Waiting For the Riverboat

Visiting A Treasure House

We visited the Wallace Collection today, a museum of great art, furniture and armour collected by the 4th Marquess of Hertford and willed to the nation by his son. The entire collection is displayed in his London town home, a beautiful mansion, each wall of which is wallpapered in silk with floor to ceiling curtains in the range of 12 feet high. By chance, we happened upon the mansion as a concert on an antique harsichord was finishing up, giving us a rare opportunity to hear that instrument. We then wandered the galleries, continuing to find ourselves amazed as we came upon one well known piece of art after another. Our favorite story was of the purchase of Rubens paintings by the marquess. He bought them sight unseen because he thought he should. Then he put them in storage and never looked upon them. Other artists that impressed were Rembrandt, Hals, Titian, Van Dyke, Murillo and Champeigne. we all enjoyed looking at the large collection of bronzes and through them learning about the ten labours of Hercules. Olivia was particularly interested in landscapes, while Meredith made a game out of looking for Cupids and Psyches. In the house, we also stumbled upon the largest single collection of furniture owned by Marie Antoinette, which gave us an opportunity to discuss seriously with Olivia the moral dimensions of the excesses of the French Revolution versus the terrible suffering of the peasantry which led to it. She is pondering that still. We also saw the amazing collection of armour, and the girls got actually got to try some of it on (see photos above). Unfortunately, we had to leave as the museum closed, but for a small museum with free admission, it was well worth the trip.

A Couple Hours With the Lord Chancellor

Scott had a little chat today with the Lord Chancellor of England, along with 200 of his friends and intimates who also attended a lecture at the London School of Economics. The Lord Chancellor historically was one of the most powerful positions in the British government, serving as chief of the judiciary, a member of the Cabinet and speaker of the House of Commons. (Apparently, separation of powers hadn't been invented yet.) The most famous lord chancellor ever is probably Thomas More, whose head Henry VIII removed when More didn't support his break with the Roman Catholic church. The position is less important since reforms in 2005, and even after attending the lecture, I'm still a little unclear as to the positions exact functions. According to the current chancelor, Jack Straw, the position is "steward of the Constitution" which doesn't help much considering that the British Constitution is an unwritten document which gets interpreted by parliament as times dictate. I learned several interteresting facts at the lecture, notably that Straw is the first "commoner" to occupy the office since 1591, the last year Christopher Hatton was chancellor for Elizabeth I. I also learned that Britain has an incredibly well funded legal defense system (for which the Lord Chancellor is responsible), funded at f38 per capita (compared with f4 in Germany and f3 in France.) This is quite lucrative for some attorneys who specialize in defending the indigent, producing more than f1 million per year in revene. The Lord Chancellor went out of his way to make it clear this practice is nearing its end! Lastly, the lecture ended on a fascinating note. In response to a question, the Lord Chancellor strongly defended the use of closed circuit television and mandatory DNA registration as a necessary protection of Britons. In a most un-British way, he was nearly shouted out of the room by the assembled audience of lawyers and law and political science-students!

Pimp My Ride

Somebody in London thinks s/he is very funny. These stickers replicate official tube signs and are posted on various tube cars around London. Given the crowded condition of the tube at some times, it doesn't seem too far fetched!

Just Beat It

Even the most determined sightseers must pause occasionally to attend to domestic chores--in our case, homework, housecleaning, laundry and some shopping. The chore to which the girls were introduced today was rug beating. Far from thinking this was an awful task, they vied for a turn with the push broom to beat the dust from the carpet. For Olivia, it was an opportunity to take out some aggression--probably held over from her frustration with having to do multiplication story problems. In the end, all three girls did a good job with rug beating. They are available to be hired out when we come home! Not so much their Mom, who seized the opportunity of having three little girls outside to give the floor a needed scrub. Hey, Honey, if you're reading this, you're as sexy when you clean as when you draft legal documents and write wine columns!

Olivia's Journal: The Zoo

Yesterday we went to the London Zoo. It was very fun. My favorite was the tiger. Unfortunatele, they were layzy. I also liked the otters. We got to see them eat crayfish. They swam to the bottom, caught one, came back up and ate it alive. I took a video of it. I also liked the penguins, but I was amazed by how little there was of penguins. We also saw butterflys. We saw the world's largest moth. It looked fake, and it only lived seven days. We also saw gifraffes. They were very cool. Evry time the other one came in they would play around. My favorite thing was when I read a plaque that said the lion trys to get his neibors and eat them as an extra meal! It was a very fun day.

We See Our Girls In A New Light At Methodist Hall

We began our day in ecumenical fashion by attending services at the United Methodist Central Hall in London. This enormous church is next door to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. It was built in 1912 as the world headquarters of Methodism and served as the site of the first meeting of the United Nations in 1946. Its enormous central auditorium seats 2,352 although the space is designed to feel much smaller. The sanctuary is dominated by an enormous pipe organ around which the choir is seated, giving it all a rather Mormon Tabernacle-esque feeling. The service was nice enough, and the people were extraordinarily friendly, but what really surprised us was when the time came for the children to head off to Sunday School. To our surprise, all three of our girls were eager to go. They happily left Mom and Dad without a murmur and went off somewhere in the cavernous bowels of the building with the other children. Are these the same little girls who had to taken to their Sunday School room at St. Pauls Hammersmith by their parents and bribed heavily to allow us to leave? It was a moment of realization for us as to how much our little girls have grown emotionally in our two months in London and a moment of pride in just how secure all three of them have become.

The London Zoo: Fun But Oddly Disappointing

After church, Mom and Dad had a surprise for little girls. Much to Olivia's frustration, we wouldn't tell them our afternoon plans, but as we got closer she figured it out for herself. Our destination was the London Zoo at Regent's Park. Quite honestly, the zoo is pretty sad in every respect but price where it truly is the leader of the pack. It is old, tired and inferior in variety, animal care and physical condition to the zoos with which we are more familiar in Portland and St. Louis. Still, a monkey is a monkey, and the girls were excited to see plenty of them. They also enjoyed the gorillas, Bactrian (two-humped) camels, the giraffes, the otters, the pygmy hippos, the tigers and lion, the pigs, the wild dogs and the parrots. They really liked the butterfly house, and Meredith and Cecily were thrilled when the keeper worked with them to allow a butterfly to land on their fingers. Strangely enough, the zoo doesn't have a number of the standard animals one expects at zoos, such as elephants. London Zoo does operate another larger zoo outside London at Whipsnade where a larger collection of some 2500 animals is based. Getting to it, however, is a transportation nightmare which we and all but the most ardent of zoological tourists are not equipped. Given that the zoo seems to keep the best of its collection locked away where no one can see it, is it any wonder they are under financial strain?

Have You Ever Seen Animals Like These?

Cecily shows us a llama.

Olivia imitates the bearded pig.

Meredith mimics a pelican.

Quote of the Day

An actual conversation at dinner tonight, apropos of our trip to the zoo:

Dad: Olivia, what do you call a thing that eats other things?
Olivia: Ummmm, predator?
Dad: Right! Good job. And what do you call the things that get eaten?
Olivia: Clients!