THE OXFORD COUNTRY
_Lætissimus umbra._
And the eye travels down to Oxford’s towers.
The walls of Oxford are tufted with ivy-leaved toadflax, wallflower, and
the sunny plant which botanists call “inelegant ragwort.” They form a
trail from the villages, upon wall after wall, into Ship Street and
Queen’s Lane, by which the country may be traced. In the same way, the
city may be said to steal out into the fields. Not only do we read the
epitaph of a forgotten fellow in a quiet church, and mark a resemblance
to Merton or Lincoln in the windows of an old house in North Hinksey
Street, but the beauty of the windy Shotover plateau, with its slopes of
hyacinth and furze, and the elmy hills of Cumnor and Radbrook, are
haunted and peopled by visions of the distant spires. They give that
mild, well-sculptured country a soul. Even when the city is out of
sight, its neighbourhood is not to be put by. Everywhere it is a
suspected presence, a hidden melodist. Whether in memory or
anticipation, it is, on all our walks, “like some grave thought
threading a mighty dream.”
I could wish that an inexorable Five Mile Act had kept it clear of red
brick. Newman and Ruskin hinted at the same. I know not how to describe
the spirit which turns a few miles of peaceful southern country into
something so unique. But if I mention a wood or a stream, let the reader
paint in, as it were, something sweet and shadowy in the distance, with
his imagination or recollection; let it be as some subtle perfume in a
_pot pourri_ which makes it different from all others.
There is a beautiful, sloping acre, not far from Oxford, which a number
of great elms divide into aisles and nave, while at one end a curving
hawthorn and maple hedge completes them with an apse. Towards Oxford,
the space is almost shut in by remote elms. On one side I hear the soft
and sibilant fall of soaking grass before the scythe. The rain and sun
alternating are like two lovers in dialogue; the rain smiles from the
hills when the sun shines, and the sun also while the rain is falling.
When the rain is not over and the sun has interrupted, the nightingale
sings, where the stitchwort is starry amidst long grass that bathes the
sweeping branches of thorn and brier; and I am now stabbed, and now
caressed, by its changing song. Through the elms on either side, hot,
rank grasses rise, crowned with a vapour of parsley flowers. A white
steam from the soil faintly mists the grass at intervals. The grass and
elms seem to be suffering in the rain, suffering for their quietness and
solitude, to be longing for something, as perhaps Eden also dropped
“some natural tears” when left a void. A potent, warm, and not quite
soothing
[Illustration: OXFORD, FROM SOUTH HINKSEY
Elms and willow trees fringe the slope of the hills leading to the
valley, in which the city shows sparkling in the morning sunlight.
Commencing from the west or left side of the picture, we see the tower
and lantern of All Saints’, with the dome of the Radcliffe Library
telling dark against the sky; then come the University Church of St.
Mary, Tom Tower, and the stretch of buildings of Christ Church, with the
Great Hall of the College, the Cathedral spire finishing the group.
Merton Tower stands detached to the east.
The almost level line of the horizon, with the trees bordering the river
to Iffley, frame as beautiful a group of buildings as any to be seen in
England.
Farm sheds show under the willow trees to the left.
The time is the early morning of a summer day.]
perfume creeps over the grass, and makes the May blossom something
elvish. I turn and look east. Almost at once, all these things are
happily composed into one pleasant sense, and are but a frame to a tower
and three spires of Oxford, like clouds--but the sky is suddenly
cloudless.
I suppose that ivy has the same graceful ways on all old masonry, yet I
have caught myself remembering, as if it were unique, that perfect
ancient ivy that makes an arcade of green along the wall of Godstow
nunnery. And in the same way, above all others I remember the pollard
willows that lean this way and that along the Oxford streams--like
prehistoric sculpture in winter, but in summer a green wave and full of
voices. Never have I seen sunsets like those which make Wytham Wood and
Marley Wood great purple clouds, and the clouds overhead more solid than
they. How pleasant are Cherwell and Evenlode, and those angry little
waters at Ferry Hinksey! When I see the rain a white cloud and Shotover
Hill a grey cloud, I seem never before to have seen the sweetness of
rain. October is nowhere so much itself as among the Hinksey elms, when
the fallen leaves smell of tea (and who that loves tea and autumn will
cast a stone?). The trees, whether they stand alone or in societies, are
most perfect in autumn. Something in the soil or climate preserves their
farewell hues as in a protracted sunset. Looking at them at nightfall,
it is hard to believe that they have been amidst ten thousand sunsets
and remained the same; for they ponder great matters, and not only in
the autumn, but in May, when the silence is startled by the gurgling
laughter of the hen cuckoo. When spring comes into the land, I remember
a mulberry that suspended its white blossom, among black boughs, over a
shining lawn at the edge of the city; and the bells that in March or
April seemed to be in league with spring, as we heard them from the
fields. And how well a conversation would grow and blossom between
Headington and Wheatley or Osney and Eaton! Some that loved not the
country would flourish strangely in wisdom or folly as the roads rose or
fell, or as the grey oak stems of Bagley Wood began to make a mist
around us. The only incidents, in twenty miles, were the occasional
sprints of one who was devoted to a liver, or the cometary passing of
one on a bicycle that sang _Le Roi d’Ivetot_ as if it were a psalm
containing the whole duty of man. And how a book--even a “schools”
book--taken on the river or the hills, would yield a great sweetness to
alternate handlings and laughter of several companions; or, if it were a
dull book, might be made to yield more than its author ever meant. I
have ever thought that the churchyard with a broken cross at Hinksey,
and the willows below and the elms above, if one takes George Herbert
there, is a better argument for the Church than Jewel and Chilling
worth, if the old yew had not seemed the priest of some old superstition
still powerful.
