In September 1970 my aunt Dorothy drove my mother and me to Cambridge, where I was to begin my studies for a degree in Modern and Medieval Languages (MML) at Downing College. A vestige of the Medieval monastic origins of the university was a requirement that all applicants should have an ‘O’ Level in Latin, no matter the subject they would study. [CORRECTION: Judy Allfrey tells me that Cambridge and Oxford abandoned the Latin requirement in 1960. Perhaps my memory is faulty, or perhpas the MML faculty required it.] This was, in fact, useful for me (studying Spanish and French), but less so for my school friend Jon Crosby whose subject was materials sciences. One curiosity of the MML tripos was the requirement that the ability of students to actually speak the two languages that they were about to study should be tested one week before the course began, and never again examined. Thus, I found myself in a Downing College where the only students were other MML initiates, and made my first new friends, including my future best man, Robert Wilson.
In the 1970s access to university education in the UK was severely rationed, as a matter of policy, to a very small proportion of those who left school education. Access to the universities of Cambridge and Oxford was possible for a still smaller, carefully selected, proportion of the population. For women the rationing was still more severe: only three of the colleges were for women, the rest, like Downing, were all male. Funding, however, in my case at least was generous. My local authority (in Ipswich) paid my tuition fees directly to the university and its colleges, and, because my parents’ income was very modest, I was given a very adequate term-time grant, and my parents were given a grant to maintain me during the vacations (my mother shred this grant with me). The tuition of student friends from wealthier families was paid in full, but their maintenance grant was reduced to reflect their parent’s income. If their parents did not top up their grant, they were less financially secure than I was. My final exam results gave me a legal right to three years of graduate research funded by the Department of Education in London, including travel and additional funding for the time I spent in Mexico.
The gender divide between colleges, in addition to being unjust as far as female applicants were concerned, was already socially outmoded. And on occasion it had absurd and sometimes hilarious consequences. For example, guests (meaning principally female guests) were required to leave the college by 11pm when the porters would lock the gates. I imagine that few students regretted a female guest being obliged to stay the night because the gates were locked. And Downing students who did not return to their rooms by 11pm had a convenient alternative to the locked gates. At one end of the college’s grounds was the Downing Street science site, separated by a fence of iron railings, one of which was always missing (and when it was replaced another was removed) so that students could get back to college through the gap in the railings.
Rather more ridiculous was the dining tradition attached to the lectures of the Maitland Historical Society, founded in 1920. The lecture had always been given by a male speaker, but, while I was at Downing, for the first time a woman was invited to lecture, and as was traditional on a Wednesday. This caused a serious problem since the college statutes (which could be amended only with the agreement of the monarch) stipulated that women could dine on the college Fellows’ High Table only on a Saturday (and only at the invitation of a Fellow who was not the husband of the female guest in question). So, the question arose: what to do about dining the female lecturer? The distinguished Fellows met to consider the problem and debated three options: 1. Not to give the lady dinner; 2. To declare the lady to be a gentleman; 3. To declare the Wednesday to be a Saturday. The combined superior intellects of the Fellowship decided, after much discussion, to declare Wednesday to be a Saturday. This was also a college which called its students “gentlemen”, but termed its staff, who included “bedders” who cleaned the rooms and made the beds of the gentlemen, those who cooked or served their meals and so on, “college servants.”
A few days ago I returned to Cambridge to attend the memorial service for Dr Geoffrey Walker who taught me English to Spanish Translation, the Conquest of Mexico, and Latin American History from 1970-1973. Geoff and his wife Ana had been friends ever since. Geoff began his academic career with a PhD (completed in 1963 and published in 1979 as Spanish Politics and Imperial Trade, 1700-1789, by Macmillan, for whom I was working at the time) about the trade between Spain and the Americas in the 18th century. Geoff met a charming young Catalan woman, Ana. They fell in love and were married at the monastery of Montserrat in Cataluña. While studying in Madrid in 1958-1959 it seems that Geoff met Juan Carlos, the King of Spain, as I learned at the memorial, in a nightclub. Geoff became a founding Fellow of a new (all male) college, Fitzwilliam College, in 1966.
He switched the focus of his academic studies to Catalan language, literature and culture, and became an important figure in the development of Catalan studies in the UK. For his role in promoting Catalan culture he was awarded the Cross of Sant Jordi. He also received the Order of Isabel la Católica after organizing the visit of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía to Cambridge in 1988. Geoff, as a tribute at his memorial noted, was of the generation of university teachers, for whom teaching was more important than research (although his output of publications was considerable and wide-ranging) before the UK government’s Research Excellence Framework emphasized research at the expense of teaching. He also smoked his pipe during interviews with applicants to Fitzwilliam and served sherry in student meetings. This marks him out as having his feet firmly planted in a Cambridge that no longer exists, although he enthusiastically supported the admission of women to Fitzwilliam in 1978 (Downing did not get round to this until 1980). He once told me that an argument deployed by those who opposed the admission of women was that this was simply impossible because none of the college rooms had full-length mirrors. Today, the toilets in the college are labelled “all genders”, so things have certainly changed, with the notable exception of those reserved for Fellows, which are still labelled “Ladies” and Gentlemen”. I don’t know what arguments were made in Downing’s case, but I recall being told by the college Chaplain, with a note of surprise in his voice, at a dinner in the 1980s that the women even manged some of the college societies.
