While we perused the halls of the Victoria and Albert Museum, a grand-looking mirror caught our attention. It was part of the “Sizergh Toilet Service,” or a collection of silver objects named for Sizergh Castle, where they previously resided. Historians surmise the objects were made together by the same smith in 1680 and the thin description near the objects hinted that they may have been a gift from Charles II of England to the Norman-descendant Strickland family in the Lake District. All of the objects in the service were gorgeous, but the elegantly-framed mirror was its most arresting item.

We noticed that in attempting to recreate the history of the mirror for ourselves that we could not free our imaginations from our prior experiences: the movies and television shows that we had seen, the books we had read, or the history of Charles II’s extramarital affairs. All of these coalesced to inform our perception of what the mirror had meant for its original users. Our inability to form a past for this object separate from our own, modern, existence is similar to Dante Rossetti’s first interaction with the Assyrian “beast” in The Burden of Nineveh. Here, he confronts the object outside a museum and, out of the context of an exhibit, conjectures what its past may have meant, but in doing so he draws on contemporary culture, religion and shreds of knowledge about where the object was found.

Here, we will argue that objects such as the Sizergh looking glass, and others attributed historical significance yet devoid of context, like in a museum, serve as a medium to reflect one’s own experiences when trying to envision their meaning.

With respect to the mirror we examined, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s historical resources indicate that the actual looking glass would have been the most expensive part of the piece, but the large and ornately etched silver frame must have rivaled in price. The bigger, upper portion (a crown of sorts) of the frame depicted a tropical garden and a number people walking in its midst. The center of this crown bore a fountain with cherubim sculpted into its stem. Along the remaining three sides of the frame were other meticulous floral patterns, though bearing no distinct figures like the top piece. The mirror itself was not particularly large (almost something that one would use to apply cosmetics) and the service looked as if it were meant to be kept in a bedroom for the use of a single person.

Neither the mirror nor the frame had seen much wear, however: the glass and adjoining silver were in pristine condition. We wondered why this was and why the king would lavish such an expensive gift on the Stricklands. Together, we produced our own history of the piece, building on each other’s theories.

It is well-known that Charles II was taken to sleeping with other women aside from his wife: he acknowledged fourteen illegitimate children before he died. Perhaps, we thought, the Stricklands, who were often present at court because of their wealthy and landed status, possessed a daughter with whom Charles was enamored. Since he was a married man, he could not make overt gestures in court to show his fancy for Lady Strickland, and so he sent her trinkets. One can see the romance within the Sizergh looking glass. The silver work and pricey glass of the mirror would have been of the finest quality for the time.  Charles may have even had a hand in its design and dictated the scene that was to be etched on the top side of the frame, as two of the figures in the tropical garden appear to be stealing away like lovers.

But Charles’ advance was declined. Lady Strickland’s father caught wind of the service that had been sent to his daughter, and, desiring not to have her become one of Charles’ infamous paramours, had the service boxed up and stowed in the attic of Sizergh Castle. It could not have been returned to the king, for that would have been regarded an insult, and so it was removed from sight until discovered much later and donated to the museum.

We arrived at these conclusions because any object pertaining to Charles II involuntarily evokes our imaginings of his love life, which is readily visible in current historical accounts. This led us to think that the Stricklands may have had a daughter he tried to woo. Similarly, we saw a dramatic interjection by Lady Strickland’s father because that it is the action that we would have taken. In today’s society, it would be unthinkable to let one’s daughter be taken in as a concubine. Though, this was likely offensive in the seventeenth century as well, we have no way of knowing how the father would have reacted, or how he regarded women. He may have welcomed showers of gifts, in exchange for his daughter.

In The Burden of Nineveh, Rossetti contemplates the past of a great stone sculpture, something that resembled a winged bull with a human face, that he saw being transported into a museum in London. The “beast” arrived with no context, save that it was found in Nineveh and was somehow bound up with Assyrian history, yet Rossetti envisions its past. “On London stones our sun anew/ the beast’s recovered shadow threw./ Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown/ Such proof to make thy godhead known?/ From their dead Past thou liv’st alone;/ And still thy shadow is thine own/Even as of yore in Nineveh.” Here he muses, drawing on his historical and geographical education, that it might have been a god (because he has a god) and considers the type of society (because he had a society) over which the beast would have cast its shadow, because great monuments loom everywhere over London, commemorating various figures and pasts. We can see from this passage that the beast itself functions as a canvas for Rossetti’s thoughts as he tried to make sense of the culture that created it.

