Beautiful Oxford

Harry Potter settings:

The Ashmoleon:

Christchurch Cathedral: Christchurch College:

Bourne-Jones window:

Christchurch College:

Class, with swans:

Tour guide 2007:Addison's Walk 2003:

Oxford Envy

Oxford I know is not for me—wrong gender, wrong century, wrong class, wrong country—but I am envious anyway. I am just grumpy with hopeless envy. Maybe it’s because so many English writers have Oxford in their past, in the pasts of their characters, and the ideal is built into my brain. I don’t like the feeling of envy. It is uncomfortable and shameful. But it is true that every trip to Oxford has been miserable. Today, it has been mostly because of Chris [age 10], who has moaned and stomped and sulked and miseried his way around town all afternoon. He and I wander about Radcliffe Square and Christchurch, bumping into each other and getting rained on.

Something about vertical spaces appeals in an innate, primitive way. I wonder if it has to do with our lives in the trees before we came down to the savannah. When I dream of flying, I dream enclosed spaces, clearings between huge trees, the inside of cathedral spaces, deep gorges with high curving cliffs on either side. I don’t even want to think of Freudian interpretations. But the loveliness of Oxford includes a vertical, enclosed, protected space or sense. And then of course Oxford goes beyond that almost to the ludicrous (the obviously Victorian-built parts)—the effect of being just overweeningly rich and proud. But generally the cushion of wealth and care is very comfortable to the senses.

I suppose it is salutary for me to feel envious of the wealth, pride, and knowledge of the Oxford tradition, as most people in the world may be jealous of Americans. Oxford is simply beyond my reach. For most, even if they are physically in the US, “America” is beyond their reach as well, and maybe they walk longingly and envious through the streets of America as I walk in Oxford, peering into walled gardens

with signs that say “Private. No visitors.”

Even the arguments may be the same. "If we let everyone in who wants to come, we will be overwhelmed." All the tourists are crowded onto the crass and busy High Street, while the meadows are behind locked gates. I can argue that Oxford is archaic, hierarchical, irrelevant, even bad and dangerous, but there is no arguing with the attraction to me of this particular combination of privilege, learning, and power.

So this is my weakness, which feels like a weakness, and is painful and uncomfortable. I should remember it. I am vulnerable to intellectual snobbery and envy. Not a comfortable picture of myself. (2003)

OK Oxford, I’m not jealous of you anymore. Not my favorite town but at least bearable this time. I recognize that part of what I thought was exclusionary is just the nature of English towns—crowded High Street, walled gardens, etc. And the students are so extremely young. I’m done with that, thank God. I do, I work as I choose.

To be truly at Oxford, one would have to not be a frantic, sex- and beer-obsessed undergraduate, but a teacher, a researcher—someone who lived here and watched the children come and go like the ebb and flow of the tide. A lot like John’s job at BYU, as a matter of fact, especially since the new Humanities Building with its gorgeous courtyard garden, cloistered walkways, overhanging balconies, fountains, sky-lights and winding stairs. I don’t want his job—the politics would be too much for me—but I’m glad John has it, since he loves it and I can participate peripherally. All wealthy universities—which BYU certainly is—have these things in common, I believe: the community of scholars (with its advantages and disadvantages); the yearly infusion of bright, beautiful, enthusiastic young people; the opportunity to be passionate about a very narrow, impractical (in terms of money) art or other interest; and the setting for people who were always very bright and comfortable in school, top of their class, to stay in that sheltered, academic setting forever.

Virginia Woolf eventually came to see the public school/university tradition (at that time completely anti-female) as poisoning the whole world (in “Three Guineas”). I don’t believe it is innately or inevitably evil. Maybe more openness has helped alleviate the problems. I still think there are particular blind spots in academic thinking (VW calls it “the little spot at the back of the head”) that can be very dangerous in people who believe themselves to be so smart they see everything. Oh well, it’s interesting. It’s nice not to be angry at Oxford anymore. I have found my (metaphorical) cloistered halls. The danger I could fall into is too much freedom and isolation, mixed with my innate laziness and desire to stay in my comfort zone. (2005)

Oxford (1997)

Yesterday John, Chris and I went to Oxford. We missed the trip last time because Amy was in the hospital. We ate a fine pub lunch at the "Wig and Pen" and then headed around town while John took pictures of places from Hardy's book "Jude the Obscure." Oxford is a collection of separate colleges, each with its walled and gated courtyards, its spires and chapels. Their names are very evocative--St. John's, Christchurch, Balliol, Magdalen--ancient places that were old in the thirteenth century when Chaucer wrote of the "clerks of Oxford" in Canterbury Tales. I started off melancholy, thinking of Virginia Woolf, longing and envious of her brothers' education. My mood was not ameliorated by Christopher, screaming in the tower of St. Mary's (completely disrespectful of melancholy anyway) because he couldn't climb the ladder by himself--20 tourists waited below for him to finish his tantrum and descend. And where in fifteen seconds do you find a place for a four year old to pee--because fifteen seconds is all you've got. At least then we were closer to the river and there was a tree to stand behind.

