London Impressions

A light drizzle accompanies me as I stroll along the Victoria Embankment from the Tate Britain towards St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s a two and a half mile walk and I’m glad for the time to mull things over. Since I arrived to London, I’ve been wanting to walk alongside the Thames, to try and get to know the river the way I’ve gotten to know other rivers and streams. Though, even now it’s hard, for while following the embankment as I am, I’m still twenty-five or thirty feet above the water. And here, the distance makes a difference in the relationship. It’s more formal in a way. Not off-putting, but restrained. Below me, the water shifts between varying hues of brown and slate-gray, textured with subtle movement, subtle but not excited. Maybe not excitable. The sound I hear is the traffic passing and the rare occasional bird.  

I’ve just come from the Impressionists In London: French Artists In Exile 1870-1904 exhibition at the Tate Britain.

Just shy of two weeks ago, a gallery attendant at the Tate Modern had given me a complimentary pass to view it and I felt it would be bad form not to go. Also, I like impressionism.

He’d come over to where I was gazing at a Jackson Pollock in black and white because I’d said hello and smiled as I’d walked past him.

“Do you like Pollock?” he’d asked me.

“Yeah,” I’d said with a little shrug. “You don’t?”

He’d shaken his head.

“Who do you like?”

“I like Rothko.”

We’d chatted a bit longer, talking art and then he wanted to know what else I planned to do in London. “Just museums or maybe a little drinking too?” He pointed at the water bottle he was carrying. I couldn’t tell if he was hinting at something or just making small talk so I glided along noncommittally with the conversation. If he’d asked straight out, I might have gone with him for a drink. Maybe. I like making new friends. But he didn’t ask and I didn’t suggest.

After he’d pressed me a bit further, I’d given him a short list of my favorite artists and, as if I’d passed a test perhaps, he said, “Come on.” I followed, leaving Jackson Pollock behind, not sure where exactly he was leading me.

He guided me to the Rothko room. At the entrance, he gave me a complimentary pass to the Modigliani Exhibition there at the Tate Modern and the pass for the Tate Britain as well. As I accepted them with sincere thanks, I wondered how many passes the attendants get. And why he chose me to give these to. If, at the end of the day, he enjoyed policing all the art work, protecting it. The art aside, I don’t think I’d enjoy that as a job. While I pondered these details, we stood together at the doorway for a moment in silence.

“That one is my favorite,” he said, pointing to the left corner of the room.

I stepped in and looked at each of the nine paintings. I wasn’t being simply agreeable when I told him, “I think that’s my favorite too.”

Then he held out his hand, we shook and we exchanged names. That was it. After that, he’d left me to enjoy the Rothko and I did. 

I sat and stared at the paintings in the dim lighting. 

The murals featured there are more subdued pieces, less vibrant in color than the rest, and better known, of Rothko’s works, and the room’s light is always kept lowered to enhance the mood of the paintings. The piece my gallery friend liked best was a long upright rectangle of deep, hazy red set over a foggy purple background. With its open rectangular center, it looked like a portal, reminding me of the gate the children go through to get to Narnia in The Silver Chair. This red gate is a single portal, I thought. Only for one person. Or only for one person at a time. 

The painting to the left showed a black border with two rectangular openings over another purple background. Is it two portals for two people to get to the same place? Two portals for two people to get to different places? Is it two portals for one person to choose between? These were the thoughts I had while I sat there. 

As I left (my friend nowhere in sight), I paused and looked back one more time. The room and its art seemed an odd and fitting place for me to end my brief friendship with the gallery attendant. For (and maybe he knew), I’m still choosing to walk through portals alone.  

So, nearly two weeks later, still on my own, I make my way along the Victoria Embankment, walking past the London Eye, past a plaque for the playwright and poet W.S. Gilbert who was known best for his collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, past the obelisk gifted to the British Nation by the Viceroy of Egypt in 1819, past boats, and past bridges.

 

I’m thinking about art as I go.

The Impressionists exhibition did not disappoint.

