Thursday, July 17, 2003
Visiting the lesser cultural attractions of Washington
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Washington is best seen by traveling on the heavily subsidized Metro ($1.20 one way for most trips; senior care fare cards are hard to find). From our B&B in Woodley Park, near the Zoo with the pandas, it was one stop to the embassy area, Dupont Circle, three more, with a transfer at Metro Central, to the all-important Smithsonian, and six to Union Station, our easternmost destination. From the station it is a quick walk down Delaware Ave., past the huge Russell Senate Office Building to the edge of the Capitol toward our noontime starting objective, the Folger Shakespeare Library. At the Russell I asked two middle-aged men in t-shirts for directions. The one wearing Banc One looked at our map, oriented us, and sent us, past the Supreme Court building, to the library. His approach to our problem was judicious, his solution confidence-inspiring, and the parting handshake said “trust me.” I would have voted for him for any office he aspired to.
At the SC a bunch of young people were collecting anti-death penalty signatures. Queried about SC activities, the two girls managing the floppy banner informed me that theirs was the only action in town, everybody else was on vacation (true, the government buildings looked empty). Not allowed in the SC sanctum wearing propaganda shirts, they had reversed them, gone in, changed back and taken defiant pictures of themselves. Ah, kids…
The Senator’s advice was good, though. In the Folger, world’s most important Shakespearean collection, we saw an exhibition of the era of Elizabeth I (1533-1603). Absolutely fascinating was the Queen’s 1593 letter to James VI of Scotland, warning him of treacherous Catholic nobles, with a postscript apologizing for cramping the lines. The Queen’s hand was even and beautiful, as though she spent much time writing. Regardless of the cramping, her Elisabeth R(ex) signature took major space, to have the two capital letters underlined with double curlicues. It was like shaking hands with history.
The Folger has 79 copies if the 1623 First Folio, the collection of Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) 36 (eventually 39) plays, 160 of the 1632 Second, 1643 Third and 1663 Fourth, and the world’s only copy of the 1594 Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s first published play. The duplicate copies serve study purposes, to establish the evolution of the plays’ texts.The books were printed in quires, three sheets folded within each other, of 12 pages. The text per page was estimated, and the centerfold type, for pages 6-7,was handset first, the side printed, and the type distributed , to be reused for the next sheet. Erroneous pages were not discarded. Inaccurate casting was corrected with extra lines or extra spacing. The text for 14 plays came from previously printed quartos, the rest from four “bad [incomplete or reconstructed from memory] quartos” and actors’ study manuscripts, corrected during performance. Eighteen of the plays survive only in the First Folio, justly called “the most important work in the English language.”
The Folger abuts the three buildings of the Library of Congress. A docent advised us to visit and marvel at the renovations, but there was no time . We were bound for the Freer and Arthur M. Sackler Galleries, at the far end of Independence Ave, the furthest away of the nine Smithsonian installations.Both of these museums are devoted to Oriental arts, lots of pottery and figurines, in plush premises, partly underground. Freer’s pride is the James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) collection of paintings, surrounded by the works of his fellow aesthetes, Hinman and Thayer. The “Peacock Room,” built for a Liverpool shipping magnate, is the ultimate in Japanese Victorian plush, gold and blue woodwork on the walls, to provide shelving for rare blue China. The Freer Museum is like the Frick in New York, with an interior court and garden. Both museums are celebrating Whistler’s 100th anniversary.
Continuing with the Eastern theme, Byzantine division, we drove to Dumbarton Oaks, the Robert Bliss Wood estate in Georgetown, where the idea of the United Nations was hatched in 1941. Its 10 acres contain the wildest fantasy gardens on hillside terraces, a 1920s landscapers’ dream. Driving to Georgetown from the Northeast seemed to be an easy adventure – tootle down the Rock Creek Parkway, past the meadows and hillsides of Chandra Levy memory, and turn west, but it was not to be. We ended at the FDR Monument, way down South. On the way back we tried exiting at Virginia Ave but had to settle for an exploration of the Kennedy Center, a rectangular box, and the magnificent curves of the otherwise dull Watergate Apartment buildings. Nothing daunted, we started again, this time turning West at Dupont Circle on Q Street, traversing its narrow bridge into the squeezed roadways of the tree-rich refuge of the wealthy. Cobblestoned streets, hardly a passageway, charming gardens of the wealthy and powerful – but I’d rather be in the Woodley Park/ Connecticut Ave. area rubbing shoulders with the smart young.
