In which I Dream Beneath the Spires of Oxford Archives

Visiting Blenheim Palace: Thoughts on Creativity, Envy and the Good Life

View from the palace, showing the island.
Image credit.

I’ve lived in Oxford for 14 years now (in two instalments) and try to walk around the Blenheim Gardens and grounds once a year, if not once a season. I love the lakes: they get me.

And, often, when I visit the gorgeous gardens of stately homes, I feel a twinge of envy. I would not feel envy if they had earned them by their labour as Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey earned his seventeeth century manor house in Dorset. The immense inherited wealth in Britain, as in Blenheim or Chatsworth, sometimes does make me feel envious, though both estates, of course, leverage and make their inherited largesse to make even more money, as is necessary in a country with high taxation, like the UK.

“I am a bit envious,” I tell Roy. “What beauty to enjoy every day! And just to have inherited it!!”

But then, as we walk around, I realise that it would take a particular temperament to live happily in Blenheim Palace, and that I might not have it.

It would, oddly, take much tolerance for imperfection. As I walked through the Secret Garden, my fingers itched as I saw weeds and plants needing dead-heading. And this despite a crew of gardeners.

You have to make peace with a crew of gardeners who cannot keep up with the garden–just as you yourself cannot!

You sacrifice privacy–for running a palace and its grounds must take an veritable armada of cleaners, housekeepers, groundsmen and gardeners.

You are pierced with worries, for the ultimate responsibility of keeping an ageing building and its furnishings shiny ultimately falls on to you.

And in this daily piercing with mundane responsibility, even with the money to throw at each hydra head of things which need to be done, you surely would not have time to be a writer.

So, though living in Blenheim Palace, with its gorgeous grounds, would be many people’s definition of the good life, it would not be the good life for me. Too many worries, and distractions. Too little privacy!

* * *

I read an American survey a decade or so ago which asked people how much money they needed to live happily; the respondents, across the income levels, said $10,000. In other words, everyone wanted just a little bit more money.
Oddly enough though, the really moneyed classes have produced relatively few creative people–writers, artists, film-makers. Keeping up with one’s lifestyle appears to siphon off energy and ambition. Each extra thing you own adds stress and worry and distraction to your life. And, for those artists who eventually became very wealthy, their best work was in the period of relative poverty.

Christianly speaking, envy, I guess, is rebellion against the plan God has chosen for your life… the IQ, family income, gifts, nationality, he has given you. At times, one wishes God had given us more–I have certainly have–but we develop both our characters and our gifts as we seek to work against constraints (of time, of our own talent, of our weakness of character, of the shortage of money or energy or strength).

Envy is wanting to live in someone else’s story–a futile wish!!–instead of trying to write the best story we can with our own life. And one can always revise the story of one’s life to make it read better. Small leveraged changes will inevitably bring about other bigger and bigger changes.

And the gifts and character we develop as we struggle in this “vale of soul-making” are certainly more precious than if we had them handed to us on a platter, like Blenheim Palace is handed down to generation after generation of the Marlboroughs.

Detail of the entrance to Blenheim Palace

The main entrance courtyard to Blenheim Palace

View of the back of palace and water garden

A close up of the mazelike hedges

Intricate detail at the top of 40 foot columns

A lion and a hapless rooster (?)

The top of the archway leading out of the palace

An intriguing sculpture at the top of a pair of pillars

A particularly beautiful pheasant

We came to Blenheim to walk in the gardens. It was daffodil season

This photo shows only a quarter of the field of daffodils

Daffodils as far as the eye can see

Densely planted containers of daffodils

The Secret Garden, pictured below, was renovated in 2003, and opened to the public in 2004.

Cherry blossoms by a Japanese style pond

with a single mallard

Two maples just coming into leaf:

Ranunculus

Magnolia

Viburnum — very fragrant

A couple of shots of the Italian garden, which is not open to visitors

Topiary birds around the edge

Italian Garden, Blenheim Palace

The gardens are filled with statuary. |Here is one of the smaller ones on the top of a pillar.

Finally, the estate is full of wonderfully gnarled trees:

England: A Rhapsody

By Anita Mathias

I love England. I have now lived for at least 14 years each in three continents–Asia, America and Europe. If I could live anywhere I chose, I would choose England (as I have). (And if I could choose any English town to live in, I would choose Oxford–as I have.)

