Chapter III: Part 3

Throughout her trials Margaret found in Mrs. Cobbold a constant friend, one who never allowed her for a moment to feel forsaken. The letters which passed between her and her former mistress are preserved, and on reading them one cannot but fail to note how in style and diction the maid had been influenced by Mrs. Cobbold. Margaret continued to write from Australia, and her letters are marvellous when one considers her antecedents and lack of early education. She collected specimens to send to her mistress, some of which were presented to the Ipswich Museum. Once more she was able to save life by an act of desperate daring, from which the men shrank, at the time of a flood. At last, according to the story, “John Barry,” who had prospered in the colony, found that she was there, sought her out, and married her. The last letter published in the book is dated June 25th, 1812, and announces her marriage to John Barry. It contains these words: “Should you ever think fit, as you once hinted in your letter to me, to write my history, or to leave it to others to publish, you have my free permission at my decease, whenever that shall take place, to do so. But let my husband’s name be concealed, change it, change it to any other ... for mine and my children’s sake.” She died September 10th, 1841, in the sixty-eighth year of her age.

The book raises problems of exceptional literary interest. In the first place, it was written by a man of unimpeachable character, who wrote with a distinctly religious aim, in view mainly to shew that the heroine after having violated “the laws of God and man” became by “the inculcation of Christian faith and virtue conspicuous for the sincerity of her reformation.” He avers that his narrative is strictly true and based on facts “well known to many persons of the highest respectability still living” and that he himself received the letters he quotes. He has no motive for deviating from his intention to tell the truth except that, as we have seen, Margaret Catchpole desired her married name to be concealed. That the author studiously carried out this natural wish is proved by the fact that a wealthy lady in New South Wales, named Mrs. Reiby, who had left Bury in Lancashire as a girl, was declared to be the true Margaret Catchpole, to her great annoyance, as she naturally had no desire to figure as a “convict heroine.” In 1910 the story of Margaret was dramatised in London and acted by the late Mr. Laurence Irving and his wife. A correspondence thereupon appeared in the _East Anglian Daily Times_ in which it was hinted that Mrs. Reiby, a Staffordshire girl, was transported in 1791 for the same offence of horse stealing.[14]

No one can read the book without perceiving that all the conversations are fictitious. Mr. Cobbold was no Shakespeare, and he makes all his characters talk in the same style as (if report be true) he conversed himself. The whole of the Barry incidents may be fictitious; for if the details given were true, everybody in Suffolk must have known who Margaret’s husband was. The father of Edmund and John “Barry” was the discoverer of crag shells as manure and was a farmer and miller at Levington Hill, the next parish to Nacton. But even then the author may have used pardonable license. Still the last letter of Margaret’s which the author declares he received from his mother cannot be genuine. It is signed Margaret “Barry,” and it says expressly that she was married to the man who had loved her fruitlessly when the family lived at Nacton. In point of fact Margaret never married.

Had the book been a document written many centuries ago, there would be suggested grave doubts whether such a woman ever existed; as it is, the Cobbold family have lived in Ipswich in unbroken succession during the past century; and documents, like the original gaol-delivery in 1797 and the exemption of Mr. Cobbold from any parish offices for arresting the culprit, prove beyond doubt the existence of Margaret Catchpole.

As, however, the subject of these lectures is ‘English social life,’ I shall now give some extracts from the book before me, and from Crabbe’s biography to shew how the peasantry lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.[15]

Even to this day if you enter a harvest field in Suffolk at reaping time you will hear the old Norman French demand for “_Largess_” and you will be expected to give it. Mr. Cobbold gives in his book a description of a harvest home, many features of which are still remembered. The farmer lodged all the single men in his house, but the married men (known as hinds) lived in the neighbouring cottages. When the last sheaf of corn was conveyed to the stack-yard, the barn was covered with green leaves and the sheaf brought in with shouting and blowing of the harvest horn. The farmer then gave an ample supper to the labourers, and he, his wife, and daughters waited on their guests. The head man of the harvest field acted as “lord of the feast.” The chief song was called “Hallo Largess,” and was in honour of the division of the Largess obtained in harvest time among the reapers. Here is a verse of the song quoted by our author:

“Now the ripening corn
In the sheaves is borne,
And the loaded wain
Bring home the grain.
The merry, merry reapers sing
And jocund shouts the happy harvest hind
Hallo Large, Hallo Large, Hallo Largess.”

