the Church at heart that something more than twelve months' book-work
and a week of religious retirement was required to wean the ordinary
B.A. from the puerilities--if nothing worse--of his Undergraduate
life, and to equip him for a life of Pastorship and Teachership. The
sense of this need gave rise to the creation of Theological Colleges,
where a man who looked forward to Holy Orders might, after taking his
ordinary degree at Oxford or Cambridge, apply himself to the studies
more specially necessary for his chosen work, and--even more important
still--might acquire the habits of methodical and self-disciplined
life. The idea took shape in such foundations as the Theological
Colleges of Wells, Cuddesdon, Sarum, and Ely, the _Scholæ Cancellarii_
at Lincoln, and the Clergy School at Leeds. Fighting their way through
all manner of strange misrepresentations about Monasticism and
Mediævalism, they have in the course of years attained to recognition,
popularity, and apparent stability. The bishops patronize them warmly,
and incumbents who desire curates not wholly ignorant of their craft
are increasingly unwilling to engage one who has not passed through a
Theological College. That the broad result of the training given in
these seminaries is a general increase in clerical efficiency I cannot
doubt, but perhaps a layman may be permitted to point out some curious
gaps and lapses in that training which go some way towards making
clergymen less esteemed, and therefore less influential, than they
ought to be.
1. The Clergy are not taught to be courteous. If they are courteous by
nature and habit, well and good; but a rough Undergraduate, destitute
of sympathy and tact and ignorant of social usage, passes through a
Theological College and comes out as rough as he entered it. A Bear in
Holy Orders is as destructive as a Bull in a China Shop.
2. The Clergy are not taught to manage money; they muddle their public
accounts; they beg money for one object and use it for another; they
seldom acknowledge what they receive by post; and they have absolutely
no notion of cutting their coat according to their cloth. "Spend and
beg, and the money will come from somewhere" is their simple and
sufficient creed.
3. The Clergy are not taught business. They have not the faintest
notion of conducting a public meeting. They lose their way in
the agenda-paper of the most insignificant committee. They break
appointments at their will and pleasure. They seldom answer letters,
and are frankly astonished when their correspondents are annoyed.
4. The Clergy are not taught the Science of Citizenship. Outside their
strictly professional studies (and, in some cases, the records of
athleticism) they are the most ignorant set of young men in the world.
They work hard and play hard, but they never read. They know nothing
of books, nothing of history, nothing of the Constitution under which
they live, of the principles and records of political parties, of the
need for social reform or the means of securing it. They have a vague
but clinging notion that Radicals are Infidels, and that Dissenters, if
they got their deserts, would have their heads punched.
Sixty years ago an Italian critic said that, in spite of all their
defects, the English clergy were "Un clero colto e civile." Could as
much be said to-day?
XIV
PILGRIMAGES
I use the word in something wider than Chaucer's sense, and yet in a
sense not wholly different from his. For, though we no longer make an
annual visit to the Shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, still we all
feel bound, at least once a year, to go somewhere and do something
quite out of our normal course. Perhaps, like Chaucer's friends, we
"long" to do this in April, but the claims of business are generally
too strong for us; so we have to content ourselves with admiring the
peeps of greenery which begin to invade the soot of our urban gardens,
and, if we are of a cultured habit, we can always quote Browning's
Thrush or strain the kalendar so as to admit Wordsworth's Daffodils.
This notion of a yearly Pilgrimage as a necessity of rightly-ordered
life seems to have fallen into a long abeyance. "Dan Chaucer" (for I
love to be on easy terms with great men) described the social customs
of the fourteenth century, and then the Pilgrimage seems to have been
an established institution: "Tom Hughes" described those of the
eighteenth, and this is what, writing in 1862, he says about the annual
Pilgrimages of his own time:--
"I have been credibly informed, and am inclined to believe, that the
various Boards of Directors of Railway Companies agreed together some
ten years back to buy up the learned profession of Medicine, body and
soul. To this end they set apart several millions of money, which they
continually distribute judiciously among the Doctors, stipulating
only this one thing--that they shall prescribe change of air to every
patient who can pay, or borrow money to pay, a railway fare, and see
their prescription carried out. If it be not for this, why is it that
none of us can be well at home for a year together? It wasn't so twenty
years ago--not a bit of it. The Browns did not go out of the county
once in five years."
