Oxford Part 1: How I Came to Eat Turkish Delight in C.S. Lewis' House

Hello friends/family/strangers who hit the "Next Blog" button on Blogspot! Tomorrow I leave to study in Oxford for a week and exactly one week ago I went to Oxford for the first time. What an appropriate time to write about my trip! It's not at all because I was too tired/busy/lazy to update days before now!

Last week I went on my second study trip of the semester with my Worlds Beyond Oxford class and my magical elf-lady professor, Cara (not exaggerating, she is beautiful and wonderful and she looks like she walked straight off the set of The Lord of the Rings). Our staff chaperone was Jonathan, the director of the program, who is equally wonderful and charming so basically it was a chaperone match made in heaven.

Foggy Oxford

We started our trip with a walking tour of Oxford, learning a little about the college system and a few of the specific colleges including Pembroke College, Exeter College, Merton College, and Magdalen College (pronounced MAWD-lin). We also caught a glimpse of University College (Univ) where we'll be studying this coming week! Given the focus of our course, most of these places had specific ties to Lewis, Tolkien, and Pullman, i.e. they attended school there, taught there, were interviewed there, or were just inspired by something in the area.

Tolkien's home from 1971-1973

Tolkien's favorite tree, the Botanic Garden

Pullman's Bench, plot point in The Amber Spyglass, the Botanic Garden

 

 

The Narnia Door

There were also a few little nuggets here and there about other authors; for instance, this is the gate to a garden that was possibly Lewis Carroll's inspiration for the garden where Alice and the Queen of Hearts play croquet:

Note the red roses!

Bonus! We saw the Hospital Wing from the Harry Potter movies from the outside:

I'LL BE BACK FOR YOU.

We ended the tour at The Eagle and Child, the pub where Lewis and Tolkien met as part of their literary group The Inklings.

Lemony Snicket is not an Oxford alum but it sure did feel like it when after a series of unfortunate events we were unable to go with our original plan of getting lunch at the pub (was that joke trying too hard? I don't care I like it and it's staying). It was late in opening and our schedule was too tight to wait around. So instead we got some sandwiches from a place nearby and ate them in a park where we discussed which of us matched certain Lord of the Rings characters. The only thing missing was a "Please Do Not Feed the English Majors" sign. (Cara, obviously, is Galadriel, and was told so quite blatantly by one of my classmates.)

By mid-afternoon we arrived at the Kilns, aka C.S. Lewis' home.

The house is owned by the C.S. Lewis Foundation and operates partly as a place for scholars and graduate students from the University of Oxford to live and study. It's a little strange to think of students (many of whom are Americans) living in Lewis' house. We were given a tour of the house by an American currently living there for a year.

The sitting-room, where Lewis and Tolkien chatted about their books.

Turkish Delight

Lewis' bedroom

We left the house and drove a short distance to the cemetery where Lewis is buried and the church he used to attend.

Unreadable...but it says "Here sat and worshipped Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963)"

It was a surprisingly somber way to end the trip. I can't wait to go back to Oxford tomorrow and see all the places we could only pass by. We have a pretty full schedule since we're having all our regular classes plus lots of scheduled events, but it should be a really fun week. I'll update when I can!