“All European cities have these lumps of dead history… they obstruct the mind, lie inertly across it for centuries and do no more than alert the fancy for an hour or two in those happy times when a sense of the past is… a passing wonder before which we congratulate ourselves on our progress… But a real sense of the past cannot exist without a sense of the present… These picturesque lumps bristle and wake up… The Tower means murder now, torture now, stranglings, treacheries, massacre, the solitary cell, the kick of the policeman’s boot. The scratchings on the walls of the tower are the scratchings of Auschwitz… It may have astonished Victorians that Wren’s uncle, a harmless, dull, and climbing bishop, was shut up here for eighteen years; but that sort of thing does not astonish us today… The Tower… is awake again” (Pritchett 97).
It’s amazing to me how V.S. Pritchett’s sentiments still are so contemporary even though he wrote London Perceived fifty years ago. The past has always existed in the present, but living in a globalized world makes us aware of it more so than ever before. No longer does the western world witness only the implications of what occurs in our household or town; now we see rebellions in Eastern Europe unfold across our televisions, or children with swollen bellies in India begging on billboards for us to donate a dollar. Now, whether we cause it directly or not, we see everything, even if we can’t comprehend the full reality.
Brits are astoundingly up-to-date with the news. They know not only the past and present of their own country, but about virtually every other country, too. The average English citizen seems to be able to discuss economics in China, Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential run, and their own class conflicts from 1066 to today, all without batting an eye. Sure, I know who Sarah Palin is, and I know about American socio-economic classes, but I certainly couldn’t tell you the British equivalent of Palin or explain how their class system works. It’s all I can do to remember everything I Googled about U.K. politics just two days before arriving here, including the current prime minister. Yes, that’s embarrassing to admit, and not fitting with the highbrow portrait of myself that I typically like to paint. But my point is that the English are more globally attune than the average American. The English feel the past heavily, and as a result, the present becomes heavier. The medieval or Georgian buildings are not just of a time, but of alltimes. And while today we might see the scratchings not of Auschwitz but of perhaps Darfur, the scratchings of Auschwitz are there, too.
It fascinates me that, although America and England are both aware of our increasingly globalized world, this awareness manifests so differently. Whereas Americans are determined to lead global trends, the English are determined to observe them. I make this generalization with hesitation, but without judgment, as both action and observation are necessary instruments for change. Pritchett cautions both his era and ours to use action and observation to effect, to have the fore- and hindsight to make decisions that are conscious of humanity on a global scale. It’s easy to mistake the Tower as an archaic relic that’s fun to look at but reveals nothing pertinent to our own lives, but Pritchett claims that to do so is to ignore the fact that the past is alive and well in the present. From what I’ve seen so far of Londoners, they are heeding – perhaps have always heeded, without needing instruction – his advice.
[[image via tripadvisor.co.uk]]
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