public has no need of my services, and that England has suffered a
disastrous rebuff. The fleet has retreated from Apulia. England--let
posterity note this--has not an inch of ground in all the Italian
Peninsula. Well, we are worsted, and we must bide our time; but this I
will say: if that insolent young fool the First Mate thinks that his
family shall protect him he is mistaken. The press is a great power and
never greater than where (as in England) a professor of a university or
the upper classes write for the papers, and where a rule of anonymity
gives talent and position its full weight.[53]
IX.
Lambkin’s Address to the League of Progress
Everybody will remember the famous meeting of the Higher Spinsters
in 1868; a body hitherto purely voluntary in its organisation, it
had undertaken to add to the houses of the poor and wretched the
element which reigns in the residential suburbs of our great towns. If
Whitechapel is more degraded now than it was thirty years ago we must
not altogether disregard the earlier efforts of the Higher Spinsters,
they laboured well each in her own sphere and in death they were not
divided.
The moment however which gave their embryonic conceptions an organic
form did not sound till this year of 1868. It was in the Conference
held at Burford during that summer that, to quote their eloquent
circular, “the ideas were mooted and the feeling was voiced which
made us what we are.” In other words the Higher Spinsters were merged
in the new and greater society of the League of Progress. How much
the League of Progress has done, its final recognition by the County
Council, the sums paid to its organisers and servants I need not here
describe; suffice it to say that, like all our great movements, it
was a spontaneous effort of the upper middle class, that it concerned
itself chiefly with the artisans, whom it desired to raise to its own
level, and that it has so far succeeded as to now possess forty-three
Cloisters in our great towns, each with its Grand Master, Chatelaine,
Corporation of the Burghers of Progress and Lay Brothers, the whole
supported upon salaries suitable to their social rank and proceeding
entirely from voluntary contributions with the exception of that part
of the revenue which is drawn from public funds.
The subject of the Conference, out of which so much was destined to
grow, was “The Tertiary Symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor.”
Views upon this matter were heard from every possible standpoint; men
of varying religious persuasions from the Scientific Agnostic to the
distant Parsee lent breadth and elasticity to the fascinating subject.
Its chemical aspect was admirably described (with experiments) by Sir
Julius Wobble, the Astronomer Royal, and its theological results by the
Reader in Burmesan.
Lambkin was best known for the simple eloquence in which he could
clothe the most difficult and confused conceptions. It was on this
account that he was asked to give the Closing Address with which the
Proceedings terminated.
Before reciting it I must detain the reader with one fine anecdote
concerning this occasion, a passage worthy of the event and of the man.
Lambkin (as I need hardly say) was full of his subject, enthusiastic
and absorbed. No thought of gain entered his head, nor was he the
kind of man to have applied for payment unless he believed money to
be owing to him. Nevertheless it would have been impossible to leave
unremunerated such work as that which follows. It was decided by the
authorities to pay him a sum drawn from the fees which the visitors had
paid to visit the College Fish-Ponds, whose mediæval use in monkish
times was explained in a popular style by one who shall be nameless,
but who gave his services gratuitously.
After their departure Mr. Large entered Lambkin’s room with an
envelope, wishing to add a personal courtesy to a pleasant duty, and
said:
“I have great pleasure, my dear Lambkin, in presenting you with this
Bank Note as a small acknowledgment of your services at the Conference.”
Lambkin answered at once with:
“My dear Large, I shall be really displeased if you estimate that
slight performance of a pleasurable task at so high a rate as ten
pounds.”
Nor indeed was this the case. For when Lambkin opened the enclosure
(having waited with delicate courtesy for his visitor to leave
the room) he discovered but five pounds therein. But note what
follows--Lambkin neither mentioned the matter to a soul, nor passed
the least stricture upon Large’s future actions, save in those matters
where he found his colleague justly to blame: and in the course of the
several years during which they continually met, the restraint and
self-respect of his character saved him from the use of ignoble weapons
whether of pen or tongue. It was a lesson in gentlemanly irony to see
my friend take his place above Large at high table in the uneasy days
that followed.
