Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals Part 12

"The Master's Lodge, where Dr. Whewell lives, is one of the buildings composing the great pile of Trinity College. One of the rooms in the lodge still remains nearly as in the time of Henry VIII. It is immense in size, and has two oriel windows hung with red velvet. In this room the queen holds her court when she is in Cambridge; for the lodge then becomes a palace, and the 'master' retires to some other apartments, and comes to dinner only when asked.

"It is said that the present master does not much like to submit to this position.

"In this great room hang full-length portraits of Henry and Elizabeth.

On another wall is a portrait of Newton, and on a third the sweet face of a young girl, Dr. Whewell's niece, of whom I heard him speak as 'Kate.'

"Dr. Whewell received us in this room, standing on a rug before an open fireplace; a wood fire was burning cheerily. Mrs. Airy's daughter, a young girl, was with us.

"Dr. Whewell shook hands with us, and we stood. I was very tired, but we continued to stand. In an American gentleman's house I should have asked if I might sit, and should have dropped upon a chair; here, of course, I continued to stand. After, perhaps, fifteen minutes, Dr. Whewell said, 'Will you sit?' and the four of us dropped upon chairs as if shot!

"The master is a man to be noted, even physically. He is much above ordinary size, and, though now gray-haired, would be extraordinarily handsome if it were not for an expression of ill-temper about the mouth.

"An Englishmen is proud; a Cambridge man is the proudest of Englishmen; and Dr. Whewell, the proudest of Cambridge men.

"In the opinion of a Cambridge man, to be master of Trinity is to be master of the world!

"At lunch, to which we stayed, Dr. Whewell talked about American writers, and was very severe upon them; some of them were friends of mine, and it was not pleasant. But I was especially hurt by a remark which he made afterwards. Americans are noted in England for their use of slang. The English suppose that the language of Sam Slick or of Nasby is the language used in cultivated society. They do not seem to understand it, and I have no doubt to-day that Lowell's comic poems are taken seriously. So at this table, Dr. Whewell, wis.h.i.+ng to say that we would do something in the way of sight-seeing very thoroughly, turning to me, said, 'We'll go the whole hog, Miss Mitch.e.l.l, as you say in America.'

"I turned to the young American girl who sat next to me, and said, 'Miss S., did you ever hear that expression except on the street?' 'Never,'

she replied.

"Afterwards he said to me, 'You in America think you know something about the English language, and you get out your Webster's dictionary, and your Worcester's dictionary, but we here in Cambridge think we know rather more about English than you do.'

"After lunch we went to the observatory. The Cambridge Observatory has the usual number of meridian instruments, but it has besides a good equatorial telescope of twenty feet in length, mounted in the English style; for Mr. Airy was in Cambridge at the time of its establishment.

In this pretty observatory, overlooking the peaceful plains, with some small hills in the distance, Mr. and Mrs. Airy pa.s.sed the first year of their married life.

"Professor Challis, the director, is exceedingly short, thick-headed (in appearance), and, like many of the English, thick-tongued. While I was looking at the instruments, Mrs. Airy came into the equatorial house, bringing Mr. Adams, the rival of Leverrier, [Footnote: See Chapter VII.]--another short man, but bright-looking, with dark hair and eyes, and again the thick voice, this time with a nasal tw.a.n.g. He is a fellow of Pembroke College, and master of arts. If Mr. Adams had become a fellow of his own college, St. John, he must have gone into holy orders, as it is called; this he was not willing to do; he accepted a fellows.h.i.+p from Pembroke.

"Mr. Adams is a merry little man, loves games with children, and is a favorite with young ladies.

"At 6.30 we went again to the lodge to dine. We were a little late, and the servant was in a great hurry to announce us; but I made him wait until my gloves were on, though not b.u.t.toned. He announced us with a loud voice, and Dr. Whewell came forward to receive us. Being announced in this way, the other guests do not wait for an introduction. There was a group of guests in the drawing-room, and those nearest me spoke to me at once.

"Dinner was announced immediately, and Dr. Whewell escorted me downstairs, across an immense hall, to the dining-room, outside of which stood the waiters, six in number, arranged in a straight line, in livery, of course. One of them had a scarlet vest, short clothes, and drab coat.

"As I sat next to the master, I had a good deal of talk with him. He was very severe upon Americans; he said that Emerson did not write good English, and copied Carlyle! I thought his severity reached really to discourtesy, and I think he perceived it when he asked me if I knew Emerson personally, and I replied that I did, and that I valued my acquaintance with him highly.

"I got a little chance to retort, by telling him that we had outgrown Mrs. Hemans in America, and that we now read Mrs. Browning more. He laughed at it, and said that Mrs. Browning's poetry was so coa.r.s.e that he could not tolerate it, and he was amused to hear that any people had got above Mrs. Hemans; and he asked me if we had outgrown Homer! To which I replied that they were not similar cases.

"Altogether, there was a tone of satire in Dr. Whewell's remarks which I did not think amiable.

"There were, as there are very commonly in English society, some dresses too low for my taste; and the wine-drinking was universal, so that I had to make a special point of getting a gla.s.s of water, and was afraid I might drink all there was on the table!

"Before the dessert came on, saucers were placed before each guest, and a little rose-water dipped into them from a silver basin; then each guest washed his face thoroughly, dipping his napkin into the saucer.

Professor Willis, who sat next to me, told me that this was a custom peculiar to Cambridge, and dating from its earliest times.

"The finger bowls came on afterwards, as usual.

