Chittenden's--A wonderful teacher--My personal experiences as a
schoolmaster--My "boys in blue"--My unfortunate garments--A "brave
Belge"--The model boy, and his name--A Spartan regime--"The Three
Sundays"--Novel religious observances--Harrow--"John Smith of
Harrow"--"Tommy" Steele--"Tosher"--An ingenious punishment--John
Farmer--His methods--The birth of a famous song--Harrow school
songs--"Ducker"--The "Curse of Versatility"--Advancing old age--The
race between three brothers--A family failing--My father's race at
sixty-four--My own--A most acrimonious dispute at Rome--Harrow after
fifty years.
I was sent to school as soon as I was nine, to Mr. Chittenden's, at
Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. This remarkable man had a very rare gift:
he was a born teacher, or, perhaps, more accurately, a born
mind-trainer. Of the very small stock of knowledge which I have been
able to accumulate during my life, I certainly owe at least one-half to
Mr. Chittenden. There is a certain profusely advertised system for
acquiring concentration, and for cultivating an artificial memory, the
name of which will be familiar to every one. Instead of the title it
actually bears, that system should be known as "Chittendism," for it is
precisely the method adopted by him with his pupils fifty-four years
ago. Mr. Chittenden, probably recognising that peculiar quality of
mental laziness which is such a marked characteristic of the average
English man or woman, set himself to combat and conquer it the moment
he got a pupil into his hands. Think of the extraordinary number of
persons you know who never do more than half-listen, half-understand,
half-attend, and who only read with their eyes, not with their brains.
The other half of their brain is off wool-gathering somewhere, so
naturally they forget everything they read, and the little they do
remember with half their brain is usually incorrect. It seems to me
that this sort of mental limitation is far more marked in the young
generation, probably because foolish parents seem to think it rather an
amusing trait in their offspring. Now, the boy at Chittenden's who
allowed his mind to wander, and did not concentrate, promptly made the
acquaintance of the "spatter," a broad leathern strap; and the spatter
hurt exceedingly, as I can testify from many personal experiences of
it. On the whole, then, even the most careless boy found it to his
advantage to concentrate. This clever teacher knew how quickly young
brains tire, so he never devoted more than a quarter of an hour to each
subject, but during that quarter of an hour he demanded, and got, the
full attention of his pupils. The result was that everything absorbed
remained permanently. If I enlarge at some length on Mr. Chittenden's
methods, it is because the subject of education is of such vital
importance, and the mere fact that the much-advertised system to which
I have alluded has attained such success, would seem to indicate that
many people are aware that they share that curious disability in the
intellectual equipment of the average Englishman to which I have
referred; for unless they had habitually only half-listened, half-read,
half-understood, there could be no need for their undergoing a course
of instruction late in life. Surely it is more sensible to check this
peculiarly English tendency to mental laziness quite early in life, as
Mr. Chittenden did with his boys. To my mind another striking
characteristic of the average English man and woman is their want of
observation. They don't notice: it is far too much trouble; besides,
they are probably thinking of something else. All Chittenden's boys
were taught to observe; otherwise they got into trouble. He insisted,
too, on his pupils expressing themselves in correct English, with the
result that Chittenden's boys were more intellectually advanced at
twelve than the average Public School boy is at sixteen or seventeen.
It is unusual to place such books as Paley's Christian Evidences, or
Archbishop Whately's Historic Doubts as to Napoleon Bonaparte, in the
hands of little boys of twelve, with any expectation of a satisfactory
result; yet we read them on Sundays, understood the point of them, and
could explain the why and wherefore of them. Chittenden's one fault was
his tendency to "force" a receptive boy, and to develop his intellect
too quickly. As in the Pelm--(I had very nearly written it) system, he
made great use of memoria technica, and always taught us to link one
idea with another. At the age of ten I got puzzled over Marlborough's
campaigns. "'Brom,' my boy, remember 'Brom,'" said Mr. Chittenden.
"That will give you Marlborough's victories in their proper
sequence--Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malplaquet, 'Brom'"; and
"Brom" I have remembered from that day to this.
Though it is now many years since Mr. Chittenden passed away, I must
pay this belated tribute to the memory of a very skilful teacher, and
an exceedingly kind friend, to whom I owe an immense debt of gratitude.
My own experiences as a pedagogue are limited. During the War, I was
asked to give some lessons in elementary history and rudimentary French
to convalescent soldiers in a big hospital. No one ever had a more
cheery and good-tempered lot of pupils than I had in my blue-clad,
red-tied disciples. For remembering the order of the Kings of England,
we used Mr. Chittenden's jingle, beginning:
"Billy, Billy, Harry, Ste,
Harry, Dick, Jack, Harry Three."
