Wednesday, May 27, 2009
London

I did all kinds of everything today–as the old song goes. Awoke at 6 .oo and continued reading The Order of the Phoenix–My God!–that book is just endless!

Checked my email and continued writing by blog–as I had left it half done last night being just too exhausted. Time flies, doesn’t it, and between eating my cereal breakfast and watching a bit of Breakfast TV, it was time for me to get outdoors to meet Margaret from St. Bartholomew’s for the insider’s view, she had promised me, of the Hogarth Staircase leading to the Main Hall of the Hospital at Smithfield.

A Secret Revealed–Hogarth’s Staircase:
Margaret was waiting for me at 10.00 am outside the church as we had planned. It was drizzling today and very breezy indeed and the temps had plunged a good few degrees lower than the last few days. My umbrella was useless against the wind and I quite gave up drying to stay dry as I was clearly fighting a losing battle against Nature.

So I was grateful when she led me to the Main Hall that skirts the lovely quadrangle around which the hospital is built (of what I now easily recognize as white Portland stone). And what a treat awaited me as soon as she pushed back the heavy door. There, overwhelming me by its magnificent presence, were the walls running alongside a wide staircase that was completely covered right up to the ceiling in a life-size painting. In fact, there were two of them–one on each wall. One featured ‘The Good Samaritan’, the other ‘Jesus healing the Lame at the Pool of Bethesda’. As in all Hogarth’s portrait’s the faces are alight with expressiveness. The background landscapes were painted by George Lambert who specialized in painting theaters sets for Covent Garden shows.

There is a wonderful story behind the paintings that is worthy of being recounted. When the Governors of the Hospital wished to create a fitting entry hall to serve as access to the Main Hall above, they sought the services of an Italian painter. Hogarth who had made a reputable name for himself as a painter of portraits was so outraged that she wrote to the Board offering his services for free. The offer was accepted and Hogarth set to work creating murals that were completely different from the socially satirical ones in which he had specialized (his Rake’s Progress series, for instance, adorns the inner secret chamber of Sir John Soanes’ Museum). The governors were delighted. The sick persons featured in the second mural were actually based on patients at the hospital.

There is also a great deal of incidental ceiling and border adornment around the walls for which, Hogarth, of course, is not responsible. But the fact that so stunning a piece of work remains virtually unknown to London’s visitors is amazing to me and I felt privileged to have a look at it.

A Medical Museum–St. Bart’s Hospital Museum:
On our way out, we passed by the Museum of St. Bart’s (for St. Bartholomew’s has, for long, gone by this nickname). Margaret suggested I visit it and since entrance was free, I went for it. And then, I was just blown by what I saw. I mean this is what never fails to astonish me about London. Apart from the nationally known and state sponsored musuems which every tourist sees, around every street corner there is some tiny, practically unknown museum whose entry is free and which is almost never visited by anyone. And yet, the contents of these museums are just breath taking. Not only are they extremely well run and well maintained, but they have collections that are the stuff of which fantasy is made. Yesterday, I was at the Bank of England Museum and today, I stumbled across this one at St. Bart’s. Surprisingly, no guide book had mentioned it and while such a great deal is made about the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great and its literary associations (with Ben Jonson’s play Bartholomew Fair, for instance), this lovely little place has gone completely unsung.

So imagine how much the literature buff in me was thrilled by the knowledge that it was in the quadrangle of this hospital that the fictional Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story A Study in Scarlet met the fictional John Watson and uttered to him the famous line, “You have just returned from Afghanistan, I perceive?”–much to Watson’s amazement. Holmes, it turns out, was associated with this hospital, probably as an assistant in the chemistry labs though he had started his career as a medical student. Naturally, there is a paperback copy of the book with this sentence underlined and turned to the page on which it appears.

