UK
The Waddesdon Manor Harp
In case you don't know, I wrote about 18th century French harps for my M.A. dissertation and I am obsessed with theses things. LOOK AT IT. It's so unnecessary and unapologetic. And I appreciate an instrument that is a pain in the ass: difficult to play, delicate to move, and expensive as hell. And it does. Not. Care. I love these harps, and I recently(ish) went and visited this one at Waddesdon Manor because I am nosy and like making harp friends.
I went with some friends to Waddesdon Manor in Aylesbury, which is the home of the British branch of the Rothschild family. Basically they were nouveau riche and lookin' to spend some serious cash on all kinds of 18th century stuff that all the fancy people were into, so the house is full of expensive Louis XVI furniture, Sèvres porcelain, and lots of Reynolds and Gainsborough portraits they bought (these are two of my favorite portrait artists and I DIE when I see any of their work). Cue the gasp of horror at having to BUY a Gainsborough of another nobleperson and not just snapping your fingers to get him to come paint you at your house! LIKE A PEASANT!
Can we take a minute to appreciate the soft boudoir lighting they had going on in here?
Anyway, I slunk around the corner of one of the main rooms while cursing the Rothschilds under my breath for hogging all the Gainsboroughs and Reynolds when I spied this golden beauty lurking in the back of the room! I have become such a freak that I generally flinch when I see a vagely triangular shape because I think it's a harp, but I could tell from far away that it was from the 1780s and I wanted to be its friend. So I emailed the curator and asked to come see the harp, and she said to come on a Monday when the Manor would be closed to the public. Cut to me in a black cab at the front gate of the house politely shouting into an intercom that I was not a sueprcreep and had an appointment to come legitimately creep in the house. They finally let me in and the curator met me in front of the house and snuck me along some corriders to get to the offices where I left my things, then we descended into the darkness of the public rooms where all the curtains were shut and lights were turned off. It was dark and spooky and I was alllllll over it. And there were ZERO tourists there, unlike when I visited the first time and it was so crowded in some rooms I almost fainted.
Now, I don't know much about this particular harp because I wasn't able to open it up and take a peek inside the soundbox to check for the maker's plaque. I can tell you that it's a typical single action pedal harp in the French style, which was popular from about 1760 to 1815 or so. Single action means you can press each pedal down once, so there's a starting position and a raised position (natural and sharp notes); each pedal operates a hook on all the strings of the same note to change their pitch. They came from Germany to France at the beginning of the 18th century, and by the 1780s (when this was most likely built) they had become golden Rococo masterpieces. This particular single action had been heavily conserved and was pretty fragile, so I don't blame them for not letting some rando bust it open (or even touch it). But also, OBSERVE THE GOLDEN LOVELINESS.
It's missing a pedal and someone was a little rambunctious with the soundboard and snapped it, but otherwise is in great shape! It can't be played, but that's pretty rare for harps this old; you would normally have to spend a lot of time and money on maintenance generally, and usually what happens with these is that they end up in the attic and get eaten up by bugs or else the string tension slacks and it affects the wood. It's much easier to keep something like a bassoon or violin playing for 200 years because they are much less fragile, smaller, and aren't full of iron mechanisms that get crusty after a while of not playing them. You have to oil that shit! Instruments are high maintenance children. Old instruments are the kid from Problem Child--definitely the Devil but also kind of cute so, whatever.
I would talk more about the history of the harp, but that's another post in itself! I had to try VERY hard not to just copy+paste my dissertation in here, because it's SO INTERESTING. Would you guys be interested in a harp-history post? With lots of pics?? Maybe multiple posts? LET ME KNOW!
Angus Walk: South London Green Chain
On my MA course, we were often graced with the presence of Angus, a visiting lecturer from SOAS. At the end of the course he taught--and as often as we could politely beg him for another--he would plan a history walk around London, where you would learn more from him just talking than you had ever had learned about anything in your life. How all that information stays in one person's mind, I don't know. Anyway, Angus usually takes us on London city tours and tells us all about architecture, companies, politics, and famous people; we'd had a City of London, East London docks, and London cemetery tour already. This time, we asked him to do a South London tour of all the greenest green spaces down there. There is a path called the Green Chain that is full magnificent tree-lined and cemetery-filled walking paths to be had south of the river, and Angus walked (sprinted) with us right through it
Now, to my American friends, prepare yourself for some English pronunciations! As you can see on the sign, we were wandering through Sydenham (Sih-denum) Hill, one of many gorgeous leafy green areas of Southern London which used to be the Great North Wood before it became a trendy neighborhood in the 19th century. We also wandered through the boroughs of Southwark (Suhtherk) and Lewisham. Dulwich (Dull-itch), or Deepest Darkest Dulwich as my friend calls it, is around there as well, and that's where the Horniman Museum and Gardens are. The museum has a musical instrument collection, and I once went to a really awesome ethnomusicology conference on instruments there with my friend who spoke about mouth harps in Norway (and totally shut down some jerk who didn't understand why people liked mouth harps). Anyway, even the suburb parts are green like this, and there are tons of gorgeous cottages, a great place for 18th century paintings called Dulwich Picture Gallery, and all the wonders of English leafiness within Overground distance of all your favorite London things. Why are people so hung up about living or visiting friends 'South of the River'?? EMBRACE IT.
There were lots of hills and stairs involved and I got a good workout because I was stupid and decided to run up all the stairs, so I was sore the next day. But I digress. We passed lots of WWI cemeteries including Nunhead Cemetery, one of the Magnificent Seven of London cemeteries. It's Victorian, like almost everything around here, and was opened in 1840. It came complete with an Anglican church but it lost its roof in a fire, so now it's just open to the sky.
Bye for now, my friends. There is more Englishness to come!
