Speech-Day to Holidays. Dr. Vaughan, some time Head-master of Harrow and
afterwards Dean of Llandaff, was in 1868 Vicar of Doncaster. My only
brother was one of his curates; the Vaughans asked my mother to stay
with them at the Vicarage, in order that she might see her son, then
newly ordained, at his work; and, the visit falling in the Harrow
holidays, they good-naturedly said that she might bring me with her. Dr.
Vaughan was always exceedingly kind to boys, and one morning, on our way
back from the daily service, he said to me--"Sir Grosvenor Le
Draughte[8] has proposed to break his journey here, on his return from
Scotland. Do you know him? No? Well--observe Sir Grosvenor. He is well
worthy of observation. He is exactly what the hymn-book calls 'a
worldling.'" The day advanced, and no Sir Grosvenor appeared. The Doctor
came into the drawing-room repeatedly, asking if "that tiresome old
gentleman had arrived," and Mrs. Vaughan plied him with topics of
consolation--"Perhaps he has missed his train. Perhaps there has been an
accident. Perhaps he has been taken ill on the journey"--but the Doctor
shook his head and refused to be comforted. After dinner, we sat in an
awe-struck silence, while the Vaughans, knowing the hour at which the
last train from Scotland came in, and the length of time which it took
to drive from the station, listened with ears erect. Presently the
wheels of a fly came rumbling up, and Dr. Vaughan, exclaiming, "Our
worst anticipations are realized!" hurried to the front door. Then,
welcoming the aged traveller with open arms, he said in his blandest
tones--"Now, my dear Sir Grosvenor, I know you must be dreadfully tired.
You shall go to bed at once." Sir Grosvenor, who longed to sit up till
midnight, telling anecdotes and drinking brandy-and-water, feebly
remonstrated; but the remorseless Doctor led his unwilling captive
upstairs. It was a triumph of the _Suaviter in modo_, and gave me an
impressive lesson on the welcome which awaits self-invited guests, even
when they are celebrities. But all this is a parenthesis.
I should be shamefully ungrateful to a place of peculiar enjoyment if I
forbore to mention the Library at Harrow. It was opened in 1863, as a
Memorial of Dr. Vaughan's Head-mastership, and its delicious bow-window,
looking towards Hampstead, was my favourite resort. On whole-holidays,
when others were playing cricket, I used to read there for hours at a
stretch; and gratified my insatiable thirst for Biographies, Memoirs,
and Encyclopædias. The Library was also the home of the Debating
Society, and there I moved, forty-two years ago, that a Hereditary
Legislative Body is incompatible with free institutions; and supported
the present Bishop of Oxford in declaring that a Republic is the best
form of Government. The mention of the Debating Society leads me to the
subject of Politics. I have said in a former chapter that the
Conservative Reform Bill of 1867 was the first political event which
interested me. It was a stirring time all over the world, in France, in
Italy, and in Mexico. There were rebellions and rumours of rebellion.
Monarchical institutions were threatened. Secret Societies were in full
activity. The whole social order seemed to be passing through a crisis,
and I, like the Abbé Siéyes, fell to framing constitutions; my favourite
scheme being a Republic, with a President elected for life, and a
Legislature chosen by universal suffrage. But all these dreams were
dispelled by the realities of my new life at Harrow, and, for a while, I
perforce thought more of Imperial than of Papal Rome, of Greek than of
English Republics. But in the summer of 1868, Mr. Gladstone's first
attack on the Irish Church caused such an excitement as I had never
before known. It was a pitched battle between the two great Parties of
the State, and I was an enthusiastic follower of the Gladstonian
standard. In November 1868 came the General Election which was to decide
the issue. Of course Harrow, like all other schools, was Tory as the sea
is salt. Out of five hundred boys, I can only recall five who showed the
Liberal colour. These were the present Lord Grey; Walter Leaf, the
Homeric Scholar; W. A. Meek, now Recorder of York; M. G. Dauglish, who
edited the "Harrow Register," and myself. On the polling day I received
my "Baptism of Fire," or rather of mud, being rolled over and over in
the attempt to tear my colours from me. The Tory colour was red; the
Liberal was blue; and my mother, chancing to drive through Harrow with
the light blue carriage-wheels which my family have always used, was
playfully but loudly hissed by wearers of the red rosette. Among the
masters, political opinion was divided. Mr. Young, whom I quoted just
now, was a Liberal, and a Tory boy called Freddy Bennet (brother of the
present Lord Tankerville) covered himself with glory by pinning a red
streamer to the back of Young's gown while he was calling "Bill."