The Browns, as we all know, stood in Mr. Hughes's vocabulary for the
Upper Middle Class of England--the class to which the clergy, the
smaller squires, and the professional men belong; the class which
in Chaucer's time contained the "Man of Lawe," the "Marchande," the
"Franklyne," and the "Doctore of Phisyke"; and, although Mr. Hughes,
who ought to know, says that in the earlier part of Queen Victoria's
reign they were a stay-at-home class, they are now the most regular and
the most zealous of Pilgrims. It was the majestic misfortune of the
Duke in "Lothair" to have so many houses that he had no home. People
so circumstanced do not need to go on Pilgrimages. After the autumn in
a Scotch Castle, the winter in a country house in the Midlands, the
spring in another in the Southern Counties, and the season in Grosvenor
Square, people are glad of a little rest, and seek it in some "proud
alcove" on the Thames or a sea-girt villa at Cowes. Unless their livers
drive them to Carlsbad or their hearts to Nauheim, they do not travel,
but display what Lord Beaconsfield called "the sustained splendour of
their stately lives" in the many mansions which, in the aggregate,
represent to them the idea of Home. I might perhaps on another occasion
sketch the Grand Tour of Europe, on which, for educational purposes,
the Earl of Fitzurse used to send his eldest son, young Lord Cubley;
compressed, with his tutor and doctor, into a travelling-carriage, with
a valet and a courier in the rumble. The Duke of Argyll's Autobiography
has just told us what this kind of Pilgrimage was like; but to-day I am
dealing with the present rather than the past.
It is the people with one house who go on Pilgrimages nowadays--the
impoverished squire, the smoke-dried clergyman, the exhausted merchant,
the harried editor. To these must be added all the inhabitants, male
and female, of Lodging-land and Flat-land,--all "the dim, common
populations" of Stuccovia and Suburbia. There are mysterious laws
of association which connect classes with localities. Tradesmen love
Margate; to clerks Scarborough is dear. The Semitic financier has long
claimed Brighton for his own. Costermongers go hop-picking in Kent;
artizans disport themselves on the nigger-haunted pier of Southend.
Governed by some mysterious law of their being, schoolmasters make
straight for the Alps. There they live the strenuous life and brave
the perilous ascent; climb and puff and pant all day; rush in, very
untidy and not very clean, to _table d'hôte_; and season their meal
with the "shop" of St. Winifred's or the gay banter of Rosslyn
Common-room. It is agreeable to watch the forced cordiality, the thin
tutorial humour, with which they greet some quite irresponsive pupil
who happens to have strayed into the same hotel; and I have often
had occasion to admire the precocious dexterity with which the pupil
extricates himself from this dreaded companionship. Of Mr. Gladstone it
was said by his detractors that he had something of the Schoolmaster
in his composition; and this trait was aptly illustrated when, during
the summer holidays some fifty years ago, he met the late Duchess of
Abercorn in a country house accompanied by her schoolboy son, Lord
George Hamilton. Not many mornings had elapsed before Mr. Gladstone
said to the boy's mother, "Duchess, don't you think it a pity that your
son should spend his holidays in entire idleness? I should be happy
to give him an hour's Homer every morning." The offer was accepted,
and the foundation of Lord George's lifelong hostility to the Liberal
leader was securely laid. It is the nervous dread of some such awful
possibility which supplies wings to the boy's feet and lies to his
tongue when he encounters Dr. Grimstone or Basil Warde in a Swiss hotel.
