Sunday, August 9

Guided tour through Merton College included the Mob Quad, oldest in Oxford, 14th century, and the gothic chapel where all alumni can be "hatched, matched, and/or dispatched". Merton College alumni include Sir Thomas Bodley, T.S. Eliot, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan.

We'll be having our lectures in the Examination Schools where students from all colleges in the University come at the end of each term, sub fusc (in formal gowns) for "schools" (exams).

My room is in Rose Hall, reminiscent of St. Andrew's, meals in the College Hall, vaulted great room in use since 1277.

Well, Jefferson and Adams visited Oxford in March-April 1786,

but didn't comment.

How could they see the Radcliffe Camera and say nothing?

To compare the worlds they came from and were visiting: in 1790 New York, the largest city in the new republic, totaled 33,000 pop., London , 700,000.

Exploring - Day 1

Bedazzled from the splendor, the hordes of tourists from every spot earth [What about the global recession?], and sleep deprivation, I walked the streets, explored tiny alleyways and strolled paths along gardens and meadow.

The old buildings are mostly oolitic Cotswold limestone, honey colored in today's bright sunshine. The round building is the Radcliffe Camera, a private reading room for the Bodleian Library.

I enjoyed a half pint and a "matured cheddar" sandwich in a pub called the Bear, open for business at that spot on Boar Lane since 1272.

My camera's eye can only capture some few details. This is the decoration above a doorway on the Christopher Wren Sheldonian Theater.

Here, apparently the public library, though nobody was loitering about the lovely entry way:

Dreaming Spires?

Matthew Arnold's poem Thrysis: A Monody, to Commemorate the Author's Friend, Arthur Hugh Clough (1866)

includes these lines describing the view of Oxford from Boars Hill: "And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,/ She needs not June for beauty's heightening".

Background Reading

Perfect timing! Here is this -- just out, and a great read about botany as a major impetus behind 18th century global exchange and exploration:

By the time Jefferson and Adams toured Stowe and other gardens in the 1790s, it was 60 years after Bartram in PA & Collison in London began exchanging seeds and seedlings. And that's just the beginning. I'm so glad to have read this book.

The adventure begins ...

Here's the course description that enticed me to sign on. How could I resist?