THE ADDRESS
MY DEAR FRIENDS,
I shall attempt to put before you in a few simple, but I hope
well-chosen words, the views of a plain man upon the great subject
before us to-day. I shall attempt with the greatest care to avoid
any personal offence, but I shall not hesitate to use the knife with
an unsparing hand, as is indeed the duty of the Pastor whosoever he
may be. I remember a late dear friend of mine [who would not wish me
to make his name public but whom you will perhaps recognise in the
founder and builder of the new Cathedral at Isaacsville in Canada[54]].
I remember his saying to me with a merry twinkle of the eye that
looms only from the free manhood of the west: “Lambkin,” said he,
“would you know how I made my large fortune in the space of but three
months, and how I have attained to such dignity and honour? It was by
following this simple maxim which my dear mother[55] taught me in the
rough log-cabin[56] of my birth: ‘Be courteous to all strangers, but
familiar with none.’”[57]
My friends, you are not strangers, nay, on the present solemn occasion
I think I may call you friends--even brethren!--dear brothers and
sisters! But a little bird has told me.... (_Here a genial smile passed
over his face and he drank a draught of pure cold water from a tumbler
at his side._) A little bird has told me, I say, that some of you
feared a trifle of just harshness, a reprimand perhaps, or a warning
note of danger, at the best a doubtful and academic temper as to the
future. Fear nothing. I shall pursue a far different course, and
however courteous I may be I shall indulge in no familiarities.
“The Tertiary symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor” is
a noble phrase and expresses a noble idea. Why the very words are
drawn from our Anglo-Saxon mother-tongue deftly mingled with a few
expressions borrowed from the old dead language of long-past Greece and
Rome.
What is Education? The derivation of the word answers this question. It
is from “e” that is “out of,” “duc-o” “I lead,” from the root Duc--to
lead, to govern (whence we get so many of our most important words such
as “Duke”; “Duck” = a drake; etc.) and finally the termination “-tio”
which corresponds to the English “-ishness.” We may then put the whole
phrase in simple language thus, “The threefold Showings of twofold
Led-out-of-ishness among the Needy.”
The Needy! The Poor! Terrible words! It has been truly said that
we have them always with us. It is one of our peculiar glories in
nineteenth century England, that we of the upper classes have fully
recognised our heavy responsibility towards our weaker fellow-citizens.
Not by Revolution, which is dangerous and vain, not by heroic
legislation or hair-brained schemes of universal panaceas, not by
frothy Utopias. No!--by solid hard work, by quiet and persistent
effort, with the slow invisible tenacity that won the day at Badajoz,
we have won this great social victory. And if any one should ask me for
the result I should answer him--go to Bolton, go to Manchester, go to
Liverpool; go to Hull or Halifax--the answer is there.
There are many ways in which this good work is proceeding. Life is a
gem of many facets. Some of my friends take refuge in Prayer, others
have joined the Charity Organisation Society, others again have
laboured in a less brilliant but fully as useful a fashion by writing
books upon social statistics which command an enormous circulation. You
have turned to education, and you have done well. Show me a miner or
a stevedore who attends his lectures upon Rossetti, and I will show
you a man. Show me his wife or daughter at a cookery school or engaged
in fretwork, and I will shew you a woman. A man and a woman--solemn
thought!
A noble subject indeed and one to occupy the whole life of a man! This
“Education,” this “Leading-out-of,” is the matter of all our lives here
in Oxford except in the vacation.[58] And what an effect it has! Let me
prove it in a short example.
At a poor lodging-house in Lafayette, Pa., U.S.A., three well-educated
men from New England who had fallen upon evil times were seated at a
table surrounded by a couple of ignorant and superstitious Irishmen;
these poor untaught creatures, presuming upon their numbers, did not
hesitate to call the silent and gentlemanly unfortunates “Dommed
High-faluthing Fules”; but mark the sequel. A fire broke out in the
night. The house was full of these Irishmen and of yet more repulsive
Italians. Some were consumed by the devouring element, others
perished in the flames, others again saved their lives by a cowardly
flight.[59] But what of those three from Massachusetts whom better
principles had guided in youth and with whom philosophy had replaced
the bitter craft of the Priest? They were found--my dear friends--they
were found still seated calmly at the table; they had not moved; no
passion had blinded them, no panic disturbed: in their charred and
blackened features no trace of terror was apparent. Such is the effect,
such the glory of what my late master and guide, the Professor of
Tautology, used to call the “Principle of the Survival of the Fittest.”
