the dream­ing spires

It’s impos­si­ble to over­state how com­pelling Oxford is.  The sheer weight of his­to­ry, the famed, adven­ture­some, beloved fig­ures from the past that seem to peep out from every cor­ner, the hon­eyed stone and yes, the Dream­ing Spires.

We began this, the last leg of our uni­ver­si­ty jour­ney, ear­ly in the morn­ing at Padding­ton Sta­tion.  In itself a bas­tion of tra­di­tion, with a newish roof and still absolute­ly nowhere to sit, Padding­ton lets you begin every trip with a feel­ing of ener­gy and aliveness.

Oxford itself wel­comed us with a bright blue sky, streets filled with prospec­tive stu­dents on this Open Day.

We made our way to the “His­to­ry Taster Lec­ture,” a fas­ci­nat­ing British pro­fes­sor’s look at how Amer­i­cans write their his­to­ry, always with a view toward con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing events in the past.  He showed slides of Oba­ma giv­ing speech­es at the foot of the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al, in front of glass cas­es hold­ing the orig­i­nal Con­sti­tu­tion.  An inter­est­ing per­spec­tive.  Then, a daunt­ing but infor­ma­tive talk on the admis­sions process, with three impos­si­bly poised first-year stu­dents telling their tales.

The good news is, the speak­ers could have been describ­ing Avery, I thought.  She would be in pos­i­tive heav­en in the joint hon­ours pro­gramme in his­to­ry and pol­i­tics.  The bad news is, she’s cho­sen among the very most dif­fi­cult pro­grammes to get into.  Already, his­to­ry accepts only about 25% of appli­cants.  But add Avery’s spe­cial pro­gramme, and you’ve hit a uni­ver­si­ty-wide low of 13% accep­tance.  She can only do her best.

Feel­ing some com­bi­na­tion of inspi­ra­tion and intim­i­da­tion, we man­aged a quick lunch, then wan­dered over to the first Col­lege on her list, Wad­ham.

Did you know that Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty was made up of Col­leges?  These are group­ings of build­ings — liv­ing, eat­ing and learn­ing quar­ters for three years- under the rubric of par­tic­u­lar Stu­dent Union gov­ern­ing bod­ies, and with very par­tic­u­lar sport­ing tra­di­tions, gar­dens, polit­i­cal lean­ings, cof­fers, points of pride.  Avery had done a fair amount of research to find the Col­leges that appealed the most to her.

It was hard to believe that any place rep­re­sent­ed by such struc­tures could be con­sid­ered lib­er­al.  Every­thing is so, so ancient.

We were giv­en a tour by a love­ly, ener­getic, gen­er­ous young man who took to Avery’s polit­i­cal views straight­away and it was a very nice first wel­come to Oxford.  We saw sam­ple bed­rooms, the Junior Com­mon Room, the beau­ti­ful gardens.

And then on to Bal­li­ol, most beloved Col­lege to me because it boasts my favorite alum­nus of any insti­tu­tion, Lord Peter Wim­sey.  Speak­ing of ancient, Bal­li­ol is hap­pi­ly cel­e­brat­ing its 750th birthday.

With a rather shy, reserved tour guide this time, we toured the stun­ning grounds.  Here are some win­dows behind which live actu­al stu­dents, believe it or not.  Not “fresh­ers,” though.

Straight out of every nov­el from “Brideshead Revis­it­ed” to “Gaudy Night” that I’ve ever read, was the din­ing hall.

The guide went on at some length about meal plans, din­ners per week, etc., but all I could think was “Eat?  Who would both­er eat­ing when you could just gaze around and feel part of his­to­ry.” (The food sounds all right, actu­al­ly, and they wear gowns only occa­sion­al­ly, which is too bad.)

From here we traipsed over to the library, where­in I could imag­ine Avery doing any amount of research, or indeed just dreaming.

Fel­low Lord Peter Wim­sey enthu­si­asts will rejoice with me at what I found in the card cat­a­log.  (I was so hap­py, first of all, to find a card cat­a­log in this vir­tu­al world of ours.)

We popped along to St. John’s Col­lege, which is appar­ent­ly referred to sim­ply as “John’s.”

The rich­est col­lege at Oxford — and the sweet young Irish tour guide seemed to think this rather bald claim was made all right by describ­ing how gen­er­ous­ly stu­dents are sup­port­ed finan­cial­ly — the gar­dens stretched on sim­ply for­ev­er, and the build­ings were stun­ning in their age and beauty.