"It is customary for the lady of the house or the 'first lady' to turn to her nearest neighbor at the close of dinner and say, 'Shall we retire to the drawing-room?' Now, there was no lady of the house, and I was in the position of first lady. They might have sat there for a thousand years before I should have thought of it. I drew on my gloves when the other ladies drew on theirs, and then we waited. Mrs. Airy saw the dilemma, made the little speech, and the gentlemen escorted us to the door, and then returned to their wine.

"We went back to the drawing-room and had coffee; after coffee new guests began to come, and we went into the magnificent room with the oriel windows.

"Professor Sedgwick came early--an old man of seventy-four, already a little shattered and subject to giddiness. He is said to be very fond of young ladies even now, and when younger made some heartaches; for he could not give up his fellows.h.i.+p and leave Cambridge for a wife; which, to me, is very unmanly. He is considered the greatest geologist in England, and of course they would say 'in the world,' and is much loved by all who know him. He came to Cambridge a young man, and the elms which he saw planted are now st.u.r.dy trees. It is pleasant to hear him talk of Cambridge and its growth; he points to the stately trees and says, 'Those trees don't look as old as I, and they are not.'

"I did not see Professor Adams at that time, but I spent the whole of Monday morning walking about the college with him. I asked him to show me the place where he made his computations for Neptune, and he was evidently well pleased to do so.

"We laughed over a roll, which we saw in the College library, containing a list of the ancestors of Henry VIII.; among them was Jupiter.

"Professor Adams tells me that in Wales genealogical charts go so far back that about half-way between the beginning and the present day you find this record: 'About this time the world was created'!

"November 2. At lunch to-day Dr. Whewell was more interesting than I had seen him before. He asked me about Laura Bridgman, and said that he knew a similar case. He contended, in opposition to Mrs. Airy and myself, that loss of vision was preferable to loss of hearing, because it shut one out less from human companions.h.i.+p.

"Dr. Whewell's self-respect and immense self-esteem led him to imperiousness of manner which touches the border of discourtesy. He loves a good joke, but his jests are serious. He writes verses that are touchingly beautiful, but it is difficult to believe, in his presence, that he writes them. Mrs. Airy said that Dr. Whewell and I _riled_ each other!

"I was at an evening party, and the Airy boys, young men of eighteen and twenty, were present. They stood the whole time, occasionally leaning against a table or the piano, in their blue silk gowns. I urged them to sit. 'Of course not,' they said; 'no undergraduate sits in the master's presence!'

"I went to three services on 'Scarlet Sunday,' for the sake of seeing all the sights.

"The costumes of Cambridge and Oxford are very amusing, and show, more than anything I have seen, the old-fogyism of English ways. Dr. Whewell wore, on this occasion, a long gown reaching nearly to his feet, of rich scarlet, and adorned with flowing ribands. The ribands did not match the robe, but were more of a crimson.

"I wondered that a strong-minded man like Dr. Whewell could tolerate such trappings for a moment; but it is said that he is rather proud of them, and loves all the etiquette of the olden time, as also, it is said, does the queen.

"In these robes Dr. Whewell escorted me to church--and of course we were a great sight!

"Before dinner, on this Scarlet Sunday, there was an interval when the master was evidently tried to know what to do with me. At length he hit upon an expedient. 'Boys,' he said to the young Airys, 'take Miss Mitch.e.l.l on a walk!'

"I was a little surprised to find myself on a walk, 'nolens volens;' so as soon as we were out of sight of the master of Trinity, I said, 'Now, young gentlemen, as I do not want to go to walk, we won't go!'

"It was hard for me to become accustomed to English ideas of caste. I heard Professor Sedgwick say that Miss Herschel, the daughter of Sir John and niece to Caroline, married a Gordon. 'Such a great match for her!' he added; and when I asked what match could be great for a daughter of the Herschels, I was told that she had married one of the queen's household, and was asked to _sit_ in the presence of the queen!

"When I hear a missionary tell that the pariah caste sit on the ground, the peasant caste lift themselves by the thickness of a leaf, and the next rank by the thickness of a stalk, it seems to me that the heathen has reached a high state of civilization--precisely that which Victoria has reached when she permits a Herschel to sit in her presence!

"The University of Cambridge consists of sixteen colleges. I was told that, of these, Trinity leads and St. John comes next.

"Trinity has always led in mathematics; it boasts of Newton and Byron among its graduates. Milton belonged to Christ Church College; the mulberry tree which he planted still flourishes.

"Even to-day, a young scholar of Trinity expressed his regret to me that Milton did not belong to the college in which he himself studied. He pointed out the rooms occupied by Newton, and showed us 'Newton's Bridge,' 'which will surely fall when a greater man than he walks over it'!

"Milton first planned the great poem, 'Paradise Lost,' as a drama, and this ma.n.u.script, kept within a gla.s.s case, is opened to the page on which the _dramatis personae_ are planned and replanned. On the opposite page is a part of 'Lycidas,' neatly written and with few corrections.

"The most beautiful of the college buildings is King's Chapel. A Cambridge man is sure to take you to one of the bridges spanning the wretched little stream called the 'Silver Cam,' that you may see the architectural beauties of this building.

"It is well to attend service in one or the other of the chapels, to see a.s.sembled the young men, who are almost all the sons of the n.o.bility or gentry. The propriety of their conduct struck me.

"The fellows of the colleges are chosen from the 'scholars' who are most distinguished, as the 'scholars' are chosen from the undergraduates.

They receive an income so long as they remain connected with the college and unmarried.

"They have also the use of rooms in the college; they dine in the same hall with the undergraduates, but their tables are placed upon a raised dais; they have also little garden-places given them.