Return to Oxford!

Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Oxford

On another day on which I felt as if I was in the North Pole rather than in London, I headed at 7.15 am to catch the 8 am Megabus to Oxford. I was excited. I hadn't returned to Oxford since I arrived here in September as I was waiting for some official meetings to fall into place before I made the trip. As it turned out, I discovered, on visiting the Oxford Tourism website, that the famed Ashmolean Museum was due to close for a year on December 23. This meant that if I didn't grab a look-see while I could, I would not have the chance to review its collection at all. There was no time to be lost. I hastened to make the arrangements that would ensure that the people I wanted to meet were free to see me and then before you could say 'Elias Ashmole', I was booking a ticket to get going.

I was a little apprehensive about finding the Megabus terminus; but then when I stopped to ask the Oxford Tube driver where it was, he informed me that Megabus and Oxford Tube were partners in the Stagecoach company and I could hop into his bus with a Megabus ticket. Well, that took the stress off my mind and into the bus I went, climbing to the upper deck and making myself comfortable on the front seat while it wasn't quite dawn yet outside that huge picture window.

I had the upper deck almost to myself for the length of the two hours it took us to get to Oxford. I cannot recall having made a visit in the autumn before and the farms and fields we passed en route looked almost forlorn in the watery sunshine. Because--thank God for little mercies--the sun was actually trying valiantly to poke through the clouds and often did succeed, the landscape was prevented from appearing completely desolate.

That same forlornness dogged me throughout the day for Oxford's trees without their foliage are a rather sad sight indeed. The bus dropped me off at the High and without wasting any time at all, I walked through Radcliff Square to the Tourist Information Bureau on Broad Street to find out if there were any special activities in the town that day that I ought not to miss.

Then, I hastened to the Ashmolean Museum having just two and a half hours in which to take in the Highlights of its collection. Though it is an imposing Neo-Classical building, the Ashmolean has none of the grandeur of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and when I walked past the doors, that lack of splendor became even more evident. For the lobby of the Fitzwilliam is jaw-droppingly opulent while the Ashmolean is far more subdued. The lower floor still holds the Greek and Roman works, but you need to climb a curving staircase to get to the first and second floors for the bulk of the collection.

It was with feelings of disappointment that I discovered that construction work had already begun, which placed the items in disarray. But rather quickly, that disappointment turned to relief for I made the discovery that the 'Treasures of the Ashmolean' had all been grouped together and were on display in just four rooms. This meant that instead of having to search through the vast expanses of the building for the highlights, all I needed to do was focus on those few rooms and I could see them all.

Of course, I started with the Alfred Jewel which inspired an entire episode in the Inspector Morse series entitled 'The Wolverhampton Tongue'. This item, said to be at least a thousand years old, is smaller than my little finger. It is the ornament that would have adorned a small instrument used to point to letters on a manuscript when one was reading from it. It is truly exquisite in its detail, featuring the head of a man holding a few flowers in his hand. I was then taken by a mantle that once belonged to Powhatan, father of Pocahontas. How that item arrived from the New World to the Ashmolean is anyone's guess...but there it was, made of deerskin and adorned all over with tiny white cowrie shells. In terms of paintings, there was Pietro di Cosimo's The Forest Fire which Marina Vaizey enumerates among her 100 Masterpieces of Art and it is remarkable because in its depiction of animals, it is the first significant painting in the history of Western Art that does not make man the central figure of a canvas but places him in a rather minor role. Another very important work was Paolo Uccelo's The Hunt, a rather detailed and very lovely painting on wood that was meant to adorn the side of a marriage or dowry chest. The portraits of Elias Ashmole (who donated his collection to the University to start the Museum in the 18th century) is placed in an elaborate frame that was carved by the great Grinling Gibbons himself whose work I have admired ever since I saw his mantle carvings at Hampton Court Palace a few years ago. There were several other exquisite pieces featuring textiles, glass, jewelry, sculpture, furniture, etc. and because they were all grouped together, it was so easy to view the collection. I felt extremely fortunate to have been able to see these works especially since I cannot recall having seen any of them even though my journal entries of 22 years ago tell me that I did spend one morning at the Ashmolean.

At 12.30 pm, having satisfied myself that I had seen everything of importance, I walked along Woodstock Road towards St. Antony's College where I had a 1.oo pm appointment with Julie Irving who administers the Senior Associate Member Program at the college. I hadn't met her before though we had been in email contact for a long while. She volunteered to introduce me to Dr. Nandini Gooptu, a historian at the college with whom I had recently made contact. We met at the Buttery and I spent an hour with Nandini over a beef casserole and pecan pie lunch talking about her work and my intended research project on Anglo-Indians on which I intend to work when I take on the position of Senior Associate Member at St. Antony's next summer.

An hour later, I was taking a tour of the college in the company of Julie who introduced me to a number of the senior staff such as the Warden, Margaret McMillan and her assistant Penny. I also saw the Library, the dining hall, the computer facilities, the Porter's Lodge where SAMs have their pigeon-holes for mail, and a lot of other places of interest. Though I will be working at St. Antony's as an independent scholar next summer, I will be in contact with a lot of administrative staff and it was nice to get to know them.

