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CHRIST'S COLLEGE MAGAZINE,

DARWIN'S LODGINGS.

EVERY detail of Charles Darwin's life at Cambridge is of such deep interest to all men who are studying science, that we fed sure they will welcome the following account of the actual  situation of the rooms in which he lodged when living out of College.

As is well known Darwin occupied rooms in the First Court during part of his life at  Cambridge, but a portion of his time here was spent in lodgings, the exact whereabouts of which has been involved in considerable doubt.

When, later in life, Darwin revisited Cambridge he one day pointed out to his son (now Sir George Darwin) the house in Sidney Street, in which, he said, he had once had rooms.

He added that at that time Bacon the tobacconist occupied the shop below. Unfortunately Sir George Darwin was unable in after years to identify the house, and it is only recently that the efforts that have been made to ascertain its exact position have been crowned with success. It has now been proved that it was the house which stood on the site now covered by No. 63, Sidney Street, and occupied by Messrs Rutter and Son.

The person to whose wide local knowledge the admirers of Darwin are indebted for the settlement of this interesting point is Mr Thomas Hunnybun, whose memory of Cambridge extends over many years. Mr Hunnybun was born in the year 1830 in the house on the opposite side of the street to the present No. 63. This house was attached to the carriage factory where Mr Hunnybun, like his forefathers, carried on business for a great number

of years. Other times have brought other manners, and

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the carriage factory has given way to a motor-car garage. Mr Hunnybun remembers that the house now occupied by Messrs Rutter and Son was once tenanted by Bacon the tobacconist, and that the latter used to let lodgings to University undergraduates, generally to Christ's men. Mr Hunnybun says that he well remembers his father going on several occasions to call on the Master of Christ's College to complain of the behaviour of undergraduates at Bacon's; and this fact impressed the recollection of the house upon his mind. The cause of complaint was, apparently, that the sporting young gentlemen over Bacon's were in the habit of leaning out of the windows and with tandem whips flicking the passers by. This seems to have been a favourite amusement at the time, for it is said that sixty years ago it was quite dangerous to walk down Rose Crescent on a Sunday morning, and one was unlikely to get through without having one's hat literally whipped off.

Mr Hunnybun's statement as to the site of Bacon's shop is confirmed by the rate books of the parish in the Church Chest of Holy Trinity. The position of the house in the assessment roll shows that it occupied the site named by Mr Hunnybun. The house can only be identified by the name of Bacon as the assessment roll gives no numbers, which were not used in Sidney Street at that time.

Bacon's business was, of course, after Darwin's time, transferred to the corner of Rose Crescent on Market Hill. This must have taken place comparatively soon after Darwin's University days ended. It was at Rose Crescent where Calverley conceived the "Ode to Tobacco" ending with " Here's to thee, Bacon."

The site at the south side of Trinity Church, where Bacon's house stood and where Messrs Rutter and Son's

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office now is, has been covered with houses for centuries, and houses are shown there in the first plan of Cambridge issued in 1572. It had probably been built over long before that. Some of the houses now present a modern appearance from the street, but the old timber and plaster framework still exists behind the later fronts. On the 22nd November, 1850, some of the houses on this site were destroyed by a fire which led to the conviction, on a charge of arson, of one or two persons who lived there.

Besides his rooms over Bacon's Darwin also occupied lodgings at No. 22, Fitzwilliam Street, the houses there being, in his time, nearly new. We hope that Mr J. E. Foster, who has kindly supplied most of the facts here narrated, will be able later on to give some further information concerning the house In Fitzwilliam Street.