Part 13

During Wordsworth’s time, the college was full of great men. Adam Sedgwick* was Professor of Geology. Another member of the college was Thomas Babington Macaulay, who was born with the century. As Fellow of Trinity, the great historian was thoroughly identified with the college, and, nine years after his death, his statue, by Woolner, was placed among the distinguished society of the antechapel. Younger by nine years than Macaulay was Alfred Tennyson (* Watts), who, in a few exquisite verses, made himself peculiarly the poet of Trinity. The chief event of his Cambridge life was, of course, his friendship for Arthur Henry Hallam, who lived, as is well known, in the New Court. Tennyson himself was otherwise not greatly attached to Cambridge. He lived at some distance from Trinity, in Corpus Buildings, and went down without taking his degree. In this respect, Thackeray (* Bogle), two years his junior, was very different from him. Through all his life, Thackeray, although he was so closely identified with London, kept his love for Cambridge, and was at heart a don. While still in residence, he would walk reading along one of the paths in the Great Court, and, in after life, he constantly returned. His rooms were close to Newton’s, north of the Great Gate. Probably no one has handled University life with more success—the subject is proverbially difficult—than Thackeray in the early chapters of _Pendennis_; and, in most of his novels, he sent his heroes to colleges which, whether he placed them in Oxford or Cambridge, have all the features of his beloved Trinity.

With Thackeray we are hard on the heels of our own age. The modern period of Trinity’s history begins with the mastership of William Whewell, whose name is inseparable from his college. The twenty-five years of his mastership, from 1841 to 1866, form a very distinguished epoch. As scholar, organiser, and benefactor to the foundation, he was pre-eminent. The famous epigram which said of him that “Science was his forte and omniscience his foible” was in the main true, but he carried to everything he attempted an immense interest and a sound judgment. His statue very worthily completes the group in the antechapel. It was erected during the mastership of his successor, William Hepworth Thompson (* Herkomer) the Platonist, famous for his erudition and his _bons mots_. Before his elevation to the mastership, Dr Thompson had been Regius Professor of Greek. The men of his generation who belonged to the Society were men of the highest eminence; the best known are, perhaps, Joseph Barber Lightfoot (* Richmond, Dickinson), the commentator on St Paul’s Epistles and Bishop of Durham; James Clerk Maxwell,* Professor of Experimental Physics in the University; the late Arthur Cayley (* Dickinson), the greatest mathematician whom Trinity boasts since the days of Newton; and the Public Orator, W. G. Clark (bust by Woolner), Thompson’s life-long friend. When Thompson died in 1886, he was succeeded by the present master, Dr Butler, who had been Head Master of Harrow and Dean of Gloucester. Beneath these rulers, and with the highest prestige in the world as her tradition, Trinity fully justifies her distinction as a royal foundation and a nursing-mother of sound and religious learning. To select from the present society is invidious; but the names of Professor Henry Sidgwick, Professor Michael Foster (* Herkomer), Dr Henry Jackson (* Furse), and Professor Jebb, are of European repute, to say nothing of the present vice-master, Mr Aldis Wright, editor of Shakspeare, and Mr John Willis Clark, the present Registrary, whose investigations in Cambridge history and antiquities are well known everywhere. In the Church one may point to the theologian Dr Westcott, Bishop of Durham, to Dr Farrar, Dean of Canterbury, and to the late Charles Alan Smythies, Bishop of Zanzibar; among politicians, to Mr Arthur and Mr Gerald Balfour, and Sir William Harcourt; while of doctors, lawyers and men of letters the crowd cannot be numbered.

