Part 6

When we turn from the peasant and trader, who in those days had little influence in controlling the country, to the classes which exercised power in the land, we come, as it were, to the surface of things; but, to use an agricultural metaphor, we cannot explain the crop without some knowledge of the soil. The explanation of many things, strange now to us in the most highly polished social circles, can be found in the character of the middle and lower classes of the time. When we come in my next lecture to deal with academic life we shall find men of the highest intellect marked by much of the uncouthness of the people described by Crabbe or Cobbold, for many scholars had passed their early days in the same surroundings; and when we go a step higher and associate with the wits, dandies, and politicians of the Regency, I think we shall acknowledge that only a very thin crust of superficial polish lay between them and the people whom they affected to despise. But this similarity does not merely extend to the faults of society; it is to be found in its virtues also. There is no lack of virile strength in the characters to which I have drawn your attention to-day; their good qualities are as marked as their defects, and we recognise in nearly every one of them qualities which brought England safe through a great crisis in its history.

APPENDIX TO “MARGARET CATCHPOLE”

The literary history of “Margaret Catchpole” is somewhat remarkable. The book was published as a true romance in 1845. It immediately attained widespread popularity and passed through several editions. It was dramatised in 1846 in London; and a play bill in the Harvard library shews that it was acted in the National Theatre, Boston, Mass., April 11 and 12, 1859. Mr. Richard Cobbold, the author, was involved in a dispute with Mr. Gedge, the editor of the _Bury Post_, on the historical accuracy of the story; both sides admitting that Margaret had married well in Australia, and that her son had visited Suffolk as a wealthy man desirous of purchasing an estate. The author nearly became involved in legal proceedings because a lady in Australia had been frequently mistaken for his heroine, and subjected to some annoyance on this account. In 1910 the story was again dramatised by the late Laurence Irving, and it was proved that Margaret Catchpole had died a spinster: the certificate of burial, dated 1819, being produced. This and the documents in the Ipswich Museum--viz. a letter written by her to Mrs. Cobbold when in prison, and a handbill offering a reward for her apprehension after her escape--give an unfavourable opinion of the accuracy of the author. The account of her arrest in the _Ipswich Journal_ of April, 1800, makes no mention of the death of her smuggler lover. I have, however, through the kindness of Suffolk friends and my own relations discovered the documents used by Mr. Richard Cobbold, which had been carefully filed by his mother; and I have seen the sketches he made (he was no mean artist) to illustrate the novel, with notes made by himself in his 77th year. He died in 1877. Upon the whole, I am convinced that, though he made some serious mistakes, especially about Margaret’s age and marriage, he believed that he was writing a perfectly true account of her. The subject seemed to me of such interest to students of literary problems that I had the hardihood to submit it as a prelection to that respectable body the Council of the Senate of the University of Cambridge (England) under the title of “St. Luke as a Modern Author” (Cambridge: Heffer and Sons). If some of that august body considered the introduction of this romance in humble life as an illustration of a serious subject an impertinence, I can only tender my apologies. In America it has been suggested by many theological professors that “Margaret Catchpole” has a real bearing on the question of the composition of the Acts of the Apostles, and may prove a clue to that thorny problem, as well as to others which can be illustrated by the use of illiterate materials for literary purposes. Margaret’s letters from Australia, despite the fact that she had been totally uneducated as a girl, are wonderfully interesting, and the naturalness of her style renders them far more readable than the polished periods which her biographer has put into her published letters.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] The lecture was delivered March, 1916.

[12] This seems impossible from what is known of the Crabbe family. (See Huchon’s “George Crabbe.”) The poet had no brother who could have taught Laud.

[13] An example of Mr. Cobbold’s local knowledge and the skill with which he weaves it into his story is seen in the fact that he makes the Barrys the sons of a farmer who first used crag shells for manure. In a Suffolk gazetteer, about 1855, I discovered that this had really been done at Levington, but in 1712, a generation or so before the Barrys could have appeared.

[14] The case of horse stealing tried in Lancashire in 1791 was a peculiarly hard one. A young lady of good family was condemned to transportation for mounting a stranger’s horse, having been dared to do so by a friend. She was only fourteen years of age! She was apparently sent to Australia rather as a passenger than a convict; and married the captain of the ship.

[15] See Appendix on the literary problem of Mr. Cobbold’s novel.

[16] Mr. Cobbold in a private document says that Colson derived his knowledge of the names of demons from Glanvil’s _Sadducismus Triumphatus_. I looked over the book and found no names of demons.

[17] I have been privileged to see kitchens in old houses in New England, which must have been used in very much the same way as Mr. Tovell’s. The house now preserved by the Colonial Dames at Quincy is a good example.

