Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 7

A retort (in which the humour is a trifle less spontaneous) was speedily penned by Sir William Browne, who specialised on epigrams and left prizes for their encouragement which are still annually awarded:

"The King to Oxford sent a troop of horse, For Tories own no argument but Force.

With equal skill to Cambridge books he sent; For Whigs admit no force but Argument."]

The Library is open only to Members of the University (Masters of Arts having the privilege of taking out not more than ten books at a time) and such ladies as are fortunate enough to find a place on the admission list. For this it is needful that two Masters of Arts should certify that the lady is, to their personal knowledge, seriously engaged in some branch of study or research. And even when admitted, she finds herself under disabilities, being forbidden to occupy any seat except in one room (the oriel window of which is visible from our standpoint at the gate of King's). Ordinary visitors may only enter under the escort of an M.A., who may take in six at a time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Old Gate of King's College._]

Those who have the good hap to be thus inducted, will, besides the new books, probably be most impressed by the long range of volumes forming the catalogue, and by the densely packed shelves of long-forgotten fiction in the "Novel Room." But the real treasures of the Library are to be found in c.o.c.kerell's Building. Here, in a range of cases, are to be seen our best Ma.n.u.scripts, including a Thirteenth Century life of Edward the Confessor, the ill.u.s.trations in which were found useful as a precedent even at the coronation of his latest namesake on the British Throne. At the extreme end, in a separate case, is the crown of all, one of the earliest ma.n.u.scripts of the Gospels, dating from the Fifth Century. Only four others of equal authority are known, one in the British Museum, one in the Vatican Library, one at Paris, and one at St. Petersburg. Ours is known as "D" or "Codex Bezae," from being the gift of the celebrated Calvinist divine Theodore Beza, who procured it from a soldier after the sack of its early home, the Monastery of St. Irenaeus at Lyons, in the Sixteenth Century. It is noteworthy for containing pa.s.sages not found in any other Codex, one of which may be read (in Greek and Latin) on the single leaf here exposed to view. It narrates how our Lord, "seeing a certain man working on the Sabbath, said unto him: Man, if thou art doing this with Knowledge thou art blessed, but if without Knowledge thou art cursed."

s.p.a.ce does not permit us to enlarge further on the Library; and we return to our station at the old gate of King's College. As we look along the lane our view is bounded by the College whose name it now bears, Trinity Hall. This must not be confounded with the larger and later Foundation of Trinity College, next door to it beyond. Trinity Hall was founded in 1350, by Bishop Bateman of Norwich, specially for the education of Clergy. It has, however, actually, become especially given to the study of Law, and is yet more widely known by its prowess in aquatics. Its boat, for the last half century, has never been far from the Headship of the River, and has oftener attained that coveted position than any other. The colours of the College, white and black, are thus of wide renown. They are derived from the College Shield, which in heraldic language is sable a crescent ermines with a bordure ermines. Visitors who approach Cambridge by the London road see this device upon the milestones near the town, which were set up by the College in the eighteenth century, and were the first milestones erected in Britain since the days of the Roman occupation.

The Library here (which is open to visitors from noon to 1 P.M. in Full Term) is the best example left us of what libraries were of old in Cambridge. It was built about 1560, and still retains its original book-cases, the tops of which form desks for reading the folios in the shelves beneath. These were in old days chained to rings sliding on a locked bar which ran the whole length of each desk. Some of the books are so chained still, but not in the ancient fashion; for of old books were shelved with the backs inward, the t.i.tle being written across the closed leaves of the front.

