Niven was expecting me and was ready with a programme of work which he had promised me in June, and I gladly accepted it. Both Niven and Browning assured me that at that late date lodgings in any college were out of the question, and that I must get lodgings in the town for one academic year at least. It did not matter, because very many students resided outside of the college buildings. I really preferred it, because I had not come to Cambridge to seek the opportunities offered by its college life; I had come to study physics and find out how Maxwell answered the question “What is Light?” That was the only definite point in the programme which I had brought to Cambridge; the rest was hazy and reminded me often of a Serbian figure of speech which speaks of a goose groping around in a fog to find its way. But I had groped like a goose in a fog when I landed at Castle Garden and finally found my way. The saying, “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” comforted me much.
My residence in lodgings outside of the college precincts had one great advantage. It gave me an opportunity to study English life from what I considered a somewhat novel point of view. It is the point of view which discloses to the foreigner English domestic life through the unique personality of the English landlady. During my eighteen months’ stay at the University of Cambridge, I had an opportunity to study her wonderful ways, not only in Cambridge, but also in London, Hastings, Brighton, and Folkestone, where I used to spend my Easter and Christmas vacations. She was the same everywhere: dignified, reticent, punctual, and square; neat and clean in all her ways; willing and anxious to render service, but not a servant; possessing a perfect understanding of her own business, which she minded scrupulously, but avoiding carefully minding anybody else’s business.
At Mr. Browning’s request a Mr. Ling, the leading tenor of King’s College choir, took me around to look for lodgings. He belonged to the town and not to the gown, and was quite anxious to impress me with the many virtues of the town. He transformed our trip into an elaborate inspection tour of the student lodgings, because he was proud of them and considered them a very essential part of the great university. At that time I thought that he, a very enthusiastic townsman, was perhaps exaggerating the importance of this subsidiary instrumentality of the university. But when I got to know the Cambridge landlady and to understand her importance, I became convinced that Mr. Ling was right. I had not been in Cambridge more than a week before I learned the fundamentals of English domestic life, and I admired its wholesome simplicity. My landlady taught me these fundamentals, and in her wonderfully tactful ways she enforced their operation without my being aware that I was led around by her intelligent and forceful hand. I take off my hat to the English landlady, who, in her humble and unostentatious ways, is one of the eloquent interpreters of Anglo-Saxon civilization. She was one of my trusty guides and sympathetic assistants during my strenuous eighteen months at the University of Cambridge.
I started my work at Cambridge unattached to any college. But later I made up my mind to attach myself to King’s College, yielding to repeated suggestions from my friend, Mr. Oscar Browning. But I did not change my lodgings. King’s had less than a hundred students and many dons. Not one of them was a star in physics, and therefore the college had no attractions for me on account of the learning of its dons. But it had a beautiful chapel and a famous choir. The stained-glass windows of King’s College chapel were famous as far back as Cromwell’s time and they are still so. Every time I attended service in this glorious chapel I went away feeling spiritually uplifted. I attended regularly, although, as a member of the Orthodox faith, I was excused from all religious services. What the other students, belonging to the established church, considered a stern duty, I considered a rare privilege. The chapel gave me a spiritual tonic whenever I needed it, and I needed it often. I yielded also to Mr. Browning’s suggestions to try for a place in the college boat, and succeeded. Rowing was the only exercise which I took at Cambridge after I had become attached to King’s, but before that I took long walks, usually with one of the younger dons or with a student who was engaged in the same book work in which I was engaged. They helped me to make myself familiar with the history of Cambridge and of the surrounding country. Everybody in Cambridge took his daily exercise just as regularly as he took his daily bath and food. I followed the universal custom; it suited me well and, besides, that was the best way to get along in Cambridge.
Physical as well as intellectual activity of the students at Cambridge was a matter of daily routine, regulated by customs and traditions. But these regulators were different for different groups of students. The student studying for honors arranged his work differently from the arrangement which suited the needs of a Poll student, that is, the ordinary student who did not aspire to academic honors. Their previous training also had been different. The students who aspired to academic honors in mathematics were quite numerous, more numerous than the students in any other honor class. Cambridge, ever since the time of Newton, had become the nursery of the mathematical sciences in the British Empire. There were about five of these honor groups at Cambridge in those days. Niven advised me to join the honor group in mathematics, the so-called mathematical tripos group, and he picked out a coach for me. Just as one straight line, only, can be drawn through two points, so the line of the student’s intellectual activity at Cambridge was fixed when he had picked out the honor class and the tutor or coach to train him for the examinations prescribed for that honor class. To join the honor class in mathematics meant to work alongside of students who expected to become Cambridge wranglers. To understand the meaning of this it suffices to know that no greater honor was in store for the ambitious youths in the university than to be a senior wrangler or to stroke a victorious varsity boat. The preparations for these glorious honors were just as careful as the preparations of a Grecian youth for participation in the Olympian games. I had no ambition to become a Cambridge wrangler, but Niven pointed out that a prospective physicist who wished to master some day Maxwell’s new electrical theory must first master a good part of the mathematical work prescribed for students preparing for the Cambridge mathematical tripos examinations.
“Doctor Routh could fix you up in quicker time than anybody,” said Niven with a smile, and then he added cautiously, “that is, if Routh consents to your joining his private classes, and if you can manage to keep up the pace of the youngsters who are under his training.” Three months before, when I first called on Niven, and when my pitch was very high, I would have resented this; but Idvor had lowered my pitch several octaves and I swallowed Niven’s bitter pill without the slightest sign of mental distress. My humility pleased him, because it probably relieved him of some anxiety about the question of managing me.
