19th Century Authors – An Oxford Education

 London, Oxford, United Kingdom
Jul 212024
 

July 2024

I have spent the last week at Oxford Experience, and the class I chose was Modernist Literature Through Oxford and London, concentrating on Dorothy Sayers’s Gaudy Nights, T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and the writings and paintings of Wyndham Lewis.

The Oxford Experience life is centered at Christ Church College.

Virginia Woolf and others of her era were part of what later became known as the Bloomsbury group, as they lived and worked in the Bloomsbury area of London. Ironically, this is where the VSA lecture courses I had taken the two weeks before were given.

 

The home of Dorothy Sayers

If you have not read Sayers, I suggest you start with the Peter Whimsey Series. Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893 – 1957) was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic. She grew up in Oxford, just a few steps from Christ Church College and next door to where her father was headmaster at Christ Church Cathedral School.

Gaudy Nights takes place in Oxford. Sommerville College is the model for Shrewsbury College, the center of Gaudy Nights.

Women were not considered full members of the University until October 192o. However, it was not until 1957 that quotas restricting the number of women undergraduates in Oxford were removed, and it wasn’t until 1959 that the five women’s colleges received the same ‘full status’ as the men’s colleges. So, in Sayers’s time, women did the same work as men but did not receive a degree.

The City Walls of Oxford still exist at New College.

The present surviving parts of Oxford’s medieval city wall date from the first half of the thirteenth century, when the older wall was overhauled and the remaining sections of rampart replaced by stone. Although it is commonly called the city wall, Oxford was a town until the creation of the See of Oxford in 1542.

The wall enclosed an area of approximately 115 acres. It originally had an internal wall walk and at least 21 semi-circular bastions. Its circumference was approximately two miles.

When William of Wykeham bought the land for New College from the City of Oxford in 1379, the latter made it a condition that the college should maintain the wall around the site. The Lord Mayor of Oxford and a group of city councilors still inspect the city wall at New College every three years.

Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882 – 1957) was a British writer, painter, and critic. He co-founded the Vorticist movement in art and edited BLAST, the literary magazine of the Vorticists.

Vorticist Composition by Wyndham Lewis is a painting of the Dining Hall of New College.

Wyndham was a friend of T.S. Eliot, and they both met James Joyce at Oxford.  Eliot’s Preludes and Rhapsody on a Windy Night appeared in BLAST in July 1915. Eliot reviewed Lewis’s first novel, Tar, in 1918, describing him as “the most fascinating personality of our time, in whose work we recognize the thought of modern and the energy of the caveman”.  In turn, Lewis considered Eliot “the most interesting man in London Society.”

Enjoying Oxford

Continuing the Trail of Artists in Bloomsbury, London

Tavistock Square

A statue of Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square

Virginia Woolf moved to 52 Tavistock Square in 1924. Many passages of Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse echo this area, and the vivid depictions of city life were inspired by what she called “street hauntings”, which involved her watching people interact with the cityscape.  The Tavistock Hotel now sits where her home once stood.

Charles Dickens also lived on Tavistock Square. At Tavistock House, Dickens wrote Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, and A Tale of Two Cities. He also put on amateur theatricals, which are described in John Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens.

You will also find this memorial in Tavistock Square. On July 7, 2005, there was a series of four coordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists that targeted commuters traveling on London’s public transportation during the morning rush hour.  The fourth terrorist detonated a bomb on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square.

Fitzroy Square

Fitzroy Square

No. 29  Fitzroy Square was the home of George Bernard Shaw from 1887 until his marriage in 1898 and later of Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell from 1907 to 1911.

Garden Square

Garden Square

 

50 Gordon Square holds a plaque reading: Here and in neighboring houses during the first half of the 20th century, there lived several members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, and The Stracheys.

Throughout her life, Woolf suffered from mental health issues, which were later diagnosed as bipolar disorder. When Woolf’s father died in 1904, the writer had her second nervous breakdown. This led to the writer and her siblings selling the family home and moving to 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury.

Author and critic Giles Lytton Strachey lived at 51 Gordon Square. He was also a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of Eminent Victorians. Strachey established a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit.

Woburn Square

Green Man by Lydia Kapinska 1999

Hidden in the shrubbery at the south end of  Woburn Square is a modern sculpture (1999) by Lydia Kapinska of an ancient imaginary creature, a Green Man. It has no real reason for its placement at that spot. But on the plaque giving the name of the sculptor is a quotation from The Waves by Virginia Woolf: My roots go down to the depths of the world… I am as green as a yew tree in the shade of the hedge…

St James Square

The London Library

Thomas Carlyle founded the London Library as an alternative to the library at the British Museum, which he claimed was filled with “snorers, snufflers, wheezers, spitters” interrupting his quiet study. Past members include Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Darwin, Agatha Christie, and Winston Churchill—some later providing their books own for the shelves.  The library was used often by Leonard Woolf and holds a fine collection of both Virginia Woolf’s work and that of Hogarth Press.

