Oxford Redux

I have never been so happy to be American than during the time I spent in Oxford. To be honest, I have not really met many Americans in Sweden. I have had only one American friend during to the whole semester (a grad student who was also from California!). I stepped off the train and into Corinna’s dormitory, and suddenly I surrounded by them. At first it was weird. I wasn’t used to it. But after a while I realized it was actually sort of fun to be around other people who can reference 30 Rock or recite the preamble to the Constitution or sing verses of “I’m on a Boat” from memory. These were the kind of superpowers I forgot that I had. The American Kind.

Aside from hanging out with Americans, Corinna and I made went for runs in the meadow and out to old Abbeys that were destroyed in the Reformation, went and looked at colleges in Oxford (and visited Harry Potter film locales), peeked around bookshops, and ate dinner in a Vegetarian Pub called the Gardener’s Arms. Corinna also wrote a bit on her Master’s thesis (which is about a guy named Dudo who wrote about Vikings having identity crises in Northern France during the middle ages) and I printed out maps of Sweden while trying to contact organic farms (see upcoming blog posts). It was totally wonderful and restful.

I also got to watch the World Cup Final on a enormous screen in a room full of around 100 Oxford students. It was something special, to be sure.

Two days in Oxford, and that was it…on to London. I felt sad to leave Corinna, as I don’t know when I will get the chance to meet her again; she is starting her PhD at Cornell in about one month. Yup, she’s one smart cookie. And besides, she couldn’t resist the call of America for much longer.

Backtracking to Bath

Bath has overall a strangeness that it cannot shake — it has, in it’s life time, been a celtic village, a pilgrimage spot and major of holy worship, a deluxe playground for the rich, a University town, and one of England’s largest Tourist attractions. Nowadays, Bath is all of these things at once: it is the meeting place of Roman ruins, shopping malls, monuments to Victoria, and American tourists.

The Roman Baths are an expensive ticket, but it is, I must say, worth it. Even amongst the throngs of visitors, beside the Great Bath there is a certain original stillness, as if the ghosts of sandal-glad Romans could easily materialize from behind the pillars. But in this stillness, there was still present the strangeness of Bath- of the collision of modern and ancient. Strangest of all throughout the lengthy celebration of Roman civilization throughout the museum was the nagging feeling that the Romans themselves were conquerors, and that the English were at one point in their history, a conquered race. I began to wonder, if ever, a thousand years from now, maybe just, just maybe there will be such a museum of ruins of the British Empire in India. Just the thought of it gives me chills.

The Jane Austen center in Bath, however, it not worth its 6- pound entry fee. I felt like I should go, if only I had done so much the day before to pay my respects to Hardy. It turns out what you get is a live, 15-minute lecture about Jane Austen’s life (which, as it turns out, wasn’t too terribly exciting) and you get to walk through a very small, Georgian-era house and look at replicas of stuff related at to Jane Austen (like teacups and and old dress). Also there is a video of a middle aged-woman in Regency era dress who teaches all willing pupils the tacit art of flirting with a fan. I kid you not. Don’t get me wrong, Jane Austen is great. I am even reading Emma at the moment. But… seriously?

My evening in Bath, I went to a Lecture at the Bath Royal Academy of Science and Literature given by Dr. Peter Marshall about my second-cousin, twice-removed, Sir Issac Newton. Dr. Marshall, the author of The Philosopher’s Stone (which I have been meaning to read– it is about Alchemy) had a lot of good things to say, but was disappointingly not so much of an engaging speaker. This was probably not helped by the fact that for some reason it is very hard for me to understand some people who speak with British accents, Dr. Marshall included. What I understood as the main point of the lecture, however, was the Newton should be considered not as the first modern scientist, but rather as the last of the old magicians. Why not both?

Speaking of magicians, I am pretty sure a slept next to one in the Bath Backpackers’ hostel. How do I know he was a magician, you ask? Well… there was a suit vest and coat strewn across his bed, not to mention a barrel and a cauldron bungee-corded to a small cart parked to the bed. On the floor: a book on magic and a top hat. Certainly he must have been a street magician, but I unfortunately never saw him nor got the chance to ask. But you can bet that every time I passed a street magician in the streets of Bath as I wandered about, I looked twice. The Magician was, at least, a better roommate than the loud English girls or that guy who snored. Best of all, however, was the Swiss girl with the strikingly Chinese accent. Or at least I thought so.

The next morning I hiked out of the city and up a very big hill (we’re talking Centennial big) to Prior Park, which is a landscape garden designed by a very rich English dude that overlooks the city of Bath and includes a Palladian Bridge (one of only 4 in the world, according to the woman at reception). When I discovered that the garden was partially designed by Alexander Pope (whom I have a love-hate relationship with) I started looking for echoes of rhymed couplets in the landscape. Soon I gave up and just enjoyed the view.

