Anachronisms

Time Patrollers meet. First, Unattached agent Everard visits Unattached agent Shalten:

"Entering, Everard found the interior cool, dim, anachronistic."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 66.

Later, Everard meets Specialist Wanda Tamberly:

"They met downtown next morning, in the anachronistic opulence of the St. Francis Hotel lobby." (p. 430)

It seems appropriate that time travelers should meet in anachronistic surroundings. I heard that one idea for Doctor Who was to identify him with the Victorian period and to furnish the TARDIS accordingly.

Shalten appreciates knowledge of social change:

"'...my preferred pied-a-terre is Paris of the Belle Epoque. Refinement that will turn into revulsion, innovation that will turn into insanity, and thus, for the foreknowledgeable observer, piquancy becoming poignancy.'" (p. 66)

Far from regretting the loss of innocence, Shalten relishes it. When Everard visits Shalten's Belle Epoque in 1902, he:

"...tried not to remember that in a dozen years this world would crash to ruin." (p. 119)

Time Patrolmen cannot avoid their knowledge of what is to come. When Carl Farness visits Berlin in 1858:

"Occasionally, a uniformed Prussian officer strode by, but his shoulders did not obviously carry the future."
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 400.

Not obviously, but a Time Patrolman knows...

1902 AD

The Shield Of Time, 1902 A.D.

Shalten debriefs Everard back in 1902 because:

"'In your position among us, you need to know the whole truth. For you to learn it later in this century could pose a hazard. Causational loops can be very subtle. Your experiences and accomplishments in Bactria must continue to have happened. Therefore you must be informed well pastward of our preparations for them. I thought you would enjoy a visit to my Belle Epoque.'" (p. 122) 

Everard's activities in Bactria cannot cease to have happened because of any temporal changes that are made in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, Shalten has made some complicated changes. By deleting 1985 A. D., pp. 11-16, when Garshin was given the Bactrian letter, he has also deleted 1987 A. D., pp. 66-76, when he himself informed Everard of the Bactrian letter. Everard remembers experiences that did not occur in the current timeline. Shalten has to delete events that he wants to delete while preserving events that he wants to preserve. No doubt Unattached agents know how to do this.

Meanwhile, at least, Poul Anderson presents a vivid description of the Boulevard St. Germain in Paris in 1902, a world that, as Everard reflects, will crash to ruin in a dozen years. See 1902 AD.

From Oakland, 1987, To Paris, 1902

Manse Everard visits Shalten's house outside Oakland in 1987. Appropriately, pines and oaks screen this small house, as if to conceal the secret of time travel.

Inside:

coolness
dimness
anachronism
mahogany
marble
embroidered upholstery
deep carpet
maroon hangings
gold-stamped French titles on leather-bound books
molecularly perfect copies of paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat

Shalten explains that these are souvenirs from his preferred setting, Paris of the Belle Epoque. Everard later visits Shalten's flat on the Left Bank in 1902. Time Patrolmen do not just travel through time. They travel to specific times that Poul Anderson evokes in meticulous detail.

Some Common Themes

Both Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time and SM Stirling's The Council Of Shadows refer to the Belle Epoque and to Notre Dame. Other common themes are fencing (swords also come into The Council Of Shadows) and characters meeting authors.

The most powerful of the Shadowspawn says:

"'Did I ever mention that I met the man Stoker? He was invaluable to us...'"
-SM Stirling, The Council Of Shadows (New York, 2012), CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 236.

The leader of a group of mutant time travelers says:

"'I hunted around and found me a young Englishman in the '90's, starting out as an author, a gifted fellow even if he was kind of a socialist. I wanted somebody late in the period, to avoid, um-m, anticipations, you see? He got interested in my, ha, 'hypothetical proposition,' and for a few guineas wrote me some clever things. I offered him more money but he said he'd rather have the free use of that time travel idea instead.'"
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), VII, p. 73.

Manse Everard of the Time Patrol meets a famous tall, thin, hawk-faced private investigator and his burly, mustached, limping amanuensis.

Stirling and Anderson celebrate and continue literary traditions.

Learning History IV

(York with the Minster.)

See Learning History III.

In Europe, the Edwardian period was called the belle epoque." (p. 184)

In York Minster, the windows include the Five Sisters. (ibid.)

Christian and Laurinda hear Mass at the tierce hour, then, after, the Nunc Dimittis, wander around the Minster. (p. 185)

This alternative York has "...somehow Teutonic architecture." The George and Dragon public house is in a Tudor building and serves Continental beer. (p. 186)

In this emulated history, the conciliar movement succeeded. The Councils of Constance and Basel healed the Great Schism and made a reconciliation with the Hussites. (p. 187) In Poul Anderson's SFWA Bulletin article, he tells us that John K. Hord regarded the Council of Basel as the beginning of the breakdown of Western European civilization.