This week’s essay was one of those where there’s nothing for
it but to plunge the pen into an artery and write with your heart’s-blood. The
thing just would. Not. Go. I finally
whomped it into shape on Friday, so I decided to take this weekend off (save the
ever-present reading) and have a little Adventure!
First I went to the Oxford Botanical Garden, since it’s A) a
garden and B) right across the High Street. Pro Tip: If you ever get the chance
to see the Oxford Botanic Garden, go first thing in the morning. I had the
whole place pretty much to myself.
And what a place! I
will not bore you with the seven zillion flower-pictures I took; I will only
bore you with two or three of them. It’s
the oldest Botanic Garden in Britain (it’s hard not to say Botanical, but when in Rome), and it had
everything – the old Physic Garden was still there, as well as greenhouses,
rock gardens and broadcast-meadows.
Afterwards I determined to go on a Pilgrimage.
This is the River Thames, upon which Charles Dodgson (aka
Lewis Carroll, who taught math at Oxford) would go rowing with Alice Liddell
and her sisters.
This is the garden in which Alice Liddell played.
This is Christ Church College, where Carroll taught and Alice lived. I was a little bit lost by the time I got back to this point (full disclosure: I'd wandered about five miles out of my way), but from Christ Church you can see Magdalen Tower so I was finally back on the right track. So you see a White Rabbit near the school helped me to find my way:
This is in Merton College, where Tolkien was a Professor of
English. It's the oldest continuously-running university library in the world:
Tolkien lived at 21 Merton Street for the last few years of his
life.
Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Hugo Dyson and a
revolving cast of extras had an informal literary-slash-drinking club they
called “The Inklings,” and they were wont to meet at a pub they called “The
Bird and The Baby”:
Cheers!
It was actually in the pub that I had the first real conversation I’ve had since I’ve been at Oxford. The lady at the next table was
about my age and we got to talking (as you do in a pub); we began by exchanging
polite banalities, and she said that she and her (grown) daughter (who was also
delightful) were from Sully, Wales, but they were in town on a tour; how did I
come to be here? I told her that I was a student at Oxford and, realizing it
as I said it, that she was the first person here I have actually said that to. Apparently the Welsh are disarmed by giant
goofy grins, because by the time my Guinness was gone we were chatting away
like we’d known each other for years. I can’t guarantee we’ll go home and write
great fantasy novels, but the place certainly does loosen the tongue!
