2012 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

CREATOR OF THE MODERN COLLEGE I Jesus College Annual Report 2012 57
valuable resource, and that students who
accept one will do their best to get a good
degree, became general. In the two Morgans’
time, the assumptions were that Cambridge
wanted students and it was for the students
to decide how they spent their time. But it was
on the foundations that they laid that Gray
and succeeding generations built. 28
So if, while the Morgans ruled, academic
studies were not a high priority for most Jesus
undergraduates – there were, of course, some
for whom they were – sporting prowess
certainly was. This is a matter that has been
examined in some detail, and there is no need
to go over the ground again here: the eleven
successive years (1876-86) in which the First
Boat was Head of the River, celebrated by a
Grand Ball in the Guildhall, attended by the
Queen’s grandson, the Duke of Clarence, and
all that. 28 ‘Black’ Morgan’s own enthusiasm
for the river was highly infectious – year in
and year out he had coached the Jesus crews
from the towpath, his favourite mount a
white horse called ‘Gehazi’. Convinced that
the shallow, narrow Cam put Cambridge
oarsmen at a disadvantage against their
Oxford rivals, he had led (1868-70) a
successful campaign for its widening and
deepening, managing to extract £100 from
Queen Victoria which she gave in memory of
“her beloved Prince Albert, lately Chancellor
of the University.” Rowing was, he said, “the
ideal [sport], no pots or personal records, all
done for the honour of the College and the
University.” 30 Within the Close, the farmer
and his animals gradually retreated before the
regiments of cricketers, footballers, hockey
and tennis players and athletes – many
undergraduates serving in more than one of
them. This was why they had come to the
College, whose sporting amenities they
could, if they wished, enjoy during “the
Long” as well as in the three University terms.
Much of what present day Jesuans
remember when thinking of their College’s
distinctive characteristics – its clubs, societies
and sports’ teams, the J.C.R. (initially “the
Reading Room”), its colours on scarves, ties,
blazers and other wear, its magazines and
May Balls, its Directors of Studies, the
friendly informal relations between Fellows,
students and staff, even the re-gothicised
appearance of its buildings and their setting
in the park-like Close – has, like Old
Members’ Reunions, its origins in the years
when ‘Black’ Morgan, first as Tutor, and then
as Master, was its dominant personality.
Astonishingly little comes from the College’s
previous three-and-a-half centuries. Rather
similar tales could, no doubt, be told of five
or six of Cambridge’s older colleges, but
Morgan was at the forefront of Cambridge’s
nineteenth-century collegiate revolution,
showing what could be done even when the
starting point was a small, poor, church
institution, with a backward-looking Head.
Amalga-mating with another college,
seriously considered elsewhere, was for him
unthinkable.
T he summer of 1882 was a great one for
weddings – in the wake of the Act of
Parliament which finally freed all
fellowships from the celibacy rule. Arthur
Westmorland (aged 62), ‘Black’ Morgan
(52), and Arthur Gray (only 30) all went to
the altar. Henceforth only one Fellow, the
Dean, had to be in Orders. And to enable
Tutors to continue to keep a close eye on
their pupils, two large family houses –
“East” (now the Bursary) and “North”
(where North Court now stands) – were
built in the Close. An exploration of East
House (even though it has since been
altered internally) gives a good idea of the
social standing of a Victorian Tutor.
Morgan soon had five children, one son,
four daughters. He was a devoted father:
for many years, while Master, he was to be
seen each morning after the Chapel
service, touring the College’s courts – two
of them his own creations – a child in each
hand or, if the weather was wet, making
with them several circuits of the Cloisters.
In was in 1885, on Corrie’s death, that
Morgan had at last come into his inheritance.
The bishop of Ely having surrendered his
right to appoint the Master, he was
unanimously elected by the Fellows, the first
for whom the Mastership was a stand-alone
office. All his precedessors had combined it
with some church post. The Fellows declared
the Lodge to be untenantable – dark, damp,