to him by one of his patients, Madame Benvenisti, in 1890.

This was restored at a cost of £5000 in 2013.

This couch was where patients revealed their wildest dreams, forgotten trauma and hidden phobias or free associated whatever sprung into their minds before Freud would interpret their unconscious meanings.

In 2013, the Freud Museum’s curators worried about the deteriorating condition of the 125-year-old couch, which had begun to sag badly in the middle and was splitting along its seams.

Thanks to generous private donations and painstaking work by specialists, the couch was restored to its original splendour.

Covered with Oriental rugs and cushions it looks remarkably comfortable to recline upon and recall deep-seated memories.

The couch has seen a lot of Freud’s patients both in Vienna and London.

Freud used pseudonyms in his case histories.

Some patients known by pseudonyms were:

• Cäcilie M. (Anna von Lieben)
• Dora (Ida Bauer, 1882–1945)
• Frau Emmy von N. (Fanny Moser)
• Fräulein Elisabeth von R. (Ilona Weiss)
• Fräulein Katharina (Aurelia Kronich)
• Fräulein Lucy R.
• Little Hans (Herbert Graf, 1903–1973)
• Rat Man (Ernst Lanzer, 1878–1914)
• Enos Fingy (Joshua Wild, 1878–1920)
• Wolf Man (Sergei Pankejeff, 1887–1979).

Other famous patients included:

• Prince Pedro Augusto of Brazil (1866–1934)
• H.D. (1886–1961)
• Emma Eckstein (1865–1924)
• Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), with whom Freud had only a single, extended consultation
• Princess Marie Bonaparte
• Edith Banfield Jackson (1895–1977)
• Albert Hirst (1887–1974).

The Wolf Man wrote of Freud’s home that….

“There was always a feeling of sacred peace and quiet here. 

The rooms themselves must have been a surprise to any patient, for they in no way reminded one of a doctor’s office but rather of an archaeologist’s study.”

 

Above: The Wolf Man

 

To the Wolf Man Freud said:

“The psychoanalyst, like the archaeologist in his excavations, must uncover layer after layer of the patients’ psyche.”

 

In 2015 (the 50th anniversary of the Museum), the Museum, along with the artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, hired a police forensic team to scrutinize traces of DNA left on the couch.

The team found many examples, including strands of hair and a multitude of a multitude of dust particles, from Sigmund Freud, his patients and his family.

Freud did not sit on the couch himself when analyzing his patients, but sat out of sight next to it.

He once famously remarked to his friend, the psychoanalyist Hanns Sachs:

“I can’t let myself be stared at for eight hours daily.”

 

The study and library were preserved by Anna Freud after her father’s death.

The bookshelf behind Freud’s desk contains some of his favourite authors: not only Goethe and Shakespeare but also Heine, Multatuli and Anatole France.

Freud acknowledged that poets and philosophers had gained insights into the unconscious which psychoanalysis sought to explain systematically.

In addition to the books, the library contains various pictures hung as Freud arranged them; these include ‘Oedipus and the Riddle of the Sphinx‘ and ‘The Lesson of Dr Charcot‘ plus photographs of Martha Freud, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Yvette Guilbert, Marie Bonaparte and Ernst von Fleischl.

The collection includes a portrait of Freud by Salvador Dalí.

 

The museum organizes research and publication programmes and it has an education service which organises seminars, conferences and educational visits to the museum.

The museum is a member of the London Museums of Health & Medicine.

 

I quickly wandered through the Museum, upstairs and down, while Ute took the audio-guided tour.

I confess that I did not fully comprehend the importance of Sigmund Freud to the same extent as she did, for in our partnership she is both the brains and the beauty while I am simply loud and can lift heavy objects.

I still couldn’t explain the therapeutic techniques of free association and transference if my very life depended upon it.

And in this overly politically correct climate we now find ourselves living in these days I find myself quite discomfited by the notions of sexuality in infantile forms.

I have yet to be convinced of the soundness of his Oedipus complex theory that suggests that the ancient Greek legend of a king who kills his father and marries his mother is reflective of a child’s incest fantasy of falling in love with Mother and being jealous of Father.

Nor am I decided whether Freud’s idea that dreams are unconscious wish fulfillments as he suggests.

And I claim almost embarrassingly little understanding of that what he called the id, ego and superego, and very scant notions of what he terms the libido and the death drive.

But I will say that the Museum succeeded in capturing my curiosity about this man whose name, though a household one, remains almost as misunderstood as the unconscious mind.

 

Freud was born in Freiburg, Moravia (today’s Pribor, Czech Republic), the first of his mother’s eight children.

Above: Freud’s birthplace, Pribor, Czech Republic

 

His father, Jakob Freud (1815 – 1896) was a fairly successful wool merchant, who, at age 40, with two grown sons, Emanuel (1833 – 1914) and Philipp (1836 – 1911) and already a grandfather, married, for his second time, Sigmund’s mother Amalie Nathanson (1835 – 1930).

“Sigi” was the first – and favourite – of Amalie’s offspring, and Sigi knew it.

“A man who has been the indisputable favourite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success, that often induces real success.”

Above: Sigi (age 16) and his mother Amalia, 1872

 

In 1859, the Freud family left Freiburg.

Freud’s half brothers emigrated to Manchester, England, parting him from the “inseparable” playmate of his early childhood, Emanuel’s son, John.

Jakob Freud took his wife and two children (Freud’s sister, Anna, was born in 1858; a brother, Julius born in 1857, had died in infancy) firstly to Leipzig and then in 1860 to Vienna where four sisters and a brother were born: Rosa (b. 1860), Marie (b. 1861), Adolfine (b. 1862), Paula (b. 1864), Alexander (b. 1866).

Freud’s choice of boyhood heroes revealed a deep dislike of Imperial Austria: the anti-monarchist Oliver Cromwell and the Carthaginian general Hannibal.

Austria was Roman Catholic and anti-Semetic.

 

In 1865, the nine-year-old Freud entered the Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium, a prominent high school.

He proved to be an outstanding pupil and graduated in 1873 with honors.

He loved literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Latin and Greek.

 

Freud entered the University of Vienna at age 17 in 1873.

He had planned to study law, but joined the medical faculty at the university, where his studies included philosophy, physiology and zoology.

Freud’s special interests were histology (the scientific study of organic tissues) and neurophysiology (the scientific study of the nervous system).

He wanted to be a scientist – not a medical practicioner.

In 1876, Freud spent four weeks at a zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs.

 

In 1877 Freud moved to Ernst Brücke’s physiology laboratory where he spent six years comparing the brains of humans and other vertebrates with those of invertebrates such as frogs, crayfish and lampreys.

His research work on the biology of nervous tissue proved seminal for the subsequent discovery of the neuron in the 1890s.

Freud’s research work was interrupted in 1879 by the obligation to undertake a year’s compulsory military service.

The lengthy downtimes enabled him to complete a commission to translate four essays from John Stuart Mill’s collected works.

He graduated with an MD in March 1881.

 

Freud was happy doing scientific work but Brücke gave him some fatherly advice.

Academic posts were few and badly paid and Freud’s chances of advancement as a Jew were bad, so with Freud’s father unable to support him – what with the Crash of 1873 ruining him and with six other children to support – and marriage plans with Martha Bernays (1861 – 1951), Freud began his medical career at the Vienna General Hospital.

 

Freud had to face another long training period in clinical medicine before starting his own private practice.

First he served (1882 – 1885) as assistant to Hermann Nothnagel (1841 – 1905), Professor of Internal Medicine, and spent five months (1183) working in the Psychiatric Clinic under Theodor Meynart (1833 – 1892), the greatest brain anatomist and neuropathologist at that time.

Meynart influenced Freud to become a specialist in neuropathology (diseases of the nervous system).

 

Freud’s research work in cerebral anatomy led to his studying the effects of cocaine – starting on himself.

He even prescribed it to Martha!

He felt that cocaine was nothing more than an anti-depressant, a harmless anaesthetic.

Freud’s close friend, the gifted physiologist Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow (1846 – 1891), suffered from a painful tumour of the hand and thus became a morphine addict.

Freud suggested that Ernst switch to cocaine instead.

Freud’s colleague Carl Koller put in his claim as the discoverer of cocaine, nearly ruining his reputation, because by 1886 cases of cocaine addiction were reported everywhere and Ernst had become a despairing addict.

Freud’s research would lead to the publication of an influential paper on the pallative effects of cocaine in 1884, but Ernst’s addiction would always make Freud regret that he had failed to anticipate cocaine’s addictive effects.

Above: Ernst von Fleschl-Marxow

 

His work on aphasia (the inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions as a result of a stroke or a head trauma) would form the basis of his first book On the Aphasias: a Critical Study, published in 1891.

 

Over a three-year period, Freud worked in various departments of the hospital.

His time spent in Theodor Meynert’s psychiatric clinic and as a locum (temporary replacement physician) in a local asylum led to an increased interest in clinical work.

His substantial body of published research led to his appointment as a university lecturer in neuropathology in 1885, a non-salaried post but one which entitled him to give lectures at the University of Vienna.

In 1886, Freud resigned his hospital post and entered private practice specializing in “nervous disorders“.

 

The same year he married Martha Bernays, the granddaughter of Isaac Bernays, a chief rabbi in Hamburg.

They had six children: Mathilde (b. 1887), Jean-Martin (b. 1889), Oliver (b. 1891), Ernst (b. 1892), Sophie (b. 1893), and Anna (b. 1895).

From 1891 until they left Vienna in 1938, Freud and his family lived in an apartment at Berggasse 19, near Innere Stadt, a historical district of Vienna.

 

In 1896, Minna Bernays, Martha Freud’s sister, became a permanent member of the Freud household after the death of her fiancé.

The close relationship she formed with Freud led to rumours, started by Carl Jung, of an affair.

The discovery of a Swiss hotel log of 13 August 1898, signed by Freud whilst travelling with his sister-in-law, has been presented as evidence of the affair.

 

Freud began smoking tobacco at age 24.

Initially a cigarette smoker, he became a cigar smoker.

He believed that smoking enhanced his capacity to work and that he could exercise self-control in moderating it.

Despite health warnings from colleague Wilhelm Fliess, he remained a smoker, eventually suffering a buccal (of the mouth) cancer.

Freud suggested to Fliess in 1897 that addictions, including that to tobacco, were substitutes for masturbation, “the one great habit.”

 

Freud had greatly admired his philosophy tutor, Brentano, who was known for his theories of perception and introspection.

Brentano discussed the possible existence of the unconscious mind in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874).

Although Brentano denied its existence, his discussion of the unconscious probably helped introduce Freud to the concept.

 

Freud owned and made use of Charles Darwin’s major evolutionary writings, and was also influenced by Eduard von Hartmann’s The Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869).

Other texts of importance to Freud were by Gustav Fechner and Johann Friedrich Herbart with the latter’s Psychology as Science arguably considered to be of underrated significance in this respect.

Freud also drew on the work of Theodor Lipps who was one of the main contemporary theorists of the concepts of the unconscious and empathy.

Though Freud was reluctant to associate his psychoanalytic insights with prior philosophical theories, attention has been drawn to analogies between his work and that of both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, both of whom he claimed not to have read until late in life.

One historian concluded, based on Freud’s correspondence with his adolescent friend Eduard Silberstein, that Freud read Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and the first two of the Untimely Meditations when he was seventeen.

In 1900, the year of Nietzsche’s death, Freud bought his collected works.

He told his friend, Fliess, that he hoped to find in Nietzsche’s works “the words for much that remains mute in me.”

Later, he said he had not yet opened them.

Freud came to treat Nietzsche’s writings “as texts to be resisted far more than to be studied.”

Above: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

 

His interest in philosophy declined after he had decided on a career in neurology.

Freud read William Shakespeare in English throughout his life and it has been suggested that his understanding of human psychology may have been partially derived from Shakespeare’s plays.

 

Freud’s Jewish origins and his allegiance to his secular Jewish identity were of significant influence in the formation of his intellectual and moral outlook, especially with respect to his intellectual non-conformism, as he was the first to point out in his Autobiographical Study.

They would also have a substantial effect on the content of psychoanalytic ideas, particularly in respect of their common concerns with depth interpretation and “the bounding of desire by law”.

 

In October 1885, Freud went to Paris on a fellowship to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned neurologist who was conducting scientific research into hypnosis.

He was later to recall the experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in neurology research.

Charcot specialized in the study of hysteria and susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience.

 

Once he had set up in private practice in 1886, Freud began using hypnosis in his clinical work.

He adopted the approach of his friend and collaborator, Josef Breuer, in a use of hypnosis which was different from the French methods he had studied in that it did not use suggestion.

The treatment of one particular patient of Breuer’s proved to be transformative for Freud’s clinical practice.

 

Described as Anna O., she was invited to talk about her symptoms while under hypnosis (she would coin the phrase “talking cure” for her treatment).

In the course of talking in this way these symptoms became reduced in severity as she retrieved memories of traumatic incidents associated with their onset.

Above: Bertha Pappenheim (aka Anna O.)(1859 – 1936)

 

The uneven results of Freud’s early clinical work eventually led him to abandon hypnosis, having reached the conclusion that more consistent and effective symptom relief could be achieved by encouraging patients to talk freely, without censorship or inhibition, about whatever ideas or memories occurred to them.

In conjunction with this procedure, which he called “free association“, Freud found that patients’ dreams could be fruitfully analyzed to reveal the complex structuring of unconscious material and to demonstrate the psychic action of repression which, he had concluded, underlay symptom formation.

 

By 1896 he was using the term “psychoanalysis” to refer to his new clinical method and the theories on which it was based.

 

Freud’s development of these new theories took place during a period in which he experienced heart irregularities, disturbing dreams and periods of depression, a “neurasthenia” which he linked to the death of his father in 1896 and which prompted a “self-analysis” of his own dreams and memories of childhood.

His explorations of his feelings of hostility to his father and rivalrous jealousy over his mother’s affections led him to fundamentally revise his theory of the origin of the neuroses.

On the basis of his early clinical work, Freud had postulated that unconscious memories of sexual molestation in early childhood were a necessary precondition for the psychoneuroses (hysteria and obsessional neurosis), a formulation now known as Freud’s seduction theory.

In the light of his self-analysis, Freud abandoned the theory that every neurosis can be traced back to the effects of infantile sexual abuse, now arguing that infantile sexual scenarios still had a causative function, but it did not matter whether they were real or imagined and that in either case they became pathogenic only when acting as repressed memories.

This transition from the theory of infantile sexual trauma as a general explanation of how all neuroses originate to one that presupposes an autonomous infantile sexuality provided the basis for Freud’s subsequent formulation of the theory of the Oedipus complex.

 

Freud described the evolution of his clinical method and set out his theory of the psychogenetic origins of hysteria, demonstrated in a number of case histories, in Studies on Hysteria published in 1895 (co-authored with Josef Breuer).

 

In 1899 he published The Interpretation of Dreams in which, following a critical review of existing theory, Freud gives detailed interpretations of his own and his patients’ dreams in terms of wish-fulfillments made subject to the repression and censorship of the “dream work“.

He then sets out the theoretical model of mental structure (the unconscious, pre-conscious and conscious) on which this account is based.

An abridged version, On Dreams, was published in 1901.

 

In works which would win him a more general readership, Freud applied his theories outside the clinical setting in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) and Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905).

 

In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, published in 1905, Freud elaborates his theory of infantile sexuality, describing its “polymorphous perverse” forms and the functioning of the “drives“, to which it gives rise, in the formation of sexual identity.

The same year he published ‘Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (Dora)‘ which became one of his more famous and controversial case studies.

 

During this formative period of his work, Freud valued and came to rely on the intellectual and emotional support of his friend Wilhelm Fliess, a Berlin based ear, nose and throat specialist whom he had first met 1887.

Above: Freud (left) and Wilhelm Fliess (1858 – 1928)(right)

 

Both men saw themselves as isolated from the prevailing clinical and theoretical mainstream because of their ambitions to develop radical new theories of sexuality.

Fliess developed highly eccentric theories of human biorhythms and a nasogenital connection which are today considered pseudo-scientific.

He shared Freud’s views on the importance of certain aspects of sexuality — masturbation, coitus interruptus, and the use of condoms — in the etiology of what were then called the “actual neuroses“, primarily neurasthenia and certain physically manifested anxiety symptoms.

They maintained an extensive correspondence from which Freud drew on Fliess’s speculations on infantile sexuality and bisexuality to elaborate and revise his own ideas.

His first attempt at a systematic theory of the mind, his Project for a Scientific Psychology was developed as a metapsychology with Fliess as interlocutor.

However, Freud’s efforts to build a bridge between neurology and psychology were eventually abandoned after they had reached an impasse, as his letters to Fliess reveal, though the soundest ideas of the Project were to be taken up again in the concluding chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams.

 

Freud had Fliess repeatedly operate on his nose and sinuses to treat “nasal reflex neurosis” and subsequently referred his patient Emma Eckstein to him.

According to Freud her history of symptoms included severe leg pains with consequent restricted mobility, and stomach and menstrual pains.

These pains were, according to Fliess’s theories, caused by habitual masturbation which, as the tissue of the nose and genitalia were linked, was curable by removal of part of the middle turbinate.

Fliess’s surgery proved disastrous, resulting in profuse, recurrent nasal bleeding – he had left a half-metre of gauze in Eckstein’s nasal cavity the subsequent removal of which left her permanently disfigured.

At first, though aware of Fliess’s culpability – Freud fled from the remedial surgery in horror – he could only bring himself to delicately intimate in his correspondence to Fliess the nature of his disastrous role and in subsequent letters maintained a tactful silence on the matter or else returned to the face-saving topic of Eckstein’s hysteria.

Freud ultimately, in light of Eckstein’s history of adolescent self-cutting and irregular nasal and menstrual bleeding, concluded that Fliess was “completely without blame“, as Eckstein’s post-operative hemorrhages were hysterical “wish-bleedings” linked to “an old wish to be loved in her illness” and triggered as a means of “rearousing [Freud’s] affection“.

Eckstein nonetheless continued her analysis with Freud.

She was restored to full mobility and went on to practice psychoanalysis herself.

Above: Emma Eckstein (1865 – 1924)

 

Freud, who had called Fliess “the Kepler of biology“, later concluded that a combination of a homoerotic attachment and the residue of his “specifically Jewish mysticism” lay behind his loyalty to his Jewish friend and his consequent over-estimation of both his theoretical and clinical work.

 

Their friendship came to an acrimonious end with Fliess angry at Freud’s unwillingness to endorse his general theory of sexual periodicity and accusing him of collusion in the plagiarism of his work.

After Fliess failed to respond to Freud’s offer of collaboration over publication of his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1906, their relationship came to an end.

In 1902, Freud at last realised his long-standing ambition to be made a university professor.

The title “professor extraordinarius“was important to Freud for the recognition and prestige it conferred, there being no salary or teaching duties attached to the post (he would be granted the enhanced status of “professor ordinarius” in 1920).

Despite support from the university, his appointment had been blocked in successive years by the political authorities and it was secured only with the intervention of one of his more influential ex-patients, a Baroness Marie Ferstel, who had to bribe the minister of education with a painting.

With his prestige thus enhanced, Freud continued with the regular series of lectures on his work which, since the mid-1880s as a lecturer of Vienna University, he had been delivering to small audiences every Saturday evening at the lecture hall of the university’s psychiatric clinic.

 

From the autumn of 1902, a number of Viennese physicians who had expressed interest in Freud’s work were invited to meet at his apartment every Wednesday afternoon to discuss issues relating to psychology and neuropathology.

This group was called the Wednesday Psychological Society (Psychologische Mittwochs-Gesellschaft) and it marked the beginnings of the worldwide psychoanalytic movement.

 

Freud founded this discussion group at the suggestion of the physician Wilhelm Stekel.

Stekel had studied medicine at the University of Vienna under Richard von Krafft-Ebing.

His conversion to psychoanalysis is variously attributed to his successful treatment by Freud for a sexual problem or as a result of his reading The Interpretation of Dreams, to which he subsequently gave a positive review in the Viennese daily newspaper Neues Wiener Tagblatt.

Above: Wilhelm Steckel (1868 – 1940)

 

The other three original members whom Freud invited to attend, Alfred Adler, Max Kahane and Rudolf Reitler, were also physicians and all five were Jewish by birth.

Both Kahane and Reitler were childhood friends of Freud.

 

Kahane (1866 – 1923) had attended the same secondary school and both he and Reitler went to university with Freud.

They had kept abreast of Freud’s developing ideas through their attendance at his Saturday evening lectures.

In 1901, Kahane, who first introduced Stekel to Freud’s work, had opened an out-patient psychotherapy institute of which he was the director in Bauernmarkt, in Vienna.

In the same year, his medical textbook, Outline of Internal Medicine for Students and Practicing Physicians, was published.

In it, he provided an outline of Freud’s psychoanalytic method.

Kahane broke with Freud and left the Wednesday Psychological Society in 1907 for unknown reasons and in 1923 committed suicide.

 

Reitler (1865 – 1917) was the director of an establishment providing thermal cures in Dorotheergasse which had been founded in 1901.

He died prematurely in 1917.

 

Adler, regarded as the most formidable intellect among the early Freud circle, was a socialist who in 1898 had written a health manual for the tailoring trade.

