Читать книгу Highways and Byways in Cambridge and Ely - John William Edward Conybeare - Страница 5

Table of Contents

Entrance to Cambridge.—Railways.—Roman Catholic Church.—Street runlets, Hobson, Perne.—Fitzwilliam Museum.—Peterhouse, Chapel, Deer-park.—Little St. Mary's Church, Washington Arms.—Gray's window.—Pembroke College, Large and Small Colleges, "Querela Cantabrigiensis," Ridley's farewell.—St. Botolph's Church.—The King's Ditch.—Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Guilds, St. Benet's Church, Fire-hooks, Corpus Library, Corpus Ghost.—St. Catharine's College.—King's Parade.—Pitt Press.—Newnham Bridge, Hermits.—The Backs River, College Bridges, Hithes.

Having thus given the reader a very meagre and sketchy outline of the sort of knowledge needful for a due appreciation of Cambridge, and leaving him to fill in such details as he pleases from the numberless histories and guide books, large and small (and for the most part excellent) which he will find quite readily accessible, we will now suppose him to be entering the town.

Should he do this from the railway station he will have to face a mile or so of "long unlovely street" to begin with. For when railroads were first made—(the Great Eastern line from London to Cambridge being constructed in 1845)—they were regarded with extreme suspicion and dislike by the authorities of both Universities. The noise of the trains, it was declared, would be fatal to their studies; the facility of running up to London would hopelessly demoralise their undergraduates; bad characters from the metropolis would come down in shoals to prey upon them. Thus both Oxford and Cambridge strenuously opposed any near approach of this new-fangled abomination to their hallowed precincts. Oxford actually succeeded in keeping the main line of the Great Western as far off from it as Didcot, ten miles away, whence it did not penetrate to the city itself till a considerably later date, when prejudice had been overcome by the patent advantages of the new locomotion, and a station hard by was welcomed. At Oxford, therefore, no such distance divides the railway and the Colleges as at Cambridge, where from the first the station stood in its present place. This, at the date of its construction, was far beyond even the outermost buildings of the town, with which it is connected by the old Roman road, the main artery of Cambridge, running straight, as Roman roads do run, for miles on either side to the "Great Bridge." To antiquarians this road is known as the Via Devana, because its objective is supposed to have been the old Roman city of Deva (Chester); during its passage through Cambridge it has no fewer than seven official designations, to the frequent discomfiture of strangers.

Where it conducts the visitor townwards from the railway station it presents, as we have said, a somewhat dreary vista; dignified only by the beautifully proportioned spire of the Roman Catholic Church, built in 1885. The erection of this edifice was due to the generosity of a single benefactor, Mrs. Lyne-Stephens, a French lady, who, early in the reign of Queen Victoria, won fame and fortune as the most renowned ballet dancer of the London stage. The Church is popularly called, in Cambridge, a Cathedral; but this is a misnomer, for the Bishop's See is not here but at Northampton.

The cross-roads at which the church is placed rejoice in the inane designation of Hyde Park Corner. The best approach to Cambridge is by the westward road of the four, which leads into the London Road (or Trumpington Road, as it is here called), that umbrageous avenue of leafage spoken of in our opening sentences. Keeping along this towards the town, we find ourselves confronted with one of the prettiest and most uncommon amongst the minor attractions of Cambridge, the runlets of clear water which sparkle along the side of either pavement.

This pleasant feature is attributed to the benevolence of an ancient Cambridge worthy, Thomas Hobson, who dwelt here from the reign of Henry the Eighth to that of Charles the First. By trade he was a "carrier," a profession which at that date included not merely the transport of goods but the provision of locomotion for passengers—then almost wholly equestrian. Thus Hobson not only himself travelled regularly to and from London with his stage-waggon, but kept a large stable of horses, not fewer than "forty good cattle," ready for hire—even supplying his customers with boots and whips for their journey. But he was very autocratic in the matter, and would never allow any steed to be chosen except in accordance with his will. "This or none" he would say to any hirer who dared to remonstrate. And his business was so prosperous that he could afford to say it, and thus give rise to the still current expression "Hobson's Choice." He rose to be Mayor of Cambridge, and his portrait still hangs in the Guildhall.

Finally when he died, at the age of eighty-six, in 1630, he gained the honour of a serio-comic epitaph from Milton, then a student of Christ's College, "on the University Carrier who sickened in the time of his Vacancy, on being forbid to go to London by reason of the Plague."

"Here lieth one who did most truly prove

That he could never die while he could move;

So hung his destiny, never to rot

While he might still jog on and keep his trot.