By repeating it all together, over and over again, the very jangle of
it made it stick in my pupils' memory. Dates proved a great difficulty,
yet a few dates, such as that of the Norman Conquest and of the Battle
of Waterloo, were essential. "Clarke, can you remember the date of the
Norman Conquest?" "Very sorry, sir; clean gone out of my 'ead." "Now,
Daniels, how about the date of Waterloo?" "You've got me this time,
sir." Then I had an inspiration. Feigning to take up a
telephone-receiver, and to speak down it, I begged for "Willconk, One,
O, double-six, please." Twenty blithesome wounded Tommies at once went
through an elaborate pantomime of unhooking receivers, and asked
anxiously for "Willconk--One, O, double-six, miss, please. No, miss, I
didn't say, 'City, six, eight, five, four'; I said 'Willconk, One, O,
double-six.' Thank you, miss; now I can let mother know I'm coming to
tea." This, accompanied by much playful badinage with the imaginary
operator, proved immensely popular, but "Willconk, One, O, double-six"
stuck in the brains of my blue-clothed flock. In the same way the
Battle of Waterloo became "Batterloo--One, eight, one, five, please,
miss," so both those dates remained in their heads.
We experienced some little trouble in mastering the French numerals,
until I tried a new scheme, and called out, "From the right, number, in
French!" Then my merry convalescents began shouting gleefully, "Oon,"
"Doo," "Troy," "Catta," "Sink," etc.; but the French numerals stuck in
their heads. Never did any one, I imagine, have such a set of jolly,
cheery boys in blue as pupils, and the strong remnant of the child left
in many of them made them the more attractive.
When I first went to school, the selection and purchase of my outfit
was, for some inscrutable reason, left to my sisters' governess, an
elderly lady to whom I was quite devoted. This excellent person,
though, knew very little about boys, and nothing whatever as to their
requirements. Her mind harked back to the "thirties" and "forties," and
she endeavoured to reconstitute the dress of little boys at that
period. She ordered for me a velvet tunic for Sunday wear, of the sort
seen in old prints, and a velvet cap with a peak and tassel, such as
young England wore in William IV.'s days. She had large, floppy, limp
collars specially made for me, of the pattern worn by boys in her
youth; every single article of my unfortunate equipment had been
obsolete for at least thirty years. In my ignorance, and luckily not
knowing what was in store for me, I felt immensely proud of my new kit.
On the first Sunday after my arrival at school, I arrayed myself with
great satisfaction in a big, floppy collar, and my new velvet tunic,
amidst the loud jeers of all the other boys in the dormitory. I was,
however, hardly prepared for the yells and howls of derision with which
my appearance in the school-room was greeted; my unfortunate garments
were held to be so unspeakably grotesque that boys laughed till the
tears ran down their cheeks. As church-time approached the boys
produced their high hats, which I found were worn even by little
fellows of eight; I had nothing but my terrible tasselled velvet cap,
the sight of which provoked even louder jeers than the tunic had done.
We marched to church two and two, in old-fashioned style in a
"crocodile," but not a boy in the school would walk beside me in my
absurd garments, so a very forlorn little fellow trotted to church
alone behind the usher, acutely conscious of the very grotesque figure
he was presenting. I must have been dressed very much as Henry
Fairchild was when he went to visit his little friend Master Noble. On
returning from church, I threw my velvet cap into the water-butt,
where, for all I know, it probably is still, and nothing would induce
me to put on the velvet tunic or the floppy collars a second time. I
bombarded my family with letters until I found myself equipped with a
high hat and Eton jackets and collars such as the other boys wore.
We were taught French at Chittenden's by a very pleasant old Belgian,
M. Vansittart. I could talk French then as easily as English, and after
exchanging a few sentences with M. Vansittart, he cried, "Tiens! mais
c'est un petit Francais;" but the other boys laughed so unmercifully at
what they termed my affected accent, that in self-defence I adopted an
ultra-British pronunciation, made intentional mistakes, and, in order
to conform to type, punctiliously addressed our venerable instructor as
"Moosoo," just as the other boys did. M. Vansittart must have been a
very old man, for he had fought as a private in the Belgian army at the
Battle of Waterloo. He had once been imprudent enough to admit that he
and some Belgian friends of his had...how shall we put it?...absented
themselves from the battlefield without the permission of their
superiors, and had hurriedly returned to Brussels, being doubtless
fatigued by their exertions. His little tormentors never let him forget
this. When we thought that we had done enough French for the day, a
shrill young voice would pipe out, "Now, Moosoo, please tell us how you
and all the Belgians ran away from the Battle of Waterloo." It never
failed to achieve the desired end. "Ah! tas de petits sacripants! 'Ow
dare you say dat?" thundered the poor old gentleman, and he would go on
to explain that his and his friends' retirement was only actuated by
the desire to be the first bearers to Brussels of the news of
Wellington's great victory, and to assuage their families' very natural
anxiety as to their safety. He added, truthfully enough, "Nos jambes
courraient malgres nous." Poor M. Vansittart! He was a gentle and a
kindly old man, with traces of the eighteenth-century courtliness of
manner, and smothered in snuff.
