York In Books

Hello wonderful people! I'm back! (Again. It's Friday. You were probably expecting this.) This past weekend I went to York and absolutely loved it! (I also did several other things this weekend, including a hike and a trip to a graveyard, but I'm thinking perhaps I'll save up all the hikes and do one big good, better, best post for UK hikes, and the graveyard will just have to wait for another day.) But instead of giving you a blow-by-blow of What I Did In York This Past Weekend (which sounds horribly boring for both of us, even though it was a super fun trip) I thought I'd take all of my favourite places that I got to go in York, think of a book that I'm reminded of for each one, and then tell you about the place and the book! Sound good? Cool. 

The York City Walls
Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman 
The fact that York still has its city walls from the Middle Ages (and some of its walls from the Roman period, when it was still Eboracum, although not many of those) honestly blew me away. Plus, the fact that you can actually walk on those walls? And through the medieval towers and gate houses and everything? Amazing! You can go up and walk on the walls guys! It's so cool! (And you get the absolute best views.) 
That reminded me of Catherine, Called Birdy, which is possibly my favourite piece of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages. It's written as a diary, and it's about this extremely spunky young teenaged girl who really is not into the idea of an arranged marriage with someone much older than her. But the book is mostly so delightful because it's so connected with the down-to-earth realities of the time period, everything from strewing herbs on the floor and making it smell good to the horrible table manners and the fleas. I feel like Birdy is the kind of person who would totally sneak up onto the city walls, if given the chance...

The Multangular Tower
The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff 
I had heard of the Multangular Tower before going to York, but I had no idea why it's actually so cool. And the answer to that question is that it's actually a Roman tower. Like, it's a still extant tower that the Romans built on one of the corners of the walls that surrounded their legion-sized camp at Eboracum. You can see where they used bricks as a splice, and you can see some of how they built their walls with stone facings and rubble infill. It's wild. History just plonked down in the middle of the city. On top of the Roman tower, there is a layer that was built in the Middle Ages with arrow slits and arches and stuff, too, so you have this cool stratification thing going on, as well. 
All of this Romans-in-Britain stuff reminded me of--well, actually it reminded me of several things, including G. A. Henty and Helena by Evelyn Waugh, but the one that I was thinking of moreso when I started writing this post was The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. While TEotN isn't set in York, precisely (and I'm not sure if there is a specific city/camp in which it's set) it is set in the North of England, and it is about someone attached to a Roman military *waves hands in the air vaguely* unit thingy who has to go travel through the North of England to find this specific Eagle/pennant/thingy. (Clearly, I remember this book quite well. I do remember the important things, enough to remember it being a good book, but I do need a reread.)

The Ruins of St. Mary's Abbey
In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden
I had only been in York for maybe ten minutes when I was wandering through the history museum's gardens and came across the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, just...y'know. Sitting there. As they do. Like it's totally normal to have the ruins of an abbey that King Henry VIII destroyed just randomly there at your city centre. The ruins themselves are beautiful, and I wish I could have seen the whole abbey back when it was whole and operational and had its stained glass and art and everything. Boo King Henry VIII. 
And while St. Mary's Abbey was home to male Benedictines, if you want to read about Benedictine life in a non-destroyed abbey, look no farther than my old favourite, In This House of Brede, which is about the life of a convent of Benedictine nuns just pre-Vatican II. It's insightful about human nature, contains beautiful descriptions of liturgy and the abbey gardens, and is basically everything you ever wanted in a book about religious life. (In my opinion, at least.)

