Study Abroad
STUDY ABROAD
“Everything free and easy,
Do as you darn well pleasy,
Why don’t you find your way there?
Go there, stay there!”
--The Lambeth Walk
“There’ll always be an England,
Where there’s a country lane,
Wherever there’s a cottage small
Beside a field of grain.”
--There’ll Always Be An England
Have you been wondering about my first trip overseas? In the early Seventies, like the children of old colonial administrators in the British Empire a hundred years before, I went home to England for the first time. My beloved old walrus of an advisor, soon to become the head of the college History Department, was incensed that I’d been turned down for a previous History group, and so got me on an Art Department one, where I would “provide variety to the group.” So it was the London Seminar Abroad for me during my junior year!
This meant twenty odd students living in a boarding house in the Earl’s Court section of the city that had been the capital of the world before my own beloved New York. Ah, London in the Fall! An ancient room heat meter allowed us to be warm every time we re-inserted the coin that would slip right out again for reuse. So it was free, but several times in the middle of the night when we were all asleep, it would shut off! Lovely, mate. Brrr! My trick was to take a hot bath before I went to bed.
It was a wonderful program. We did all the tourist stuff in London from The Tower to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, and saw the Queen open parliament in a ceremony that recalled all the old pomp and circumstance of an England in her prime. We took several group trips to other parts of the country. I supplemented this with a four person junket up to Scotland one long weekend—two boys and two girls. We had tutors coming into the house to teach us regular classes downstairs, and they’d give us assignments to visit art museums, the theatre from Shakespeare to Journey’s End, concerts, and so on. In our purposely large amount of free time, we’d supplement these official activities with our own desires—which for me were more history related themes, like the Imperial War Museum and the National Army Museum. As well as more general twenty years old interests. London pubs, taxis, Kew Gardens, and All Of It—we had plenty of time in our three month term to sample the City’s delights. Outside of Buckingham Palace, as we waited for the fancy Changing of the Guard, one officers dressed in a modern brown army uniform standing relaxed near me turned to his colleague and said calmly: “Do you think its time?” “Yes," replied the other, "let’s go.” It turned out these two were the leaders of the whole parade, which included picture perfect infantry and cavalry in their Nineteenth Century red coats and tall bearskin hats, promenading by us in neat ranks! Even in a ceremony, there’s no need to stand on ceremony! How veddy British.
During one trip out of the City, I took charge of the group in the absence of our professor—being very sober for my age—and we went to Stratford Upon Avon. In a magical moment while leading the gang through the picturesque Seventeenth Century wood and plaster streets towards Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, three fellows and a woman strode through the streets in flamboyant Three Musketeers style period costume, enjoying their stroll together. There was no sort of historical guide program going on locally that we knew about, but I later suspected that someone was reenacting an English Civil War battle nearby! Perhaps they’d been with Brigadier Peter Young and the Sealed Knot Society, with the World War II hero leading his costumed group through their historical paces.
One morning, with trepidation, I met with two of the English Relatives—those mythical folk my mom wrote to every Christmas. Being ashamed to show a “rich American” the poverty of their own home up in Birmingham, they came down to see me. Still upstairs when someone yelled up that I had visitors, I smelled an aftershave I hadn’t inhaled since my grandfather had died several years before! It was his younger brother, my Great Uncle Jim, and I came down the stairs to meet him and his son Tony. They were nervous too, but we set off to tour a bit of the city. It was almost as unusual an opportunity for them as for me, as they never came down themselves. But my visit was an occasion for a Major Trip for them.
Uncle Jim had been in the great British merchant marine, but had never settled in the USA, despite Grandpa Charley’s many urgings, as he felt he had stay behind, and look after their own mother after grandpa had left. Grandpa had missed his little brother ever after. I showed them some of the sites I’d become familiar with, and Jim took me around and pointed out spots where, as young blades, he and grandpa had followed up performances on the music hall stage with parties and good times in their youth. We toured the HMS Belfast, a World War II cruiser docked in the Thames for visitors to board. The old man, although physically challenged by the walk, insisted on it, and managed to keep up with us, although we slowed down all we could without making it obvious.
Jim had been a young radio operator on a British Navy cruiser at the titanic Battle of Jutland in World War One--the last where mighty battleships of one fleet fired heavy broadsides at their counterparts in the other. A German shell had warped the wireless compartment door, trapping him inside. Had the ship gone down, he’d have gone with it. The ship survived, and they cut him out back home in port with welding torches! From then he’d traveled all over the world on peaceful ships, but always come home again. He clearly was devoted to his older brother, yet being too poor to make private plane visit back and forth across the Atlantic. But he’d put into port in New York once in a while. His son Tony reminded me of my own Dad and cousin Jim in many ways. By the time we parted that day, we were all crying in a pub, toasting The English Family and The American Family. Knowing London at this point better than they did themselves, I saw them off on the train, knowing I’d never see them again. Good show, Old Boy…but a bit of all that, you know?
At the end of the term, I presented my independent history report to the seminar group downstairs in the parlor, on the decline of British national morale since their descent from Ruling the Waves to becoming the inspirational Athens to our Rome during the post war Pax Americana. The signs of Imperial greatness had been all around us on our trip, in statuary and song. But at the premiere of the filmYoung Winston (Richard Attenborough, Simon Ward) I’d seen the older World War II generation rise in the theatre as God Save The King was played before the show. They sang along, while the Union Jack was projected into the curtain, where it looked like a waving flag. I’d stood out of respect, but most of the English younger generation had stayed in their seats and mocked the oldsters. Would our sense of national purpose ever flag some day? All around the world as I would travel on, other American youth, embarrassed about the Viet Nam war in front of their European hosts, would often pretend to be…Canadian!
After our group went home, I arranged for a few days in Paris, meeting a school chum across the Channel who’d been there before, and could show me around. From the student quarter, we explored about, and he showed me how to thump on a car bonnet… er, hood…and swear in French (our academic language) when they almost hit you. The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, The Arc de Triomphe, an edition of the Funcken World War One uniform book en francais! At one point I did run out of cash, and had to use my Emergency Plan. I used the American Express office as previously arranged, to call for aid from my well off uncle who had such fancy credit connections back home, when a ‘credit card’ was available for juse by one’s company. I sent the only telegram in my life, counting the words I could barely afford to pay for and carefully composing: “Send money American Express Paris fast! Charles.” When I got home, my mom had it on the refrigerator under a magnet. She said: “You could at least have signed it ‘Love.’” “Couldn’t afford it, Mom.” Ah, to be young and reckless in Paris, in the carefree days of youth! What an idiot.
“Everything free and easy,
Do as you darn well pleasy,
Why don’t you find your way there?
Go there, stay there!”
--The Lambeth Walk
“There’ll always be an England,
Where there’s a country lane,
Wherever there’s a cottage small
Beside a field of grain.”
--There’ll Always Be An England
Have you been wondering about my first trip overseas? In the early Seventies, like the children of old colonial administrators in the British Empire a hundred years before, I went home to England for the first time. My beloved old walrus of an advisor, soon to become the head of the college History Department, was incensed that I’d been turned down for a previous History group, and so got me on an Art Department one, where I would “provide variety to the group.” So it was the London Seminar Abroad for me during my junior year!
This meant twenty odd students living in a boarding house in the Earl’s Court section of the city that had been the capital of the world before my own beloved New York. Ah, London in the Fall! An ancient room heat meter allowed us to be warm every time we re-inserted the coin that would slip right out again for reuse. So it was free, but several times in the middle of the night when we were all asleep, it would shut off! Lovely, mate. Brrr! My trick was to take a hot bath before I went to bed.
It was a wonderful program. We did all the tourist stuff in London from The Tower to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, and saw the Queen open parliament in a ceremony that recalled all the old pomp and circumstance of an England in her prime. We took several group trips to other parts of the country. I supplemented this with a four person junket up to Scotland one long weekend—two boys and two girls. We had tutors coming into the house to teach us regular classes downstairs, and they’d give us assignments to visit art museums, the theatre from Shakespeare to Journey’s End, concerts, and so on. In our purposely large amount of free time, we’d supplement these official activities with our own desires—which for me were more history related themes, like the Imperial War Museum and the National Army Museum. As well as more general twenty years old interests. London pubs, taxis, Kew Gardens, and All Of It—we had plenty of time in our three month term to sample the City’s delights. Outside of Buckingham Palace, as we waited for the fancy Changing of the Guard, one officers dressed in a modern brown army uniform standing relaxed near me turned to his colleague and said calmly: “Do you think its time?” “Yes," replied the other, "let’s go.” It turned out these two were the leaders of the whole parade, which included picture perfect infantry and cavalry in their Nineteenth Century red coats and tall bearskin hats, promenading by us in neat ranks! Even in a ceremony, there’s no need to stand on ceremony! How veddy British.
During one trip out of the City, I took charge of the group in the absence of our professor—being very sober for my age—and we went to Stratford Upon Avon. In a magical moment while leading the gang through the picturesque Seventeenth Century wood and plaster streets towards Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, three fellows and a woman strode through the streets in flamboyant Three Musketeers style period costume, enjoying their stroll together. There was no sort of historical guide program going on locally that we knew about, but I later suspected that someone was reenacting an English Civil War battle nearby! Perhaps they’d been with Brigadier Peter Young and the Sealed Knot Society, with the World War II hero leading his costumed group through their historical paces.
One morning, with trepidation, I met with two of the English Relatives—those mythical folk my mom wrote to every Christmas. Being ashamed to show a “rich American” the poverty of their own home up in Birmingham, they came down to see me. Still upstairs when someone yelled up that I had visitors, I smelled an aftershave I hadn’t inhaled since my grandfather had died several years before! It was his younger brother, my Great Uncle Jim, and I came down the stairs to meet him and his son Tony. They were nervous too, but we set off to tour a bit of the city. It was almost as unusual an opportunity for them as for me, as they never came down themselves. But my visit was an occasion for a Major Trip for them.
Uncle Jim had been in the great British merchant marine, but had never settled in the USA, despite Grandpa Charley’s many urgings, as he felt he had stay behind, and look after their own mother after grandpa had left. Grandpa had missed his little brother ever after. I showed them some of the sites I’d become familiar with, and Jim took me around and pointed out spots where, as young blades, he and grandpa had followed up performances on the music hall stage with parties and good times in their youth. We toured the HMS Belfast, a World War II cruiser docked in the Thames for visitors to board. The old man, although physically challenged by the walk, insisted on it, and managed to keep up with us, although we slowed down all we could without making it obvious.
Jim had been a young radio operator on a British Navy cruiser at the titanic Battle of Jutland in World War One--the last where mighty battleships of one fleet fired heavy broadsides at their counterparts in the other. A German shell had warped the wireless compartment door, trapping him inside. Had the ship gone down, he’d have gone with it. The ship survived, and they cut him out back home in port with welding torches! From then he’d traveled all over the world on peaceful ships, but always come home again. He clearly was devoted to his older brother, yet being too poor to make private plane visit back and forth across the Atlantic. But he’d put into port in New York once in a while. His son Tony reminded me of my own Dad and cousin Jim in many ways. By the time we parted that day, we were all crying in a pub, toasting The English Family and The American Family. Knowing London at this point better than they did themselves, I saw them off on the train, knowing I’d never see them again. Good show, Old Boy…but a bit of all that, you know?
At the end of the term, I presented my independent history report to the seminar group downstairs in the parlor, on the decline of British national morale since their descent from Ruling the Waves to becoming the inspirational Athens to our Rome during the post war Pax Americana. The signs of Imperial greatness had been all around us on our trip, in statuary and song. But at the premiere of the filmYoung Winston (Richard Attenborough, Simon Ward) I’d seen the older World War II generation rise in the theatre as God Save The King was played before the show. They sang along, while the Union Jack was projected into the curtain, where it looked like a waving flag. I’d stood out of respect, but most of the English younger generation had stayed in their seats and mocked the oldsters. Would our sense of national purpose ever flag some day? All around the world as I would travel on, other American youth, embarrassed about the Viet Nam war in front of their European hosts, would often pretend to be…Canadian!
After our group went home, I arranged for a few days in Paris, meeting a school chum across the Channel who’d been there before, and could show me around. From the student quarter, we explored about, and he showed me how to thump on a car bonnet… er, hood…and swear in French (our academic language) when they almost hit you. The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, The Arc de Triomphe, an edition of the Funcken World War One uniform book en francais! At one point I did run out of cash, and had to use my Emergency Plan. I used the American Express office as previously arranged, to call for aid from my well off uncle who had such fancy credit connections back home, when a ‘credit card’ was available for juse by one’s company. I sent the only telegram in my life, counting the words I could barely afford to pay for and carefully composing: “Send money American Express Paris fast! Charles.” When I got home, my mom had it on the refrigerator under a magnet. She said: “You could at least have signed it ‘Love.’” “Couldn’t afford it, Mom.” Ah, to be young and reckless in Paris, in the carefree days of youth! What an idiot.
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- The Fleet Is In! (May 16th, 2011)
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- Two Guys Part II (March 3rd, 2011)
- Two Guys Part I (March 3rd, 2011)
- World's Fair (February 26th, 2011)
