only remember two whom I actively disliked, and of these two one was the
absolute reproduction of Mr. Creakle, only armed with "thirty Greek
lines" instead of the cane. Some of the staff were not particularly
friends, but notable as curiosities; and at the head of these must be
placed the Rev. Thomas Henry Steel. This truly remarkable man was born
in 1806. He was Second Classic and Twentieth Wrangler, and Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a master at Harrow under Dr.
Wordsworth in 1836; left the School in 1843, to take a country living;
returned to Harrow, under Dr. Vaughan, in 1849, and in 1855 became (for
the second time) master of The Grove, one of the largest boarding-houses
in Harrow, where he remained till 1881. He was a keen, alert, and active
old gentleman, with a rosy face and long white beard, like Father
Christmas: and he carried, in season and out of season, a bright blue
umbrella. His degree sufficiently proves that he was a ripe scholar,
but, as George Eliot says, "to all ripeness under the sun there comes a
further stage of development which is less esteemed in the market";
and, when I was in his Form, it was chiefly characterized by an
agreeable laxity of discipline. As regards his boarding-house of forty
boys, it was currently reported that he had never been seen in the boys'
side of it. Perhaps he went round it when they were asleep. But it was
on his preaching that his fame chiefly rested. His sermons were written
in a most exuberant style of old-fashioned rhetoric, and abounded in
phrases, allusions, and illustrations, so quaint that, once heard, they
could never be forgotten. I believe that he kept a small stock of these
sermons, and seldom added to it; but knowing, I suppose, that if
preached twice they must inevitably be recognized, he never preached a
sermon a second time as long as there was even one boy in the School who
had heard it on its first delivery. This was a very sensible precaution;
but he little knew that some of his most elaborate passages had, by
their sheer oddity, imprinted themselves indelibly on the memories of
the hearers, and were handed down by oral tradition. One such
especially, about a lady who used to visit the hospitals in the American
War, and left a bun or a rose on the pillow of the wounded according as
she thought that they would recover or die, had an established place in
our annals; and it is not easy to describe the rapture of hearing a
passage which, as repeated by one's schoolfellows, had seemed too absurd
for credence, delivered from the School-pulpit, in a kind of solemn
stage-whisper. However, "Tommy Steel" was a kind-hearted old gentleman,
who believed in letting boys alone, and by a hundred eccentricities of
speech and manner, added daily to the gaiety of our life. For one great
boon I am eternally his debtor. He set me on reading Wordsworth, and
chose his favourite bits with skill and judgment. I had been reared in
the school that derided--
"A drowsy, frowsy poem called _The Excursion_,
Writ in a manner which is my aversion,"
and "Tommy Steel" opened my eyes to a new world of beauty. By the way,
he had known Wordsworth, and had entertained him at Harrow; and he told
us that the Poet always said "housen," where we say houses.
Another of our curiosities was Mr. Jacob Francis Marillier, a genial old
gentleman without a degree, who had been supposed to teach writing and
Mathematics, but long before my time had dropped the writing--I suppose
as hopeless--and only played a mathematical barrel-organ. He had joined
the staff at Harrow in 1819, and, as from my earliest days I had a love
of Links with the Past, I learned from Mr. Marillier a vast amount about
the ancient traditions of the School, which, even in 1869 (when he
resigned), were becoming faint and forgotten.
Yet a third oddity must be commemorated; but in this case it is
desirable to use a pseudonym. I think I remember in one of
Bulwer-Lytton's novels a family called Sticktoright,[3] and that name
will do as well as another. The Rev. Samuel Sticktoright was essentially
what is called a "Master of the old school." He was born in 1808, came
to Harrow in 1845, and had a large House for thirty years. I have just
been contemplating his photograph in my Harrow album, and he certainly
looks "the old school" all over, with his carefully-trimmed whiskers,
double-breasted waistcoat, and large white "choker," neatly tied. By the
boys generally he was regarded as an implacable tyrant, and I have heard
(though this was before my time) that a special victim of his
passionless severity was a pink-faced youth with blue eyes called
Randall Thomas Davidson. Personally, I rather liked him; partly, no
doubt, on the principle on which Homer called the Æthiopians
blameless--namely, that he had nothing to do with them. But there was a
sly twinkle in the corner of Mr. Sticktoright's eye which bespoke a
lurking sense of humour, and in the very few words which he ever
bestowed on me there generally was a suggestion of dry--very dry--fun.