Mr. Chittenden was never tired of dinning into us the astonishing
merits of a pupil who had been at the school eleven or twelve years
before us. This model boy apparently had the most extraordinary mental
gifts, and had never broken any of the rules. Mr. Chittenden predicted
a brilliant future for him, and would not be surprised should he
eventually become Prime Minister. The paragon had had a distinguished
career at Eton, and was at present at Cambridge, where he was certain
to do equally well. From having this Admirable Crichton perpetually
held up to us as an example, we grew rather tired of his name, much as
the Athenians wearied at constantly hearing Aristides described as "the
just." At length we heard that the pattern-boy would spend two days at
Hoddesdon on his way back to Cambridge. We were all very anxious to see
him. As Mr. Chittenden confidently predicted that he would one day
become Prime Minister, I formed a mental picture of him as being like
my uncle, Lord John Russell, the only Prime Minister I knew. He would
be very short, and would have his neck swathed in a high black-satin
stock. When the Cambridge undergraduate appeared, he was, on the
contrary, very tall and thin, with a slight stoop, and so far from
wearing a high stock, he had an exceedingly long neck emerging from a
very low collar. His name was Arthur James Balfour.
I think Mr. Balfour and the late Mr. George Wyndham were the only
pupils of Chittenden's who made names for themselves. The rest of us
were content to plod along in the rut, though we had been taught to
concentrate, to remember, and to observe.
Compared with the manner in which little boys are now pampered at
preparatory schools, our method of life appears very Spartan. We never
had fires or any heating whatever in our dormitories, and the windows
were always open. We were never given warm water to wash in, and in
frosty weather our jugs were frequently frozen over. Truth compels me
to admit that this freak of Nature's was rather welcomed, for little
boys are not as a rule over-enamoured of soap and water, and it was an
excellent excuse for avoiding any ablutions whatever. We rose at six,
winter and summer, and were in school by half-past six. The windows of
the school-room were kept open, whilst the only heating came from a
microscopic stove jealously guarded by a huge iron stockade to prevent
the boys from approaching it. For breakfast we were never given
anything but porridge and bread and butter. We had an excellent dinner
at one o'clock, but nothing for tea but bread and butter again, never
cake or jam. It will horrify modern mothers to learn that all the boys,
even little fellows of eight, were given two glasses of beer at dinner.
And yet none of us were ever ill. I was nearly five years at
Chittenden's, and I do not remember one single case of illness. We were
all of us in perfect health, nor were we ever afflicted with those
epidemics which seem to play such havoc with modern schools, from all
of which I can only conclude that a regime of beer and cold rooms is
exceedingly good for little boys.
The Grange, Mr. Chittenden's house, was one of the most perfect
examples of a real Queen Anne house that I ever saw. Every room in the
house was wood-panelled, and there was some fine carving on the
staircase. The house, with a splendid avenue of limes leading up to it,
stood in a large old-world garden, where vast cedar trees spread
themselves duskily over shaven lawns round a splashing fountain, and
where scarlet geraniums blazed. Such a beautiful old place was quite
wasted as a school.
We were very well treated by both Mr. and Mrs. Chittenden, and we were
all very happy at the Grange. During my first year there one of my
elder brothers died. A child of ten, should death never have touched
his family, looks upon it as something infinitely remote, affecting
other people but not himself. Then when the first gap in the home
occurs, all the child's little world tumbles to pieces, and he wonders
how the birds have the heart to go on singing as usual, and how the sun
can keep on shining. A child's grief is very poignant and real. I can
never forget Mr. and Mrs. Chittenden's extreme kindness to a very
sorrowful little boy at that time.
There was one curious custom at Chittenden's, and I do not know whether
it obtained in other schools in those days. Some time in the summer
term the head-boy would announce that "The Three Sundays" had arrived,
and must be duly observed according to ancient custom. We all obeyed
him implicity. The first Sunday was "Cock-hat Sunday," the second "Rag
Sunday," and the third (if I may be pardoned) "Spit-in-the-pew Sunday."
