THE TALL STUDENT
Peterhouse—Quoits and Billiards—Trinity Hall—A
Fellowship—Lincoln’s Inn.
[Sidenote: The new Under-graduate.]
Harry knew that for his father’s sake it was necessary for him to be
self-supporting as soon as possible, and therefore chose his college on
purely financial grounds. He went to Peterhouse, where the fellowships
could be held by laymen, and were reported to be of unusual value.
His great friend, Sir Leslie Stephen, saw him there for the first time.
We cannot do better than quote from Sir Leslie’s biography of Fawcett
the impression his subject then made upon him:
‘I saw Fawcett for the first time a few months after his entrance (in
October 1852).... I could point to the precise spot on the bank of the
Cam where I noticed a very tall, gaunt figure swinging along with huge
strides upon the towing path. He was over 6 feet 3 inches in height. His
chest, I should say, was not very broad in proportion to his height, but
he was remarkably large of bone and massive of limb.
‘The face was impressive, though not handsome. The skull was very large;
my own head vanished as into a cavern if I accidentally put on his hat.
The forehead was lofty, though rather retreating, and the brow finely
arched.
‘The complexion was rather dull, but more than one of his early
acquaintance speaks of the brightness of his eye and the keenness of his
glance. The eyes were full and capable of vivid expression, though not,
I think, brilliant in colour. The features were strong, and, though not
delicately carved, were far from heavy, and gave a general impression of
remarkable energy. The mouth long, thin-lipped, and very flexible, had a
characteristic nervous tremor as of one eager to speak and voluble of
discourse....
‘A certain wistfulness was a frequent shade of expression. But a
singularly hearty and cordial laugh constantly lighted up the whole face
with an expression of most genial and infectious good-humour.[3-1]
Footnote 3-1:
Sir Leslie Stephen, speaking of the photograph reproduced to face p.
26, says, ‘The rather peculiar expression of the eyes results from the
weakness of sight presently to be noticed which made him shrink from
any strong light.’
‘On my first glimpse of Fawcett, however, I was troubled by a question
of classification. I vaguely speculated as to whether he was an
undergraduate, or a young farmer, or possibly somebody connected with
horses at Newmarket, come over to see the sights. He had a certain
rustic air, in strong contrast to that of the young Pendennises who
might stroll along the bank to make a book upon the next boat race.
[Illustration: HENRY FAWCETT BEFORE HE WAS BLIND]
‘He rather resembled some of the athletic figures who may be seen at the
side of a north-country wrestling-ring. Indeed, I fancy that Fawcett may
have inherited from his father some of the characteristics of the true
long-legged, long-limbed Dandie Dinmont type of north-countryman. The
impression was, no doubt, fixed in my mental camera because I was soon
afterwards surprised by seeing my supposed rustic dining in our College
Hall. I insist upon this because it may indicate Fawcett’s superficial
characteristics on his first appearance at Cambridge.
‘Many qualities, which all his friends came to recognise sooner or
later, were for the present rather latent, or, maybe, undeveloped. The
first glance revealed the stalwart, bucolic figure, with features
stamped by intelligence, but that kind of intelligence which we should
rather call shrewdness than by any higher name.’
[Sidenote: Sports and Games.]
At first the men of his own year were inclined to estimate Harry as an
outsider in sports and games. His simple provincial ways gave little
sign of expert skill. But he won his way in dramatic fashion. An
undergraduate nick-named the ‘Captain’ challenged him to a game of
quoits. Salisbury’s native game is quoits; Harry was well trained, and
won easily. Then the battle shifted to billiards. Captain’s score pushed
steadily ahead until in a game of a hundred points he had ninety-six to
Harry’s seventy-five: four points more for the Captain, twenty-five for
Harry. The onlookers vociferously offered ten to one on the Captain.
Fawcett gravely took all the bets offered at this rate, and any others
that he could get, and then calmly, in a single break, made the
twenty-five necessary points.
[Sidenote: A successful Game of Billiards.]
