A Penny for the Old Guy

First, sorry to be so long in posting again, but my plans for this past weekend got derailed, so I didn't really have anything new to talk about. However the last couple of days have been chock full of great experiences, and I'll start with this one.

Yesterday was Nov. 5, Guy Fawkes Day here in England. In 1605, Fawkes and some co-conspirators hatched a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament during the king's annual address, wiping out most of the leadership of the country. Fawkes, you see, was a Catholic, and England was now fully and militantly Protestant. Elizabeth I had died in 1603 naming her cousin James VI of Scotland as her heir--she was the "Virgin Queen" remember. So James Stuart comes to London to become James I of England. The idea was that the plotters would stuff the basement of the Parliament with barrels of gunpowder (hence the name The Gunpowder Plot) and set them off when all the members, the lords, and the king were assembled. This would be the signal for a rising of Catholics and an attempt to restore England to Catholicism. It was foolish nonsense of course, and in any event the plot was discovered. Fawkes and several others were arrested, tried, and executed by being hanged, drawn, and quartered, the prescribed punishment for treason.

Shortly after that, there began a tradition that every year on Nov. 5,  huge bonfires would be lit and effigies of "The Old Guy" would be tossed into the flames while denouncing Catholicism and praising England's Protestant faith. Children would pass among the onlookers asking for "a penny for the Old Guy," and fireworks would be set off as well. The tradition has lasted into the present day, although its anti-Catholic sentiments have been pretty much expunged. Now it is more just a celebration than any kind of political or religious statement. And, these days it is rapidly being overtaken by Halloween as the trappings of that American holiday are more and more in evidence here.

Anyway, ever since my English major days when Guy Fawkes Day figured so prominently in several novels I was reading, I always wanted to attend a bonfire, and last night I got to do so.

I hope you can see it, but this was the bonfire--a right proper one--held on the football pitch below the Carriage House.

It made me feel like as though I was in a Thomas Hardy novel or something like that. Very satisfying indeed. Tomorrow I'll post again recounting the Remembrance Day ceremony here in the Pegasus Courtyard honoring the fallen and the veterans of England's wars, coupled with a unexpected treat not unrelated to that service.

Look Familiar?

Last Friday we went over to Stoke Rochford, a country house near Harlaxton and built at virtually the same time? It was designed by the same man who designed this manor, so guess what?

See anything that looks familiar? Indeed, the central entrance could almost pass for Harlaxton. The clock is in the same style as well although of a different color clock face. The house is a working hotel now with guest rooms going for about $500-$1000 a night. And, this house, too, served as headquarters for some of the British 1st Airborne in the days leading up to Operation Market Garden in September 1944, and a number of those "lads," now in their late 80s or 90s, were returning last weekend for a reunion.

This building was hit by a devastating fire in 2004 which gutted much of the center of the house, although the walls were left intact. Fortunately, their B&G director had been doing everything right (British Army veteran), and the insurance company had to fork over 12 million pounds for the reconstruction effort. You can barely tell where the surviving original decor ends and the reconstruction begins. A large Orangery survived without damage.

As did the only known marble sculpture work attributed to the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens, the great marble fireplace in the what had been one of the drawing rooms and now serves as the bar. It is insured for 2 million pounds.

The rooms on the other side of this wall (almost two feet thick) were destroyed. The brass hardware on the inner doors melted completely, but the fire did not penetrate. However, thousands of gallons of water poured into the room during the fight against the flames. The plaster ceiling was saturated and on the verge of collapse. Scaffolding was quickly erected in the room up to within about a foot of the ceiling and then sheep skins were shoved in between the scaffolding and the ceiling to draw off the water. It took 18 months before the ceiling was dry, but it was saved. The company that directed the restoration work was the same one that worked on Windsor Castle after its fire in 1992. The external scaffolding alone cost over a million pounds to erect and maintain for three years while work went on.

 After a lovely cream tea in the main hallway--sorry, my flash was disabled so those didn't come out very well--we returned to Harlaxton.

Today is Halloween and there is a trick and a treat for the students. They second exam in the British Studies course is this afternoon from 2-4, and then there is a costume party in the Bistro tonight.

The True Navel of the Universe

Well, this morning we travelled to the true "Navel of the Universe." The ancient Greeks foolishly believed that it is at Delphi, the Incas believed it to be Cuzco, but in truth it is in the heart of a little farm town in Leicestershire, Melton Mowbray at this very spot.

Seriously. They have been making pork pies here since the middle of the 19th century, and there are NONE in the world better. It is part of Dickinson and Morris Sausage shop which is next door.

Their recipe is so treasured that it is registered as a Protected Geographical Indicator which means that they and a couple of other pie shops in town are the only ones in the WORLD who can call their product Melton Mowbray Pork Pies. Those of you who know us know that we make a pork pie every year for Christmas, and they are pretty darn good if we do say so ourselves, but they are nothing compared to these. And, they will ship anywhere in the world--for a fee.

Melton Mowbray's most famous "resident"--as opposed to food item--was undoubtedly Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth "wife," whom Henry had married in absentia and upon first seeing her labeled a "Flanders mare," i.e. a Clydesdale. Now, by this time, Henry was no longer the dashing young thing he'd been and was at least as rotund as she was and reportedly had a huge running sore on his leg that refused to heal. So it is probably no surprise that she jumped at the chance to escape from Henry and settle in to a property he gave her along with the title of the King's Good Sister after divorcing her. The place had been Thomas Cromwell's until he fell out with the king for having arranged the marriage to Anne in the first place. Henry thought it would be funny, I guess, to give Cromwell's old place to her.

 

No one knows whether she ever actually lived there or not, her main residence being Sussex, but she certainly got possession of the place as part of the divorce settlement.

After that, back to the Gregory in Harlaxton for a well deserved pint on a spectacular autumn day. We had snow flurries last night, and the temperature today stayed at below 40, but with absolutely gorgeous sunshine--and a pretty stiff breeze with gusts up to 20 mph or so, which made sitting by the fire at the Greg the perfect end.

I'll make another post soon about a country house near here that we visited yesterday.

What Goes Up. . .?

. . . Must come down. This afternoon, I tagged along with an engineering class and a calculus class both taught by Dr. David Unger from the University of Evansville for a visit to

All together now. . .the birthplace and childhood home of Sir Isaac Newton, he of the laws of motion and gravity, the spectrum of light, and the inventor of fluxions which we now call the Calculus--and yes I know that Leibniz is also credited with this discovery, but I wasn't visiting his birthplace, I was at little Isaac's, so cool it.

It was in this house that Newton was born on Christmas Day, 1642, (OS) in the room at the upper left of the house.

For anyone who has taken my Origins III class in the last 15 years or so, you have seen this house at the beginning of Bronowski's The Majestic Clockwork. I've stolen so much from that film over the years for my lectures on the Scientific Revolution that I feel like I should be paying royalties to the late Dr. B's estate. But, if you are going to steal, might as well be from the best.

And, of course, here is THE TREE, seriously, this is the apple tree in the field in front of the manor. It was blown down in a storm in the early 19th century, but the root system was undamaged and it has regrown. Cuttings from it have been taken to Cambridge (both England and Massachusetts) and several other spots around the world.

As you can see from the foliage, autumn is coming on strong here, and I confess I miss the leaves falling across campus in Bethany now. The weather has turned rather dreary this week. Haven't seen the sun for three days, only endless fog. Hard to get a picture of, but this is a pretty good example.

Visibility is at best about 300-400 yards at the height of the day, much less in the morning and toward darkness which is creeping in earlier and earlier these days. We go back to standard time on Sunday which will mean darkness before 5 p.m. We're much farther north than Bethany, so the hours of daylight will shrink to about 8-4 by the time I'm ready to leave in early December. Anyway, that was our visit to Newton's home. Very glad I got to do this and my thanks to Dr. Unger.

Two Very Dear Old Friends

Slipped into London on Saturday to visit two very dear old friends. Trip was a bit trying as in addition to the usual Saturday football match traffic on the train, there was a huge demonstration scheduled by public and private sector unions in the heart of London. 150,000 workers from all over the country converged on the capital to remind the Tory government that there are limits to what working people will endure before they say "no" to more austerity and more foolishness, such as the Tory Chief Whip's notorious slur toward police officers guarding No. 10 as "#$%&* Plebs" who need to remember their place. He has resigned. Also, the Victoria Line was completely shut down for the weekend for maintenance which dumped everyone onto the Northern and Bakerloo lines which made for a very crowded underground ride to Lambeth North near my first old friend.

And here she is.

Yes, the Imperial War Museum, one of the best museums dedicated to this sort of thing in the world. The guns you see are 15-inch naval guns from the Queen Elizabeth class of battleships that first entered service in 1916. Below is the breach end of the gun on the right, taken from HMS Ramillies (look it up--although surprisingly not a naval battle!).

And these guns could fire a shell that weighed as much as a Volkswagen up to 30,000 yards, so far that you had to correct for the curvature of the earth when aiming them. This is one of those shells--mother and child are actual scale.

Then it was into the great hall at the center of the building where there were such wonderful things as a M4 Sherman, a Churchill, a Jagdpanther tank destroyer, a T-34, and a Mark V British tank from the First World War. Overhead flew a Spitfire (on the left), a P-51 Mustang (center) and a FW-190 (right).

And if you look closely just below the Mustang, you will see the most feared weapon of the war, the German 88mm dual purpose flak/anti-tank gun.

Could have spent much more time there, but had a date with  another dear old friend just up the street toward Waterloo station, The Old Vic.

As you can see from the marquis, I went there to see a production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler adapted by Brian Friel. A wonderful afternoon in the theatre. Ibsen's plays are considered one of the earliest forceful statements of feminism, although he denied this himself. He saw the struggle for women to break free of male dominated late 19th century society as an issue of humanity in general. Whatever, it made for some incredibly powerful theatre.

And the Old Vic is one of the classic theatre houses in London, although located on the South Bank rather than the West End. Built in 1818. It had a checkered career in the 19th century including several ownership changes, and a false fire alarm in 1856 which led to the deaths of 16 people in the Upper Circle (demonstrating Justice Holmes' remark that freedom of speech does not include the right falsely to shout fire in a crowded theatre). In the early 20th Century it settled into its modern form under the leadership of Lilian Baylis, and became popular as the "Old Vic" in the 1920s. The stream of England's finest actors in the 20th century has flowed mightily through the resident company including  Olivier, Richardson, Redgrave, Guinness, Dench, Jacobi, and on and on. Guest artists such as Smith, O'Toole, Finney, Hopkins, Burton, and on and on. The current Artistic Director is Kevin Spacey. It is one of my favorite venues to watch plays.

After the play, I foolishly thought I would slip back up to the Euston Flyer near King's Cross station for dinner and a pint before my train back to Grantham. However, when I got out of Euston Station and on the way down Euston Road toward King's Cross,  every pub in the area, including the Flyer was jammed packed with either the remnants of the demonstrations earlier in the day or football fans glued to the big screen TVs showing the Arsenal-Norwich match. So, I settled for a quick pint standing outside and then on to the station. Had a few lads on the train who had had a few too many, but they settled fairly in quickly as we left the station. At Grantham station ran into another couple teaching here this fall, Dan and Peggy Harris from Baker University, who were on the same train in another carriage, and we shared a cab back to the manor. Dan retired a couple of years ago after 27 years as football coach, baseball coach, and Athletic Director. Peggy is the Dean of the School of Education and Dean of the School of Professional and Graduate Studies.

Please Sir, may I have some MORE!

First, sorry for being a bit late with this posting, but it has been a busy week here at Harlaxton. Among other things, yours truly participated in the annual Harlaxton Variety Show last evening along with about a dozen students, as well as three children of visiting faculty here for the term. It was a grand evening, music, comedy, dancing, etc., held in the Great Hall. We did a couple of John McCutcheon tunes that were very well received (if we do say so ourselves).

Anyway, on Tuesday, the entire school was taken over to The Southwell Union Workhouse, a particularly stark reminder of the official attitudes of the Victorians to those less fortunate members of society who had no job or were in some way prevented from working--age, disability, an economic downturn, things like that. If you have ever read Dickens, watched "A Christmas Carol" on TV,  or seen the musical "Oliver" you will know what I am talking about.

Southwell was actually built in 1824, a decade before the passage of the new Poor Law, ("You're poor, boy. That's why we have poor laws in the country!") which completely revamped the way those in need were to be handled. Its setup was used as a model for the "reform" measure passed in1834. Since the last poor laws had been set up in 1601 when Good Queen Bess was still on throne more than 230 years before, we're thinking that it was probably time for a little tinkering, wouldn't you?

From the outside the facility looks pretty solid and imposing, but not particularly odious.

But behind those walls, there was a whole system of treatment designed to make life in the workhouse so odious  and distasteful that people would do literally anything to avoid having to come to the workhouse.

To understand the system however, you need to know that the Victorians charitably made a distinction between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor. The deserving poor were those who through no fault of their own--old age, disability, widowhood, abandoned children--were forced to seek assistance from the state. The undeserving poor were any able-bodied man, woman, or teenage child who couldn't find work. Poverty for these people was seen as a moral failing, i.e. the fact that they had no job was the result of the fact that they just would not go out and get a job because they were no-good layabouts who were just waiting for the benefits to roll in. Unfortunately, there are those in America today who seem to have about the same opinion. Amazing, sometimes, to think how far we have NOT come. Economic conditions--downturns, depressions, bank panics, etc. (financial meltdowns brought on by toxic lending practices)--were never excuses for not having a job.