On the first Sunday we all marched to church with our high hats at an
extreme angle over our left ears; on the second Sunday every boy had
his handkerchief trailing out of his pocket; on the third, I am sorry
to say, thirty-one little boys expectorated surreptitiously but
simultaneously in the pews, as the first words of the Litany were
repeated. I think that we were all convinced that these were regularly
appointed festivals of the Church of England. I know that I was, and I
spent hours hunting fruitlessly through my Prayer Book to find some
allusion to them. I found Sundays after Epiphany, Sundays in Lent, and
Sundays after Trinity, but not one word could I discover, to my
amazement, either about "Cock-hat Sunday" or "Spit-in-the-pew Sunday."
What can have been the origin of this singular custom I cannot say.
When I, in my turn, became head-boy, I fixed "The Three Sundays" early
in May. It so happened that year that the Thursday after "Cock-hat
Sunday" was Ascension Day, when we also went to church, but, it being a
week-day, we wore our school caps in the place of high hats. Ascension
Day thus falling, if I may so express myself, within the Octave of
"Cock-hat Sunday," I decreed that the customary ritual must be observed
with the school caps, and my little flock obeyed me implicitly. So
eager were some of the boys to do honour to this religious festival,
that their caps were worn at such an impossible angle that they kept
tumbling off all the way to church. It is the only time in my life that
I have ever wielded even a semblance of ecclesiastical authority, and I
cannot help thinking that the Archbishop of Canterbury would have
envied the unquestioning obedience with which all my directions were
received, for I gather that his own experience has not invariably been
equally fortunate.
At thirteen I said good-bye to the pleasant Grange, and went, as my
elder brothers, my father, and my grandfather had done before me, to
Harrow.
In the Harrow of the "seventies" there was one unique personality, that
of the Rev. John Smith, best-loved of men. This saintly man was
certainly very eccentric. We never knew then that his whole life had
been one long fight against the hereditary insanity which finally
conquered him. In appearance he was very tall and gaunt, with
snow-white whiskers and hair, and the kindest eyes I have ever seen in
a human face; he was meticulously clean and neat in his dress. "John,"
as he was invariably called, on one occasion met a poorly clad beggar
shivering in the street on a cold day, and at once stripped off his own
overcoat and insisted on the beggar taking it. John never bought
another overcoat, but wrapped himself in a plaid in winter-time. He
addressed all boys indiscriminately as "laddie," though he usually
alluded to the younger ones as "smallest of created things,"
"infinitesimal scrap of humanity," or "most diminutive of men"; but,
wildly eccentric as he was, no one ever thought of laughing at him. It
was just "old John," and that explained everything.
I was never "up" to John, for he taught a low Form, and I had come from
Chittenden's, and all Chittenden's boys took high places; but he took
"pupil-room" in my house, and helped my tutor generally, so I saw John
daily, and, like every one else, I grew very much attached to this
simple, saint-like old clergyman.
He went round every room in the house on Sunday evenings, always first
scrupulously knocking at the door. An untidy room gave him positive
pain, and the most slovenly boys would endeavour to get their filthy
rooms into some sort of order, "just to please old John." John was
passionately fond of flowers, and one would meet the most unlikely boys
with bunches of roses in their hands. If one inquired what they were
for, they would say half-sheepishly, "Oh, just a few roses I've bought.
I thought they would please old John; you know how keen the old chap is
on flowers." Now English schoolboys are not as a rule in the habit of
presenting flowers to their masters. For all his apparent simplicity,
John was not easy to "score off." I have known Fifth-form boys bring a
particularly difficult passage of Herodotus to John in "pupil-room,"
knowing that he was not a great Greek scholar. John, after glancing at
the passage, would say, "Laddie, you splendid fellows in the Upper
Fifth know so much; I am but a humble and very ignorant old man. This
passage is beyond my attainments. Go to your tutor, my child. He will
doubtless make it all clear to you; and pray accept my apologies for
being unable to help you," and the Fifth-form boy would go away feeling
thoroughly ashamed of himself. After his death, it was discovered from
his diary that John had been in the habit of praying for twenty boys by
name, every night of his life. He went right down the school list, and
then he began again. Any lack of personal cleanliness drove him
frantic. I myself have heard him order a boy with dirty nails and hands
out of the room, crying, "Out of my sight, unclean wretch! Go and
cleanse the hands God gave you, before I allow you to associate with
clean gentlemen, and write out for me two hundred times, 'Cleanliness
is next to godliness.'"
