Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely Part 10

(_i.e._ the English) of which each parish priest had long been bound to give his congregation every Sunday as best he might.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Oriel in Second Court of St. John's College._]

This first Authorised Version was founded on the work of Miles Coverdale, published five years earlier, with a specially fulsome dedication to King Henry the Eighth, who, in consideration of his recent breach with the Papacy,[66] is described as "our Moses ... who hath brought us out ... from the cruel hands of our spiritual Pharao."

In this edition (of which we have here a copy printed on vellum, and perhaps destined for the King's own hands) this idea is enlarged upon in a highly elaborated frontispiece. Henry sits, smiling imperially, in the middle of the page, distributing Bibles right and left to all sorts and conditions of men--bishops, clergy, monks, n.o.bles, commons, artisans, husbandmen, and, notably, prisoners;--while out of every mouth proceeds a label bearing the universal acclamation "Vivat Rex,"

the English equivalent of which, "G.o.d save the King," is first found in this Version.

[Footnote 66: It need scarcely be pointed out that this breach was not made from any Protestant zeal, but only to enable the King to put away the wife he was tired of, and marry Anne Boleyn, which the Pope would not authorise.]

The main approach to the Library is by a fine stone staircase in the north-western corner of the "Second Court;" but access is more generally obtained at present by an unpretending doorway in the middle of the northern side of the "Third Court." This door opens into the lower storey of the Library, which contains nothing of interest except a not very inspired statue of Wordsworth. Hence a circular iron stair leads up to the Library proper.

The "three Gothic courts," mentioned in Wordsworth's "Prelude" as belonging to St. John's, sufficed the College till the reign of George the Fourth. When it was then determined to expand, the bold departure was taken of erecting the new buildings on the other side of the river. Never, before or since, has any other College, either at Oxford or Cambridge, done the like; and one could wish that the experiment had been made at a period when architecture was at a less debased level. It was the period which Sir Walter Scott, in the "Antiquary,"

has in mind when he says "The Lord deliver me from this Gothic generation." But, of that period, the "New Court," as it is called, is a favourable specimen, most especially the grated[67] bridge connecting it with the main body of the College, which has a really graceful span. The idea of this structure was suggested by the Bridge of Sighs at Venice, and it is commonly known by that name, which provokes unkind comparisons. From it we get good views of the Library oriel to the north, and, on the other side, of the older bridge belonging to St. John's, three arches in the characteristic Johnian style of red brick with stone dressings, built at the end of the seventeenth century.

[Footnote 67: The gratings are to prevent any nocturnal escape from College. Only one man is ever known to have "squeezed himself betwixt the bars."]

The New Court has practically but one side, the ends being very slightly returned, running east and west, with a quasi-cupola in the centre, surrounded by pinnacles and surmounted by a gilded vane. It is hard to believe, but it is quite historical, that one morning (in the 'sixties) this vane was found to be decked out in the brilliant scarlet "blazer"[68] of the College boat club, the perpetrator (who was never discovered) having actually scaled the roof by means of one of the water-pipes! And it was some time before the resources of civilisation in the hands of the College authorities availed to abate the outrage.

[Footnote 68: This word, now used of all flannel sporting jackets, was, for several decades--till nearly 1880, in fact--confined to the fiery coats of the St. John's (or, officially, "Lady Margaret") Boat Club. When, about that date, the question of having a "universal blazer" was debated by the undergraduates, an elderly clergyman protested, in all shocked seriousness, against the "incendiary tendencies" of such a notion.]

The New Court, on its southern side, is separated by a traceried cloister from the College Backs. On pa.s.sing through the gate of this it is well to bear to the left and walk along the bank of the river, here overhung by magnificent elms, and affording a picturesque prospect of the Trinity buildings on the other side. The grounds of both Colleges to the west of the river are here divided up into a series of lawn-tennis courts, and are parted from each other by a broad ditch, which runs beneath the boughs of bowery horse-chestnut trees. In spring the Trinity bank of this ditch is bright with daffodils, the Johnian with narcissus. An iron foot-bridge, common to both Colleges, with a gate at either end, gives access from one to the other; but we had best continue by the path which skirts the Johnian bank. This finally leads out of the College grounds into the Backs proper, by a fine iron gate bearing a gilded eagle rising from a crown, the crest borne by Lady Margaret.