… … …

Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,

And too much breathing put him out of breath;

Nor were it contradiction to affirm

Too long Vacation hastened on his Term.

… . … .

But had his doings lasted as they were

He had been an immortal carrier."

The popular tradition, (attested by an inscription on the fountain in the Market Place,) which gives this hero the whole credit of the street runlets, seems, however, to go too far, though they were certainly first made during his life-time. Their source is in some springs which issue from the chalk near Great Shelford, four miles south-east of Cambridge, and which are called, as such sources are commonly called hereabouts, "The Nine Wells"—nine being used as an indefinite number. It is interesting to remember that this conception evolved itself also amongst the ancient Greeks, who talked of the "Nine Fountains" at Athens, and the "Nine Ways" at Amphipolis, with exactly the same indefiniteness of numeration. The ancient outfall of these springs seems to have been by what is now called "Vicar's Brook," which is bridged by the London Road at the first milestone from Cambridge. Till the eighteenth century the bridge was a ford, known as Trumpington Ford. The earliest proposal to intercept the stream near this spot and divert its course through the town, was due, not to Hobson, but to another worthy (or unworthy) contemporary of his, Dr. Andrew Perne, then Master of Peterhouse College, a divine of such an accommodating breadth of view that he alone, amongst all the higher authorities of the University, succeeded in retaining his post and his emoluments throughout the horrible see-saw of the Reformation period.

We first hear of him in the reign of Edward the Sixth, as a Protestant of such stalwart calibre that he destroyed as "idolatrous" almost every single book in the University Library. Under Mary he figures as no less ardent a Catholic, even to the degree of digging up and publicly burning (in default of living heretics) the corpses of the celebrated Protestant teachers Bucer and Fagius. Finally the accession of Elizabeth convinced him once more that Protestantism was the truest form of Christianity; and she lived long enough to keep him from again changing his principles. This amazing versatility naturally did not pass without comment. The wits of the University coined from his name the Latin verb pernare "to be a turn-coat," and declared that the A.P. which showed on a new weather-cock given by him to his College stood for A Protestant or A Papist indifferently.

It was this man who, in 1574, started the idea of bringing the Shelford water into Cambridge. The plan was carried out by "Undertakers" (who hoped to make money by it), in 1610, and amongst these Hobson would seem to have been the predominant partner.

Peterhouse.

Accompanied by the rippling of these runlets (which only represent a very small amount of the water brought by "Hobson's Conduit" into Cambridge) we shortly reach our first University edifice, the Fitzwilliam Museum, fronted by a singularly fine façade of classical architecture, and having in the Entrance Hall a really magnificent staircase of coloured marbles. It should be noted that the four lions which flank the façade are (unlike those in Trafalgar Square) all in differing attitudes. The Museum (which is open to the public three days in the week and to members of the University on all days) contains a fine collection of pictures and antiques, the nucleus of which is a bequest made in 1816 by Viscount Fitzwilliam. The Egyptian section is specially noteworthy, and the water-colours by Turner. The building was commenced in 1837, but was not finally completed till 1875, when the cost had run up to a hundred and fifteen thousand pounds.

The long-fronted Hospital on the opposite side of the road is the modern representative of an ancient institution which gave to this region, then quite the extremity of Cambridge, the name (as appears in our oldest maps) of Spittal End.

Adjoining the Museum we find ourselves arriving at our first College, St. Peter's College, more commonly called Peterhouse, the same of which the inevitable Dr. Perne was so long Master. (We may here note that in Cambridge this name "Master" is the designation of the Head of every College except King's, which has a "Provost," and Queens', with its "President.") Peterhouse, as has been mentioned in our first chapter, was the earliest College to be founded in Cambridge. Its founder Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, derived his idea from Merton College at Oxford, which had been in existence some twenty years when, in 1281, he introduced its system into Cambridge, and even adopted its very statutes. He first designed to incorporate his College with the already existing quasi-monastic Brotherhood of the Hospital of St. John (now St. John's College). The double Rule, however, bred so many quarrels that he settled his "Scholars of Ely" on their present site; their abode being dubbed Peterhouse from the adjoining church of St. Peter (now St. Mary's the Less), which for three hundred and fifty years served as the College Chapel, and is still connected by a covered passage with the College buildings.

