#9 Traipsing on Names

Westminster Abbey was a bit of a blur, but a beautiful blur nonetheless, after the long walk there. The London Tube Workers strike has officially begun, and with it tube closures (we support you, tube workers! The walk was worth it!). I’ve also been dying to see stained glass and gothic arches, and Westminster Abbey was filled to the brim. As we passed by poet’s corner, and crowded around our tour guide, Molly, I couldn’t help but think of what a full-circle moment it was. Two years ago, before I had even heard about this trip, I was writing a story in-verse about the difficulty of being caught between adventure and home. One of my protagonists said something to the effect of, “I’m going to Britain to see and learn, to visit Byron’s grave.” Not going to lie, I might have been a little misty eyed as I stood on Lord Byron’s plaque at poet’s corner yesterday. It just reminded me, I guess, that if you work at something softly, and diligently, and steadily it will become real whether you’re ready for it or not. 

I think one of the things that surprised me the most about seeing so many memorials to artists, writers, musicians, and innovators was that the experience was so joyful. I heard a few people mention how odd it was to be standing on the names of people who had died, but honestly, I kind of love how Westminster Abbey is able to weave the lives and accomplishments of historical figures into the everyday rhythm of London’s living. One name that stuck out to me, although not in poet’s corner, was a watchmaker by the name of Thomas Tompion whose gravestone mentions his “curious inventions…whose accurate performances are the standard of mechanic skill” (“Thomas Tompion”). The idea of watchmaking in general, I think, is a fascinating one because it’s literally the study of how we organize our energy and our lives, but it’s also interesting to think about how Tompion’s inventions have lived on. Everyone has a watch in some form or fashion, and we’ll likely always need them. What a privilege it would be to know that your work allowed someone to sketch a map everyday about what they wanted their life to look like. 

After looking into more information about Tompion, it’s also interesting to note that so much of his life and training in clockmaking is lost to us. Westminster Abbey’s website, for instance, notes that “nothing is known of his early life and education, but by the 1670s he was making turret and long-case clocks for the nobility” (“Thomas Tompion”). We know that Tompion was esteemed in his field, but who taught him what he knew? What led him to become so enthralled with measuring minutes that he became “the finest English clockmaker of all time” (“Thomas Tompion”)? Tompion’s first and most prominent mark in history, it seems, is the faint ticking at the edge of your thoughts: always present, always guiding, but unobtrusive. There’s something deeply moving about people that are both talented and unassuming, and I’d wager that Tompion, someone known purely for the good of his work, was one of those people. 

Yet as I look into the work of W.H. Auden, a 20^th century poet who has a memorial stone in Poet’s Corner, I’m reminded just how important it is for your life to speak beyond your ambition. W.H. Auden, according to Westminster Abbey’s website, was an incredibly accomplished writer and became a professor of poetry at Oxford (“Wystan Hugh Auden”). Yet, before Auden was a celebrated poet, he was a post-office worker who wrote about the importance of communication and how valuable his job was. He was married, but as Westminster Abbey’s website mentions, Auden “married Erika Grundgens but only in order that she could escape from Nazi Germany” (“Wystan Hugh Auden”). So much of being a poet, from my limited understanding of it, is about looking deeply at things that don’t necessarily ask to be seen. More than words, Auden gave time to other people, and as his memorial stone mentions, this act wasn’t always easy. “In the prison of his days/Teach the free man/how to praise,” the memorial stone quotes from a poem Auden wrote to memorialize W.B. Yeats. Although I doubt I’m picking up on the whole scope of these lines, they remind me of what Auden’s small acts of kindness must have felt like: brief moments of praise in an otherwise ordinary, sometimes tiring world, which is almost more worthy remembrance than anything Auden wrote.

Coincidentally, Dylan Thomas’s memorial stone sits close to Auden’s. I know of Thomas because I fell in love with his poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” in high school, which is a reflection on his father’s death. However, I knew little about Thomas actual life. According to poets.org, a website funded by the Academy of American Poets, Dylan Thomas was known for “his reading tours of the United States, which did much to popularize the poetry reading as a new medium for art” (“About Dylan Thomas”). Yet, despite Thomas’s insistence on fighting death in “Do Not Go Gentle,” he died abruptly due to a bout of alcoholism when he was thirty-nine (“About Dylan Thomas”). Somehow, though, even after learning that Thomas couldn’t quite fight for his own life the way he asked his readers to, I still believe his poetry. I think, in a sense, that’s the impression that stuck with me the most after walking through Westminster Abbey: it’s a place filled with the ghosts of flawed human beings, but even art made from the remnants of their brokenness can heal. Even the cracks in the walls of an Abbey can be lovely. 

More tomorrow,

Kath

Sources

“Thomas Tompion.” About the Abbey, Westminster Abbey, https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/thomas-tompion

“Wystan Hugh Auden.” About the Abbey, Westminster Abbey, https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/wystan-hugh-auden

“About Dylan Thomas.” Poets, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poet/dylan-thomas