John Edward Routh, fellow of Peterhouse College, was the most famous mathematical coach that Cambridge University had ever seen. In his lifetime he had coached several hundred wranglers, and for twenty-two consecutive years he had coached the senior wrangler of each year. This is really equivalent to saying that a certain jockey had ridden the Derby winner for twenty-two consecutive years. He was a senior wrangler himself in 1854, when great James Clerk Maxwell was second wrangler, and he divided with Maxwell the famous Smith’s prize in mathematics. To be admitted by Routh into his private classes was flattering, according to Niven, but to be able to keep up with them would be a most encouraging sign. Niven was anxiously waiting for that sign. Routh accepted me, but gave me to understand that my mathematical preparation was much below the standard of the boys who came to Cambridge to prepare for the mathematical tripos examinations, and that I should have to do considerable extra reading. He also cautioned me that all this meant very stiff work for a good part of the academic year. I went to Cambridge to study physics and not mathematics; but, according to Niven and Routh, my real desire, as far as they could make it out, was to study mathematical physics, and they assured me that my training with Routh, if I could keep the pace, would soon lay a good foundation for that. Lord Rayleigh lectured on mathematical physics and so did famous Professor Stokes (later Sir George Gabriel Stokes); but according to Routh and Niven I was not prepared to attend any of these lectures, and much less to read Maxwell’s famous mathematical treatise on his new electrical theory. Niven reminded me once of my first visit to Cambridge, when I had insisted that Cambridge without Maxwell had no attractions for me, and he asked me, jokingly, whether Lord Rayleigh’s lectures were good enough for me. I answered that they certainly were, but that, unfortunately, I was not good enough for the lectures. “Next year you will be,” said Niven, consoling me; and I, unable to suppress my feeling of disappointment, answered: “Let us pray that the starving jackass does not drop dead before the grass is green again.” “What’s that?” asked Niven, somewhat puzzled. “That is a free translation of a Serbian proverb, and I am the jackass,” said I, and refused to furnish any further explanations. But Niven figured it out correctly in the course of the evening and then laughed heartily. He confessed that Serbo-American humor was somewhat involved and required considerable analysis.
The Cambridge colleges, some nineteen in number, resembled our American colleges in many ways. The career of the Cambridge Poll men was essentially the same as that of our American college boys. But our American colleges had no class of students corresponding to the Cambridge honor men. Referring particularly to the honor men who prepared for the so-called mathematical tripos, they came to Cambridge after graduating at some college outside of Cambridge. For instance, Maxwell came to Cambridge from the University of Edinburgh, and Routh came there from the University College, London. Both of them migrated to Cambridge, because their teachers in mathematics, like illustrious De Morgan, the first mathematical teacher of Routh, were mathematicians of distinction, and discovering in their young pupils extraordinary mathematical talents they developed them as far as they could, and then sent them to Cambridge for further development under the training of famous coaches who prepared them for the mathematical tripos. These teachers were usually former Cambridge wranglers, apostles of the Cambridge mathematical school, and they were always on the lookout for a fresh supply of mathematical genius for the nursery which regarded great Newton as its founder. This was the type of boys which I met in Routh’s classes. They did not seem to know as much of Greek and Latin, of history and economics, of literature and physical sciences, as I did, but their training in mathematics was far superior to mine. They were candidates for the mathematical tripos, and no American college of those days had a curriculum which could turn out candidates with the preliminary mathematical training which those boys brought to Cambridge.
Routh had warned me that stiff work was before me for a good part of a whole academic year, if I was to keep up with the young mathematical athletes whom he was training, and he was right. I experienced many moments of despondency and even despair, and I needed all the tonic which King’s College chapel could give me; I needed it very often, and I got it. Routh was a splendid drill-master even for those students who, like myself, had no tripos aspirations. He certainly was a wonder, and everything he did was done with ease and grace and in such an offhand manner that I often thought that he considered even the stiffest mathematical problems mere amusing tricks. Problems over which I had puzzled in vain for many hours he would resolve in several seconds. He was a virtuoso in the mathematical technique, and he prepared virtuosos; he was the great master who trained future senior wranglers. I never felt so small and so humble as I did during the early period of my training with Routh. Vanity and false pride had no place in my heart when I watched Routh demolish one intricate dynamical problem after another with marvellous ease. I felt as a commonplace artist feels when he listens to a Paderewski or to a Fritz Kreisler.
Long before the end of the academic year, I finished Routh’s preliminary tripos course in dynamics and much of the auxiliary mathematics demanded by it, and became quite skilled in solving dynamical problems. I had much difficulty in keeping pace with Routh’s classes, but I succeeded, and Niven was pleased. But I was not pleased; I did not think that I had found there what I had expected to find. In the course of time I discovered that I was not alone in my opinion; many Cambridge men failed to find in tripos drills the stimulating elements of that scientific spirit which leads to original research. I was a goose which groped around in a fog when I came to Cambridge; but, if I had come from an English college as a promising tripos candidate, with my work cut out for me by my superiors and in accordance with old customs and traditions of Cambridge, I should not have discovered that there was in Cambridge at that time an epoch-making movement, the significance of which cannot be overestimated. I shall return to this point later.