The existing Chapel was built by yet another Bishop of Ely closely connected with the College, Dr. Matthew Wren, Master here 1625–1634. He was uncle to the great Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul's, and had enough architectural originality of his own to aim at copying the beautiful tracery of the mediæval church-builders. It was the first time that any such attempt had been made in England; and this going behind the Reformation roused the Protestant feeling of the time to fury. Men declared it incredible that there could be "so much Popery in so small a chapel"; and when the Civil War gave the Puritans their opportunity Wren paid for being so far in advance of his age by an imprisonment of not less than eighteen years, till released, in 1660, by the Restoration. The Chapel windows are now filled with some fine Munich glass, the only example of this work in Cambridge.

Besides the Chapel, the Library here is remarkable, and the "Combination Room" boasts itself as almost, if not quite, the finest apartment of its kind in all Cambridge. This name, we may mention, is given in every College to the parlour whither the M.A.'s retire, after dining in Hall, for wine, dessert, and conversation.[6] That of Peterhouse is a luxurious apartment, panelled with oak, and with stained-glass windows.

Another feature of the College is its little deer park, the only one in Cambridge, and, with the exception of Magdalen College, Oxford, the only one in either University. Access to this is obtained by passing through the passage between the Hall and the Kitchen. Beyond the deer park again an iron gate leads to the College Gardens, the only College Gardens in Cambridge which visitors may freely enter. And they are well worth entering.

There is, however, no way through this College, as there is through many, and we must leave it through the same gate as we entered by, thus returning to the street. Over the gate we observe the coat of arms belonging to the College, the armorial bearings of the founder surrounded by a border of crowns. This feature will be seen in every College, for each has its own arms, and these are invariably emblazoned above the entrance.

St. Mary the Less, South side.

Architecturally attached to Peterhouse is, as has been said, the church of St. Mary "the less," so called in contradistinction to "Great" St. Mary's, which here, as at Oxford, is the designation of the "University Church." This is the only really beautiful church in Cambridge, the tracery of the windows being exquisite flowing Decorated. All date from the fourteenth century, when the present structure displaced the earlier church dedicated to St. Peter. One feature of interest here is a monument put up to Richard Washington, who was minister of this church in the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was of the same family as the great George Washington, and in the coat of arms here displayed we may see the origin of the American Stars and Stripes, while the crest has become the American eagle.[7]

To the west of the church we get a view of the back of Peterhouse in its untouched picturesqueness, abutting on the churchyard, at the end of which comes another Museum, that of Classical Archæology. This is reached by a narrow lane, having the church on one side, and on the other "Emmanuel," the leading Congregationalist place of worship in Cambridge. As we return between these into the street we should look up at the buildings of Peterhouse and notice, in front of the window at the top corner of the ivy-clad wall, an erection of stout iron bars. By these hangs a tale; for the window belongs to the rooms traditionally occupied by the poet Gray when in residence here. It is said that he caused these bars to be put up, from his constitutional dread of fire, and that he kept a stout rope constantly affixed to them as a means of escape in case of need. Awakened one night by shouts of "Fire! Fire!" he slid down this rope in deshabille—to find himself plunged at the bottom into a huge vat of water placed there by his friends. So runs the tale; which adds that Gray migrated in disgust from Peterhouse to Pembroke. That he did so migrate is quite historical.

To reach his new College, Gray had only to cross the street; for almost immediately opposite to Peterhouse are seen the more widely extended buildings of Pembroke. Not so very many years ago they were the less widely extended of the two; for while Peterhouse has remained comparatively stationary, Pembroke, more than any other College, has partaken in the wonderful expansion which the last half century has wrought in the number of University students at Cambridge.

Peterhouse, from St. Mary's Churchyard.

From the Restoration onwards the Colleges of Cambridge were for two hundred years, till the middle of the nineteenth century, divisible in numerical strength between two strongly marked classes. At the top came the two great Societies of Trinity and St. John's; of which the former gradually drew ahead, and came to have some four hundred students to St. John's two hundred. The remaining fifteen Foundations were classed together as the "Small Colleges"; the largest of them being well under a hundred strong, and the smallest (amongst them Pembroke) small indeed. But with the great extension of the University curriculum, by the addition of a host of literary and scientific subjects to the Mathematics which had previously been the sole avenue to a Degree, there has come as marked an increase in the number of students, and the old College classification has broken down. Trinity, indeed, remains at the top, even more than ever, having almost doubled its overwhelming numbers; but St. John's has been caught up and overpassed by several of the once "small" Colleges, amongst them by Pembroke. And yet, in the year 1858, Pembroke had only one solitary freshman; and he migrated to Caius, in dread, as the tale then ran, of being divided into sections by the authorities, to satisfy the demands of the Mathematical, Classical, and Philosophical lecturers provided by the College.

