Laudator Temporis Acti

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), quoted in Norman White, Hopkins: A Literary Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 84:

They have cut down the beautiful beech in the Garden Quad, which stood in the angle of Fisher's buildings, because it was said to darken the rooms. This is a wicked thing; such a beech no doubt has not its like in Oxford, being a rare tree here. Its destruction is owing to the Fellows Green and Newman. The former is of a rather offensive style of infidelity, and naturally dislikes the beauties of nature.

I think the quotation comes from a letter Hopkins wrote to his mother on October 19, 1863. Google Books' snippet view shows that the quotation also appears in C.C. Abbott, ed., The Further Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 83. White's quotation is different in a couple of minor respects from Abbott's edition, so I'll quote what I can see of the latter:

The trees which stand before the sitting-room make it rather dark, but in the darkest part of the year of course they are bare. This reminds me that they have cut down the beautiful beech in the Garden Quad, which stood in the angle of Fisher's buildings, because it was said to darken their rooms. This is a wicked thing; such a beech no doubt has not its like in Oxford, beech being a rare tree here. Its destruction is owing to the Fellows Green and Newman. The former is of a rather offensive style of infidelity, and naturally dislikes the beauties of nature. It is said that Fisher building[s] are to be pulled down, and I believe Gothic buildings like those I am in are to be put up in their stead. I wish they could have pulled them down first, and let the tree stand.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson, who writes, "The miscreant Fellows of Balliol are philosopher Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882) and ancient historian William Lambert Newman (1834–1923)."

Related post: Strokes of Havoc.

Labels: arboricide