The morning after the memorial, I rode the U1 bus through a district of Cambridge that was entirely new to me. For the university is no longer the rather stuffy pipe-smoking, sherry-serving, mostly men-only Cambridge of my days. Cambridge is now a centre for scientific and technological research that has attracted international investors. The Cambridge of 99,000 people in 1970 has become a city of 146,000, and of global significance, in 2021. Housing and infrastructure have not matched this population growth, which has become a problem for the university, especially the cost (and scarcity) of housing. One response to the population pressures is the new suburb of Eddington, built by the university, to provide houses for the wealthy and apartments (for a three-year period) for students and university staff, complete with a Hyatt hotel, and fashionable cafés and restaurants. And between Eddington and the old city centre, are large new buildings that resemble corporate headquarters, but that house the science and technology departments of the university, all moved out from the buildings in the centre that they occupied when I was a student. The investments must be staggeringly large.
Chatting to the bursar of Fitzwilliam during the day of the memorial, I realized that much has changed in the nature and balance of power in the university. For example, humanities (such as my department of MML) are now much downgraded in importance, funding and student numbers, while money and student numbers pour above all into science and technology, and on a smaller scale career-oriented subjects such as law and economics. The funding has also changed. The college receives tuition a payment of £4,600 from the central government (the university receives the same amount. This figure that has not increased for years, since it is passed onto the students as a loan, so it is politically unpalatable to do so. The amount is insufficient, so the college tops this up by some £3,500 from its endowment. Students receive a loan for their maintenance costs, which has increased by only 2% a year (inadequate to cover costs but also added to the student loan). So, the student has become a consumer and the college a supplier. And inadequate funding means that some students suffer financial hardship and need support from the college and the university. Students are permitted to work a small number of hours during term-time to supplement meagre funding, something that was unheard of in the 1970s.
Another change is a considerable change in student dining. When I was a student, I paid a fee every term to cover the cost of lunch and dinner. Since the food was paid for, students almost always ate communally in the college hall, unless something truly awful (“chicken Stanley”, named after the college Steward drove many of us to a local Indian restaurant). Now lunch is served only in the final (exam) term of the year. Student meals are subsidized, those of the Fellows are priced at cost, and the college makes its margin from meals served to conference delegates, or students from other colleges. Fitzwilliam has enjoyed a mini-boom recently: neighbouring Churchill College has ceased to serve meat, so its carnivores eat in Fitzwilliam.
Despite its astonishing growth, Cambridge’s ancient past lives on in a number of ways. John Latham, who picked me up from the new Cambridge North rail station and drove me to the events of the day, told me that he had just become chair of the trustees of Hobson’s Conduit. I must confess that I had no idea what he was referring to until he asked me whether I remember the deep gutters that run along both sides of Trumpington Road as it reaches the city centre. The Conduit was first proposed in 1574 to solve the sanitation problems caused by the King’s Ditch. The Ditch was dug in the 13th century on the orders of Henry II to defend the southern and eastern boundaries of Cambridge, but the stagnant water due to a lack of drainage was a source of health hazards. Moreover, Cambridge needed a supply of clean water. So, between 1610 and 1614 a watercourse was constructed from springs at Nine Wells, near Great Shelford, to bring water to the city’s marketplace (via the Trumpington Road gutters), and to drain the Ditch. Thomas Hobson endowed the Hobson Conduit Trust to manage the waterway, and (so John Latham tells me) the Lords of the Manor gave the trust a 1,000-year lease. The trust has ancient legal powers that require. It to approve any developments along the Conduit that could adversely affect it. In 21st-century boomtown Cambridge this is a substantial power and an onerous duty.
Hobson, by the way is famous as the origin of the phrase ‘Hobson’s choice.’ He owned a livery stable whose horses delivered mail between London and Cambridge. The horses were also rented to students and academic staff. To ensure that no horse was overworked, Hobson instituted a rota so that each horse had a period of rest. Thus, when a customer rented a horse, he was obliged to take the next horse on the rota. The alternative was not to rent a horse at all – hence Hobson’s choice.
As I shared memories of Geoff Walker and ana with others at the memorial, I remembered Geoff telling why he decided to retire. In his translation class, he had always assigned an extract from The Mill on the Floss (as I well remember). He decided that his Cambridge had changed just too much when a student complained that the translation exercise was “weird” and told Geoff that she would complain to her Director of Studies.
