January 22, 2004

Class: ENG 240

T.S. ELIOT'S TRUE NAMES REVEALED!

STUDENT'S PERSONAL ACCOUNT

This morning, I woke up and stretched out, as usual, trying to figure out when breakfast was, and why I'd woken up ahead of the alarm AGAIN. Then I remembered that today was my journal entry day! Sometime during the brushing the teeth routine, I looked down, and saw a metal crescent. It was a spoon lost down there since some time immemorial. It haunted my thoughts the rest of the day . . .

We went down to breakfast to find that our seats were no longer reserved at all. It was pandemonium. On the way down, we'd said a subdued good morning to a strange man. He asked us if we'd slept well. I don't quite know how to place his accent. Maybe he was Swedish.

Westminster was next on the agenda. We walked around the outside, beside the black wrought-iron gate. Left and through an arch. Then through an arch and to the left. Westminster's nave has beautiful later English gothic architecture. The ceiling reached toward heaven, pillars shooting straight up toward the sky. The abbey is 938 years old, said our guide. The vaulted ceilings were vastly high above us. The nave is the largest open space.

Our guide, dressed in a black habit, told us that the abbey was founded by a famous king. As he led us around, he proposed that we could go look at this or that if we liked. He never really asked us. It was weird. He had the strangest face with a distinct beak or spade of a nose, and kohl-rimmed eyes, strangely shaped. Thin lips were pressed together sternly if he was not using them to speak. His hair was pointy, and he had a bald spot on the back. He was altogether an interesting person.

The odd guide told us that according to Barbara Harvey, a famous historian and writer, the minster was founded in 973. In the 7th century, there was an old Saxon church where this one now stands. Way back when, Edward the Confessor, back before they numbered royalty for later shelving convenience, got a lot of money together and built the minster, replacing one that was already there. He had endowed the earlier abbey to the monks in the 11th century.

Edward, having been driven to exile in Normandy for a year, was influenced greatly by the arts and architecture of that people. This played a major part in his choices when he commissioned people to build his new abbey. Westminster was initially built in the low, round, Norman style.

Confessor is a title given by the church to people who suffer because of religious persecution. If you die from such persecution, you're called a martyr.

Apparently, Pope Alex III liked Edward, so they canonized him. He became Saint Edward, and stories of miracles began to spring up. The people started to take pilgrimages to his grave which was in the abbey he built.

Further down the line, one King Henry III, also a fan of Edward's put fifty thousand pounds into renewing Edward's grave. He actually had a new one built. This was more of a shrine than anything else, but before he was born, the first major rebuilding of the abbey occurred in the 1200s. That was when the early Norman church started to evolve.

Henry III eventually rebuilt parts too, until he ran out of money, but he built in the French-influenced gothic style. Henry V got into the game in his lifetime too, refurbishing and building anew. Most notably there was the addition of Italian artistry and golden gilt on Edward's shrine. Only a bit of that decadence remains because of the sheer amount of time that has passed. One can still tell how beautiful and opulent it must have been.

On the 13th of October in 1269, the actual remains of St. Edward were moved from his original tomb into the actual shrine. There was a lot more complicated history, but then I asked our strange guide what position he held in the church. I had been observing his black habit, but he was wearing a normal shirt and dark tie beneath that. Occasionally, he reached into a pocket and jingled keys in an impatient manner.

He told us that he was a verger of the abbey, ceremonially bearers of the 'verge' which means 'rod' in Latin. He's one of the guys who escorts the queen and carries a silver stick when she's at the abbey for ceremonies or whatnot. Interesting.

One thing that surprised me was that Elizabeth and Mary are buried in the same room. They are sisters, but each was notorious for politically high profiles and not liking each other terribly much. Their tombs are decadently decorated. Below Mary's feet, a blood red lion roars. Elizabeth's effigy is a living reminder of a queen who demanded admiration and courtship.

In 1777, our guide told us, some people opened Saint Edward's tomb to verify it was him. They found the remains of a man 6 and a half feet tall. Edward was nicknamed 'longshanks' during his lifetime. Another of his nicknames was "Hammer of the Scots". Faded, on his older tomb reads "PACTVM SERVA" which means 'servant of the people' in Latin. His remains crumbled away and were lost after 1777.

They buried Oliver Cromwell at a spot, then they dug him up. Our guide picked at the ring on his own hand as we looked around. He told us more about Oliver Cromwell's trial and subsequent death. Then he sarcastically said something to the effect of " . . . then you will all go down to Poet's Corner. Hurray." It was a terribly dry voice.

There was some bit about the Stone of Scone and the Coronation Throne, but I hardly listened because we were coming closer to the place of great and greatly dead poets.

The place was a crazy mess of plaques and stone slabs.

Alfred Lord Tennyson
Robert Browning
Lewis Carroll
Chaucer
William Blake
Charles Dickens
Shakespeare
AND
Thomas Stearns ELIOT!!

There were many, many more names. After this point, the guided tour was consumed in my mind by sheer glee. I'd come to England, and I'd been to Poet's Corner. I'd completed my pilgrimage.