Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

365 Project: Oxford Houses of the Good and Great

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A crisp clear January day in North Oxford.  A perfect day to explore.  These houses are all within a quarter of a mile of the dome of St. Hugh’s College:
The dome on St. Hugh’s College
John Ronald Reuel TOLKIEN (1892–1973), author and scholar, 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford
Blue Plaque on J. R. R. Tolkien’s House
The house 
J. R. R. Tolkien’s House
Tolkien also lived at 99 Holywell Street, very close to the Bodleian Library, from 1950 – 1953.  Zoe had been to Tolkien’s Holywell Street house numerous times as one of her friends lives there.
Nirad C. CHAUDHURI (1897–1999), writer, 20 Lathbury Road, Oxford
and here’s the house
Nirad Chaudhuri’s house
Paul NASH (1889–1946), artist, 106 Banbury Road, Oxford
Blue Plaque on Paul Nash’s house
Paul Nash’s House.
The house is now one of may houses that make up  d’Overbroeck’s College, which is not a Oxford college, but a secondary school
Sir James MURRAY (1837–1915), Lexicographer and Editor of the OED, 78 Banbury Road, Oxford
Plaque and pillar box infrom of Sir James Murray’s house
No, Sir James Murray did  not live in the pillar box, but
Anything addressed to ‘Mr Murray, Oxford’ would always find its way to him, and such was the volume of post sent by Murray and his team that the Post Office erected a special post box outside Murray’s house. (Wikipedia)

and a bit about James Murray

Some idea of the depth and range of his linguistic erudition may be gained from a letter of application he wrote to Thomas Watts, Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, in which he claimed an ‘intimate acquaintance’ with Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish and Latin, and ‘to a lesser degree’ Portuguese, Vaudois, Provençal & various dialects’. In addition, he was ‘tolerably familiar’ with Dutch, German and Danish. His studies of Anglo-Saxon and Mœso-Gothic had been ‘much closer’, he knew ‘a little of the Celtic’ and was at the time ‘engaged with the Slavonic, having obtained a useful knowledge of the Russian’. He had ‘sufficient knowledge of Hebrew & Syriac to read at sight the Old Testament and Peshito’ and to a lesser degree he knew Aramaic, Arabic, Coptic and Phoenician. However, he did not get the job. (Wikipedia)

Sir James Murrary’s House
A passer by told me that while the above house was Murray’s house, the block of flats below, now called Murray Court, is build on what was his rambling  grden where he build sheds for his daughters to work on the OED.
Murray Court
A little further south in picturesque Park Town I found the house of 
William Richard MORFILL (1834–1909), first Professor of Russian and Slavonic Languages, 42 Park Town, Oxford
Blue Plaque on William Morfill’s house
William Morfill’s house
and even further south, almost at the University Parks, the home of  Walter PATER (1838–1894), author and scholar, and his younger sister  Clara Pater (1841–1910), pioneer of women’s education, 2 Bradmore Road, Oxford.
Blue Plaque on the Pater’s house
 The front door — with gables looking rather old and ornate hinges.
The whole building.  The right half was the Paters.
Walter and Clara Pater’s House
and I couldn’t resist including these even more ornate hinges on a door across the road, but of no known historical value.
T. E Lawrence’s house (Lawrence of Arabia) is a little way away at 2 Polstead Road
Blue Plaque on T. E Lawrence’s House
T. E Lawrence’s House
On the way home, we stopped at C. S Lewis’s house — The Kilns, on what is now called Lewis Close, in Risinghurst in Headington.  The plaque is on the door nearest the road; formerly the tradesmen’s entrance.
Blue Plaque on C. S. Lewis’ House

 A view from just outside the gate

C. S. Lewis’ house
A view from the car park
C. S. Lewis’ house
and a view of the opposite side
C. S. Lewis’ house
Certainly a large house, but quite plain.  Lewis bought it sight unseen, because it had eight acres of woods, now the C. S. Lewis Nature Reserve.
Finally, Dorothy Sayers was born in a house on the very narrow Brewer’s Street  backing onto Pembroke College, and opposite Christchurch, and near St. Aldate’s Church.
Blue plaque marking Dorothy Sayers birthplace

Beautiful Flowers in our Winter Garden, Oxford, Jan 11, 2012

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Here are some flowers in our garden.  
 Helleborus Niger, showing the first caterpillar of the season. 
Hellebores,  are resistant to most pests, being toxic to them.  Perhaps the flowers are not toxic, or this caterpillar could find nothing else.
Also called the Christmas Rose, this plant was in flower on Christmas Day. ‘Niger’ does not refer to the flower, but to the roots.
Helleborus feotidus.  This prolific self seeder has produced row of plants along our graveled drive way.  One of the few green flowers.
 Flowering cherry
 Daphne (I think)
 Primroses, planted last winter, and back in flower.
 Helleborus Winter Moonbean.  
This cultivar has attractive striking foliage, which I should have photographed also.
 Hellebore hybrid
Helleborus Eric Smithii
 Winter jasmine
 
 A final hellebore cultivar
 A stray early pyracantha flower.
 And finally, a couple of hellebores with massive flower buds ready to explode

More hellebores

Choosing Books, Films and Peace: Whatever is True, Noble, Pure, Lovely, Admirable

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In an orgy of decluttering, I am giving all these books away!