He was, of course, the most uncompromising of Tories, and every form of
change, in Church or State or School, was equally abhorrent to him. In
local society he played a considerable part, both giving and receiving
hospitality; and it was the traditional pleasantry to chaff him as an
inveterate bachelor, at whom all the young ladies of the place were
setting their virginal caps. These jests he received very much as Tim
Linkinwater received the allusions of Mr. Cheeryble to the "uncommonly
handsome spinster," rather encouraging them as tributes to the fact
that, though now advanced in years, he was well preserved, and, as most
people surmised, well off.
These facetious passages were, of course, confined to the society in
which the masters moved, and we boys knew them only by hearsay. But what
we saw with our own eyes was that the only human being who ever dared to
"cheek" Mr. Sticktoright, or to interfere with his arrangements, or to
disregard his orders, was his butler, whom we will call Boniface.
Everyone who knows school-boys knows that they have a trick of saying
things about those in authority over them, which really they do not the
least believe but which they make a bold pretence of believing. So in
the case of "Sticky" and Boniface. They were of much the same age, and
rather similar in appearance; wherefore we said that they were brothers;
that they had risen from a lowly station in the world, and had tossed up
which should be master and which butler; that "Sticky" had won the toss,
and that the disappointed Boniface held his brother in subjection by a
veiled threat that, if he were offended, he would reveal the whole story
to the world. This tradition seemed to present some elements of
unlikelihood, and yet it survived from generation to generation; for not
otherwise could we account for the palpable fact that the iron severity
which held all boy-flesh in awe melted into impotence when Boniface was
the offender.
The solution of the mystery was romantic. Dr. Butler, contrary to his
usual practice, was spending the Christmas holidays of 1876-7 at Harrow.
One day a stranger was announced, and opened the conversation by
saying--"I regret to tell you that your colleague, Mr. Sticktoright, is
dead. He died suddenly at Brighton, where he was spending the holidays.
I am his brother-in-law and executor, and, in compliance with his
instructions, I have to ask you to accompany me to his house." Those who
know the present Master of Trinity can picture the genuine grief with
which he received this notification. Mr. Sticktoright had been a master
when he was a boy at school, and a highly-respected colleague ever since
he became Head-master. That the bearer of the sad news should be
Sticktoright's brother-in-law seemed quite natural, for he must have
married a Miss Sticktoright; and the Head-master and the executor went
together to the dead man's house. There, after some unlocking of drawers
and opening of cabinets, they came upon a document to this effect: "In
case of my dying away from Harrow, this is to certify that on a certain
day, in a certain place, I married Mary Smith, sometime a housemaid in
my service, by whom I leave a family."
So there had really been much more foundation for our tradition than we
had ever dreamed, and Boniface had probably known the romantic history
of his master's life. The extraordinary part of the matter was that old
Sticktoright had always spent the Easter, Summer, and Christmas holidays
in the bosom of his family at Brighton, and that no one connected with
Harrow had ever chanced to see him basking in their smiles. [N.B.--the
names, personal and local, are fictitious.] In the north aisle of Harrow
School Chapel, where departed masters are commemorated, you may search
in vain for any memorial to the Rev. Samuel Sticktoright.
Yet one more curiosity must be named, this time not a Harrow master.
"Polly Arnold" kept a stationer's shop, and, as a child, helping her
grand-mother in the same shop, had sold pens--some added cribs--to Byron
when a boy in the school. Here was a Link of the Past which exactly
suited me, and, if only Polly could have understood the allusion, I
should have said to her--"Ah, did you once see Byron plain?" I happened
to have a sister who, though exceptionally clever and lively, had
absolutely no chronological sense. I took her to see Polly Arnold one
day, when this conversation ensued--"Well, Miss Arnold, I am very glad
to make your acquaintance. I have often heard of you from my brother. He
tells me you remember John Lyon. How very interesting!" [N.B.--John Lyon
founded Harrow School in 1571.] To this tribute Polly replied with much
asperity--"I know I'm getting on in life, Miss, but I'm not quite three
hundred years old yet"--while my sister murmured in my ear--"Who _is_ it
she remembers? I know it's someone who lived a long time ago."
