Winchester, 19.6.90: Sunlit Cathedrals and Hawaiian Shirts

We got settled late last night and were so tired, I got to write nothing in the journal. Now the 2nd night we’re in England. Writing this at a b and b in Winchester as sun sets, 8:50 P.M.

We arrived in England yesterday by jet foil at 12:15 English time. I was so tired I slept on the foil—especially after a lunch on the foil of salmon in a cloyingly sweet pink sauce, a meat salad in an equally sweet sauce, a good potato salad in a mustard vinaigrette, and frangipani and chocolate.

Things very tense with Steve and K. and A. in afternoon. K. almost hysterical as we passed through customs, a quality British inspectors apparently do not appreciate. We managed to get through, got the rental car, and drove on to Canterbury. Was beginning to get gray and drizzly in Canterbury, and with the tensions and growing headache, all is a fog.

We did a quick and perfunctory tour of the cathedral, which was full of (other) tourists, especially Germans. Then went to St. Margaret’s church, now converted into a rather hideous sound and statue and olfactory show of the Canterbury Tales. Since the guidebook said it, we went!

The real show were two English middle-aged couples, one from Sheffield, others from some place I didn’t understand. The men were both pot-bellied, one in a hat saying, “It used to be wine, women, and song; now it’s beer, the old lady, and telly.” The other had a loud Hawaiian shirt. One woman had long curly brown hair pulled into a top-of-head ponytail, a loud blouse, shorts, and sandals—very large and simpering. Shades of H.E. Bates.

From Canterbury through a beautiful Kentish village, Chilham. Had whitewashed buildings, one of them a Clements Cottage. A little bookstore in the village was lovely—went in to buy a map.

Then to Rye, by then full rain. We got in around 6 P.M. and found a b and b on the outskirts, chi-chi name Little S. Very middle-class gnomes in garden and ugly bright flowers. Owner, a Mrs. P., false-jolly with little shrewd eyes screwed up in merriment but actually piercing and evaluating.

Went out to eat in Rye and found the experience depressing. The fish and chips place we wanted to go to closed at 7, and A., misunderstanding, caused a scene.

So we went to a restaurant next door with local, high-priced food. I had lamb chops with tomatoes, mushrooms, and peas. K. trout and fennel, Steve and A. grilled lemon sole. With this came six vegetables. Not bad, but rude waiter named Jeremy. In fact, many tradesfolk we’ve encountered here seem mercenary and rude, with false bonhomie.

Today, got up at 7:30 and took hour’s walk down a lane. Sunny—took photos of Rye from a distance. Think I heard a cuckoo. Thought of home as we walked up some lanes—sheep and rabbits and green verges.

After frugal breakfast, drove to Winchelsea and went in pretty 14th-century church. Took pictures. Then through Hastings and up to a little village with 16th- and 17th-century pubs, Sedelscombe. Then over to Brighton—hideous, what we saw—and a little village called Alfriston, which was lovely. Another 14th-century church and a 13th-century clergy house, which we toured. Then had a pub lunch of stilton and bread and celery, chutney, cucumber, tomato, and ale.

After that, through Arundel, Lewes, and Petworth, where we didn’t stop, then on to Winchester. Somewhere along the way, something clicked—I felt a sense of belonging or something. Shortly after this, we passed from Sussex into Hampshire.

Got into Winchester after driving through beautiful South Downs Hills, many with ripe wheat. Winchester beautiful when we arrived at 5 P.M.—full sun. Got our b and b and walked to cathedral as it closed at 6:30. Then to St. Swithuns church and afterward to Wyckham Arms pub for country paté and cider. After that to St. Giles Hill, where we saw sun setting over the city. Then along Itchen River to b and b.

Tenterden, Kent, 13.5.06: Cornish Pasties and Fifty Springs

Jan Morris says that the Welsh word “cwm,” for a deep dell, is pronounced “coom,” just as “combe” is pronounced in Somerset. Welsh influence in the West Country dialect? Or perhaps Cornish. Isn’t it from the same Brythonic roots as Welsh?

Thinking last night of those Cornish pasties we enjoyed with Chuck in Canterbury, in a lane leading towards the cathedral from the High Street. That moment—the sitting, the cool air when it was torrid inside, the savory lunch—is imprinted, jewel-like, on my memory. Steve’s mint and lamb pasty was good, but I must say, I enjoyed my traditional one.

