Owing to our revised plans for luncheon I had several marmalade sandwiches in my hand, laid in an open white paper which Barfleur had brought and passed around, the idea being that we would not have time for lunch if we wished to complete our visit and get back by dark. Sir Scorp had several meat sandwiches in another piece of paper equally flamboyant. I was eating vigorously, for the ride had made me hungry, the while my eyes searched out the jewel wonders of the delicious prospect before me.
“This will never do,” observed Sir Scorp, folding up his paper thoughtfully, “invading these sacred precincts in this ribald manner. They’ll think we’re a lot of American sightseers come to despoil the place.”
“Such being the case,” I replied, “we’ll disgrace Barfleur for life. He has relations here. Nothing would give me greater pleasure.”
“Come, Dreiser. Give me those sandwiches.”
It was Barfleur, of course.
I gave over my feast reluctantly. Then we went up the street, shoulder to shoulder, as it were, Berenice walking with first one and another. I had thought to bring my little book on Oxford and to my delight I could see that it was even much better than the book indicated.
How shall one do justice to so exquisite a thing as Oxford,—twenty-two colleges and halls, churches, museums and the like, with all their lovely spires, towers, buttresses, ancient walls, ancient doors, pinnacles, gardens, courts, angles and nooks which turn and wind and confront each other and break into broad views and delicious narrow vistas with a grace and an uncertainty which delights and surprises the imagination at every turn. I can think of nothing more exquisite than these wonderful walls, so old that whatever color they were originally, they now are a fine mottled black and gray, with uncertain patches of smoky hue, and places where the stone has crumbled to a dead white. Time has done so much; tradition has done so much; pageantry and memory; the art of the architect, the perfect labor of builder, the beauty of the stone itself, and then nature—leaves and trees and the sky! This day of rain and lowery clouds—though Sir Scorp insisted it could stand no comparison with sunshine and spring and the pathos of a delicious twilight was yet wonderful to me. Grays and blacks and dreary alterations of storm clouds have a remarkable value when joined with so delicate and gracious a thing as perfectly arranged stone. We wandered through alleys and courts and across the quadrangles of University College, Baliol College, Wadham College, Oriel College, up High Street, through Park Street, into the Chapel of Queens College, into the banquet of Baliol and again to the Bodleian Library, and thence by strange turns and lovely gateways to an inn for tea. It was raining all the while and I listened to disquisitions by Sir Scorp on the effect of the personalities, and the theories of both Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren, not only on these buildings but on the little residences in the street. Everywhere, Sir Scorp, enthusiast that he is, found something—a line of windows done in pure Tudor, a clock tower after the best fashion of Jones, a façade which was Wren pure and simple. He quarreled delightfully, as the artist always will, with the atrocity of this restoration or that failure to combine something after the best manner, but barring the worst errors which showed quite plainly enough in such things as the Oxford art gallery and a modern church or two—it was all perfect. Time and tradition have softened, petted, made lovely even the plainest surfaces.
I learned from Barfleur where Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde lived, where Shelley’s essay on atheism was burned, and where afterwards a monument was erected to him, where some English bishops were burned for refusing to recant their religious beliefs and where the dukes and princes of the realm were quartered in their college days. Sir Scorp descanted on the pity of the fact, that some, who would have loved a world such as this in their youth, could never afford to come here, while others who were as ignorant as boors and as dull as swine, were for reasons of wealth and family allowed to wallow in a world of art which they could not possibly appreciate. Here as elsewhere I learned that professors were often cads and pedants—greedy, jealous, narrow, academic. Here as elsewhere precedence was the great fetish of brain and the silly riot of the average college student was as common as in the meanest school. Life is the same, be art great or little, and the fame of even Oxford cannot gloss over the weakness of a humanity that will alternately be low and high, shabby and gorgeous, narrow and vast.
The last thing we saw were some very old portions of Christ College, which had been inhabited by Dominican monks, I believe, in their day, and this thrilled and delighted me quite as much as anything. I forgot all about the rain in trying to recall the type of man and the type of thought that must have passed in and out of those bolt-riven doors, but it was getting time to leave and my companions would have none of my lagging delight.
It was blowing rain and as we were leaving Oxford I lost my cap and had to walk back after it. Later I lost my glove! As we rode my mind went back over the ancient chambers, the paneled woodwork, stained glass windows, and high vaulted ceilings I had just seen. The heavy benches and somber portraits in oil sustained themselves in my mind clearly. Oxford, I said to myself, was a jewel architecturally. Another thousand years and it would be as a dream of the imagination. I feel now as if its day were done; as if so much gentle beauty can not endure. I had seen myself the invasion of the electric switch board and the street car in High Street, and of course other things will come. Already the western world is smiling at a solemnity and a beauty which are noble and lovely to look upon, but which cannot keep pace with a new order and a new need.