Reflections on an ignored garden

The following column, John Fleming's first for The Daily Princetonian, is reprinted here from the Feb. 6, 1995 edition of the paper.

Even though I knew the forces of reaction were on the march, I was hardly prepared to be invited into the pages of the 'Prince' as a "regular contributor," and native modesty would certainly have forced me to decline were it not for two things.

First, there was the charm of the invitation itself. My editorial host explained that the new journalistic regime wants to make the 'Prince' "look like the campus"—that is, "represent all segments of the Princeton community, different points of view, stuff like that." Then the clincher: "After all, from a certain perspective, the faculty are a part of Princeton." Civic duty is the other spur. I want to draw attention to some of the really important things that happen but go unreported in a journal whose idea of front-page news is "Domino's Challenge to Tiger Pizza".

Quite clearly the most important unreported even of the last year was the completion and dedication of the Class of 1969 Meditation Garden in what had for many student generations been a little pocket of offal between the back side of the Theatre Intime and Murray-Dodge Hall.

I refer to the place about twenty-five yards from the virtual nose of the virtual "Picasso" statue where the thespians used to store a small lumber yard of garishly painted plywood flats and where, on occasion, marginally ambulatory rich old folks would park the Mercedes while sipping champagne at a Museum opening.

The class of '69, as a gift to us on the occasion of their twenty-fifth last year, cleaned up Intime's act. I should have thought that the transformation into a thing of beauty of this spectacular kitchen midden — one of the few parts of campus that actually did look like the 'Prince' even before the implementation of the new editorial policy –– surely deserves to be memorialized in our journal of record if not in song and story.

Well the song and story that you will find if you actually go through this mini-paradise is this. Engraved upon a gorgeous stone that celebrates forever the unity of black and white, the divinely sough harmony of the sexes, the happy codependence of the ying and the yang, is the following:

WE ARE STARDUST (BILLION YEAR-OLD CARBON) WE ARE GOLDEN (CAUGHT IN THE DEVIL'S BARGAIN) AND WE'VE GOT TO GET OURSELVES. BACK TO THE GARDEN JONI MITCHELL — WOODSTOCK 1969

Now that is a great song. That is a true song, a profound song. Must I point out the obvious? It is an Augustinian song. (Don't ask me why the university would give an honorary degree to Bob Dylan, by comparison a mere whining Pelagian with Joni Mitchell out there.)

Yes, it's true that some members of the great class of 1969 used to go around in bandannas and tie-dyes singing tuneless ballads about Che Guevara, burning draft-cards, bras and cannabis and threatening a similar ministration for the Armory and the Stock Exchange. And, of course, they did help trash the farmer's fields up in New York State. But I find it possible to forgive youthful excess that is eventually corrected by a Miltonic vision, good musical taste – and a sense of philological adventure.

Which brings me to the story, as opposed to the song. For the story you have to seek out a small plaque attached to the park bench in the northwest corner of the class of '69 mini-paradise. Here I refer not to a little label that says "Country Casual in commercial obeisance to a manufacturer of garden furniture – there are snakes even in paradise, after all – but to the following inscription:

Hwæ! Se weorthfull Hobytlan Acræfted thisne smyltan stede.

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That inscription is in Old English! On the basis of unique knowledge, I can tell that no more than ten members of the class of '69, max, mastered the rudiments of that tongue. But here's one of them, twenty fiver years out, who writes thus:

Listen! The great Hobbit designed this tranquil place.

To the portentous names of Firestone, Forbes, and Rockefeller, and all the others who in their generations have enriched our common life with beauty and utility we must now add the equally portentous name of Hobbit. Even Joni Mitchell might be caught off guard by the brilliance of lateral thinking that gets back to the garden by paving the parking lot and putting up a paradise. On the next warm day, why don't you take a book over to the Hobbit's Garden and read a spell? It's a tranquil place.

(English professor John V. Fleming is Master of Wilson College and a "Rhodes Scholar from Arkansas whose ratings are still over 50%." His column name is taken from an Old English description of the Clerk of Oxford from Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales.")