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Housman, “Shropshire Lad”: “To look at things in bloom fifty springs are little room.” Indeed. The eye does not tire of looking, the ear of hearing, or the hand of touching.

Fakenham, 4.5.06: Lemon Posset, Women's Rights, and Lessons for Pilgrims

Writing now from Fakenham in Co. Norfolk. The last two days rather a blur.

After Chris left us on the morning of the 2^nd, Steve and I went to the library in Canterbury and found its local history section to be closed until the afternoon. So some aimless knocking about Canterbury—

To find a travel kit of multicolored thread for Trudie Reed, who says she’s found this no place else but in England. So off to Marks and Sparks, which didn’t have it. But we did buy things for supper—egg salad and watercress sandwiches, chicken and ham, ploughman’s. Found nice juices—raspberry and orange or strawberry and orange. And tomatoes and a mix of greens—rocket, watercress, and spinach.

We did find the thread at a sewing shop. Turned out it’s called a plait.

And suddenly I look up to admire an elephant—some cast metal; the b and b lady has many of them—that’s catching the morning light in our breakfast nook. And see the lampshade above it, which says, “Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum et in via peccatorum”: another pilgrim moment.

We are definitely in via. And the way I seek on this pilgrimage—should seek—is that of the righteous and just . . . .

And back to Canterbury. Found that scented shelf paper we’ve seen only in the British Isles at the sewing shop. Got some lavender-scented boxes. Nice to go out of one’s way to fulfill the needs of someone else and happen on what one needs oneself: pilgrim, take note.

Then on to have a bit of lunch at a Cornish pasty place off the High Street. The day was close, and the air at the outside tables felt good. We sat and talked. To talk with fellow pilgrims often tiptoeing through a minefield. I must learn to be more aware (ware: Warten, watch?) of the needs and feelings of others. Another gift for which I pray on pilgrimage.

Then several hours of research in the local studies room of the library. It was mostly misspent time, except that I was able to obtain the originals of Dorothy Gardiner and Gregory Whatmore on William Watmer the mayor.

And they had bits and pieces of information no one had abstracted, which fill in gaps re: the Wynnes. E.g., once Robert and his wife died of plague, it was confirmed within three weeks and the house was sealed, a guard placed at its door. William Watmer had apparently removed the children by then. Their clothes had to be burned—hence the details in some family histories about local merchants providing clothes (for which the estate paid).

And that Watmer’s papers have survived and are in the Dean and Chapter library of the cathedral. The house on the north side of the High Street west of Mercey (from “mercer,” I find) Lane was owned by the Dean and Chapter.

That the “Scottesden” referred to in the Watmer lineage for arms is Stottesden in Shropshire. William Watmer left there as a young man to go to Canterbury, evidently because—Whatmore suggests—Robert Wynne had preceded him, going with William’s sister Frances. Whatmore says the Wynnes were from Canterbury.

The papers of William Watmer form the bulk of Consistory Court records of Canterbury in the early 1600s, and of dispositions from that period.

Picture emerging: when Charles was killed, there were riots in Canterbury in 1647 when extreme Puritans sought to suppress Christmas. In 1648, more riots. The man who ended up with the Wynne house—his name is in one of the articles; they’re not in front of me—was a Puritan who sought to mollify the extreme faction and was consequently arrested. The 1648 riots were caused by the court returning no true bill found in his case.

He became a Royalist in reaction and died within the year. Surely all of this—coupled with the fact that the mayor Robert died in debt—forms the background to Robert Wynne’s decision to head to Virginia.

And then there are the ties to the Randolphs, multiple ones, through both the Wynne and Epps families, that would have helped him in Virginia. The Randolphs seem to have had connections both to Massachusetts and Virginia, and a turbulent career in the former, which leads me to think that they were not thoroughgoing Puritans.

The picture I get of Kent is of a county much divided in the war. Hardline Puritanism throve in east Kentish places like Biddenden. Canterburians had a vested—an economic—interest in the business of pilgrimage and some must have run afoul of Henry when he sought to suppress the cult of Beckett.

It was a divided area that, by the end of the 17^th century, was a bare ruined choir—something on which Pepys comments.