He was particularly interested in the potential social impact of psychiatry.

Above: Alfred Adler (1870 – 1937)

 

Max Graf, a Viennese musicologist and father of “Little Hans” (Herbert Graf, 1903 – 1973), who had first encountered Freud in 1900 and joined the Wednesday group soon after its initial inception, described the ritual and atmosphere of the early meetings of the society:

The gatherings followed a definite ritual.

First one of the members would present a paper.

Then, black coffee and cakes were served; cigar and cigarettes were on the table and were consumed in great quantities.

After a social quarter of an hour, the discussion would begin.

The last and decisive word was always spoken by Freud himself.

There was the atmosphere of the foundation of a religion in that room.

Freud himself was its new prophet who made the heretofore prevailing methods of psychological investigation appear superficial.

 

Above: Max Graf (1873 – 1958)

 

By 1906, the group had grown to sixteen members, including Otto Rank, who was employed as the group’s paid secretary.

 

In the same year, Freud began a correspondence with Carl Gustav Jung who was by then already an academically acclaimed researcher into word-association and the Galvanic Skin Response, and a lecturer at Zurich University, although still only an assistant to Eugen Bleuler at the Burghölzli Mental Hospital in Zürich.

Above: Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961)

 

In March 1907, Jung and Ludwig Binswanger, also a Swiss psychiatrist, travelled to Vienna to visit Freud and attend the discussion group.

Thereafter, they established a small psychoanalytic group in Zürich.

 

In 1908, reflecting its growing institutional status, the Wednesday group was renamed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

 

After the founding of the IPA in 1910, an international network of psychoanalytical societies, training institutes and clinics became well established and a regular schedule of biannual Congresses commenced after the end of World War I to coordinate their activities.

 

In 1911, the first women members were admitted to the Society.

Tatiana Rosenthal (1885 – 1921) and Sabina Spielrein were both Russian psychiatrists and graduates of the Zürich University medical school.

Prior to the completion of her studies, Spielrein had been a patient of Jung at the Burghölzli and the clinical and personal details of their relationship became the subject of an extensive correspondence between Freud and Jung.

Both women would go on to make important contributions to the work of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society founded in 1910.

Above: Sabina Spielrain (1885- 1942)

 

Freud’s early followers met together formally for the first time at the Hotel Bristol, Salzburg on 27 April 1908.

This meeting, which was retrospectively deemed to be the first International Psychoanalytic Congress, was convened at the suggestion of Ernest Jones, then a London-based neurologist who had discovered Freud’s writings and begun applying psychoanalytic methods in his clinical work.

Jones had met Jung at a conference the previous year and they met up again in Zürich to organize the Congress.

There were, as Jones records, “forty-two present, half of whom were or became practicing analysts.”

In addition to Jones and the Viennese and Zürich contingents accompanying Freud and Jung, also present and notable for their subsequent importance in the psychoanalytic movement were Karl Abraham and Max Eitingon from Berlin, Sándor Ferenczi from Budapest and the New York-based Abraham Brill.

Important decisions were taken at the Congress with a view to advancing the impact of Freud’s work.

A journal, the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologishe Forschungen, was launched in 1909 under the editorship of Jung.

This was followed in 1910 by the Monthly Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse edited by Adler and Stekel, in 1911 by Imago, a journal devoted to the application of psychoanalysis to the field of cultural and literary studies edited by Rank and in 1913 by the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, also edited by Rank.

 

Plans for an international association of psychoanalysts were put in place and these were implemented at the Nuremberg Congress of 1910 where Jung was elected, with Freud’s support, as its first president.

 

Freud turned to Brill and Jones to further his ambition to spread the psychoanalytic cause in the English-speaking world.

Both were invited to Vienna following the Salzburg Congress and a division of labour was agreed with Brill given the translation rights for Freud’s works, and Jones, who was to take up a post at the University of Toronto later in the year, tasked with establishing a platform for Freudian ideas in North American academic and medical life.

Jones’s advocacy prepared the way for Freud’s visit to the United States, accompanied by Jung and Ferenczi, in September 1909 at the invitation of Stanley Hall, president of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, where he gave five lectures on psychoanalysis.

The event, at which Freud was awarded an Honorary Doctorate, marked the first public recognition of Freud’s work and attracted widespread media interest.

 

Freud’s audience included the distinguished neurologist and psychiatrist James Jackson Putnam, Professor of Diseases of the Nervous System at Harvard, who invited Freud to his country retreat where they held extensive discussions over a period of four days.

Putnam’s subsequent public endorsement of Freud’s work represented a significant breakthrough for the psychoanalytic cause in the United States.

When Putnam and Jones organised the founding of the American Psychoanalytic Association in May 1911 they were elected president and secretary respectively.

Brill founded the New York Psychoanalytic Society the same year.

His English translations of Freud’s work began to appear from 1909.

 

Some of Freud’s followers subsequently withdrew from the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and founded their own schools.

From 1909, Adler’s views on topics such as neurosis began to differ markedly from those held by Freud.

As Adler’s position appeared increasingly incompatible with Freudianism, a series of confrontations between their respective viewpoints took place at the meetings of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society in January and February 1911.

In February 1911, Adler, then the president of the society, resigned his position.

At this time, Stekel also resigned his position as vice president of the society.

Adler finally left the Freudian group altogether in June 1911 to found his own organization with nine other members who had also resigned from the group.

This new formation was initially called the Society for Free Psychoanalysis but it was soon renamed the Society for Individual Psychology.

In the period after World War I, Adler became increasingly associated with a psychological position he devised called individual psychology.

 

In 1912, Jung published Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (published in English in 1916 as Psychology of the Unconscious) making it clear that his views were taking a direction quite different from those of Freud.

To distinguish his system from psychoanalysis, Jung called it analytical psychology.

Anticipating the final breakdown of the relationship between Freud and Jung, Ernest Jones initiated the formation of a secret committee of loyalists charged with safeguarding the theoretical coherence and institutional legacy of the psychoanalytic movement.

Formed in the autumn of 1912, the Committee comprised Freud, Jones, Abraham, Ferenczi, Rank, and Hanns Sachs.

Max Eitingon joined the Committee in 1919.

Each member pledged himself not to make any public departure from the fundamental tenets of psychoanalytic theory before he had discussed his views with the others.

Above: The Committee (from left to right): Otto Rank, Sigmund Freud, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, Sandor Ferenczi, Ernest Jones and Hanns Sachs

 

After this development, Jung recognised that his position was untenable and resigned as editor of the Jarhbuch and then as president of the IPA in April 1914.

The Zürich Society withdrew from the IPA the following July.

 

Later the same year, Freud published a paper entitled “The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement“, the German original being first published in the Jahrbuch, giving his view on the birth and evolution of the psychoanalytic movement and the withdrawal of Adler and Jung from it.

 

The final defection from Freud’s inner circle occurred following the publication in 1924 of Rank’s The Trauma of Birth which other members of the committee read as, in effect, abandoning the Oedipus Complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytic theory.

Abraham and Jones became increasingly forceful critics of Rank and though he and Freud were reluctant to end their close and long-standing relationship the break finally came in 1926 when Rank resigned from his official posts in the IPA and left Vienna for Paris.

His place on the committee was taken by Anna Freud.

Rank eventually settled in the United States where his revisions of Freudian theory were to influence a new generation of therapists uncomfortable with the orthodoxies of the IPA.

 

Psychoanalytic societies and institutes were established in Switzerland (1919), France (1926), Italy (1932), the Netherlands (1933), Norway (1933) and in Palestine (Jerusalem, 1933) by Eitingon, who had fled Berlin after Adolf Hitler came to power.

The New York Psychoanalytic Institute was founded in 1931.

The 1922 Berlin Congress was the last Freud attended.

By this time his speech had become seriously impaired by the prosthetic device he needed as a result of a series of operations on his cancerous jaw.

He kept abreast of developments through a regular correspondence with his principal followers and via the circular letters and meetings of the secret Committee which he continued to attend.

The Committee continued to function until 1927 by which time institutional developments within the IPA, such as the establishment of the International Training Commission, had addressed concerns about the transmission of psychoanalytic theory and practice.

There remained, however, significant differences over the issue of lay analysis – i.e. the acceptance of non-medically qualified candidates for psychoanalytic training.

Freud set out his case in favour in 1926 in his The Question of Lay Analysis.

He was resolutely opposed by the American societies who expressed concerns over professional standards and the risk of litigation (though child analysts were made exempt).

These concerns were also shared by some of his European colleagues.

Eventually an agreement was reached allowing societies autonomy in setting criteria for candidature.

In 1930 Freud was awarded the Goethe Prize in recognition of his contributions to psychology and to German literary culture.

 

Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, and across the humanities.

It thus continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate with regard to its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or is detrimental to the feminist cause.

Nonetheless, Freud’s work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture.

 

In the words of W.H. Auden’s 1940 poetic tribute, by the time of Freud’s death, he had become “a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives.”

 

Somehow I got the feeling that the Freud Museum, try as it may, fails to truly capture the essence of what Sigi was trying to do.

Because the man was just too big.

At least in terms of the average tourist-layman, the simple man I am.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / The Rough Guide to London / Richard Appignanesi & Oscar Zarate, Introducing Freud / Joel Whitebook, Freud: An Intellectual Biography / Rebecca Wallersteiner, “If you’re sitting comfortably….a trip to the Sigmund Freud Museum!“, Spotlight, 23 October 2015 / Sophie Leighton, “Freud’s Collections“, Freud Museum London Friends News

Canada Slim and the Body Snatchers

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 4 September 2018

I should be dead.

In fact, for at least a quarter of a century.

Back in Canada, I tried to chop a log.

The axe bounced off the log and sliced into my foot.

A mile in the bush limp, a drive home, a quick dash to the local hospital and an ambulance ride from there to the metropolis of Montréal, followed by surgery, hospitalization and convalescence….

And I am alive to tell the tale.

This injury, sadly, was the first of many unfortunate accidents I have had, transforming my body from a wonderland into a battlefield.

In earlier days, blood loss or infection might have ended my life, but I live, as many others live, longer and healthier.

We live in an age where the human anatomy has been mapped, where an abundance of drugs are available, where antiseptic conditions are par for the course in all medical institutions, where medical professionals are highly trained and qualified, where the deliverance of babies is no longer such a danger for infant or mother.

A time of liver and lung, uterus and penis, skull and scalp, arm and hand, face and heart, eye and hip replacements, appendectomies and mastectomies….

A time of virtual and remote, robot-assisted and laser-aided, plastic and emergency surgery….

Days of disinfectant, inoculation, anesthesia, x-rays, MRIs and ultrasound….

 

I take my survival for granted, confident in the advances available to me in case of injury or illness.

 

Sometimes it is good to visit places that remind one of how and why mankind has been able to survive the rigours and ravages inflicted upon the body.

Such a place is in London at a venue of body snatchers and “the fastest knife in the West End“.

The tale begins last fall and travels back in time.

Welcome….

25 October 2017

We spend 80% of our adult lives working, but, on average, 80% of workers often confess that they dislike the work that they do.

My wife is among the happy minority of those who do what they love and love what they do.

My wife is a doctor.

When we travel together it is not uncommon to find us visiting, among many, tourist attractions that are medically themed.

During our week in London we would visit at least three attractions of this nature.

 

(For other London attractions not medically themed, please see: Canada Slim and….

• the Danger Zone
• the Paddington Arrival
• the Street Walked Too Often
• Underground
• the Outcast
• the Wonders on the Wall
• the Calculated Cathedral
• the Right Man
• the Queen’s Horsemen
• the Royal Peculiar
• the Uncertainty Principle
• the Museum of Many

For medically themed London attractions, please see Canada Slim and….

• the Lamp Ladies
• the Breviary of Bartholomew)

 

London has its fair share of quirkiness:

Near Wimbledon there is an authentic Buddhist temple that feels like it was discretely teleported directly from Thailand. (Buddhapadipa Temple)

One can climb a castle as if it were the rock face of Mount Everest or the Matterhorn. (Castle Climbing Centre)

Or visit a house lacking electricity and modern plumbing on a Monday night, Silent Night, candlelight tour. (Dennis Severs’ House)

Or tread softly in the necropolis that is Highgate Cemetery.

Come and watch people swing from the gallows. (London Dungeon)

Listen to Anne Boleyn plead her case just before her head is deftly separated from her soft narrow shoulders. (London Dungeon)

Walk by moonlight the Whitechapel backstreets as Jack the Ripper knew them. (London Dungeon)

 

We did none of these things, but this is not to suggest that our time was devoid of quirkiness….

 

Time is often not our friend when we travel, so we took the Tube to London Bridge Station instead of walking across the Thames River upon the London Bridge.

We would later sail underneath it but we denied ourselves the tactile experience of trodding upon it.

The River Thames is the longest river in England and the second longest in Britain (after the Severn) and is crossed by over 200 bridges, 27 tunnels, six public ferries, a cable car and a ford.

Prior to the commencement of my relationship with my wife, I followed on foot the Thames from its source near Cirencester to Oxford.

I would, on visits to London, also spend time by its banks.

 

There has been a London Bridge spanning the Thames since AD 50 and it could be argued that without a London Bridge there might never have been a London.

 

The first London Bridge was built by the Romans (“What have they ever done for us?“) as part of their road-building programme, to help consolidate their conquest.

This Bridge, and those London Bridge constructions that followed until 1209, was built of wood.

These timber crossings would fall into disrepair, be rebuilt and destroyed by both Saxons and Danes, be destroyed by the London tornado of 1091 and the fire of 1136.

The nursery rhyme “London Bridge is falling down” is connected to the Bridge’s historic collapses.

 

After the murder of friend/foe Thomas à Becket, the penitent King Henry II commissioned a new stone bridge with a chapel in the centre dedicated to Becket as martyr.

Begun in 1176, London Bridge was completed in 1209 during the reign of King John.

The Old London Bridge (1209 – 1831) was 26 feet / 8 metres wide, 900 feet / 270 metres long, supported by 19 irregularly spaced arches.

It had a drawbridge to allow for the passage of tall ships and defensive gatehouses on both ends.

By 1358 it was already crowded with 138 shops.

The buildings on London Bridge were a major fire hazard and the increased load on the arches required their reconstruction over the centuries.

In 1212, fire broke out on both sides of the Bridge simultaneously trapping many people in the middle.

Houses on the Bridge were destroyed during Wat Tyler’s Peasants’ Revolt (1381) and Jack Cade’s Rebellion (1450).

By the time of the Tudors there were over 200 buildings on the Bridge, some seven stories high, some overhanging the river by seven feet, others overhanging the road forming a dark tunnel through which traffic had to pass.

Yet this did not prevent the addition, in 1577, of the palatial Nonsuch House to the buildings that crowded the span.

The available roadway was just 12 feet / 4 metres wide , divided into two lanes, so that in each direction, carts, wagons, coaches and pedestrians shared a single file lane 6 feet / 2 metres wide.

 

The bridge’s southern gatehouse became the scene of one of London’s most gruesome sights – a display of the severed heads of traitors, impaled on pikes, dipped in tar and boiled to preserve them against the elements.

The head of William Wallace was the first to appear on the gate in 1305, starting a tradition that was to continue for another 355 years.

 

(Keep this morbid tradition in mind while remembering that before the Anatomy Act of 1832, the only legal supply of corpses for anatomical purposes in the UK were those condemned to death and dissection by the courts.)

 

Other famous heads on London Bridge pikes included Jack Cade (1450), Thomas More (1535), Bishop John Fisher (1535) and Thomas Cromwell (1540).

In 1598, a German visitor to London, Paul Hentzner, counted over 30 heads on the Bridge.

John Evelyn’s Diary noted that the practice stopped in 1660, following the Restoration of King Charles II, but heads were reported at the site as late as 1772.

By 1722 congestion was becoming so serious that the Lord Mayor decreed that “all carts, coaches and other carriages coming out of Southwark into this City do keep all along the west side of the Bridge, and all carts and coaches going out of the City do keep along the east side of the Bridge.”

This has been suggested as one possible origin for the practice of traffic in Britain driving on the left.

By 1762, all houses and shops on the Bridge had been demolished through an Act of Parliament.

Even so, the Bridge was narrow, decrepit and long past its useful life.

 

The New London Bridge (1831 – 1967) was completed in 1831, and was 928 feet / 283 metres long and 49 feet / 15 metres wide.

By 1896 the Bridge was the busiest point in London and one of its most congested: 8,000 pedestrians and 900 vehicles crossed every hour.

This Bridge is a prominent landmark in T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland“, wherein he compares the shuffling commuters across London Bridge to the hellbound souls of Limbo, the first circle of Hell, in Dante’s Inferno.

Subsequent surveys showed that the Bridge was sinking an inch / 2.5 cm every eight years.

By 1924 the east side of the Bridge had sunk 4 inches / 9 cm lower than the west side.

The Bridge would have to be removed and replaced.

In 1967 the City of London placed the Bridge on the market.

 

On 18 April 1868, the Bridge was purchased by Missouri oil entrepreneur Robert McCullough for US $2,460,000.

As the Bridge was dismantled, each piece was meticulously numbered, then shipped via the Panama Canal to California and then trucked from Long Beach to Lake Havasu City in Arizona.

This Bridge was rebuilt across the Bridgewater Channel canal and opened on 10 October 1971.

Gary Nunn’s song “London Homesick Blues” includes the lyrics:

“Even London Bridge has fallen down and moved to Arizona.

Now I know why.”

The modern, current London Bridge was opened on 17 March 1973, with a length of 928 feet / 283 metres.

 

Emerging from the London Bridge Tube Station I recall John Davidson’s poem “London Bridge” and think to myself that clearly Heathrow Airport hadn’t been built when he wrote it:

“Inside the Station, everything’s so old,

So inconvenient, of such manifold

Perplexity, and, as a mole might see

So strictly what a Station shouldn’t be,

That no idea minifies the crude

And yet elaborate ineptitude.”

The main line station is the oldest railway station in London fare zone 1 and one of the oldest in the world having opened on 14 December 1836.

It is one of two main line termini in London to the south of the River Thames (the other being Waterloo) and is the fourth-busiest station in London, handling over 50 million customers a year.

 

In Tudor and Stuart London, the chief reason for crossing the Thames, to what is now Southwark, was to visit the disreputable Bankside for its pubs, brothels and bear-baiting pits around the south end of London Bridge.

Four hundred years later, Londoners have rediscovered the habit of heading to Southwark, thanks to the traffic-free riverside path and a wealth of top attractions, with the charge led by the mighty Tate Modern.

Of these attractions, the most educational and strangest is the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret, at 9a St. Thomas Street.

The operating theatre and garret (1822 – 1862) were originally part of St. Thomas Hospital, itself part of the Augustinian Priory of St. Mary Overie, founded in 1106.

The Priory, which stood on the present site of Southwark Cathedral, provided care for the poor and gave board and lodgings to pilgrims.

The “spital” of St. Mary Overie was named St. Thomas in 1173 in tribute to Thomas à Becket, the Christian martyr murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.

When the Priory and the Hospital were destroyed by fire in 1212, the Bishop of Winchester, Pierre des Roches, paid for them to be rebuilt.

The new Hospital, independent of the Priory, was opened in 1215.

It continued to be staffed by monks and nuns, but surgical work was carried out by barbers since the Council of Tours (1163) had ordained that the shedding of blood was incompatible with holy office.

St. Thomas still provided hospitality for pilgrims.

 

Funds for the Hospital were largely provided by donations from individuals who believed giving to the poor would speed their spiritual journey to heaven.

One donation came from Alice de Bregerake who gifted her property in return for a yearly rent of one single rose.

 

(“There’s a lady who knows all that glitters is gold and she’s buying a stairway to heaven.“)

 

During the early 1500s, Southwark was a thriving community and St. Thomas was at its heart.

Within St. Thomas was the Southwark School of Glaziers, where the stained glass windows for King’s College Chapel in Cambridge were made.

In 1537, the first complete edition of the Holy Bible in English was completed here.

In January 1540 the Priory was dissolved by King Henry VIII, as part of his reforms of the church in England, and the Hospital closed.

In 1551 the Hospital was purchased and repaired by the City of London and two years later Henry’s son Edward VI awarded it a Royal Charter alongside four other London hospitals.

In 1681 fire led to the loss of 24 Hospital buildings.

By 1702 the main Hospital consisted of three grand classical courtyards.

 

In 1703, Dr. Richard Mead (1673 – 1754), one of London’s most famous physicians, was appointed to the Hospital staff.

At the time one of the most common ailments of St. Thomas in-patients, who were treated in the foul wards at the rear of the Hospital, was venereal disease.

Above: Richard Mead

 

(Remember the aforementioned brothels?)

 

Mead’s recommended cure, aqua limacum (snail water), was included in the Pharmacopoeia Pauperum (a directory of medical treatments to be used in London hospitals) in 1718:

“Take garden snails, cleansed and bruised, 6 gallons; earthworms, washed and bruised, 3 gallons; common wormwood, ground ivy and carduus, each one pound and half penny royal; juniper berries, fennel seeds, aniseeds, each half a pound; cloves and cubebs bruised, each 3 ounces; spirit of wine and spring water, of each 8 gallons.

Digest them together for the space of 24 hours and then draw it off in a common alembick.

This is admirably well contrived both for cheapness and efficacy.

