When in the beautiful university
city of Cambridge, if you want to
escape the hubbub of the centre you should make your way along the banks of the
Cam to the village
of Grantchester, a riverside
settlement with charming pubs and cottages.
Probably the best known building in the village is The Orchard Tea Garden, which is known in literary and academic circles as the place where a
group of talented friends known as the Grantchester Group used to
congregate. The group included
philosophers Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, writers E. M. Forster
and Viriginia Woolf, the economist Maynard Keynes, the artist Augustus John and
the poet Rupert Brooke.
Brooke, who moved into Orchard House in
1909, was a central figure to the group.
His boyish good looks and floppy hair once moved the Irish poet W. B.
Yeats to describe him as the "handsomest young man in England". This was a peaceful period when hedonism was
the order of the day, and the group led an idyllic existence, skinny dipping in
the river and hanging out together in the orchard. On one occasion Brooke and Virginia Woolf
swam naked by moonlight in a weir pool known as Byron's Pool, a reminder
of an earlier poetic presence in the
village. However, as was the case for so
many people, the fun ended abruptly in 1914 with the onset of World War I. Brooke entered the war by joining the Navy,
and he sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in 1915. Tragically, he died of sepsis brought on by
an infected mosquito bite while moored off the Greek island of Skyros. He was buried there, and the grave remains on
the island to this day.
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| River Cam at Grantchester - geograph.org.uk - 808244. Photo by Trevor Peach, via Wikimedia Commons |
In May 1912 Brooke found himself in Berlin, and was so
overcome with nostalgia for Grantchester that he penned a poem called 'The Old
Vicarage, Grantchester'. In the poem he
recalls wistfully the flowers in the garden: "And in my flower-beds I
think//Smile the carnation and the pink".
Suffering from the Berlin
heat, he longs for the cool river back home: "The stream mysterious glides
beneath//Green as a dream and deep as death", and "And there the
shadowed waters fresh//Lean up to embrace the naked flesh". He then pokes fun at the Germans and their
rules and regulations: "Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton//Where das Betreten's not verboten." (an allusion
to the German mania of the time for banning people from walking on grass). He also has a go at the inhabitants of the
other neighbourhoods in and around Cambridge,
accusing them of being miserable, as in the lines "Strong men have run for
miles and miles//When one from Cherry Hinton smiles", in contrast to
Grantchester, where "They love the Good, they worship Truth//They laugh
uproariously in youth".
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| Grantchester Mill Pond - geograph.org.uk - 649084. Photo by Sebastian Ballard, via Wikimedia Commons |
The Orchard Tea Garden still serves tea to
thirsty passers-by today, and the wooden tea pavilion still stands there. For those who want something stronger, the
pleasant selection of pubs in the village includes one named after Rupert Brooke. The walk to Grantchester is an
easy 2-mile hike along well-worn riverside paths taking in the verdant stretch
known as Grantchester Meadows.
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| The Red Lion - geograph.org.uk - 649097. Photo by Sebastian Ballard, via Wikimedia Commons |
Map of the area.
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