special interest to you. Yet those who have been to our Cambridge would
find it indeed hard to recognise it in the place I am now about to put
before you. It changed beyond recognition within the long lifetime of
the author, whose reminiscences, put down during his long last illness,
will be the text of my lecture. He had remarkable opportunities of
observing University life, and many faculties of making the best of
them. His hard shrewd face looks down upon us when we take our wine
after dinner as guests in the combination room of Christ’s College,
and is an indication of his character. He was no Boswell; for he
lacked appreciation of the men he described and though capable of
devoted friendship, had little affection for many of them. But he is an
admirable raconteur with a shrewd eye for the absurdity of a situation,
and will, I think, prove excellent company for us during the time at my
disposal.
Many of my audience have doubtless visited our English Cambridge before
this war broke out, and will be able to check the remarks I am about to
make. An easy run from London brings the traveller to a railway station
so inconvenient that it could only have been imagined in a bad dream;
and he finds himself in the outskirts of a fair sized and rapidly
increasing town.
A dull drive through a street of shops brings you to the colleges;
and, if you happened to arrive at midday, you would find a stream of
undergraduates in cap and gown with women students from Girton and
Newnham issuing from or flowing into the lecture rooms. Supposing your
host to be in his college, you would find the courts populous with
undergraduates, some in cap and gown, some in flannel blazers, and
some, _proh pudor!_ in evening pumps or even in carpet slippers. If
you asked a question of one of them, you would be answered obligingly,
if not with elaborate courtesy. Your host (a fellow of the college)
would probably be working with a few pupils; and when they withdrew
you would either be given lunch in his rooms or taken to his house. A
few friends would be asked to meet you. The meal would be, I hope, a
good one, and several would not even take the wine which was provided.
Why I say this will appear later. If it were summer, you would have
been taken for a walk in the “Backs,” and have found the narrow river
crowded with boats full of gaily flannelled men and a good many ladies;
and, I think, you would have admired the brightness of the scene.
You might witness a cricket match, and, later in the evening, have
watched the eights practising, with their coaches running, cycling, or
riding beside them. If you dined in the college hall, you would find
a good if not elaborate dinner neatly served; and the company, if not
brilliant, would be at least variegated. In the combination room, over
a modest glass of port and perhaps a cigar, the conversation would turn
on many topics. The presiding fellow, who has been everywhere, would
be laying down the law to a somewhat inattentive audience about hotels
in Buda-Pesth and the old college friends he had met on the Yukon
River. A famous man of letters would be giving his views on finance
and town planning. A chemist and a mathematician would be absorbed in
discussing bird life. A great authority on art might be explaining
his views on the religion of the future to a D.D., who ought to know,
being by repute a heretic, but is somewhat inattentive as he is trying
to listen, and at the same time endeavouring to explain to another
man what are the prospects of the college boat. An anthropologist of
European fame is being instructed by the junior fellow how the last
fashionable dance ought to be performed; and the tutor, a silent man,
suddenly breaks in with a question as to the progress of one of his
pupils. Naturally the guest is not neglected; he would perhaps rather
listen, especially as everyone is talking about something he does not
make his specialty, as all sensible people do after dinner. It may be
our supposed guest is taken to the Master’s Lodge and finds several
undergraduates on terms of easy familiarity with the “dons” and even
with the, in old days unapproachable and awful, Head of the college. I
am of course speaking of happier days before the War had depleted our
numbers and when we all felt friendly and sociable.
In every scene in this imaginary sketch the contrast with Cambridge
in the eighteenth century would be apparent. Except for parts of the
buildings all is changed. In one respect the traveller who visited
Cambridge a century ago would have had the advantage. Had he approached
by either of the hills, by Madingley or the Gog Magogs, the town would
have appeared more beautiful than now. Here is a description of his
first view of the place by John Henry Newman in 1832, who was too great
an admirer of the beauties of Oxford to fail to see how lovely was her
rival:
“CAMBRIDGE, July 16th, 1832.
