THE 50th ANNIVERSARY GAUDY AT ST HILDA'S COLLEGE, OXFORD by Adèle Geras

I was going to put up the following poem at the end of this piece but conscious of the fact that sometimes people don't read the whole post, I'm putting it right at the top because I want all visitors to this site today to see it. It's published here by kind permission of its author, Wendy Cope, and it is copyright to her, of course.

REUNION

Fifty years have passed since we first met,

And forty seven since we said goodbye,

Embarking on our adult lives – and yet

You are the same, it seems to me. Am I?

Five decades of life, of ups and downs,

Of love and marriage, work and motherhood

And here we are, back in the world of gowns

And college food and essays – and it’s good,

It’s very good, my lovely, clever friends,

To travel to the past and find you here,

To share just one more evening meal that ends

In someone’s room - before we disappear

Into a future, where I’m sad to know

It’s over. It was over long ago.

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On Friday, September 20th, 2013, I travelled by train with my old friend and contemporary, Wendy Cope, from Cambridge to Oxford. We were bound for the Gaudy Dinner, and I had been looking forward to this day for many months. I had filled in the place on the form where it asked us who we'd like to have on the same corridor, as it were, and I just listed all my friends. The result of this was: we were all next to one another which made things very pleasant and facilitated the drinking of cups of tea, gossiping, and generally made all of us feel as though were were quite at home. Anne had the best view and she called us along to look at it.

We had tea. We found out what people had been doing for the last 50 years. We remarked on how very little we'd changed in spite of looking completely different in so many ways. We changed into our glad rags and made our way from Milham Ford, where we were quartered, past South to the new Jacqueline du Pre building. 36 of us were there. Someone from the College took a photo and if I ever get hold of a copy of it, I will post it here on this blog. The Principal addressed us. I can remember being quite intimidated by the Principal in 1963 but now it struck me how young and glamorous she was. She told us about life at St Hilda's since the men had arrived. Their tally of Firsts had gone up and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement, but I rejoiced that the college had been single sex when I was there. Am I an old fogey? I suppose I am, but honestly, if there were men around in the early morning before I had my make up on, I'd have been very disconcerted.

Everyone sat with their old chums. We didn't make an effort to speak or interact with women whom we'd not known when were were young. Was that bad of us? Was it natural? I don't know. What I do know is: it was delightful to catch up with those people we did remember with fondness. Anne, Ann, Wendy, Sian, Liz, another Liz and Esme. We spoke of those friends who were no longer with us, and Wendy made a toast to 'absent friends.' Tamara couldn't be there and neither could Jenny but they'd sent apologies and it's quite possible that now we've all met up again, we might do so informally some other time.

Here's a picture of us during the dinner. It's not a very good shot but if you look carefully you might just see my mugshot staring down from the wall. We were invited to send in a photo on our application form and it was good fun to see everyone displayed like that. After dinner, back we went to Milham Ford. I can honestly say that the only time I was in this building during my time at Oxford was to do Laundry. All the washing machines etc were in there...I lived for all three of my years in a building called Hall, which I always thought of as the main building, but that was perhaps a bit solipsistic! On Saturday morning, I got up early and took a photo of one of the splendid St Hilda's trees

...and went and stood under the window of the very beautiful room I had in my first year, just so that I could photograph the view I had every morning.

And finally, the gates. I've taken two shots of the gates. The first, to set them in context and to show how high and imposing they were....

...and the second to draw attention to those wicked spikes and the general dauntingness of them as things to clamber over in the dark. But I did. I, famous for not being able to climb for toffee, as we used to say; well-known for never having got over a single piece of gym equipment in my entire school career, used to get over these gates. Climb right over them: up one side and down the other. I have no idea at all how I did it. I must have been young.

Two-faced b**t**d

There is an irresistible subject for any History Girl whose blog-posting date is 1st January: Janus. He was a Roman god but not one of the Olympians borrowed from the Greeks and re-named. No, Janus was more of down-and-dirty street god, with no high-falutin' powers or exciting sexual history.

