The Roses in Regent's Park

Nostalgia Roses

A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red. Alice thought this a very curious thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up to them she heard one of them say, "Look out now, Five! Don't go splashing paint over me like that!" ...

"Would you tell me," said Alice, a little timidly, "why you are painting those roses?"

Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, "Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore she comes, to--" At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called out "The Queen! The Queen!" and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen.  

--Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.  

In Regent's Park, there is an area called Queen Mary's Garden. It contains the national collection of delphiniums and about 9,000 begonias. I, however, was in awe of the rose garden. 

Thousands of roses, all shapes and sizes, shining softly in the sunshine, letting their perfume intoxicate the air, flirting with the romantic meanderers, content in their little elegant kingdom of shrubberies and pathways. There is nothing like the exotic majesty of a rose.

And throughout the entire meander, all I could think of was the Queen of Hearts and her poor playing cards, desperately trying to paint the roses red. 

Roses in Queen Mary's Garden

Note: My camera died (per usual) on this trip to London. Photos are nicely stolen using Google Images. 

221b Baker Street

"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world."

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four (1890)

Gillette as Holmes

Erratic, arrogant, cold as well as passionate, methodical, bohemian, pipe-smoker, cocaine-user, perhaps manic-depressive, inquisitive, morally ambiguous, genius. There is no one quite like Sherlock Holmes. Created by the Scottish author and physicist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes has appeared in four novels and fifty-six short stories, not to mention the countless "inspired-by" tales, television shows, plays, musicals, and films (BBC is better than you, Robert Downey Jr!).

The deerstalker cap (see note) and the curved pipe that are now synonymous with the character at Holmes were first introduced by the actor William Gillette in 1899. Gillette assumed the role of Holmes more than 1,300 times in twenty years, starred in in a silent film based on the Holmes play, and voiced the character twice on radio. Coining the bastardized phrase, "Oh, this is elementary, my dear fellow," which was later whittled down to the infamous, "Elementary, my dear Watson," Gillette was, in a way, the father of the commercial Holmes we know today. I am lucky enough to live a mere twenty minutes from Gillette's castle, situated in the lovely East Haddam, Connecticut. The castle is riddled with intricate wooden locks, trick bars, curiously-placed mirrors, and stairs that lead nowhere--a veritable fantasy world of the man who lived the eccentric genius detective. But I digress. 

The Sherlock Holmes Museum and Mrs. Hudson's Restaurant.

The home of Gillette is preserved in all its weirdness, yet the home of Sherlock Holmes himself is meticulously fabricated to celebrate the eccentricity of the true character--"fabricated" being the key word. As a visitor to the "home," you can tell it has been created in the spirit of a movie set: the details are rich and plentiful, but the atmosphere does not let the visitor at any point believe a man has actually lived in the space. Regardless, it was still a lovely little museum.

There was no 221 Baker Street during the years of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Baker Street was less than a mile long with numbered addresses ranging from 1 to 85. It was only in 1930 that some of the surrounding streets were renamed, buildings renumbered, and 221 Baker Street became a real address.

Holmes's study.

My friend Ilia and I first encountered a whiff of the cult of Holmes when we first got off at the Baker Street tube station: the walls were tiled with Holmes's silhouette. A little ways down the street was the home of the infamous detective himself. The first floor of the building is a lovely gift shop with everything ranging from shot glasses, post cards, books and magnifying glasses, to deerstalker hats, matchbooks, and old fashioned imperial mints. Everything was overpriced but of that range of quality one only finds in the original museum shop. I bought a box of Sherlock Holmes matches for 80p. 

A great part of 221 seemed to be made of the staircase trunk. Rooms branched off of it "like leaves or some kind of hollow fruit" (the words of Ilia). The first was the study of Sherlock. We were greeted by an elderly man dressed in Victorian garb who spoke in the mumbled English only a true Englishman can properly understand. We introduced ourselves as being from Massachusetts, and he cheekily responded that indeed, Boston is known for throwing some excellent tea parties. 

In The Musgrave Ritual, Watson describes Holmes lifestyle thus: 

"Although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind...[he] keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantlepiece...He had a horror of destroying documents...Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner."