Otherwise the College has little to show us; and, instead of seeking it, we shall do better if we turn westwards through the specially beautiful iron gate which leads us into Clare College. The coat of arms beneath which we pa.s.s as we enter has its tale to tell concerning the foundation of the College. They are those of the n.o.ble lady who, in 1338, thus commemorated her widowhood, an example followed, as we have seen, in the next decade, by Marie de Valence at Pembroke. But Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Gilbert de Clare (the "Red Earl" mentioned in _Marmion_), had gone through no fewer than three of these lamentable experiences. She therefore not only charged her College Shield with the golden chevronels of Clare impaled with the golden cross of De Burgh (her latest husband), but surrounded the whole with a sable bordure besprinkled with golden heraldic tears, bearing perennial witness to her repeated sorrows. Hence it comes that the Clare "colours" are to this day black and gold.

Few College edifices convey such a sense of unity as these of Clare.

"Their uniform and harmonious character gives them, at first sight, the appearance of having been built from one design, and carried out at one time."[23] As a matter of fact, however, the existing buildings are of no fewer than five separate dates, each separated by decades, and extending altogether over nearly a century and a half (1638-1768); while of the original fourteenth century structure no trace whatever is left. The eastern and northern sides of the Court are the earliest, built between 1638 and 1643, when the work was stopped, five years after its commencement, by the outbreak of the Civil War; while the stones and beams made ready for its continuance were commandeered by the Roundheads for the new works which they were then throwing up to strengthen the defences of Cambridge Castle. Not till 1669 did the College finances so far recover from this blow as to permit the resumption of the building. The western side was then built, followed by the northern (1683-93), while the Chapel was not added till 1768.

But the result of all this patchwork is an exquisite little gem of a Court, its bal.u.s.traded walls overshadowed by the towering pinnacles of King's College, and giving, as we have said, a wonderful sense of unity, which is partly owing to older work having been altered to harmonise with the newer.

[Footnote 23: Atkinson and Clark, _Cambridge Described_.]

The College treasury contains some most interesting and beautiful specimens of sixteenth-century plate. One tankard is known as the "Poison Cup," because, mounted in the cover, it has a conical fragment of crystal, such as was supposed, in the pharmacy of the day, to change colour if poison were poured into the vessel. This cup is of gla.s.s enclosed in exquisitely wrought filigree work. The thumb-piece is an angel with outspread wings. Another tankard is the "Serpentine Cup," the bowl being of that stone. This too is enclosed in most beautiful silver-gilt work, adorned with flowers and fruit and birds and arabesques. Yet another is the "Falcon Cup," a receptacle in the shape of that bird, originally intended, it would seem, for holding sweetmeats. All these were presented to the College by Dr. Butler, Court Physician to King James the First, of whom Fuller says that "he was better pleased with presents than money, and ever preferred rarities before riches."[24]

[Footnote 24: Foster and Atkinson, _Old Cambridge Plate_.]

Pa.s.sing through the court, we come to the beautiful bridge, already familiar to us from the river. Its bal.u.s.traded parapet is surmounted by fourteen large b.a.l.l.s of stone, thirteen of them whole, and one out of which a cantle of nearly a quarter of its bulk has, for some unknown reason and at some unknown date, been cut. A cheap laugh may thus be obtained by challenging a stranger to count these b.a.l.l.s accurately; for the missing cantle, being turned towards the river, is quite invisible from the bridge itself. Another feature in connection with these b.a.l.l.s is that one of them is visibly much newer than the rest (which, like the bridge, date from the middle of the seventeenth century). This is due to a not very far off feud between Clare and St.

John's, when a piratical Johnian crew came up the river after dark and stormed the bridge. Before the enraged Clare men could open the iron gate under the College archway and pour out to the rescue, the enemy had begun throwing the b.a.l.l.s into the water, where one sank so deep into the muddy bottom that it could never be recovered.

