Caveat Lector

David was so chuffed by the British Museum that he came home with all sorts of plans for the next day. We’ll walk down here and see that and then walk there and see those on the way, and then we can…

I thought he was, shall we say, overstating things a bit. So I started figuring out bus and Underground routes, thanks to free wireless and the Transport for London website, which is really amazingly useful.

Here’s something I didn’t know that you should if you’re going to London. Get an Oyster card before you go. Oyster cards will be familiar to DCites; they’re London’s analogue to the Metro SmartCard. In London, they save boatloads of money (because public transport, like everything else, is expensive: at roughly two dollars per pound, non-Oyster fare is three bucks per bus trip and six bucks per Tube excursion!), but it’s all but impossible to get one while you’re actually there. This site will let you grab one online, and you absolutely should.

So anyway, David didn’t even wake up on time to start his monster let’s-walk-all-of-London trip, so we got on the bus (with a bit of trouble owing to road construction around King’s Cross) and went to St. Paul’s instead. The kindly gent at the entrance decided without our prompting that we were students and gave us the student discount; I didn’t argue, as it’s true in David’s case at least.

The cathedral is lovely, and refurbishment efforts of late have done marvelously well. It’s hard to do “ornate” without landing at “gracelessly loud and tacky,” but St. Paul’s manages it quite nicely. Do, if you go, look carefully at the names on the various statues; it isn’t just old war heroes. “Is that the Sir William Jones? He’s got Sanskrit on his book,” I whispered to David. And sure enough it was. A linguist in St. Paul’s, who’d have thought?

A lexicographer, too; you may make your bow to a statue of Samuel Johnson. And writers (John Donne’s effigy is the most famous), composers, statesmen (as opposed to politicians and nobles) and of course churchmen, all sculpted in fine style, though some of the subjects might have been a tad shocked at the dramatic flying robes. It does give one a certain amount of hope for the world, the enshrining of great scientific and artistic minds in St. Paul’s.

The monument to Wellington? Is miles over the top. Grotesque. But that’s only to be expected, and it is to the cathedral’s credit that it’s just about the only over-the-top piece on the main floor. The Nelson tomb in the crypt has a ponderous dignity that I find preferable, even if the thing is much too large.

We climbed the stairs to the Whispering Gallery amidst a swarm of French middle-school students, who gleefully demonstrated the space’s notable (and very much functional) acoustic effect. What impressed me even more than that, though, was that Wren’s design didn’t give me the acrophobic wiggins, though the Gallery is definitely a wiggins-distance (thirty yards or so) above the floor. I felt perfectly secure, and enjoyed the chance to examine the mosaics from a closer angle.

The Stone Gallery, too, is worth climbing to. Be prepared for the knifelike wind on the exterior roundabout, but don’t let it stop you—the view of London is awesome. (And don’t pick a rainy day to go to St. Paul’s! We were very much in luck, as the day we went was clear as a bell.) David hiked all the way up the dome to the last gallery; I balked, fearing the acrophobic wiggins. He says there isn’t much in it; the exterior views are much the same as from the Stone Gallery.

The crypt is utterly fascinating; save some time to wander it. Again, one of the signal qualities of St. Paul’s is that later additions to it, such as the Churchill Gates, haven’t ruined it; later artists are either so awed by Wren’s masterwork or so micromanaged by cathedral brass that they don’t do anything stupid. This is a rare thing, and to be celebrated.

I did like Wren’s own epitaph: “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice.” That’s an artisan proud of his work, that is, and he had every right to be.

We picked up some sandwiches from the nearby mini-mart, and I discovered Wensleydale cheese, for which I shall have evil unholy cravings as long as I live. (It was probably faux Wensleydale, but oh well. Does anybody import the real thing? I would pay fancy prices to try it.) We then wandered down past the Museum of London, the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange, and other bits of architecture and statuary until we got to the Tower of London.

It was far too late to go in—quite dark, though that happens early in London in late November—and honestly I think that’s just as well, because the place gives me the creeps. Tons of forbidding stone, tiny windows that hoard pain and despair, a Gormenghastly lack of architectural rhyme or reason… I have trouble contemplating human cruelty. I’ve lived near the Holocaust Museum for a year and a half now, and I can’t make myself go. I’m not sure I could tour the Tower for similar reasons. Sure, it spent a couple centuries as an inoffensive storehouse, but that doesn’t erase what it was before that.

We caught the tube back to King’s Cross and found a little hole-in-the-wall all-vegetarian Indian place for dinner. Absolutely no complaints; the food was excellent and the service kind. And so ended a day that turned out much less ambitious than planned, but probably more satisfying because of it.