London was beautiful, but still nowhere near Prague in my book. Of all the paintings, engravings by tower prisoners, crown jewel, etc. that I saw in the museums, the best things were all the works stored in The British Library.
I mean, the first thing I saw was the actual manuscript of Jane Eyre that Charlotte Bronte wrote with her own hands. Then I looked to my right and saw the manuscript of Persuasion by Jane Austen—Jane Austen’s freaking handwriting, on her actual writing desk. I was freaking out. I mean those papers were the first to know the story. Those were the papers that those authors had personally translated legendary works to. But I had a lot more freaking out to do, so I just stopped trying to calm myself down and shed a few tears of joy in front of Alice in Wonderland. All these original manuscripts were there: Um, BEOWULF, drafts of Paradise Lost by John Milton, Mrs. Dalloway, Wordsworth poems, envelopes The Beatles had first written lyrics down on, the resignation letter Sir Thomas Moore wrote to Henry VIII denouncing Protestantism, the ACTUAL letter Queen Elizabeth wrote to her council saying that she had no need to get married and finally the friggin Magna Carta. Definitely this and a lot of other things there would blow any former English major’s mind.
Shout out to Nolan who let me crash for free at his place while I was there. It was out on the English countryside and while there I saw a fox! A real, cute, red fox that kept on just staring at us and freaking me out until Nolan told me they never attack humans. Pretty cool trip, but I’ll have more details of it later …
1 year ago