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FIFTEEN CHAPTERS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
* * * * *
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME._
THE GREAT BOER WAR. _Arthur Conan Doyle._
COLLECTIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS. _G. W. E. Russell._
FROM THE CAPE TO CAIRO. _E. S. Grogan._
SPURGEON'S SERMONS. _Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, LL.D._
SIR FRANK LOCKWOOD. _Augustine Birrell, K.C., M.P._
THE MAKING OF A FRONTIER. _Colonel Durand._
LIFE OF RICHARD COBDEN. _Lord Morley._
LIFE OF PARNELL. _R. Barry O'Brien._
MEMORIES GRAVE AND GAY. _Dr. John Kerr._
A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. _S. Reynolds Hole._
RANDOM REMINISCENCES. _Charles Brookfield._
AT THE WORKS. _Lady Bell._
MEXICO AS I SAW IT. _Mrs. Alec Tweedie._
PARIS TO NEW YORK BY LAND. _Harry de Windt._
LIFE OF LEWIS CARROLL. _Stuart Dodgson Collingwood._
THE MANTLE OF THE EAST. _Edmund Candler._
LETTERS OF DR. JOHN BROWN.
JUBILEE BOOK OF CRICKET. _Prince Ranjitsinhji._
BY DESERT WAYS TO BAGHDAD. _Louisa Jebb._
SOME OLD LOVE STORIES. _T. P. O'Connor._
FIELDS, FACTORIES, & WORKSHOPS. _Prince Kropotkin._
PROBLEMS OF POVERTY. _Dr. Chalmers._
THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS. _M. E. Durham._
LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY.--I. & II. _Sir George O.
Trevelyan, Bart._
WHAT I SAW IN RUSSIA. _Hon. Maurice Baring._
WILD ENGLAND OF TO-DAY. _C. J. Cornish._
THROUGH FINLAND IN CARTS. _Mrs. Alec Tweedie._
THE VOYAGE OF THE "DISCOVERY."--I. & II. _Captain Scott._
FELICITY IN FRANCE. _Constance E. Maud._
MY CLIMBS IN THE ALPS AND CAUCASUS. _A. F. Mummery._
JOHN BRIGHT. _R. Barry O'Brien._
POVERTY. _B. Seebohm Rowntree._
SEA WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN. _Commander E. Hamilton Currey, R.N._
FAMOUS MODERN BATTLES. _A. Hilliard Atteridge._
THE CRUISE OF THE "FALCON." _E. F. Knight._
A.K.H.B. (A Volume of Selections).
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS. _Jack London._
GRAIN OR CHAFF? _A. Chichele Plowden._
LIFE AT THE ZOO. _C. J. Cornish._
THE FOUR MEN. _Hilaire Belloc._
CRUISE OF THE "ALERTE." _E. F. Knight._
FOUR FRENCH ADVENTURERS. _Stoddard Dewey._
A REAPING. _E. F. Benson._
_Etc., etc._
_Others to follow._
* * * * *
Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
BY THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL
[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN
AND NEW YORK
_NOTE._
_This book was originally published under the title of "One Look Back."_
TO
HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND
IN HONOUR OF THE BEST GIFT WHICH OXFORD GAVE ME
CONTENTS
I. BEGINNINGS 9
II. HARROW 35
III. HARROVIANA 56
IV. OXFORD 82
V. OXONIANA 102
VI. HOME 125
VII. LONDON 143
VIII. HOSPITALITY 171
IX. ELECTIONEERING 195
X. PARLIAMENT 222
XI. POLITICS 246
XII. ORATORY 283
XIII. LITERATURE 309
XIV. SERVICE 338
XV. ECCLESIASTICA 365
FIFTEEN CHAPTERS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
I
BEGINNINGS
One look back--as we hurry o'er the plain,
Man's years speeding us along--
One look back! From the hollow past again,
Youth, come flooding into song!
Tell how once, in the breath of summer air,
Winds blew fresher than they blow;
Times long hid, with their triumph and their care,
Yesterday--many years ago!
E. E. BOWEN.
The wayfarer who crosses Lincoln's Inn Fields perceives in the midst of
them a kind of wooden temple, and passes by it unmoved. But, if his
curiosity tempts him to enter it, he sees, through an aperture in the
boarded floor, a slab of stone bearing this inscription:
"On this spot was beheaded
William Lord Russell,
A lover of constitutional liberty,
21st July, A.D. 1683."[1]
Of the martyr thus temperately eulogized I am the
great-great-great-great-grandson, and I agree with The Antiquary, that
"it's a shame to the English language that we have not a less clumsy way
of expressing a relationship of which we have occasion to think and
speak so frequently."
Before we part company with my ill-fated ancestor, let me tell a story
bearing on his historical position. When my father was a cornet in the
Blues, he invited a brother-officer to spend some of his leave at Woburn
Abbey. One day, when the weather was too bad for any kind of sport, the
visitor was induced to have a look at the pictures. The Rembrandts, and
Cuyps, and Van Dykes and Sir Joshuas bored him to extremity, but
accidentally his eye lit on Hayter's famous picture of Lord Russell's
trial, and, with a sudden gleam of intelligence, he exclaimed, "Hullo!
What's this? It looks like a trial." My father answered, with modest
pride--"It is a trial--the trial of my ancestor, William, Lord Russell."
