First Impressions of Cambridge [1840]

The sage council not being able to determine upon any plan for the building of their City, the cows, in a laudable fit of patriotism, took it under their peculiar charge; and, as they went to and fro from pasture, established paths through the bushes, on each side of which the good folks built their houses.

Knickerbocker's New York.

And round the cool green courts there ran a row
Of cloisters, branched like mighty woods,
Echoing all night to that sonorous flow
Of spouted fountain floods.

Tennyson, Palace of Art

Imagine the most irregular town that can be imagined, streets of the very crookedest kind, twisting about like those in a nightmare, and not unfrequently bringing you back to the same point you started from. Some of these tortuous lanes are without trottoirs, like the streets of old Continental towns; but it is more common to find a passage or short street all sidewalk – as we call what the English call causeway – without any carriage road. The houses are low and antique; sometimes their upper stories project out into, and over the narrow pathway, making it still narrower; and their lower stories are usually occupied as shops – tailors and booksellers being the predominant varieties. Every now and then your road passes over a muddy little river, not larger than a tolerable canal, which rambles through and about the town in all sorts of ways, so that in whatever direction you walk from any point, you are pretty sure to come to a bridge before long. Such is the town of Cambridge – the bridge over the Cam.

Among these narrow, ugly, and dirty streets, are tumbled in, as it were at random (for the whole place looks as if it had been dancing to Amphion's music, and he had left off in the middle of a very complicated figure) some of the most beautiful academical buildings in the world. However their style of architecture may vary, according to the period at which they were built or rebuilt, they agree in one essential feature – all the colleges are constructed in quadrangles or courts; and, as in course of years the population of every college, except one, has outgrown the original quadrangle, new courts have been added, so that the larger foundations have three, and one (St. John's) has four courts. Sometimes the 'old court', or primitive part of the building, presents a handsome front to the largest street near it; but frequently, as if to show its independence of, and contempt for, the town, it retires from the street altogether, showing the passer-by only its ugliest wall, and smallest, shabbiest gate. This is particularly the case with the very largest and most distinguished colleges.

You enter, then, by a portal neither particularly large nor very striking in its appearance, but rather the reverse, into a spacious and elegant square. There are neat grass-plots and walks, a fountain in the centre; on one side stands a well proportioned chapel, in one corner you catch a glimpse through a tantalizing grating of a beautiful garden, appropriated to the delectation of the authorities. In a second court you find sounding and venerable cloisters, perhaps a veritable structure of monkish times, if not, a satisfactory imitation of that period. And as you look on the walls, here rich with sculptured ornament, there covered with trailing and festooning ivy, the theory and idea of the college edifice begin to strike you – its front is inside for its own benefits; it turns its back upon the vulgar outside. But you have not yet fathomed and sounded its spirit of seclusion. The entries are narrow and low; the staircases narrow and tortuous; the iron-bound doors, closed by some mysterious spring, or open only to show another door within, look like the portals of a feudal dungeon. But up those break-neck stair-cases, and inside those formidable doors (sometimes with the additional preliminary of a small, dark passage), are luxurious suites of rooms, not exactly like those of a Parisian hotel or a 'double-house' in the Fifth Avenue, but quite as beautiful and much more comfortable. The apartments and the entrance seem made in inverse proportion to each other; a mere hole in the wall sometimes leads you to half a house of rooms; and most cosy rooms they are, with their prodigiously thick walls that keep out the cold in winter and heat (when there is any) in summer, their impregnable sporting-doors that defy alike the hostile dun and the too friendly 'fast man', and all their quaint appurtenances, such as book-cases of the true scholastic sort, sunk into and forming part of the wall, so that it would not be easy to appropriate them or the space they occupy to any other purpose – queer little nooks of studios, just large enough to hold a man in an arm-chair and a big dictionary; unexpected garrets, which the very occupant of the rooms never goes into without an air of enterprise and mystery, and which the old priests used for oratories – perhaps; the modern Cantabs keep their wine in them.