He was the embodiment of a single idea and an idea that is so much a part of our everyday life that we rarely think of it as in any way needing a divine presence. Janus is the god of beginnings.

But he is also the god of gateways and therefore one who looks backwards as well as forwards: hence the two faces. So a god of endings too.

The annual desire to "ring out the Old Year and ring in the New" with parties, more or less alcohol, traditions involving lumps of coal or whatever, are just up Janus's street. Particularly since they are followed by possible hangovers and that other custom of New Year's resolutions. We are looking forwards in the light of what has gone before. "This year I shall lose weight/drink less/be nicer to X, get a two-book deal" or whatever it is can be the triumph of hope over experience.

Every year the image of the old year as a skeleton with a scythe is replaced by a fat gurgling baby. But 2011 was a baby on January 1st last year and rapidly turned into a more skeletally terrifying year than many of us can remember before.

But I bet that's what people felt in Europe as 1348 turned into 1349. And they didn't get much comfort from their new year either.

Still,  I am resolutely a glass half full kind of History Girl so am not going to have any truck with that gloomy view. Even without the Black Death, the people of mid-14th century Europe had so much shorter a life expectancy than we do and so much more brutal a life while they were on this earth that it really does make our own financial and climatic disasters more bearable to contemplate.

"In my end is my beginning," was the motto Mary Queen of Scots embroidered on a cloth while she was in prison awaiting her execution. "In my beginning is my end," echoed T.S.Eliot more pessimistically in East Coker (though he turned it back into the more positive version in the last line).

"The way up and the way down are the same" was one of Heracleitus' apercus, along with the one about not stepping into the same river twice. I think he would have been quite keen on Janus if he had known about him.

I found these interesting facts about Janus on a site called: Livius, which tells me that he was very ancient indeed and the "gods' god."

"Janus also has a temple at Rome with double doors, which they call the gates of war; for the temple always stands open in time of war, but is closed when peace has come. The latter was a difficult matter, and it rarely happened, since the realm was always engaged in some war, as its increasing size brought it into collision with the barbarous nations which encompassed it round about. But in the time of Augustus it was closed, after he had overthrown Marc Antony; and before that, when Marcus Atilius and Titus Manlius were consuls, it was closed a short time; then war broke out again at once, and it was opened."

[Plutarch, Life of king Numa 20.1-2
tr.Bernadotte Perrin]

Even Vergil had a view about these gates:

"The terrible iron-constricted Gates of War shall shut; and safe within them shall stay the godless and ghastly Lust of Blood, propped on his pitiless piled armory, and still roaring from gory mouth, but held fast by a hundred chains of bronze knotted behind his back."

[Virgil, Aeneid, 1.293-296]

Tr. W.F. Jackson Knight

This is the arch of Janus Quadrifrons in Rome, which means four-faced. His usual two aspects are "bifrons", which means two-faced and signifies virility, according to the Livius site. I shall NOT comment on the connection between masculine behaviour and two-facedness. But the four-faced version is for death and destruction. Probably. Or it just refers to the architectural construction of the arch, with four lots of vaulting. Whatever, Janus is certainly the god of doorways, gates and possibly bridges too, which are all two-way entities.

I always see the year as a circle, with December/January down at the bottom - probably a leftover from Infant School iconography. But that encourages the view of the cyclical nature of seasons, life, the universe and everything. And it brings me to Fortune's Wheel. Fortuna, the Roman goddess, originally held a cornucopia, I discovered last week; the Wheel so familiar to us from Tarot packs and the cover of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, was a 16th century invention.

So, the imagery comes and goes, like the year. Happy 1st of Janus's month and a very good New Year to all our History Girls followers.

We have a strong Viking theme coming up with Guest posters including Kevin Crossley-Holland. And watch out for May when we will have the amazing Hilary Mantel.

Meanwhile I hope the temple gates stay firmly shut and peace is given a chance in 2012.