"Good heavens! my dear fellow--an ancestor of yours tried? What a
shocking thing! _I hope he got off._"
So much for our Family Martyr.
In analysing one's nationality, it is natural to regard one's four
grand-parents as one's component parts. Tried by this test, I am half an
Englishman, one quarter a Highlander, and one quarter a Welshman, for my
father's father was wholly English; my father's mother wholly Scotch; my
mother's father wholly Welsh; and my mother's mother wholly English. My
grandfather, the sixth Duke of Bedford, was born in 1766 and died in
1839. He married, as his second wife, Lady Georgiana Gordon, sister of
the last Duke of Gordon, and herself "the last of the Gordons" of the
senior line. She died just after I was born, and from her and the "gay
Gordons" who preceded her, I derive my name of George. It has always
been a comfort to me, when rebuked for ritualistic tendencies, to recall
that I am great-great-nephew of that undeniable Protestant, Lord George
Gordon, whose icon I daily revere. My grandmother had a numerous family,
of whom my father was the third. He was born in Dublin Castle, his
father being then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in the Ministry of "All the
Talents." My grandfather had been a political and personal friend of
Charles James Fox, and Fox had promised to be godfather to his next
child. But Fox died on the 13th of September, 1806, and my father did
not appear till the 10th of February, 1807. Fox's nephew, Henry Lord
Holland, took over the sponsorship, and bestowed the names of "Charles
James Fox" on the infant Whig, who, as became his father's viceregal
state, was christened by the Archbishop of Dublin, with water from a
golden bowl.
The life so impressively auspicated lasted till the 29th of June, 1894.
So my father, who remembered an old Highlander who had been out with
Prince Charlie in '45, lived to see the close of Mr. Gladstone's fourth
Premiership. He was educated at Rottingdean, at Westminster, where my
family had fagged and fought for many generations, and at the University
of Edinburgh, where he boarded with that "paltry Pillans," who,
according to Byron, "traduced his friend." From Edinburgh he passed
into the Blues, then commanded by Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, and thence
into the 52nd Regiment. In 1832 he was returned to the first Reformed
Parliament as Whig Member for Bedfordshire. He finally retired in 1847,
and from that date till 1875 was Sergeant-at-Arms attending the House of
Commons. He married in 1834, and had six children, of whom I was the
youngest by eight years, being born on the 3rd of February, 1853.[2]
My birthplace (not yet marked with a blue and white medallion) was 16,
Mansfield Street; but very soon afterwards the official residences at
the Palace of Westminster were finished, and my father took possession
of the excellent but rather gloomy house in the Speaker's Court, now
(1913) occupied by Sir David Erskine.
Here my clear memories begin. I have indeed some vague impressions of a
visit to the widow of my mother's grandfather--Lady Robert Seymour--who
died in her ninety-first year when I was two years old; though, as those
impressions are chiefly connected with a jam-cupboard, I fancy that they
must pertain less to Lady Robert than to her housekeeper. But two
memories of my fourth year are perfectly defined. The first is the fire
which destroyed Covent Garden Theatre on the 5th of March, 1856. "During
the operatic recess, Mr. Gye, the lessee of the Theatre, had sub-let it
to one Anderson, a performer of sleight-of-hand feats, and so-called
'Professor.' He brought his short season to a close by an entertainment
described as a 'Grand Carnival Complimentary Benefit and Dramatic Gala,
to commence on Monday morning, and terminate with a _bal masqué_ on
Tuesday night.' At 3 on the Wednesday morning, the Professor thought it
time to close the orgies. At this moment the gasfitter discovered the
fire issuing from the cracks of the ceiling, and, amid the wildest
shrieking and confusion, the drunken, panic-stricken masquers rushed to
the street. The flames burst through the roof, sending high up into the
air columns of fire, which threw into bright reflection every tower and
spire within the circuit of the metropolis, brilliantly illuminating the
whole fabric of St. Paul's, and throwing a flood of light across
Waterloo Bridge, which set out in bold relief the dark outline of the
Surrey hills." That "flood of light" was beheld by me, held up in my
nurse's arms at a window under "Big Ben," which looks on Westminster
Bridge. When in later years I have occasionally stated in a mixed
company that I could remember the burning of Covent Garden Theatre, I
have noticed a general expression of surprised interest, and have been
told, in a tone meant to be kind and complimentary, that my hearers
would hardly have thought that my memory went back so far. The
explanation has been that these good people had some vague notions of
_Rejected Addresses_ floating through their minds, and confounded the
burning of Covent Garden Theatre in 1856 with that of Drury Lane Theatre
in 1809. Most people have no chronological sense.
Our home was at Woburn, in a house belonging to the Duke of Bedford,
but given by my grandfather to my parents for their joint and several
lives. My father's duties at the House of Commons kept him in London
during the Parliamentary Session, but my mother, who detested London and
worshipped her garden, used to return with her family to Woburn, in time
to superintend the "bedding-out." My first memory is connected with my
home in London; my second with my home in the country, and the
rejoicings for the termination of the Crimean War.
Under the date of May 29, 1856, we read in _Annals of Our Time_,
"Throughout the Kingdom, the day was marked by a cessation from work,
and, during the night, illuminations and fireworks were all but
universal." The banners and bands of the triumphal procession which
paraded the streets of our little town--scarcely more than a village in
dimensions--made as strong an impression on my mind as the conflagration
which had startled all London in the previous March.
