Listen, I love university towns.
So, being in the neighborhood (about to start my 10-day Cotswold Way walk) I jumped at the chance to visit Oxford, England.
Established in 1096, only Italy’s University of Bologna is reckoned to be older.
Or so the Italians say.
“God knows; I won’t be an Oxford don anyhow. I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.”
This from Oscar Wilde, a notorious Oxford dropout.
I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.”
This from WB Yeats, who was known to wax poetic at the drop of a hat (or a dram of the brandy).
One of the things I most like about Oxford it is a city of walkers and cyclists, while cars and buses are obliged to nose gently around the madding crowds.
Apparently nobody told the Oxford dons that they were obliged to gut their medieval lanes and passageways so as to accommodate multiple lanes of fast moving machines.
We came upon an encampment of students protesting on behalf of Gaza. And nary a bobby in sight. Although apparently there has been a spot of trouble between the dons and impertinent students at one time or another.
The “City of Spires” is also a city of the arts.
But one does not live on textbooks alone.
One requires nourishment of other sorts.
There has been some controversy of creeping modernism and commercialism in Oxford.
The tourist-rich city centre, Alexander Larman writes in the Oxford Mail, “has always suffered from neglect, but now it’s little more than a sad mishmash of unlicensed Harry Potter merchandise shops, indifferent fast-food outlets…” and such.
Citing one out-of-place modern ‘monstrosity,’ he continued: “It is no surprise that, on its first floor, it hosts the ironically named Cosy Club, a bar-restaurant with faux-Victorian décor that looks like a morphine-induced fever dream.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with fever dreams. Oscar Wilde quite approved of them most heartily.
Fun fact: Oxford is named after a shallow spot in the river where they used to, um, ford oxen.
William The Conquerer once wreaked more havoc on this town than is seen on your typical Florida football weekend.
Which is why, I suppose, they have so many gates in Oxford.
I am reminded of the statue in Animal House that said “Knowledge is good.” I suspect this says the same thing, Only in Latin.
William Shakespeare, who legend has it lived in nearby Stratford-On-Avon, apparently did some heavy drinking at The Crown.
The Bard, when in his cups, was given to slurring things like:
Dost thou think, because thou art virtous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?
I have drunk, and seen the spider.
I will make it a felony to drink small beer.
And..
That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold.
In his poem ‘Thyrsis’ the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold called Oxford “the city of dreaming spires.”
But to be fair, he never got to drink with Shakespeare at The Crown, or he would have said something more profound like “There out to be a law against drinking small beer.”
P.S. Small beer is slang for Bud Lite.
One more thing.
The unfortunate accident—for I like to think it was no more—that you had not yet been able to acquire the ‘Oxford temper’ in intellectual matters, never, I mean, been one who could play gracefully with ideas but had arrived at violence of opinion merely.
A classy Oscar Wilde insult. Which probably sounds even classier in Latin.
FreeGNV 