Outsmarted (May 9, 2010)

Hello all,
Yes, I am a month behind on these messages. I'll try to recount each week individually still, for diehard fans (I flatter myself). The rest of you, if you don't feel like vicariously re-living a month of my past, there will be no hard feelings.
I left off in Oxford, where I enjoyed the hospitality of a group of American students. I hung out at their house for the evening, venturing out to get some supper at a nearby Chinese restaurant called the Pink Giraffe. At about 11:00, my friend Christine was kind enough to walk me back to the hostel, where I called it a day.
The first order of business for Monday was a walking tour around some of the prominent sites and structures in Cambridge--the first of these was Jesus College.
Oxford was initially built at a low site where the Thames and Cherwell rivers could be crossed without bridges on the backs of livestock. While there is evidence of Roman activity in the surrounding area, the first true settlement and a monastery were established by the Saxons in the 8th Century. At some point in the course of the town's growth, Oxford became the site of education--the first account of students in Oxford dates back to the 11th Century. At that time, most English students seeking higher education enrolled at the already-established University of Paris. However, relations between England and France deteriorated until 1167, when Henry II forbade English students to study in France. As a result, English students turned to local options, and today Oxford remains the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world, not to mention one of the leading academic institutions worldwide.
The University of Oxford works on the "collegiate" model, whereby students enroll and live in Oxford in association with one of thirty-eight separate colleges. Each college is relatively small, functioning more like a residence hall at an American school, accomodating anywhere from 200 to 400 students and providing food, lodging, and intramural involvement to students. Matriculation is centralized through the university, and rather than attend a fixed schedule of classes, students sit for discretionary lectures that relate to their discipline. The University also oversees examinations and the awarding of diplomas. The individual colleges don't specialize in particular academic fields, so even if a student isn't admitted to a particular college of his choice, he could receive virtually the same education if he is lucky enough to be admitted to another of the 38 colleges. However, the admission process (which has drawn criticism thorughout the University's history) is quite exclusive, based almost entirely on merit, and the majority of the 3,000 annual incoming students have outstanding records at elite, private preparatory schools.
The first site on the tour was Jesus College, one of the 38. It exemplified the typical layout of one of the university colleges--a gate led through impressive stone exterior walls and emptied into the quadrangle, a placid plot of lawn, surprisingly peaceful within the shelter of the building walls, despite being located within the heart of Oxford. We stepped inside the dining hall, which dated back to the 1500s and featured portraits of sponsors, founders, and prominent alumni (amongst these were Queen Elizabeth and T.E. Lawrence).
From Jesus College we passed by All Souls College, a college that holds the distinction of matriculating no undergraduates and only about 40 senior research fellows. We saw the Radcliffe Camera, a circular building used as a reading room for the University library, and the Sheldonian Theater, designed by architect Christopher Wren and serving as the site of commencement ceremonies for the entire university. We stepped into the Divinity School, which was the first intentionally-built lecture hall for use by the entire university and served as the site for all university examinations for hundreds of year. These examinations were not written tests, but instead took the form of verbal debates with one's tutor, while the chancellor of the university looked on. As if this weren't grueling enough, debates were conducted in Latin and were open to the public, who would frequently heckle the student in question. Examinations could last for up to three days (with breaks of course), but most were terminated by the Chancellor within three hours, at which point the student would either earn his degree or leave up to seven years of matriculation behind him, empty handed.
Following the tour, I joined a tour of the Bodleian Library. The Bodleian Library started out as a collection of classical manuscripts, and with the help of donations and sponsorship has grown exponentially in the six hundred years since a reading room was first built above the Divinity School. The single greatest endowment that ensures the Bodleian's growth is its standing as a legal deposit library. Since the 1600s, the Bodleian has been legally entitled to one free copy of every publication printed in Great Britain, and it receives thousands of volumes every week. In return for this free endowment, the library holds the books indefinitely for future reference for the publishers. The library is a reference library only--in the past, each volume was physically chained to the shelves, but this precaution has given way to electronic anti-theft measures. A portion of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was shot on location in the Bodleian Library.
After the library, the tour passed through the Divinity School again and into an adjoining room where the college governing body (whose name escapes me presently) used to convene from time to time. The room was intentionally modeled after the interior of the Houses of Parliament, and Parliament has convened there more than once, for issues of political expediency. Beyond that room was a small courtroom, a relic from the days when students were subject to the jurisdiction of the University and could be penalized for such transgressions as breaking curfew.