People who have only known me as a double-dyed Londoner always seem to
find a difficulty in believing that I once was a countryman; yet, for
the first twenty-five years of my life, I lived almost entirely in the
country. "We could never have loved the earth so well, if we had had no
childhood in it--if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up
again every spring, that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we
sat lisping to ourselves on the grass--the same hips and haws on the
autumn hedgerows.... One's delight in an elderberry bush overhanging the
confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a more gladdening sight than the
finest cistus or fuchsia spreading itself on the softest undulating
turf, is an entirely unjustifiable preference to a Nursery-Gardener. And
there is no better reason for preferring this elderberry bush than that
it stirs an early memory--that it is no novelty in my life, speaking to
me merely through my present sensibilities to form and colour, but the
long companion of my existence, that wove itself into my joys when joys
were vivid."
I had the unspeakable advantage of being reared in close contact with
Nature, in an aspect beautiful and wild. My father's house was
remarkable for its pretty garden, laid out with the old-fashioned
intricacy of pattern, and blazing, even into autumn, with varied colour.
In the midst of it, a large and absolutely symmetrical cedar "spread its
dark green layers of shade," and supplied us in summer with a kind of
_al fresco_ sitting-room. The background of the garden was formed by the
towering trees of Woburn Park; and close by there were great tracts of
woodland, which stretch far into Buckinghamshire, and have the character
and effect of virgin forest.
Having no boy-companions (for my only brother was ten years older than
myself), of course I played no games, except croquet. I was brought up
in a sporting home, my father being an enthusiastic fox-hunter and a
good all-round sportsman. I abhorred shooting, and was badly bored by
coursing and fishing. Indeed, I believe I can say with literal truth
that I have never killed anything larger than a wasp, and that only in
self-defence. But Woburn is an ideal country for riding, and I spent a
good deal of my time on an excellent pony, or more strictly, galloway.
An hour or two with the hounds was the reward of virtue in the
schoolroom; and cub-hunting in a woodland country at 7 o'clock on a
September morning still remains my most cherished memory of physical
enjoyment.
"That things are not as ill with you and me as they might have been is
half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and now
rest in unvisited tombs." Most true: and among that faithful number I
must remember our governess,--Catherine Emily Runciman--who devoted
forty years of her life, in one capacity or another, to us and to our
parents. She was what boys call "jolly out of school," but rather
despotic in it; and, after a few trials of strength, I was emancipated
from her control when I was eight. When we were in London for the
Session of Parliament, I attended a Day School, kept by two sisters of
John Leech, in a curious little cottage, since destroyed, at the bottom
of Lower Belgrave Street. Just at the age when, in the ordinary course,
I should have gone to a boarding-school, it was discovered that I was
physically unfit for the experiment; and then I had a series of tutors
at home. To one of these tutors my father wrote--"I must warn you of
your pupil's powers of conversation, and tact in leading his teachers
into it."
But I was to a great extent self-taught. We had an excellent, though
old-fashioned, library, and I spent a great deal of my time in
miscellaneous reading. The Waverley Novels gave me my first taste of
literary enjoyment, and _Pickwick_ (in the original green covers) came
soon after. Shakespeare and _Don Quixote_ were imposed by paternal
authority. Jeremy Taylor, Fielding, Smollett, Swift, Dryden, Pope,
Byron, Moore, Macaulay, Miss Edgeworth, Bulwer-Lytton, were among my
earliest friends, and I had an insatiable thirst for dictionaries and
encyclopædias. Tennyson was the first poet whom I really loved, but I
also was fond of Scott's poetry, the _Lays of Ancient Rome_, the _Lays
of the Scottish Cavaliers_, and _The Golden Treasury_. Milton, Shelley,
Wordsworth, and Matthew Arnold came later, but while I was still a boy.
George Eliot, Thackeray, Ruskin, and Trollope came when I was at Oxford;
and I am not sure that Browning ever came. On the whole, I owe my chief
enjoyment to Scott, Dickens, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, and to _Pickwick_
more than to any single book. But I think the keenest thrill of
intellectual pleasure which I ever felt passed through me when, as a boy
at Harrow, I first read Wordsworth's "Daffodils."
Our home, in its outward aspects, was extremely bright and cheerful. We
had, as a family, a keen sense of fun, much contempt for convention, and
great fluency of speech; and our material surroundings were such as to
make life enjoyable. Even as a child, I used to say to myself, when
cantering among Scotch firs and rhododendrons, "The lines are fallen
unto me in pleasant places." A graver element was supplied by a good
deal of ill-health, by bereavements, and, in some sense, by our way of
religion. My home was intensely Evangelical, and I lived from my
earliest days in an atmosphere where the salvation of the individual
soul was the supreme and constant concern of life. No form of
worldliness entered into it, but it was full of good works, of social
service, and of practical labour for the poor. All life was lived, down
to its minutest detail, "as ever in the great task-Master's eye." From
our very earliest years we were taught the Bible, at first orally; and
later on were encouraged to read it, by gifts of handsomely bound
copies. I remember that our aids to study were Adam Clarke's Commentary,
Nicholl's _Help to Reading the Bible_, and a book called _Light in the
Dwelling_. Hymns played a great part in our training. As soon as we
could speak, we learned "When rising from the bed of death," and
"Beautiful Zion, built above." "Rock of Ages" and "Jesu, Lover of my
soul" were soon added. The Church Catechism we were never taught. I was
confirmed without learning it. It was said to be too difficult; it
really was too sacramental. By way of an easier exercise, I was
constrained to learn "The Shorter Catechism of the General Assembly of
Divines at Westminster." We had Family Prayers twice every day. My
father read a chapter, very much as the fancy took him, or where the
Bible opened of itself; and he read without note or comment. I recall a
very distinct impression on my infant mind that the passages of the Old
Testament which were read at prayers had no meaning, and that the public
reading of the words, without reference to sense, was an act of piety.