Fawcett is quoted as having given this account, ‘Bets were forced on me;
but the odds were really more than ten to one against my making
twenty-five in any position of the balls, but I saw a stroke which I
knew that I could make, and which would leave me a fine game.’ No matter
by what magic the feat was achieved, it filled his pockets, and cleared
for ever any doubts in his companions’ minds as to the capacity and
shrewdness of ‘Old Serpent,’ as he was then dubbed, and by which
nickname he went for a brief time.
He never gambled again. The story is paralleled in later years by an
equally solitary financial speculation. He then showed the same
quickness in seizing the facts and calculating the chances, the same
boldness in acting on his own judgment, and the same restraint in not
repeating the adventure.
He disapproved of gambling, and had a wholesome dislike of it. His sense
of fun made it impossible for him ever to have a holier-than-thou
attitude, but his common sense and natural goodness kept him singularly
free from the failings so common among his associates. While anything
but a Puritan, he ‘was in all senses perfectly blameless in his life.’
[Sidenote: Making Friends.]
He had a rare talent for friendship, attracting people to him as easily
as he was attracted to them, and his faculty of making friends and
keeping them held to the end. He was never known to lose a friend.
Those who knew him well appreciated his strong intellectual equipment.
Perhaps his chief characteristics were his absolute normality, his
remarkable freedom from self-consciousness, his common sense, and his
ever-present sense of fun. These early years at the university, when the
lank boy was emerging into the statesman, were years of great happiness
and joviality. Fawcett found many congenial spirits, and formed
intimacies among men destined to distinguished careers. Most of his
associates were good workers, but not particularly given to intellectual
subtleties. Music made slight appeal to him, and he was flagrantly
ignorant of classics and modern languages, and made no pretence to
culture. The young Cambridge men of this period were greatly afraid of
sentimentality, and devotees of the ‘God of Things as they are.’
But there was one subject peculiarly attractive to the men with whom
Fawcett consorted—political economy. And in those days political economy
meant Mill. His book, gathering together all the last words of the
science, had been written a very few years before Fawcett went to
Cambridge. It had had a phenomenal success, and it and its author were
enjoying a phenomenal authority. Edward Wilson, a brilliant Senior, well
represented the feeling of his day, when he would confute all opposition
by an apt quotation, leaving Mill triumphantly supreme, and then close
his vindication with the cry, ‘Read Mill! Read Mill!’ Fawcett did, from
early till late, until he knew the book by heart. As he was thoroughly
inoculated with this cult, his reverence for Mill was one of his strong
steadfast beliefs through life.
Fawcett begrudged time taken from his books, and never rowed in his
college boat, although Sir Leslie Stephen writes:
[Sidenote: Boating.]
‘That he occasionally performed in the second boat, I remember by this
circumstance, that I can still hear him proclaiming in stentorian tones
and in good vernacular from an attic window to a captain of the boat on
the opposite side of the quadrangle, and consequently to all bystanders
below, that he had a pain in his inside and must decline to row. I have
some reason to think that he had felt bad effects from some previous
exertions, and had been warned by a doctor against straining himself. I
have an impression that there was some weakness in the heart’s action.
Fawcett, like many men who enjoy unbroken health, was a little nervous
about any trifling symptoms. One day we found him lying in bed,
complaining lustily of his sufferings, and stating that he had
dispatched a messenger to bring him at once the first doctor attainable.
A doctor arrived, and his first question as to the nature of Fawcett’s
last dinner resolved the consultation into a general explosion of
laughter, in which the patient joined most heartily.’
It was characteristic of Fawcett that he treated all men as equals, and
took from them the best of what they had to offer. He became intimate
with men of all ages. Mr. Hopkins, a Peterhouse man, with whom Fawcett
read, had received his B.A. in 1827, twenty-five years before Fawcett’s
appearance at Cambridge; but this difference in age did not prevent a
close bond. Fawcett never alluded to Hopkins without great enthusiasm,
and in the days of his grave trial this friend was the most helpful of
all. He was of great service in the first years at Cambridge, urging
Fawcett to regard the mathematical studies necessary for taking a good
degree as valuable intellectual gymnastics. Fawcett with his usual
keenness and common sense was quite alive to the fact that a good degree
was a distinct commercial asset, and said that he would rather be Senior
Wrangler in the worst year than second to Sir Isaac Newton. His definite
aim in life—a political career—made any wanderings into study for its
own sake of no interest to him. He planned through life so to select
that he might obtain.
