In this way on January 9th, 1897 (a year in which the Westminster Aquarium

was yet standing), and shortly after the issue of the New Year's Honours'

List, the following article appeared in _The Speaker_. The reader will

find it quite harmless until he comes to the sequel. It was entitled--

NOOKS OF OLD LONDON.

I.--THE WESTMINSTER SCUTORIUM.

Let me begin by assuring the reader that the Westminster Scutorium

has absolutely no connection with the famous Aquarium across the

road. I suppose that every Londoner has heard, at least, of the

Aquarium, but I doubt if one in a hundred has heard of the little

Scutorium which stands removed from it by a stone's throw, or less;

and I am certain that not one in a thousand has ever stooped his head

to enter by its shy, squat, fifteenth-century doorway. It is a fact

that the very policeman at the entrance to Dean's Yard did not know

its name, and the curator assures me that the Post Office has made

frequent mistakes in delivering his letters. So my warning is not

quite impertinent.

But a reader of antiquarian tastes, who cares as little as I do for

hypnotisers and fasting men, and does not mind a trifle of dust, so

it be venerable, will not regret an hour spent in looking over the

Scutorium, or a chat with Mr. Melville Robertson, its curator, or

Clerk of the Ribands (_Stemmata_)--to give him his official title.

Mr. Robertson ranks, indeed, with the four pursuivants of Heralds'

College, from which the Scutorium was originally an offshoot.

He takes an innocent delight in displaying his treasures and

admitting you to the stores of his unique information; and I am sure

would welcome more visitors.

Students of Constitutional History will remember that strange custom,

half Roman, half Medieval, in accordance with which a baron or

knight, on creation or accession to his title and dignities,

deposited in the king's keeping a waxen effigy, or mask, of himself

together with a copy of his coat of arms. And it has been argued--

plausibly enough when we consider the ancestral masks of the old

Roman families, the respect paid to them by the household, and the

important part they played on festival days, at funerals, &c.--that

this offering was a formal recognition of the _patria potestas_ of

the monarch as father of his people. Few are aware, however, that

the custom has never been discontinued, and that the cupboards of

Westminster contain a waxen memorial of almost every man whom the

king has delighted to honour, from the Conquest down to the very

latest knight gazetted. The labour of modelling and painting these

effigies was discontinued as long ago as 1586; and the masks are no

longer likenesses, but oval plates of copper, each bearing its name

on a label. Mr. Robertson informed me that Charles I. made a brief

attempt to revive the old practice. All the Stuarts, indeed, set

store on the Scutorium and its functions; and I read in an historical

pamphlet, by Mr. J. Saxby Hine, the late curator, that large

apartments were allocated to the office in Inigo Jones's first

designs for Whitehall. But its rosy prospects faded with the

accession of William of Orange. Two years later the custody of the

shields (from which it obtained its name) was relegated to the

Heralds' College; and the Scutorium has now to be content with the

care of its masks and the performance of some not unimportant duties

presently to be recounted.

A reference from the Heralds' College sent me in quest of Mr.

Melville Robertson. But even in Dean's Yard I found it no easy

matter to run him to earth. The policeman (as I have said) could

give me no help. At length, well within the fourth doorway on the

east side, after passing the railings, I spied a modest brass plate

with the inscription _Clerk of the Ribands. Hours 11 to 3_.

The outside of the building has a quite modern look, but the

architect has spared the portal, and the three steps which lead down

to the flagged entrance hall seem to mark a century apiece.

I call it an entrance hall, but it is rather a small adytum, spanned

by a pointed arch carrying the legend _Stemmata Quid Faciunt_.

The modern exterior is, in fact, but a shell. All within dates from

Henry VI.; and Mr. Robertson (but this is only a theory) would

explain the sunken level of the ground-floor rooms by the action of

earthworms, which have gradually lifted the surface of Dean's Yard

outside. He contends the original level to be that of his office,

which lies on the right of the adytum. A door on the left admits to

two rooms occupied by the _nomenclator_, Mr. Pender, and two

assistant clerks, who comprise the staff. Straight in front, a

staircase leads to the upper-apartments.

Mr. Robertson was writing when the clerk ushered me in, but at once

professed himself at my service. He is a gentleman of sixty, or

thereabouts, with white hair, a complexion of a country squire, and

very genial manners. For some minutes we discussed the difficulty

which had brought me to him (a small point in county history), and

then he anticipated my request for permission to inspect his masks.

"Would you like to see them? They are really very curious, and I

often wonder that the public should evince so small an interest."

"You get very few visitors?"

"Seldom more than two a day; a few more when the Honours' Lists

appear. I thought at first that your visit might be in connection

with the new List, but reflected that it was too early. In a day or

two we shall be comparatively busy."

"The Scutorium is concerned then with the Honours' Lists?"

"A little," replied Mr. Robertson, smiling. "That is to say, we make

them." Then, observing my evident perplexity, he laughed.

"Well, perhaps that is too strong an expression. I should have said,

rather, that we fill up the blanks."

"I had always understood that the Prime Minister drew up the Lists

before submitting them to Her Majesty."

"So he does--with our help. Oh, there is no secrecy about it!" said

Mr. Robertson, in a tone almost rallying. "The public is free of all

information, only it will not inquire. A little curiosity on its

part would even save much unfortunate misunderstanding."

"In what way?"

"Well, the public reads of rewards (with which, by the way, I have

nothing to do) conferred on really eminent men--Lord Roberts, for

instance, or Sir Henry Irving, or Sir Joseph Lister. It then goes

down the List and, finding a number of names of which it has never

heard, complains that Her Majesty's favour has been bestowed on

nonentities; whereas this is really the merit of the List, that they

_are_ nonentities."

"I don't understand."

"Well, then, _they don't exist_."

"But surely--"

"My dear sir," said Mr. Robertson, still smiling, and handing me his

copy of _The Times_, "cast your eye down that column; take the names

of the new knights--'Blain, Clarke, Edridge, Farrant, Laing, Laird,

Wardle'--what strikes you as remarkable about them?"

"Why, that I have never heard of any of them."

"Naturally, for there are no such people. I made them up; and a good

average lot they are, though perhaps the preponderance of

monosyllables is a little too obvious."

"But see here. I read that 'Mr. Thomas Wardle is a silk merchant of

Staffordshire.'"

"But I assure you that I took him out of _Pickwick_."

"Yes, but here is 'William Laird,' for instance. I hear that already

two actual William Lairds--one of Birkenhead, the other of Glasgow--

are convinced that the honour belongs to them."

"No doubt they will be round in a day or two. The Heralds' College

will refer them to me--not simultaneously, if I may trust Sir Albert

Woods's tact--and I shall tell them that it belongs to neither, but

to another William Laird altogether. But, if you doubt, take the

Indian promotions. Lord Salisbury sometimes adds a name or two after

I send in the List, and--well, you know his lordship is not fond of

the dark races and has a somewhat caustic humour. Look at the new

C.I.E.'s: 'Rai Bahadur Pandit Bhag Rum.' Does it occur to you that a

person of that name really exists? 'Khan Bahadur Naoraji

('Naoraji,' mark you) Pestonji Vakil'--it's the language of

extravaganza! The Marquis goes too far: it spoils all

verisimilitude."

Mr. Robertson grew quite ruffled.

"Then you pride yourself on verisimilitude?" I suggested.

"As I think you may guess; and we spare no pains to attain it, whether

in the names or In the descriptions supplied to the newspapers.

'William Arbuthnot Blain, Esq.'--you have heard of Balzac's scouring

Paris for a name for one of his characters. I assure you I scoured

England for William Arbuthnot Blain--'identified with the movement

for improving the dwellings of the labouring classes'--or is that

Richard Farrant, Esq.? In any case, what more likely, on the face of

it? 'Frederick Wills, Esq., of the well-known tobacco firm of

Bristol'--the public swallows that readily: and yet it never buys a

packet of their Westward Ho! Mixture (which I smoke myself) without

reading that the Wills's of Bristol are W. D. and H. O.--no Frederick

at all."

"But," I urged, "the purpose of this--"

"I should have thought it obvious; but let me give you the history of

it. The practice began with William III. He was justly scornful of

the lax distribution of honours which had marked all the Stuart

reigns. You will hardly believe it, but before 1688 knighthoods, and

even peerages, went as often as not to men who qualified by an

opportune loan to the Exchequer, or even by presiding at a public

feast. (I say nothing of baronetcies, for their history is

notorious.) At first William was for making a clean sweep of the

Honours' List, or limiting it to two or three well-approved

recipients. But it was argued that this seeming niggardliness might

injure His Majesty's popularity, never quite secure. The Scutorium

found a way out of the dilemma. Sir Crofton Byng, the then Clerk of

the Ribands, proposed the scheme, which has worked ever since.

I may tell you that the undue _largesse_ of honours finds in the very

highest quarters as little favour as ever it did. Of course, there

are some whose services to science, literature, and art cannot be

ignored--the late Lord Leighton, for instance, or Sir George Newnes,

or Sir Joseph Lister again; and these are honoured, while the public

acclaims. But the rest are represented only in my collection of

masks--and an interesting one it is. Let me lead the way."

But I have left myself no space for describing the treasures of the

Scutorium. The two upper stories are undoubtedly the least

interesting, since they contain the modern, unpainted masks.

Each mask has its place, its label, and on the shelf below it,

protected by a slip of glass, a description of the imaginary

recipient of the royal favour. One has only to look along the

crowded shelves to be convinced that Mr. Melville Robertson's office

is no sinecure. The first floor is devoted to a small working

library and a museum (the latter undergoing rearrangement at the time

of my visit). But the cellars!--or (as I should say) the crypt!

In Beaumont's words--

"Here's a world of pomp and state

Buried in dust, once dead by fate!"

Here in their native colours, by the light of Mr. Robertson's duplex

lantern, stare the faces of the illustrious dead, from Rinaldus

FitzTurold, knighted on Senlac field, to stout old Crosby Martin,

sea-rover, who received the accolade (we'll hope he deserved it) from

the Virgin Queen in 1586. A few even are adorned with side-locks,

which Mr. Pender, the _nomenclator_, keeps scrupulously dusted.

In almost every case the wax has withstood the tooth of time far

better than one could have expected. Mr. Robertson believes that the

pigments chosen must have had some preservative virtue. If so, the

secret has been lost. But Mr. Pender has touched over some of the

worst decayed with a mixture of copal and pure alcohol, by which he

hopes at least to arrest the mischief; and certainly the masks in the

Scutorium compare very favourably with the waxen effigies of our

royalties preserved in the Abbey, close by. Mr. Robertson has a

theory that these, too, should by rights belong to his museum: but

that is another story, and a long one. Suffice it to say that I took

my leave with the feelings of one who has spent a profitable

afternoon: and for further information concerning this most

interesting nook of old London I can only refer the reader to the

pamphlet already alluded to, _The Westminster Scutorium: Its History

and Present Uses_. By J. Saxby Hine, C.B., F.S.A. Theobald & Son,

Skewers Alley, Chancery Lane, E.C.

This article appeared to my beloved editor innocent enough to pass, and to

me (as doubtless to the reader) harmless enough in all conscience.

Now listen to the sequel.

Long afterwards an acquaintance of mine--a barrister with antiquarian

tastes--was dining with me in my Cornish home, and the talk after dinner

fell upon the weekly papers and reviews. On _The Speaker_ he touched with

a reticence which I set down at first to dislike for his politics.

By and by, however, he let slip the word "untrustworthy."

"Holding your view of its opinions," I suggested, "you might fairly say

'misleading.' 'Untrustworthy' is surely too strong a word."

"I am not talking," said he, "of its opinions, but of its mis-statements

of fact. Some time ago it printed an article on a place which it called

'The Westminster Scutorium,' and described in detail. I happened to pick

the paper up at my club and read the article. It contained a heap of

historical information on the forms and ceremonies which accompany the

granting of titles, and was apparently the work of a specialist.

