Oxford & Bath: The England We Always Imagined

Bath, England

Although London is a wonderful city, its increasing globalization makes it harder to find the “England” I imagined growing up. So Tom and I ventured out of the city for two day-trips, one to Bath and one to Oxford. And we are sure glad we did.

Bath
Bath, held so much beauty that it seemed to glisten among the ideal green hillsides. It has almost always been a popular destination from the Roman era till today.

During the Roman era, the Romans constructed temples and bathhouses here because of its proximity to 3 natural springs. The ancient Roman baths have been excavated and remain the primary tourist attraction in the town.

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The main Roman bath

Starting with the Roman baths, you can literally walk through the ages as you tour the town from the magnificent Medieval Abbey to the pervading Georgian architecture.

The whole town felt otherworldly and like one royal palace. The buildings were stately and so well-maintained that they looked new, and yet their style made it perfectly clear that they were not. Perhaps this is why the town made us feel like we were stepping back in time as opposed to looking back in time. 

It left us nostalgic for a different era. And the fact that it was the hometown of Jane Austen added to the romanticism of the place.

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Notice some symmetry of our own in this photo? Hint: there are two Jaime's :)

Nevertheless, the architecture is deceptively “perfect.” The stylistic preference for symmetry and the simultaneous attempt to avoid additional taxes, led to painting on additional windows where none existed. At first glance, it isn’t noticeable, perhaps because our mind prefers to see the symmetry, even if it isn’t real.

Oxford, England

Oxford
And then there is Oxford, my personal favorite. It’s hard not to engage your imagination as you tour this town. Home to Oxford University and its 38 distinct colleges, you feel smarter just walking through the streets. 

So many famous scholars and (particularly interesting to me as a literature major) literary giants have walked the same streets as they birthed in their minds fantastical lands such as Narnia, the Shire, Alice’s Wonderland, and more. Its meandering river, beautiful gardens, darling shops, awe-inspiring buildings, and thick atmosphere of scholarly tradition make it immediately clear how this town could have served their imaginations and prompted their literary efforts.

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The absolute highlight of the day was our visit to The Eagle and Child pub. We sat in a small room at the back where J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and a few others, self-named the “Inklings,” met every Tuesday morning to discuss and critique each other’s writings.

Although Tom and I enjoy Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings trilogy, we have a special fondness for C.S. Lewis and his many writings (not just his Chronicles of Narnia, for which he is most widely known). We read many of his works together (such as The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, The Great Divorce, etc…) and discussed them while dating each other in high school. We continue to return to his writings today as a creatively uncommon source of common sense. 

I could go on and on about Lewis, but I have asked my good friend, scholar, and philosophy professor, David Turner to do us the favor instead. He offers a much more intriguing take on Lewis; enjoy! 

Enter David:

C.S. Lewis (compliments Getty Images)

C.S. Lewis (1898 – 1963) was an Irishmen in England who is mostly known for writing children’s literature (think, The Chronicles of Narnia) and Christian theology that made sense. His works have been read with great affection by a wide and diverse audience for well over seventy years. So what accounts for such enduring interest and a faithful following by so many different people?

Lewis can take hold of our imaginations.

Although this doesn’t settle the question, any satisfactory response will account for Lewis’ phenomenal ability to creatively draw readers into other worlds and visualize what it would be like to live there. Lewis invites readers to imaginative worlds like Narnia and Perelandra, places which are very much unlike the real world. These worlds have dragons, talking fawns, mermaids, bubble trees and other sorts of things we find in fairy tales. When we “walk” through these lands, we find ourselves stirred. These fairy lands arouse longings and desires we did not know we had and for what we know not what. If we are honest, we admit the genuineness of these longings. Time spent in these worlds elicits real desires and emotions, which linger long after we have finished the book and returned from fairyland to the real world. Oftentimes, we find ourselves looking for something in the real world that will satisfy these longings and desires the other world has elicited. Here we owe Lewis a great debt. For Lewis has just taken us through an important imaginative exercise.

According to Lewis, a healthy imagination will go to fairy worlds where apples are made of gold and consider gold apples in order to love real apples. While we derive great benefits by considering what it would be like to hold a gold apple, look at its color and feel its weight, time spent with a gold apple should also educate us about real apples. This is because real apples are genuinely more enchanting than gold ones, says Lewis. What is real is to be desired over what is not real.

However, many works of fiction today invite us out of the real world and into another world, and persuade us to stay. Rather than an invitation to a journey that returns home, it is an invitation to escape from the real world and drift. The longer we remain in the other world, the more we become disappointed, even disapproving, of the real world. We find real apples aren’t very interesting after all. Lewis instinctively knew this, and for this reason took great care to tend the imagination of his readers. In an essay, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children,” Lewis writes about the dangers of fantasies that dispose readers to escape the real world, or return entirely discontented with it. Lewis offers his readers a journey that is healthy for the imagination: fiction that carries the reader to fantastical worlds in order to learn how to live with a deeper love for the real world. Even the protagonists in his stories return to the real world after they have spent time in the other world.

Maybe this is why so many readers have turned to C.S. Lewis to help them peer through the looking glass. For myself, when I finish a book by Lewis I feel as though my imagination has been baptized. I’m immersed in another world in order to embrace and love this world. 

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