As I walked down the country lane outside my house, a cup of tea in hand, I saw a herd of cows, very attractive Guernseys, in our farmer-neighbour’s field. It was a beautiful bird-loud day. It could have been out of a Constable painting or a Dylan Thomas poem. Timeless England!

I read about 500 illegal immigrants living in tent cities in Calais, hoping to come to England. The writer explained why. He said, “Can you imagine 500 men, women and children sleeping rough in Dover?” The council would do something about it.

I thought of what V.S. Naipaul in The Enigma of Arrival calls “the curious humanity of the English state.”

I do love this country, warts and all! I love their sense of decency and fair play. I love the fact that the police prosecute for racist tweets, an everyday occurrence in other countries. I love that, in this country, calling someone a “bigot” is one of the worst things you can say, in the judgement of both accused and accuser.

A River Walk on the Thames Path from Sandford Lock to Folly Bridge, via Iffley Lock

By Anita Mathias

Enjoy this post by my husband Roy on one of our favourite walks by the River Thames in Oxford, incredibly beautiful and a great place to relax. Roy takes his camera, I take my jumbled thoughts. He comes back with photographs, and I come back with peace and a blog post.

Roy thinks we should walk the 51 miles of the Thames Path to London, some day or week. He’s serious, but I pretend he’s joking.

Now, over to Roy

The Kings Arms at Sandford Lock is great place to start a riverside walk. Upstream, it is 3 miles, and perhaps the nicest river walk in Oxford, past river boats, flocks of grazing geese, Iffley lock, Iffley Meadow, and the college boathouses to Folly Bridge and Christchurch Meadow. The section from Iffley Lock upstream is paved. Downstream, it is more rural, and one can follow the Thames Path right into London.

Sandford Lock to Folly Bridge via Iffley Lock

The green at Sanford Lock is a wonderful place for a picnic. Opposite the Kings Arms, with its outdoor garden.

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Otmoor Nature Reserve, Oxford (RSPB): Oxfordshire Walks

By Anita Mathias

Otmoor Nature Reserve is one of the my favourite places to walk in Oxford. It’s usually totally deserted, so it’s a great place to walk, pray, think. A watery world of sea and sky, lagoon-like ponds reflecting the sky, punctuated by the honks of wild geese and swans, and the quacks of ducks,and the cries of herons and seagulls.

Here’s a picture blog on it, from Roy

Otmoor Nature Reserve is a tranquil area of marshland with a few gravel roads visitors can walk. (The reserve has no postcode, but OX3 9TD will take you into Otmoor Lane, and just follow this road to the reserve car park at the end.) To see birds well, you need binoculars, or even a telescope. We went to enjoy the scenery.

This seems like a man made waterway. It is in the fenced RSPB reserve.

Reflections in the still water.

View of the wetlands from the (very comfortable) hide.

A pair of swans through the Echinops.

Pair of swans.

Nesting swan, with two Canada gees

A male pheasant with one of his six females.

It was a cold windy day, mostly sunny, with occasional rain.

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Canada geese (iphone photo)

The reserve is known for blackthorn. Similar to hawthorn, but can be distinguished because it flowers earlier.

Pure white cascades of blackthorn flowers.

I was surprised by the quality of the iphone photo below:

Willow catkins (please correct me id I'm wrong, iphone photo)

Willow catkins (please correct me if I’m wrong, iphone photo)

Moss encrusted, thatched cottage (Beckley, Oxfordshire. iphone photo)

A loose rooster, Bekley Oxfordshire. (iphone photo)

Hen running loose in Beckley, Oxfordshire.

The Bluebell Woods and Peacocks of Harcourt Arboretum, Oxford: Oxfordshire Walks

By Anita Mathias

A guest post by Roy Mathias

Harcourt Arboretum lies on lands once owned by the Norman Harcourt family. We went to see the wonderful bluebell woods, and also saw the peacocks descended from those that the Harcourts introduced over 100 years ago.

A carpet of bluebells, Harcourt Arboretum.

The bluebells grow in a grove of 300 oak trees planted in 1847. The area is preserved as a small natural ecosystem, with exotic plants removed.

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The peacocks are very tame, but they do like to slowly turn as they display their tails.

