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Cambridge Apostles

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The Cambridge Apostles (also known as Conversazione Society) is an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the first Bishop of Gibraltar.[1]

The origin of the Apostles' nickname dates from the number, twelve, of their founders. Membership consists largely of undergraduates, though there have been graduate student members, and members who already hold university and college posts. The society traditionally drew most of its members from Christ's, St John's, Jesus, Trinity and King's Colleges.

Activities and membership

King's College, Cambridge

The society is essentially a discussion group. Meetings are held once a week, traditionally on Saturday evenings, during which one member gives a prepared talk on a topic, which is later thrown open for discussion.

The usual procedure was for members to meet at the rooms of those whose turn it was to present the topic. The host would provide refreshments consisting of coffee and sardines on toast, called "whales".[2] Women first gained acceptance into the society in the 1970s.

The Apostles retain a leather diary of their membership ("the book") stretching back to its founder, which includes handwritten notes about the topics on which each member has spoken. It is included in the so-called "Ark", which is a cedar chest containing collection of papers with some handwritten notes from the group's early days, about the topics members have spoken on, and the results of the division in which those present voted on the debate. It was a point of honour that the question voted on should bear only a tangential relationship to the matter debated.[3] The members referred to as the "Apostles" are the active, usually undergraduate members; former members are called "angels". Undergraduates apply to become angels after graduating or being awarded a fellowship. Every few years, amid great secrecy, all the angels are invited to an Apostles' dinner at a Cambridge college. There used to be an annual dinner, usually held in London.

Undergraduates being considered for membership are called "embryos" and are invited to "embryo parties", where members judge whether the student should be invited to join. The "embryos" attend these parties without knowing they are being considered for membership. Becoming an Apostle involves taking an oath of secrecy and listening to the reading of a curse, originally written by Apostle Fenton John Anthony Hort, the theologian, in or around 1851.

Former members have spoken of the lifelong bond they feel toward one another. Henry Sidgwick, the philosopher, wrote of the Apostles in his memoirs that "the tie of attachment to this society is much the strongest corporate bond which I have known in my life."

Eleven former members of the Apostles are buried in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge : Henry Jackson, classicist (1863); Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, classicist (1859); Desmond MacCarthy, newspaper critic (1896); Sir Donald MacAlister, physician (1876); Norman McLean, orientalist (1888), G. E. Moore, philosopher (1894); Frank P. Ramsey, economist and philosopher (1921); Gerald Shove, economist (1909); Vincent Henry Stanton, Professor of Divinity (1872), Arthur Woollgar Verrall, Classicist (1871), and Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (1912). These eleven members were from Christ's, King's, St. Johns College and Trinity. A twelfth member Benjamin Hall Kennedy is buried in the Mill Road Cemetery, Cambridge.

Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore joined as students, as did John Maynard Keynes, who invited Ludwig Wittgenstein to join. However, Wittgenstein did not enjoy it and attended infrequently. Russell had been worried that Wittgenstein would not appreciate the group's unseriousness and style of humour.[4] He was admitted in 1912 but resigned almost immediately because he could not tolerate the level of the discussion on the Hearth Rug; they took him back though in the 1920s when he returned to Cambridge. (He also had trouble tolerating the discussions in the Moral Sciences Club.)

Bloomsbury

The Apostles became well known outside Cambridge in the years before the First World War with the rise to eminence of the group of intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group. John Maynard Keynes, Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey and his brother James, G. E. Moore, E. M. Forster and Rupert Brooke were all Apostles. Keynes, Woolf and Lytton Strachey subsequently gained prominence as members of Bloomsbury.

Cambridge spy ring

Main article: Cambridge Five

The Apostles came to public attention again following the exposure of the Cambridge spy ring in 1951. Three Cambridge graduates with access to the top levels of government in Britain, one of them a former Apostle, were eventually found to have passed information to the KGB. The three known agents were Apostle Guy Burgess, an MI6 officer and secretary to the deputy foreign minister; Donald MacLean, foreign office secretary; and Kim Philby, MI6 officer and journalist.

In 1963, American writer Michael Straight, also an Apostle, and later publisher of The New Republic magazine, admitted to a covert relationship with the Soviets, and he named Anthony Blunt, MI5 officer, director of the Courtauld Institute, and art adviser to the Queen as his recruiter and a Soviet spy. Confronted with Straight's confession, Blunt acknowledged his own treason and revealed that he had also drawn into espionage his fellow Apostle Leonard "Leo" Long. Straight also told investigators that the Apostle John Peter Astbury had been recruited for Soviet intelligence by either Blunt or Burgess. Leo Long confessed to delivering classified information to the Soviets from 1940 until 1952.

