Richard II and the Interior Designer
“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”
John of Gaunt in William Shakespeare’s Richard II
In Shakespeare’s Richard II, the terminally ill John of Gaunt is talking to the Duke of York, waiting for King Richard to arrive. Gaunt’s deathbed wish is to positively influence the irresponsible young king. But the duke says Richard’s sycophants have swayed him too far with the reckless imprudence of worldly pleasures. Gaunt then prophesies that the king is on the road to destruction in a “rash fierce blaze of riot” that will soon burn out. In one of Shakespeare’s most memorable passages, Gaunt deplores the fact that the holy, happy, fair kingdom of England has been leased to a loser.
I have a book simply entitled This England which was published by the National Geographic Society in 1966 and purchased by my dad. It is full of photographs of this “This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars” that I love so much and is the home of my ancestors, all divided by sections like the Cotswolds, the Midlands, and the West Country. Every year or so, I go back through the entire volume, soaking up every picture and bits of the text.
My house has a number of artifacts from the “sceptred isle” collected from my trips there, and several of my walls are adorned with tapestries from Liberty of London. I recently bought some new chairs that, to me, have a medieval sort of design filled with birds and flowers. When the interior designer delivered the furniture, she enthusiastically praised the decor in what I call my “great hall,” a room I had never seen as particularly outstanding, just comfortable and enjoyable.
But apparently, something about the room resonated with her and before long, she was telling me about visiting her ancestral home in Scotland, and how stunning it was to connect to her past. Then she said she was going to tell me something she had told very few people, but that she knew I would somehow understand. She felt that she sometimes caught a glimpse in her mind of herself dressed in a gown with wide sleeves and a cone-shaped hat with a veil trailing behind it. She wondered if it were a memory of a past life, or just a figment of her imagination.
I told her that I often have a sudden vision of myself tramping up a winding stone stairway or running across a flower strewn meadow with a castle in the distance. When I go into old cathedrals in England, I am overtaken by a melancholy for the time I seemed to have spent there long ago. And when I am working to put a tapestry on a wall or some similar task, I have a déjà vu sensation that what I am currently doing I have experienced in another lifetime. I have often wondered about reincarnation, or past lives, and I have also mused over whether my DNA carries with it memories lodged in its molecules, encoding my ancestors’ experiences that are mysteriously delivered to me.
We were both a little surprised about our revelations to each other. But, the conversation was a lovely and a lively one, simply sparked by my relics from “This other Eden, demi-paradise... This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”