Before we reach this, we find water on either side of us; that to the west being not from the Cam, but a small tributary brooklet which joins the river near the Great Bridge. It is here dammed up so as to afford s.p.a.ce for the College swans to make merry in, and on the further side is the Fellows' Garden, known as "the Wilderness." The wealth of spring flowers here cultivated--snowdrops, daffodils, crocuses, primroses, anemones, and hyacinths--is delicious in a country like Cambridges.h.i.+re, where Nature supplies their charms with very n.i.g.g.ardly hand in comparison with the more favoured regions of England. Outside the Eagle gate we are close to the entrance of the Trinity avenue.

Let us stand once more before the great gate of Trinity. Turning to the south, instead of the north as before, we find ourselves in a few score yards with the buildings of a College again to the east and west of the street at once. This College is commonly known as Caius (p.r.o.nounced Keys), and officially as "Gonville and Caius," after the original founder in the fourteenth century, and the benefactor who, two hundred years later, so largely developed it as to leave his name also attached to the site.[69] The former was a simple parish priest, rector of Terrington, on the Norfolk seaboard of the Wash. His little college, designated the "College of the Annunciation,"[70] and consisting only of a Master and three Fellows, found its original quarters hard by Pembroke, with which it was founded simultaneously in 1347. A few years later, on Gonville's death, his friend and diocesan, Bishop Bateman of Norwich, moved it to its present site, next door to his own new college, Trinity Hall.

[Footnote 69: The two infant cherubs which (without any heraldic authority) act as supporters to the College s.h.i.+eld over the gate of the new buildings (those to the east of the street) are popularly supposed to be meant for the innocent souls of the two Founders. The s.h.i.+eld itself (duly granted by the Heralds' College, 1575), comprises both their Coats with a blue and silver bordure. That of Dr. Caius is curious; two green serpents standing on their tails upon a green stone amid flowers of amaranth. This is declared (in the grant) to signify "Wisdom stayed upon Virtue and adorned with Immortality"--a characteristic Elizabethan "conceit."]

[Footnote 70: It was not till after Gonville's death that it began to be called by his name.]

There Gonville Hall, as it was now called, gradually developed, but remained a very puny bantling till the reign of Queen Mary, when one of its own scholars took upon himself the task of expanding it. His name was really Keys, which according to the fas.h.i.+on of the day, was transliterated into the Latin equivalent Caius, and he was a celebrated doctor of medicine, President of the College of Physicians, and himself physician to the Royal household. It was in the interests of his favourite study that he refounded the college, which to this day has a specially medical tinge. He was also a singularly devout man, and the spirit in which he built is exemplified by the three gates through which we successively pa.s.s in our progress through the College. From Trinity-street we enter beneath a narrow, plain, low-browed archway, known as the Gate of Humility, and inscribed HUMILITATIS.[71] A short avenue of lime-trees (also a part of the Founder's design) leads across the small court to a loftier, wider portal, over which we may read the word VIRTUTIS. Through this we gain another court, and, looking back, we discover that in using the Gate of Virtue we have indeed used the Gate of Wisdom; for it bears the inscription IO. CAIVS. POSVIT. SAPIENTIAE. And, finally, a small, beautifully designed turret, rich with Renaissance figures and pilasters, and inscribed HONORIS, covers our exit through the Gate of Honour, to which those of Humility, Virtue, and Wisdom have successively led us on.

[Footnote 71: The present gateway is not, however, the original one, but erected in mid-Victorian days at the same time as the large pinnacled gate at the south-east corner of the College, but the humble character of the original is fairly reproduced.]

This Gate of Honour is really a wonderful little gem of architecture, quite unique in its design, which is due to Dr. Caius himself, though the work was not finished till after his death. The turret is an oblong ma.s.s of stone-work, some twelve feet in width by six in depth, rising to a height of about twenty feet, and topped with a singularly graceful hexagonal cupola.[72] The view of it, more especially from the further side of the Court, whence it groups with the Senate House and University library just outside, and with the soaring pinnacles of King's College Chapel beyond, is one nowhere to be surpa.s.sed. From a picturesque point of view no one can regret the absence of the somewhat gaudy coats of paint and gilding with which it originally was covered; but the result of their removal has been that the stone (which is soft, and was never intended to stand exposure to the atmosphere) is rapidly decaying.