In the following year our Politics found a fresh vent through the
establishment of _The Harrovian_. I had dabbled in composition ever
since I was ten, and had printed both prose and verse before I entered
Harrow School. So here was a heaven-sent contributor, and one morning,
in the autumn of 1869, as I was coming out of First School, one[9] of
the Editors overtook me and said--
"We want you to contribute to _The Harrovian_. We are only going to
employ fellows who can write English--not such stuff as 'The following
boys _were given prizes_.'" Purism indeed!
Here began my journalistic career. For three years I wrote a
considerable part of the paper, and I was an Editor during my last year,
in conjunction with my friends Dumbar Barton and Walter Sichel.
Harrow is sometimes said to be the most musical of Public Schools; and
certainly our School Songs have attained a wide popularity. I believe
that "Forty Years on" is sung all over the world. But, when I went to
Harrow, we were confined to the traditional English songs and ballads,
and to some Latin ditties by Bradby and Westcott, which we bellowed
lustily but could not always construe. E. E. Bowen's stirring, though
often bizarre, compositions (admirably set to music by John Farmer)
began soon after I entered the school, and E. W. Howson's really
touching and melodious verses succeeded Bowens' some ten years after I
had left. Other song-writers, of greater or less merit, we have had; but
from first to last, the thrilling spell of a Harrow concert has been an
experience quite apart from all other musical enjoyments. "The singing
is the thing. When you hear the great body of fresh voices leap up like
a lark from the ground, and rise and swell and swell and rise till the
rafters seem to crack and shiver, then you seem to have discovered all
the sources of feeling." This was the tribute of a stranger, and an
Harrovian has recorded the same emotion:--"John was singing like a lark,
with a lark's spontaneous delight in singing; with an ease and
self-abandonment which charmed eye almost as much as ear. Higher and
higher rose the clear, sexless notes, till two of them met and mingled
in a triumphant trill. To Desmond, that trill was the answer to the
quavering, troubled cadences of the first verse; the vindication of the
spirit soaring upwards unfettered by the flesh--the pure spirit, not
released from the human clay without a fierce struggle. At that moment
Desmond loved the singer--the singer who called to him out of heaven,
who summoned his friend to join him, to see what he saw--'the vision
splendid.'"[10]
I am conscious that, so far, I have treated the Moloch of Athletics with
such scant respect that his worshippers may doubt if I ever was really a
boy. Certainly my physical inability to play games was rendered less
bitter by the fact that I did not care about them. I well remember the
astonishment of my tutor, when he kindly asked me to luncheon on his
carriage at my first Eton and Harrow match, and I replied that I should
not be there.
"Not be at Lord's, my boy? How very strange! Why?"
"Because there are three things which I particularly dislike--heat, and
crowds, and cricket." It certainly was a rather priggish answer, but let
me say in self-defence that before I left the school I had become as
keen on "Lord's," as the best of my compeers.
That, in spite of his reprehensible attitude towards our national game,
I was still, as Mr. Chadband said, "a human boy," is proved by the
intense interest with which I beheld the one and only "Mill" which ever
took place while I was at Harrow.[11] It was fought on the 25th of
February, 1868, with much form and ceremony. The "Milling-ground," now
perverted to all sorts of base uses, is immediately below the
School-Yard. The ground slopes rapidly, so that the wall of the Yard
forms the gallery of the Milling-Ground. The moment that "Bill" was
over, I rushed to the wall and secured an excellent place, leaning my
elbows on the wall, while a friend, who was a moment later, sat on my
shoulders and looked over my bowed head. It would be indiscreet to
mention the names of the combatants, though I remember them perfectly.
One was a red-headed giant; the other short, dark, and bow-legged.
Neither had at all a pleasant countenance, and I must admit that I
enjoyed seeing them pound each other into pulp. I felt that two beasts
were getting their deserts. To-day such a sight would kill me; but this
is the degeneracy of old age.
