Having Laura here has given me an excuse to do all of the touristy things that I try to pretend I’m too cool for. It’s really been a great chance to show off the city, and to get to know my guide book better. We’ve been to a ton of museums, some of which I’d been to before (like the V and A, but Laura went and did most of that on her own while I was in class) and some I hadn’t yet gotten around to, like the British Museum. I loved the British Museum, by the way. I’m usually not much for ancient artifacts and the like but I loved seeing the reading room (where the likes of Karl Marx and Virginia Woolf did research back in the day) and I had fun in the clock exhibit. There’s something special about having multiple hundreds years old clocks strike the quarter hour at the same time. 

By far my favorite thing that we’ve done so far, though, has been a trip to Hampton Court Palace. Originally we had wanted to take a day trip to Bath, but we balked at the four hour bus ride each way. Instead, we opted for the half an hour train ride that took us to the outskirts of London to Hampton Court Palace. The ride there was really pleasant. I love traveling by train, and after running around on the tube it was a relief to use a conveyance that moved above ground. You could look out the window and see the city turn into the suburbs, and finally into countryside. Laura, who is native to Oregon, was pleased with the sight of the country greenery, but if given the option I prefer cityscapes because I prefer people gazing to vistas
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Hampton Court Palace was the end of the line, and we followed the steady stream of like minded tourists who walked from the station to the palace.

The sight of the palace itself is really breathtaking. Made from red brick, with dramatic curling chimneys and appropriately palatial statuary I really felt, as I walked through the gates onto the gravel courtyard, that I was stepping back in time, until I noticed the cars and lorries that were puttering around. There was also a distinctly modern feel to the tickets that we purchased (two for one with our train tickets!) and the brochures we received. Stepping out into the main courtyard (called the clock court because of the large clock that dominates it.), I tried to regain the feeling of stepping back in time, but I soon found that the problem with Hampton Court is that it belongs to no single period in history. It was first turned into a palace by Henry the VIII, after he seized the home of Cardinal Wolsey, who forfeited his property after objecting to the king’s divorce (he would have forfeited his head as well, but died conveniently before execution), but Henry’s improvements were knocked down by William the III and continued to be used until George III abandoned it. Hence there were different styles of furniture and architecture ranging from the Tudor to the Georgian. In truth, I don’t know enough about architecture to have really picked up on the distinctions between the three different styles, but they had guides in period costumes roaming around and I’d seen enough period dramas on BBC to distinguish the different costumes from one another.

Indeed, some of the highlights of the day were the guided tours that the costumed employees gave. We attended three while we were there—one of William III’s chambers, one of Henry VIII’s state chambers and one of the Queen’s chambers. Usually people in costume frighten me when a proscenium arch and a row of footlights do not divide us. I keep dreading the moment when they address you directly and then you have to decide whether or not to play along with them and answer as if you belong to the period. I can never think of anything clever enough to say, and the entire debacle usually results in me feeling awkward and embarrassed and having missed the amusing tidbit about Tudor bedposts that the entire exchange is meant to explain in the first place. Fortunately, the guides at Hampton Court were much more professional, and the worst it ever got was watching Henry VIII’s lady in waiting insist that the eight year old American girls who were on the tour must be princesses because they were wearing purple. The girls were more delighted than embarrassed, so it all worked out for the best. 

Each tour had its particular charms, but there were some general rules that ran throughout the palace. To begin with, the larger and grander a room was the lower the class of people it was meant for. The idea was the big rooms were supposed to make you feel little in the prescence of the king. As we progressed through the chambers and got closer to the actual throne rooms the rooms became less grand and more inviting. William III, for example, chose to decorate the walls of his waiting room with elaborate displays of weaponry, which were particularly suited to rid you of any sort of warm or fuzzy feelings. My favorite take on the whole pomp and circumstance thing, though, was Henry VIII’s state hall, which featured carved heads in the rafters that were supposed to remind you that the King had men listening in. The heads in the eaves were known as “eaves droppers,” which I suppose is where the expression comes from. Henry’s hall also featured the Abraham tapestries, which he commissioned after the birth of his son. The whole hall was so massive and impressive that I didn’t really take a close look at the tapestries, and it wasn’t until I was on another tour of another part of the palace that the (non-costumed) guided informed me that the Abraham Tapestries were second only to the Crown Jewels when it came to national treasures. So now I can say I’ve seen them, but I feel as if I didn’t really experience them. Hate it when that happens.

In the end I came away with the conviction that I would not have liked to be a Queen or Princess at Hampton Court. The monarchs in the olden days had to perform the most useless functions in addition to running a country. For instance, it was part of the monarch’s duties to take their meals in public. People would pay to come and watch them eat. The purpose of this was to prove that the King or Queen had an appetite and was hence alive and kicking, but it meant that the ruler could never pass up a dish, or decide to skip a meal and just grab a sandwich. Also, people had to pay homage to them constantly. One of the guides took us through the ceremonies that Lords and Ladies would have to go through when presented to William III. You could never turn your back on the king, and it was fairly common for ladies to trip on their trains and fall flat on their bums while walking backwards and bowing to the king. Another story told of a courtier whose periwig was so tall it snagged on a chandelier when he was walking backwards from the king.

There were lots of interesting things at the palace, including tales of Katherine Parr’s ghost which is said to haunt the Queen’s chambers, a beautiful chapel and an elaborate re-creation of the Tudor kitchens. The grounds are also something, but it was chilly and we were short on time, so we admired the gardens from the windows and didn’t attempt the hedge maze. My favorite part of the palace tour, however, was an exhibit called “Servants, Soldiers and Suffragettes.” I went because it had the word suffragettes in the title, and I love anything having to do with feminism and women’s lib, but the exhibit turned out to be about the “grace and favor apartments in the palace. Apparently, after George III quitted the palace it was used as lodgings for favorites of the ruling king or queen. Servants, soldiers and suffragettes were just three of the various types of people who took up residence there. The rooms themselves were small, bare, and cold. They presented a picture of shabby gentility that felt so much more real to me than the large banquet halls and manicured lawns. I imagined blue haired ladies serving tea there, complaining about the collapse of empire and how it was impossible to find good help. For some reason, this was the image that stuck with me most on the train ride back. The apartments are still in use, but after an elderly resident burned down half the palace only the ones on the ground floor are now in use. A few of them can even be rented out, so if you want to stay in Hampton Court Palace on your next visit to London I’d check it out.