After the chapter, my father read one of Henry Thornton's Family
Prayers, replaced in later years by those of Ashton Oxenden.
While we were still very young children, we were carefully incited to
acts of practical charity. We began by carrying dinners to the sick and
aged poor; then we went on to reading hymns and bits of Bible to the
blind and unlettered. As soon as we were old enough, we became teachers
in Sunday schools, and conducted classes and cottage-meetings. From the
very beginning we were taught to save up our money for good causes. Each
of us had a "missionary box," and I remember another box, in the
counterfeit presentment of a Gothic church, which received contributions
for the Church Pastoral Aid Society. When, on an occasion of rare
dissipation, I won some shillings at "The Race-Game," they were
impounded for the service of the C.M.S., and an aunt of mine, making her
sole excursion into melody, wrote for the benefit of her young friends:
"Would you like to be told the best use for a penny?
I can tell you a use which is better than any--
Not on toys or on fruit or on sweetmeats to spend it,
But over the seas to the heathen to send it."
I learned my religion from my mother, the sweetest, brightest, and most
persuasive of teachers, and what she taught I received as gospel.
"Oh that those lips had language! Life has past
With me but roughly since I heard thee last."
_Sit anima mea cum Sanctis._ May my lot be with those Evangelical saints
from whom I first learned that, in the supreme work of salvation, no
human being and no created thing can interpose between the soul and the
Creator. Happy is the man whose religious life has been built on the
impregnable rock of that belief.
So much for the foundation. The superstructure was rather accidental
than designed.
From my very earliest days I had a natural love of pomp and pageantry;
and, though I never saw them, I used to read of them with delight in
books of continental travel, and try to depict them in my sketch-books,
and even enact them with my toys. Then came Sir Walter Scott, who
inspired me, as he inspired so many greater men, with the love of
ecclesiastical splendour, and so turned my vague love of ceremony into a
definite channel. Another contribution to the same end was made, all
unwittingly, by my dear and deeply Protestant father. He was an
enthusiast for Gothic architecture, and it was natural to enquire the
uses of such things as piscinas and sedilia in fabrics which he taught
me to admire. And then came the opportune discovery (in an idle moment
under a dull sermon) of the Occasional Offices of the Prayer Book. If
language meant anything, those Offices meant the sacramental system of
the Catholic Church; and the impression derived from the Prayer Book was
confirmed by Jeremy Taylor and _The Christian Year_. I was always
impatient of the attempt, even when made by the most respectable people,
to pervert plain English, and I felt perfect confidence in building the
Catholic superstructure on my Evangelical foundation.
As soon as I had turned fourteen, I was confirmed by the Bishop of Ely
(Harold Browne), and made my first Communion in Woburn Church on Easter
Day, April 21, 1867.
After the Easter Recess, I went with my parents to London, then seething
with excitement over the Tory Reform Bill, which created Household
Suffrage in towns. My father, being Sergeant-at-Arms, could give me a
seat under the Gallery whenever he chose, and I heard some of the most
memorable debates in that great controversy. In the previous year my
uncle, Lord Russell, with Mr. Gladstone as Leader of the House of
Commons, had been beaten in an attempt to lower the franchise; but the
contest had left me cold. The debates of 1867 awoke quite a fresh
interest in me. I began to understand the Democratic, as against the
Whig, ideal; and I was tremendously impressed by Disraeli, who seemed to
tower by a head and shoulders above everyone in the House. Gladstone
played a secondary and ambiguous part; and, if I heard him speak, which
I doubt, the speech left no dint in my memory.
At this point of the narrative it is necessary to make a passing
allusion to Doctors, who, far more than Premiers or Priests or any other
class of men, have determined the course and condition of my life. I
believe that I know, by personal experience, more about Doctors and
Doctoring than any other man of my age in England. I am, in my own
person, a monument of medical practice, and have not only seen, but
felt, the rise and fall of several systems of physic and surgery. To
have experienced the art is also to have known the artist; and the
portraits of all the practitioners with whom at one time or another I
have been brought into intimate relations would fill the largest album,
and go some way towards furnishing a modest Picture-Gallery. Broadly
speaking, the Doctors of the 'fifties and 'sixties were as Dickens drew
them. The famous consultant, Dr. Parker Peps; the fashionable physician,
Sir Tumley Snuffim; the General Practitioner, Mr. Pilkins; and the
Medical Officer of the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life
Insurance Company, Dr. Jobling; are in the highest degree representative
and typical; but perhaps the Doctor--his name, unfortunately, has
perished--who was called to the bedside of little Nell, and came with "a
great bunch of seals dangling below a waistcoat of ribbed black satin,"
is the most carefully finished portrait. Such, exactly, were the Family
Physicians of my youth. They always dressed in shiny black,--trousers,
neckcloth, and all; they were invariably bald, and had shaved upper lips
and chins, and carefully-trimmed whiskers. They said "Hah!" and "Hum!"
in tones of omniscience which would have converted a Christian
Scientist; and, when feeling one's pulse, they produced the largest and
most audibly-ticking gold watches producible by the horologist's art.