Peacock emitting its characteristic ear screech.

Peacock emitting its characteristic ear piercing screech.

Peacock: The classic view.

Peacock: Rear view.

Here are just a few of the numerous pictures I took of this photogenic subject

Displaying peacock, close up.

Displaying peacock, close up.

The peacock shakes its tail feathers is it closes them after displaying.

The eyes on the peacock’s tail.

The flowering trees included magnolias (below) as well as rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias.

Perfectly white magnolia petals, Harcourt Arboretum.

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A fern coming out of dormancy.

Dryopteris Affinis

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One of the many old oaks, Harcourt Arboretum.

Harcourt has a number of distinct areas — large pines and redwoods, flowering trees, maples, hollys, two ponds, woodland, and a summer flower meadow.

Pinus Nigra (subsp. Laricio), Harcourt Arboretum.

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New maple leaves, Harcourt Arboretum.

Autumn and Spring colours mix, Harcourt Arboretum.

P.S. from Anita: Don’t you want to visit? You really must!

7 Quick Takes: Kew Gardens, Wisley, Leighton House, Univ. Parks, Oxford,Daughters, Progress on NY Goals,

By Anita Mathias

1 We are taking a walking course in London, with Joanna Hall of The Walking Diet.

With her walking technique, I am walking faster—much faster—and, more importantly, really, really enjoying it. I am walking about 4 miles a day around London, when I am there, and Oxford.

2 Leighton House

Frederick, Lord Leighton was a Pre-Raphaelite artist who was immensely rich privileged and never needed to work for his living. Unlike othesr born to his happy state of affairs, however, he did make something of his life.

When he declared his intention of becoming an artist, his parents opposed it, unless he became a preeminent artist. And so he assured them he would become one of the preeminent artists of his generation. And he did—becoming the President of the Royal Academy.

Leighton, who was probably gay, never married. His gorgeous house is dedicated to beauty. There are beautiful Moorish rooms much like the Alhambra and the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, all tiles, and gold mosaics and fountains. The light-flooded enormous studio is to die for!

And, in line with the aesthetic movement, beauty for beauty’s sake, he has a mishmash of lovely things from throughout the world in every room—peacock fans, Japanese vases, inlaid ivory Ottoman chests!! There is even a Narcissus room, after the Narcissus room in the just-discovered Pompeii. His bedroom, oddly, is a near-monastic cell amid all this magnificence.

High stained glass window in the Arab Hall, Leighton House.

Dome, the Arab Hall, Leighton House.

Tile panel, the Arab Hall, Leighton House.

3 Britain’s glory is her gardens. The ponds with wild ducks, the spring bulbs, soft birdsong—oh, exploring them in early spring mid-week with all the retirees is an otherworldly, almost mystical experience.

Here are some images from Kew Gardens

Huge Chestnut, Kew Gardens.

A variety of water birds (Kew).

A drift of Crocus, Kew.

Squirrels are everywhere in London parks.

and the Oxford Botanic Garden

Crocus under a mossy tree, Oxford Botanical garden.

Crocus under a mossy tree, Oxford Botanic Garden.

Tulips planted at the base of a tree, Oxford Botanical Garden.

Tulips planted at the base of a tree, Oxford Botanic Garden.

Banana flower, greenhouse, Oxford Botanical Garden.

Banana flower, greenhouse, Oxford Botanic Garden.

Moored punts, filled with rain water, by Magdalen Bridge, Oxford Botanical Garden.

Moored punts, filled with rain water, by Magdalen Bridge, Oxford Botanic Garden.

A view from Christchurch Meadow.

4 And Wisley Garden in Surrey

Garden sculpture, Wisley. (iphone)

A colorful crocus drift, Wisley. (iphone)

With, equally colorful ducks. (iphone)

Miniature narcissus gazing into the water, Wisley. (iphone)

5 We walked yesterday through a flooded University Parks in Oxford. What a strange half-watery, other-worldly place it was—familiar fields under water, the river and ponds having burst their banks, the meadows now the habitation of swans, ducks, coots and glebes. There were very few people around, and it felt like a thin place, other worlds very present.

