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| Billie Silvey |
| Two Trips |
| In 1995, our daughter Kathy gave me the most wonderful and unexpected Christmas gift. She sent her dad and me to London. She had made monthly payments all year to cover our fare on British Airways, our stay at the St. Giles Hotel, and a bus tour of major sites. As an English major who had written an unpublished book on Lord Byron, I was overjoyed at the prospect of visiting sites associated with him. Before we left, we bought a guidebook and good walking shoes and mapped out some of the places we wanted to visit. Our hotel room was as efficient and tightly packed as a mobile home. At night, we'd watch the BBC and pore over the guidebook and maps, plotting our route for the next day. |
| March 2006 |
| London and beyond Because of my interest in Byron, our England trip was planned around a certain theme. The first day, we took the bus tour to help orient ourselves, but we left the tour at Green Park near St. James and walked up to 50 Albemarle where John Murray, Byron’s publisher, still is a going concern. We saw the drawing room upstairs with its three tall windows familiar from the drawing of Byron, Sir Walter Scott, D’Israeli, and other Murray authors, and a second room displaying two well-known Byron paintings. The rooms are still used by the firm on a daily basis. Murray purchased the prime property with the proceeds from Byron’s hugely popular Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. As an author, it stoked my desire to someday make good money for a publisher--and myself. We walked through Green Park to Buckingham Palace, then through St. James’ Park to Westminster Abbey. We toured the Abbey, seeing the graves of musicians, statesmen, kings and queens. There was a plaque for Byron, which had been added much later. At the time of his death, he had been refused burial there. It made me reflect on the things we do in life and how they continue to haunt us after death. That night, we ate at an 18th century tavern off Bloomsbury with a restaurant above, where we talked with some of the first real Londoners we’d met. Frank had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and I had steak and kidney pie--good, hearty English food like Byron would have eaten, in a tavern he might have frequented when he wasn’t starving himself to maintain his ethereal good looks. Saturday, we visited the National Gallery and saw one of my favorite paintings, Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire. The Romantic painting contrasts the beauty and slow pace of life before the Industrial Revolution with the pollution and speed after. Byron lived during that transition, and as a Romantic himself, felt pulled between the stability of the past and challenges of the future. At lunch in the gallery basement, we got a great view of the statue of Nelson, the military hero of the Romantic Age, which is too high to see well from street level. Then we went to the National Portrait Gallery to see 19th century portraits, including Byron and his circle. Monday, we took the train north to Nottingham, getting a good view of the parts of London where people actually live, as opposed to hotels and monuments and businesses. In the countryside, we saw emerald fields and hedgerows, long-haired horses, white swans and sheep and many, many new white lambs. In Nottingham we walked up St. James Street to the house where Byron and May Gray stayed. It’s a law firm now, and we talked with one of the solicitors, filling him in on the history of his building. He had never even noticed the plaque on the side of the building. Then we crossed the street to the Infirmary where Byron was treated. It made alive the pain Byron suffered in an attempt to treat a handicap that twisted his life. The next day, we took the train to Hucknall, where a friendly verger showed us through the church where Byron was buried. I wondered if the attentions of those who memorialized him there compensated for his rejection in London. |
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| Frank at the British Museum |
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| Billie at Newstead Abbey (Click on the picture for a virtual tour) |
| Then on to Newstead, where the custodian gave us a private tour of Newstead Abbey, Byron’s ancestral estate. The abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539 and granted to Sir John Byron, an ancestor of the poet. Only the 13th century front of the ruined priory church survives, which reminded me of the gothic themes of Romanticism. As we toured the Great Hall, the Great Salon, and the small and large dining rooms I thought how much Byron would have enjoyed seeing the house in its restored state. Many of these rooms were uninhabitable in his day. He was a young lord with property, but little money to keep it up. Surviving ceilings and overmantels hint of the baronial glory of the original estate. We climbed the spiral stairs to the Prior’s Oratory, where Byron claimed to have seen the ghost of the Black Friar. His adjoining bedroom contains his furniture and personal possessions, including the gilt bed with four posters topped with baron’s coronets that he had made for his rooms at Cambridge. Our guide unhooked the velvet rope to let me touch his bed. The Chinese-patterned hangings and curtains are reproductions of those Byron ordered for the room in 1801. Exoticism was an important part of the Romantic movement, and Byron wrote several long poems on Eastern themes. From there, we went down to the North Gallery, which had served as a library but now serves as a museum for Byron’s belongings and pictures. Planning a trip around a theme can deepen the experience. Not only can you learn about a particular subject or individual before you go, but you have a context for the sites you see while you’re there. Ten years later, I fondly recall the places Byron lived, the sights he saw, and the associations with his life and poetry they produced in me. |
