One of the joys of
London is to stroll its streets and alleyways and stumble across centuries of
history. London also has a vibrant artistic life that few other cities in the
world can match. Jan and I decided that today we would combine art, history,
music and the history of printing and publishing in a day out in London.
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| King Charles I by Daniel Mytens, oil on canvas, 1631 |
Our first stop was the
National Portrait Gallery. The gallery is about to be refurbished, so we are
making sure that we see the galleries we are most interested before it closes
in June for three years. This morning was the turn of Charles I, Thomas Cromwell
and his Parliamentarians. The portraits of Charles convey his imperious
certainty in his divine right to govern. He was also a spendthrift, or more charitably
a connoisseur and creator of a great art collection. Cromwell proved too
powerful an enemy for Charles to contend with. He lost his head on a scaffold outside
Inigo Jones' Palace of Westminster in 1649. The Restoration brought his brother
Charles II back from exile in France to reign from 1660-1685. This Charles married
a Portuguese princess, but died without a legal heir, despite fathering some
fifteen children – all with mistresses. To my surprise, his wife was devoted to
him.
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| King Charles II, John Michael Wright, oil on canvas, 1661-1665 |
Our next stop was St
Bride’s Church. Tucked down an alleyway off Fleet Street. The history of buildings
on the site goes back to at least Roman times. A small piece of Roman paving
can still be seen in the crypt. The church is named after Bride (or Brigid), a
daughter of a Celtic prince and a druidic slave, born in 453AD. St Bride’s is
known as the printer’s church because the splendidly named Wynkyn de Worde, the
apprentice of William Caxton set up his printing business, using Caxton’s own
press, in St Bride’s churchyard after his master’s death. Wynkyn was buried in
the churchyard in 1535.
The Medieval church of
St Bride was destroyed by the Fire of London in 1666. In 1671 the church
wardens of St Bride’s took Christopher Wren to dinner in the Globe Tavern to
persuade him to design a new church on the site. It took another year to
convince Wren to take on the design of the church, which cost of £11,430 5
shillings and 11 pence. There are, of course, several famous Wren churches in
London. But on the night of 29 December 1940, eight of them were destroyed by
German bombs. St Bride’s was one of them. The restored church was dedicated on
19 December 1957.
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| Christopher Wren, St Bride's |
Every Tuesday and
Friday the church arranges free lunch-time concerts. Today’s musician was Nuno
Lucas, a young Portuguese pianist with extraordinary technique. He played
Mozart’s Piano Sonata No.18 in D. Since you can’t beat Mozart this was a great
start. There followed the modern Australian composer Carl Vine’s Five
Bagatelles, a wonderful introduction to a composer we had never hear of until
today. Robert Schumann’s Abegg Variations op.1 conjured up images of elegant
Viennese ladies being guided round the dance floor by plump Austrian’s in
dinner jackets. However, it reminded Jan that yesterday she had heard on BBC
Radio 4 a recording of a performance of a piece by Schumann by a Jewish pianist
who had survived Auschwitz. Isaac Albéniz’s ‘El Albaicín’ was a fitting climax
to the performance, full of dark Spanish power, lyricism and a Moorish/gypsy
flavour that reminds the listener of Spain’s complicated history. We shall
become more frequent attenders of these concerts.
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| St Bride by David McFall |
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