I'll Love You Tomorrow

by Welby Thomas Cox, Jr.

  London has no master plan, no dramatic mise en scene, its charm lies in its irregularities, in the placing of important buildings in unimportant places. There are, of course, exceptions: The Mall from Admiralty Arch up to Buckingham Palace has a regal air, particularly on some state occasion when banners flank the tree-lined route. Trafalgar Square could be distinctly grand were it not for some very drab buildings on two of its sides. The view of the House of Parliament from the terrace of the Festival Hall is a heart-lifting sight, but here again the plebeian girders of Hungerford Bridge mar the foreground.

  Another unexpected feature of London is the number, variety and beauty of its parks and open space. St James Park was laid out by John Nash as a front garden for Buckingham Palace but is open for all to enjoy and the view from the bridge over the lake might be of some oriental city shimmering in the limpid sunlight. Hyde Park is less of a private garden and more of an open space but trees and the Serpentine judiciously break the flatness and, in the adjoining Kensington Gardens, there are some unfrequented corners where the quack of ducks and the scuttering of blackbirds in the undergrowth are the only sounds to be heard.

  What overseas visitor marvel at most-and what most Londoners take for granted-is the incredible collection of art treasures and historical objects to be found in the City. To list all the famous art galleries and museums would be tedious and unhelpful but to say that London collectively has the richest concentration of art objects of any city in the world-and that includes Paris and Rome-is no exaggeration.

  More than most cities, London has been shaped and given character by the men and women who have been its citizens. The blue plaques on the fronts of many houses record were they lived or worked. One of them at 17 Gough Court, off Fleet Street, marks the home of Dr. Johnson who said: ‘When a man is tired of London he is tired of life, for there is in London, all that life can afford.’

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  I have totally over-looked two uniquely beautiful areas; the South-Eastern Counties and the West Country. The tour of England would not be complete without a look at their contribution and place in the history of Great Britain.

  The south-east has always been England’s front door, nowadays open and welcome but, in the past, often slammed shut in the face of enemies. Through it came the Celts bring the Iron Age with them. Uninvited came the Romans imposing their materialistic civilization on the country and pushing the Celts out into its western fringes. The Anglo-Saxons followed leaving their church and literature to mark their passage. When the Normans invaded in 1066, they, too came through England’s front door landing at Pevensey Bay, winning a decisive battle behind Hastings, and then marching around Kent to London where William built the Tower and tamed the country with sword and fire. Spain’s Armada never reached the front door, but barely got to the front gate before being decimated by British sea power and gales. Napoleon and Hitler both looked enviously across the Channel at ‘the white cliffs of Dover’ and quailed at the prospect on landing on so an unfriendly shore.

  These same white cliffs, which are many people’s first sight of England-at Dover or Newhaven-are the sliced-off ends of two ranges of chalk hills that delimit the region: The North and South Downs. Between them lies so much beautiful country and so many interesting places that visitors to Britain often travel no further.

  At either end of this region stand the two great cathedrals of Canterbury and Winchester-Canterbury where Thomas a Becket was murdered and Winchester where King Alfred was buried. Between the two and running along the ridge of the North Downs are the remains of Bronze Age track which was almost certainly the main east-west trade route in ancient times. But after the murder of Thomas a Becket in 1170 and his subsequent canonization, so many pilgrims going to Canterbury used the route that parts of it have become traditionally known as the Pilgrim’s Way. One of the best places to locate it is just south-east of Guildford where St. Martha’s church stands independent of any village on a spur of the downs. The old track runs past the church which is thought to have been the sight of a chantry chapel and from it there is a view that epitomizes southern England: tree upon tree, field after field, hill and hollow for 25 miles to the south where, on a clear day, the mushroom shape of Chanctonbury Ring may be seen. The grove of trees planted in the eighteenth century on the site of an Iron Age earthwork is as much a landmark on the South Downs as St. Martha’s is on the North. To match the Pilgrim’s Way along the North Downs, a South Downs Way has now been designated and mapped.

