First Day of Class and West Wycombe

Monday was my first day of class at Oxford. I woke up, and when I walked out of my staircase onto the quad with my school work, it really hit me that I'm actually studying here. My class is called "Jane Austen on Location"; we read Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey, and now we're visiting the places in the books and that Austen references. When we went to class it was still a little bit fuzzy because of jet lag, and also we had gone on a long hike the day before. I hadn't reviewed the book yet, and honestly didn't really know which one she wanted to start with, so I felt unprepared. I think everyone did, but we made it through and the second class day went much more smoothly. This particular professor has a reputation for expecting more than usual from her students, and she lives up to it. I've had her before, and I've taken care of her daughter twice a week for a year, and she definitely sets a high bar. It makes us work harder, and the best work I've done has been in her classes. Our discussions have gone well, and the group members already know one another because we spent time together before coming here.

Today we traveled to West Wycombe. It's especially known for the period in which Sir Francis Dashwood, second baronet, lived there and made it notorious with his risque landscaping and ornate Palladian architecture. He had traveled on the Grand Tour to Italy and Greece, and he came back with new knowledge, a disdain for the Catholic church, and the courage to do something outlandish. He was a member and officer in several clubs, including the Hell Fire Club, the Dilettanti Club, the Monks of Medmenham, the Fransiscans, and others. They met in various locations, but the Monks of Medmenham began at Medmenham Abbey until they needed more concealment and moved to West Wycombe, Francis Dashwood's estate. He renovated the gardens to represent his own ideals and those of the group. Many of his statues were fallic symbols or depicted the Venus, the goddess of love. The opening to the Temple of Venus was meant to imitate a woman's body, as did the arrangement of bushes on his estate, which one would see from his tower. He had landscape architects, such as Repton, design "authentic" ancient temples to add credibility to the estate, and he set a trend that took off immediately. The man-made lake he shaped into the form of a swan to, we believe, recall the mythological story about Zeus and how he turned into a swan in order to rape a woman. The innuendo continues, but doesn't still exist today. The estate was renovated to exclude its more suggestive elements, but the basic form and many of the structures still mark the grounds. Also on the property are chalk caves in which the group met. We traveled down into those, and it felt sort of like walking into an underground burial site. It wound down through different passages, and we saw many off-shoots before finally arriving at their group room.

At the club meetings, Dashwood dressed like a clergy man, poured a milky juice for the members to drink (apparently a combination of various liquors created the affect of milkiness), and mocked the practices of the church. Afterwards, they met with prostitutes in their own "cells", drank excessively, and the rest we'll never know.

The Dashwood family still lives at West Wycombe, and we saw pictures of they and their children when we toured the home. Many movies have been filmed there including "Little Dorrit" (currently filming), "Cranford", "The Importance of Being Earnest", and several others I hadn't heard as much of.

After the trip, we returned to the college (only a 30 minute bus ride or so) and went to dinner. Tonight a lot of us are going to the college pub and out to the Purple Turtle afterwards.

As a side note: today I got a run in, and I found a new trail at Christ's Church College that I followed. I saw a good number of other runners and walkers this morning, and it was really unbelievable to actually do some jogging next to one of the most famous university colleges in the world.