John was ter­ri­bly excit­ed by the sight of an award-win­ning group of res­i­dence halls, Kendrew Quad­ran­gle.  I found them hor­ri­fy­ing­ly mod­ern, so I did not take a pho­to.  And any­way, can I tell you how I was frowned on for the entire day by my fam­i­ly for tak­ing pho­tographs at all?  But aren’t you glad I did.

The tour guide, rosy-cheeked and charm­ing, explained when asked that she was read­ing Art His­to­ry.  I thought about con­fess­ing to my defunct PhD but then had to remind myself that no one had the slight­est inter­est in an old moth­er. Bet­ter just to enjoy the scenery.

We saun­tered along the high street and down a qui­et lit­tle lane, on our way to the next Col­lege.  Did you know that every­one cycles in Oxford?

We found our­selves at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege, the old­est in Oxford.

We had a tour guide all to our­selves, as the day was wind­ing down.

The library was found­ed, as these stat­ues grate­ful­ly attest, by “gen­er­ous Amer­i­can benefactors.”

But any oth­er acco­lade or mem­o­rable qual­i­ty at Uni­ver­si­ty was eclipsed by this mag­i­cal discovery.

Avery was beside her­self with devo­tion to the Young Romantics.

From here we met up with my dar­ling pal Jo, on a blis­ter­ing street cor­ner in the blaz­ing sun.  We part­ed com­pa­ny, Jo and me to have a love­ly cold drink togeth­er in the gar­dens of the Quod (THE place to eat and drink in Oxford), and a bit of a gos­sip.  One heav­en­ly thing about Oxford would be the chance to see Jo when­ev­er I pop over for a vis­it (very infre­quent­ly, I assure you).

John and Avery stag­gered to our table some 40 min­utes lat­er, hav­ing soaked in the sights and sounds of beau­ti­ful Magde­len (pro­nounced Maudlin) Col­lege, one of the very largest and most spacious.

Hav­ing said good­bye to Jo and decid­ed that we had it in us to vis­it one more Col­lege — and Avery had run into friends who told her exact­ly which one this last should be — we walked slow­ly to The Queen’s Col­lege.

In the grad­u­al­ly cloud­ing-over sky, we con­tem­plat­ed the mag­nif­i­cent pro­por­tions of the Col­lege, although our guide — an adorably out­go­ing man study­ing Chem­istry of all things — was a bit apolo­getic that a fire had destroyed the orig­i­nal 14th cen­tu­ry build­ings and what we were look­ing at were only 250 years old.  Shame, that.

The accom­mo­da­tions were just love­ly — old-fash­ioned, with lit­tle sit­ting rooms and love­ly high ceil­ings.  And the chapel.  Oh my.

The Col­lege pos­sess­es two bells!  Two.  Which our tour guide rings; what was the chance of that, meet­ing the Col­lege Ringer?  “And of course, we are very proud of our most illus­tri­ous alum­nus, Tim Bern­ers-Lee, who invent­ed the World Wide Web.  The cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter of Aus­tralia also spent some time here.  Per­haps we’re not so proud of that.”

The gar­dens were, he assured us, very pop­u­lar places for bar­be­cues, Pim­m’s par­ties, and any man­ner of high jinks.  For all that, they looked inescapably peaceful.

As did all the Col­leges, Queen’s boast­ed its row­ing records, in chalk on the hal­lowed walls.

The day in Oxford was at an end.  We pulled our­selves back from all the dreams that had filled our imag­i­na­tions, and went home.  Nine hours, 8.7 miles and almost 30,000 steps walked in Oxford, we were ready for an ear­ly night, at the train jour­ney’s end.

So ends our month of uni­ver­si­ty adven­tures.  All we can do now is wait for AS-lev­el exam results in August, sup­port Avery through her appli­ca­tions in the autumn, and then sol­dier on to deci­sion time before Christ­mas.  She feels con­fi­dent that among all the places we’ve seen, she will find a place to be hap­py.  As one of the coun­sel­lors at school said wise­ly, “You must remem­ber, par­ents, that 95% of the girls in this school will be hap­py no mat­ter where they go.  And the oth­er 5% will be unhap­py no mat­ter where they go.  All you can do is to help your girl to be one of that 95% percent.”

For right now, though, it’s been enough to have these delight­ful trips, in each oth­er’s com­pa­ny, push­ing Avery’s boat out on the next big riv­er.  Whether or not it is the Isis remains to be seen…