No one can walk much in the Oxford country without becoming a Pantheist.
The influence of the city, the memories, the books he is fresh from,
help the indolent
[Illustration: OXFORD FROM HEADINGTON HILL
The elm trees of the “Grove” of Magdalen College show to the extreme
left of the picture. The buildings of the College do not appear.
To the right of the “Grove” are the two spires of the Cathedral and the
University Church of St. Mary, with the Radcliffe dome and the “Schools”
tower farther on.
The view is looking west, at sunset in corn harvest.]
walker, who is content to sit under a hedge and wait for the best
things, to make his gods. The lanes are peopled with no fairies such as
in Wales and Ireland nimbly feed the fantasy, which here, in
consequence, is apt to take flight in wonderful ways. I remember one
(and Ovid was not at all in his mind) who was all but confident that he
saw Persephone on flat pastures and red ploughlands, gleaming between
green trees, when the hawthorn was not yet over and the roses had begun,
and the sapphire dragon-fly was afloat, on the Cherwell, as the boat
made a cool sound among the river’s hair, betwixt Water Eaton and Islip.
On the quiet, misty, autumn mornings, the hum of threshing machines was
solemn; and there at least it was a true harmony of autumn, and the man
casting sheaves from the rick was exalted--
Neque ilium
Flava Ceres alto nequiquam spectat Olympo.
Everywhere the fancy, unaided by earlier fancies, sets to work very
busily in these fields. I have on several afternoons gone some way
towards the beginning of a new mythology, which might in a thousand
years puzzle the Germans. The shadowy, half-apprehended faces of new
deities float before my eyes, and I have wondered whether Apollo and
Diana are not immortal presences wheresoever there are awful trees and
alternating spaces of cool or sunlit lawn.... In the lanes there seems
to be another religion for the night. There is a fitful wind, and so
slow that as we walk we can follow its path while it shakes the heavy
leaves and dewy grass; and we feel as if we were trespassing on holy
ground; the land seems to have changed masters, or rather to have One.
Often I saw a clean-limbed beech, pale and slender, yet firm in its
loftiness, that shook delicately arched branches at the top, and below
held out an arm on which a form of schoolboys might have sat,--rising
out of fine grass and printing its perfect outlines on the sky,--and I
could fancy it enjoyed a life of pleasure that was health, beauty that
was strength, thought that was repose.
The Oxford country is rich in footpaths, as any one will know that goes
the round from Folly Bridge, through South Hinksey, to the “Fox” at
Boar’s Hill (where the scent of wallflower and hawthorn comes in through
the window with the sound of the rain and the nightingale); and then
away, skirting Wootton and Cumnor, past the “Bear” (with its cool
flagged room looking on a field of gold, and Cumnor Church tower among
elms); and back over the Hurst, where he turns, under the seven firs and
solitary elm, to ponder the long, alluring view towards Stanton Harcourt
and Bablock Hythe. He may take that walk many times, or wish to take it,
and yet never touch the same footpaths; and never be sure of the waste
patch of bluebell and furze, haunted by linnet and whinchat; the newly
harrowed field, where the stones shine like ivory after rain; the green
lane, where the beech leaves lie in February, and rise out of the snow,
untouched by it, in polished amber; the orchard, where the grass is
gloomy in April with the shadow of bright cherry flowers.
One such footpath I remember, that could be seen falling among woods and
rising over hills, faint and winding, and disappearing at last,--like a
vision of the perfect quiet life. We started once along it, over one of
the many fair little Oxford bridges, one that cleared the stream in
three graceful leaps of arching stone. The hills were cloudy with woods
in the heat. On either hand, at long distances apart, lay little grey
houses under scalloped capes of thatch, and here and there white houses,
like children of that sweet land--_albi circum ubera nati_. For the most
part we saw only the great hawthorn hedge, which gave us the sense of a
companion always abreast of us, yet always cool and fresh as if just
setting out. It was cooler when a red-hot bicyclist passed by. A sombre
river, noiselessly sauntering seaward, far away dropped with a murmur,
among leaves, into a pool. That sound alone made tremble the glassy dome
of silence that extended miles on miles. All things were lightly
powdered with gold, by a lustre that seemed to have been sifted through
gauze. The hazy sky, striving to be blue, was reflected as purple in the
waters. There, too, sunken and motionless, lay amber willow leaves; some
floated down. Between the sailing leaves, against the false sky, hung
the willow shadows,--shadows of willows overhead, with waving foliage,
like the train of a bird of paradise. Everywhere the languid perfumes of
corruption. Brown leaves laid their fingers on the cheek as they fell;
and here and there the hoary reverse of a willow leaf gleamed in the
crannied bases of the trees. A plough, planted in mid-field, was curved
like the wings of a bird alighting.
We could not walk as slowly as the river flowed; yet that seemed the
true pace to move in life, and so reach the great grey sea. Hand in hand
with the river wound the path, until twilight began to drive her dusky
flocks across the west, and a light wind knitted the aspen branches
against a silver sky with a crescent moon, as, troubled tenderly by
autumnal maladies of soul, we came to our place of rest,--a grey,
immemorial house with innumerable windows.
IN PRAISE OF OXFORD