Following this tour, I wandered back through college toward Christ Church College, the largest college in Oxford and one which had been dissolved and reopened by Henry VIII as part of the dissolution of the monasteries. While trying to figure out how to kill one more hour, I abruptly came across a musical instrument collection I had been trying to find before. Pleased, I entered what turned out to be a moderately sized two-story building with glass cases running along the walls, crammed full of horns, oboes, bassoons, flutes, trumpets, recorders, pipes, clarinets, keyboard instruments, a couple pieces of percussion, and a very long alpenhorn. But probably the most fascinating exhibit to be found in the the collection was none other than the curator who let me in. This rotund individual had a prominent overbite and had a tendency to kind of growl through bared teeth rather than speak, while his eyes bugged out from behind large glasses. He led me to a couple different display cases, gesturing violently and describing different permutations of instruments with such appelations as "an exhibit from the museum of abysmal ideas". When a notion or remark struck him as funny, he punctuated his remarks with a high-pitched laugh, which occasionally climaxed with a prolonged and vehement snort. He asked me where I was from, and when I mentioned that I attended college in Michigan he rolled his eyes once more and described how he had entertained a student group from Michigan earlier in the week. Evidently these students were quick to demonstrate that Michigan (which he pronounced "Mitch-igan") somewhat resembles a mitten, an oddity that didn't strike this curator as terribly clever. I commiserated with him, agreeing that the analogy loses any vestiges of charm after the third repetition.
"Well, it awl depends on where you live, do'n't it," the curator barked. "Mitchigan is shayp'd loick a mitten, Italy is the boot-nation, i'n't it? And the UK looks loick a walrus on a skaytboard!"
Later that evening I made my way to the house that Christine actually lived in for the semester, since it was a much more inviting place to hang out than my hostel. I enjoyed a home-cooked meal and conversed with my girlfriend and her mother via webcam. I sat in a room by myself, and other residents in the house would poke their heads in and introduce themselves. Eventually a bearded, bespectacled student stepped in and immediately asked me to describe myself. He listened placidly as I stumbled through a basic introduction, then introduced himself as Carl. Jumping off of the fact that i was an English student, we then plunged into a discussion of Dostoevsky and somehow ended up on Beowulf before I walked back to my hostel with Christine, grabbing some food on the way.
The next morning I caught up on some email and correspondence at a Starbucks for an hour or two before visiting the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. One of the advantages of Britiain's colonial heritage is that any significant city has a token collection of ancient Greek or Middle-Eastern artifacts at their museum, collected at a time when the British looted such artifacts with impunity. I saw some interesting clay votive figures from ancient Mesopotamia--essentially, these figures stood in for human devotees and could keep a round-the-clock vigil even when their owners were out running errands or doing other things. There was also a nice collection of pottery collected from ancient Greece and some artifacts from European prehistory, such as some antler picks which were recovered near Stonehenge. My favorite room was hung with medieval tapestries and had a collection of violins and violas in display cases.
From the Ashmolean Museum, I walked to the Museum of the History of Science. This museum was housed in the building that had previously housed the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, and this building is widely acknowledged as the first purpose-built museum building in the world. The ground floor contained a collection of sextants, microscopes, and other navigagional instruments, the polished brass glowing inside the display cases. The basement housed a variety of instruments--most notable were Marconi's original radio equipment, a set of photographic plates and chemicals that had belonged to Lewis Carroll, a camera that T.E. Lawrence carried throughout the Arab revolt of WWI, and a chalkboard upon which Albert Einstein had approximated the size of the universe during a 1931 lecture at Oxford.
My next stop after the Museum of the History of Science was the Oxford University Press, which was located away from the center of town. The tour guide who showed four other visitors and me around was a tall, straight, pleasant man with a rich, flowing voice that you would expect to hear narrating National Geographic documentaries. As he explained each exhibit, his cadence and inflection never wavered for a second, as if he were reciting from a script. Like the guide at the Bodleian library, he succeeded in making the history of an academic press interesting, highlighting the prolonged and expensive ordeal of producing the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language.
