Cold and Civil War
In 1987, the Cold War was approaching its end. It was a strange war—it wounded people’s minds and hearts but did not kill them. KP got caught up in the Cold War when his Polish translator fell in love with him.1 He invited me to the Rose and Crown pub on North Parade Street to meet her. The Rose and Crown (1887) is located on what used to be farmland owned by St. Johns College in north-central Oxford. Now, one hundred years later, KP, his girlfriend, and I were sitting at one of its tables. No one else was in the pub. Here is their story as I recounted it to my husband:
“Shortly after we left in August, a Polish woman that KP met (who was his translator) on a Reuters trip to Poland last year had fallen madly in love with him and had gotten a visa to come to England for two months to be with him. . . . KP is attached to the Polish woman, as well as her being attached to him. But careerwise, she is a liability because a lot of his friends are in sensitive positions in government. For example, if the Indian Home Office knew he had a Polish girlfriend, they would not be allowed to talk to him because they are required to report any contact with people from communist countries. So it sounds to me like the situation with the Polish woman is not going to work out at all. . . . She and KP have taken a flat here in Oxford for two weeks until he has to leave.”
Looking back, I see that it was the first piece of evidence for my idea that we had all been deprived of a basic human right when passports became mandatory in the United States in 1952, likely as a result of the Cold War. From the beginning of time, human beings had wandered freely over the face of the earth, that is, until the Cold War. Since then, humans have been incarcerated in the countries of their birth. I am still longing for that not-so-long-ago time of freedom to choose where I want to live anywhere in the world and pity those people who cannot flee from war or famine because of the restrictions on human movement put in place during the Cold War.
The last time I saw KP was about ten years later when he visited Oxford. He invited me to lunch at the poshest café at the time Le Petit Blanc on Jericho Street. I showed up wearing a faded blue Mao-style jacket that had been made in China for the workers and a baby sling with my one-year-old son. Rather than salt and pepper shakers, there were two tiny saucers with salt and pepper. My son reached out and took a tiny fistful of pepper and dropped it into the salt dish. I laughed spontaneously, then looked up to see that KP was mortified and embarrassed. My son laughed mischievously and threw his head back, “Mission accomplished. This guy won’t be asking my Mom out again.”
John Aubrey Returns to Oxford
In last week’s newsletter, John left Oxford and returned home at the request of his father. We pick up the story six weeks later. “As I lie awake at night in Broad Chalke, reading, missing Oxford, wishing I could return there . . . thoughts of the Antichrist fill my mind as the rising sun throws a lattice of intersecting lines across the bedroom floor. Those who talk of politics say a universal darkness is gathering. The King and his Parliament are irreconcilably at odds. Chaos will break over England.”
October 23, 1642
“On this day the Battle of Edgehill was fought in southern Warwickshire: the war is begun.”
February 1643
“I have revolted against my father. With much ado, I have overridden his fearful anxiety and am once again in Oxford, where King Charles has entered the city like Apollo and taken it back from the Parliament’s soldiers. As I rode back here I saw perhaps a dozen soldiers, belonging to the King’s garrison in Abingdon, keeping watch near the barrow on Cutchinlow Hill. They stood guard in a great pit so that if the enemy comes, only their heads will be shot at. Oxford is crowded with soldiers.
The King resides in Christ Church and his Queen in Merton College. A special path has been laid through the grounds of Corpus Christi for them to visit each other. Sometimes the visits are secret, sometimes ceremonial. The court has been shrunken in scale and mapped on to Oxford and the King’s army is billeted here: he is gathering his forces. There are already several thousand foot soldiers and three troops of horses, but more keep coming. The city is too small to cope. It is overfull, disease-ridden, people in the street are hungry and dying. All the colleges have become barracks; Magdalen Hall is an arsenal; where once was the corn market men make bullets, so grain is stored now in the Academic Schools and those that labour there produce military uniforms not arguments or scholarship; Oxford Castle is a prison; Osney Abbey a powder mill.
I am made much of by the scholars. This city suits me well. I studied my reflection in my looking glass today. I am almost seventeen years old and must by now be fully grown: of middling height with a quick look about me. My clothes are smart: black velvet, a plush-gippe and silver shoulder belt. I cut a sparkish figure in town.
. . .
Many of the courtiers have brought their wives and families to Oxford. Suddenly the city is full of beautiful women. Lady Isabella Thynne, daughter of the Earl of Holland, aged about nineteen, is staying in Balliol College with her husband, Sir James Thynne. She comes often to visit her intimate friend, fine Mistress Fanshawe, who is staying at Trinity with her husband, John Fanshawe the poet. These two young women came to chapel this morning, half-dressed, like angels. For a frolic, they tried to visit the President’s lodgings, but old Ralph Kettell could see they meant to make fun of him . . . These dissolute times, the lively courtiers, the soldiers and their rough ways, grieve the President. He has taken to standing by the gate into the college and observing the persons who come to walk in our grove: it has become like Hyde Park in London.”2
For the back story on how I met KP, see Birthday Kisses, Jaguar Smiles.
Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey, My Own Life (New York: New York Review Books, 2015), 48–51.
Yeah..I would have been suspicious of Polish lady and her sudden declaration of love, too... 😂 As for KP, definitely NOT mature enough to be around kids. 😂
One more thought - the rose logo for the Rose & Crown looks strangely like Luther's Rose. I bet there is a historical connection somewhere in the annals...