A feel good article

Time-Traveling in Oxford, England

By HENRY SHUKMAN

OXFORD'S first museum was a kind of cabinet of curiosities (elephant molar, sawfish bill and so on) known as Tradescant's Rarities, displayed in the 1630's, and later housed in the city's second museum, the Ashmolean. In the late 19th century the Pitt Rivers Museum was built, a neo-Gothic brick hall crammed — crammed in a way no other museum on earth is — with tribal treasures from around the world. There are cases of shrunken heads, canoes of every design hang from the ceiling, crowding the vaulted space, and unnumbered axes, plows, arrows, swords, pipes, staffs, tunics, paddles, shoes and all manner of witching paraphernalia occupy glass cases, drawers, cabinets and display windows. The building heaves with the collective juju of the known world, gathered by Victorians as they traveled their vast empire and beyond.

But even this museum is as nothing to the cabinet of curiosities, the embarras de richesses, that is Oxford itself. The three earliest colleges were founded in the mid 1200's (Balliol, Merton and University, attended by Bill Clinton) and by the mid 16th century many of the eventual 39 colleges had been built. The result was and remains a square-mile warren of stone architecture, bristling with spires, pinnacles and finials (the spikes beloved of Gothic architects), abounding with quadrangles, passageways, chapels, halls and alleys.

Within the mostly lost medieval city walls, within this labyrinth of Gothic architecture, there are paintings by Botticelli, Uccello and Frans Hals; there is a genuine dodo's beak; early astrolabes from the Arab world; the room where England's first cup of coffee was drunk (in 1637 in Balliol); Convocation House where Charles I's Parliament met during the Civil War; buildings by Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor; and more fine silver and glassware for lavish college feasts than you could find in any royal or imperial palace.

One beautiful building after another — and all of them built of Cotswold sandstone, which changes color with the light, from pale cream to an apricot glow. You can lose yourself here and forget there ever was a century other than the 16th — except when you have to emerge briefly to get across the High Street, which with its "sublime curve" has been called the most beautiful street on earth. In late dusk, when the sky is luminous and the streets are already dark, the stone walls acquire the sumptuousness of a bowl of oranges in candlelight.

I grew up in Oxford. Both my parents were academics, which I liked to think gave me a free pass throughout the college domains (strictly, I'm not sure it did). I still like to think I know Oxford as well as anyone. (It's possible: the boundaries of some colleges are so tangled that not even the infamous bulldogs, the bowler-hatted university police, know them precisely.) I'm biased, but to my mind one of Europe's great pleasures is to weave your way aimlessly through Oxford's cloisters and passages. You leave contemporary life behind. The clock and the calendar recede. The colleges were after all religious institutions until 1870, part monasteries, part schools. (Though the spirit of rebellious philosophy was always there too, and still is: among recent prayer requests on a board in Magdalen Chapel I saw this, addressed to God: "Good luck to you!")

A guided wander, then.

Coming from the train station, a first stop is Worcester College's delightful quad, with its sunken lawn, and string of what look like Gothic stone cottages on one side facing a neoclassical block on the other. Then while making your way up the grand, short Beaumont Street toward the center, take a quick look at St. John's Street: two simple rows of 18th-century houses clad in sandstone that has aged into rich tea-colored stains.

J. R. R. Tolkien ("Rings") lived here, and used to meet his friend C. S. Lewis ("Narnia") in the Eagle and Child pub round the corner. From the 1930's to the 60's they met with friends weekly, often in the pub, and called their gatherings the Inklings. Lewis recalled the "golden sessions" they enjoyed by the fire. It's still an oak-paneled hive rich with the aroma of yeast and hops, with my favorite beer, the local Old Hooky, on tap. (Ale doesn't get hazelnuttier.)

In the Ashmolean Museum, where Beaumont meets St. Giles, go upstairs to the Italian Renaissance room for a squint at works by Mantegna, Bellini and especially Uccello and his mystical "Hunt in the Forest," where hounds leap into the darkness of a seemingly endless wood; then down again, and up Magdalen Street to Broad Street. Lined with three colleges and rows of 18th-century shops (among them the labyrinthine Blackwell's bookstore), it ends with Wren's Sheldonian Theater, with its distinctive white cupola and 12 startled busts of Roman emperors.

You're now in the heart of Oxford. There are treasures wherever you turn: the roseate stone tank of the quadrangle at the Bodleian Library; the stone Bridge of Sighs over Queen's Lane; the Radcliffe Camera (or "chamber"), a 90-foot-high rotunda that wouldn't be out of place in Renaissance Florence; All Souls College, home of the sinecure par excellence, where the only duties are to dine at college every so often and to converse brilliantly over the port.

If you happen to be in town on a Wednesday during term time, Queen's College has free organ recitals at lunchtime in its Rococo chapel (designed by Hawksmoor), a short walk down the High. The large stained-glass windows cast glitters of colored light on the plain stone walls while the gathering in the pews will be as somber as a group of scholars bent over a manuscript, as they unravel the intricacies of a Bach fugue.

Then head up cobbled Brasenose Lane to the Covered Market , Oxford's answer to the bazaar, fragrant with delicatessens, florists, coffee and tea merchants and butchers that hang carcasses of venison, hare, pheasant and woodcock outside their stalls. The crowds will tell you which are the best sandwich counters.

Oxford is thick with pubs. What is this link between alcohol and academia, books and beer? One 20th-century student reputedly demanded a flagon of claret during his exams, having discovered an ancient rule in the University Statute Book entitling him to. The invigilator was able to annul the request because the student was improperly dressed: according to another statute, he should have been wearing a saber.

New College's Cloisters with their ancient ilex tree; Magdalen's herd of deer; Corpus Christi's slightly wild organic garden by the old city wall, where you can see nothing that wouldn't have been there 500 years ago; Merton's library like an inverted ship on Mob Quad, the oldest academic library in the world (1373); Christ Church's Tom Quad and Great Hall, famous now as Hogwart's Hall in Harry Potter; and the Venetian moments of stone and water created by unexpected channels. The profusion of trees that make Oxford look like a forest from the air and caused the French poet Mallarmé to complain of Oxford's "green sickness," the oaks in Christ Church Meadow, the willows along the rivers and the unlikely Mediterranean pine tucked in a square at the back of University College, in front of a white stucco villa like an ice cream about to melt. In the end, what can you do with this city but sing its praises?

Oxford. Normal or weird? II

I came across a facebook group called "Oxford is not part of the real world." I am putting up pictures from this group.
Living in Oxford, I am finding normal what others would find weird. If you're ever considering coming to Oxford, be it for study or to visit me, then here's what to expect:


I don't notice the guy, while I remember the one at UQ vividly.
Because tourists love where we eat, sleep, and study.

Balliol has a championship croquet ground. I am going to become an expert comes Trinity.

And yes, cellos appear out of nowhere. This is at the king's arms, a very typical pub five minutes' walk from my room.

Oxford: Normal or weird?

A very typical sight. Note the palm tree, the facade, the gargoyles and the fellow in academic gown.
A mexican wave of people who've just matriculated.
People being led around the city by a piper.
A nice view? In Oxford, this is a rather normal one. The building to your left is the Bodlein library, a dreary place for all who study there. And ahead, you see colleges where students battle both the Oxford flu and the Oxford workload.
I don't see this everyday, but it seems like none of the people on the photo care.