PhilPaine.com

Gog and Magog

Back in Lon­don (or Llundain, in Welsh), and I head­ed back to Cam­den Town, hop­ing to get a spot in the same “cheap” (by Lon­don stan­dards) hos­tel. This proved suc­cess­ful, and I left my pack in stor­age while I spent anoth­er day explor­ing the city.

I had deter­mined that the only cost-effec­tive way of trav­el­ing in Lon­don is to buy a day pass for the bus sys­tem, and stay out of the cost­ly Under­ground entire­ly. Bus­es move slow­ly, but once you fig­ure it out, the spaghet­ti-like maze of routs is actu­al­ly quite ratio­nal­ly planned. And from the top of dou­ble-deck­ers, you see a lot, and get a chance to ori­ent your­self that the “tube” does not provide.

Since my pre­vi­ous explo­rations where in the west end of the cen­ter city, this time I con­cen­trat­ed on the east. I took a bus to Ele­phant & Cas­tle, south of the Thames, then walked north across Lon­don Bridge, into The City. This is the dis­trict that com­pris­es the actu­al “City of Lon­don”, and cor­re­sponds fair­ly close­ly to the bound­aries of Roman Lon­dini­um. It’s the his­toric finan­cial cen­ter of Eng­land, which is why Eng­lish busi­ness­men are said to “work in the City”. They have aban­doned their bowler hats, but the cur­rent dress code still makes them look like flocks of penguins.

In fact, there is anoth­er, new­er finan­cial dis­trict fur­ther east, which has an impres­sive clus­ter of office tow­ers. There are some mod­ern build­ings in The City, too, but they are scat­tered about ran­dom­ly. Some are very strik­ing, and one, at 30 St. Mary Axe, is more adven­tur­ous in design than any­thing in Toron­to. It looks like a giant alien seed pod that has crash-land­ed. It should look jar­ring­ly out of place, but some­how the effect is satisfactory.

I don’t real­ly care for Christo­pher Wren’s style, but I must admit that St. Paul’s is an impres­sive cathe­dral, and the peel­ing of its car­il­lon was very har­mo­nious. But I was drawn to anoth­er car­il­lon, which was ring­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, sev­er­al blocks away. This was at the church of St. Lawrence Jew­ry, near the Guildhall.

Tourists in Lon­don are drawn to Buck­ing­ham Palace and the Tow­er. Both of these are sym­bols of British monar­chy. I was after a dif­fer­ent sym­bol­ism. The issues I was dis­cussing in the last entry boil down to the strug­gle between Crown and Par­lia­ment that is obvi­ous­ly going on in the U.S., and influ­enc­ing events in Cana­da. I was search­ing for the Guild­hall, because it rep­re­sents the par­lia­men­tary side of the equation.

The Guild­hall, a medieval (though much rebuilt and mod­i­fied) build­ing on the cite of an ancient Roman amp­ithe­atre, is the his­toric town hall of the City of Lon­don. It rep­re­sents, at least in my mind, the strug­gle between monarchy/aristocracy and democ­ra­cy, because it was the locus of asser­tions by the city of its inde­pen­dence from feu­dal restric­tions. There was a say­ing com­mon in the mid­dle ages: City air makes free. The Guild­hall, in many ways, is a kind of archi­tec­tur­al embod­i­ment of the Magna Car­ta. It has more mean­ing for me the more impres­sive mon­u­ments that peo­ple seek out in London.

The Guild­hall of London

Promi­nent in its dec­o­ra­tion are rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Gog and Magog, enig­mat­ic fig­ures from the bible who are found in many Jew­ish, Chris­t­ian and Islam­ic folk tra­di­tions. The giants Gog and Magog are guardians of the City of Lon­don, and images of them have been car­ried in the Lord May­or’s Show since the days of Hen­ry V. The Lord May­or’s account of Gog and Magog says that the Emper­or Dio­clet­ian had thir­ty-three wicked daugh­ters. He mar­ried them off to keep them under con­trol. But, led by the eldest, Alba, they mur­dered their over-con­trol­ling hus­bands. As pun­ish­ment for this, they were cast adrift at sea, and end­ed up on a dis­tant isle, which they named Albion, after Alba. Here they mat­ed with demons, and gave birth to a race of giants, among whose descen­dants were Gog and Magog. The task of the giants is to defend the rights of the cit­i­zens — implic­it­ly from the demands of the King and Aristocracy.

Near­by, I came across the Old Bai­ley, which is famil­iar to any­one who has read the Rumpole of the Bai­ley nov­els of John Mor­timer, or seen their tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tions with the inim­itable per­for­mances of Leo McK­ern. The Old Bai­ley is a nar­row lane where one can find the Cen­tral Crim­i­nal Court of Lon­don, as well as the dingy lit­tle pubs where bar­ris­ters, pros­e­cu­tors and judges lubri­cate the com­plex­i­ties of British Com­mon Law. This legal tra­di­tion, found­ed on Magna Car­ta, is the source of law in many coun­tries, includ­ing my own. From this tra­di­tion­al body of law, we have inher­it­ed the crit­i­cal con­cept of habeas cor­pus, essen­tial for the preser­va­tion of lib­er­ty. The present Roy­al­ist admin­is­tra­tion in the Unit­ed States has unleashed vicious and sys­tem­at­ic attacks on habeas cor­pus. The atroc­i­ties of Abu Ghraib and the obscen­i­ty of Guan­tanamo Bay are open assaults on habeas cor­pus, and thus on the fun­da­men­tal free­doms of all Amer­i­cans, far more than they are intend­ed to com­bat terrorism.

The Court build­ing itself is unim­pres­sive. In fact, it’s a down­right ugly Vic­to­ri­an build­ing, but it has a fine mot­to carved above its door: Defend the Chil­dren of the Poor and Pun­ish the Wrong­do­ers. How much of that has actu­al­ly occurred under its roof is hard to say, but at least the inten­tion is stated.

Lon­don’s back lanes pro­vide end­less lit­tle sur­pris­es. At the shad­owy cor­ner of Cock Lane and Guilt­spur Street, I found a small gild­ed stat­ue of a chub­by, naked child on the cor­ner of a build­ing. It was erect­ed in 1666 on a pub called The For­tune of War, which lat­er became the hang­out of the Res­ur­rec­tion­ists, or body-snatch­ers. Sup­pos­ed­ly the stolen bod­ies were laid out among the tables where they quaffed their pints. This pub was demol­ished, but the stat­ue built into the present struc­ture. It marks the end­ing edge of the Great Fire. The fat child rep­re­sents the claim, made on its inscrip­tion, that the fire was caused by The Great Sin of Glut­tony (and not so much the Papists, as oth­er mon­u­ments claim).