When I was a little girl I could
always be found reading a book; while my siblings were out leading the
neighborhood in street hockey games of epic proportions; I would be curled up
in a chair somewhere reading stories that took me to far away places. Every Christmas my favorite gifts were the
ones that I had identified under the tree as books; they sat there so
delicately wrapped in paper that shined under the twinkling of the colored lights
laced throughout the tree branches. When
Christmas morning finally came, and after the big unwrapping event had ceased;
I would take my little treasures to my room and line them along the bookshelf
that my dad and grandpa had made me, and then I would begin the process of
choosing which one I should read first.
When I was a teenager I found myself spending my money from my part time
job on Oprah’s latest picks for her larger than life book club. Lastly, when I was married and in my twenties
I joined my first intimate book club; a group of women, American ex-pats, all
brought together in England because of our husbands jobs. We shared the duty of hosting book club once
a month, rotating between each other’s homes in our little cozy town in
Oxfordshire, England.
I came to discover
that I was not only involved in a book club that exposed me to cultures and
writers I had never explored before, but that right in the heart of this
beautiful county was a literary trove of writers and stories so historically
vast that I spent my days wandering in and out of their worlds; all of us
linked through time through a lovely university town called: Oxford.
I
remember the first time that I had gotten off the bus in Oxford, I decided to
get off somewhere along St. Giles only to promptly come to a group of
pedestrians standing outside a pub called, The Eagle and Child, I came to find
out that this pub had been frequented by none other than the literary greats,
J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Tolkien
and Lewis had been a part of a literary discussion group called: The
Inklings. This group would mostly meet
at Magdalen College, the school in which Lewis lived, but occasionally the
group would meet at the pub. First
readings of The Lord of the Rings
were given here.
I
stepped inside and took a seat at a table; I ordered a diet coke, and in true
American style said, “no lemon, and with ice, please”. I wondered if they had sat at these very
tables? By this time The Lord of the Rings had already been
made into a movie trilogy that had taken the movie world by storm. Accumulatively nominated for 30 Academy
awards and winning 17, it could arguably be named the best trilogy in the
history of film. Sitting in this pub I
wondered if Tolkien could have ever imagined the heights that his works would
reach? I had worked at Barnes &
Noble in the states one Christmas as boxed sets of the beloved novels flew off
the shelves.
After
my soda, I decided to hit the pavement.
I wasn’t quite sure where I was going but my motto has always been: if I don’t know what exactly it is that I
want to see and I’ve never seen any of it, then it doesn’t exactly matter where
I wander, does it? So with that philosophy
in mind, I walked out of the pub and turned right seeing as how to the left
looked like nothing but boring houses and motor vehicles while to the right I
could see the beginnings of some shops, and more people on foot. I came to a corner with a Waterstone’s
bookstore, which was a chain bookstore in England. In the window was a flier announcing a night
with Ian McEwan coming soon. I jotted
down the date and time in my moleskin notebook in my purse. I didn’t go into Waterstone’s but was
reminded of another bookstore that a friend had told me I must visit when I
made it into town. The store was called
Blackwell’s and it was an institution in Oxford. I asked a passerby the whereabouts and lucky
for me it was just off the main road I had been traveling by a few blocks or
so. While Blackwell’s didn’t turn out to
be the journey for me that it had been for my neighbor, I thought it was a nice
bookstore overall with a rich history.
Apparently they had been the publisher of one of Tolkien’s first
poems. I imagine my neighbor felt about
the store the way I would feel if I ever got the chance to visit City Lights
Bookstore in San Francisco.
After perusing the
shelves I headed back down the road in the direction I had came to put me back
to the main street that I wanted to continue to explore further. I pressed on past many British chains all the
while remembering how my favorite United States President had attended
Oxford. At this point, President Clinton
had already released his book, My Life. I had listened to an audio version of it in
the car for months and had eventually bought a hard copy when I met him at a
book signing event in Washington D.C. It
made me wonder; were great people drawn to Oxford, or did those same people
only become great once they’d been to Oxford?
College students
were everywhere; female students pranced through town in their ballet flats and
with colorful scarves wrapped repeatedly around their necks; walking along with
their friends and laughing. I heard a
group of them behind me, “He just doesn’t like me because I’m soft!” I loved that, again, I made a note in my
moleskin; how much more flattering it sounded in England than in America when
one feels turned down because of their weight.
Male students looked studious in their peacoats and glasses, zipping
through the market street on their old fashioned looking bicycles.
I walked on and
eventually found myself at Christ Church College, I paid a small fee to enter
and before I knew it I was standing on the same staircase that Professor
McGonagall stands on when she greets the students to their very first meal at
Hogwarts in the children’s movie, Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone; based on the beloved children’s book of
the same title. I couldn’t believe it,
for years I had been obsessed with this series; reading every book upon its
midnight release, flying my sisters all over the world to go see the movies
with me. I could not wait to come back
to this spot with them when they came to town to visit me. Ahead of me at the top of the stairs was some
ruckus as large amounts of people gathered at an entrance waiting for their
turn to enter into the dining hall of the college, also used as the famous
dining hall in the Harry Potter franchise.
As I walked around
the room, people pointed out the stained glass windows inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Professor Lewis Carroll had been inspired
and written the book from Christ Church College. I couldn’t believe that students dined here,
beneath these windows in this great hall.
When I’d had enough of battling with tourists through the hall, I left
the building and just off the grounds and across the street from the college I
came to the smallest shop called, “Alice’s Shop.” It has become history that Carroll wrote his
story for the Dean of Christ Church’s daughter, Alice Liddell. Alice and her sisters had loved to visit this
hundreds of years old shop, and so in the sequel to Alice, Professor Carroll wrote the shop into Through the Looking Glass.
The shop nowadays sells little trinkets dedicated to the novels: tea
sets, books, and dolls.
As I left the tiny
souvenir shop I thought about my day; I had really only traveled the length of
a really long street. But this street
was not your average street, it was bookended by two literary masters: Tolkien and Carroll. If Hollywood is home to the stars then Oxford
could easily be home to the greatest writers of literature; sprawling
throughout time Oxford has housed some of the greatest minds that have come up
with some of the most enchanting stories.
I made my way back
to the bus stop in front of The Eagle and Child, thinking about my day. Because of the people that had once haunted
these streets, I not only got to visit Oxford, but I’ve been to Wonderland,
Narnia, and Middle Earth.
