the oddness of England

It was odd being in England because it wasn't odd. After a day or so of adjustment, England felt, although not exactly familiar, not unfamiliar. I think I was expecting it to feel old and full of history, and to really feel how much older it is there than here, and how much more history there is. But the strange thing is that a medieval church does not seem old. Perhaps this is because it is part of the city.

In a nearly contradictory way, I did not like reconstructed things very much. I found Shakespeare's Globe to be emotionally empty; it is merely a reconstruction for tourists, I think. I did not particularly like the reconstruction of the medieval rooms at the Tower, partially because they lacked the intricacy of something truly medieval. I did not mind, so much, Dicken's house, which has a room furnished as best they know in the style of Dickens, but it has real carpet in the Victorian style, and window shades, and wallpaper and such. It also has one of Dicken's chairs. I think there are two differences. The room in Dicken's house has some original elements (such as the chair), and those things that are reproductions are good reproductions (they really do have the detail of the original). I like the old things, although I do not feel that they are old. The new reconstructions lack character, history, and that sense of reality that Anne Hathaway's cottage has, for instance. The old things do not feel musty or dingy, but interesting (the closest I can come, I think, are my great uncles, who have all kinds of marvelous stories about all their lives, and I'm sure I've not heard them all).

Stonehenge comes the closest, of everything I saw in England, to that weighty sense of history. The medieval walls in York are old, but they don't feel old; they belong to the city and it is the Borders and Starbucks that seem out of place.

Perhaps it is because I have read so many British authors, and loved England before I was there, but England had very little of that otherness I expect when visiting another country. There are differences; bobby pins are called grips, they drive on the other side of the road and prefer roundabouts to four way stops, and it is in a sense smaller (although not really, because England is bigger when you are inside it then when you are outside it). I know this country, with its greenness, and castle walls, the Underground and St. Pauls. I had never seen St. Pauls before, and yet I knew it. It was what I expected (from the pictures and descriptions), but it was also bigger and brighter and realer.