John took the First Fourth, and his little boys could always be
detected by their neatness and extreme cleanliness. Neither of these
can be called a characteristic of little boys in general, but the
little fellows made an effort to overcome their natural tendencies "to
please old John." When his hereditary enemy triumphed, and his reason
left him, hundreds of his old pupils wished to subscribe, and to
surround John for the remainder of his life with all the comforts that
could be given him in his afflicted condition. It was very
characteristic of John to refuse this offer, and to go of his own
accord into a pauper asylum, where he combined the duties of chaplain
and butler until his death. John was buried at Harrow, and by his own
wish no bell was tolled, and his coffin was covered with scarlet
geraniums, as a sign of rejoicing. I know how I should describe John,
were I preaching a sermon.
Another mildly eccentric Harrow master was the Rev. T. Steele,
invariably known as "Tommy." His peculiarities were limited to his use
of the pronoun "we" instead of "I," as though he had been a crowned
head, and to his habit of perpetually carrying, winter and summer, rain
or sunshine, a gigantic bright blue umbrella. He had these umbrellas
specially made for him; they were enormous, the sort of umbrellas Mrs.
Gamp must have brought with her when her professional services were
requisitioned, and they were of the most blatant blue I have ever
beheld. Old Mr. Steele, with his jovial rubicund face, his flowing
white beard, and his bright blue umbrella, was a species of walking
tricolour flag.
Schoolboys worship a successful athlete. There was a very pleasant
mathematical master named Tosswill, always known as "Tosher," who at
that time held the record for a broad jump, he having cleared, when
jumping for Oxford, twenty-two and a half feet. That record has long
since been beaten. Should one be walking with another boy when passing
"Tosher," he was almost certain to say, "You know that Tosher holds the
record for broad jumps. Twenty-two and a half feet; he must be an
awfully decent chap!" Tosswill had the knack of devising ingenious
punishments. I was "up" to him for mathematics, and, with my hopelessly
non-mathematical mind, I must have been a great trial to him. At that
time I was playing the euphonium in the school brass band, an
instrument which afforded great joy to its exponents, for in most
military marches the solo in the "trio" falls to the euphonium, though
I fancy that I evoked the most horrible sounds from my big brass
instrument. To play a brass instrument with any degree of precision, it
is first necessary to acquire a "lip"--that is to say, the centre of
the lip covered by the mouthpiece must harden and thicken before "open
notes" can be sounded accurately. To "get a lip" quickly, I always
carried my mouthpiece in my pocket, and blew noiselessly into it
perpetually, even in school. Tosher had noticed this. One day my
algebra paper was even worse than usual. With the best intentions in
the world to master this intricate branch of knowledge, algebra
conveyed nothing whatever to my brain. To state that A + b = xy, seemed
to me the assertion of a palpable and self-evident falsehood. After
looking through my paper, Tosher called me up. "Your algebra is quite
hopeless, Hamilton. You will write me out a Georgic. No; on second
thoughts, as you seem to like your brass instrument, you shall bring it
up to my house every morning for ten days, and as the clock strikes
seven, you shall play me "Home, Sweet Home" under my window."
Accordingly every morning for ten days I trudged through the High
Street of Harrow with my big brass instrument under my arm, and as
seven rang out from the school clock, I commenced my extremely
lugubrious rendering of "Home, Sweet Home," on the euphonium, to a
scoffing and entirely unsympathetic audience of errand-boys and early
loafers, until Tosher's soap-lathered face nodded dismissal from the
window.
The school songs play a great part in Harrow life. Generation after
generation of boys have sung these songs, and they form a most potent
bond of union between Harrovians of all ages, for their words and music
are as familiar to the old Harrovian of sixty as to the present
Harrovian of sixteen.
Most of these songs are due to the genius of two men, Edward Bowen and
John Farmer. Like Gilbert and Sullivan, neither of these would, I
think, have risen to his full height without the aid of the other.
Farmer had an inexhaustible flow of facile melody at his command,
always tuneful, sometimes almost inspired. In addition to the published
songs, he was continually throwing off musical settings to topical
verse, written for some special occasion. These were invariably bright
and catchy, and I am sorry that Farmer considered them of too ephemeral
a nature to be worth preserving. "Racquets," in particular, had a
delightfully ear-tickling refrain. Bowen's words are a little unequal
at times, but at his best he is very hard to beat.
I had organ lessons from Farmer, and as I liked him extremely, I was
continually at his house. I enjoyed seeing him covering sheets of music
paper with rapid notation, and then humming the newly born product of
his musical imagination. As I had a fairly good treble voice, and could
read a part easily, Farmer often selected me to try one of his new
compositions at "house-singing," where the boys formed an exceedingly
critical audience. Either the new song was approved of, or it was
received in chilling silence. Farmer in moments of excitement perspired
more than any human being I have ever seen. Going to his house one
afternoon, I found him bathed in perspiration, writing away for dear
life. He motioned me to remain silent, and went on writing. Presently
he jumped up, and exclaimed triumphantly, "I have got it! I have got it
at last!" He then showed me the words he was setting to music. They
began:
"Forty years on, when afar and asunder,
Parted are those who are singing to-day."