[Footnote 72: Each side of the hexagon was originally a sun-dial.]

The paved footway into which the Gate of Honour leads is known as Senate House Pa.s.sage,[73] and is still the route along which the students of the College pa.s.s to receive in the Senate House such honours as their University examinations may have ent.i.tled them to. It forms the southern boundary of the College, which, alone amongst the Colleges of Cambridge, is wholly surrounded by public ways, Trinity-street being on the east, Trinity-lane on the north, and Trinity Hall-lane on the west. The tasteless ma.s.s of modern red brick (erected 1853) at the north-west angle of the block contains the hall; with the kitchens, by an unusual arrangement, beneath. These kitchens have an immemorial gastronomic renown in Cambridge, and are credited with the possession of culinary secrets enabling them to surpa.s.s all rival establishments. In some verses written about the end of the eighteenth century (concerning a well-known young lady of Cambridge) we find this referred to:

"The sons of culinary Caius, Smoaking from the eternal Treat, Gazed on the Fair with greedy air, As she were something good to eat: Even the sad Kingsman lost his gloom awhile, And forced a melancholy smile.[74]

[Footnote 73: "Pa.s.sage" is the local name applied to the many paved footways which intersect Cambridge. They are forbidden ground to vehicles, including bicycles, a prohibition which constantly brings undergraduates before the Police Court.]

[Footnote 74: At this date King's was a highly conservative College, and its discipline strict with a strictness long discarded by the University at large.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Gate of Honour, Caius College._]

Dr. Caius himself became the first Master of his new College, a post which he accepted with a reluctance which proved only too well justified, for he himself was a devout and pious man of the old school, and wholly out of sympathy with the militant Protestantism which was then fast becoming the dominating spirit at Cambridge, as in England generally. He has left in writing his lamentation over the sad depletion of the University which was the first result of the Reformation.[75] The wholesale destruction of ancient works of art--beautifully illuminated service books, and elaborately embroidered vestments--by which the votaries of the new religion sought at once to express their loathing of the older faith and to make its revival the harder, did but recall to him the like policy pursued by the Pagan antagonists of Jehovah in the days of the Maccabees. And he did what in him lay to stem the tide, rescuing here a Missal and there a Chasuble from the iconoclasts, till he had acc.u.mulated in his Lodge quite a little store of these sacred objects.

But the times were too hard for him. He was denounced as a reactionary, a sympathiser with Popery; a riot broke out among the College students; the Lodge was stormed; the Papistical relics thrown out of the window and burnt in the midst of the Court;[76] whilst the Master and Founder himself was expelled from his own College and (as he had spent upon it all he had) ended his days in penury and exile.

He was, however, allowed a grave in the chapel, which bears the touching inscription FUI CAIUS ("I _was_ Caius").

[Footnote 75: "To the Universities," Froude (our most ardent Protestant historian) tells us, in his _History of England_, "the Reformation brought with it desolation.... They were called Stables of a.s.ses--Schools of the Devil.... The Government cancelled the exhibitions which had been granted for the support of poor Scholars.

They suppressed the Professors.h.i.+ps and Lectures.h.i.+ps--Degrees were held anti-Christian. Learning was no necessary adjunct to a creed which 'lay in a nutsh.e.l.l.' ... College Libraries were plundered and burnt.

The Divinity Schools at Oxford were planted with cabbages, and the laundresses dried clothes in the School of Arts."

At Cambridge Dr. Caius gives a long list of University Hostels, filled, within his memory, by zealous students, which, when he wrote had become wholly deserted and taken possession of by the townsfolk.]

[Footnote 76: The pillage was actually presided over by the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Dr. Whitgift, Master of Trinity, whose Protestant zeal raised him later to the Archbishopric of Canterbury.]

The undergraduates of Caius wear a gown of a singular and not very pleasing violet hue with velvet tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. The College "colours" are light blue and black; the former, which is, as all know, the University colour, having been granted them to use, in memory of a famous race, in the early days of College boating, seventy years ago, when their crew beat the University Eight. It is, of course, an axiomatic rule of sportsmans.h.i.+p that no Club may a.s.sume the insignia of another (or any colourable imitation thereof), without leave from the previous users. The earliest "Light Blues" were the Eton Boat Club, by whose permission the Cambridge Boat Club took the colour. The Cricket Clubs, at both Eton and Cambridge, were then permitted to use it, and now this permission has been extended to all engaged as champions of the University, at athletics, football, etc.