“Having come to this place with no anticipations, I am quite taken by
surprise and overcome with delight. This, doubtless, you will think
premature in me, inasmuch as I have seen yet scarcely anything, and
have been writing letters of business to Mr. Rose and Rivingtons. But
really, when I saw at the distance of four miles, on an extended
plain, wider than Oxford, amid thicker and greener groves, the Alma
Mater Cantabrigiensis lying before me, I thought I should not be able
to contain myself, and in spite of my regret at her present defects
and past history, and all that is wrong about her,[18] I seemed about
to cry _Floreat in eternum_. Surely there is a _genius loci_ here, as
in my own dear home; and the nearer I came to it, the more I felt its
power. I do really think the place finer than Oxford, though I suppose
it isn’t, for everyone says so. I like the narrow streets; they have
a character, and they make the University buildings look larger by
contrast. I cannot believe that King’s College is not far grander than
anything with us; the stone, too, is richer, and the foliage more thick
and encompassing. I found my way from the town to Trinity College
like old Œdipus, without guide, by instinct; how, I know not. I never
studied the plan of Cambridge.”
Ill paved, ill drained as was the town, narrow as were the streets,
it must have been picturesque to the eye, and the colleges, unspoiled
by modern additions, are very attractive, to judge by the old prints.
On the whole, however, I think our verdict would have been that old
Cambridge was a pleasanter place for us to explore than for its
inhabitants to live in.
Let us now exercise our imagination a little more and try to fancy what
a day spent in Cambridge would have been like to a stranger towards the
close of the eighteenth century. One thing, I think, may be assumed
to be unaltered. Had he come to visit a friend, he would have been
hospitably received. Let us suppose that he also arrived at midday in
summer when it was full term and that, to quote Wordsworth, he--
“At the Hoop alighted ... famous inn.”
He certainly would not have met a troop of young men, let alone
maidens, going in and out of lecture. The lectures were over: and the
lecture rooms were never crowded. Perhaps some noisy fellow-commoners
might have stared and jeered at him and quite possibly have insulted
him. Most colleges were very empty of students, many rather
dilapidated. He would have dined in the middle of the day, and the
hall would have been hot, noisy, and probably ill ordered. Joints were
passed from one diner to another and carved according to taste. At the
high table, where he would dine, would be the resident fellows, a stray
nobleman or so, and a few rich young men, called fellow-commoners. A
good deal of beer would be drunk, and most of the company would be
rather cross and sleepy after the meal. The fellows, who were nearly
all clergymen, would show themselves obsequious to the noblemen,
uneasily familiar with the fellow-commoners, and completely oblivious
of the scholars and pensioners, who dined at the lower table, and of
the sizars, or poor scholars, who, in some cases (certainly at an
earlier date), waited on them, and after dinner ate what had been left
on the high table. There were no games to watch: and in the afternoon
probably our guest would be mounted and taken for a ride. In the
evening supper would be served and perhaps a considerable amount of
wine drunk in the combination room. As political feeling ran high at
the time, the company would probably have quarrelled. Very few fellows
had ever left their native country. A few had hardly known any places
save their homes and their University.
Some must have been strangely uncouth in manner and appearance. Most
of them were, as I have said, clergymen, and, of course, bachelors;
but their practice of celibacy was not always such as to fulfil the
ideals of the advocates of that holy state in the days of the saints.
But we have not yet finished our day. Supper would have been followed
by an adjournment to a small, dirty, ill-lighted public house, and the
walk home to bed might not be inaptly compared to the convolutions of a
corkscrew.
That such was the University in the days of our author I fancy some
extracts from the book before me will convince you. He admits that in
his youthful days Cambridge had sunk lower than it ever had before, and
he trusted that such days as his might never recur.
We have kept him waiting too long. Let me present to you Henry Gunning,
Esquire Bedel of the University of Cambridge. He tells us he was a
son of a clergyman in the neighbourhood and the descendant of “that
admirable prelate,” Dr. Peter Gunning, Bishop of Ely in the reign of
Charles II. He entered Christ’s College in 1784, and died in 1855,
well over eighty years of age, after a life spent in the University.