"I wrote another tune to it first," explained Farmer, "a bright tune, a
regular bell-tinkle" (his invariable expression for a catchy tune),
"but Bowen's words are too fine for that. They want something
hymn-like, something grand, and now I've found it. Listen!" and Farmer
played me that majestic, stately melody which has since been heard in
every country and in every corner of the globe, wherever two old
Harrovians have come together. Some people may recall how, during the
Boer War, "Forty years on" was sung by two mortally wounded Harrovians
on the top of Spion Kop just before they died.
To my great regret my voice had broken then, else it is quite possible
that Farmer might have selected me to sing "Forty years on" for the
very first time. As it was, that honour fell to a boy named A.M.
Wilkinson, who had a remarkably sweet voice.
John Farmer's eccentricities were, I think, all assumed. He thought
they helped him to manage the boys. I sang in the chapel choir, and he
circulated the quaintest little notes amongst us, telling us how he
wished the Psalms sung. "Psalm 136, quite gaily and cheerfully; Psalm
137, very slowly and sorrowfully; Psalm 138, real merry bell-tinkle,
with plenty of organ.--J. F."
Long after I had left, Farmer continued to pour out a ceaseless flow of
school songs. Of course they varied in merit, but in some, such as
"Raleigh," and "Five Hundred Faces," he managed to touch some subtle
chord of sympathy that makes them very dear to those who heard them in
their youth. After Farmer left Harrow for Oxford, his successor, Eaton
Faning, worthily continued the traditions. All Eaton Failing's songs
are melodious, but in two of them, "Here, sir!" and "Pray, charge your
glasses, gentlemen," he reaches far higher levels.
The late E.W. Howson's words to "Here, sir!" seem to strike exactly the
right note for boys. They are fine and virile, with underlying
sentiment, yet free from the faintest suspicion of mawkish
sentimentality. Two of the verses are worth quoting:
"Is it nought--our long procession,
Father, brother, friend, and son,
As we step in quick succession,
Cap and pass and hurry on?
One and all,
At the call,
Cap and pass and hurry on?
Here, sir! Here, sir!" etc.
"So to-day--and oh! if ever
Duty's voice is ringing clear,
Bidding men to brave endeavour,
Be our answer, 'We are here!'
Come what will,
Good or ill,
We will answer, 'We are here!'
Here, sir! Here, sir!" etc.
The allusion is, of course, to "Bill," the Harrow term for the
roll-call. These lines, for me, embody all that is best in the
so-called "Public School spirit."
In my time the distant view from the chapel terrace was exceedingly
beautiful, whilst the immediate foreground was uncompromisingly ugly. A
vegetable garden then covered the space where now the steps of the
"Slopes" run down through lawns and shrubberies, and rows of
utilitarian cabbages and potatoes extended right up to the terrace
wall. But beyond this prosaic display of kitchen-stuff, in summer-time
an unbroken sea of green extended to the horizon, dotted with such
splendid oaks as only a heavy clay soil can produce. London, instead of
being ten miles off, might have been a hundred miles distant. Now, for
fifty years London, Cobbett's "monstrous wen," has been throwing her
tentative feelers into the green Harrow country. Already pioneer
tentacles of red-brick houses are creeping over the fields, and before
long the rural surroundings will have vanished beyond repair.
"Ducker," the Harrow bathing-place, has had scant justice done to it.
It is a most attractive spot, standing demurely isolated amidst its
encircling fringe of fine elms, and jealously guarded by a high wooden
palisade, No unauthorised person can penetrate into "Ducker"; in
summer-time it is the boys' own domain. The long tiled pool stretches
in sweeping curves for 250 feet under the great elms, a splashing
fountain at one end, its far extremity gay with lawns and flower-beds.
I can conceive of nothing more typical of the exuberant joie-de-vivre
of youth than the sight of Ducker on a warm summer evening when the
place is ringing with the shouts and laughter of some four hundred
boys, all naked as when they were born, swimming, diving, ducking each
other, splashing and rollicking in the water, whilst others stretched
out on the grass, puris naturalibus, are basking in the sun, or
regaling themselves on buns and cocoa. The whole place is vibrant with
the intense zest the young feel in life, and with the whole-hearted
powers of enjoyment of boyhood. A school-song set to a captivating
waltz-lilt record the charms of Ducker. One verse of it,
"Oh! the effervescing tingle,
How it rushes in the veins!
