The weather was dismal, the traffic was terrible, but I was still reasonably patient as we crawled toward the last segment of congested traffic, at the foot of the great ramp that leads from the waterline to the altitude of the George Washington Bridge. We were on the Harlem River Drive; we would cross Manhattan on the GWB approach, but then turn off for a brief stretch of smooth sailing along the Henry Hudson Parkway. We would take the first exit we came to, and climb once again to the height of Fort Tryon Park, where the car would drop us off for the Cloisters Garden Party.

I was patient, as I say, but the driver was not, and the driver didn’t know that he didn’t know what he was doing when he decided, at the last minute, to swerve into the right lane of the Harlem River Drive, which was empty, because all traffic on the Drive at that hour is aimed at the GWB: it’s one of the three routes to suburban New Jersey. The stretch of Drive beyond the access ramp is never very heavily traveled, and it’s not unusual for it to be absolutely empty, but for one’s vehicle. I knew what the driver, thinking himself very clever, was planning to do, and I knew that he wouldn’t be able to do it, and I was beside myself with frustration. In a small, calm compartment of my mind, I worked on how to save the situation.

For there is no entrance to Fort Tryon Park from the southbound lane of the Henry Hudson Parkway.

Nor would Kathleen’s suggestion work: proceeding to the next exit, getting off the Parkway, and then getting right back on again at the opposite entrance. This is a maneuver that I call the Sherman McCoy, after the protagonist of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities: it’s his deluded reliance on such a plan, which New York City was built to defeat, that precipitates his downfall. The next-exit turnaround works on most Interstate Highway access points in the United States, but as Susan Sontag said about Manhattan — well, some other time. The “next exit” of the Henry Hudson Parkway is a manic doodle of whichways that even makes use of a city street (Riverside Drive). Re-entry onto the northbound lane of the Parkway is not an option that I’m aware of. But we got off at this next exit anyway, because I was pretty sure that I could get us out of the sprawling interchange and onto a side street that would take us to Fort Washington Avenue, from which the Park and the Cloisters can also be reached. When I saw “W 178 St” on an overhead sign, I directed the driver to head for it, and, soon enough, we were really on our way.

I had not actually insulted the driver, but I had loudly berated him for not listening to me. My indignation subsided the moment the driver realized his error (counting on a southbound-lane exit that didn’t exist). By the time we reached Margaret Corbin Circle, at the entrance to Fort Tryon Park, the driver was not exactly apologizing but excusing himself — in seventeen years of driving around New York, he’d never been here — and I was apologizing, if also along pro forma lines. I was magnanimous — that state of soul that is ignited by the triumphant satisfaction of knowing that (a) I was right and (b) I knew how to fix it because (c) I’ve been visiting the Cloisters for nearly fifty years. Call me a hedgehog: I know one big thing about the Cloisters. How to get there.

Kathleen, who had not enjoyed the interplay between the driver and me, muttered as we crossed the cobbled road to the Cloisters that she hadn’t wanted to go in the first place. But we were soon enveloped in the peace of the place, and when we boarded a bus (provided by the Museum) for the homeward journey, she said that she was very glad to have come.

***

I know a few other things about the Cloisters, but others know them better. The important thing about what I do know is that it’s indispensable: if you can’t get to the Cloisters, the rest doesn’t really matter.

Which is why, I suspect, the Museum puts on this annual Cloisters party for its more generous members. Such members are extremely unlikely to take the MTA bus that threads its way up Broadway, and even less likely to take the IRT subway to 191st Street and then walk half a mile through the hills and dales of Fort Tryon Park, which itself is not easy to do, because if you elect to follow the road, there is no sidewalk, whereas the pathways in the Park are anything but straightforward, and often involve flights of stone steps that aren’t in the very best shape. As for driving, there’s something curiously wrong about a forty-minute road trip (in no traffic) that begins and ends in Manhattan. It’s a way of going nowhere in a car that reminds me of what Mark Twain said about Bermuda (before airplanes were an option): it was a Paradise that you had to go through Hell to get to.

Some party notes: The arcades of the Cuxa Cloister, the largest of the four (they say that there are five, but St-Guilhem, Trie, and Bonnefont are the only others that I’ve found), are not very spacious when furnished with a bar and serving tables and a small crowd of members — not on a rainy night when you can’t stroll in the garden, and neither can you leave the cloister with food and drink. Doubtless because of the weather, but also perhaps because absolutely nothing else was on offer, not even water, the wine-tasting setup in the chapter house didn’t seem to be very busy. There was another bar in the hall that contains the Fuentidueña Apse (“on permanent loan” from the Spanish government) — crickets. Heading downstairs, we found another bar/munchables setup in the arcade of the Bonnefont Cloister, which was almost jammed, given the bad weather. The Trie Cloister, which ordinarily sports a breezy café cart, was deserted, probably because the garden there has been completely reconstructed, with new drainage and a few seedlings sprouting from the new topsoil; the charming fountain is also out for repairs.

Access from the bar areas to the other rooms is limited to two doors leading off the Cuxa Cloister, the one from the vestibule and the one that leads to the room that I never linger in, despite its very pretty windows, the Early Gothic Hall. Through this chamber, you can descend to the lower level, with the Treasury (closed for the occasion, wisely I should think), the adjacent Trie and Bonnefont Cloisters, and the “tomb room” that is probably the most powerful reminder of the vicissitudes of fortune to be found in this city: how surprised those knights and ladies would be — how much more than surprised— to learn that their effigies would cross the ocean and come to rest in a heathen cosmopolis for all to gawk on (all who can find the way to Fort Tryon Park, anyway).

By another door, you can leave the Early Gothic Hall for the two rooms of tapestries (Nine Heroes and Unicorns) and the collections of late-Gothic artifacts (the jewel of which is the Campin Altarpiece). Through the vestibule, you can pass to the hall with the great apse that I’ve already mentioned, and proceed further to the always-tranquil St-Guilhem Cloister, with its pebbled court and translucent sunroof. The Langon Chapel was blocked off, for use by servers, but we espied the capital that is said to portray Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. (How surprised they would be, too — but not more than surprised, not that pair.)

I’m not sure that the doors to the battlements were unlocked, but only fools would have made use of them — fools and persons not appropriately dressed. The wet weather was a great shame. The gardens were lush and green and very melancholy. So beautiful and yet so inaccessible.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 11th, 2013 at 1:07 pm.