2013 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

FREND OF JESUS I Jesus College Annual Report 2013 51
the Clergy”. (Lovelace Papers, Bodleian
Library: letter William Frend to Ada Byron
27.2.1829). Lady Byron, Ada Lovelace, who
pioneered computer programming, and was
dubbed the Enchantress of Numbers by
Babbage, was taught mathematics privately
by Frend from an early age. On another
occasion, as remembered by his daughter
Sophia, he said: “the highest academical
teaching should be given without reference
to religious differences”. Sophia was
convinced that her father’s views, urged in a
flow of correspondence, led to the founding
of London University. His Plan of Universal
Education, published in the same year as the
Reform Bill, 1832, argued for free education
for all, including women – whose education
should be “as much attended to as that of the
men…”
His last years were spent at 36 Tavistock
Square, London. After suffering two strokes
he was almost completely paralysed, and
could barely speak. On 20 February 1841,
he indicated to his daughter that she should
read to him his favourite Psalm (19) –
“The Heavens declare the glory of God”.
Sophia wrote that as she read “As for man, his
days are as grass”, he “joined in and repeated
with me clearly and in a firm voice the verses
following to the end of the Psalm”. It was the
last time he spoke. He died the following day.
After his death, Sophia’s husband,
Augustus de Morgan, wrote a letter to Jesus
College (now in the keeping of the Old
Library), confirming with gentle irony, and
despite an evident fondness for the place, his
disdain for its petty conventions of those
times – doubtless including the insistence on
powdered hair and the outlawing of blue
coats.
“Nothing could show the bent of his mind
in this respect as well as the vivid manner in
which he could always remember the most
trifling minutiae of College habits or
discipline, which was accompanied by the
most frequent recurrence to the subject
whenever he was in a company with a
Cambridge man.”
Sophia de Morgan eventually despatched
to the College a marble bust of William
Frend, which remains in our keeping .
* * *
I am grateful to Dr Frances Wilmoth for
making available to me materials on Frend in
the keeping of the Old Library, particularly
Frend’s Account of the Proceedings and Sequal to
an Account. Other ms materials on Frend
include a collection of letters now deposited
at Cambridge University Library, also
published by the Cambridge Records Society:
Letters to William Frend from the Reynolds Family
of Little Paxton and John Hammond of Fenstanton.
See also Vol 1 of Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, ed. E. L. Griggs, 6 vols (Oxford,
1956-71); John Cornwell Coleridge: 1772-1804
(London, 1973); Frida Knight, University Rebel:
The Life of William Frend (London, 1971);
Nicholas Roe, Wordsworth and Coleridge, The
Radical Years (Oxford, 1988).
The bust of William Frend
Photo reproduced with the permission of John Henwood