Traitor!

Taking a short break before preparing for the evening. Toni and I (alone!) will be attending a performance of Blackbird by David Harrower before heading home for a sleepless night worrying about whether or not we will make the plane on time. This will no doubt be my final entry before departing for the States. It's been fun.

This morning we took the kids for a walk around St. James Park. Birds to feed, large tour groups to avoid, dogs to pet ... I think Zelda is getting antsy about leaving, there were a few outrageous outbursts but for the most part it was a delightful walk.

The weather has been incredibly kind this trip. I don't know what I was expecting, there was rain, of course, and the Ghost Walk was a bit chilly. But the past few days there have been these bursts of sunshine which have made our outdoor walkabouts pleasureful, not dreary. Zelda refused to wear her jacket around the park.

Crazy middle-aged squirrel man.

Sighted in the window of a magic shop in the Charing Cross Rd. underground; a scary-ass, life-size dummy.

After returning to to the vicarage, Henrik and I made an excursion to St. Mary's - Worshipping God for 1,200 Years if their website is to be believed. Why this last-minute trip to a church literally up the road from my brother's house? Yesterday, two days before we leave, he suddenly decided to inform me that St.Mary's is the final resting place of Benedict Arnold.

Directing Kirk W. Bromley's The American Revolution I got to know a bit about the General. Brian, who played him learned a lot more and let me know some of it. I figured it was someplace I had to check out. Though it isn't normally open on a Monday, they were kind enough to let us in, anyway.

We entered the church through the rear, because that's where the memorial is, right there, by that door. A step down into what was once the crypt ... and is now the Sunday school rooms.

Where Arnold, his wife Peggy Shippen, and his daughter are buried exactly, no one knows. The basement was just a charnel house full of coffins with lead plate inscriptions. The place flooded a lot, the caskets knocked around, and knocked their plates off. Finally, they were all just buried.

What remained was a painted memorial, neglected by time and ignored by Sunday schoolchildren. Recently a slab of Vermont granite was dedicated by a retired Senator, and that's what I took a picture of.

Upstairs, in the church proper (the building dates back to 1777) there is also a window to America's best known traitor, which includes a legend similar to the monument downstairs.

The crypt monument reads:

In this crypt lie the bodies of
Benedict Arnold
1741 - 1801
sometime General in the army of
George Washington
and of his faithful and devoted wife
Margaret Shippen
and of their beloved daughter
Sophia Matilda Phipps
The two nations whom he served
in turn in the years of their enmity
have united in enduring friendship.
The phrases "sometime General" and "the two nations whom he served" crack me up.


Benedict Arnold
1741 - 1801
Stone cold Yankee Doodle stud.

See you on the other side.