The Apostles, up to 1930

The Apostles, also known as The Conversazione Society, or simply ‘The Society’, was founded on 1 April 1820. As the early register pages (shown below) show, its original members were predominantly St John’s College students, who might be considered evangelical Anglicans. Its founding member, George Tomlinson, became Bishop of Gibraltar.

The Apostles are thought to have got their name due to the fact there were 12 members, although it might not be a coincidence that the Society provided a private forum for the critical discussion of such topics as religion and ethics. It was founded at a time when clubs and societies tended to focus on drinking, dining or sport. Though it was not unique in its focus on intellectual debates, the Society endured in a way other similar groups didn’t.

Members, who referred to each other as Brethren, were selected by existing members, with a sponsor suggesting each new ‘embryo’ (candidates for election to membership).  Apostles who left the Society and joined the outside world were said to have ‘taken wings’ and become Angels. Current Apostles tended to have weekly meetings in each other’s rooms, at which the ‘moderator’ would read an essay/paper from the ‘hearth rug’, to be followed by a debate and a vote. Minutes would be kept, which included titles and votes but little else, with the titles often seemingly unrelated to the topic discussed. Attendance at the meetings was such an expectation that absence was often noted in the minute book.

In addition to Minute Books, they kept Registers and a Photo Book. These vary in detail over the years but often included election numbers and dates, names, the number of essays read, whether they were made an honorary member (Angel) and whether they held a position such as that of Secretary. In early Register entries, such as those of the original members below, the dates and titles of their papers are given.

Being a secret society, the records it created had to be kept privately, so until their deposit in the King’s College Archive Centre, they were kept in the ‘Ark’. This is an elaborately carved item, which contained a desktop lectern with drawers. In turn, the ark was on wheels and concealed in a rather plain looking wooden box. The Ark is now kept in the Archives Centre’s reading room. Some of the papers which were read to the Society can be found in the archives (they are now stored under standardised environmental conditions with all other College archives or as part of various deposits of personal papers of individual members).

It can be tempting to assume that long established institutions have stood the test of time because of enduring traditions. While it may be true that the form and rigour of their debate remained faithful to its roots, the membership and ideology of the Apostles became broader.

In the early 20^th century, the Apostles formed something of a meeting place for people who would go on to form the Bloomsbury group. Virginia Woolf’s father, Lesley Stephen, had been an Apostle and her cousin, James Kenneth Stephen, also became one. Her future husband, Leonard Woolf, was a member, alongside the likes of John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry and others.

Lytton Strachey coined the term ‘higher sodomy’ for the love of men for men, as often felt among the Brethren, which was mostly platonic, though not always. According to Richard Deacon’s book on the Apostles, it was not until the 1970s that they elected their first female member.

With the influx of writers (Rupert Brooke, the poet, and E.M. Forster, who became a novelist), artists/critics (Roger Fry) and at least one future art collector (John Maynard Keynes), the concept of Beauty began to be discussed.

Members like McTaggart and Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson encouraged the discussion of metaphysics and philosophers like Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead and G. E. Moore became influential members on the questions of Truth and Ethics. Russell even nominated Ludwig Wittgenstein for election but he only lasted one term.

These Apostles often discussed the ‘real’ and ‘phenomenal’ worlds, referring respectively to their world of discussion, with its a priori understanding of the Truth, and the outside world of ordinary experiences such as employment.

Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson’s feelings about the Apostles are best put in his own words, taken from his autobiography:

At the end of 1884 after my return to Cambridge I was elected to the Society of the Apostles, .... It formed for many years a very important part of my life, though not so much at my first election, as in the year or two following, when McTaggart, the philosopher, Roger Fry, and Wedd (afterwards Classical teacher at King’s) were the active members. We met, as still the Society meets, on Saturday nights. A paper was read and we spoke in turn, drawing lots for the order. These were, and are, the externals. The soul of the thing, as I felt it, is incommunicable. When young men are growing in mind and soul, when speculation is a passion, when discussion is made profound by love, there happens something incredible to any but those who breathe the magic air. Some breath of it, I almost think, still hangs about the dedication to Cambridge printed in my little volume of verse. I go still to the Society, from time to time, find it of course different from what it was in my youth, in the topics and the opinions discussed, but find also the same spirit of free, candid uncompromising youth, of all spirits, to my mind, the most beautiful and touching. Oh, brethren, if ever any of you should read these words, be sure that they are written by one who has never forgotten and never been faithless.

