ENGLAND, A CHILDREN’S LITERATURE TOUR, Part 1, Beatrix Potter, Guest Post by Cathy Bonnell

 

Hilltop Farm, Once Home of Beatrix Potter

My friend Cathy Bonnell, a retired school librarian who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, loves to travel and recently spent two weeks in England with her daughter Courtney, a journalist. Cathy has contributed previously to The Intrepid Tourist. I thank her for sharing her photos and report of her trip in July to London and the Lake District, with a special eye to connections with children’s literature.

Cathy in London

After a sleepless night in the sky, I made it to London and my daughter Courtney’s darling neighborhood, Belsize, for a two week visit. Early dinner in a little cafe steps from her flat and to bed early!

Chiluly sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum

The next day a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum was my first sightseeing venture —to see an exhibit of original art by author/illustrator Beatrix Potter. 

The tiny illustrations of Beatrix Potter were so thrilling to this longtime admirer and former elementary school librarian. 

Her sketchbooks and handwritten manuscripts were also shown at the museum.

Off early the next morning on the train to the Lake District, where we stayed in a lovely historic hotel in Bowness called Landeth Howe, once owned by Beatrix Potter. Two full days of small group tours took us to Beatrix Potter’s famous home, Hilltop Farm, now owned by the National Trust. 

The white gate at Hilltop Farm is original. 

The lush greenery and sweeping scenery of the Lake Country was a very welcome sight to this desert dweller.  Note a part of Hadrian’s wall in the background.

Such beautiful blooms were everywhere.

Castlerigg (similar to Stonehenge) in Keswick near Sawrey.  No one knows why they were built or by whom.

Rainy, windy and chilly day around the Lake District.

After three days in The Lake District we were back in London  

To be continued next week in Part 2.

LONDON IN WINTER: Museums and More, Part 2

Inner courtyard, Westminster Abbey, London

 (Continuation of previous post, my week in London, January 2013)

High tea at the Cranley

Tuesday– Went to Westminster Abbey.  At 16 pounds each (the senior or concession rate) it seemed expensive, but the self-guided audio tour, narrated by Jeremy Irons, is quite good.  And the cathedral is packed with history–it was consecrated in 1066 and has been going ever since as a center of the church and burial place for notables. We had lunch (pumpkin soup for me and a sandwich and ginger beer for Art )in the Cathedral café (which was nice and warm, compared to the church which felt nearly as chilly as the air outside.)  We then took the tube to Green Park to see Patrick Blanc’s vertical gardens on the Athenaeum Hotel, which are very impressive.  Our original plan was to take high tea there, but at 29 pounds per person, it seemed a bit steep, so we went back to our hotel where we ordered a delicious high tea for only 10 pounds per person.

Pinter Theater

That evening, we went to see Old Times with Kristen Scott Thomas at the Pinter Theater in the West End.  Afterward, we went back to our hotel, stopping at the Hereford Arms on Gloucester Road for a beer and crisps (potato chips).  Apparently the Hereford Arms is famous for its association with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and for the American soldiers who turned the Hereford Square park across the street into a baseball diamond during World War II when they were stationed nearby.

Saatchi Gallery, once a military barracks

Wednesday– Walked to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs.  Also saw an interesting exhibit of art from the first voyage to Australia (First Fleet) in a gallery devoted to art and science.  The museum was filled with school groups, some wearing green neon vests, others in suits and ties, and one group carrying note pads and wearing lab coats with “dinosaur scientist” printed on back. Then we met our friend Gretchen and went to the Bumpkin for lunch–I had a crispy duck salad (with pickled vegetables), Art had chicken pie again and Gretchen had a cheese tart.  We finished with sticky toffee pudding.  We then walked (about two miles) to the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea where we saw two exhibits of Russian art and an amazing permanent installation on the ground floor that is a room covered with a layer of oil that perfectly reflects the posts and ceiling.  The effect is disconcerting.

Victoria and Albert Museum

Thursday– Walked to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see  Light from the Middle East, a photography show by Middle East and Asian photographers.  We made our way to a far corner of the museum to see the museum's permanent photography collection (a representative selection from the beginning of photography in 1846 to the 1970's) passing through countless halls of sculpture, ironwork, casts of famous artworks, including the huge pillars of Hadrian from Rome (prepared in the 1800s for students to copy), jewelry, and more.  According to a friend, the V and A is where they put everything that doesn’t fit into the other British museums. It has a random feel. We ate lunch in the café and spent another hour (I spent most of it in the Indian galleries looking at Hindu and Moghul miniatures and Art went back to the photography room.)

The next day was Art’s meeting and on Saturday we headed back to Heathrow for our flight to Los Angeles.  We had had a full and invigorating week in London.  And despite all the time we spent in museums, we only saw a fraction of the displays, so we always have a reason to go back.

London Museums

Natural History Museum, London

Museum of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Museum of Childhood, Royal Academy of Art:  Here are notes of some of my museum visits from my diary of our three month stay in London in the fall of 1998.  London is packed with museums, so this is just a sampling! Click on the links for current information about museum hours, locations, etc.