  The south-east has the most popular sea coast in the whole of Britain. Londoners flock to the north Kent resorts such as Herne Bay, Margate and Broadstairs where sand, sea and sunshine still form the firm basis for a day at the seaside. The other south-coast resorts, stretching from Ramsgate to Bournemouth offer every variation between the slightly formal elegance of Eastbourne and the occasional stretch of coast almost unmarked by civilization. If it is sunshine that you want, the Isle of Wight claims the most.

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  Writing in brief about the West Country is like writing a précis of the Encyclopedia Britannica or summarizing the contents of the British Museum. Something has to give: the problem is not what to put in but what to leave out. Cathedrals for instance; Salisbury, Exeter and Wells cannot be ignored and even Truto, the nineteenth century creation of J. Longborough Pearson, deserves more than the dismissive tag of ‘a piece of Early English revival’. And if cathedrals cannot be left out, what about all those wonderful churches, from early Anglo-Saxon church of St. Lawrence, Bradford-on-Avon to the neo-Byzantine splendor of St. Osmund’s, Parkstone. Houses, too, must be included. Penfound Maner, one of the oldest inhabited Maner houses in Britain was mentioned in the Doomsday Book; Cotehele, an early sixteenth century Cornish Maner house, almost unchanged since it was built; Saltram House, near Plymouth, with its superb Robert Adam interiors; and Wiltshire’s Lacock Abbey dating from the fourteenth century with the adjoining Lacock village totally preserved by the national trust. Castles range from the purely defensive like Portland, Dartmouth or Pendennis to the more domestic, lived in castles like Compton Castle, occupied by the descendants of Sir Humphrey Gilbert since the sixteenth century, or Castle Drogo, probably the last building of its kind ever to be built in Britain, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and standing over 900 feet up, overlooking a gorge of the river Teign.

  At least the West Country is readily definable: a slight devious line joining Gloucester and Southampton satisfies most people as to its eastern border; the sea ordains the boundaries to the north and south; and Land’s End places its final full stop to the west. It is the characterization of this west pointing peninsula that poses the next problem. Scientifically the chalk uplands of Salisbury Plain have little in common with the granite crags of Cornwall’s Penwith Peninsula, yet both share man’s pre-historic puzzles. While Stonehenge is probably the most celebrated stone circle in Europe, few will be familiar with a similar circle though on a very different scale: the ‘Merry Maidens’ of St. Buryan. Equally they stand silent and mysterious, challenging us to unravel their meaning.

  If the West Country is rich in pre-historic relics, it is richer still in the myths and legends that surround them. Tintagel thrives on the quiet unsupportable claim that King Arthur was born there in the sixth century; the ruins on the cliff edge date from at least six centuries later. There are more genuine grounds for believing that Cadbury Castle in Somerset might have been the site of Arthur’s Camelot. Glastonbury, also in Somerset, is the legendary burial place of king Arthur and the spot where Joseph of Arimathea, having transported the holy Grail (or Mary Magdalen and her daughter, depending on which book you want to believe…many believing that the Holy Grail is represented by the female) from Jerusalem, stuck his staff into the ground where it took root and grew into the Holy Thorn bush which flowers each Christmas Day.

  While the legends of the West Country are fascinating, the landscapes are superb and very real. Each of the five counties, Cornwal
l, Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire has its wilderness though some are wilder than others. Wildest of all is Devon’s Dartmoor, officially designated one of Britain’s national parks and covering over 350 square miles. Its granite uplands were extensively inhabited during the Bronze and iron Ages as the remains of many stone hut circles prove, but today, apart from a few villages close to the crossing roads, and his Majesty’s prison at Princeton, it is deserted except for wild deer and ponies.