From the bridge we get a lovely view of the College "Backs." To the south the single slender arch of King's Bridge flings itself over the river in the graceful curve which is all its own; to the north we see the iron span of Garret Hostel Bridge, hiding from us the beauties of Trinity Bridge beyond. But, if there be no ripple upon the water, the three graceful arches of this invisible bridge are seen reflected upon the gla.s.sy surface with a specially charming effect. The whole view is amongst the world's loveliest, especially in the May term, when the Master's little garden to our right glows with bright colour, answered across the stream by that of the Fellows; when the water is alive with gay little craft, gigs, punts, and canoes; and when the "ambrosial dark" of the Avenue before us beckons us on to explore the delights of its umbrageous depths. It was planted in 1691, and is carried for 150 yards on a wide embankment, dense with shrubs and closed with jealously-spiked gates at either end, across what was once an island in the river (known as b.u.t.ts Close), till it debouches on to the elm-shaded length of greensward described in our opening page, and named, in old maps of Cambridge, "King's College Back-sides." The whole does, in fact, belong to King's, but the many rights of way which traverse it make it practically an open park.

Not so long ago oaken railings (still to be seen in places) ran between it and the road, till a visit from Lord Kitchener (then Sirdar of Egypt, fresh from his Ethiopian victories) was made the occasion of a gigantic bonfire in the Market Place, to feed which the whole were torn up and carried away by gangs of enthusiastic undergraduates. A like fate befell the wooden palings and gates of the College gardens across the road, now replaced by iron, and altogether the damage done ran into hundreds of pounds; while the town police and the University proctors waited for each other to act until too late. There are three of these College gardens on end--King's, Clare, and Trinity; and rarely lovely they are, with their wide "smooth-shaven" lawns, broken into glades by clumps of ornamental trees. But each can only be entered under the aegis of a Fellow of its own respective College, and they are so carefully planted out from the road that scarcely even a glimpse can be gained of the delights within, "where no profaner eye may look."

Leaving these on our left we proceed along the northward-leading path till we reach the fine iron gate which bears the escutcheon of Cambridge's mightiest College, Trinity, a College more than twice as large as any other, numbering something like 700 residents, students and teachers together. Like London, which an Indian visitor once described as "not a city, but a herd of cities," Trinity may be described as a conjoined herd of colleges, for it was created by the amalgamation of no fewer than nine earlier inst.i.tutions. Two of these, Michaelhouse[25] and King's Hall, were amongst the most noteworthy colleges in Cambridge. The former was founded by Henry de Stanton, Chancellor to King Edward the Second, in 1323, and was thus, next to Peterhouse, the oldest college in Cambridge. And King's Hall was but a few years younger, being founded by King Edward the Third in 1336.

Indeed, it may claim to be actually the elder in embryonic existence, for Edward the Second, in 1317, was already maintaining scholars--"children of our Chapel" as his writ calls them--in Cambridge. And that these "children" (who were required to be at least fourteen years of age on coming into residence) were quartered hereabouts is evident from King's Hall having been built across the line of an ancient street running down to the river and known as "King's Childer Lane." The town agreed to the expropriation of this lane in consideration of one red rose annually to be paid by the College to the Corporation on Midsummer Day. The remaining seven foundations incorporated in Trinity College were hostels (inst.i.tutions for lodging students, more or less organised in college fashion, but not recognised by the University as colleges). These were St.

Catharine's Hostel, Physwick Hostel, Crutched Hostel, Gregory's Hostel, Tyled Hostel, Oving's Inn, and St. Gerard's or "Garret"

Hostel; which last, as we have seen, is still kept in memory by the name of the public bridge crossing the river between Trinity and Clare.

[Footnote 25: Michaelhouse (like Peterhouse) derived its name from the neighbouring church which was used for worship by the Scholars till they got a chapel of their own.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Old Schools' Quadrangle._]

All these, Colleges and Hostels alike, were seized upon by Henry the Eighth, when that rapacious and unprincipled monarch desired to pose (in 1546, a year before his death) as a Pious Founder, and go down to posterity as a benefactor. He gained this credit cheaply; for not only did he thus get his edifices ready made, but their endowments also; while such additional endowments as he bestowed on his new College were almost wholly derived from the spoil of the Abbeys suppressed by him. Nor did he fail to take toll of each transfer of this stolen property for the benefit of his exchequer. His professed object, meanwhile, was "to educate Youth in piety, virtue, self-restraint, charity towards the poor, and relief of the distressed." His alumni, in short, were to be made as opposite to himself in character as possible.