Later in his autobiography, ‘Goldie’ (as his friends knew him), describes falling in love with fellow-Apostle Roger Fry.

To find out about E.M. Forster and his experiences as an Apostle, please visit the online exhibition on him (see link at the bottom of this page). There you will find details about his nomination and a paper he read, entitled ‘The Feminine Note in Literature’.

Forster was elected an Apostle on 9 February 1901. His experiences as a member were to influence his writings. Most famously, the opening scene of his novel The Longest Journey is inspired by Apostles meetings. A letter below shows that he was also inspired by a paper read by Rupert Brooke on 24 November 1911.

John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge on 5 June 1883. He was educated at Eton, and came up to King's College, Cambridge as a scholar in 1902.

After graduating he entered the Home Civil Service and served for two years at the India Office.  He left the civil service in 1908, however, and in 1909 was elected a Fellow of King's College and remained so until his death.  He was lecturer in Economics from 1911 to 1937 and in 1919 he also accepted the post of Second Bursar of the College. Keynes spent much of his time in London, including working for the Treasury. In 1924 he began his memorable tenure as First Bursar, changing completely the philosophy by which the college managed its assets, and in 1925, he married Lydia Lopokova.

One of Britain’s most noted economists, he wrote Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Treatise on money (1930) and his later General theory of employment, interest and money (1936).

He was elected an Apostle on 28 February 1903. His interests were incredibly diverse, including collecting books on the history of science and several Newton manuscripts; and collecting modern art.  He was also a theatre patron. The diversity of his interests was perhaps reflected in his numerous papers to the Apostles.

He died on Easter Sunday, 21 April 1946, after several years of ill-health.

Rupert Chawner Brooke was born on 3 August 1887, in Rugby, Warwickshire.

In 1906, he came up to King’s College, where he studied in the first part of his tripos, before turning his attention to English. After graduating, he travelled extensively. His dissertation ‘John Webster and the Elizabethan drama’ gained him his Fellowship at King’s College, in 1913. He wrote such famous poems as ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’ and the ‘Soldier’. While sailing for Gallipoli, he suffered from sunstroke and blood poisoning. He died aboard a French hospital ship on the following 23 April 1915 and was buried on the Greek island of Skyros.

Certain Apostles became Rupert Brooke’s closest friends in later life, not least Edward Marsh. He often referred to the Apostles in letters to Marsh and sometimes to Ka Cox.

Brooke read numerous papers to the Apostles. The titles provided on his papers and in the corresponding minutes seldom matched. While it was normal for Apostles papers to be given obscure titles, with little relevance to the topic discussed, Brooke’s titles were perhaps the most obscure.

Deacon, R., (1985). The Cambridge Apostles : a history of Cambridge University's élite intellectual secret society, London: Royce.

Dickinson, G.L., Proctor, D. & Annan, N.G.A., (1973). The autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson and other unpublished writings / edited by Dennis Proctor; with a foreword by Noel Annan, London: Duckworth.

Furbank, P.N., (1979). E.M. Forster: a life, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Levy, P., (1981). Moore : G.E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lubenow, W.C., (1998). The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: liberalism, imagination, and friendship in British intellectual and professional life, Cambridge: Cambridge Unversity Press.

Mellor, D.  (2005, September 22). Ramsey, Frank Plumpton (1903–1930), mathematician and philosopher. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 2 Jul. 2020, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-37882.

Fry, R. & Sutton, D., (1972). Letters of Roger Fry / edited with an introduction by Denys Sutton., London: Chatto and Windus.

Spalding, F., (1980). Roger Fry, art and life, London: Granada Pub.

Withers, J.J. & King's College (1929). A register of admissions to King's College, Cambridge, 1797-1925, 2nd ed., London: Murray.