300 Year Old Waistcoats and Very Tasty Buns

I'd been to Bath before - back on the study abroad to the UK I did with Seattle Pacific, we stopped in Bath for... a week? Probably less... between Cambridge and Stratford. We stayed at Belushi's / St Christopher's Inn (part of the hostel chain we had also stayed at in Edinburgh), visited the Baths, the Jane Austen Centre, the Assembly Rooms, the Abbey, Sally Lunn's, etc - all the fun touristy things that you have to see whilst staying in a touristy town. However, I also visited the Museum of Costume, and realized sadly that they had the option to book a study table to examine the historical garments in person - unfortunately, I hadn't booked it early enough, and missed my chance.

Not this time, though. I emailed Elaine Uttley, and booked myself a study table for 11-1 on Thursday the 15th, then bought a train ticket and mapped out Bath, to help avoid getting miserably lost. The night before I kicked everyone out of my room at a decent hour, packed my bag full of the required pencils (no pens!), sketchbooks, and camera, then went to bed. Far too early in the morning, I headed out the door to grab the bus to the coach station, a train to Southampton, then another train to Bath. I had to hustle a bit to get up to the Museum in time, but ended up getting there about five minutes early: enough time to pop my head into the Assembly Rooms and once more gawp and gawk at the majesty.

At 11, Elaine came down to fetch us (there was another girl booked for the same time slot, studying the New Look style) We had to leave our coats and bags in lockers in the hallway, sign release forms, don gloves, and then - voila! Elaine pulled a sheet off of the table I was working at, revealing an amazing stash of Victorian undergarments - corsets, bustles, crinolines - drool. I sketched, I photographed, I carefully examined from all angles (I went to put one of the crinolines back, only to have the waistband tape fall to the other side and reveal the advertising tags - I gasped aloud. :) 

By the time I was done going through the underwear, I looked up to realize it was already 12:15 - I quickly called Elaine back, and was able to access the rolling rack of actual garments she had pulled for me - menswear from the 1700's and women's riding habits from the 1800's. Absolute heaven. The garments were all in amazing shape for being 200-300 years old, and the level of workmanship on them was absolutely exquisite. 

All the pockets were fully functioning, the lining was twisted to the outside, then handstitched over to create a lovely little binding to the outside, the collars all had two rows of (hand)stitching - and I should point out that this handstitching was pedantically straight, even, and uniformly 9 stitches to the inch. Crazy! All too soon it was 1PM, and everything was put back on hangers padded in muslin, copyright forms were completed and signed, and we were back out in the hallway collecting our coats.

It was scheduled to rain that day, so I had taken a bit of a chance scheduling my return journey for 5:30PM - if it had been nasty weather, I didn't have a whole lot of options to wile away four and a half hours with. Happily, despite being freezing cold and with a biting wind, the sun came out and made the city - nearly all Georgian buildings of golden sandstone - glow. As I was walking back towards the town centre, I found myself in a familiar street, and nearly started giggling aloud when I realized I was walking past good ol' Belushi's. I took a quick picture and went to walk away, but paused for a moment, looking at the windows of the pub. I remembered, suddenly, very distinctly sitting in that pub as I waited to meet up with a gaggle of people - I had a strongbow and some Shakespeare to read, and had stopped reading for a moment to glory in the moment, and to wonder what the future would hold. I people-watched through the window, wondering about their lives and what it must be like to live in the UK, rather than touring around, visiting a new spot every week. (Don't get me wrong - I loved that we got to see so many locations and I wouldn't change that for the world, but it was sad to always feel like a tourist, rather than someone actually living there) It felt like an oddly important moment, at the time, so I took a picture of the Strongbow on the window to remember that feeling. Standing there now felt like such a fascinating circle - living with film students, I imagined the scene as it would play out in a movie - me, standing in the middle of the street, looking in at the girl I was three years ago.

I went back to the Abbey, taking the tour inside (smiling at the ancient American flag hanging alongside the UK one, glorying as the sunshine came streaming in one of the stained glass windows, being creeped out by the vaults beneath the church, etc. 

I popped 'round to Sally Lunn's bun shop, because - even three years later - I remembered how fantastically delicious they were. I grabbed a corner table, ordered a sweet bun with butter, clotted cream, and fresh strawberry jam and a hot chocolate, and propped up my latest read which I had brought with me for the train (even though I ended up sleeping nearly the whole journey to Bath) - "Stigmata" by Helene Cixous. (A collection of her essays - don't let the classification of "Feminism / Gender Studies" scare you away - this is a lovely read. I wandered the Victoria Art Gallery, which was disappointingly small, but had some truly lovely oil paintings upstairs. I also picked up a flyer on the plays coming to Bath in the new year, including "Waiting for Godot" with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Definitely going to that one.

The train was twenty minutes late picking us up at Bath Spa Station - very unusual, but very frustrating. Fortunately, there was a train connecting Southampton to Bournemouth that left only about ten minutes after we arrived, so I didn't get home too terribly late. And good thing, that - as I was, shortly after arriving home, invited to catch hypothermia and get smashed in the head with a bottle - an offer I simply couldn't refuse...