On the Road

I have shamelessly purloined the title of Jack Kerouac’s definitive work that helped to define “The Beat Generation” but what follows is hardly definitive. Although I don’t consider myself a travel writer this piece sets a context for a number of pieces that will follow and that deal with various subjects. I have kept notes of some of the things that we have seen and the places we have visited and in some cases the stories of our visits encompass wider issues that I hope readers will find interesting and stimulating.

We have been on the road travelling in Great Britian. As I write this we have been here for 3 weeks and another few days to go.

The object of the trip was to visit my wife’s ancestral home in Orkney. We started in London where we had a few days before taking a train to Edinburgh. That was a journey that was marred by tragedy. A person had stepped on the rails in the path of a high speed train near Doncaster and had brought virtually all northern travel to a standstill while accident investigation people did their forensic duties.

Two days in Edinburgh (very busy with an upcoming International Book Festival, the Tattoo and a little further down the track the Fringe Festival) and then on by train to Inverness, a visit to Dunrossie Moor (the site of Culloden where some of my ancestors were on the losing side which started the move in locations – the dreaded Clearances - that ended up in New Zealand about 100 years later). We picked up a rental car and drove through the Highlands to the town of Thurso and took the car ferry from Scrabster to Stromness on Orkney.

The further north we went the less traffic there was on the roads and the volume of people decreased. We did not go so far into the countryside to approach the raw wildness of some of the locations in Outlander and much of the road followed to coast and the North Sea was on our right dotted with oil rigs or with the huge three-armed power generating windmills that lent an eerie almost science-fictional ambience to the view. The weather was good although we would discover the meaning of wind on Orkney.

From Stromness we drove to the town of Kirkwall and spent 4 days seeing the sites – and I mean sites rather than sights. Some of the human settlements in Orkney predate Stonehenge. Some of the sites we visited were far from the sea when first settled but are now at the water’s edge. Rising seas are not a new phenomena.

Much – indeed most – of Orkney is treeless and the land rolls gently and from time to time there are large hills that are deceptive. They don’t look high nor steep but when one decides to climb to a view vantage point it becomes clear that deceit is alive and well. Whether that was from the feys or the sprites or some local pookah (and we may have disturbed some of them, clambering about as we did in chambered cairns) or, when we were close to the sea a local selkie or maighdean mhara is difficult to tell. There are times when there was a sense of mystery in the landscape and the land is ancient. The weave and weft of time has a different meaning than we understand in our country still emerging from childhood.

We returned to London via a reverse route – returned the car at Inverness (I can recommend car hire as a way of seeing out of the way places of which there are plenty on both Orkney and through northern Scotland) by train to Edinburgh and thence to London where the temperatures this time around had soared from the late teens and early twenties to the late twenties and early thirties.

In London we stayed at the East India Club on St James’s Square.

This beautiful Square is in fact private land fenced around with a black wrought iron spiked fence but the gates are open Monday to Friday during the day and the ambience is peaceful and cool. The grass provides a refuge for those who come there for lunch as the classical equestrian bronze of William III looks on.

The Square is one of those contemplative places that are present in many locations in London – an oasis of peace amid the hurly-burly of the city. It is hard to imagine that five minutes walk away is the mighty, pulsating, pounding  heart of Piccadilly Circus and shopper’s paradise, Regent Street arcing away with Thomas Nash’s façade leading the way towards the magic of Oxford Street. If you are awake and aware you can look down a side street from Regent Street into Carnaby Street and the wonderland of Soho. When my parents visited London in the mid-1950’s Soho was a place where “nice” people did not venture and the name Kray was whispered behind a hand. Not so now and deep within Soho are fabulous eateries. One I remember from a 1981 visit after Mastermind was on Greek Street off Shaftesbury Avenue. The place was Au Jardin des Gourmets and it was beautiful. There is a location for a restaurant named Au Jardin des Gourmets in Greek Street but it is neither the same place nor in the same location. More than that I cannot say, for like many places in post-Covid London it is permanently closed

As a member of the Northern Club  I can access and stay at a number of clubs in other countries which have reciprocal arrangements. On two previous occasions when I was in London addressing Conferences we stayed at the East India Club which is wonderfully located, a few minutes walk from Piccadilly, handy to Green Park and Piccadilly Tube Stations, rich with history.

The East India Club was founded in 1849. The full title of the club is East India, Devonshire, Sports and Public Schools' Club due to mergers with other clubs. The club was originally founded for officers of the East India Company, and its first Patron was Prince Albert. The present building was constructed in 1866.

The main dining room is of interest not only because it is magnificent but because the history of the Raj is portrayed in the portraits that line the walls. Clive is there as is Warren Hastings and others

Just around the corner on the Square is the house where Augusta Ada King (nee Byron) Countess Lovelace lived – she who was a mathematician when it wasn’t twee for ladies to be so engaged, and who helped Charles Babbage develop the marvellous Analytical Engine – an early computer. Ada was the only legitimate child of George Gordon, Lord Byron (mad, bad and dangerous to know according to Lady Caroline Lamb).

A little further down the Square is Chatham House, residence of Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham, Lord Derby and Willam Ewart Gladstone. There is also the building which was the HQ of General Eisenhower as he planned the D-Day Landings in 1944.

A plaque on the Duke of York St leading away from the Square commemorates Henry Jermyn Earl of St Albans who developed the St James’s Park area of Piccadilly.

