What's your Anglo?

I've had this post in my mind for about a week; sometimes I just need awhile for it to ferment enough to be satisfying.

Once again multiple events in my life have converged to make me dwell on a subject. This time both "events" happened to be books that I was reading last week. One was one I had bought at Summer conference- A Severe Mercy, the memoirs of a husband and wife who became Christians and then had to deal with great loss; the other was an old favorite of mine that I decided needed rereading, The Wind in the Willows. What could possibly connect a spiritual autobiography with a children's book about talking animals? England, my friends, England. In A Severe Mercy Sheldon and Jean Vanauken travel to Oxford to study, where they eventually convert thanks in part to their numerous Christian friends (including C.S. Lewis). Of course, the characters of The Wind in the Willows live and breathe England.

Thoughts of England floating in my head! What is it about that tiny island off the coast of Europe that makes so many long wistfully for its shores? My theory is that anyone who truly loves literature loves England. We owe it such a great debt, of course, from Shakespeare to A.A. Milne, but it extends beyond that. It isn't just walking around imagining that you hear John Donne preaching the words of his sermons directly to you. Something about the isle strikes us as mysterious; the place where magic lives and adventure lurks.

There are two very distinct images I have of England, both of which are enticing. One stems from Tolkien and the like, and ultimately from Arthurian legend. It is the primeval England, where Romans battle with druids for supremacy. Where magic streams out of every rock. It is the England of fairies and dragons (it is fitting that the patron saint of England is St. George). Of Arthur and his knights and the quest for the grail. Or, moving back to reality, the England of the actual Middle Ages, so flavored in my mind by the Brother Cadfael mysteries. Stephen and Maude slugging it out; dark corridors and harsh conditions; savage meals of meat and mead.

The other, quite opposing view, is of a distinctly more refined England. This is the island of Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, and Charles Dickens. People are refined or, if not aristocratic, still contain a certain charm. An island full of Henry Higginses. And of course the British army spreading the gospel of England across the globe. Rudyard Kipling and his ilk. And Oxford- oh, Oxford! Centuries of learning that seem to take on a life of their own. Everyone you meet literate in Chaucer and Milton, Catullus and Virgil. Where books still hold a power over the soul, and everyone is a poet.

How much of this is fiction? I suspect a great deal- my friend Matt (an English major who I think shares many of my convictions) spent a year at Oxford and was distinctly disappointed by it. Maybe that England, if it ever existed, has faded permanently from view. But maybe, just maybe, the ghosts of Swift and Orwell still dance in the moonlight with Merlin and Galahad and Richard the Lionheart. Someday I plan to go to England and find out. Perhaps I'll even share a pint with the Inklings.