Soho Square, Spring 1992

Twenty years ago this week I arrived in London to work for six months. I had been to the UK once before for about six weeks in the summer of 1989, but going there to work was an adventure of an entirely different sort. I was there as part of a now defunct (but recently so) program through the British Universities North America Club (BUNAC) which allowed college students, or the recently graduated like myself, to get a work permit to work in the UK. I kept a journal the whole time I was there, but alas it is short on detail and high on the emotions of a 22-year old. I wish it were the other way around. I read through the journal last week and was astonished what I no longer remember. I mention people and events for which I can muster absolutely no visual image. If only I had been more descriptive of people, places, and things, and less concerned with mind-numbingly boring and generic statements about my feelings.

However, I consider the following quote to be one of the more refreshingly evocative passages from that journal:

You know boogers are consistently black in London.

My only Pepysian entry had nothing to do with the Great Fire in London but it did have to do with a great fire in Los Angeles when a white jury found the LAPD officers who beat the crap out of Rodney King not guilty. Seeing the photo of the burning LA neighborhoods on the cover of someone’s Evening Standard on the Tube was a startling juxtaposition to my life in London.

I ended up settling down in the BUNAC hostel for my six months. I shared a room with three other people and a kitchen with 26 others for the cost of 45 pounds a week. It ate up about forty percent of my income, but I couldn’t have had a more central location, just a stone’s throw from Charing Cross Road, Soho, and the British Museum (and Persephone Books which didn’t exist at that time).

I didn’t get a job I interviewed for at the Westminster Abbey Bookshop. Thank god. What would it have been like to wait on tourists for six months? I did, however, take the first job that was offered to me. It was working in a store in the Trocadero Centre at Piccadilly Circus. Talk about tourists. It was absolutely awful. I had just finished my college degree (the first in my family to do so) and this was the best I could do. I quit about 45 minutes into my 8-hour shift. I offered to stay for the whole shift, but thankfully the manager (the owner’s daughter) let me leave. I have never felt so relieved in my life to walk away from a job. I felt like I escaped a prison sentence.

I only worked 45 minutes of that Tuesday evening shift.

A few days later I interviewed for a job at the Sydney House Hotel in Chelsea.  When I made the appointment for the front desk clerk job that was posted at the BUNAC office, I assumed it would be a crappy little back-packers hotel like the one I stayed at in Bayswater when I first arrived in London. Shows how much I knew about Chelsea at the time. It turned out to be a wonderful little jewel box hotel with 21 rooms in two old townhouses. It had been open for about a year and was run by an amusing but intimidating French speaking Swiss man who had also done all of the decorating. For someone who came from modest means and who had just spent four years being a poor undergraduate (and who indeed was sharing a hostel room with 3 others, etc.) the hotel was opulent. The chandeliers in the lobby were Baccarat, the bathrooms were swathed in marbled, the robes were plush, the amenities were Molten Brown, and the lobby perpetually smelled of  stargazer lilies. And each of the rooms had its own distinct design. (Understandably, but somewhat sadly, the Sydney House updated their decor many years ago, so it doesn’t look much like the place I remember.)

They lobby always smelled wonderfully like stargazer lilies which are oddly absent from this photo.

Lots of red toile made up the Paris room.

This was called the “Honeymoon Room”

I don’t remember the name of this one.

If you have ever watched Fawlty Towers then you know what my life was like for six months. Granted, none of the managers were like Basil Fawlty, but I think all of the guests from Fawlty Towers were reincarnated as guest of the Sydney House. Do you remember when Mr. Fawlty asked a deafish old fussbudget if she wanted the hotel “moved a little bit to the left”? There were a lot of guests like that.

And speaking of guests, we had a few interesting ones come through. Although he was only there to pick up a guest at the hotel, the Texas millionaire who was caught on film sucking Fergie’s toe came in one night. But most importantly to my young gay self, was my brush with Rupert Everett. Now, in 1992, Everett had only been in one or two independent films and was pretty unknown in the U.S. That is, except for those of us who fell in love with him in the beautifully elegiac film Another Country. One quiet August night while manning the front desk I took the following message for one of our guests:

The carbon copy of the actual message I took from Rupert Everett, my imaginary boyfriend.

[There was a whole paragraph here that Blogger decided should magically disappear for no apparent reason. It described the moment when Rupert Everett entered my life ever so briefly. I wonder if he still thinks of the young American who gazed up at him wistfully from the front desk of the Sydney House Hotel?]

