Cambridge

Abstract

It was during his time at King’s College that the sad event of his father’s death took place in 1889, when Gooch was fifteen. Though he seems to have been on somewhat remote terms with his father, the event must have made a deep impression on him. If anything, it brought him even closer to his mother. Financially, the widow and the three sons were left well-off. There was thus no monetary obstacle to giving the youngest son a residential university education at Oxford or Cambridge. The eldest son, Charles, had been at Balliol College, Oxford, and the middle son, Henry, was still at Trinity College, Cambridge, when George reached university age. Particularly after the death of the father, there must have been a feeling in the family that George would be helped by the presence of an elder brother in the same college, at least initially. In October 1891, just before his eighteenth birthday, George passed the entrance examination into Cambridge, including a First at French. He took as an additional subject mechanics, which he had been taught at Eton.¹ He had no hesitation about studying history. At Trinity, he was a major scholar after an initial period as a commoner.