It is as good a snail water as can be made….

Mostly given in consumption contracted for viscous practices and venereal contagions, this is the constant drink of those who are under the weakness and decays….”

Improvements to the facilities continued throughout the following 150 years.

 

St. Thomas’ Grand Committee Minutes of 21 October 1821 record that the women’s operating theatre be moved from the west end of one of the women’s wards and that “the herb garret over the church be fitted up and in future used as a theatre for such operations instead of the present theatre.”

The new operating theatre opened in 1822.

 

John Flint South (1797 – 1882), the son of a Southwark druggist, began his medical training at St. Thomas in 1814.

He was appointed Conservator of the Hospital’s anatomy Museum in 1820 and was made Joint Lecturer in Anatomy in 1823.

In 1841 he was appointed surgeon at St. Thomas, a post he held until 1863.

He was also appointed surgeon to the Female Orphan Asylum in 1843.

South’s Career at St. Thomas spans the entire period of the Old Operating Theatre’s history and as such his memoir, John Flint South Memorials, published 20 years after his death, provides a remarkable insight into how the operating theatre functioned.

Above: John Flint South

 

The Murder Act of 1752 decreed that only executed murderers could be used for dissection, but this did not provide enough subjects for the medical and anatomical schools.

By the 19th century only about 56 people were being sentenced to capital punishment each year, but with the expansion of medical schools as many as 500 cadavers were needed annually.

Body snatching – the secret removal of corpses from burial sites to sell them to medical schools – became so prevalent that it was not unusual for relatives and friends of someone who had just died to watch over the body until burial and then keep watch after burial to stop it being violated.

Interfering with a grave was a misdemeanour, not a felony, and therefore only punishable with a fine and imprisonment rather than exile or execution.

The body snatching trade was a sufficiently lucrative business to run the risk of detection, particularly as the authorities ignored what they considered a necessary evil.

In Edinburgh, during 1827 and 1828, William Burke and William Hare brought a new dimension to the trade of selling corpses “to the doctors” by murdering rather than grave robbing and supplying their victims’ fresh corpses for medical dissection.

The murders raised public awareness of the need for bodies for medical research and contributed to the passing of the Anatomy Act of 1832, which allowed unclaimed bodies and those donated by relatives to be used for the study of anatomy and required the licensing of anatomy teachers, effectively ending the body snatching trade.

 

When pioneering health reformer, Florence Nightingale, returned to London from the Crimean War in 1856 she set up a fund “to establish and control an institute for the training, sustenance and protection of nurses paid and unpaid.”

The specialist training of nurses was not universally supported and many doctors viewed it as a threat to their authority.

The work left for nurses, it was believed, required little more than “on-the-job” training.

There were prejudices too against “delicate“, educated women undertaking manual work or having contact with the coarse realities of the hospital wards.

However, Nightingale was an influential and convincing advocate for reform.

The Nightingale Fund raised almost 50,000 pounds.

She chose to establish her School of Nursing at St. Thomas.

The two main deciding factors were Nightingale’s admiration for Sarah Wardroper, St. Thomas Matron and Superintendent of Nurses, and the fact that the Hospital would soon move to a new site where the School could be built to the latest, Nightingale-inspired plan.

The School of Nursing opened at the St. Thomas Southwark site on 24 June 1860 with 15 students.

Above: Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910)

 

In June 1862, the Hospital moved to make way for a railway line to Charing Cross.

 

With the move, the operating theatre, situated in the attic of St. Thomas Church, was sealed up and lay in darkness for nearly a century.

After the Hospital closed the only access to the roof space of the Church was through an opening, 20 metres above floor level, in the north wall of the first floor chamber of the bell tower.

 

In 1956, Raymond Russell (1922 – 1964), while researching the history of St. Thomas decided to investigate the attic.

He found the garret in darkness, the skylight above the operating theatre had been replaced by slates and the other windows were black with a century of dirt.

Russell’s find was extraordinary:

No other early 19th century operating theatre in Europe has survived.

It is likely that the use of the garret of St. Thomas as a Hospital apothecary dates back to the present Church’s construction in 1703.

Hooks, ropes and nail holes in the roof and dried opium poppy heads discovered under the floorboards in the 1970s are all evidence of the garret’s former use.

Herbs have been used as medicine since ancient times and before the development of the chemical industry, medicinal compounds were made from natural materials, mostly plants.

Even today, the majority of medicines originate from plant sources.

At St. Thomas, quantities of herbs were purchased from a visiting “herb woman” and the Hospital had its own botanical garden and apothecary’s shop within its grounds.

The apothecary was the chief resident medical officer of the Hospital and was responsible for prescriptions for surgical cases and, in the absence of the physician, for dispensing medicine to all the Hospital’s patients.

In 1822 part of the Herb Garret was converted into a purpose-built operating theatre.

The patients were mainly poor people who were expected to contribute to their care if they could afford it.

Rich patients were treated and operated on at home, probably on the kitchen table, rather than in hospital.

The patients at the Old Operating Theatre were all women.

 

A description of the students packing the theatre to witness an operation has been left by Dr. South:

“The operating theatre was of utterly inadequate size for the numbers of pupils who congregated….

The general arrangement of all the theatres was the same: a semicircular floor and rows of semicircular standings, rising above one another to the large skylight which lit the theatre.

On the floor the surgeon operating, with his dressers, other surgeons and apprentices and the visitors stood about the table, upon which the patient lay, so placed that the best possible view of what was going on was given to all present.

The floor was separated by a partition from the rising stand-places, the first two rows were occupied by the other dressers.

Behind a second partition stood the pupils, packed like herrings in a Barrel, but not so quiet, as those behind them were continually pressing on those before and were continually struggling to relieve themselves of it, and had not infrequently to be got out exhausted.

There was also a continual calling out of “Heads, Heads” to those about the table whose heads interfered with the sightseers.

The confusion and crushing was indeed at all times very great, especially when any operation of importance was to be performed.

I have often known even the floor so crowded that the surgeon could not operate till it had been partially cleared.”

 

Patients put up with the audience in their distress because they received medical treatment from some of the best surgeons in the land, which they otherwise they could not afford.

The majority of cases were for amputations or superficial complaints as, without antiseptic conditions, it was too dangerous to do internal operations.

The risk of death at the hands of a surgeon was likely, as there was a lack of understanding of the causes of infection.

Beneath the table was a sawdust box for collecting blood.

The death rate was further heightened by the shock of the operation and because operations took place as a last resort, patients tended to have few reserves of strength.

Until 1847, surgeons had no recourse to anaesthetics and depended on swift technique, the mental preparation of the patient, and alcohol or opiates to dull the patient’s senses.

 

(Dr. Robert Liston (1794 – 1847) was described as “the fastest knife in the West End. 

He could amputate a leg in 2 1/2 minutes.”

Indeed he is reputed to have been able to complete operations in a matter of seconds, at a time when speed was essential to reduce pain and improve the odds of survival of a patient.)

Above: Robert Liston

 

After 1847, ether or choloroform was used.

 

The small room at the side of the Theatre was used to spare the patient the sudden alarm of being brought straight into the Theatre full of students, with the operating table and instruments on view.

“Soon after….another female was brought in blindfolded and placed on to the table for the purpose of undergoing an operation for the removal of the leg below the knee.”

(The Lancet, October 1829)

 

These were the days before antisepsis (eliminating possible infection in the wound after the operation) or asepsis (avoiding any contamination from the start).

Unsterilized clothes were blood and pus stained while undisinfected hands used undisinfected instruments and sponges from previous operations.

In those days, “surgeons operated in blood-stiffened frock coats – the stiffer the coat, the prouder the busy surgeon“. (Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Above: American Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809 – 1894)

 

“There was no object in being clean.

Indeed cleanliness was out of place.

It was considered to be finicky and affected.

An executioner might as well manicure his nails before chopping off a head.” (Sir Frederick Treves)

Above: Frederick Treves (1853 – 1923)

 

No one wore a face mask or rubber gloves.

There were no blood transfusions nor vaccines.

Neurosurgery, cataract surgery, cardiac surgery, transplant surgery, Caesarian sections and hip replacements were either unknown or too dangerous to attempt.

 

Charles Bell (1774 – 1842), in his Illustrations of the Great Operations of Surgery (1821), describes the five most complex operations undertaken during the time of the Old Operating Theatre.

Below is a description of what the visitor would expect to see:

“To one side a table with instruments, covered with a cloth to preserve the edges of the cutting instruments.

On it we expect to see:

1. A large cushion with tenacula (sharp hooks), needles, pins and forceps.
2. Ligatures (binding materials) of every variety, well arranged.
3. Adhesive straps, well made and not requiring heating, but if they should, let chafing dishes be at hand.
4. Lint, compresses, flannel and calico bandages, double and single headed rollers, tow, cereate spread on lint.  Let there be no want of sponges, so that when the surgeon calls for a sponge, you have not to seek it among the patient’s clothes.  When a sponge falls among the sand, let it be not necessary to touch the wound with it.
5. Wine and water and hartshorn (ammonia solution used as smelling salts).
6. A kettle of hot water, a stoup (flagon) of cold water, basins, bucket, plenty of towels, apron and sleeves.”

Above: Scottish Dr. Charles Bell (1774 – 1842)

 

On the wall are two inscriptions:

 

Miseratione non Mercede (Latin for “For compassion, not for gain“)

 

The other sets out the Regulations for the Theatre as approved by the Hospital’s surgeons:

“Apprentices and the dressers of the surgeon who operates are to stand around the table.

The dressers of the other surgeons are to occupy the three front rows.

The surgeon’s pupils are to take their places in the rows above.

Visitors are admitted by permission of the surgeon who operates.”

 

The blackboard is a reminder of the Theatre’s use for lectures as a report in The Lancet of November 1923 records:

“25 November 1923:  At half past one this day, the following clinical remarks were delivered by Mr. Travers, in the female operating theatre, in reference more particularly to the case of compound fracture….”

 

The operating table is made of Scots pine, has four stout legs, and at 60 cm high is low by modern standards.

It has an inclined headboard and a long wooden slide extension at the foot end.

The table stands with the foot end towards the audience.

Beneath the table is the aforementioned wooden box of sawdust.

Distinguished visitors (generally foreign professors) were given seats on chairs, stools or a bench at the foot of the table.

The two small side tables held instruments and equipment.

The cupboard contained the instruments, dressing materials and lotions.

There is a wash stand, also of Scots pine, holding a small basin and ewer of blue and white china.

Above this is a tiny looking glass and a row of pegs from which hang the purple frock coats with grocer’s bib and apron.

A low sturdy wooden chair is used by the surgeon chiefly for cases of piles (hemorrhoids) and leg amputations.

 

The Museum also contains a collection of artefacts revealing the horrors of medicine before the age of science, including instruments for cupping (skin sunction), bloodletting, trepanning (drilling a circular hole in the skull) and childbirth.

There are also displays on monastic health care, the history of St. Thomas’s, Florence Nightingale and nursing, medical and herbal medicine.

 

Once upon a time body snatchers stole corpses so doctors could practice their skills and students learn anatomy.

Once upon a time doctors created more corpses and snatched lives from bodies than surviving patients.

Now doctors snatch many bodies from the jaws of death and generally make them whole.

 

Without Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, ancient Greek and Islamic medicine….

Without the trials and errors of dissection and pathological examinations….

Without the development of cell and neuron and molecular theory….

We would not have evolved to the discoveries and understanding of the body that we as a civilization now possess.

Without an understanding of blood circulation, the evolution of dealing with mental illness, the discovery of germs and the dangers of insects, the founding of the talking cures of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, the study of hormones and immunology, the genetic revelation of genes and genomes, could we have a fighting chance in understanding health and disease in the manner that we do.

Without the stethoscope, the microscope, the hypodermic syringe, the thermometer, x-rays and radiotherapy, the sphygmomanometer (blood pressure measurement), the defibrillator, lasers, the endoscope, ultrasound and CT (computerized tomographic) scanning, MRI (magnetic resonance Imaging) and PET (positron emission tomography), the incubator and medical robots, we would lack the tools that doctors need to heal us and prolong our lives.

Mankind has survived the plague, typhus, cholera, puerperal fever, tuberculosis, influenza, smallpox, polio, cancer and AIDS, and thanks to great discoveries in medicine, though the battle against these scourges remains inconclusive, we still have a greater opportunity to overcome than prior generations had.

Opium provides pleasure and pain relief, quinine treats malaria, digitalis is a tonic for the heart, penicillin cures syphilis and gangrene, the birth control pill offers a woman freedom, drugs for the mind ease mental suffering, ventolin helps us breathe easier, Insulin aids the diabetic, dialysis cleans the kidney, statins lower our cholesterol and vitamins compensate for whatever our diets may lack.

Wounds are properly dressed, anaesthesia makes surgery painless, operations are clean, blood is transfused, exploration of the brain is possible, eyesight can be restored, mothers are less likely to die giving birth, hearts can be healed, organs transplanted, hips replaced and scars reduced by less invasive keyhole methods.

 

Truly, compared to the past, we live in an age of miracles.

 

Sometimes we take modern medicine for granted.

Stand in the middle of the Old Operating Theatre and be reminded how lucky we are to live in this day and age and how far we have travelled to get here.

Above: The Rod of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing and Medicine

Sources: Wikipedia / William and Helen Bynum, Great Discoveries in Medicine / The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret Museum Guide / The Rough Guide to London / Rachel Howard and Bill Nash, Secret London: An Unusual Guide / http://www.thegarret.org.uk

 

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the Breviary of Bartholomew

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 30 June 2018

“Writing a blog about everything that happens to you will honestly help here.” (Therapist)

“Nothing happens to me.”(John Watson, MD)

(“A Study in Pink“, Sherlock)

Two months ago (30 April) I began this post.

Four days later I was involved in an accident resulting in both arms broken.

After 3 weeks in hospital and 4 weeks in a rehab centre and 2 weeks at home, I am finally able to resume this post.

(My other blog is only a month and a half behind, so I am making progress!)

 

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 30 April 2018

I am certain that what I am feeling this morning isn´t unique to myself.

That feeling that my life isn´t completely my own.

That I am being pulled and propelled by others in directions that I would rather choose for myself.

There are the obligations of work where employers view employees as mere tools towards their profits or obstacles carelessly removed when those profits are threatened.

There are the obligations of relationships where everyone wants your time and attention and feels slighted if your time and attention is considered more important to you than their own.

There are times when I can really relate to the words of Dido Armstrong….

“If my life is for rent….

….I deserve nothing more than I get

Cos nothing I have is truly mine.

I´ve always thought that I would love to live by the sea.

To travel the world alone and live more simply.

I have no idea what´s happened to that dream.

Cos there´s really nothing left here to stop me.

It´s just a thought, only a thought….

While my heart is a shield and I won´t let it down.

While I am so afraid to fail so I won´t even try.

Well, how can I say I´m alive?”

This song comes back to me each time I have the feeling of being a voyeur of my own life.

And as the jukebox of my mind plays this song I am reminded of particular moments in London….

 

London, England, 25 October 2017

She was there for a medical conference.

I was there to carry her bags.

Or so it felt at times.

We had only a week to explore London (23 – 29 October).

Her conference was Thursday to Saturday 26 – 28 October, which meant from Monday to Wednesday and on Sunday I would need to accommodate her wishes and make them my own for the sake of marital bliss.

(Ain´t love grand?)

It wasn´t Thursday yet, so serendipitious exploration by myself wasn´t in the cards this day.

She was determined to see absolutely everything she could while she could and liked having me around to carry our half dozen guidebooks and the liquid refreshment and the various odds and ends tourists insist they overpack their daybags with.

We found ourselves in the section of London known as Smithfield….

 

“The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep with filth and mire, a thick steam perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle and mingling with the fog.”

(Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens)

Smithfield is a corruption of “smooth field“, originally open ground outside the city walls, a flat marshy area stretching to the eastern bank of the Fleet River.

Very little of early medieval London remains intact today, because Londoners built houses of wood.

The City burned down in 1077, 1087, 1132, 1136, 1203, 1212, 1220 and 1227.

Almost anything left intact was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.

What has survived was begun by a fool.

The great Priory of Saint Bartholomew along with St. Bartholomew´s Hospital was founded in the 12th century by Rahere when Henry I (1068 – 1135), a son of William the Conqueror, was King.

Almost all that is known about Rahere comes from the Book of Foundation.

Rahere´s family was poor, but he was intelligent and ambitious so over time he would acquire rich and powerful friends.

His cheerful and fun-loving character made him popular and he soon became part of Henry I´s court as the king´s jester.

The whole royal household was thrown into grief and gloom when the White Ship bearing the King´s heir and a number of his friends was lost with all hands on board in a winter storm in November 1120.

Henry never smiled again and Rahere became a priest.

Rahere decided to go on a pilgrimage to Rome, a long and difficult journey by sea or land in those days, controlled by wind and weather and the speed of a sail or a horse, taking a month or more.

Rahere visited various places in Rome associated with St. Peter and St. Paul but then he fell dangerously ill with malaria and was nursed at the Hospital of San Giovanni di Dio on Isola Tiberina by the Brothers of the Order of St. John of God.

If the Book of Foundation is to be believed, in his sickness Rahere vowed that if he would regain his health he would return to England and “erect a hospital for the restoration of poor men.”

Rahere´s prayer was answered and he soon set off for England.

On the way home he had a terrible dream in which he was seized by a beast with four feet and two wings who lifted him up high and placed him on a ledge above a yawning pit.

Rahere cried out in fear of falling and a figure appeared at his side who identified himself as St. Bartholomew and said he had come to help him.

In return the Saint said:

“In my name, thou shalt found a church that shall be a House of God in London at Smithfield.”

So, according to the legend, that´s just what Rahere did.

Rahere´s fabled miraculous return to good health contributed to the priory gaining a reputation for curative powers, with sick people filling the church of St. Bartolomew the Great, notably on 24 August (St. Bartholomew´s Day).

As Smithfield was part of the King´s market the King´s permission was needed.

A Royal Charter was drawn up (1122) to found a priory of Augustinian canons and a hospital.

Building began in March 1123.

The ghost of Rahere is reputed to haunt St. Bartholomew´s, following an incident during repair work in the 19th century when his tomb was opened and a sandal removed.

The sandal was returned to the church but not Rahere´s foot.

Since then, Rahere is a shadowy, cowled figure that appears from the gloom, brushes by astonished witnesses and fades slowly into thin air.

Rahere is said to appear every year on the morning of 1 July at 7 a.m., emerging from the vestry.

 

Bartholomew Fair was established in 1133 by Rahere to raise funds.

Rahere himself used to perform juggling tricks.

(Samuel Pepys would later write about seeing a horse counting sixpence and a puppet show of Ben Jonson´s 1614 play Bartholomew Fair.)

In Daniel Defoe´s Moll Flanders (1722) his heroine meets a well-dressed gentleman at the Fair.

William Wordsworth´s poem The Prelude (1803) mentions the din and the Indians and the dwarfs at the Fair.

Victorians would close the Fair down in 1855 to protect public morale.

It was felt that the Fair was encouraging debauchery and public disorder.

The Newgate Calendar wrote that the Fair was “a school of vice which has initiated more youth into the habits of villainy than Newgate Prison itself.”)

 

Hidden in the back streets north of the namesake hospital, St. Bartholomew the Great is London´s oldest and most atmospheric parish church.

Begun in 1123 as the main church of St. Bartholomew´s priory and hospice, it was partly demolished in the Reformation and gradually fell into ruins.

The church once adjoined the hospital and though the hospital mostly survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries, about half of the church was ransacked before being demolished in 1543.

In the early 16th century, Prior William Bolton had an oriel window installed inside the church so he could keep an eye on the monks.

The symbol in the centre panel is a crossbow (bolt) passing through a barrel (tun) in honour of the Prior.

Having escaped the Great Fire of 1666, the church fell into disrepair.

The cloisters were used as a stable, there was a boys´ school in the triforium, a coal and wine cellar in the crypt, a blacksmith´s in the north transept and a printing press where Benjamin Franklin served for a year (1725) as a journeyman printer in the Lady Chapel.

The church was also occupied by squatters in the 18th century.

From 1887, Aston Webb restored what remained and added the chequered patterning and flintwork that now characterizes the exterior.

The Church of Saint Bartholomew the Great is a rare survivor, despite also suffering Zeppelin bombing in World War I and the Blitz in World War II.

To get an idea of the scale of the original church, approach it through the half-timbered Tudor gatehouse on Little Britain Street.

A wooden statue of St. Bartolomew stands in a niche.

Below is the 13th century arch that once formed the entrance to the nave.

The churchyard now stands where the nave once was.

There is also the bust of Edward Cooke made of “weeping marble“, stone that appears to cry if the weather is wet enough and when the central heating hasn´t dried out the stone.

The inscription beneath the statue exhorts visitors to “unsluice your briny floods.”

One side of the cloisters survives to the south and now houses the delightful Cloister Café.

Under a 15th century canopy north of the altar is the tomb of Rahere.

 

The poet and heritage campaigner John Betjeman (1906 – 1984) kept a flat opposite the churchyard on Cloth Fair.

Betjeman considered St. Bartolomew the Great to have the finest surviving Norman interior in London.

 

Charity in the churchyard on Good Friday still continues.