For the next one hour, I took myself on a tour of a space that was totally fascinating, even though I have to say that medicine is not quite my cup of tea. However, History is. And in this hospital that has a history that goes back 9 centuries when it was founded by the monk Rahere, there is a great deal of it. I saw grants and charters for instance with the sealing wax dating from the time of the Tudors for it was Henry VIII who granted the hospital the charter that allowed it to bring succour to the poor and the suffering. I saw loads of ancient documents hand written with quills on parchment. I learned that the earliest ‘doctors’ and nurses’ were monks and nuns in convents (the use of the word ‘sister’ for a nurse derives from the fact that the earliest nurses were Benedictine nuns). I saw 16th century devices used for such treatments as cupping and drilling holes in human skulls and 18th and 19th century amputation kits that included saws! Needless to say, my knees often went weak at the sight of these operations. I discovered that the first female doctor graduated from medical school in 1841 but following protests from her male counterparts, women were not allowed into medical school until well into the mid-20th century! I learned about the history of nursing–a profession that in the Victorian Age attracted women from the lowest classes because the work expected from them was mainly menial. It was only the efforts of the suffragettes that led to the establishment of nursing as a trained profession requiring many years of study.

I found the entire visit worthwhile and will recommend it to my physician friends. Anyone associated with the healing and curing of human beings will find this place a treasure trove of fascinating material.

I returned home to continue with my packing and I am happy to say that I am slowly getting there. I did not realize how time consuming it would be to pack my London life away and move it along! Fortunately, I have given myself ample time to accomplish this, so I am not stressed by the endeavor.

Lunch with Rosemary:
At 12. 50, I took the Tube to get to Goodge Street to meet my friend Rosemary who had made plans to meet me for lunch at 1. 20 pm. at a place rather picturesquely named the Squat and Gobble at the corner of Tottenham Street and Charlotte Street. I was seeing Rosemary after ages–what with all my travels and her recent one to India and last week to Yorkshire, we simply hadn’t connected. Rosemary and I had a quiche and salad (both of which were really yummy–I have to say that I am still amazed at how far British food has come) and just chatted away nineteen to the dozen about all the goings-on in our respective families.

Rosemary has kindly offered to help me move on Sunday by bringing her car over. This is a real God sent. I discussed with her the saga of trying to find someone to ship my bureau-desk to the States and her sane response was that if nothing happens until Sunday, she can just move it in her car and I can keep looking for a way to get it to Acton after Sunday. I was just so hoping I would manage to move it directly from my place at Holborn instead of lugging it to Farringdon and having to move it from there.

On Campus Again:
After lunch, I walked to NYU’s campus at Beford Square and discovered some more interesting historic information along the way. Lady Ottoline Morell (the renowned patron of poets such as W.B. Yeats) lived not even a few meters from the entrance to our campus on Gower Street–and right across the road was a plaque that announced that the pre-Raphaelite Movement was founded in this house! I mean just think about it: two of the most influential literary and artistic aspects of 20th century life (one a person, the other a movement) are sitting cheek by jowl on the same street just a few feet away from where I stomped all year round. Talk about the history that lies embedded in the paving stones of Bloomsbury! It really does stop me in my tracks–quite literally!

I did not realize that I would spend as much time as I did on campus–between handing in grade breakdowns, clearing up my office and packing things away, making calls for more interviews with Anglo-Indian subjects (as well as one call to my father’s cousin in Putney whom I had last seen 22 years ago), three hours passed. Then, it was time to get back home and continue packing and finally deciding which books and files and notes I will retaim and which I will discard. I have a load of books to give away and one of my NYU English colleagues told me that the Oxfam at Bloomsbury takes donations. I will probably have to take a cartload off to them.

I also made a call to Genevieve to thank her for my camera charger which arrived in the mail today. This gave me a chance to joke with her adorable boys–Louis, whom I have nicknamed the Macho Man and little Amaury. It was great fun chatting with them in French again!

After a shower and dinner, it was time for me to write this blog, then spend a while with Potter and his friends before going off to bed.