Miss Morris

Who do you think of when you hear the phrase Cambridge characters? There are a number of town rather than gown characters, but understandably persons with a connection to the university come to mind. Long ago, there was Byron, who apparently kept a bear in his college rooms, in protest against the rule forbidding dogs. In the early 20^th century, there was Rupert Brooke and a substantial proportion of that Bloomsbury crowd. Incidentally, in the village of Grantchester, just outside Cambridge and made famous by Brooke’s poem, there is an outdoor refreshment area called The Orchard. I remember seeing a sign outside it, listing some of its famous former customers. These included Brooke, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Rutherford, Germaine Greer, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Fry, Prince Charles, Emma Thompson, …

I remember thinking, it must have been quite a party.

Another 20^th century Cambridge character was the philosopher Wittgenstein, whose grave is often adorned with peculiar devotional items including pork pies. Wittgenstein is also often remembered as the man who threatened Karl Popper with a poker. This is unfair as far as I can glean from the various accounts I have read of the incident. Popper was giving a lecture. Wittgenstein, who had been moodily fidgeting and prodding the fire with the said poker, stood up, still holding the poker, and asked Popper for an example of one of the principles he was espousing as essentially axiomatic. Popper replied that one shouldn’t threaten visiting speakers with a poker. Wittgenstein, who wasn’t threatening anybody, stormed out in a huff. I may have got this wrong, but it is my impression. And although as a scientist I should be on Popper’s side, I can’t help sympathising with the grumpy old German shepherd rather than the yapping but indisputably brilliant terrier.

I have a story relating to the pork pies and I may recount it in a future blog.

In the late 20^th century there are other Cambridge characters who surely stand out in the public mind, the famous spies, Clive James, Stephen Hawking, Germaine Greer... However, I would like to mention two others who might be less well known.

In 1975, in my  second year as a student at Edinburgh University, I shared a grubby and ramshackle flat in Tollcross with three other students. On a top shelf in the hall cupboard in the flat I found a pile of old crime novels. One was Welcome Death, by Glyn Daniel. This was a clever little murder mystery that included a revelation early on in the narrative that the time of the crime was wrong, as a result of a pub clock being kept ten minutes fast. I liked this, as it was common practice in Scottish pubs at the time, with our guilt-ridden obsession with alcohol.

Daniel was Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge, a charismatic Welshman who also featured on popular television and radio shows, and wrote whodunits in his spare time. I am particularly impressed with the fact that when he was on desert island discs, he chose as his book Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a fascinating reference work in which one can find entries for items as diverse as Sweet Fanny Adams, Dennis the Menace and the Sabine Women.

I moved to Cambridge in the second week of December 1986, the same week that Daniel died. I remember thinking it a peculiar coincidence.

The other Cambridge character to whom I would like to draw your attention is Miss Morris.

When we lived in Chesterton High Street in the early 1990’s, Miss Irene V. Morris was our next-door-but-one neighbour. She was a grand old lady of 80, a fellow of Newnham College, and what used to be called a bluestocking. When our Bill was born on 4^th December 1993, she said, ‘That’s your Christmas box’. In the following weeks, when seeing him out in his pram, she referred to him as ‘his lordship’.

Miss Morris had been a lecturer in German at Cambridge for forty years, and from what I hear was held in great affection by her students and great respect by her colleagues. She had had many illustrious students. Apparently at one point in her career, she had torn a strip off one graduate student, a Fulbright Scholar called Sylvia Plath, for marrying Ted Hughes. Miss Morris considered this a temeritous move, all too correctly as things turned out, and told her she was a silly girl.

Miss Morris was from Belfast, and belonged to some Presbyterian demonination called the Secession Church of Advanced Damnation or something like that. However, she was perfectly sociable with her heathen neighbours, one of whom from his name obviously dug with the other foot. She had had an interesting life, including travelling a lot in Germany in the 1930’s. Rather alarmingly, she remarked that she had found the SS officers quite gallant and charming.

One day, Linda met her in the local newsagents, buying all the broadsheets for that day. Miss Morris explained that her former student Peter Cook had died a few days ago, and she wanted to read all the obituaries. Miss Morris told Linda that she had taught a number of the ‘footlights lot’ and that of all of them Peter Cook was far and away the cleverest. Indeed, she was pretty contemptuous of the rest of them. Cook could have had a brilliant career in academia if he had been prepared to do the slightest stroke of work. However, he baulked at this particular fence. Miss Morris remarked with some amusement and affection that he was always late (if ever) with essays, but invariably had the most charming and plausible excuses for the delay. She was clearly very fond of him.

After we moved from Chesterton High Street I occasionally saw Miss Morris dotting about Cambridge, dressed in her habitual black, and always wearing a striking hat. She died in 2007, aged 94, and was much missed by colleagues, friends and co-religionists. She was a true British eccentric. RIP Miss Morris.

This reminds me of something Peter Cook said, not as himself but in character as EL Wisty, his invented, peculiarly British and peculiarly inept character. It articulates something I have often thought myself. A television interviewer asked, ‘Do you think you have learned from your mistakes?’

‘Oh yes,’ replied Cook/Wisty, ‘I think I could repeat them perfectly.’