Читать книгу Oxford - Edward Thomas - Страница 3
ОглавлениеCHAPTER I
ON ENTERING OXFORD
Passing rapidly through London, with its roar of causes that have been won, and the suburbs, where they have no causes, and skirting the willowy Thames—glassy or silver, or with engrailed grey waves—and brown ploughlands, elm-guarded, solitary, I approached Oxford. Nuneham woods made one great shadow on the land, one great shadow on the Thames. According to an old custom, it rained. But rain takes away nothing from Oxford save a few nice foot passengers. It transmutes the Franciscan habit of the city to a more Dominican cast; and if the foil of sky be faintly lighted, the rain becomes a visible beatitude.
One by one the churches of St. Mary the Virgin and All Saints’, and the pleasant spire of the Cathedral, appear; with the dome of the Radcliffe Camera, Tom Tower of Christ Church, and that old bucolic tower of Robert d’Oigli’s castle on the west. For a minute several haystacks, a gasometer, and the engine smoke replace them. But already that one cameo from[Pg 20] February’s hand has painted and lit and garnished again that city within the heart, which is Oxford. I think, when I see an old woodcut of a patron holding his towered foundation in his hand, about to bestow it as a gift—as William of Wykeham is depicted, holding Winchester—that even so Oxford gives to us the stones of church and college, the lawns and shrubs of gardens, and the waters of Isis, to be stored in the chambers of the soul—“Mother of Arts!”
Mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
So ran my thoughts and Milton’s verse; and possessed, as it is easy to become in such a place, with its great beauty, thinking of its great renown, my mind went naturally on in the channel of that same stream of verse, while I saw the Christ Church groves, the Hinksey Hills, and the grey Isis—
See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato’s retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the Summer long;
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees’ industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream.
But the dark entry to the city, on the western side, suddenly changed my thoughts. It is well known. It is the most contemptible in Europe. It consists of a hoarding, a brewery, and suitable appurtenances. Of more recent date is the magnificent marmalade shop,[Pg 21] the most conspicuous building in Oxford. On the north and east the approach is not worse, consisting, as it does, of sermons in brick, arranged in perfectly successful imitation of Tooting. On the south the fields are melancholy in apprehension of a similar fate. In short, one ignorant of the city might believe that he was approaching the hub of the universe.
Then, the Norman tower appeared again, and the afforested castle mound rose up. A bell, and many bells, began to sound. The present vanished in charge of a westward-going motor car, containing three gentlemen with cigars and a lady; and the past, softer than the cooing of doves and more compelling than organ music, came with the twilight from the tower of St. Michael’s church.
At sunset or at dawn the city’s place in the world, as a beautiful thing, is clearest. Few cities look other than sad at those hours; many, unless hid in their own smoke, look cheap. Oxford becomes part of the magic of sunset and dawn—is, as it were, gathered into the bosom of the power that is abroad. Yet, if it is one with the hills and the clouds and the silence, the human dignity of the place is also significant. The work of the ancient architect conspires with that of the sunset and of long, pregnant tracts of time; and I know not whether to thank, for the beauty of the place, its genius or perhaps the divinest series of accidents that have ever agreed to foster the forward-looking designs of men. In the days when what is admirable in Oxford was built, the builder made no pretence to[Pg 22] please his neighbour. He made what he loved. In many cases he was probably indifferent to everything else. But the genius of the place took care; and only the recent architects who have endeavoured to work in harmony with the place have failed. There is a gentle and puissant harmonising influence in Oxford which nothing can escape. I am no lover of Georgian architecture and am often blind to the power of Wren; but in Oxford I have no such incapacities; and I believe that here architecture should be judged, not as Norman or classical, as the work of Wolsey or Aldrich, but as Oxford architecture. The library at Christ Church, or any other work of the eighteenth century, seems to me as divine a thing, though as yet it lacks the complete unction of antiquity, as Mob Quad at Merton or Magdalen Tower. To pass from the Norman work of St. Peter’s in the East to the Palladianism of Peckwater quadrangle, is but to descend from one to another of the same honourable race. If certain extremely new edifices wear out a thousand years they will probably be worthy of reverence at the end of that time, and be in harmony with Merton chapel and Balliol hall at once. Nothing is so deserving, few things so exacting, of respect, from transitory men as age. Things change, and improvements are questioned or questionable; but, for me, age is as good as an improvement; and Oxford honours what is old with particular dignities and graces; under her influence the work of age is at once blander and more swift.
But this gentle tyranny—as of the Mother of[Pg 24][Pg 23]
OXFORD, FROM THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE
On the extreme left of the picture shows the roof of the Schools; the dome of the Radcliffe Library, St. Mary’s tower and spire, and Merton tower, occupying the centre of the picture.
To the right, over part of Brasenose College, are the elm trees of the Broad Walk. In the foreground are the pinnacles and roof of the Bodleian Library.
The view is from the Cupola of the Sheldonian Theatre, looking south on a stormy day.
[Pg 27][Pg 26][Pg 25]
Christ, who, in Leonardo’s picture, unites angel and holy child and St. John with outspread hands—is exerted not only upon the stones, but also upon the people of the place. A man may at Oxford rejoice in the company of another whom it is a self-sacrifice to meet elsewhere. He finds himself marvelling that one who was merely a gentleman in London can be interesting in Long Wall Street or on the Cherwell. The superb, expensive young man who thinks that there is “practically nobody in Oxford”—the poor, soiled scholar—the exuberant, crimson-lipped athlete, whose stride is a challenge, his voice a trumpet call—the lean and larded æsthete, busily engaged upon the quaint designs of oriental life—all discover some point in common when they are seen together in the Schools, or on the riverside.
I was never more effectually reminded of this Oxford magic than when I heard the City Band playing opposite University one day. I was indifferent, and for the time ignorant and incapable of knowing, whether the music was that of Wagner or Sousa. It seemed to me the music of Apollo, certainly of some one grander than all grand composers. And yet, as I was informed, what I had entirely loved was from an inferior opera which every street boy can improve.
It was another music, and yet symphonious, that I heard, when I came again to Addison’s Walk at Magdalen. I stopped at Magdalen cloisters on my way[Pg 28]—
