{"id":7059,"date":"2018-06-14T11:02:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T09:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/siv-sketches.net\/?page_id=7059"},"modified":"2025-04-01T17:33:58","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T15:33:58","slug":"chapter-29-travels-from-paris-and-more","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/siv-sketches.net\/?page_id=7059","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 30 (Part 1) \u2013 Travels from Paris \u2013 London"},"content":{"rendered":"
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John on a bench in Soho Square amid falling leaves (1983)<\/p><\/div>\r\n

During these thirteen years we traveled a lot, and among other places we went to, London a few times. And always in London we saw at least one play, we went to Selfridges\u2019s in Oxford Street and we went to Foyle\u2019s wonderful bookstore in Charing Cross Road where we walked down to the basement and looked over the wonderfully messy stacks of books which reminded us of the old bookstore, Barnes and Noble in New York City, where, in the old days, you could walk down to a somewhat less scruffy-looking basement and find the real treasures.<\/p>\r\n

We went to Soho Square which neither of us knew of from previous separate visits. It doesn\u2019t at all look downtrodden or filled with dubious-looking characters any more, just quiet and beautiful. <\/span><\/p>\r\n

We visited the British Museum and its fabulous collection of stolen artifacts from former colonies, Egypt mainly. We bought some minor Kashmir scarves and things in the very specialized store across from the museum. We heard a group of mostly young people singing Christmas carols outside Saint Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square. It was the end of November, it was cold and I was wearing a new Irish tweed suit from Selfridges. The singing was delightful and we have always wondered how it is that the British are such musical people and the French are not. This carol singing on a cold November day was a nice surprise.<\/p>\r\n

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The magnificent entrance on Cromwell Gardens to the V&A Museum (by Diliff – Own work,  Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\r\n

In 1988 we finally got around to visiting the V&A (Victoria & Albert) Museum, the jewel of art and design in its magnificent building on Cromwell Gardens just south of Knightsbridge and Kensington Gardens. It is only a stone\u2019s throw away from the Royal Albert Hall where I once went to a Promenade concert in 1955 with my dear friend Melville, who introduced me to London.
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In the V& A Museum the very rooms are part of the art exhibit. If I ever saw anything vaguely like it, it would be Glyptoteket<\/em> in Copenhagen, but this is on a far superior level with its enormous number of art objects and its splendor. Some works of art were donated to the V&A, others<\/p>\r\n

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In 2000, an 11-metre high, blown glass chandelier by Dale Chihuly was installed at the V&A’s main entrance hall. Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\r\n

were of course bought with the money the British Empire stole from its colonies in all parts of the world, and which they certainly thought they had a perfectly legal and moral right to. The museum was founded in 1852. You will find art of all imaginable forms from various European countries, from India and from several other Asian countries.<\/p>\r\n

We must have been seriously overwhelmed during our visit, because we don\u2019t remember very much of what is in this magnificent museum. Surprisingly enough, we have only one picture from the interior and that is one of Victorian costumes. If we ever decide to go back to London one more time, I believe it would be to revisit the V&A Museum. We would take a couple of days for the museum alone and hopefully also get in a visit to a theater.<\/p>\r\n

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Siv in front of a couple in Victorian dress at the V&A museum.<\/p><\/div>\r\n

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We met with one of our Swedish girls, now a guide in London, Katarina from Stockholm, the daughter of very close friends from my youth, Britt and Ingvar. We first saw her at the hotel where she had her guiding headquarters, which was far better than ours, which happened to be pretty much of a dump that time, even though the exterior looked fine. We also went to her home in a street called something ending in \u2018Mews\u2019 \u2014 such a cute street name. She worked as a guide in London, and she loved her job. 
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John admiring a very old grand piano at the V&A.<\/p><\/div>\r\n

It ended after a year or two though. She got married to a nice man, Anders, and had Britt\u2019s and ingvar\u2019s first granddaughters, being the oldest one of three sisters. They now have seven grandchildren in all, of both sexes.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Now John being the one he is, it was a must to go to Simpson\u2019s in the Strand for dinner. We went there at least twice, two different years. When John called to make a reservation, he wisely asked if tie was de rigueur.<\/em> The answer was \u2018Yes\u2019. John of course had not brought a tie, so we found one at Simpsons in Old Bond Street. Funny coincidence, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the same Simpsons. Apparently the name of this men\u2019s clothing store is Daks Simpsons, so the likeness in the names is just a coincidence.<\/p>\r\n

The atmosphere at Simpson\u2019s in the Strand is sober and low-keyed, not snobbish. No noisy Americans here.<\/p>\r\n

Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding was the choice we made both times, since it just could not be more succulent than here. The noisy Americans might well be at the Savoy, which is right around the corner, but certainly very different. But, as a contrast, we also had delicious steak and kidney pie at Lyons in Fleet Street, which leads up to St Paul\u2019s Cathedral. This was close to an area that I remember seeing still in rubble after the war in 1955, all around St. Paul\u2019s there was nothing but rubble. I was amazed and shocked. Ten years after the end of the war London had not yet recovered, not by a long shot. Leicester Square was another shocking surprise where you could still see the ghastly destruction from the blitz during the war. Also, in 1955 Fleet Street was still the home of the big newspapers, The London Times, The Manchester Guardian, as it was called then, and many others.<\/p>\r\n