During his long last illness he dictated his reminiscences.[19] He had,
at an earlier period written some memoirs; but, on reflection, after a
serious illness he had decided to burn all the papers. In his own words:
“I kept an account of the decision of the Heads on any disputed
point.... My notes became much swelled by rumours of _jobbing_ among
the higher powers, which, though sometimes defeated, were generally
so skilfully conducted that they more frequently succeeded. I had
collected sufficient materials for publishing a pretty large volume,
but was about that time attacked by a sudden and dangerous illness,
which afforded more opportunity for serious reflection than I had
before accustomed myself to.... I was apprehensive that I might have
inserted some things (which I believed to be facts) upon questionable
authority.... I feared that the papers might fall into the hands of
some bookseller whose only object would be gain, to obtain which he
would not scruple to whitewash men whose characters ought to have been
drawn in the darkest colours, or to speak in extremely harsh terms of
others on whose eccentricities I only wished to pass a slight censure.
Too ill to admit of delay, I decided on committing all my papers to
the flames, nor did I for fifty years regret the step.” Gunning died
before his task was completed: his memoirs terminated abruptly; but the
most interesting part of his work has happily survived, and the earlier
reminiscences, as is customary with the aged, are more full and vivid
than the later.
I shall not attempt to moralise or discant much upon his story; but I
intend to give it in his own words with a few remarks in passing.
Henry Gunning entered Christ’s College as a sizar, a poor scholar
who was at one time supposed to be fed by what was left of the meals
provided for the fellows (a Christ’s College sizar being the equivalent
of a “servitor” at Oxford), though Gunning says nothing of this.[20]
As we shall see, he led anything but the life of a humble dependant
whilst at the University. His college had been and now is among the
most distinguished at Cambridge. It had produced John Milton and Ralph
Cudworth, and had been a famous centre of the intellectual life of the
seventeenth century. It was the college of William Paley, who was
Senior Wrangler in 1763, and it was destined to be the school of many a
famous man, among them Charles Darwin. But only three men entered with
our hero in 1785.
The two tutors, Mr. Parkinson and Mr. Seale, were in a sense men of
mark. The former had been disappointed in failing to be elected Master;
and was engaged to a very beautiful young lady, whose numerous admirers
made him at times uncomfortable. As Mr. Parkinson had an eighteen-mile
ride to get to his lady-love, he lectured in cap and gown, but also
booted and spurred, and snubbed young Gunning when he asked for
explanations of difficult points in the lecture.
Accordingly his pupil gave up lectures and decided not to read at
all; but at the end of the term the tutor spoke most kindly and
encouragingly, as an old friend of his pupil’s father. The result was
that Gunning became, for a time at least, a reading man, and was
much encouraged by his friend Hartley, a Yorkshireman who shewed him
the solution of the difficulties which Parkinson was too impatient to
explain. When Parkinson examined Gunning he found that his progress
was most satisfactory, encouraged him most kindly to persist; and when
Gunning told him of a man who was reputed to read twelve hours a day
in hopes of surpassing the expected Senior Wrangler, he remarked, “If
he mean to beat him he had better devote six hours to reading and six
hours to reflecting on what he has read.”
Seale, the other tutor, was a good teacher and a really humorous
lecturer. “Nothing could be pleasanter than the hour passed at his
lecture, such was his kindness to all.... When any ludicrous blunder
occurred ... he joined in the laugh as heartily as any of us.” Seale
seems to have been a very able scholar, but somewhat quarrelsome: he
became chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury; but had to resign
because he quarrelled with the butler about the wine supplied at the
chaplains’ table. However, Gunning had nothing to complain of in regard
to the education he got from his college.
He was not always a close student; and both his diversions and his
friends are more interesting in illustrating his times, than are his
tutors or his reading. May I for a moment digress and explain the
constitution of the University? Except for a very few professors and
the officials--Vice-Chancellor, Proctors, Taxors, and Moderators,
etc.--the University was practically non-existent. The colleges did
virtually all the teaching and were self-contained bodies.[21]
A man got little or no instruction outside his own college; the
University examined him and gave him his degree--that was all.
The real rulers of the University were the Masters of the colleges.