Being interested (as you know) in these matters, and having an hour to

spare, I took a hansom down to Westminster. At the entrance of Dean's

Yard I found a policeman, and inquired the way to the Scutorium. He eyed

me for a moment, then he said, 'Well, I thought I'd seen the last of 'em.

You're the first to-day, so far; and yesterday there was only five.

But Monday--_and_ Tuesday--_and_ Wednesday! There must have been thirty

came as late as Wednesday; though by that time I'd found out what was the

matter. All Monday they kept me hunting round and round the yard,

following like a pack. Very respectable-looking old gentlemen, too, the

whole of 'em, else I should have guessed they were pulling my leg.

Most of 'em had copies of a paper, _The Speaker_, and read out bits from

it, and insisted on my searching in this direction and that . . . and me

being new to this beat, and seeing it all in print! We called in the

postman to help. By and by they began to compare notes, and found they'd

been kidded, and some of 'em used language. . . . I really think, sir, you

must be the last of 'em.'"

MAY.

I was travelling some weeks ago by a railway line alongside of which ran a

quickset hedge. It climbed to the summit of cuttings, plunged to the base

of embankments, looped itself around stations, flickered on the skyline

above us, raced us along the levels, dipped into pools, shot up again on

their farther banks, chivvied us into tunnels, ran round and waited for us

as we emerged. Its importunity drove me to the other side of the

carriage, only to find another quickset hedge behaving similarly.

Now I can understand that a railway company has excellent reasons for

planting quickset hedges alongside its permanent way. But their

unspeakable monotony set me thinking. Why do we neglect the real parks of

England?--parks enormous in extent, and yet uncultivated, save here and

there and in the most timid fashion. And how better could our

millionaires use their wealth (since they are always confiding to us their

difficulties in getting rid of it) than by seeking out these gardens and

endowing them, and so, without pauperising anyone, build for themselves

monuments not only delightful, but perpetual?--for, as Victor Hugo said,

the flowers last always. So, you may say, do books. I doubt it; and

experts, who have discussed with me the modern products of the paper

trade, share my gloomy views. Anyhow, the free public library has been

sufficiently exploited, if not worked out. So, you may say again, have

free public gardens and parks been worked out. I think not. Admit that a

fair percentage of the public avails itself of these libraries and parks;

still the mass does not, and they were intended for the mass.

Their attractiveness does not spread and go on spreading. The stream of

public appreciation which pours through them is not fathomless; beyond a

certain point it does not deepen, or deepens with heart-breaking slowness;

and candid librarians and curators can sound its shallows accurately

enough. What we want is not a garden into which folk will find their way

if they have nothing better to do and can spare the time with an effort.

Or, to be accurate, we do want such gardens for deliberate enjoyment; but

what we want more is to catch our busy man and build a garden about him in

the brief leisure which, without seeking it, he is forced to take.

Where are these gardens? Why, beside and along our railway lines.

These are the great public parks of England; and through them travels

daily a vast population held in enforced idleness, seeking distraction in

its morning paper. Have you ever observed how a whole carriageful of

travellers on the Great Western line will drop their papers to gaze out on

Messrs. Sutton's trial-beds just outside Reading? A garish appeal, no

doubt: a few raying spokes of colour, and the vision has gone. And I

forestall the question, "Is that the sort of thing you wish to see

extended?--a bed of yellow tulips, for instance, or of scarlet lobelias,

or of bright-blue larkspurs, all the way from London to Liverpool?"

I suggest nothing of the sort. Our railway lines in England, when they

follow the valleys--as railway lines must in hilly districts--are

extraordinarily beautiful. The eye, for example, could desire nothing

better, in swift flight, than the views along the Wye Valley or in the

Derbyshire Peak country, and even the rich levels of Somerset have a

beauty of their own (above all in May and June, when yellow with sheets of

buttercups) which artificial planting would spoil. But--cant about Nature

apart--every line has its dreary cuttings and embankments, all of which

might be made beautiful at no great cost. I need not labour this: here

and there by a casual bunch of rhododendrons or of gorse, or by a sheet of

primroses or wild hyacinths in springtime, the thing is proved, and has

been proved again and again to me by the comments of fellow-passengers.

Now I am honestly enamoured of this dream of mine, and must pause to dwell

on some of its beauties. In the first place, we could start to realise it

in the most modest fashion and test the appreciation of the public as we

go along. Our flowers would be mainly wild flowers, and our trees, for

the most part, native British plants, costing, say, from thirty shillings

to three pounds the hundred. A few roods would do to begin with, if the

spot were well chosen; indeed, it would be wiser in every way to begin

modestly, for though England possesses several great artists in landscape

gardening, their art has never to my knowledge been seriously applied to

railway gardening, and the speed of the spectators introduces a new and

highly-amusing condition, and one so singular and so important as to make

this almost a separate art. At any rate, our gardeners would have to

learn as they go, and if any man can be called enviable it is an artist

learning to express art's eternal principles in a new medium, under new

conditions.

Even if we miss our millionaire, we need not despond over ways and means.

The beauty-spots of Great Britain are engaged just now in a fierce rivalry

of advertisement. Why should not this rivalry be pressed into the service

of beautifying the railway lines along which the tourist must travel to

reach them? Why should we neglect the porches (so to speak) of our

temples? Would not the tourist arrive in a better temper if met on his

way with silent evidence of our desire to please? And, again, is the

advertising tradesman quite wise in offending so many eyes with his

succession of ugly hoardings standing impertinently in green fields?

Can it be that the sight of them sets up that disorder of the liver which

he promises to cure? And if not, might he not call attention to his wares

at least as effectively, if more summarily, by making them the excuse for

a vision of delight which passengers would drop their newspapers to gaze

upon? Lastly, the railway companies themselves have discovered the

commercial value of scenery. Years ago, and long before their discovery

(and as if by a kind of instinct they were blundering towards it) they

began to offer prizes for the best-kept station gardens--with what happy

result all who have travelled in South Wales will remember. They should

find it easy to learn that the 'development' of watering-places and

holiday resorts may be profitably followed up by spending care upon their

approaches.

But I come back to my imaginary millionaire--the benevolent man who only

wants to be instructed how to spend his money--the 'magnificent man' of

Aristotle's _Ethics_, nonplussed for the moment, and in despair of

discovering an original way of scattering largesse for the public good.

For, while anxious to further my scheme by conciliating the commercial

instinct, I must insist that its true beauty resides in the conception of

our railways as vast public parks only hindered by our sad lack of

inventiveness from ministering to the daily delight of scores of thousands

and the occasional delight of almost everyone. The millionaire I want is

one who can rise to this conception of it, and say with Blake--

"I will not cease from mental fight,"

(Nor from pecuniary contribution, for that matter)

"Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land."

For these millionaires are bediamonded all over with good intentions.

The mischief with them is their lack of inventiveness. Most of my readers

will agree that there is no easier game of solitaire than to suppose

yourself suddenly endowed with a million of money, and to invent modes of

dispensing it for the good of your kind. As a past master of that game I

offer the above suggestion gratis to those poor brothers of mine who have

more money than they know how to use.

The railway--not that of the quickset hedges, but the Great Western, on to

which I changed after a tramp across Dartmoor--took me to pay a pious

visit to my old school: a visit which I never pay without thinking--

especially in the chapel where we used to sing 'Lord, dismiss us with Thy

blessing' on the evening before holidays--of a passage in Izaak Walton's

_Life of Sir Henry Wotton_:--

"He yearly went also to Oxford. But the summer before his death he

changed that for a journey to Winchester College, to which school he

was first removed from Bocton. And as he returned from Winchester

towards Eton College, said to a friend, his companion in that

journey, 'How useful was that advice of a holy monk who persuaded his

friend to perform his customary devotions in a constant place,

because in that place we usually meet with those very thoughts which

possessed us at our last being there! And I find it thus far

experimentally true that at my now being in that school, and seeing

the very place where I sat when I was a boy, occasioned me to

remember those very thoughts of my youth which then possessed me:

sweet thoughts indeed, that promised my growing years numerous

pleasures without mixtures of cares: and those to be enjoyed when

time--which I therefore thought slow-paced--had changed my youth into

manhood. But age and experience have taught me that those were but

empty hopes: for I have always found it true, as my Saviour did

foretell, 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.'

Nevertheless, I saw there a succession of boys using the same

recreations and, questionless, possessed with the same thoughts that

then possessed me. Thus one generation succeeds another, both in

their lives, recreations, hopes, fears, and death.'"

But my visit on this occasion was filled with thought less of myself than

of a poet I had known in that chapel, those cloisters, that green close;

not intimately enough to call him friend, yet so intimately that his

lately-departed shade still haunted the place for me--a small boy whom he

had once, for a day or two, treated with splendid kindness and thereafter

(I dare say) had forgotten.

"T. E. B."

Thomas Edward Brown was born on May 5th, 1830, at Douglas, in the Isle of

Man, where his father held the living of St. Matthew's. Sixty-five years

later he wrote his last verses to aid a fund raised for a new St.

Matthew's Church, and characteristically had to excuse himself in a letter

penetrated with affection for the old plain edifice and its memories.

"I was baptised there; almost all whom I loved and revered were

associated with its history . . . 'The only church in Douglas where

the poor go'--I dare say that is literally true. But I believe it

will continue to be so. . . . I postulate the continuity. . . ."

I quote these words (and so leave them for a while) with a purpose, aware

how trivial they may seem to the reader. But to those who had the

privilege of knowing Brown that cannot be trivial which they feel to be

characteristic and in some degree explicative of the man; and with this

'I postulate the continuity' we touch accurately and simply for once a

note which sang in many chords of the most vocal, not to say orchestral,

nature it has ever been my lot to meet.

Let me record, and have done with, the few necessary incidents of what was

by choice a _vita fallens_ and "curiously devoid of incident." The boy

was but two years old when the family removed to Kirk Braddan Vicarage,

near Douglas; the sixth of ten children of a witty and sensible Scots

mother and a father whose nobly humble idiosyncrasies continued in his son

and are worthy to live longer in his description of them:--

"To think of a _Pazon_ respecting men's vices even; not as vices, God

forbid! but as parts of _them_, very likely all but inseparable from

them; at any rate, _theirs!_ Pitying with an eternal pity, but not

exposing, not rebuking. My father would have considered he was

'taking a liberty' if he had confronted the sinner with his sin.

Doubtless he carried this too far. But don't suppose for a moment

that the 'weak brethren' thought he was conniving at their weakness.

Not they: they saw the delicacy of his conduct. You don't think, do

you, that these poor souls are incapable of appreciating delicacy?

God only knows how far down into their depths of misery the sweetness

of that delicacy descends. . . . He loved sincerity, truth and

modesty. It seemed as if he felt that, with these virtues, the

others could not fail to be present."

Add to this that the Vicar of Kirk Braddan, though of no University, was a

scholar in grain; was, for example, so fastidious about composition that

he would make his son read some fragment of an English classic to him

before answering an invitation! "To my father style was like the instinct

of personal cleanliness." Again we touch notes which echoed through the

life of his son--who worshipped continuity.

From a course of tuition divided between his father and the parish

schoolmaster, Brown went, at fifteen or over, to King William's College,

and became its show scholar; thence, by the efforts of well-meaning

friends (but at the cost of much subsequent pain), to Christ Church,

Oxford, as a servitor. He won his double first; but he has left on record

an account of a servitor's position at Christ Church in the early fifties,

and to Brown the spiritual humiliation can have been little less than one

long dragging anguish. He had, of course, his intervals of high spirits;

but (says Mr. Irwin, his friend and biographer) "there is no doubt he did

not exaggerate what the position was to him. I have heard him refer to it

over and over again with a dispassionate bitterness there was no

mistaking." Dean Gaisford absolutely refused to nominate him, after his

two first classes, to a fellowship, though all the resident dons wished

it. "A servitor never has been elected student--_ergo_, he never shall

be." Brown admired Gaisford, and always spoke kindly of him "in all his

dealings with me." Yet the night after he won his double first was "one

of the most intensely miserable I was ever called to endure." Relief, and

of the right kind, came with his election as Fellow of Oriel in April,

1854. In those days an Oriel Fellowship still kept and conveyed its

peculiar distinction, and the brilliant young scholar had at length the

ball at his feet.