From the very first, Trinity thus became almost the largest and wealthiest College in Cambridge. For a century it disputed the headship of the University with its neighbour, St. John's College, and for another century and more sang second to that great rival. But in 1785 it drew ahead, and since that date has improved its lead without a check, till now it stands not only first but without a second. So large is it that it cannot, for very sportsmanship, row as a whole in the b.u.mping races, but has to be divided for that purpose into two boat clubs, denominated respectively "First Trinity" and "Third Trinity,"--or, in common speech, "First" and "Third" simply. The former is the original "Trinity Boat Club" and this is still its official name, whence it is also known as the "T.B.C." It wears the original Trinity colours,--dark blue,[26] with the badge of a golden lion and three crowns, the device of King Edward the Third. The latter consists of Trinity men from the two great rowing schools, Eton and Westminster. It is, of course, a very much smaller body than "First,"

but, as its members come up ready-made oarsmen, it has been almost as frequently Head of the River. Both boats are always in the first flight. Once there existed a "Second Trinity" club, which has long since ceased to maintain its existence.

[Footnote 26: The T.B.C. boat was one of the two first boats to appear on the river. The other was the "Lady Margaret" or St. John's boat, whose colours were (and are) bright red. These two boats used to row along, challenging each other, by sound of bugle, to extempore bursts of racing. This was in the Twenties. The first regular College races began in the year 1827; but only five Colleges rowed (Trinity, St.

John's, Caius, Jesus and Emmanuel). Not till 1859 were all represented.]

We enter the precincts of this great College by "that long walk of limes," up which Tennyson pa.s.sed, as he tells us in "In Memoriam,"

when he re-visited Cambridge, "to view the rooms" once inhabited by his friend and hero, Arthur Hallam.[27] This avenue was planted in 1672,[28] and leads us to the fine cycloidal[29] bridge, built at the same period. After crossing this, we should not keep straight, which would bring us into the "New Court" where Hallam dwelt (a poor bit of architecture erected 1825), but rather turn to the left, by the path that sweeps along the bank of the river, with its fine weeping willows. Looking back, as we leave the bridge behind us, we may admire the climbing agility which frequently enables undergraduates to descend to the projecting piers just above the water, and find their way back again, without a ducking.

[Footnote 27: Hallam's rooms were on the southern side of the New Court, in the central staircase (letter G), and were the western set on the first floor. Tennyson himself never "kept" in College, but had lodgings, first in Rose Crescent, and afterwards opposite the Bull Hotel.]

[Footnote 28: Its line was determined by the distant spire of Coton Church which for two centuries closed the vista. (It is now hidden by these trees.) A current witticism was that the view symbolised a Trinity Fellowship--a long, straight-forward prospect, closed by a village church. Till the year 1878 every Fellow had to become a Priest of the Established Church within seven years, on pain of forfeiting his Fellowship. After this he was a Fellow for life, unless he married. And each Fellow in turn had a right to any College living that fell vacant. All this is altered now. Fellows are elected unconditionally for a limited period (which may be renewed), and College livings are a.s.signed to the best men to be had, whether of Trinity or not.]

[Footnote 29: A cycloid is the curve described by any single point on the rim of a rolling wheel.]

We have here in front of us the New Court of St. John's College, seen across its lawn-tennis grounds; while to our left is the magnificent range of horse-chestnuts along the boundary of the two Colleges.

Splendid at all times, these are seen at their very best when duly touched by frost. To our right rises the fine ma.s.s of Trinity Library, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1675; whose walls of warm-coloured stone have been already dwelt upon. The lower portion of the building forms an open cloister, with grated windows and gates barring it from the Backs where we stand.

Through one of these gates our path leads us, and we find ourselves within the College, and at the door of the Library. At certain hours, usually between three and four in the afternoon, this is open to visitors; at others the escort of a Member of the College is needed.

