The Anatomy Of Ghosts

Author’s Note

The eighteenth century was not a glorious period for English universities (by and large they managed things better in Scotland). At Oxford and Cambridge, individual colleges followed their idiosyncratic paths with little to guide them apart from their own statutes, which were at least two centuries out of date, as were the syllabuses that the universities prescribed for their students to study. By the standards of the 1780s, Jerusalem College might have been considered conservative, and some of its fellows perhaps a little eccentric; but they would not have been unusual in this.

Those who know modern Cambridge may notice that there are remarkable similarities between the fictional Jerusalem College and the entirely real Emmanuel College. I should like to emphasize that these resemblances extend only to its layout and aspects of its early history. I should also like to thank Dr Sarah Bendall, Fellow of Emmanuel, and Amanda Goode, the College’s Archivist, for their help. Dr Bendall, with Professor Peter Brooke and Professor Patrick Collinson, is the author of A History of Emmanuel College (The Boydell Press, 1999), which gives an illuminating account of the development and organization of a medium-sized college over more than four hundred years.

The Holy Ghost Club is of course fictional. There are rumours, but no hard evidence, of the existence of hellfire clubs at the universities. By their very nature, such societies can be hard to trace. There’s substantial evidence of their existence elsewhere in society, though by the 1780s most of them were growing a little tamer and more discreet in their practices than they had been.

I have used London and Cambridge street names that were current in the eighteenth century, which are not always those that are current today.

I am grateful to Roger Crowley, Martin Dow, Alick Miskin and Christopher Trillo for lending me their names; to Elizabeth Manners for providing Jerusalem with its Letters Patent from Queen Elizabeth I; to my agent, Vivien Green, and my publishers at Michael Joseph for their patience, enthusiasm and meticulous editorial skills; and to my wife, Caroline, for everything else.

Andrew Taylor