Jesus College, Cambridge, has a unique beginning, as it grew out of a Benedictine Nunnery, and Bishop Alcock, of Ely, its founder, when he did away with the discredited sisterhood, adapted their ruined buildings instead of destroying them. The college was erected to the honour of the Blessed Virgin, St. John, and St. Radegund, but Alcock added the new title which it still bears. The names of Prioresses are preserved from Letitia, circa 1213, to Joan Fulbourne, 1493. Though we do not know precisely when the nuns began, there is an unusual amount of records left concerning them which tend to show that they were distinguished in family rather than learning, and given to hospitality as well as good works. They owed their butcher £21 at a time when a sheep cost a shilling. Let us hope that the good man's daughters learnt something as boarders in the St. Radegund Guest House. What can be gathered concerning early days is told pleasantly. It may seem odd that a nunnery should exist in Cambridge, quite near the site of the famous Sturbridge Fair; but the ladies started before the colleges began, and they were some way off the nucleus of academic buildings. The excellent sketches are a great addition to the book. The beautiful piscina figured on page 286 has long been familiar to lovers of Cambridge architecture, but new discoveries have been made since Le Keux published his Memorials in 1845. Jesus has been lucky in its antiquaries and historians, also in escaping the full fervour of that debased Gothic which flourished in the nineteenth century. The discovery of the Chapter Arches by the Rev. Osmond Fisher in 1893 is quite a romance. He was able to supplement many years earlier the indolence of a Master and save the Tower from falling.
The notes, other than architectural, chronicle the varying fortunes of the foundation, with details of the plague, plays in English and Latin, militant and destructive commissioners, and worthies like Tobias Rustat, Yeoman of the Robes to Charles II. Cranmer's is the first name in the college lists, and it has always been distinguished in theology, though for most people its main modern reputation is for athletics. This side of the college is, however, not touched by the authors, who deal with reverend signiors and men famous in literature.
The college can boast of Sterne, whose grandfather was one of its masters; but nothing is known of his academic behaviour. This is just as well, since his associate Hall-Stevenson can hardly have been a model young man. Coleridge, the only poet, we think, who ever won an academic prize for a Greek Ode, was decidedly eccentric, and had a reputation for saying good things, as we learn from the lively pages of Gunning. He was treated with great leniency by the dons of Jesus, and left through his own perversity. His poetry at this time is negligible, and his lines "to a young Jackass on Jesus Piece," whom he wished to take with him,
in the Dell
Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell,
reveal the coming exponent of Pantisocracy. We do not think that his rowdiness at the trial of Frend in the Senate House is to his credit, in spite of his explanations.
The work of both writer and artist shows a genuine enthusiasm for the college and its memories. Both illustrations and print gain by the ample page; but a book weighing well over two-and-a-half pounds will hardly do as a "handbook."
COMRADES IN CAPTIVITY. By F. W. Harvey. Sidgwick & Jackson. 10s. 6d. net.
Mr. Harvey's book strikes one immediately as amazingly truthful. He not only gives one facts about his prison life in Germany, he avoids giving too many facts. Deliberately he refuses to be preoccupied with the mere horrors, or the beastliness of some of his captors, or the nervous strain on the prisoners. And this surely is artistically right, if one is to get a picture of what prison life meant to the average normal prisoner. The men who wished to retain sanity had to keep out of their minds, so far as they could, the things which Mr. Harvey leaves out of his book. They endeavoured by work, by lectures, by concerts, by games, by theatrical performances to recall continuously to themselves that normal life still prescribed in spite of their untoward fate. And nobly most of them succeeded. Perhaps some of their efforts were a little uncalled-for. For instance, Mr. Harvey tells us that on their first arrival at Guterslob new prisoners were treated quite formally by their fellow-countrymen:
New arrivals were not ignored by the British. There was a system whereby they even fed (German food being totally inadequate) until their own parcels began to arrive. Clothes, too, were served out to those who seemed in need. And there were invitations to tea with senior officers and officials. Such preliminaries accomplished, however, one was dropped like a hot coal—for a time, that is, until one had proved oneself.
And he also states that when at Crefeld all prisoners other than British were turned out. "We thought it damnable." The truth is our Allies had been, far more than we realised, an interest and diversion in captivity. Certainly it must have seemed odd to be made welcome by Russians and French rather than by one's fellow-countrymen, and we think it is due not, as Mr. Harvey, "to the national tradition," but to the public school and university tradition of the new boy and the freshman. Mr. Harvey enlivens his book with specimen lectures—including an excellent one of his own on Shaw—poems and anecdotes; and there are amusingly rough sketches by Mr. C. G. B. Bernard.