We left Edinburgh and drove back into England, stopping briefly in a rural area where we saw about 80 surviving yards of Hadrian’s Wall, built by the Romans around 120 to establish some border control and keep the Scots out.
That particular section of the wall is not overly impressive – the nearby St Andrew’s Church was built in 650, largely of stones taken from the old Roman wall – but I enjoyed seeing it for several reasons, beyond my usual love of history.
First, because borders – and border walls – obviously work. How did everybody know that 2000 years ago, but Brandon’s brain-trust doesn’t know that today?!
Second, because it reminds me of the cantankerous Scots, and their rebellious spirit that was passed down to my hillbilly ancestors in Appalachia. I love the idea that the Roman legions – the most intimidating military force in the world at that time – could whip some Scots in some skirmishes and battles, but they never stayed whipped.
Until finally even the mighty Romans threw up their hands. “Just when these highlander-billies seem like they’re beaten, they get all wound up on scotch and haggis, and they come back at us again. Screw it, let’s just build a wall. Our empire will stretch from Africa to right here, and beyond the wall it will be nothing but barbarians and bagpipes.”
And the Scots said, “Aye. You may have catapults and legions and the Emperor Hadrian, but we’ve got ‘the chieftain of the pudding race’! Haggis!!”
It’s funny to think that 1900 years ago, the Romans wouldn’t go into the highlands to mess with the Scots, and 100 years ago, the federal revenuers wouldn’t go into the hollers of Kentucky to mess with some of the same stubborn people. Good on ‘em.
Our other main stop that day was in the great medieval (and earlier, Roman) town of York. We spent half the day there, and it wasn’t enough. We saw the original city walls, and the Shambles – Europe’s best preserved Medieval street – but we spent most of our time in the spectacular York Minster gothic cathedral.
The size and beauty of the cathedral – it took 250 years to complete, and is one of the largest in Europe – is hard to describe. It would take days to fully appreciate all of the statuary and carvings, stained glass windows, and tombs and painted wooden figures throughout. We went down into a crypt area, and through a Plexiglas floor could see the remains of the original Roman fort walls, along with the first Norman church built there centuries later.
During the next day, we spent a lot of time on the road, but our main stop was a highlight for me: Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of the greatest of the dead white males, Shakespeare.
(Not to be confused with the whitest of the live white females, who is far from great: Lizzie Warren.) (#wemustneverstopmockingher)
The weather was beautiful, sunny and cool, and we did a drive through in the bus to orient us, and then were let out for about 2 hours. We took a walk to the river and then down a street past Shakespeare’s daughter’s house and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, down into a lovely park running along the river. We walked a shady path and watched a few rowers on the river, along with a swan.
At the end of that park was the Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried at the altar. (Unfortunately there was about to be a concert, so we couldn’t get up to the front to see Shakespeare’s grave up close.)
We walked back to the center of the oldest part of town, past the grade school that Shakespeare attended, and the spot where the new house that he bought when he returned from London as a financial success once stood. The dope who ended up owning it in the 1800s tore it down!
A few blocks further we saw the Shakespaw Cat Cafe, a quaint little place boasting a room containing some mellow rescue cats and a traditional three-course afternoon tea. My wife and daughter stayed there, while my brother-in-law and I walked on and took a tour of Shakespeare’s childhood home, which was as primitive and cool as you’d expect. In the museum along with it, I got to see a Shakespeare 2nd folio, along with a lot of other great artifacts.
We made it back to London by around 4:00, and after dinner we took a last, long walk around town. Our hotel was in Kensington, and a two-mile stroll down Kensington Road brought us to the Albert Memorial, an impressive tribute to Victoria’s husband, which sits on the edge of Kensington Gardens, across the road from the Royal Albert Hall.
The central memorial – focused on a guilded statue of a seated Prince Albert – also features allegorical sculptures depicting industrial arts and sciences valued by the Victorians, including agriculture, commerce, engineering and manufacturing. A frieze that circles the main structure contains images of famous sculptors, composers, painters, poets, architects and engineers.
The whole thing occupies a square, at the four corners of which are four more sculpted groupings of people and one large animal, each one symbolizing a part of the British empire. The Americas grouping features a bison, the African one a camel, the Asian one an elephant, and the European one a bull. (Google the memorial for views of the many sculptures.)
I had a great time on this trip, and packed a lot into 12 days. In addition to spending time with my two top-shelf daughters, I got to see Oxford, Stratford, 2 early Shakespeare folios, 3 Roman towns, multiple castles, half a dozen great churches, and 5 amazing border collies at work. I also ate haggis 3 times, and lived to tell the tale.
