It's been 10 posts since my last Narnia Bloggin' post, so I thought I'd write one about the Narnian/C.S. Lewis stuff I encountered on my trip to England last month. I signed up for a literary England tour with Her Literary Travel because two of the places they were going were Oxford and the Kilns, C.S. Lewis's home. CSL taught at Magdalen (pronounced Maudlin for some reason) College in Oxford University for over 30 years.
CSL's rooms, where he lived during the week and met with the students he was tutoring, are the three windows to the right of the windows that have red flowers in window boxes/the bottom four rightmost windows except for the one all the way to the right.
I was especially excited to see Addison's Walk, where CSL and I think J.R.R. Tolkien as well liked to take walks, because CSL wrote a poem set there that I memorized: "I heard in Addison's Walk a bird sing clear"*. It's a very nice nature-y place to walk, as it circles a deer park. The tour guide said she was pretty sure the deer we saw there were the descendants of the deer CSL would have seen ("weird Americans", she was probably thinking when someone asked her that). Sadly we weren't able to walk Addison's Walk, as we had the rest of our walking tour to do. This means I missed the round plaque with "What the Bird Said Early in the Year" (pictured in the link above). Ah well.
Magdalen College's chapel is lovely; our tour guide said CSL would have attended services here, if memory serves. I was especially fascinated by the sepia-tone stained glass windows, which I'd never seen before (usually Gothic-style cathedrals and chapels have very colorful stained glass windows).
During our walking tour of Oxford, we passed through St. Mary's Passage, which has two features of Narnia-related interest:
1. these faun supports flanking a door with a leonine-looking gorgon head!
2. a classic lamppost!
C.S. Lewis may have been inspired by these features, as the lamppost is one of the main symbols for the Chronicles of Narnia, and Tumnus the faun is an important side character. "Apparently, C.S. Lewis spent much time running between the two doors that stand opposite each other in this passage, which is why some think he was inspired by this specific passage." (source, which doesn't state where she got her information)
I was planning on visiting the Eagle & Child during our free time, as it's the pub where the Inklings (including CSL and J.R.R. Tolkien) met to read each other's writing, but it has sadly been closed since the pandemic. It is undergoing construction/renovation and was completely covered up. :/
I was very tempted to buy this TCON Christmas ornament from the Bodleian Library gift shop, as it shows all 7 books, but it was £17 so I didn't. On the website it's listed as being only £10?!? I would have bought it at that price! Ugh.
I really enjoyed my time in Oxford, short as it was. It's definitely worth visiting if you're a reader. This has gotten kind of long with all the photos, so you'll have to wait until the next NB post to read about my visit to the Kilns.
*the last line is different than I remember! The one I memorized had no quicks: "The gates of good adventure swing apart." The version I memorized ends: "I said, 'this might prove truer than a bird can know / and yet your singing will not make it so.'"