While the Schoolmaster limits his aspirations to the Alps, the Oxford
or Cambridge Don, having a longer vacation at his command, takes a
more extended view, and urges his adventurous Pilgrimage along roads
less trite. A few years ago an Oxford Don resolved to strike out what
was then a quite new line, and spend his Long Vacation in Portugal.
Conscious of insufficient acquaintance with the Portuguese language,
he repaired to Mr. Parker's excellent shop in the Turl and enquired
for a Portuguese Phrase-book. After some research, that never-failing
bookseller produced "The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese
and English." The book had an instant and a deserved success. The
preface sets forth that "a choice of familiar dialogues, clean of
gallicisms and despoiled phrases, it was missing yet to studious
Portuguese and Brazilian youth; and also to persons of other nations
that wish to know the Portuguese language." To supply this felt want
Pedro Carolino compiled his hand-book for "the acceptation of the
studious persons, and especially of the Youth, at which we dedicate
him particularly." Among those studious persons was our Pilgrim-Don,
who naturally turned in the first instance to a dialogue headed
"FOR TO TRAVEL
When do you start?
As soon as I shall have to finish a business at Cadiz.
Have you already arrested a coach?
Yes, sir, and very cheap.
Have you great deal of effects?
Two trunks and one portmanteau.
You may prepare all for to-morrow. We shall start at the coolness.
The way, is it good?
Very good.
At which inn shall stop us?
In that of the Sun, it is the best. The account mount is little. The
supper, the bed, and the breakfast shall get up at thirty franks.
That seems to me a little dear."
The next dialogue follows in the natural order:--
"FOR TO BREAKFAST
John, bring us some thing for to breakfast.
Yes, sir; there is some sausages and some meat pies. Will you that I
bring the ham?
Yes, bring him, we will cut a steak.
Put an nappe cloth upon this table.
Give us some plates, any knifes, and some forks, rinse the glasses.
I have eaten with satisfaction some pudding, sausages, and some ham. I
shall take some tea.
Still a not her cup?
I thank you it is enough."
Breakfast over, the traveller engages a guide and starts out
"FOR TO SEE THE TOWN
We won't to see all that is it remarquable here.
Come with me, if you please. I shall not folget nothing what can to
merit your attention. Here we are near to cathedraly. Will you come in
there?
We will first go to see him in oudside, after we shall go in there for
to look the interior."
A day of sight-seeing concludes happily with the ever-welcome dialogue--
"FOR TO DINE
Give us a rice soup.
What wine do you like best?
Bourgogne wine.
Give us some beef and potatoes, a beefsteak to the English.
What you shall take for dessert?
Give us some Hollande cheese and some prunes.
I will take a glass of brandy at the cherries.
Gentlemen, don't forget the waiter."
Parsimony is a bond which makes the whole world kin, and it is
interesting to find embedded in 182 closely-printed pages of "despoiled
phrases" two such characteristic specimens of sound English as "That
seems to me a little dear" and "Don't forget the waiter."
XV
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
"Gentlemen," said Dr. Blimber to his pupils on the eve of the holidays,
"we will resume our studies on the twenty-fifth of next month." But
that adjournment, I think, was for Christmas, and we are now in what
Matthew Arnold's delicious schoolboy called "the glad season of sun
and flowers." Very soon, in Dr. Farrar's romantic phrase, "the young
life which usually plays like the sunshine over St. Winifred's will be
pouring unwonted brightness into many happy English homes." Or, to take
Mr. Snawley's darker view of the same event, we shall be in the thick
of one of "those ill-judged comings home twice a year that unsettle
children's minds so."