During the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and in the ensuing distress, many fled France and sought safety in exile to England. The artists Pissarro, Tissot, Monet, Legros, Carpeaux, Corot, Daubigny, and Sisley are some of those who did and are featured in this exhibition.

It’s crowded in the rooms. This is my first weekend day to venture into a museum and at first, I’m put off by the shuffling of bodies and the straining it takes to get in front of the art. But then, soon enough, I get lost in the colors, images, and mood. 

I’m not sure I’ve seen works by James Tissot before. But his painting is so vivid I believe that the figures in his ballroom scene will begin to dance if only the musicians huddled in the corner would stop goofing off and begin to play. That the pink dress the central woman wears would be silk against my fingers if I reached up to touch the folds of it.

One of the explanatory signs next to this painting titled “Too Early” says that critics compared Tissot to Jane Austen. They went on to explain that he was, “the great painter of the humour of ‘polite society’ but of course Tissot also brought a French outsiders perspective to his assessment of the quirks of English Society.”

I love that.

A bit further in, there’s a room devoted to the London Fog and a few of the artists’ attempts to capture its effects on the cityscape, the sky, the water and then transfer all that to the canvas. Although American rather than French, James Abbott McNeill Whistler has a trio of paintings in this room. The sign next to one says that Whistler claimed ownership of the fogs, “My own lovely London fogs… I am their painter!” It goes on to say that Oscar Wilde, apparently an admirer of Whistler’s work, also went so far as to credit Whistler with the invention of fog, “There may have been fogs for centuries in London – I daresay there were – but no one saw them… They did not exist until art had invented them.” 

I feel this in front of the three Whistler paintings. As if I’m wrapped up in the fog, not able to see too far ahead of me, but just there, see, there, the faint figures of human and boat and dock.

I step closer to one, and am, not for the first time, amazed that a curving series of light green painted lines can create the image of a human. That I’m willing to believe that that human is real, well, real enough within the context of the painting.

From there I go into the next room which is all Monet. 

I love Monet. I always have. Maybe for the vibrancy of flower petal, sunlight, and reflection, for the soft edges of water lilies and buildings, for the sense of movement and mood, for the touches of orange, the dreamlike quality of beauty, for the mastery of water and sky, for all that and more.

In this room are some of the paintings from his House of Parliament series and a few from his Charing Cross Bridge series.

After spending some time going from one painting to the other, I sit on the bench in the middle of the room, elbow to elbow with two others, and gaze and think.

He’s a master, is the loudest thought in my mind. But why? I immediately ask. It’s impressionism. Just bits of paint and color. Just daubs and streaks of paint. These are not as “real” as the Tissot paintings were. Ah, yes, but these daubs of paint and color, look at what they do.

Photography is forbidden within these rooms. And in a way, I’m glad for it allows me to really look. To sit and look. To think and look.

Monet is a master because somehow with paint, and canvas, and brushstroke he captured mood. Somehow, I can hear the water from the paintings in a way I can’t even hear it as I walk in actuality beside the Thames.

The painted water – lit by the descending painted sun – is orange, yellow, and pink, and still, I feel as if I could reach in and come away with it dripping from my fingertips—not paint but water. In this dry room, I can almost feel the soft rain on my face, the moisture of the gathering fog. It’s the world I’d have gotten into if I’d taken the portal from Rothko’s deep red rectangle.

On the opposite side of the room, another painting shows the water as if lit from within, from beneath. If I touched that water, I’d be able to discern the temperature difference between the sunlit parts and the colder reaches of the river just beyond it.

Monet is a master because he looked at something real and took it and somehow turned it into a feeling, into a mood, an impression, a place, into an effect of the dream and half-waking moments I’ve experienced for myself in real life.

It’s hard to know when to leave. 

I cannot stay forever, so I stand once again in front of one of the Charing Cross Bridge paintings. Its sign lists the date as 1904. I stand in front of this painting by Monet, 92 years after his death. 114 years after the painting’s completion. And while outside of this room, outside of this building, in this same city where I am there are works that are much much much older than this, it’s still astounding that art speaks across time.