Well, what more to say? A nice meal—the sandwiches, raw vegetables, and crisps—in our room that evening. I was excessively tired—heat, constant walking, lingering jet lag.

Next day, a quandary. There’s an Epps tomb in St. Clement’s church, Old Romney I’d have dearly loved to see. There’s Ashford, where the Slomans and Epps lived.

But that would have been to take us south when we needed to go north, and we found the Kentish Studies Society archives—to which the Canterbury library kept nudging us—was in Maidstone, east of Canterbury and on our way to Walsingham.

So we forewent Romney and Ashford and went to Maidstone. Where I found a baptism record, 1620, Ashford, for a Mary Sloman who has to be Mary Poythress Wynne.

And where I found the 1619 and 1663 Watmer pedigrees. The first is when William obtained a coat of arms by tying into the Watmough family of Ecclestone.

The second is his son Giles’s pedigree, showing the Randolph connection. I found in both books the Randolphs, Epps, Petts, etc., and copied multiple pedigrees. Amazing, the extent to which those Virginia families were—and would have known they were—cousins.

As we walked to the Kent archives—we’d managed to park only three blocks or so from them, not knowing we were close—we passed a house that had a statue of a nun in old habit holding a cross, facing out the ground floor windows.

On our return, Steve photographed her. As he did so, I saw in the upstairs window a Virgin Mary. As Steve snapped photos, I saw a shadowy presence looking out the window, and then a witch-like face glaring as she opened the door.

Pilgrims: beware. What appears to be a sign may be conveyed by a “witch.” Things are never as they seem. And grace may arise from unexpected places.

Then on—an interminable trip. We hit terrible traffic, a slowdown, skirting London. Only to find the M11, our main road north, was closed. So on to unexpected byways (pilgrim, take note), wending and winding, anxious about a bed to sleep in and a meal, since we’d had only breakfast earlier in the day.

Then, after driving through scrubby and slightly forbidding forest, past barren-looking fields of sheep, and into Fakenham, we stopped at the first b and b we saw. They had no room, but called a place called Smith’s Cottage on Smith’s Lane.

They recommended a pub at Colkirk (pronounced “coker”) for a late supper. Steve had steak and ale pie, Chuck and I fish and chips and peas. We finished with a lemon posset so buttery it was like eating butter beaten with lemon and sugar. Otherwise, food not distinguished, but the pub was very restful, clean, quiet, in a quaint little village I’d love to explore.

Interesting conversations. A woman, two men, the barkeeper (a woman). Woman at bar tells the group she’s half Spanish. The older of the men says he’s a typical English mongrel, too: he’s half German and partly Scottish.

One thread seemed to be about a soap opera they were watching, which has a repressive Christian character—a vicar?—who thinks the Jews should be killed. That led them to a conversation about how the Christians often betray Christian values. And that led to a protracted discussion of women’s rights and how women (barkeep’s contribution) have no option in today’s workplace except to defend themselves.

Canterbury, 2.5.06:: Pinx and Moving Baptismal Fonts

If a liturgical gesture can bear such freight, our pilgrimage began in earnest yesterday at evensong at Canterbury cathedral. At which a group of gentlemen from the states were welcomed and prayed for. At which all pilgrims and the Queen were prayed for.

At which the most enthralling little boy—not English-looking in the blond and stolid sense that will all too soon turn to beef and port wine complexion, but in a pixiesh way, dark hair and dark expressive eyes—sang with his heart. His mouth rounded out to every O, his hands could not remain still, his head and shoulders moved to the music in a way I imagine the choir master would seek to suppress as outré.

In which Chuck and I both imagined the beedle as a witch. She kept escorting people—the lectors—down the choir hall to the reading stand, a silver wand (the mace, I imagine) in her hand, held precisely forward as if it clove the malicious air ahead of her, warning it to behave itself. Her black robe and secretive half-smile fitted her to a T.

Steve had just said—coffee in a bakery on the High Street—that we should try to imagine our own religious spectacles as if seeing them for the first time, new-minted eyes.

I did so with the witch, and saw not some seemly Christian show, but something distinctly ancient Egypt, thaumaturgic and a little wicked simultaneously. She definitely spiced up what would otherwise have been a rather stuffy 45 minutes of prayer and praise.

And what did I feel, think of, through it all? I’d like to say I’ve received intimations—of meaning, of a direction for pilgrimage, of a roadmap for life’s journey, of the sense that there is a roadmap.

