England Revisited

...America, accompanied by 27 pieces of luggage...

...On one page I traced the size of English coins...

...is just shut my eyes and paid what I had to," a friend whom I saw in New York told me about her own recent trip to London...

...But I stayed out of the stores and didn't actually buy a thing...

...Though I travel quite a bit, my trips are usually work-related, and work recently has taken me in other directions: to Poland, to Germany, to Austria, to Bosnia, to the Netherlands, even to California...

...London to Chester is only a two-and-a-quarter hour ride...

...Well, you must have been very brave," he responded...

...My stay in England proceeded along these lines...

...I think the oldest we had was from 1862...

...In second class, these ranged from 76 pounds (nearly $140) for a fully flexible ticket that I could use any time of the day, to the unreserved "saver" ticket of 54 pounds (about S 100), which could be used on any train after 9:00 a.m...

...John's Wood, where I donned my uniformnavy blue with white collar-fraternized with the other two servants, and helped clean and cook...

...Come Saturday...

...The other patrons expressed sympathy with my plight...

...We were fascinated by the fact that each coin bore the face of the monarch who was ruling when it was minted, so different from coins in the U.S., which for the most part bore the faces of dead presidents...

...I don't know just how this gap of years accumulated...

...Now 94, she lived only a 10-minute walk away...

...I am not quite sure I knew why I was there, either, except perhaps to complete a circle or glimpse back into my youth or simply satisfy curiosity and confirm the changes of time...

...Knowing that I would have to go to Chester, a city 190 miles northwest of the British capital on the border with Wales, I went online to check the train schedule...

...It was mid-winter, and I got terribly seasick...

...A silver-haired man, who looked something like my memory of Richard Green and his father, greeted me...

...I had phoned the person in Chester I was going to visit and suggested that, because I was to arrive in London on Friday afternoon, it would be most convenient for me to visit him on Sunday...

...Moreover, part of the journey had to be carried out by bus...

...An uncle of mine once described how they all set off from the main hub in Chicago...

...In London, I even saw my first Virgin lingerie shop...

...The British rail system has less romantic connotations, although the route I took was part of a modern sort of empire...

...More than 30 years ago, when I was just out of college, I had known Green's parents...

...Today, 1,000 lire is worth only 50 euro cents...

...It was very rubbed and worn and bore the silhouette of Victoria as a young woman...

...Green, tall and thin and elegant, with her white hair beautifully coiffed and a glittering smile on her face, was seated in an armchair...

...I was 10 years old then...

...and stalked out...

...I kept a diary of that trip and I still have it...

...Sure enough, trains from London to Chester on Sunday were not only few and far between, they entailed a bewildering series of changes...

...I went to a local London school for the semester, and I still have vivid, and not terribly pleasant, memories of being taught how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide sums of money...

...10 if bought later...

...When we walked into the cottage, Mrs...

...The Virgin Web site invited me to select the train 1 wanted to take and then presented me with a variety of prices...

...Five new pence, rather than 12 pennies, now made up a shilling, making 100 new pencerather than 240 old pennies-in a pound...

...Miners and farmers, a covered wagon, a Pony Express rider, and a racing stagecoach keep pace, while three railroad trains nip at her heels...

...All I could reply was "Yes, it is really a different world...

...My connection with Britain dates back to my childhood, when my family spent half a year in London during a sabbatical my father had from the university where he taught...

...I have a surreal recollection that many of the other passengers were nuns...

...But, with the pound sterling worth almost S2...

...I guess all this musing on what used to be dates me, but revisiting after a lengthy absence a city where I once lived inevitably leads to nostalgic impulses...

...The pennies in our collection, all still in circulation at the time, dated back to Queen Victoria's reign...

...The next morning, we drove to Canterbury in a hired limousine, eating crustless cucumber sandwiches along the way...

...The dollar has sunk to its lowest level in many years against all European currencies, and I was already well acquainted with the greenback's curtailed buying power on the Continent...

...Coins so easily become "change" or even "small change" and are so much easier to part with than bills...

...The cottage was crowded with an overstuffed sofa and chairs and ottomans and cushions and doilies and ashtrays and vases and brass trimmings and other doodads...

...The equivalent of more than $5 for an Underground ticket to central London from the outer district where I was staying with friends...

...Green was 60-ish at the time and I liked her very much...

