Mother's Chronicles - Book Four

25

King's College

Sri Aurobindo was at Cambridge, "borne there by his own ability." Cambridge, "the nursery of blooming youth," as a poet saw it.

Following is the letter Sri Aurobindo wrote to his father when he went up to Cambridge in October 1890. "Last night I was invited to coffee with one of the dons and in his rooms I met the great O. B., otherwise Oscar Browning, who is the feature 'par excellence' of King's. He was extremely flattering, passing from the subject of cotillons to that of scholarship he said to me, 'I suppose you know you passed an extraordinarily high examination. I have examined papers at thirteen examinations and I have never during that time seen such excellent papers as yours (meaning my Classical papers at the scholarship examination). As for your essay, it was wonderful.' In this essay (a comparison between Shakespeare and Milton), I indulged in my Oriental tastes to the top of their bent; it overflowed with rich and tropical imagery; it abounded in anti-thesis and epigrams and it expressed my real feelings without restraint or reservation. I thought myself that it was the best thing I had

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ever done, but at school it would have been condemned as extraordinarily Asiatic and bombastic. The great O. B. afterwards asked me where my rooms were and when I had answered he said, 'That wretched hole!', then turning to Mahaffy¹: 'How rude we are to our scholars! We get great minds to come down here and then shut them up in that box! I suppose it is to keep their pride down!'" This was the letter reproduced by Dr. K. D. Ghose when he wrote to his brother-in-law on 2 December 1890.

Oscar Browning (1837-1923) was an educationist and a historical writer.

According to Sri Aurobindo's own estimation he was not at all painstaking like his poet-brother. "I could never go into the minute details. I read, and left it to my mind to absorb what it could. That's why I could never become a scholar." But what a mind I and what a power of absorption!!

There is no examination for passing out of St. Paul's School other than the Public examinations —at least it was so in the last century. Thus it was in December 1889 that A. A. Ghose took the Examination for Scholarships, Exhibitions and Admissions to King's College, Cambridge. The Scholarship examination was taken at Cambridge under the supervision of the college authorities. There were several papers, such as translation from English verse and prose into Latin and Greek, and vice versa. Needless to specify that candidates were not accepted unless they had a good school record in examinations. As a result

1. Robert Pentland Mahaffy, who became a distinguished Kingsman (History Prizeman, 1891) and an eminent lawyer.

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The main gate of King's College, Cambridge

(with the Chapel on the right), late last century

of Ara's performance, he was elected by the College's Electors to Fellowships on 19 December 1889 to the first vacant Open Scholarship. This means that in the examiners' opinion he was the best of the candidates for scholarships. No wonder. English was to Ara like water to a duck; and he had so well mastered Greek and Latin that he passed the Scholarship examinations with record marks.

The Scholarship amount of £80 a year was paid from

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the foundation of King's College, Cambridge, which was started in 1441 by King Henry VI.

However, it was only in the next academic year that a vacancy arose and A. A. Ghose could join college: "Ghose Aravinda Acroyd, admitted scholar at King's College, October 11, 1890 . . . Matric Michaelmas 1890 . . ." The feast of St. Michael, one of the archangels, is known as Michaelmas and falls on 29 September. Oxford, Cambridge and other universities in England have a Michaelmas term.

Dr. K. D. Ghose wanted his son to go in for the Indian Civil Service. So, while waiting to go up to Cambridge, Ara joined the I.C.S. Class organized by St. Paul's School —which had no official recognition from the I.C.S. — for a group of senior boys who were working for the I.C.S. entrance examination. That year there were five such boys, among whom A. A. Ghose was the only Indian; he stood second in the Class. In the Open Entrance Scholarship examination —the I.C.S. recruited its new members by public competition administered by the Civil Service Commission — out of all the candidates, A. A. Ghose ranked eleventh.

In his I.C.S. Class Report from St. Paul's School, for the half-year ending July 1890, we note that the teachers commented on his 'lack of energy,' although they found the young man's work 'good.' This was the period when the adolescent was living in the difficult conditions of the Kensington Club.

Thus Sri Aurobindo became, at one and the same time, a probationer for the Indian Civil Service and a Scholar at Cambridge. He was doing his 'duty' as a son.

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During the two years, from October 1890 to October 1892, when A. A. Ghose was at King's, his quarters —'that wretched hole' in Oscar Browning's words —consisted of a bedroom facing north, a small kitchen with sink, stove and cupboard, and a sitting-room, or study. Sri Aurobindo's quarters were on the second floor of the building on King's Lane. Its rooms were reserved for the Scholars of King's College. The building has since been demolished.

But no matter. A flight of fancy can take us back in time. We see the young man in his study, relaxing of an evening after days of hard work —he was doing his Tripos. We hear him welcoming a friend who had dropped in. "The cigarettes are on the mantelpiece —excuse my laziness! — " he says, "and the lucifers¹ are probably stocked in the fruit-shelf. And here is coffee and a choice between cake and biscuits." Then before settling down more comfortably before a blazing fire for a talk, he says hospitably, "First let me give you a glass of champagne. I do not keep," he adds, "any of those infernal concoctions of alcohol and perdition of which you in Europe are so enamoured." The conversation between the collegians was no doubt all wit and elegance and, if we know our A. A. Ghose, wide-ranging and deep.*

In October 1890 Sri Aurobindo was eighteen years old. Several years later, when he was a professor at Baroda College,

1. Friction matches. Invented in 1827 by the English chemist John Walker. In 1829, a manufacturing unit was opened in London by Samuel Jones. 'Lucifer' means light-bringer, which is Satan's other function.

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in an address to a students' Social Gathering held towards the close of the year, Sri Aurobindo harked back to his own college days. "I think there is no student of Oxford or Cambridge who does not look back in after days on the few years of his undergraduate life, as, of all the scenes he has moved in, that which calls up the happiest memories, and it is not surprising that this should be so, when we remember what that life must have meant to him. He goes up from the restricted life of his home and school and finds himself in surroundings which with astonishing rapidity expand his intellect, strengthen his character, develop his social faculties, force out all his abilities and turn him in three years from a boy into a man. His mind ripens in the contact with minds which meet from all parts of the country and have been brought up in many various kinds of trainings, his unwholesome eccentricities wear away and the unsocial, egoistic elements of character are to a large extent discouraged. He moves among ancient and venerable buildings, the mere age and beauty of which are in themselves an education. He has the Union which has trained so many great orators and debaters, has been the first trial ground of so many renowned intellects. He has, too, the athletics clubs organized with a perfection unparalleled elsewhere, in which, if he has the physique and the desire for them he may find pursuits which are also in themselves an education. The result is that he who entered the university a raw student, comes out of it a man and a gentleman, accustomed to think of great affairs and fit to move in cultivated society, and he remembers his College and University with affection, and in after days if he meets with those who

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have studied with him he feels attracted towards them as to men with whom he has a natural brotherhood. This is the social effect I should like the Colleges and Universities of India also to exercise, to educate by social influences as well as those which are merely academical and to create the feeling among their pupils that they belong to the community, that they are children of one mother."

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