Cantabrigia

Literis Antiquis Novis Institutis Decora: Distinguished for Classical Learning and New Institutions

Motto of Cambridge, Massachusetts

My print of Harvard Square (I also collect prints…never an empty shelf, never a blank wall!). My first impression of my new home, and where I cut my teeth as a baby tour guide. This is a view of what we call “The Pit.” The green-roofed building was the original Harvard Subway entrance, now Out of Town News. Harvard Yard is in front of you, and Brattle Street behind.

On my very first visit to Boston in 2010, I made a stop in Harvard Square. The steeples and yards washed me in memories of my two blissful summers in Oxford, and I was in love. Two years later, I had moved to Boston and in the spirit of getting to know my new city, I found myself with a Groupon for a tour of Harvard and Old Cambridge. Strolling for two hours through Harvard Yard, and the old town beyond (I’m so sorry, Georgia, for making you do the extended route!) renewed my enthusiasm for the intellectual charm of Harvard Square. After I had settled in, my mom finally talked me in to sending a resume over to that tour company, and (after getting rid of my appendix), I began my first fall in my new home giving tours of Harvard.

Even after ‘graduating’ to the big stage of the Freedom Trail, I have always felt a sigh of relief to come back to Harvard Square. Cambridge has always felt to me like coming home. And as of four months ago, almost seven years after my first visit, Cambridge finally is home. I am, at last, a Cantabrigian.

Oh what a very long way away Boston used to be! It was an 8 mile trip over bridge and land to Boston from Cambridge until the West Boston Bridge was built in 1793- that bridge is called the Longfellow Bridge today, and it makes it so much more convenient to get back and forth!

The city of Cambridge got off to a humble start in the 1630s as an offshoot of Boston very creatively named Newtowne. In an attempt to set itself apart from its more prominent neighbor, and in the hopes of preserving the fledgling colony for future generations of Puritans, Newtowne got the permission and funding to found New College in 1636. Unfortunately the school got off to a rather rough start as well and was on the verge of closing down in 1638 when a man named John Harvard got off the boat from England, promptly died, and left half of his fortune and library to New College. In gratitude for the gift that would ensure the institution’s survival, the college’s name was changed to Harvard. And in celebration of becoming the official “Cambridge” of the New World, the town changed it’s name to Cambridge and literally grew up and thrived around that venerable university. So not quite Oxford, but inspired by a very similar collegiate ideal. And there is an Oxford street!

The John Harvard Statue- Statue of Three Lies. I wouldn’t touch those golden toes if I were you.

Thanks to the supreme importance of the college and of education in general to the survival of the town, it is probably no surprise that Cambridge seems to attract the intellectuals. As one of my friends would say, the insufferably pedantic intellectuals. (I don’t think he really cares much for Harvard when it comes right down to it). For better or worse, however, I feel I can class myself among the pedantic lot, and so Cambridge suits me just fine. Liz Gilbert (who I got to see for the first time at the First Parish Church in Cambridge- thanks to the Harvard Bookstore!), talks in her memoire Eat, Pray, Love, about cities each having their own word- the common current that runs through a place and the thread that unites the people who live there. Cambridge’s word would be something like Intellectual, or Knowledge, or if we’re going for verbs: To Learn, or To Know. Ah- like I said, home! A very kind new acquaintance, discussing with me the other day my penchant for reading real books and just in general wanting to know things, labeled me, with no irony at all, “a scholar.” I was pleased to find that I have reached a point in my life where, even lacking any degree higher than Bachelor of Fine Arts, I am confident and proud to accept that label as my own.

Cambridge 1854- Alice was 3 years old. This map is on a beautiful tea tray I acquired at the Longfellow House!

Having discovered that unconscious prejudice of mine in the relief of its absence, I started to think about our current fixation with higher degrees. Since I am, as I said, the pedantic kind, I went looking and learned that graduate degrees are actually a fairly modern invention. Harvard itself didn’t start offering doctoral degrees until after the Civil War. Even doctors and lawyers achieved their credentials, not through intensive scholarly programs, but through practical apprenticeships and personal study well into the 19th century. John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Da Vinci (just a few of my favorites) were all avid readers and experimenters who built lives, careers, art and governments by sculpting their own learning.

One of Cambridge’s own preeminent scholars, and another of my favorites, obtained his Harvard professorship in modern languages with nothing but an undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and the merit of his own, self-directed studies.

Henry! Such a handsome fellow, and absolutely cherished in Cambridge. I recommend a visit to his beautiful Brattle Street home if you’ve never been!

I freely admit to not knowing very much about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when I first moved to New England, but his story and his beautiful home on Brattle street, captured my imagination from my first visit, and I have since spent a great deal of time with Henry and his family- especially his eldest daughter, Alice. Theirs is the Cambridge I imagine for myself. A beautiful, quiet home with history and a garden; a library full of a life’s worth of collecting; a study with beautiful windows; good friends gathered around the dinner table and afterwards the fire talking about ideas. Henry was the first American poet to quit his day job as a professor and focus entirely on poetry.

Alice in Italy in 1927, the year before she died- what a lady. Here’s to the hope that we will all be so lucky to be traveling in style right up till the end!

His daughter Alice became a scholar in her own right and a great philanthropist, helping to restore George Washington’s Mount Vernon for future generations, and also helping to found what would become Radcliffe College, the first step towards admitting women into the hallowed halls of Harvard. Both Longfellow and his daughter would receive honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. (Incidentally, Winston Churchill, an abysmal student in his school days, would ultimately receive an honorary doctorate from Harvard during WWII, one of at least 13 honorary degrees he received from universities around the world.) The Longfellows were a truly Cantabrigian intellectual family who left an indelible mark.

Julia and Paul Child also called Cambridge home for more than 20 years. Another couple I admire greatly, the Childs were an unendingly curious pair, well-travelled and eager to share the pearls of their experience. Similarly lacking in formal higher education, Julia also received an honorary doctorate from Harvard and several other institutions as well (her list of honorary degrees is just as impressive as Churchill’s). Julia and Paul lived on Irving Street, just beyond Harvard’s main campus, two doors down from the home of philosopher William James, and across the street from the birthplace of poet ee cummings!

With neighbors like those, who wouldn’t want to call Cambridge home?

But do you know what the best bit about Cambridge is?

The books.

I’m serious, if you haven’t yet, go check out my post on Cambridge bookstores. And then take a google into our myriad libraries (Widener, Houghton, Schlesinger…). And then just treat yourself to a wander down our picturesque residential streets.

Walking home after dark one evening a couple of weeks after I moved in, I was engaging in one of my favorite after dark games of peering into other people’s open windows as I passed (Oh come on, you know you totally do that too). A couple of houses down from mine I found a curtain still open and beyond it I saw…a wall of books! In the next house down, I encountered another open window, and what did I see? A wall of books!!

As Cogsworth and Lumiere would say: Gads of books! Mountains of books! Forests of books! Cascades! Swamps! More books than you’ll ever be able to read in a lifetime!!!

My neighbors live in libraries. I live in a library. What could be better than Cambridge?