"This is none of your empty honours," he wrote to his mother; "it

gives me an income of about 300 pounds per annum as long as I choose

to reside at Oxford, and about 220 pounds in cash if I reside

elsewhere. In addition to this it puts me in a highly commanding

position for pupils, so that on the whole I have every reason to

expect that (except perhaps the first year) I shall make between 500

and 600 pounds altogether per annum. So you see, my dear mother,

that your prayers have not been unanswered, and that God will bless

the generation of those who humbly strive to serve Him. . . I have

not omitted to remark that the election took place on April 21st, the

anniversary of your birth and marriage."

How did he use his opportunity? "He never took kindly to the life of an

Oxford fellow," thought the late Dr. Fowler (an old schoolfellow of

Brown's, afterwards President of Corpus and Vice-Chancellor of the

University). Mr. Irwin quotes another old friend, Archdeacon Moore, to

much the same effect. Their explanations lack something of definiteness.

After a few terms of private pupils Brown returned to the Island, and

there accepted the office of Vice-principal of his old school. We can

only be sure that his reasons were honourable, and sufficed for him; we

may include among them, if we choose, that _nostalgia_ which haunted him

all his days, until fate finally granted his wish and sent him back to his

beloved Argos "for good."

In the following year (1857) he married his cousin, Miss Stowell, daughter

of Dr. Stowell, of Ramsay; and soon after left King William's College to

become 'by some strange mischance' Head Master of the Crypt School,

Gloucester. Of this "Gloucester episode," as he called it, nothing needs

to be recorded except that he hated the whole business and, incidentally,

that one of his pupils was Mr. W. E. Henley--destined to gather into his

_National Observer_, many years later, many blooms of Brown's last and not

least memorable efflorescence in poesy.

From Gloucester he was summoned, on a fortunate day, by Mr. Percival

(now Bishop of Hereford), who had recently been appointed to Clifton

College, then a struggling new foundation, soon to be lifted by him into

the ranks of the great Public Schools. Mr. Percival wanted a man to take

the Modern Side; and, as fate orders these things, consulted the friend

reserved by fate to be his own successor at Clifton--Mr. Wilson (now Canon

of Worcester). Mr. Wilson was an old King William's boy; knew Brown, and

named him.

"Mr. Wilson having told me about him," writes the bishop, "I made an

appointment to see him in Oxford, and there, as chance would have it,

I met him standing at the corner of St. Mary's Entry, in a somewhat

Johnsonian attitude, four-square, his hands deep in his pockets to

keep himself still, and looking decidedly _volcanic_. We very soon

came to terms, and I left him there under promise to come to Clifton

as my colleague at the beginning of the following Term; and, needless

to say, St. Mary's Entry has had an additional interest to me ever

since. Sometimes I have wondered, and it would be worth a good deal

to know, what thoughts were crossing through that richly-furnished,

teeming brain as he stood there by St. Mary's Church, with Oriel

College in front of him, thoughts of his own struggles and triumphs,

and of all the great souls that had passed to and fro over the

pavement around him; and all set in the lurid background of the

undergraduate life to which he had been condemned as a servitor at

Christ Church."

Was he happy in his many years' work at Clifton? On the whole, and with

some reservation, we may say 'yes'--'yes,' although in the end he escaped

from it gladly and enjoyed his escape. One side of him, no doubt, loathed

formality and routine; he was, as he often proclaimed himself, a

nature-loving, somewhat intractable Celt; and if one may hint at a fault

in him, it was that now and then he soon _tired_. A man so spendthrift of

emotion is bound at times to knock on the bottom of his emotional coffers;

and no doubt he was true _to a mood_ when he wrote--

"I'm here at Clifton, grinding at the mill

My feet for thrice nine barren years have trod,

But there are rocks and waves at Scarlett still,

And gorse runs riot in Glen Chass--thank God!

"Alert, I seek exactitude of rule,

I step and square my shoulders with the squad,

But there are blaeberries on old Barrule,

And Langness has its heather still--thank God!"

--With the rest of the rebellious stanzas. We may go farther and allow

that he played with the mood until he sometimes forgot on which side lay

seriousness and on which side humour. Still it _was_ a mood; and it was

Brown, after all, who wrote 'Planting':--

"Who would be planted chooseth not the soil

Or here or there,

Or loam or peat,

Wherein he best may grow

And bring forth guerdon of the planter's toil--

The lily is most fair,

But says not' I will only blow

Upon a southern land'; the cedar makes no coil

What rock shall owe

The springs that wash his feet;

The crocus cannot arbitrate the foil

That for his purple radiance is most meet--

Lord, even so

I ask one prayer,

The which if it be granted,

It skills not where

Thou plantest me, only I would be planted."

"You don't care for school-work," he writes to an Old Cliftonian.

. . . "I demur to your statement that when you take up

schoolmastering your leisure for this kind of thing will be

practically gone. Not at all. If you have the root of the matter in

you the school-work will insist upon this kind of thing as a relief.

My plan always was to recognise two lives as necessary--the one the

outer Kapelistic life of drudgery, the other the inner and cherished

life of the spirit. It is true that the one has a tendency to kill

the other, but it must not, and you must see that it does not. . . .

The pedagogic is needful for bread and butter, also for a certain

form of joy; of the inner life you know what I think."

These are wise words, and I believe they represent Brown more truly than

utterances which only seem more genuine because less deliberate. He was

as a house master excellent, with an excellence not achievable by men

whose hearts are removed from their work: he awoke and enjoyed fervent

friendships and the enthusiastic admiration of many youngsters; he must

have known of these enthusiasms, and was not the man to condemn them; he

had the abiding assurance of assisting in a kind of success which he

certainly respected. He longed for the day of emancipation, to return to

his Island; he was impatient; but I must decline to believe he was

unhappy.

Indeed, his presence sufficiently denied it. How shall I describe him?

A sturdy, thick-set figure, inclining to rotundity, yet athletic; a face

extraordinarily mobile; bushy, grey eyebrows; eyes at once deeply and

radiantly human, yet holding the primitive faun in their coverts; a broad

mouth made for broad, natural laughter, hearty without lewdness. "There

are nice Rabelaisians, and there are nasty; but the latter are not

Rabelaisians. I have an idea," he claimed, "that my judgment within this

area is infallible." And it was. All honest laughter he welcomed as a

Godlike function.

"God sits upon His hill,

And sees the shadows fly;

And if He laughs at fools, why should He not?"

And for that matter, why should not we? Though at this point his fine

manners intervened, correcting, counselling moderation. "I am certain God

made fools for us to enjoy, but there must be _an economy of joy_ in the

presence of a fool; you must not betray your enjoyment." Imagine all this

overlaid with a certain portliness of bearing, suggestive of the

high-and-dry Oxford scholar. Add something of the parsonic (he was

ordained deacon before leaving Oxford, but did not proceed to priest's

orders till near the end of his time at Clifton); add a simple natural

piety which purged the parsonic of all "churchiness."

"This silence and solitude are to me absolute food," he writes from

the Clifton College Library on the morning of Christmas Day, 1875,

"especially after all the row and worry at the end of Term. . . .

Where are the men and women? Well, now look here, you'll not mention

it again. They're all in church. See how good God is! See how He

has placed these leitourgic traps in which people, especially

disagreeable people, get caught--and lo! the universe for me!!! me--

me. . . ."

I have mentioned his fine manners, and with a certain right, since it once

fell to me--a blundering innocent in the hands of fate--to put them to

severest proof. A candidate for a scholarship at Clifton--awkward, and

abominably conscious of it, and sensitive--I had been billeted on Brown's

hospitality without his knowledge. The mistake (I cannot tell who was

responsible) could not be covered out of sight; it was past all aid of

kindly dissimulation by the time Brown returned to the house to find the

unwelcome guest bathing in shame upon his doorstep. Can I say more than

that he took me into the family circle--by no means an expansive one, or

accustomed, as some are, to open gleefully to intruders--and for the

inside of a week treated me with a consideration so quiet and pleasant, so

easy yet attentive, that his dearest friend or most distinguished visitor

could not have demanded more? A boy notes these things, and remembers.

. . . "If I lose my manners," Mr. Irwin quotes him as saying once over

some trivial forgetfulness, "what is to become of me?" He was shy, too,

like the most of his countrymen--"jus' the shy "--but with a proud reserve

as far removed as possible from sham humility--being all too sensible and

far too little of a fool to blink his own eminence of mind, though willing

on all right occasions to forget it. "Once," records Mr. Irwin, "when I

remarked on the omission of his name in an article on 'Minor Poets' in one

of the magazines, he said, with a smile, 'Perhaps I am among the major!'"

That smile had just sufficient irony--no more.

To this we may add a passion for music and a passion for external nature--

external to the most of us, but so closely knit with his own that to be

present at his ecstasies was like assisting a high priest of elemental

mysteries reserved for him and beyond his power to impart. And yet we are

beating about the bush and missing the essential man, for he was

imprehensible--"Volcanic," the Bishop of Hereford calls him, and must go

to the Bay of Naples to fetch home a simile:

"We can find plenty of beauty in the familiar northern scenes; but we

miss the pent-up forces, the volcanic outbursts, the tropic glow, and

all the surprising manifold and tender and sweet-scented outpourings

of soil and sunshine, so spontaneous, so inexhaustibly rich, and with

the heat of a great fire burning and palpitating underneath all the

time."

Natures more masterfully commanding I have known: never one more

remarkable. In the mere possession of him, rather than in his direct

influence, all Cliftonians felt themselves rich. We were at least as

proud of him as Etonians of the author of "Ionica." But no comparisons

will serve. Falstaffian--with a bent of homely piety; Johnsonian--with a

fiery Celtic heat and a passionate adoration of nature: all such epithets

fail as soon as they are uttered. The man was at once absolute and

Protean: entirely sincere, and yet a different being to each separate

friend. "There was no getting to the end of Brown."

I have said that we--those of us, at any rate, who were not of Brown's

House--were conscious of a rich and honourable possession in him, rather

than of an active influence. Yet that influence must not be underrated.

Clifton, as I first knew it, was already a great school, although less

than twenty years old. But, to a new-comer, even more impressive than its

success among schools, or its aspirations, was a firmness of tradition

which (I dare to say) would have been remarkable in a foundation of five

times its age. It had already its type of boy; and having discovered it

and how to produce it, fell something short of tolerance towards other

types. For the very reason which allows me with decency to call the type

an admirable one, I may be excused for adding that the tradition demanded

some patience of those who could not easily manage to conform with it.

But there the tradition stood, permanently rooted in a school not twenty

years old. Is it fanciful to hold that Brown's passion for 'continuity'

had much to do with planting and confirming it? Mr. Irwin quotes for us a

passage from one of his sermons to the school: "Suffer no chasm to

interrupt this glorious tradition. . . . Continuous life . . . that is

what we want--to feel the pulses of hearts that are now dust." Did this

passage occur, I wonder, in the sermon of which I rather remember a

fierce, hopeless, human protest against 'change and decay'?--the voice

ringing down on each plea, "What do the change-and-decay people say to

_that?_"

"I postulate the continuity." Vain postulate it often seems, yet of all

life Brown demanded it. Hear him as he speaks of his wife's death in a

letter to a friend:--

"My dear fellow-sufferer, what is it after all? Why this sinking of

the heart, this fainting, sorrowing of the spirit? There is no

separation: life is continuous. All that was stable and good, good

and therefore stable, in our union with the loved one, is

unquestionably permanent, will endure for ever. It cannot be

otherwise. . . . When love has done its full work, has wrought soul

into soul so that every fibre has become part of the common life--

_quis separabit?_ Can you conceive yourself as existing at all

without _her?_ No, you can't; well, then, it follows that you don't,

and never will."