...She had a soft, lilting voice and sometimes confided to me her sorrows and insecurities...

...I ended up with the oneway "super-saver" to Chester, then a 10 pound (nearly $20) ticket from Chester to Manchester, followed by a 54 pound ($ 100) one-way "saver" ticket from Manchester back to London-again, roughly a two-hour ride...

...said one...

...One went that way, to San Francisco," he said, throwing out his arm and looking into the distance...

...The pound coins, each a thick round disc smaller in diameter than a quarter, easily clink forgotten in pockets or gather in clumps with the other loose change...

...My brothers and I collected English coins that year, and particularly English pennies...

...Mrs...

...As I recall, I got 15 pounds a week, plus bed and board...

...It was in the village, though, that I experienced my first instance of anti-Semitism...

...Letter from London England Revisited By Ruth Ellen Gruber London I have lived in London at various times and under various circumstances during my life, but I had not been to England for nearly a decade until I stopped here for a week en route home to Italy from a recent trip to the United States...

...In those pre-Vatican II days all of them wore formal, billowing habits in shades of black, white and gray, some with wimples folded outward to look like wings...

...Indians and buffalo retreat before the radiant figure of Progress, who floats through the air in a diaphanous gown, stringing telegraph wire with one hand, holding a school book in the other...

...Britain's prices are notorious for being higher even than those in Euroland...

...All of this ran through my head as I crossed New Bond Street and entered the gallery...

...I was, in a way, terrified...

...As a child, London was my first encounter with residing overseas and interacting with non-Americans on their own turf...

...Ruth Ellen Gruber is a regular NL contributor...

...I paused, then on impulse crossed the street and went in...

...Nearly $ 16 for an unlimited day's travel on public transport if the ticket was bought before 9:30 a.m...

...What made things worse for me was the very feel of today's English money...

...Well, on Sundays there aren't many trains...

...That role has been assumed by the Euro itself, worth 2,000 lire-and a coin that resembles the old 500 lire piece...

...By comparison, a full week's unlimited travel on public transport in Berlin costs about $30...

...Americans were novelties back then...

...preparing a large lunch (or dinner) for 1:30 p.m...

...American Progress," a famous allegorical painting by John Gast, made this explicit...

...Twelve pounds for a cut-price DVD that in theU.S.would cost$12...

...I had answered an ad in the Evening Standard newspaper and met the Greens in a London hospital, where they were both recovering from an automobile accident...

...Since I was only going one-way to Chester (and then traveling on to Manchester and returning to London from there), no matter which ticket I took I would be penalized, as round trip tickets, going and returning from the same station, cost just one pound more than the one-way fare...

...In addition, I was to do the dishes and keep the kitchen and dining area clean, do the shopping, and be on call for any extra errands...

...The copper pennies were by far the biggest, more than an inch in diameter...

...To me that still sounds worth something-at least worth more than 12.5 new pence or, as people say, " 12 and ahalfpee," which intoday's terms is hardly worth anything at all...

...Their great size in relation to that of the farthing, or one-quarter penny, which was about the size of an American cent, is why those distinctive Victorian bicycles with big front wheels and tiny rear ones were called "penny-farthings...

...She was almost painfully happy to see me, though it was quite clear she did not know who I was or why I was there...

...it just did...

...The old monetary system and many of the old coins disappeared when Britain decimalized its currency in 1971...

...it is not a serious unit of calculation anymore...

...I had to wear a maid's uniform at all times, except in my free time (which was very limited...

...A home-care assistant opened the door...

...Although eccentric, she seemed very young, somehow childlike, and rather fragile...

...My first encounter with the sticker shock, and other surprises, came even before I enplaned in Washington...

...Green, in her old age, had drifted far beyond the realm of everyday reality...

...As I threaded my way down the sidewalk, my eye was suddenly caught by the sign for the Richard Green Gallery, a venerable art dealership that has been in business for three generations...

...What can you expect...

...The smallest note is five Euros-or 10,000 lire-worth approximately $6.50 at the current exchange rate...

...The psychological perception of what is valuable has had to do with both...

...I spent my first night on the job at Richard Green's large home in St...

...Green took me on at once and explained my duties: preparing and bringing up to their bedroom an early tea at 8:00 a.m., and at 9:00 bringing her breakfast upstairs...

...Given that by now I have lived more than half my life in Europe, it clearly was a decisive experience...