After whiling away another hour or two in town, I capped off Tuesday evening with a visit to the Eagle and Child, a pub where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and several other literary scholars used to meet to smoke pipes, sip a pint, and discuss literature. Although the Eagle and Child isn't much to look at, I found it to be a very pleasant atmosphere, and I lingered there for more than an hour. I was delighted when I encountered a patch of graffiti in the men's bathroom that proclaimed:
"In the words of the prophet of our times, Vivienne Leigh--TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY!"
After that, I chatted with Karin online before returning to my hostel and calling it a day.
I got an early start on Wednesday, catching a train back to London and checking into a hostel in the city. I then passed an hour devouring a pub lunch. I ordered a plate of sausages, mashed potatoes, and peas, which were pretty good, but the lager I had with it had a sour aftertaste which didn't agree with me. After my meal I took the tube back to the Kubrick archives--after my previous visit a two weeks prior, I had set up another appointment to see more materials. I spent four hours leafing through papers in boxes. The most interesting item was a proof copy of Stephen King's The Shining, scrawled with Kubrick's notes, representing the first stage of the process which transformed the novel into a film. Also I looked at three different fan letters Kubrick had received. One was a thesis that a group of professors had written on The Shining. Kubrick had annotated these letters as well, marking the occasional grammatical error and conceding a couple approving remarks. Another letter was handwritten on yellow legal pad sheets, most of which praised Kubrick for The Shining, but which concluded with a page or two of suggested "improvements" for the film. Kubrick had left this one unblemished.
After getting dinner, I made my way to the home of the British Film Institute, located on the south bank of the Thames River, where I saw a showing of a 1955 French thriller entitled Les Diaboliques. This film was supposed to be very influential on Hitchcock's Psycho--in fact, the story goes that Hitchcock read the novel on which the film is based, then immediately contacted the publisher to option the rights to a film version, only to find that the French director, Henri-Georges Clouzot, had only just beat him to it.
On Thursday morning I took a train to Canterbury, the center of the Anglican church. Canterbury rose to prominence as the site where St. Augustine founded an abbey upon his arrival in England in 597 AD. The Abbey has existed in several different permutations over the years, culminating in the Canterbury Cathedral that stands in the center of town today. Followint his success in re-introducing Catholic
Christianity to England, Augustine himself was recognized as the first Archbishop of Canterbury. 1500 years later, the current Archbishop of Canterbury still presides over not only his local diocese but also the worldwide Anglican church from his seat in Canterbury.
Until 1170 AD, Canterbury and York competed for dominance of the church in England. That year, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, was murdered in the midst of overseeing a service of vespers in Canterbury Cathedral. Becket had been at odds with Henry II regarding the relationship of the church to the Royal government, and although the circumstances of Becket's murder were ambiguous, Henry submitted to a ritual of penance at Canterbury and Becket was canonized by the Catholic Church. A shrine was constructed in the cathedral and immediately became the destination of religious pilgrims such as those described by Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales. With so much religious significance ascribed to Canterbury, it beat out York for dominance of the Anglican Church.
I spent most of my time in Canterbury at the cathedral. I joined a guided tour of the Cathedral, along with a mother and her son. The youngster had recently studied Chaucer in school and was brimming with questions for the tour guide, which frankly put me to shame. Our guide pointed out the site of Thomas Becket's murder, which is marked with a modern memorial; the crypt, which is the oldest part of the Cathedral, and the quire, which featured a raised platform at the far end where devout pilgrims would finally see Becket's shrine at the culmination of their journey. The shrine no longer exists--Henry VIII destroyed it and appropriated its riches during the dissolution of the monasteries--but a perpetually burning candle lights the spot where it stood in centuries past. After the tour, I ambled around the exterior of the cathedral for a bit, enjoying the sunshine. I walked back into town, where I got a milkshake and unexpectedly stumbled across a reference to Calvin College in a novelty book that I was perusing in a toy shop.
I rode a train back to London, collected my luggage from the hostel, and boarded another train to Cambridge. The station was quite full that evening, and I'm curious whether that just represented regular train traffic for London or whether the station was swelled with travelers whose travel plans were foiled by the eruption of the volcano in Norway. I toiled over a crossword puzzle during the trip to Cambridge, where I met my friend Sam and his father at the station. We rode back to Sam's house, where I was to be hosted for the duration of my stay in Cambridge--the feeling of staying in a home rather than a hostel was sublime. Basically the evening was spent sedentary in front of a television, where I confirmed that British television really does get overwhelmed by American programming.