“At evening when the work of the day is over,” to quote from “Margaret Catchpole,” “all the men collect in a circle, and Hallo, that is cry, “Largess.” Three times they say in a low tone, “Hallo Large! Hallo Large! Hallo Large!” and all, hand in hand, bow their heads almost to the ground; but after the third monotonous yet sonorous junction, they lift up their heads, and, with one burst of their voices, cry out “Gess.” I cannot help wondering whether this semi-barbarous custom which prevailed in Suffolk survive in those marvellous yells in which the exuberant spirits of youth in the highly civilized universities of America now find a vent.

Allusion has been made to the superstition of the East Anglian peasantry, and a most interesting example is given in Thomas Colson, better known in Ipswich as Robinson Crusoe, the fisherman on the Orwell. He had built a boat for himself of the strangest materials and was constantly at work on the river. His skill was wonderful, and he is described as a perfect fisherman, quiet, steady, active, and thoughtful. In character he was singularly benevolent, never refusing to help anyone in distress. To quote Mr. Cobbold: “The writer of these pages knew Colson well. He has often as a boy been in a boat with him, and always found him kind and gentle.”

The old man’s mania was probably only an exaggeration of the belief of his time or at any rate of his youth. He was a firm believer in wizards and witchcraft. He fancied himself surrounded by evil spirits. He knew their names, their propensities, how they afflicted men, and his great study was to prevent their malign influence. His trust in charms was absolute, and his whole body was hung with amulets, rings, bones of horses, verses, etc., each of which he declared to be efficacious against a certain spirit. If he lost one of his many charms, he believed himself specially liable to attack by the demon, against whom it was a prophylactic. That he had learned much from folklore is evident from the fact that though often questioned about the different demons who tormented him, he never deviated from his ordinary account of them; and no one ever found him tripping as to their names or attributes. Though subject to hallucinations, he must have learned his demonology somewhere; and there seems to me little doubt that among the less educated folk in East Anglia there was, down to the end of the eighteenth century, a belief and a knowledge of the different powers of evil little different from that of the Middle Ages or the days when witchcraft was dreaded by all the inhabitants of England of every class.[16]

The primitive character of rural life at a comparatively late period is seen in the admirable description of Mr. Tovell’s house in the Life of the Poet Crabbe, written by his son, which fully attests the accuracy of his younger contemporary--Mr. Cobbold. Mr. Tovell, whose property Mrs. Crabbe inherited, was a yeoman farmer possessed of a very considerable freehold property whose income, £800 ($4000), for those days was considerable. A landowner of such comparative wealth in the eighteenth century might well aspire to a place among the gentry of the county, but Mr. Tovell possessed a sturdy independence which forbade him taking any position in which he might feel himself ill at ease. A yeoman he was by education and such he was determined to remain: “Jack,” he said, “will never make a gentleman.” Nevertheless, says Mr. Crabbe, he possessed a native dignity of his own. The following is a description of his and his worthy wife’s menage at Parham. I quote somewhat at length.

“His house was large and the surrounding moat, the rookery, the ancient dovecot, and the well-stored fishponds were such as might have suited a gentleman’s seat of some consequence; but one side of the house immediately overlooked the farm-yard, full of all sorts of domestic animals and the scene of constant bustle and noise. On entering the house, there was nothing at first sight to remind one of the farm: a spacious hall paved with black and white marble, etc., etc. But the drawing room, a corresponding dining parlour, and a handsome sleeping apartment upstairs, were all _tabooed_ ground and made use of on great and solemn occasions only--such as rent days and an occasional visit with which Mr. Tovell was honoured by a neighbouring peer. At all other times the family and their visitors lived entirely in the old-fashioned kitchen along with the servants. My great-uncle occupied an arm chair.... Mrs. Tovell sat at a small table on which, in the evening stood one small candle in an iron candlestick...; in winter a noble block of wood, sometimes the whole circumference of a pollard, threw its comfortable warmth and cheerful blaze over the whole apartment.

“At a very early hour in the morning, the alarm called the maids and their mistress also:... After the important business of the dairy and a hasty breakfast, their respective employments were again resumed: that which the mistress took for her especial privilege being the scrubbing of the floors of the state-apartments.”

Once a new servant was found doing this, and thus spoke the good lady: “_You_ wash such floors as these? Give me the brush this instant and troop to the scullery and wash that, madam.... As true as G--d’s in heaven, here comes Lord Rochford to call on Mr. Tovell. Here, take my mantle (a blue woollen apron), and I’ll go to the door.”

