Magna Carta: Why visiting British Library ?

Bernard Shaw liked to say he got his education at the British Museum, so did Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Lenin and  Dr. Sun Yat-Sun also spent lots of time studying in The British Museum while exiling in London.  Does the Museum regret educating Lenin and Carl Marx like Harvard would Yamamoto?  I used to wonder how can one get an “education” in a museum, then I always forgot that “the library department” of the British Museum is as old as the museum itself that had a beginning in 1753.

Magna Carta

The British Library moved out of British Museum in 1980s, we saw this plaque saying it was unveiled by Prince of Wales on 12/7/1982; that was Prince Charles.

Our hotel is just five-minute walk from the library.  We didn’t want to “waste” our time in the library while in London; but it is on our “Must Visit” list.  It is the original copy of Magna Carta that brought us there.

Jefferson also went to see the original copy of Magna Carta in the British Museum (in the “library department” of the museum then) in 1786.  One can imagine Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, must be very emotional seeing the Magna Carta, the document that leads to the constitutional monarchy, giving people liberty and birth of early democracy.  It was signed by King John in 1215.

There are four surviving copies of the Magna Carta.  Janice saw one of them in the Museum of Fine Art at Boston before our trip to London.  She said the one we saw at British Library is much more legible, indeed more legible than the copy I got from internet (no photo is allowed in the British Library).  The Magna Carta was no longer on display there when I went to Boston for a meeting about 2 weeks ago, although we did see a special Goya exhibition.

(The following photos are taken in the British Museum.)

Thomas Jefferson (and John Adams) would be my ideal travel company

Thomas Jefferson (and John Adams) would be my ideal travel company, at least traveling in England, as we would go and enjoy seeing the same places.  While serving as the Minister (modern day Ambassador) to France, Thomas Jefferson was asked to go to England for some business by John Adams, who was then Minister to England.

Jefferson and Adams travel together to see England countryside in March-April 1786. They visited the battlefield at Worcester where Oliver Cromwell defeated Charles I, ending the British civil war.  Adams was astonished the local farmers were ignorant of the encounter; he gave them a lecture, “tell your neighbor and your children that this is holy ground; much holier than that on which your churches stand.”  This is tantamount to farmers in Gettysburg didn’t know there was a decisive battle fought there during the Civil War.

“You have sat too long any good you have been doing lately . . . Depart, I say; and let us have done with you.  In the name of God, go!”

The above is what Oliver Cromwell uttered in the House of Commons in Dissolution of Long Parliament in 1653.  In his The Blast of War, Harold Macmillan described a scene repeated in the House, when Leo Amery tried to force Chamberlain to step down as the Prime Minister in 1940.

In his Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain had one page saying the important history in 1542 when De Soto stood on the banks of the Mississippi and that includes “a hundred long years must still elapse before Englishmen would hear the name of Oliver Cromwell.”

They also visited Stratford on Avon—Shakespeare’s home.  Shakespeare’s plays were always on the list of books that Jefferson recommended to others; history would dominate the list, but literature, math and science were also included. And that is about the same kind of books I read (I do read medicine “on my spare time” :-)

Jefferson also went to see the original copy of Magna Carta in the British Museum.  Being the author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson, I can imagine, would have solemn emotion seeing the Magna Carta, which can be treated as  the document that leads to Constitution of the United Kingdom, the birth document of early democracy.  It was signed by King John in 1215.

King John was Shakespeare’s first history play, all the others (from Richard II to Henry VIII—9 of them) occurs from 1367 to 1547, nearly 200 years, practically a continuous history of England.  King John is the only exception, and I think his signing of Magna Carta got him the honor of being picked by the Bard.

There is also a chapter of Magna Carta in Churchill’s A History of the English Speaking Peoples, in which he also mentions one can see the document of Magna Carta in the British Museum.

I would visit these same places, and also the parking lot, where the skeletons of Richard III were recently dug out, had I planned a visit to England.  But, I am afraid the professional travel agency may have different idea.

800th anniversary of Magna Carta

Buckingham Palace had a reception celebrating the 800^th anniversary of Magna Carta yesterday (Feb. 23).  The photo shows the Queen was inspecting it.  We did it while in London last September.  The link is to the post in my blog.

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/search?q=magna

The four original 1215 copies were displayed together at the British Library for one day, 3 February 2015, to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.

 

 

Royal visit

Being an Anglophile I should pay attention to the royal visit to the U.S. the past few days.  Prince Charles has been here twenty some times.  I recall when I first came here in 1971, he was here quite often; that was the days before Princess Diana.  Dean Martin once “roasted” him in a “Man of the Hour” TV program, saying at the end of a date, the prince would ask, “Your palace, or mine?”




Prince Charles at Washington's tomb

Given the places he (and his wife, the future queen) visited (Lincoln Memorial, National Archives, Shakespeare Theater Co, Mount Vernon, Lincoln’s summer cottage at Silver Spring), I can be his travel company.

Prince Charles viewed the 1297 version of the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives.  I often wonder what kind of emotion evoked in him he himself being a “historical” figure.

One of the gifts he received is a US patent application of a polo stick submitted by Lord Louis Mountbatten (a great grandson of Queen Victoria, his grand uncle).  Prince Charles plays polo often in his younger days.

I was dismayed when Lord Mountbatten was killed by IRA in 1979.  He was a heroic fighter against Nazi Hitler and then Japanese aggressor.  Like JFK, the destroyer he commanded was sunk and he swam to the shore and then took charge of the rescue operation.



Lord Mountbatten, FDR and Churchill

He later became the Supreme Allied Commander of Southeast Asia Command and on September 12, 1945 received the Japanese surrender of all Japanese forces with South East Asia Command.

To kill a hero fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is inexcusable regardless what political motive might be.