Now that I am talking about school-fellows, several names call for
special mention. As I disliked athletics, it follows that I did not
adore athletes. I can safely say that I never admired a boy because of
his athletic skill, though I have admired many in spite of it. Probably
Sidney Pelham, Archdeacon of Norfolk, who was in the Harrow Eleven in
1867 and 1868, and the Oxford Eleven in 1871, will never see this book;
so I may safely say that I have seldom envied anyone as keenly as I
envied him, when Dr. Butler, bidding him farewell before the whole
school, thanked him for "having set an example which all might be proud
to follow--unfailing sweetness of temper, and perfect purity of life."
In one respect, the most conspicuous of my school-fellows was H.R.H.
Prince Thomas of Savoy, Duke of Genoa, nephew of Victor Emmanuel, and
now an Admiral in the Italian Navy. He came to Harrow in 1869, and lived
with Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Arnold. He was elected King of Spain by a vote
of the Cortes on the 3rd of October 1869. He was quite a popular boy,
and no one had the slightest grudge against him; but, for all that,
everyone made a point of kicking him, in the hope of being able to say
in after-life that they had kicked the King of Spain. Unfortunately
Victor Emmanuel, fearing dynastic complications, forbade him to accept
the Crown; so he got all the Harrow kicks and none of the Spanish
half-pence. When I entered Harrow, the winner of all the classical
prizes was Andrew Graham Murray, now Lord Dunedin and Lord President of
the Court of Session; a most graceful scholar, and also a considerable
mathematician. Just below him was Walter Leaf, to whom no form of
learning came amiss; who was as likely to be Senior Wrangler as Senior
Classic, and whose performances in Physical Science won the warm praise
of Huxley. Of the same standing as these were Arthur Evans, the
Numismatist, Frank Balfour, the Physiologist, and Gerald Rendall,
Head-master of Charterhouse. Among my contemporaries the most
distinguished was Charles Gore, whose subsequent career has only
fulfilled what all foresaw; and just after him came (to call them by
their present names) Lord Crewe, Lord Ribblesdale, Lord Spencer, Mr.
Justice Barton of the Irish Bench, and Mr. Walter Long, in whom Harrow
may find her next Prime Minister. Walter Sichel was at seventeen the
cleverest school-boy whom I have ever known. Sir Henry McKinnon obtained
his Commission in the Guards while he was still in the Fifth Form.
Pakenham Beatty was the Swinburnian of the school, then, as now, a true
Poet of Liberty. Ion Keith-Falconer, Orientalist and missionary, was a
saint in boyhood as in manhood. Edward Eyre seemed foreordained to be
what in London and in Northumberland he has been--the model
Parish-Priest; and my closest friend of all was Charles Baldwyn
Childe-Pemberton, who, as Major Childe, fell at the battle of Spion Kop,
on a spot now called, in honour of his memory, "Childe's Hill." _De
minimis non curat Respublica_; which, being interpreted, signifies--_The
Commonwealth_ will not care to know the names of the urchins who fagged
for me.[12] But I cherish an ebony match-box carved and given to me by
one of these ministering spirits, as a proof that, though my laziness
may have made me exacting, my exactions were not brutal.
On the 15th of June, 1871, Harrow School celebrated the three-hundredth
anniversary of its foundation. Harrovians came from every corner of the
globe to take part in this Tercentenary Festival. The arrangements were
elaborated with the most anxious care. The Duke of Abercorn,
affectionately and appropriately nicknamed "Old Splendid," presided
over a banquet in the School-Yard; and the programme of the day's
proceedings had announced, rather to the terror of intending visitors,
that after luncheon there would be "speeches, interspersed with songs,
from three hundred and fifty of the boys." The abolition of the second
comma dispelled the dreadful vision of three-hundred-and-fifty
school-boy-speeches, and all went merry as a marriage-bell--all, except
the weather. It seemed as if the accumulated rain of three centuries
were discharged on the devoted Hill. It was raining when we went to the
early celebration in the Chapel; it was raining harder when we came out.
At the culminating moment of the day's proceedings, when Dr. Vaughan was
proposing "Prosperity to Harrow," the downpour and the thunder drowned
the speaker's voice; and, when evening fell on the sodden
cricket-ground, the rain extinguished the fireworks.