Russel Square

24 Russel Square

 24 Russell Square was the home of the publishing house Faber & Faber. Established in 1929 by T.S. Eliot, the firm quickly became a leading publisher of emerging poets, playwrights, and novelists like W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Siegfried Sassoon, Samuel
Beckett, and James Joyce.
Wanderings in the Area for fun and education

The Foundling Hospital was founded in 1739 by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram. It was established for the “education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children.” The word “hospital” was used in a more general sense. simply indicating the institution’s “hospitality” to those less fortunate.

Bronze Sculpture by Tracy Emin

This very tiny bronze mitten on the Foundling Museum fence is part of Tracy Emin’s Baby Things series. It was placed there during an exhibit of her work at the Museum in 2010.

I am always a sucker for Atlas and Caryatid. I have no idea what they are called when putti are holding up the pediment.

This stunning, recently restored building became famous as a meeting place for many of London’s artists, intellectuals, and bohemians from the 1920s to the mid-1950s.

Polished mahogany partitions with acid-etched glass were installed downstairs to recreate the original snugs.

The building was originally constructed as the Fitzroy Coffee House in 1883 and converted to a pub (called “The Hundred Marks”) in 1887.

A new Lincrusta ceiling

Although geographically close to the Bloomsbury set, Fitzrovians were wilder in temperament, a loose-knit gang of friends described in the Times Literary Supplement as a ‘world of outsiders, down-and-outs, drunks, sensualists, homosexuals, and eccentrics’.

Regulars included painters Nina Hamnett, Augustus John, Walter Sickert, and Wyndham Lewis, the occultist Aleister Crowley, and poets Stephen Spender and Ezra Pound. In the late thirties and early forties, journalists and playwrights working at the nearby BBC dropped by, including Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNiece, and George Orwell (who conceived the Nineteen-Eighty-Four notion of absolute hell while doing a brief stint at the BBC). Even Albert Einstein came for a pint.

The pub was closed for a year in 2015 and underwent a complete restoration. In the seventies, its Victorian interior had been ripped out, so everything needed to be replaced. The Fitzroy Tavern was named the best-restored pub in the UK in 2017. An often-told story of the Fitzroy Tavern involved a former licensee of the pub named Judah ‘Pop’ Kleinfeld. Having seen the loser of a darts match in the public bar throw a dart into the ceiling in exasperation, Kleinfeld hit upon the idea to provide darts to the public with little paper bags attached, which they would then throw into the ceiling for an aptly named charity called Pennies From Heaven.

St Georges Garden Bloomsbury

In the early 1700s, as graveyards directly around churches had started to fill up in London, new burial grounds and bodies often had to be buried some distance from the church. This is the case with St. George’s.   This site served two churches, St George’s Bloomsbury and St George the Martyr on Queen’s Square. The graveyard was closed in 1884/5 and turned into a park.

 

 

That was a wild meander of London and Oxford that tied artists, authors, and my interests into one.  It made sense to me, even if it didn’t to anyone else.

Walking Oxford, England – Random Architecture

 Oxford
Oct 192022
 

October 17, 2022

The buildings of Oxford are well known if one watches British television, in particular Inspector Morse.  It isn’t quite like on television because when you wander town there are actual people populating every square inch of the town, but the sense of history and the magnificent architecture isn’t lost on anyone despite, cars, pedestrians, and bicycles everywhere.

I only have 2 days to really spend in Oxford so on day one I decided to walk and walk and walk.  In this post, I am going to focus on architecture.  The buildings are highly random, I went into some, and others I just found worthy of a photograph.

The Randolph Hotel

I am staying at the Randolph so let me begin there.  It too featured in several Inspector Morse shows, and there are several photos of John Thaw in the bar.

Construction of the Randolph Hotel began in 1864. The architect was William Wilkinson. There was debate about the building’s design. John Ruskin favored Gothic revival (why he got any say in the design, I am not sure) but the  City Council wanted a classical style since the rest of Beaumont Street was early 19th century Regency. Compromise gave them a simplified Gothic façade, similar to the Oxford University Museum and the Oxford Union buildings, but in brick. The hotel was named after Lord Randolph Churchill.  The hotel has been modified many times and after a fire in 2015, it underwent a major renovation.


Across the street from The Randolph is The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology Britain’s first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677.  The present building was built between 1841 and 1845 and is a work of art.

The Divinity School is a medieval building and room in the Perpendicular style built between 1427 and 1483.  It too has undergone several changes, in particular after the Reformation.  This is just some of the exquisite detail.