Likewise, we were also attempting to connect, not necessarily to the mirror itself, but more to the people who may have possessed it. But like Rossetti we will never know for certain, because our imaginations are constrained by our own lives. Ours and the poet’s experiences show that objects function as mirrors for ourselves—we impose an imagined past upon them, comprised of our own history. In this case, the Sizergh looking glass functions literally as a reflection of us as well.

It is impossible to accurately read an object’s history and users without some context. If we were able to see even how the Stricklands dealt with the service after coming to possess the pieces, like if they wrapped them in white sheets and hid them away or if they actually did adorn a bedroom, we would be able to speculate more precisely on the family’s feeling toward them. Alone, and set apart from their users and use in general, everything that we imagine the Sizergh looking glass to represent is subjective projection.

Above: the interior of Shakespeare’s Birthplace all done up with new fancy decorations. The kids love it.

Though never explicitly mentioning him by name, Henry James’ short story The Birthplace refers to the house in which William Shakespeare was born. There are several references in the text (“the home of the supreme poet, the Mecca of the English-speaking race”) that allude to the home as being the birthplace of Shakespeare. The piece operates as a critique of the public’s near-deification of the famous playwright, in which the characters refer to him as “Him,” the capitalized form typically reserved for God. Mr. Gedge, the protagonist and an honest man (as described by the narrative), takes a position as a caretaker and tour-guide to The Birthplace, but later finds himself questioning the morality of telling tales of Shakespeare’s youth, which, as he confesses to his wife, he fabricates. His historical embellishment is all but exposed by a young American couple, Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, who visit the house later in the story and Gedge is made to look weak, merely hawking lies for a living. James likely wrote The Birthplace to voice his own suspicion of the authenticity of Shakespeare’s works and the supposed history of his life.

Perhaps it was that I had read James’ piece before arriving in Stratford-Upon-Avon, but I despised The Birthplace, or what it seems to have turned into. I felt cynical and embittered during my whole tour there, though I did find the other historical locations around town, like Shakespeare’s grave in Trinity Church, to be much less offensive: they were not littered with kitsch.

The mere grandiosity of the visitors’ center that obstructs the entrance to Shakespeare’s alleged childhood home was highly annoying. It seemed to crowd out any sense of wonder I might have felt naturally and replace it with its own interpretation of what I should feel. Chiefly, I was irked that I could not walk straight into the house itself, but was forced through a kind of winding Disneyland of Shakespeare to watch a series of pompous introductory videos. These videos were probably the worst part of it all for me. Their purpose was to reassure everyone of the magnitude of Shakespeare’s impact on literary culture and that it all started at The Birthplace. They were full of deep, grandiose voices (to match the visitors’ center) declaring famous, and now cliché, lines from his works. When I finally did arrive in the house, I was shocked to see placeholder furniture and wallpaper everywhere. It was as if the house did not match the magnificence of the visitors’ center and so the “Shakespeare Birthplace Trust” felt the urge to dress it all up a bit. The resulting effect was that barely any of the original structure of the house was visible, but under a layer of new, tacky fabric. James’ story was on the forefront of my mind the entire time.

In the fourth chapter of The Birthplace, Mr. Gedge made known to his wife his concerns with the lies and folklore he generated for tourists:

“I haven’t wanted to worry you. But, you know, we don’t know anything about it…About His having been born up there. About anything, really. Not the least little scrap that would weigh, in any other connection, as evidence.”

In responding, Mrs. Gedge, apparently unbothered by their regular distortion of the past, is of the opinion that their lies generate an income and that their options to do anything but continue to tell them were few. Thus, James endeavors to say, the commodification of history degrades fact into legend and turns honest people, like Mr. Gedge, into peddlers of sensation.

