Letter from Cambridge |
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Act I, Scene I: The Setting
Cambridge is a beautiful town an hour north of London, an archetypical university city. It dates back to pre-Roman times, and the Romans found it useful since it is the first point upstream in the river Cam narrow enough that one can put a bridge over it, thus its name. The university dates from 1209, and many of the older college buildings are from the 14th century. They are in a wonderfully honey-colored limestone, with towers and statues and carved bits, with gates that only begin to suggest through their openings the cozy, formal courtyards of an old educational system still resplendent with exceptional impact and prestige.
The town center is handsome, marred only by the proliferation of postcard and tee-shirt shops where one can purchase every variety of college and University logo on mugs and sweatshirts. Haven’t found a tattoo parlour that will do the same but am sure there is one here somewhere. There is still an open-air market in the city center, and while some stalls are tourist-targeted, it is also possible to get handsome looking produce and local cheeses.
The town is flat, with a small hill, Castle Hill at its northwest end not far from the river where the Normans threw up a conquering castle, the mound of which is still present. An English friend revealed that as one stands on the mound on a clear day, and faces east, one is on the highest point of land until reaching the Ural Mountains in Russia. In between are the long low vast plains of northern Europe in eastern Anglia , the Netherlands, northern Germany and the rest. It is a New England style hill, not a California one, rounded and soft and not a huge effort to ascend in the three-odd blocks it takes to rise from the river. The fens, a swampy lowland, lurk off to the north and east, and are responsible for the famous misty, damp airs that characterize Cambridge atmospheric conditions. From Pacific fog to fen fog I go.
I am located west of the city center about a mile, an easy twenty minute trot in good conditions. Many of the older colleges have their main entrances on the street they call Kings in the center of town, with the back of their quads abutting the river. Just over the river most of them own land, known as the “backs” which are devoid of buildings and kept grassy and unspoiled. These I traverse on my way to town, and the fields are eye-achingly green, and inhabited by geese, squirrels, ducks and all manner of bird life.
My residence is in university housing, specifically:
A5 Fawcett Court
6 Charles Babbage Rd.
Cambridge, CAMS
CB3 0FZ
Bonus points if you know who Charles Babbage is. It is a long and tedious story of how I arranged this housing, and I will not relate the details, only noting that it is the result of many months of increasingly frustrated searching, with eventual groveling in front of university authorities (to their credit they bent a rule and allowed me, a non-university affiliated visiting scholar, a spot in their university only housing.) It was the only accessible place of the dozens and dozens of listings we sifted through.
The building is new and cheaply constructed, reminiscent of my own college housing thirty years ago which had been thrown up quickly and with no intention of lasting more than a couple dozen years (these buildings are still there back in Amherst and cheerfully if determinedly falling apart.) The place itself is boxy, white and soulless, with drafty windows that leak when it rains, but still I can get into it without steps, and use the toilet and almost take a shower, none of which I could say about my other options, all due to English ADA equivalent rules that mandate some accommodation to accessible housing in recently constructed multiple housing.
In my fantasies I had myself ensconced in a 17th century stone farmhouse, with a comfortable, dark wood paneled library and workroom for writing, with sheep out front, two of which I had named Daisy and Montague, and whom I would feed bits of carrots in the morning as I jaunted off to the university library, my bookbag and laptop in tow. Serves me right to have fantasies. The university housing, a vast complex, is located in the fields west of town, near the physics lab and the veterinary school, and from my kitchen window I can gaze fondly at the mini-silos of liquid nitrogen apparently required for the Cavendish lab’s operations. There are horse fields adjacent, and I had begun to worry that the signs “kindly refrain from feeding the horses” were fictional, as I saw none the first few days, but they suddenly appeared a few days ago, presumably in time for term, blanketed against the cold and entirely unimpressed to be grazing on university property.
My rental agreement is a twenty-two page model of thoroughness and regularity, and among other things I am required to clean the windows every month, keep my “family servants or visitors” from activities that might clog the plumbing, and refrain from “boisterous behaviour or ball games” outside that might threaten the shrubbery. But no complaints. My mind and body are here in England, my ancestral homeland, in an ancient, intoxicating and storied university town, and situated for the next half a year of my life. Lucy, Aaron and Heather will join me in February, and then again for the summer, but it is just me for the moment.
The Why of it All
I am here on a mission, a long planned and inexorable one. My obsession for the last few years concerns the history of university libraries, how they began, how they evolved, what sorts of bumps they ran into during their passage to the present day, who were their characters, and how many of their current issues are ones that have been present for them since their origins. Obviously, this study cannot be done in a vacuum, since their mission is tied to the universities themselves, and the means of teaching, the needs of the students, and masters, all have bearing on how the libraries operated and what they looked like. If all goes well, I will someday have a book to show for my efforts.
