Cambridge Apostles

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The Cambridge Apostles, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, is an intellectual secret society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who went on to become the first Bishop of Gibraltar.[1]

The origin of the Apostles' nickname dates from the number, twelve, of their founders. Membership consists largely of undergraduates, though there have been graduate student members, and members who already hold university and college posts. The society traditionally drew most of its members from St John's, Jesus, King's, Christ's and Trinity Colleges.

Activities and membership

King's College, Cambridge

The society is essentially a discussion group. Meetings are held once a week, traditionally on Saturday evenings, during which one member gives a prepared talk on a topic, which is later thrown open for discussion; during the meetings, members used to eat sardines on toast, called "whales". Women first gained acceptance into the society in the 1970s.

The Apostles retain a leather diary of their membership ("the book") stretching back to its founder, which includes handwritten notes about the topics each member has spoken on. It is included in the so-called "Ark", which is a collection of papers with some handwritten notes from the group's early days, about the topics members have spoken on, and the results of the division in which those present voted on the debate. It was a point of honour that the question voted on should bear only a tangential relationship to the matter debated. The members referred to as the "Apostles" are the active, usually undergraduate members; former members are called "angels". Undergraduates apply to become angels after graduating or being awarded a fellowship. Every few years, amid great secrecy, all the angels are invited to an Apostles' dinner at a Cambridge college. There used to be an annual dinner, usually held in London.

Undergraduates being considered for membership are called "embryos" and are invited to "embryo parties", where members judge whether the student should be invited to join. The "embryos" attend these parties without knowing they are being considered for membership. Becoming an Apostle involves taking an oath of secrecy and listening to the reading of a curse, originally written by Apostle Fenton John Anthony Hort, the theologian, in or around 1851.

Former members have spoken of the lifelong bond they feel toward one another. Henry Sidgwick, the philosopher, wrote of the Apostles in his memoirs that "the tie of attachment to this society is much the strongest corporate bond which I have known in my life."

Ten former members of the Apostles are all buried in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge : Henry Jackson, classicist (1863); Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, classicist (1859); Desmond MacCarthy, newspaper critic (1896); Sir Donald MacAlister, physician (1876); Norman McLean, Orientalist (1888), G. E. Moore, philosopher (1894); Frank P. Ramsey, philosopher (1921); Vincent Henry Stanton, Professor of Divinty (1872), Arthur Woollgar Verrall, Classicist (1871), and Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (1912). These ten members were from Christ's, King's, St. Johns, and Trinity colleges.

John Maynard Keynes invited Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (1912) which both Russell and G. E. Moore had joined as students, but Wittgenstein did not enjoy it and attended infrequently. Russell had been worried that Wittgenstein would not appreciate the group's unseriousness, style of humour, or the fact that the members were in love with one another.[2] He was admitted in 1912 but resigned almost immediately because he could not tolerate the level of the discussion on the Hearth Rug; they took him back though in the 1920s when he returned to Cambridge. (He also had trouble tolerating the discussions in the Moral Sciences Club.)

Bloomsbury

The Apostles became well known outside Cambridge in the years before the First World War with the rise to eminence of the group of intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group. John Maynard Keynes, Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey and his brother James, G. E. Moore, E. M. Forster and Rupert Brooke were all Apostles. Keynes, Woolf and Lytton Strachey subsequently gained prominence as members of Bloomsbury.

Cambridge spy ring

Main article: Cambridge Five

The Apostles came to public attention again following the exposure of the Cambridge spy ring in 1951. Three Cambridge graduates with access to the top levels of government in Britain, one of them a former Apostle, were eventually found to have passed information to the KGB. The three known agents were Apostle Guy Burgess, an MI6 officer and secretary to the deputy foreign minister; Donald MacLean, foreign office secretary; and Kim Philby, MI6 officer and journalist.

In 1963, American writer Michael Straight, also an Apostle, and later publisher of The New Republic magazine, admitted to a covert relationship with the Soviets, and he named Anthony Blunt, MI5 officer, director of the Courtauld Institute, and art adviser to the Queen as his recruiter and a Soviet spy. Confronted with Straight's confession, Blunt acknowledged his own treason and revealed that he had also drawn into espionage his fellow Apostle Leonard "Leo" Long. Straight also told investigators that the Apostle John Peter Astbury had been recruited for Soviet intelligence by either Blunt or Burgess. Leo Long confessed to delivering classified information to the Soviets from 1940 until 1952.

Writers have accused several other Apostles of being witting Soviet agents. Roland Perry in his book, The Fifth Man (London: Pan Books, 1994) makes a circumstantial case against Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild, who was a friend to both Burgess and Blunt. The espionage historian John Costello in The Mask of Treachery (London: William Collins & Sons, 1988) points a finger at the mathematician Alister Watson. Kimberley Cornish, in his controversial The Jew of Linz (London: Century, 1998), makes the rather extravagant claim that Ludwig Wittgenstein was the "éminence grise" of the Cambridge spies.

In the 1930s when Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt were elected the membership was mainly Marxist. Documents from the Soviet archives included in The Crown Jewels (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), by Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, indicate that it was Burgess who seduced and led Blunt into the Soviet underground. As the Queen's art adviser, Blunt was knighted in 1956, but was stripped of his knighthood in 1979 after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher publicly named him as a spy — his confession having been kept secret before then.

Current members

Former members

Members of the Apostles include (with the year they joined in brackets, where known):

A

  • Noel Annan, intelligence officer, provost of King's College, Cambridge, provost of University College, London, vice-chancellor of the University of London, member of the House of Lords (1948)

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

J

K

L

M

P

R

S

T

  • [James Talbot]
  • Charles Henry Tawney
  • [Alfred Taylor]
  • [Thomas Taylor]
  • [Henry Thompson]
  • Stephen Edelston Toulmin

V

W

Appearances in literature

Notes

  1. ↑ W. C. Lubenow, The Cambridge Apsotles 1820-1914, Cambridge University Press, 1999, page 27.
  2. ↑ McGuinness, Brian. Wittgenstein: A Life: Young Ludwig 1889-1921. University of California Press, 1988, p. 118.
  3. ↑ "Interview of Professor Quentin Skinner - part 2". YouTube. 2008-06-02. Retrieved 2012-05-26. 
  4. ↑ The Times obituary, 8 June 1984.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 "A Cambridge Necropolis" by Dr. Mark Goldie, March 2000, for the Friends of The Parish of The Ascension Burial Ground
  6. ↑ Henry Jackson at Find a Grave
  7. ↑ Sir Richard Jebb at Find a Grave
  8. ↑ Sir Donald Macalister at Find a Grave
  9. ↑ Sir Desmond MacCarthy at Find a Grave
  10. ↑ Norman McLean at Find a Grave
  11. ↑ George Edward Moore at Find a Grave
  12. ↑ Frank P. Ramsey at Find a Grave
  13. ↑ The Times obituary, 18 August 1947.
  14. ↑ The Times obituary, 11 May 1967.
  15. ↑ Norton-Taylor, Richard (9 January 2004). "Obituary: Michael Straight". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 2008-10-03. 
  16. ↑ Arthur Woollgar Verrall at Find a Grave
  17. ↑ Ludwig Wittgenstein at Find a Grave

References

  • Allen, Peter (1978). The Cambridge Apostles: The Early Years. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-21803-0. 
  • Deacon, Richard (1986). The Cambridge Apostles: A History of Cambridge University's Elite Intellectual Secret Society. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-11820-4. 
  • Levy, Paul (1980). Moore: G. E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 978-0-03-053616-8. 
  • Lubenow, W. C. (1998). The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Political Life. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-57213-2. 

External links

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