. From the Still Life Prop Cabinet . Toby Mug: Lon…

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From the Still Life Prop Cabinet
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Toby Mug: London, 1979

Robert L. Chapman could do the Sherlock Holmes hat, even in London. At six foot four, thin, with his white goatee, tan chinos, work boots and tweed overcoat, he looked like an American English professor in a contemporary Dickens novel. At one point, he read to our group the opening paragraphs of Great Expectations. As he read, we realized he’d taken us to the graveyard described in those paragraphs.

It was 1979, and Chapman was compiling his Dictionary of American Slang. He was also working on a new edition of Roget’s Thesaurus, which he claimed he needed to do to pay some bills. Chapman was a linguist, the authoritative voice in many of William Safire’s On Language columns. And he knew England well from the years he spent there as a soldier in World War II. Many of the stops on his literary tour included sites such as the graveyard that he’d scouted out in the 1940s.

The tour was a January semester course in English Literature at Drew University where Chapman taught. Everyone on it—there were ten of us—had to pick a writer and prepare two visits to significant landmarks associated with that writer. At those sites we would read appropriate passages to the class. Chapman threw in a few of his own presentations. We spent the month taking one- to three-day excursions from London, where Drew owned a house in Maida Vale, to our literary landmarks in a tiny British caravan driven by “Chappy.” At the end of the trip, we were to write a paper recounting our adventures in the style of our chosen writer. I chose Shakespeare and took everyone to the Tower of London. My favorite trip, led by a student from Drew’s Continuing Education for Women program, was to Thomas Hardy’s “Wessex” in Dorset. There were three women from the CEW program, all of whom had children in college. They were extremely hip, wisely pulling no mom-like stuff

We also visited Canterbury Cathedral, Oxford, and Stonehenge–lots of Hardy sites. The guard at Stonehenge let our group under the ropes to walk amongst and touch the plinths—we were the only people around during a light English snow flurry in the late afternoon. One day, at another graveyard in the Bloomsbury section of London, Chapman pulled back considerable bramble to reveal Karl Marx’s grave, which features a huge bust of the great man (the grave is better tended these days, I hear).

The London trip was my first prolonged stay in any city. I was familiar enough with New York, having lived just outside it all my life, so the “big city” aspect wasn’t new to me. It mattered more, probably, that it was my first step outside of the U.S. I’ve covered that aspect elsewhere. At night, I tended to venture out alone. It would start in the evening with a map. I’d find Southwark across the river, let’s say, and I’d remember that the Globe Theater used to be there. That sounded interesting. My roommate, Dave, a rather proper chap who actually lived in Nantucket, heading off to another night of D’Oyly Carte’s Gilbert and Sullivan, sniffed a warning that my guttersnipe inclinations would end badly. We’d toss scarves around our necks with “have it your way” expressions and head off in our separate directions.

At about midnight, I’d realize that I’d ventured into the most dangerous place I’d ever been. Southwark was a prime example—I remember climbing from the Underground on a broken escalator, encountering men resembling the Jethro Tull Aqualung character at street level. I almost got knifed in Ramsgate, near Dover, on an overnighter. I shucked the miscreant by jumping into traffic and ran back to the country house that was putting us up for the night. A few of my better-heeled classmates, including the three blonde girls who’d formed a coterie, were sitting in the parlor. I dropped down with our host’s golden retriever next to the fireplace thinking about how life is good.

Most of my adventures took place in London. Traversing gangs of pigeons on Trafalgar Square, I’d enter the national gallery in the afternoon. At closing time, I would steer through gangs of black leather punks marching up the stairs, chanting, “Shoosh, shoosh, shoosh, shoosh” with their fingers on their lips. Punk was so new and raw then, especially in London. The posters of Elvis Costello in the Underground were actually intimidating. So were the cityfolk who pegged me for a Yank (my down coat was a giveaway) and blamed me for the Vietnam War. This usually happened well after the bars closed, by law, at 11:pm (Time, gentlemen, please!).