Universities, at least in their western setting, and one could argue that this is perhaps the most significant legacy of medieval Europe, began in the twelfth century, at Bologna, Oxford and Paris. Cambridge was one of the first of the next round, the 1209 date I mentioned earlier a result of a mass migration of students and masters from Oxford after one of the interminable and inevitable town-gown conflicts that seemed to characterize early university life. The conflict resulted in the disgruntled educated masses departing until the town of Oxford mended its ways and altered its stance over how it treated its sometimes over-energetic scholars. This eventually it did, after a three year boycott of teaching, during which the town discovered just how much it missed the economic benefits of hosting a university, but many of the Oxonian students and faculty stayed in Cambridge to set up shop, as it is really a nice place. Cambridge has one of the most complete set of annals, rules and regulations since its inception of any of the early universities.
My choices were Oxford or Cambridge, with pros and cons either way. Oxford has the incomparable Bodleian library, perhaps the first real research collection in the world, and a romantic evocative medieval feel to the downtown. The surroundings there are more than picturesque, rolling hills and Cotswold towns with names like Burton on the Water and Stow on the Wold, that look like they emerged from the 16th century intact, rubbing their eyes at modernity. It was from very early on a center for freethinkers, and even heretics. My kind of place. On the other hand, the library would be much more taxing for me to use, as disabled access is problematic. Cambridge University’s library is large and relatively easier to use, the town not as medieval in feel but rather more 16th and 17th century in character. It is flatter, a nice benefit, and while close to the fens and raw, damp swirling winds, is surrounded by farmlands and altogether pleasant a place. Cambridge it is then, for the next seven months of my life.
Research
First task was the conference down the road, beginning the morning after my arrival. A somewhat strangely organized one, from multiple disciplines it is titled Technology, Knowledge & Society, and I gave a paper at their inaugural one, in Berkeley a couple years ago. This time I recognized the conference staff, but no one else, so I may be an unusual repeat attendee. My paper, with the cumbersome title “Historical Nodes of Inquiry: University Education and Technological Tectonic Shifts” examines three quite different technological moments in university history as a reminder of how we may cope with accelerated and jarring technological change in the present.
Despite a sudden panic on the second day of the conference, on the day my paper was scheduled, when I overslept, my jet lag and exhaustion overpowering my normal ability to wake punctually, I luckily managed to get to the place on time for my own slot. All went well after that, and I could relax a bit and enjoy the rest of the proceedings.
Getting a copy of the Times Literary Supplement in town (akin, but superior, to the New York Times Book Review) was a treat, although like most treats here, an expensive one at £2.70. English literary reviewing is a delightful art form, from which US reviewers could learn a thing or two. Acerbic reviews are common, but devastatingly learned. The percentage of non-fiction academic works in the TLS is far greater than the New York Times, and far more intellectual and university press offerings are handled. I noted with a squirm of pleasure that a new work had just appeared that addressed one of the very areas mentioned in my talk (the particular event was the dispute that Newton and Leibniz had over the priority of discovery of calculus at the turn of the 18th century) and thrilled with the discovery, I hustle off to the nearest bookstore to buy a copy, my first academic purchase here. If I had an expense account, it would be my first deductible, £15.99, but alas I don’t and it wasn’t.
A week after my arrival, I trot over to the university library (this is going to be one of the best parts of the affair, as it is all of a fifteen minute commute by walk/bikepath) and get my precious ticket to heaven, my reader’s card. The staff member asks if I have gotten one before, and I try not to look too smug in my response, while handing it over for him to pull up my file. Even better, I get to give a local address this time, and I rummage off into the stacks for an invigorating first pass.
My daily routine is beginning to settle in. Tuesday last was my first serious day of writing, rising well before dawn (not hard to do here, as the sun, when you can see it, doesn’t actually surface until 8:20 or so and then disappears around 4pm) making a mug of tea and settling into a good one and half hours of solid writing, some 1500 words. Each paragraph as I go I realize that I am making assertions that will need careful checking, and each paragraph ends up producing more questions to follow up on than it answers. But that is normal early stage going, and just means the natural multiplication of exposition. Then it is off to the library or town for supplies, or if raining too hard, stay at home and work some more.
Comparative Cultural and Linguistic Comments
It always amazes me just how different English, and by extension Commonwealth, culture is from that of the United States. We do speak the same language after all (don’t we?) and the USA is a direct descendant (as is Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc.) of England. So are the perceived differences really minor, akin to noticing as a child visiting on a weekend stayover at an aunt’s house that they use a different brand of butter than at home? Or are the differences deeper?