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| Frank above the Forum |
| Rome and Florence In 2000, Kathy gave Frank a trip to Rome, where he had attended high school, translated sermons, and guided guests. Thus, he was the perfect guide for his wife, who had never been there and didn’t speak the language. We organized the Rome trip around clusters of sites we wanted to see in walking distance in various directions from our hotel. The first day, we walked south to Santa Maria Maggiore, a large church with wonderful mosaics, then to St. Peter in Vincoli, where we saw Michelangelo’s Moses. From there we walked on to the Colosseum and the Forum and climbed the Capitoline Hill to the museums and the mayor’s office, with facades designed by Michaelangelo. At the museum, we saw parts of the huge statue of Constantine and my favorite, the Dying Gaul. We got back to the hotel exhausted from walking and climbing on rough Roman roads. The next day, we walked west to the Castor and Pollux statues at the president’s palace, to the Trevi Fountain where I threw the traditional coin, and to the Pantheon, a stunningly simple Roman structure that impressed me with its weight and perfect proportions. Then north and east to the Spanish Steps for lunch and a tour of the Keats/Shelley house. Further north in the Metro underground walkway to the Villa Borghese, where we saw several Berninis--the Pauline Borghese, Apollo and Daphne, the Rape of Proserpine and Bernini’s David. The next day was Sunday, with an early wakeup call and the Metro west to the Vatican Museums. It was the monthly admission-free day, so the crowds were incredible, but once the museums opened, the line moved fast. We saw the Laocoon, Apollo Belvedere and the large Raphael paintings. I could have looked all day at the Sistine Chapel, despite the guards shushing and the cell phones ringing and a woman walking backward into me and stepping flat on my foot. The pope had just blessed the crowd, so we felt like spawning salmon trying to get inside St. Peter’s. It was so huge, and beautiful, especially the Pieta. I’d seen many pictures of it, but they were no substitute for the real thing. The Bernini canopy and window were stunning, also the doors the pope comes out of once every 25 years, and Bernini’s statue for a tomb with a skeleton holding an hourglass reaching from under flowing drapery to remind us of the brevity of life. Rome has almost too much history to grasp. It’s hard to think of living there with any sense that anything you do can have an impact. I think our shorter history lets us think the things we do matter and that we can accomplish something. The next day, we took the train north through the outskirts of Rome with apartment blocks with clothes hanging on the balconies, past factories, and into the countryside. The hills were green with vineyards, olive groves, and two-story farmhouses of bright-colored stucco or duller rock. |
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| Billie on the roof terrace with Il Duomo |
| At the station at Florence, where Kathy had studied one summer in Pepperdine’s Year-in-Europe program, we caught a taxi that took us on a wild ride around the Duomo, down a street and into a narrow alley to our hotel. The Brunelleschi Hotel is built around an old tower. From the roof, we had an incredible view of Florence, with the dome of the Cathedral in one direction and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio in the other. It was harder to keep things straight on the ground. With no square blocks and walls all around, I kept starting out the wrong direction. We went to the Duomo, where we saw the gates of the baptistry and the salmon and green marble set geometrically into the facade, then to the Ponte Vecchio with its jewelry shops. I love Giotto, and we were able to see his works at the Uffizi and Santa Croce, or what’s left of them after floods and earthquake. We had dinner at a nice little place near our hotel that had been in business for 400 years. The Bargello Museum, the oldest civic building in Florence, looks like a fortress and served for a time as a prison. Now it houses an interesting collection of sculpture, paintings and household items spanning some eight centuries. The Medici tombs feature Michelangelo’s Dawn and Dusk and Night and Day. Stunning! We saved the best to last, visiting the Accademia and seeing Michelangelo’s Prisoners and David. In Italy, the variety of artists and works and the great span of history was like dipping into a treasure chest each day and coming up with a handful of precious and beautiful objects of all descriptions. Our last dinner there was at a wonderful old restaurant with frescoes of Florence on the walls and vaulted ceilings with heraldic seals from all the towns around, including our waiter’s hometown. Frank had Florentine bistecca, and I had shrimp, calamari and octopus scallopini. I wish I knew how the Italians cook seafood so it melts in your mouth. It was one of many secrets I’d like to learn, but maybe the secrets are part of the charm, like the mysterious smile of a waiter that says you’re getting something really special, no matter how many people have had the same dish. |
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| (Click on the picture for virtual tours of the Forum and other Roman sites.) |
| (Click on the picture for virtual tours of the Duomo and other sites in Florence.) |
| (Click on the picture to go inside the British Museum and to other London sites.) |