On that same cricket-ground nine days later, in the golden afternoon of
Midsummer Day, George Clement Cottrell, a boy beautiful alike in face
and in character, was killed in an instant by a blow from a ball, which
struck him behind the ear when he was umpiring in the Sixth Form game.
On the 29th of June his five hundred school-fellows followed him to his
resting-place in the Churchyard on the Hill, and I believe we
unanimously felt that he whom we had lost was the one, of all our
number, of whom we could say, with the surest confidence, that he was
fit to pass, without a moment's warning, into the invisible World.
_Beati mundo corde_.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Writing to John Murray in 1832, Byron said--"There is a spot in the
Churchyard, near the footpath, on the brow of the Hill looking towards
Windsor, and a tomb under a large tree (bearing the name of Peachie, or
Peachey), where I used to sit for hours and hours as a boy: this was my
favourite spot."
[5] The Rev. E. M. Young.
[6] Herga is the Anglo-Saxon name of Harrow.
[7] Charlotte Seymour, Countess Spencer, died 1903.
[8] The name is borrowed from "Sybil." The bearer of it was an ancient
physician, who had doctored all the famous people of his time, beginning
with "Pamela."
[9] Mr. R. de C. Welch.
[10] _The Hill._ Chapter vi.
[11] Some authorities say that it was the last on record.
[12] This paper appeared in _The Commonwealth_.
IV
OXFORD
"For place, for grace, and for sweet companee,
Oxford is Heaven, if Heaven on Earth there be."
SIR JOHN DAVIES.
The faithful student of "Verdant Green" will not have forgotten that
Charlie Larkyns, when introducing his Freshman-friend to the sights of
Oxford, called his attention to a mystic inscription on a wall in Oriel
Lane. "You see that? Well, that's one of the plates they put up to
record the Vice's height. F.P.--7 feet, you see: the initials of his
name--Frederick Plumptre!" "He scarcely seemed so tall as that," replied
Verdant, "though certainly a tall man. But the gown makes a difference,
I suppose."
Dr. Plumptre was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford from 1848 to 1851, and Master
of University College for thirty-four years. He died in 1870, and the
College thereupon elected the Rev. G. G. Bradley, then Head-master of
Marlborough, and afterwards Dean of Westminster, to the vacant post. It
was an unfortunate choice. Mr. Bradley was a man of many gifts and
virtues, and a successful schoolmaster; but the methods which had
succeeded at Marlborough were not adapted to Oxford, and he soon
contrived to get at loggerheads both with Dons and with Undergraduates.
However, there existed at that time--and I daresay it exists still--a
nefarious kind of trades-unionism among the Headmasters of Public
Schools; and, as Bradley had been a Head-master, all the Head-masters
advised their best pupils to try the scholarships at University College.
So far as I had any academical connexions, they were exclusively with
Trinity, Cambridge; and my father was as ignorant of Oxford as myself.
All I knew about it was that it was the source and home of the Oxford
movement, which some of my friends at Harrow had taught me to admire.
Two or three of those friends were already there, and I wished to rejoin
them; but, as between the different Colleges, I was fancy-free; so when,
early in 1872, Dr. Butler suggested that I should try for a scholarship
at University, I assented, reserving myself, in the too probable event
of failure, for Christ Church. However, I was elected at University on
the 24th of February, 1872, and went into residence there on the 11th of
the following October. The Vice-Chancellor who matriculated me was the
majestic Liddell, who, with his six feet of stately height draped in
scarlet, his "argent aureole" of white hair, and his three silver maces
borne before him, always helped me to understand what Sydney Smith meant
when he said, of some nonsensical proposition, that no power on earth,
save and except the Dean of Christ Church, should induce him to believe
it. As I write, I see the announcement of Mrs. Liddell's death; and my
mind travels back to the drawing-room and lawns of the Deanery at Christ
Church, and the garland of beautiful faces
"Decking the matron temples of a place
So famous through the world."