At any rate, interrupted in this way by Christopher, I remembered the recurring dream I had years ago in which after a long journey I came to just such a place--a monastery, school, home--the Oxford colleges were accurate to my dream right down to the walled gardens and overtones of religion. It was graduation day for at least one college, and the graduates were dashing about with their black robes edged in ermine, their well-dressed parents trailing them with cameras. Then I felt envious and excluded, not just because of the gates across the gardens and the signs at the courtyards saying "no visitors", but because I had to go to Oxford on a bus and buy my own meal in a pub and I wasn't and never will be invited to lunch by an Oxford don--and as fine as BYU is it isn't Oxford.

Blenheim

Blenheim Palace is a splendid, lofty place, still home of the present Duke. I can't remember what he is duke of. It is Winston Churchill's birthplace--his mother was at a party and went into premature labour. The most interesting part of the palace is the library. The library in the Disney cartoon "Beauty and the Beast" must have been inspired by the library at Blenheim Palace. The gardens were designed by Capability Jones. In those days they didn't believe in flowers near the house (or much in flowers at all), instead laying out formal water gardens and topiary gardens, and a circle rose garden about a half a mile from the house. What Jones believed in were vistas, and when you own all the land for miles around, that's what you can afford to have. The garden creation required nearly 500,000 trees to be planted. You can imagine. There is a huge artificial lake, with boat tours to the various temples and grottoes and so forth. The old bridge across to a lovely island once contained art galleries and even a small theatre (waterlogged and unsafe now). Most of the kids again had a strong reaction against such conspicuous consumption and wealth. (1997)

Blenheim Palace is, as ever, a gorgeous example of human inequality and exploitation. But just because aristocratic inheritance is fantastically obviously unmerited, doesn't mean that other forms of inequality and exploitation (cue: American versions) are more palatable. Even so, it must be especially rotten in this era to be an aristocrat - one would have to choose between being 1) a rabid reactionary, 2) a blithering idiot, or 3)a raucous reformer - in simple defense against the cognitive dissonance. On the other hand, I may be giving an insular aristocracy too much credit - the royals don't seem to mind being 1) and 2) of the above (e.g., Prince Harry). (2007)

Shakespeare Sites in Stratford

Barges on the Avon:

Fools, minstrels and jesters:

The Grammar School:

The Birthplace:

Food and Class in the Open Air (Hathaway Garden)

The Victorians (2003)

We’re sitting in the garden at Ann Hathaway’s cottage listening to Kelli talk about garden styles through the ages, especially comparing the Victorian passion for ornate carpets of bedding plants to their nostalgic literature extolling the simple, delicate, useful herb-and-flower cottage garden. We are so similar to the Victorians, particularly us Mormons.

Stratford Theatre

We took an overnight coach trip to Stratford--the trip Chris and I missed last time because he was sick. We saw Hall's Croft, where Shakespeare's daughter lived with her physician husband. We saw the grammar school where Will learned his Latin and Greek. Then we saw "Hamlet" and "Merry Wives of Windsor"--both excellent productions. Hamlet was done in modern dress, with the king as a Godfather-type businessman. Instead of flowers, Ophelia carried a bottle of (I assume) herbal pills, offering rosemary and rue instead of posies. Instead of holding a dagger, Hamlet put a handgun to his head during the "to be or not to be" speech, and shot Polonius instead of stabbed him. The duel at the end still worked because they were fencing in modern uniforms. I had an odd reaction, thinking--"this is the older adolescent from hell." My sons are difficult, but they are nothing like Hamlet. I have a great deal of sympathy for Gertrude. (1997)

Lear last night was wonderful. McKellen made us feel the pity and terror. Lear, shrunken in habit of authority at the beginning, grew to the true measure of his greatness as he moved through madness to his ultimate sanity. I believe in tragedy as much as anything in this universe. Life is tragic, and even more so for those who don't realize it until they've lost what's most important to them--and then it's most difficult and most likely to crack them apart. Realizing tragedy and somehow accepting it, and not accepting it, is the only way to be sane to the end of life (maybe I need to write another essay).