Till the water seems to mingle
With the pulses and the brains,"
exactly expresses the reason why, as a boy, I loved Ducker so.
Unfortunately, I never played cricket for Harrow at "Lords," as my two
brothers George and Ernest did. My youngest brother would, I think,
have made a great name for himself as a cricketer, had not the fairies
endowed him at his birth with a fatal facility for doing everything
easily. As the result of this versatility, his ambitions were
continually changing. He accordingly abandoned cricket for steeplechase
riding, at which he distinguished himself until politics ousted
steeplechase riding. After some years, politics gave place to golf and
music, which were in their turn supplanted by photography. He then
tried writing a few novels, and very successful some of them were,
until it finally dawned on him that his real vocation in life was that
of a historian. My brother was naturally frequently rallied by his
family on his inconstancy of purpose, but he pleaded in extenuation
that versatility had very marked charms of its own. He produced one day
a copy of verses, written in the Gilbertian metre, to illustrate his
mental attitude, and they strike me as so neatly worded, that I will
reproduce them in full.
"THE CURSE OF VERSATILITY"
"It is possible the student of Political Economy
Might otherwise have cultivated Fame,
And the Scientist whose energies are given to Astronomy
May sacrifice a literary name.
In the Royal Academician may be buried a facility
For prosecuting Chemical Research,
But he knows that if he truckles to the Curse of Versatility,
Competitors will leave him in the lurch.
"If an eminent physician should develop a proclivity
For singing on the operatic stage,
He will find that though his patients may apparently forgive
it, he
Will temporal'ly cease to be the rage,
And the lawyer who depreciates his logical ability
And covets a poetical renown,
Will discover on his Circuit that the Curse of Versatility
Has limited the office of his gown.
"The costermonger yonder, if he had the opportunity,
Might rival the political career
Of the orator who poses as the pride of the community,
The Radical Hereditary Peer.
And the genius who fattens on a chronic inability
To widen the horizon of his brain,
May be stupider than others whom the Curse of Versatility
Has fettered with a mediocre chain.
"Should a Civil Servant woo the panegyrics of Society,
And hanker after posthumous applause,
It MAY happen that possession of a prodigal variety
Of talents will invalidate his cause.
He must learn to put a tether on his cerebral agility,
And focus all his energies of aim
On ONE isolated idol, or the Curse of Versatility
Will drag him from the pinnacle of Fame.
"Though the Curse may be upon us, and condemn us for Eternity
To jostle with the ordinary horde;
Though we grovel at the shrine of the professional fraternity
Who harp upon one solitary chord;
Still...we face the situation with an imperturbability
Of spirit, from the knowledge that we owe
To the witchery that lingers in the Curse of Versatility
The balance of our happiness below."
Of course, to some temperaments variety will appeal; whilst others
revel in monotony. The latter are like a District Railway train, going
perpetually round and round the same Inner Circle. As far as my
experience goes, the former are the more interesting people to meet.
To persons of my time of life, the last verse of "Forty years on" has a
tendency to linger in the memory. It runs--
"Forty years on, growing older and older,
Shorter in wind, as in memory long,
Feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder,
What will it help you that once you were strong?"
Although it is now fifty, instead of "forty years on," I indignantly
disclaim the "feeble of foot," whilst reluctantly pleading guilty to
"rheumatic of shoulder." It is common to most people, as they advance
in life, to note with a sorrowful satisfaction the gradual decay of the
physical powers of their contemporaries, though they always seem to
imagine that they themselves have retained all their pristine vigour,
and have successfully resisted every assault of Time's battering-ram.
The particular sentiment described in German as "Schadenfreude,"
"pleasure over another's troubles" (how characteristic it is that there
should be no equivalent in any other language for this peculiarly
Teutonic emotion!), makes but little appeal to the average Briton
except where questions of age and of failing powers come into play, and
obviously this only applies to men: no lady ever grows old for those
who are really fond of her; one always sees her as one likes best to
think of her.
I have already divulged one family secret, so I will reveal another.
Some few years ago my three eldest brothers were dining together. Each
of them professed deep concern at the palpable signs of physical decay
which he detected in his brethren, whilst congratulating himself on
remaining untouched by advancing years. The dispute became acrimonious
to a degree; the grossest personalities were freely bandied about. At
length it was decided to put the matter to a practical test, and it was
agreed (I tell this in the strictest confidence) that the three
brothers should run a hundred yards race in the street then and there.