But the name of Arnold, when connected with Harrow, suggests quite
another train of thought. At Easter, 1868, Matthew Arnold came to live
at Harrow, with a view of placing his three boys in the School. The
eldest of the three was the invalid to whom his father referred in a
letter quoted in my first chapter: I was able to show him some little
kindnesses, and thus arose an intimacy with the parents, brothers, and
sisters which I have always regarded as--
"Part of my life's unalterable good."
FOOTNOTE:
[3] "The wood belonged to the Hazeldeans, the furze-land to the
Sticktorights--an old Saxon family if ever there was one." _My Novel_.
Book I.
III
HARROVIANA
"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."
W. CORY.
Everyone who travels by the North Western, or the Great Central, or the
Midland Railway, must be conversant with the appearance of that
"Pinnacle perched on a Precipice," which was Charles II.'s idea of the
Visible Church on Earth--the Parish Church of Harrow on the Hill. Anselm
consecrated it, Becket said Mass in it, and John Lyon, the Founder of
Harrow School, lies buried in it. When I was a Harrow boy, the
Celebrations of the Holy Communion in the School Chapel were rare, and
generally late; so some of us were accustomed to communicate every
Sunday at the 8 o'clock service in the Parish Church. But even in holy
places, and amid sacred associations, the ludicrous is apt to assert
itself; and I could never sufficiently admire a tablet in the North
aisle, commemorating a gentleman who died of the first Reform Bill.
"JOHN HENRY NORTH,
Judge of the Admiralty in Ireland.
Without an equal at the University, a rival at the Bar,
Or a superior in chaste and classic eloquence in Parliament.
Honoured, Revered, Admired, Beloved, Deplored,
By the Irish Bar, the Senate and his country,
He sunk beneath the efforts of a mind too great for
His earthly frame,
In opposing the Revolutionary Invasion of the Religion and
Constitution of England,
On the 29th of September, 1831, in the 44th year of his age."
Alas! poor Mr. North. What would he have felt if he had lived to see the
Reform Bills of 1867 and 1885? Clearly he was taken away from the evil
to come.
Until the Metropolitan Railway joined Harrow to Baker Street, the Hill
stood in the midst of genuine and unspoilt country, separated by five
miles of grass from the nearest point of London, and encompassed by
isolated dwellings, ranging in rank and scale from villas to country
houses. Most of these have fallen victims to the Speculative Builder,
and have been cut up into alleys of brick and stucco, though one or two
still remain among their hay-fields and rhododendrons. When I first
ascended Harrow Hill, I drove there from London with my mother; and,
from Harlesden onwards, our road lay between grass meadows, and was
shaded by hedgerow timber. Harrow was then a much prettier place than it
is now. The far-seen elms under which Byron dreamed[4] were still in
their unlopped glory, and the whole effect of the Hill was wooded. So an
Eton man and Harrow master[5] wrote:--
"Collis incola frondei
Nympha, sive lubentius
Nostra Pieris audies,
Lux adest; ades O tuis
Herga[6] mater, alumnis!"
"Goddess of the leafy Hill,
Nymph, or Muse, or what you will,
With the light begins the lay,--
Herga, be our guest to-day."
The site now covered by the externally hideous Speech-room--a cross
between a swimming-bath and a tennis-court--was then a garden. In truth,
it only grew strawberries and cabbages, but to the imaginative eye, it
was as beautiful as the hanging pleasaunces of Semiramis.
Dr. Butler, with a hundred gifts and accomplishments, had no æsthetic or
artistic sense; and, under his rule, the whole place was over-run by
terrible combinations of red and black brick; and the beautiful view
from the School-Yard, stretching away across the Uxbridge plain, was
obstructed by some kind of play-shed, with a little spout atop--the very
impertinence of ugliness.
Of the various buildings at Harrow, by far the most interesting is what
is now called "The Fourth Form Room," in the West wing of the Old
School. It is the original room which John Lyon designed--"A large and
convenient school-house with a chimney in it,"--and in its appearance
and arrangements it exactly bespeaks the village Day School that Harrow
originally was. Its stout brick walls have faced the western breezes of
three hundred years, and in their mellow richness of tint remind one of
Hatfield House and Hampton Court. This single room has been the nucleus
round which all subsequent buildings--Chapel and Library and
School-Rooms and Boarding-Houses--have gathered; and, as long as it
exists, Harrow will be visibly and tangibly connected with its Founder's
prescient care.
