It's a shame that neither of the places that I visited today allowed photography, because I saw some truly amazing things on the ninth day of the Jane Austen Death March.
My first stop was the Wallace Collection, a museum that I had never heard of before. But, I was perusing my London guidebook last night and thought that this museum sounded intriguing, so I decided to check it out. I am thrilled that I did -- if you are ever in London and have an appreciation for/interest in pre-1900 art, French furnishings, medieval armor, porcelain, or just lovely interiors, you should definitely put this museum at the top of your list. The collection was amassed by four Marquesses of Hertford in the 1800s, and donated to the nation in the early 1900s. And they acquired some truly marvelous things -- it's difficult to imagine what it must have been like to live in such ridiculous splendor, given the complete opulence of the rooms and the priceless works of art that covered the walls.
They had a pretty significant number of paintings by the Dutch masters, as well as a number of Venetian works by Canaletto (who must have been popular in the early 1800s given the number of Regency interiors I've seen over the past week that have featured his works). There were several portraits by Gainsborough and Reynolds, two of the preeminent portrait artists of the late 1700s. One of my favorite areas was the grand staircase, where the first floor landing featured some gorgeous works by Boucher. They also had a huge collection of furniture, much of it French, with many pieces featuring intricate marquetry. There was one secretaire, approximately as tall as I am, made of oak and veneered with four or five other woods (holly, ebony, etc.) and edged in gilded bronze; another room featured an eight-foot-long writing table, also edged with gilded bronze, and surrounded by two armoires, a whole row of sumptous bookcases with glass doors, gorgeous armchairs with gilded arms and silk seat coverings, a gilded chandelier hanging overhead, and thick red damask covering the walls.
I wanted to have lunch in the cafe to extend the experience, but no wonder the guidebook said that lunch there would be a highlight of a visit -- entrees cost approximately $40. Unwilling to spend $50 or $70 on lunch, I ate at McDonalds instead -- not a particularly fitting break after such a beautiful museum, but at least I didn't feel broke afterwards.
My next stop was the British Library. As you might expect, I'm a sucker for books -- in fact, one of my favorite outings during my entire stay in Dublin was the time that Darragh and Liz took me to the Chester Beatty Library. But the British Library was like a dream come true for a book lover -- they have two of the four surviving original copies of the Magna Carta (one of which was on display), an early copy of 'Beowulf', an original Gutenburg Bible, some paper and papyrus Biblical texts from the first few centuries AD, and a whole host of medieval illuminated manuscripts. They don't just collect Western manuscripts, however; they were displaying some truly lovely early manuscripts, from the age when each page was essentially an intricate painting, from all of the world's major religions. I was of course drawn to the Hindu manuscripts, but the Japanese, Islamic, and Jewish manuscripts were gorgeous as well.
Their collection extends right up to the present day; from the religious texts, I progressed past some letters written by the Tudors, a bunch of writing from Shakespeare and his contemporaries, through a host of other authors (and musicians -- they had some of the original scores from Mozart, Beethoven, and Handel), and made a quick stop to see the intricately decorated diplomatic letters sent between Raffles (the British dude who put Singapore on the map) and the various kings and chiefs of the surrounding islands. There were handwritten manuscripts for 19th-century works like handwritten Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' and Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' -- and to make the Jane Austen Death March worthy of its name, they had Jane Austen's traveling writing desk and a letter she had written to her sister Cassandra. They also had some twentieth-century authors, including Sylvia Plath. And if you're into the Beatles, one display case included John Lennon's original scribbled lyrics for 'A Hard Day's Night', written on the back of a birthday card for his son; there were also Paul McCartney's lyrics for 'Yesterday', and the original lyrics for 'Ticket to Ride'.
So all in all, it was another v. worthwhile day of sightseeing. I made it back to my hotel around seven, and spent a fruitless few minutes on the phone with a friendly customer service agent in India in an attempt to top up the balance on a sim card that I bought for my phone yesterday. He was laughably effusive in his compliments to me -- he said that I sounded incredibly confident, and that it was a true pleasure to talk to someone who was so confident and willing to give him the information he needed. Also, when I said my name was 'Sara Wampler', he said something about how he could imagine that he was dealing with Sarah Jessica Parker, which was apparently a compliment. However, it ended just like many of my interactions ended with service-sector employees of most companies (outside my own, of course) in India -- he was v. friendly and seemed genuinely eager to help, but ten minutes later I got a text msg from the company saying I couldn't top up -- they can't accept non-UK credit cards. So I ventured outside, topped up at a nearby store, and spent a couple of hours on the phone with my parents tonight (when I wasn't washing the rest of my laundry in the sink).
My mother laughed outright when I said that I haven't figured out my life this week -- she said that she's heard me declare that I would figure things out several times in the past, and wasn't expecting for it to happen this week either. And she has a point -- but I'm going to reach the point sooner rather than later when I have to decide whether to go back to my current employer, whether to strike out in a different direction in the corporate world, whether to abandon corporate America altogether, and if so, what to abandon it for. The fact that I'm not sure and can't see the path ahead of me is making me v. nervous, even if I'm trying to bury the nerves under the excitement of travel. So I'll make the new grandiose declaration that I'll figure it all out on my bus trip to Scotland next week -- but obviously that's a long shot.
Now, though, I should really go to bed. Tomorrow's my last full day in England; I leave Sunday morning to go to Edinburgh, where my bus tour starts on Monday. Yay!
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