Autumn in Cambridge, 1999, with a pale sun shining after a frost, and patterned light falling through the chestnut and lime trees. The academic year is three weeks old, and students are predictably dashing about in gowns and on bikes, or punting slowly along the Cam. In Chesterton Lane, a friend and I eventually find a certain house, Gothic Revival Castlebrae, now a part of Clare College. A bored receptionist shows me the plaque I have come so far to see:
This house was originally the home of
DR AGNES SMITH LEWIS (1843-1926) and
DR MARGARET DUNLOP GIBSON (1843–1920)
Inseparable twins, tireless travellers, distinguished Arabic & Syriac scholars.
Lampada Tradam.
Lampada Tradam. Let me hand on the torch. Later I go alone to Westminster College, an institution originally established in London for the training of Presbyterian ministers, but one that owes its current Cambridge incarnation to these twins, born Agnes and Margaret Smith, for they gave the college its land, and also founded several scholarships. A trimmed and decorated late Victorian red brick edifice, the building is a mere hundred years old.
I enter. Raised an Australian Presbyterian, I feel the past settle weightily on me the minute I cross the threshold, and automatically expect to see stretches of blue fleur-de-lis carpet along the corridors, and multiple copies of the old Scottish Psalter and Church Hymnary ranged on the various shelves. Even the ld-books-and-wood-and-dust-and-midday-dinner smell seems familiar. But this is the purposeful present, and so I am led straight to the dining hall, where ruby light filters through stained-glass windows bearing improving mottoes, and where I view the portraits of Agnes and Margaret. By an unknown artist, alas. The pictures sit above High Table, and my guide turns discreetly away as I kick off my shoes and climb on a chair in order to take several colour snapshots.
Neither Agnes nor Margaret ever attended university, but they were painted in full academic dress, as holders of several honorary degrees. The portraits face each other, and the women are wearing identical red-buttoned black robes and red hoods; both hold books, and their grey hair is swept back under mortarboards. A fluted column is a heavily symbolic part of each picture, for the twins were formidable classical scholars and travelled extensively in the Ancient World.
1843. This was the year of the Great Disruption of the Church of Scotland, and the resultant emergence of the Free Church, and