“J”: a Memoir of John Willis Clark

Abstract

TO anyone who had a share in Cambridge life in the latter half of the century that closed with 1910, J. W. Clark, either as superintendent of museums or as registrary, was a familiar and striking figure. The many who knew him intimately called him “J.,” and all will welcome the biography with that title which the Master of Christ's, in more ways than one “J.'s” successor, has produced with the assistance of a number of friends. The book itself is rather gossipy. “We respected him as a man of learning and weight, and still more as a man of the world,” says one of the contributors; and it is largely with “J.” as a man of the world that the book deals. From the point of view of the casual reader, it reminds one somehow of the hundred and nineteenth psalm. The kaleidoscope is shaken through some 300 pages, but the same constituent elements occur on every page: “J.'s” friendliness, waywardness, temper, as well as his interest in society, travel, theatres, museums, buildings, architecture, books and libraries; and the serious part of the book, which deals with the development of the study of the natural sciences at Cambridge, finds accommodation in two appendices. But, by the same token, those who read the book with some knowledge of local colour will find it an epitome of Cambridge in the nineteenth century, opportunist, casual of purpose, wayward, but effective and progressive.

“J”.: a Memoir of John Willis Clark.

By A. E. Shipley. Pp. x + 362. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1913.) Price 10s. 6d. net.