The 13th of October was my first Sunday in Oxford, and my friend Charles
Gore took me to the Choral Eucharist at Cowley St. John, and afterwards
to luncheon with the Fathers. So began my acquaintance with a Society
of which I have always been a grateful admirer. But more exciting
experiences were at hand: on the 20th of October it was Liddon's turn,
as Select Preacher, to occupy the pulpit at St. Mary's. The impressions
of that, my first University sermon, have never faded from my mind. A
bright autumn morning, the yellow sunlight streaming in upon the densely
crowded church, the long array of scarlet-robed doctors, the preacher's
beautiful face looking down from the high pulpit, with anxious brow and
wistful gaze. And then the rolling Latin hymn, and then the Bidding
Prayer, and then the pregnant text--_He that believeth on the Son hath
everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life;
but the wrath of God abideth on him_. Are we listening to St. John the
Baptist or St. John the Evangelist? The preacher holds that we are
listening to the Evangelist, and says that the purpose of St. John's
Gospel is condensed into his text. "If to believe in Him is life, to
have known and yet to reject him is death. There is no middle term or
state between the two.... In fact, this stern, yet truthful and
merciful, claim makes all the difference between a Faith and a theory."
And now there is a moment's pause. Preacher and hearers alike take
breath. Some instinct assures us that we are just coming to the crucial
point. The preacher resumes: "A statement of this truth in other terms
is at present occasioning a painful controversy, which it would be
better in this place to pass over in silence if too much was not at
stake to warrant a course from which I shall only depart with sincere
reluctance. Need I say that I allude to the vexed question of the
Athanasian Creed?" The great discourse which was thus introduced, with
its strong argument for the retention of the Creed as it stands, has
long been the property of the Church, and there is no need to
recapitulate it. But the concluding words, extolling "the high and rare
grace of an intrepid loyalty to known truth," spoke with a force of
personal appeal which demands commemoration: "To be forced back upon the
central realities of the faith which we profess; to learn, better than
ever before, what are the convictions which we dare not surrender at any
cost; to renew the freshness of an early faith, which affirms within us,
clearly and irresistibly, that the one thing worth thinking of, worth
living for, if need were, worth dying for, is the unmutilated faith of
Jesus Christ our Lord,--these may be the results of inevitable
differences, and, if they are, they are blessings indeed."[13]
The same Sunday was marked by another unforgettable experience--my first
visit to St. Barnabas'. The church was then just three years old. Bishop
Wilberforce had consecrated it on the 19th of October, 1869, and made
this characteristic note in his diary:--"Disagreeable service. Acolyte
running about. Paste squares for bread, etc., but the church a great
gift." Three years later, a boy fresh from Harrow, and less sensitively
Protestant than the good Bishop, not only thought "the church a great
gift," but enjoyed the "acolyte running about," and found the whole
service the most inspiring and uplifting worship in which he had ever
joined. My impressions of it are as clear as yesterday's--the unadorned
simplicity of the fabric, emphasizing by contrast the blaze of light and
colour round the altar; the floating cloud of incense; the expressive
and unfussy ceremonial; the straightforward preaching; and, most
impressive of all, the large congregation of men, old and young, rich
and poor, undergraduates and artisans, all singing Evangelical hymns
with one heart and one voice. It was, if ever there was on earth,
congregational worship; and I, for one, have never seen its like. The
people's pride in the church was very characteristic: they habitually
spoke of it as "our Barnabas." The clergy and the worshippers were a
family, and the church was a home.
At the Dedication Festival of 1872, there was a strong list of
preachers, including W. J. E. Bennett, of Frome, and Edward King, then
Principal of Cuddesdon. But the sermon which made an indelible
impression on me was preached by R. W. Randall, then vicar of All
Saints, Clifton, and afterwards Dean of Chichester. It was indeed a
memorable performance. "Performance" is the right word, for, young as
one was, one realized instinctively the wonderful art and mastery and
technical perfection of the whole. There was the exquisitely modulated
voice, sinking lower, yet becoming more distinct, whenever any specially
moving topic was touched; the restrained, yet emphatic action--I can see
that uplifted forefinger still--and the touch of personal reminiscence
at the close, so managed as to give the sense that we were listening to
an elder brother who, thirty years before, had passed through the same
experiences, so awfully intermingled of hope and tragedy, which now lay
before us on the threshold of our Oxford life. It was, in brief, a
sermon never to be forgotten; it was "a night to be much remembered unto
the Lord."