LECTURE IV

GUNNING’S “REMINISCENCES OF CAMBRIDGE”

An English University so closely connected with New England must have special interest to you. Yet those who have been to our Cambridge would find it indeed hard to recognise it in the place I am now about to put before you. It changed beyond recognition within the long lifetime of the author, whose reminiscences, put down during his long last illness, will be the text of my lecture. He had remarkable opportunities of observing University life, and many faculties of making the best of them. His hard shrewd face looks down upon us when we take our wine after dinner as guests in the combination room of Christ’s College, and is an indication of his character. He was no Boswell; for he lacked appreciation of the men he described and though capable of devoted friendship, had little affection for many of them. But he is an admirable raconteur with a shrewd eye for the absurdity of a situation, and will, I think, prove excellent company for us during the time at my disposal.

Many of my audience have doubtless visited our English Cambridge before this war broke out, and will be able to check the remarks I am about to make. An easy run from London brings the traveller to a railway station so inconvenient that it could only have been imagined in a bad dream; and he finds himself in the outskirts of a fair sized and rapidly increasing town.

A dull drive through a street of shops brings you to the colleges; and, if you happened to arrive at midday, you would find a stream of undergraduates in cap and gown with women students from Girton and Newnham issuing from or flowing into the lecture rooms. Supposing your host to be in his college, you would find the courts populous with undergraduates, some in cap and gown, some in flannel blazers, and some, _proh pudor!_ in evening pumps or even in carpet slippers. If you asked a question of one of them, you would be answered obligingly, if not with elaborate courtesy. Your host (a fellow of the college) would probably be working with a few pupils; and when they withdrew you would either be given lunch in his rooms or taken to his house. A few friends would be asked to meet you. The meal would be, I hope, a good one, and several would not even take the wine which was provided. Why I say this will appear later. If it were summer, you would have been taken for a walk in the “Backs,” and have found the narrow river crowded with boats full of gaily flannelled men and a good many ladies; and, I think, you would have admired the brightness of the scene. You might witness a cricket match, and, later in the evening, have watched the eights practising, with their coaches running, cycling, or riding beside them. If you dined in the college hall, you would find a good if not elaborate dinner neatly served; and the company, if not brilliant, would be at least variegated. In the combination room, over a modest glass of port and perhaps a cigar, the conversation would turn on many topics. The presiding fellow, who has been everywhere, would be laying down the law to a somewhat inattentive audience about hotels in Buda-Pesth and the old college friends he had met on the Yukon River. A famous man of letters would be giving his views on finance and town planning. A chemist and a mathematician would be absorbed in discussing bird life. A great authority on art might be explaining his views on the religion of the future to a D.D., who ought to know, being by repute a heretic, but is somewhat inattentive as he is trying to listen, and at the same time endeavouring to explain to another man what are the prospects of the college boat. An anthropologist of European fame is being instructed by the junior fellow how the last fashionable dance ought to be performed; and the tutor, a silent man, suddenly breaks in with a question as to the progress of one of his pupils. Naturally the guest is not neglected; he would perhaps rather listen, especially as everyone is talking about something he does not make his specialty, as all sensible people do after dinner. It may be our supposed guest is taken to the Master’s Lodge and finds several undergraduates on terms of easy familiarity with the “dons” and even with the, in old days unapproachable and awful, Head of the college. I am of course speaking of happier days before the War had depleted our numbers and when we all felt friendly and sociable.

In every scene in this imaginary sketch the contrast with Cambridge in the eighteenth century would be apparent. Except for parts of the buildings all is changed. In one respect the traveller who visited Cambridge a century ago would have had the advantage. Had he approached by either of the hills, by Madingley or the Gog Magogs, the town would have appeared more beautiful than now. Here is a description of his first view of the place by John Henry Newman in 1832, who was too great an admirer of the beauties of Oxford to fail to see how lovely was her rival:

“CAMBRIDGE, July 16th, 1832.

“Having come to this place with no anticipations, I am quite taken by surprise and overcome with delight. This, doubtless, you will think premature in me, inasmuch as I have seen yet scarcely anything, and have been writing letters of business to Mr. Rose and Rivingtons. But really, when I saw at the distance of four miles, on an extended plain, wider than Oxford, amid thicker and greener groves, the Alma Mater Cantabrigiensis lying before me, I thought I should not be able to contain myself, and in spite of my regret at her present defects and past history, and all that is wrong about her,[18] I seemed about to cry _Floreat in eternum_. Surely there is a _genius loci_ here, as in my own dear home; and the nearer I came to it, the more I felt its power. I do really think the place finer than Oxford, though I suppose it isn’t, for everyone says so. I like the narrow streets; they have a character, and they make the University buildings look larger by contrast. I cannot believe that King’s College is not far grander than anything with us; the stone, too, is richer, and the foliage more thick and encompassing. I found my way from the town to Trinity College like old Œdipus, without guide, by instinct; how, I know not. I never studied the plan of Cambridge.”