I believe it to have been this passion for continuity that bound and kept

him so absolute a Manxman, drawing his heart so persistently back to the

Island that there were times (one may almost fancy) when the prospect of

living his life out to the end elsewhere seemed to him a treachery to his

parents' dust. I believe this same passion drew him--master as he was of

varied and vocal English--to clothe the bulk of his poetry in the Manx

dialect, and thereby to miss his mark with the public, which inevitably

mistook him for a rustic singer, a man of the people, imperfectly

educated.

"I would not be forgotten in this land."--

This line of another true poet of curiously similar temperament[1]

has haunted me through the reading of Brown's published letters.

But Brown's was no merely selfish craving for continuity--to be

remembered. By a fallacy of thought, perhaps, but by a very noble one, he

transferred the ambition to those for whom he laboured. His own terror

that Time might obliterate the moment:

"And all this personal dream be fled,"

Became for his countrymen a very spring of helpfulness. _Antiquam

exquirite matrem_--he would do that which they, in poverty and the stress

of earning daily bread, were careless to do--would explore for them the

ancient springs of faith and custom.

"Dear countrymen, whate'er is left to us

Of ancient heritage--

Of manners, speech, of humours, polity,

The limited horizon of our stage--

Old love, hope, fear,

All this I fain would fix upon the page;

That so the coming age,

Lost in the empire's mass,

Yet haply longing for their fathers, here

May see, as in a glass,

What they held dear--

May say, ''Twas thus and thus

They lived'; and as the time-flood onward rolls

Secure an anchor for their Keltic souls."

This was his task, and the public of course set him down for a rustic.

"What ought I to do?" he demands. "Shall I put on my next title-page,

'Late Fellow of Oriel, etc.'? or am I always to abide under this ironic

cloak of rusticity?" To be sure, on consideration (if the public ever

found time to consider), the language and feeling of the poems were

penetrated with scholarship. He entered his countrymen's hearts; but he

also could, and did, stand outside and observe them with affectionate,

comprehending humour. Scholarship saved him, too--not always, but as a

rule--from that emotional excess to which he knew himself most dangerously

prone. He assigns it confidently to his Manx blood; but his mother was

Scottish by descent, and from my experience of what the Lowland Scot can

do in the way of pathos when he lets himself go, I take leave to doubt

that the Manxman was wholly to blame. There can, however, be no doubt

that the author of "The Doctor," of "Catherine Kinrade," of "Mater

Dolorosa," described himself accurately as a "born sobber," or that an

acquired self-restraint saved him from a form of intemperance by which of

late our literature has been somewhat too copiously afflicted.

To scholarship, too, imposed upon and penetrating a taste naturally

catholic, we owe the rare flavour of the many literary judgments scattered

about his letters. They have a taste of native earth, beautifully

rarefied: to change the metaphor, they illuminate the page with a kind of

lambent common sense. For a few examples:--

"I have also read a causerie on Virgil and one on Theocritus. So many

French _litterateurs_ give me the idea that they don't go nearer the

Greek authors than the Latin translations. . . . Sainte Beuve

[_Nouveaux Lundis_, vii. 1--52, on 'The Greek Anthology'] is an

enthusiastic champion for our side, but, oddly enough, he never

strikes me as knowing much about the matter!"

"Your Latin verses [translating Cowley] I greatly enjoy. The dear old

Abraham goes straight off into your beautiful lines. Of course he

has not a scrap of modern _impedimenta_. You go through the customs

at the frontier with a whistle and a smile. You have _nothing to

declare_. The blessed old man by your side is himself a Roman to

begin with, and you pass together as cheerfully as possible. . . ."

"I have also been reading Karl Elze's _Essays on Shakespeare_.

He is not bad, but don't you resent the imperturbable confidence of

men who, after attributing a play of Shakespeare's to two authors,

proceed to suggest a third, urged thereto by some fatuous and

self-sought exigency?"

"Did you ever try to write a Burns song? I mean the equivalent in

ordinary English of his Scotch. Can it be done? A Yorkshireman--

could he do it? A Lancashire man (Waugh)? I hardly think so.

The Ayrshire dialect has a _Schwung_ and a confidence that no-English

county can pretend to. Our dialects are apologetic things,

half-ashamed, half-insolent. Burns has no doubts, and for his

audience unhesitatingly demands the universe. . . ."

"There is an ethos in Fitzgerald's letters which is so exquisitely

idyllic as to be almost heavenly. He takes you with him, exactly

accommodating his pace to yours, walks through meadows so tranquil,

and yet abounding in the most delicate surprises. And these

surprises seem so familiar, just as if they had originated with

yourself. What delicious blending! What a perfect interweft of

thought and diction! What a _sweet_ companion!"

Lastly, let me quote a passage in which his thoughts return to Clifton,

where it had been suggested that Greek should be omitted from the ordinary

form-routine and taught in "sets," or separate classes:--

"This is disturbing about Greek, 'set' Greek. Yes, you would fill

your school to overflowing, of course you would, so long as other

places did not abandon the old lines. But it would be detestable

treachery to the cause of education, of humanity. To me the

_learning_ of any blessed thing is a matter of little moment.

Greek is not learned by nineteen-twentieths of our Public School

boys. But it is a baptism into a cult, a faith, not more irrational

than other faiths or cults; the baptism of a regeneration which

releases us from I know not what original sin. And if a man does not

see that, he is a fool, such a fool that I shouldn't wonder if he

gravely asked me to explain what I meant by original sin in such a

connection. . . ."

So his thoughts reverted to the school he had left in 1892. In October,

1897, he returned to it on a visit. He was the guest of one of the house

masters, Mr. Tait, and on Friday evening, October 29th, gave an address to

the boys of the house. He had spoken for some minutes with brightness and

vigour, when his voice grew thick and he was seen to stagger. He died in

less than two hours.

His letters have been collected and piously given to the world by Mr.

Irwin, one of his closest friends. By far the greatest number of them

belong to those last five years in the Island--the happiest, perhaps, of

his life, certainly the happiest temperamentally. "Never the time and the

place . . ." but at least Brown was more fortunate than most men.

He realised his dream, and it did not disappoint him. He could not carry

off his friends to share it (and it belongs to criticism of these volumes

to say that he was exceptionally happy in his friends), but he could

return and visit them or stay at home and write to them concerning the

realisation, and be sure they understood. Therefore, although we desire

more letters of the Clifton period--although twenty years are omitted,

left blank to us--those that survive confirm a fame which, although never

wide, was always unquestioned within its range. There could be no

possibility of doubt concerning Brown. He was absolute. He lived a

fierce, shy, spiritual life; a wise man, keeping the child in his heart:

he loved much and desired permanence in the love of his kind.

"Diuturnity," says his great seventeenth-century namesake, "is a dream and

folly of expectation. There is nothing strictly immortal but

immortality." And yet, _prosit amasse!_

The railway took me on to Oxford--

"Like faithful hound returning

For old sake's sake to each loved track

With heart and memory burning."

"I well remember," writes Mrs. Green of her husband, the late John Richard

Green, "the passionate enthusiasm with which he watched from the train for

the first sight of the Oxford towers against the sky:" and although our

enthusiasm nowadays has to feed on a far tamer view than that which

saluted our forefathers when the stage-coach topped the rise of Shotover

and its passengers beheld the city spread at their feet, yet what faithful

son of Oxford can see her towers rise above the water-meadows and re-greet

them without a thrill?

In the year 1688, and in a book entitled _The Guardian's Instruction_,

a Mr. Stephen Penton gave the world a pleasing and lifelike little

narrative--superior, in my opinion, to anything in _Verdant Green_--

telling us how a reluctant father was persuaded to send his son to Oxford;

what doubts, misgivings, hesitations he had, and how they were overcome.

I take the story to be fictitious. It is written in the first person,

professedly by the hesitating parent: but the parent can hardly have been

Penton, for the story will not square with what we know of his life.

The actual Penton was born, it seems, in 1640, and educated at Winchester

and New College; proceeded to his fellowship, resided from 1659 to 1670,

and was Principal of St. Edmund's Hall from 1675 to 1683. He appears to

have been chaplain to the Earl of Aylesbury, and, according to Antony a

Wood, possessed a "rambling head." He died in 1706.

The writer in _The Guardian's Instruction_ is portrayed for us--or is

allowed to portray himself--rather as an honest country squire, who had

himself spent a year or so of his youth at the University, but had

withdrawn when Oxford was invaded by the Court and the trouble between

King Charles and Parliament came to a head: and "God's grace, the Good

example of my parents, and a natural love of virtue secured me so far as

to leave Oxford, though not much more learned, yet not much worse than I

came thither." A chill testimonial! In short, the old squire (as I will

take leave to call him) nursed a somewhat crotchety detestation of the

place, insomuch "that when I came to have children, I did almost _swear_

them in their childhood never to be friends with Oxford."

He tried his eldest son with a course of foreign travel as a substitute

for University training; but this turned out a failure, and he had the

good sense to acknowledge his mistake. So for his second boy he cast

about to find a profession; "but what course to take I was at a loss:

Cambridge was so far off, I could not have an eye upon him; Oxford I was

angry with."

In this fix he consulted with a neighbour, "an old grave learned divine,"

and rigid Churchman, who confessed that many of the charges against Oxford

were well grounded, but averred that the place was mending. The truth

was, the University had been loyal to the monarchy all through the

Commonwealth times; and when Oliver Cromwell was dead, and Richard

dismounted, its members perceived, through the maze of changes and

intrigues, that in a little time the heart of the nation would revert to

the government which twenty years before it had hated. And their

impatient hopes of this "made the scholars talk aloud, drink healths, and

curse Meroz in the very streets; insomuch that when the King came in, they

were not only like them that dream, but like them who are out of their

wits, mad, stark, staring mad." This unholy 'rag' (to modernise the old

gentleman's language) continued for a twelvemonth: that is to say, until

the Vice-Chancellor--holding that the demonstration, like Miss Mary

Bennet's pianoforte playing in _Pride and Prejudice_, had delighted the

company long enough--put his foot down. And from that time the University

became sober, modest, and studious as perhaps any in Europe. The old

gentleman wound up with some practical advice, and a promise to furnish

the squire with a letter of recommendation to one of the best tutors in

Oxford.

Thus armed, the squire (though still with misgivings) was not long in

getting on horseback with his wife, his daughters, and his young hopeful,

and riding off to Oxford, where at first it seemed that his worst

suspicions would be confirmed; "for at ten o'clock in the inn, there arose

such a roaring and singing that my hair stood on end, and my former

prejudices were so heightened that I resolved to lose the journey and

carry back my son again, presuming that no noise in Oxford could be made

but _scholars_ must do it,"--a hoary misconception still cherished, or

until recently, by the Metropolitan Police and the Oxford City Bench.

In this instance a proctor intervened, and quelled the disturbance by

sending 'two young pert townsmen' to prison; "and quickly came to my

chamber, and perceiving my boy designed for a gown, told me that it was

for the preservation of such fine youths as he that the proctors made so

bold with gentlemen's lodgings." The squire had some talk with this

dignitary, who was a man of presence and suitable address, and of

sufficient independence to deny--not for the first time in history--that

dons were overpaid.

Next morning the whole family trooped off to call upon the tutor whom

their old neighbour had recommended. Oddly enough, the tutor seemed by no

means overwhelmed by the honour. "I thought to have found him mightily

pleased with the opinion we had of his conduct, and the credit of having a

gentleman's son under his charge, and the father with cap in hand.