The York Oratory
The Dream of Gerontius by Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman
Next to the ruins of St. Mary's, there's a little church that turned out to be of Anglican persuasion, but that made me want to know if there are any Catholic churches worth visiting in York. (Something I hadn't looked up before I went--that was my first mistake I guess.) To my surprise and delight, the Oratorian Fathers have an Oratory there, as well as running the Shrine of St. Margaret Clitherow (more on her in a moment). To my further joy, they were having a Pontifical High Mass that very day for the ordination of a deacon, and needing no more persuasion, I went. The Oratory itself is a gorgeous church inside (though I wasn't allowed to take pictures) and out, and the liturgy that took place was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The bishop did a completely orthodox and beautiful job with Mass, including a lot of Latin, the music was Elgar, Bruckner, and Vierne (Elgar is possibly my favourite composer of music for Mass, although Palestrina gives him a run for his money), and the actual ordination of the deacon (which was something I had never seen before) was unique and really cool to see, from the prostration to the vows in the hands of the bishop. 
All of this Oratorian stuff, of course, made me think of St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, the famous founder of the Birmingham Oratory, and the namesake of Newman Centres everywhere. The Dream of Gerontius was I think the first full-length work of his I'd ever read, and it is a beautiful poem about a man's death, and his journey alongside his guardian angel into Purgatory. While it's an epic poem, it's not actually that long, and it's in the public domain, so I'd encourage you to find it and give it a read. :) Also, Elgar set it to music at one point, which is a double whammy of awesome.

Yorkminster
Cathedral by David Macaulay 
I didn't go into Yorkminster mostly because I was salty that it's not a Catholic cathedral anymore (although it used to be, boo King Henry again) but also because I didn't want to pay admission. However, it is beautiful enough from the outside to stand and look at for quite some time. I love the way that it is absolutely enormous and dominates and broods over the city. It's beautiful! (Even if it's Anglican now.)
Hearing about how Yorkminster was built (and how the tower in the middle collapsed during construction and had to be rebuilt, which must have been just...so stressful, but I'm also kind of amused by that) and how long it took to build reminded me of the book Cathedral by David Macaulay. It's kind of a picture book, but I think it's just as much fun for an adult as for a kid. It tells the story of a (fictional) medieval town building a cathedral from start to finish, and it has these beautiful pencil illustrations showing all of the steps and craftspeople and the process of building. And I think one of the things that I love about it is that it shows how important the cathedral was to the ordinary people of the town, and how much love went into its construction. 

The Shambles
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling
The Shambles is the old butcher's quarter/street of York, and it's been preserved in a rather old form--I don't know how historic it is, but I do know that at least some of the houses date from at the very latest the 16th century. It's become a fairly tourist-y quarter, with most of the houses now having a tourist shop of some sort downstairs, from bakeries to wool product shops to the massive Harry Potter shop called "The Shop That Cannot Be Named". 
That shop is there because the street looks almost exactly like the set of Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter movies. I'm not sure if the set was inspired by that street exactly, but it is that picture perfect medieval cobbled street with the buildings leaning in on either side. So of course it reminded me of Harry Potter. :D 

The Margaret Clitherow Shrine
The Trials of Margaret Clitherow by Peter Lake & Michael C. Questier
St. Margaret Clitherow's house--and the shrine that now occupies the bottom story of said house--are actually in the Shambles, something that threw me for a loop, because I had walked through the Shambles and not seen it the first time, so when my GPS told me that it was literally in the Shambles, I didn't believe it. But it is. It's one of the houses that leans in to block out most of the sky above the street--a tiny oasis of quiet and peace and holiness amidst the Harry Potter nerds, people dressed up like Charles Dickens handing out flyers for ghost tours, and incessant shopping. It makes sense--Margaret Clitherow's husband was a butcher, so the fact that her house is in the old butcher's quarter should really not be shocking to me. It's a beautiful little shrine, with a small altar, flanked by statues of Margaret and another English Martyr, behind a beautifully carved wooden altar rail. There are three benches used as pews during the Mass that's held there on Saturdays at 10 am, and while the Eucharist is not reposed there (because there are always curious tourists peeking in, who aren't always pilgrims), there was a beautiful sense of peace and the presence of God when I knelt for a little while to pray.
The thing that made me want to visit the shrine in the first place was finding the book The Trials of Margaret Clitherow at random on a trip to the UIUC Main Stacks with a friend. I had heard the name in passing before, but didn't know much about the saint. She has since become one of my favourite English saints (a title she shares with St. Thomas More, St. Edmund Campion, and St. John Henry Cardinal Newman). She converted to Catholicism I believe actually after her marriage, during the time of religious persecution following the establishment of the Church of England, and would host local children in her house (aka the shrine) for lessons in Catholicism, as well as hosting secret Masses there regularly. She was found out, eventually, and martyred by being crushed under a door--i.e. stones were stacked on top of the door until she was dead. Which sounds absolutely awful. One of the reasons why she's one of my favourite English saints is that she reminds me of my mom. From the biography, I got the sense that she was a very strong-minded woman who saw what she needed to do and did it, which is my mom to a T, and also my mom (who runs the marriage prep program at our parish, was head sacristan for a good bit, and is part of the church decorating committee) would totally be the person to host secret Masses in her home, if it was illegal to be Catholic in America. 

