Whining and complaining in the Siberian wind
Rupert Christiansen
A LITERARY HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE by Graham Chainey
The Pevensey Press, £14.95
This is a book that any self-respecting reviewer, especially one educated in situ, feels obscurely guilty about liking. It ram- bles and gossips, has no thesis and contains no original research; its only conclusion is perhaps an obvious one — that while a little of Cambridge may be a good thing for a creative writer, a lot of it can only be bad. It is, however, an immensely enjoyable book, consistently interesting and lucidly composed. Mr Chainey is a sympathetic but uninfatuated guide: he is, one notes, an outsider inasmuch as he was educated at Oxford and only moved to Cambridge in 1977.
Although the level is that of intelligent entertainment, one academically signifi- cant point does emerge, albeit by implica- tion rather than conscious development. The Cambridge intellectual stereotype — 'rationalist, purist, puritan, analytical', treating language as 'a tool rather than as a musical instrument' — does not hold. In fact, it comes to look like little more than a myth perpetrated by the Scrutiny group in their own interests. Chainey's 500 years of narrative show the puritans and purists in a distinct minority of no tangible prominen- ce, and that a downbeat scepticism has been far more tenacious: the University Wits leading to Monty Python. The Cam- bridge tone is never rhapsodic, and apart from the tiresome Rupert Brooke, who concentrated his activities on the suburb of
Grantchester, there is not much romance in the air.
What is in the Cambridge air is a dreariness exacerbated if not caused by the dismal climate. Whining and complaining are endemic. Erasmus moans about his gallstones, and not one of his 31 surviving Cambridge letters mentions King's College Chapel, a building without parallel in Europe then nearing completion. Milton wrote (in Latin) after being rusticated in 1626, 'I am not exactly prostrate with nostalgia for that forbidden abode. With its unpleasing bare fields devoid of soft shade, how uncongenial that place is to devotees of Apollo' (now that is the Cambridge tone). Gray found that the place reminded him of a 'spider with a nasty lump in the middle of it, and half a dozen long scamb- ling legs . . . Everything is so tediously regular, so samish, that I expire for want of a little variety.' George Herbert, Laurence Sterne and James Elroy Flecker all died from consumption contracted on the damp Fenland flats. Mr Chainey does not men- tion the wind commonly said to blow untrammeled from Siberia, but hundreds of thousands have suffered from its relent- less bone-chilling blast.
Others enjoyed themselves despite the weather. Byron had his pet bear and looked back at his days swimming in the Cam as perhaps the happiest of his life. Tennyson was brought to bloom by the dazzling Hallam and Forster got it 'just right' by his third year. Bloomsbury would never have consolidated without its roots in collegiate Platonism.
The net spreads beyond poets and novel- ists, and the line of dons impervious to normal social conduct is, in its way, im- pressive. Spenser's teacher Gabriel Harvey is the earliest star personality, a man of vanity, pedantry and sycophancy who embroiled himself for no very good reason in a blistering war of Elizabethan epithets with two young satirists Thomas Nashe and Robert Greene. Harvey threatened to bat- ter Nashe's 'carrion to dirt, whence thou camst; and squeeze thy brain to a snivel, whereof it was curdled.' Nashe parried by calling Harvey 'a firking finicaldo fine schoolmaster . . . spending a forenoon every day in sponging and licking himself before the glass.' C. S. Calverley, a 19th- century fellow of Christ's, typified the overgrown undergraduate mentality of the Victorian era, leap-frogging over street furniture and wasting his time translating English literature into impeccable classical Greek. And then looms up the monstrous Oscar Browning of King's, characterised by E. F. Benson as a 'genius flawed by abysmal fatuity': enough said. Of modern figures with éclat, Jeremy Prynne gets a
mention, John Casey does not. The con- troversy over Leavis's Richmond Lecture features, but the sacking (or non- reappointment, as some prefer it) of Cohn MacCabe is apparently not yet history.
Dons inspire mixed feelings: Mr Chainey is mercifully not exhaustive in relating their foibles. He is equally tactful about sprink- ling trivial nuggets without sinking to miscellaneity. I am pleased to discover that Pepys's tutor Morland invented the ear trumpet, that Christopher Smart co-edited the first recorded student magazine, and that the usage 'Oxbridge' was coined by Thackeray. I have also enjoyed toying with the parallels between Lawrence leaving his umbrella behind after a tricky evening at Trinity with Maynard Keynes, while Henry James forgets his pyjamas after a charged weekend with Geoffrey Keynes.
All this detail would go for nothing if it were not backed up by a broader feeling for the cultural geist. Mr Chainey provides such a structure and shows, for example, that although Cambridge never slumped as Oxford did in the 18th century, its High Victorian experience was vitiated by Punch waggishness and a sentimentality that in- fected even the muscular Leslie Stephen. The book concludes with a comprehensive picture of post-war literary Cambridge and the media climbers slickly dissected by Frederick Raphael in The Glittering Prizes.
A small pleasure of reviewing a book succeeding so smoothly in its intentions comes from winkling out quibbles. Label- ling Herbert as a follower 'of Donne's "metaphysical" style of verse' is downright sloppy; there is no mention of the great book collector A. N. L. Munby and not enough about Cambridge bookshops. No light is cast on Patrick White's mysterious Cambridge years, beyond reiterating that they are a mystery.
Quibbles indeed: for this is truly a first-class piece of publishing by a small house, well produced at a reasonable price, with an excellent selection of photographs. It's not a book that anyone needs, but it is one that will be widely liked: buy it for someone's birthday and keep it for your- self.
Previous page
