The Cambridge Apostles and José María de Torrijos

Discovering heroism

Abstract

I intend to investigate the attraction that —in the context of liberal emigration in England during the Ominous Decade— the leader José María de Torrijos generated in the group of students at the University of Cambridge known as the Apostles. To do this, I will establish a dialogue between the existing Anglo-Saxon bibliography on this group with the different biographies of the conspirator. I will enrich my analysis with the memoirs written by children of the Apostles Alfred Tennyson and Frederick Denison Maurice and the Records of a Girlhood by the actress Fanny Kemble, sister of the Apostle John Mitchell Kemble. I will also include the correspondence of the Apostles Arthur Hallam and Richard Chenevix Trench, as well as the novel by Maurice Eustace Conway, with a strong autobiographical content and ignored in studies on the Apostles. I will thus delve into a little-known aspect of Torrijos’ life, investigating the reasons that prompted these students to follow him in his conspiracy, as well as, finally, to abandon him.