A gentleman touching up signs at the Bodleian Library complex

The Divinity School leads to the Bodleian Library, the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, however, no pictures are allowed.

The Radcliff Library

The Radcliffe Camera is an iconic Oxford landmark and a working library, part of the central Bodleian Library complex. It is linked to the Bodleian Old Library by the underground Gladstone Link. The exterior was completed in 1747 and the interior was finished by 1748, although it did not open until 1749. It is named after John Radcliff who left 40,000 BP for the library.

The Sheldonian Theater

The Sheldonian Theatre was built from 1664 to 1669 after a design by Christopher Wren. The interior has an exquisite ceiling, which is difficult to capture.

The painted ceiling of the Sheldonian Theater

Painted by Robert Streater between 1668 and 1669 the ceiling is meant to represent Truth descending upon the Arts and Sciences to expel ignorance from the University.

The Emperors of the Sheldonian

There are magnificent carved figures surrounding the theater known as the Emperor Heads.  First commissioned by Sir Christopher Wren in the 1660s, the current set, are from the 1970s, and is the third set. Apparently, the University has only found 23 of the original 45.  It is believed the original 17th Century heads were given away to Oxford associates.

A view from the cupola of the Sheldonian

Standing atop the Sheldonian one can get a sense of what Oxford felt like in earlier centuries. In contrast, when climbing the Saxon Tower of Saint Michael this is the view.

Standing on the top of the Saxon Tower of Saint Michael

Saxon Tower of Saint Michael

 

28 Cornmarket Street was originally three separate shops, and probably dates from the fifteenth century and altered in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. It belongs to Jesus College and has always been in the parish of St Michael-at-the-Northgate Church.

The Corn Exchange

The corn exchange was built in 1894-5. Corn exchanges in England are distinct buildings that were originally created as a venue for corn merchants to meet and arrange pricing with farmers for the sale of wheat, barley, and other corn crops. The word “corn” in British English refers to all cereal grains.

The exterior of Frideswide Church, the patron saint of Oxford

The Jackson Building is part of Trinity College

The Danby Gate

The Danby Gate at the front entrance to the Botanic Garden is one of three entrances designed by Nicholas Stone between 1632 and 1633.

Morris Garage

Since my first car was an MG I had to go find this building. In 1902 William Morris (later Lord Nuffield) took over old abandoned livery stables and in 1909–10 demolished them and replaced them with the Morris Garage, designed by Tollit & Lee. In 1977 the whole building was threatened with demolition, but the frontage, side elevation, and roof structure were retained and in 1980 it was developed as student housing for New College by John Fryman of the Oxford Architects Partnership.

That is just a very very small cross-section of the myriad types of architecture that abounds in Oxford.

 

Walking Oxford, England The Odd and Fun

 Oxford
Oct 192022
 

October 17, 2022

I walked all day on the 17th and decided to break this into two posts, one architecture and the other all the other fun stuff I saw.  Here goes with the Odd and Fun.

Jane Burden was a major figure in the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite art movement. She was the favorite model for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the leading artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

She became Mrs. William Morris, the one and the same famous textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, and printer associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement.

However, Jane Burden’s beginnings were rather humble, I had to really work to find this alley where she was born, but it was a wonderful little find.

The alleyway where Jane Burden was born

Homage to two very storied Kings

I tripped over this sign, somewhat buried in a hedge down the street from the hotel at 24 Beaumont.

St Giles Cemetery – I tried to find some history and the City Council simply has it listed as “disused”.

The Oxford Canal is a 78-mile narrowboat canal. Completed in 1790, it connects to the River Thames at Oxford and goes to the Grand Union Canal.

I walked for miles along the canal system finding all sorts of interesting little places.

Osney Stream

The old Rewley Road Swing Bridge with the newer Sheepwash Channel Railway Bridge behind it

The bridge once crossed Sheepwash Channel. It was designed by Robert Stephenson and built in 1850–1. It was reconstructed in 1890 and 1906, using steel girders. The rail line that crossed the Rewley Road swing bridge, carried passengers from Oxford to as far as Cambridge. It was closed to passenger traffic in 1951 and to freight in 1984. The bridge is presently under reconstruction once again.

 

An old gate along the canals running along a very modern housing development

Wildlife along the canals

There is wonderful ornamentation all over Oxford, this guy made me giggle

Lead drain pipes held against the wall with stunning fasteners

Wandering the back streets

The bridge is popularly known as the Bridge Of Sighs but is officially called Hertford Bridge. It was completed in 1914 and designed by Sir Thomas Jackson.