Late in October, 1840, a young New Yorker was losing himself among the impracticable streets, and admiring the remarkable edifices of Cambridge. He was surprised at the number and variety of the academical buildings and their distance from one another; for, though knowing that the different colleges were separate and independent foundations, connected only by a few general ties, he had expected something like contiguity of location, and was not prepared to find them scattered over an area of some miles. Nor was it without some degree of curiosity that he inspected such of the population as he met, a curiosity which they were not slow to retaliate with abundance of eye-glasses. Dressed in the last Gothamite fashion (then, as now, a reproduction of the preceding year's Parisian), with the usual accessories of gold chain and diamond pin, the whole surmounted by a blue cloth cloak, he certainly bore no resemblance, in point of costume, to any of the academical public whom he encountered. The Cantab's garb generally consists of a not too new black coat (frock or cutaway), trousers of some substantial stuff, grey or plaid, and a stout waistcoat, frequently of the same pattern as the trousers. Straps are unknown to him, and instead of boots he wears easy low-heeled shoes, for greater convenience in fence and ditch jumping, and other feats of extempore gymnastics which diversify his 'constitutionals'. The only showy part of his attire is the cravat, which is apt to be blue or some other decided color, and fastened in front with a large gold-headed pin. During the middle of the day this outfit is completed by a hat of the average ugliness of English hats, but before 12 a.m., and after 4 p.m., you must superadd the academical costume. This consists of a gown, varying in color and ornament according to the wearer's college and rank but generally black, not unlike an ordinary clerical gown, and a square-topped cap, which fits close to the head like a truncated helmet, while the covered board which forms the crown measures about a foot diagonally across. It is not by any means a sine qua non that the cap and gown should be in good order and condition; the latter is often sadly torn and faded, while the former retains but few traces of its original form after the rough usage it has undergone. To steal caps and gowns is no more an offence against the eighth commandment in Cambridge, than to steal umbrellas is with us – an additional reason for their appearance being little thought of. In one thing only is the Cantab particular – the one nicety of every English gentleman, however clumsy or shabby the rest of his dress may be – his linen is always faultless. A dirty shirt, or even a badly got up one, is a phenomenon in the University. Peculiar as the academic costume is, its effect is by no means unbecoming; on the contrary, it adds, in a majority of cases, to the dignity and style of the wearer.

Nor must it be supposed that the gownsmen are thin, study-worn, consumptive-looking individuals. The stranger's first impression was, that he had never seen so fine a body of young men together. Almost every man looked able and ready to row eight miles, walk twelve, or ride twenty 'across country', at the shortest notice, and to eat half a leg of mutton and drink a quart of ale after it. One would hardly suspect them to be students at all, did not the number of glasses hint that those who carried them had impaired their sight by late reading.

The young American who noted these particulars felt somewhat bashful among a crowd of strangers, even as he does now on making his appearance before you, reader. Yet it is necessary that he should go on, however painful it may be to his modesty, to tell how he came there, and for what purpose, which he will do as briefly as possible in the next chapter.

Some Preliminaries, Rather Egotistical but Very Necessary [1835–9]

I was fifteen years old when I went to New Haven to enter the Freshman class, at Yale College. In the school where I prepared, one of the masters was an Englishman, and the instruction given partly on the English model. I had been fitted for Columbia College, the standard for the Freshman class in which institution was then nearly equal to that for the Sophomore at Yale. (I never met a New Englander who knew this, or could be made to believe it, but it is perfectly true notwithstanding.) The start which I had thus obtained confirmed me in the habits of idleness to which a boy just emancipated from school is prone, when he has nothing immediately before him to excite his ambition. During the first year I did little but read novels and attend debating societies; and the comparison of my experience with that of others leads me to conclude that this is the case with most boys who enter well prepared at a New England College; they go backwards rather than forwards the first year. In the second year came on a great deal of mathematics, laborious rather than difficult; much of it consisted in mere mechanical working of examples in trigonometry and mensuration, which were nearly as great a bore to the best mathematicians in the class as to the worst. I never had any love for or skill in pure science, and my health, moreover, being none of the best, I very early in the Sophomore year gave up all thoughts of obtaining high honors, and settled down contentedly among the twelve or fifteen who are bracketed, after the first two or three, as 'English Orations'. There were four prizes, one in each year, which could be obtained by classics alone, and of these I was fortunate enough to gain three. But they were very imperfect tests; indeed there was at that time no direct means of determining who was the best, or second, or third, classical scholar in any class.