Just like the Gedges, the modern Birthplace Trust has commodified The Birthplace into a twisted version of itself. Not only is one’s view of the house obstructed by the new furniture and hangings on the walls, one is forced to both enter and exit through gift shops. The videos, the Disneyland persona of the visitors’ center is all in place to make the house more of a conventional tourist destination, rather than allow the house to retain its own identity.

None of this is to say, however, that the videos and furniture are inaccurate interpretations of history, as Gedge’s information was. I am not in a place to tell. Presumably, the site has received input from enough archaeologists and historians to present an accurate version of events, but my gripe with the site is the fanfare of it all: the fact that I was unable to form my own impression, or even see, the house and the history it contained.

It seemed an obvious choice for me to make my journey out to Hampstead Heath. I wanted to feel the same sense of relaxation that Keats evokes in his poem Long In City Pent. His poem resembled my own experience with the city thus far: overwhelming in many regards and sometimes even makes me feel entrapped. The Heath offered a reprieve from the torrent of stimuli I faced when walking down Baker Street and through Hampstead town. It was very enjoyable to enter into an area where the land yawned out and I could finally find a space away from other people, and have time to make sense of everything that had happened to me in the past few days.

Georg Simmel pointed out that there is constant antagonism between the individual and society, and that, within metropolitan life, the individuals’ motive is to resist being swallowed up by the “social—technological mechanism” and made uniform. We have a drive to assert our self-worth and our minds against the collective. Within the city, I have found, like Simmel, that it is difficult to do this, because it is so easy to be swept away by the “external stimuli” of society and forget what you are doing. I realized, while sitting on the Heath, that when I am surrounded by city-life and busy people, all with their own quiet agendas, my ego appears to vanish and I merely observe situations around me.

Keats likely felt the same way. In Long in City Pent he describes how being in the city too long causes mental fatigue, and how freeing it is to finally look upon the open sky, which, on the Heath near his house, is not crowded out by tall buildings. What is striking about that place is the suddenness with which the overbearing city and cityscape give way to wide-open fields and the sounds of birds. All stimuli scale back into something tolerable. I could immediately see why Keats tried to capture the giddiness of stepping into a quiet space after being in a densely urban environment. This giddiness is quite obvious in the poem: “’Tis very sweet to look into the fair/ And open face of heaven,- to breathe a prayer/ Full in the smile of the blue firmament.” He describes the happiness to be in nature as rooted in the feelings of relaxation and respite, or the opportunity to fritter a day away reading a book (a “debonair”) and forget about the city.

While momentarily happy and thankful to be away from roaring traffic and yelling pedestrians, I differed in that I did not (could not) sink into a distraction like my phone or a novel, I was already preoccupied with my own thoughts. So, I sat on a bench I found in the middle of an open field facing a wood, to reflect on my experiences in the town. I could not forget the hundreds of separate situations I saw while walking on the sidewalk: kissing couples, angry construction workers, frenetic taxis, dull-eyed and pitiable homeless people mumbling at passersby. Each of these things seemed to be happening at the same time and they all aroused in me emotions of happiness and sadness in rapid succession. It was impossible for me to put these out of my mind during the two hours I spent on the Heath.

Keats portrays the city and nature as being opposites: the town being like a cage, where one is “pent” up, and nature somewhere where one can be set free and be at peace.  To him, it is a place to be whimsical and without worry.

I determined that my mental life in nature is still busy like in the city, however. Though I did find that the Heath was somewhere that I could hear myself think, which I appreciated, I also found that I carried my city-experiences with me and revisited them like dreams. It was not freedom entirely—I could not focus on the beauty in front of me or even read a book. Regarding this, Simmel also makes the point that, after some time in metropolitan life, one becomes blasé to the city and the onslaught of stimuli. This still has not happened to me though, and so I am not able to completely stow my urban experiences and just enjoy the countryside.

Fortnum and Mason

The Royal Academy of the Arts

A big roundabout near Oxford Street

Another roundabout near Oxford Street. In the background is The Crown Pub, where we stopped in for a couple pints.

If you couldn’t tell, Charing Cross Tube Station. My buddy James’ blurry face is in the foreground.