More wonderful ornamentation

Martyrs Mark

Broad Street is undergoing some road construction so I had to shoot this through a fence, but bless the construction workers for leaving the mark exposed. In the middle of the 16th century, during the reign of Queen Mary I (also known as “Bloody Mary” due to her brutal religious persecution), three Protestant clergymen were charged with heresy and executed on this spot marked with a brick cross. It is said that the nursery rhyme, Three Blind Mice is an allegory for the trio of clergymen’s demise.

On the east façade of Saint Martin’s Tower, there is a clock adorned by two “quarter boys” who hit the bells to mark the passing of every “quarter” of the hour.

Deadman’s Walk

As the sun was trying to set and the Meadow Christ Church was closing I made it to Deadman’s Walk. The walkway is thought to be the route of medieval Jewish funeral processions. A procession would begin at the synagogue (near where Tom Tower now stands) and proceeded towards the Jewish burial ground (now the site of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden).

This stone slab in the Botanical Garden reads:

Beneath this garden lies a medieval cemetery.

Around 1190 the Jews of Oxford purchased a water meadow outside the city walls to establish a burial ground. In 1231 that land, now occupied by Magdalen College, was appropriated by the Hospital of St John, and a small section of wasteland, where this memorial lies, was given to the Jews for a new cemetery.

An ancient footpath linked this cemetery with the medieval Jewish quarter along Great Jewry Street, now St Aldates. For over 800 years this path has been called ‘Deadman’s Walk,’ a name that bears silent witness to a community that contributed to the growth of this City and early University throughout the 12th and 13th centuries.

In 1290 all the Jews were expelled from England by King Edward I. They were not permitted to return for over 350 years.

May their memory be blessed

For me, it was really just a lovely stroll on a stunning fall evening.

Colleges of Oxford

 Oxford, United Kingdom
Oct 192022
 

October 18, 2022

The University of Oxford has thirty-nine colleges and six permanent private religious halls. These institutions are autonomous self-governing corporations within the university. The colleges are not only student residences but have the responsibility of teaching undergraduate students. Most colleges take both graduates and undergraduates, but several are for graduates only.

Behind the walls is where you will find the peace and quiet of Oxford.

Magdalen College

Magdalen College

You do not just walk into the colleges, most are private and do not allow visitors, and those that do, require a fee.  I chose to visit Magdalen because I had read about the gardens.  The college was founded in 1458 with a large endowment, a substantial library, and some very impressive buildings.  Sadly I am here in the fall and while lovely, the gardens are probably better appreciated in the Spring.

The central quad of Magdalen College

Christ Church

Christ Church is one of the largest and wealthiest of all the colleges of Oxford. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is a joint foundation of the university and the cathedral of the Oxford diocese.

Tom Tower was designed by Sir Christopher Wren.  It looms over Tom Quad the largest quadrangle in Oxford.

The Dining Hall most famous as the inspiration for Harry Potter has a far richer history that its movie fame. The Great Dining Hall was the seat of the parliament assembled by King Charles I during the English Civil War.

Christ Church Cathedral

The cathedral was originally the church of St Frideswide’s Priory,  the patron saint of Oxford.

In 1522, the priory was surrendered to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who had selected it as the site for his proposed college. However, in 1529 the foundation was taken over by Henry VIII. Work stopped, but in June 1532 the college was refounded by the King. In 1546, Henry VIII transferred to it the recently created See of Oxford from Osney. The cathedral’s official name is Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxoniensis, given to it by Henry VIII’s foundation charter.

Christ Church Cathedral is one of the smallest cathedrals in the Church of England.  The tour of the Cathedral itself takes half an hour there is so much history as to be overwhelming, but it is a stunning building.

The Meadows Building (1862-6) serves as the public entrance for paying visitors to Christ Church and is where my friend Susan stays when she attends Oxford

Skulls found on the River Magdalen that runs around Christ Church

The exterior gardens of Christ Church are absolutely beautiful.

Alice in Wonderland and Christ Church

Alice was the daughter of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church, where Charles Dodgson (Lewis Caroll)  lectured in mathematics.  Alice was three when her father became Dean. Alice and her sisters were playing in the deanery garden when Dodgson went to photograph it, and that is how they met.

In 1862, Dodgson (Carroll), his friend Duckworth and the three Liddell sisters, including Alice, rowed up the River Isis to the town of Godstow. On the boat trip, Carroll began spinning the story of a bored girl named Alice looking for adventure. Everyone loved his stories  and they asked him to write “Alice’s Adventures.” Two years after their boat trip, Carroll penned Alice’s Adventures Underground and in 1865 the story was published.

Those on the boating trip,  Canon Robinson Duckworth and Alice’s sisters, Lorina and Edith, appear in the book as the Duck, the Lory—a sort of parrot—and the Eaglet respectively.

You can find “Alice’s Shop” directly across from the entry to Christ Church College