The family dined together--the heads sat at the old kitchen table--the maids at a side table, called a bouter, the farm men stood in the scullery. With the principals at the table any stranger who happened to come in dined, even if he was a travelling ratcatcher, tinker, or farrier. “My father,” Mr. Crabbe goes on to say, “well describes in the ‘Widow’s Tale,’ my mother’s situation when living in her younger days at Parham:

“But when the men beside their stations took,
The maidens with them, and with these the cook;
When one huge wooden bowl before them stood,
Filled with huge balls of farinaceous food;
With bacon, mass saline! where never lean
Beneath the brown and bristly rind was seen:
When from a single horn the party drew
Their copious draughts of heavy ale and new;
When the coarse cloth, she said, with many a stain,
Soil’d by rude hands who cut and came again;
She could not breathe, but, with a heavy sigh,
Reined the fair neck, and shut the offended eye;
She minced the sanguine flesh in pastimes fine
And wondered much to see the _creatures_ dine.”

Then Mr. Crabbe goes on to describe Mr. Tovell’s cronies, who came after dinner, and enjoyed their punch, prosperous farmers or wealthy yeomen like himself. Their talk was at times too much for Mrs. Tovell, who withdrew; but “the servants, being considered much in the same point of view as the animals dozing on the hearth, remained.”

The life of Crabbe the poet as told by his son is an admirable piece of biography, and the Rev. George Crabbe, junr., was to my mind at least as good a realist in prose as his father in poetry. I wonder if I am right in conjecturing that you in New England had at the same time old farmers not very unlike Mr. Tovell who lived in prosperous simplicity like the old Suffolk Yeoman, rough in manner, coarse in expression, and blunt in sensibility, yet with an honest independence of character which redeemed much which to our eyes may seem repulsive.[17]

But the object of my remarks in this lecture has been to endeavour to give you an idea of what England, or part of it, was like about 1800; because I have another side of the picture to shew in my next lecture. The primitive simplicity of the peasant and the farmer was doomed to disappear, and the process had already begun. Still, side by side with a luxurious civilisation there were many traces of a roughness belonging to an early period in human development. To bring these facts into light, I do not think that the choice of my native county of Suffolk is a bad one.

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.

Gunning certainly kept good company, and this is how he enjoyed himself. He was a keen sportsman, and Cambridge afforded excellent opportunity for him to indulge his taste. The fenlands were not preserved and abounded with waterfowl. Young lads and boys were always ready to carry the game and to provide poles to leap the fen ditches. The fishing was excellent, and so both summer and winter could be fully occupied by the sportsman. We hear nothing of any games or athletics from Gunning. Everybody rode, but there was apparently no hunting. Here is a riding story told by Mr. Gunning. Dr. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, was remarkable for holding many posts simultaneously and of impartially neglecting the duties of all. Yet he possessed undoubted gifts, and his was the only criticism of Gibbon’s famous chapters about the rise of Christianity which the historian deemed worthy of his attention. He took a high degree in 1759 and five years later became Professor of Chemistry. For two years he held the chairs of Chemistry and Divinity together; and for thirty-two years he was Bishop of Llandaff, and Regius Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, discharging the duties of both offices from his house in the Lake district in the North of England. Apropos of this house in Westmorland, Gunning tells a good story. The proprietor of the Cock Inn out of compliment to Dr. Watson changed the name of his hostelry to the “Bishop’s Head” and painted his Lordship on the signboard. The ostler, who had saved money, built a rival hotel which he called “The Cock.” Thereupon the landlord of the “Bishop’s Head,” finding custom leaving him, put an inscription under the portrait, “This is the Old Cock.”

Dr. Watson’s deputy professor was Dr. Kipling, who was very unpopular from the way in which he held aloof from the undergraduates, so the young men resolved to have their revenge. Dr. Kipling’s principal recreation, to quote our author, “was a daily ride to the hills, which at that time was the most frequented road among members of the University. Returning one day, he picked up an ostrich feather which he saw drop from the hat of a lady, who was proceeding very slowly about fifty yards in advance.

