The Noble Duke of York

This past weekend was spent in the medieval city of York. It’s not actually medieval anymore, it’s moved into the present with the rest of the island, but from most of the things we saw you wouldn’t have guessed it.

Unfortunately, I have few pictures to share with you, and the ones I do were not taken by me. I got sick the night before we left (learned all kinds of interesting things about Pepto-Bismol) and seemed to have interesting packing priorities in my delirium. I don’t remember packing that clearly, but Saturday when I found myself in the hotel and more or less in my right mind I discovered that I had thought it necessary to bring six shirts, but no camera. Sorry about that.

Its five hours to York by coach bus, which is exactly long enough to read an entire morality but not quite long enough for a good nap—I think this was an intentional choice on the part of our professor. We were joined on our adventure by the circus family, who were, as always, a lot of fun to have around. We were also afforded the rare glimpse of seeing our professor parenting for long (5 hour) periods at a time. Turns out his style of parenting 3 and 6 year old boys is not unlike his style of teaching medieval literature to undergrads. Seriously, he turned his son’s discussion of Viking battle strategy (this kid may or may not be six) into a mini-lecture on medieval monasteries, and definitely teaches time-telling like he leads discussion.

Once in York, after a brief telling-off by the concierge of the very fancy hotel about our rooms being non-smoking and “restraining our children,” we set off to walk the pageant route of the York mystery plays. Ironically, this was the least medieval thing we did all weekend. We did manage, however, while weaving in and out of shopping tourists to force our poor professor to take silly pictures at each of the stations. This included one with a human statue who willingly played along but then insisted on painting St. George purple (the brush was dry, but he didn’t know that.)

Saturday was more medieval that the first. We started off with a tour of the York minster, which is no longer the York minister, but everyone calls it that anyway. The Archbishop was not home, but our tour guide was surprisingly great and I know so much about preserving medieval stain glass that I could probably drop out of school, become a glacier (that’s “glass-i-er” not slow moving ice) and do just fine. We also got to wander around the crypt which had, among other things, the tomb of St. William. St. Williams notable miracle was healing a woman who had gotten indigestion and gone mute after eating a frog.

Saturday afternoon gave us three hours of driving in the English countryside, to and from the ruins of Reivaulx Abbey. The hills were beautiful and dotted with lots of sheep (many numbered-with their lambs- in red spray paint.) and it sparked many heated discussions about what a moor was, how it differed from a heath and which had purple heather. The ruins of the Abbey were beautiful and lots of fun to climb in, sit in windows and generally wander. The weather was gorgeous which was good because as fun as the abbey was it would have been equally miserable had the weather been gross.

The next morning we woke and had a second "real" English Breakfast. This time I could actually enjoy it: eggs, ham, sausage, grilled tomato (the best part, by far)and some sort of deep fried bread (like french toast minus all the things that make french toast good.) We packuped up and headed off to Castle Howard. This side trip was a break from the expected in that it was not medieval, nor was it a castle. It is, in fact, the family home (and museum) of the Howards, the head of which is the earl of Carlisle. And no joke, people live here.



And granted, people live in Buckingham palace. But people who are not the figureheads of English civilization, real actual people live here. The museam consisted of walking through a series of richly decorated semi-Victorian aristocratic-like-you-wouldn't-believe rooms and being equal parts in awe and aghast that people live like this but still charge admission to their house. The gardens, however, were wonderful. They were the perfect examples of groomed British landscape architecture--something out of Arcadia.

Then five hours , one morality play, and some truly bizarre crackers from a Yorkshire rest stop later, we were back in London.

Next week, Cambridge.

Love,
The Mouse