Friends and Relatives:

Bath
----

This is our part one of the fifth report of our travels, about Bath which
we visited over the week-end of the end of October for a dual purpose,
to meet Wayne Harris and his wife Jackie, and to see the Roman baths
there.  Wayne and Jackie live in a village, Wooten-on-Edge, about 15 km
from Bath.  Wayne was my student way back in the 80's, and like many
of my ex-students he is now a good friend.  We went to Bath by coach,
and was fetched by Wayne.  He drove us to his cottage in Wurtley, near
Wooten-under-Edge, passing through other villages with equally delightful
names like Little Badminton, Cold Ashton, Nimlet, Old Sodbury.  I swear I
am not making up these names!  These are just on the southern edge of the
Cotwalds, in rolling green country with stone hedges and contented sheep.
The roads vary from two undivided lanes to one lane only with passing
bays should two vehicles meet.  The quaintness of the village names is
matched by their rustic character.  Wayne and Jackie's house is typical.
It was once a workman's cottage, originally a three room modest abode
-- kitchen, bedroom and living room.  The loo was an outhouse.  It was
subsequently extended backwards and upwards.  The beam in the living
area is testimony to its Victorian vintage.  From a small hill nearby
we could look across to Wales.  The larger houses in the area are all
heritage listed, including some barns that are undergoing conversion
into studios.  The exterior and much of the interior has to be preserved,
as these often date back to before the 18th century.

When we arrived in Bath we had 3 hours before Wayne was due to meet us;
this was planned so that we could walk to the Bath Museum to see the ruins
of the ancient Roman baths enclosed in it.  This is a wonderful museum,
probably the best microcosm of the Roman Britain.  As you surely recall,
it was Julius Caesar who conquered Celtic Britain for Rome in the 1st
century BC.  The Roman Peace (Pax Romana) lasted until the middle of
the 5th century AD when the Roman legions were withdrawn to defend the
core of the Empire in Italy.  In the four centuries they civilised the
natives, seducing them with Greek learning, Roman engineering, politics,
language and rituals like bathing.  A Roman governor was asked by the
natives why he bathed once a day.  He replied, "Because I am too busy to
bathe twice a day".  The remains of the ancient bath and its adjoining
temple are still visible.  There are two "pools", the first of which was
sacred and no bathing was permitted in it.  It's overflow was into the
second public bath.  The sacred pool is constantly replenished by hot
water originating deep in the earth but forced to the surface through
crevices by unrelenting pressure.  I was amazed to read that this water
is 10,000 years old, meaning it began seeping into the earth when the
first human settlements began anywhere!

For the Romans this mysterious source of hot bubbly water was occasion to
worship, for natives already attributed to it all manners of curative
powers.  The local Celtic deity was Sulis, and when the Romans discovered
that the attributes of Sulis closely matched those of the Roman goddess
Minerva, the obvious conclusion was that Sulis was simply a British
manifestation of Minerva.  In a satisfying amalgamation the shrine
goddess became Sulis-Minerva.  All were happy.  In our own age of
religious discord, when Muslims and Jews, Prostestants and Catholics,
are divided by Gods that only the pedantic can distinguish, I could not
help feeling nostalgic for that pagan eclecticism.  There was mounted on a
pedestal a gilded head of what must once have been a spectacular statue of
Sulis-Minerva, clearly severed from its body by a weapon.  It is alleged
that when Christianity arrived in Britain many such pagan relics were
destroyed in rampages of religious fervor.  You probably know about the
insanity of the newly converted; it's not as rare as one might imagine --
here are some that are have nothing to do with religion but have the same
character: diet fads, single issue politics, and simplistic economics.
I often regard the current orthodoxy that private enterprise will solve
every problem as one of the most telling intellectual ailments.  And the
most fanatical devotees of this orthodoxy are often ex-socialists!

In this museum you also see some Roman tombstones collected from the
countryside near the temple.  The inscriptions are moving.  There is
one of a little girl, adopted out of slavery at birth by obviously
wealthy parents.  She succumbed to a fatal illness at the age of 18
months.  There were two of Roman legionaires in their thirties.  One of
them was from infantry XX and he is described as a Roman legionaire
from a Belgic tribe.  The other, from a different infantry, was from a
Spanish tribe.  Others were "real" Romans.  It was clear from these
that the Roman army comprised men who were not ethnically Roman, but
who were in all probability culturally assimilated.  I smiled at this
thought.  This is 20th century Britain, much diminished in power from
the age of Queen Victoria when she was Empress of half the world on
which the sun never set.  And do you recall who served in the British
army?  Not only the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish -- but also the
Indians, the Malaysians, the West Indians, the Fijians, the Gurkhas,
and of course the Australians, Canadians, the New Zealanders, and the
South Africans.  Today, the Gurkhas still serve loyally.  All over
France there are military cemetaries that bear the names of fallen
soldiers of the British Army in the First World War, but some of them
are "Gurbek Singh" and "Ali Mohammed" of the Indian Army serving under
the Union Jack.  Pax Britannica was in many ways a copy of Pax Romana.
As for assimilation, one of our God-daughters who met with native
Indian ex-officers of the British Army in India reported that they
lived the life-style of British retired colonels, taking high tea and
speaking in the same muffled accents!  I imagine that the Gauls,
Iberians, Goths, Franks and Celts who served in the Roman legions would
have similarly considered themselves Roman.