“On overtaking her he presented the feather, accompanied by an expression relative to the good fortune in being able to restore it. The lady thanked him for his kindness, and, expressing her annoyance that her servant was not in attendance, said she had just left General Adeane’s.... The Doctor begged her not to be uneasy, as he should have much pleasure in attending her until her servant appeared. They had not proceeded far before they began to meet parties of young men who were going out for their morning’s ride. From the significant glances that were exchanged between the parties Dr. Kipling could not fail to discover he had got into bad company. That he might rid himself of his new acquaintance, ... he clapped spurs to his horse, which had been selected with his well-known Yorkshire discernment. The lady was well mounted, and applying her whip briskly kept up with the Doctor.” Thus they rode together through the town, and the story was long related in the University. The lady’s name was Jemima Watson. No relation to the Bishop and Professor of that name! You will, I think, see that Mr. Gunning had a keen eye for character and no little malice; and I propose to deal with some of the strange personalities of the time depicted by him.

On taking a very good degree, our author might reasonably have looked for a fellowship, but this was not possible because “his county” was already in possession of one. I may explain that it was the law that at a small college like Christ’s the fellows should be so selected that no two persons born in the same county should be on the list together. This was intended to protect a college from being monopolised by a single county, by the fellows choosing their friends. But at this time the office of Esquire Bedel was vacant, and Gunning was elected to it. The Vice-Chancellor at this time was attended on all ceremonial occasions by three Esquire Bedels and also by Yeoman Bedels. The former officers still exist, but their number has been reduced to two. Gunning’s colleagues were Mr. William Mathew, Senior Fellow and Bursar of Jesus College, and the famous Mr. Beverley, of Gunning’s own college. Mathew, an excellent man, gave his friend the following description of the duties of his office. They were first _carving_ at the Vice-Chancellor’s table, and in this Beverley was unrivalled and always kept the best slices for himself.

Second only to the art of carving was the practice of _punctuality_, which was thus defined: “The statutes of the University enjoin the Respondent to dispute from the _first_ to the _third_ hour. The authorities consider the statutes to be complied with provided the Disputant is in the box _before_ the clock strikes _two_ and does not leave it until after it has struck three.... There are other points of practice which are soon learned.” As says Gunning, “most of them were founded on _a violation of the statutes_. I inserted them in a memorandum book.”

The senior Esquire Bedel was Mr. Beverley, a most remarkable man. Gunning hated him with all his heart and introduces him in these words:

“If his own account of himself is to be believed (and perhaps _in this instance_ his word may be taken), he was the most profligate man in the University. He obtained his office by the influence of the famous Lord Sandwich, the friend and betrayer of Wilkes, immortalised as Jenny Twitcher. Beverley had a large family, borrowed from everybody, and cheated all he could. Lord Sandwich entertained magnificently at Hinchinbrooke Castle, about fourteen miles from Cambridge, and Beverley was not above procuring invitations for members of the University who paid him.”

He must have had many attractive qualities and was a good musician. People were always trying to get him out of debt, especially Mr. Basil Montagu, a son of Lord Sandwich.

Montagu collected money to free him from his pressing liabilities and then invited Beverley to tea and read him a long lecture on his extravagance. Poor Beverley departed in tears, not having been told what his benefactor intended to do. Montagu felt he had been too severe and feared that Beverley might give way to despair and even kill himself. But, instead of finding the prodigal a corpse, he heard sounds of music if not of dancing, and found his volatile friend seated at his table with a bowl of punch and several boon companions. “After this exhibition Montagu troubled himself no further about Beverley’s debts.”

A notable character of the time was a certain Jimmy Gordon, who had fallen from a position of affluence to one of extreme degradation.[22] Seeing the Master of Trinity, who was also Bishop of Bristol, Gordon begged of him. His Lordship replied, “If you can find a greater scoundrel than yourself, I will give you a half a crown.” Off went Gordon and told Beverley that the Master wished to speak to him. The Master, when Beverley came, remarked, “You have been misinformed, Mr. Beverley.” Up came Jimmy at this moment and said, “I think, my lord, I am entitled to my half crown.”

I feel I must relate one more example of Beverley’s behaviour. On Midlent Sunday it was customary for the Vice-Chancellor to drive in state and preach in the church at Burwell and be accompanied by one or more of the Esquire Bedels. After the sermon they all dined at a farmer’s house and so enjoyed the ale and port wine that they did not go and hear the vicar at afternoon service. “What sort of preacher is Mr. Turner?” asked the Vice-Chancellor. “For my own part,” replied the tenant, “I would not go over the threshold to hear him preach.” “If that be your opinion, who have had frequent opportunities of hearing him, I am of that opinion too; and we will remain and have a few more glasses of your fine old port.” Needless to remark, the clergyman was furious at the having been thus neglected. On the way back to Cambridge a Mr. Hole, who was acting as a deputy Bedel, attacked Mr. Beverley, who had a good deal of wit, and gave him more than he got. Then the Vice-Chancellor tried to defend Mr. Hole, and he too got more than he bargained for. So he stopped the carriage and told Beverley to go and sit on the box. The Bedel refused, and told the other two that they had better get out and walk home. “They declined to follow this advice,” and “it was not long before perfect quiet reigned among them, and the university Marshal who acted as Vice-Chancellor’s servant imagined (and it was not a _very improbable_ conclusion) that they had been overtaken by the drowsy god.”