Flooded fields by University Parks. (iphone pic)

The small duck pond has been engulfed by the flooding river (University Parks, Feb, 2013, iphone)

Hopkins felt that about Oxford

Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded;

Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

He wrote that of Duns Scotus. I feel like that about him.

6 My daughters

Irene, 13, now has a blog, Life Among the Cupcakes. I begged her to have a blog about books, since she reads a lot and writes like an angel, but she sagely explained that she must be herself, and not me, and her passion is baking!! Humph!

Other Irene quotes—I think everyone should be a Buddhist. Even if they are a Christian.

Irene stayed home one day to work at our family business (a publishing company). It was a “take your daughter to work day,” but we work from home. And the phone kept ringing. The doorbell kept ringing. She was disgruntled and disgusted. “People don’t realize how important I am. They don’t realize I have stayed home from school just to work!” Work said with utter contempt compared with the sublimity of school, which she loves!

Zoe is doing a lot of talks at her school’s Christian Union which she runs, and at the Pathfinders (10-14) group at Church. She has been voted as “Most Likely to be the First Female Archbishop of Canterbury” for her school’s yearbook. Studying theology at Jesus College, Cambridge, however, is a more immediate item on her agenda.

7 New Year’s Resolutions

I now wish I had followed Zen Habits sage advice, and made just one resolution a month. Next year.

However, here is my progress on my resolutions.

Weight

	Weight (lb)	Cum. Loss
Jan 1st	233
Jan 13th	231.8	-1.2
Jan 20th	229.2	-3.8
Feb-29	227.8	-5.2
Mar-20	227.2	-5.8 lbs

Week of	Goal Km	Actually done KM
Jan-07		29.6
Jan-14	33.6	Ice 13.6
Jan-21	14.96	snow 16.4
Jan-28	19.69	23.36
Feb-28	25.69	28.37
Mar-10	31	35km

Linking up with The Conversion Diary–http://www.conversiondiary.com/

and Leigh Kramer–http://www.leighkramer.com/blog/2013/03/what-im-into-march-2013-edition.html

Organising my house

Before

After

After!!

Next week’s challenge

Mar 20 (Before)

Walking Away from the Dreaming Spires; Walking Away from Joy

By Anita Mathias

The Dreaming Spires
(credit)

Well, my daughter Zoe is in Cambridge today for her Entrance interview, and I have been thinking about Oxbridge interviews.

Fielding describes being interviewed to read English at Cambridge by Kingsley Amis, “the world’s greatest satirist,” who had recently written Lucky Jim.

Asked “What novel would you take on a train journey?” he says—no, not Lucky Jim, but Wuthering Heights—“I drone on about pathetic fallacies and thanatoid visions – just the kind of bilious bollocks the world’s greatest satirist needs to hear from a callow wanker on a sofa.”

Amis abruptly and scornfully terminates the interview. “My school is later informed that I am “woeful” and “without obvious potential“.

* * *

Here’s C.S. Lewis’s description from Surprised by Joy of arriving in Oxford for his entrance interview.

My first taste of Oxford was comical enough. I had made no arrangements about quarters and, having no more luggage than I could carry in my hand, I sallied out of the railway station on foot to find either a lodging-house or a cheap hotel; all agog for “dreaming spires” and “last enchantments.”

My first disappointment at what I saw could be dealt with. Towns always show their worst face to the railway. But as I walked on and on I became more bewildered. Could this succession of mean shops really be Oxford? But I still went on, always expecting the next turn to reveal the beauties, and reflecting that it was a much larger town than I had been led to suppose.

Only when it became obvious that there was very little town left ahead of me, that I was in fact getting to open country, did I turn round and look. There behind me, far away, never more beautiful since, was the fabled cluster of spires and towers.

I had come out of the station on the wrong side and been all this time walking into what was even then the mean and sprawling suburb of Botley. I did not see to what extent this little adventure was an allegory of my whole life.”

Or anyone’s!

I live in Oxford now. It is 97 years since Lewis came up for his interview, but the contrast between the golden, gleaming, dreaming spires, and mean Botley is still striking.

* * *

In the famous Alpha course, leaders often tell this story attributed to a Native American elder,

There are two dogs inside me. The black dog is mean. The white dog is good.
The black dog fights the white dog all day.

When asked which dog wins, the elder reflected for a moment and replied;

The one I feed the most.

