Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 3

King's Bridge, beneath which we now glide, is a single delicate rib of stone, a marked contrast to the elaborate woodwork of Queens', and to the three arches of grey stone and bal.u.s.traded parapet of Clare, the next in order. Between these the river widens, and the view opens out on either side; a s.p.a.cious meadow dotted and bounded with elms and limes on the west, and on the east as s.p.a.cious a lawn beyond which rise the buildings of King's and of Clare College, and the west front of that glory of Cambridge and of the world, King's College Chapel.

This reach of the river used, a few years ago, to be the scene of a pretty annual merry-making, known as the "Boat Show," which formed part of the attractions of the "May Week."[13] Hither the College boats which had been contending for precedence in the May Races used to row up in procession and draw up side by side in a ma.s.s occupying the whole breadth of the stream. Each crew rose in turn with uplifted oars to salute the victors who had attained (or retained) the Headship of the River; after which the procession returned to the boat houses two miles below. (The races were rowed two miles below again, where the stream is wide enough for the due manipulation of an eight-oar.)[14]

[Footnote 13: See page 17.]

[Footnote 14: See Chapter VI.]

Clare Bridge pa.s.sed, the College gardens of Clare and Trinity Hall (which last must not be confounded with the larger and later foundation of Trinity College) flank our course on either side for a short s.p.a.ce, till the next bridge, Garret Hostel Bridge, which proclaims its non-Collegiate origin by being (like Newnham Bridge) a tasteless structure of iron. It is, in fact, a public thoroughfare; the road leading to it, Garret Hostel Lane, being the solitary survival of the dozen or so of little streets which gave access to the River from mediaeval Cambridge, till the banks were usurped by the Colleges. And in its name we have the last surviving reminder of those "Hostels," or officially recognised lodging houses, which, before Colleges came into being (and for some while after), provided accommodation for the swarming students of the mediaeval University.

Garret Hostel itself, together with others, was swallowed up by the gigantic College which we now reach, Trinity. Trinity Bridge, a cycloidal curve carried on three arches, is led up to on either side by the "long walk of limes" sung by Tennyson in "In Memoriam"; and the splendid range of chestnuts which, as we pa.s.s beneath it, opens upon us to the north-west, forms the boundary between the paddocks of Trinity and St. John's. On the east rises the vast fabric of Trinity Library built by Sir Christopher Wren, with its magnificent range of arched windows and its warm yellow sandstone, an occasional violet block adding to the effect, a veritable feast of quiet colour, especially when glowing in the evening sun, and contrasting pleasingly with the paler tint of the New Court of St. John's College, which, with its plethora of crocketed pinnacles, here bounds our view to the left front. To the right front rises the square tower of St. John's Chapel, picturesquely reflected in the still waters.

A slight bend in the stream, overhung by great elms, brings us to St.

John's Bridge, a fine three arched structure of brick and stone built in 1696.[15] Beyond it the College buildings rise, like those of Queens', directly from the water--to the west the white stone abutments of the New Court, to the east the red brick walls and oriel window of the Library, the most beautiful building of its cla.s.s in either Cambridge or Oxford. On it we can read the date 1624, and the letters I. L. C. S. standing for _Johannes Lincolnensis Custos Sigilli_, which commemorate the benefactor John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, to whose generosity we owe this gem of architecture. In his day, and for long after, St. John's was quite the largest College in Cambridge, rivalled only, for a moment, by Emmanuel. The present supremacy of Trinity did not begin till late in the eighteenth century.

[Footnote 15: Sculptures over the piers represent the bridge itself, a very unusual feature.]

The river is here spanned by the latest of the College bridges, a single arch of stone high in air, carrying a pathway vaulted over with stone and lighted on either side by grated windows, after the fashion of the "Bridge of Sighs" at Venice. It was built about 1830 to form a communication between the older part of the College on the eastern side of the river and the recently erected New Court on the western, while giving no opportunity for illicit leaving of the College. As has been already stated, students, while bound to be inside the College gates all night, are not bound to keep to their rooms, but may wander about the Courts at any hour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _St. John's Bridge._]

With St. John's the Collegiate buildings cease and are succeeded by the last remaining "Hithes," or quays, used for commercial traffic, which of old lined the banks for the whole length of Cambridge. We read of Corn Hithe, Pease Hithe, Flax Hithe, Garlic Hithe and others.