I felt tired, back racked by seats designed to keep a body bolt upright. I felt self-conscious, as I always do in church services in which one faces a watching group across.

Some lines moved or amused me: the psalm that prayed we be mended in all our ways (there is nothing now about me that doesn’t need mending); the prayer for peace that told God only God can fight to make peace; the muted English O Phos Hilarion, ushering us into the muted light of a beautiful English spring evening.

I felt like a pilgrim: befuddled, weary, praying to see the way, the next step ahead; praying for strength to take that step; aware of all the others in the ark, each needy in his or her own way.

And then we walked to dinner in an Italian restaurant (run by Spaniards) in the High Street, called Ark. Where the tables were too close and we were unlucky enough to sit beside one of those smug middle-class English couples who imagine themselves more urbane than they are. Who smirked when they heard us talk. Who smirked solely because we are Americans, a private joke of such self-professed urbane middle-class couples.

Whom, I’ll admit, God help me, I played with a bit by recounting the story of how I saw Ellen’s family treated in the Yale Club—solely because they were Italian, working-class, not one of us.

I saw that my words reached her ears, at least, and bit a tiny bite out of her imperturbable superiority, such that they didn’t know where to put “the” Americans in their catalogues of amusing creatures. Such that he decided to employ the oh-so-banal trick of calling us crazy, Steve said, who saw him twisting his finger around a circle outside his ear, the secret smile turned to more openly dismissive secret hand signals.

And my God, why did I—why do I—even care? She had a moustache and a too-tight pink bodice that no one in her right mind with such a figure and complexion would think of wearing. He had a frog’s mouth attached to pig’s eyes. They looked the embodiment of . . . stupidity that doesn’t know it’s stupid. I was heartily glad when they left, and also a bit at a loss to know to what next to turn my attention.

Catty? Or Chaucerian awareness that one’s fellow pilgrims are part of the hair shirt (and high drama) of any pilgrimage as one is no doubt in turn to them.

This was far from the whole day, and it’s backwards narrative. The day began with rain but turned to glorious sunshine as we drove to Whitstable. Which I thoroughly enjoyed, though our b and b owner dismissed it as a mere fishing village and some guidebooks I peeked into yesterday sniffed and said not anything in the town is worth seeing.

But I enjoyed the seaside, the oceanfront booths selling cockles and whelks, and pinx, and prawns (and crawfish tails?!). We sat and picked at little paper cups of these.

Rather, Steve and Chuck and I did. I had had a rubbery, gritty chaw of a thing or two and then relinquished the cups for some oversized shrimp cooked with no seasoning and served with vinegar. One was good. Two tasted off, and I have diarrhea today—as does Steve.

We also got to see the Mayday parade on the High Street, as we stood in the upper floor of a bookstore and looked out the window. There were people dressed as May trees, people in blackface (!) twirling in Morris dances and then running into the crowd to boo at bystanders. There was a bagpipe. It was glorious (well, the blackface was disturbing, but maybe I don’t understand it), and then it was over—a perfect, undemanding little interlude in a very pleasant morning.

Fishing huts. Bright painted doors. An art museum cum community center, with a young attendant who had designs cut into his hair on one side—pleasant warm brown eyes and a nice smile.

St. Dunstan’s. Where I touched the font in which Marlowe (and Robert Wynne the emigrant) were baptized. Where I had the fright of my life while the others inspected the Roper chapel and I sat quietly looking at the font.

And began to imagine I saw the top piece, a carved cathedral spire, moving ever so slowly. Where I convinced myself I was seeing things.

Where I think realized I was seeing it move both directions, which then convinced me I couldn’t be imagining what I was seeing. Where I ran running to Steve, who pointed out—oh that German mind for solid reality—that it was suspended by a pull thingy that would enable the rector to lift the top easily, and thus was twisting and turning even as it appeared to be sitting on the font.

Canterbury, 1.5.06: A-Maying and Moorhens on the Stour

Shall we go a-Maying with Corinna? If so, a wet a-Maying we shall have. Gray skies and mizzling rain this morning. We had planned to drive to Whitstable for the May Day celebrations.

Well, if one canceled an outing in England because of rain, one would no outings have. And it may be clear in an hour (only to rain again).

