Oxford and Cambridge—Two Famous University Cities

I never realized when I first decided to go to Oxford and Cambridge the seriousness of the step I was taking. One might have gone to Eton and Harrow and got away with it. Oxford and Cambridge, however, are a national passion. Father is divided against son, mother against daughter, aunts against nephews and nieces, by a fierce emotional conviction that they are “Oxford” or “Cambridge”. This feeling seems stronger amongst those who have not attended them than with those who have. The crowds that throng the tow-paths of the Thames on Boat Race Day show that.

Let us try to survey both the universities from an inner standpoint. Similarities, of course, are many. The ancient tradition of centuries is shared by both, and the threat of modern scientific education is equally felt. Scientists throng “King’s Parade” in Cambridge as much as they do “The High” in Oxford.

If similarities exist, the differences are deeper marked. The most striking contrast is the difference in ethos between the two. Cambridge is a matter-of-fact, down-to-earth, sensible university. It is still defiantly progressive. Oxford is very much the city of dreaming spires, and conservative in its deepest roots. Eccentricity is frowned on at Cambridge; at Oxford it is a cult. Poetry flourishes at Oxford; philosophy finds its home in Cambridge; Oxford undergraduates have a certain brilliance; their conversation sparkles; they are intimately concerned with their inner reactions and feelings. Cambridge undergraduates are more concerned with their relations with their fellow- men; they get on with the job.

Generalizations are inevitably faulty. Oxford types may be found in Cambridge and vice versa, individuals exist who defy any classification; yet, generally speaking, the distinction is true.

Are Oxford and Cambridge romantic? Well, yes, that is the only word. Romantic to the outsider because of their long history, their exquisitely beautiful buildings, and the sense that within those buildings something timeless and beneficent lives in spite of all changes in the world at large.

Oxford and Cambridge form two of the most wonderful groups of buildings in the world, and it is no use pretending that, if Oxford or Cambridge were re-housed in efficient, modern structures, they would still be Oxford and Cambridge. They would not.

They would remain great institutions, yes; but just that essence which makes them precisely what they are would have been lost. Oxford today leads a peculiar sort of double life. Down the famous High Street roar trucks and buses. They roar between the glories of English architecture: University College, Queen’s College, Magdalen College, etc. The buses are bound for the Morris Works, one of the biggest motor-car plants in Europe, in full swing there, just outside the old city.

The other Oxford exists now like an island in a flood, cut in two by the main stream. But what an island! Leave the High Street, and in a moment you are in a city of wonderful, stately silence, not a city of free squares and open places, but a city of enclosures, for the colleges of Oxford look inwards. Each has one or two, or perhaps, three, grass-covered quadrangles into which no wheeled traffic goes. Round these beautiful quadrangles are the chapels and halls and libraries of Oxford, and the rooms of the undergraduates of the colleges.

Among this network of quadrangles, the life of the university goes on. All day, during term-time, undergraduates in their queer, scrappy little gowns—tokens of a seventeenth-century style of dress—thread their way through this Gothic labyrinth, or come streaming in and out of it on bicycles, with the automatic familiarity of bees round a bee-hive.

The colleges may be small or large, but whether they are small or large, they are never—or very rarely—grandiose. But here and there rise the great gestures of Oxford architecture—the soaring fourteenth-century steeple of St. Mary’s, the elegant tower of Magdalen, and the bulk of Tom Tower at Christ Church.

Those are the messengers, sky-messengers of Oxford, seen for many miles round. This grandeur of silhouette is unique to Oxford. If Oxford leaves the impression of enclosure and skyward aspiration, Cambridge leaves the impression of horizontal space. I think this is partly due to the overpowering, horizontal splendour of King’s College, the most conspicuous of the colleges, and one of the few which is visible all at once from the street. The quadrangle—a very large one—is screened from view by a light, low, pierced stonework screen. The college itself spreads broadly across the background, which, on one side of the quadrangle, is a building which I think, without doubt, is one of the great architectural spectacles of Europe: King’s College Chapel.

There is nothing you can compare that building with, except buildings so utterly different in climate and purpose as to make the comparison absurd—the Parthenon, perhaps, or Chartres Cathedral. But why compare? The complete and unruffled nobility of King’s Chapel is one of those things which make comparisons meaningless. At evening service, with only the fading daylight above you and the sparkle of candles on the choristers’ desks, you feel that space has been mastered in a way that has never been achieved at any other time or place.

As to architecture, Cambridge is to Oxford what Paris is to Rome. In Cambridge, as in Paris, everything is on show, and the whole is laid out to the best advantage. Oxford, like Rome, abounds in beauty, but it is a hidden beauty that must be sought for.

Norman St. Jolm-Stevas and John Summerson.

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