A centuries-old tradition began when 21 sixpences were placed upon the gravestone of a woman who had stipulated in her will that there would be an annual distribution to 21 widows in perpetuity.

Freshly baked hot cross buns nowadays are not only to widows but to others as well.

In 2007 the church became the first Anglican parish church to charge admission to tourists not attending worship.

 

St. Bartholomew the Great is the adopted church of the Worshipful Companies of Butchers, Founders, Haberdashers, Fletchers, Farriers, Farmers, Information Technologists, Hackney Carriage Drivers and Public Relations Practitioners.

Perhaps it is this last Company combined with the church´s atmosphere that has made St. Bartholomew´s much beloved of film companies.

 

The fourth wedding of the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) sees Charles (Hugh Grant) deciding to marry ex-girlfriend Henrietta (Anna Chancellor) aka “Duck Face“.

However, shortly before the ceremony at St. Bartholomew, Charles´ ex-casual girlfriend Carrie (Andie MacDowell) arrives, revealing to Charles that she and Hamish (Corin Redgrave) are separated.

Charles has a crisis of confidence, which he reveals to his deaf brother David (David Bower) and his best friend Matthew (John Hannah).

During the ceremony, when the vicar asks whether anyone knows a reason why the couple should not marry, David, who was reading the vicar’s lips, asks Charles to translate for him and says in sign language that he suspects the groom loves someone else.

The vicar asks whether Charles does love someone else and Charles replies, “I do.”

Henrietta punches Charles and the wedding is halted, with the church forgotten for the rest of the film.

 

In Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, the Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman) “marries” Maid Marion (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) in this church meant to be the chapel of Nottingham Castle.

William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) reveals to Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) that he is alive when he surprises her and her husband-to-be Lord Wessex (Colin Furth) inside St. Batholomew´s. (Shakespeare in Love)

Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore) regularly visits Father Smythe (Jason Isaacs) at the church. (The End of the Affair, 1999)

William Wilburforce (Ioan Gruffuff)(1797 – 1833) finds spiritual enlightenment in St. Bart´s to inspire him to devote his life to the abolishment of slavery in England. (Amazing Grace)

Anne Boleyn (Natalie Portman) marries King Henry VIII (Eric Bana) and is crowned Queen of England in a ceremony at St. Bartholomew, as is Snow White (Kristen Stewart). (The Other Boleyn Girl)(Snow White and the Huntsman)

The interiors of Fotheringray Castle and Chartley Hall (the former where Mary, Queen of Scots (1542 – 1587) was imprisoned, the latter from where she reigned, both ruins) are captured by St. Bartholomew´s. (Elizabeth: The Golden Age)

Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Dr. John Watson (Jude Law) with Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan) and his police force battle Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) and his men within St. Bartholomew`s. (Sherlock Holmes, 2009)

St. Bart´s has also been used in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Transformers: The Last Knight (2017), the TV series Taboo and as a stand-in for Westminster Abbey by T-Mobile for its “royal wedding” advertisement (2011).

 

Historically much blood has been spilt in Smithfield, with both the living their lives dispatched and the dead their bodies snatched.

Blood, both animal and human, has been spilled at Smithfield for centuries that.

Given its ease of access to grazing and water, Smithfield established itself as London´s livestock market, remaining so for almost a thousand years.

The meat market grew up adjacent to Bartholomew Fair, though it wasn´t legally sanctioned until the 17th century.

Live cattle continued to be herded into Smithfield until the Fair was suppressed and the abattoirs moved out to Islington.

A new covered market hall was erected in 1868 and it remains London´s main meat market.

Early morning by 7 am, Smithfield Market is at its most animated with a full range of stalls open.

 

Human blood was often spilled in Smithfield as well.

 

William Wallace (1270 – 1305), a Scottish knight and one of the main rebel leaders during the Wars of Scottish Independence, was captured near Glasgow, transported to London and taken to Westminster Hall.

There he was tried for treason and for atrocities against civilians in war, “sparing neither age nor sex, monk nor nun“.

He was crowned with a garland of oak to suggest he was the King of Outlaws.

Wallace responded to the treason charge:

“I could not be a traitor to King Edward, for I was never his subject.”

Following his trial, Wallace was taken from the Hall to the Tower of London on 23 August 1305.

He was then stripped naked and dragged through the city at the heels of a horse to Smithfield.

He was strangled by hanging but released while he was still alive.

He was then emasculated, eviscerated and his bowels burned before him.

Wallace was then beheaded, drawn and quartered.

His head was preserved (dipped in tar) and placed on a pike atop London Bridge.

In 2005 a memorial service was held for Wallace, on the 700th anniversary of the Scottish rebel´s execution.

Above: Plaque on the wall of St. Bartholomew´s Hospital, marking the place of Wallace´s execution

 

Wat Tyler led the Peasants´ Revolt in 1381.

At the height of the Revolt, Tyler had them gather, 20,000 strong, at Smithfield after having just taken London by storm.

They assembled to discuss what their next move should be.

They were debating whether to loot the city when the King appeared, accompanied by a retinue of 60 horsemen.

Though Richard II was only a boy of 14, he did not shrink from the challenge.

When he reached the Abbey of St. Bartholomew, Richard stopped and looked at the great crowd and said he would not go on without hearing what they wanted.

If they were discontented, he would placate them.

Tyler, a roofer from Kent, emboldened by the peasants´ success, rode forward to negotiate with the King.

He spoke insolently to the King and to the Lord Mayor of London who was with him.

In reply, the Lord Mayor produced his sword and struck Tyler in the head.

Tyler fell to the ground and was surrounded by the King´s retainers who finished him off while the peasants looked on helplessly.

They were about to launch into a massacre when Richard hurriedly retrieved the situation.

Ordering his retainers to stay where they were, Richard rode forward alone and calmed the mob.

He told them:

“I am your King.

You have no other leader but me.”

The crowd dispersed, the Revolt was over, the peasants went home, their remaining leaders hunted down and hanged without mercy.

 

Smithfield became a regular venue for public executions.

The Bishop of Rochester´s cook was boiled alive here in 1531, after being found guilty of poisoning.

The local speciality was burnings, reaching a peak during the reign of “Bloody” Mary in the 1550s when hundreds of Protestants were burnt at the stake for their beliefs, in revenge for the Catholics who had suffered a similar fate under Henry VIII and Edward VI.

A plaque on the side of the church commemorates those who died at Smithfield as martyrs for their faith – 50 Protestants and the religious reformers who would be called “the Marian martryrs“.

“It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their Theory of the universe.

That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages and it failed altogether in its object.” (G.K. Chesterton)

On 16 July 1546, Anne Askew of Lincolnshire and three men were burnt at the stake, for going around London distributing Protestant tracts and giving them secretly to the ladies of the Queen´s household.

Askew was arrested, tortured in the Tower of London and then executed.

She was 25.

So many executions….

 

Reportedly some nights there is a strong scent of burning flesh.

 

During the 16th century the Smithfield site was the place of execution of swindlers and coin forgers who were boiled to death in oil.

After 1783, when hangings at Tyburn Tree (present site of Marble Arch) stopped, public executions at the nearby gates of Newgate Prison just south of Smithfield, began to draw crowds of 100,000 and more.

The last public beheading took place here in 1820 when five Cato Street Conspirators were hanged and decapitated with a surgeon´s knife.

It was in hanging that Newgate excelled.

Its gallows dispatched 20 criminals simultaneously.

Unease over the “robbery and violence, loud laughing, oaths, fighting, obscene conduct and still more filthy language” that accompanied public hangings drove the executions inside the prison walls in 1868.

The bodies of the executed were handed over to the surgeons of St. Bartholomew´s for dissection, but body snatchers also preyed on non-criminals buried in the nearby churchyard of St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate.

Such was the demand for corpses that relatives were forced to pay a night watchman to guard the graveyard in a specially built watchhouse to prevent the “Resurrection Men” from retrieving their quarry.

Successfully stolen bodies were taken to the nearby tavern, the Fortune of War, to be sold to the physicians of the St. Bartolomew´s Hospital.

Rahere may have been both head of the Priory and master of the Hospital, but soon these offices, these institutions became distinct identities.

St. Bart´s Hospital wasn´t the first of its kind, for it, like the earliest Hospitals, was a part of a monastery that gave shelter and food to wayfarers, serving both as guesthouse and infirmary, caring not just for the traveller, but for all kinds of needy people, including the sick, the aged and the destitute.

St. Bart´s would become known for taking in expectant mothers, foundlings and orphans and babies from nearby Newgate Prison.

St. Bart´s began with eight brethern and four sisters, all following the rule of the Augustinian order.

For over four centuries, the Hospital continued to be a religious institution.

By 1150, St. Bart´s had become a popular refuge for the chronically ill, many seeking miraculous cures, yet little is known about these patients in medieval times, other than those described in the Book of the Foundation.

 

A carpenter named Adwyne was brought in suffering from chronic contractions resulting from prolonged illness.

First he regained use of his hands by making small tools and as his limbs became stronger he was able to use an axe.

His recovery has much in common with modern physiotherapy and occupational therapy.

 

Gradually, treatments based on medical doctrines were introduced.

 

John Mirfeld, a contemporary of Chaucer, lived within the Priory and was closely connected to the Hospital.

He wrote two books in which he recorded everything he believed conducive to spiritual and physical health.

The first of his works, the Breviarium Bartholomei (Breviary of Bartholomew), written in Latin between 1380 and 1395, is a large compendium of diagnoses, treatments and remedies, which were copied from the standard medical authorities of the day, mainly classical and Arabic, but included cures based on folklore and magic which were an integral part of medieval medicine.

Mirfield´s writings were the best available medical practice 600 years ago.

The Breviarium Bartholomei dealt with general illnesses, then categorized other diseases according to the parts of the bodies they affected.

 

The Order of the Hospital (1552) stated that there should be “one fayre and substantial chest” in which the Hospital´s records were kept.

The chest was to have three locks, which only the president, treasurer and one other governor had the key to a lock.

The Clerk of the Hospital was responsible for writing down a record of the Hospital´s business, for which he kept four books: a repertory (copies of all deeds relating to the Hospital´s property, rights and obligations), a book of survey (the names of all the tenants of the Hospital´s properties and who was responsible for repairs), a book of accounts / the ledger (copies of all deeds relating to the Hospital´s property, rights and obligations), and a journal (a record of the meetings of the hospital´s governers).

 

From 1547 there were usually three Hospital surgeons, each in regular attendance on the patients.

Some of the early surgeons at St. Bart´s were skilled practitioners and highly distinguised in their day.

William Clowes (1544 – 1604) wrote a number of books which have been described as the best surgical texts of the Elizabethan age.

Above: William Clowes

John Woodall (1556 – 1643), a contemporary of William Harvey, wrote The Surgeon´s Mate, a book full of sound and practical advice for ships´ surgeons.

Woodall was one of the first to recognize scurvy (caused by a lack of Vitamin C in the diet) and lemon juice as a treatment for it.

Above: John Woodall

The most common operations were: amputations, lithothomy (removing bladder stones) and trephination (drilling with a circular saw to remove portions of the skull.

But without anaesthetics and any understanding of the causes of infection, pus in wounds was accepted as part of the healing process and mortality rates were high.

More typically, surgeons dealt with accidents such as burns, fractures, knife and gunshot wounds.

They also pulled teeth, lanced boils, drained pus, treated skin disorders, venereal infections, tumours and ulcers.

 

Most drugs were made from home-grown and imported plants and spices and were based on traditional remedies.

In 1618 the first London Pharmacopoeia was published and sponsored by the Royal College of Physicians, embodying a list of approved drugs and the methods of preparing them.

Some exotic substances were included, such as unicorn´s horn and spider´s web, reflecting the practices of the time.

 

One of the more distinguished apothecaries at St. Bart´s was Francis Bernard (1627 – 1698) who amassed a huge library, containing 13,000 volumes, 4,500 of which related to medicine and science, at his house in Little Britain near the Hospital.

 

Pharmacy changed slowly and it was not until the 19th century that scientific analysis began to isolate drugs like morphine, codeine and quinine.

 

Unlike surgeons who acquired their skills by apprenticeship, physicians were university trained.

Until the 17th century, medicine remained largely backward looking, dependent upon classical authorities and ancient remedies.

Diagnosis was made by taking into account the patient´s history, lifestyle and appearance, and external factors such as the environment in which the patient lived.

Gradually, however it became accepted that the human body could be investigated by dissection and that knowledge of anatomy was vital in understanding how the body worked.

 

William Harvey (1578 – 1637) studied medicine and anatomy at the famed University of Padua before serving as physician at St. Bart´s.

Above: William Harvey

He is credited with one of the greatest advances in medical history: the discovery of the circulation of the blood, published in 1628 in Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cardis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (An Anatomical Essay on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals).

Based on his observations and experiments, Harvey demonstrated that the blood circulated constantly around the body, pumped by the heart, going out by the arteries and returning by the veins.

His work was a role model for scientific investigation.

Nonetheless by the 18th century there was still no real understanding of the nature and causes of disease.

 

Peter Mere Latham (1789 – 1875) emphasized the careful physical examination of the patient.

Above: Peter Mere Latham

Some 60 volumes of his casenotes, all carefully indexed, are the earliest examples of detailed patient records.

 

Diagnosis using instruments, such as the stethoscope, was introduced in the first half of the 19th century.

Percivall Pott (1714 – 1788) bridged the gap between the barber-surgeons and the modern art of surgery.

Known for his consideration of the patient and who described amputation as “terrible to bear and horrible to see“, Pott introduced many improvements to surgery and helped raised the standing of his procession.

By the last quarter of the 18th century, systematic medical education (the mix of university education and hands-on apprenticeship) had yet to be introduced in England.

Due to popularity of anatomical, surgical operations and bandaging lectures, the Hospital began to provide a purpose-built lecture theatre.

A wide range of subjects was taught including theory and practice of medicine, anatomy and physiology, surgery, physics, chemistry, materia medica (drugs), midwifery and diseases of women and children.

By 1831, St. Bart´s had the largest medical school in London, providing a complete curriculum for students preparing for medical examination.

 

Health care was transformed in the 19th century.

New specialities arose as medicine became a science.

By the end of the century, research, often conducted in the laboratory, had become the basis of medical science.

 

A story, a legend, begins in 1881, when Dr. John Watson, having returned to London after serving in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, visits the Criterion Restaurant and runs into an old friend named Stamford, who had been a dresser under him at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.

St. Bart´s was Watson´s alma mater.

Watson confides in Stamford that, due to a shoulder injury that he sustained at the Battle of Maiwand, he has been forced to leave the armed services and is now looking for a place to live.

Stamford mentions that an acquaintance of his, Sherlock Holmes, is looking for someone to split the rent at a flat at 221B Baker Street, but he cautions Watson about Holmes’s eccentricities.

Stamford takes Watson back to St. Bartholomew’s where, in a chemical laboratory, they find Holmes experimenting with a reagent, seeking a test to detect human haemoglobin.

Holmes explains the significance of bloodstains as evidence in criminal trials.

“There´s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life.” (Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet)

After Stamford introduces Watson to Holmes, Holmes shakes Watson’s hand and comments, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

Though Holmes chooses not to explain why he made the comment, Watson raises the subject of their parallel quests for a place to live in London, and Holmes explains that he has found the perfect place in Baker Street.

At Holmes’s prompting, the two review their various shortcomings to make sure that they can live together.

After seeing the rooms at 221B, they move in and grow accustomed to their new situation.

Pathology (the study of the underlying causes and processes of disease) was at first the main area of scientific work.

Case notes of individual patients were systematically compiled, not only as a record of diagnosis and treatment, but also for use in teaching and research.

Gradually, the old beliefs that infection arose spontanteously gave way to the discovery that disease was caused by small living germs (bacteria).

With the introduction of anaesthetics and antiseptics, procedures could be undertaken that were formerly prohibited by the risk of blood loss, infection and the suffering of the patient.

So while the number of operations performed at St. Bart´s increased dramatically, the overall mortality rate kept falling.

During the 1930s, St. Bart´s led the world in the development of mega-voltage X-ray therapy for cancer patients and was the first Hospital to install equipment capable of treating tumours with a 1,000,000 volt beam.

 

St. Bartholomew´s Hospital has existed on the same site since its founding in the 12th century, surviving both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz, making this Hospital the oldest in London.

 

St. Bartholomew´s Hospital Museum, open Tuesday to Friday, 10 am to 4 pm, shows how medical care has developed and the history of the Hospital.

The Museum is part of the London Museums of Health and Medicine and has been described as one of the world´s 10 weirdest medical museums.

Among the medical artifacts are some fearsome amputation instruments, a pair of leather “lunatic restrainers” and jars with labels such as “Poison – for external use only.”

The Museum contains some fine paintings, gruesome surgical tools and a tribute to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote some of his Sherlock Holmes stories while studying medicine here.

“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.“

Upstairs on the 3rd floor of the Hospital, the Barts Pathology Museum (http://www.qmul.ac.uk/bartspathology) is a cavernous, glass-roofed hall lined with jars of pickled body parts, open to the visitor by appointment only.

Around 5,000 diseased specimens in various shades of putrid yellow, gangerous green and bilious orange are neatly arranged on three open-plan floors linked by a spiral staircase.

Only the ground floor of the Museum is open to the public, while the upper galleries are reserved for teaching, cataloguing and conservation.

Some favourites: the deformed liver of a “tight lacer“(corset wearer), the misshapen bandaged foot of a Chinese woman, the skull of the assassin John Bellingham who murdered Prime Minister Spencer Perceval.

The Museum has a series of workshops and talks inspired by its collection.

There are taxidermy classes, lectures on funerary cannibalism and the history of syphilis, and festivals dedicated to bodily decay and broken hearts.

Have a glass of wine amongst severed hands and trepanned skulls.

If you dare….

Prior to the Anatomy Act of 1832, there were only two ways in which medical schools could acquire corpses: prisoners sentenced to death and dissection, or corpses purchased from the “Resurrection Men” body snatchers.

 

A door leads from the Hospital Museum to the Hospital´s official entrance hall.

On the walls of the staircase are two murals painted by William Hogarth: The Pool of Bethesda and The Good Samaritan, which can only be seen at close quarters on Friday afternoons.

Hogarth was so enraged by the news that the Hospital was commissioning art from Italian painters that he insisted on doing the staircase murals for free as a demonstration that English painting was equal to Italian.

The legend recreated in the BBC drama, final episode “The Reichenbach Fall” of the second series of Sherlock.

J.M.W. Turner, “Reichenbach Falls”

John finds Sherlock at the St. Bartholomew’s lab but leaves after hearing Mrs. Hudson has been shot.

Sherlock texts Moriarty who meets him on the roof of the hospital to resolve what the criminal calls their “final problem“.

Moriarty reveals that Sherlock must commit suicide or Moriarty’s assassins will kill John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade.

Sherlock realises that Moriarty has a fail-safe and can call the killings off.

Sherlock then convinces Moriarty that he is willing to do anything to make him activate the fail-safe.

After acknowledging that he and Sherlock are alike, Moriarty tells Sherlock “As long as I am alive, you can save your friends,” then commits suicide by shooting himself in the mouth, thereby denying Sherlock knowledge of the abort codes and the ability to prove that Moriarty does exist.

With no way to use the fail-safe, Sherlock calls John, who is rushing back from 221B Baker Street after realising the report about Mrs. Hudson was a ruse.

Claiming that he was always a fake and explaining this last phone call is his “note“, Sherlock swan-dives off the roof of St. Bartholomew as John looks on horrified from the street, thereby ensuring that Moriarty’s true identity dies with him.

After being knocked to the ground by a cyclist, John stumbles over to watch, grief-stricken, as Sherlock’s bloody body is carried away by hospital staff.

St. Bart´s is again used as the location for the resolution to Holmes´ faked suicide, in the first episode (“The Empty Hearse“) of the third Sherlock series.

Just inside the Henry VIII Gate of St. Bartholomew´s Hospital is the Hospital church of St. Bartholomew the Less.

Inside the light and airy church with its limed oak pews the visitor can find a painting of St. Batholomew, the aforementioned parish chest and memorials to Hospital doctors, nurses and other staff.

On the wall, the Balthrope Monument has the kneeling figure of Robert Balthrope, Sergeant Surgeon to Queen Elizabeth I with the final lines (paraphrased):

“Let here his rotten bones repose till angel´s trumpet sound.

To warn the world of present change and raise the dead from the ground.”

To wander a neighbourhood so rich in history and culture….

To learn of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, of jesters of joy and saints of determination, of fairs fayre and deadly prisons, of patriots and poets, of movie magic, of queens and martyrs, of rebels who defied kings, of doctors and nurses, of drugs and medicine….

Such is Smithfield, the Springfield of England, such was our Bart day.

The jukebox of my mind thinks of The Simpsons.

Do the Bartman.

Sources

Wikipedia

Nicholas Best, London in the Footsteps of the Famous

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

Rena Gardiner, The Story of Saint Bartholomew the Great

Rachel Howard and Bill Nash, Secret London: An Unusual Guide

Rough Guide London

St. Bartholomew`s Hospital: Nine Centuries of Health Care

 

Canada Slim and the Museum of Many

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 29 January 2018

It is easy to criticize, easy to destroy and belittle the efforts of others.

Above: The very critical and much criticized President Donald Trump

 

But sometimes criticism is unavoidable.