Watson and Holmes peer down at a body on the floor.

True to the stories, there were things everywhere! Papers, books, statuettes, telescopes, vials, glass instruments, a violin, discarded newspapers, pipes, candles, photos, knives, a gun...It was elegantly cluttered. Watson's room was much more organized and simple, true to his character. In the other rooms, details from various stories were brought to life, such as the head of a hound from The Hound of the Baskervilles, a poison dart from The Sign of the Four, and the wax statue of Professor Moriarty!
Even though the museum never lost its museum-y quality, the ability to touch and interact with everything in the "movie set" was wonderful. I wonder what Holmes would have thought of all these strangers messing with his personal effects. I can just picture him, reclining in some chair, smoking a pipe, and observing us all as we reverently pay homage to rooms he never once stepped foot in.

Note: The deerstalker hat was really first linked to Holmes via illustrations by Sidney Paget, but Gillette really celebrated the look and brought it to the forefront of the characterization. 

Ilia and me, playing Holmes and Watson.

Another Reason Why Books Rule #2

An American in Paris

La Seine and nearby dock from the
Simone-de-Beauvoir foot-bridge

Paris is not in England and should therefore not necessarily be included in this blog, which is vaguely trying to focus on my novel (get it? it's a pun!) experience in the UK. But Paris est Paris: the city of iron lace modernity and curling stone antiquity; of romanticisms and existentialisms; of ex-patriots, drunk poets, poor philosophers, and starving artists; of lights; of love. Quite frankly, there is no place like Paris (see note 1).

The depth of literature associated with Paris is so great, I can't even begin to think about diving down that hole. The result would be me, having plummeted blindly for some time, crushed against some great pile of Baldwin, Wilde, Orwell, Voltaire, Hemingway, Hugo, Proust, Beckett...My bones broken, all the descriptions and bits of plot stained with my over-worked blood. 

And that is why I present to you short collection of my photos and some bits of quotes gathered from the great interweb. I highly suggest you get on a plane and be seduced and inspired by Paris yourself. 

The Palais Garnier, home to the Opéra National de France.
Inspiration for the Paris Opera House in Leroux's The Phantom
 of the Opera; there really is an underground lair.

"It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French."

-James Baldwin

"There is an atmosphere of spiritual effort here. No other city is quite like it."

-James Joyce

A view of the street from the Palais Garnier, late afternoon.

"But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight."

-A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

"The national characteristics...the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro."

View of Paris from the rooftop of Les Galeries Lafayette

-Lawrence Durrell

The Eiffel Tower

"She was a committed romantic and an anarcha-feminist. This was hard for her because it meant that she couldn't blow up beautiful buildings. She knew the Eiffel Tower was a hideous symbol of phallic oppression but when ordered by her commander to detonate the lift so that no-one should unthinkingly scale an erection, her mind filled with young romantics gazing over Paris and opening aerograms that said Je t'aime." 

-Jeanette Winterson (see note 2)

"Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding streets--as vast and indestructible as nature itself. All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries, the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the world outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful, what was essential might there still come to its finest flower. Even the majestic trees that graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her--and the waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the earth and had become Paris."

-Interview with a Vampire, Anne Rice

The tombstone of Oscar Wilde, covered with kisses and
lipstick tokens of love.

"When good Americans die, they go to Paris."
-Oscar Wilde


"There is never any ending to Paris, and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. Paris was always worth it, and you received return for whatever you brought to it..."
-A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

Note 1: My experience in Paris was bittersweet. The friend I was meeting there for the weekend bailed on me at the last possible second (being in the City of Love ALONE sucks); I lost my camera on the first day (these are taken by ipod); I am le poor and have not the money for expensive Parisian dinners or activities. But I am always in love with Paris, and like a lover, I cannot wait to return.

Note 2: I happened upon this quote quite suddenly, and I know it's a bit strange and not in the same tone as all the rest, but I still haven't quite stopped giggling at it.

Side-note: This is a really lazy post about Paris; I apologize.  Perhaps I'll come back to this write up my own ideas about the city, but that will be for another day. 

View of Paris from Montmartre