John said this morning that he wonders if tragedy is un-Christian--if it denies the eucatastrophe of the Resurrection. I don't think it does. I think that the Christian Resurrection exists outside or beyond our tragic world. I gave the example of Mary Ann losing Russell. Close the casket on the broken face and body, and he's gone. As Lear says, "forever, forever, forever, forever, forever." No more in this life do we see our dead. No matter the state of our faith, we cannot know in an earthly sense what lies beyond. Denying the reality of tragedy is itself a form of madness. Mary has been half-mad. "I'll never get over it," she says now. And one doesn't. Our loved dead are gone, gone, gone--we shall not see or touch or know them in this life. No faith or doctrine changes that. I think that when we gloss over it we harm both ourselves and the grieving, deny ourselves and the grieving the purging catharsis of pity and fear, and push those grieving (which will be all of us before the end) into madness. (2007)

The Swan:

St. Nicholas Park, Warwick

...on a Sunday after church. We stay at a hotel, and so have to find somewhere else to eat our sandwiches:

Queuing for food:

Fearless leader:
and Ultimate! (on Saturday of course):

A beautiful bony-faced, white-haired, blue-eyed man (with a beard) stopped his bicycle to ask what we are doing here. He said he is measuring the distance from here to Kenilworth Castle for a bicycle race. He said he is a retired teacher of engineering. Every time John would get distracted or walk around the little enclosure away from him, he would say, “Well, I’ll let you get on with it,” but he would stay if I asked a question. I think he was lonely. I think old people are often lonely and want to talk, and younger people don’t pay attention to them—often see right through them. And yet they are human and interesting—more interesting in many ways than the young ones—they’ve had more experience.

It is so cold, my fingers are freezing. A couple of squirrels are considering a commando raid on the remains of the food. I have a half-eaten Mars Bar in my pocket, my temporary home is less than a mile away, the sun is going down, and all is well. (2005)

Church at Warwick

The first time we went to church in Warwick, the ward met above a chemist's shop, just half a block or so from our hotel, the Warwick Arms.

Now they have a beautiful little chapel, not that much farther from the hotel, and we meet for church and have our fireside there.

Four Years Old at Warwick Castle (1997)

Warwick was great for Chris. They have a touchable waxworks display all along one level, showing preparation for battle during medieval times. Visitors walk from room to room listening to a soundtrack and moving among statues and real people dressed up in costume. Chris tried to get the weapons from every soldier on display. He would just walk quickly over, grab hold, give a little tug, sigh, and move on to the next weapon. They must be used to little boys, however, because all the arrows, bows, swords, daggers, crossbows, etc., were tacked down quite securely. Then at the end we walked into a little shop, and there were plastic swords with scabbards for £2. Then we found (or Chris found, I should say to be more accurate) a suit of armour for £6, which includes shield, breastplate, and helmet with moveable visor. Chris is now Sir Christopher, and takes his knightly duties quite seriously. He loses his privileges every once in a while--right now his sword is gone for a time because he stabbed John in the stomach after dinner. But overall, he hasn't been too bad.

Trebuchet at Warwick Castle (2007)

John helped man the trebuchet:

Thoughts on Romans, Arthur, Christianity (2007)

I pasted photos from the Warwick promotional pamphlet of the double-eagle Roman troops into my journal. The Romans were gone so many centuries before the next armoured groups of soldiers that it is hard to imagine them.

But I guess Romans were actually everywhere on this island except in the far North. They are so far back in time that they are almost magical—except that their artifacts are everywhere.

I wonder if Arthur really was Brit/Roman, in his actual incarnation. How can a mostly illiterate population maintain an advanced culture through centuries after the culture is gone, and under the onslaught of the Norse? And the Saxons. And the Normans. I wonder if Arthur really was Christian? He must have been an extraordinary personality—or have been eulogized by an extraordinary poet—to have made such a long-lasting impression.

Jesus was no earlier than the Romans in Britain, and I suppose in some ways Jesus was as much a child of the Romans as Arthur was. But the Arthur story includes Jesus of course.I had a thought about war imagery—expressed in its most silly form as “we’re fighting for peace.” I wonder (as we sing Sullivan’s “Onward Christian Soldiers”), if Jesus himself used such imagery. He said, “I bring not peace but a sword.” Maybe I need to look it up and see the context. Paul used the “whole armour of God” imagery. But in general Jesus used the language of peace—“resist not evil,” “love your enemies,” etc. Easy to forget that, or to believe it applies to our personal lives only and not nationally or in the collective. As Pres. Kimball said, “we are a warlike people.”

Warwick Castle

Magical Warwick (or Disneyfied Warwick, depending on your mood and whether you have a child with you):

Chris (at age 10) enjoys the waxworks
and the actors:A knight in shining armour:

The Peacock Garden:

More waxworks:Students on the battlements: