Peyps

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Professor Rudalevige took some of us out on our walk of Bloomsbury, the neighborhood of our hotel, this morning. To be honest, we saw so much that I can’t remember it all, and the batteries died in my camera, so I don’t have pictures of everything. I couple things of note, though. I really liked the squares and gardens. I didn’t realize that the Arran House was so close to so much. I also didn’t realize that a noble family still owns the land and that everyone in the neighborhood pays a lease on their house or business. The thought of one family owning an entire neighborhood, a prosperous neighborhood, is a bit unthinkable in the U.S. Or, maybe, once again, I’m simply showing my ignorance.
Moving on—It seemed that nearly every building in Bloomsbury had a little round, blue plaque on it that said “So-and-so born here,” or “Thus-and-such lived here,” etc. Many important literary figures lived here, though. Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster. The Bloomsbury Group, for instance, came from here. Huh, fancy that. We saw the publisher where T.S. Eliot worked as an editor and the building which became the basis for George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in 1984. Toward the end of the tour, we saw the Great Ormand Street Hospital, to which J.M. Barrie left all the royalties of Peter Pan. I’m sure they’re doing quite well, nowadays.
We stopped for lunch at the Museum Tavern, and Prof. Rudalevige bought us all drinks. I ordered falafel (yum!) and drank a Pimms and Lemonade, a traditional summer drink here in England. I haven’t been to many yet, but I have to say that I love pubs. Not because they sell me alcohol. Stop stereotyping. It’s because the atmosphere is just very laid back. Every pub has its own personality, but all of the ones I’ve been to (the few) have just been very pleasant in a uniquely pub-y way. I don’t think bar culture in America is the same. I’m going to miss pubs when I leave the UK. I suppose that’s even more incentive for me to go to more of them.

A bit later we had tickets to a show in Kilburn, off toward the North-West of London. We all got a bit lost on the way to the Tricycle Theater, but eventually found it. The play was Let There Be Love by Kwame Kwei-Armah, a playwright of Caribbean descent, and it dealt with issues of immigration and prejudice in Britain. Basically, the plot surrounds Alfred Morris, a bitter, elderly immigrant from Granada who has lived in London for many years and who resents the recent influx of Eastern Europeans taking jobs away from “real Britons.” His relatively estranged daughter hires a newly arrived Polish immigrant Maria to take care of him, and, though the relationship is strained at first, they form a bond over the immigrant’s plight and jazz music. Maria becomes the daughter Alfred has always wanted, and eventually she helps reconcile him with his family. She convinces him to visit Granada one last time before he dies of cancer, and, upon arriving back him, he asks Maria to help him commit suicide before his love of life dissipates again. Click here for a review of the play by the Times.
It’s not a play I would ever have thought to see on my own, but I really did love it. And not just because Alfred was played by the guy who played the butler on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (Joseph Marcell). The dialogue was good and the relationship between characters was heartwarming. Although people disagree, I thought he play was well balanced between the personal issues of the characters and the broader political and social issues that it addressed. Emma mentioned that it would be interesting to do the same thing with African-Americans and Mexican immigrants set in the States. I think it would work.
After the play, I went with Jen to Sainsbury’s and got dinner. The other day, Abby bought this bottle of Elderflower water, which is, as the name suggests, water flavored with elderflower. I haven’t the foggiest idea what an elderflower is, but it does make the water taste pretty good. We got back to the Arran House and ate dinner, entertained by Chris and Lauren going back and forth about Pepys and Pretty Witty Nell. Samuel Pepys is known for the careful diary he wrote during the time of the Great Fire, and you hear his name everywhere. Nell was one of Charles II’s mistresses, and her portrait in the National Gallery shows her slightly…exposed…and, of course, this did not escape the notice of my friends. So, from now on, “Peyps” and “Pretty Witty Nell” are going to be the inside jokes of the program, or at least our little subgroup. I’m sure Christopher Wren will make it in there, too. He always does.