* * *

Yeah, it’s another way of gauging our thoughts, actions and choices, isn’t it? Are they leading towards the Heavenly City of the Dreaming Spires in which the Lord, high and exalted, is seated on a throne; and the train of his robe fills the temple with glory, while above him seraphim fly, calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6)

Or, instead of “the fabled cluster of spires and towers,” are the thoughts and emotions I am harbouring leading to a mean, small-minded suburb of judgements, negativity, jealousy and competitiveness?

On a bad, bored day, I have to check my thoughts many times and ask—Do I want to live here, in this small, claustrophobic negative suburb?

When someone annoys me and my thoughts spiral repetitively, rehearsing the many and manifest failings of this person, as they gradually, in my mind, turn from grey to black to horrible–I need to stop and ask myself, “Is this the address I want to live at? Obsessing about this silly person’s silly faults? Or do I want to dwell in the secret places of the Most High?

* * *

“Stop, drop and roll,” my kids were taught when in elementary school in America—basic fire safety.

Well, when I find myself spiralling into negativity, or fear or worry, I have my own routine, “Stop, drop, repent.”

A) Force myself to think about the person’s good points; thank God for the goodness in them,

B) Meditate on whether I myself have ever been guilty of the annoyingness I see them. And so use this “beam research” as an energizing spur to repentance

C) Turn to Jesus, the Lord upon the throne. Ask for his Holy Spirit to fill me.

D) And remember my goals, long and short term, ask him for strength to fulfil them. Move from the negative to the positive; from the mean streets to the golden spires and towers; from a pointless drain on my energy to being re-energized.

* * *

Yes, turn to Jesus. For there is life

Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. I give my flesh for the life of the world. (John 6,53, 55).

And I change my address. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me, and I in him. (John 6:56). No longer will I dwell in smallness and negativity. I will escape to the secret places of the Most High. Yeah, I will dwell smuggled in the recesses of Jesus, the Rock.

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The Poet, the Albatross and the Christian

By Anita Mathias

The Albatross

Sometimes, to entertain themselves, the men of the crew
Lure upon deck an unlucky albatross, one of those vast
Birds of the sea that follow unwearied the voyage through,
Flying in slow and elegant circles above the mast.

No sooner have they disentangled him from their nets
Than this aerial colossus, shorn of his pride,
Goes hobbling pitiably across the planks and lets
His great wings hang like heavy, useless oars at his side.

How droll is the poor floundering creature, how limp and weak —
He, but a moment past so lordly, flying in state!
They tease him: One of them tries to stick a pipe in his beak;
Another mimics with laughter his odd lurching gait.

The Poet is like that wild inheritor of the cloud,
A rider of storms, above the range of arrows and slings;
Exiled on earth, at bay amid the jeering crowd,
He cannot walk for his unmanageable wings.

— George Dillon, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)

We saw huge, white albatrosses glide on their giant wings in New Zealand in 2009. Aloft, in their native element, they are majestic, sublime.

Once captured, and mocked by sailors who force them to waddle on deck where their giant wings hamper their walk, as Baudelaire describes, they are piteous and comic. The gigantic wings which helped them soar are now comic impediments

* * *

God designs an ideal medium, aerial, terrestrial, submarine, for each of us, and we are at home and happy when we are in it. God determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live (Acts 17:26). When we are in the right place, doing what we are meant to do, there is a sense of ease, a sense of soaring.

I have finally found this place. I am living in the town in which I have most longed to live, Oxford, with its heady combination of history, architecture, art, Christian and literary history, beauty, nature and stimulation.

I am beginning to get back into the work I most enjoy, creative prose, and am enjoying my blog. I am again enjoying reading. And I am enjoying the brainy, creative community in my church, St. Andrew’s, Oxford.

Of course, it took years for the pieces of the puzzle to fit together, and for me to discover work and a place which make me very happy.

Taking the time to discover the roles God has created us for, and the work which makes our souls sing—ah, these are worthwhile quests, for when we are doing the right work, and are in the right place and the right relationships, we can soar in the way we are designed to.

How about you? Have you discovered what you would like to make your life’s work? A church which permits your fullest flourishing? What are the dreams which God has placed in your heart, and are you able to work on them daily or weekly, at least a little?

What a string of personal questions! I’d love to hear your answers!