The associations of the moment, so different in their effects on
different natures, have awoke the spirit of prophecy in the late Head
Master of Eton, Dr. Warre, who, projecting his soul into futurity,
sees dark days coming for the "Public Schools" as that phrase has been
hitherto understood. It was clear, said Dr. Warre, after distributing
the prizes at Shrewsbury, "that ere long the Public Schools would
have to justify not only their _curriculum_, but, it might be, their
very existence. The spirit of the age seemed to be inclined towards
Utilitarianism, and it was now tending to undervalue the humanities
and the culture that attended them, and to demand what it appreciated
as a useful and practical training--_i.e._ something capable of making
boys breadwinners as soon as they left school. He did not say that
view would ultimately prevail, but the trend of public opinion in that
direction would necessitate on the part of Public Schools a period of
self-criticism, and very probably a reorganization of _curricula_. But
there was another problem to be faced which would become more serious
as the century waxed older, and that was a new phase of competition. As
secondary education expanded, secondary day-schools would be provided
regardless of expense, and it was idle to think this would have no
effect upon great Public Schools. What would be weighed in the balance,
however, was the value of the corporate life and aggregate influence of
the Public Schools upon the formation of character."
When ex-Head Masters begin to see visions and Old Etonians to dream
dreams, the ordinary citizen, with his traditional belief in the virtue
and permanence of Public Schools, must rub his eyes in astonishment.
What is going to happen next? Is Eton to abandon "taste" and take to
"useful knowledge"? Is Harrow to close its Boarding Houses and become a
village Day School once more? Are Wykeham's "seventy faithful boys" (as
the late Lord Selborne called them in his first attempt at verse) no
longer to "tund" or be "tunded"? Is Westminster to forswear its Latin
Play, and replace the "Phormio" and the "Trinummus" with "Box and Cox"
and "Ici on Parle Français"?
These enquiries, and others like them, are forced on our attention
by such subversive discourse as Dr. Warre's; and that incursion of
rampant boyhood which begins with the beginning of August reinforces
the eloquence of the ex-Head Master. The Retreat of the Ten Thousand,
which used to worry us in our youth, was not half so formidable an
affair as the Advance of the Ten Thousand, schoolboys though they be,
who just now overrun the land. There they are, an army ever increasing
in numbers and maintained at an immense expense. Whatever commercial
and agricultural depression may have effected in other quarters, it
did not touch the schools of England. The greater schools are full to
overflowing; provincial schools have doubled and trebled their numbers;
and every Elizabethan and Edwardian foundation in the Kingdom has woke
from slumber and celebrated at least a Tercentenary. And all this is
not done for nothing. Private schoolmasters take shootings in Scotland;
the proprietors of Boarding-houses at the Public Schools buy villas
in the Riviera, and build pineries and vineries at home; meanwhile the
British Parent eyes his diminishing income and his increasing rates,
and asks himself, in the secrecy of his own heart, what Tommy is really
getting in return for the £200 a year expended on his education. The
answer takes various forms. Perhaps Tommy is following the "grand, old
fortifying classical curriculum" which sufficed for Lord Lumpington,
and enabled the Rev. Esau Hittall to compose his celebrated "Longs and
Shorts on the Calydonian Boar." In this case the parent says, with
Rawdon Crawley, "Stick to it, my boy; there's nothing like a good
classical education--nothing," but he generally is too diffident about
his own accomplishments to subject his sons to a very searching test.
Perhaps one boy in a hundred learns enough Latin and Greek at school to
fit him for a good place in the Classical Tripos or a "First in Mods."
This, if he is meant to be a schoolmaster, is a definite and tangible
result from his father's investment; if he is intended for any other
profession the advantage is not so clear. If he is to be a Soldier, no
doubt there is the "Army Class" or the "Modern School," where, indeed,
he is exempted from Greek, is taught some mathematics, and acquires
some very English French and German; but, in spite of these privileges,
he generally requires a year's residence at a crammer's before he has
a chance for Sandhurst. For the ordinary life of the Professions the
Public School makes no preparation whatever. Tommy may have acquired
"taste," but he is no more qualified to be, as Dr. Warre says, a
"bread-winner" than he was the day he began school-life.
Matthew Arnold, in his delightful essay on "An Eton Boy," says, with
regard to that boy's prowess as Master of the Beagles:--
"The aged Barbarian will, upon this, admiringly mumble to us his story
how the Battle of Waterloo was won in the Playing Fields of Eton.