Instead of all this he talked at a rate as if the gentry were _obliged_ to

tutors more than tutors to them." The tutor, in short, was decidedly tart

in his admonitions to this honest family--he did not forget, either, to

assure them that (_generally_) a college tutor was worse paid than a

dancing-master. Here is a specimen of his advice--sound and practical

enough in its way:--

"I understand by one of your daughters that you have brought him up a

_fine padd_ to keep here for his health's sake. Now I will tell you

the use of an horse in Oxford, and then do as you think fit.

The horse must be kept at an _ale-house_ or an _inn_, and he must

have leave to go once _every day_ to see him eat oats, because the

master's eye makes him fat; and it will not be genteel to go often

to an house and spend nothing; and then there may be some danger of

the horse growing _resty_ if he be not used often, so you must give

him leave to go to _Abingdon_ once every week, to look out of the

tavern window and see the maids sell turnips; and in one month or

two come home with a surfeit of poisoned wine, and save _any

farther trouble_ by dying, and then you will be troubled to send

for your horse _again_. . . ."

The humour of college tutors has not greatly altered in two hundred years.

I have known one or two capable of the sardonic touch in those concluding

words. But conceive its effect upon the squire's lady and daughters!

No: you need not trouble to do so, for the squire describes it: "When the

tutor was gone out of the room, I asked how they liked the person and his

converse. My boy clung about his mother and cry'd to go home again, and

she had no more wit than to be of the same mind; she thought him too

weakly to undergo so much hardship as she foresaw was to be expected.

My daughter, who (instead of catechism and _Lady's Calling_) had been used

to read nothing but speeches in romances, and hearing nothing of _Love_

and _Honour_ in all the talk, fell into downright _scolding_ at him;

call'd him the _merest_ scholar; and if this were your _Oxford_ breeding,

they had rather he should go to _Constantinople_ to learn manners!

But I, who was older and understood the language, call'd them all great

fools. . . ."

On the tutor's return they begged to have his company at dinner, at their

inn: but he declined, kept the young man to dine with him, and next day

invited the family to luncheon. They accepted, fully expecting (after the

austerity of his discourse) to be starved: "and the girles drank

chocolette at no rate in the morning, for fear of the _worst_." But they

were by no means starved. "It was very pleasant," the squire confesses,

"to see, when we came, the _constrain'd_ artifice of an unaccustomed

complement." There were silver tankards 'heaped upon one another,'

'napkins some twenty years younger than the rest,' and glasses 'fit for a

_Dutchman_ at an _East-India Return_.' The dinner was full enough for

ten. "I was asham'd, but would not disoblige him, considering with myself

that I should put this man to such a charge of forty shillings at least,

to entertain me; when for all his honest care and pains he is to have but

forty or fifty shillings a quarter; so that for one whole quarter he must

doe the drudgery to my son for nothing." After dinner, our good squire

strolled off to a public bowling-green, "that being the onely recreation I

can affect." And "coming in, I saw half a score of the finest youths the

sun, I think, ever shined upon. They walked to and fro, with their hands

in their pockets, to see a match played by some scholars and some

gentlemen fam'd for their skill. I gaped also and stared as a man in his

way would doe; but a country ruff gentleman, being like to _lose_, did

swear, at such a rate that my heart did grieve that those fine young men

should _hear_ it, and know there was such a thing as swearing in the

kingdom. Coming to my lodging, I charged my son never to go to such

publick places unless he resolved to quarrel with me."

And so, having settled the lad and fitted him up with good advice,

the father, mother, and sisters returned home. But the squire, being

summoned to Oxford shortly after to "sit in _parliament_" (presumably in

the last Parliament held at Oxford, in March, 1681), took that opportunity

to walk the streets and study the demeanour of the "scholars." And this

experiment would seem to have finally satisfied him. "I walk'd the

streets as late as most people, and never in ten days ever saw any scholar

rude or disordered: so that as I grow old, and more engaged to speak the

_truth_, I do repent of the _ill-opinion_ I have had of that place,

and hope to be farther obliged by a very good _account_ of my son."

Old Stephen Penton may have had a rambling head; but unless I have thumbed

the bloom off his narrative in my attempt to summarise it, the reader will

allow that he knew how to write. He gives us the whole scene in the

fewest possible touches: he wastes no words in describing the personages

in his small comedy--comic idyll I had rather call it, for after a fashion

it reminds me of the immortal chatter between Gorgo and Praxinoe in the

fifteenth idyll of Theocritus. There the picture is: the honest

opinionated country squire; the acidulous tutor; the coltish son; the

fond, foolish, fussing mother; the prinking young ladies with their curls

and romantic notions; the colours of all as fresh as if laid on yesterday,

the humour quite untarnished after two hundred years. And I wonder the

more at the vivacity of this little sketch because, as many writers have

pointed out, no one has yet built upon University life a novel of anything

like first-class merit, and the conclusion has been drawn that the

elements of profound human interest are wanting in that life. "Is this

so?" asks the editor of Stephen Penton's reminiscences in a volume

published by the Oxford Historical Society--

"In spite of the character given to Oxford of being a city of short

memories and abruptly-ended friendships, in spite of the inchoative

qualities of youths of eighteen or twenty, especially in respect to

the 'ruling passion' so dear to novelists, yet surely in the three or

four years spent at Oxford by an incredible company of young students

'fresh from public schools, and not yet tossed about and hardened in

the storms of life'--some of them Penton's 'finest youths,' some

obviously otherwise--there must be, one would think, abundance of

romantic incident awaiting its Thackeray or Meredith. For how many

have these years been the turning point of a life! . . ."

There at any rate is the fact: _the_ novel of University life has not been

written yet, and perhaps never will be. I am not at all sure that _The

Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green_ do not mark the nearest approach to it--

save the mark! And I am not at all sure that _The Adventures of Mr.

Verdant Green_ can be called a novel at all, while I am quite certain it

cannot be called a novel of first-class merit. _Tom Brown at Oxford_

still counts its admirers, and has, I hear, attained the dignity of

translation into French; but Tom Brown, though robust enough, never seemed

to get over his transplantation from Rugby--possibly because his author's

heart remained at Rugby. 'Loss and Gain' is not a book for the many; and

the many never did justice to Mr. Hermann Merivale's 'Faucit of Balliol'

or Mr. St. John Tyrwhitt's 'Hugh Heron of Christ Church.' Neither of

these two novels obtained the hearing it deserved--and 'Faucit of Balliol'

was a really remarkable book: but neither of them aimed at giving a full

picture of Oxford life. And the interest of Miss Broughton's 'Belinda'

and Mr. Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' lies outside the proctor's rounds.

Yes (and humiliating as the confession may be), with all its crudities and

absurdities, _Verdant Green_ does mark the nearest approach yet made to a

representative Oxford novel.

How comes this? Well, to begin with, _Verdant Green_, with all his

faults, did contrive to be exceedingly youthful and high-spirited. And in

the second place, with all its faults, it did convey some sense of what I

may call the 'glamour' of Oxford. Now the University, on its part, being

fed with a constant supply of young men between the ages of eighteen and

twenty, does contrive, with all its faults, to keep up a fair show of

youth and high spirits; and even their worst enemies will admit that

Oxford and Cambridge wear, in the eyes of their sons at any rate, a

certain glamour. You may argue that glamour is glamour, an illusion which

will wear off in time; an illusion, at all events, and to be treated as

such by the wise author intent on getting at truth. To this I answer

that, while it lasts, this glamour is just as much a fact as _The Times_

newspaper, or St. Paul's Cathedral, just as real a feature of Oxford as

Balliol College, or the river, or the Vice-Chancellor's poker: and until

you recognise it for a fact and a feature of the place, and allow for it,

you have not the faintest prospect of realising Oxford. Each succeeding

generation finds that glamour, or brings it; and each generation, as it

passes, deems that its successor has either found or brought less of it.

But the glamour is there all the while. In turning over a book the other

day, written in 1870 by the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, I come on this

passage:--

"When I recall my own undergraduate life of thirty years and upwards

agone, I feel, notwithstanding modern vaunt, the _laudator temporis

acti_ earnest within me yet, and strong. Nowadays, as it seems to

me, there is but little originality of character in the still famous

University; a dread of eccentric reputation appears to pervade

College and Hall: every 'Oxford man,' to adopt the well-known name,

is subdued into sameness within and without, controlled as it were

into copyism and mediocrity by the smoothing-iron of the nineteenth

century. Whereas _in_ my time and before it there were distinguished

names, famous in every mouth for original achievements and 'deeds of

daring-do.' There were giants in those days--men of varied renown--

and they arose and won for themselves in strange fields of fame,

record and place. Each became in his day a hero of the Iliad or

Odyssey of Oxford life--a kind of Homeric man."

To which I am constrained to reply, "Mere stuff and nonsense!"

Mr. Hawker--and more credit to him--carried away Homeric memories of his

own seniors and contemporaries. But was it in nature that Mr. Hawker

should discover Homeric proportions in the feats of men thirty years his

juniors? How many of us, I ask, are under any flattering illusion about

the performances of our juniors? We cling to the old fond falsehood that

there were giants in _our_ days. We honestly believed they were giants; it

would hurt us to abandon that belief. It does not hurt us in the least to

close the magnifying-glass upon the feats of those who follow us.

But this generation, too, will have its magnifying-glass. "There were

giants in our days?" To be sure there were; and there are giants, too, in

these, but others, not we, have the eyes to see them.

Say that the scales have fallen from our eyes. Very well, we must e'en

put them on again if we would write a novel of University life. And, be

pleased to note, it does not follow, because we see the place differently

now, that we see it more truly. Also, it does not follow, because Oxford

during the last twenty years has, to the eye of the visitor, altered very

considerably, that the characteristics of Oxford have altered to anything

like the same extent. Undoubtedly they have been modified by the

relaxation and suspension of the laws forbidding Fellows to marry.

Undoubtedly the brisk growth of red-brick houses along the north of the

city, the domestic hearths, afternoon teas and perambulators, and all

things covered by the opprobrious name of "Parks-system," have done

something to efface the difference between Oxford and other towns.

But on the whole I think they have done surprisingly little.

Speaking as a writer of novels, then, I should say that to write a good

novel entirely concerned with Oxford lies close upon impossibility, and

will prophesy that, if ever it comes to be achieved, it will be a story of

friendship. But her glamour is for him to catch who can, whether in prose

or rhyme.

ALMA MATER.

Know you her secret none can utter?

Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown?

Still on the spire the pigeons flutter;

Still by the gateway flits the gown;

Still on the street, from corbel and gutter,

Faces of stone look down.

Faces of stone, and other faces--

Some from library windows wan

Forth on her gardens, her green spaces

Peer and turn to their books anon.

Hence, my Muse, from the green oases

Gather the tent, begone!

Nay, should she by the pavement linger

Under the rooms where once she played,

Who from the feast would rise and fling her

One poor _sou_ for her serenade?

One poor laugh from the antic finger

Thrumming a lute string frayed?

Once, my dear--but the world was young then--

Magdalen elms and Trinity limes--

Lissom the blades and the backs that swung then.

Eight good men in the 'good old times--

Careless we, and the chorus flung then

Under St. Mary's chimes!

Reins lay loose and the ways led random--

Christ Church meadow and Iffley track--

'Idleness horrid and dogcart' (tandem)--

Aylesbury grind and Bicester pack--

Pleasant our lines, and faith! we scanned 'em:

Having that artless knack.

Come, old limmer, the times grow colder:

Leaves of the creeper redden and fall.

Was it a hand then clapped my shoulder?

--Only the wind by the chapel wall.

Dead leaves drift on the lute; so . . . fold her

Under the faded shawl.

Never we wince, though none deplore us,

We, who go reaping that we sowed;

Cities at cock-crow wake before us--

Hey, for the lilt of the London road!

One look back, and a rousing chorus!

Never a palinode!