 

I have had colleagues at work who have gone both directions when it comes to negativity and praise.

 

One colleague will hide her light under a blanket, not reminding others enough about her significant accomplishments and good work.

She needs to make sure that the people who count – those with whom she works, those who make decisions, those who have influence on her career – are aware of her accomplishments and contributions.

She is amazingly generous about giving others their due when they deserve it, but I feel she neglects to include herself as meriting praise in the team´s success.

Above: Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910 – 1997)

 

Another colleague can sink a ship with her constant barrage of complaints, negativity and whining about what´s wrong with everyone and everything.

Above: The RMS Titanic leaving Southampton, 10 April 1912

For her, the glass is always half empty.

Upon arrival at the Pearly Gates, she will invariably ask St. Peter:

“Is that it?”

For her, the worst is about to happen.

She can spot the negative and bad in most everyone at a distance of a thousand paces.

She is Vampirella without the sex appeal, draining energy rather than blood.

And there is not a whole hell of a lot a person can do about her.

She is genetically predisposed to her way of thinking, so she is avoided whenever possible.

 

A tourist attraction gets both types of these visitors:

Those inclined to see the best in the place, not realizing that it is their attitude that influences their positive opinion of the place.

And there is the type who will find negative in the place no matter what.

In this blog, which has become over time a series of travelogues and essays, I am trying to find a balance between these two extremes.

I will try not to wax too poetically about a place, unless it truly is a wonder of wonders that one must see before “kicking the bucket”.

By the same token I am trying consciously not to let the negative experience I might have had, often through no fault of the place´s own, keep me from seeing the positive aspects of the places I have visited.

 

London, England, 25 October 2018

Take my wife.

Please!

Above: Comedian Rodney Dangerfield (1921 – 2004)

She is a lovely woman but she has special ways about her that make each travel experience with her an adventure.

Her Swabian soul (think of a German version of a Scot´s stereotypical thriftiness) was working overtime on our week´s sojourn in London.

We only had a week and, by God and all the saints and apostles, we were going to see EVERYTHING.

She bought us London Passes and, by God and all the saints and apostles, we were going to use them efficiently.

As she had less time for sightseeing than I did, because her reason for visiting London was to attend an international doctors symposium, she was stressed, grim and determined for us to be the ultimate tourists.

Running, not walking, between attractions.

Viewing museum exhibits without reading their descriptions, unless the museum particularly interested her.

In marrying her I sowed the winds of change.

And as a result there are many times I am swept away by the whirlwind that is my wife.

 

Today we visited the Museum of London akin to the way a tornado visits a town: without lingering long in any location, choosing our own path and method of passing through.

She Who Must Be Obeyed hated it.

I still reserve judgment.

 

The neighbourhood of the Museum is, at first glance, brutal, concrete, unwelcoming.

The city´s only large residential complex is a maze built upon a bombed borough, a labyrithine dystopia of listless pedestrian paths and anonymous apartments straitjacketed by three 400-foot towers.

To appreciate this section of city known as the Barbican, one must ignore first impressions of promethian prison and imagine instead that beyond the boundaries of natural hesitation lies a land of soft sensitivity and cool cultural crossways.

Here is an amazing arts centre set along side an artificial oblong lake within and home to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Here be bars, cafés and restaurants.

The Barbican complex is indistinguishable for most folks from the Barbican Centre, whose seven floors feature a concert hall, two theatres, three cinemas, a rooftop garden and an art gallery.

The Barbican Centre is home to one of the top venues in London for jazz, classical and world music and, surprisingly, one of the most affordable (by London standards) places in the city for quality theatre and dance.

As well as being a champion of young and new artists, playwrights, performers and filmmakers, the Barbican Centre is home to the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as one of the largest public libraries in London.

The Barbican Centre has plenty of places to eat and drink.

There are art and design shops and, unexpectedly, a giant conservatory teeming with tropical flora.

 

Here in the Barbican are two of the most neglected spots in London.

 

The church of St. Giles Cripplegate is the Barbican´s solitary prewar building.

Above: St. Giles-without-Cripplegate Church

A heavily restored early Tudor church, St. Giles is bracketed between a pair of artificial lakes and overlooks an impressive corner bastion of an old Roman fort.

It was here in St. Giles that Oliver Cromwell was married in 1620.

Above: Oliver Cromwell (1599 – 1658)

It was here in St. Giles that the poet John Milton was buried in 1674, then unburied in 1793.

Above: John Milton (1608 – 1674)

His teeth were knocked out as souvenirs and his corpse exhibited to the public until the idea of a putrifying poet no longer appealed.

 

Opposite the former General Post Office, south of the Museum, lies Postman´s Park, one of the most curious and least-visited corners of the city.

Above: Postman´s Park

Here, in 1900, in the churchyard of St. Botolph Aldersgate, the painter and scupltor George Frederick Watts paid for a national memorial to “heroes of everyday life”, a patchwork wall of majolica tiles protected by a canopy and inscribed with the names of common folk who died in the course of some act of uncommon bravery.

Above: George Frederic Watts (1817 – 1904)

It is the classic Victorian morbid sentimental fascination with death.

It is macabre masterpiece literature.

“Drowned in attempting to save his brother after he himself had just been rescued….”

“Saved a lunatic woman from suicide at Woolwich Arsenal Station, but was himself run over by the train….”

Edgar Allan Poe would have loved and Stephan King would love this place.

Above: The Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, Postman´s Park

 

Hidden in the southwestern corner of the Barbican is the Museum of London, whose permanent galleries are meant to be an educational excursion through London´s past from prehistory to present, as seen through archeological artifacts and massive scale models.

The Museum was opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 2 December 1976, as the first new museum building to open in London since the end of the Second World War.

Above: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

The Museum tries to tell the story of London´s development as a city over hundreds of thousands of years: from stone age settlements in the Thames Valley, through the founding of Londinium by the Roman army, to the great world city that London is today.

I use the word “tries” deliberately, because the Museum is a victim of its own success.

It attracted 370,000 visitors in its first six months and has attracted millions since then.

Above: Christopher Le Brun´s Union (Horse with two discs), Museum entry

It has acquired a reputation for excellence as a museum that sees itself as “not simply of or about London, but also for London” and thus seems to encompass a tourist population the size of London that visit it.

The Museum´s mission is to play a part in the lives of all Londoners, to inspire a passion for London, but it is hard to feel passionate about the history of London when half of London congregates within the Museum.

 

The Museum attempts to answer the questions:

How did London come to be such an extraordinary place?

 

(Which begs the unasked question:

What exactly is ordinary and extraordinary?

Can a place be either/both?)

 

Who were the Londoners who lived here in the past?

What does the future hold?

 

The Museum has around one million items in its core collection, plus an additional six million “finds”.

It holds 25,000 items of clothing and fashion, 100,000 paintings, prints and photographs, 17,000 excavated skeletons, 50,000 prehistoric and Roman objects, 50,000 objects from Tudor and Stuart London, 110,000 objects from modern London, 1,800 life stories from individual Londoners, half a million historic documents and a growing collection of items from the yet-unfinished 21st century.

 

Imagine if you will herds of mammoths here where crowds now gather.

Or see if you can a Londinium that boasts a thriving Roman port, a large forum and basilica, public baths, barracks, amphitheatre and temples.

Then imagine a battleground where one civilization replaces another to be itself subseded by yet another: Angles and Saxons, Vikings and Normans, the splendour, hustle and bustle of medieval times with merchants and craftsmen….

Imagine a city that survives the Black Death, Civil War, a Great Fire, the Blitz.

A city where once walked Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare, where a King was publicly executed.

Imagine a city that grows from being the capital of a country to become the centre of an empire.

A busy chaotic place filled with both amusement and hardship, fabulous fortunes and pathetic poverty….

Stroll down the Victorian Walk with the look and feel of London in the year 1900.

The shop fronts, fixtures and fittings are all original.

Peek through the windows of the tobacconist, the barber´s, the chemist´s, the tailor´s, the pawnbroker´s….

See a city that has seen overcrowding and lack of sanitation, failing health and lack of housing.

Where customs changed as technology developed….

Electricity, telephones, motor vehicles and moving pictures that heralded modern times….

 

And what of the future?

Above: The Shard, London

How can the city reduce its carbon footprint?

Where will the jobs of the future come from?

Should London build higher skyscrapers or deeper Tube lines?

 

The Museum of London could be a great place.

But the Museum suffers from an overabundance of overabundance.

Too many artifacts, too many stories, too many visitors, too much of too much.

The screaming children, the harried parents, a warehouse of the walking weary….

A Museum with a too well-worn welcome mat….

A Museum that one regrets visiting, because one cannot linger undisturbed to absorb all that one sees, because the mass and mob make tranquil contemplation and progressive study of all that can be seen damned difficult and downright discouraging.

And it was this Museum, this overabundance of overabundance, this overwhelming overgrowth, that made me see the Museum as the actual model of what London means to me.

Too much and too many.

I could never live in London, though visiting it from time to time is a pleasant idea.

London is too crowded, too complex and complicated for a wee lad such as I am who came from a wee village and lives in another wee village today.

London is too expensive and expansive.

It is as unnerving as the Museum that exhibits it.

The Museum tries to be everything to everyone but it is everyone that diminished everything the Museum has tried to accomplish.

I don´t belong in London.

Take me home, rural routes, to the place where I do belong.

Sources: Wikipedia / The Rough Guide to London / The Museum of London

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the Uncertainty Principle

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 10 January 2018

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I am reminded of this more and more these days as I watch events unfold again and again around the globe that suggest the politicization of society remains an ongoing clear and present danger.

Politicization is, at least to my way of thinking, a process where tradition and excellence are replaced by ideology and illusion.

Take, for example, two stories from the 8 January edition of the New York Times:

Windsor, England

Since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced their wedding date last month, the council leader who oversees one of the richest boroughs in Britain has been on a campaign to deal with the homeless people who “sleep rough” near the wedding venue, Windsor Castle – all eight of them, according to official statistics.

Simon Dudley, leader of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, wrote to the Thames Valley Police last week, demanding that they use their legal powers to tackle the issue of “aggressive begging and intimidation” before the royal wedding on 19 May.

Last month, while on ski vacation in Wyoming, Dudley tweeted  – (Why do we give tweets so much damn influence anyway?) – about an “epidemic of rough sleeping and vagrancy in Windsor”, which he says paints the historical market town in an “unfavourable light”.

His description of “bags and detritus” accumulating on the streets  – (Sounds like my apartment!) – and “people marching tourists to cash points to withdraw cash” suggested that homeless people had somewhat taken over the quaint streets of Windsor.

But while Britain has a big homelessness issue, with 1 in every 200 people in England currently without a home, there are just 8 homeless people in all of Windsor and Maidenhead, the government says.

Local charities say the official figures may not fully capture the extent of the problem, because a number of people, known as the “hidden homeless”, beg on the streets by day and spend their nights in temporary accommodations for extended periods.

The Thames Valley Police say they deal with occasional reports of begging in the area but have not had any reports of anyone being marched to cash points to take out money.

(I will say that I have seen beggars begging near cash points but the only thing compelling me to assist them was my own conscience and not any overt intimidation from them.)

To quote some of the people interviewed by Ceylan Yeginsu:

“I think that (Dudley´s) comments are rude and heartless. 

If they are going to move us, it should be into a permanent home, not out of sight for a day just so that rich people can throw a party.”

“They are making us out to be criminals, a public safety hazard. 

What´s all that about?

We don´t bother anybody. 

We don´t go up on anyone. 

We just take whatever we are given.”

“The unpleasant sight is not what is shameful here. 

It´s the fact that we are not providing these poor people with warm homes in the middle of winter.”

“People sleeping on the street don´t do so through choice. 

They are often at their lowest point, struggling with a range of complex problems and needs, and they are extremely vulnerable, at risk from cold weather, illness and violence.”

To the mind of Dudley what matters most is not the tradition and excellence of character showing compassion and charity to those in genuine need and distress but rather it is the illusion of pretending that there is no homelessness issue in Windsor.

Haworth, England

Above: Bronte Parsonage Museum, Haworth

Should a 30-year-old supermodel help lead a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth (30 July 1818) of Emily Bronte?

Above: (from left to right) Anne, Emily and Charlotte Bronte

That question is at the crux of a row that broke out after the Bronte Society in Britain, one of the world´s oldest literary societies, anointed Lily Cole a “creative partner” for the upcoming festival celebrating Emily´s life.

Above: Lily Cole

The colloboration, announced last week, spurred a Bronte biographer and Society member to write a scathing blog post denouncing it as a “rank farce”.

“What would Emily Bronte think if she found that the role of chief “artist” and organizer in her celebratory year was a supermodel?”,  the biographer Nick Holland asked.

Above: Nick Holland

Holland said Cole´s appointment smacked of a desire to be “trendy”.

Based on what I have read about Lily Cole, though she may be compassionate and intelligent in her own way, whether she is sufficiently qualified and knowledgeable enough to properly respect the literary tradition of this great writer remains doubtful to me.

It seems that the Society is more interested in attracting people to the celebration through the use of Cole´s beauty and celebrity than they are in demonstrating the excellence and tradition of Bronte´s writing.

And whether simply being beautiful qualifies a person as being sufficiently competent is a prickly issue.

For it begs the question:

Can a woman be both beautiful and competent, rather than being exclusively one or the other?

I believe that a woman can be both, but I don´t think a woman should necessarily be considered competent or incompetent because she is beautiful or not.

Cole should be judged on her knowledge of Bronte´s writing and her academic record in literature, neither of which seems to dominate her resumé.

It seems that tradition and excellence is being superseded by the illusion that all a woman needs are looks to be successful, rather than intelligence, experience or merit.

And I still remain skeptical of the value that a model serves society when basically her primary role is to walk up and down a catwalk like a living clothes hanger showing clothing that she had no hand in creating to a small minority of people who can afford the clothing being demonstrated.

In a world crying for equal respect to be paid to women, can we not find a woman who is more than a pretty face and praise her for her intelligence and insight instead of her ability to artistically apply make-up to anorexic cheekbones?

Isn´t that the point of celebrating Emily Bronte, in that we are praising her for the merits of her literature rather than for the accident of her gender?

(For more on the Bronte sisters, please see That Which Survives of this blog.)

 

The United States

Let´s look at science and truth and the disdain with which the present Administration has for these concepts.

If the facts do not support the present political agenda then they are dismissed as fake.

The illusion that the government is infallible is preferred over the tradition of hard work and the excellence of research.

An entire community of scientists can scream until they are blue in the face that global warming is real and a danger to the continued existence of this planet and that they have the facts and research to prove it, but this is considered nonsense and invalid with a simple 5 am barely literate tweet by the President.

Above: Donald Trump, the Twit of Twitter

 

Nazi Germany, 1935 – 1939

On 1 April 1935 Arnold Sommerfeld achieved emeritus status at the University of Münich.

Above: Arnold Sommerfeld (1868 – 1951)

However, Sommerfeld stayed on as his own temporary replacement during the selection process for his successor, which took until 1 December 1939.

The process was lengthy due to academic and political differences between the Munich faculty’s selection and that of both the Reichserziehungsministerium (REM, Reich Education Ministry) and the supporters of Deutsche Physik.

In 1935, the Munich faculty drew up a candidate list to replace Sommerfeld as ordinarius professor of theoretical physics and head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Munich.

Above: Seal of the University of Munich

There were three names on the list: Werner Heisenberg, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932,  Peter Debye, who would receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1936, and Richard Becker — all former students of Sommerfeld.

The Munich faculty was firmly behind these candidates, with Heisenberg as their first choice.

Above: Werner Heisenberg (1901 – 1976)

However, supporters of Deutsche Physik and elements in the REM had their own list of candidates and the battle commenced, dragging on for over four years.

During this time, Heisenberg came under vicious attack by the supporters of Deutsche Physik.

One such attack was published in Das Schwarze Korps, the newspaper of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, headed by Heinrich Himmler.

Above: Heinrich Himmler (1900 – 1945)

Heisenberg had been lecturing to his students about the theory of relativity, proposed by the Jewish scientist Albert Einstein.

In the editorial, Himmler called Heisenberg a “White Jew” who should be made to “disappear.”

These verbal attacks were taken seriously, as Jews were subject to physical violence and incarceration at the time.

Heisenberg fought back with an editorial and a letter to Himmler, in an attempt to get a resolution to this matter and regain his honour.

At one point, Heisenberg’s mother visited Himmler’s mother to help bring a resolution to the affair.

The two women knew each other as a result of Heisenberg’s maternal grandfather and Himmler’s father being rectors and members of a Bavarian hiking club.

Eventually, Himmler settled the Heisenberg affair by sending two letters, one to SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich and one to Heisenberg, both on 21 July 1938.

In the letter to Heydrich, Himmler said Germany could not afford to lose or silence Heisenberg as he would be useful for teaching a generation of scientists.

To Heisenberg, Himmler said the letter came on recommendation of his family and he cautioned Heisenberg to make a distinction between professional physics research results and the personal and political attitudes of the involved scientists.

The letter to Heisenberg was signed under the closing “Mit freundlichem Gruss und, Heil Hitler!” (“With friendly greetings and, Hail Hitler!”)

Overall, the settlement of the Heisenberg affair was a victory for academic standards and professionalism.

However, the replacement of Sommerfeld by Wilhelm Müller on 1 December 1939 was a victory of politics over academic standards.

Above: Wilhelm Müller (?) (1880 – 1968)

Müller was not a theoretical physicist, had not published in a physics journal, and was not a member of the Deutsches Physikales Gesellschaft(DPG, German Physics Society).

His appointment as a replacement for Sommerfeld was considered a travesty and detrimental to educating a new generation of theoretical physicists.

The Nazis preferred the illusion – the ideology that scientific knowledge could only be disseminated by those of “pure Aryan blood” and “proper thinking” – over academic excellence achieved through merit.

Werner Heisenberg, known as the father of quantum physics, won his Nobel Prize for postulating his now-famous uncertainty principle which, in the simplest terms that I understand, says that the more precisely position of some particle is determined, the less precisely the momentum of the particle can be known, or vice versa, the more precisely the momentum of a particle is known, the less precisely the position can be determined.

I am no physicist and I will be damned thrice if I could properly explain the principle in any significant way, but in my own personal psychology I find the more settled a person is, the less precise his progress will be, and vice versa, the more progressive a person is, the less precise the position he holds.

If one does not travel physically or intellectually beyond one´s comfort zone, the less certain it is that the person can evolve beyond their stage of stagnation.

The more one travels physically or intellectually, the less certain he/she will be about maintaining an inflexible position on any given topic, for the exposure to new ideas offers the mind the suggestion of infinite possibilities in infinite combinations.

Travellers can nonetheless be fooled by illusion overwhelming our common sense.

Three incidents come to mind in my own personal travels.

 

Niagara Falls, New York, 1990

I couldn´t resist..

I had visited the Canadian Niagara Falls so I was understandingly curious to compare how the American Niagara Falls looked.

Misty spray, mighty roar, majestic scale, marvelous spectacle, I was one of millions of people who have invaded the Niagara River area that splits the land into two separate nations.

Long before tourists came, Seneca natives populated the area.

In 1678 they led the French priest Louis Hennepin (1626 – 1704) to the Falls.

His description was widely read in Europe:

“The universe does not afford its parallel.”

The Falls have attracted daredevils, including the Great Farini, who used barrels and tightropes and various contraptions in attempts to go over the Falls.

(For a description of the Great Farini, please see Canada Slim and the Lamp Ladies of this blog.)

Only some survived.

Honeymooners arrive (starting with Napoleon III) in the thousands, despite jokes that the Falls will be the first (or second) disappointment of married life.

To keep tourists and their dollars for longer than it takes to view the Falls, the American side has parks and attractions like its Canadian counterpart does, but – national pride aside – I believe the Canadians have done it better.

I tried visiting the New York side of the River by crossing on foot the Rainbow Bridge that spans the expanse between the nations.

I was refused.

So I opted for the Greyhound bus entry, then played the tourist.

I viewed the American Falls, took the Prospect Point Observation Tower elevator, crossed a bridge to Goat Island to view Terrapin Point and the Three Sisters Islands in the upper rapids, and descended to the Cave of the Winds where walkways go within 25 feet of the cataracts.

The town itself with over 60,000 people struck me as a grimier and grittier place as compared to the Ontario town of 75,000 people and a visit to nearby Buffalo made me think of the Gotham City as presented by Tim Burton´s Batman movie.

As historic as Buffalo´s Erie Canal and railroads may be, as fine as some of Buffalo´s buildings and parks are, the city felt like one huge Crime Alley, the downtown isolated and almost deserted.

Buffalo was in the 1990s a working class town known by me for only two things: the Buffalo Bills (who never seem able to win a Super Bowl) and the Anchor Bar´s Buffalo wings (deep-fried chicken wings covered in a spicy Sauce and served with blue cheese dressing and celery).

I ate the wings and boarded a bus back to Niagara Falls, New York and then waited in the bus terminal for a bus back over the border.

I was approached by a stranger.

I never understood racism or racial profiling, for I can never forget the family vacation I took a decade previously when we were on a freeway outside of Chicago and an ebony family in a long station wagon passed alongside us.

My foster mom shrieked and insisted we bolt our doors and windows.

