A Letter from Oxford

A University opens its doors...

{Oxford, England}

I would like to tell you that I’ve wanted to visit Oxford since reading Matthew Arnold’s 19th-century descriptions of the city. I could open my letter with his quote,

“Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene!…whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age…”

Or, the famous line from the poem Thyrsis, in which Arnold describes Oxford as “that sweet city with her dreaming spires…”. It’s from this poem that Oxford gets its nickname “City of Spires” from, after all.

I would sound so smart if I did that.

But the truth is, I’ve wanted to visit Oxford since I saw the 1984 movie Oxford Blues, starring Brat-Packer Rob Lowe as a Young American who hustles his way into the venerable university that is the heart of this city. Despite competing with 80s heartthrobs Lowe, Julian Sands, and Cary Elwes, for me it was Oxford itself that stole the show.

In my junior high school in the middle of America, it was fashionable to wear athletic apparel from local universities - universities that one day we hoped to attend. But after watching Oxford Blues, instead of a University of Iowa sweatshirt, I bought a University of Oxford sweatshirt - emblazoned with an ancient crest instead of a flashy Hawkeye mascot. I didn’t in a million years think I would ever attend Oxford, but goodness…how I wanted at least to visit, one day.

The city of Oxford was founded in the tenth century - a small settlement on the River Thames. The Thames was particularly shallow here, which allowed oxen to ford the river, and so it was called Oxen-ford. Eventually, that became Oxford. The date of the founding of the University is uncertain. The University’s website tells us that there was teaching of some form starting in 1096, and that things really got rolling when King Henry II banned English students from traveling to Paris to study in 1167. It is the oldest university in the English-speaking world.

The University of Oxford is made up of thirty-nine different colleges. The oldest of these colleges are Balliol, Merton and University Colleges, founded in the 13th century. The colleges are spread around town, and each has its own set of buildings including student rooms, library, chapel, dining hall, etc. It is possible to visit most of the colleges, but only certain buildings, and at certain times of the day - and each college charges a separate entrance fee to visit.

Which is why I’m excited that my visit to Oxford this year coincides with Oxford Open Doors, an event that happens just one weekend every year - always in September. Over the course of the weekend, almost all of the colleges, and many other University and city institutions open their doors free of charge to the public. Some buildings are only accessible to the general public this one weekend every year. It’s a popular event, and almost every quad, chapel, museum and library is packed with people.

(Oxford Open Doors is part of a larger event that happens in the UK every September, called Heritage Open Days: cities all across the country open their doors and organize events in celebration of their history. If you can, I highly recommend planning your visit to England in September - it’s a wonderful opportunity.)

It is scorching hot this Sunday, and as I stand and look at the beautiful, round Radcliffe Camera - part of the Bodleian Library and perhaps the University’s most recognizable building - I think of my first visit to Oxford, just over a year before.

It was scorching hot that day, too - a day at the tail end of England’s hottest and dryest summer on record. The normally green isle was mostly brown that year, and when I look at my pictures from this same spot last year, the grass in front of the Radcliffe Camera may as well have been dirt there was so little life left in it.

I didn’t spend enough time in Oxford that day. It was a short trip - just one day - and it felt rushed. And, I hate to admit…I had been a little bit disappointed in Oxford.

It’s hard to imagine any place, anywhere, with so much history packed into such a small space. A list of famous graduates could fill a book, and that would be just the start. It sounds crazy, but there was a part of me that thought I would feel the history in the atmosphere…that centuries of genius would somehow be tangible, and weigh the very air down. But I didn’t feel it, walking through the streets.

Instead, I looked down at the Radcliffe Camera that day from the top of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, and then out across a beautiful sea of spires. I could see down into the quad of All Soul’s College, and to some of the colleges beyond that, and I couldn’t help feeling that all of the history - and everything really important in Oxford - was behind closed doors. I felt like the outsider that I was.

What a difference a year makes. Oxford is a riot of color this year, with blossoming shrubs and bushes everywhere, lush vines climbing the walls and flower beds lining the walks. The grass in the quads is so intensely green that it projects an eerie glow onto the ancient stone buildings. The campus is pulsing with life, both botanical and human. The gates have been opened.

Friendly students are standing at the doors of their colleges, welcoming visitors. A few of them act like they’re being put out, but I forget about them quickly because so many more are friendly and welcoming…and excited to tell you about “their” Oxford. Ballioll College has some of its literary archives on display, and I smile as I walk through the door, telling the student attendant how much I love books. He likes Victorian literature, he says, and excitedly walks me over to a notebook of condolence letters from that the writer George Eliot received after her partner George Henry Lewes died. It includes letters from some of the 19th centuries most famous writers and artists, including Tennyson, Edward Burne-Jones, and Ivan Turgenev. It is a treasure - just one of thousands in the University’s collections - and I feel lucky to be able to see it.

The University is enormous, and it would be impossible to visit everything in one day - and so my tour tends towards the bookish locations.

(Of course it does.)

