The Life of Thomas Arnold, D.D.
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was born at Alderley Rectory, Cheshire,
on December 13, 1815. He was educated at Rugby under Arnold,
and at Oxford, where Tait, the future Archbishop of
Canterbury, was his tutor. Entering holy orders, he was
appointed select preacher in 1845; became Canon of Canterbury
in 1851; and in 1863 succeeded Trench as Dean of Westminster.
He died on July 18, 1881, and by Queen Victoria's commands his
remains were laid beside those of his wife, Lady Augusta
Bruce, in Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster. Of all his works,
perhaps his most important contribution to English literature
is the "Life of Arnold," which was published two years after
the death of the famous master of Rugby. To the task of
writing the book Stanley devoted all his energies, steering
clear, however, of any attempt to form an opinion of his own
upon Arnold's life and character, while achieving a result
that not only assured his own position at Oxford, but brought
him well into the front rank of contemporary writers. The
religious animosity at Oxford was uncongenial to Stanley, and
it was only the prospect of Dr. Arnold occupying the Chair of
Modern History that reconciled him to his surroundings.
_I.--Youth and Early Manhood_
Thomas Arnold, seventh child and youngest son of William and Martha
Arnold, was born June 13, 1795, at East Cowes, Isle of Wight, where his
father was collector of customs. His early education was undertaken by a
sister; and in 1803 he was sent to Warminister School, in Wiltshire. In
1807 he went to Winchester, where, having entered as a commoner and
afterwards become a scholar of the college, he remained till 1811. In
after life he always cherished a strong Wykehamist feeling, and, during
his headmastership at Rugby, often recurred to his knowledge there first
acquired, of the peculiar constitution of a public school.
He was then, as always, of a shy and retiring disposition; but his
manner as a child, and till his entrance at Oxford, was marked by a
stiffness and formality, the very reverse of the joyousness and
simplicity of his later years. He was unlike those of his own age, with
pursuits peculiar to himself; and the tone and style of his early
letters are such as might have been produced by living chiefly with his
elders, and reading, or hearing read, books suited to a more advanced
age. Both as boy and young man he was remarkable for a difficulty in
early rising amounting almost to a constitutional infirmity; and though
in after life this was overcome by habit, he often said that early
rising was a daily effort to him.
The beginning of some of his later interests may be traced in his
earlier amusements and occupations. He never lost the recollection of
the impression produced upon him by the excitement of naval and military
affairs, of which he naturally saw and heard much by living at Cowes in
the time of the Napoleonic war; and with his playmates he would sail
rival toy fleets or act the battles of the Homeric heroes with
improvised spears and shields. He was extremely fond of ballad poetry,
and his earliest compositions all ran in that direction. At Winchester
he was noted for his forwardness in history and geography; and there
also he gave indications of that mnemonic faculty which in later years
showed itself in minute details, extending to the exact state of the
weather on particular days, or the exact words or passages he had not
seen for twenty years. The period of his home and school education was
too short to exercise much influence on his after life, but he always
looked back upon it with tenderness.
In 1811 he was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; in
1814 he took a first class in classics; in 1815 he was made a Fellow of
Oriel; and he gained the Chancellor's prizes for the Latin and English
essays in 1815 and 1817. During his later time at Oxford he took private
pupils and read extensively in the libraries. Meanwhile, he had been led
gradually to fix on his future life course. In December, 1818, he was
ordained deacon and next year settled at Laleham, where, in August,
1820, he married Mary Penrose, daughter of the rector of Fledborough,
Notts.
At Laleham he remained for nine years, coaching private pupils for the
universities. Here were born six of his nine children; the youngest
three, besides one who died in infancy, were born at Rugby. During this
period an essential change and growth of Arnold's character became
manifest. The warm feelings of his youth gave place to the fixed
earnestness and devotion which henceforth took possession of him. His
former indolent habits, his morbid restlessness and occasional weariness
of duty, indulgence of vague schemes without definite purpose,
intellectual doubts as to accepted religious beliefs--all seem to have
vanished for ever.
It was now that the religious aspect of his character came to be
emphasised. In common acts of life, public and private, the depths of
his religious convictions very visibly appeared. And while it is
impossible to understand his religious belief except through the
knowledge of his life and writings on ordinary subjects, it is
impossible on the other hand, to understand his life and writings
without bearing in mind how vivid was his realisation of those truths of
religion on which he most habitually dwelt. It was this which enabled
him to undertake labours which, without such a power, must have crushed
or enfeebled the spiritual growth which in him they seemed only to
foster. His letters at this time show better than anything else how he
was, though unconsciously to himself, maturing for the arduous duties he
afterwards undertook. It was now, too, that he first became acquainted
with Niebuhr's "History of Rome," which revolutionised his views of
history, and, later, served as a model for his own "History of Rome."
