to icy conditions, I am used to the soft air and balmy weather of the Mediterranean. None the less, even the lowliest tavern did not possess a bitterness like that hall. The chill ate through your clothes and flesh and made your very bones ache with the pain of it.
Even that would have been endurable had food, wine or company been a compensation. These colleges have the monastic custom of eating in common, with the exception of the wealthier members who pay to have food sent up to their chambers. On a raised platform sit the senior Fellows, and in the rest of the hall are the others. As the food is scarcely fit for animals, I suppose it is not surprising that they behave like beasts. They eat off wooden platters, and in the middle of the tables are vast wooden bowls into which they toss the bones, when they do not throw them at one another. I ended up with food splattered over me from Fellows talking with their mouths full, spraying each other with bits of gristle and half-masticated bread.
The wine was scarcely palatable, so I could not even drink myself into oblivion. Instead, I had to listen to the conversation, which was not at all about matters of scholarly interest. I began to realise that, having initially fallen in with Mr Boyle and Dr Lower, I had gainedan unduly favourable impression, both of Oxford and the English. Far from being concerned about the latest advances of knowledge, the assembly was instead entirely taken up with who was going to gain which preferment, and what the dean of this had said to the rector of that. There was one other guest apart from myself, evidently a gentleman of some standing, and the obsequiousness of their behaviour to him was such that I assumed he was a patron of the college in some form. He, however, said little, and I was placed too far away to draw him into conversation.
For my part, I excited little interest and I confess my pride was wounded by it. I had anticipated that someone like myself, fresh from Leiden and Padua, would have rapidly become the centre of attention. Far from it. Saying that I did not live in the town and had no position in the Church was like confessing to the pox. When it became clear I was a Catholic two members left the hall, and at least one other declined to sit near me. I hated to admit it, since I had become partial to the English by then, but in nearly all respects they were no better than their fellows in Padua or Venice and, apart from the differences in religion and language, could have been exchanged for any group of gossiping Italian priests without anyone really noticing.
But if few paid me much attention, only one was offensive and my reception was neglectful more than hurtful. It was a great shame, however, that the frostiness came from a gentleman whom I was ready to admire without reservation, for Dr John Wallis was someone I would dearly have liked to count in my society. I knew of him and admired him for his skill in mathematics, which placed him amongst the first rank in Europe, and I had imagined that a man who was the correspondent of Mersenne, who had crossed mathematical swords with Fermat and Pascal, would have been of the broadest civilisation. Alas, this was not the case. Dr Grove introduced us, and was shamed by the way that Wallis refused even normal civility to me. Rather, he stared at me with pale, cold eyes that reminded me of a reptile, declined to respond to my bow, then turned his back on me. Worse still, he later rudely spurned my every effort at acquaintanceship.
This was as we were sitting down to eat, and Grove becameexcessively cheerful and pugnacious in his conversation to cover up the embarrassment his colleague had caused.
‘Now, sir,’ he said, ‘you must defend yourself. It is not often that we have an advocate of the new learning amongst us. If you are intimate with Lower, I suppose you must be so.’
I replied that I hardly saw myself as an advocate, and certainly not a worthy one.
‘It is true,
Even that would have been endurable had food, wine or company been a compensation. These colleges have the monastic custom of eating in common, with the exception of the wealthier members who pay to have food sent up to their chambers. On a raised platform sit the senior Fellows, and in the rest of the hall are the others. As the food is scarcely fit for animals, I suppose it is not surprising that they behave like beasts. They eat off wooden platters, and in the middle of the tables are vast wooden bowls into which they toss the bones, when they do not throw them at one another. I ended up with food splattered over me from Fellows talking with their mouths full, spraying each other with bits of gristle and half-masticated bread.
The wine was scarcely palatable, so I could not even drink myself into oblivion. Instead, I had to listen to the conversation, which was not at all about matters of scholarly interest. I began to realise that, having initially fallen in with Mr Boyle and Dr Lower, I had gainedan unduly favourable impression, both of Oxford and the English. Far from being concerned about the latest advances of knowledge, the assembly was instead entirely taken up with who was going to gain which preferment, and what the dean of this had said to the rector of that. There was one other guest apart from myself, evidently a gentleman of some standing, and the obsequiousness of their behaviour to him was such that I assumed he was a patron of the college in some form. He, however, said little, and I was placed too far away to draw him into conversation.
For my part, I excited little interest and I confess my pride was wounded by it. I had anticipated that someone like myself, fresh from Leiden and Padua, would have rapidly become the centre of attention. Far from it. Saying that I did not live in the town and had no position in the Church was like confessing to the pox. When it became clear I was a Catholic two members left the hall, and at least one other declined to sit near me. I hated to admit it, since I had become partial to the English by then, but in nearly all respects they were no better than their fellows in Padua or Venice and, apart from the differences in religion and language, could have been exchanged for any group of gossiping Italian priests without anyone really noticing.
But if few paid me much attention, only one was offensive and my reception was neglectful more than hurtful. It was a great shame, however, that the frostiness came from a gentleman whom I was ready to admire without reservation, for Dr John Wallis was someone I would dearly have liked to count in my society. I knew of him and admired him for his skill in mathematics, which placed him amongst the first rank in Europe, and I had imagined that a man who was the correspondent of Mersenne, who had crossed mathematical swords with Fermat and Pascal, would have been of the broadest civilisation. Alas, this was not the case. Dr Grove introduced us, and was shamed by the way that Wallis refused even normal civility to me. Rather, he stared at me with pale, cold eyes that reminded me of a reptile, declined to respond to my bow, then turned his back on me. Worse still, he later rudely spurned my every effort at acquaintanceship.
This was as we were sitting down to eat, and Grove becameexcessively cheerful and pugnacious in his conversation to cover up the embarrassment his colleague had caused.
‘Now, sir,’ he said, ‘you must defend yourself. It is not often that we have an advocate of the new learning amongst us. If you are intimate with Lower, I suppose you must be so.’
I replied that I hardly saw myself as an advocate, and certainly not a worthy one.
‘It is true,
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