Teaching Quote by John G. D. Clark

Academic pride is doing a lot of quiet work here. Clark’s sentence looks like a neutral biographical aside, but it’s really a small act of institutional choreography: he’s placing “the master” inside an English, and specifically Cambridge, lineage. The phrase “paid a number of visits” carries the polite, almost touristic register of elite exchange, smoothing over whatever messier motives or frictions might have surrounded those trips. Then comes the pivot: “as a Cambridge man.” That credential isn’t decoration; it’s an invitation to read the rest as loyalty-talk, the kind of insider affirmation that signals who belongs in the story and who gets to claim it.

The subtext is a subtle competition over ownership. “It is a source of pride” frames scholarly influence as something that can be tallied and awarded, like a medal Cambridge gets to wear. The comparative “for a longer period than elsewhere in my country” quietly demotes the author’s own national institutions. Clark doesn’t deny their importance; he simply implies they were less successful at hosting, retaining, or recognizing this figure. That tension - admiration filtered through a hint of reproach - suggests a context where intellectual authority still gravitates toward British centers, even when the “master” is connected to another country.

What makes the line work is its restraint. Clark never states a thesis about cultural prestige or academic hierarchy. He just lets the social code do it: Cambridge as arbiter, England as magnet, the “master” as currency in a prestige economy.