The Senate House, to the entrance of which the Gate of Honour has brought us, is the nerve-centre of the University. Here are held, usually on each Thursday during Term, the meetings ("Congregations" is the official word) of that august body the "Senate," to whose vote all University legislation must ultimately be submitted. This body, however, consisting as it does of all who have attained the Degree of Master of Arts, several thousands in number, is far too large to initiate that legislation. This is done by a small elected General Committee, the "Council," and by special Committees (or "Syndicates") dealing with the various special subjects to be considered. Both Council and Syndicates also act as executive authorities, and by them "Graces" embodying this or that proposal are from time to time laid before the Senate. The Grace is read aloud by one of the Proctors, in his robes of office, standing beside the Chair, which is occupied by the Vice-Chancellor.[77] The benches are tenanted by such members of the Senate as care to be present.[78] There is no discussion;[79] but, on the Grace being read, any member may utter the words "Non Placet,"

whereupon the Proctor cries "Ad scrutinium," and the congregation divides; the "Placets," (or "Ayes" as they would be called in Parliament), moving to the right of the Chair, and the "Non-Placets"

to the left. Should this grouping not sufficiently disclose the sense of the meeting, a poll is held; each member's vote being given publicly by writing, on an official form, avouched by his signature.

These papers are then counted by the Proctors, and their respective numbers read out by the Vice-Chancellor.

[Footnote 77: This officer is the acting Head of the University, and is appointed by the Council from amongst the Heads of the Colleges, usually by rota, year by year. The Chancellor, whom he represents, is always some specially distinguished notability, and is appointed for life. He is only present on state occasions.]

[Footnote 78: Members are often able to introduce ladies, when there is likely to be room for them. And undergraduates may listen to proceedings from the Galleries, where, in defiance of rule, they are often heard as well as seen, should the business be exciting.]

[Footnote 79: Such discussion as may seem needful has already taken place before a Meeting of the resident Members of the Senate, who have spent at least forty nights in Cambridge during the last Academic year, and whose names are accordingly on the "Electoral Roll." They are summoned, as required, by the Vice-Chancellor, to discuss the various matters which it is proposed to embody in "Graces."]

These numbers are usually but small; indeed most of the business is altogether unopposed. But when some subject which excites general interest is brought forward, "backwoods-men" flock (and are whipped) up from all parts of England. Macaulay has given us a humorous poem on the coach-loads of country clergy thus pitch-forked into Cambridge to vote against the admission of Roman Catholics to the University; and within the last few decades, similar scenes were witnessed in connection with the question of their being allowed a recognised Public Hostel of their own, and with those of Compulsory Greek, and of granting Degrees to women.

Such is the procedure at the Senate House; or, rather, such it has. .h.i.therto been, for the whole question of University legislation is even now in the melting-pot. The use of the building for the chief University examinations is also dying or dead, now that a vast "Examination Hall" has been built for that purpose. But Degrees still continue to be conferred there; the students found worthy by the examiners successively kneeling before the Vice-Chancellor, and being admitted by him to their degree in the name of the Trinity. They are presented by the "Fathers" of their respective Colleges, in a recognised order, beginning with the Royal Foundations, King's always coming first and Trinity second. When the Degree of Doctor ("Honoris causa") is conferred on any distinguished visitors, the place is thronged, and each in turn is introduced with a laudatory Latin speech by the "Public Orator," who has to exert his ingenuity in composing some neat and appropriate epigrammatic remark about him.[80]

[Footnote 80: The office thus requires no mean scholarly and oratorical powers. When Queen Elizabeth visited Cambridge, the Public Orator had to make her a laudatory address of half an hour in duration, without notes, "with the Queen's horse curvetting under her"

(for this was not in the Senate House--yet unbuilt--but in the open air before King's College Chapel), and with constant mock-modest interruptions from her Royal lips. Her only thanks were a commendation of his excellent memory.]