Still on her spire the pigeons hover;

Still by her gateway haunts the gown;

Ah, but her secret? You, young lover,

Drumming her old ones forth from town,

Know you the secret none discover?

Tell it--when _you_ go down.

Yet if at length you seek her, prove her,

Lean to her whispers never so nigh;

Yet if at last not less her lover

You in your hansom leave the High;

Down from her towers a ray shall hover--

Touch you, a passer-by!

[1] "The Quest of the Sangraal," R. S. Hawker.

JUNE.

The following verses made their appearance some years ago in the pages of

the _Pall Mall Magazine_. Since then (I am assured) they have put a

girdle round the world, and threaten, if not to keep pace with the banjo

hymned by Mr. Kipling, at least to become the most widely-diffused of

their author's works. I take it to be of a piece with his usual

perversity that until now they have never been republished except for

private amusement.

They belong to a mood, a moment, and I cannot be at pains to rewrite a

single stanza, even though an allusion to 'Oom Paul' cries out to be

altered or suppressed. But, after all, the allusion is not likely to

trouble President Kruger's massive shade as it slouches across the Elysian

fields; and after all, though he became our enemy, he remained a

sportsman. So I hope we may glance at his name in jest without a

suspicion of mocking at the tragedy of his fate.

THE FAMOUS BALLAD OF THE JUBILEE CUP.

You may lift me up in your arms, lad, and turn my face to the sun,

For a last look back at the dear old track where the Jubilee Cup was

won;

And draw your chair to my side, lad--no, thank ye, I feel no pain--

For I'm going out with the tide, lad, but I'll tell you the tale

again.

I'm seventy-nine, or nearly, and my head it has long turned grey,

But it all comes back as clearly as though it was yesterday--

The dust, and the bookies shouting around the clerk of the scales,

And the clerk of the course, and the nobs in force, and

Is 'Ighness, the Prince of Wales.

'Twas a nine-hole thresh to wind'ard, but none of us cared for that,

With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish along the

flat.

"Stiff?" Ah, well you may say it! Spot-barred, and at

five-stone-ten!

But at two and a bisque I'd ha' run the risk; for I was a greenhorn

then.

So we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red swallow-tail--

There was young Ben Bolt, and the Portland colt, and Aston Villa, and

Yale;

And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander, and The Saint,

And the German Emperor's Meteor, a-looking as fresh as paint;

John Roberts (scratch), and Safety Match, The Lascar, and Lorna

Doone,

Oom Paul (a bye), and Romany Rye, and me upon Wooden Spoon;

And some of us cut for partners, and some of us strung to baulk,

And some of us tossed for stations--But there, what use to talk?

Three-quarter-back on the Kingsclere crack was station enough for me,

With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal a-lee!

And I leaned and patted her centre-bit, and eased the quid in her

cheek,

With a 'Soh, my lass!' and a 'Woa, you brute!'--for she could do all

but speak.

She was geared a thought too high, perhaps; she was trained a trifle

fine;

But she had the grand reach forward! _I_ never saw such a line!

Smooth-bored, clean-run, from her fiddle head with its dainty ear

half-cock,

Hard-bit, _pur sang_, from her overhang to the heel of her off hind

sock.

Sir Robert he walked beside me as I worked her down to the mark;

"There's money on this, my lad," said he, "and most of 'em's running

dark;

But ease the sheet if you're bunkered, and pack the scrimmages tight,

And use your slide at the distance, and we'll drink to your health

to-night!"

But I bent and tightened my stretcher. Said I to myself, said I,--

"John Jones, this here is the Jubilee Cup, and you have to do or die."

And the words weren't hardly spoken when the umpire shouted "Play!"

And we all kicked off from the Gasworks end with a "Yoicks!" and a

"Gone away!"

And at first I thought of nothing, as the clay flew by in lumps,

But stuck to the old Ruy Lopez, and wondered who'd call for trumps,

And luffed her close to the cushion, and watched each one as it

broke,

And in triple file up the Rowley mile we went like a trail of smoke.

The Lascar made the running: but he didn't amount to much,

For old Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it back to touch;

And the whole first flight led off with the right, as The Saint took

up the pace,

And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it there with an

ace.

John Roberts had given a miss in baulk, but Villa cleared with a

punt;

And keeping her service hard and low, The Meteor forged to the front,

With Romany Rye to windward at dormy and two to play,

And Yale close up--but a Jubilee Cup isn't run for every day.

We laid our course for the Warner--I tell you the pace was hot!

And again off Tattenham Corner a blanket covered the lot.

Check side! Check side! Now steer her wide! And barely an inch of

room,

With The Lascar's tail over our lee rail, and brushing Leander's

boom!

We were running as strong as ever--eight knots--but it couldn't last;

For the spray and the bails were flying, the whole field tailing

fast;

And the Portland colt had shot his bolt, and Yale was bumped at the

Doves,

And The Lascar resigned to Steinitz, stale-mated in fifteen moves.

It was bellows to mend with Roberts--starred three for a penalty

kick:

But he chalked his cue and gave 'em the butt, and Oom Paul scored the

trick--

"Off-side--no-ball--and at fourteen all! Mark cock! and two for his

nob!"--

When W. G. ran clean through his lee, and yorked him twice with a

lob.

He yorked him twice on a crumbling pitch, and wiped his eye with a

brace,

But his guy-rope split with the strain of it, and he dropped back out

of the race;

And I drew a bead on The Meteor's lead, and challenging none too

soon,

Bent over and patted her garboard strake, and called upon Wooden

Spoon.

She was all of a shiver forward, the spoondrift thick on her flanks,

But I'd brought her an easy gambit, and nursed her over the banks;

She answered her helm--the darling!--and woke up now with a rush,

While The Meteor's jock he sat like a rock--he knew we rode for his

brush!

There was no one else left in it. The Saint was using his whip,

And Safety Match, with a lofting catch, was pocketed deep at slip;

And young Ben Bolt with his niblick took miss at Leander's lunge,

But topped the net with the ricochet, and Steinitz threw up the

sponge.

But none of the lot could stop the rot--nay, don't ask _me_ to

stop!--

The Villa had called for lemons, Oom Paul had taken his drop,

And both were kicking the referee. Poor fellow! He done his best;

But, being in doubt, he'd ruled them out--which he always did when

pressed.

So, inch by inch, I tightened the winch, and chucked the sandbags

out--

I heard the nursery cannons pop, I heard the bookies shout:

"The Meteor wins!" "No, Wooden Spoon!" "Check!" "Vantage!"

"Leg before!"

"Last lap!" "Pass Nap!" At his saddle-flap I put up the helm and

wore.

You may overlap at the saddle-flap, and yet be loo'd on the tape:

And it all depends upon changing ends, how a seven-year-old will

shape;

It was tack and tack to the Lepe and back--a fair ding-dong to the

Ridge,

And he led by his forward canvas yet as we shot neath Hammersmith

Bridge.

He led by his forward canvas--he led from his strongest suit--

But along we went on a roaring scent, and at Fawley I gained a foot.

He fisted off with his jigger, and gave me his wash--too late!

Deuce--vantage--check! By neck and neck, we rounded into the

straight.

I could hear the 'Conquering 'Ero' a-crashing on Godfrey's band,

And my hopes fell sudden to zero, just there with the race in hand--

In sight of the Turf's Blue Ribbon, in sight of the umpire's tape,

As I felt the tack of her spinnaker crack, as I heard the steam

escape!

Had I lost at that awful juncture my presence of mind? . . . but no!

I leaned and felt for the puncture, and plugged it there with my toe

. . .

Hand over hand by the Members' Stand I lifted and eased her up,

Shot--clean and fair--to the crossbar there, and landed the Jubilee

Cup!

"The odd by a head, and leg before," so the Judge he gave the word:

And the Umpire shouted "Over!" but I neither spoke nor stirred.

They crowded round: for there on the ground I lay in a dead-cold

swoon,

Pitched neck and crop on the turf atop of my beautiful Wooden Spoon.

Her dewlap tire was punctured, her bearings all red-hot;

She'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her running gear

in a knot;

And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened her girth

And led her away to the knacker's. She had raced her last on earth!

But I mind me well of the tear that fell from the eye of our noble

Prince,

And the things he said as he tucked me in bed--and I've lain there

ever since;

Tho' it all gets mixed up queerly that happened before my spill,

--But I draw my thousand yearly: it'll pay for the doctor's bill.

I'm going out with the tide, lad.--You'll dig me a humble grave,

And whiles you will bring your bride, lad, and your sons

(if sons you have),

And there, when the dews are weeping, and the echoes murmur "Peace!"

And the salt, salt tide comes creeping and covers the popping-crease,

In the hour when the ducks deposit their eggs with a boasted force,

They'll look and whisper "How was it?" and you'll take them over the

course,

And your voice will break as you try to speak of the glorious first

of June,

When the Jubilee Cup, with John Jones up, was won upon Wooden Spoon.

"To me," said a well-known authority upon education, "these athletics are

the devil." To me no form of athletics is the devil but that of paying

other people to be athletic for you; and this, unhappily--and partly, I

believe, through our neglect to provide our elementary schools with decent

playgrounds--is the form affected nowadays by large and increasing crowds

of Englishmen. The youth of our urban populations would seem to be

absorbed in this vicarious sport. It throngs the reading-rooms of free

public libraries and working men's institutes in numbers which delight the

reformer until he discovers that all this avidity is for racing tips and

cricket or football "items." I am not, as a rule, a croaker; but I do not

think the young Briton concerns himself as he did in the fifties, sixties,

and seventies of the last century with poetry, history, politics, or

indeed anything that asks for serious thought. I believe all this

professional sport likely to be as demoralising for us as a nation as were

the gladiatorial shows for Rome; and I cannot help attributing to it some

measure of that combativeness at second-hand--that itch to fight anyone

and everyone by proxy--which, abetted by a cheap press, has for twenty

years been our curse.

Curse or no curse, it is spreading; and something of its progress may be

marked in the two following dialogues, the first of which was written in

1897. Many of the names in it have already passed some way toward

oblivion; but the moral, if I mistake not, survives them, and the warning

has become more urgent than ever.

THE FIRST DIALOGUE ON CRICKET.

1897.

Some time in the summer of 1897--I think towards the end of August--I was

whiling away the close of an afternoon in the agreeable twilight of

Mr. D--'s bookshop in the Strand, when I heard my name uttered by some one

who had just entered; and, turning about, saw my friend Verinder, in

company with Grayson and a strapping youth of twenty or thereabouts, a

stranger to me. Verinder and Grayson share chambers in the Temple, on the

strength (it is understood) of a common passion for cricket. Longer ago

than we care to remember--but Cambridge bowlers remember--Grayson was

captain of the Oxford eleven. His contemporary, Verinder, never won his

way into the team: he was a comparatively poor man and obliged to read,

and reading spoiled his cricket. Therefore he had to content himself with

knocking up centuries in college matches, and an annual performance among

the Seniors. It was rumoured that Grayson--always a just youth, too--

would have given him his blue, had not Verinder's conscientiousness been

more than Roman. My own belief is that the distinction was never offered,

and that Verinder liked his friend all the better for it. At the same

time the disappointment of what at that time of life was a serious

ambition may account for a trace of acidity which began, before he left

college, to flavour his comments on human affairs, and has since become

habitual to him.

Verinder explained that he and his companions were on their way home from

Lord's, where they had been 'assisting'--he laid an ironical stress on the

word--in an encounter between Kent and Middlesex. "And, as we were

passing, I dragged these fellows in, just to see if old D--' had

anything." Verinder is a book-collector. "By the way, do you know Sammy

Dawkins? You may call him the Boy when you make his better acquaintance

and can forgive him for having chosen to go to Cambridge. Thebes did his

green, unknowing youth engage, and--as the _Oxford Magazine_ gloomily

prophesied--he bowls out Athens in his later age." The Boy laughed

cheerfully and blushed. I felt a natural awe in holding out an

exceedingly dusty hand to an athlete whose fame had already shaken the

Antipodes. But it is the way of young giants to be amiable; and indeed

this one saluted me with a respect which he afterwards accounted for

ingenuously enough--"He always felt like that towards a man who had

written a book: it seemed to him a tremendous thing to have done, don't

you know?"

