by Bruce Feiler
“By now,” he said, when he had finished his speech and fallen back on his heels, “you will have noticed that I have the tendency to talk rather a lot. I want to remind you that this is not meant to be a lecture tour. If I do go on too long, just tug on the end of my raincoat and I’ll stop talking straight away.”
“Did you notice his coat?” a lady whispered to her husband as we filed toward our next destination. “It’s a Burberry.”
“Did you notice his coat?” Halcyon whispered to me at almost the same time. “He has it facing inside out so we can see the label.”
After shuffling down the main street, which the British call the high street and which in Cambridge is called King’s Parade, we stepped through the double-breasted black gates that lead into the courtyard of King’s College.
“Now take note,” Roger began when we had assembled on a cobbled sidewalk in front of a miniature sign that said, in triplicate: PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS; NE MARCHEZ PAS SUR LES PELOUSES S.V.P,; BITTE NICHT AUF DEN RASEN TRETEN. “This is King’s College, not King’s University. It isn’t Cambridge University either. Here I want to introduce you to an important distinction between the colleges and the university.”
A college, he went on to explain, is a small, independent community of its own, with space for eating, drinking, reading, writing, sleeping, and studying.
“In principle,” he said, “as soon as you enter through the gates of a college, you are in a private space. It’s noisy and public on the outside; quiet, closed, and contemplative on the inside. The second principle is that colleges are basically square in their plan. Each one has a chapel, a hall, and other buildings to accommodate the senior members of the college. Here, let me begin to draw a few strands together….”
The group squeezed together and its collective eye widened.
“The arrangement of the buildings is a remnant of the disciplined life of a medieval monastery. When the university was founded, being a student was almost the same as being a monk. Do you know why?”
“Because all you did was eat, sleep, and study,” said the American wax woman, who seemed to be drooling on Roger’s lapel.
“But wait, you’ve missed the most important part: pa-rayer. And believe it or not, prayer was an exceedingly important part of college life. Why? you ask. Because hundreds of years ago, if you asked in Europe what’s the truth, the first answer that would come to mind was that the truth was something arranged according to the principles of the Hand of God.”
With this comment Roger thrust his hand into the air like a Shakespearean actor, then dropped his voice to a whisper.
“When you are dealing with the truth,” he said, “you are dealing with something that’s divine. In Cambridge, as elsewhere, there has always been a very close connection between study and prayer. That’s why the college faces inward, like a cloister…
“But!” he suddenly boomed, “times change. You see that building over there? He pointed toward the towering drip castle cathedral that King’s College calls its chapel. “Henry VI, the founder of this college, designed that chapel in the fifteenth century to symbolize the greatness of God. He wanted it to be plain, with little decoration—a place for private worship. But he died before it could be completed, and by the time it was finished, by Henry VIII, the spirit of the age had changed.
“Now this is extremely important,” he urged, his voice rising to the level of indignation as the organ inside began to wail. “If you look closely at the building, you will notice that at the very summit the decorations aren’t religious, they’re political: roses and gates. What you are seeing are symbols of the King’s power in a building designed to honor God. The message is, and I’m drawing several strands together here: God is great, but so is the King of England. A sacrilege for Henry VI, who believed in the papacy, but appropriate for Henry VIII, who broke away from Rome to start the Church of England. If I were an art historian, and thank God I’m not, I would say that this college is a medieval construction, but one that comes so late in the development of the Middle Ages that it contains flashes of the modern spirit. And that, my friends, is the essence of Cambridge. The King is the Country; the Country is the Church; and the Church is the University.”
He ended his speech fully raised on the balls of his feet, with the organ climaxing as if on cue and several of the tour members retrieving their cameras to snap an image of the chapel with its grand explicator spread-eagled in front. Letting out his breath and coming down to earth, Roger looked at the group with a satisfied smile and gave his raincoat a tug.
“We’ll take a five-minute break right now and meet again at the gate.”
“Walking around Cambridge is like walking around a museum.”
Halcyon and I were ambling around the King’s College grounds, peeking into various beech-shaded courtyards and rubbing our fingers along the braille of the well-read stones.
“I see what you mean,” I said. “But with all the tourists roaming the walks and all the students locked in their rooms, sometimes it seems like a zoo.”
She peered through a stained lavender window into the library. “At least the students don’t bite.”
Halcyon and I had one overwhelming thing in common. We both came to Cambridge awed by its architecture and intimidated by its reputation. Not only was Cambridge widely believed to be one of the Seven Academic Wonders of the World, but it had been that way for almost eight hundred years. For us, as perhaps for Cynthia Shepard, coming to Cambridge was fulfilling a dream; specifically, it was a chance to absorb the time-honored “Renaissance” view of the world. But as we discovered, and discussed, in our earliest days at Clare, the reality of Cambridge is much less glowing than its myth would suggest, and much less broad-minded than it first appears.
