Tedious brief tales of Granta and GramaryeGray, Arthur
General
Tedious brief tales of Granta and Gramarye
Gray, Arthur
Ghost stories, English; Jesus College (University of Cambridge) -- Fiction; Short stories, English
Between the years 1738 and 1743 the minutes record many meetings of
the Club, for it met on other occasions besides that of All Souls
Day. Apart from a great deal of impious jocularity on the part of the
writers, they are limited to the formal record of the attendance of
the members, fines inflicted, and so forth. The meeting on November
2nd in the latter year is the first about which there is any departure
from the stereotyped forms. The supper was given in the house of the
physician. One member, Henry Davenport, the former Fellow-Commoner of
Trinity, was absent from the entertainment, as he was then serving
in Germany, in the Dettingen campaign. The minutes contain an entry,
“Mulctatus propter absentiam per Presidentem, Hen. Davenport.” An entry
on the next page of the book runs, “Henry Davenport by a Cannon-shot
became an Incorporeal Member, November 3, 1743.”
[Illustration: _Doorway, Cow Lane._]
The minutes give in their own handwriting, under date November 2, the
names and addresses of the six other members. First in the list, in
a large bold hand, is the autograph of “Alan Dermot, President, at
the Court of His Royal Highness.” Now in October Dermot had certainly
been in attendance on the Young Pretender at Paris, and doubtless
the address which he gave was understood at the time by the other
Everlastings to refer to the fact. But on October 28, five days
_before_ the meeting of the Club, he was killed, as I have already
mentioned, in a duel. The news of his death cannot have reached
Cambridge on November 2, for the Secretary’s record of it is placed
below that of Davenport, and with the date November 10: “this day was
reported that the President was become an Incorporeal by the hands of
a french chevalier.” And in a sudden ebullition, which is in glaring
contrast with his previous profanities, he has dashed down “The Good
God shield us from ill.”
The tidings of the President’s death scattered the Everlastings like
a thunderbolt. They left Cambridge and buried themselves in widely
parted regions. But the Club did not cease to exist. The Secretary
was still bound to his hateful records: the five survivors did not
dare to neglect their fatal obligations. Horror of the presence of the
President made the November gathering once and for ever impossible:
but horror, too, forbade them to neglect the precaution of meeting
in October of every year to put in writing their objection to the
celebration. For five years five names are appended to that entry in
the minutes, and that is all the business of the Club. Then another
member died, who was not the Secretary.
For eighteen more years four miserable men met once each year to
deliver the same formal protest. During those years we gather from
the signatures that Charles Bellasis returned to Cambridge, now, to
appearance, chastened and decorous. He occupied the rooms which I have
described on the staircase in the corner of the cloister.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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