  The two highest points in Cornwall, Brown Willy at 1375 feet and Rough Tor at 1311 feet are found close to each other on Brodmin Moor, a high granite-strewn area lying between the upper reaches of the rivers Inny and Camel. There is only one road across the moor and it was the appalling state of this road in the seventeenth century that prevented Bodmin from then becoming the county town of Cornwall; The Assize judges could not be persuaded to venture further west than Launceston. If they had they would have discovered, as millions of holiday makers have, that the true glory of the West Country is the long and magnificent seacoast that borders this pointing finger of land. From Weston-super-Mare and the Seven Estuary right round to Hengistbury head and the Needles, there are cliff walks and beaches, sheltered bays and quiet coves, hedlands, harbors, creeks, estuaries, seaside towns and villages that make this whole region Britain’s unique holiday haven. Its climate, too, is softer, warmer and more equable than the rest of Britain and along the south coast ‘Riviera’, from Falmouth to Dawlish, palm trees flourish and sub-tropical plants grow freely.

  For lovers of marine drama, the many headlands on the north Cornish coast provide grandstand views when Atlantic gales brings thousands of tons of boiling seas crashing down on the unyielding rocks, and, when the storm has abated, the same Atlantic rollers carry surfers far up the wide sandy beaches of Newquay, Bude, West Oh! And Saunton Sands. For the yachtsmen the more sheltered south coast with their wide bays and deep estuaries offer not only safe sailing but also friendly harbors and magnificent coastal scenery.

  Epilogue

  I have not wanted to bring the novel, ‘I’ll Love You Tomorrow’ to a close. For in doing so, painfully… I bring as well the close of a childhood memory, which exist no longer, of a safe place for orphaned and/or displaced children during the period from the early part of the 20th century until the late 20th century. A period of no more than eighty years where the laws of the Unites States permitted women to legally and indiscriminately murder millions of innocent babies in the name of the right of the mother to choose. The slaying of innocence over the benign use of a condom or other birth control methods will forever provide the clarion call for adult parents and Christians everywhere to strike down Roe vs. Wade and begin to teach our youth that the taking of life for a few minutes of pleasure is not acceptable. The unborn, with no defense against the scalpel or the pill, form the battleground, certain to come, with the seating of the new Supreme Court. It is the prayer of this writer that the newly constituted court under the leadership of a strict conservative will see the wisdom in striking down this inhuman law. Regardless of the moans and cries for the right of the mother, (I use this word, ‘mother’ only because it has been commonly applied and attached to those paid to fight to maintain Roe vs. Wade) but certainly, there isn’t a mother alive that would choose to murder their baby in exchange for freedom of sex.

  So, orphanages still exist in the United States but their numbers are few and the need long ago settled by legislative breeding. Shame on America, the very same people who continue to weep for the losses of the Jews are fighting to protect the right of millions to murder innocents. Yes, let us call it the way it is…the east and west coast liberals, spearheaded by pseudo-Jewish intellectuals wrapped in the guise of the American for Civil Liberties, MS magazine, Ms. Foundation for Women, The Coalition for Labor Union Women, the National Women’s Political Caucus, NOW, Cosmopolitan Magazine and Playboy Magazine are at the very forefront of this legislation, and they will not be easily defeated. These are the same people who now rattle the swords over the inhuman treatment of Prisoners of War, or convicted killers like Tukky Williams, the founder of the notorious street gang, the Creps (or creeps depending on your point of view) in LosAngles in the 70’s, an admitted killer of four innocent people. Thank God, the Governor of California did not succumb to the weepy, hand wringing of these liberals who now spend their time and money in a desperate, last ditch, attempt to save Roe vs. Wade…the modern killing fields, red with the blood of the unborn.

  When the history of the world is written, and those who write it point to a time, a generation, a century that produced the most vile, the most evil, the most selfish, the most radical, the most barbaric killers of all times, the greatest sluts who used abortion to clean up for the lack of discipline…these writers will point to the 20thcentury, and they will further refine the provocateurs of the sexual revolution and the feminist movement in the two generations born during the decades of 1930 to 1950.

  This time period gave us the king and queen of the revolution for enlightenment…Hugh Hefner and Gloria Steinem. Hefner baring the clitoris with the camera for all to see in living color and Steinem glorifying its right to gender equality. Of course neither assume any responsibility for the explosive escalation of pornography during this period and its impact on the abuse of children.

