2012 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

54 CREATOR OF THE MODERN COLLEGE I Jesus College Annual Report 2012
Black Morgan: Vanity Fair, 1889
value for its money. 11 It was he too, as Dean,
who had work on the Chapel’s restoration
resumed, appealing for funds and seeing the
outer Chapel transformed with William
Morris’s richly painted nave ceiling, and its
windows filled with as fine a collection of
stained glass – by Morris, William Burne-
Jones and Ford Madox Brown – as can be
found in any church of comparable size. For
thirty years – until ‘Red’ Morgan’s death in
1895 – the two Morgans were to be the closest
of collaborators. They not only ran, they
dominated, the College : they were it, and it
was them. And when ‘Black’ Morgan was
elected Master, it was ‘Red’ Morgan who
succeeded him as Senior Tutor (three were
now needed) while continuing as Dean.
Their partnership’s fame spread well beyond
Cambridge: in 1889 Vanity Fair published
‘Spy’ cartoons of both of them.
Sensing the Victorian middle class’s
growing appetite for university education – to
fill the gap between a young man’s leaving
school and being fit for an appropriate job or
profession – and with the B.A. (though not
the M.A.) degree now open to non-Anglicans,
Morgan’s aim was not just to return student
numbers to 1849-53 levels, but significantly
to increase them. A Tutor’s repute and
prestige – and his income – depended on
how many students he had in his college.
There was no University or (except at Trinity)
college entrance examination and no
educational requirement for matriculation:
Morgan was to oppose their introduction. 12
But if Jesus was to have more students, more
rooms would be needed. In 1863 it was a
college of two-and-a-bit courts – the
attractive Entrance Court dominated by the
Gate Tower, the rather damp and pokey
Cloister Court, and a Pump Court which
extended only to K staircase, and embraced
the College Cook’s vegetable garden.
At the December 1867 Audit meeting, it
was agreed “that power be given to the
resident Society to consider the expediency of
enlarging the present College buildings and
to report thereon to the Society at large”, and
fourteen months later, on 2 February 1869,
the Fellows agreed to Morgan’s proposal –
written into the Conclusions Book in his own
hand – that
“In consideration of the greatly
increased number of undergraduates
admitted of this College and of the
increased number of young persons
generally throughout the country for
whom education at the universities has
become an object of interest and
importance . . . the Master and Fellows
have felt to be necessary to consider
whether or not it be their duty to build a
certain number of additional sets of
rooms within the College precincts for
the accommodation of those students
who are now compelled to occupy
lodgings in the town”
to approve Waterhouse’s plans for 22 (later
increased to 24) sets “and to give the resident
Society authority to raise the necessary funds
to carry out the Designs.” Taking advantage
of recent legislation which had, for the first
time, permitted colleges to borrow, most of
those necessary funds – the builder’s tender
was for £6248 – were found in the Rustat
Trust’s reserves, and were to be repaid over
thirty years. 13
Morgan’s vigorous student-recruitment
campaign had already borne fruit. By 1868