The result is that Pembroke, even beyond most Colleges, is a medley of architectural additions. When Gray migrated to it, and for a century thereafter, the modest range of low white stone which still contains the main entrance, formed the whole frontage; the College buildings being a small quadrangle about half the size of the present First Court. It was, in fact (except for a new Chapel, built by Wren in 1663, and still in use), no larger than it was at its first foundation, in 1346, by Mary, widow of Amory de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and daughter of Guy, Count of Chatillon and St. Paul. Her widowhood was brought about, according to tradition, by her husband being accidentally slain, before her eyes, on their very wedding day, at the tournament held to celebrate the nuptials. Modern criticism disputes this tragic tale, but it was believed in Gray's day, and he has referred, in his well-known list of the Founders of Cambridge Colleges, to

"sad Chatillon, on her bridal morn

Who wept her bleeding love."

On her widowhood, however occasioned, she retired from the world, and took the veil at Denny Abbey, between Cambridge and Ely. The College was founded by her in her husband's memory, and has ever since displayed her armorial bearings, the coats of Valence and St. Paul dimidiated.

At the time of the Civil War, the "Querela Cantabrigiensis" (a contemporary publication, written in the Royalist interest), in denouncing the misdeeds of the Parliamentary forces, complains bitterly that "fourscore ragged soldiers, who had been lowzing before Crowland nigh a fortnight, were turned loose into Pembroke Hall, being one of the least Halls of the University, to kennel there, and charged by their officers to shift for themselves, who, without more ado, broke open the Fellows' and Scholars' chambers, and took their beds from under them."

A century before this we find Bishop Ridley, the famous Protestant martyr, dwelling on this College (of which he had been Master) in his touching farewell to Cambridge, composed shortly before his execution:

"Farewell, Pembroke Hall, of late my own College, my care and my charge … mine own dear College! In thy orchard—(the walls, butts,[8] and trees, if they could speak, would bear me witness)—I learnt without book almost all Paul's Epistles; yea, and I ween all the Canonical Epistles also, save only the Apocalypse—of which study, although in time a great part did depart from me, yet the sweet smell thereof I trust I shall carry with me into Heaven; for the profit thereof I think I have felt in all my lifetime ever after. And, I ween, of late there was that did the like. The Lord grant that this zeal and love toward that part of God's Word, which is a key and true commentary to all the Holy Scripture, may ever abide in that College so long as the world shall endure."

Besides Bishop Ridley, Pembroke can boast other well-known Protestant divines of the Reformation era, Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift, his successor, and Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester. The mitre and pastoral staff of the last named (both of brass, and the former quite unwearable) are preserved amongst the College treasures. So is also a magnificent silver-gilt cup, the gift of the Foundress, which still goes round the High Table on special Feast Days. It bears two inscriptions in old English characters. Round the bowl is an exhortation to "drenk and mak gud cher" for love of St. Dennis—to whom Marie de Valence, as a Frenchwoman, had a special devotion—while round the stem are the words "M.V. God. help.at.ned."

This cup is the more valuable as being almost the only piece of mediæval plate still surviving in Cambridge. In ancient days the College Halls and Chapels were abundantly supplied, but when the Civil War broke out the loyal Gownsmen, with one accord, devoted all their silver to the service of the King and sent it off to him at Oxford. But it never got there; for Cromwell gained his first distinction by pouncing upon the convoy "with a ragged rout of peasants," and then compelled the surrender of what little was left in Cambridge. How this cup escaped is not known.

Nor is Pembroke's lay list of distinguished alumni less notable than its clerical. Besides Gray, it has another poet of the first rank in Edmund Spenser, and no less a statesman than the younger Pitt. Amongst men of science it counts the late Sir George Gabriel Stokes, whose memory is still fresh, and the all too much forgotten seventeenth century astronomer, Dr. Long. Of the latter a striking memorial long remained in the College—a copper globe, eighteen feet in diameter, pierced to represent the celestial sphere, and so arranged that thirty observers at once could find place within it and see the sequence of the constellations as the globe revolved. Unhappily this object of unique interest has been improved off the face of the earth, amongst the various innovations to which Pembroke has specially lent itself.

The original foundation of this College (which was for some time more commonly called "Marie Valence Hall") consisted of a Master, fifteen scholars, and four Bible clerks. It has now twelve Fellows, thirty-three scholars, and upwards of two hundred students in residence.