by Bruce Feiler
Several years later, on my way home from Asia, I spent a summer in Europe, backpacking around France, studying in Scandinavia, and traveling for the first time behind the sagging Iron Curtain. Whereas Europe before had seemed sclerotic and fossilized, the entire continent on that trip seemed to be shedding its lethargy following a generation of Cold War. With talk of greater union in the West and newfound freedom in the East, people from the Baltic to the Mediterranean were whispering excitedly about a New Europe. Even more important for me, the Old Europe that I had so defiantly scorned seemed to reach out and draw me home like a displaced son. The weathered stones underfoot, the towering columns overhead, even the faded chiaroscuro in the grand drawing rooms of erstwhile dukes, tasted as sweet and warm as a gingerbread house after a three-year diet of salted soy delights.
The final stop on my tour that summer was London. England seemed dimmer than other places in Europe, more weathered and grey. But it also seemed more familiar. After an absence of several years, during which the closest I had come to British culture was an outrageously expensive pot of “high” tea in the Peninsula Hotel on Hong Kong Bay, the details of English life reminded me at every turn of stories and songs I had long forgotten or never even heard: Paddington, Buckingham, Bloomsbury, Canterbury, London Bridge, still falling down. What I remembered most from that trip were the rooms of books—the dusty grandeur of the London Library, the musty allure of second-hand shops on Charing Cross Road, and a single almond-shaped lamp in the Radcliffe Camera at Oxford that glowed through a tinted pane. Six months after that trip, halfway through writing my book about teaching in Japan, I applied to become a student in Britain.
During the time I lived in Japan, I learned to respect the vital role that schools play in the success—or failings—of a nation. In Japan the key to the country’s postwar success has been its secondary schools, which systematically, deliberately transform students into hardworking citizens. As a result, Japan’s secondary schools today are arguably the most respected and envied in the world, and Japan at century’s end enjoys a burgeoning role in world affairs.
Britain, on the other hand, has had a difficult century. In 1890 the land of Queen Victoria enjoyed the world’s largest empire, the world’s mightiest navy, the world’s strongest currency, and the world’s largest city. In the last hundred years British monarchs have seen the empire seized by upstart nationalists, the navy lose control of the seas, the pound lose much of its value, and London—the national pearl—become transformed into a giant museum on the one hand and a Third World relocation center on the other. When Britain ruled the world a century ago, the key to its success was not its secondary schools but its elite universities, which systematically, deliberately transformed students into members of a ruling class. As a result, Britain’s best universities were then, as now, arguably the most respected and envied in the world. But what role, if any, have they played in the less grandiose recent century in British history? More important, what role are they playing now as Britain struggles to throw off its own yoke of anti-European bias and join a unifying Europe? Finally, are Oxford and Cambridge at century’s end models of the academy as it was meant to be or anachronisms of a bygone era? These questions, among others, were on my mind as I wrote my application.
For reasons more practical than romantic, I chose Cambridge over Oxford. For close to seven hundred years the two universities, known together as “Oxbridge,” have been like siblings, twin rivers drawing strength from the same tributary, crossing similar terrains, and discharging their students into the same hallowed bay of the British master class. But in the area of postgraduate programs, the two schools have taken different paths. Oxford, fifty miles northwest of London, has built on its strength in the humanities, while Cambridge, fifty miles northeast of the capital, has opted for more practical programs, such as engineering, law, and, the program to which I applied, international relations.
The application itself, due in mid-February, was fairly straightforward, containing no existential questions like “What was the most meaningful piece of advice you ever received?” or “What three items would you remove from your house if it was attacked by nuclear weapons?” Instead, the questions were more formal: surname, forename, military rank, and proposed topic for a twenty-five-thousand-word thesis to be completed by the end of the year. The catch, however, was that every time I sent my application to Cambridge via Federal Express, the Board of Graduate Studies sent back a letter by sea mail indicating that I had failed to include a copy of some document such as my high school diploma or my last will and testament.
Months passed—April, May, June—and with the exception of these periodic form letters, I received no word from the Board. I decided to telephone. Calling Cambridge from America, I soon discovered, is like walking through one of those giant shrubbery mazes behind antique country estates: it takes half an afternoon to get through to the other side, and once you do you are back where you started.
“Sorry, Mr. Feiler, the Board of Graduate Studies have not seen your application in some months.” (The British, in deference to their Royalist past, still use plural verbs for collective nouns.) “It must be at the Centre of International Studies.”
“Sorry, Mr. Feiler, the Centre of International Studies are not able to inform you of our decision. We have sent your application back to the Board of Graduate Studies.”
At last, in late July, six weeks before the start of school, I received a letter by air from the Board of Graduate Studies informing me that the Centre of International Studies had formally accepted my application but that I would not be admitted to the program until a college had accepted me as well. Cambridge, unlike universities in America, is composed of over thirty privately owned colleges that provide room, board, and a residential community to the twenty-thousand students and teachers affiliated with the university. It was back into the maze for me.