Ill paved, ill drained as was the town, narrow as were the streets, it must have been picturesque to the eye, and the colleges, unspoiled by modern additions, are very attractive, to judge by the old prints. On the whole, however, I think our verdict would have been that old Cambridge was a pleasanter place for us to explore than for its inhabitants to live in.

Let us now exercise our imagination a little more and try to fancy what a day spent in Cambridge would have been like to a stranger towards the close of the eighteenth century. One thing, I think, may be assumed to be unaltered. Had he come to visit a friend, he would have been hospitably received. Let us suppose that he also arrived at midday in summer when it was full term and that, to quote Wordsworth, he--

“At the Hoop alighted ... famous inn.”

He certainly would not have met a troop of young men, let alone maidens, going in and out of lecture. The lectures were over: and the lecture rooms were never crowded. Perhaps some noisy fellow-commoners might have stared and jeered at him and quite possibly have insulted him. Most colleges were very empty of students, many rather dilapidated. He would have dined in the middle of the day, and the hall would have been hot, noisy, and probably ill ordered. Joints were passed from one diner to another and carved according to taste. At the high table, where he would dine, would be the resident fellows, a stray nobleman or so, and a few rich young men, called fellow-commoners. A good deal of beer would be drunk, and most of the company would be rather cross and sleepy after the meal. The fellows, who were nearly all clergymen, would show themselves obsequious to the noblemen, uneasily familiar with the fellow-commoners, and completely oblivious of the scholars and pensioners, who dined at the lower table, and of the sizars, or poor scholars, who, in some cases (certainly at an earlier date), waited on them, and after dinner ate what had been left on the high table. There were no games to watch: and in the afternoon probably our guest would be mounted and taken for a ride. In the evening supper would be served and perhaps a considerable amount of wine drunk in the combination room. As political feeling ran high at the time, the company would probably have quarrelled. Very few fellows had ever left their native country. A few had hardly known any places save their homes and their University.

Some must have been strangely uncouth in manner and appearance. Most of them were, as I have said, clergymen, and, of course, bachelors; but their practice of celibacy was not always such as to fulfil the ideals of the advocates of that holy state in the days of the saints. But we have not yet finished our day. Supper would have been followed by an adjournment to a small, dirty, ill-lighted public house, and the walk home to bed might not be inaptly compared to the convolutions of a corkscrew.

That such was the University in the days of our author I fancy some extracts from the book before me will convince you. He admits that in his youthful days Cambridge had sunk lower than it ever had before, and he trusted that such days as his might never recur.

We have kept him waiting too long. Let me present to you Henry Gunning, Esquire Bedel of the University of Cambridge. He tells us he was a son of a clergyman in the neighbourhood and the descendant of “that admirable prelate,” Dr. Peter Gunning, Bishop of Ely in the reign of Charles II. He entered Christ’s College in 1784, and died in 1855, well over eighty years of age, after a life spent in the University. During his long last illness he dictated his reminiscences.[19] He had, at an earlier period written some memoirs; but, on reflection, after a serious illness he had decided to burn all the papers. In his own words:

“I kept an account of the decision of the Heads on any disputed point.... My notes became much swelled by rumours of _jobbing_ among the higher powers, which, though sometimes defeated, were generally so skilfully conducted that they more frequently succeeded. I had collected sufficient materials for publishing a pretty large volume, but was about that time attacked by a sudden and dangerous illness, which afforded more opportunity for serious reflection than I had before accustomed myself to.... I was apprehensive that I might have inserted some things (which I believed to be facts) upon questionable authority.... I feared that the papers might fall into the hands of some bookseller whose only object would be gain, to obtain which he would not scruple to whitewash men whose characters ought to have been drawn in the darkest colours, or to speak in extremely harsh terms of others on whose eccentricities I only wished to pass a slight censure. Too ill to admit of delay, I decided on committing all my papers to the flames, nor did I for fifty years regret the step.” Gunning died before his task was completed: his memoirs terminated abruptly; but the most interesting part of his work has happily survived, and the earlier reminiscences, as is customary with the aged, are more full and vivid than the later.

I shall not attempt to moralise or discant much upon his story; but I intend to give it in his own words with a few remarks in passing.