Writers have accused several other Apostles of being witting Soviet agents. Roland Perry in his book, The Fifth Man (London: Pan Books, 1994) makes a circumstantial case against Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild, who was a friend to both Burgess and Blunt. The espionage historian John Costello in The Mask of Treachery (London: William Collins & Sons, 1988) points a finger at the mathematician Alister Watson. Kimberley Cornish, in his controversial The Jew of Linz (London: Century, 1998), makes the rather extravagant claim that Ludwig Wittgenstein was the "éminence grise" of the Cambridge spies.

In the 1930s when Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt were elected the membership was mainly Marxist. Documents from the Soviet archives included in the book The Crown Jewels (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), by Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, indicate that it was Burgess who seduced and led Blunt into the Soviet underground. As the Queen's art adviser, Blunt was knighted in 1956, but was stripped of his knighthood in 1979 after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher publicly named him as a spy—his confession having been kept secret before then.

Known members

Former members

Members of the Apostles include (with the year they joined in brackets, where known);[6]

A

  • Thomas Ainger (1820)[7]
  • Noel Annan, intelligence officer, provost of King's College, Cambridge, provost of University College, London, vice-chancellor of the University of London, member of the House of Lords (1948)

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

J

K

L

M

P

R

S

T

V

W

Appearances in literature

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l W. C. Lubenow, The Cambridge Apsotles 1820-1914, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  2. ^ Brookfield, Frances Mary. The Cambridge "Apostles", C. Scribner's Sons, 1907
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa "A Cambridge secret revealed: the Apostles", King's College, Cambridge, January 2011
  4. ^ McGuinness, Brian. Wittgenstein: A Life: Young Ludwig 1889-1921. University of California Press, 1988, p. 118.
  5. ^ "Interview of Professor Quentin Skinner - part 2". YouTube. 2 June 2008. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
  6. ^ Lubenow, W.C. (1998). The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life. Cambridge University Press. p. 127.
  7. ^ Levy, Paul (1979). Moore: G. E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. pp. 300-311
  8. ^ Blakesley, Joseph Williams. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 2 March 2015. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  9. ^ Butcher, Samuel Henry. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 2 March 2015. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  10. ^ Clifford, William Kingdon. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 2 March 2015. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  11. ^ The Times obituary, 8 June 1984.
  12. ^ Fane, Julian Henry Charles. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 2 March 2015. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  13. ^ Farrar, Frederic William. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  14. ^ The Cambridge Apostles, A History of Cambridge University's elite intellectual secret society, by Richard Deacon. Published in Great Britain by Robert Royce Limited, 1985. ISBN 0-9477-28-13-9
  15. ^ Hale, Keith, ed. (1998). Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey. Yale University Press. p. 107.
  16. ^ a b c d e f "Tennyson at Cambridge: The Apostles", Faculty of English, Cambridge, July 2014
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i "A Cambridge Necropolis" by Dr. Mark Goldie, March 2000, for the Friends of The Parish of The Ascension Burial Ground
  18. ^ Henry Jackson at Find a Grave
  19. ^ Sir Richard Jebb at Find a Grave
  20. ^ Kemble, John Mitchell. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  21. ^ Kennedy, Benjamin Hall. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  22. ^ Lushington, Edmund Law. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  23. ^ Sir Donald Macalister at Find a Grave
  24. ^ Sir Desmond MacCarthy at Find a Grave
  25. ^ Maurice, John Frederick Denison. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Retrieved 30 July 2014.[permanent dead link]
  26. ^ Norman McLean at Find a Grave
  27. ^ Merivale, Charles. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  28. ^ Milnes, Richard Monckton. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  29. ^ George Edward Moore at Find a Grave
  30. ^ Morton, Edward John Chalmers. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  31. ^ Frank P. Ramsey at Find a Grave
  32. ^ The Times obituary, 18 August 1947.
  33. ^ Sidgwick, Henry. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  34. ^ Smith, Henry Babington. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  35. ^ Spedding, James. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  36. ^ Stanley, Edward Henry. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  37. ^ Stephen, James Fitzjames. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  38. ^ Stephen, James Kenneth. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  39. ^ Lubenow 1998, p. 240. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFLubenow1998 (help)
  40. ^ Sterling, John. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  41. ^ The Times obituary, 11 May 1967.
  42. ^ Norton-Taylor, Richard (9 January 2004). "Obituary: Michael Straight". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 3 October 2008.
  43. ^ Trench, Richard Chenevix. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  44. ^ Arthur Woollgar Verrall at Find a Grave
  45. ^ Walpole, Spencer Horatio. "A Cambridge Alumni Database". Archived from the original on 31 October 2014. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
  46. ^ Brian McGuinness, Young Ludwig, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 146.

Bibliography

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