When my work at St. Antony's was done, I decided to seek out Norham Road where I would very likely be staying for a few weeks in a bed and breakfast while I am attached to St. Antony's. The owner of the B&B, a lady by the name of Elizabeth Longrigg, had been in correspondence with me and I thought it made sense to check out her house while I had the opportunity. Norham Road looked particularly deserted on this freezing December afternoon and with rain having fallen while I was in the Ashmolean, the streets were slick and shiny.

A few minutes later, Elizabeth Longrigg who happens to be a retired Oxford academic, an expert in Anglo-Saxon, Old and Middle English, was giving me a tour of her home and showing me the two rooms I could have if I decided to stay at her place. It had the old world feel of a Victorian home, was filled with all sorts of family memorabilia, furniture that looked as if it had been in the house forever, a very large and spacious dining room where a Continental breakfast was served every morning and two small rooms--a tiny sun room with a delightful view overlooking the main street and a larger room on the second floor. Both rooms had lovely roll top desks and good reading lamps because, as Elizabeth informed me, she only takes on academics as lodgers--academics whose research interests bring them to Oxford on short or long stays. After I had taken a peak at the garden which looked extremely bleak on this sunless afternoon--for the sun had hidden itself away by then--I walked towards Wellington Square with the idea of looking up Lisa Denny, an old acquaintance I had known when I had attended an international graduate program at Oxford 22 years ago.

Liza Denny is still attached to the Department of External Studies which now calls itself the Department of Continuing Education. I had found her name and telephone extension through the Oxford University Directory and though she did not remember me, she was warm and welcoming and introduced me to her colleague in the department. She also gave me information about next summer's program at Exeter College and suggested I get in touch with the current director. When I told her that I would be resident at St. Antony's, Oxford, next summer, she invited me to get involved in the program as a participant perhaps by giving a lecture. I was quite delighted and told her that I would follow up with her suggestion.

By the time I got out of Rewley House, semi-darkness had wrapped itself around the city. Since the colleges are open to visitors between 2 and 5 pm, I decided, for old times sake, to go to Exeter to tour the college. I don't know whether it was nostalgia, the dreadful weather or the fact that I do not feel like a student any longer...but suddenly, I was gripped by the most fervent longing for my Oxford friends Firdaus, Annalisa and Josephine and, as I strolled through the Fellow's Garden, for Brigita Hower with whom I have completely lost touch.

As I walked through the Margary Quadrangle and saw the room I once occupied bathed in light , I felt such an aching for those unforgettably beautiful Oxford days of my youth. It certainly did not made me feel any better, when I passed through a room on the ground floor, and actually saw Jeri Johnson who used to be a Tutor to both Annalisa and Firdaus. She was seated in the midst of a meeting with another lady and a gentleman whom I did not recognize.They were all clothed in the academic garb of Oxford dons and were deep in conversation. There she was, looking for all the world as if I had just turned the clock back 22 years. But for the fact that her hair has silvered entirely all over her head, she does not look a jot different from the way she did more than two decades ago.

It was very difficult for me to meet up with these ghosts from the past--first Lisa Denny, then Jeri Johnson. Because she was in a meeting, I could not, of course, make contact with Jeri, but I did step instead into the chapel where an organ rehearsal was on and as I allowed the deep sonorous tones to wash over me, I recalled those days when I had sat there enthralled by a concert that had been put on by so many talented young American musicians so many years ago. Where were they all, I wondered? How had the years treated them? Had they become academics as Annalisa and I had done or had they strayed into varied fields as Firdaus and Jo had?

With my friends in my thoughts, I stepped out into the quad and sat for a while on a bench, overlooking the lawn upon which I had once sprawled, taking in the familiar sights of the steeple of the chapel, the clock on the walls of the Dining Hall, the doors leading to the Undercroft and the Junior Common Room. Then, while I was in the midst of my reverie, darkness descended upon the medieval city and the occasional high pitched cries of modern-day undergrads reached my ears from afar.

But the cold made it impossible for me to tarry much longer with my memories. Though it was only 5 pm, I decided to try to catch the earlier bus back to London. It would have been impossible to see anything else by that point. There was no evensong service at St. Mary The Virgin Church that I could have attended. I had intended to browse through Blackwell's Bookstore for some literature on the shooting of the Inspector Morse mysteries. But, by then, my feet were aching and I'd had enough. When, coincidentally, the same driver from my morning's ride, pulled up and agreed to take me on the earlier bus, I sank into the same upper deck front seats rather gratefully and tried to doze off on the ride back.

Something was missing about my visit to Oxford and for the longest time I wasn't sure what it was. And then it dawned on me--it was the presence of my friends that I missed so much. For all of us, those days at Exeter had been some of the most memorable ones of our lives and it is impossible for me to return to Oxford without dwelling on those precious moments of our youth. How marvelous, I thought, that the one thing we gifted each other all those years ago has lasted unbroken over the miles and over the years--the gift of our friendship.