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. And the God of peace will be with you. (Phil 4:8).

This is Paul’s prescription for peace. Perhaps these things–whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy–which flow from God, escort us into the presence of God, which is peace.

* * *

I feel ambivalent about that verse. It seems so goody-goody and blinkered, as if one was deliberately ignoring the dark and shadow side of life.

And would one not then be ill-equipped to deal with evil when it confronted you? Bruno Bettelheim’s study of fairy-tales, The Uses of Enchantment argues that fairy tales are a gentle introduction to the darkness the child will definitely face, within herself, probably; outside herself, very likely. (My children, very sadly, found Andersen too heart-breaking, some of Oscar Wilde, too cruel, and Grimm, well, too grim–so I didn’t get to read many fairy tales to them.)

* * *

I am reading One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp’s tribute to positive thinking and gratitude. How does dwelling on the pain and anguished of the world help the anguished? she asks.

But by gratitude for the goodness and joy in the world we help mend one of the cracks in the world: our own hearts, and our own ability to be rejoice and be glad.

And one whole, happy woman overflowing with joy is perhaps of more use to the world than a wide-eyed one, who knows all about all the evil in the world, whose weeping eyes have been pierced by the Ice Queen’s shards.

* * *

 Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy…

I have unconsciously adopted some of this as my mantra for some years. For instance, I resist seeing movies or reading books about the Nazi concentration camps; pogroms, Soviet Gulags, or the horrors of Communist regimes; anything to do with sadism or torture; the suffering of animals; or movies or books with too much violence, war, human degradation, or violent and degrading sex (as opposed to eroticism). Or, mostly, thrillers as I get too stressed watching them.

My children haven’t watched such films either, and are extraordinarily sensitive as a result. We’ve been a no-TV household, which means we are very intentional about what we watch (though we have box sets of Downton Abbey; ssshh Game of Thrones and documentaries).

We decided not to have TV when we got married since watching the news is more time-consuming  than skimming the papers, besides, we could always watch DVDs of the best programs. (Andrew Weil says watching the news increases one’s stress, anxiety and depression; the news is structured to make you feel all is wrong with the world.) Also, we wanted to have more family time, to have quietness in the house, to resist the pressures of consumerism caused by subliminal advertising, and to have children who would read because the atmosphere was relatively distraction-free.

* * *

I am sifting through thousands of books, deciding which ones to keep.

The verse helped me—books which deal with evil, suffering, ugliness, “perversion” are chucked, unless they have extreme redeeming literary merit. I am not interested in bleak, dystopian views of the world.

Because, you see, I know I am acting in a comedy. I know how it is going to end. I have read Revelation. The world ends with a return to order, with a wedding, with dancing, feasting and merriment.

* * *

So as I sift through thousands of books, I am using two yardsticks

1) One is Matthew Arnold’s famous dictum, “Life is too short to read anything but the best which has been thought and said.” I probably will not get to read everything which interests me among “the best that has been thought and said.”  Why waste time with inferior stuff? So, if the book has little literary merit, off it goes.

(In my teens, I read everything, thrillers, mysteries, romances… I have been a bit of a purist since then. I have barely read a thriller, a mystery or a romance since my late teens!!  Yeah, rarefied reading habits!)

2) And the second yardstick I’ve used, very roughly, is Philippians. Does it deal with what is true, right, noble, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy?

And if it doesn’t, is it really, really well-written?– I’ve real almost all of Rushdie’s novels, and listened to almost all of Toni Morrison’s on tape. Or am I very interested in the subject matter? Or the author’s style

There are bleak, brutal, scarifying novels, like Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, which are exquisitely written and constructed. I have read it twice, both because it was set in the India of my childhood, an intimately familiar setting, and because I was interested in her experiments with language, and the structure of her plot.

But if a book fails both tests—it’s neither well-written, nor interesting and edifying– what conceivable good is reading it going to do me?

Reading about evil weakens the spirit. It clouds it with fear. It shakes and depresses you. There is little good which can come of it.

But I am not going to content myself with a diet of Pollyanna either.

Thankfully, there is a huge middle ground between the Nazi concentration camps and Pollyanna.

G.K. Chesterton on Joy (from Orthodoxy)

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It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy.
Such conflicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided.
And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity.
But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead.
 And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say “enlightened” they mean darkened with incurable despair.
It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while mediaevals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything — they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything — they were at war about everything else.
But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe.
* * *
The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so.
Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.
Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live.
Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down.
The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it.
Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man’s ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small.
The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation.
The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something.
Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell.
Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness.
There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
–Orthodoxy

My Four Rabbits, from R. Lightning, Empress, Sunlight and Bandit

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These are four of my dear friends. The second and fourth rabbits from R. are the mum and dad. The other two are the offspring. They get on well, and are very endearing, gentle, affectionate pets.
They are indoor and outdoor pets, playful and frisky.
When I work, I hear Roy’s fast, heavy footsteps; Jake, the Collie’s equally fast footsteps, which sometimes sound like Roy’s because he has 4 feet to Roy’s two; Irene’s light, fleet of foot, always running footsteps; and Zoe’s slower, more deliberate ones.
And then rabbit footsteps, soft, gentle, like the wind, coming to visit me.
They always make me happy.