Canterbury Cathedral
This is a special ghost edition of Eve Loves Things: Canterbury Cathedral! This way for 100% real ghosts and ghost photographs which are in no way a result of a smudge on my camera lens.
My friend had finished her MA and was heading back to the States, so we decided to go on one last day trip to Canterbury. It was full of old things and old creepy ghost feelings, as you can see in the 100% authentic ghost photography which is, I repeat, not a drop of water that landed on my lens when it was raining.
So much scrolling! Listen, Canterbury in incredible. I've seen a lot of gothic cathedrals, but this one was so huge and impressive it was terrifying. Because the crypt is above ground, the cathedral has several floors in the centre, and because they don't get any light it feels outrageously dark and spooky, which if you ask me is half the point. Granted, the point of many gothic churches was to fill them with light by using so many windows and light-coloured stone, but also I think it adds to the whole life and death vibe of a Christianity that communicated more through imagery than text. When you had lots of illiterate churchgoers, you had to remind them what's what by putting gargoyles and stuff on your already horrifyingly large church-tomb.
Also, Canterbury is actually for REAL haunted with important Christian ghosts. Thomas Beckett was the archbishop of Canterbury and was having a tiff with king Henry II about the churches' rights. The king sent some soldiers to the cathedral and they cut Thomas' head off where he was kneeling to pray, which is a pretty cheap shot. After that he became a huge Christian martyr and saint, and tons of people made pilgrimages to Canterbury to see his relics and hope that some of their voodoo magic rubbed off on them, cause you do NOT mess around with relic-magic.
Anyhoo, remember when you had to read The Canterbury Tales in high school English and probably regretted your entire life? They were written about people coming to the Cathedral to hang out with the crypt of Thomas Beckett. People came to the cathedral for hundreds of years, until Henry VIII destroyed Beckett's shrine when he was generally pillaging all the Catholic churches in England, because he was a JERK. I mean, take their money if you want, but leave the super old crypt for posterity at least!
I have to say, my favorite part of any medieval cathedral is the cloisters. I'm fairly sure I was a monk/nun in a former life because when I walk around cloisters I feel like I belong there. This also happens in libraries, which is where you spend most of your time if you're a fancy monk copying manuscripts. And I would have been the fanciest monk, dammit. Or actually, the apothecary monk, because you were basically a witch, and I think I was also a witch.
Coming back to reality, the cloisters were gorgeous and the sun was very polite and came out when we were walking in them. The grass was VERY GREEN, and I think you aren't allowed to walk on it to preserve the greenness. The cloisters must have been hard place to live but also a relatively safe one, since the church more or less protected you and fed you and such, although I can't imagine things were champagne and caviar unless you were the archbishop and you probably ignored most of the rules about humility and poverty and just threw DOWN at monk parties whenever you had the chance. At least that's what I am led to believe after reading The Name of the Rose, which I definitely recommend if you like reading murder mysteries, stories about monastic life, and if you don't mind having obscure mystical text titles in Latin thrown in your general direction whilst you read.
University of Cambridge
I just went for the cheese scones at Fitzbillies.
In September I went to a musical instrument conference at the University of Cambridge. The conference was hilarious because it was partly organised by the Institute of Acoustics, and apparently a lot of the academics researching and writing about instruments are physicists and astronomers because they know about sound bouncing around in a conical shape and such. Half of the presentations were lots of math equations up on a Powerpoint slide and I was a little terrified, but there were also some insane 3D scanning and renderings going on.
Now, there are two things I think about when I think of Cambridge. The first is my friend Denys, who studied abroad there for a year and who lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts while she was at MIT. The second is Brideshead Revisited, or else every other kinds of early 20th century novel about sad privileged white boys being super sad because, you know, sleeping on a bed made of money is uncomfortable at times. Of course, now Cambridge is more than simply a posh boys' club; women can go to Cambridge now and it's full of super smart, terrifying geniuses like my friend. But lots of things stayed the same and the whole place is very weirdly historic. The river is a big thing, and there are lots of flat boats you can rent (they call it punting) to pretend you are in Bridget Jones reciting Keats while drinking a Diet Coke. Or so I assume. Anyway, the river and its surrounding bits were really pretty and picturesque, and there were cows everywhere to complete the whole countryside motif.
The most medieval part (I think) is King's College Chapel, which has all the important components of high medieval architecture and what everyone on house-shopping shows on HGTV is looking for: high ceilings, lots of natural light, CHARACTER, and tons of storage. This chapel in particular has really amazing spindly ceiling bits that fan out like a plant. There's also some SERIOUS stained glass going on in there. The glass looks amazing when it's sunny out, and the whole place looks very bright and airy because the stone is light in color and the whole place is basically a glass box, whereas cathedrals are sometimes darker from their shape and exterior things blocking light (or dirty old stonework).
Another friend who went to Cambridge for undergrad was explaining all the rituals and traditions and such and I got a little overwhelmed, but she said that you sit in your College in the chapel, thus the awesome members only plaque above. She also directed me to Fitzbillies, the cafe in the first picture, where they serve cheese scones. I went back to that place way more times than I should have in three days, but I have no regrets about those delicious damn scones.
I really enjoyed wandering around Cambridge because it had plenty of funky old parts like alleyways and ancient pubs and such. It was nice too because I came right before all the new undergrads would get there, so it was pretty peaceful and I didn't get run over by a swarm of cyclists like I thought I might. I was really into the whole medieval thing. In fact, I met someone at the conference who showed me around Peterhouse, the oldest College at Cambridge with a dining hall that was supposedly the oldest building in England still used for its original purpose. SO MANY MEDIEVAL GOINGS ON!
And there will be even more medieval goings on in my next post: Canterbury Cathedral!
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