At the top of Duke of York St is Jermyn St which runs parallel to Piccadilly and has the most wonderful array of menswear stores. Shirts, suits, shoes and everything else is wonderfully and tastefully displayed although the prices (in pounds) are breathtaking.

The Piccadilly Arcade runs off Jermyn Street to Piccadilly itself and at the Jermyn St entrance is a bronze of George Brummel. “Beau” Brummell was an important figure in Regency England, and for many years he was the arbiter of British men's fashion. At one time, he was a close friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV, but after the two quarrelled and Brummell got into debt, he had to take refuge in France. Eventually, he died shabby and insane in Caen.

Brummell was remembered afterwards as the preeminent example of the dandy, and a whole literature was founded upon his manner and witty sayings, which have persisted until today. His name is still associated with style and good looks and has been given to a variety of modern products to suggest their high quality. That he now stands in Jermyn St is more than appropriate – it is perfect.

Piccadilly is a joy although after noon is wall to wall people. A promenade down Piccadilly is best accomplished about 9:30 am, sun high in the azure sky highlighting the architecture of the variety of buildings. Heading towards the Circus one passes Hatchard’s Bookshop (est. 1797) and Waterstones Bookshop about which I shall write in another piece about four London bookshops (a few of the very, very many such establishments.)

And there at the Circus is the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. It was erected in 1892–93 to commemorate the philanthropic works of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, the Victorian politician and philanthropist, and his achievement in replacing child labour with school education. The fountain overlooks the south-west end of Shaftesbury Avenue, also named after the Earl.

Although the statue is generally known as Eros, it was created as an image of that Greek god's brother, Anteros. The sculptor Alfred Gilbert had already sculpted a statue of Anteros and, when commissioned for the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, chose to reproduce the same subject, who, as "The God of Selfless Love" was deemed to represent the philanthropic 7th Earl of Shaftesbury suitably. Gilbert described Anteros as portraying "reflective and mature love, as opposed to Eros or Cupid, the frivolous tyrant." Gilbert commented on his reason for the statue, saying:

As to the figure surmounting the whole if I must confess to a meaning or a raison d’ être for its being there I confess to have been actuated in its design by a desire to symbolise the work of Lord Shaftesbury the blindfolded Love sending forth indiscriminately yet with purpose his missile of kindness always with the swiftness the bird has from its wings never ceasing to breathe or reflect critically but ever soaring onwards regardless of its own peril and dangers.

Looking down Regent St towards Pall Mall from the Circus is the magnificent column monument to the Duke of York and beyond the towers of Parliament Building. I first came across this view in 1981. It was a cool evening in late June and we had walked down Shaftesbury Avenue. I was so unfamiliar with the geography that we came upon the Circus as if by accident and after a brief recognition that we were at one of London’s many hearts I looked down Regent St towards the column bathed in the golden light of the setting sun and the light kissed spires of Parliament and of the many views I have seen in my travels this is my favourite.

Along Piccadilly in the opposite direction, heading towards Green Park, is the house occupied by Lord Palmerston – he of the mauve tinted sideburns - and across the Park is St. James’s Palace built by Henry VIII for his second wife. Sadly she never lived to see it completed.

And onwards towards Hyde Park Corner, Aspley House, former residence of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, Hyde Park and up Park Lane towards Marble Arch and Speaker’s Corner of which more in a future piece.

On the opposite side of St James’s Square is a street of the same name which leads on to Pall Mall and there, as one steps onto Pall Mall are three of the great London clubs – the Athenaeum, the Reform Club (Phileas Fogg’s club in “Around the World in 80 Days”) and the Traveller’s Club.

I had the pleasure of joining a good friend at the Travellers for lunch and it was delightful – grand in style and presentation with a lovely garden out the back – perfect for a pre-lunch drink and an after lunch coffee.

The Travellers Club is a private gentlemen's club and is the oldest of the surviving Pall Mall clubs, established in 1819, and is one of the most exclusive. It was described as "the quintessential English gentleman's club" by the Los Angeles Times in 2004.

The original concept for the club, conceived by Lord Castlereagh and others, dates from the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. They envisaged a club where gentlemen who travelled abroad could meet and offer hospitality to distinguished foreign visitors. The original rules from 1819 excluded from membership anyone “who has not travelled out of the British islands to a distance of at least five hundred miles from London in a direct line”.

The members of the club's first Committee included the Earl of Aberdeen (later Prime Minister), Lord Auckland (after whom a certain city is named), the Marquess of Lansdowne (who had already served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and later refused office as Prime Minister) and Viscount Palmerston (later Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister).

The club's original premises were at 12 Waterloo Place. It moved to 49 Pall Mall in 1821 (a building which had once been occupied by Brooks's). However, it quickly outgrew this building and in 1826 the members decided to spend £25,000 on the construction of a purpose built club house on the present site at 106 Pall Mall, backing onto Carlton gardens.

To give one a sense of the history of the place one of the ambassadors who attended the Club was Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Talleyrand was a survivor, having been a churchman up until the Revolution which he managed to survive and became one of Napoleon’s diplomats. After the fall of l’Empereur he was the leading French diplomat at the Congress of Vienna.

Talleyrand suffered from a clubbed foot rendering him partially lame and in his later years was a large man. The bannister of the Travellers shown in the photo was specially made for him so that it would safely bear his not inconsiderable weight. There is a brass plaque halfway up the bannister stating this and it can be just discerned in the picture below.

That is a background for some of the articles that I shall be writing and publishing over the next few weeks. I hope they inform and entertain.