Washington is best seen by traveling on the heavily subsidized Metro ($1.20 one way for most trips; senior care fare cards are hard to find). From our B&B in Woodley Park, near the Zoo with the pandas, it was one stop to the embassy area, Dupont Circle, three more, with a transfer at Metro Central, to the all-important Smithsonian, and six to Union Station, our easternmost destination. From the station it is a quick walk down Delaware Ave., past the huge Russell Senate Office Building to the edge of the Capitol toward our noontime starting objective, the Folger Shakespeare Library. At the Russell I asked two middle-aged men in t-shirts for directions. The one wearing Banc One looked at our map, oriented us, and sent us, past the Supreme Court building, to the library. His approach to our problem was judicious, his solution confidence-inspiring, and the parting handshake said “trust me.” I would have voted for him for any office he aspired to.
At the SC a bunch of young people were collecting anti-death penalty signatures. Queried about SC activities, the two girls managing the floppy banner informed me that theirs was the only action in town, everybody else was on vacation (true, the government buildings looked empty). Not allowed in the SC sanctum wearing propaganda shirts, they had reversed them, gone in, changed back and taken defiant pictures of themselves. Ah, kids…
The Senator’s advice was good, though. In the Folger, world’s most important Shakespearean collection, we saw an exhibition of the era of Elizabeth I (1533-1603). Absolutely fascinating was the Queen’s 1593 letter to James VI of Scotland, warning him of treacherous Catholic nobles, with a postscript apologizing for cramping the lines. The Queen’s hand was even and beautiful, as though she spent much time writing. Regardless of the cramping, her Elisabeth R(ex) signature took major space, to have the two capital letters underlined with double curlicues. It was like shaking hands with history.
The Folger has 79 copies if the 1623 First Folio, the collection of Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) 36 (eventually 39) plays, 160 of the 1632 Second, 1643 Third and 1663 Fourth, and the world’s only copy of the 1594 Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare’s first published play. The duplicate copies serve study purposes, to establish the evolution of the plays’ texts.The books were printed in quires, three sheets folded within each other, of 12 pages. The text per page was estimated, and the centerfold type, for pages 6-7,was handset first, the side printed, and the type distributed , to be reused for the next sheet. Erroneous pages were not discarded. Inaccurate casting was corrected with extra lines or extra spacing. The text for 14 plays came from previously printed quartos, the rest from four “bad [incomplete or reconstructed from memory] quartos” and actors’ study manuscripts, corrected during performance. Eighteen of the plays survive only in the First Folio, justly called “the most important work in the English language.”
The Folger abuts the three buildings of the Library of Congress. A docent advised us to visit and marvel at the renovations, but there was no time . We were bound for the Freer and Arthur M. Sackler Galleries, at the far end of Independence Ave, the furthest away of the nine Smithsonian installations.Both of these museums are devoted to Oriental arts, lots of pottery and figurines, in plush premises, partly underground. Freer’s pride is the James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) collection of paintings, surrounded by the works of his fellow aesthetes, Hinman and Thayer. The “Peacock Room,” built for a Liverpool shipping magnate, is the ultimate in Japanese Victorian plush, gold and blue woodwork on the walls, to provide shelving for rare blue China. The Freer Museum is like the Frick in New York, with an interior court and garden. Both museums are celebrating Whistler’s 100th anniversary.
Continuing with the Eastern theme, Byzantine division, we drove to Dumbarton Oaks, the Robert Bliss Wood estate in Georgetown, where the idea of the United Nations was hatched in 1941. Its 10 acres contain the wildest fantasy gardens on hillside terraces, a 1920s landscapers’ dream. Driving to Georgetown from the Northeast seemed to be an easy adventure – tootle down the Rock Creek Parkway, past the meadows and hillsides of Chandra Levy memory, and turn west, but it was not to be. We ended at the FDR Monument, way down South. On the way back we tried exiting at Virginia Ave but had to settle for an exploration of the Kennedy Center, a rectangular box, and the magnificent curves of the otherwise dull Watergate Apartment buildings. Nothing daunted, we started again, this time turning West at Dupont Circle on Q Street, traversing its narrow bridge into the squeezed roadways of the tree-rich refuge of the wealthy. Cobblestoned streets, hardly a passageway, charming gardens of the wealthy and powerful – but I’d rather be in the Woodley Park/ Connecticut Ave. area rubbing shoulders with the smart young.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 4:37 PM 