The Snickleways
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Snickleways in York are these really thin passages between the old buildings, only really wide enough for one person to get through at a time, or two if they squeeze. They're really fascinating spaces, mysterious, and drawing you through them with the light at the end of the next street over. (They're basically secret passages, or so it feels when you're in one.)
And they feel completely Dickensian. The dark, badly- or not-at-all-lit passageways between old, leaning buildings? Hello, Dickens, that you? And that reminded me of one of my favourites of the Dickens books I've read to date, Our Mutual Friend.

Jorvik Viking Festival
Beowulf tr. Seamus Heaney
I didn't realize, when I decided to go to York on the particular weekend that I did, that the Jorvik Museum, a living-history-type Viking museum, was having its annual Viking Festival. Which did not only mean that there were people dressed as Vikings playing music on historical instruments in the town square, and people dressed as Vikings doing things like throwing pots on foot-powered pottery wheels, or turning bowls on foot-powered lathes, or smelting metal in a hand-powered smelting thingamajig. It also meant that there was a Viking reenactor's market in an old church that was entirely candlelit, and I went after dark, so it felt like I was walking into some kind of arcane ritualistic thing going on. (It wasn't--it was literally just a market where you could buy things like handmade cloak pins or a meter and a half of wool fabric, and did I buy both of those things? Yes.) And further it meant that there were people dressed like Vikings (sometimes in full CHAIN MAIL) just wandering around every part of the city I visited. Men, women, children, whole families in Viking attire. It was amazing. 
And of course, of all the books that this would make me think of, it has to be Beowulf, and specifically the Seamus Heaney translation. I'm not sure what the relationship is between Beowulf and the Viking/Norman culture of England, but it seems like it can't be that far apart, because you have alehouses and funeral pyres and all that fun stuff. And Vikings aside, it's simply one of my favourite epic poems of all time, and the fact that Heaney rendered it in the classic verse scheme that that sort of poetry was in when it was written just makes it all the better. 

shoutout to the dude standing in the middle of my picture staring at me XD

Minster Gate Books
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
One of my last stops on the trip was Minster Gate Books, a tiny little six-level (six level) bookshop right by Yorkminster. (To be clear, it was in an old house, so each level was, like, one room. And then you'd have books stacked willy-nilly on the landings and along the stairs, and in random spots...it was amazing.) They had an astonishing array of first editions and old books, none of which I could particularly afford, but I did walk away with two pocket-sized Dickens editions (Pickwick and Tale of Two Cities) which are inscribed from a friend to another friend (it seems) for Christmas 1932 and Christmas 1936, respectively. They're bound in beautiful blue covers, with golden embossing-y stuff on them, and I'm slightly obsessed. (I don't really need first editions of books; I just want old books from back when they were bound in a quality manner. And when the total for two of them only comes to £8...you have a very happy Sam.)
And of course, this trip to a cool English bookshop reminded me of the coolest of English bookshops, memorialized in 84, Charing Cross Road, which consists of a series of letters exchanged between the author and a bookshop in England right after WWII (if my memory serves me). A friendship blossoms over a shared love of books, and it's a lovely little read. 

So! How have you been, my dear readers? Have you read any of these books? Do you have a favourite epic poem?