_II.--Headmaster of Rugby_
Arnold was not without his visions of ambition and extensive influence
from the first, but he liked Laleham, and always looked back with fond
regret to his time there. "I have always thought," he wrote in 1823,
"with regard to ambition, that I should like to be _aut Caesar aut
nullus;_ and as it is pretty well settled for me that I shall not be
Caesar, I am quite content to live in peace as _nullus_." But the fates
had ordered it otherwise. Friends had long been urging him to seek a
larger sphere of usefulness; and when, in August, 1827, the
headmastership of Rugby became vacant, he applied for the post.
He had himself little hope of success. The testimonials he sent in were
few, but all spoke strongly of his qualifications. Among them was a
letter from Dr. Hawkins, the future Provost of Oriel, in which the
prediction was made that if Arnold were elected he would change the face
of education throughout the public schools of England. The impression
produced upon the trustees by this letter and by the other testimonials
was such that Arnold was immediately appointed. In June, 1828, he
received priest's orders; in April and November of the same year took
his degrees of B.D. and D.D., and in August entered on his new office.
The post was in many respects suited to his natural tastes--to his love
of tuition, which had now grown so strongly upon him that he declared
sometimes that he could hardly live without such employment; to the
vigour and spirits which fitted him rather to deal with the young than
the old; to the desire of carrying out his favourite ideas of uniting
things secular with things spiritual, and of introducing the highest
principles of action into regions comparatively uncongenial to their
reception. He had not, however, accepted it without grave doubts about
his fitness. In a private letter he says:
I confess that I should very much object to undertake a charge
in which I was not invested with pretty full discretion.
According to my notions of what large schools are, founded on
all I know and all I have ever heard of them, expulsion should
be practised much oftener than it is. Now, I know that
trustees, in general, are averse to this plan, because it has
a tendency to lessen the numbers of the school, and they
regard quantity more than quality. In fact, my opinions on
this point might, perhaps, generally be considered as
disqualifying me for the situation of master of a great
school; yet I could not consent to tolerate much that I know
is tolerated generally, and, therefore, I should not like to
enter on an office which I could not discharge according to my
own views of what is right.
At Rugby, Arnold from the first maintained that in the actual working of
the school he must be completely independent, and that the remedy of the
trustees, if they were dissatisfied, was not interference, but
dismissal. It was on this condition that he took the post; and any
attempt to control either the administration of the school or his own
private occupations he felt bound to resist as a duty not only to
himself but the master of every foundation school in England. The
remonstrances which he encountered, particularly from his fixed
determination always to get rid of unpromising subjects, were vehement
and numerous; but he repeatedly declared that on no other conditions
could he hold his appointment, or justify the existence of the public
school system in a Christian country.
"My object," he wrote, just before taking up duty, "will be, if
possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope
to make; I mean that, from the natural imperfect state of boyhood, they
are not susceptible of Christian principles in their full development
upon their practice, and I suspect that a low standard of morals in many
respects must be tolerated amongst them, as it was on a larger scale in
what I consider the boyhood of the human race."
This is the keynote of his whole system. As he put it, what he looked
for in the school was, first, religious and moral principles; second,
gentlemanly conduct; and third, intellectual ability. Intellectual
training was never for a moment underrated, but he always thought first
of his charges as schoolboys who must grow up to be Christian men. His
education, in short, "was not based upon religion, but was itself
_religious_." For cleverness as such, Arnold had no regard. "Mere
intellectual acuteness," he used to say, "divested as it is, in too many
cases, of all that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more
revolting than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be almost like
the spirit of Mephistopheles." Often when this intellectual cleverness
was seen in union with moral depravity, he would be inclined to deny its
existence altogether.
A mere plodding boy was, above all others, encouraged by him. At Laleham
he had once got out of patience, and spoken sharply to a pupil of this
kind, when the pupil looked up in his face and said, "Why do you speak
angrily, sir? Indeed, I am doing the best that I can." Years afterwards
he used to tell the story to his children, and said, "I never felt so
much ashamed in my life--that look and that speech I have never
forgotten." And though it would, of course, happen that clever boys,
from a greater sympathy with his understanding, would be brought into
closer intercourse with him, this did not affect his feeling of respect,
and even of reverence, for those who, without ability, were
distinguished for high principle and industry. "If there be one thing on
earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an
inferiority of natural powers where they have been honestly, truly and
zealously cultivated."
_III.--As Teacher and Preacher_
Arnold had always been painfully impressed by the evils of the public
school system, according to which a number of boys are left to form an
independent society of their own, in which the influence they exert over
each other is far greater than that exerted by the masters. He writes,
in 1837:
Of all the painful things connected with my employment,
nothing is equal to the grief of seeing a boy come to school
innocent and promising, and tracing the corruption of his
character from the influence of the temptations around him, in
the very place which ought to have strengthened and improved
it. But in most cases those who come with a character of
positive good are benefited; it is the neutral and indecisive
characters which are apt to be decided for evil by schools, as
they would be, in fact, by any other temptation.
This very feeling led him to catch with eagerness at every means by
which the trial might be shortened or alleviated. He believed that the
change from childhood to manhood might be hastened without prematurely
exhausting the faculties of body and mind; and it was on this principle
that he chiefly acted. He desired the boys to cultivate true manliness
as the only step to something higher. He treated them as gentlemen, and
appealed and trusted to their common sense and conscience.
