262 WORK AT CAMBRIDGE 



with the dinner, and the present writer will always 

 remember one night in a Long Vacation when he dined 

 alone at the high table with the Professor and the 

 Master, Neville.* We, or rather they, talked of the 

 Bedchamber Plot as of an affair of yesterday, and the 

 bewildered guest began to have doubts about his own 

 sobriety. After dinner an adjournment was made on 

 Sundays to the Combination Room. 1 This involved a 

 steep climb up a rather slippery wooden staircase, but 

 Newton always refused assistance, preferring the use of 

 his two sticks. It is (or was) the custom to take the 

 dessert and port wine sitting at small tables about the 

 fire-place, and it is the duty of the junior Fellow to see 

 that the wine is passed and so on. When many guests 

 were present the decanter was apt to get delayed in its 

 progress, and Mr. Benson records that " the Master 

 once innocently suggested that for a change we should 

 sit round the big oval table. The Professor was speech- 

 less with indignation, and sate sullenly through the 

 proceeding, scarcely opening his mouth except to say 

 that he would hardly have known the place." 



Nothing vexed him more than innovations : what 

 was the custom in that place was right, and there was 

 no more to be said. But he was always genial and full 

 of talk, and after a second glass of port wine he departed 

 with his guests to his rooms. There you would find a 

 blaze of gas (to this was added in later years electric 

 light), a semicircle of not very comfortable chairs set 

 about the fire, which was nearly always lighted, and a 

 tray containing cups and a pot of the strongest brew 

 of coffee. 



Whilst the Professor was changing into a thin, black 

 coat made of a sort of cashmere material, which he wore 



* Latimer Neville, 7th Lord Braybrooke, Master of Magdalene, 1853- 

 1904. 



