Oxford, October 1987
As in my first year at Oxford, I had a secret, but of a different nature. “Only the college doctor knows and he seemed quite happy about the news. I guess doctors are happy to welcome new life.”
Only eight years had passed since women were admitted to Keble College, and I imagined that I was the first student at Keble to get pregnant. I even believed there was a chance that I would be “sent down” (i.e., asked to leave). My grad student husband, who was in America, wanted me to drop out of Oxford and come home. This was my response to him:
“I still don’t understand what the necessity of dropping out is. I go through my day and do my work and don’t even think about being pregnant. I don’t see how it would interfere with my academic work. Other women I know have worked as copyeditors throughout every phase of childbearing. Nearly all the freelance editors have preschool children at home. It is one of the few highly paid, professional jobs that a woman can do at home and also take care of her children.
There is a tendency to overestimate the amount of burden that having a child can create. Before I was pregnant, I had the impression that being pregnant was a traumatic experience that would demand all my attention and energy. It’s not like that; it’s a normal feeling. I don’t look or feel a lot different. Maybe I am lucky. The baby has been good and I have had no side effects like sickness. . . . What it means in practical terms is no alcohol, no smoke-filled rooms, not carrying too many groceries or too many books (not that you can check out that many books anyway).
I want to say more about my attitude towards having a child. The burden of it is exaggerated, and some women may have self-serving reasons for saying it takes a lot of time.
When I came back to Oxford this year, I had the attitude that everything would be the same. Oxford is a wonderful experience that in some ways cannot be repeated. The magic of the first year is simply gone. It’s not just the Oxford experience that that applies to. It applies to all experience—you can’t repeat the novelty of new experience.
At some point in your life, after you have experienced many things, you find a certain emptiness. For me, the emptiness comes from missing out on one of the fundamental parts of life, that is, having children. . . . All the things that you can put before me and say, ‘If you have a child, you have to give up this, you have to give up that’—I’m not sure what exactly I’d have to give up that I couldn’t do later or that would be purely the result of having a child. . . . The only thing they prevent you from having is the sense of being childless. And the sense of being childless is lost forever, destroyed. It’s natural to regret the ending of that sort of existence, especially if you are happy. But beyond the regret for the loss of a childless state of being, I think there is another state of existence which isn’t so terrible after all. The destroying is preliminary to the remaking. If you don’t have the capacity for destroying and remaking, then you lack the capacity for continued life and growth. You are just dead.”
Meanwhile, John Aubrey Faces a Different Type of Destruction
Oxford, 1642
“This morning we were listening to a lecture in the hall when there was a knock at the door and Dr Kettell was called away on college business. A raucous murmur rose, higher and higher pitched, before falling straight down, like a hawk to its prey, when the door opened again and an armed man entered. Jack Dowch, a boy in front of me, whom I have never liked, raised his arm to point at Dr Kettell’s hour-glass. The man smirked and smashed it with the butt of his rifle. There was silence. War is coming. The King and his Parliament cannot agree. Dr Kettell returned and the lecture continued as if nothing had happened. I heard nothing. I stared at the light refracted through the broken glass on the floor. I hoped Dr Kettell would not drag his foot through it. Lots of the young scholars are training instead of attending lectures; in New College gardens there are two squadrons taking shape, one wielding pikes, the other halberts; there are roadblocks and trenches between the colleges. Oxford is becoming a garrison town. My father is summoning me home. I do not wish to go.”
“My friends rode out with me today to Woodstock Manor, where I was excited to visit Rosamund’s Bower,1 built, it is said, in the twelfth century. . . . Now the place is full of ruined walls, five or six feet high, which must once have formed the intricate bower. . . . Meadows surround what is left, and beyond them clouds above the woods, that give a very lovely melancholy prospect. In the high park, there are stag-headed oak trees that have not borne leaf for over a hundred years. They are of great antiquity, which, for me, makes them worthy of veneration. . . . I intended to sketch the remains of the bower today, but my friends were rowdy and impatient, urging me to come away.”
. . .
“Oxford is now held by the Parliament’s soldiers. . . . How now Bellona thunders! And as a clear sky is sometimes suddenly overstretched with dismal cloud and thunder, so England’s serene peace is shattered by the factions of these times.”
. . .
“I have regretfully obeyed my father and am back at Broad Chalke. He is afraid of the trouble that has come to Oxford: the war without an enemy, the gathering storm over England, threatening to rend the country apart, like a great oak struck by lightning. I lie, listless, in my chamber, reading. I am sad and alone again as I was in childhood. I miss my friends and all my books in Oxford. The books I have with me are getting damp and rotten in the heavy Wiltshire air. . . . they get so covered in hoary mould that I cannot tell what colour the leather used to be.”2
I conclude with Thomas Tomkins’s “A Sad Pavan for These Distracted Times” as a preview of what lies ahead. It was composed shortly after the death of the king in 1649. “A quarter of a century earlier, Tomkins had composed music for the King’s Coronation. Now he had seen everything he held dear, destroyed. All that was left was to write the funeral dirge, for his king, and for his life’s work. After the execution of Charles, although Oliver Cromwell was King of England in all but name, he took the title Lord Protector. The monarchy would not be restored until 1660, but the already elderly Tomkins never lived to see it.”3
Rosamund’s Bower was an underground labyrinth where Henry II secretly met his mistress Rosamund Clifford. The bower was demolished when Blenheim Palace was built though there is now a maze in the garden there.
Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey, My Own Life (New York: New York Review Books, 2015), 41, 43–44, 45, 46.
Song Facts. https://www.songfacts.com/facts/thomas-tomkins/a-sad-pavan-for-these-distracted-times.
"If you have a child, you have to give up this, you have to give up that." Having worked with kindergartners through eighth graders for the past 30 years, I can honestly say there is an enrichment of life, not a loss, from being in a community of wide-ranging age groups and backgrounds, including children. If our communities of daily living - our towns, cities, and gathering places - were more inclusive of diverse age groups, the benefits would be enormous. It is reassuring to know that every cell in our body is replaced every seven years. We grow out of childhood, yet hopefully retain the unique gifts of that time in our growth and development. As you note, destroying and remaking is essential to life.
By the way - nice teapot!