...By comparison, the oneway fare on the fastest train between Rome and Florence-a journey only slightly shorter-costs about $37...

...I remember coming back to London for the first time after the decimalization and finding that a particular bus route I used to take frequently now cost 10 new pence-two shillings, or considerably more than it had cost before...

...In pre-Euro Italy, for example, a 1,000 lire note may not have seemed a huge sum, but one could use it in calculating costs...

...The rail system has been privatized in the UK...

...Done in 1872, it shows, in the words of historian Brian W. Dippie, "the light of civilization dawning in the East, dispelling the darkness that enshrouds the West...

...that's when they do work on the tracks...

...When I was very young, I worked for your parents," I said...

...Instead of stodgy old British Rail, there is now a host of private train operators serving different parts of the country-much, perhaps, like the preAmtrak rail days in the United States, when the Santa Fe, Union Pacific, Rock Island, and other lines provided passenger service...

...They're Jews, you know...

...In my recollection, I drew myself tall, responded "So am I, you know...

...he asked...

...But never, since the mid-'90s, across the Channel...

...I was terrified by what I had heard about the prices...

...But I did walk over to see her...

...Louis...

...Those were the days of pounds, shillings and pence (or pennies): 12 pence made up a shilling and 20 shillings made up a pound...

...I mentioned early on that before arriving in London I was not concerned about old memories rearing up...

...How are you traveling, by rail...

...Another went that way, to Los Angeles...

...And then he asked if I would like to visit with his mother...

...To St...

...The Greens terminated my employment rather abruptly when they decided suddenly to close the cottage and move for awhile to sunny Spain...

...Not of the country itself, or of London's enormous expanse, or of old memories rearing up and slapping me in the face...

...It was clear that Mrs...

...He painted a romantic picture of vast spaces conquered by iron horses and their riders...

...In fact, for a strange but compelling few weeks, I had worked for them-serving as a live-in cook-housekeeper in their almost suffocatingly quaint cottage in a storybook village near Canterbury...

...We sailed to England on the S.5...

...On Saturday, there was a full schedule of frequent connections, but here is where the sticker shock set in...

...Green turned to me and said, "Isn't it just like walking into a Fairyland...

...Fish and chips when I was a kid in London could cost 2 shillings and six pence (written 2'6d)-also known as half a crown...

...Some years ago, paper pound notes gave way to pound coins, removing even more nuance...

...Later, a new design bore an older, more jowly image of her wearing a sort of veiled headdress...

...And though Mrs...

...It was not Richard, however, but his brother, and he listened politely as I told him who I was and why I was there...

...It all seemed rather unreal, and the first night there, I recorded in my diary, I bolted the door and barricaded it with a chair...

...The Greens were Jewish, like me, and I made a hit with them by preparing traditional meals: chicken soup, farfel, Iox and bagels...

...I remember her husband as a big bluff man, who went riding every morning and referred to his wife constantly as "my angel," "my dream" and other endearments...

...Green responded to my pleasantries with gracious pleasantries of her own that were quite disconnected to the actual here and now, I was very glad to see her too...

...The London to Chester route is served by Virgin Trains, part of the conglomerate headed by Sir Richard Branson that runs Virgin Airlines, Virgin record stores and more...

...Her newest book is Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe...

...In Britain, too, the smallest bill is a five pound note-worth nearly $10...

...He phoned her, and turned on the speaker so I could follow a conversation full of "my loves" and "my darlings...

...To Denver...

...No, he said, it emphatically would not...

...Feeling put out and left in the lurch, I aired a complaint or two in the local pub...

...In England 35 years ago, "new pence" replaced pennies...

...This allowed much easier computation, but it took away the nuance of price and value...

...In fact, though, that is precisely what happened as I hurried along New Bond street en route to a meeting, on my next to last day in town...

...I had a narrow room decorated with lace and pastel frills, on which I imposed my small collection of books and pictures...

...So, England...

...I found, too, that I was still in time to book a "super saver" ticket costing 22 pounds ($40) that required a three-day advance booking for a specific train: Miss that and you lost the ticket...

...Somehow paper bills, for many if not most people, seem to represent a higher value, or at any rate a threshold of value...

...and a light supper at 7:30...

...That changeover led to a bout of sticker shock similar to the price increases in many European countries that came with the institution of the Euro...