The emperor Hadrian, of whose Wall you must have heard, visited Bath once.
I recommend a faction (mixture of fact and fiction!) novel by Margaret
Yourcenar, "The Memoirs of Hadrian", to get a flavor of what a great
emperor he was.  When one reads in Roman history that an emperor is a
son of the previous emperor, it is usually the case that there is no
blood relationship between them.  Instead, a wise emperor, or often a
wise senate, would pick a good soldier/administrator as a successor,
then the current emperor will adopt him.  Instant son-hood!

Cambridge
---------

This we visited the week-end of Nov 4, to see my cousin Julia and
her English husband Mike whom I had never met before, and to do some
work with a friend, Michael Wise, Senior Fellow at Pembroke College.
Mike and Julia picked us up from the coach station in Cambridge, and
took us to their home 15 miles away in West Wratting.  No, this was
not so called because it harbored the Great Plague.  As I had not seen
Julia for over 15 years, it was a somewhat emotional meeting for us.
And I finally caught up with this husband of hers, who by reputation
is a funny Englishman -- we were not disappointed.  Mike would say the
most outrageous things with only a twinkle in his eye.  He also seemed
to be completely immune to the cold.  When we were wandering around,
me, Yokelin and Julia wrapped up in jumpers and jackets, Mike would be
wearing only an inner vest and shirt.  It is clear that the old saw "Mad
dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun" is only half the truth.
The other half is what they do in winter.  On Sunday morning the
weather smiled on us, and we all went to Ely (pronounced "EELEE") about
7 miles away, where sits one of the most magnificent cathedral I have
ever seen.  Ely is in the middle of the Fen, a flat countryside in
which the sky meets the horizon for as far as the eye can see.  From
miles around, the cathedral rises like an ancient ship beckoning the
spriritually dissipated, the needy, the troubled and the rejected to
flee the sea of their discontent and join it in an uplifting hymn to
the Almighty who promises solace.  The cathedral itself is Norman
architecture, with elaborate and ornate carvings topping massive
stone.  Inside are high columns, and a tall ceiling with exquisite
sacred paintings.  Stained glass windows adorn the sides, and private
chapels are hidden behind modest doors.  The origins are Saxon, a small
church built in the 8th century by Queen Etheldreda, later canonised.
She married twice, then became a nun.  I thought, "Tried it twice,
didn't like it, then found her niche".  The Norman conquerers of
England built Ely cathredral on the same site in the 13th century.  On
one side, it opens out to a large hall in which every statuette carved
into the walls was beheaded by the Cromwellians in what they saw was
an act of piety in destroying idolatory.  They also smashed the stained
glass, which have been replaced today by stark plain glass -- a fitting
reminder of what religious excess can lead to.

The Fen is actually a continuation of the low-lands (Netherlands!) of
Holland which rising sea-levels thousands of years ago had divided.
If you were deposited by magic in the middle of it, you could easily
believe you were in Holland as there are the same wind-mills and dykes,
the latter protecting the drained peat marshes from the ditches.

Later that day we decamped for Cambridge where we said goodbye to Julia
and Mike, and met up with Michael Wise in Pembroke College.  This is the
3rd oldest of the Cambridge colleges.  We walked around to peek at the
some of the others -- Trinity (the richest), St. John's, Corpus Cristi,
Kings, Peterhouse.  Most were impressively sedate, with manicured lawns
surrounded by cloisters that invited quiet contemplation.  King's had a
magnificent chapel.  You could sense Privilege in all of them, conferred
by centuries of investment and patronage.  It is said that one could go
from Cambridge to the Channel and pass Trinity property all the way.
Michael showed us the intimacies of Pembroke, in which we had a guest
room for the night, and were to join the Fellows and students in formal
dinner that evening.  Pembroke was founded in 1347 by the Countess of
Pembroke.  Among its luminaries were George Stokes (of Stokes' theorem in
mathematical physics, and Lucasian Professor of Physics in his time --
as was Issac Newton earlier, and Stephen Hawking today), Thomas Gray
(of Gray's elergy), William Pitt the Younger, Peter Cook.  How Gray
got to Pembroke is a wonderful story, no doubt rendered apocryphal
by constant re-telling.  He was a Fellow in Peterhouse, which is just
diagonally across the street from Pembroke.  The Peterhouse students
were unreconstructed pranksters, and knowing that Gray was terrified of
fire, they rang the firebell outside his door one night.  Gray scrambled
down the fire-escape not noticing that the students had placed a big
tub of cold water at the bottom.  Legend has it that he stumbled wet and
miserable to Pembroke, knocked on the little door in the big one, and when
the porter opened it he asked if he could come stay in Pembroke instead.
No one could tell me if he composed the Elergy before or after that.