Rupert Everett cuddling Cary Elwes in Another Country

And speaking of skipping my dinner break [which I was before Blogger deleted it], one of the great things about my job at the Sydney House was that employees got a hot, free meal made by a west African woman named Joyce who always called me Thompson. She was also responsible for keeping the cooler stocked with room service staples like her amazing lemon tarts which I secretly wolfed down when no one was looking.

In some ways that job in London seems like a million years ago and in other ways it seemed like it just happened. I wish my journal from that time was a different kind of journal. But it does remind me that on 4 May 1992 I went into a second shop and bought my first Virago Modern Classic: All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville West and A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood which I think was my first Isherwood. A nice little bit of information from the days before I started by reading log in 1994. As is my follow-up commentary on those purchases:

With these books around who wants to read stupid old Jack Kerouac? Not me! On the Road has to be the lamest “classic” I have ever come across.

Not much has changed in 20 years.

  

I am not sure how it is where you live, but here in Washington, DC, and most of the eastern U.S. we had and unusually warm winter and June arrived in early March. But this weekend it has been grey, and rainy, and on the chilly side. Since we still have a large stack of firewood in the back yard I thought we should take advantage of the cooler (and certainly more seasonal) weather to use up some of the wood. But it was the discussion of leaving wood ash in the grate in Chapter 3 of The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford that really put me over the edge. So at 10:00 this morning I built a fire and have been enjoying the snap, crackle, pop of the burning wood.

The cozy library and Nancy Mitford (and a hunger pang or two) made me think that something was missing. So I whipped up a batch of scones, John made a pot of tea, and we went back to the library to settle in with our treats. Not being able to read and stuff my mouth full of scone at the same time I said to John that what was missing was Radio 4. Not having a wireless that picks up the BBC, after all Broadcasting House is about 4,000 miles away, I had to resort to a wireless of another sort. I fired up the laptop, logged on to www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 and now we are happily settled in and listening to a profile of Dame Edna Everage.  I guess the subject matter isn’t exactly 1945, and of course me blogging about it isn’t very 1945, but the fire, and the tea, and the scones, and the “wireless” has me pretending it is. But now that I think about it, I probably have used more than our sugar, cream, and butter ration would have allowed us in 1945.  And now the Shipping Forecast. I never understand a word of it, but it is so evocative.

All of this of course is getting me primed for our trip to England in May. We are off to Sissinghurst, Rye, the Cotswolds, and a quick stop in Oxford. But even before that we have so many fun things are coming up. Best friends are coming to visit from the Netherlands for two weeks. Then my parents will be here for 10 days, then a few weeks later more best friends from Atlanta will be with us.

And I should mention I am enjoying The Pursuit of Love.  I have tried reading this more than a few times but never got past the first page. Just never seemed to be in the mood for it. But I picked it up last night before bed and it was just the right thing. And is perfect for today. I hope you are enjoying your Sunday as much as I am enjoying mine.

   

I am not sure how closely any of you follow the number of people who “follow” your blog, but I just wanted you to know that I have not stopped following your blog but I have stopped “following” your blog.

In my efforts to clean up my Google Reader I decided that I didn’t want the “blogs I follow” to be in a separate place from all the other blogs that I follow. I want them all in a nice alphabetical list.  But in order to do that I have to “unfollow” everyone, and then manually add you into my Google Reader.

I wish I could still “follow” all of you (I hate to be the reason that your “follow” stats dip by one), but Google won’t let me do that I put you in the order I want.

And for those of you who don’t see your blog in this image, don’t worry, I still follow you on my Google reader but for some reason I never “followed” you or you are on a platform that doesn’t allow following. I stopped “following” people many moons ago when I first got Google Reader and saw how it kept the “followed” sites separate from the rest.  It bothered my sense of order back then, but I have only now, decided to take the bull by the horns and clean it up.

If none of this makes sense to you, you have nothing to worry about.

Imagine this plot: In 1869 a well respected superintendent of an insane asylum is accused of profiting from his position, defrauding employees, neglecting the patients under his care, and even the non-return of two horses that wandered onto the grounds of the asylum. Months of letters, testimony, and committee investigations ensue in order to determine if the charges have any basis in fact.

Then imagine that the story is told with all the twists, turns, and commas of Victorian syntax with no little attention to bureaucratic details.

Could this be a lost Trollope manuscript? Some mix of The Warden and The Last Chronicle of Barset? It could be, but it isn’t. It is actually a description of a real life scenario I stumbled across in the course of my job. You see, my job for 2012 is to research and write a book-length history of an insane asylum that dates back to 1855. After a few years working as an urban planner on a project to redevelop said insane asylum, and after working for a few more years dealing with the historic preservation issues related to that same project, I now get to write this history to help mitigate the adverse effect the redevelopment is having on the asylum which is a National Historic Landmark. (You may remember me posting some pretty cool historic photos of this asylum last spring.)