XVII

EMMANUEL COLLEGE

When one hears of the destruction of the beautiful courts at Emmanuel and Sidney, one is tempted to wonder what good genius of building spared the second court of St John’s and Nevile’s Court at Trinity. Had Ralph Symons’ work been allowed to remain here, we should have had a building almost exactly parallel with the latter. Symons built courts, but he did not attempt imposing street-fronts, and the ranges he erected between 1584 and 1586 turned their backs ungraciously to the road. The entrance to the college was on the north side, where there is now a smaller court in the Gothic style of 1840. What is now known as the Brick Building, east of the entrance court and at right angles to the south side, belongs to 1633, but is substantially in harmony with Symons’ earlier work. It forms a very charming fragment. The classical transformation of Emmanuel was begun during Dr Breton’s mastership. Sir Christopher Wren, who was just completing his chapel at Pembroke, was invited to design the east side of the court. It is interesting to observe how he followed his uncle’s design for the chapel of Peterhouse, copying the lateral galleries which connect the chapel with the main buildings. Wren built these between 1665 and 1677, and it is probable that, when he began working at Trinity in 1675, he left the completion of this beautiful composition to his pupil, Nicholas Hawksmoor. The characteristic of the whole is a very striking dignity. Internally, the chapel is less interesting, but the stained glass, representing noteworthy members of the college, such as Sancroft, William Law, and some of the Cambridge Platonists, is thoroughly suited to the fine, plain windows. The northern gallery is the picture-gallery of the Master’s Lodge as well as an approach to the chapel, and contains a number of fine portraits, including a Lely, two Gainsboroughs and two Romneys.

In the last century the revival which Wren had innocently inaugurated swept away Symons’ building. In 1719 the south side of the court was rebuilt; the gigantic pilasters in the centre are a proof of how bad the Palladian work of that over-abused period could be. Sir James Burrough of Caius, who for half a century was the architectural dictator of Cambridge, designed new north and west buildings, obeying the unconquerable desire of the day for an eloquent façade. Because the design is Burrough’s, this addition is tolerable and more or less appropriate to the chapel; but Burrough died before it was begun, and this, like the Clare chapel, is a posthumous and probably slanderous addition to his fame. At all events the work was entrusted to Essex, who carried it out before 1770. It is perhaps significant that Essex was chosen, a year or two later, to compare his work once more to Wren’s, this time at Trinity. The western cloister, which recalls the similar but earlier building at Pembroke, is heavy but not unsuccessful. Essex had his own way with the Hall, which is probably the least agreeable hall in Cambridge. It is cold and stiff, and the plaster roof brings bad taste to a climax. In the Gothic court north of this is the Library, which corresponds to the refectory of the old Dominican house—the Hall is on the site of the chapel. It was, till the Restoration, the college chapel. Sancroft, to whose initiative Wren’s work is due, gave it a valuable collection of old books, chiefly Bibles, and its Oriental manuscripts were carefully described by Sir William Jones. The chief modern addition to Emmanuel is the large brick building at the east end of the college garden. This, although not remarkable in itself, is interesting as the pioneer of an attempt to revive the economical principle of the medieval hostel. It also forms a not unfitting termination to the pretty lawn, with its pond and tennis-courts.

* * * * *

“The pure house of Emmanuel” occupies the site of the house of Dominican Friars outside Barnwell Gate. At the dissolution the buildings were left untouched, and, when Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Treasurer of the Household, came into possession of the land, he had his materials for a college all ready. Sir Walter was a strong Puritan, and was on that account no great favourite with Queen Elizabeth. She met him one day and said, “Sir Walter, I hear that you have erected a Puritan foundation.” Sir Walter, however, disclaimed the insinuation, “No, Madam; far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws; but I have set an acorn, which, when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof.” The acorn, nevertheless, grew into a very Puritan oak. The buildings seem to have been erected in a curious spirit; for, if not Sir Walter, at all events his executors, revelled in the fact that the secular buildings of the foundation stood upon the Friary church, and did all they could to obliterate the monastic plan of the buildings. But, beyond this unnecessary manifestation of spite, the college was admirably governed and its students were—and all through its history have been—serious and law-abiding. Sir Walter founded it as “a College of Theology, Science, Philosophy, and Literature, for the extension of the pure Gospel of Christ our only Mediator, to the honour and glory of Almighty God,” and appointed, as its first master, Dr Laurence Chaderton, who ruled the college for thirty-eight years, and had a great part in the Authorised Version of the Bible. Under Dr Chaderton, the foundation increased in learning and godliness, and Fuller said of it, “Sure I am, at this day it hath overshadowed all the Universities, more than a moiety of the present masters of colleges being bred therein.” Dr Branthwaite* of Caius, Dr Whichcot* of King’s, Dr Samuel Ward* of Sidney, and the famous Ralph Cudworth* of Clare and Christ’s, all held fellowships at Emmanuel.