Alas! disasters have been prepared in those Playing Fields as well as
victories--disasters due to an inadequate mental training, to want of
application, knowledge, intelligence, lucidity."
With "taste" we commonly hear "tone" combined in the eulogies of
Public Schools. The Parent, who knows (though he would not for the
world admit) that Tommy has learnt nothing at St. Winifred's or
Rosslyn which will ever enable him to earn a penny, falls back upon
the impalpable consolation that there is "a very nice tone about the
school." Certainly Eton imparts manners to those who have not acquired
them at home, and in this respect Radley is like unto it. But, taking
the Public Schools as a whole, it can scarcely be denied that, however
faithfully they cultivate the ingenuous arts, they suffer Youth to be
extremely brutal. If this be urged, the Parent will shift his ground
and say, "Well, I like boys to be natural. I don't wish my son to be
a Lord Chesterfield. Character is everything. It is the religious
and moral influence of a Public School that I think so valuable." As
to the Religion taught in Public Schools, it is, as Mr. T. E. Page
of Charterhouse recently said with artless candour, exactly the same
commodity as will probably be offered by the County Councils when the
Education Bill has become law; and it is worth noting that, though
Bishops shrink with horror at the prospect of this religion being
offered to the poor, they are perfectly content that it should be
crammed down the throats of their own sons. As to the morality acquired
at Public Schools, a clergyman who was successively an Eton boy and
an Eton master wrote twenty-five years ago: "The masters of many
schools are sitting on a volcano, which, when it explodes, will fill
with horror and alarm those who do not know what boys' schools are, or
knowing it, shut their eyes and stop their ears." It must be admitted
that the British Parent, dwelling on the slopes of that volcano,
regards its chronic menace and its periodical activities with the most
singular composure.
In years gone by Harrow, like most other places where there was a
Public School accessible to day boys, was a favourite resort of widowed
ladies whose husbands had served in the Indian Army or Civil Service.
These "Indian Widows," as he called them, so pestered Dr. Vaughan,
then Head Master, that he said in the bitterness of his soul: "Before
I came to Harrow I thought 'Suttee' an abomination; but now I see that
there is a great deal to be said for it." It is easy enough to see why
Head Masters dislike the Home Boarding system. It defeats the curious
policy by which assistant masters pay themselves out of their boarders'
stomachs, and it brings all the arrangements of teaching and discipline
under the survey, and perhaps criticism, of the parents; but, in spite
of magisterial objections, the Home Boarding system is probably the
only and certainly the most efficacious method of coping with those
moral evils which all schoolmasters not wilfully blind acknowledge, and
which the best of them strenuously combat. In that extension of Day
Schools which Dr. Warre foresees lies the best hope of a higher tone in
public education.
The British Parent knows the weaknesses of the Public School system. He
knows that he gets a very doubtful return for his money--that his son
learns nothing useful and very little that is ornamental; is unsuitably
fed, and, when ill, insufficiently attended; exposed to moral risks
of a very grave type; and withdrawn at the most impressible season of
life from the sanctifying influences of Motherhood and Home. He knows
all this, and, knowing it, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he
sends all his boys to a Public School. Why? Partly because every one
goes to a Public School and he has no wish to be eccentric or faddish;
partly because the boys are tiresome at home and he wants peace; partly
because, in existing conditions, he does not know how to get them
educated while they are under his roof. But the strongest reason is
none of these. He sends his sons to Eton or Harrow because he was there
himself, has felt the glamour and learnt the spell; because some of his
happiest memories hover round the Playing Fields or the Hill; because
there he first knew what Friendship meant and first tasted the Romance
of Life.
"I may have failed, my School may fail;
I tremble, but thus much I dare:
I love her. Let the critics rail,
My brethren and my home are there."
XVI
SCHOOLS AND BOARDING-HOUSES