London today is a glitzy place of theaters and museums galore, Piccadilly Circus has been very much changed and much of its great charm gone by the one-time  eternal-seeming ‘Guiness Time\u2019 neon sign with the enormous clock having been replaced by  \u2014 what else, Mc Donald\u2019s increasingly tasteless and domineering signs plus a multitude of IT signs. Even the Coca Cola sign is better than IT, in my opinion, since it was there as long ago as in 1955. We might well all be conservatives at heart.<\/p>\r\n

For pictures of old London, see Chapter 8<\/a> \u2013<\/strong> England, London<\/p>\r\n

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I had been to concerts in London in 1955 with my dear friend Melville, who first introduced me to London, its very modern Festival Hall and the Royal Albert Hall right south of Kensington Gardens. I had seen plays in London before I got to London with John, even the immortal play “The Mousetrap” by Agatha Christie at Ambassadors Theatre, <\/em>with one of my  prot\u00e9g\u00e9es, when we passed through London in 1966, a group<\/p>\r\n

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Agatha Christie’s play “The Mousetrap” on A\u00f9bassadors Theatre  (Program)<\/p><\/div>\r\n

of thirteen young American girls and I, as their chaperone.  “The Mousetrap”is still running today, but at a different theater, Since the opening in the 50s, it must be the children and grandchildren of the early audiences who are now seeing it. Amazing. I do believe it beats the most long-running performance in Paris, which is Ionesco\u2019s “<\/span>La cantatrice chauve”<\/em> and “<\/span>La le\u00e7on”<\/em> at <\/span>le Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de la <\/em>Huchette<\/em> i<\/em>n <\/span>le<\/em> Quartier Latin<\/em>. (“<\/span>The Bald Soprano“<\/em> and “T<\/span>he Lesson“<\/em>) Or doesn\u2019t it beat Ionesco?<\/span><\/p>\r\n

I quote from \u2018Le\u00e7on de fran\u00e7ais<\/a>\u2018 \u201cWhat\u2019s created the renown of this place is that for fifty years here we\u2019ve been performing The Bald Soprano and The Lesson by Ionesco. It\u2019s the world record for a consecutive run of the same show in the same place. Well, to begin with, the success was the success of a discovery. People came to listen to a new kind of humour. The Theatre of the Absurd, to begin with, surprised.\u201d So it seems that Ionesco takes the price over old-fashioned Agatha Christie. I saw Ionesco’s performance around 1970 and even at that time it was a sensation, the way it seemed to have been running forever.<\/p>\r\n

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Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de la Huchette in le 5e arrondissement in Paris Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\r\n

We, the entire group of young American girls, even saw the musical, “Oliver!”<\/em>, all arranged by \u2018Simpsons Travel Tours\u2019 or rather its sister company in London who arranged our entire 8-week tour through Europe \u2014 for better or for worse.<\/p>\r\n

“Oliver!”, <\/em>a musical based on Dickens\u2019s \u2018Oliver Twist\u2019, was seemingly a great success, but I found ti a very lackluster performance, as did in fact several reviewers, if I remember right.<\/p>\r\n

However, now with John as my guide, theater in London has become a much more interesting thing.<\/p>\r\n

I was back in the U.S. and my school at Mamaroneck after the one year in Paris when I had met John at a theater. Came Easter and I had nothing to do with myself. It was 1972 and it was getting close to Easter vacation. There was nobody in the U.S. I could go and see during my vacation. So I found a charter company (which I lived to regret, since they had gone bankrupt and closed down when it was time for me to go back to New York), and I called John to tell him I was coming.<\/p>\r\n

We had a good time seeing all John\u2019s Coll\u00e8ge de France<\/em> friends, Roberto among others. When it came time for my returning from London, John generously suggested accompanying me.<\/p>\r\n

That got to be our first visit together to London. We saw “Jumpers<\/em>“, a burlesque comedy with serious undertones by Tom Stoppard, and I don\u2019t suppose we had much time for anything else.  I am not sure if our first visit to Simpson\u2019s in the Strand was in \u201972 or rather in \u201983, which was to become our second trip to London. That was after we had sold our fermette<\/em> in l\u2019Indre<\/em> and it was after our big tour of the United States in 1979. But I do know that we have been at Simpson\u2019s in the Strand on at least two occasions. Both times equally pleasant and delicious. We might go back one day and see how it has changed. After thirty years it simply can not have remained the same as the last century’s refined, low-toned gentleman\u2019s-club-like restaurant.<\/p>\r\n

\u2018Jumpers<\/em>\u2018 by Tom Stoppard, a playwright I had not heard of before, was an exciting play and an excellently staged performance, lively and funny. It was on at the Old Vic Theatre on the south bank, right across the Westminster Bridge crossing the Thames from the Houses of Parliament.<\/p>\r\n

In this play Tom Stoppard ridicules the field of academic philosophy, especially in its athletic version \u2014 in the person of George Moore, university professor of philosophy \u2014 and \u201clikening it to a less-than skillful competitive gymnastics display.\u201d (Wikipedia<\/a>)  In this more or less absurdist play, Stoppard also makes fun of the exercise-nut, Archie Jumper, Vice-Chancellor of George Moore\u2019s university. To complete this whimsical story, a murder mystery is also added to this unconventional play. Stoppard shows us from a burlesque angle the collapse of a dysfunctional marriage.  Dotty is George\u2019s disturbed wife, played by Diana Rigg, the only actor I had ever heard of. I knew her as the smart and funny Emma Peel in \u2018The Avengers<\/em>\u2018, a pretty funny television series in the sixties that I often watched in New Rochelle.   <\/a><\/p>\r\n