So the majority of my work day is spent in places like the National Archives and the Library of Congress. The archive work is particularly fascinating because I am working with primary documents that read like excerpts from a Trollope novel and are filled with lots of fantastic (mundane) Trollopian details.

How about this letter from 1857 offering the superintendent first refusal on a soon-to-be vacant (and better) pew at Christ Church for only $26 per annum?

Or how about the story suggested by this invoice for the superitendent’s wife’s funeral? Twenty carriages at $5 a piece, 21 pair of raw silk gloves, $20 for freezing the body. The superitendent was well paid at $2,500 per year, but this $304 funeral was more than 10% of his annual income.

And I must say, reading plenty of Trollope over the years has prepared me well for sifting through thousands of letter from the second half of the the 19th century. What it didn’t prepare me for, however, was deciphering the sometimes cryptic handwriting which can make for really slow going. I can’t wait until the typewriter is invented and the hospital buys one. Maybe my eyes will uncross when I get to those years.

One of the more fascinating, and Trollopian letters I have come across relates to the plot I described earlier. So again imagine this plot where the superintendent is fending off attacks on his professional integrity when he gets a letter from one of his former clerks George Kellogg, who is now farming in Jamaica, Vermont. In that letter Kellogg tells the superintendent of a visit from a man he judged

…to be about thirty years of age, light hair, red side whiskers, quite a full face (judge caused by whiskey), he had a small bottle of whiskey with him and he offered me some the first thing. It being nearly gone he drank it himself.

The farmer goes on at some length to describe how the visitor attempted to bribe him to go back to Washington to testify against the superintendent.

The bribe was like this: 1st, I was to have my old place with better pay &c, 2nd, If one or two thousand dollars would induce me to tell all I knew for, said he, you know enough of Dr. Nichols to send him to State’s prison…

Kellogg is taken aback by the charges and the man’s bald attempt to bribe him.

I told him he was a stranger to me and that I knew nothing about him or his friend whom he was working for and that I should be very careful what I said or did. He then said that his friends name was General M. McGowan who was a surgeon in the army a was third or fourth cousin of General Grant [presumably the newly elected President Ulysses S. Grant] and was a very fine man, and a great friend of Secretary [of the Interior] Cox and a man who would surely be appointed in Dr. Nichols’ place.

What amazes me about this scenario is that in 1869 someone was so intent on procuring the position of superintendent of this asylum that they sent this inebriated boob 451 miles north to try and bribe a former employee–and one who was still on good, personal terms with the superintendent. In the end, like a good Trollope novel, the superintendent was cleared of all charges but with an admonishment or two to keep better account books going forward.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are so many fascinating aspects to this project.  Life in a Victorian-era insane asylum (Wilkie Collins anyone?) The role of the hospital during the Civil War. A pioneering institution in the understanding of brain pathology in the insane with over 2,500 brain specimens collected over the years. The place where Ezra Pound was kept for 15 years after being charged with treason after WWII. And the list goes on.

I don’t think I have ever been so excited to go to work each day.

  
Given our interest in visiting some out of the way places and having a generally out of the way kind of time when we go to England in May, we decided to rent a car. I have driven all around France with no problems, but I have never attempted to drive on the wrong…I mean left side of the road before.

I have no problems with roundabouts, but can I do one this way?  I am thinking of renting extra air bags…if only that were possible.

So, look out my pedestrian friends of the sceptred isle, Toonces is going to be on the road.

 
One should not start writing a post when one is still half asleep. This morning before I left for work I started to write a post, but it was far from finished. And now all of you will see the draft in your feed readers despite me taking the post down…

I promise the real post, when it is done will be great.

Williams College in the gorgeous Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts.

Back in April of 2009 before most of you had even heard of My Porch, I posted something that I still find fascinating. John and I had been on a road trip where we talked about how much fun it would be to spend a semester studying whatever we wanted to. A kind of academic fantasy camp. No real worries about grades or anything stressful, just the chance to learn about something you never had time for in school.

(I am aware that more than a few of you are still in the halls of the academy, so this may be less interesting to you…but you still may want to play along)

Q: If you could spend a semester studying anything you wanted, what kind of classes would you take?

Rules:

1. Assume everything else in your life is manageable (e.g, your
family isn’t neglected, bills are paid, you don’t have to work, etc.)

2. Choose classes that you would want to take just for the fun of taking them. That
is, stay away from stuff that would get you a promotion at work or help you to
finish a degree or something like that. This is your chance to explore anything
you want.