Accordingly, a nephew of mine paced one hundred yards in Montagu
Street, Portman Square, and stood immovable as winning-post. The
Chairman of the British South African Chartered Company, the Chairman
of the Great Eastern Railway Company, and the Secretary of State for
India took up their positions in the street and started. The Chairman
of the Great Eastern romped home. We are all of us creatures of our
environment, and we may become unconsciously coloured by that
environment; as the Great Eastern Railway has always adopted a go-ahead
policy, it is possible that some particle of the momentum which would
naturally result from this may have been subconsciously absorbed by the
Chairman, thus giving him an unfair advantage over his brothers. It is
unusual for a Duke, a Chairman of an important Railway Company, and a
Secretary of State to run races in a London street at ten o'clock at
night, especially when the three of them were long past their sixtieth
year, but I feel certain that my confidence about this little episode
will be respected.
I fear that this habit of running races late in life may be a family
failing. During my father's second tenure of office as Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland, he was still an enthusiastic cricketer, and played
regularly in the Viceregal team in spite of his sixty-four years. The
Rev. Dr. Mahaffy, Professor of Ancient History at Trinity College,
Dublin, also played for the Viceregal Lodge in his capacity of Chaplain
to the Viceroy. Dr. Mahaffy, though a fine bowler, was the worst runner
I have ever seen. He waddled and paddled slowly over the ground like a
duck, with his feet turned outwards, exactly as that uninteresting fowl
moves. My father frequently rallied Dr. Mahaffy on his defective
locomotive powers, and finally challenged him to a two hundred yards
race. My father being sixty-four years old, and Dr. Mahaffy only
thirty-six, it was agreed that the Professor should be handicapped by
wearing cricket-pads, and by carrying a cricket bat. I was present at
the race, which came off in the gardens of the Viceregal Lodge, before
quite a number of people. My father won with the utmost ease, to the
delirious joy of the two policemen on duty, who had never before seen a
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland racing a Professor of Trinity College.
I myself must plead guilty to having entered for a "Veterans' Race" two
years ago, at the age of sixty-one, at some Sunday School sports in
Ireland. I ran against a butler, a gardener, two foremen-mechanics, and
four farmers, but only achieved second place, and that at the price of
a sprained tendon, so possibly the "feeble of foot" of the song really
is applicable to me after all. The butler, who won, started off with
the lead and kept it, though one would naturally have expected a butler
to run a "waiting" race.
I was at Harrow with the Duke of Aosta, brother of the beautiful Queen
Margherita of Italy. H. R. H. sported a full curly yellow beard at the
age of sixteen, a somewhat unusual adornment for an English schoolboy.
When I accompanied my father's special Mission to Rome in 1878, at a
luncheon at the Quirinal Palace, Queen Margherita alluded to her
brother having been at Harrow, and added, "I am told that Harrow is the
best school in England." The Harrovians present, including my father,
my brother Claud, myself, the late Lord Bradford, and my brother-in-law
the late Lord Mount Edgcumbe, welcomed this indisputable proposition
warmly--nay, enthusiastically. The Etonians who were there, Sir
Augustus Paget, then British Ambassador in Rome, the late Lord
Northampton, and others, contravened her Majesty's obviously true
statement with great heat, quite oblivious of the fact that it is
opposed to all etiquette to contradict a Crowned Head. The dispute
engendered considerable heat on either side; the walls of that hall in
the Quirinal rang with our angered protests, until the Italians present
became quite alarmed. Our discussion having taken place in English,
they had been unable to follow it, and they felt the gravest
apprehensions as to the plot the foreigners were evidently hatching.
When told that we were merely discussing the rival merits of two
schools in England, they were more than ever confirmed in their opinion
that all English people were hopelessly mad.
To one like myself, to whom it has fallen to visit almost every country
on the face of the globe, there is always a tinge of melancholy in
revisiting the familiar High Street of Harrow. It is like returning to
the starting-point at the conclusion of a long race. The externals
remain unchanged. Outwardly, the New Schools, the Chapel, the Vaughan
Library, and the Head-Master's House all wear exactly the same aspect
that they bore half a century ago. They have not changed, and the
ever-renewed stream of young life flows through the place as joyously
as it did fifty years ago. But....
"Oh, the great days in the distance enchanted,
Days of fresh air, in the rain and the sun."
At times the imagination is apt to play tricks and to set back the
hands of the clock, until one pictures oneself again in a short jacket
and Eton collar, going up to school, with a pile of books hugged under
the left arm, and the intervening half-century wiped out. But, as they
would put it in Ireland, these lucky, fresh-faced youngsters of to-day
have their futures in front of them, not behind them. Then it is that
Howson's words, wedded to John Farmer's haunting refrain, come back to
the mind--
"Yet the time may come as the years go by,
When your heart will thrill
At the thought of 'The Hill'
And the day that you came, so strange and shy."