That evening, having been forewarned by Michael that I would have to
dress decently for dinner, I donned my tweed jacket and tartan bow-tie
and accompanied Yokelin, Michael and his wife Katherine to dinner at the
great hall.  We waited in an adjoining room as the Fellows drifted in.
Then a gong was struck in the great hall -- the signal for dinner.
We went in, with the Master leading, followed by the Dean (he is the
College priest), and then us mortals.  You might have heard of the
"high table".  Well, this was it.  There were two tables in the raised
platform where we sat, and the students were in rows of long tables in
the hall itself.  Before we were allowed to sit, we had to stand behind
our chairs, and the Master said grace in Latin.  Dinner was served by
waiters who brought out each course after the previous one was cleared.
At the conclusion of dinner, a strange ritual emerged.  A wide bowl with a
pitcher in it was placed before the Master.  I watched in Jakun amazement
as he poured the water in the pitcher onto a corner of his napkin (hey,
no paper stuff, we all had white cloth!), then proceeded to dab his brow
and cheeks with it, ending with discreet wipes of his mouth.  The bowl
is to catch the water so poured.  Thereafter, the bowl with the pitcher
in it was passed down the table in a zig-zag fashion, across it from
person to person.  You had the option of dipping your napkin into the
bowl, or pouring more water from the pitcher onto it.  When it came to
me I discovered that this was no ordinary water but scented rose water.
For one wicked moment, betraying the Rabalaisian that was in me, I
thought I might just commit sacrilege in using my scented napkin to
wipe my armpit too.  Mercifully, the solemnity of the occasion soon
re-asserted itself, and I was whole again.  After dinner, the Fellows
and their guests (only us that evening) re-assembled in the adjoining
room for cheese, wine and biscuits, and to make small talk.  I was
seated next to Prof John Dougherty, Professor of Physics, a statistical
mechanics and plasma man.  He is a personal friend of Stephen Hawking.
We fell into talking about all manners of things, but I hope you will
pardon me if I repeat one of his jokes that may only make sense to the
physicists among you.  After I told him about the Poynting Building in
the Uni of Birmingham, he chuckled and said he had just taught his
students about the Poynting vector.  "That is clearly a vector, for it
is the duty of vectors to point. But later I will tell them that it
does not do everything it promises, and then I will say that it should
really have been called the DisaPoynting vector".  I can almost hear
your groans!

We were then invited to retire to the Master's rooms to listen to a
concert The performers were the Fellows and the students.  A new grand
piano had just been donated to Pembroke, and this was an opportunity to
try it out.  John Dougherty was among the performers, playing two pieces,
one by Mozart and one by Chopin.  You get the sense that in the rarefied
atmosphere of places like Cambridge, all the dons are multi-talented.
Even distinguished mathematicians are steeped in the humanities.  If a
life of contemplation and scholarship was the culmination of civilization,
then I had the privilege of beholding its priests.  Tea was served by
the Master's wife.  Oh, I forgot to mention that he was once British
Ambassador to Syria.  I conversed with the Dean for a while, on matters 
mundane and theological.  While he is clearly a committed Christian, he 
was no stranger to the subtleties of other faiths.  I could easily see
how Erasmus thrived in a world like this.

The guest room where we spent the night is like a Fellow's room.
The bath had no shower.  When I remarked later that it would not be
costly to install showers, I was given to understand that to do so would
destroy the character of the place!  Tradition plays a large role here.
There was a Fellow back in the days of Henry VIII by the name of
Ridley whose portrait hangs in the great hall, annotated by the words
"Martyred in 15XX".  He was put to death by Mary Tudor when he refused
to recant his Protestantism while she was attempting to restore England
to Catholicism.  Michael told me that when it was recently (in the last
20 years) discovered that Mary Tudor had once prayed in the chapel, it
was proposed to put a plaque there to commemorate it.  In the ensuing
debate, some Fellows were serious in their opposition when they intoned
"Remember Ridley".

We are off to Scandinavia next.  Watch this space for another report.

Norman (and Yokelin)