The Upware Republic

This year also marks the centenary of the book that revealed the singular history of The Upware Republic. The principal source for the story of this undergraduate jeu d’esprit is Cambridge Revisited by Arthur B. Gray (1921), not to be confused with the Arthur A. Gray who, as ‘Ingulphus’, wrote a volume of antiquarian ghost stories, Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Grammarye (1919).

Arthur Beales Gray’s book is a collection of pleasant vignettes about Cambridge backwaters. He tells us it was his aim ‘to wander amidst the bye-ways of local history . . . the mass of curious and interesting lore that has gathered about Cambridge to an unusual degree’. And he clearly takes a particular delight in recounting how, in November, 1851, a group of Cambridge University undergraduates proclaimed an independent republic at an old thatched waterside inn, near the Fenland village of Upware, which had the picturesque name of “Five Miles from Anywhere - No Hurry”. 

Officials were appointed for the Republic, a minute book opened, and inscriptions made upon the walls and windows of the pub. Among those that Gray records are: two Consuls, a President, State Chaplain, Minister of Education, Professor, Interpreter, Champion, Tapster, Treasurer, Secretary, Vice-Consul, and, more curiously in a Republic, a Count.

This robust proclamation of independence was in picturesque defiance of the varsity authorities. The advantage of the pub was that it was sufficiently remote from the city to evade the watchful eye of their moral guardians while the students indulged in drinking, riot and revelry, although it was also the base for more hearty pursuits such as rowing, boating and skating.

The members of the Republic included several who were to become eminent in various spheres in later life, including a Master of the Rolls, a Solicitor-General, two co-authors of an authoritative work on the natural history of Central America, a President of the mountaineering society The Alpine Club, the man who sold Lord’s cricket ground to the MCC, and many others.

But perhaps the most intriguing name in the Republic’s records is that of Samuel Butler, the author of the imaginary-world satire Erewhon, who was at Cambridge from 1854-8. Could the recollection of this fantastical invented state in his student days have seeded the idea of an upside-down, contrary world found in Butler’s book?

The student involvement in the Republic seems to have waned after 5 or 6 years, but in the 1860s and later it became instead a Kingdom under the sway of the eccentric poet Richard Ramsay Fielder MA, of Jesus College, Cambridge, who in “red waistcoat and corduroy breeches”, would swig from an earthenware jug of enormous capacity, which he called “His Majesty’s pint”. 

In this regal capacity, Fielder was the author of Shakespeare! Lines written for the Tercentenary Anniversary Festival in commemoration of his birth, ... at Stratford-on-Avon By “His Majesty of Upware.” R. R. F. (Ely, 1871), and of several other commemorative pamphlets for other figures, also issued from Ely.

Arthur B Gray presented the Upware Republic Society Visitors' Book 1851-1856 to Cambridge University Library in 1921, presumably following the publication of his own book. The library describes the book as follows: ‘Visitors' book, in various hands, listing members of Cambridge University who visited Upware, 6 November 1851 - 14 May 1856, with notes and remarks, 46 folios. Inside the front cover is the bookplate of Arthur B. Gray’.

Alas, the original pub seems to have long vanished, although there is a modern replacement of the same name, but The Upware Republic was relaunched by a group of reprobates as an unusual literary society on its 150^th anniversary, in November 2001, and this conducted research, revived interest in the tradition, championed Butler, and issued several newsletters.

It also issued its own stamp, designed by distinguished fantasy and SF artist C.P. Langeveld. The one farthing sepia features a portrait of Samuel Butler, and was issued in an edition of 640 copies on 30 August 2003 for the purpose of validating the Republic’s postal communications to and between its citizens (it is now unavailable). This was the start of the Strange Stamps series.

It is thought that The Upware Republic may be one of the first, possibly indeed the very first, in the colourful history of what are now known as ‘micro-nations’, self-proclaimed and often eccentric enclaves within or without the more conventional nations, or possibly on other planes of existence altogether.

(Mark Valentine)