So, as I said,  the whole point behind the Poor Law of 1834, then, was to make public assistance so odious and distasteful that people would do virtually anything to avoid going to the Workhouse, that public assistance was to be the very LAST option. For example, workhouses were strictly segregated by sex, i.e. men and women--even if married--were forced to live in separate parts of the workhouse. Children were placed in another area away from both their parents. If you were able-bodied, you worked and menial tasks all day or even and tasks that had no point at all except to keep you busy, i.e. like an army fatigue. Rules were strictly enforced.

This particular workhouse could handle up to about 160 people for which there was one privy for each sex--a hole in the ground--and one water pump for each sex in their respective workyards.

The chap holding the clipboard was our guide from the National Trust. He often does this in costume as one of the inmates (and I use that term deliberately as these places were very little better than prisons). Suffice it to say that it was a very sobering experience for the students and your faithful blogster. Also, admittedly a great treat as we are a scholar of the Victorian Era and knew a fair amount about the workhouse system but had never visited one. If you want additional info on this whole era, check out Edwin Chadwick's Poor Law Report to Parliament in 1834, or Friedrich Engels (yes, that Engels) Condition of the English Working Class published in 1844. Or, just read more Dickens!

A Horse, A Horse. . .

Well, today campers, we visited the city of Leicester about an hour's train ride from here to the west and south. It is famous for several things, but most importantly for being the final resting place of wicked King Richard III, he of the hunchback and the little Princes in the Tower--yes, yes, I know, all Tudor propaganda designed to clear Henry VII of murdering the little darlings. Not buying it. Richard put the princes in the Tower, his own nephews no less, and nobody ever heard of them again. Both of them had precedence over Richard for the throne so he needed them dead. Not that Henry would have balked at a little murder if he'd found them still alive in the Tower when he got to London, and from the same motive as Richard, but that is stretching it methinks.

Anyway, just a month ago, a team from the university was excavating three trenches in the area around the cathedral where the Greyfriars Abbey used to stand and made a stunning discovery, a skeleton of an adult male with spinal curvature, evidence of a very nasty knock on the head, and an arrowhead in his back. Richard is known to have been buried in the Greyfriars Abbey after he was killed at the battle of Bosworth in August 1485, losing to Henry Tudor who then became Henry VII and was the father of Henry VIII, he of the six wives and the Henrician Reformation fame. This is a pic of the trench--in a parking lot no less--one of three dug by the team, with a couple of actors being filmed in it last month.

Now it looks like this again!

Anyway, exciting work being done on the remains including DNA analysis. Time will tell. The trench is literally just across the street from St. Mark's church, the core of which dates from the Conquest, and which was elevated to cathedral status in 1926 when Leicester was made a diocese--gotta have some place for "The Bish" to hang his mitre--but it is one of the smallest in England.

Walked to the cathedral gate that said "Entrance," went through and tried to open the door only to crash a ceremony underway in the nave elevating some new members of the clergy. So, thought I'd take in the Guildhall next door which dates from the early 15th century only to crash a wedding there, well not quite. The hall was closed but I only had to wait about ten minutes before the wedding was over and the place was open to visitors again. The first pic is of the outside of the building and the second is of the hall inside.

 

 

Not as grand as Commencement (where your blogster was wed), but not a bad setting for nuptials.

The highlight of the day, however, came at the Jewry Wall Museum a few hundred yards away. If you guessed that this may have had something to do with the town's Jewish population prior to the expulsion of all Jews from the kingdom by Edward I, Hammer of the Scots (and the Welsh), in 1290, you would be WRONG. Has no connection to anything Jewish apparently. Instead it is the site of the Roman bathes in the city which were dedicated to Juno (or Janus) and the Jewry spelling only dates from Victorian era. The "cester" in Leicester marks it as a Roman town (see earlier posts), but even before the Romans, there was a Celtic town there, as well as an Anglo-Saxon settlement later, and it became one of the five "county" capitals of the Danelaw in the 10th century. The baths were unearthed in the 19th century as were a number of villas with elaborate mosaic tile floors and fresco walls. Couldn't take any pics of the villa interiors in the museum (an excellent one by the way), but you can see the layout of the baths in this picture with the entrance in the back, preparatory rooms in the middle, and three "hot" baths in the foreground where the father and his daughter are reading one of the plaques.

After all this, a well deserved pint and sandwich and then back to Harlaxton for a relaxing evening.