Soon, my time in Bath was (somwhat mercifully) up and I caught the train back to Oxford. The train seemed to chase the feeble afternoon sun, and I began to feel that I really, already missed Sweden. One can see only so many Cathedrals and brown stone buildings until they begin to blend into one another … and as memories they live more as a time-warped dream than anything else.

But mountains and valleys, trees and lakes, the skärgård, the sun at 11 PM – these things have a sort of renewable joy that, rather than transport the beholder back in time, insist upon the beauty of the present.

Dorchester (Casterbridge)

Warning: this is epic and long.

It smells like the ocean. That was the first thing I thought as I stepped off of the 6 AM train into Dorchester, the grey sky above me just waiting to burst in rain.

Dorchester is a place I have always known by a different name: Casterbridge. In my junior year of high school, my English class read Thomas Hardy’s novel ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge.’ Everybody in the class despised it. The language was too old, the descriptions to long, and the events…to ordinary (for lack of a better word). Everbody in the class despised it, that is, except for me. And so began my infatuation with Hardy’s special brand of pastoral tragedy- the complicated and confused nature of his characters, the oddness of his description, and his romanticization of the everyday. Hardy has the vocabulary of a latinist, the eye of a stonemason, and the heart of a Dorset farmer. I have always said that his prose is not always as consistently masterful as, say, Jane Austen, but for me as a 16 year old student of literature, his dealing with themes of fate and mortality seemed more exciting than questions of civility, or of marriage and not marriage. The events that transpire in his novels where shocking by Victorian stantards, and his way of handling them in literature considering the context of his time was infinitely intriguing. In short,  I became a member of Team Hardy.

And as everyone who has read Hardy knows, his books are very strongly based in place, so much so that the landscape almost becomes a character in its own right, full of mad will and spasmodic resplendance.

So, Dorchester it was. I had to go.

When I arrived the town was not yet awake, the the streets where empty and the tourist office would not open for another hour, so not really knowing where I was and going soley on the what I had remebered from Hardy’s own half real, half fantasy descriptions I did the only thing that seemed natural: I began to walk. I walked through the empty, grey streets, being certain to mark the details of the stone work on the buildings as I passed. There was the church, the clock tower, the old fountain in the middle of town. Soon I passed a sign pointing in the direction of something called the ‘Roman Townhouse’, and with nothing better to do, I followed it.

I reached the townhouse at the top of the highest point in the city. The ‘townhouse ‘ was a ruin at best, but some beautiful roman mosiac floors remained. I sat there alone and ate my breakfast pondering the strangeness of the Roman settlement in England and thinking of Hardy’s lines about how Dorest houses the dead of that ancient empire.

When the tourist center finally opened and I procured a map and made my plan for the day.

First it was off to the market, the site where in Hardy’s novels the local corn merchants and farmer do business with each other. Today, it is just as lively but the goods that are traded are more like old junk, tacky trinkets, and of course, food from local farms. Walking through the crowds of bustling people, I tried to imagine Bathseba Everdine (From ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’) walking amongst them, the only woman-farmer in a the male dominated world of agricultural commerce. I myself bought a piece of carrot cake and a hunk of black pepper cheddar cheese.

Next up was Mambury rings, which are large parenthetical-shaped mounds made for some reason or another by anicient peoples and was used by the Romans as an amphitheater. Today, it is used for outdoor Shakespeare performances, and I regretting not being in Dorchester on a day of a performance. Shakespeare in a Stone Age monument sounds fantastic.

Next I walked a couple kilometers through the countryside to Maiden Castle, England’s (and possibly Europe’s) largest Iron age fort. All the while through the country side I was thinking of  ‘The Return of the Native’  and the characters’ long, wild walks through Egdon heath. As you can probably tell, most of my day was spent in my own imaginary Hardy-world. It was fantastic.

When I at last reached Maiden Castle, it was too foggy for me to see the structure from a distance, so I hiked up the first set of mounds in order to get a closer look. Upon realizing the ture enormity of the monument, I decided that I had walked far enough, turned around and walked back into town.

Next up was the Dorset county museum, which is a tidy and well-kept little musuem inside an old Victorian-decorated cathedral. There were a lot of the types of things that fascinate me: old farming implements, Roman remains, portraits of the Duke of Monmouth (who apparently was very popular in Dorset). The pinnacle of the visit, and the reason I had come, however, was the Thomas Hardy display on the top floor. The relative sparcity of visitors to the museum allowed me to spend quite a lot of time examing the manuscripts they had, pondering Hardy’s small, neat handwriting and the odd way he formatted his poetry (some stanzas aligned to the left, others justified). And then there was Hardy’s own title page for my favorite of his novels, ‘Tess of the D’Ubervilles’. It was quite an experience to read the words ‘Tess of the D’Ubervilles: or, A Pure Woman’ in Hardy’s own hand, and to realize that the edition of the Novel Ihad read several years earlier had in fact preserved the orignal format of the page. I was satisfied knowing that Hardy, as a poet (poets are often concerned about such things) would be satisfied. I stayed in that Room for quite a while, reading what I could of the orginal manuscripts and trying to imagine Hardy’s creative process.