A more reputable but still very striking character was Dr. Milner, the President of Queen’s College. His portrait is one I often study when I dine there. A portly man in his red gown and doctor’s wig, he sits grasping the arms of his chair, looking very strong and masterful. In politics a strong Tory, attached by religious sympathy to the evangelical party, editor of the “Church History” of his brother, from his force of character and his mathematical ability Milner was long the ruler of the University. Caring nothing for public opinion, he would have his own way; and he is reported to have once exclaimed, when settling a man’s place in an examination and the man’s tutor exclaimed, “Surely you do not say that A is better than B?” “I never said he was the better man; I said he should stand above him.” It was the custom for the moderators who conducted the Tripos and made out the lists to submit any doubtful cases to some great mathematician, who held a _viva voce_ examination; and, as Milner’s undoubted ability made his judgment of great value, he was often called to do this. Except where men of his own college or Magdalene, a great centre of evangelicalism, were concerned, his judgment was excellent; but Gunning considers that he was quite unscrupulous when his partiality or interest led him to decide a point. Milner, though an ardent pietist and a valetudinarian, was somewhat notorious for the joviality of his supper parties, at which the bowl circulated freely and the fun was fast and furious. His powerful personality dominated the University, as may be seen from the fact that he did his best to stop the reform of Trinity College. In his account of this Mr. Gunning draws a striking picture of the Seniority of the college in the closing years of the eighteenth century. By its statutes Trinity was practically governed by the Master and the ten Senior Fellows, the latter men who had lived for years in the college without generally doing any work, being content with holding their fellowship and living in celibate idleness. Their power was great; and, as it may well be supposed, they were not as a rule qualified to exercise it, especially when they claimed a right to select the fellows themselves without regard to the reports of the examiners. The tutors fought a hard battle to remove this abuse and were taunted by Milner and the Tory party with being Jacobites and supporters of the French Revolution. The matter was decided in the courts, and the tutors won, with the result that a fellowship at Trinity became, in Macaulay’s words, a veritable “patent of nobility.”

I abbreviate Gunning’s description of the Seniority partly from a sense of propriety.

The Rev. Stephen Whiston, B.D., was, says our author, “I believe a very respectable man.”

The Rev. Samuel Backhouse, B.D., kept a girls’ school at a village called Balsham.

“Was it profit that he sought?
No; he paid them to be taught.
Had he honour for his aim?
No; he _blushed to find it fame_.”

The Rev. Samuel Peck, B.D., must have been rather a nice old man. He was a great authority on village law and helped the country people gratis, saying, “Sam Peck never takes a fee, but he loves gratitude,” and the farmers paid him in presents of the produce of their land. He played a very clever trick upon Gunning’s old tutor Seale by persuading him to share the expenses of treating two ladies on a journey from London to Cambridge, who turned out to be his own cook and waitress![23]

The Rev. Thomas Wilson, B.D., had to have his garden key taken away because he was rude to the Master’s wife one dark evening when she was returning from a party.

The Rev. John Higgs, B.D., and the Rev. Thomas Spencer, B.D., were unknown to Gunning. Mr. Spencer was mad, and only came to Cambridge when his vote was wanted. The Rev. William Collier, B.D., was a well-known gourmand. He is recorded to have eaten three-quarters of a sucking pig and to have left the rest because he was engaged to dine immediately after. He was a Hebrew scholar, a good classic, and a modern linguist. The Rev. James Lambert was an excellent sportsman and was supposed to be unorthodox. “Lambert was never addicted to those vices for which at that time the Seniors of Trinity were so notorious, but when in college attended closely to literary pursuits.” He was Professor of Greek.

Observe, except Lambert all were B.D.’s. Here is an epitaph:

“Here lies a Fellow of Trinity.
He was a Doctor of Divinity.
He knew as much about Divinity
As other Fellows do of Trinity.”