Having visited Mortlake the previous Monday in my quest to better understand Dee and his world, I came back this Tuesday (May 10) for mid-week service, which is only held on Tuesdays. I'd really enjoyed exploring the churchyard and surrounding area the week before, and I was looking forward to worshiping here as well. Of course I also wanted to see Dee's memorial plaque, which is inside the church.
Here it is in context - between the nearest two windows on the right:
Here is a view of the east end of the church. Because the Tuesday morning group was so small, six people total including me and the minister, we used a small area in the corner for service, as seen in the second picture down.
These pipes would not have been here in Dee's time, nor did we use them in our service, but I'm all about pipe organs, so here's a picture!
I don't imagine that there's much at all that remains of the church from Dee's time. Inside the church was this wonderful timeline of various restorations and renovations. Dee was born in 1527 and began living at Mortlake in 1565, so there would have been a church of St. Mary the Virgin, Mortlake here when he was living here. He died in 1609 and was buried beneath the church floor. As far as I know the church tower does remain from his time here.
After the service I was invited to stay for a coffee time, and all six of us had a wonderful and wide-ranging conversation. I did take a picture of the group, but I promised not to share it on social media, and so I won't, but I really appreciated my time with Patrick, Mary, Francis, Alex (the minister) and Ann. At one point Alex got up hurriedly, and next thing I knew he had reappeared with one of the church secretaries. He had remember that she was from California (San Jose) originally, and so she and I connected as well. I always feel a bit mercenary attending worship and then wanting to go back in the sanctuary and take dozens of pictures - as if I'm just "worshiping" as an "in" to be inside the church - which isn't true; I'm really there to worship. I just also have the additional historical interest as well. They were so open and helpful about that - pointing things out to me - looking for pamphlets for me to have. I tend to be a bit sheepish about John Dee both in academic circles and in church circles because he has such a reputation as an occultist, so I fear some Christians might shy away and some academics might be scornful, but I think my fears are coming only from what I've seen of him being portrayed on certain TV shows and in certain novels. Even in his own day he was sometimes in favor and sometimes out of favor because of his work. But the people here seem quite proud of the connection with Dee that their church has.
The secretary, whose name I wish I could remember, walked me back into the sanctuary, looked to her right, and let out an exclamation of surprise upon noticing a John Dee pamphlet. Last she knew there weren't any more of these, as the John Dee of Mortlake Society had disbanded a month ago after 13 years of monthly meetings, and the pamphlets had all disappeared. She said, "This one must have appeared for you!" I said, "That sounds like a John Dee thing!"
Time here is so different than it is in the US. I keep being surprised, for instance, about burials. The folks here shared that Dee was buried here but that the exact site is unknown (as the plaque says). They followed up by saying, "So many renovations over the years and we're so near the river whose course can change, you know." I guess this is simply the expectation after this period of time here, whereas I'm used to thinking that graves are things you can keep visiting forever right where they are! Anyway . . . I was booked in at RCP with Katie again for the afternoon and also needed to get back to the British Library before that, so I was soon on my way back to central London.
I just cannot get enough of the courtyard of the British Library, its vastness and variety.
I'd been planning just to be at the RCP today because I was supposed to have been able to do all my readings at the British Library the previous night. It was open until 8:00pm after all. What I didn't realize until I tried to access the manuscript I wanted is that some of the reading rooms close early, and the manuscript room is one of those and had closed at 5. I'd seen this manuscript before, the Dee Genealogical Roll (shelf mark Cotton. Ch. XIV.1.), and so I really only needed a quick look to refresh my memory and to look for things I may not have noticed before. It is a scroll that is six and a half feet in length, so there is a lot to examine. It dates to the 1590s, so it always surprises me that I am allowed to handle this and take photographs as well (no flash, of course).
Oh, and when I went to the manuscripts room they didn't have enough space there that day for this to be viewed, so they sent it up one floor to the maps room, which is where I viewed it.
I do have another post on this blog taking a closer look at this scroll. It can be found at
this link. After rolling this back up again (no mean feat!), I walked back to the RCP. The RCP is in a beautiful neighborhood just across from Regent's Park, so I took a picture of part of my walk just to give the idea.
They were undergoing some refurbishment, so I was reading in a different place than I had before. They were so apologetic about it, but it was a lovely, wonderful place to read as far as I was concerned, and my eyes were really only for the books anyway!
Much of what I look at is Dee's marginalia. I requested 8 books, and they were of all different sorts: mathematics, astrology, cabbala, navigation, cryptography, etc. Most are in Latin, which is not my strong suit, but the works on mathematics I can follow, and in others I pick up quite a lot despite my very weak Latin. For me this is very much about getting a sense of Dee and his personality and his interests. Much of that comes from noticing what he underlined and looking at his doodles and reading his marginal notes.
I have a clearer picture than the one above, but this one includes the manicule (pointing finger), a "doodle" for which he is famous, and some playfulness with the letter m at the top - copying the text below it. The page below is one of the first ones I opened to, and the marginal note in the top left caught my eye. Do you recognize what it is? (I'll give the answer at the end of the post.)
Here's a page from a book on cryptography:
There were many pages in many books that I found interesting, but that's probably enough for a blog post. At this point the day had already been pretty full, and I was very ready to go back to the hotel, but it was my last night in London, and I'd never been in Regent's Park before, and it's right across the street from the RCP, and it was rush hour anyway, so off I went into Regent's Park. (How's that for a long sentence?)
Regent's Park felt very different from Hyde Park -- not saying good different or bad different, just different. Hyde Park has some very "pretty" places in it, like the Italian Gardens, but large swaths of it feel a bit like forest - very grassy, but kind of long grass in places and trees dotting the landscape. Most of Hyde Park seems to me like a place where you can play frisbee or have your dog fetch or something. Regent's Park on the other hand, at least the bits of it I saw, looks like a well-manicured garden everywhere. Again, neither good nor bad, just different. Both are beautiful in their own way.
I don't know if I caught the rose beds too early or too late, but they are extensive and well laid out, and they must be a feast for the eyes and for the nose when they are in bloom. This is part of Queen Mary's Gardens.
It would have been very relaxing to have sat near the above scene for an hour or two. The bridge goes across the an island, and there was a waterfall I could see and here from where I was on the path, such a gorgeous and relaxing place! But I had to get back and get packed, so, off I went to the Baker Street Tube Station.
But once again, I stopped short of heading back. I though of my brother Tim, a big Sherlock Holmes fan, and remembered that 221b Baker Street was some distance around that next corner, so, off I went again - just for a super-quick "photo-op."
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