If anything, the university today seems trapped by its past. Even more than the numerous anachronistic handicaps—the lack of adequate showers, the one pay telephone for every hundred students, the multitude of signs that lord over the college grounds (NO WALKING ON THE GRASS UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY A SENIOR MEMBER OF THE COLLEGE; PLEASE DON'T FEED THE STUDENTS)—Cambridge is governed by a set of conventions that were established for the most part in the Middle Ages, when the colleges were first constructed to be monasteries of the mind. There are numerous examples of this legacy. The academic year, like the agricultural calendar around which it was based, begins in the fall. The three terms of the year are named for religious occasions: Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael that usually coincides with the start of fall term; Lent, the forty-day fast that overlaps most of winter term; and Easter, which usually falls at the beginning of the spring session.
Even more than these structural antiquities, however, the intellectual life of the university today is still surprisingly monkish. As graduate students, Halcyon and I were expected to complete our work almost entirely on our own. In my case, the requirements for the M.Phil. (master of philosophy) in international relations were to pass an exam at the end of Lent Term, turn in a twenty-five-thousand-word dissertation (about a hundred pages) at the end of Easter Term, and sit for an oral examination after that. Beyond a few optional lectures in the mornings, however, the directors of the course left us to our own devices. At the introductory meeting for the sixty members of the program, the director, Mr. R. C. B. Langley, M.A. (no Ph.D.), distributed a six-page, single-spaced reading list, announced the dates of our exam, and declared, dismissively, “You’re adults now; get on with it.”
My first encounter with my thesis supervisor was no different. In the second week of term, I wandered over to a section of campus called the Sidgwick Site, climbed to the fourth floor of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, and knocked on the closed door at the end of the hall: R. R. LONG, PROFESSOR OF JAPANESE HISTORY.
“Come in…”
Inside the tiny room, about the size of a confessional, bookshelves climbed from floor to ceiling, manila folders crawled from wall to wall, and note cards tiptoed skyward from every square inch of a rolltop d
esk, at the back of which sat an embalmed computer and in front of which stood a bespectacled technophobe.
“Sherry?” he said, without turning around.
“No, thank you,” I said, with no place to sit down.
The back of Dr. Richard Long, hunched over an inchoate manuscript, was slightly stooped in the shoulders of his brown woolen jacket, slightly rumpled at the seat of his grey flannel trousers, and slightly frazzled at the ends of his white wiry hair that stuck out of his head in a frenzied Einsteinian style. After several moments spent rearranging the cards on his desk, Dr. Long turned around to greet me, apologized for having lost my C.V., and suggested that I remove some books from a chair and tell him a little about myself.
As I briefed him on my background, my biography, and my idea of writing a dissertation on the Allied Occupation of Japan, he nodded quietly to himself, began to pull some books from the shelves at both sides of the room (no need to leave his seat), and scribbled some notes in his calendar book.
“Very well,” he said, when I had dribbled to a stopping point. “I’m afraid your topic won’t do; it’s been done. But not to worry; look through these books, find an alternative, and come back to see me at the start of next term. In the meantime, try to stay out of trouble and learn to drink sherry—semidry, I recommend.”
Undergraduates at Cambridge follow a similar pattern of independent study, and it was meeting them that ultimately shattered my ideal of a Renaissance education at work. Cambridge rather fussily requires its students to study only one academic subject during their three years at college—no language requirement, no interdisciplinary balance, no well-rounded view of the world: just a single subject. Like graduate students, undergraduates attend limited numbers of classes and take no tests at all during their first two terms, only at year-end. This policy has distinct repercussions on the life of the college. First, since students have no assignments or tests for two-thirds of the year, they go out of their way during the early terms to squeeze in as much extracurricular activity as humanly possible, such as rowing, rollicking, and getting pissed. Second, and more telling, one of the most comic aspects of life at Cambridge is that students no more than eighteen years old refer to one another by the career titles of the academic subjects they study, as in “He’s a second-year engineer”; “She’s a third-year medic.” They even call law students “lawyers,” even though real-life lawyers spurn this term in favor of the even more hierarchical ones, barrister and solicitor.
Finally, and most debilitating of all, the limited course of study has unfortunate social consequences as well.
“They can’t carry on a conversation!” Halcyon shouted one night after returning from dinner with a scientist. “All he understands is country music and astrophysics.”
“So what did you talk about?” I asked.
“Safety precautions in the lab.”
I had the opposite problem with my first date, a woman who read philosophy at King’s and who was active in a discussion group called, oh-so-cleverly, Philosopher King’s. When she found out that I had not read Plato “in the original,” she gave up on me halfway through the soup and spent the rest of the evening looking over my shoulder for some Real Men of Letters.
“What did you talk about?” Simon asked.
“The defects of translation.”
Despite our desire for well-rounded companions, the university still seems to prefer rough-edged squares. As an institution, Cambridge has abandoned the requirement that all students speak Latin (1950s), it has slackened the requirements that all students dine in gowns (1960s), and it has even overturned the requirement that all students be male (1970s), but it has refused to alter its long-standing course requirements. The university today still stakes its reputation on the old-fashioned premise: You are what you read.