“Sorry, Mr. Feiler, the Board of Graduate Studies have not seen your application in some weeks. It must be at King’s College, your first choice.”
“Sorry, Mr. Feiler, King’s are not accepting Americans this year. Your application has been sent to Clare, your second choice.”
Finally, in early August, I spoke with the director of graduate studies for Clare College, the estimable Dr. A. B. Jones, or rather Dr A. B. Jones (the British generally don’t use periods after abbreviations, but they do usually use them after initials, and in either case they don’t call them periods, but “full stops”; that said, in this book they will be included), who informed me that he had one position left, for which he would like to interview me.
“Now?” I asked.
“Or never,” he said. He cleared his throat and ruffled through some papers as I straightened my nonexistent tie.
First, he wanted to know why exactly it was that I had received a B+ in French during my sophomore year at Yale. “Clare College is accustomed to receiving only the top students from American universities,” he said, “and this blemish is most troubling.”
“Well,” I stammered. “As you probably know, college in America involves a lot more than studying. I was probably out saving the world or something.”
There was silence on the other end. Perhaps it was now and never, I thought. Moving quickly to cover my mistake, I told him I was not embarrassed about the blemishes in my transcript, since they were, after all, acquired five years ago. He moved on to the next question.
“I notice from your vita,” he said (vita, I learned from my dictionary, is Latin for “résumé,” which of course is French for “exaggerated list of what you’ve done in your life that’s designed to impress other people”), “that you’ve done a lot of traveling in your life. Is Cambridge just another stop in your world tour?”
Naturally, the obvious answer to this question was “Yes,” but I decided to play my role a little more gracefully and issued some interview humble-babble about the virtues of the program being greater than the virtues of the place.
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��I wouldn’t care if the international relations program was in Duluth instead of Cambridge,” I said. “This is the right course for me.”
As soon as I said that, I wondered if Dr. A. B. Jones had ever heard of Duluth, but it was too late: I had already revealed myself to be a boorish American who couldn’t speak French very well and who, in any case, was foolish enough to want to spend a year living in Minnesota instead of England.
“I have one more question,” he said. “In Cambridge we consider our academics to be of utmost importance, far more significant than what you Americans call ‘saving the world.’ I would like to know if this thesis of yours is a serious academic endeavor.”
At this point his condescension was driving me—and my phone bill—through the roof.
“Dr. Jones,” I said. “Everything I do is serious. I would not consider spending a year on a project if I did not think it worthwhile.”
“Well, Mr. Feiler,” he said, “I regret that your application has reached my desk rather late in the year, and I’m afraid that you will find all other colleges in the same difficult position as we are. But considering the interesting things you’ve done in your life, and that Clare College prides itself on having interesting students, I am minded to offer you a slot….”
There was a pause as I tried to interpret what he said—regret, filled, minded?—but all I could muster was an image of weeks passing by, with no word from Clare, and my application trapped in the maze.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “What does that mean?”
“Well, son, that means I will inform the Board of Graduate Studies to inform the Centre of International Studies that you have been admitted to Clare College.”
And just like that, after forty-five minutes of questioning and twenty-five weeks of anxiety, I was finally accepted to Cambridge. Six weeks later, with my manuscript recently completed and Columbus Day fast approaching, I traveled for a day from Savannah to New York, flew for a night from Kennedy to Heathrow, and rode for an afternoon on a bus, called a coach, from the banks of the Thames to the Backs of the Cam.
WELCOME TO CLARE COLLEGE, read the sign on the gate where the polished black taxi dropped me off with my bags. NO DOGS, STROLLERS, BICYCLES, OR PICNICS. NO MOORING ON THE BANKS.
The Cam is a lazy sort of river. Not a river of mythic dimension on which slaves rode to freedom or hunters sought their prey; not a river of epic proportions on which nations thirst for being or crops depend for life; and not a river of geological significance that carved canyons out of stone or valleys out of peaks. The Cam is a sluggish, rather lackluster stream that rises from the chalk hills northeast of London, eases north through the fens of East Anglia, and empties into a wash at the base of the great North Sea. Despite its distinctly high-minded air and unfortunate low-life smell, the Cam has the good sense to wend its way through the grassy banks and cobblestone streets of one of the most picturesque medieval towns in Europe. Here the river is narrow, often no wider than a horse can jump; it is tame, perfect for late afternoon strolls, bicycle rides along its banks, picnics on its shores. Here, in the Middle Ages, an enterprising resident resolved to join one shore with the other and set out to build a bridge.