The family, except for the darker hue of their skin, were no more dangerous than a Norman Rockwell painting, and we were travelling together at a speed of 60 miles per hour on a crowded highway.

It was illogical, irrational and emotional.

I had seen few black people before visiting the States and those I had met were quite decent and civil individuals, so I couldn´t understand why the extreme fear demonstrated by my foster parent.

Maybe Canadians are exposed to too much American TV?

When I was approached by a black man about my age (I was in my 20s then.) I felt neither fear nor suspicion.

He gave me a song and dance about how he needed to get back home to Los Angeles but couldn´t afford the bus fare.

He gave me a LA business card of what he said was his current employer.

His manner seemed sincere, but as a last measure of caution I bought his ticket ensuring that it was non-refundable and could only be redeemed as a bus ticket.

Time passed.

I contacted his LA employer who informed me that the young man had indeed worked for them but had quit their employ before he asked me for bus fare.

To my own surprise I was neither angry nor disappointed.

I might have been scammed but I proved to myself that I could be a generous person.

Maybe my action resulted in his returning to LA or perhaps he managed to convince another hapless traveller to buy his ticket, still he must have needed the money or he wouldn´t have done the scam.

I wish him well, though I doubt he would remember me.

 

Barcelona, Spain, 25 May 2007

On vacation with my wife, a week in this self-confident and progressive capital of Catalunya, Barcelona was and ever shall remain a city vibrating with life and excitement.

It is a thriving port and a prosperous commercial city that one could easily spend one´s entire life in and yet barely scratch its surface.

Superb museums, Gothic and modernista architecture, world famous ramblas, beautiful beaches, beckoning promenade, every day felt like a fiesta.

We soaked in Picasso, Joan Miró and Antoni Gaudí.

We strolled, we browsed, we listened to buskers and watched street Performers.

The energy of Barcelona was and still remains boundless.

We sunbathed, we swam, we ate, we drank as if there would be no tomorrow.

We wandered the streets of Barcelona day and night unafraid, lost in a kaleidoscope of colours and a garden of smells, lost in a warren of broad boulevards and ancient and narrow streets, lost in our own private flight of fancy, seeing only joy and elegance all around us.

We did not see the dirt and neglect that is also Barcelona´s seedier side.

We did not see poverty, for we chose to be blind to it.

We did not see drug use, for we were high already on the wine of each other´s company and the intoxicating nature of our vacation playground.

Was there danger lurking the flanks of the ramblas?

Should we have locked our passports, tickets and wallets inside the safe of our hotel room?

Should we have kept our backpacks beneath our feet as we poured endless sangrias down our gullets?

Were there pickpockets and bag snatchers hungry for the wealth we had and they did not?

Perhaps.

Yet fear is forgotten, for hidden down alleys little changed for centuries are tapas bars, in gentrified old town quarters are designer boutiques, in workers´ taverns bargain lunches.

Gourmet restaurants, craft outlets and workshops, fin de siècle cafés, restored palaces, neighbourhood markets and specialist galleries, and that wonder of wonders, that miracle of miracles, Gaudí´s labour of love the Sagrada Familia.

Where is the fear?

Where is the danger?

We climbed a hillside, after midnight, intimately intoxicated.

Two men approach us, claiming to be plain clothes policemen.

My wife is German, so her instinct is to be lawabiding and obedient to figures of authority.

I am Canadian with a healthy trust in law and order common to a country where – unlike our neighbours to the south where settlement arose then the law followed,  we sent the law out first then settlers followed – it is assumed that those who regulate our lives do it in our best interests rather than their own.

(Naive, perhaps, but preferable to paranoia.)

Perhaps it was Niagara Falls that remained with me, but there was something about the set-up, the whole approach, that smelled bad, felt wrong.

They demanded to see our passports.

I categorically refused.

My wife was concerned, ready to be compliant.

But I was unwilling to budge.

Their badges were too quickly opened and closed to be read distinctly in the midnight lamplight.

I felt a bravado that only alcohol can provide.

I was prepared to defend my fayre maiden even had they been armed to the teeth.

I was curiously unafraid and completely certain of my stance.

I told them I thought they weren´t policemen and I brushed them aside as I dragged my wife down the street with me.

They did not follow.

Whether they were cops or crooks, they were too amateur to want to tackle a man twice their height who refused to be intimidated.

I should have been scared.

I still don´t understand why I wasn´t.

 

London, England, 24 October 2017

The Soho district has a historic reputation for tolerance.

No matter how dour daily life may be or how depressingly dull politics may become, Soho is a refuge from the rigours of reality.

Here the artistic assemble and the groups gather.

Here the media IS the message, the film is the fantasy, the advertised the attraction.

Life in high profile, in coats of many colours.

There is nowhere else in London where diversity in infinite forms congregates and clashes: businessmen boast, drunks drop, theatre goers critique, fashion leaps and falls, markets never seem to close, pimps, prostitutes and police patrol.

This is the best of times.

This is the worst of times.

A place where the song “There´s Gonna Be a Heartache Tonight” seems fitting.

We are drawn to the lights and sounds like moths to flames, for we are tourists.

We wonder if one can be sober and a teenager at the same time here.

And is everyone getting married tomorrow?

Here a stag party, here a hen party, here a drunk, there a drunk, everyone´s a drunk, drunk.

Ol´ Macdonald went to Soho, e-i-e-i-ohhh!

Sadly the wedding invitations will be as lacklustre as the imagination that went into the wandering about the streets from pub to pub the night before.

Are you not entertained?

It felt like a full day: the Churchill War Rooms (Would the man who would fight on the beaches and in the streets have defended Soho?), the Household Cavalry Rooms, Westminster Cathedral, the Florence Nightingale Museum….

Enough of the mighty and the martyrs, the pomp and pomposity, we wanted to pump passion into our veins and colour into our consciousness.

We find ourselves on Charing Cross Road, T.S. Eliot territory, where the American Eliot spent much of his time retreating from his English wife Vivienne.

Above: Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Their marriage was markedly miserable, in part because of Viv´s health.

In a letter to their mutual friend Ezra Pound, Vivi complained of having a high temperature, fatigue, insomnia, migraines and colitis simultaneously.

Above: Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot (1888 – 1947)

Eliot retreated so often from his wife that Viv would eventually resort to marching up and down Charing Cross Road wearing a sandwich board bearing the slogan:

“I am the wife that T.S. Eliot abandoned.”

She was later diagnosed with mental instability and spent her remaining years in an asylum.

Is that what it means for a European to be married to a North American?

My poor wife.

We find ourselves wandering aimlessly trying to locate a restaurant listed in her Müller guide to London when in front of Wyndhams Theatre two young ladies in their 20s approached us.

Would we like two free tickets to see the show about to begin?

Cautiously, we accept.

One of the ladies, her name written in ink on our tickets, Miranda Banfield had received four free tickets through her workplace and two of the ladies cancelled at last moment.

The show was Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle, our seats next to theirs.

To relieve their anxiety I opted to keep Ute between myself and them.

We were plesantly distracted and immensely grateful for the generosity.

Heisenberg is the story of Georgie Burns (Anne-Marie Duff), a 42-year-old American and Alex Priest (Kenneth Cranham), a 75-year-old English butcher, who meet in a London railway station.

They begin a romantic relationship and eventually travel to New Jersey to search for Georgie´s missing son.

Had we been sceptical of Miranda´s unexpected kindness we might have missed out on a magical moment of theatre.

Miranda and her companion did not expect or ask for further contact or remuneration and we parted ways pleasantly after the show.

We had progressed over the years and were less certain about categorizing people into distinct categories of good and bad.

Stranded strangers could be legitimate or could be liars.

Men on midnight streets could be cops or conmen.

Generosity could be genuine and gratefully accepted.

Life is uncertain.

Sources:  Wikipedia / Google / Lonely Planet USA / The Rough Guide to London / The Rough Guide to Spain

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the Lamp Ladies

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 30 December 2017

In this season of goodwill and gratitude for all the blessings we enjoy, those who are healthy should especially be thankful, for we live in an age when life expectancy is higher because mankind has developed medicines and methods to extend life and restore health.

Granted there is still much significant progress needed, for far too many people still fall victim to the scourges of cancer and strokes.

There is still much we do not understand about diseases like Parkinson´s, AIDS and far too many others to comprehensively list here.

Even the common cold with its endless variety of mutations remains unsolvable and must simply be accepted as one of the countless burdens we must endure in life.

What is significant about today when compared with yesteryear is that common injuries are less likely to be fatal.

As well through the contributions of thoughtful compassionate innovators, our attitudes towards the care of the injured and ailing have improved.

Here in Switzerland and back in my homeland of Canada I have been hospitalized due to injuries caused by accidents: a fall from a tree (shattered shoulder), an axe slip (shattered foot), and a fall on a staircase (shattered wrist).

And though I also have medical conditions of anemia and celiac, neither these conditions nor the accidents I have had led to risks of fatality.

For prompt and compassionate medical attention provided to me ensured that I still live a functional, mostly painless, and happy healthy existence.

For the Christian West, Christmas is the season to show thanksgiving to God for sending His Son Jesus Christ to save our immortal souls, we also should not forget the human instruments of change that have assisted mankind to save our mortal flesh.

I married a doctor, and, even though she is a children´s physician, knowing her has given me an appreciation of just how difficult a profession medicine really is at all levels of medical treatment.

From the surgeon whose precision must be matched with efficiency, to the specialist doctor whose diagnosis must be accurately matched with the most likely cause of the patient´s symptoms, to the technicians who operate machinery that can reveal the interior of a patient´s body, to the family doctor who must know when to send a patient to a specialist and when to trust his/her own treatment, to the pharmacist that must know what medicines do and how to administer them, to the administrator who must balance the needs of patients with the cost of maintaining those needs, to the cleaning staff who ensure that the health care environment is as sterile as humanly possible, to the therapist who teaches the patient how to heal him/herself, to the nurse who monitors and comforts the bedbound sick person unable to fend for him/herself…..

The world of health care is a complex and complicated system demanding dedicated people and a neverending desire to improve itself.

A visit to a London museum two months ago has made me consider how grateful I am that an Englishwoman had the courage to be compassionate, Christian, and transformed the world for the better.

London, England, 24 October 2017

As mentioned in great detail in my blogpost Canada Slim and the Royal Peculiar my wife and I visited Westminster Abbey, that necrophiliac fetish house for the Establishment.

And folks whether or not they were avowed antiestablishment found themselves commemorated here.

The poet Shelley, despite wishing to be known as an anarchist artist and was buried in Rome, is memorialised here in Poets´ Corner, across from Viscount Castlereagh, a man Shelley loathed.

Above: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)

“I met Murder on the way.

Above: Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769 – 1822)

He had a face like Castlereagh.”

Before leaving the Abbey, we briefly visited the Undercroft Museum with its death-worshipping collection of royal funeral effigies.

Until the Middle Ages, British monarchs were traditionally embalmed and left to lie in state for a set period of time.

Eventually, the corpse was substituted for a wooden figure of the deceased, fully dressed with clothes from the Great Wardrobe and displayed on top of the funeral carriage for the final journey.

As the clothes were expected to fit the effegy perfectly, the likenesses found in the Undercroft are probably fairly accurate.

Edward III´s face has a strange leer, a recreation of the stroke he suffered in his final years.

Above: Westminster Abbey effigy of Edward III (1312 – 1377)

His eyebrows came from a plucked dog.

Several soldiers are known as the Ragged Regiment due to their decrepit decay.

Frances, the Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, holds what may be the world´s oldest stuffed bird, an African Grey parrot that died in 1702.

Above: Frances Teresa Stewart (1647 – 1702)

Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary that Frances was the greatest beauty he had ever seen.

Sadly she was disfigured by smallpox in 1668.

Sadly her final fate no different than that of her parrot.

Leaving the Abbey we see the Methodist Central Hall, an inadequate and unnecessary replacement to the building that once stood here.

On this site once stood the Royal Aquarium and Winter Garden, opened in 1876, a grand Victorian entertainment venue.

It housed palm trees, restaurants, an art gallery, an orchestra, a skating rink, the Imperial Theatre, smoking and reading rooms.

A variety of sea creatures were displayed here, but the Aquarium was often plagued by frequent plumbing problems, so the place became better known for the exciting performances staged here than for the fish.

Come one, come all.

See William Leonard Hunt, aka the Great Farini, the world renowned Canadian showman and tightrope walker!

Above: William Hunt, aka the Great Farini (1838 – 1929)

Gasp in awe at 14-year-old Rossa Matilda Richter, aka Zazel, the first ever human cannonball, as she (barely 5 feet tall and 64 lbs heavy) is launched through the air flying 30 feet or more!

Above: Rossa Richter, aka Zazel (1863 – 1929)

Protests were launched over the danger Zazel faced and for a while the venue was in danger of losing its license but crowds kept coming to see the performances.

By the 1890s the Aquarium´s reputation became disreputable and it became known as a place where ladies of poor character went in search of male companions.

The Great Farini and Zazel were one thing, but an Aquarium of ill repute was too much for Victorian propriety to accept.

The Aquarium closed in 1899 and was demolished four years later.

In 1905 construction began on the Hall for Methodists, Christianity´s least entertaining sect.

We headed towards the Thames and followed Millbank Road to a place which suffered the opposite fate of the Aquarium.

While the Aquarium lost its aura of entertainment and was replaced by a stodgy religious institute, opposite the Tate Britain Museum is an almost invisible plaque upon an unremarkable bollard that tells the reader that where the entertaining Tate stands once stood Millbank Prison.

Above: Tate Britain

Millbank was built to serve as the National Petientiary and was used as a holding facility for convicts due for transportation to Australia.

“Near this site stood Millbank Prison which was opened in 1816 and closed in 1890.

This buttress stood at the head of the river steps from which, until 1867, prisoners sentenced to transportation embarked on their journey to Australia.”

Novelist Henry James called Millbank “a worse act of violence than any it was erected to punish”.

Above: Henry James (1843 – 1916)

The phrase “down under” is said to be derived from a nearby tunnel through which the convicts were walked in chains down to the river.

A section of the tunnel survives in the cellars of the nearby Morpeth Arms, a pub built to seve the prison warden and said to be haunted by the ghost of a former inmate.

Depending on their crime, prisoners could be given the choice of receiving a five-to-ten-year jail sentence instead of exile.

Among the many to be sent to Australia – and perhaps the unluckiest of them all – was Isaac Solomon, a convicted pickpocket and the inspiration for the character Fagin in Charles Dickens´ Oliver Twist.

Above: Isaac “Ikey” Solomon (1727 – 1850)

In 1827 Solomon managed to escape while being taken to Newgate Prison.

He fled England to New York, but then travelled on to Tasmania when he discovered his wife had been transported there for crimes of her own.

Upon arrival in Tasmania, Solomon was rearrested, shipped home to London, retried, reconvicted and sentenced to exiled imprisonment for 14 years….back to Tasmania.

We made our weaving way to Pimlico Tube Station, a unique station in that it doesn´t  have an interchange with another Underground or National Rail Line.

We rode the rails until Waterloo, the last station to provide steam-powered services and the busiest railway station in London / the 91st busiest in the world / the busiest transport hub in Europe.

I had once taken the Eurostar from Waterloo Station to Paris as one of the 81,891,738 travellers during the 13 years (1994 – 2007) Eurostar operated from here, before it began service from St. Pancras.

The clock at Waterloo has been cited as one of the most romantic spots for a couple to meet, and has appeared in TV (Only Fools and Horses) and in the film Man Up.

Waterloo Station has appeared in literature (Three Men in a Boat, The Wrong Box, The War of the Worlds), films (Terminus, Rush Hour, Sliding Doors), theatre (The Railway Children), music (the Kinks song “Waterloo Sunset”) and paintings.

Our destination – typical of travelling with a doctor – a hospital, St. Thomas Hospital, noteworthy for a male serial killer and a lady humanitarian.

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, also known as the Lambeth Poisoner, was a Scottish Canadian serial killer who claimed victims from the United States, England, Canada and Scotland.

Above: Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (1850 – 1892)

Born in Glasgow, Cream was raised outside Quebec City.

He attended Montreal´s McGill University and then did his post-graduate training at St. Thomas.

In 1878 Cream obtained qualifications in Edinburgh.

He then returned to Canada to practice in London, Ontario.

In August 1879, Kate Gardener, a woman with whom he was having an affair, was found dead in an alleyway behind Cream´s office, pregnant and poisoned.

Cream claimed that she had been made pregnant by a prominent local businessman, but after being accused of both murder and blackmail, Cream fled to the United States.

Cream established a medical practice not far from the red light district of Chicago, offering illegal abortions to prostitutes.

In December 1880 another patient died after treatment by Cream, followed by another in April 1881.

On 14 July 1881, Danial Stott died of poisoning, after Cream supplied him a remedy for epilepsy.

Cream was arrested, along with Stott´s wife.

Cream was sentenced to life imprisonment in Joliet prison.

Cream was released in 1891, after Governor Joseph Fifer commuted his sentence.

Using money inherited from his father, Cream sailed for England.

He returned to London and took lodgings at 103 Lambeth Palace Road.

At that time, Lambeth was ridden with poverty, petty crime and prostitution.

On 13 October 1891, Nellie Donworth, a 19-year-old prostitute accepted a drink from Cream.

She died three days later.

On 20 October, Cream met 27-year-old prostitute Matilda Clover.

She died the next morning.

On 2 April 1892, after a vacation in Canada, Cream was back in London where he attempted to poison Louise Harvey.

Above: Louise Harvey

On 11 April, Cream met two prostitutes, Alice Marsh, 21, and Emma Shrivell. 18, and talked his way into their flat.

Cream put styrchine in their bottles of Guinness.

Both women died in agony.

On 3 June 1892, Cream was arrested and was later sentenced to death.

On 15 November, Cream was hanged on the gallows at Newgate Prison and his body buried in an unmarked grave within the prison walls.

Cream´s name does not appear in later McGill graduate directories.

No mention of those who mourned Cream´s victims is made either.

Ladies of the night lost in the shadows of Lambeth lamplight, fallen and forgotten.

Another medical professional is equally remembered at a site as inconspicuous as a prison burial ground: a parking lot.

On the south side of Westminster Bridge, a series of red brick Victorian blocks and modern white additions make up St. Thomas´s Hospital, founded in the 12th century.

At the Hospital´s northeastern corner, off Lambeth Palace Road, is a car park.

A hospital car park isn´t the most obvious location for a museum, but that where one finds the homage to Florence Nightingale, the genteel rebel who invented the nursing profession.

Born on 12 May 1820 at the Villa Colombaia, three decades before Cream, Florence Nightingale was named after the city of her birth, Florence, Italy.

Above: Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910)

“There is nothing like the tyranny of a good English family.”

Florence was born into a rich, well-connected family though quite liberal in their attitudes.

Their circle of friends and acquaintances included the author Elizabeth Gaskell, the scientist Charles Darwin and the reform politician the Earl of Shaftesbury.

(For the story of the Earl of Shaftesbury, please see Canada Slim and the Outcast of this blog.)

Her maternal grandfather William Smith campaigned to abolish slavery and Florence´s father William Nightingale educated both her and her sister Frances Parthenope (after her birthplace of Parthenope, Naples) in French, Latin, German, mathematics, philosophy and science, then considered strictly male pursuits,

The Nightingales loved to travel – her parents´ honeymoon lasted so long that they produced two daughters before they returned home.

Growing up Florence visited many European cities.

She travelled to France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy.

She enjoyed visiting museums, dancing at balls, and going to concerts, confessing at one point that she was “music mad”.

In 1838, her father took the family on a tour of Europe where they were introduced to the English-born Parisian heiress Mary Clarke, with whom Florence bonded.

Above: Mary Clarke (1793 – 1883)

Clarke was a stimulating hostess who did not care for her appearance, and while her ideas did not always agree with those of her guests, “she was incapable of boring anyone”.

Clarke´s behaviour was said to be exasperating and eccentric and she had no respect for upper class British women, whom she regarded generally as inconsequential.

She said that if given the choice between being a woman or a galley slave, she would choose the galleys.

Clarke generally rejected female company and spent her time with male intellectuals.

However Clarke made an exception in the case of Florence.

They were to remain close friends for 40 years despite their 27-year age difference.

Clarke demonstrated that women could be equals to men, an idea that Florence did not obtain from her mother Fanny Smith.

Florence underwent the first of several experiences that she believed were calls from God in February 1837 while at her family home of Embley Park, prompting a strong desire to devote her life to the service of others.

Above: Embley Park

Devout and scholarly, Florence was not expected to do anything much apart from marry and procreate.

As a young woman, Florence was attractive, slender and graceful.

She had rich brown hair, a delicate complexion and a prominent, almost Roman, nose.

She was slim until middle age and tall for a Victorian woman, about 5´8″ or 172 cm in height.

While her demeanour was often severe, she was very charming and possessed a radiant smile.

Florence received several marriage proposals.

She was certainly not supposed to work, but Florence´s ambition was to become a nurse.

Her parents were aghast.

In the Victorian Age, nurses were known for being devious, dishonest and drunken.

Hospitals were filthy, dangerous places exclusively for the poor.

The rich were treated in the privacy of their own homes.

In her youth Florence was respectful of her family´s opposition to her working as a nurse, but nonetheless she announced her decision to enter the field in 1844.