Henry Gunning entered Christ’s College as a sizar, a poor scholar who was at one time supposed to be fed by what was left of the meals provided for the fellows (a Christ’s College sizar being the equivalent of a “servitor” at Oxford), though Gunning says nothing of this.[20] As we shall see, he led anything but the life of a humble dependant whilst at the University. His college had been and now is among the most distinguished at Cambridge. It had produced John Milton and Ralph Cudworth, and had been a famous centre of the intellectual life of the seventeenth century. It was the college of William Paley, who was Senior Wrangler in 1763, and it was destined to be the school of many a famous man, among them Charles Darwin. But only three men entered with our hero in 1785.

The two tutors, Mr. Parkinson and Mr. Seale, were in a sense men of mark. The former had been disappointed in failing to be elected Master; and was engaged to a very beautiful young lady, whose numerous admirers made him at times uncomfortable. As Mr. Parkinson had an eighteen-mile ride to get to his lady-love, he lectured in cap and gown, but also booted and spurred, and snubbed young Gunning when he asked for explanations of difficult points in the lecture.

Accordingly his pupil gave up lectures and decided not to read at all; but at the end of the term the tutor spoke most kindly and encouragingly, as an old friend of his pupil’s father. The result was that Gunning became, for a time at least, a reading man, and was much encouraged by his friend Hartley, a Yorkshireman who shewed him the solution of the difficulties which Parkinson was too impatient to explain. When Parkinson examined Gunning he found that his progress was most satisfactory, encouraged him most kindly to persist; and when Gunning told him of a man who was reputed to read twelve hours a day in hopes of surpassing the expected Senior Wrangler, he remarked, “If he mean to beat him he had better devote six hours to reading and six hours to reflecting on what he has read.”

Seale, the other tutor, was a good teacher and a really humorous lecturer. “Nothing could be pleasanter than the hour passed at his lecture, such was his kindness to all.... When any ludicrous blunder occurred ... he joined in the laugh as heartily as any of us.” Seale seems to have been a very able scholar, but somewhat quarrelsome: he became chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury; but had to resign because he quarrelled with the butler about the wine supplied at the chaplains’ table. However, Gunning had nothing to complain of in regard to the education he got from his college.

He was not always a close student; and both his diversions and his friends are more interesting in illustrating his times, than are his tutors or his reading. May I for a moment digress and explain the constitution of the University? Except for a very few professors and the officials--Vice-Chancellor, Proctors, Taxors, and Moderators, etc.--the University was practically non-existent. The colleges did virtually all the teaching and were self-contained bodies.[21]

A man got little or no instruction outside his own college; the University examined him and gave him his degree--that was all.

The real rulers of the University were the Masters of the colleges. Most of them were highly placed ecclesiastics, and, consequently, had frequently to be absent from Cambridge; but as the “Heads” might marry, and fellows had to resign their position on taking a wife, they constituted a permanent element, and became all-powerful. I myself have often heard stories of the time when the Master of a college, and his family, belonged to an aristocracy to which no ordinary Master of Arts could hope to be admitted; and, you may be sure, the ladies who reigned in the lodges were very careful to keep the wives and daughters of such married graduates as happened to live in the town at their proper distance. Gunning will have plenty to say about them. The fellows of the colleges were for the most part non-resident; only the tutors and a few old men resided with any permanence in the colleges. With a few exceptions the fellows who stayed in Cambridge were either very young men or very strange old bachelors who seldom left the town. What instruction was given was given by the college tutors, and most of the fellows who lived in Cambridge served as curates to the different village churches. Some were almost entirely idle men, and one, who shall be nameless, found them no little mischief to do.

The fellows dined at the high table, to which the nobility were also admitted. Noblemen, _i.e._ peers, the eldest sons of peers, and men who could prove royal descent, had till comparatively recently had the right of proceeding to the degree of M.A. after two years of residence without taking any examination or the degree of B.A. In Gunning’s early days peers wore on state occasions a magnificent academical dress varying in colour according to taste. Then came the fellow-commoners, men of wealth, who paid far higher fees than the ordinary students and dined with the fellows. These were also distinguished by the magnificence of their academic attire. It is difficult to imagine a much worse system of education. The nobility and fellow-commoners were kept apart from the ordinary men, often grossly flattered by the fellows and even by the Masters of the colleges. Work was not expected of them, and their example was often pernicious alike to the students and to the younger fellows. The majority of the young men were classed as scholars, who with the fellows formed what is called the “society” of the colleges, pensioners, and sizars or servitors. Almost all were intending to take Holy Orders: a few, however, became barristers or medical practitioners. The University was very small. In 1748 there were only 1500 on the books of the colleges; this includes non-residents, who were almost certainly in the majority. In 1801 the total of residents in the University, including, I suppose, the servants who slept in college, was 803.