Hampstead High Street

Hampstead Heath, bottom of Parliament Hill

Top of Parliament Hill, Hampstead Heath

George Orwell’s House! From 1903-1950.

Yesterday, we migrated up to Regent’s College and settled ourselves in our dormitories. I’m staying in Reid Hall, which dates back to the Victorian era and is set within one of the most gorgeous parks I’ve ever seen.

The college is nestled in the flora and fauna of a vast swath of public land. We’re next to a large “boating lake” and, while it was sunny today, we saw a fleet of paddling boats on the water, crewed by parents and children. It was idyllic.

I woke up this morning, took a shower, and then ate a sumptuous breakfast–nowhere in the United States is college food this good. While feasting, I caught up with some of the other students in my group and we regaled one another with our tales from the previous evening.

I befriended a group of Michigan State business school students and we strolled around town trying to convince other people that we were British. A good night, but no one really believed us, probably because British youth don’t typically try to prove their citizenship to random folks on the sidewalk, while giggling.

Following breakfast, I went with another group to Westminster Abbey for an Anglican service. I mostly tagged along for something to do, but as soon as we were seated in the Abbey, one of the most beautiful interiors I’ve ever seen, I was awe-struck. The vaulted ceilings surge up violently tall and impress upon you the weight of their history and grandeur. It’s all gold-guilded and highly (extremely) ornate.  Tombs are everywhere within the Abbey, and standing over each one is a sculpture of the person who died. William Blake was in there somewhere I believe, or at least his bust. It was an odd feeling, watching the 1000 year-old service surrounded by droves of the living and droves of the dead. This odd feeling was compounded by the choir, whose magnificent refrains surged upward like the building itself. It seemed as if the voices and the stone were made for each other. Below is a link to a video of the choir, to give you an idea of what I mean:

Following this, we walked around the Thames and passed by the London Eye. Another Utah student, and I went off on our own and ended up talking about The Fountainhead for an hour and a half on an embankment cafe.

Later, we headed over to Camden–which I’ll devote an entire post to later. It’s this crackling bohemian neighborhood to the north of Regent’s Park.

I hope this pace of walking, photography and writing is sustainable and I don’t sink into apathy as I acclimate to my surroundings.  I’ve been running on minimal sleep and have, thus far, largely ignored the academic components to my being here (readings and the like).

-English construction workers are everywhere in this part of town, mostly renovating very old apartment complexes. The weird thing is, only like one or two men in each crew seems to do anything at any given point in time. Most of them seem to mill about and smoke.

-London makes you feel a billion emotions at once. There’s so much going on everywhere, all the time. Jet lag may take a few days to cure, but the sensory adaptation that Londoners acquire takes years I’m guessing. I probably looked like a total weirdo with my head bobbling around like one of those dashboard ornaments. The people, the architecture, the history, the public works all caught my attention at the same time it seemed. I got distracted by some youths making out on the sidewalk and then raised my eyes to see a mumbling, bleary-eyed, homeless man hobbling toward me. I had my headphones in and didn’t make eye-contact, though. I pretended like I didn’t notice him. Londoners, from what I can tell, do the same thing.

-I’m so tired right now that I can barely keep my head up as I write this. Future posts shall see my thoughts assembled more coherently.

Just got in from salt lake.  It’s awful humid though, and I’m encircled by sweaty people with British accents at the gate, waiting to board the flight to Heathrow.

Our descent/landing was pretty turbulent and it got my adrenaline going pretty hard.  Not sure when I developed such an uneasiness about flying. I remember when I was 5 and it all just seemed like a rollercoaster. I don’t know, I probably started fearing flight when I figured out that humans are fallible. I can’t control these horrendous imaginings of the wings tearing off and the like.

Well the line for security is obscene, but spirits are high. Who knew there’d be such a rush to leave salt lake on a Thursday morning. As far as I know there’s nothing especially significant about this day. I’m surrounded by Vietnamese people as I write this. I like them because they talk at a low constant volume, as opposed to the classic suburbanites in front of me. Did I mention that I detest the Transport Security Administration?