Despite the intense anger and distress of her mother and sister, Florence rebelled against the expected role for a woman of her status to become a wife and mother.

“I craved for something worth doing instead of frittering time away on useless trifles.”

Florence came closest to accepting the marriage proposal of politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, but after a nine-year courtship she rejected him in 1849, convinced that marriage would interfere with her ability to follow her calling to nursing.

Above: Richard Monckton Milnes (1809 – 1885)

Whether Milnes´ devotion to the writing of Marquis de Sade and his extensive collection of erotica had something to do with Florence´s decision remains unstated.

She knew that marriage would mean swapping one cage for another and felt that God meant her to remain single.

“Marriage had never tempted me. 

I hated the idea of being tied forever to a life of Society, and such a marriage could I have.” 

In the essay Cassandra, Florence wrote about the limited choices facing women like her and raged against the way women were unable to put their energy and intelligence to better use.

Florence´s parents allowed her to visit Rome in 1847 with family friends, Charles and Selina Bracebridge, hopefully to take her mind off nursing.

In Rome, Florence met the young politician, former Secretary of War, Sidney Herbert on his honeymoon with his wife Elizabeth.

Above: Sidney Herbert (1810 – 1861)

Together Florence and Elizabeth visited convents and hospitals run by Catholic nuns.

Sidney and Florence became lifelong close friends and the Herberts would later be insturmental in facilitating Florence´s future nursing work.

Florence continued her travels with the Bracebridges as far as Greece and Egypt.

Her writings on Egypt in particular are testimony to her learning, literaray skill and philosophy of life.

Sailing up the Nile as far as Abu Simbel in January 1850, Florence wrote of the temples there:

Above: The temples of Abu Simbel: the Great Temple of Ramses II (left), the Temple of Nefertari (right)

“Sublime in the highest style of intellectual beauty, intellect without effort, without suffering …. not a feature is correct – but the whole effect is more expressive of spiritual grandeur than anything I could have imagined.

It makes the impression upon one that thousands of voices do, uniting in one unanimous simultaneous feeling of enthusiasm or emotion, which is said to overcome the strongest man.”

At Thebes, Florence wrote of being “called to God”.

A week later near Cairo she wrote in her diary:

“God called me in the morning and asked me would I do good for Him alone without reputation.”

During a visit to the Parthenon in Athens, Florence rescued an owl, which she called Athena.

Above: The Parthenon

Athena always perched on Florence´s shoulder or in her pocket, with a specially designed pouch to to catch her droppings.

Above: Athena (1850 – 1855)

Athena was a demanding creature who had to be bathed with sand daily.

When the badtempered owl died, Florence wrote:

“Poor little beastie, it was odd how much I loved you.”

Her sister Frances wrote a short story, The Life and Death of Athena, ensuring the little owl´s posthumous fame.

Rather than forget nursing as her parents hoped, Florence´s determination grew even stronger.

Later in 1850, Florence visited the Lutheran religious community at Kaiserswerth-am-Rhein, near Dusseldorf, in Germany, where she observed Pastor Theodor Fliedner and the deaconesses working for the poor and the sick in a hospital, orphanage and college.

Above: Kaiserswerth Clinic

She regarded the Kaiserswerth experience as a turning point in her life, where she received months of medical training which would form the basis for her later care.

Florence learned about medicines, how to dress wounds, observed amputations and cared for the sick and dying.

She had never felt happier.

“Now I know what it is to love life.”

On 22 August 1853, Florence took the post of Superintendant at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Upper Harley Street in London, a position she held until October 1854.

When an epidemic of cholera broke out in London, Florence rushed to nurse victims in the nearby Middlesex Hospital.

Florence read about the disaster facing the British army in the autumn of 1854.

Hundreds of soldiers were sent to fight with the French and the Ottoman Turks against the Tsar´s Russian army in the Crimea were dying of disease.

The Crimean War was the first time the public could read in the newspapers about how the troops were suffering.

Above: Map of the Crimean War (Russian version)

When the news broke of the disaster in the Army, polticians were criticised.

More soldiers were dying from disease, and from cold during the winter, than from enemy action.

“In most cases the flesh and clothes were frozen together.

As for feet, the boots had to be cut off bit by bit, the flesh coming off with them.”

The wounded arrived by the boatloads at the British Army´s base hospitals at Scutari in Constantinople (today´s Istanbul).

Reporting from the front lines in the Crimea, William Howard Russell, Times journalist, blamed disorganization and a lack of supplies.

Fellow Times journalist in Constantinople, Thomas Chenery, reported that the French allowed women to nurse, unlike the British.

After the initial battles in the Crimea, the conflict centred on the besieged port of Sebastopol, where Russian and Ukranian women nursed heroically.

Above: The Siege of Sebastopol (September 1854 – September 1855), by Franz Roubaud (1902)

Conditions in the vast hospitals were horrific.

“Must men die in agony unheeded?”, demanded the Times.

The scandal provoked a public outcry.

Sidney Herbert, once again Secretary of War, wrote to Florence asking her to lead a group of women nurses – a new and risky idea.

Florence and her team of 38 brave women volunteer nurses that she trained and 15 Catholic nuns set sail for Scutari.

Florence arrived early November 1854 at Selimiye Barracks in Scutari and found that poor care for wounded soldiers was being delivered by overworked medical staff in the face of official indifference.

Medicines were in short supply, hygiene was being neglected and mass infections were common, many of them fatal.

There was no equipment to process food for the patients.

There was a lack of food, a lack of blankets, a lack of beds.

Casualities arrived, after a long journey, dirty and starving.

“It is of appalling horror!

These poor fellows suffer with unshrinking heroism, and die or are cut up without complaint.

We are steeped up to our necks in blood.”

At Scutari the nurses had to contend with rats, lice, cockroaches and an absence of sanitation and had to cope with long hours and hard physical work.

After Florence sent a plea to the Times for a government solution to the poor condition of the facilities, the British Government commissioned engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel to design a prefabricated hospital that could be built in England and shipped to the Dardanelles.

Above: Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806 – 1859)

The result was Renkioi Hospital, a civilian facility that had a death rate less than one tenth that of Scutari.

Florence reduced the death rate from 42% to 2% by making improvements in hygiene.

She implemented handwashing and other hygiene practices in the war hospital.

She organized the nurses and soldiers´ wives to clean shirts and sheets and the men to empty the toilets.

She bombarded Herbert with letters asking for supplies and used her own money and funds sent by the public via the Times, to buy scrubbing brushes and buckets, blankets, bedpans and operating tables.

“This morning I foraged in the purveyor´s store – a cruise I make almost daily, as the only way of getting things.  I am really cook, housekeeper, scavenger, washerwoman, general dealer and storekeeper.”

Every night she walked miles of hospital corridors where thousands of casualities lay, holding a Turkish lantern (fanoos) on her nightly rounds of the wards.

Florence would always dismiss the idea that she alone improved the Hospital.

It was a team effort.

In Britain, penny papers popularised the image of “the Lady with the Lamp” patrolling the wards.

Her work went beyond nursing care.

Florence treated the soldiers equally, whatever their rank, and also thought of their families´ welfare.

She wrote letters of condolence to relatives, sent money to widows, and answered inquiries about the missing or ill.

When the initial crisis was over, Florence also organized reading rooms.

As an alternative to alcohol, the Inkerman Café was opened, serving non-alcoholic drinks.

She set up a banking system so ordinary soldiers could send their pay home, rather than drink or gamble it away.

Stories of Florence´s devotion to the men flooded home to Britain.

One soldier wrote home of the love and gratitude for Florence felt by “hundreds of great rough soldiers”.

The men worshipped her.

During her first winter at Scutari, 4,077 soldiers died.

Ten times more soldiers died from diseases such as typhoid, typhus, cholera and dysentary than from battle wounds.

Scutari had been built on top of a huge cesspool.

With overcrowding eased, defective sewers flushed out and ventilation improved, death rates were sharply reduced.

Florence still believed that the death rates were due to poor nutrition, lack of supplies, stale air and overworking of the soldiers.

She came to believe that most of the soldiers at the hospital were killed by poor living conditions.

Florence believed that she needed to maintain military style discipline over her nurses.

“If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease but of the nursing.”

She wanted her nurses to be treated with respect by the men and doctors.

This meant no flirting with doctors or soldiers, no disobedience or drunkenness.

The first image showing Florence as “the Lady with the Lamp” appeared in the Illustrated London News early in 1855.

As the war dragged on, Florence´s work made her internationally famous.

“She is a ministering angel without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow´s face softens with gratitude at the sight of her.

When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.”

Florence hated what she called the “buzz fuzz” of celebrity, but she knew how to use public opinion.

Fame gave her power and influence to make changes, but she knew it obscured the achievements of others and the human cost of the war.

Florence´s image appeared as pottery figurines, souvenirs and even on paper bags.

Songs and poems were written about her.

When the US poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published “Santa Philomena” in 1857, it fixed Florence´s image forever as the Lady with the Lamp.

Above: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)

“Lo! in that house of misery

A lady with a lamp I see

Pass through the glimmering gloom

And flit from room to room.”

After contracting “Crimean fever” from infected goat´s milk, Florence suffered ill health.

After the Crimean War, Florence returned to Britain in August 1856, travelling under the name “Miss Smith” to avoid publicity.

Thin, exhausted and ill, she felt a sense of failure and grieved over the soldiers who did not return.

“My poor men lying in your Crimean graves, I stand at the altar of murdered men.

Florence devoted the rest of her life to ensure that they did not die in vain.

While Florence shrank from public appearances, she skillfully used her reputation and the authority of her name to convincethose in power of the need for health reform, starting with Queen Victoria, whom she impressed greatly when they met in Balmoral.

Above: Queen Victoria (1819 – 1901)

For the rest of her days she would continue to suffer reoccuring bouts of fever, exhaustion, depression, loss of appetite, insomnia and severe back pain.

Unable to continue nursing, she devoted herself to health reform, founded the first training school for nurses at St. Thomas, campaigned to improve hospital conditions and championed the cause of midwives.

Often irritable, highly critical of herself and others, Florence worked on, writing hundreds of letters, gathering and analysing statistics, commenting on reports, briefing politicians and medical experts.

Prompted by the Indian mutiny of 1857, Florence began a lifelong campaign to improve the health of all Indians, not just British soldiers.

She studied the design of hospitals in Britain and across Europe.

Florence wrote Notes on Nursing to help ordinary women care for their families.

She stressed the importance of cleanliness, warmth, fresh air, light and proper diet.

Florence wrote some 200 books, pamphlets and articles, and over 14,000 letters.

As well as nursing she wrote about religion and philosophy, sanitation and army hygiene, hospitals, statistics and India.

She wrote about her travels and the frustrations of life for educated women.

Florence changed society´s ideas about nursing.

She believed in looking after a person´s mental as well as physical wellbeing.

She stressed the importance of being sensitive to a patient´s needs and their environment to aid recovery.

She helped make nursing a respectable profession for women.

Her work proved an inspiration to many, including the founder of the Red Cross movement, Henri Dunant.

Above: Henri Dunant (1828 – 1910)

Florence championed causes that are as just important today as they were in her day, from hospital hygiene and management, to the nursing of soldiers during war and afterwards, and healthcare for all around the world.

In recognition of her pioneering work in nursing, the Nightingale Pledge is taken by new nurses.

The Florence Nightingale Medal is the highest international distinction a nurse can achieve and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.

The Florence Nightingale Museum doesn´t just celebrate Florence as a devout woman who single-mindedly revolutionized the healthcare industry but as well it hits the right note by putting the two years she spent tending to the wounded of the Crimean War in the context of a lifetime of tireless social campaigning, and also mentions others involved in that same health care crisis.

Dimly lit and curiously curated with circular display cases covered in fake grass or wrapped in bandages, this small museum is packed with fascinating exhibits, from Florence´s hand-written ledgers and primitive medical instruments to pamplets with titles like How People May Live and Not Die in India.

The Museum and the neighbourhood of Lambeth are worth exploring, especially in a world too full of Dr. Creams and too few Florence Nightingales.

Perhaps if our politicians visited more museums like the Red Cross Museum in Geneva or the Florence Nightingale Museum there might less incentive to cause war ourselves or to ignore wars far removed from us, such as Yemen – “a pointless conflict (that) has caused the world´s worst humanitarian crisis”.

Perhaps if we followed role models such as Florence we might one day truly find peace on Earth and good will towards man.

Sources: Wikipedia / The Rough Guide to London / Rachel Howard and Bill Nash, Secret London: An Unusual Guide / Simon Leyland, A Curious Guide to London / Florence Nightingale Museum / http://www.florence-nightingale.co.uk

 

Canada Slim and the Royal Peculiar

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 22 December 2017

This week I returned back to work after being absent at home for the past two weeks.

It was a warm welcome with hugs and expressions of delight.

So much so that one witnessing customer commented:

“I want to work here!” 

Back home after work:

First World problems.

Ah, the problem of having too many choices!

I don´t own (and happily don´t owe) much in this world.

What I possess is an (over)abundance of books and DVDs for a man of my modest income.

If I had to estimate I would say that I probably have at least 1,000 or more DVDs.

Of these I would safely say that there are only about a dozen films that I find myself watching again and again.

For example, I recently watched for the nth time the 1974 Billy Wilder film The Front Page starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Mathau.

Director Wilder, a newspaperman in his younger days recalled:

“A reporter was a glamourous fellow in those days, the way he wore a hat and a raincoat and a swagger, and had a camaderie with fellow reporters and with local police, always hot on the trail of tips from them and from the fringes of the underworld.”

Wilder set the movie in 1929, because the daily newspaper was no longer the dominant news medium in 1974.

(Even less so in 2017….)

The movie has reminded me of the old idea that there are basically only two types of people: those who make the News and those who follow the News.

Those who are remembered by history are those who have made history, who have made the News.

And if there is one place where a person´s legacy seems to matter is within the confines of a famous cathedral.

The decision to create a mausoleum or memorial for a person is determined by what the person accomplished in their life.

Especially for the Christian West it seems the bigger the mausoleum, the grander the grave, the more remarkable the memorial, the more attention and recognition is paid (or should be paid) to the legacy a person left behind.

The downside of this thinking is the presumption that those without a mausoleum, those lacking a memorial, those without a grave, must then be undeserving of respect, unworthy of memory, unloved and forgettable.

First World thinking and materialist obsessiveness carry on even beyond one´s life and onwards in the legacy of those who no longer live.

This kind of thinking was quite evident in our visit to London in October….

 

London, England, 24 October 2017

The Houses of Parliament overshadow a much older neighbour, Westminster Abbey.

Westminster Abbey has stood in London longer than any other building and embodies much of the history of England.

It was so named to differentiate it from the “east minster“, St. Paul´s Cathedral.

It is the finest Gothic building in London, the most important religious building in England, with the highest nave of any English church.

Over the centuries Westminster Abbey has meant many things to many people.

The Abbey has been the venue for every Coronation since the time of William the Conqueror (1028 – 1087)

It has been the site of every royal burial for some 500 years between the reigns of Henry III (1207 – 1272) and George II (1683 – 1760).

Scores of the nation´s most famous citizens are honoured here and the interior of the Abbey is cluttered with hundreds of monuments, reliefs and statues.

With over 3,300 people buried beneath the Abbey´s flagstones and countless others commemorated here, Westminster is, in essence, a massive mausoleum, more tourist attraction than house of God.

Would a modern day Jesus´ visit to this temple result in His repeating:

Above: Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple (El Greco)

“Make not My Father´s house a house of merchandise.” ?

Would the Black Adder of the first BBC series wherein his father makes him the Archbishop of Canterbury (Episode 3)(transplanted to today) gleefully rub his hands together at all the modern wealth to be generated by the faithful and the curious?

Above: Tony Robinson / Baldrick (left), Tim McInnery / Lord Percy Percy (middle), and Rowan Atkinson / The Black Adder / Prince Edmund / The Archbishop of Canterbury

“Holy Moses! Take a look!

Flesh decayed in every nook!

Some rare bits of brain lie here,

Mortal loads of beef and beer.”

(Amanda McKittrick Ros, “Visiting Westminster Abbey”)

No one knows exactly when the first church was built on this site, but it was well over a thousand years ago.

At its genesis, this area was a swampy and inhospitable place on the outskirts of London.

The church stood on an island called Thorney Island, surrounded by tributaries of the River Thames.

In 960, Dunstan, the Bishop of London, brought 12 Benedictine monks from Glastonbury to found a monastery at Westminster.

Above: Dunstan (909 – 988)

One hundred years later King Edward the Confessor founded his church on the site.

Above: Edward the Confessor of England (1003 – 1066), King (1042 – 1066)

Edward was driven from England by the Danes.

During his exile in Normandy, Edward vowed that if his kingdom was restored to him, he would make a pilgrimage to Rome.

When Edward did eventually reclaim his throne in 1042, there was so much unrest in the kingdom that he was advised not to make the perilous journey in case a coup occurred while he was away.

The Pope absolved Edward of his vow on condition that he raise or restore a church in honour of St. Peter.

Edward´s Abbey was consecrated on 28 December 1065, but the King was too ill to attend.

He died a few days later and was buried before the high altar.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicts Edward´s body being carried into the Abbey for burial.

After Edward´s death his reputation as a holy man grew.

Miracles were said to have occurred at his tomb.

In 1161, Edward was made a saint.

King Henry III held the Confessor in such reverance that he resolved to build a new shrine for Edward in a yet more glorious church.

Above: Henry III of England (1207 – 1272), King (1216 – 1272)

The new church was consecrated on 13 October 1269.

In 1539, England´s monastries faced a crisis.

Henry VIII had fallen out with the Pope because the Pope refused to annul the King´s marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

Above: Henry VIII of England (1491 – 1547), King (1509 – 1547)

Henry declared himself supreme head of the Church of England.

In 1540, Henry dissolved the monasteries and seized their assets.

Westminster Abbey fared better than most religious houses, because of its royal connections, so instead of being stripped and aband0ned it was refounded as a cathedral, with a Bishop and a Dean.

In 1553 Queen Mary succeeded Henry´s son, Edward VI, and Roman Catholicism became once more the approved religion.

Above: Mary I of England (1516 – 1558), Queen (1553 – 1558)

Mary made the Abbey a monastery again and the monks returned.

Her successor, Queen Elizabeth I, who came to the throne just five years later, in 1558, reversed Mary´s changes and refounded the Abbey yet again, this time with a Dean and a Chapter.

Above: Elizabeth I of England (1533 – 1603), Queen (1553 – 1603)

The Dean was answerable to no one but herself as sovereign, and it is in this form, not subject to the jurisdiction of a Bishop, as are most churches, but as a special church under the Queen – an institution known as a Royal Peculiar.

During the English Civil War, which culminated in the execution of Charles I and the establishment in 1649 of Oliver Cromwell´s Commonwealth, the Abbey was damaged when Puritans smashed altars, destroyed religious images and the organ, and seized the crown jewels.

Above: Oliver Cromwell (1599 – 1658), Lord Protector (1553 – 1558)

The Puritans were keen to rid the Abbey of all symbols of religious “superstition”.

Although the Abbey escaped wanton destruction better than many churches, it still bears the scars to this day.

The Abbey faced new peril during the Second World War.

Westminster miraculously survived, although bombs destroyed parts of it.

Walk with me through the Abbey.

Edward the Confessor´s church was the first in England to be built in the form of a cross, with the North and South Transepts forming its arms.

Most visitors, as did my wife and I, enter the Abbey via the North Transept.

The first impression one gets is of the soaring height of the vaulting.

At 102 feet, it is the highest in Britain.

The rose window above the entrance dates from 1722 and depicts the Apostles, excluding Judas Iscariot.

The rose window in the opposite transept depicts a variety of religious and other figures.

The North Transept is also known as the Statesmen´s Aisle, because it is littered with overblown monuments to long-forgotten empire builders and 19th century politicians, including Prime Ministers Viscount Palmerston (1784 – 1865), Robert Peel (1788 – 1850), Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881) and William Gladstone (1809 – 1898) who are buried nearby.

Above: William Gladstone (1809 – 1898), UK Prime Minister (1868 – 1874 / 1880 – 1885 / 1886 / 1892 – 1894

Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder (1708 – 1778) is featured in a 30-foot memorial, buried alongside his son Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (1759 – 1806), who became Prime Minister at the age of  just 24 and whose monument is over the Abbey´s west door.

Above: William Pitt the Younger (1759 – 1806), Prime Minister (1783 – 1806)

The North Transept leads down to the crossing – the centre of the church.

To the west is the Quire – an intimate space forming essentially a church within a church.

This was where the monks worshipped and this is where the Choir sits for the eight regular Choral Services (Matins, Holy Communion (4x), Eucharist, Evensong and Evening Service) each week.

The Choir consists of 12 men, known as Lay Vicars, and 24 boys, who come from the Abbey´s own choir School, now the only school in England exclusively for the education of choristers.

In the Middle Ages the Quire was the scene of a horrible murder.

In those days criminals could seek sanctuary in the Abbey.

Once they were within the walls, the law could not reach them.

But in 1378 fifty of the King´s men, ignoring the right of sanctuary, chased a prisoner into the Quire.

One of the soldiers “clove his head to the very brains” and also killed a monk who tried to rescue the poor man.

