_HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER_
The loved and honoured friend whose name stands at the head of
this section was the fourth son and, youngest child of Dr. George
Butler, Dean of Peterborough, and sometime Head Master of Harrow.
Montagu Butler was himself-educated at Harrow under Dr. Vaughan,
afterwards the well-known Master of the Temple, and proved to be
in many respects the ideal schoolboy. He won all the prizes for
composition, prose and verse, Greek, Latin, and English. He gained
the principal scholarship, and was Head of the School. Beside all
this, he was a member of the Cricket Eleven and made the highest
score for Harrow in the match against Eton at Lord's.
In July, 1851, Montagu Butler left Harrow, and in the following
October entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a Scholar. He won
the Bell University Scholarship, the Battie University Scholarship,
the Browne Medal for a Greek Ode twice, the Camden Medal, Porson
Prize, and First Member's Prize for a Latin Essay, and graduated as
Senior Classic in 1855. Of such an undergraduate career a Fellowship
at Trinity was the natural sequel, but Butler did not long reside
at Cambridge. All through his boyhood and early manhood he had
set his heart on a political career. He had a minute acquaintance
with the political history of modern England, and his memory was
stored with the masterpieces of political eloquence.
In 1856 he accepted the post of Private Secretary to the Right Hon.
W. F. Cowper, afterwards Lord Mount Temple, and then President of the
Board of Health in Lord Palmerston's Administration. In this office
he served for two years, and then, retiring, he spent eleven months
in foreign travel, visiting in turn the Tyrol, Venice, the Danube,
Greece, Rome, Florence, and the Holy Land. During this period, he
changed his plan of life, and in September, 1859, he was ordained
Deacon by Bishop Lonsdale of Lichfield, on Letters Dimissory from
Bishop Turton of Ely. His title was his Fellowship; but it was
settled that the College should present him to the Vicarage of
Great St. Mary's, Cambridge; and till it was vacant he was to have
worked as a classical tutor in Trinity. Then came another change.
"Dr. Vaughan's retirement," he wrote, "from the Head Mastership
of Harrow startled us. We all took quietly for granted that he
would stay on for years." However, this "startling" retirement
took place, and there was a general agreement among friends of
the School that Vaughan's favourite pupil, Montagu Butler, was
the right man to succeed him. Accordingly, Butler was elected in
November, 1859, though only twenty-six years old; and, with a view
to the pastoral oversight of Harrow School, he was ordained priest,
again by Bishop Lonsdale, at Advent, 1859.
In January, 1860, Montagu Butler entered on his new duties at Harrow,
and there he spent five-and-twenty years of happy, strenuous, and
serviceable life. He found 469 boys in the School; under his rule
the numbers increased till they reached 600.
Butler's own culture was essentially classical, for he had been
fashioned by Vaughan, who "thought in Greek," and he himself might
almost have been said to think and feel in Latin elegiacs. But his
scholarship was redeemed from pedantry by his wide reading, and
by his genuine enthusiasm for all that is graceful in literature,
modern as well as ancient. Under his rule the "grand, old, fortifying,
classical curriculum," which Matthew Arnold satirized, fought hard
and long for its monopoly; but gradually it had to yield. Butler's
first concession was to relax the absurd rule which had made Latin
versification obligatory on every boy in the School, whatever his
gifts or tastes. At the same time he introduced the regular teaching
of Natural Science, and in 1869 he created a "Modern Side." An even
more important feature of his rule was the official encouragement
given to the study of music, which, from an illicit indulgence practised
in holes and corners, became, under the energetic management of Mr.
John Farmer, a prime element in the life of the School.
In January, 1868, Butler admitted me to Harrow School. My father had
introduced me to him in the previous September, and I had fallen at
once under his charm. He was curiously unlike what one had imagined
a Head Master to be--not old and pompous and austere, but young and
gracious, friendly in manner, and very light in hand. His leading
characteristic was gracefulness. He was graceful in appearance, tall and
as yet slender; graceful in movement and gesture; graceful in writing,
and pre-eminently graceful in speech. He was young--thirty-four--and
looked younger, although (availing himself of the opportunity afforded
by an illness in the summer of 1867) he had just grown a beard.
He had a keen sense of humour, and was not afraid to display it
before boys, although he was a little pampered by a sense of the
solemn reverence due not only to what was sacred, but to everything
that was established and official. To breakfast with a Head Master
is usually rather an awful experience, but there was no awe about
the pleasant meals in Butler's dining-room (now the head Master's
study), for he was unaffectedly kind, overflowing with happiness,
and tactful in adapting his conversation to the capacities of his
guests.
It was rather more alarming to face him at the periodical inspection
of one's Form. ("Saying to the Head Master" was the old phrase, then
lapsing out of date.) We used to think that he found a peculiar interest
in testing the acquirements of such boys as he knew personally, and
of those whose parents were his friends; so that on these occasions
it was a doubtful privilege to "know him," as the phrase is, "at
home." Till one reached the Sixth Form these social and official
encounters with Butler were one's only opportunities of meeting
him at close quarters; but every Sunday evening we heard him preach
in the Chapel, and the cumulative effect of his sermons was, at
least in many cases, great. They were always written in beautifully
clear and fluent English, and were often decorated with a fine
quotation in prose or verse. In substance they were extraordinarily
simple, though not childish. For example, he often preached on
such practical topics as Gambling, National Education; and the
Housing of the Poor, as well as on themes more obviously and directly
religious. He was at his best in commemorating a boy who had died
in the School, when his genuine sympathy with sorrow made itself
unmistakably felt. But whatever was the subject, whether public or
domestic, he always treated it in the same simply Christian spirit.