As time went on, the Puritanism of Emmanuel became more and more pronounced. The services in the chapel savoured of Congregationalism and were altogether opposed to the Laudian revival of church life and doctrine. Under the first Dr Sancroft, the college ritual was thus reported to the Archbishop, “They receive that Holy Sacrament, sitting upon forms about the Communion Table, and do pull the Loaf one from the other, after the minister hath begun. And so the Cup, one drinking as it were to another, like good fellows, without any particular application of the said words, more than once for all.” This expression of shocked piety has nothing in its wording which allows us to expect exaggeration. The servers at the altar were also “Fellows’ subsizars,” and not in holy orders. However, one fails to see any extravagant Protestantism in this arrangement. Emmanuel chapel must have presented a strange contrast to Wren’s and Cosin’s chapel at Peterhouse, or to the chapel at Queens’ which Dowsing ransacked so unceremoniously. The college, meanwhile, was the nursery of American colonisers, and has therefore always been a goal of American pilgrimage. Mr Everett’s bombastic passage on the subject has been often quoted; its eloquence is scarcely of the finest type. But, in company with a row of Pilgrim Fathers, Emmanuel produced John Harvard, the founder of the greatest American University, and may therefore be called the mother of American education.

But, in common with St John’s and other colleges, Emmanuel lost its Puritanism with years. The Restoration brought in a better state of feeling, and, under the second Dr Sancroft and his successors, Doctors Breton* and Holbech,* the college devoted its energies to building. William Sancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury, and kept up the traditions of his college in refusing to acknowledge James II.’s Declaration. He was the chief of the seven bishops who signed the famous petition against that document. Afterwards, as a non-juror, he resigned his archbishoprick. But the best of all the sons of Emmanuel was another non-juror, William Law, who was for many years a fellow, and held the living of King’s Cliffe in Northamptonshire. This great man has become better known to the world since the publication of his biography by Canon Overton, and the reprinting of his letters to Bishop Hoadly. He was a staunch and able supporter of the Church’s principles, but his most abiding monument is the half mystical but intensely practical treatise called _A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life_. The book has had an influence second only to that of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, and its wide application may be judged from the fact that it affected people so widely different as Dr Johnson and Richard Hurrell Froude. Its simple but vivid style and its picturesque quaintness, account very largely for its popularity. In later years, Law, a solitary and meditative man, took up the half-understood ideas of German mysticism, and became a blind disciple of Jacob Behmen. These later aberrations have somewhat eclipsed his legitimate fame. The college has commemorated him by a window in the chapel. In connection with Law, it is interesting to remember that another mystical writer, Joseph Hall, Bishop, first of Exeter and afterwards of Norwich, was a fellow of Emmanuel. There is a portrait of Hall in the splendid collection at the Lodge, in which he is represented as wearing a gold medal. This medal was given him by the States General as a recognition of his services at the Synod of Dort, and the original is still in the possession of the college.

There is also, in the same collection, an admirable portrait of Sancroft, who, beyond his contributions to the new chapel, was a great benefactor to the library. This library is one of the most valuable in Cambridge. Bishop Bedell of Kilmore, who pursued his studies at Emmanuel with great success, and was a fellow of the college, left it a Hebrew Bible which he had bought for its weight in silver. Among other treasures it contains a MS. of Chrysostom and a copy of Wyclif’s Bible, with the inscription “Ihū help us, for we ben feble.” To return to the portraits in the Master’s Lodge. We find there an excellent portrait of that accomplished diplomat and typical prig, Sir William Temple, by Lely. And, among other seventeenth-century worthies, we are glad to see the portrait of the greatest of Cambridge builders, Ralph Symons, “Effigies Radulphi Simons,” the inscription goes, “Architecti sua aetate peritissimi qui praeter plurima aedificia ab eo praeclare facta, duo collegia Emanuelis hoc Sydneii illud exstruxit integre. Magnam etiam partem Trinitatis reconcinnavit amplissime.”