Most of them were highly placed ecclesiastics, and, consequently,
had frequently to be absent from Cambridge; but as the “Heads” might
marry, and fellows had to resign their position on taking a wife, they
constituted a permanent element, and became all-powerful. I myself have
often heard stories of the time when the Master of a college, and his
family, belonged to an aristocracy to which no ordinary Master of Arts
could hope to be admitted; and, you may be sure, the ladies who reigned
in the lodges were very careful to keep the wives and daughters of
such married graduates as happened to live in the town at their proper
distance. Gunning will have plenty to say about them. The fellows of
the colleges were for the most part non-resident; only the tutors and
a few old men resided with any permanence in the colleges. With a
few exceptions the fellows who stayed in Cambridge were either very
young men or very strange old bachelors who seldom left the town. What
instruction was given was given by the college tutors, and most of
the fellows who lived in Cambridge served as curates to the different
village churches. Some were almost entirely idle men, and one, who
shall be nameless, found them no little mischief to do.
The fellows dined at the high table, to which the nobility were also
admitted. Noblemen, _i.e._ peers, the eldest sons of peers, and men
who could prove royal descent, had till comparatively recently had the
right of proceeding to the degree of M.A. after two years of residence
without taking any examination or the degree of B.A. In Gunning’s early
days peers wore on state occasions a magnificent academical dress
varying in colour according to taste. Then came the fellow-commoners,
men of wealth, who paid far higher fees than the ordinary students
and dined with the fellows. These were also distinguished by the
magnificence of their academic attire. It is difficult to imagine a
much worse system of education. The nobility and fellow-commoners
were kept apart from the ordinary men, often grossly flattered by
the fellows and even by the Masters of the colleges. Work was not
expected of them, and their example was often pernicious alike to the
students and to the younger fellows. The majority of the young men
were classed as scholars, who with the fellows formed what is called
the “society” of the colleges, pensioners, and sizars or servitors.
Almost all were intending to take Holy Orders: a few, however, became
barristers or medical practitioners. The University was very small. In
1748 there were only 1500 on the books of the colleges; this includes
non-residents, who were almost certainly in the majority. In 1801
the total of residents in the University, including, I suppose, the
servants who slept in college, was 803.
Gunning certainly kept good company, and this is how he enjoyed
himself. He was a keen sportsman, and Cambridge afforded excellent
opportunity for him to indulge his taste. The fenlands were not
preserved and abounded with waterfowl. Young lads and boys were always
ready to carry the game and to provide poles to leap the fen ditches.
The fishing was excellent, and so both summer and winter could be fully
occupied by the sportsman. We hear nothing of any games or athletics
from Gunning. Everybody rode, but there was apparently no hunting. Here
is a riding story told by Mr. Gunning. Dr. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff,
was remarkable for holding many posts simultaneously and of impartially
neglecting the duties of all. Yet he possessed undoubted gifts, and
his was the only criticism of Gibbon’s famous chapters about the rise
of Christianity which the historian deemed worthy of his attention.
He took a high degree in 1759 and five years later became Professor of
Chemistry. For two years he held the chairs of Chemistry and Divinity
together; and for thirty-two years he was Bishop of Llandaff, and
Regius Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, discharging the duties
of both offices from his house in the Lake district in the North of
England. Apropos of this house in Westmorland, Gunning tells a good
story. The proprietor of the Cock Inn out of compliment to Dr. Watson
changed the name of his hostelry to the “Bishop’s Head” and painted his
Lordship on the signboard. The ostler, who had saved money, built a
rival hotel which he called “The Cock.” Thereupon the landlord of the
“Bishop’s Head,” finding custom leaving him, put an inscription under
the portrait, “This is the Old Cock.”
Dr. Watson’s deputy professor was Dr. Kipling, who was very unpopular
from the way in which he held aloof from the undergraduates, so the
young men resolved to have their revenge. Dr. Kipling’s principal
recreation, to quote our author, “was a daily ride to the hills,
which at that time was the most frequented road among members of the
University. Returning one day, he picked up an ostrich feather which he
saw drop from the hat of a lady, who was proceeding very slowly about
fifty yards in advance.
“On overtaking her he presented the feather, accompanied by an
expression relative to the good fortune in being able to restore it.