  Consider this, in the period prior to the late sixties, a man searching for a date on any given evening, rarely discovered an opportunity for female contact in a public restaurant, bar or after-hour jive joint. Female companionship which flowered into the prospects for sexual activity leading to marriage happened within the context of the family community: an introduction via a family friend; school; the arts; chance meetings at the grocery, laundry, on the bus or train, at a sports event. And trust me, when the meeting occurred, most often there was little prospect that the man was going to get to ‘first base’ in the near term.

  But by the seventies and the birth of Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and their partners glorifying the right of women to do and say anything they pleased and Hugh Hefner denigrating women in the name of art, ‘Looking for Mr. Goodbar’ and ‘The Graduate’ set the tempo for the outing of the sluts. Suddenly, every city had several hot night spots where the women came out howling and Tom-cats on the prowl feasted on the flesh.

  Why not, the young women begged the question…their mother’s said it was ok for women to seek pleasure wherever they could find it, as long as they protected themselves through the use of condoms or the fall back methodology of abortion.

  Then, one of Steinem’s revolutionary partners, the homosexual community introduced a chilling influence to the party in the form of a disease called ‘Aids’, and all the homophobic… the gays and the feminist bra-burners had lampooned… smiled in the satisfaction in knowing that homosexuality was evil and deviant.

  What is the explanation from the experts on the origination of this deadly disease? They know it originated in Africa…from monkeys. They say that it can only be transmitted by the exchange of sexually transmitted body fluids; the sharing of an infected needle from one drug user to another; or innocently through a blood transfusion. We are quite certain that the monkeys were not using needles for the injection of drugs, nor were any of them the recipients of a blood transfusion…so go figure… how did these African’s catch the disease and why was it initially impacting only the gay community? Was there some kind of very selective sexual activity between the monkeys and the Africans? Maybe it was an issue that Hughie Hefner could have taken up as he lounged around the mansion in his PJ’s, ogling teen-age girls.

  But guess what…the NOW crowd embraced their gay co-hearts and even as they wringed their hands over the dilemma, they turned the media machines into vanguards of public relations to mitigate the damage to the homosexual community and the seriousness of the coming epidemic. And the sexual guard was once again relaxed…and the whores and gays went back to bogeying down Broadway and into Main Street where the disease proliferated by sex and drug u
se kills 8,000 per day in 2005.

  Add to that the number of abortions performed every day and we begin to feel the depth of the pain promulgated by the NOW crowd and the sexual revolution. They must be extremely proud of the advances made in the 20thcentury, somewhere among those millions of corpse…children all, the spirit of another great mind resides in the dust and ashes of life cut short by those who cared too little for the sacred lives of others.

  As I write these historically documented truths, a sixty-eight-year-old Caucasian…I do so not because I am a trained professional social engineer in the academic sense. Like a Kinsey (whose methodology was rather bizarre and his wife a bi-sexual slut who shared her bed as he took pleasure while watching…kinky/Kinsey) but like the bra-burners and all the big mouths of the era, the sons and daughters of the twentieth century…I do so because I was there, and because I am mad as hell.

  A book published in 1999, IMAGINE: THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN HEROES, edited and compiled by Gina Misiroglu is significant in its selection of the fifty odd heroes. Many of them warranting a spot in the time capsule, represented by thirty-two women (64%) eighteen men (36%), of whom at least two are known Aids victims and thirteen minorities (26%).

  The book is telling, as much for those included as those omitted. Hillary Clinton is considered one of the most important people in the 20thcentury, while her husband, two term President William Jefferson Clinton did not warrant a mention. In the introduction, Joseph Campbell is quoted, “when we quit thinking about ourselves and our own self- preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.”

  I wonder what Hillary Clinton was thinking in that context early in the Clinton administration when she invested thousands of dollars, based on insider trading information of an impending act by the president relative to the devaluation of the dollar.