I composed lines of iambic pentameter. Sitting in the back of the crammed caravan, Chappy and Mrs. Chappy, along for the trip, quibbling over directions up front, I would scribble in my little red notebooks. This caught the eye of my favorite blonde, Mary, who confided that I came off as a Dostoyevsky type during the weekend we took off together to Stratford-Upon-Avon on the train. It was Mary’s birthday and I arranged for a small cake at dinner. We saw the Tempest—I remember the Caliban character well. Totally green he was, with four goat horns sprouting from his bald head. Our hosts at the bed and breakfast prefigured Nick Park’s claymation world of Old Blighty. So did the station manager, who gave us Mrs. B&B’s card. College men in matching blazers hit on Mary at the pub after the show, but Mary ignored them, preferring the attentions of the dark little mustachioed fellow who didn’t drink enough for the schoolboy’s liking. That night, Mary divulged certain problems she had in her relationship with her father. That was about all she divulged, as I recall–I was nothing if not the perfect freaking little gentleman, and I only get so far with the Dostoyevsky thing.

Back in London, I would sit in cafes listening to The Who on corny radio stations. I caroused Carnaby Street. One day, near the Tower of London, I noticed a guy that looked like my hometown neighbor Vince with a beard. He happened, coincidentally, to be standing next to two guys looking like our high school chums Ralph and John with beards. It really was Vince, Ralph, and John! In addition to the beard, John had picked up a phony British accent. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Ralph was at a loss, in an aside, to explain what had come over John.

One day–it was a weekend day toward the end of the trip–I stopped into an upscale newsstand in which I spotted a yellow Toby mug. Toby, a stock character in England comparable to an 18th century Homer Simpson, has pre-Shakespearean roots. Your standard Toby mug is Toby himself with a tricorn hat, his pipe, and a flagon of ale. But any and all decorative mugs with faces–fish, man, or leprechaun–can be considered Tobys. My favorite depiction of a Toby in literature is Uncle Toby in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, which I read in my sophomore year, the year prior to the trip. [The recent film version of Shandy is actually very good—completely in keeping with the spirit of the book]. I sprang for the Toby mug. That and a big wool sweater were my souvenirs from the trip.

We retuned, flying on Air India, to Kennedy Airport, whereupon we immediately boarded a helicopter shuttle to Newark. The last navigational quibble between the Chapmans occured as we crossed over midtown Manhattan. Yes, helicopter shuttles used to fly over the city between airports—until one crashed moments after take-off a couple of months after our ride.

Back at Drew, I spent a little more time hanging around Mary, who never fully realized that she outclassed me. I found that quite charming. When she graduated that year, she handed over to me the editorship of Drew’s literary magazine, Plateau—a fond act of nepotism, no doubt, but I was, to the best of her knowledge, the only cat on campus with little red notebooks filled with iambic pentameter.

Such as it was:

Sonnet to the Color Red
(London, 1979)

In London Town the color red resides
On double-decker busses in the Strand
And at the Tower, stained from pierced sides,
The Yeoman Gaoler, regal red, yet stands.
In pubs, cafes, on cars, and colonnades
The trim of red makes Soho seem to bleed;
At Buckingham the palace guard parades
With crimson-cloak-draped cavalry and steed.
The red world dwells below here and above
Piled high upon the Cockney’s curly head;
In Piccadilly Eros stands for love
Eclipsing Coca-Cola’s neon red.
Now, when I close my eyes the red remains–
I see, at least I feel it in my veins.

Pip Ho!
Vanx
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Photos: Toby Mug: Verb-Ops 2006; Chappy, kid in Trafalgar Square: Verb-Ops 1979; Literary Pilgrims at Penshurst, a Ben Jonson landmark: Sarah Chapman, 1979. Illustration from Tristram Shandy–frontispiece to vol. 1, second state.