They had what were called "the courtly manners of the old school"; were
diffuse in style, and abounded in periphrasis. Thus they spoke of "the
gastric organ" where their successors talk of the stomach, and referred
to brandy as "the domestic stimulant." When attending families where
religion was held in honour, they were apt to say to the lady of the
house, "We are fearfully and wonderfully made"; and, where classical
culture prevailed, they not infrequently remarked--
Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops.
By the way, my reference to "the domestic stimulant" reminds me that on
stimulants, domestic and other, this school of Physicians relied with an
unalterable confidence. For a delicate child, a glass of port wine at
11 was the inevitable prescription, and a tea-spoonful of bark was often
added to this generous tonic. In all forms of languor and debility and
enfeebled circulation, brandy-and-water was "exhibited," as the phrase
went; and, if the dose was not immediately successful, the brandy was
increased. I myself, when a sickly boy of twelve, was ordered by a
well-known practitioner, called F. C. Skey, to drink mulled claret at
bedtime; and my recollection is that, as a nightcap, it beat bromide and
sulphonal hollow. In the light of more recent science, I suppose that
all this alcoholic treatment was what Milton calls "the sweet poyson of
misuséd wine," and wrought havoc with one's nerves, digestion, and
circulation. It certainly had this single advantage, that when one grew
to man's estate, and passed from "that poor creature, small beer," to
the loaded port and fiery sherry of a "Wine" at the University, it was
impossible to make one drunk. And thereby hangs a tale. I was once
writing the same sentiment in the same words for a medical journal, and
the compositor substituted "disadvantage" for "advantage," apparently
thinking that my early regimen had deprived me of a real happiness in
after-life.
Such were the Doctors of my youth. By no sudden wrench, no violent
transition, but gently, gradually, imperceptibly, the type has
transformed itself into that which we behold to-day. No doubt an inward
continuity has been maintained, but the visible phenomena are so
radically altered as to suggest to the superficial observer the idea of
a new creation; and even we, who, as Matthew Arnold said, "stand by the
Sea of Time, and listen to the solemn and rhythmical beat of its waves,"
even we can scarcely point with confidence to the date of each
successive change. First, as to personal appearance. When did doctors
abandon black cloth, and betake themselves (like Newman, when he seceded
to the Church of Rome) to grey trousers? Not, I feel pretty sure, till
the 'seventies were well advanced. Quite certainly the first time that I
ever fell into the hands of a moustached Doctor was in 1877. Everyone
condemned the hirsute appendage as highly unprofessional, and when, soon
after, the poor man found his way into a Lunatic Asylum, the
neighbouring Doctors of the older school said that they were not
surprised; that "there was a bad family history"; and that he himself
had shown marked signs of eccentricity. That meant the moustache, and
nothing else. Then, again, when was it first recognized as possible to
take a pulse without the assistance of a gold chronometer? History is
silent; but I am inclined to assign that discovery to the same date as
the clinical thermometer, a toy unknown to the Doctors of my youth, who,
indeed, were disposed to regard even the stethoscope as new-fangled.
Then "the courtly manners of the old school"--when did they go out? I do
not mean to cast the slightest aspersion on the manners of my present
doctor, who is as polite and gentlemanlike a young fellow as one could
wish to meet. But his manners are not "courtly," nor the least "of the
old school." He does not bow when he enters my room, but shakes hands
and says it's an A1 day and I had better get out in the motor. Whatever
the symptoms presented to his observation, he never says "Hah!" or
"Hum!" and he has never once quoted the Bible or Horace, though I have
reason to believe that he has read both. Then, again, as a mere matter
of style, when did Doctors abandon the majestic "We," which formerly
they shared with Kings and Editors? "We shall be all the better when we
have had our luncheon and a glass of sherry," said Sir Tumley Snuffim.
"We will continue the bark and linseed," murmured Dr. Parker Peps, as
he bowed himself out. My Doctor says, "Do you feel as if you could
manage a chop? It would do you pounds of good"; and "I know the peroxide
dressing is rather beastly, but I'd stick it another day or two, if I
were you." Medical conversation, too, is an art which has greatly
changed. In old days it was thought an excellent method of lubricating
the first interview for the Doctor to ask where one's home was, and to
state, quite irrespective of the fact, that he was born in the same
neighbourhood; having ascertained that one was, say, a Yorkshireman, to
remark that he would have known it from one's accent; to enlarge on his
own connexions, especially if of the territorial caste; to describe his
early travels in the South of Europe or the United States; and to
discourse on water-colour drawing or the flute. "We doctors, too, have
our hobbies; though, alas! the demands of a profession in which _Ne
otium quidem otiosum est_ leave us little time to enjoy them."