Of all the College Libraries in Cambridge this is the most interesting in its miscellaneous contents. Mounting the wide stone stair-way, we enter the long, wide, lofty, vaulted gallery, with a series of wooden book-cases projecting from either wall all along its course. The carved wreaths of flowers and leaves and fruitage which adorn these cases deserve careful notice. They are by Grinling Gibbons, probably the most wonderful wood carver who ever lived, and their intricacies bear striking testimony to his almost superhuman skill. In the recesses between the cases are to be seen sundry curios, from the College estates and other sources, while more are to be found in the long ranges of gla.s.s-covered tables topping the smaller book-shelves which line either side of the central pa.s.sage way. Roman and Anglo-Saxon antiquities, and a splendid series of coins and medals, are here exhibited. Amongst the miscellaneous curios are a model of Caesar's famous bridge across the Rhine and a globe of the planet Mars.

What will, however, first catch our eye on entering, will be the window at the southern end of the room, with its painted gla.s.s so unlike anything to be seen elsewhere. It is, in fact, unique, having been made in the middle of the eighteenth century by the discoverer of this particular method of staining gla.s.s, who kept the process secret--a secret which died with him and has never been recovered. The window cannot be called artistically beautiful, and the subject is weird. The University of Cambridge, represented as a lady in a somewhat scanty robe of yellow, is presenting Sir Isaac Newton to King George the Third (who did not come to the Throne till 1760, many years after the great philosopher died), while the transaction is being recorded by Francis Bacon Lord Verulam of Elizabethan fame!

Beneath this window is Thorwaldsen's fine marble statue of Lord Byron, one of Trinity's greatest poets. This was originally intended for Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, but the Dean and Chapter of the period so strongly disapproved of Byron's morality that they refused it a place there. Apart from his poetical genius, he as little deserved to be honoured in Trinity library; for, as an undergraduate, he not only accomplished the apparently impossible feat of climbing by night to the roof (which others have more than once done since)[30]

but abominably disfigured the statues upon it, in which he has had, happily, no imitators. Other relics of him are preserved hard by, which are supposed to bear upon the thrilling question as to how far he had or had not a club foot.[31]

[Footnote 30: Nocturnal exploration of the College roofs has been so favourite an amus.e.m.e.nt amongst undergraduates that not long ago a book was actually published ent.i.tled _The Roof-Climber's Guide to Trinity College_. Every eminence in the College has been scaled, save only the Great Gate Tower. The Hon. C. S. Rolls, who was afterwards the first man to fly from England to France and back, and who fell a martyr to his zeal for aviation, was, in his day, the most daring and systematic of all Trinity roof-climbers.]

[Footnote 31: Byron himself was morbidly sensitive on this point. Mr.

Clark (_Guide to Cambridge_, p. 140) tells how he abused a friend who fell behind out of courtesy: "Ah! I see you wish to spy out my deformity." He was in residence 1805-8.]

For these few will care; but this end of the library contains things which few can fail to care about. Here is the death-mask of Sir Isaac Newton, and a reflecting telescope, on the model invented by him. Here is Thackeray's ma.n.u.script of "Esmond," and Tennyson's ma.n.u.script of "In Memoriam." Here is Milton's ma.n.u.script of "Lycidas," and his first design for "Paradise Lost," all cut and scored about with alterations and corrections, showing that he originally designed his great poem to be a drama, the characters of which (headed by Moses) are here listed.

Here, too, is a copy of the "Solemn League and Covenant" imposed on all men by the Puritans at the time of the Great Rebellion.[32] This was found hidden amongst the rafters of a village church near Cambridge.

[Footnote 32: This instrument bound its subscribers to zealous endeavour, far from any "detestable indifference and neutrality," for the "extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, ... Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Chapters, Archdeacons, and all that Hierarchy." Every adult in the kingdom had to sign this very thoroughgoing test, on pain of imprisonment.]

