Inns of Cambridge

Within the central Cambridge parish of St Edward were formerly two famous taverns called the Mitre and the Tuns. The Mitre stood at the south end of the site now occupied by the screen of King’s. It “fell” through a fire in 1633, three years after the well-known conflagration on London Bridge ; but, it was afterwards rebuilt, and again flourished on the patronage of “freshmen and doctors.” Among the poems of Christopher Smart is one entitled “The Pretty Barkeeper of the Mitre” written in 1741.

THE PRETTY BAR-KEEPER OF THE MITRE. – BALLAD XIV.

Written at College, 1741

‘Relax, sweet girl, your wearied mind,
And to hear the poet talk,
Gentlest creature of your kind,
Lay aside your sponge and chalk;
Cease, cease the bar-bell, nor refuse
To hear the jingle of the Muse.

‘Hear your numerous vot’ries prayers,
Come, O come, and bring with thee
Giddy whimsies, wanton airs,
Aud all love's soft artillery;
Smiles and throbs, and frowns, and tears.
With all the little hopes and fears.’
 
She heard—she came—and e'er she spoke,
Not unravish'd you might see
Her wanton eyes that wink'd the joke,
E'er her tongue could set it free.
While a forc'd blush her cheeks inflam'd,
And seem'd to say she was asham'd.
 
No handkerchief her bosom hid,
No tippet from our sight debars
Her heaving breasts with moles o'erspread,
Mark'd, little hemispheres, with stars;
While on them all our eyes we move,
Our eyes that meant immoderate love.
 
In every gesture, every air,
Th’ imperfect lisp, the languid eye,
In every motion of the fair
We awkward imitators vie,
And, forming our own from her face,
Strive to look pretty as we gaze.
 
If e'er she sneer'd, the mimic crowd
Sneer'd too, and all their pipes laid down;
lf she but stoop'd, we lowly bow’d, -
And sullen if she "gan to frown
In solemn silence sat profound—
But did she laugh!—the laugh went round.
 
Her snuff-box if the nymph pull'd out,
Each Johnian in responsive airs
Fed with the tickling dust his snout,
With all the politesse of bears.
Dropt she her fan beneath her hoop,
Ev’n stake-stuck Clarians strove to stoop.
 
The sons of culinary Kays .
Smoking from the eternal treat,
Lost in ecstatic transport gaze.
As though the fair was good to eat;
Ev’n gloomiest king's men, pleas'd awhile,
“Grim horribly a ghastly simile.”
 
But hark, she cries, “My mamma calls,”
And straight she's vanish'd from our sight;
'Twas then we saw the empty bowls,
'Twas then we first perceiv'd it night;
While all, sad synod, silent moan,
Both that she went—and went alone.

Source: Kellett, Ernest Edward (Ed) (1911) ‘A Book of Cambridge Verse’ Cambridge University Press.

Christopher Smart was the author of poem Jubilate Agno that later, memorably inspired Benjamin Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb (Op. 30), a cantata composed in 1943.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy recalled that the only essay he remembered writing whilst a student at Cambridge (St. Johns) was on the poetry of Christopher Smart:

‘For years Smart stayed at Cambridge as the most drunken and lecherous student they’d ever had, Adams said. “He used to do drag revues and drank in the same pub that I did. He went from Cambridge to Grub Street, where he was the most debauched journalist they had ever had, when suddenly he underwent an extreme religious conversion and did things like falling on his knees in the middle of the street and praying to God aloud. It was for that that he was thrust into a loony bin, in which he wrote his only work, the Jubilate Agno, which was as long as Paradise Lost, and was an attempt to write the first Hebraic verse in English. The zealously eccentric Smart was an apt study for Adams, his magnum opus also featuring odd odes to his cat Jeoffry’s fleas-and coincidentally, if you’re of a superstitious bent, as Nick Webb pointed out, line 42 of Jubilate Agno reads “For there is a mystery in numbers…’

Simpson, M. J. (2005) ‘Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams’ Justin, Charles & Co.,