From the days of declaiming in the chalk-pit at Queenwood, Fawcett had
realised the value of public speaking.
[Sidenote: The Debater.]
The great Macaulay, Sir William Harcourt, and other distinguished men
had tried their oratorical pinions in flights at the Debating Club
called ‘The Union.’ Fawcett joined, and after some tentative efforts,
despite his friends’ amusement and discouragement, boldly won his way,
and became a good speaker. He worked over his orations carefully, and by
great persistence gained an easy and fearless manner of speaking, and we
find that he opened debates on National Education and University Reform.
In these years the events which led to the Crimean War provided the
chief subjects of debate, such as the foreign policy of Austria and
Prussia, the independence of Poland, and the character of the Emperor
Nicholas. On these questions Fawcett did not share the views of John
Bright, who was then making his great speeches on behalf of peace; but
the undergraduate’s democratic sympathies are clearly shown in his
advocacy of non-sectarian National Education, of a motion that ‘the
party called “Cobdenites” have done the country good service,’ or in
favour of a ‘considerable extension of the franchise,’ and of
‘University Reform.’
[Sidenote: Good-bye to Grandiloquence.]
It was during this period of careful self-training that Fawcett
gradually reduced his style of speaking to that simplicity and
directness which became so marked throughout his career. There is a
lingering trace of grandiloquence and schoolboy rhetoric in an essay
written on the merit of Pope’s poetry, but that seems to have been his
swan-song to elocution with frills.
[Sidenote: The Friend of Friends.]
Fawcett left Peterhouse in his second year, and went to Trinity Hall as
a pensioner, thus reducing the expense to his father. There chances for
scholarship were alluring, and several immigrants from other colleges
joined forces at Trinity Hall. There also he met Leslie Stephen, his
lifelong friend and biographer, who speaks of this friendship as ‘one of
the greatest privileges of my life.’
Fawcett set to work with a will to carry off the Senior Wranglership. We
are told that in the Tripos, for the first and the last time in his
life, Fawcett’s nerve failed. Though he got out of bed and ran round the
college quadrangle to exhaust himself, he could not sleep, and failed to
gain the success which meant so much to him. He sank to seventh; but in
spite of his comparative failure he had shown marked ability, and made
so great an impression by his work, that he was elected to a fellowship
at Christmas 1856.
[Sidenote: Pounds and Pence.]
He adhered to his boyish ambition of entering Parliament, but there were
still great obstacles in his way. Beyond his fellowship, which brought
him £250 a year, he had no income of his own. His father was not a rich
man, and the strain on his purse to support his other three children was
sufficient. Harry resolved, therefore, to make his way by a career at
the Bar, and while still at Cambridge entered Lincoln’s Inn. When he had
won his fellowship he settled in London, and set himself to study law.
No one who came in contact with him at this time had any doubt that he
would arrive at his goal by main force. A friendly firm of solicitors
had already promised that he should have opportunities, and his great
talent for working well with all sorts of people, his genius for
friendship, and his real business ability bid well for the success of
his plan. His will was inflexible, his good-nature chronic, and his
acuteness of mind and general ability far beyond the average.
In the mimic legislature of the Westminster Debating Society, which
consisted of young barristers and journalists, Fawcett soon became the
leader of the Radical party. The organisation followed the form of the
House of Commons. It is said that Bulwer Lytton had once paid it a
visit, and said afterwards that he had entered in a fit of abstraction,
mistaking it for the House of Commons, and only discovered his error
upon finding that there were no dull speeches and no one asleep, which
seems to prove that it must have been a most remarkable society.
One of his contemporaries, who saw Fawcett in the height of these
pseudo-Parliamentary triumphs, speaks of his ‘resonant voice, wild hair,
and expressive eyes.’ But just at this point, when he seemed to be
setting with full sail on the channel towards success, his eyes began to
trouble him.