In which she finds a souvenir, and hears angelic voices.
There are choristers singing somewhere in the Bodleian - probably in the divinity school just under us because I can hear them so well. I think they may be practicing for evensong at St. Mary's, which is just a stone's throw away. It's very beautiful here, all burnished wood and the smell of old book and the painted glass managing a demure glow in the misty gray light of a late afternoon on what was another cool and drizzly day. I can hear the soprano soloist's voice rising above the hush of pages turning and typing at keyboards and it makes me wish I could sing, or fly, or both. It's the auditory equivalent of watching a bird with a really big wingspan bursting into flight out of a rustling tree.
I actually really like the weather here. I like a cold climate. Maybe not quite such a wet cold, but I'll take it.
I just opened up MS. Rawl. D. 1451 and suddenly feel like I have ALL kinds of free time because "not useful" is a pretty good way to put it. I'll give it a description on principle, but I don't think I'll be spending a king's ransom to have the damn thing digitized. Interesting for what it is - a seventeenth century scholar's journal of excerpts from books - but I'm going to go ahead and gamble that it wasn't older and better than the other full (non excerpta) mss I have. Could be wrong, and boy will my face be slightly pink in the cheeks if that happens, but I'll probably be well into my dotage by the time De universo finally gets edited, ceteris paribus.
Talked to Adored Advisor last night and was like "Well, a valid stemma and edition is right out." And he's like yeah, that probably would have taken about 10 years anyway." Oh, okay, thanks! I will say that I don't really mind that he's always asking me to do stuff like that for term papers and/or my dissertation, because I think I'm better for it. But still: really? 10 years? Never thought you might mention that earlier?
Have had a spring in my step all day - two fewer mansucripts to worry about, one less leg of trippage (I am getting tired, kiddos), one more day in Oxford, though I may be in the B&B - the landlady will sort it out but has promised me a room somewhere - her words were "we shan't leave you motherless!" which I found very endearing, I'm very fond of her. The home stretch in sight - and I will come back with my head up and feathers in my cap, my figurative horse jingling with a harness full of pilgrim's brasses, happy to see my family and my own pillows and to get back to work in the fields of home. I've got a Taurus moon - I love travelling and I really love coming home. There and Back Again. I'll never be an expatriate - at least not for more than the occasional year or two - but I'll always be a traveler.
Today on my way to Balliol I stopped in a tiny shop crammed full of pens and nibs and sealing wax and racks and racks of papers and envelopes and leather-bound journals and bespoke leather boxes for your personal papers available (said the sign) and baskets full of tiny bottles of ink and large bottles of ink, paperweights and ink erasers that were large and smooth as rocks from the Oak Bluffs beach at Martha's Vineyard, cards and stock and just everything. Venetian masks, overstuffed chairs, rare and just plain old books in Latin and Greek upstairs. It is called "Scriptum" and it has a website with tiny pictures: http://www.scriptum.co.uk/index.php
Upstairs I also found a box of old prints and stuff, and crammed behind the matted ones I found an unmatted repro of a steel engraving, rather large, depicting the view of Oxford as seen from the top of the Bodleian. Which is the view I have seen as I look out of the window of Duke Humfrey's. I was so happy to have it for 15 pounds. Also a little envelope of bookplates for my mother. I had to have them for her because they're done in a pretty 1930s style, ornamented words in a block, saying simply "A BOOK TO KEEP." And room for her name. These made me think of her because she is not a book owner, she's a voracious library user. She checks out anywhere between 10-15 books a week at the inside, reading almost one a day and skimming others on craft or cooking or whatever (or they're for my dad). If she actually buys a book to own and have, it's because it's true love.
Dinner with
m_nivalis ! I am going to miss my new friend.