That this art speaks across time to me on this day, in this place, and within the world of my own experience.

Outside, the air on my face is brisk. The breeze loosens the edges of my hair out of my braid and whisks them across my forehead. I’m outside in the drizzling rain walking past the same river and the same buildings Monet and Tissot and Pissarro and Whistler painted.

Do I see them a little differently than I did only hours before? Maybe I do.

I walk on and the distance between me and St. Paul’s Cathedral shortens. I stop to look out over the stone wall down into the Thames and think, Thank you, Richard, gallery attendant and friend, for giving me the gift of art.

Though hidden behind a thick paper of clouds, I imagine that if given the chance, the soon setting sun would cast its light like paint over the water, changing the brown and slate-gray to green, pink, orange, blue, and purple. For now, though, the clouds and rain make their own picture and I’m there a contented figure in it.  

Highgate Cemetery, London

London.

On one of my go out and adventure days, I take the bus through the center of London and on eastward. I keep my eyes wide open for no matter where I look there’s something grand; a dreary street with a startling steepled church at its end, a sign marking Drury Lane (which I’m not quick enough to get a picture of), the Thames with boats and bridges, the passing people, the contrasting architecture of new time and old, the shops, the notices by grass ways and sidewalks that say: No Dog Fouling which is of course, an admonishment to pick up one’s dog’s poop.

In Archway, I get off and after a quick chat with a local vendor about which direction I should walk, I head up the hill toward Waterlow Park. The day is crisp and lightly dusted with clouds. There isn’t even a drop of rain and though at first chilly being about 44 degrees, after a few minutes I unzip my coat and loosen my scarf. Stretching my legs feels nice after being in the bus for nearly two hours.

I’m all but whistling as I walk. For really, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect winter day as I go along following yet another book reference.

When I’d been looking through lists of What Not To Miss While In London I’d stumbled across a mention of Highgate Cemetery. “Wait a second,” I thought. “I know about that place.” And had promptly written it at the top of my To See list.

Where would I go if I didn’t have books to direct me?

In An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas (whose characters I seem to be following all over the place) Highgate Cemetery is the starting point for the novel’s mystery when a selection of shoes (with feet still inside) are left outside the main gates. Naturally, the legend of the cemetery with its unexplained, eerie happenings and allusions to vampirism links in with the plot. And, as befits a detective story, the shoes are the advance warning of a terrible murderer beginning his destructive mission.

I’m not really sure why I want to go so badly. But I do.

The night before, I look the place up to make sure I know what to expect while there—“The paths can get muddy underfoot, so do wear sensible shoes.”—and while I’m at it I find out that the cemetery is the final resting place of a number of notable people including a few members of Charles Dickens' family (though not Dickens himself) and Karl Marx. I also find out that the cemetery is separated into two parts, East and West. The East side can be toured without a guide while the West cannot. At this point, I’m not even sure if I’ll need to go inside. It’s just the gates I really want to see.

Therefore, upward I go. Past The Old Crown tavern where the words Take Courage fortify me as I puff along, past a hospital, past a church, I get to the top of the hill and find my way into the park.

Just to be directionally clear, I stop in at the café and ask the man working there if the cemetery really is directly through the park.

“You literally go straight through,” he says.

“No deviation,” I say with a smile, “neither to the right nor to the left.”

Without a twitch of eyebrow (though with a twinkle in his eyes), he says, “Literally straight. Even when you come to the lake and to the trees.”

Thus informed, I go more or less, if not quite literally, straight through the park. It’s friendly with trees, the occasional squirrel, and the aforementioned lake replete with ducks. The grass, weighted with water, squishes underfoot. Avoiding patches of mud the best I can in my sensible shoes, I meander through and eventually arrive at the cemetery.

Ah.

There’s the famous gate. There’s the road the detectives would have driven up. There’s the place where the still footed shoes were left. There.