Museum of London
    My other excursions last week included a trip to see the Museum of London, which traces the history of the city from 50,000 years ago.  (I didn’t realize that until the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago, Britain wasn’t an island and people simply walked across from Europe.)  I have never been able to keep the kings and queens of English history straight, but this museum does a good job of making it clear when and why ruling families changed.  I didn’t allow enough time so I’ll have to go back to find out what happened after Henry VIII.

    (A few weeks later.) On Saturday afternoon we decided to visit the Museum of London.  The museum is so packed with information that one can easily go there again and again.  One of the items that caught my attention this time was the story of building the wall around London when it was the Roman city of Londinium.  The stones for the wall came from a quarry near the mouth of the Thames and were transported by boat up the river to the city.  We know this because one of the boats sank with its load of stones and was preserved in the mud of the river.  Wedged into a hole in the side of the boat archeologists also found a pair or men’s leather underwear.  Apparently some Roman sailor had tried, in vain, to use his clothing to stop a leak in this ultimately unseaworthy vessel.   

St. Paul’s Cathedral
    After tea in the museum café we visited St. Paul’s Cathedral. Unlike most other English cathedrals, which are medieval, St. Paul’s is baroque, built after the earlier medieval cathedral was destroyed in the great London fire. It is topped by an enormous dome which is one of London’s most impressive landmarks.  We decided to stay for the 5:00 Evensong, a sung service performed by the priests and the St. Paul’s Cathedral choir.  This is a boys’ choir with the soprano parts sung by little boys, who looked as young as seven or eight, and were positively cherubic in their long robes and high, fluted collars. I had been eager to hear one of the Anglican cathedral choirs after watching the Masterpiece Theater series, “The Choir” (based on a novel by Joanna Trollop), on television last year.  The boys’ voices are so pure and clear and they just soared in the huge space of the cathedral.

National Portrait Gallery
    Last Monday I met a friend and toured the National Portrait Gallery, which is a collection of portraits of notable British people from medieval times to the present and ranges from political figures like Winston Churchill and royal personages to ballet dancers, writers and pop singers.  Most are paintings, although in the modern era there are some photos.  Almost every name is familiar from history books (or in the modern era from the news) and I was amazed at how the pictures brought the people to life and in some cases revealed a different character.  In an early picture of Henry VIII he is actually quite thin!

Natural History Museum
    On Thursday morning I finally visited the Natural History Museum, and I spent most of my time in their excellent dinosaur and fossil collection.  I discovered that one of the most important fossil collectors of the last century was a woman named Mary Anning and that she made her first major find at the age of eleven.  I am trying to get more information about her with the idea that I might write a story about her later. [Note: I did include her and her discoveries in my books Giant Sea Reptiles of the Dinosaur Age and  Pterosaurs: Rulers of the Skies in the Dinosaur Age.]

Victoria and Albert Museum
    The Victoria and Albert Museum is across the street from the Natural History Museum so I spent the afternoon there.  It has an enormous collection ranging from paintings (including more Constables and Turners) to costumes and decorative arts from all over the world.  I went to two special exhibits, one of the work of Grinling Gibbons, a wood carver who made elaborate decorations for doorways, fireplaces, mirrors, etc. in the 18th century, and the other of the work of Aubrey Beardsley, whose black and white drawings characterize the 1890’s.  I did a paper on his work when I was in college, although I never saw then the quite shocking erotic drawings that were on display here.

Museum of Childhood
    On the same outing as my visit to Toynbee Hall, I visited the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, a museum that is packed with dolls, doll houses, toys, trains, etc. many from Victorian times but others that were more recent.  It was a bit odd to see Malibu Suntan Barbie displayed alongside China dolls dressed in 19th century outfits.  In the shop there was a series of children’s books on Victorian life in Britain and now that I'm home I regret that I didn't buy one called "Victorian Toilets.”

Royal Academy of Art
    One of my stops was at the Royal Academy of Art, which has a special exhibition of Picasso ceramics.  It is a wonderful show with room after room of all kinds of ceramics including vases turned into voluptuous women, birds and other creatures, plates painted and decorated with ceramic fish and forks, other plates with bullfighting scenes where the plate itself becomes a miniature bull ring, painted tile murals, etc, etc.  The sheer quantity and inventiveness show what a genius Picasso was.  The show was crowded and included a lot of school children taking notes and carefully sketching various pieces.  I thought to myself, what a great homework assignment!  Maybe the kids didn’t think so, but most other children are lucky to see pictures of great art in books or posters.  As I came out of the museum I noticed the elaborately decorated shop windows across the street and realized that the store was Fortnum and Mason’s, the famous food emporium.  So I went in to take a look and it was like another museum with every kind of pickled, bottled, boxed, or packaged food imaginable, all at great cost and displayed and wrapped so nicely that it seemed a shame that one would have to open the packages up to eat what was inside.