John Lyon knew nothing of Conscience Clauses. He ordained that all his
school-boys should attend the Parish Church; and so they did, stowed
away in galleries where hearing was difficult and kneeling impossible.
In 1836 Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, was
elected Head-master of Harrow, in succession to the genial but too
gentle Longley. Seeing that Worship was practically impossible for the
boys under existing conditions, he set to work to build a Chapel. It
occupied the same site as the present Chapel, but only one fragment of
it remains, embedded in the West wall of Sir Gilbert Scott's more
graceful structure. The Chapel was consecrated by the Visitor,
Archbishop Howley, in 1839. Dr. Wordsworth, justly proud of his
handiwork, invited his brother-master, Dr. Hawtrey of Eton, to view it.
Much to Wordsworth's surprise, Hawtrey did not take off his hat on
entering the Chapel; but, when he neared the altar, started back in
confusion, and exclaimed, in hasty apology, "I assure you, my dear
friend, I had no notion that we were already inside the Sacred Edifice."
So much for the æsthetics of Harrow Chapel as originally constructed,
but time and piety have completely changed it. In 1855, Dr. Vaughan
added a Chancel with an apsidal end, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott.
Next, the central passage of the Chapel became a Nave, with pillars and
a North Aisle. Then the South Aisle was added, and decorated with glass
before which one shudders, as a Memorial to Harrow men who fell in the
Crimea. So the Chapel remained till 1903, when two curious additions,
something between transepts and side-chapels, were added in memory of
Harrow men who fell in South Africa. The total result of these
successive changes is a building of remarkably irregular shape, but
richly decorated, and sanctified by innumerable memories of friends long
since loved and lost. A tablet, near which as a new boy I used to sit,
bears this inscription--
In mournful and
affectionate remembrance of
JOHN HYDE D'ARCY,
Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford,
and formerly Head of this School.
He passed through the Strait Gate
of Humility, Toil, and Patience,
into the clear light and true knowledge of Him
Who is our Peace.
"If any man will do His Will, he shall know of the doctrine."
Few sermons have ever impressed me so powerfully as this significant
memorial of a life which lasted only nineteen years.
The morning and evening services in the Chapel were what is called
"bright and cheerful"--in other words, extremely noisy and not very
harmonious or reverent. We had two sermons every Sunday. The Head-master
preached in the evening; the Assistant-masters in the morning.
Occasionally, we had a stranger of repute. Dr. Butler's preaching I have
already described, and also that of Farrar and Westcott. Mr. Steel's
traditional discourses were in a class by themselves. But other
preachers we had, not less remarkable. I distinctly remember a sermon by
Mr. Sticktoright, who told us that we did not know in what way the world
would be destroyed--it might be by fire, or it might be by water
(though this latter alternative seems precluded by Genesis ix. 11). The
Rev. James Robertson, afterwards Head-master of Haileybury, compared the
difference between a dull boy and a clever boy to that between an ox and
a dog. "To the ox, the universe comprises only the impassive blue above,
and the edible green beneath; while the dog finds a world of excitement
in hunting, and a demi-god in man." Dean Stanley, preaching on Trinity
Sunday, 1868, thus explained away the doctrine of the Trinity--"God the
Father is God in Nature. God the Son is God in History. God the Holy
Ghost is God in the Conscience." And Thring of Uppingham bellowed an
exposition of Psalm lxxviii. 70 with such surprising vigour that he
acquired among us the affectionate nickname of "Old Sheepfolds." It is a
pleasure to place in contrast with these absurdities the truly pastoral
and moving sermons of Mr. John Smith, whose apostolic work at Harrow I
have already commemorated. His paraphrase of 1. St. Peter iv. 7-8 still
lingers in my ear--"Be watchful, be prayerful, be very kind." He is thus
described on a Memorial Tablet in the Chapel:
To the Young a Father,
To friends in joy or grief a Brother,
To the poor, the suffering, and the tempted,
A minister of Hope and Strength.
Tried by more than common sorrows,
And upborne by more than common faith,
His holy life interpreted to many
The Mind which was in Christ Jesus,
The Promise of the Comforter,
And the Vision granted to the Pure in Heart.
It may seem odd that one should remember so much about sermons preached
so long ago, but Bishop Welldon's testimony illustrates the point. "When
I came to Harrow, I was greatly struck by the feeling of the boys for
the weekly Sermon; they looked for it as an element in their lives, they
attended to it, and passed judgment upon it." (I may remark in passing
that Dr. Welldon promptly and wisely reduced the Sunday Sermons from two
to one.)
