London Homecoming

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Scott Smoot and his bike at Trafalgar Square, virtually

After the Queen's funeral last Monday, I took some time away from the bike. I got back in the saddle this weekend with two rides, 56 miles, enough to take me from Oxford to London on my virtual tour of the world. In the selfie, I'm resting my other arm on the seat of my bike while I rest myself in Trafalgar Square.

This is a place I lived and loved in my imagination long before I first visited in 1980. From Mary Poppins in grade school to practically all the dead white guys I read for my English major, my memory was packed with London images and incidents, so much so that I burst into tears coming up from the Marble Arch station, as if it were a homecoming, not my first step on a London street.

On great advice from my mentor Frank Boggs, I first toured London's National Portrait Gallery. From the top floor where I saw Alfred the Great's crude likeness on a ship's plank, to the basement, where I recognized Henry James from across the room, I strolled through a thousand years.

In a room dedicated to massive framed portraits of 18th century writers, I found my favorite portrait on the back of an envelope. From several feet away, I saw the sketch of a gentleman with a hunched back and bowed legs disproportionately short, and knew that it must be the refined but feisty poet Alexander Pope. He fought to have no likeness made of what he called his "misshapen" body. Portrait artist Joshua Reynolds drew him surreptitiously while the poet gestured in conversation. I was amused and touched.

During six weeks of studying literature at Oxford, I reserved weekends for London theatre. I saw first London productions by some of my heroes that summer: Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, Harold Pinter's The Hothouse, and, my favorite of the summer, Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, much more fun than the movie. Another highlight was a Samuel Beckett double-bill at the Old Vic theatre, Krapp's Last Tape and Endgame, the author directing inmates from San Quentin.

I had London all to myself at sunrise on my last day in England. Walking to Paddington, I sang "London Pride," learned from a recording by Cleo Laine. Noel Coward's wartime benediction for the city expressed what I was feeling:

Gray city,
stubbornly implanted,
taken so for granted
for a thousand years.

Stay, city,
smokily enchanted,
cradle of our memories,
our hopes and fears.

Every blitz,
our resistance toughens
from the Ritz
to the Anchor and Crown.
Nothing ever can override
the pride of London town.

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