After the time of Law and the non-jurors, the history of Emmanuel is very quiet, and the stately ease for which its buildings are conspicuous possessed the college. During the mastership of Dr William Richardson,* in 1765, a member of the college published a book which had a tremendous effect on English literature. This was the _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, collected by Bishop Percy of Dromore. The labours of this antiquarian are a lasting glory to his college. A similar taste was apparent in Richardson’s successor, “rare” Richard Farmer (* Romney) who was master from 1775 to 1797. The love of himself and his _coterie_ for Shakspeare took him, night after night, to the theatre at Stourbridge Fair, and his affection for the drama combined with his good-fellowship made him something of a curiosity at the time when most college masters were dry and pedantic. To the same period belongs Samuel Parr, whose pipe, tobacco-box, and stopper are preserved by the College. He was undoubtedly a wit and a good talker, but his jokes were lengthy and pompous, and he scarcely deserves the praise of those admirers who have likened him to Dr Johnson and Sydney Smith. For most of us, possibly, he lives entirely by virtue of de Quincey’s essay upon him.

The two most famous scholars whom Emmanuel produced in the eighteenth century were Joshua Barnes,* Professor of Greek at its beginning, and Richard Hurd,* Bishop in succession of Lichfield and Worcester, who died in 1808. Hurd was a theologian with a somewhat dull pen, and is now chiefly remembered as the disciple, friend and biographer of Bishop Warburton. At the beginning of this century Sir Busick Harwood, a scientific man greatly in advance of his age, was Professor of Anatomy. Gell, the antiquary and explorer of Pompeii, who died in 1836, was also an Emmanuel man. But the present century, although the standard of work and scholarship has been high, is not prolific in eminent names. Our greatest living historian, Dr Creighton, held a fellowship at Emmanuel according to the terms of the Dixie Professorship, but Cambridge cannot count him as her own. At present, the college is rapidly increasing in numbers and emulates the modern popularity of Pembroke; and it has the distinction, rare at Cambridge, of success on the river and in the schools alike.

XVIII

SIDNEY SUSSEX COLLEGE

[Illustration: Sidney Sussex College]

Ralph Symons, the great Cambridge builder whose name deserves to be more widely known than it is, was the architect chosen to superintend the works at Sidney. He was employed on Nevile’s Court at Trinity, and was, a year or two later, to begin operations in the second court of St John’s. Sidney, which was ready at the beginning of 1599, was quite comparable with those famous works of art. As usual, the architect did not attempt to manage a street-front. Here, however, instead of turning the back of his buildings to the street, as at Emmanuel, he constructed an oblong three-sided court, whose eastern side directly fronted the street. In 1628 Sir Francis Clerke of Houghton Conquest completed a second court on similar lines. The south side of one court thus became the north side of the other. This common side, which exactly bisects the building, was terminated by a gateway opening on the street and into either court. In this original plan the entrance to the Hall was immediately in the centre of the eastern range of the north court; the entrance to the Chapel occupied a similar position in the south court. We are still able to admire this graceful and simple plan. But of the original buildings the only remaining traces are the oriels in the garden-front of the Master’s Lodge. In 1776 Essex, who had for the last ten years been “improving” Cambridge out of knowledge, built a new chapel; and in 1830, while Dr Chafy was master—the names of these masters deserve to be handed down—it was decided to thoroughly remodel the college in the new Gothic style. This step was prompted simply by the admiration which Wilkins’ doings at Corpus, Trinity, and King’s had excited. Each college glowed with pious emulation, and Sidney chose for its destroyer Sir Jeffrey Wyattville, who had Gothicised a great part of Windsor Castle. Wyattville overhauled the college in the Vandal manner; removed all traces, save those I have referred to, of Symons’ obsolete work, and replaced it by the present pretentious and insipid structure which adorns the eastern side of Sidney Street. It is a comfort to know that a later generation has made amends for this criminal error of taste. A court, or rather two sides of a court, with cloisters, have been added in recent years by the late Mr John Loughborough Pearson. This range of buildings, not very obvious owing to the high walls behind which it stands, is of red brick, and, like many other new buildings in Cambridge, is in the style of the French Renaissance with English modifications. It is certainly one of Mr Pearson’s great successes, and is, moreover, a success in a line which he seldom attempted. The court—which contains, by the way, a very fine Combination Room—is one of the most retired spots in Cambridge, and in its studious shades it is possible to forget Wyattville’s ravages.