The lady thanked him for his kindness, and, expressing her annoyance
that her servant was not in attendance, said she had just left General
Adeane’s.... The Doctor begged her not to be uneasy, as he should have
much pleasure in attending her until her servant appeared. They had
not proceeded far before they began to meet parties of young men who
were going out for their morning’s ride. From the significant glances
that were exchanged between the parties Dr. Kipling could not fail to
discover he had got into bad company. That he might rid himself of his
new acquaintance, ... he clapped spurs to his horse, which had been
selected with his well-known Yorkshire discernment. The lady was well
mounted, and applying her whip briskly kept up with the Doctor.” Thus
they rode together through the town, and the story was long related
in the University. The lady’s name was Jemima Watson. No relation to
the Bishop and Professor of that name! You will, I think, see that
Mr. Gunning had a keen eye for character and no little malice; and I
propose to deal with some of the strange personalities of the time
depicted by him.
On taking a very good degree, our author might reasonably have looked
for a fellowship, but this was not possible because “his county” was
already in possession of one. I may explain that it was the law that at
a small college like Christ’s the fellows should be so selected that
no two persons born in the same county should be on the list together.
This was intended to protect a college from being monopolised by a
single county, by the fellows choosing their friends. But at this time
the office of Esquire Bedel was vacant, and Gunning was elected to
it. The Vice-Chancellor at this time was attended on all ceremonial
occasions by three Esquire Bedels and also by Yeoman Bedels. The
former officers still exist, but their number has been reduced to
two. Gunning’s colleagues were Mr. William Mathew, Senior Fellow and
Bursar of Jesus College, and the famous Mr. Beverley, of Gunning’s
own college. Mathew, an excellent man, gave his friend the following
description of the duties of his office. They were first _carving_ at
the Vice-Chancellor’s table, and in this Beverley was unrivalled and
always kept the best slices for himself.
Second only to the art of carving was the practice of _punctuality_,
which was thus defined: “The statutes of the University enjoin the
Respondent to dispute from the _first_ to the _third_ hour. The
authorities consider the statutes to be complied with provided the
Disputant is in the box _before_ the clock strikes _two_ and does not
leave it until after it has struck three.... There are other points
of practice which are soon learned.” As says Gunning, “most of them
were founded on _a violation of the statutes_. I inserted them in a
memorandum book.”
The senior Esquire Bedel was Mr. Beverley, a most remarkable man.
Gunning hated him with all his heart and introduces him in these words:
“If his own account of himself is to be believed (and perhaps _in this
instance_ his word may be taken), he was the most profligate man in
the University. He obtained his office by the influence of the famous
Lord Sandwich, the friend and betrayer of Wilkes, immortalised as
Jenny Twitcher. Beverley had a large family, borrowed from everybody,
and cheated all he could. Lord Sandwich entertained magnificently at
Hinchinbrooke Castle, about fourteen miles from Cambridge, and Beverley
was not above procuring invitations for members of the University who
paid him.”
He must have had many attractive qualities and was a good musician.
People were always trying to get him out of debt, especially Mr. Basil
Montagu, a son of Lord Sandwich.
Montagu collected money to free him from his pressing liabilities
and then invited Beverley to tea and read him a long lecture on his
extravagance. Poor Beverley departed in tears, not having been told
what his benefactor intended to do. Montagu felt he had been too
severe and feared that Beverley might give way to despair and even kill
himself. But, instead of finding the prodigal a corpse, he heard sounds
of music if not of dancing, and found his volatile friend seated at his
table with a bowl of punch and several boon companions. “After this
exhibition Montagu troubled himself no further about Beverley’s debts.”
A notable character of the time was a certain Jimmy Gordon, who had
fallen from a position of affluence to one of extreme degradation.[22]
Seeing the Master of Trinity, who was also Bishop of Bristol, Gordon
begged of him. His Lordship replied, “If you can find a greater
scoundrel than yourself, I will give you a half a crown.” Off went
Gordon and told Beverley that the Master wished to speak to him. The
Master, when Beverley came, remarked, “You have been misinformed, Mr.
Beverley.” Up came Jimmy at this moment and said, “I think, my lord, I
am entitled to my half crown.”