I know from his own lips that he had never passed through those
depths of spiritual experience which go to make a great preacher;
but his sermons revealed in every sentence a pure, chivalrous, and
duty-loving heart. One of his intimate friends once spoke of his
"Arthur-like" character, and the epithet was exactly right.
His most conspicuous gift was unquestionably his eloquence. His
fluency, beauty of phrase, and happy power of turning "from grave
to gay, from lively to severe," made him extraordinarily effective
on a platform or at a social gathering. Once (in the autumn of
1870) he injured his right arm, and so was prevented from writing
his sermons. For three or four Sundays he preached extempore, and
even boys who did not usually care for sermons were fascinated
by his oratory.
In the region of thought I doubt if he exercised any great influence.
To me he never seemed to have arrived at his conclusions by any
process of serious reasoning. He held strongly and conscientiously
a certain number of conventions--a kind of Palmerstonian Whiggery,
a love of "spirited foreign policy;" an admiration for the military
character, an immense regard for the Crown, for Parliament, and
for all established institutions (he was much shocked when the
present Bishop of Oxford spoke in the Debating Society in favour of
Republicanism); and in every department of life he paid an almost
superstitious reverence to authority. I once ventured to tell him
that even a beadle was a sacred being in his eyes, and he did not
deny the soft impeachment.
His intellectual influence was not in the region of thought, but in
that of expression. His scholarship was essentially literary. He had
an instinctive and unaffected love of all that was beautiful, whether
in prose or verse, in Greek, Latin, or English. His reading was wide
and thorough. Nobody knew Burke so well, and he had a contagious
enthusiasm for Parliamentary oratory. In composition he had a _curiosa
felicitas_ in the strictest meaning of the phrase; for his felicity
was the product of care. To go through a prize-exercise with him
was a real joy, so generous was his appreciation, so fastidious
his taste, so dexterous his substitution of the telling for the
ineffective word, and so palpably genuine his enjoyment of the
business.
As a ruler his most noticeable quality was his power of discipline.
He was feared--and a Head Master who is not feared is not fit for
his post; and by bad boys he was hated, and by most good boys he
was loved. By most, but not by all. There were some, even among the
best, who resented his system of minute regulation, his "Chinese
exactness" in trivial detail, his tendency to treat the tiniest
breach of a School rule as if it were an offence against the moral
law.
I think it may be said, in general terms, that those who knew him
best loved him most. He had by nature a passionate temper, but
it was grandly controlled, and seldom, if ever, led him into an
injustice. His munificence in giving was unequalled in my experience.
He was the warmest and staunchest of friends; through honour and
dishonour, storm and sunshine, weal or woe, always and exactly the
same. His memory for anything associated with his pupils careers
was extraordinarily retentive, and he was even passionately loyal
to _Auld Lang Syne_. And there is yet another characteristic which
claims emphatic mention in any attempt to estimate his influence.
He was conspicuously and essentially a gentleman. In appearance,
manner, speech, thought, and act, this gentlemanlike quality of his
nature made itself felt; and it roused in such as were susceptible
of the spell an admiration which the most meritorious teachers have
often, by sheer boorishness forfeited.
Time out of mind, a Head Mastership has been regarded as a
stepping-stone to a Bishopric--with disastrous results to the
Church--and in Butler's case it seemed only too likely that the
precedent would be followed. Gladstone, when Prime Minister, once
said to a Harrovian colleague, "What sort of Bishop would your
old master, Dr. Butler, make?" "The very worst," was the reply.
"He is quite ignorant of the Church, and would try to discipline
his clergy like school-boys. But there is one place for which he
is peculiarly qualified--the Mastership of Trinity." And the Prime
Minister concurred. In June, 1885, Gladstone was driven from office,
and was succeeded by Lord Salisbury. In October, 1886, the Master of
Trinity (Dr. W. H. Thompson) died, and Salisbury promptly offered
the Mastership to Dr. Butler, who had for a year been Dean of
Gloucester. It is not often that a man is designated for the same
great post by two Prime Ministers of different politics.
At Trinity, though at first he had to live down certain amount of
jealousy and ill-feeling, Butler's power and influence increased
steadily from year to year, and towards the end he was universally
respected and admired. A resident contemporary writes: "He was
certainly a Reformer, but not a violent one. His most conspicuous
services to the College were, in my opinion, these: (1) Sage guidance
of the turbulent and uncouth democracy of which a College Governing
body consists. (2) A steady aim at the highest in education, being
careful to secure the position of literary education from the
encroachments of science and mathematics. (3) Affectionate stimulus
to all undergraduates who need it, especially Old Harrovians. (4)
The maintenance of the dignity and commanding position of Trinity
and consequently of the University in the world at large."
To Cambridge generally Butler endeared himself by his eager interest
in all good enterprises, by his stirring oratory and persuasive
preaching, and by his lavish hospitality. As Vice-Chancellor, in
1889 and 1890, he worthily maintained the most dignified traditions
of academical office. Those who knew him both on the religious
and on the social side will appreciate the judgment said to have
been pronounced by Canon Mason, then Master of Pembroke: "Butler
will be saved, like Rahab, by hospitality and faith."