Fine evening walk yesterday along the Stour, where we saw a man and his son fishing for brown trout, which we could see in the stream. We watched to moorhens feed their chicks? Goslings? Ducklings? They waded into the stream on their bright yellow unwebbed feet, snapped up things with their scarlet beaks, and then carried the bits to the young.

Jet-lagged. Awoke wide awake at 2, had cocoa and read a bit, then slept to 8:30. Now getting up befuddled, throat sore, the persistent infection in my right ear picking up.

Oh, the walk. We walked into Canterbury from our guesthouse, which is near the University of Kent. It was a cool, sunny afternoon, nice for walking. Visited the usual tourist places, High St., the cathedral gate.

Either because it was a Sunday or the eve of May Day (which is a bank holiday), or both, there were booths and vendors all along High St. But we arrived just as they shut down.

And then to a pub for undistinguished pub grub—leek, chicken, and ham pie. And then back and to bed, exhausted, by 9.

Canterbury, 29.4.06: Pilgrimage and the Whole Grab-Bag Selft

Calling a trip a pilgrimage has this advantage: it frees one to let happen what will happen. I like that sense of freedom, of not having to decide from day to day what I should see and do.

Ironically, if one considers a pilgrimage a response to God’s guiding hand, it’s freedom one is giving up. One remains open, supple, disponible, responsive to a will transcending one’s own.

I’m not sure if—for a long time!—I’ve believed in that kind of puppet-master God pulling all the strings. Such a God is always male, and always a tyrant.

The only variation in these puppet-master theologies is whether they tyrant is benign or, well, tyrannical . . . .

Yet I’m loath to give up the idea that God guides us. Amazing things happen, “coincidences.” Doors open. Injustice is reversed. Flowers spring forth in the unlikeliest places.

I picture the God accomplishing this (with us) as a more feminine force, weaving the woof on the warp of our freedom. And with leading strings of love . . . .

Surrounded as I write this in Atlanta airport by a bevy of soldiers, all in camouflage. Where are they going? ON the flight from Little Rock, a soldier in regular clothes told Steve he’s headed to Puerto Rico “to help our boys down there.”

Why? Is something we don’t know going on “down there”? Is Bush’s response to his plummeting poll numbers going to be to beef up military presence in Latin America—in other words, while mouthing support for illegal immigrants, cynically to exploit our fear of contamination at the borders (Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger is so enlightening on that point).

Things—our culture—seem more militarized than I ever recall. And yet we’re not at war—not in the engrossing sense of World War II, in which the whole nation was involved.

The military presence is especially pronounced in every airport we go to. Again, entry points, orifices: a symbolic gesture to remind us to remain on guard, to remember that we now need Big Papa (God’s emissary) to guard and protect us.

The flight here: horrendous. Steve said he can’t remember being on one so bad in a long time. I don’t think I can ever recall such a flight. It made turbulence and rough air sound like warm milk beside a hot toddy.

Things feel apocalyptic now. People look . . . odd—either messengers sent to pass on a cryptic warning, or menacing watchers.

Of course, I realize this has much to do with my mental state. If so, what does that state (and what it opens me to) portend for pilgrimage?

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Somewhere in the Atlantic approaching England. I’ve slept little and fitfully, but what sleep I got was at least moderately refreshing.

Why pilgrimage now? Why me? At one level, the answer is obvious. I just am not who I was a few years ago.

Which is to say, not sure who I am . . . . Aging, moving to death, yes.

I’ve been through a wreck. I lived. I’m not quite the same, though.

I’ve had lesions detected in my lungs. They’re apparently benign. But. They’re there, and what do they mean? Intimations of mortality?

Above all, we’re facing a move I absolutely don’t want to make. And yet everything tells me I should do so.

If nothing else, “my” life is hardly in my control. And I need guidance, strength, clarity.

Pilgrimage has to be about a lot more. Pilgrims who set off on the road to Canterbury in the middle ages, for instance: just as I do, they surely brought a whole grab bag full of petitions and thanksgivings along with them.

They brought their whole grab-bag self, rejoicing, muttering, praying, cursing, scratching, farting, kneeling.

If Chaucer tells us anything, he certainly tells us that. He tells us they went a-pilgrimage as much for a change of pace, and of scenery, as for pious adventure.

And who knows what they found along the way, each of them? And what I’ll find?