I thought to myself that half an hour in Mr. D--'s shop (which contains

new books as well as old) would correct his sense of the impressiveness of

the feat. Indeed, I read a dawning trouble in the glance he cast around

the shelves. "It takes a fellow's breath away," he confessed. "Such a

heap of them! But then I've never been to the British Museum."

"Then," said I, "you must be employing researchers for the book you are

writing."

"What?" he protested. "_Me_ writing a book? Not likely!"

"An article for some magazine, then?"

"Not a line."

"Well, at least you have been standing for your photograph, to illustrate

some book on Cricket that another fellow is writing."

He laughed.

"You have me there. Yes, I've been photographed in the act of bowling--

'Before' and 'After': quite like Somebody's Hair Restorer."

"Well," said I, "and I wish you had contributed to the letterpress, too.

For the wonder to me is, not that you cricketers write books (for all the

world wants to read them), but that you do it so prodigiously well."

"Oh," said he, "you mean Ranji! But he's a terror."

"I was thinking of him, of course; but of others as well. Here, for

instance, is a book I have just bought, or rather an instalment of one:

_The Encyclopaedia of Sport_, edited by the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire,

Mr. Hedley Peek, and Mr. Aflalo, published by Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen:

Part IV., CHA to CRO. I turn to the article on Cricket, and am referred

'for all questions connected with fast bowling, and for many questions

associated with medium and slow' to 'the following paper by Tom

Richardson.'"

"Tom Richardson ought to know," put in Grayson.

"Good Heavens!" said I, "I am not disputing that! But I remember Ruskin's

insisting--I think in _Sesame and Lilies_--that no true artist ever talks

much of his art. The greatest are silent. 'The moment,' says Ruskin,

'a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about it. All words

become idle to him--all theories.' And he goes on to ask, in his

vivacious way, 'Does a bird theorise about building its nest?'

Well, as to that one cannot be sure. But I take it we may call Richardson

a true artist?"

"Certainly we may."

"And allow that he can really do his work?"

"Rather!"

"Then it seems to me that Ruskin's rule may apply to other arts, but not

to Cricket. For here is Richardson not only talking about fast bowling,

but expressing himself with signal ease and precision. Listen to this,

for instance:--

"'A ball is said to _break_ when, on touching the ground, it deviates

sharply from its original line of flight.'

"And again:--"

"'A ball is said to have 'spin' on it when it gains an acceleration of

pace, not necessarily a variation of direction, on touching the

ground.'

"It would be hard, I think, to improve upon these definitions. But let me

satisfy you that I was not exaggerating when I spoke of the dignity of

Mr. Richardson's English style:--

"'The bowler, whether born or made, should cultivate and acquire a

high action and a good swing of arm and body, as such a delivery will

make the ball rise quickly and perpendicularly from the pitch; but

the action must at all costs be easy and free, qualities which

neither imitation nor education must allow to disappear.'

"We often hear complaints--and reasonable ones for the most part--that the

wage given to first-class professional cricketers is no longer adequate.

But one of the pet arguments for increasing it is that their employment

begins and ends with the summer. Now, I certainly think that, while

bowlers write in this fashion, they can have little or nothing to dread

from the winter months."

"I declare," said Grayson, "I believe you are jealous!"

"Well, and why not? For, mark you, Mr. Richardson's is no singular case,

of which we might say--to comfort ourselves--that the Goddess of Cricket,

whom he serves so mightily, has touched his lips and inspired him for a

moment. Turn over these pages. We poor novelists, critics, men of

letters, have no such paper, such type, as are lavished on the experts who

write here upon their various branches of sport. _Our_ efforts are not

illustrated by the Swan Engraving Company. And the rub for us is that

these gentlemen deserve it all! I am not going to admit--to you, at any

rate--that their subjects are of higher interest than ours, or of more

importance to the world. But I confess that, as a rule, they make theirs

more interesting. When Mr. C. B. Fry discourses about Long Jumping, or

Mr. W. Ellis about Coursing, or Mr. F. C. J. Ford upon Australian Cricket,

there are very few novelists to whom I had rather be listening. It cannot

be mere chance that makes them all so eloquent; nor is it that they have

all risen together to the height of a single great occasion; for though

each must have felt it a great occasion when he was invited to assist in

this sumptuous work, I remarked a similar eloquence in those who

contributed, the other day, to Messrs. Longmans' 'Badminton Library.'

When sportsmen take to writing admirable English, and peers of the realm

to editing it, I hardly see where we poor men of letters can expect to

come in."

"The only cure that I can see," said Verinder, "is for Her Majesty to turn

you into peers of the realm. Some of you suggest this from time to time,

and hitherto it has puzzled me to discover why. But if it would qualify

you to edit the writings of sportsmen--"

"And why not? These books sell: and if aristocracy have its roots in

Commerce, shall not the sale of books count as high as the sale of beer?

The principle has been granted. Already the purveyors of cheap and

wholesome literature are invited to kneel before the Queen, and receive

the _accolade_."

"She must want to cut Tit-bits out of them," put in the Boy.

"Of course we must look at the proportion of profit. Hitherto the profits

of beer and literature have not been comparable; but this wonderful boom

in books of sport may redress the balance. Every one buys them. When you

entered I was glancing through a volume of new verse, but without the

smallest intention of buying it. My purchases, you see, are all sporting

works, including, of course, Prince Ranjitsinhji's _Jubilee Book of

Cricket_."

"Just so," snapped Verinder. "You buy books about sport: we spend an

afternoon in looking on at sport. And so, in one way or another, we

assist at the damnation of the sporting spirit in England."

When Verinder begins in this style an oration is never far distant.

I walked back with the three to the Temple. On our way he hissed and

sputtered like a kettle, and we had scarcely reached his chamber before he

boiled over in real earnest.

"We ought never to have been there! It's well enough for the Boy: he has

been playing steadily all the summer, first for Cambridge and afterwards

for his county. Now he has three days off and is taking his holiday.

But Grayson and I--What the deuce have we to do in that galley?

Far better we joined a club down at Dulwich or Tooting and put in a little

honest play, of a week-end, on our own account. We should be crocks, of

course: our cricketing is done. But we should be honest crocks.

At least it is better to take a back row in the performance, and find out

our own weakness, than pay for a good seat at Lord's or the Oval, and be

Connoisseurs of what Abel and Hearne and Brockwell can and cannot do.

If a man wants to sing the praises of cricket as a national game, let him

go down to one of the Public Schools and watch its close or cricket-ground

on a half-holiday: fifteen acres of turf, and a dozen games going on

together, from Big Side down to the lowest form match: from three to four

hundred boys in white flannels--all keen as mustard, and each occupied

with his own game, and playing it to the best of his powers.

_Playing it_--mark you: not looking on. That's the point: and that's what

Wellington meant by saying--if he ever said it--that Waterloo was won upon

the playing-fields at Eton. In my old school if a boy shirked the game he

had a poor time. Say that he shirked it for an afternoon's lawn-tennis:

it was lucky for him if he didn't find his racquet, next day, nailed up on

the pavilion door like a stoat on a gamekeeper's tree. That was the

sporting spirit, sir, if the sporting spirit means something that is to

save England: and we shall not win another Waterloo by enclosing

twenty-two gladiators in a ring of twenty-two thousand loafers, whose only

exercise is to cheer when somebody makes a stroke, howl when some other

body drops a catch, and argue that a batsman was not out when the umpire

has given him 'leg-before.' Even at football matches the crowd has _some_

chance of taking physical exercise on its own account--by manhandling the

referee when the game is over. Sport? The average subscriber to Lord's

is just as much of a sportsman as the Spaniard who watches a bull-fight,

and just a trifle more of a sportsman than the bar-loafer who backs a

horse he has never clapped eyes on. You may call it Cricket if you like:

I call it assisting at a Gladiatorial Show. True cricket is left to the

village greens."

"Steady, old man!" protested the Boy.

"I repeat it. For the spirit of the game you might have gone, a few years

ago, to the Public Schools; but even they are infected now with the

gladiatorial ideal. As it is you must go to the village green; for the

spirit, you understand--not the letter--"

"I believe you!" chuckled young Dawkins. "Last season I put in an off day

with the villagers at home. We played the nearest market town, and I put

myself on to bowl slows. Second wicket down, in came the fattest man I

ever saw. He was a nurseryman and seedsman in private life, and he fairly

hid the wicket-keep. In the first over a ball of mine got up a bit and

took him in the ab-do-men. 'How's that?' I asked. 'Well,' said the

umpire, 'I wasn't azackly looking, so I leave it to you. If it hit en in

the paunch, it's 'not out' and the fella must have suffered. But if it

took en in the rear, I reckon it didn't hurt much, and it's 'leg-before.''

I suppose that is what you would call the 'spirit' of cricket. But, I

say, if you have such a down on Lord's and what you call the gladiatorial

business, why on earth do you go?"

"Isn't that the very question I've been asking myself?" replied Verinder

testily.

"Perhaps we have an explanation here," I suggested; for during Verinder's

harangue I had settled myself in the window-seat, and was turning over the

pages of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book.

"'It is a grand thing for people who have to work most of their time

to have an interest in something or other outside their particular

groove. Cricket is a first-rate interest. The game has developed to

such a pitch that it is worth taking interest in. Go to Lord's and

analyse the crowd. There are all sorts and conditions of men there

round the ropes--bricklayers, bank-clerks, soldiers, postmen, and

stockbrokers. And in the pavilion are Q.C.'s, artists, archdeacons,

and leader-writers. . . .'"

"Oh, come!" Grayson puts in. "Isn't that rather hard on the stockbroker?"

"It is what the book says.

"'Bad men, good men, workers and idlers, all are there, and all at one

in their keenness over the game. . . . Anything that puts very many

different kinds of people on a common ground must promote sympathy

and kindly feelings. The workman does not come away from seeing

Middlesex beating Lancashire, or vice versa, with evil in his heart

against the upper ten; nor the Mayfair _homme de plaisir_ with a

feeling of contempt for the street-bred masses. Both alike are

thinking how well Mold bowled, and how cleanly Stoddart despatched

Briggs's high-tossed slow ball over the awning. Even that cynical

_nil admirari_ lawyer--'"

I pointed a finger at Verinder.

"'Even that cynical _nil admirari_ lawyer caught himself cheering

loudly when Sir Timothy planted Hallam's would-be yorker into the

press-box. True, he caught himself being enthusiastic, and broke off

at once--'"

"When I found it hadn't killed a reporter," Verinder explained. "But I

hope Ranjitsinhji has some better arguments than these if he wants to

defend gladiatorial cricket. At least he allows that a change has come

over the game of late years, and that this change has to be defended?"

"Yes, he admits the change, and explains how it came about. In the

beginning we had local club cricket pure and simple--the game of your

Village Green, in fact. Out of this grew representative local cricket--

that is, district or county cricket which flourished along with local club

cricket. Out of county cricket, which in those days was only local

cricket glorified, sprang exhibition or spectacular or gladiatorial

cricket, which lived side by side with, but distinct from, the other.

Finally, exhibition and county cricket merged and became one. And that is

where we are now."

"Does he explain how exhibition and county cricket came, as he puts it, to

be merged into one?"

"Yes. The introduction of spectacular cricket (he says) changed the basis

of county cricket considerably. For many years the exhibition elevens and

the counties played side by side; but gradually the former died out, and

the new elements they had introduced into the game were absorbed into

county cricket. The process was gradual, but in the end complete.