But the day of days in Harrow Chapel was Founder's Day, October 10th,
1868, when the preacher at the Commemoration Service was Liddon, who had
lately become famous by the Bampton Lectures of 1866. The scene and the
sermon can never be forgotten. Prayers and hymns and thanksgivings for
Founder and Benefactors had been duly performed, and we had listened
with becoming solemnity to that droll chapter about "Such as found out
musical tunes, and recited verses in writing." When the preacher entered
the pulpit, his appearance instantly attracted attention. We had heard
vaguely of him as "the great Oxford swell," but now that we saw him we
felt a livelier interest. "He looks like a monk," one boy whispers to
his neighbour; and indeed it is a better description than the speaker
knows. The Oxford M.A. gown, worn over a cassock, is the Benedictine
habit modified by time and place; the spare, thin figure suggests
asceticism; the beautifully chiselled, sharply-pointed features, the
close-shaved face, the tawny skin, the jet-black hair, remind us vaguely
of something by Velasquez or Murillo, or of Ary Scheffer's picture of
St. Augustine. And the interest aroused by sight is intensified by
sound. The vibrant voice strikes like an electric shock. The exquisite,
almost over-refined, articulation seems the very note of culture. The
restrained passion which thrills through the disciplined utterance warns
even the most heedless that something quite unlike the ordinary stuff of
school-sermons is coming. "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy
youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou
shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." The speaker speaks of the
blessedness and glory of boyhood; the splendid inheritance of a Public
School built on Christian lines; the unequalled opportunities of
learning while the faculties are still fresh and the mind is still
receptive; the worthlessness of all merely secular attainment, however
desirable, however necessary, when weighed in the balance against "the
one thing needful." The congregation still are boys, but soon they will
be men. Dark days will come, as Ecclesiastes warned--dark in various
ways and senses, darkest when, at the University or elsewhere, we first
are bidden to cast faith aside and to believe nothing but what can be
demonstrated by "an appeal, in the last resort, to the organs of sense."
Now is the time, and this is the place, so to "remember our Creator"
that, come what may, we shall never be able to forget Him, or doubt His
love, or question His revelation. The preacher leans far out from the
pulpit, spreading himself, as it were, over the congregation, in an act
of benediction. "From this place may Christ ever be preached, in the
fulness of His creative, redemptive, and sacramental work. Here may you
learn to remember Him in the days of your youth, and, in the last and
most awful day of all, may He remember you."
Five minutes afterwards we are in the open air. Boys stare and gasp;
masters hurry past, excited and loquacious. Notes are compared, and
watches consulted. Liddon has preached for an hour, and the school must
go without its dinner.
Enough has now been said about the Chapel and its memories. I must now
turn to lighter themes. I remember once hearing Mrs. Procter, who was
born in 1799 and died in 1888, say casually at a London dinner-party,
when someone mentioned Harrow Speech-Day--"Ah! that used to be a
pleasant day. The last time I was there I drove down with Lord Byron and
Doctor Parr, who had been breakfasting with my step-father, Basil
Montagu." This reminiscence seemed to carry one back some way, but I
entirely agreed with Mrs. Procter. Speech-Day at Harrow has been for
more than forty years one of my favourite holidays. In my time the
present Speech-Room did not exist. The old Speech-Room, added to John
Lyon's original building in 1819, was a well-proportioned hall, with
panelled walls and large windows. Tiers of seats rose on three sides of
the room; on the fourth was the platform, and just opposite the
platform sat the Head-master, flanked right and left by distinguished
visitors. There was a triumphal arch of evergreens over the gate, and
the presence of the Beadle of the Parish Church, sumptuous in purple and
gold, pointed to the historic but obsolescent connexion between the
Parish and the School. The material of the "Speeches," so-called, was
much the same as that provided at other schools--Shakespeare, Sheridan,
Chatham, Aristophanes, Plautus, Molière, Schiller. An age-long desire to
play the Trial in _Pickwick_ was only attained, under the liberal rule
of Dr. Wood, in 1909. At the Speeches, one caught one's first glimpse of
celebrities whom one was destined to see at closer quarters in the years
to come; and I never can forget the radiant beauty of "Spencer's Faery
Queen,"[7] as I saw her at the Speeches of 1869.