Lying to the masters he made a grave offence. He placed implicit
confidence in a boy's assertion, and then, if a falsehood were
discovered, punished it severely. In the higher forms any attempt at
further proof of an assertion was immediately checked. "If you say so,
that is quite enough; of course, I believe your word"; and there grew up
in consequence a general feeling that "it was a shame to tell Arnold a
lie: he always believed you." Few scenes can be recorded more
characteristic of him than when, in consequence of a disturbance, he had
been obliged to send away several boys, and when, in the midst of the
general spirit of discontent which this excited, he stood in his place
before the assembled school and said, "It is _not_ necessary that this
should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys;
but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen."
Arnold's method of teaching was founded on the principle of awakening
the intellect of every individual boy. Hence it was his practice to
teach by questioning. As a general rule, he never gave information,
except as a kind of reward for an answer, and often withheld it
altogether, or checked himself in the very act of uttering it, from a
sense that those whom he was addressing had not sufficient interest or
sympathy to receive it. His explanations were at short as
possible--enough to dispose of the difficulty and no more; and his
questions were of a kind to call the attention of the boys to the real
point of every subject and to disclose to them the exact boundaries of
what they knew or did not know. With regard to the younger boys, he
said: "It is a great mistake to think that they should _understand_ all
they learn; for God has ordered that in youth the memory should act
vigorously, independent of the understanding--whereas a man cannot
usually recollect a thing unless he understands it."
At Rugby he made it an essential part of the headmaster's office to
preach a sermon every Sunday in the school chapel. "The veriest
stranger," he said, "who ever attends service in this chapel does well
to feel something more than common interest in the sight of the
congregation here assembled. But if the sight so interests a mere
stranger, what should it be to ourselves, both to you and to me?" More
than either matter or manner of his preaching was the impression of
himself. Even the mere readers of his sermons will derive from them the
history of his whole mind, and of his whole management of the school.
But to his hearers it was more than this. It was the man himself, there
more than in any other place, concentrating all his various faculties
and feelings on one sole object, combating face to face the evil which,
directly or indirectly, he was elsewhere perpetually struggling.
His personal interest in the boys was always strong. "Do you see," he on
one occasion said to an assistant-master who had recently come, "those
two boys walking together? I never saw them together before; you should
make an especial point of observing the company they keep; nothing so
tells the changes in a boy's character."
_IV.--Influence of the Great Teacher_
But the impression which Arnold produced upon the boys was derived not
so much from any immediate intercourse or conversation with them as from
the general influence of his whole character, displayed consistently
whenever he appeared before them. This influence, with its consequent
effects, was gradually on the increase during the whole of his stay.
From the earliest period, indeed, the boys were conscious of something
unlike what they had been taught to imagine of a schoolmaster, and by
many a lasting regard was contracted for him. In the higher forms, at
least, it became the fashion, so to speak, to think and talk of him with
pride and affection. As regards the permanent effects of his whole
system, it may be said that not so much among his own pupils, or in the
scene of his actual labours, as in every public school throughout
England is to be sought the chief and enduring monument of Arnold's
headmastership at Rugby.
Of Arnold's general life at Rugby there is no need to say much; for
although the school did not occupy his whole energies, it is almost
solely by his school work that he is remembered. He took a not
unimportant part in the political and theological discussions of his
time, and various literary enterprises also engaged his attention. In
theology he entertained very broad views. One great principle he
advocated with intense earnestness was that a Christian people and a
Christian Church should be synonymous. That use of the word "Church"
which limits it to the clergy, or which implies in the clergy any
particular sacredness, he entirely repudiated.
He was convinced that the founders of our constitution in Church and
State did truly consider them to be identical; the Christian nation of
England to be the Church of England; the head of that nation to be, for
that very reason, the head of the Church. This view placed him in
antagonism to the High Church party; but, as a matter of fact, he
neither belonged, nor felt himself to belong, to any section of the
English clergy. Politically, he held himself to be a strong Whig; but
that he was not, in the common sense of the word, a member of any party
is shown by the readiness with which all parties alike, according to the
fashion of the time, claimed or renounced him as an associate.
Arnold did not like the flat scenery of Warwickshire He described
himself as "in it like a plant sunk in the ground in a pot." His
holidays were always spent away from Rugby, either on the Continent, or,
in later years, at his Westmoreland home, Fox How, a small estate
between Rydal and Ambleside, which he purchased in 1832. He was just
about to leave Rugby for Fox How when his life was mournfully and
suddenly ended by an attack of angina pectoris, on June 12, 1842. Only
the year before he had been appointed by Lord Melbourne Regius Professor
of Modern History at Oxford.
Arnold's principal works are six volumes of sermons, a three-volume
edition of Thucydides, the Oxford "Lectures on Modern History," and the
three-volume "History of Rome," which, by his unfortunate death, was
broken off at the Second Punic War. To the last-named he looked as the
chief monument of his historical fame.
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