Literature – The Cambridge Placebook

April 12, 2022April 13, 2022

Cambridge in Books

I got an email from the University a few months ago advertisting a book-collecting contest put on by the University Library Special Collections people. I didn’t take it very seriously at first because although I have indeed collected a lot of books since coming to Cambridge, they seemed a bit too much of a hodge-podge to count as a Collection-with-a-capital-C. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much the books I’d accumulated reflected my curiousity about the British landscape, and especially Cambridge. In any case, I loved them–that should count for something, right? So I proceeded to document the accumulation and spin up a little essay (partly from past blog posts) to submit. Inspired, I even bought a few more books…

As it turned out, my collection WAS too hodge-podge to make a big enough impression on the judging panel, who commended my enthusiasm but thought it might be “a little broad,” and didn’t advance it to the shortlist. Ah well, I had fun with it. And I thought I’d share it here. Read on for the essay followed by a descriptive bibliography of the books crammed into my college-issued bookshelf. (Will I actually expand my collection as aspired to in the essay? Well…stay tuned…)

Some of the books in my Cambridge/nature/guidebook collection

January 4, 2022January 5, 2022

Byron’s Pool

Of all the romantically named Cambridge haunts, Byron’s Pool may be near the top of the list. I don’t particularly enjoy what I’ve read of Lord Byron’s high-flown poetry (except for the satire), and I don’t find the Romantic hero-personality of extremes and debauchery and drama particularly appealing—but I was as beguiled as anyone by the idea of a grove along the River Cam where the famous poet was supposed to have swum while an undergraduate at Trinity (this is what all the guidebooks and interpretive signs say, and not much more). It’s so very Cambridge. Most significantly for my interests, it’s farther up the River Cam than I’ve ever visited.

November 6, 2021January 4, 2022

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is like the cool cousin of London. I wouldn’t be surprised if its popularity as a quick holiday destination has only increased during the pandemic, domestic travel being a hot commodity. I’d only ever heard good things about it but hadn’t managed to get there, despite it being only a 5-hr train ride the length of England from Cambridge. I was determined to squeeze it in before the term got into full swing or any unforeseen disruptions *cough* Covid *cough* got in the way, so my friend Marie and I made a long weekend of the Edinburgh bucket list. Hills, castles, kilts, neogothic grandeur, bagpipes, haggis, hipster art—we fit all of it in.

January 17, 2021July 5, 2021

Grantchester Meadows

When the English poet and Cambridge alumnus Rupert Brooke was homesick and depressed in Germany in 1912, he wrote a nostalgic, light-hearted poem about one of Cambridge’s gems:

. . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester! —
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
…I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .

God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England’s the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of THAT district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.

(from “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester”)

Brooke proceeds to comically badmouth every other village in the vicinity of Cambridge based entirely on what insults rhyme with their names.[1] It makes an interesting timepiece, to recognize the names of villages that have now been subsumed as neighborhoods of the City of Cambridge (Madingley, Cherry Hinton, Ditton…). Grantchester, however, is one village that has kept its geographical identity, still tiny and discrete on the banks of the River Cam amidst fields and college sports greens. Nevertheless, it is very closely linked with Cambridge, not least by the steady flow of joggers and dog-walkers along the two-mile footpath that runs beside the River Cam from Cambridge to Grantchester. Much more could be said about Grantchester, the village— its medieval church, its pubs, its tearoom, its namesake detective show I got my family hooked on after witnessing its fourth season being filmed in town—but it’s the path to Grantchester I want to write about for now. The path ambles through the idyllic chain of green where Brooke wanted to lie “flower-lulled in sleepy grass”: Grantchester Meadows.

August 12, 2019July 5, 2021

G. David, Bookseller

Part I: A quest for nature books

In St. Edward’s Passage, one of the many stone-and-cobble folds of the Cambridge city centre off of the teeming King’s Parade, there is a secondhand bookshop that is exactly what you would expect a Cambridge bookshop to be. Looking over the little jungle-y churchyard of St. Edward King and Martyr Church, an unassuming but functional blue awning announces in bold letters G. DAVID, EST 1896, and a few outdoor shelves, crates, and display windows announce a clutter of books. Entering puts you in a bookshelf sandwich. You are pressed breathtakingly close to dozens of dashing and eclectic strangers; breathing books, inhaling titles. (The same could be said about your proximity to the other patrons dancing past you in the between-bookshelf space.) The first glimpses on my first visit were enough to put me in a literary swoon—poetry by Ted Hughes, contemporary fiction, something called Treasured Island: A Book Lover’s Tour of Britain, Ursula K LeGuin, Dickens, Darwin. There were quirky posters and postcards pinned to the wall, black and white photos of historical David’s Bookshop milestones, photos of notable people with G. David bags (including Michelangelo’s David), and an envelope addressed only to “David’s Bookshop, The Passage, Cambridge” with a sticky note proudly announcing that it found its way here. And there were more rooms, and a downstairs. (No photography allowed, or I would have eaten it all up in my camera.)

Needless to say, I left with more books than I had come to buy.

March 4, 2019July 5, 2021

Notes and Noticing

But we are and always have been name-callers, christeners.

Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks

After a roughly two-decade lifelong stint in the Western US, I’ve moved to Cambridge, England, and I want a record of the place. I want to name its multitudes of places. Presumptuous of me, maybe; people have been recording and naming this place for dizzying centuries, and I’ve been here for six months. But I want my turn anyway. You’re welcome to flip through this placebook, if you can’t come see and be here yourself.

Category: Literature