Remembering London

Next month it'll be two years since I was in London. It would seem rather cliche to say that the time has flown by and I can't believe it has already been that long. I guess cliches are appropriate sometimes.

For college students, summer provides the often much needed opportunity to get away from university and visit various parts of the world, either to study, vacation, live, work, or just disappear. This summer is no exception and many of my friends are vacating Utah County to spend their time elsewhere - Matt, and Lauran & Dustin are studying in Cambridge; Kylie is already doing her study abroad in Senegal; Talia will be working in China; Marshall & Beth have moved to San Francisco; Bentley is back in the English countryside; there are others I'm forgetting at the moment, too. Me, I'm staying here and am happy to be here. There's enough to do right in Utah that I'm happy to stay here and relax, though I'll soon be off for the Washington Peninsula with the family for a week.

Seeing new and/or familiar places is really cool and I really value the opportunities I've had to travel as much as I have. With all that travel I often get nostalgic for the places I've visited and the experiences I had there. It's just that nostalgia that has me writing this post. I went back through my London pictures and was reminded of how great the city was, even if I preferred the English countryside to the big city. After spending several weeks traipsing across the English countryside for my study abroad, the ten days we spent in London was quite a change of pace and tone. London reminded me just how beautiful, even spiritual, the weeks prior to our stay in the city really were. Hiking the stormy and windy mountains of Scotland and northern England, wandering across the haunted and lonely moors, laying on the grass at Tintagel listening to the ocean as the moon reflected off the water, and watching the sun set from Tennyson Downs  are just a few memorable moments of my time in the English countryside.

But London brought its own joys and overall was a very enjoyable experience. Much fun was had playing ultimate frisbee in their parks with really crappy grass; seeing really sweet plays like Death and the King's Horsemen and Arcadia; visiting the very impressive museums (the Soviet propaganda room of the Tate Modern was particularly awesome); and buying cheap CDs from street vendors on Portobello Road, then wandering the streets listening to Parts & Labor's Receivers. London has a charm that is all its own. It really is a unique place to England and to the world. Like Berlin (my favorite big city), it has an intriguing tone that is both modern and ancient. There is history there, but it's a city that has not lost touch with modern society, containing both positive and negative aspects of our day and age. It's a rather frantic city, but, if you're looking, you'll find ample opportunity to slow down and relax. All in all it's a place that I have fond memories of. But when you visit London, be sure to take some time, or a lot of time, and head for the countryside.

I could continue, but I'd rather just show some pictures and be done writing. The pictures are more interesting anyway.

Enjoy your travels.

Gustave Doré's London: A Pilgrimage

Dore's London: All 180 Illustrations from London, A Pilgrimage by Gustave Doré

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What's fun about Gustave Doré's London pictures is that they are a great historical document of London life and they also often serve as a nice commentary on the quality of life in London at this time. Doré was really fascinated by London, and it is apparent that he is interested in both the positive and negative aspects of the city. But while his images might includes a wide range of topics and personalities, it seems that Doré was most often drawn to the poor and working-class, and many of his images captures with striking potency the reality and plight of the lower-class.

I guess some contemporaries of Doré were bugged that Doré had so many pictures of the darker side of London - the poor, the homeless, the working and living conditions for London's lower-class. Maybe these dissenters were also bugged by the fact that it's these pictures of London's dark side that really stand out. The sections on London's more prosperous citizens and their leisure and social activities (like "The Race", "The Derby" and "London on the Downs") feel a bit weak and weren't that engaging to me. But Doré also knows how to laugh at those upper-class citizens, too. Picture 105 of the Monkey House in Zoological Garden is a pretty amusing jab at those proper ladies pressed to the cage wire looking at the monkeys. The ladies look more caged than the monkeys do and I wonder who Doré thought was the bigger ape of the two groups.

I also love that the final two images of the collection are "The Angel and the Orphan" and "Infant Hospital Patients." Both images recall the injustices and sorrows attached to children, because of the social and cultural practices of the times. Children were too often severely exploited and abused, and I like that this collection ends with the children in mind. "The Angel and the Orphan" shows the angel cradling an orphan child while knocking on a door. The image recalls Christ's words in Matthew 25:35, where he states "I was a stranger and ye took me in." Christ explains this statement in verse 40 to mean that "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Thus, for a Christian community like London (or Doré's France), it is ones Christian obligation to care for and love ones neighbor. "The Angel and the Orphan" wraps up this nice collection by reminding a predominantly Christian population of their Christian obligation to their neighbors, and "Infant Hospital Patients" I think suggests that more can be done to "lift up the hands which hang down" (Heb 12:12). This was probably was not the message London's bourgeois culture wanted to hear. No wonder some people were bugged.

View all my reviews

Some images:

"Zoological Garden - The Monkey House"

"A Flower Girl"

"The Angel and the Orphan"

"Father Thames"