of the vague religious and political beliefs which he had brought with him from home and from Clifton. All questions were discussed, not only Canon Wilson’s Sunday sermon; nor was there any need to circle round the centre. His creed, he noted afterwards, had dropped from him without any shock or pain so far as he was concerned. His new friends were as respectful of the scientific spirit and as scornful of the sentimental or the effusive as Sir Edward himself. But they submitted not merely mosses and plants to their scrutiny but politics, religion, philosophy. This intense interest in abstract questions drew upon them a certain amount of banter from outsiders. So one may infer from a description given by Mr E.F. Benson of a certain evening party in Oscar Browning’s rooms. The host himself pedalled away at the obeophone; “Bobby and Dicky and Tommy” strummed out a Schumann quintet; the President of the Union played noughts-and-crosses with a cricket blue, and in the midst of the racket Mr Benson observed “a couple of members of the secret and thoughtful society known as ‘The Apostles’ with white careworn faces, nibbling biscuits and probably discussing the ethical limits of Determinism”.
The names are not given, but it is possible that one of those thoughtful young men was Roger Fry himself. For in May 1887 he confided to his mother: “I have just been elected to a secret society (not dynamitic though it sounds bad) commonly known as The Apostles—it is a society for the discussion of things in general. It was started by Tennyson and Hallam I think about 1820, and has always considered itself very select. It consists of about six members. McTaggart and Dickinson belong. It is rather a priding thing, though I do not know whether I shall like it much. It is an extremely secret society, so you must not mention it much.” Not long before he had been elected, without being asked, to the Pitt Club, “which is supposed to be a very swell thing, and for which there is keen competition”. But he refused, because he thought it “not worth the very big subscription”. He had no doubts about joining the other society, even if he doubted whether he would enjoy it. Soon the only doubt that remained was whether he was worthy of the honour.
Since I last wrote [he continued a few days later] I have been partially initiated into the society I mentioned before, i.e. I have seen the records which are very interesting containing as they do the names of all the members which includes nearly everyone of distinction who was at Cambridge during the last 50 years. Tennyson I think I told you is still a member and there are references to the society in “In Memoriam” which none but the duly initiated can understand. Thomson the late Master of Trinity, Baron Pollock, Lord Derby, Sir James Stephen, Clerk-Maxwell, Henry and Arthur Sidgwick and Hort are all (or have been) members, so that I feel much awed by thus becoming a member of so distinguished and secret a society—it has a wonderful secret ritual the full details of which I do not yet know but which is highly impressive. The most awful thing is that on June 22nd there is a grand dinner at Richmond at which Gerald Balfour is President and I (woe is me) as being the newest member am Vice-President and I have to make a speech. I suppose that theoretically it is very wrong of me to tell you all this but you must tell no one but father. I am afraid you will think all this rather absurd but I am rather delighted to have been elected though I know I am far below the average of members and was really chosen because they did not happen to know of anyone else so suitable. And now to turn to the awful Tripos….
It was undoubtedly “a priding thing” to be elected a member of that very select, very famous and very secret society. No election to any other society ever meant so much to him. And “the most awful thing”—the speech at Richmond—was a success. They laughed at his jokes; Gerald Balfour paid him a compliment on his speech; and after dinner with eight others he rowed down the river to Putney, which was reached about two in the morning. So, it would seem, the Apostles were not quite so white and careworn as they looked to outsiders. Certainly they ate something more succulent than biscuits; nor were their discussions confined to the “ethical limits of Determinism”. The meetings led to friendships and the friendships led to boating parties* Lowes Dickinson has described one of them:
We four [he wrote], that is McTaggart, Wedd, Fry and myself, used at this time to row down the Thames from Lechlade to Oxford at the close of the summer term and those few days were a wonderful blend of fun and sentiment. McTaggart bubbled over all the time. He could not row, of course, but we made him do so. “Time, Bow”, said the cox and McTaggart replied, “Space”. He read aloud or quoted Dickens, whom he knew almost by heart. The long stretches choked with rushes and reeds above Oxford; Abingdon, where we could pass the night and lie in the hay by the river; the wonderful wooded reach between Pangbourne and Maple Durham; the Hill at Streetley which we climbed at sunset; the locks with their roaring water; teas in riverside gardens; a moonlight night at Shipley; the splendid prospect of Windsor and ices in the famous tuck shop; it all lingers still in my mind after forty years, and the ghost of McTaggart rises up inspiring and enchanting it all, witty, absurd, sentimental, adorable.
It was a society of this kind then—the society of equals, enjoying each other’s foibles, criticising each other’s characters, and questioning everything with complete freedom, that became the centre of Roger Fry’s life at Cambridge. The centre of that centre was the weekly meeting when they read papers and, as Roger told his mother, “discussed things in general”. The records are private; yet it is permissible, judging from the names of the members and their future fame, to suppose that the subject of Roger Fry’s first paper, “Shall we Obey?” was typical of the general run; and to infer that “things in general” excluded some things in particular. It is difficult to suppose that Baron Pollock, Lord Derby, Sir James Stephen, Clerk-Maxwell and the Sidgwicks ever discussed the music of Bach and Beethoven or the painting of Titian and Velasquez. There is no evidence, apart from McTaggart’s early reference to Rossetti and from one visit in his company to the Royal Academy, that the young men who read so many books and discussed so many problems ever looked at pictures or debated the theory of aesthetics. Politics and philosophy were their chief interests. Art was for them the art of literature; and literature was half prophecy. Shelley and Walt Whitman were to be read for their message rather than for their music.
Perhaps then, when Mr Benson talks of the pallor of the Apostles, he hints at something eyeless, abstract and austere in their doctrines.
Often in later life Roger Fry was to deplore the extraordinary indifference of the English to the visual arts, and their determination to harness all art to moral problems. Among the undergraduates of his day, even the most thoughtful, the most speculative, this indifference seems to have been universal. His own interest in abstract argument was so keen that the deficiency scarcely made itself felt then. But as his letters show, even while they argued his eye was always active. He noticed the changing lights on the willows, the purple of the thunderstorm on the grey stone of the colleges, the sunset lights on the flat fields. Many half-sheets are filled with careful architectural drawings. He was sketching a great deal. At Cambridge indeed he began to paint in oils—his first picture was it seems a portrait of Lowes Dickinson. And pictures themselves were becoming more and more important. He bicycled over to Melbourne, where Miss Fordham showed him her “really very wonderful collection. She has five Turners, 2 Prouts, many old Cromes, Copley Fieldings, D. Cox’s &c.” When he stayed with Edward Carpenter he visited the Ruskin Museum at Walkley and noticed not only the minerals, though they are duly described, but also “copies of Carpaccio and Lippo and Botticelli, also a very fine Verrocchio”. He began to add lectures upon art to his lectures upon science; he went to meetings of the Fine Arts Society in Sidney Colvin’s rooms, and records how a scientific experiment that he was making was interrupted by “a huge discussion on the nature of art with an old King’s man who is up”.
Indeed, as the years at Cambridge went on, art was more and more frequently interrupting science. In November 1887 there was an important exhibition of pictures at Manchester. Roger Fry left Cambridge at 3.45 in the morning; reached the gallery at noon; looked at pictures till eight in the evening; got back to Cambridge at 4.15 the next morning; slept for an hour on a friend’s sofa and then went to a scientific lecture at nine.
It certainly was a somewhat fatiguing affair [he wrote], as of course one could not get much accommodation at the price, but the pictures were a sight worth
