Thursday, March 13, 2008

29 July 1985

Today, I received a letter from Miss Rina Milsom, of the "Swan Rescue Service," Shotesham, St. Mary, Norwich, Norfolk, NR15 1XX. Miss Milsom is concerned for the safety of our five trumpeter swans, having heard that we allowed several hundred Girl Guides to visit the grounds—and get very close to the swans—just a few days ago, and having learned, also that one of our cygnets has disappeared. She wants us to fence the property and to limit access so that the swans will not be disturbed. If we do not comply, she warns that the Service may have to take the swans away from us. I wrote her this letter:

     “Ms. Geraldine Raine has acquainted me with the contents of your letter of 18 July 1985, for which I thank you on behalf of the College. Three of the subjects with which your letter is concerned deserve direct and prompt response.
     First, the College cannot consider a fencing project that would be absolutely intruder proof. Our grounds cover 57 acres. Closing the perimeter gaps would be expensive—I would estimate the cost as in excess of £4000—and would require a barrier that would be conspicuously at odds with a plan we are following to restore the Abbey's 18th-century gardens. (The grounds are, of course, regularly and vigilantly patrolled.)
     Second, we have had no further news of the missing cygnet. Our groundsman has made extensive enquiries and has carefully searched all the waterways in the area, but he has found no trace of the lost bird. We suspect, however, that it left of its own accord. We have found no evidence of any attack upon it. We will, of course, keep on the watch for our stray, but we have no great hopes that we will find it.
     Third, we cannot completely close our grounds to visitors. When we sought grants for some of our considerable restoration projects, we agreed to admit visitors past prescribed times. Though the times of visitation are limited and although visitors are supervised and required to abide by clearly defined regulations, a limited number of people are rather often guests on our grounds. We have not encountered and do not expect to encounter any real difficulty in our efforts to have the visitors and the swans respect each other.
     Representatives of your service will always be welcomed as observers of the swans' circumstances and conditions here at the Abbey. If, for any reason at all, any of your observers think that the College cannot provide the birds with the sort of habitat they need, we will, regretfully, agree that the Service should seek a home for them elsewhere.
     Until we receive such unhappy news from you, however, we will continue to do our very best to ensure the swans' health, safety, and contentment. We have become devoted to them and would sharply miss them were they to leave us.”
     My duty reminder list for today read like this: Check with the student with the infected foot to see whether or not she needs a visit to the National Health Service. Write to J. Neil Waddell, School House, Bishop's Stortford College, Maze Green Road, Bishop's Stortford, Herts., to ask about the catalogue he is preparing of the C.S. Lewis library. Write—or at least start writing—my recommendations to President Donaldson . Write a press release on Nick's appointment as Acting Director. Make sure that the letter prepared on 7/27 is retyped with all the earlier typos removed. Ask Geraldine about deposits on Newcastle Brown Ale bottles that MBA students take out of the Buttery. Write Tony Baldry, MP for the Banbury district, thanking him for meeting yesterday about the planned Wroxton Advisory Committee made up of local citizens. Write David Luker concerning his complaint about John Seagrave's decision regarding Luker's stipend. Check with Marian Cowie about honoraria for Eithne, Paul, Brian Little, and Tara Heinemann for their work in the MBA program.

POSTSCRIPT (ADDED LATER)
In the process of clearing out my files and packing up to leave, I discovered a note from a graduate student who assured me that she would send me the text of a "Sound and Light" script about the Abbey—a project that I had suggested to her. Dated "December 10," it reached me several months after I left the Abbey, probably for the last time. Its historical references to the Abbey included this passage about the first layman to own it: "In 1536 Sir Thomas Pope, who was Treasurer of the Court of Augmentations, the ministry responsible for the newly dissolved monasteries and Henry VIII's close friend, purchased the lease to the 3,000 acres of Wroxton manor and land. ...he endowed the lands to his younger brother John with the stipulation that John and his descendants hold the lease in perpetuity. Thus, it was Trinity College who collected the income from the property. After three marriages and repeated attempts, Sir Thomas died childless in 1554."
     The incongruous mix of an official, historical tone and the hiccup of solecism in the text set me to reflecting again, with a mixture of mild melancholy and amusement of my own compounding, upon the range of disparities Wroxton has always set before me. My last two or three days there in June of 1985 were a perfect example of them.
     Patty and I stayed on after everyone else left except Ron Ward, and he stayed for only one day and night. For at least two days and nights, therefore, we were the sole occupants of the big old house. Suddenly emptied of the staff and students who had made up the community in which we had lived for several weeks, the building seemed dispiritingly chilled and cheerless. It was, furthermore, a far from hospitable place to be. The heat and hot water had been turned off during the nights as part of the shut-down operation. Consequently, whenever we wanted to bathe, we had to get in the tub before 8.00 p. m. or sometime after 8.00 a. m.
     Hot water for morning coffee required a trip from our Room #2 in the west end of the first floor—American translation, "second floor"—down to the ground floor, eastward to the basement, and through the old cloister corridor from the east end of the basement to the far west end of the oldest underpinnings of the Abbey. In a small, jerry-built kitchen there, we could make use of a two-burner electric stove on which we could heat a saucepan of water, which we would then carry up to our room.
     While these circumstances made staying on somewhat grim, they also allowed us the pleasure of having everything virtually to ourselves, and we were able to pretend total and exclusive ownership to the great old building and its grounds, through which we walked in solitude and wonder, only occasionally seeing Robert or one of his parents tending to the beds or clearing brush.
     On our very last morning, as we took our final walk past the kitchen by the north end of the Carriage House, Peter, the chef, came hurrying out the door. He was in the midst of a last clean-up of the cafeteria before vacation. He reached out to shake my hand and, remembering his wet hands, wiped his palms on his apron with murmurs of apology. As we smiled at each other in our goodbye handclasp, he said, "Goodbye, sir. It's been a real pleasure to have you in charge here. I think I speak for all the staff in saying that."
     His farewell, delivered with great care and a deference that contended with a controlled friendliness bent upon avoiding familiarity, was touchingly simple and sincere. It was also accompanied with an obvious, though far from fully successful, effort at casualness. I found it honestly moving. I thanked Peter huskily through a small lump in my throat and, as I told him how grateful to him and his fellow workers I was for their friendship and help, I looked off toward Lady Lake, partly to break off eye contact.
     Over the hounds' cemetery and the path leading to the water a light fog scrimmed the tree trunks and bushes, giving the look of an Oriental landscape to the scene. I felt a sudden urge to leave, to make the departing as short as I could, to put the Abbey behind me. Shortly thereafter, that's exactly what Patty and I did, for we got in our rented car, which we were returning to an agency in Banbury, and began our trip homeward, by train from Banbury to London and then to Southampton and by boat from there to New York.
     As I drove up the long driveway to the village, however, I kept an eye on the rearview mirror, watching the Abbey grow smaller and smaller behind us—and larger and larger in memory.

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