I left the Museum to go back into town, and walked down the main street, know full of people as it would have been in Hardy’s day, in order to view that house that is immortalized as the house of Micheal Henchard in ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge.’ It is a brown brick house, very proper, and is now a Barclay’s Bank. I stood there for a moment trying to picture the cloistered Elizabeth Jane peering out from the second floor window. Next I walked by The Kings Arms, which is know a Best Western Hotel. It seemed to fit actually.

The journey I saved for last on that day was the walk out to Strindsford, to the small Parish Church where T.H.’s heart is buried. This time, walking through the sheep fields, my imagination dwelled on Tess, and her long, solitary wanderings- as well as her non-solitary ones.

I at last reached the church, it was very small. When I went in I realized that it likely looked exactly the same as when TH was baptized there. Being alone in empty stone churches in the middle of teh English countryside is a humbling and transporting experience, and for some reason I felt the urge to sing a pslam aloud. So I did.

I went out of the Church and found the small, unadorned white tomb in which Hardy’s heart is buried. The rest of his in in Westminisiter Abbey, where the Queen wanted him, but is heart, as always and as ever, lies in Dorset. I sat there for a while and paid my repspects, and thanked him for the insight, inspiration, and imagination that he has given the world of literature, and especially for the strong effect his words have had on me.

Satisfied at last, I walked back to town, said my last goodbyes to ‘Casterbridge,’ and caught a train to my next destiation: Bath. Stay tuned, and thanks for putting up with my Thomas Hardy stuff.

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Farm in Uppsala update: I HATE CUCUMBERS AND GREENHOUSES. that is all.

From Svearikes land Engel-land they wonde

After spending a month in the wilds of Sweden, arriving in Oxford is a lot like being thrown from the woods into one of the world’s greatest centers of scholarship.

Actually, that is exactly is. Sweden, after all, is out in the boonies. Even Stockholm All of a sudden there were cars and people and the sound of strange languages (French, Spanish, Chinese, you-name-it) all around me. There were streetlights and taxis and cathedrals and pubs and portraits of Cardinal Woolsey. It was overwhelming to say the least. But it was Oxford!

But let me start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). I slew out of Skavsta airport in Sweden the night of the 3rd of July to arrive very late in London Strandsted airport, which actually isn’t in London but rather about an hour away. I did my best to surpress my fake British accent that sometimes has a way of coming out when I talk to British people, but I unfornutely failed when I uttered a very snobbish ‘Thank you’ to the man who checked my passport. Apparently my fake brittish accent is extremely snobbish. I’ll have to work on that.

I had planned to sleep in the airport that night (to wait until the busses started again) and I thought it was going to be a nightmare. Au contraire! I found a quiet corner of Stansted airport were everyone was sleeping peacefully. So I joined in the resfullness by pulling out my handy sleeping bag and making myself a little nest on the floor. The rest of the night was surprisingly uneventful. I could have been dreaming, but I even thought I heard som people speaking Swedish next to me.

At 7 Am I rolled up the sleeping bag and hopped on the buss to Oxford. the ride I don’t really remember much of, again, I was asleep. When I finally reached the Oxford station, I was greated by my friend and hostess, Corinna (Oxford student and medvalist extraodinaire), who was waving two American flags upon my arrival. It was the 4th of July afterall! We walked back up to her place in the Balliol college manor, all the while waving the flags and signing the Star Spangeled Banner very proudly. Later, we even had a water-balloon toss with another American to celebrate. It was amazing.

After dropping my stuff in her room, Corinna led me a bit around the city. We a te a delicious lunch of lentils and goat cheese (I personally was just excited to eat something that wasn’t fish or potatoes or bread). Throughout all the day’s tours, I, still big-eyed at the sheer amount of civilization after nearly six months in Sweden, was still in a daze of brown stones, medeval streets, and dreaming spires. And of course, being me, I couldn’t help but think of Jude (from Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure) sitting on a hill, looking at the lights of Oxford from a distance, longing for all the privledge of the scholarly life and above all, to study Latin. Indeed, in Oxford, privledge, as well as history, seems to seep through the walls.

And then, at 7 PM, it was time for me to hit the road again, on the train to Coventry, the working-class city that is the home of Jaguar Motors, Lady Godiva (yes, she was real) and my physics buddy from Lund, Pardis. And so I was off, after only a few hours rest in Oxford, traveling again…

I plan to recount each of my visits to different towns in England in different posts. Up next: Coventry. Then Dorchester (aka Casterbridge) and my one-on-one time with Thomas Hardy’s heart (yes, that happened). Then it will be the wierdness of Bath, and then back to Oxford (where I am now). And then, in two days, London. Look out for those posts, I will try to update as much as I can.

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*Anyone who gets the reference in the title wins… well, you know what.