Backstage at Trinity and Corpus

11.06.12 (Cambridge, UK) - Backstage at Trinity and Corpus

After lunch, when I finish with my work at the Parker Library for the day, I send Ahron a text and ask if he wants to see the Wren Library. A few days prior to this, I'd mentioned that it's open to the public from noon to 2 pm, and he'd expressed some interest in seeing it. He says he still is, then tells me he'll be here in thirty minutes.

On our way to Trinity College, I ask if Ahron wants to go the "correct" way to the library, or whether he wants to trespass.  

"Oh, I want to do some trespassing...I feel completely under-dressed for this," says Ahron. "You look like you belong here, I look like I just strolled in off the street."

I'm down in my "professional student" attire, collared dress-shirt, black slacks, and my patented brown jacket. It's just become sort of a ritual for me: try to look like I'm a professional while I'm at the libraries - the proper young lad. He seems a bit discouraged that he sticks out in his gray sweater and jeans. 

"I obviously don't go to school here," he says.

We'll just pretend that I have a guest, I say, and they won't ask any questions.

They don't ask questions. As with the first time I strolled in the front gate of Trinity College, nobody cares. 

"This is nice," says Ahron. "But I feel like such an impostor."

The long way to the Wren Library reading room is now under construction. The path is clear, but now there's scaffolding marring the otherwise beautiful grounds. 

Once in the library, we do a tour of the manuscripts that are held under glass, lock and key. There are several gospel books from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, there's a copy of the Nurnberg Chronicle and a few books exalting Christ, there is a scroll from the fourteenth century, there are several papers by Newton (a fellow at Trinity) and an autograph work by Bertrand Russell. There are a few people huddled around Shakespeare's First Folio, and we only spend about a minute looking at it. They rotate the works kept under glass, so returning to the Wren isn't a bad idea.

After the Wren, and all the perusing of antiquity, I tell Ahron that I might be able to get him into the Parker Library reading room.

We arrive at the Porter's Lodge, and I call Dr. Suzanne Paul from the phone. She says to come on in, but there's a tour group in there right now, so we'll have to wait a little.

Ahron pallor is that of a man back-stage at a big, Hollywood blockbuster. It's as though he's seen "the actors" without their make-up, as though the wires and dongles and lights were all suddenly visible. The curtain's been pulled back, there's the wizard. Ahron says that he's lived in Cambridge his entire life but has never seen this side of it.

"I dunno what it is," he says, laughing,"but these courtyards, they're all blurring together, you know?"

Once we've gained admittance to the Wilkins' Room (where the reading now takes place), Suzanne says it's ok if I show off the manuscript I've been working with for the day - MS 92, John of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis. Chronicles were not as frequently illuminated as bibles (though some were) - in fact, 92  is visually dull excepting the occasional painted letters and red-inked chapter headings for beginnings of sections (right). This manuscript was written in the mid-twelfth century, copying primarily from Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, Asser's Vita Alfredi, Eadmer's Historia Novorum, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.  

Today, I'd been looking for lacunae and signs of erasure. In the above image, you can see that after the word "Adrianus" there had been something scratched off (right before "ab," which tries to play off the gap by extending the "b"'s ascender). Parchment, or animal skins, used for manuscript making during the medieval period (paper didn't become affordable in England until the late 15th to early 16th centuries), were very thick and resilient. In order to erase something (either a mistake or someone else's writing) you would literally take a knife and scrape away at a layer of the parchment. Sometimes, if you scraped too much, you'd create a hole in the parchment, or physical lacunae. Signs of wear and erasure often suggest a change of mind by the scribe, it could suggest the scribe was switching source material or greatly summarizing if it's particularly heavy erasure. Parchment was expensive, so materials would often be crammed onto a page - sometimes a lazy scribe would just paraphrase whole works, creating problems with discerning the source material.

The image of the manuscript to the left is of MS 139, or the Historia Regum of Symeon of Durham, one of the many manuscripts I've been working with. This image shows some heavy erasure.  The words "sedo" and the beginning of "Ethelstani" appears to have been written in a more modern hand. These manuscripts are always deteriorating. Scholars used to apply reagent to pages to optimistically get words to become readable. It didn't always work. Most of the time, reagent ended up destroying the manuscripts, eating through the pages like acid or, if you were lucky, turning black and causing whole portions of the parchment to be illegible forever. It's a fine balancing act of preservation and renovation in the manuscript world. You never know whose hands have touched a page.

After Suzanne and I talk about the manuscript for a while, we all go up to the Parker Library reading room. Therein, I show Ahron the manuscripts ranging from the 15th century to a very early Bible written in the 4th AD. Suzanne shows us her favorite manuscript, too: an illustrated Norman chronicle laid out in a proto-spreadsheet of year/occurrence so that it charts fifty years of the world per page. In true legendary style, that same manuscript names Arthur as a King of the English in the 5th century. On this same page is an illustration of Stonehenge, and a caption that says (something like) "Merlin made this not with force but with other means [magic]." Pretty cool stuff.

After the library tours, Ahron and I head to the Portland for a pint. We sit outside, Ahron with a Desperados and me with a bitters, talking about all the stuff we've seen and about life in general. We see a notice that shows how the Portland is planning on expanding its venue. Everything in Cambridge seems to be changing around us.

"Yeah but it won't be finished, if it ever gets finished," begins Ahron, "for four or five years, most likely. It'll be held up in debate and then someone with money will object and they'll go back to square-one. That's England."

"Bayram, the father at my old host family, used to say everything is always 'Going down'," I say. "He meant that everything's always getting worse."

I can't remember if Ahron agreed silently or not, I can't remember if he commented on the term "going down," or whether the idea that places are always getting worse and deteriorating is just so completely obvious.


Since the Portland might change, I figure I  should document the way it used to look, the way it was when I was here.

Everything here would become part of the audience area, extending
the current venue about ten yards back.
The pool table in the side bar would still remain.