Quite different is the conversation of the modern doctor. He does not
lubricate the interview, but goes straight to business--enquires,
examines, pronounces, prescribes--and then, if any time is left for
light discourse, discusses the rival merits of "Rugger" and "Soccer,"
speculates on the result of the Hospital Cup Tie, or observes that the
British Thoroughbred is not deteriorating when he can win with so much
on his back; pronounces that the Opera last night was ripping, or that
some much-praised play is undiluted rot. Not thus did Dr. Parker Peps
regale Mrs. Dombey, or Sir Tumley Snuffim soothe the shattered nerves of
Mrs. Wititterly. The reaction against alcoholic treatment can, I
believe, be definitely dated from the 10th of January, 1872, when the
heads of the medical profession published their opinion that "alcohol,
in whatever form, should be prescribed with as much care as any powerful
drug, and the directions for its use should be so framed as not to be
interpreted as a sanction for excess." This was a heavy blow and deep
discouragement to the school of Snuffim and Pilkins, and the system of
port at 11, and "the domestic stimulant" between whiles, died hard.
But this is a long digression. I return to the Family Physician who
prescribed for my youth. He was Dr. T. Somerset Snuffim, son of the
celebrated Sir Tumley, and successor to his lucrative practice. His
patients believed in him with an unquestioning and even passionate
faith, and his lightest word was law. It was he who in 1862 pronounced
me physically unfit for a Private School, but held out hopes that, if I
could be kept alive till I was fourteen, I might then be fit for a
Public School. Four years passed, and nothing particular happened. Then
the time arrived when the decision had to be made between Public School
and Private Tutor. After a vast amount of stethoscoping and
pulse-feeling, Snuffim decided peremptorily against a Public School. My
parents had a strong and just detestation of "private study" and its
products, and they revolved a great many schemes for avoiding it.
Suddenly my mother, who was not only the kindest but also the wisest of
mothers, bethought herself of making me a Home-boarder at Harrow. She
was one of those persons who, when once they are persuaded that a
certain course is right, do not let the grass grow under their feet, but
act at once. We did not desert our old home in Bedfordshire, and my
father had still his official residence in Speaker's Court; but my
parents took a house at Harrow, at the top of Sudbury Hill, and there we
established ourselves in September, 1867.
On the 4th of November in that year, Matthew Arnold, who was
contemplating a similar move, wrote to Lady de Rothschild:--"What you
tell me is very important and interesting. I think Lady Charles Russell
has a boy who, like my eldest boy, is an invalid, and I dare say you
will some time or other be kind enough to ascertain from her whether the
school life is at all trying for him, or whether she has any difficulty
in getting him excused fagging or violent exercises."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The L.C.C., which placed this slab, made a topographical error.
James Wright, in his _Compendious View of the late Tumults and Troubles
in this Kingdom_ (1683), says: "The Lord Russel ... was on the day
following, viz. Saturday the 21st of July, Beheaded in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. For which purpose a Scaffold was erected that Morning on that
side of the Fields next to the Arch going into Duke Street, in the
middle between the said Arch and the corner turning into Queen Street."
[2]
To the Editor of _The Times_.
SIR--As Links with the Past seem just now to be in fashion, permit
me to supply two which concern my near relations.
1. My uncle, Lord Russell (1792-1878) visited Napoleon at Elba in
December, 1814, and had a long conversation with him, which is
reported in Spencer Walpole's "Life of Lord John Russell." There
must be plenty of people now alive who conversed with my uncle, so
this Link cannot be a very rare one.
2. My second Link is more remarkable. My father (1807-1894)
remembered an old Highlander who had been "out" with Prince Charles
Edward in 1745. Of course, this "linking" took place at the extremes
of age, my father being a little boy and the Highlander a very old
man. My grandfather, the sixth Duke of Bedford, was one of the first
Englishmen who took a shooting in the Highlands (on the Spey), and
the first time that my father accompanied him to the north, Prince
Charlie's follower was still living near the place which my
grandfather rented.
Your obedient servant,
_Sept. 6, 1910._ GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL.
II
HARROW
Not to River nor Royal Keep,
Low Meads nor level Close,
Up to the sturdy wind-worn steep,
_Levavi oculos_;
To four red walls on a skyward climb,
Towering over the fields and Time.
E. MILNER-WHITE.
When Dr. Vaughan re-created Harrow School, after its long decadence
under Longley and Wordsworth, he wished that the number should never
exceed five hundred. Of late years the school has been greatly enlarged,
but in my time we were always just about the number which, in Vaughan's
judgment, was the largest that a Head-master could properly supervise.
That number is embalmed in Edward Howson's touching song:--
"Five hundred faces, and all so strange!
Life in front of me, Home behind--
I felt like a waif before the wind,
Tossed on an ocean of shock and change."
Some of those faces I shall presently describe; but, in reviewing my
life at Harrow, my first tribute must be paid to my Head-master--for
forty-five years the kindest, most generous, and most faithful of
friends. Henry Montagu Butler, youngest son of Dr. George Butler, Dean
of Peterborough and sometime Head-master of Harrow, was born in 1833,
and educated at Harrow. He was Head of the School, made the cock-score
in the Eton match at Lords, was Scholar and Fellow of Trinity, and
Senior Classic in 1855. He was elected to the Head-mastership of Harrow,
in succession to Dr. Vaughan, when he was only a few months over 26, and
entered on his reign in January, 1860. It is not easy to describe what a
graceful and brilliant creature he seemed to my boyish eyes, when I
first saw him in 1867, nor how unlike what one had imagined a
Head-master to be. He was then just thirty-four and looked much younger
than he was. Gracefulness is the idea which I specially connect with
him. He was graceful in shape, gesture, and carriage; graceful in
manners and ways, graceful in scholarship, graceful in writing,
pre-eminently graceful in speech. It was his custom from time to time,
if any peculiar enormity displayed itself in the school, to call us all
together in the Speech-Room, and give us what we called a "Pi-jaw." One
of these discourses I remember as well as if I had heard it yesterday.