Why did the road cross the river? No one may ever know. The person or people who built that bridge, even the person or people who paid for it, drowned in their own anonymity. The earl of Sandwich had a meal named for him; King George a colony; even the English ox has a city named for it in the one place where an ox could ford the Thames. But the chap who built the bridge across the Cam made no name for himself and only his construction lives on. In fact, the locals liked his structure so much that they named their town after it: Cantebrigge in the eleventh century, Caumbrigge in the fourteenth, and finally Cambridge from the sixteenth century until today.
These days no one seems to know how Cam, which rhymes with dam became Cambridge, which rhymes with rain ditch, but everyone knows how that town changed geography forever. Rivers are supposed to go up and down—up toward their origins and down toward their demise. But Cambridge defies this classification. When one comes to the school that was named for the town that was named for the bridge that crossed the river, no matter if one comes from north or south, from Edinburgh or Brighton, one always comes “up.”
I dragged my bags inside the nagging gate and dropped them before a small office at the bottom of a three-story archway. Inside, a middle-aged man sat hunched behind a counter with a squint in his eye, a scowl on his face, and a Sherlock Holmes pipe that drooped like a treble clef from between his frowning lips.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “I’m here to register.”
“What’s your name,” he said, dropping his pipe derisively to his lap and appraising me with a practiced stare.
“Feiler,” I said with a slight buck in my voice, like a private at boot camp.
“Mr. Feiler,” he said, now rising from behind his desk, gathering his glasses, and flattening his waistcoat around his stomach, which mirrored in size and shape the bowler that hung over the back of his chair. “This is Clare College, the second-oldest college, in the second-oldest university, in the Greatest Country on Earth. We like to maintain a certain dignity here, but also a certain friendliness. What, may I ask, is your Christian name?”
“I don’t have one,” I said. “But my first name is Bruce.”
“Good,” he replied. “I’ll call you that.”
“And what,” I asked, “do I call you?”
“Well,” he said, now ambling toward the waist-high counter that separated me from him. “You should know that I’m the deputy head porter of this college. I’m the one who decides what gets through that gate, and what doesn’t. Who comes in, and who stays out. Some people call me a son-of-a-bitch, but my friends call me Terry.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ll call you that.”
He bowed. I reciprocated and extended my hand. “I can always change later, can’t I?”
He chuckled and shook my hand. “You’re from America, I take it.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“I thought so. We’ve had a few Colonists at Clare over the years, but I won’t hold that against you. In fact, my friend, I’ll take it as a challenge. I’m going to make an English gentleman out of you, even if it takes all year.”
For several minutes we ambled through the routine of registration, as I exchanged my signature for a set of keys and my honor for a set of sheets, a blanket, and a dictum not to put tape on the antique walls. As I did, several female students gathered in the Porters’ Lodge behind me and waited to complete the same procedure.
“I’ve been traveling for a long time,” I said when the process seemed to be over. “Can you tell me where my room is?”
“Your rooms are in V,” he said, holding up his fingers in a victory sign à la Winston Churchill. “That’s a famous entryway.”
“Rooms?” I repeated hopefully.
“Oh, there’s only one room,” he said. “It’s a bed-sit. But in Cambridge we call all our lodgings rooms. It’s the way we’ve always done it.”
“I see. And why are these rooms so famous?”
He paused for a moment, running his finger down his sideburns. “Let’s just say they’re famous for love.”
He snickered and waved me out the door.
“Just don’t forget Old Terry’s three rules,” he called. “First, thou must be friends with Terry. Second, thou must come to the May Ball. And third, thou must let Terry flirt with your date on the night of the ball.”
The students behind me giggled. I believe I saw one person write the rules down.
“Now get out of here, you dirty old Yank,” Terry said. “I’d much rather speak with these young British ladies.”
Under the archway I gathered for the final time my suitcase, camera case, backpack, duffel bag, laptop computer, and the ramshackle sack of New York Timeses that had crossed too many datelines and too many time zones to be of any use, and headed through the college courty
ard to the infamous climbs of V Entryway. Under the sign VIVENT PER OMNIUM MEMORIAM 1939-1945, I found my name painted in white calligraphy on a black slate panel: V10 B. S. FEILER. I climbed one flight of wooden stairs and opened the door underneath my name, which was again painted on the wall in Latinate script—genus and species—as if I were an exotic animal or a tenured professor.
Inside, I dropped my luggage in the center of the floor and reached for the light. It didn’t work. I reached for the lamp. It also didn’t work. Glancing around in the pale evening haze, I detected in a space barely larger than my New York taxicab a bed, a desk, two chairs, and, rather optimistically I thought, four empty bookcases. It occurred to me in my sodden haze that this bed-sit should actually be called a bed-chair or a sleep-sit, but I decided that in a land where a bus is a coach, a pound is a quid, and the left lane in many pedestrian crossings is painted with a sign that says PLEASE LOOK RIGHT, this was hardly the right time to start bucking the language—especially when I had more luggage than lamps and very little sleep.