From the Statesmen´s Aisle, go straight to the central Sanctuary, site of the royal coronations.

Look down at the floor.

This precious work of art is the 13th century (1268) Italian floor mosaic known as the Cosmati Pavement, which consists of about 80,000 pieces of red and green porphyry, glass and onyx set into marble.

The swirling patterns of the universe were designed to encourage the monks in their contemplation.

Look for the inscription in brass letters, which foretells when the universe will end – 19,683 years after the Creation.

On the north side of the Sanctuary is an important group of medieval tombs.

Nearest the steps is the tomb of Countess Aveline of Lancaster.

In 1269, aged just 12, she was married to Edmund Crouchback, the youngest son of Henry III, in the Abbey´s first royal wedding.

Above: Royal seal of Edmund Crouchback (1245 – 1296)

Aveline lived only five more years and died in 1274.

Nearest the altar screen is the tomb of her husband, who outlived his child bride by 22 years, dying in 1296.

Between husband and wife is the tomb of Edmund´s cousin Earl Aymer de Valence of Pembroke, who died in 1324.

These three tombs were originally beautifully coloured and decorated, so that in the candlelight they shimmered with an extraordinary luminescence now lost in time.

The elaborate gilded screen behind the High Altar once protected Henry III´s original altarpiece (“retable”), dating from 1270, the oldest oil painting in Britain and now on display in the Abbey Museum.

The Feeding of the 5000 is an exceptionally important work, and though the centuries have not treated it kindly, what remains gives a tantalising insight into what it must once have been like.

Behind the Altar is St. Edward the Confessor´s Chapel, the spiritual heart of the Abbey.

It was here in 2010 that Pope Benedict XVI, making the first ever visit of a Pope to the Abbey, prayed alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Above: Joseph Ratzinger (b. 1927), Pope Benedict XVI (2005 – 2013)

Around the shrine in the centre, which contains Edward´s body, lie five kings and four queens.

Here is the double tomb of King Richard II (1367 – 1399) and his Queen, Anne of Bohemia (1366 – 1394).

Above: Richard II of England (1367 – 1399), King (1377 – 1399)

They were married in the Abbey in 1382.

Richard´s body was not allowed to rest in peace.

In the 18th century someone drilled a hole on the side of his tomb through which visitors could put their hand.

A number of bones went missing, including Richard´s jawbone which was only restored to the corpse in 1906.

Here are also buried King Edward III (1312 – 1377) and his wife Philippa (1310 – 1369).

Above: Effigy of Edward III of England (1312 – 1377), King (1327 – 1377)

The Confessor´s devotee King Henry III has his tomb here as well – beautifully decorated, cast in bronze and gilt.

Here lie the remains of Queen Eleanor of Castille (1241 – 1290), first wife of Edward I.

Above: Statue of Eleanor of Castile (1241 – 1290), Queen (1272 – 1290)

And here lies Edward I (1239 – 1307), at 6 feet 2 inches, very tall for those days, hence his nickname Edward Longshanks.

Above: Edward I of England (1239 – 1307), King (1272 – 1307)

And seek here the tomb of Henry V (1387 – 1422) beside that of his wife Catherine de Valois (1401 – 1437).

Above: Wedding of Henry V and Catherine de Valois

Her coffin and corpse were in full public view for centuries.

Henry V was considered one of England´s greatest monarchs, a fine military commander and an outstanding statesman.

Above: Henry V of England (1386 – 1422), King (1413 – 1422)

(His archers beat the French at Agincourt.)

The English were devastated when he died suddenly in 1422, aged only 35.

He was buried in the Abbey on 7 November, “with such solemn ceremony, such mourning of Lords, such prayer of priests, such lamentation of the common people as never was before that day seen in the realm of England.”

The diarist Samuel Pepys, on a visit to the Abbey in 1669, kissed Catherine´s leathery lips, wrote:

Above: Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703)

“This was my birthday, 36 years old and I did first kiss a queen.”

Henry and Catherine are now protected by an iron grille.

The chairs and footstools in front were given in 1949 by the people of Canada for royal use.

To the south of the Altar are the medieval seats (“sedilia”) for the priests.

Above their heads are the paintings of Henry III and Edward I.

To the west of the sedilia is the flat-topped tomb of Anne of Cleves, the 4th wife of Henry VIII.

Above: Anne of Cleves (1515 – 1557), Queen (1540)

There are more than 600 tombs and monuments in the Abbey, some of them quite massive.

Many people commemorated here are remembered because of their distinguished careers, but quite a few owe their presence in the Abbey more to their wealth or social status.

Today distinguished figures are still commemorated in the Abbey, but our tributes today are rather muted compared with the flamboyance of previous centuries.

The huge monument in the North Ambulatory to General James Wolfe (1727 – 1759) reflects the 18th and 19th centuries´ glorification of military figures, especially when they have died at the moment of victory.

Above: James Wolfe (1727 – 1759)

Wolfe was killed, aged 32, while fighting on the Plains of Abraham, Québec City, in order to capture Canada from the French.

His opponent, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, being French who also died on the Plains, is given no mention.

Above: Louis-Joseph de Montcalm (1712 – 1759)

Some of the best funereal art is tucked away in St. Michael´s Chapel, east of the Statesmen´s Aisle.

Admire the remarkable monument to Francis Vere (1560 – 1609), one of the greatest soldiers of the Elizabethan period, made out of two slabs of black marble, between which lies Sir Francis.

On the upper slab, supported by four knights, Francis´ armor is laid out, to show that he died away from the field of battle.

Near this a most striking grave, in which Elizabeth Nightingale, who died from a miscarriage, collapses in her husband Joseph´s arms while he tries to fight off the spear aimed at her by the skeletal figure of Death, who is climbing out of the tomb.

Above: Tomb of Joseph (1695 – 1752) and Elizabeth Nightingale (1704 – 1731)

In the North Ambulatory, two more chapels contain ostentatious Tudor and Stuart tombs.

One of the most extravagant tombs is that of Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chancellor to Elizabeth I, which not only dominates the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, it is, at 36 feet in height, the tallest tombs in the entire Abbey.

Above: Henry Carey, Lord Dunsdon (1526 – 1596)

From the second chapel, the Chapel of St. Paul, climb the stairs and enter the Lady Chapel (or Henry VII´s Chapel), the most dazzling part of the Abbey.

Begun by Henry VII in 1503 and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the Lady Chapel is beautiful, light, intricately carved vaulting, fan.shaped gilded Pendants and the statues of nearly one hundred Saints, high above the choir stalls decorated with banners and emblems.

Above: Henry VII of England (1457 – 1509), King (1485 – 1509)

George II, the last King to be buried in the Abbey, lies under your feet, along with his Queen Caroline – their coffins fitted with removable sides so that their remains can mingle.

Above: George II of England (1683 – 1760), King (1727 – 1760)

(Certainly a different idea of necrophilia…)

Beneath the altar is the grave of Edward IV, the single sickly son of Henry VIII.

Above: Edward IV of England (1442 – 1483), King (1461 – 1470 / 1471 – 1483)

Behind the Chapel´s centrepiece, the black marble sacrophagus of Henry VII and his spouse – their lifelike gilded effigies are perfectly obscured an ornate grille, designed by an artist more famous for fleeing Italy after breaking Michelangelo´s nose than for his own art: Pietro Torrigiano.

Above: Bust of Henry VII by Pietro Torrignano (1472 – 1528)

His funeral on 11 May 1509 was lavish:

“All the heralds cast their coats of armor off and hung them upon the rails of the hearse, crying lamentably in French – ´Le noble roi Henri le septieme est mort.´ – and as soon as they had done so, every herald put on his armor again and cried with a loud voice – ´Vive le roi Henri le huiteme.´”

Here one finds James I as well as James´ lover Duke George Villiers of Buckingham, the first non-royal to be buried in the Abbey.

Above: George Villiers (1592 – 1628)

Villiers was killed by one of his own disgruntled soldiers.

To the east the Royal Air Force Chapel: stained glass with airmen and angels in the Battle of Britain.

In the floor, a plaque marks the spot where Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell rested….

Briefly.

Until the Restoration, whereupon his mummified body was unearthed, dragged through the streets, hanged and beheaded.

To the north four maidens hold up a vast bronze canopy and weep for another of James I´s “favourites”, Ludovic Stuart.

Above: Ludovic Stuart (1574 – 1624)

Before descending the steps back into the Ambulatory, pop into the Chapel´s north aisle.

Here siblings and hated rivals in life now lie side by side reconciled in death, Elizabeth I and her Catholic half-sister “Bloody” Mary.

“All those who divided at the Reformation by different convictions laid down their lives for Christ and conscience´s sake.”

At the far end is Innocents´ Corner.

Here James I´s infant daughters lie: Princess Sophia who died aged 3 days (1607) and Princess Mary who died the same year aged 2 (1605 – 1607)

Set in the wall between the sisters is the urn containing the bones of the Princes in the Tower, Edward V and his younger brother Richard.

Above: Richard (1473 – 1483) and Edward V of England (1470 – 1483)

As you leave the Lady Chapel, look for the Coronation Chair, a decrepit oak graffiti-covered throne which has been used in every coronation since 1308.

It was custom-built to incorporate the Stone of Scone (the Stone of Destiny), a great slab of redstone which acted as the Scottish coronation stone for centuries before Edward I stole it in 1296.

William the Conqueror was crowned here on 25 December 1066.

Above: Coin of William the Conqueror (1028 – 1087), King (1066 – 1087)

It did not go well.

“When Archbishop Ealdred asked the English, and Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutences asked the Normans, if they would accept William as their King, all of them gladly shouted out with one voice, if not in one language, that they would.

The armed guard (William´s Norman troops), hearing the tumult of the joyful crowd in the church and the harsh accents of a foreign tongue, imagined that some treachery was afoot and foolishly set fire to some of the buildings.

The fire spread rapidly from house to house.

The crowd that had been rejoicing in the church took fright and throngs of men and women of every rank and condition rushed out of the church in haste.

Only the Bishops and a few clergy and Monks remained, terrified, in the Sanctuary, and with difficulty completed the consecration of the King, who was trembling from head to foot.”

On 25 February 1308 Edward II´s ceremony was dominated by his boyfriend Piers Gaveston (1284 – 1312).

Above: Edward II and Piers Gaveston by Marcus Stone (1872)

“Seeking his own glory rather than the King´s”, Gaveston wore an outfit of royal purple, trimmed with pearls.

Nor should he have walked in front of the King in the procession, nor carried Edward´s crown.

The barons were so annoyed at Galveston´s presumption that there was talk of killing him on the spot.

Both Edward and Piers would be assassinated later.

Henry VIII was only 17 at his coronation on 24 June 1509.

He walked to the Abbey from Westminster Palace along a carpet of royal blue.

The crowd was so enthusiastic that they fell on the carpet and cut it up for souvenirs.

Anne Boleyn, the second of Henry VIII´s six wives, was crowned Queen on 1 June 1533.

Above: Anne Boleyn (1501 – 1536)

The ceremony lasted 8 hours and at one point Archbishop Cranmer required Anne to lie on her face in front of the altar – not easy, when she was six months pregnant.

William III´s coronation in 1689 was spoiled by having his money pickpocketed.

Above: William III of England (1650 – 1702), King (1689 – 1702)

To the south is the Abbey´s most popular spot: The Poets´ Corner.

Above: Poets´ Corner with Shakespeare Memorial in the centre

The first occupant, Geoffrey Chaucer, was buried here in 1400.

Above: Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400)

When Edmund Spenser chose to be buried close to Chaucer in 1599, his fellow poets – Shakespeare among them – threw their own works and quills into the grave.

Above: Edmund Spenser (1552 – 1599)

More than 100 poets, dramatists and prose writers are buried or commemorated here, as well as the composer George Frederick Handel.

Above: George Frederick Handel (1685 – 1759)

(Handel´s funeral on 20 April 1759 was supposed to be private.

3,000 people turned up.)

“Upon the Poets´ Corner in Westminster Abbey

Hail, sacred relics of the tuneful train!

Here ever honoured, ever loved remain.

No other dust of the once great or wise,

As each beneath the hallowed pavement lies,

To this old dome a juster reverence brings….”

Who decides who is to be immortalized in Poets´ Corner?

The Dean of Westminster consults his colleagues in the Chapter and in the literary world, before reaching a decision which, by law, is his alone to make.

It is rare for a recently deceased poet to be memorialized.

The longest period between a poet´s death and memorialization is 1,3oo years: Caedmon (657 – 680), regarded as the first English language poet.

Above: Caedmon Memorial, St. Mary´s Churchyard, Whitby

The Corner has become a Valhalla for poets and a place of pilgrimage for lovers of literature.

The Poets´ Corner´s most famous memorial is that to William Shakespeare, erected 124 years after his death.

Above: William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

His body remains in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, with the inscription:

“Good friend, for Jesus´ sake, forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here!

Blest be the man that spares these stones

And curst be he that moves my bones.”

Why tempt fate?

The Abbey recalls actors: David Garrick, Henry Irving, William Walton, Laurence Olivier, William Walton and Peggy Ashcroft.

Here one finds a controversy:

Ben Jonson was an arrogant man who did not suffer fools and frequently quarrelled with his fellow dramatists.

Above: Ben Jonson (1572 – 1637)

He lived apart from his wife, whom he described as “a shrew, yet honest.”

One of his plays caused grave offence by its lewdness and he was imprisoned.

He later killed a man in a duel and narrowly escaped the gallows.

As Jonson grew older he became fat and alcoholic.

He was too poor for a proper grave and said that a two-foot square would be enough for him.

And that´s what he got, as he was buried standing up.

His bones and coffin have been exposed three times since his burial.

His skull is missing.

Christopher Marlowe was memorialized 409 years after his death because it was felt the Poets´ Corner was already overcrowded.

Above: Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593)

Tennyson called Marlowe the morning star which heralded Shakespeare´s dazzling sun.

Another description called him “intemperate and of a cruel heart.”

In 1593, at a Deptford tavern in South London, aged 29, Marlowe was fatally stabbed above his right eye, over a bill for supper.

John Milton had to wait more than 60 years before being memorialized.

Above: Bust of John Milton (1608 – 1674), Temple of British Worthies, Stowe

Milton, famous for his Paradise Lost, could have used the title for his autobiography.

In 1642 he married.

She left him after a few weeks.

In 1648 he began to go blind.

By 1652 he had lost his sight completely, as well as his wife and his only son.

In 1656 Milton married again but she died shortly after giving birth to a daughter.

He was passionate about what he hated.

Anti-Catholic, he called for bishops to be executed and prophesied that they would spend eternity in hell.

Milton attacked the greed of the clergy, rallied against censorship and wrote passionately against the monarchy.

On the Restoration of the monarchy, Milton went into hiding, his arrest was ordered and his books burned.

He was imprisoned in the Tower of London but was later pardoned and released.

Charles II greatly admired Samuel Butler.

Above: Samuel Butler (1612 – 1680)

The King enjoyed Butler´s Hudibras so much that he never ate, drank, slept or went to church without having Hudibras beside him.

Despite the King´s adoration, Butler died penniless.

“While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive

No generous patron would a dinner give!

See him, when starved to death and turned to dust

Presented with a monumental bust!

The poet´s fate is here in emblem shown

He asked for bread and he received a stone!”

Here one finds an impressive memorial to Matthew Prior, famous for sayings like:

Above: Matthew Prior (1664 – 1721)

“It takes two to quarrel, but only one to end it.”

“The ends must justify the means.”

“They never taste who always drink.

They always talk who never think.”

John Gay was said to be….

Above: John Gay (1685 – 1732)

“In wit, a man; simplicity, a child.”

On Gay´s monument, Alexander Pope wrote a long epitaph, but Gay had the last laugh for two lines are Gay´s not Pope´s:

“Life is a jest, and all things show it.

I thought so once, and now I know it.”

Poets´ Corner is a Who´s Who of the English dead: Longfellow, Wilde, T.S. Elliot, Lewis Carroll, Trollope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Austen, Keats, Shelley, Burns, the Bronte sisters, Thackeray, Gray, Goldsmith, Blake, Scott, Dickens, Lear, Browning, Brooke, Dylan Thomas, Auden….

Above: Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870)

(Charles Dickens was buried secretly on 14 June 1870 to avoid crowds, but so many wanted to pay their respects that the grave had to be left open for a time so the public could see him.)

Just to name a few….

Before you enter the Cloisters, check out the South Choir Aisle.

See the tomb of Thomas Thynne that shows how three thugs did him in.

Above: Tomb of Thomas Thynne (1610 – 1669)

Or consider the ironic fate of Admiral Shovell, who survived a shipwreck, was washed up alive on a beach in the Scilly Isles, only to be killed by a fisherwoman who wanted his emerald ring.

Above: Cloudesley Shovell (1650 – 1707)

Or that of the court portrait painter Godfrey Kneller who declared:

Above: Geofrey Kneller (1646 – 1723)

“By God, I will not be buried in Westminster – they do bury fools here.”

Kneller is the only artist to be commemorated in the Abbey.

Enter the Cloisters where Parliament once met, beneath the southern wall where the Whore of Babylon rides the scarlet seven-headed beast from the Book of Revelations.

See the Pyx Chamber which acted like a medieval high security safety deposit box.

Robbers broke in on 24 April 1303 and stole jewels and riches.

Some of them were hanged the following March.

The ringleader of the Pyx robbery was whipped and nailed to the door of the Pyx Chamber as a warning to others.

500 years later pieces of human skin could still be found in the door hinges.

Before you leave the Cloisters enter the Nave itself.

The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior with his garland of red poppies recalls the million British soldiers who died in World War One, with an equivalent number of women dying unmarried because there were no husbands for them.

A tablet in the floor near the Tomb marks the spot where George Peabody, the 19th century philantropist whose housing estates in London still provide homes for those in need, was buried for a month before being exhumed and removed to Massachusetts.

Above: George Peabody (1795 – 1869)

Peabody remains the only American to have been buried in Westminster.

Above the Nave´s west door, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger at just 25 teaches Anarchy while History takes notes.

With all I have described it certainly is no wonder why Westminster Abbey is so popular with tourists.

So much to see, so much to learn and yet Westminster left me with a sense of disappointment.

Not so much with the Abbey itself as much as what the Abbey represents.

Death has become a spectacle and a source of profit.

Does a life have no value if it is not commemorated grandly after death?

Does this mean that the Hindus value life less by burning the bodies of their dead?

And what of the poor who lie in anonymous mass graves unmarked and forgotten?

What of the millions who have died in war or in prison or by dread disease?

Did all these lives have no value because there are no markers to show where their bones are piled?

Does a life have no value if it is not historically significant?

Did all these lives lose their value once their bodies turned to ashes and dust?

I believe that the value of life is in the living, in the apppreciation of the moment, in the appreciation of the Now.

I believe that as long as my life is without extreme pain – physical or psychological – and I am not causing pain to others, then my life has value, at least to myself and hopefully beyond myself.

I don´t require assurance that my remains be assigned some grand memorial in some magnificent cathedral.

I don´t require a cemetery plot or even a funeral.

(Though a drinking party where folks dance with joy celebrating that they continue to live on without me would please me greatly.)

I don´t require a dim unprovable hope that some form of existence awaits me after death.

Am I suggesting that the visitor avoid Westminster Abbey?

No.

It is truly a magnificent structure and is peculiar in its own ways.

But I would be more satisfied with plaques that spoke to me of who a deceased person was, both as a person and someone who accomplished great things.

Epitaphs sound grandiose when read aloud but they speak little about what a person was like when they were alive.

Byron´s monument:  “But there is that within me whuch shall tire torture and time and breathe when I expire.”

But who was Byron?

Above: Lord George Byron (1788 – 1824)

T. S. Eliot: “The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”

Fine words, but what of the poet who wrote them?

Above: Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Trollope: “Now I stretch out my hand and from the further shore I bid adieu to all who have cared to read any among the many words I have written.”

Wouldn´t it be more respectful to read the actual words Trollope wrote then to just simply view his gravesite?

Above: Anthony Trollope (1815 – 1965)

D. H. Lawrence is labelled as “Home sum! The adventurer…” and G. M. Hopkins as “priest and poet, immortal diamond”.

But these words say nothing of who these genetlemen were.

The honour is in appreciating them for what they wrote and the life captured within their words.

Otherwise despite the fine artistry of the graves of Westminster, without an appreciation of who the dead were, what lies beneath slabs of stone is nothing but dust and ashes and the merest whisper of existence.

It would be better to show those that we love that they are loved, rather than mourn their passage which our dead cannot appreciate.

Westminster shows me that death is the great equalizer of us all, no matter how one wishes to decorate the tombs of kings and queens or poets and generals.

If while I live, others are happy that I do so….

“Wouldn´t you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.

And they´re always glad you came.

You want to go where you know troubles are all the same.

You want to go where everybody knows your name.”

With a place like this, where everybody knows my name while I am still alive, I don´t need to be buried in some great cathedral.

A great grave doesn´t make a life great.

Great love does.                                                 

Sources: Wikipedia / The Rough Guide to London / Julian Beecroft, For the Love of London: A Companion / Nicholas Best, London: In the Footsteps of the Famous / Simon Leyland, A Curious Guide to London / Oliver Tearle, Britain by the Book: A Curious Tour of Our Literary Landscape / http://www.westminster-abbey.org