Most of our young countrymen are eager to rush into their destined profession immediately on leaving college, at the age of eighteen or nineteen. Several of my contemporaries did not wait for Commencement day to begin, nominally at least, their professional studies; but I was by no means in a hurry to finish my education, thinking that a long start is often the safest, especially as I was looking forward to a profession which, above all others, should be entered on after much deliberation and mature judgment. Meaning, then, with God's help, to be a clergyman, I wished first to make myself a scholar, and for this purpose resolved to spend some time at a European University. But when it came to starting, my courage failed me; I was afraid to expose my ignorance abroad, and determined to stay at home another year. This year I would willingly have spent in my native city, as affording more advantages for study; but those who had the disposal of me thought it best that I should remain at New Haven, where accordingly I took up my quarters again as a resident graduate – a very rare animal in those parts. Poor Mason, who was to have been our great American astronomer, was my only companion in that position. The experience of that year fully justifies me in asserting, that if I wished to unmake a partially formed scholar, and to divert the attention of a young man who had a taste that way from such studies, I would send him to reside in no place sooner than in a New England college town. There was no one able to instruct me or inclined to sympathize with me, except two or three gentlemen whose professional duties in the college rendered it impossible for them to give me any regular assistance; but there were plenty of debating societies all about, and no end of young debaters. Without being considered much of a 'speaker' or 'writer' as an under-graduate, I had figured to some extent in the Yale Literary, and had just attained that beau jour de la vie when a young man gets his first 'piece' into a city magazine. All this fostered the habits of semi-literary idleness which the (so-called) studies of the senior year, appear purposely framed to encourage. Moreover, I formed rather an intimate acquaintance with a Mississippian (it was before the days of repudiation) who was always anxious to talk politics, and we used to read about a dozen newspapers a day, and throw the contents of them at each other. When it is stated that I was an ultra abolition Whig and he a slaveholding Democrat, the quantity of belligerent nonsense we interchanged, and the valuable result of our discussions may be easily imagined. The only tangible residuum that I ever realized from our debates was a pretty large bill for cakes, ice-cream, and sherry-cobblers. Indeed, so put to it was I for some daily work to balance me, as it were, and give me regular habits of study, that for the last three months of the year I joined the Law School, and then finding what I ought to have known before, that I should never make any progress in scholarship by myself at New Haven, I packed my trunks for England. Still it would be unjust to myself to say that I had absolutely wasted the twelve months. They were only comparatively lost. I did about as much in them as I ought to have done in three or four. I had broken ground in Juvenal, Thucydides, Aristophanes, and Pindar, authors who then seldom entered into the reading of an American college student: on the whole, it may fairly be said that I was a favorable specimen of a graduate from a New England College, and rather above the average than below it. Of mathematics I knew only a little Euclid and algebra, having gone through the college course of Mechanics, Conic sections, &c., to as much purpose as some travellers go through various countries. As to the rest of my education and accomplishments, they were the usual ones of an American student; that is to say, I could talk a little French and Spanish, and read a little German, had a boarding-school girl's knowledge of the names and rudimentary formulae of two or three sciences, could write newspaper articles in prose or verse, had a strong tendency to talk politics, and never saw a crowd of people together without feeling as if I should like to get up and make them a speech about things in general. I had read abundance of novels, poetry, and reviews, a fair share of English history, and a great deal of what the school books and the newspaper reporters call 'specimens of eloquence'. I had a supreme opinion of my country (except in matters of scholarship), and a pretty good opinion of myself. To complete the list, it should be added, that I could black my own boots, and, on a pinch, wash my own handkerchiefs. In short, with the exception of easiness of manner and presence of mind (two qualities in which I have always been deficient), I made a very tolerable representative for the reading section of Young America to send among English scholars. It is very awkward to write these things about one's self, but it seems impossible to dispense with them. In the course of this book, different standards of education, and the comparative knowledge of instructors, as well as pupils, in different places, will be very freely spoken of; and the reader who comes to these comparisons will naturally ask, what were my qualifications for forming any opinion on these subjects at all. And unless I tell him, it would not be easy for him to find out; for though the internal evidence of this book may sufficiently expose my fitness or unfitness for the task at present, still in order to estimate my progress or profit at the University he must know something of the foundation I had to build upon, which such indirect internal evidence would not supply.