(_Applause, which was only checked by a consideration for the respect
due to the Sacred edifice._)
Go forth then! Again I say go forth! Go forth! Go forth! The time is
coming when England will see that your claims to reverence, recognition
and emolument are as great as our own. I repeat it, go forth, and when
you have brought the great bulk of families to change their mental
standpoint, then indeed you will have transformed the world! For
without the mind the human intellect is nothing.
X.
Lambkin’s Leader
Mr. Solomon was ever determined to keep the _Sunday Englishman_ at a
high level. “We owe it” (he would say) “first to the public who are
thereby sacrificed--I mean satisfied--and to ourselves, who secure
thereby a large and increasing circulation.” [“Ourselves” alluded to
the shareholders, for the _Sunday Englishman_ was a limited Company, in
which the shares (of which Mr. Solomon held the greater number) were
distributed in the family; the tiniest toddler of two years old was
remembered, and had been presented with a share by his laughing and
generous parent.]
In this laudable effort to keep “abreast of the times” (as he phrased
it), the Editor and part Proprietor determined to have leaders written
by University men, who from their position of vantage enjoy a unique
experience in practical matters. He had formed a very high opinion
of Lambkin’s journalistic capacity from his unpublished letters as a
special correspondent. Indeed, he was often heard to say that “a man
like him was lost at Oxford, and was born for Fleet Street.” He wrote,
therefore, to Mr. Lambkin and gave him “Carte Blanche,” as one French
scholar to another, sending him only the general directions that his
leader must be “smart, up-to-date, and with plenty of push,” it was to
be “neither too long nor too short,” and while it should be written in
an easy familiar tone, there should be little or no seriously offensive
matter included.
Mr. Lambkin was delighted, and when at his request the article had been
paid for, he sent in the following:
* * * * *
THE LEADER.
“The English-Speaking Race has--if we except the Dutch, Negro, and
Irish elements--a marvellous talent for self-government. From the
earliest origins of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers to the latest Parish
Council, guided but not controlled by the modern ‘Mass Thegen’ or local
‘Gesithcund man,’ this talent, or rather genius, is apparent. We cannot
tell why, in the inscrutable designs of Providence, our chosen race
should have been so specially gifted, but certain it is that wherever
plain ordinary men _such as I who write this and you who read it_,[60]
may be planted, there they cause the desert to blossom, and the waters
to gush from the living rock. Who has not known, whether among his
personal acquaintance or from having read of him in books, the type
of man who forms the strength of this mighty national organism? And
who has not felt that he is himself something of that kidney? We stand
aghast at our own extraordinary power, and it has been finely said that
Nelson was greater than he knew. From one end of the earth to the other
the British language is spoken and understood. The very words that I am
writing will be read to-morrow in London, the day after in Oxford--and
from this it is but a step to the uttermost parts of the earth.
“Under these conditions of power, splendour, and domination it is
intolerable that the vast metropolis of this gigantic empire should
be pestered with crawling cabs. There are indeed many things which in
the Divine plan have it in their nature to crawl. We of all the races
of men are the readiest to admit the reign of universal law. Meaner
races know not the law, but we are the children of the law, and where
crawling is part of the Cosmos we submit and quit ourselves like
men, being armed with the armour of righteousness. Thus no Englishman
(whatever foreigners may feel) is offended at a crawling insect or
worm. A wounded hare will crawl, and we Read that ‘the serpent was
cursed and crawled upon his belly’; again, Aristotle in his Ethics
talks of those whose nature (φύσις) it is ‘ἕρπειν,’ which is usually
translated ‘to crawl,’ and Kipling speaks of fifes ‘crawling.’ With
all this we have no quarrel, but the crawling cab is a shocking and
abominable thing; and if the titled owners of hansoms do not heed
the warning in time they will find that the spirit of Cromwell is
not yet dead, and mayhap the quiet determined people of this realm
will rise and sweep them and their gaudy gew-gaws and their finnicky
high-stepping horses, and their perched-up minions, from the fair face
of England.”
