letters and miscellany
CASTLE MUSEUM, YORK
Whatever else you do in the exhilarating city of York, save a couple of hours to spend in the Castle Museum. For years, this has been known as one of the finest folk museums in the world—for just reason. There is almost too much to describe. The exhibits include complete period rooms from medieval times to the coronation of Elizabeth II, home appliances, Dick Turpin’s condemned cell and Kirkgate—the museum’s famous reconstructed Victorian street, complete with Hansom cab. There are displays of arms and local history, an Edwardian pub and a working water mill. Even if York did not boast the most compact assemblage of historic and cultural attractions within its 14th-century city walls, the Castle Museum would be reason enough to visit.
HORSE AND HOUNDS
You may have caught the news recently. After several years of acrimonious debate, Westminster has, in its infamous wisdom, enacted a ban on the centuries-old tradition of fox hunting. ’Tis an issue that will not die. Good country people are determined that their rural traditions shall not be thus swept away. Unlike many contentious bits of public policy in British politics, this division of opinion has been contested not so much along party lines as on social demographics: city versus country. Despite our fond dreams of England’s green and pleasant land, Britain is, after all, an urban country. Half of its population lives in just 10 metropolitan areas.
Nature-loving city dwellers have argued long and hard that fox hunting provided a cruel and unusual punishment for the poor fox. Country folk, on the other hand, know that the fox is a pesky predator whose population has to be artificially controlled in any event. That it be done while providing good sport, exercise and comradeship is not merely a game, but part of their way of life. Score one for the foxy city slickers. There will always be an England, but it is sad to see another of its defining cultural characteristics fall. You would think Parliament would have better things to do.
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KEEPING IN TOUCH
One of the fun parts of being an editor is reading the warming notes that readers like yourself occasionally send our way. Our May issue has brought some nice comments. Sophie Oka, a grand lady and longtime reader who traveled with me in Wales last summer, wrote: “What a surprise to see my name in print! Thank you for mentioning my letter—I really do enjoy your magazine—Keep up the good work!” Nancy Langveld e-mailed: “I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your recent issue (May 2005). It was filled with some of the most interesting articles in recent memory.”
Katherine Bailey has been authoring wonderful articles for BH for many years. She writes: “I’m really impressed with the art work and photos accompanying my feature on Eleanor of Aquitane. They seem to make the article come alive.” Compliments like this belong to an entire staff, of course. In addition to the beautiful feature layouts our art director creates, he hand-drew the pullquotes and title for the Eleanor piece.
We have also received a number of nominations for our nonfiction British pantheon. Keep those cards and e-mails coming, folks. Next issue we’ll collate our readers’ suggestions for the most quintessentially British narrative nonfiction of all time. No one yet has mentioned the great Samuel Pepys diaries. What about Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie? And anyone who has actually read it probably includes James Boswell’s Life of Johnson. We would love to count your vote, but hurry, the polls close soon.
KIRKIN’ O’ THE TARTANS
It was “A Man Called Peter,” Dr. Peter Marshall, who introduced “Kirkin’ o’ the Tartans” in the United States on April 27, 1941. The ceremony, based on 18th-century Scottish history and legend, has been held in churches across the country ever since. Marshall, a Scotsman, had landed at Ellis Island in 1927 at age 25 with little in his pockets. Ten years later he became pastor of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., where he served until his death in 1949. In early 1941, with war in the skies and backyards of Britain, Marshall, then chaplain of the Washington St. Andrew’s Society, conceived of the blessing as a means of showing solidarity with Britain and raising money to support the British war effort.
Now Kirkin’ o’ the Tartans services are held by St. Andrew’s societies and Scottish organizations across the country. Since 1954, a Kirkin’ has been performed annually at Washington’s historic National Cathedral. Within its majestic nave, the pipes and drums lead the grand procession to a ceremony of worship and remembrance and the “Blessing of the Tartans.”
ROYAL STICKY WICKET
At long last, His Royal Highness Prince Charles weds Camilla Parker Bowles. The nuptials are celebrated at the old town hall in Windsor, a stone’s throw over the head of Queen Victoria’s statue next to Windsor Castle. Putatively in order to help abet the happy couple’s desire to keep the ceremony “low key,” the Queen is not attending the event herself.