The old county clubs and the new ones that from time to time sprang up

added the exhibition side of cricket to the old local basis. The county

clubs were no longer merely glorified local clubs, but in addition

business concerns. They provided popular amusement and good cricket; in

fact, they became what they are now--local in name, and partly local in

reality, but also run upon exhibition or spectacular lines."

"A truly British compromise! Good business at the bottom of it, and a

touch of local sentiment by way of varnish. For of course the final

excuse for calling an eleven after Loamshire (let us say), and for any

pride a Loamshire man may take in its doings, is that its members have

been bred and trained in Loamshire. But, because any such limitation

would sorely affect the gate-money, we import players from Australia or

Timbuctoo, stick a Loamshire cap with the county arms on the head of each,

and confidently expect our public to swallow the fiction and provide the

local enthusiasm undismayed."

"My dear Verinder, if you propose to preach rank Chauvinism, I have done.

But I don't believe you are in earnest."

"In a sense, I am not. My argument would exclude Ranjitsinhji himself

from all matches but a few unimportant ones. I vote for Greater Britain,

as you know: and in any case my best arguments would go down before the

sheer delight of watching him at the wicket. Let the territorial fiction

stand, by all means. Nay, let us value it as the one relic of genuine

county cricket. It is the other side of the business that I quarrel

with."

"Be good enough to define the quarrel."

"Why, then, I quarrel with the spectacular side of the New Cricket; which,

when you come to look into it, is the gate-money side. How does

Ranjitsinhji defend it?"

"Let me see. 'Its justification is the pleasure it provides for large

numbers of the public.'"

"Quite so: the bricklayer and the stockbroker by the ropes, and the

cynical lawyer in the pavilion! But I prefer to consider the interests of

the game."

"'From a purely cricket point of view,' he goes on, 'not much can be said

against it.'"

"Let us inquire into that. The New Cricket is a business concern: it

caters for the bricklayer, the stockbroker, and the whole crowd of

spectators. Its prosperity depends on the attraction it offers them.

To attract them it must provide first-class players, and the county that

cannot breed first-class players is forced to hire them. This is costly;

but again the cash comes out of the spectators' pockets, in subscriptions

and gate-money. Now are you going to tell me that those who pay the piper

will refrain from calling the tune? Most certainly they will not.

More and more frequently in newspaper reports of cricket-matches you find

discussions of what is 'due to the public.' If stumps, for some reason or

other, are drawn early, it is hinted that the spectators have a grievance;

a captain's orders are canvassed and challenged, and so is the choice of

his team; a dispute between a club and its servants becomes an affair of

the streets, and is taken up by the press, with threats and

counter-threats. In short, the interest of the game and the interest of

the crowd may not be identical; and whereas a captain used to consider

only the interest of the game, he is now obliged to consider both.

Does Ranjitsinhji point this out?"

"He seems, at any rate, to admit it; for I find this on page 232, in his

chapter upon 'Captaincy':--

"'The duties of a captain vary somewhat according to the kind of match

in which his side is engaged, and to the kind of club which has

elected him. To begin with, first-class cricket, including

representative M.C.C., county and university matches, is quite

different from any other--partly because the results are universally

regarded as more important, partly _because certain obligations

towards the spectators have to be taken into consideration.

The last point applies equally to any match which people pay to come

to see_. . . . With regard to gate-money matches. The captains of

the two sides engaged are, during the match, responsible for

everything in connection with it. _They are under an obligation to

the public to see that the match is played in such a way as the

public has a reasonable right to expect_.'"

"And pray," demanded Verinder, "what are these 'obligations towards the

spectators,' and 'reasonable rights' of the public?"

"Well, I suppose the public can reasonably demand punctuality in starting

play; a moderate interval for luncheon and between innings; and that

stumps shall not be drawn, nor the match abandoned, before the time

arranged, unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary."

"And who is to be judge of these circumstances."

"The captain, I suppose."

"In theory, yes; but he has to satisfy the crowd. It is the crowd's

'reasonable right' to be satisfied; and by virtue of it the crowd becomes

the final judge. It allows the captain to decide, but will barrack him if

displeased with his decision. Moreover, you have given me examples to

illustrate this 'reasonable right,' but you have not defined it.

Now I want to know precisely how far it extends, and where it ceases.

Does Ranjitsinhji provide this definition?"

"No," said I; "I cannot find that he does."

"To be sure he does not; and for the simple reason that these claims on

the side of the public are growing year by year. Already no one can say

how much they cover, and assuredly no one can say where they are likely to

stop. You observe that our author includes even University matches under

the head of exhibition cricket, in which obligations towards the

spectators have to be taken into account. You remember the scene at

Lord's in 1893 when Wells purposely bowled no-balls; and again in 1896

when Shine bowled two no-balls to the boundary and then a ball which went

for four byes, the object in each case being to deprive Oxford of the

follow-on. This policy was hotly discussed; and luckily the discussion

spent itself on the question whether play could be at the same time within

the laws and clean contrary to the ethics of cricket. But there was also

a deal of talk about what was 'due to the public'; talk which would have

been altogether wide of the mark in the old days, when Oxford and

Cambridge met to play a mere friendly match and the result concerned them

alone."

"And is this," I asked, "the sum of your indictment?"

"Yes, I think that is all. And surely it is enough."

"Then, as I make out, your chief objections to spectacular cricket are

two. You hold that it gives vast numbers of people a false idea that they

are joining in a sport when in truth they are doing no more than look on.

And you contend that as the whole institution resolves itself more and

more into a paid exhibition, the spectators will tend more and more to

direct the development of the game; whereas cricket in your opinion should

be uninfluenced by those who are outside the ropes?"

"That is my case."

"And I think, my dear Verinder, it is a strong one. But there is just one

little point which you do not appear to have considered. And I was coming

to it just now--or rather Prince Ranjitsinhji was coming to it--when you

interrupted us. 'From a purely cricket point of view,' he was saying,

'not much can be said against exhibition cricket.' And in the next

sentence he goes on: 'At any rate it promotes skill in the game and keeps

up the standard of excellence.'"

"To be sure it does that."

"And cricket is played by the best players to-day with more skill than it

was by the best players of twenty or forty years ago?"

"Yes, I believe that; in spite of all we hear about the great Alfred Mynn

and other bygone heroes."

"Come then," said I, "tell me, Is Cricket an art?"

"Decidedly it is."

"Then Cricket, like other arts, should aim at perfection?"

"I suppose so."

"And that will be the highest aim of Cricket--its own perfection? And its

true lovers should welcome whatever helps to make it perfect?"

"I see what you are driving at," said he. "But Cricket is a social art,

and must be judged by the good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive,

make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the gardeners treat a fine

chrysanthemum, nipping off a hundred buds to feed and develop a single

perfect bloom."

"True: we must consider it also as a social art. But, my dear fellow, are

you not exaggerating the destruction necessary to produce the perfect

bloom? You talk of the crowd at Lord's or the Oval as if all these

thousands were diverted from honest practice of the game to the ignoble

occupation of looking on; whereas two out of three of them, were this

spectacle not provided, would far more likely be attending a horse-race,

or betting in clubs and public-houses. The bricklayer, the stockbroker,

the archdeacon, by going to see Lockwood bowl, depopulate no village

green. You judge these persons by yourself, and tell yourself

reproachfully that but for this attraction _you_, John Verinder, would be

creditably perspiring at a practice-net in Tooting or Dulwich; whereas,

the truth is--"

"Why are you hesitating?"

"Because it is not a very pleasant thing to say. But the truth is, your

heart and your conscience in this matter of athletics are a little younger

than your body."

"You mean that I am getting on for middle age."

"I mean that, though you talk of it, you will never subscribe to that

suburban club. You will marry; you will be made a judge: you will attend

cricket matches, and watch from the pavilion while your son takes block

for his first score against the M.C.C.

"And when with envy Time transported,

Shall think to rob us of our joys,

I, with my girls (if I ever have any), will sit on the top of a drag

(if I ever acquire one) and teach them at what to applaud,

While you go a-batting with your boys."

Verinder pulled a wry face, and the Boy smacked him on the back and

exhorted him to "buck up."

"And the round world will go on as before, and the sun will patrol Her

Majesty's dominions, and still where the Union Jack floats he will pass

the wickets pitched and white-flannelled Britons playing for all they are

worth, while men of subject races keep the score-sheet. And still when he

arrives at this island he will look down on green closes and approve what

we all allow to be one of the most absolutely gracious sights on earth--

the ordered and moving regiments of schoolboys at cricket. Grayson,

reach round to that shelf against which your chair is tilted; take down

poor Lefroy's poems, and read us that sonnet of his, 'The Bowler.'"

Grayson found the book and the place, and read:--

"Two minutes' rest till the next man goes in!

The tired arms lie with every sinew slack

On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back,

And elbows apt to make the leather spin

Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin,--

In knavish hands a most unkindly knack;

But no guile shelters under the boy's black

Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin.

Two minutes only! Conscious of a name,

The new man plants his weapon with profound

Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare.

Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game:

The flung ball takes one maddening, tortuous bound,

And the mid-stump three somersaults in air!"

"Topping!" the Boy ejaculated. "Who wrote it?"

"His name was Lefroy. He died young. He left Oxford a few years before

we went up. And I think," continued Verinder, musing, "that I, who detest

making acquaintances, would give at this moment a considerable sum to have

known him. Well," he continued, turning to me and puffing at his pipe,

"so you warn Grayson and me that we must prepare to relinquish these and

all the other delights sung by Lefroy and Norman Gale and that other

poet--anonymous, but you know the man--in his incomparable parody of

Whitman: 'the perfect feel of a fourer'--

"'The thousand melodious cracks, delicious cracks, the responsive

echoes of my comrades and the hundred thence resulting runs,

passionately yearned for, never, never again to be forgotten.

"'Overhead meanwhile the splendid silent sun, blending all, fusing

all, bathing all in floods of soft ecstatic perspiration.'

"--To all this we must say good-bye. And what do you offer us in

exchange?"

"Merely the old consolation that life is short, art is long; that while

you grow old, cricket in other hands will be working out its perfection,

and your son, when you have one, will start with higher ideals than you

ever dreamed of."

"And this perfection--will it ever be attained?"

"I dare say never. For perhaps we may say after Plato, and without

irreverence, that the pattern of perfect cricket is laid up somewhere in

the skies, and out of man's reach. But between it and ordinary cricket we

may set up a copy of perfection, as close as man can make it, and, by

little and little, closer every year. This copy will be preserved, and

cared for, and advanced, by those professional cricketers against whom the

unthinking have so much to say; by these and by the few amateurs who, as

time goes on, will be found able to bear the strain. For the search after

perfection is no light one, and will admit of no half-hearted service.

I say nothing here of material rewards, beyond reminding you that your

professional cricketer is poorly paid in comparison with an inferior

singer of the music-halls, although he gives twice as much pleasure as

your _lion comique_, and of a more innocent kind. But he does more than

this. He feeds and guards the flame of art; and when his joints are stiff

and his vogue is past, he goes down as groundman and instructor to a

public school, and imparts to a young generation what knowledge he can of

the high mysteries whose servant he has been: quite like the philosopher

in the _Republic_--"

"Steady on!" interposed Grayson. "How on earth will the Boy stand up to

Briggs' bowling if you put these notions in his head? He'll be

awe-struck, and begin to fidget with his right foot."

"Oh, fire ahead!" said that cheerful youth. He had possessed himself of

Prince Ranjitsinhji's book and coiled himself comfortably into a wicker

chair.--"You're only rotting, I know. And you've passed over the most

important sentence in the whole book. Listen to this: 'There are very few

newspaper readers who do not turn to the cricket column first when the

morning journal comes; who do not buy a halfpenny evening paper to find

out how many runs W.G. or Bobby Abel has made.' That's the long and short

of the matter. Verinder, which do you read first in your morning paper--

the Foreign Intelligence or the Cricket News?"