XI.
Lambkin’s Remarks on the End of Term
_Delivered in Hall on Saturday, Dec. 6th, 1887, the morning upon
which the College went down._
MY DEAR FRIENDS; MY DEAR UNDERGRADUATE MEMBERS OF THIS COLLEGE,
The end of Term is approaching--nay, is here. A little more, and we
shall meet each other no longer for six weeks. It is a solemn and
a sacred thought. It is not the sadness, and even the regret, that
takes us at the beginning of the Long Vacation. This is no definitive
close. We lose (I hope) no friends; none leave us for ever, unless I
may allude to the young man whom few of you knew, but through whose
criminal folly the head of this foundation has lost the use of one eye.
This is not a time of exaltation, so should it not be a time for too
absolute a mourning. This is not the end of the Easter Term, nor of
the Summer Term. It is the end of Michaelmas Term. That is the fact,
and facts must be looked in the face. What are we to do with the
approaching vacation? What have we done with the past term?
In the past term (I think I can answer for some of you) a much deeper
meaning has entered into your lives. Especially you, the young freshmen
(happily I have had the control of many, the teaching of some), I know
that life has become fuller for you. That half-hour a week to which you
pay so little heed will mean much in later years. You have come to me
in batches for half-an-hour a week, and each of you has thus enjoyed
collectively the beginning of that private control and moulding of
the character which is the object of all our efforts here in Oxford.
And can you not, as you look back, see what a great change has passed
over you in the short few months? I do not mean the corporeal change
involved by our climate or our prandial habits; neither do I allude to
the change in your dress and outward appearance. I refer to the mental
transformation.
You arrived sure of a number of things which you had learnt at school
or at your mother’s knee. Of what are you certain now? Of nothing! It
is necessary in the mysterious scheme of education that this blind
faith or certitude should be laid as a foundation in early youth.
But it is imperative that a man--if he is to be a man and not a
monster--should lose it at the outset of his career. My young friends,
I have given you the pearl of great price. You have begun to doubt.
Half-an-hour a week--four hours in all the term ... could any positive,
empirical, or dogmatic teaching have been conveyed in that time, or
with so much fullness as the great scheme of negation can be? I trow
not.
So much for knowledge and tutorship. What of morals? It is a delicate
subject, but I will treat of it boldly. You all remember how, shortly
after the month of October, the College celebrated Guy Fawkes’ day:
the elders, by a dinner in honour of their founder, the juniors by
lighting a bonfire in the quadrangle. You all know what followed. I do
not wish to refer again--certainly not with bitterness--to the excesses
of that evening; but the loss of eyesight is a serious thing, and one
that the victim may forgive, but hardly can forget. I hope the lesson
will suffice, and that in future no fellow of this College will have to
regret so serious a disfigurement at the hands of a student.
To pass to lighter things. The Smoking Concert on All Souls’ Day
was a great success. I had hoped to organise some similar jollity
on Good Friday, but I find that it falls in the Easter vacation. It
is, however, an excellent precedent, and we will not fail to have
one on some other festal occasion. To the action of one of our least
responsible members I will not refer. But surely there is neither good
breeding nor decency in dressing up as an old lady, in assuming the
name of one of our Greatest Families, and in so taking advantage of the
chivalry, and perhaps the devotion, of one’s superiors. The offence is
one that can not lightly be passed over, and the culprit will surely be
discovered.
Of the success of the College at hockey and in the inter-University
draughts competition, I am as proud as yourselves. [_Loud cheers,
lasting for several minutes._] They were games of which in my youth I
was myself proud. On the river I see no reason to be ashamed; next term
we have the Torpids, and after that the Eights. We have no cause to
despair. It is my experience (an experience based on ten years of close
observation), that no college can permanently remain at the bottom of
the river. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the
flood leads on to fortune, let us therefore taking heart of grace and
screw our courage to the sticking point. We have the lightest cox. in
the ’Varsity and an excellent coach. Much may be done with these things.
As to the religious state of the college it is, as you all know,
excellent--I wish I could say the same for the Inorganic Chemistry.