For the river was to old Cambridge all and more than all that the railways are now, the great artery of traffic, by which goods were far more easily and cheaply conveyed than along the roads of the period, which were always rough and often mere "Sloughs of Despond." Most especially was this the case with fuel, so that in the seventeenth century it was a familiar local saying that "here water kindleth fire." These ancient hithes, like the street-ways leading to them, have been almost all absorbed by the various College precincts. The last, as we have said, are to be seen yet, still in use, with barges (still laden chiefly with firewood) lying at them, below St. John's, by the side of the "Great Bridge," that famous pa.s.sage of the river to which Cambridge owes both its name and its very existence. Opposite the lowest of them there is one more riverside College, Magdalene, an old monastic educational establishment turned to its present purpose at the time of the Reformation by Lord Thomas Audley of Saffron Walden, a courtier of King Henry the Eighth, who had obtained a grant of it from that rapacious monarch.

Our Cam byway here ends; for the river here pa.s.ses out of the populated area of Cambridge. It is noteworthy that this area abuts on its banks to the same extent and no more than it did seven hundred years ago. The King's Ditch, which then bounded it, left the stream at the King's Mill, where our voyage started, and rejoined it just opposite Magdalene, where that voyage closes. It is well worth while, however, to retrace our course, for we shall find fresh loveliness in the reverse views of the exquisite scenery through which we have pa.s.sed; and may note the many disused archways in the College walls, which tell how, scarcely a generation ago, this unique gem of English landscape was actually defiled by being used as a shamelessly open sewer.

CHAPTER III

=Queens' College=, Erasmus, Cloisters, Carmelites, Chapel.--Old Mill Street.--=King's College=, Henry the Sixth, King's and Eton, Henry's "Will."--King's College Chapel, Wordsworth, Milton, Windows, Rosa Solis, Screen, Stalls, Vaulting, Side-Chapels, View from Roof.

When we disembark once more at Silver Street Bridge, we find ourselves standing beneath the sombre old red-brick walls of Queens', indented just above us by a small projecting turret which we should not leave without notice, for it bears the name and, by tradition, was a.s.signed to the use of the famous Erasmus during the months he spent in Cambridge. This great light of the Reformation, or, more properly speaking, of the intellectual revival which led up to it, was brought here by the influence of the saintly chancellor, Sir Thomas More, whose great wish was to broaden the University outlook by the introduction of the Cla.s.sical spirit. Hitherto its curriculum had been almost exclusively confined to Aristotelian philosophy, adapted to dogmatic Christianity by the great mediaeval Schoolmen, especially St.

Thomas Aquinas. Erasmus brought in the knowledge of Greek, which he had acquired from the learned exiles whom the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had driven to the west. Unhappily he, in no small degree, depreciated this great gift, by clogging it with his own self-opinionated p.r.o.nunciation of the language, instead of taking it as actually spoken. Strange to say, this "Erasmian"

barbarism shortly became a badge of Protestantism (though Erasmus himself lived and died a Catholic). It was thus enforced during the reign of Edward the Sixth, forbidden in that of Mary, and enforced again under Elizabeth. To this day it remains with us, and cuts us off from the living tongue of h.e.l.las.

To enter Queens' it is advisable to cross the iron bridge, and recross the river by Sir Isaac Newton's wooden structure. Pa.s.sing through the low doorway into which it leads we find ourselves in the most picturesque of all College Courts, bounded by the Hall in face of us, and on the other three sides by a low range of ancient red-brick cloisters. These once belonged to the Carmelite nuns, who removed to this site when flooded out of their original quarters at Newnham. In 1538 they sold their House to the College, just in time to escape its confiscation, at the suppression of the monasteries, by Henry the Eighth, who, as it was, required the purchase-money to be paid over to _him_. Having obtained the property Queens' at once built over the northern cloisters the beautiful gallery which serves as the drawing-room of the President's Lodge--(it has been stated that the Head of a College is, in Cambridge, always called the "Master," except here, where he is "President," and at King's where he is "Provost").

The gallery, which is a wooden construction overhanging the Cloister, is eighty feet long by twelve in width, with three large oriels looking into the Court. Those on the other side open into the President's garden, a charming enclosure ab.u.t.ting upon the river. Both gallery and garden are, of course, strictly private. Opposite the gallery, at the south-east corner of the cloisters, is a small Court of Elizabethan date, known as "Pump Court," and now-a-days as "Erasmus Court"; while from the north-east corner a tortuous little pa.s.sage brings us into a more modern Court, shaded by a fine walnut-tree (whence its name of "Walnut Tree Court"). Here stands the New Chapel, the best bit of modern work in all Cambridge, erected in 1895 from the designs of Messrs. Bodley and Garner. The beautiful proportions and effective decoration of the interior are specially noteworthy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The President's Gallery, Queens' College._]

On the southern side of this court a pa.s.sage (between the old Chapel and the Library) leads to the "Old Court," the original enclave of the College. This has remained practically unaltered since the Foundation, and is the best example remaining of the way in which a College was designed of old, after the fashion of the large country-house, as then built--Haddon Hall, for example, in Derbyshire. The red-brick and the white stone dressings, have mellowed, as elsewhere in Cambridge, to a tone of rich sombreness most restful and satisfying to the eye. The somewhat gaudy clock and clock tower are modern, as is also the yet gaudier sun-dial often, but erroneously, ascribed to Sir Isaac Newton.

Over the Hall is emblazoned the very elaborate shield of the College, quartering the six bearings to which the poor little Queen Margaret laid claim--those of Hungary, Naples, Jerusalem, Anjou, Lorraine, and De Barre, all within a bordure "vert" added by Queen Elizabeth. Hence it is that green is to-day the distinctive Queens' colour at boating, cricket, etc.

Pa.s.sing out of Queens', beneath the dignified gate-tower, we find ourselves in Queens' Lane, the quiet byway already referred to. Quiet byway as it now is, this was once a main street of Cambridge, known as Mill Street, forming (as it did before the great Colleges of King's, Trinity, and St. John's were built across it) the line of interior communication between the two bridges of the town, "the Small Bridge"

by the King's Mill and "The Great Bridge" beneath the Castle. In those days it was a busy thoroughfare, thick set with burgher houses; now, in such broken lengths of it as survive, the buildings are almost wholly Collegiate. As we emerge from Queens' gate, and turn leftwards, we have on one side the dark-red bricks of that College, on the other the like buildings of St. Catharine's, while, at the further end of the street in front, our view is bounded by the white stone of the new gateway of King's. The whole effect is delightful.

Through this gateway we now make our way into the Premier[16] College of Cambridge, and soon find ourselves face to face with one of the most beautiful views of the world. Before us spreads a s.p.a.cious lawn, the most extensive in existence,[17] bounded on three sides by the white and grey walls of College buildings, while on the fourth it merges into the wooded gra.s.s-land of the Backs; the river which divides it from these being scarcely perceptible from this point. We get a glimpse, however, of Clare Bridge, terminating the graceful facade of that College, which is in our immediate front. Behind us are the nineteenth-century additions to King's, and to our right front the fine pile of "Gibbs' Buildings," erected, in the eighteenth century, as a first attempt to approximate in some degree to the wishes of the Royal Founder, and transfer his College from the cramped position it had hitherto occupied, at the north of the Chapel, to the ampler site on the south which he had originally destined for it, and had cleared for his purpose by buying up and sweeping away, church and all, one of the most thickly populated parishes in Cambridge, that of "St. John Zachary" (_i.e._ St. John the Baptist), including a furlong's length of Mill Street.

[Footnote 16: This rank is one of the privileges due to the Royal Founder. Another was the exemption of King's men from the authority of the Proctors; another their right to a Degree without pa.s.sing the usual examinations. This was given up in the middle of last century, and now every King's student is required by the College to take Honours in some Tripos.]

[Footnote 17: A current story tells how a millionaire, who boasted that his money should make him a lawn as perfect, was discomfited by being told that to attain such perfection "you must mow and roll it regularly for 400 years. That is what has been done here."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Oriel in Queens' College._]

For the scale on which Henry VI. intended to build was something hitherto quite unprecedented, and his plan took years to mature. The inspiration of it was originally caught from William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, whose genius first conceived the idea of twinned Colleges, in the provinces and at the University, from the former of which the Scholars should pa.s.s on to complete their education at the latter. This idea Wykeham himself first carried into effect by the foundation of the College at Winchester and of New College at Oxford.

And, fired by his example, Henry VI., when only twenty, resolved on doing the same thing himself with truly Royal magnificence. His Scholars should begin their course at Eton, beneath the walls of Windsor Castle, his birthplace and favourite residence, and should thence pa.s.s to finish it at Cambridge, in the College which he would there dedicate to his own Patron Saint Nicolas, on whose Feast, December 6th (still "Founder's Day" to all Etonians and King's men), he was born.

This was in 1440. He at once put hand to the work, and that same year signed the Charters for both Colleges; the Head of each being called "Provost," in order, as he said, "to weld the two Colleges together in a bond of everlasting brotherhood,"--a bond which actually lasted in its entirety till 1870, and of which traces even yet remain.

The acquisition of the sites involved complicated legal transactions which occupied several years; but by 1444 Eton was sufficiently advanced to receive its first Scholars, a colony brought by William of Waynflete from Winchester; and by 1446 Henry was able to dedicate the first stone of his Cambridge chapel. Every dimension of this glorious edifice he himself worked out with the utmost minuteness, and set down, as he would have it completed, in that notable record of his purposes still preserved in the College Library, and known as his "Will." The word had not in those days its present purely posthumous signification, but was used of any formal disposition of a man's estate, or any part of it, to some given purpose.

In this doc.u.ment, "one of the most remarkable works in the English language," as Mr. J. W. Clark styles it, the King describes his future College so accurately that a complete plan and elevation of the whole can be drawn from it. We thus learn that Gibbs' Building represents what was meant to be the western side of an enclosed court, with a fountain in the midst of it. The Chapel was to form the northern side of this court; the entrance, with its turreted gate-tower, the eastern; the Hall and Library, the western. The great lawn before us was not to be, as now, an empty s.p.a.ce, but was to be occupied, partly by a small "kitchen court" containing the various offices (bake-house, brew-house, etc.), partly by a cloistered cemetery between the Chapel and the river, from the western side of which was to rise a pinnacled tower, 220 feet high, the rival to that at Magdalen, Oxford, which was already being planned by William of Waynflete. Another turreted gate-tower, on the very bank of the river, was to give access to the College Bridge (further north than the present one). Had this plan been carried out in its entirety, King's would indeed have been, as the historian Stow puts it, "such that the like colledge could scarce have been found again in any Christian land."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Queens' College Gateway._]

Unhappily its splendid design was brought to nought by the great tragedy of the Wars of the Roses, which broke out almost immediately.

The singular mildness with which that conflict was waged (except on the actual field of battle), with no wasting of lands, with no burning of towns or villages, with no slaughter (and scarcely any plunder) of non-combatants, permitted the work on the Chapel, which, as we have seen, was already begun, to proceed, though slowly, and did not even stop the conveyance of stone from the chosen quarry at Huddleston in Yorkshire. The payment of the workmen was a harder matter, for Henry was far from being a wealthy monarch. He and his wife between them had less than the equivalent of 50,000 per annum, all too little for the expenses of their position, even in days of peace. Still the pay was found, in a certain measure, and the workmen came and went till dispersed by the appalling tidings that their Royal Saint had been deposed and murdered in the Tower. Then in panic horror they flung down their tools and fled, with such haste that they did not even complete the job on a block of stone, already half sawn through, which lay, as Logan's print of 1680 shows it, in the south-east corner of the present Great Court, Henry's intended quadrangle, a testimony to their despair, for upwards of three centuries. Then, when the idea of carrying out his intention was at last revived, this stone was appropriately used as the first to be employed for that purpose, the Foundation Stone of Gibbs' Building.

The work on the Chapel thus abruptly stopped by the Founder's death remained in abeyance for the remainder of the century. Not till 1508 was it resumed. The sh.e.l.l of the building was finished 1515; the gla.s.s and woodwork being added under Henry the Eighth. But in the end it was completed substantially in accordance with the Founder's Will, and is the only part of his design that has been so completed. His huge campanile, his cloisters, his gate towers, never came into being; and though the Great Court is now where he meant it to be, it is built in a fashion very different from his design.

This we see at a glance as we enter it round the southern end of Gibbs' Building. For it is not an enclosed quadrangle, but formed of two detached blocks to south and west, while the east side is only a stone screen, erected in 1825, and of a sadly inferior style. But the "goodly conduit" of the Founder's Will does rise in the midst,[18] and the north side is actually formed, as he decreed, by his glorious Chapel, the most magnificent in the world, which now rises before us in all its grandeur as we behold it across the Court.

[Footnote 18: His statue surmounts it, flanked by two figures representing Science (gazing at the Chapel) and Religion (with her eyes devoutly fixed upon the Hall). To leap across from the lawn to the pedestal of this group is a feat seldom accomplished.]

And if the outside view is impressive, that which greets us when we enter is absolutely overpowering in its majesty. The sense of s.p.a.ce and repose; the up-running lines of the shafting catching the eye whithersoever it turns, and leading it up to the myriad-celled spans of the vault; the subdued light through the pictured windows staining the venerable masonry; the great organ, upborne by the rich oaken screen, dominating the whole vista, combine to form, as has been well said, "a _Sursum Corda_ done into stone," uplifting indeed to heart and sense alike. And when to this feast of visual harmony is added the feast of aural harmony, when the clear and mellow voices of the Choir blend with the majestic tones of the organ,

"And thunder-music, rolling, shakes The prophets blazoned on the panes,"

we can understand how the inspiration of the scene has thrilled poet after poet, not Tennyson only, as above quoted, but Wordsworth, and even Milton, Puritan as he was, yet more. To the former King's College Chapel suggested one of the most exquisite of his sonnets:

"Tax not the Royal Saint with vain expense, With ill-matched aims the architect, who planned, Albeit labouring for a scanty band Of white-robed scholars only, this immense And glorious work of fine intelligence.

'Give all thou canst! High Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less and more.'

So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof, Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells, Where light and shade repose, where Music dwells, Lingering and wandering on as loth to die; Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality."

And Milton, when he came under the spell of this most glorious sanctuary, forwent all his conscientious objections to the Laudian revival of ornate services, "the scrannel pipes of wretched straw,"

and all the rest of his denunciations, and was, in spite of himself, carried away into forgetfulness of all save the glory and the beauty around him. Hear him in "Il Penseroso":

"But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars ma.s.sy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light.

There let the pealing organ blow To the full-voiced choir below, In Service high and Anthem clear, As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstasies And bring all Heaven before mine eyes."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Clare College from King's._]

This pa.s.sage is memorable, not only for its own intrinsic loveliness, but because we, very probably, have in it a key to the great historical puzzle connected with King's College Chapel. How came these "storied windows," with their hundreds of pictured prophets, saints, and angels, to escape the ruthless destruction which was meted out to all such "idolatrous" representations, throughout the length and breadth of the county, by the Parliamentary authorities at Cambridge?

William Dowsing, their authorised agent, went from church to church, in town and village, shattering and defacing, and has left us a minute record of his proceedings, in which he evidently took a keen personal delight. Thus, amongst the colleges we have already noticed, he tells us that, at Peterhouse, "we pulled down two mighty great Angells with wings, and diverse other Angells, and the four Evangelists, and Peter with his Keies over the Chappell Dore, and about 100 Chirubims." At Queens' "we beat down a 110 superst.i.tious pictures, besides Chirubims"; and so on, with monotonous repet.i.tion, entry after entry.

The account also records the sums which each college had to pay him for his trouble, and such a sum (of extra amount in consideration of the magnitude of the task) was actually paid him by the Bursar of King's. Yet here are the windows before our eyes to-day in unbroken, unblemished dignity.

No contemporary explanation is forthcoming, and the true facts of the case seem to have been kept so close, and to have been known to so few, that no tradition, even, of them was handed down to posterity. As time went on, the wildest and most impossible theories were evolved to account for the marvel. It was gravely said that the windows had been taken down by the Fellows themselves in a single night, and securely buried from the baffled spite of the Roundheads before morning, till better times; the place of each being known to one Fellow only! That the west window alone remained plain till the latter part of the nineteenth century (a peculiarity really not explained by history), was held proof positive that the Fellow in charge of that particular burial was done to death by the Puritans without betraying his secret; which equally defied the researches of later generations. Such searches were actually made. A more sentimental variant of the story made the hider a pious little chorister, shot down by Cromwell in the chapel itself for refusing to reveal where lay his precious charge!

Through the empty cas.e.m.e.nt a white dove flew in, and hovered over the heroic innocent! It need scarcely be pointed out that to remove the gla.s.s from a single one of these huge windows would be a work of days for a fully equipped band of professional glaziers supplied with scaffolding; yet these absurd tales were gravely repeated, and the missing window was actually sought for. The truth of the matter will, probably, now never be known. But it is certain that the windows could not have been spared without the connivance, at least, of Oliver Cromwell, whose influence was at that time paramount in Cambridge; and it is a plausible conjecture that his protection of them was due to the intercession of his friend John Milton, to whom, as we have seen, the Chapel and its "dim religious light" meant so much.