* * * * *

In 1589 died an excellent lady, Frances Lady Sussex, widow of the second Earl. She was the daughter of Sir William Sidney, and would in any case have achieved a negative distinction as the wife of Thomas Radcliffe and the aunt of Sir Philip Sidney. But in her will she left a legacy of five thousand pounds, to be employed by her executors in the foundation of a college at Cambridge, or, in case the bequest were insufficient, in enlarging Clare Hall. Six years later, the executors bought a site from Trinity College. When Henry VIII. founded Trinity, he made over to it the lands of the Franciscan Friary which, until the dissolution, had occupied the space between the modern Sidney Street and the King’s Ditch. The buildings were apparently taken down and used as a quarry for Henry’s new college. Thus the site was vacant, and the executors, after making a preliminary payment of a hundred marks, took over the ground on a perpetual lease, and engaged to pay a rent of £13. 6s. 8d. yearly. These executors, the actual founders of Sidney, were the Earl of Kent and Sir John Harrington, the translator of Ariosto. The college was called the College of the Lady Frances Sidney Sussex, and took her arms, Radcliffe impaling Sidney. The pheon, the heraldic symbol of the Sidneys, is the badge of the college, and, like the eagle of St John’s and the silver crescent of Trinity Hall, has given its title to the college magazine of our own days.

The first master was appointed in 1598. He was Dr James Montagu,* and became Bishop of Winchester, where he died in 1618. But, in spite of this augury, the history of Sidney is the reverse of prelatical. Of late years, the college has somewhat retrieved its past record, but, on the whole, its distinction is Puritan. It is, however, a college whose history finds its centre in one event, and that event is vague and shadowy. In the college books, under the date April 23rd, 1616, is the following inscription, “Oliverus Cromwell, Huntingdoniensis, admissus ad commensum sociorum Aprilis vicesimo sexto; Tutore Magᵒ Ricardo Howlet.” Few colleges boast such a fellow-commoner. The note which follows, written in after years by a good Royalist, is worth transcribing: “Hic fuit grandis ille impostor, carnifex perditissimus, qui, pientissimo rege Carolo primo nefaria caede sublato, ipsum usurpavit thronum, et tria regna per quinque ferme annorum spatium, sub protectoris nomine, indomita tyrannide vexavit.” Vexavit, as Polonius would say, is good. No language is more abusive than aptly handled Latin! This “big impostor and most damn’d butcher” stayed at Cambridge till July, 1617, and then, like many great men, left without taking his degree. His contribution to the social life of his college has been stigmatised as discreditable, but this is probably invidious rumour and nothing more. The window of his room—which, by the way, dates from 1827 or thereabout—is still shown to the credulous. There is an admirable portrait of him in the hall, which was presented to the college, with a rather unnecessary parade of anonymity, by Mr Holles of the Hyde in Essex.

The great name of Cromwell must not, however, suffer us to forget the names of the good and pious men whom Sidney has nurtured. Dr Edmund Calamy, the famous Nonconformist divine, was a member of the college. So was Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man. So, too, were Jones of Nayland, the revivalist and hymn-writer, and an even more famous Evangelical preacher, Thomas Cecil. Sidney had, indeed, a very conspicuous share in the revival of spiritual life at the end of the last century. On the other hand, the college produced, by way of an anomaly, Sir Roger l’Estrange, the Royalist pamphleteer, whose sympathies were certainly apart from his education. The laborious antiquary, Thomas Rymer of the _Fœdera_, was also a Sidney man. In our own century it has been recorded that—