Seeing it All: Palaces and Slums

Saturday was a day of extremes for me; I saw the top of English society and the bottom of it.  To start at the beginning, we woke up Saturday morning and headed to Hampton Court.  This is an old Palace notably used by William and Mary and King Henry VII.  It is rumored that two out of Henry’s six wives still haunt the place.  Besides getting married six times, Henry is also famous (infamous?) for starting the Church of England.  The Pope wouldn’t give him a divorce, so he put himself in charge and started a new denomination. 

The Palace was beautiful, especially the gardens.  They ran along the Thames, which was most charming.  The weather was beautiful and people were out boating and fishing. My favorite gardens were the Pond Gardens, which were surrounded by hedges that formed arches you could peek through to see the flowers and pond inside. The gardens also contained the largest grape vine in the world.  There was also a maze, which I didn’t have time to do, but fun fact: Dr. Ryken and a young President Ryken once got lost in there on a Wheaton in England trip years ago.  As a result, Dr. Ryken was not a huge fan of the maze and highly discouraged us in participating in it, especially 15 minutes before the bus was leaving.

After Hampton, we had the afternoon free.  My friend Chelsea and I had purchased tickets to see inside Buckingham Palace.  We were very excited, as the Palace is not always accessible to the public.  The Palace is the Queen’s “London House” or “Office” (I’m not sure if I would put it in either of those categories).  Her true home is Windsor Castle outside of town.  (It is very common in England to live in London but have your home in country).  To get into the Palace, we had to go through airport-like security.  Also, photos are not allowed inside the Palace.  It was beautiful inside.  The rooms were huge, red lush carpet, everything was gilded in gold, and the pillows were fluffed to all look the same.  The special exhibit was a display of the Queen’s diamonds as it is the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee (Another fun fact: the only other monarch to have a Diamond Jubilee was Queen Victoria, who was the first monarch to live in Buckingham Palace).  The diamonds were beautiful, especially the Queen’s three tiaras/crowns on display.  As beautiful as they were, there was a sad story behind the diamonds: they all came from India, and England completely bled India dry of diamonds during their colonization of the country. 

My favorite discovery of the tour was finding out that Queen Elizabeth uses secret passageways to greet her guests.  One minute you are waiting to meet the Queen in a stateroom, the next thing you know a wall swings out and there she is.  Nifty.  I like the idea of the Queen pattering around in secret hallways.  No royalty was spotted on the trip, unfortunately.

After Chelsea and I enjoyed a cuppa tea and scone with clotted cream and fruit, my friend Deborah and I went to meet up with some other Wheaties and Wheaton staff who were in town.  As many of you know, last summer I participated in Global Urban Perspectives (GUP), which is the urban summer ministry.  This year, two students were during a GUP trip in London, and Sue Lee, Professor Samuelson of the Art department, and Kristy, the RD of Mac-Evans came to visit.  Deborah and I took the tube to East London to have dinner with them.

Once we started heading East on the Tube, I could tell that we had reached a different part of London.  Suddenly, the Tube was dirtier as were the streets.  East London is traditionally where many of the slums were.  One of the interns told me that Dickens was born in this area.  While East London has improved since Dickens time, it is still noticeably poorer.  It was sharp reality check, especially after Buckingham Palace which is out of a fairy tale.  It was interesting to compare to the ghettoes of the United States.  While we have rougher parts of town, we don’t have the class divide of England.  I was grateful that I was able to see the full picture of the richest to the poorest in English Society. It was hard to reconcile that they both exist in the same city, although I know that this is no different from any city anywhere else in the world.  Interestingly enough, today the Dean of St. Paul preached on remembering the poor, who are blessed as Jesus himself told us: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).  After all, no Palace or Castle here on Earth can ever compare to what waits for us in Heaven.