While most Brits are happy that the Prince of Wales is making an honest woman of his longtime lover, the Royal Wedding has, understandably enough, rivaled even fox hunting as cause for a rise in the national blood pressure. It does not matter whether the distilling crisis is constitutional or moral. Prince Charles is heir not only to the Crown, but to the title “Head of the Church of England.” It is in that role that Her Majesty may have felt some delicacy in the matter of attending the colorless civil wedding. In her role as mother of the groom, the Queen felt comfortable enough hosting the party for friends and family following the main event.
No one of a certain age is really forgetting that though they are quite different love stories, the tale before us is in its theme not dissimilar to the situation in which Britannia found herself in the days of Edward VIII. The new bride seems to all a gentler soul than the late Duchess of York. And our 21st century seems far removed in its sensibilities and social values from the world of the 1930s and prewar Britain. Still, there is a misty question that lies in Britain’s future. One rumor has it that Prince Charles has already signed abdication papers removing himself from the succession in favor of his firstborn Prince William. Only time will tell. No future for the royal couple together could be more difficult for them than their past. Certainly, we wish the Windsors many blessed years together.
SHADOWS OF ALBION
Last issue I wrote of the influence of David Hackett Fischer’s social history Albion’s Seed, and of the four great emigrations into colonial America that birthed and have nurtured our culture since that time. Beginning with our next issue, British Heritage will present a series of features examining each of those great influential movements of people that have left their mark so indelibly upon our American identity.
The first of those, of course, was the Puritan migration into Massachusetts Bay and New England in the mid 1600s. Who were those people? What was the society they left behind? What motivated them to risk life and hardship on a 17th-century sea voyage and an inhospitable northern Atlantic coastline? Do join us over the coming months as we look more closely at what it is that makes us all Albion’s seed.
IN WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL CLOSE
Winchester Cathedral’s literary associations go beyond its dramatic and cavernous interior. I have long loved the epitaph on the tombstone of Thomas Thetcher in the churchyard. It seems young Thetcher died at age 26 in 1764: “of a violent fever contracted by drinking Small Beer when hot.” The epitaph is the testimony of his comrades:
Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire Grenadier.
Who caught his death by drinking cold small beer.
Soldiers be wise from his untimely fall And when ye’re hot drink Strong or none at all.
A generation later, the decaying headstone was restored by the officers of the garrison, who added this postscript:
An honest soldier never is forgot Whether he die by Musket or by Pot.
WILDFOWL AND WETLANDS TRUST
I didn’t even know there were 120 species of duck. On the Severn Estuary, near Berkeley Castle, the wildfowl sanctuary at Slimbridge is the largest and most varied collection of wildfowl in the world. Flocks of flamingos from throughout the world share habitat with 180 species of geese, swans and ducks (including the famous Hawaiian Nee-Nee). Spring and fall, the broad savannah of the River Severn is alive with water birds taking to the North Atlantic flyway between Africa and points north. So do Reed buntings, Redshanks and Water Rails, for those who know their birds.
EXMOOR AND LORNA DOONE
You do not have to be familiar with Lorna Doone, the famous R.D. Blackmoor novel, to appreciate the tiny river valley villages that sit tucked sharply below the broad heath of Exmoor—villages such as Oare, on the Somerset-Devon border. Here in the small old stone church where Lorna was shot by Carver Doone on her wedding day, you will pick up the basics of the Doone legend quickly. The little medieval church of St. Mary’s proudly hosts its claim to fame, even arguing which window must have received the shot. It’s worth a detour off the A39 if you happen to be driving by.
Oh, and don’t be afraid of running into crowds at Oare. With narrow unclassified roads as the only way to Oare, there is no access for touring coaches—for miles.
YE OLDE TRIP TO JERUSALEM, NOTTINGHAM
Dating from 1189, Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem is reputedly the oldest pub in England. Crusaders supposedly sought refreshment there on their way to the Holy Land. Certainly the legendary Robin Hood, whose exploits took place in nearby Sherwood Forest during the reign of Richard the Lionheart, would have been able to quaff a pint or two in the very spot.
Apart from its well-founded antiquity, however, the venerable public house is unique in its construction. The pub is built into a cliff face of soft sandstone ubiquitous to Nottingham. Small chambers carved into the bare rock form rooms for the patrons to enjoy conversation, potables and the bill of fare—as they have done for more than 800 years.
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