3. Extra points for being specific.

4. Double extra points for telling me where you would want to spend your semester.

Amherst College, also in Massachusetts.

A: If I had to narrow it down to one semester, this would be my course schedule:

This was my list in 2009.

• Survey/History of British Lit
• History of Victorian and Edwardian England
• Infrastructure 101 (A more in-depth, much smarter version of all those Discovery channel shows about utilities and transportation and stuff like that.) This class includes a two week “field trip” to learn about European passenger rail infrastructure.
• Photography
• Choir

As to where, I am tempted to say Cornell because it is a nice campus in a beautiful setting and is
kind of isolated. Cozy and big at the same time. Or some other similar campus in the Northeast.

Those are all still interesting to me, but I have some other things that have me captivated at the moment.  My course list today would look something like this:

• Survey of American History from 1850 to 1900 – not generally a period in history I am naturally drawn to, but it would dovetail really nicely with what I am researching at work these days–which is fascinating–and will be blogged about in the near future.
• A research methods class. I have had one or two of these in past, but I could use a refresher as an adult who is actually paying attention.
• I would still do the Infrastructure class I mention above.
• Geometry – I was terrible at it in high school–I felt confused my whole sophomore year in Mr. Varty’s class. And I generally disliked math, but for some reason this has been interesting to me lately. I am not sure it would fill a whole semester as an adult, so maybe I would throw in an Algebra refresher course as well.
• Some kind of art class–like the kind we had in junior high which included everything from drawing to woodblock carving to pottery to painting.
• Choir
• And I still think I would do the survey of British Lit. Kind of tempted to narrow it down, but I think I would still like to take in the whole sweep of British Lit to put my reading into a broader context and framework.

As for place, I would still tend to say somewhere like Cornell. Not only is it beautiful, but I like how isolated it is relative to the the hustle and bustle of downstate New York. Even though it is set overlooking the town of Ithaca, the overall feeling is still one of a retreat. I also think I would want a larger school like Cornell, or at least one with a big research library that might be harder to find at a small school. And oddly, as much as I love places like Cambridge and Oxford, I see myself doing this at an American university.

I got to spend two lovely, interesting years here at Cornell. I could easily do another semester.

 
Now tell me, what would you do? Go ahead, click the comment button…

Maybe you would prefer Berkeley and its proximity to San Francisco.

   
Despite what you are about to read, I did actually get some reading done this weekend. In fact I have many books about which I wish to bend your ear. However, my weekend was full of other activities as well.  We were in Austin, Texas visiting John’s brother and family.

For the first time in about 15 years I went bowling. John hadn’t been in about 30 years. We weren’t good, but we had lots of fun. And the food (nachos, fries, club sandwich, washed down with Dr. Pepper) was really tasty.

We also went to an arcade where I spent all my time playing the Shrek pinball machine which was oddly satisfying.

Then there was the 3-D showing of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace which I had never seen before. The dialogue and much of the acting was rubbish, but it was still kind of enjoyable. (Except for the racist depiction of the happy/stupid Jamaican-esque Jar Jar Binks and the racist depiction of the evil villains with their Asian-inspired broken English.)

And finally, I got to help John’s nephew finish his giant, complicated Lego Death-Star. That was tons of fun. I was worried I was doing too much of it, but it turns out, he was more interested in playing with the finished product than actually putting it together. So hurray.

When we were in San Francisco on the way back from Hawai’i I spent my timewalking from used bookstore to used bookstore while John was in meetings all day. I have been to San Francisco about five times, and John and I have done plenty of exploring. But this time I just put some Xs on a map and headed out into the sunshine. And it was so much fun, not just the bookstores, but the city itself. My quads and calves may have been barking from all the hills but my god, what an amazing city.

Anyhoo, while I went from bookstore to bookstore I had the same problem I had in Hawai’i at Talk Story. I had plenty of reading material and no real interest in random browsing. I felt the need to have some sort of mission. When I was in Green Apple Books it hit me. For some time I have been thinking about vintage editions of Signet Classics paperbacks. They have funky covers, really nice paper, and although they were published before I was born, I have fond memories of them floating around bookstores during my college days. So I thought, hey, why not start a Signet collection? They would be fun to hunt for at used bookstores, rummage sales, charity shops, etc. And it would be cheap. And they are fun to look at. And the earliest versions didn’t use pulp paper so the pages are really smooth and cool to the touch.

So at Green Apple I started to my obsession. Continued it later that day at another fantastic bookstore Russian Hill Books. And then soon after we were back from Hawai’i John was out of town for work so I drove out to Hagerstown and Frederick, Maryland and hunted for so more at Wonderbook.

I am not sure how far I will take this. But it is kind of fun for now.