Some are not trivial at all, such as the driving patterns. Going in the first days on the sidewalks, I found myself thinking ahead on every intersection “cars coming from the opposite direction, look right not left when crossing.” I got that part right okay, and it is now fairly instinctual, but there is a second part that will take some doing. First you look right, but you still have to look left too, especially if in the middle of the street since cars are approaching from that direction. A week into it here and I am still taken unawares while crossing a street and a car comes zooming out of nowhere and is “in the wrong place.” Several decades of avoidance behavior do not come undone instantly.
The Cambridgeshire accent is different, and I cannot put my finger on exactly how. I am, perhaps like most Americans, quite comfortable with the educated “Oxbridge” lilt, characteristic of the BBC, which I encounter inevitably at conferences like the one I just attended. But that is a rarefied sound, and unrepresentative. London I can do, and have some ear for the south and west of the island, but here in Cambridge it is different somehow, and of course one of the natural reactions is feeling like the locals just speak too fast (not that I process too slow.)
And the punctuation, and orthography. I ended the last paragraph American style, but here some things are different (this paragraph ending British style, go ahead spot the difference).
The folks I see on the bike paths are many of them coming or going to the physics lab, and I must say that there is something unique about physicists’ appearance. They all seem to be long, angular types, with sharp, intense facial features and a demeanor that suggests they would be good hands on a twenty foot ketch at sea. They are trim, athletic, purposeful and don’t seem to go in for expensive bicycles.
Minutiae
I feel a bit like an academic paratrooper. I got myself here, by plane, and spent the first night tending to basics, digging my foxhole and being prepared just to get myself to the next day (coming prepared with tea fixings for the morning, etc.) While furnished, the place here is necessarily Spartan, and I have had, or will need, to gather up those multiple possessions that help life move along. Like dishtowels and a broom, plates and silverware, and eventually something to cover the walls. My buying patterns are schizophrenic and contradictory – if it is something I may want to bring home again, I want something distinctive or of quality, but if strictly utilitarian then I want something second hand, or inexpensive. The ultimate result is my place will end looking like that of an eccentric uncle, with an odd menagerie of mis-matched posessions.
It is expensive here, and I am initially responding like a tightwad New Englander (which of course I am.) £3.39 for a four-pack of Foster’s beer? 70p for a newspaper? Are you kidding? But these are the reactions of an American citizen with super-power entitlement, and it is more the devaluation of the American dollar over the last few decades that is the cause. A look at gas (sorry, petrol) prices provides a counterpoint, at nearly 90p a liter, which, what, translates to well over 5 dollars a gallon. But no car ownership will trouble this modern day academic monk here, although it is tempting to see if I might arrange for a lease of something fun or unavailable in the states, a nice little two door Alfa-Romeo perhaps, or a Rover or MG, just to blast around the countryside and terrorise the pubs. All sorts of unusual makes are about, ranging from these to brands that either have entirely given up on the US market (Renault, Citroen, FIAT, Skoda) to unusual styles and models from other marques (odd little VWs, Nissan mutants, and plenty of odd looking Fords (Ka etc.)
It is winter here. I am now living further north in latitude (52 degrees) than I have ever dwelled before. While travels have taken me north of this latitude for brief times, as far as Coventry and the north of Wales, this is my first longer-term residence this far up. You are at the far end of the football, so to speak, and while twirling about in space you need to look down over the laces to see the sun, and you don’t see much of it even when the clouds permit. (I have had exactly one day when the sun was out all the time, every other day has meant rain or the threat of it. My sunglasses remain cocooned in their case, not even yet removed from my luggage.) When present, the sun starts low in the sky, taking forever to get up (and making for prolonged sunrises and sunsets however) and never gets all that high anyway. The tables will be turned in June, but right now it feels like mid-winter all right, and cold and drafty and bleak, although the fields argue otherwise in their greenness.
Ah, the disability thing. I never really need a reminder that the US does probably the best job in the world at access, but I will have it regardless. England is not as good as Germany, and on a par with New Zealand, but suffers from having just so many old buildings. A good quarter of the shops in town cannot be entered, either for a large step up from the curb or even a too-narrow door. Folks are generally helpful, but there just plain aren’t a lot of wheelchair users out and about. Visiting the colleges will be a real adventure, which I will likely relate shortly. No one in the 19th century, never mind the 14th, ever expected folks to be traveling about by wheels, at least indoors.
That’s it for now. I hope to post a note once a month or so, usually around the first week, so look again in February. I am happy to hear from folks and will likely appreciate the diversion from my studies, now that I have the internet up and running in my cell, ah, flat.
fielden@sfsu.edu
Cheers from the green and sceptred isle
January 2007
Ned