Plus, unlike during the CO and COW’s vacation (God bless them!), the country we were visiting didn’t burn down when we were there!
So we’ve got that going for us.
Since I’ve been home and had some time to reflect, three thoughts from this trip have been running through my mind.
First, I don’t think I’ve ever realized how small the UK is compared to America. My home state of Florida (I wasn’t born here, but I got here as soon as I could) covers just under 70K square miles. All of England is only 50K; Scotland is 30K, and Wales is only 8K. As the crow flies, London (in southern England) is only 300 miles from the Scottish border, and less than 500 miles from the farthest we got up into the Scottish highlands. (My north Florida home is 2500 miles from the Canadian border!)
A corresponding realization is just how much England/UK has punched above its weight throughout history. The idea that so many great writers, thinkers, builders and inventors lived here, and that so many great events of history took place here – all in a place not much bigger than my state – is mind boggling.
My second thought is an appreciation of the civilizational confidence on display in the sights we saw, in both religious and secular contexts. The Albert Memorial is perhaps the best distillation of the pride taken in a globe-straddling empire on which the sun never set, but the various palaces and castles also represented impressive accomplishments: Buckingham Palace and Windsor castle in England, Cardiff Castle in Wales, and Blair and Edinburgh Castles in Scotland all bespeak wealth, and military and engineering prowess.
The many churches we saw were also mesmerizing. The soaring ones like St. Paul’s and York Minster over-awe visitors with their sheer size and grandiosity, but I found that smaller ones, such as St. John the Baptist near Windsor Castle, Christ Church and the many chapels of Oxford, and Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland also had their charms.
The church I found most aesthetically pleasing overall was St. Andrews Presbyterian church in the small town of Fort William, Scotland. You can find a picture online of the interior of the church: stone walls containing deep-set gothic arches with stained glass, an elaborately decorated altar area up front, all beneath a gorgeous, steep wooden ceiling, supported by symmetrical arches of beautifully carved, dark-wood trusses and buttresses.
Even if I were atheist or agnostic, these places would move me. The amount of effort and dedication they took to create is hard to fathom. At York Minster I read about the building of the cathedral, and put myself in the shoes of a stone mason in the year 1220. He began working on the massive foundation of a cathedral that he knew he would never see completed.
If he were lucky, he might live to see one of the transepts completed in 40 years or so. But he knew that even if his children took his trade, his son would never see the building completed, and not his grandson, either. As it happened, the structure was finally finished in 1470, 250 years and 12 generations later!
My final thought is a melancholy one, involving the seemingly frivolous, unserious and less accomplished society of our time compared to theirs. The sublime churches are mostly empty of worshippers; the faith that built them and inspired the greatest artists and thinkers of many generations has receded like a once-beautiful and life-giving lake after a long and devastating drought.
As a Christian, that is a depressing thought, and an ominous one. Once the West’s civilizational confidence lost its foundational Judeo-Christian worldview, it rested less steadily on purely civic and patriotic foundations. As the decades have gone on, the left has chipped away and undermined those bulwarks.
Our greatest historical figures are denigrated as just a bunch of dead, white males. Our past accomplishments are sneered at as colonialism and oppression, healthy patriotism derided as jingoism and prejudice, and our virtues and sacrifices dismissed as dishonest cover for the trendy sins of this age (racism, sexism, whiteness, etc.).
I am praying for a return to an ordered and reasonable faith, but I can’t say that the prospects look good for that. Without it, I can’t see how we can counter the ascendant religions of the day – not just explicit religions like an aggressive Islam, but the atheistic equivalents of proselytizing religions such as socialism, “neutral” multiculturalism, or nihilistic materialism.
I don’t see any of those ideological systems yielding to the kind of desiccated, fractious, and insecure and self-flagellating secularism of our post-Christian societies.
When I was growing up in farm country, I heard the saying, “You should never eat your seed corn.” Today you live off of this year’s harvest, but you set aside what you need to plant for next year, which ensures your future.
I loved our trip, and I liked the people I met in England, Scotland and Wales. They’ve got rich history, beautiful land, and an amazing patrimony – architecturally, artistically and intellectually. I just hope that they are not living too much off of past glories.
But I’m afraid that they, as well as we in America, may be eating their seed corn, culturally speaking.
On the other hand, every generation is another chance to turn things around. And we are cautious optimists, after all.
The first step to improving things is clear, at any rate:
Biden delenda est!
Martin Simpson 