It was directed against Lying, as not only un-Christian but
ungentlemanlike. As he stood on the dais, one hand grasping his gown
behind his back and the other marking his points, I felt that, perhaps
for the first time, I was listening to pure and unstudied eloquence,
suffused with just as much scorn against base wrongdoing as makes speech
pungent without making it abusive. It should be recorded to Butler's
credit that he was thoroughly feared. A Head-master who is not feared
should be at once dismissed from his post. And, besides being feared, he
was profoundly detested by bad boys. The worse the boy's moral
character, the more he hated Butler. But boys who were, in any sense or
degree, on the right side; who were striving, however imperfectly, after
what is pure and lovely and of good report, felt instinctively that
Butler was their friend. His preaching in the School Chapel (though
perhaps a little impeded by certain mannerisms) was direct, interesting,
and uplifting in no common degree. Many of his sermons made a lifelong
impression on me. His written English was always beautifully pellucid,
and often adorned by some memorable anecdote or quotation, or by some
telling phrase. But once, when, owing to a broken arm, he could not
write his sermons, but preached to us extempore three Sundays in
succession, he fairly fascinated us. As we rose in the School and came
into close contact with him, we found ever more and more to admire. It
would be impertinent for me to praise the attainments of a Senior
Classic, but no one could fail to see that Butler's scholarship was
unusually graceful and literary. Indeed, he was literary through and
through. All fine literature appealed to him with compelling force, and
he was peculiarly fond of English oratory. Chatham, Burke, Canning,
Sheil, and Bright are some of the great orators to whom he introduced
us, and he was never so happy as when he could quote them to illustrate
some fine passage in Cicero or Demosthenes. One other introduction which
I owe to him I must by no means forget--Lord Beaconsfield's novels. I
had read _Lothair_ when it came out, but I was then too inexperienced to
discern the deep truths which underlie its glittering satire. Butler
introduced me to _Sybil_, and thereby opened up to me a new world of
interest and amusement. When Butler entertained boys at breakfast or
dinner, he was a most delightful host, and threw off all magisterial
awfulness as easily as his gown. His conversation was full of fun and
sprightliness, and he could talk "Cricket-shop," ancient and modern,
like Lillywhite or R. H. Lyttelton. In time of illness or failure or
conscience-stricken remorse, he showed an Arthur-like simplicity of
religion which no one could ignore or gainsay.
Next to Dr. Butler, in my list of Harrow masters, must be placed Farrar,
afterwards Dean of Canterbury, to whom I owed more in the way of
intellectual stimulus and encouragement than to any other teacher. I
had, I believe, by nature, some sense of beauty; and Farrar stimulated
and encouraged this sense to the top of its bent. Himself inspired by
Ruskin, he taught us to admire rich colours and graceful
forms--illuminated missals, and Fra Angelico's blue angels on gold
grounds--and to see the exquisite beauty of common things, such as
sunsets, and spring grass, and autumn leaves; the waters of a shoaling
sea, and the transparent amber of a mountain stream. In literature his
range was extremely wide. Nothing worth reading seemed to have escaped
him, and he loved poetry as much as Butler loved oratory. When he
preached in Chapel his gorgeous rhetoric, as yet not overwrought or
over-coloured, held us spellbound; and though, or perhaps because, he
was inclined to spoil the boys who responded to his appeals, and to rate
them higher than they deserved, we loved and admired him as, I should
think, few schoolmasters have been loved and admired.
When I speak of masters who were also friends, I should be ungrateful
indeed if I omitted Arthur George Watson, in whose House I was placed as
soon as the doctors were satisfied that the experiment could be tried
without undue risks. Mr. Watson was a Fellow of All Souls, and was in
all respects what we should have expected a member of that Society
(elected the same day as the late Lord Salisbury) to be. It was said of
C. P. Golightly at Oxford that, when he was asked his opinion of Dr.
Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, he replied: "Well, if I were forced to choose
the epithet which should be least descriptive of the dear Provost, I
should choose _gushing_." Exactly the same might be said of Mr. Watson;
but he was the most high-minded and conscientious of men, a thorough
gentleman, inflexibly just, and a perfect House-Master. The days which
I spent under his roof must always be reckoned among the happiest of my
life.
Among masters who were also friends I must assign a high place to the
Rev. William Done Bushell, who vainly endeavoured to teach me
mathematics, but found me more at home in the sphere (which he also
loved) of Ecclesiology. And not even the most thoughtless or
ill-conditioned boy who was at Harrow between 1854 and 1882 could ever
forget the Rev. John Smith, who, through a life-time overshadowed by
impending calamity, was an Apostle to boys, if ever there was one, and
the Guardian Angel of youthful innocence. Dr. Vaughan, no lover of
exaggerated phrases, called him, in a memorial sermon, "the Christ of
Harrow;" and there must be many a man now living who, as he looks back,
feels that he owed the salvation of his soul to that Christ-like
character.
