How I Wish My Mother Was Here

August 31, 2008

Today was a good day. I rose a little after eight o' clock, which was surprising considering the preceding night's activities. Like our room, I smelled of puke, cheap vodka, sweat, and shame, so I showered and throwing on a semi-clean shirt, khaki shorts, and sneakers, I headed downstairs for breakfast. The menu was identical to what we have had every day: sausages, scrambled eggs, fried tomatoes, and canned peaches. This morning, however, I followed it with a glass of lukewarm water instead of my customary cup of tea. Dwight joined me shortly after I arrived, and we shared thirty minutes or so of pleasant conversation.

For most of the morning, we did not accomplish much of consequence. Dwight slept. Duncan went rock climbing--or so I suspect--and Ben tried to hide from his hangover beneath his down comforter. For my part, I occupied my time downloading and tagging photographs on Facebook; I also drafted a plan of action for the day according to which I was going to visit the British Museum in the afternoon, grab a cheap bite to eat, catch up on my journal entries and reading, and do my laundry.

Around twelve o' clock, Emma Healy telephoned Dwight inviting him to join her, Zach Garlitos, and Rob Sieg in visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington. Dwight extended the invitation to me, and with the late addition of Greg Smart, we caught the Underground and headed for the South Kensington Station. I suspect that all of us were pretty drained--nobody got much sleep last night, either because they were drinking or because they were dealing with the recent news of a friend's death--so there was practically no conversation. We finally reached South Kensington and, more importantly, the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was actually linked to the station by a long subterranean tunnel. It was an experience for certain, filing through the glass doors at the entrance and entering an enormous white-walled gallery filled with all manners of sculpture and artwork. It was remarkable.

Properly speaking, I am not certain how to categorise the Victoria and Albert Museum. Although there were many rapiers, wheelock pistols, eighteenth-century hunting rifles, and other arms throughout the place, it is not a "war museum" like the Cabinet War Rooms Museum (which I visited last Wednesday). Neither was it a museum of natural history or of human history, even though most of its exhibits were arranged within the many, many galleries in chronological order. By the planets, the name of the place itself is something of a misnomer since its collection included items from throughout British history and from across the face of the globe; it was not concerned exclusively with the Victorian Era or its well-respected namesakes. But let me say that I loved it. Top floor to basement, it was (and is) my favorite child.

I think what made the Victoria and Albert Museum so appealing to me was the breadth of coverage in terms of the items held in its collection. Like I have already mentioned, there were weapons, furniture, clothes, paintings, sculpture, cutlery, carpets, wall hangings, and dinnerware. They were arranged into exhibits discussing a plethora of topics, including the evolution of men's and women's fashion, changes within the British household between the 1500s and 1900s, the Middle East, China, and Auguste Rodin. (And by-the-bye, I do not mean to be hyperbolic, but I feel like I hardly skimmed the surface.) And as a historian, that intrigues me. Here's why. The greater mass of museums are concerned with a single topic or field of interest--military history, paleontology, modern art, you name it--and what's more, they are concerned with something which our society has determined to be significant and therefore worthy of preservation. I hate to use the word "bias" or "prejudice," but when one pauses to reflect, what else can one call it? With all museums, art collections, or preservation efforts, there is an inherent tendency to marginalise a certain order of things or people in favor of another. As a historian, I encounter this problem whenever I try to consider old wills and testaments, court writs, journals, letters, periodicals, and other primary sources; in order for there to be a seventeenth-century will for me to study in 2008, someone from the period had to determine that the document was significant and therefore worthy of preservation. Overwhelmingly through the ages, people have tended to preserve documents related to issues of war and peace, of the state, of political and military power.

In casting so broad a net and encompassing so much that one might consider secondary to the clash of arms or the lofty affairs of state, what does the Victoria and Albert Museum say about this tendency? I am tempted to say something dreadfully existential right now, but I will resist; I think that the Victoria and Albert Museum indicates that history is not necessarily or exclusively invested in the affairs of the high and mighty, without realising it pointing the way toward a field historians call "social history." Unlike past historigraphical approaches, social history concentrates on the less significant members of society--the poor, women, racial and religious minorities, etc. Due to the relative paucity of sources, it is significantly harder to practice than older schools of thought, and honestly, I remain fond of the older histories that center on the high and the mighty. As far as I am concerned, a cast of paupers makes for a pathetic drama.

To return to our narrative, I ran into Lauren Deitz and Meghan Blickman at the Victoria and Albert Museum, specifically in the exhibits dedicated to Europe between the 1500s and 1800s. The others were speeding along like crazed motorists, so I decided to follow Lauren and Meghan around the displays. It was so much fun. We did not return to the Arran House till five o' clock, and we did so most reluctantly. I then talked with the family over Skype for about an hour, went to dinner with Shannyn, Leah, Katie Stewart, and Greg at a delightful pizzeria on Goodge Street, and now here I sit, literally pounding at my helpless keyboard as I try with all my might to put off the last element of my plan for the day: the laundry. How I wish my Mother was here!