The British Museum/Library

After years of desperate longing, I finally went to Europe for the first time in 1989. My mother paid for the trip--she had sold the house after I graduated from high school two years before, and the balloon payment came due in '89. The smart, sensible thing would have been to invest. We traveled.

She had last been there when she was 16, traveling alone and staying in the YWCA in Bloomsbury, directly across from the British Museum. (Things change--the Y no longer provides accommodations, there or anywhere else in the U.K.) Our trip was to take us to England, Wales and Ireland--where we would meet up with my grandparents, who ran a B&B in Kinsale that they closed literally days before we finally got there (but that's a story for another day). Naturally, when we stayed in London, Mom wanted to stay in Bloomsbury.

So we booked a room at the Hotel Russell, which I remember with a warmth it may or may not entirely deserve. (It's "only" a four-star hotel, and seems to be frowned upon in London hotel circles--but the location is spectacular, and I can't remember any complaints from our stay.) We were flying from different locations, Mom from Miami and me from Boston, and my plane got in first.

After a minor adventure with a gypsy cab driver at Heathrow, I reached the hotel and checked in. By this time I was thrumming with excitement, and it was simply impossible to wait a couple hours, stuck in the room, till Mom arrived, so I dumped my bags and immediately hurtled across Russell Square. Looking for the British Museum.

(By the way, apropos of nothing, here's my recipe for avoiding jet lag problems, at least when going to Europe--nothing really helps on the trip back--don't sleep on the plane. Do whatever you have to do to make sure you don't sleep on that long flight over, because once you arrive your natural excitement will keep you awake till nightfall. Then you'll have no trouble getting to sleep through sheer exhaustion, and once you awaken in the morning your internal clock will be pretty well reset. You're welcome.)

Now bear in mind: I was used to Miami museums, which (particularly when I was a kid) barely deserved the name, and the vastly superior Boston museums. Still, I had never seen anything on the scale of the British Museum, so I had no idea what to expect. And although I certainly must have seen pictures of the front facade of the museum, I didn't remember any of it. And by chance, the route I took across the square led me somewhere else--to the old British Library location next to (and connecting to) the museum.

(Looking at a Google map (you have to drill down to the largest magnificatin, then switch to the Hybrid view), the hotel is at what I presume is the northeast corner of the park, directly across the street; I know I walked diagonally across the park, and probably went down Montague Place--essentially, the back of the museum--rather than Great Russell Street.)

This entrance was singularly unimpressive. A door, basically, with I think a guard or two standing on either side of it. A banner maybe. That was it. "Well," I thought to myself. "This should go pretty quickly, then. Good. I'll easily be back at the hotel before Mom gets there."

Just inside the door, a wall was painted with a floor plan for the Library/Museum structure, and certain exhibition highlights noted. I stood there, my eyes going very wide, and started mumbling things. "The Magna Carta. The Gutenberg Bible. The Rosetta Stone. Holy sh--."

Given my literary proclivities, this was perfect. Like God dumping me in literary heaven and saying "Here, have fun." One of the original copies of Shakespeare's first folio was on display, and I stood in front of its display case for a very long time, trying to guess how many productions had been borne from that book. (One of Shakespeare's four known original signatures was right next to it.) And yes, the Magna Carta, and yes, one of Gutenberg's surviving Bibles, the oldest printed books in the world, the genesis of mass communication, right there. There was also sheet music by Beethoven and Mozart; letters from Queen Victoria, from Nelson to Lady Hamilton; and the original handwritten manuscripts for books by Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, James Joyce.

Eventually I realized that I hadn't even reached the British Museum proper yet, so I forced myself to move along and, basically, sprinted through the exhibitions in easy reach, but by then I had to get back to the hotel. I reached our room, plopped myself on the bed, and only a few minutes later there was the sound of a key in a lock, the door opened, a suitcase got flung into the room, and my mother stumbled in over it.

I had not seen her in months. "Mom!" I said at once, without preamble. "Do you know what they have over at the British Museum?!?"

She smiled. It was going to be a good trip.

Postscript: Mom and I went back to the museum together the next day, and I saw the front facade, saying "Oh, that."

I went back again with Dad several years later, and explored more. But I know for a fact that I've barely explored a hundredth of what is available. The British Library consolidated its London collections into a facility in St. Pancras a few years ago, so that odd little side entrance to the museum probably doesn't exist anymore. But I know that admission to the museum is still free, which is so completely civilized and it's a damn shame that the same isn't true of museums in the U.S.

And now, having relived that charming little experience, I wanna go back real bad...