We visited Isaac Newton’s apple tree a couple of weeks ago. It’s in the orchard of his childhood home, Woolsthorpe Manor, a couple of miles off what’s now the A1, the Great North Road. These days it’s a couple of hours’ drive from Cambridge (we started a little further north than that). It would have taken considerably longer in Newton’s day; nevertheless, he made the journey.
Woolsthorpe is a lovely place. It’s in the care of the National Trust now, and they’ve managed to find a satisfying balance between hands-on science and palpable history. The volunteers (apparently there is no shortage) are a mixture of enthusiastic students and gentle retirees. It’s not exactly quiet – it couldn’t be, with children spinning balls down funnels and laughing at distorting mirrors and all the rest of it – but it feels extraordinarily peaceful. You wouldn’t think there were lorries hurtling north and south just over there. This cat was snoozing away happily in the café; later we saw it touring the yard, seeking homage from the other patrons.
I hadn’t twigged that the reason that Newton was sitting under an apple tree at his family home in the first place was that the University of Cambridge had been closed. If I’d known the year – 1665, see if you’re faster than me – I’d probably have made the connection. Bubonic plague. He was self-isolating, we might say now. Lucky to be able to do so, of course. I was conscious of a fellow-feeling: I too ended up leaving Cambridge to find a garden of fruit trees when our epidemic struck, although that was March, not apple season, and that was just the way things worked out for us.
Newton’s Cambridge was different from mine, too. He’d still be able to find his way around the city centre, and no doubt he’d be fascinated by much of what has appeared since his time. He wouldn’t have encountered tourists, or the Silicon Fenizens. It would have been much smaller, less crowded, but still a heck of a culture shock after Woolsthorpe.
And it’s interesting, isn’t it, how that massive breakthrough struck not in the intellectual ferment of the university, but in the peace of the orchard. There’s something to be said for not being where the action is.
Kathleen Jowitt 