Now let's see if I can remember: Wednesday's class is reading Dickens--and that's my Global Foods class--so we did a tour of Dickens's London. Also, we're reading Sketches By Boz--D's earliest stuff. Very fun and VERY London… This helps make my job easier! So, we started at Covent Garden… a posh shopping square that used to (read: in D's time) be the fruit and veg market for London. He writes about walking from CG to St Paul's Church to get a real slice of London life. So we did that walk. It took about 2 minutes. They are next door. BUT going from one to the other we passed the site of the first Punch and Judy show. Kind of where all public performing and such got it's start… VERY important for actors and storytellers and creative types. (Note: students' point of reference for that was Gone Girl--there is a creepy Punch and Judy doll in one scene!) Then Seven Dials, just down the street. It's a 7-pointed intersection… used to be full of gin-shops and the dregs of humanity… But in a colorful way, ac to Boz. Now, of course, it's posh! Then we walked a bit to get to Holborn Bars, an early home of D's. Of course, Furnival's Inn is gone now, but a pretty building is in its place… D wrote and published Sketches here, started Pickwick Papers, married Catherine (oops! that didn't turn out so well). Sir Thomas More and JM Barrie also resided here at various times. There is an actual Dickens Museum that is the house he lived in for a longer time in his mid-career, but CAPA takes them there already… so I chose not to include that on MY walking tour. Moving on, we went to Smithfield Market, the meat market (insert joke…) for London. Also the only traditional market in town that is STILL marketing and not just posh shops now. Of course, it's the one that sells slabs of animal hanging from hooks. Lucky my tour!! Used to run the cattle right down the street, then pen them up and slaughter them here. By the 19th century there was a public outcry about the--believe it or not--cruelty to animals (yep, even then) in addition to sanitation issues. So they built a building and moved the slaughterhouses elsewhere. Now it's sold here, not killed. Apparently the public decided it was less cruel to kill animals elsewhere! Walked past St. Bart's Hospital… irrelevant for Dickens, but totally Sherlock-related! And wrapped up at the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. A fabulous and famous old pub that served Dickens and everyone else and is still up and running and doing it's thing. Too cool to miss!! (And somehow it's not ridiculously touristy…) Also, we were just happy to be indoors, after being rained on all dang day and FREEZING!
Thursday's class is reading Twain (will always be reading Twain, in fact). The Prince and the Pauper. Written in late-Victorian, but set in Tudor England. Our tour, therefore, looked at the really old stuff--or where it used to be, at least. Started at London Bridge, millennium style. I painted the picture of what the bridge USED to look like… with the shops and residences on the bridge itself. That it was the only bridge across the Thames… that it separated "The City" of London from all the stuff that wasn't allowed… all the fun stuff (think Vegas). Next, we went to the Monument via Pudding Lane, where young Tom Canty grows up. The Monument is supposed to be on the spot of the great fire of 1666 (when the end really WAS at hand). Then we walked past the awesome and stodgy in all its British respectability Bank of London to the London Wall--the ruins of the old Roman Wall. Long gone, it's only visible in bits and pieces. So we saw a piece. Next, we also went to Smithfield Market, where Tom Canty mentions seeing executions in the square. (William Wallace being the most famous in real life.) Then WE walked past St. Bart's… we actually could stop, as there is a statue of Henry VIII (I'm surprised how unpopular he is with the general public-- I though only I thought the guy was an asshole). This is considered the ONLY statue of HVIII in the city… and he's a character in our book… Then, we went to Christchurch Greyfriars-- from another scene in the book, when Prince Edward is out on his own--his first stop--a school and hospital for poor boys. Now a ruin… it was destroyed and rebuilt a few times, of course, but finally destroyed in WWII. The powers that be decided to just leave it as a ruin, and planted a garden around it. It's in fact quite lovely--even on a cold gray winter day. It must be splendid in the spring! Thomas Mallory is buried somewhere around here… The story is basically true--King Edward DID create a hospital for the poor here… and the street it's on is King Edward St. All accounts (of which there are few) say only nice things about poor Edward VI… he just died really young. He was way less bloody than ANY of his immediate family--father OR either sister! We stopped for lunch at the Cafe Below at St. Mary Le Bow… From the rhyme Oranges and Lemons--and the standard for English-ness (you're considered a true Londoner--Cockney--if you were born in the sound of the bells of St. Marys… Tom Canty would have been in theory…)
Wednesday night I went to a play of The Woman in Black, then Thursday one of my students said they'd been discussing that play in her theater class… So we had to discuss that a bit! It was dreary miserable weather, but we struggled through. Perhaps not as gracefully as I could have! But all-in-all I had fun with my classes! (Let's hope they did, too!!)
Next week: Borough Market with my foodies, and the British Library with Twain-hearts! Squee x 2!
You might be interested in the news that Furnival's Inn comes alive again - in a way - in my forthcoming novel Death and Mr Pickwick, which tells the story of the origins of The Pickwick Papers. In particular, it forms the backdrop for the confrontation between Dickens and Pickwick's illustrator, Robert Seymour, which results in the artist's suicide. You can find out more at: www.deathandmrpickwick.com
ReplyDelete