During my first two years at Harrow, Dr. Westcott, afterwards Bishop of
Durham, was one of the masters, and it has always been a matter of deep
regret to me that I had no opportunity of getting to know him. He was
hardly visible in the common life of the School. He lived remote, aloof,
apart, alone. It must be presumed that the boys who boarded in his
House knew something of him, but with the School in general he never
came in contact. His special work was to supervise the composition,
English and classical, of the Sixth Form, and on this task he lavished
all his minute and scrupulous scholarship, all his genuine enthusiasm
for literary beauty. But, until we were in the Sixth, we saw Westcott
only on public occasions, and one of these occasions was the calling
over of names on half-holidays, styled at Eton "Absence," and at Harrow
"Bill." To see Westcott performing this function made one, even in those
puerile days, feel that the beautifully delicate instrument was
eminently unfitted for the rough work of mere routine on which it was
employed. We had sense enough to know that Westcott was a man of
learning and distinction altogether outside the beaten track of
schoolmasters' accomplishments; and that he had performed achievements
in scholarship and divinity which great men recognized as great.
"Calling Bill" was an occupation well enough suited for his
colleagues--for Huggins or Buggins or Brown or Green--but it was
actually pathetic to see this frail embodiment of culture and piety
contending with the clamour and tumult of five hundred obstreperous
boys.
It was not only as a great scholar that we revered Westcott. We knew,
by that mysterious process by which school-boys get to know something of
the real, as distinct from the official, characters of their masters,
that he was a saint. There were strange stories in the School about his
ascetic way of living. We were told that he wrote his sermons on his
knees. We heard that he never went into local society, and that he read
no newspaper except _The Guardian_. Thus when Liddon, at the height of
his fame as the author of the great Bampton Lectures, came to Harrow to
preach on Founder's Day, it was reported that Westcott would not dine
with the Head-master to meet him. He could not spare three hours from
prayer and study; but he came in for an hour's conversation after
dinner.
All that we saw and heard in Chapel confirmed what we were told. We saw
the bowed form, the clasped hands, the rapt gaze, as of a man who in
worship was really _solus cum Solo_, and not, as the manner of some of
his colleagues was, sleeping the sleep of the just, or watching for the
devotional delinquencies of the Human Boy. His sermons were rare events;
but some of us looked forward to them as to something quite out of the
common groove. There were none of the accessories which generally
attract boyish admiration--no rhetoric, no purple patches, no
declamation, no pretence of spontaneity. His anxious forehead crowned a
puny body, and his voice was so faint as to be almost inaudible. The
language was totally unadorned; the sentences were closely packed with
meaning; and the meaning was not always easy. But the charm lay in
distinction, aloofness from common ways of thinking and speaking, a wide
outlook on events and movements in the Church, and a fiery enthusiasm
all the more telling because sedulously restrained. I remember as if I
heard it yesterday a reference in December, 1869, to "that august
assemblage which gathers to-morrow under the dome of St. Peter's," and I
remember feeling pretty sure at the moment that there was no other
schoolmaster in England who would preach to his boys about the Vatican
Council. But by far the most momentous of Westcott's sermons at Harrow
was that which he preached on the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, 1868.
The text was Ephesians v. 15: "See then that ye walk circumspectly." The
sermon was an earnest plea for the revival of the ascetic life, and the
preacher endeavoured to show "what new blessings God has in store for
absolute self-sacrifice" by telling his hearers about the great
victories of asceticism in history. He took first the instance of St.
Anthony, as the type of personal asceticism; then that of St. Benedict,
as the author of the Common Life of equality and brotherhood; and then
that of St. Francis, who, "in the midst of a Church endowed with all
that art and learning and wealth and power could give, reasserted the
love of God to the poorest, the meanest, the most repulsive of His
children, and placed again the simple Cross above all the treasures of
the world." Even "the unparalleled achievements, the matchless energy,
of the Jesuits" were duly recognized as triumphs of faith and
discipline; and the sermon ended with a passionate appeal to the Harrow
boys to follow the example of young Antony or the still younger
Benedict, and prepare themselves to take their part in reviving the
ascetic life of the English Church.
"It is to a congregation like this that the call comes with the most
stirring and the most cheering voice. The young alone have the fresh
enthusiasm which in former times God has been pleased to consecrate to
like services.... And if, as I do believe most deeply, a work at
present awaits England, and our English Church, greater than the world
has yet seen, I cannot but pray everyone who hears me to listen humbly
for the promptings of God's Spirit, if so be that He is even now calling
him to take a foremost part in it. It is for us, perhaps, first to hear
the call, but it is for you to interpret it and fulfil it. Our work is
already sealed by the past: yours is still rich in boundless
possibilities."
It may readily be believed that this discourse did not please either the
British Parent or the Common Schoolmaster. A rumour went abroad that Mr.
Westcott was going to turn all the boys into monks, and loud was the
clamour of ignorance and superstition. Westcott made the only dignified
reply. He printed (without publishing) the peccant sermon, under the
title "Disciplined Life," and gave a copy to every boy in the School,
expressing the hope that "God, in His great love, will even thus, by
words most unworthily spoken, lead some one among us to think on one
peculiar work of the English Church, and in due time to offer himself
for the fulfilment of it as His Spirit shall teach." Those who remember
that Charles Gore was one of the boys who heard the sermon may think
that the preacher's prayer was answered.