The Senate House is a stately cla.s.sical building, running east and west, erected in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Up to that date the functions which it now discharges were served partly by the old Schools (now the University Library), which have been already spoken of, and which adjoin it on the west, and partly by the University Church (called here, as at Oxford, "Great St. Mary's"), which stands hard by to the east. The legislative meetings of the Senate were held in the former,[81] the Degrees were conferred, and other gatherings held, in the latter.

[Footnote 81: One apartment was called the Regent House, as being thus used by the Governing Body of the University.]

This was all very well before the Reformation, whilst reverence for consecrated places still held its own; but, after that great convulsion, the proceedings too frequently were markedly unecclesiastical in tone. The conferring of Degrees was originally a solemn function beginning with High Ma.s.s, and continuing with a serious _viva voce_ exercise of the candidates in the presence of the Vice-Chancellor. But when the Reformation had made it fas.h.i.+onable to show a healthy Protestant contempt for the old Catholic superst.i.tions, the whole ceremony was deliberately turned into a farce. The questioning of the candidates was no longer done by grave University officials, but by an "old" (_i.e._ a senior) Bachelor, who sat upon a three-legged stool, and made his interrogations as profane and scurrilous as possible. He was known, from his stool, as "Mr. Tripos,"

and so essential a part of the proceedings did he become that "Tripos"

got to be (as it still is) the regular name for an "Honour"

examination at Cambridge. To judge by the few that have come down to us, the jokes current on these occasions were poor to the last degree.

Thus, in 1657, we read that two Oxonians, got up as hobby-horses, presented themselves, giving as their qualification that they "had smith's work at their digits' ends," (Smith being a then current writer of school books). They were duly admitted, on the ground that "such _equitation_ gave them an _equitable_ claim!" And all this was in the church; where, indeed, far less innocent performances were constantly given, including stage-plays and recitations in which the most solemn mysteries of the Catholic Faith were often travestied and held up to ridicule.[82]

[Footnote 82: As Protestantism lost its first militant fervour, these performances more and more dropped their polemical features. But they still remained most inappropriate for a place of wors.h.i.+p. We have seen how the higher minds of the University, such as Dr. Barrow, felt about them before the seventeenth century came to an end. (See p. 104.)]

The church which was thus so long profaned is of late Perpendicular architecture. Huge galleries have been inserted for the accommodation of such undergraduates as may attend; the nave being appropriated to the Master of Arts. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the east end was filled with tier above tier of semicircular benches for the seniors of the University, from whose prevailingly bald heads this elevation became profanely known as "Golgotha." All is now arranged in decent fas.h.i.+on, and since the building of the Senate House the church has only been used for strictly ecclesiastical purposes.

Here each Sunday afternoon is preached the "University Sermon," the preacher being some clergyman selected by the Council of the Senate.

No service is held in connection with this sermon, but the preacher, before commencing, reads from the pulpit what is known as the "Bidding Prayer"--a long list of subjects for intercession, comprising the various authorities in Church and State, the Clergy, and (as the source of their supply) the Universities and Colleges. Amongst these "as in private duty bound" the preacher specifically names the College to which he himself belongs, finally concluding with the Lord's Prayer.[83] The sermon is officially attended by the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors, who gather in the Senate House and cross the street in procession to the West door of the church. One of the Proctors carries the University Bible, a ponderous tome suspended by a chain; and in front is borne the silver mace of the University, by an official designated the "Esquire Bedell."

[Footnote 83: On the Sunday after All Saints' Day, when the "Lady Margaret Preacher," appointed by the Vice-Chancellor, officiates, he begins by reading the long roll of benefactors to the University from the earliest times; in itself a specially inspiring predication.]

The church has witnessed various vicissitudes of doctrine. Here, during the first outbreak of Protestantism, the Missal was solemnly torn up and burnt amid the hooting of the crowd; and when, a century later, the Puritans gained the ascendancy, a like fate befell the Book of Common Prayer, Cromwell himself presiding at the ceremony. This was on Good Friday, 1643, when the Vice-Chancellor and several other Heads of Colleges were, for refusing to abet the proceeding, shut up in the church "all the long cold night, without fire or candle." They were afterwards haled to London, and, after being pelted through the City, were subjected to a sort of Black Hole treatment, under hatches on board a hulk in the river, with all port-holes closed, and no air "save such as they could suck from each others' breaths," as the "Querela Cantabrigiensis" piteously complains.