The Bodleian Library has long lines everywhere - as do all of the locations that were used in the filming of the Harry Potter movies - but it is worth the wait to see the Divinity School with its walls of paned glass and elaborate rib-vaulted ceiling. It is one of the oldest buildings on campus, dating to the mid-1400s. Oxford’s first library was established at about the same time - in 1447 - when the Duke of Gloucester (named Humfrey) donated his small personal collection of precious volumes to the University. The collection was 281 volumes, which seems tiny until you remember that Johannes Gutenberg only invented his printing press in 1440, and his bible wasn’t published until 1455. Before Duke Humfrey donated his collection of handmade books, Oxford’s own library only held 20 volumes total.

The library was destroyed less than 100 years later, when King Henry VIII had the mostly-religious volumes burned under the Protestant Reformation.

Luckily for Oxford, a Fellow at Merton College, Thomas Bodley, married a wealthy fish merchant’s widow in 1587. Her name was Ann Ball, and her fortune allowed Bodley to amass a large private library - which he then used to re-establish Oxford’s library in 1598. Thanks to an agreement Bodley made with the Stationer’s Company in London, the library receives a copy of every book printed in England. The Bodleian Library is the country’s second-largest library and its original reading room is named for the generous Duke Humfrey.

It is a short walk down Oxford High Street to Magdalen College, one of the largest and most well-known of Oxford’s colleges.

(Just a note: it’s pronounced “maudlin” - like self-pitying, instead of “mag-da-len” like Mary Magdalene. It is a quirk of Oxford and Cambridge - as far as I know, Magdalen is still pronounced Magdalene everywhere else in England.)

Compared to the Bodleian it is surprisingly quiet down here. It gives me a chance to pause and think about the fact that Oscar Wilde wandered through this expanse of green - and Samuel Pepys, and about a million other notable graduates. Possibly the name that’s the most associated with Magdalen College these days, though, is C.S. Lewis. He graduated from University College and was a fellow of Magdalen from 1925 until 1954, during which time he published a whole mass of non-fiction books, as well, of course, as most of the Chronicles of Narnia. I visit the breathtaking chapel where Lewis attended daily services during his years at Oxford and find that I have it almost entirely to myself.

I make a quick stop at nearby Holywell Cemetery to visit the grave of Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, and my heart warms at the inscription on his tombstone:

“TO THE BEAUTIFUL MEMORY OF KENNETH GRAHAME, HUSBAND OF ELSPETH AND FATHER OF ALISTAIR, WHO PASSED THE RIVER ON THE 6TH OF JULY, 1932 LEAVING CHILDHOOD & LITERATURE THROUGH HIM THE MORE BLEST FOR ALL TIME.”

Surprisingly, it hadn’t really occurred to me before today how many of my favorite books from childhood were written in Oxford, but I realize as I walk that this is becoming a bit of a kid-lit pilgrimage. There are many more of course - we haven’t even talked about J.R.R. Tolkien, or Philip Pullman. Even Dr. Seuss went to Oxford, for goodness’ sake. But it’s getting towards the end of the day now, and my time is running short, so I cross the High Street again and walk into the Oxford Botanical Gardens and think about perhaps the most famous of them all. It’s time to go in search of Wonderland.

An alley of trees line a path through Christ Church Meadow

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson came to Oxford in 1851, when he was 19 years old, and lived here until his death in 1898. At the age of 24, he published his first poem under the pen name “Lewis Carroll”.

He was a student, and then a tutor and lecturer in Mathematics at Christ Church College. He wrote in his spare time, and composed puzzles and, in his early 20s, took up photography. In 1856, he was photographing Christ Church Cathedral when he met the newly-appointed Dean of Christ Church, Henry Liddell. Liddell had just recently relocated to Oxford with his wife and four children, including three-year-old Alice. Henry Liddell invited Charles Dodgson over to the Deanery a few weeks later, to photograph his daughters. Eventually, the family became close friends with the young tutor, spending countless afternoons together in the sunshine of Christ Church Meadow.

They visit the Museum of Natural History, where they see the Oxford dodo, and they walk through the flower beds of the Oxford Botanic Garden. Dodgson entertains the young girls with nonsense poems and stories, incorporating places they’ve visited and things they’ve seen on their adventures.

One golden afternoon in 1862, under a sunny Oxford sky, Dodgson takes the girls for a boat ride on the River Thames near Christ Church College. He tells them a story he calls “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground”. Alice Liddell - age ten by now - loves this story (it’s about HER!), and wants a hard copy. She asks Dodgson to write the story down. He spends a year writing his manuscript and presents it to Alice as a Christmas gift at the end of 1864. By Christmas the following year, the first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is being prepared for publication, with illustrations by John Tenniel. It is, of course, a masterpiece of literature - considered by many to be the greatest book ever written for children. It has never been out of print.

I joke a lot about ghosts in my letters from England, but here, today, I can almost feel them. Duke Humfrey presenting his precious books to the University, only to have them destroyed. Oscar Wilde's open, friendly face striding purposefully across the grass at Magdalen College. Kenneth Grahame mourning his young son, who has died by suicide in the shadow of his famous father.

Perhaps they are not ghosts at all - but memories floating through the air. Memories of stories I’ve heard, and stories I’ve read. Memories that held a place in my mind long before I visited this magical city, and memories that will remain forever after.

Lewis Carroll in a boat beneath a sunny sky, ever drifting down the stream.

Or maybe, I think, as I linger in the golden gleam of the sun setting over Christ Church Meadow, maybe, maybe, maybe it’s all just a dream…

XO