And here is a copy of the famous Indulgence sold by Tetzel, Luther's denunciation of which gave the signal for the earliest outburst of Protestantism at the Reformation. When the crabbed old printing is deciphered it proves to be a startlingly mild doc.u.ment, no licence to commit sin, as is generally supposed, but merely granting to the purchaser the privilege of confessing, once in his life, to a priest of his own choice instead of to the parson in whose parish he dwelt.

The priest so chosen is given authority to absolve from nearly all sins, but not from the heinous offence of buying alum from anyone except the Pope, in whose territory it had, at that date (1515), been recently discovered. Alum was in those days a most valuable substance, and had hitherto been attainable only at the Turkish town of Roc, in Syria, whence the name of "rock alum" still surviving in use amongst pharmacopoeists. To buy it there was not only to take money out of the pocket of the Pope, but to put it into those of the enemies of Christendom. Hence the heinousness of the offence.

Trinity library forms the western side of one of the Courts of the College, known as "Nevile's Court" (from Dr. Thomas Nevile, Master at the close of the sixteenth century, who planned and began it in 1610), and also as "Cloister Court," from the wide cloisters which surround it on the north, south, and west. The eastern side is formed by the Hall, raised four feet above the ground level, and reached by a beautiful bal.u.s.traded and terraced staircase of stone. It is the finest college hall in either university, and was also the work of Nevile.

In the northern cloister which leads us to it, there are sundry points not to be overlooked. As we look along it from the library entrance we perceive at the far end a door with a stalwart iron knocker. Now there is a fine echo in this cloister, and a stamp of the foot at our end will evoke a sound from the door precisely like that of a knocker. So great a part does illusion play in human impressions, that five people out of six, when they hear this sound, are ready to declare that they have seen the knocker actually move. It was by timing this echo, we may mention, that Sir Isaac Newton first measured the velocity of sound. The echoing properties of these cloisters are referred to by Tennyson in the "Princess":

"our cloisters echoed frosty feet."

The ma.s.sive block which pillars the angle of the cloister is known as the "Freshman's Pillar"; a favourite old-time amus.e.m.e.nt of the junior students (not yet wholly disremembered) having been to traverse the very narrow base-top right round, without setting foot to the ground.

In old times, indeed until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, these cloisters played a notable part in undergraduate life. Athletic pursuits were far less general than now, and exercise was largely pedestrian. On a wet day, accordingly, when the roads were uninviting, the cloisters used to be crowded with a veritable swarm of trampers, doing "quarter-deck" from end to end of the three covered sides of the court.

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

The stair-case entrances here lead to specially delightsome sets of rooms, with oak panels and beautiful plaster ceilings. One of these was occupied by the late Duke of Clarence, when, as "Prince Edward,"

he was an undergraduate of Trinity, mingling freely with the college life around him, and making himself generally beloved by his simple unaffected pleasantness.[33] His royal father, when Prince of Wales, was also an undergraduate of Trinity; but Court etiquette was stricter in those days, and, instead of being in College, he was quartered at Madingley Hall, four miles away. A few months after his wedding, in June, 1864, he brought his beautiful bride to visit Cambridge and take all hearts by storm. In their honour the whole area of Nevile's Court was tented in and floored over and made into one vast ball-room, which included the cloisters and the hall stairway. The former were used for promenading, all the best settees and arm-chairs to be found in College being commandeered to be placed in them; the Hall served for supper; while the band was housed beneath the Library. All was beautifully decorated and lighted (though it was before the days even of paraffin lamps), and the whole scene was one of unforgettable brilliance.[34] The cost was, naturally, something portentous; but those were the times of academic prosperity, before the great agricultural depression of the following decade brought down rents, and with them college incomes, almost (sometimes altogether) from pounds to shillings.[35]

[Footnote 33: These same rooms (on the south-westernmost staircase) were probably those occupied by Lord Byron.]