5/8 – 5/10/22
I had only been to England once, if you didn’t count brief stopovers in Heathrow Airport. And that single trip – made at the beginning of a European backpacking excursion, at the tender age of 20 – had consisted of a few jetlagged days in London. So when an auction company asked whether I would be willing to speak at the London reception for their spring sale, I decided that it was time to go back and see England properly.
5-8
My flight from O’Hare lasted only about seven hours, but it felt long, thanks in part to the woman sitting in front of me, who flipped her seat back immediately after takeoff and spent the rest of the flight thrashing restlessly. I didn’t bother attempting to sleep.
Arriving at Heathrow shortly after dawn, I made my way to the tube, and to Pimlico, where I had booked a budget hotel. I deposited my bags there, readied my daypack, and strode off to explore. The weather – sunny, with a temperature around 70 – was almost disconcertingly pleasant, and it was a pleasure to revisit the familiar sights of Westminster.
Then I made a beeline for the British Museum, where I spent a pleasant, if increasingly fatigued, few hours among the collections.
At length, too uncomfortably numb for serious sightseeing, I left the museum and strolled along the Thames for hours, drifting with the weekend crowds.
After a picnic lunch near the London Eye, I made my way to a shady park beside the Houses of Parliament and sat by the river. A breeze murmured in the treetops, and the sky was innocent of clouds.
5-9
The day began with a long walk from Pimlico to Mayfair, made longer by street closures around Buckingham Palace for the queen’s upcoming platinum jubilee. My destination was a quiet office building with dimly-lit hallways, the home of Numismatica Ars Classica, one of the world’s leading auctioneers of ancient coins.
At the end of May, NAC is scheduled to auction the most valuable of all ancient coins: one of the two privately-owned EID MAR aurei. About a month ago, I had contacted NAC to ask whether they would allow me to view the coin. They raised no objections, and also agreed to let me see a few of their other rarities. I had assumed that – at best – I would be allowed to film an NAC employee handling the coin. Instead, after a short wait on an overstuffed couch, I was ushered into the office of one of NAC’s principals, a pleasant Italian gentleman. And there on the table in front of me was the EID MAR, along with five other museum-grade coins.
My eyes bulged. Those six coins were collectively worth several million dollars – the EID MAR alone might be worth that much – and they were just sitting on the table a few inches away. “Can I touch the coins?” I asked, incredulously. “By all means” replied the owner. And then, to my astonishment, he stood up. “Let me know when you’re done.”
So, for an hour, I was left alone with the world’s most valuable ancient coin. I laid it in the center of my palm, feeling the weight of the gold. I cradled it between thumb and forefinger, feeling the hole driven through it when some supporter of Brutus made the coin into an amulet two millennia ago. And then, I recorded my videos, displaying the EID MAR and the other coins on the tray (which included two of the rarest and most beautiful of all ancient Greek coins).
I left NAC walking on a cloud, mind whirling with ideas for the YouTube video in which my footage would be embedded. Then I plunged into the tube and made for the city (that is, the ancient and medieval heart of London). After a bag lunch in the shadow of St. Paul’s, I entered the church itself – which I hadn’t seen since 2007 – and spent a pleasant hour and a half inside among the Victorian tomb monuments.
I made the long climb up to the top of the dome, and stood there for ten minutes or so, bathing in the cool breeze. I was amazed by how much the London skyline had changed in 15 years – everywhere I looked, it seemed, a new 50-story tower looked back.
Then, down to the crypt. After admiring the vast sarcophagus of Nelson, I searched in vain for the tomb of a certain Admiral Malcolm, whose effigy (I had read) stood beside the remains of a Roman altar. Admiral Malcolm, however, proved elusive. So I approached one of the volunteer guides, a very elderly gentleman, and explained my problem. He considered a moment. “Admiral Malcolm? I can’t say that I know.” We recruited a second guide, who was equally unaware of the admiral’s whereabouts. Some discussion followed, in the course of which it was decided that Sheila upstairs might know. So upstairs we went, to consult a white-haired lady with half-moon spectacles and a very large desk. Drawers were opened, yellowed papers consulted. At last, Sheila tapped a plan of the crypt. “I believe I’ve found him.” So she had – my shuffling partner and I returned to the crypt, rounded a corner, and encountered the admiral, larger than life. The Roman altars, however, proved less impressive than I hoped.
After all that, the Museum of London – though interesting and well-displayed – was a bit anticlimactic. I spent the last hours of the afternoon just walking and watching, caught up in the energy of the city. I ended up on a bench by the Tower Bridge, soaking in the sunshine.
5-10
I didn’t know what to expect from Cambridge. I had heard quite a bit about the place – one of my professors at Carleton College, for example, used to rhapsodize about punting on the Cam – but I was wondering how different it would feel from an American college town. As it turned out, very different indeed…
After leaving my bags at a camera store, I walked across the street to King’s College. Like the other colleges, King’s is closed to visitors during the month of May, when students are taking their examinations. The famous chapel, however, was open. I spent an hour inside, craning my neck to catch every detail of the fan vaulting and stained glass.
From King’s, I followed a gravel path to the banks of the surprisingly diminutive River Cam, where modest flotillas of punts were already prodding their way up– and downstream. Sensing the approach of rain, I saved my river walk for later and headed into the center of the old town, poking my head into any college considerate enough to leave its doors open. I surreptitiously signed a copy of Naked Statues that I found in a bookstore near King’s, strolled around the center market, and ordered lunch from a Thai lunch stall just as the heavens opened.
Fortunately, the downpour didn’t last long, and I was able to reach the Fitzwilliam Museum (small, but well-organized) without getting soaked. When I left an hour later, I discovered that the sun had emerged, and that the weather – against all odds – had become splendid.
I sat in the sun-washed meadow behind Peterhouse College, basking. I strode along the Backs, watching cows graze below the medieval towers. I watched tourists run their punts aground on the Cam. Then, all too soon, it was evening. I ate a pizza in the market square, students and tourists strolling past, before starting my own walk to the station for the long train to Leeds.