“You will notice,” said our guide as we huddled in Trinity College, “that I have been talking about where students are praying, where they are eating and drinking, but that I have neglected one of the most interesting questions: where are students studying?”
Several of the tour members nodded their heads as they surveyed the Great Court of Trinity, with its large platters of pristine grass, oversized wedding-cake-shaped stone well, and stained glass gingerbread Hall.
“Well,” he said. “Let me answer that question by explaining to you a typical day in the life of the college: Between eight and nine, students and teachers come pouring out of the little staircases into the court and disappear into the Dining Hall. Three hundred years ago they went first to the Chapel, but now they go straight to breakfast. An hour later they come back into the court and go up the little staircases and back into their rooms. Then the students, but not the teachers, come out again. Down those little staircases they come, carrying books and papers. For several minutes there is frenzied activity as the students come out of their own staircases and disappear into others. Then, and this is the beauty of it all, quiet descends on the college….”
“What has happened?” cried one of the men.
“Aha!” the guide shouted. “What has happened is that the students have gone into the rooms of their teachers. That, my friends, is where the teaching takes place. It’s all done in sets of two, you see: a teacher and a pupil. That is what we call supervision. Every student has supervisions, usually once or twice a week, and that intensive form of learning is the most important element of the Cambridge education.”
There was a slight mumbling among the group.
“I see a couple of frowns,” the guide said. “Do the colleges have so many teachers that they are able to provide individual, one-to-one tuition? The answer to that question is yes.”
The mumbles turned to aahs.
“How can this be afforded? you ask. It is extraordinarily expensive, certainly. But remember what I have been saying, and here again I would like to draw a few strands together for you. While these are academic institutions, they are also a bit like monasteries. People give presents of property to these colleges, in the same way as people once gave gifts to monasteries.”
“But wait,” cried the American lady, who had pulled a chocolate bar from her purse. “If every college is a separate institution, then what is the university?”
“That’s a very handy question,” Roger said like a satisfied teacher who had led his class to his principal point. “At last I’m ready to answer the question ‘What does the university provide for the colleges?’ In 1209, when a group of renegade academics from Oxford first came to Cambridge, university was the word used to describe a group of scholars. Naturally, the group divided over time into smaller groups, which eventually became the colleges. They decided that those who completed their course of study at this college would apply to the university to be certified. The college provides the education; the university grants the degrees.”
“But how do students get in?” she asked. “Is there a test?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s called the A-Levels. Schools all across the country prepare their students for these. The results are graded nationally, and when the results are published, the universities get to look at them and pick their students. Cambridge and Oxford like to pick those who get straight A’s, which are quite difficult to get on these exams….”
The bells of St. Mary’s tolled four times just as the sun dipped behind the Trinity Hall and Roger ascended to his final point.
“But take note,” he warned. “Before they’re admitted, students have to take another exam and be interviewed by a college. Students are questioned with two criteria in mind. First, is the student really as bright as he or she seems to be? And second, is he or she a nice person? Very bright people are often not nice, and those people are not admitted to the college. Cambridge, you see, is more than just an academic environment; it’s a communal way of life.”
“And what happens to those who don’t pass the interview?”
“Well,” he said, “I must say again that you are very lucky to have me as your guide b
ecause I have a remarkably objective view of the place, since I was trained at a rather older university than this one, and one that is not normally mentioned around here….”
There was a slight chuckle of recognition as our “Official Blue Badge” guide finally divulged himself to be a dark blue traitor.
“You see, there is a view at that university, which as I said is not normally mentioned here, that people at Cambridge do not have a sense of humour. Well, I can assure you that just isn’t true. If one of the colleges at Cambridge, say Trinity College, dislikes a student slightly, they may say, ‘Well, we think you ought to apply to St. John’s College.’”
A tittle began.
“But, if they dislike a student quite a lot, they may say, ‘Well, we think you ought to apply to Awxford.’”
It built to a rumble. Roger mounted his toes and thrust his pointer finger high into the sky.
“But if they dislike a student a great deal, they might say, ‘Well, we think you should apply to some provincial school. Why don’t you think about Harvard?’”
The congregation burst into applause.
A week after the story on Cynthia Shepard appeared in Varsity, the rival newspaper Weekly Revue ran a front-page article headlined THE AMERICAN SWIMMING POOL FRAUD: WAS SHE TRICKED OR IS SHE THE TRICKSTER? The story, written with a cynical tone verging on the xenophobic, described how the supposedly unsuspecting American told Cambridge authorities she eagerly gave up her twenty-thousand-dollar scholarship to Miami University and paid five thousand dollars to the “clean-cut and respectable” agent for a seat at Corpus Christi. But was the affair really what it seemed? the paper wondered. Where were the other duped students? And was Miss Shepard really “so naïve that she did not even ask for a receipt?”