I stand and stare. I take my pictures. I glance behind me at the park.

Is this enough to see?

I’m not sure, so I go inside the little ticket booth at the entrance and the lady gives me a brochure, telling me (almost chastisingly) that the guided West tours are all done for the day. I go out and scan through the brochure, calculate the entry fee’s cost against my day’s budgeted allowance, and decide to self-guide myself through the East Cemetery.

I’m glad I do.

There’s a stillness there among the “dead but not gone,” as a few of the tombstones proclaim.

“If you live on with those you loved, you have not really died,” some others say, and I ponder this, having an internal conversation with myself about legacy and meaning and death.  

The trees are tall and protective, kindly protective, inviting. Not at all menacing, not at all creepy. Maybe all the menace and fright are to be found in the West Cemetery. How will I ever know having missed the West tour?

Though lightly chastised, I am not sad as I walk the paths among the crosses and slabs, the angels, the spires and monuments, among the trees, stopping occasionally to mark a date or to read an inscription. For cemeteries are the place of a million stories. Each life and each death spin a complicated web of mystery, pain, and joy. Although impossible to know, the imaginings like memories are maybe another extension of that person’s life. Maybe. Somehow.

One man’s stone says, “Better a spectacular failure, than a benign success” Just like that with a comma in the middle and no period at the end.

One woman’s reads, “Thy dragon is subdued Thou hast come home again.” I stand there for a while wondering, What dragon? What legend, what torment, what home, and what joy to be there again?

Musing, I wander down another path and the not so distant sound of children playing reaches me—laughter, voices, excited noise. “Ah,” I think, “that’s the contrast there, here’s this place of memorial and death and yet the children’s voices are still heard. There’s still life on the other side of these gates.”

The barren trees seem to be listening too, but what they think I don’t know. The sun inches its way lower in the sky. I pass a trio of woman. What drew them here? Vampires? Legends? A relative? A book? Marx? Do we acknowledge each other as we cross paths? I don’t remember. I’m absorbed in my own thoughts. I’m intrigued by the slabs worn nearly smooth by time and the cracked and broken monuments. I find it comforting that nature takes over, weaving its way in with roots and vines around and over and through what we have done.

The brochure I was given says, “Cemeteries were also intended as tourist attractions right from their earliest days, not just as places for the bereaved to mourn. Visitors would be improved by reading epitaphs, admiring the art of the memorials, and escaping the noise and pollution of the metropolis.”

Are those women improved? Am I? Yes, I’m sure I am. And while much improved, strolling by the root and ivy covered stones, nevertheless, I begin to think about leaving. I still have a long bus ride ahead of me and a few other places I would like to see before the day is over. But, almost as an afterthought, I decide to find Marx’s grave (Dickens’ family's graves are on the West side). Why not? I’m here.

Again, I’m glad I do.

I follow my little map and then look up. It’s impossible to miss.

The monument is a monstrosity. A giant, rectangular block of gray with a formidable bust of Marx on top. A memorial unveiled in 1956 by the Communist Party for him, his wife, their grandson, his housekeeper, and his daughter. It feels out of place among the other memorials, the trees, and the intertwining vines. This is not a memorial for nature to easily befriend or overtake. It is a monument to man. To one man. To his ideas and his impact on social science and people. Embarrassingly enough, I’m not even really sure what that impact was, at least not for me personally, or if that even matters.

I take a few photos and as I step away two men approach. One seems to be a sort of tour guide and the other his guest. The guide gives me a look that I can’t quite read. Is he wondering if I am a Marxist, a Communist, a Socialist?

No, I’m none of those things. Not here, not today. I walk away from Marx and head back toward the front entrance. I’m none of those things. I’m just a reader following fictional characters and finding in the process that real life is all around me.

  

*Many thanks to Rebecca Clark for calling my attention to a mistake regarding Charles Dickens burial place. His wife, younger brother, and parents are buried in the West Cemetery at Highgate while he himself is resting at Westminster Abbey.