I slept in on Friday morning, then Sam and I caught a bus into Cambridge--he lives in a village nearby, and during the half-hour bus ride, we chatted about a variety of things. Cambridge has a quieter, more laid-back atmosphere than Oxford--it feels much more organic and less contrived. Oxford may be more accessible for a visit, but I feel that Cambridge would be a nicer place to simply exist. Sam walked me down some of the main streets, pointing out different colleges and places of interest. We wound up in the Fitzwillian Museum, which is an art museum in Cambridge, housed in a large Classical Revival building. Wandering through, Sam pointed out both his favorite paintings and those which he had never liked. After the museum, we grabbed some lunch and strolled past some more of the colleges, admiring the green grass and the narrow streams. Punting on these streams is a common pastime both in Cambridge and in Oxford, and some people were enjoying the sunny weather that afternoon by drifting along the stream. After wandering around town a bit more, Sam's mother picked us up and we drove to an American military cemetery outside of Cambridge. There had been an airbase or two nearby during the Second World War, but the American soldiers interred had been stationed all over England during World War Two. The site was beautiful, with uniform rows of monuments arranged in concentric arcs radiating out from a flagpole. There was also a chapel on the site, adorned with large painted maps of American involvement in World War Two and a mosaic on the ceiling and far wall depicted formations of bombers attended by angels, headed for some unknown destination. After spending some time there, we returned to Sam's house, ate dinner, and had a leisurely evening of television once more.
I awoke on Saturday to the sounds of a contractor installing new vinyl on Sam's bathroom floor. When I went downstair for breakfast, Sam and his mother were trying to place the contractor by his accent; at last they just asked him, but I can't remember what he said. With the bathroom once more at our disposal, we showered and rode a bus back into Cambridge.
The first stop was the Cambridge Zoological Museum, which was full of specimens of all sorts of animals. The most interesting displays were those on birds and small mammals. Sam and I speculated as to what could be on these animals' minds, based on their taxidermied facial expressions. One case in the museum was devoted to specimens that Charles Darwin had collected during the course of his voyage on the HMS Beagle. Essentially, these were old preserved fish in glass jars, and a handful of stuffed finches. Interesting, nevertheless.
After the musuem, we met Sam's mother once more in town and drove to a nearby manor house, Wimpole Estate. After parking and walking through an old stable structure, we passed a "historic bazaar", which was a variety of reenactors from different eras in costume ranging from WWII to the 1700s. Interestingly, there was a group there dressed in Confederate uniform, representing a society dedicated to reenacting British units that fought in the American Civil War. We then walked around the exterior of the manor house itself. Wimpole Hall was begun in 1640, and like most large estates has been in a state of perpetual maintenance/expansin ever since then. It changed hands several times, and the last individual to oversee significant restoration of the house was Rudyard Kipling's daughter. We opted not to enter the house, but rather set off across the grounds, which were green and rolling and dotted with trees and cattle. We moved further out, across a ditch, where the trees disappeared and the cattle were replaced by sheep and goats. We ended up at the Wimpole Folly, which was a tower intentionally fashioned to resemble a Gothic ruin--evidently this was something of a fad in 18th-century Europe. We wandered back amidst a horde of sheep--Sam threatened to attack them with a stick, but restrained himself. We then enjoyed afternoon tea at the cafe on the grounds. This consisted of English tea with a scone, strawberry jam, and clotted cream (something halfway between whipped cream and butter). Taking tea in the afternoon sun was the perfect way to end the day, and Sam's mother seemed quite pleased that I, as an American, displayed such a fondness for tea. She was so pleased that even after we returned to the house for the evening, she offered me tea no less than three times throughout the evening. The most exciting part of the evening occurred when I was obliged to kill a spider that was menacing Sam--evidently spiders creep him out.
I awoke on Sunday in time to attend the Anglican church in Sam's village with him and his father. This reminded me that small, local churches are just about the same wherever you go, for better or for worse. After church, we returned home, where Sam's mother had prepared a hearty Sunday dinner, which was marvelous. Digestion occured in front of the television for a couple more hours until Sam and his father saw me off to the train station. After three connecting trains in as many hours, I stepped out on the platform back in York, which isn't quite home, but it works for the semester.
Alright, that should catch everyone up on the final week of my break. Sorry for the delay--I've been a slave to homework yesterday. Accounts of the following weeks should (hopefully) be coming out soon.
Take care everyone!
-John Morton