This province falls under the guidance of Mr. Large, but the deficiency
in our standing is entirely the fault of his pupils. There are not
twenty men in the University better fitted to teach Inorganic Chemistry
than my colleague. At any rate it is a very grave matter and one by
which a college ultimately stands or falls.
We have had no deaths to deplore during this term, and in my opinion
the attack of mumps that affected the college during November can
hardly be called an epidemic. The drains will be thoroughly overhauled
during the vacation, and the expense of this, spread as it will be
among all undergraduate members whether in residence or not, will form
a very trifling addition to Battells. I doubt if its effect will be
felt.
There is one last thing that I shall touch upon. We have been
constantly annoyed by the way in which undergraduates tread down the
lawn. The Oxford turf is one of the best signs of our antiquity as
a university. There is no turf like it in the world. The habit of
continually walking upon it is fatal to its appearance. Such an action
would certainly never be permitted in a gentleman’s seat, and there
is some talk of building a wall round the quadrangle to prevent the
practice in question. I need hardly tell you what a disfigurement such
a step would involve, but if there is one thing in the management of
the college that I am more determined upon than another it is that no
one be he scholar or be he commoner shall walk upon the grass!
I wish you a very Merry Christmas at the various country houses you may
be visiting, and hope and pray that you may find united there all the
members of your own family.
Mr. Gurge will remain behind and speak to me for a few moments.
XII.
Lambkin’s Article on the North-west Corner of the Mosaic Pavement of
the Roman Villa at Bignor
Of Mr. Lambkin’s historical research little mention has been made,
because this was but the recreation of a mind whose serious work
was much more justly calculated to impress posterity. It is none
the less true that he had in the inner _coterie_ of Antiquarians, a
very pronounced reputation, and that on more than one occasion his
discoveries had led to animated dispute and even to friction. He is
referred to as “Herr Professor Lambkin” in Winsk’s “Roman Sandals,”[61]
and Mr. Bigchurch in the Preface of his exhaustive work on “The
Drainage of the Grecian Sea Port” (which includes much information
on the Ionian colonies and Magna Graecia) acknowledges Mr. Lambkin’s
“valuable sympathy and continuous friendly aid which have helped him
through many a dark hour.” Lambkin was also frequently sent books on
Greek and Roman Antiquities to review; and it must be presumed that the
editor of _Culture_,[62] who was himself an Oxford man and had taken
a House degree in 1862, would hardly have had such work done by an
ignorant man.
If further proof were needed of Mr. Lambkin’s deep and minute
scholarship in this matter it would be discovered in the many
reproductions of antiquities which used to hang round his room
in college. They were photographs of a reddish-brown colour and
represented many objects dear to the Scholar, such as the Parthenon,
the Temples of Paestum, the Apollo Belvedere, and the Bronze head at
the Vatican; called in its original dedication an Ariadne, but more
properly described by M. Crémieux-Nathanson, in the light of modern
research, as a Silenus.
Any doubts as to Lambkin’s full claim to detailed-knowledge in those
matters, will, however, be set at rest by the one thing he has left
us of the kind--his article in the _Revue Intellectuelle_, which was
translated for him by a Belgian friend, but of which I have preserved
the original MSS.[63] It is as follows:
THE ARTICLE.
I cannot conceive how M. Bischoff[64] and Herr Crapiloni[65] can have
fallen into their grotesque error with regard to the Head in the Mosaic
at Bignor. The Head, as all the world knows, is to be found in the
extreme north-west corner of the floor of the Mosaic at Bignor, in
Sussex. Its exact dimensions from the highest point of the crown to
the point or cusp of the chin, and from the furthest back edge of the
cerebellum to the outer tip of the nose are one foot five inches and
one foot three inches, respectively. The Head is thus of the Heroic or
exaggerated size, and _not_ (as Wainwright says in his _Antiquities_),
“of life size.” It represents the head and face of an old man, and is
composed of fragments, in which are used the colours black, brown,
blue, yellow, pink, green, purple and bright orange. There can be no
doubt that the floor must have presented a very beautiful and even
brilliant appearance when it was new, but at the present day it is much
dulled from having lain buried for fifteen hundred years.