Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
was that which he preached on the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, 1868.
The text was Ephesians v. 15: "See then that ye walk circumspectly." The
sermon was an earnest plea for the revival of the ascetic life, and the
preacher endeavoured to show "what new blessings God has in store for
absolute self-sacrifice" by telling his hearers about the great
victories of asceticism in history. He took first the instance of St.
Anthony, as the type of personal asceticism; then that of St. Benedict,
as the author of the Common Life of equality and brotherhood; and then
that of St. Francis, who, "in the midst of a Church endowed with all
that art and learning and wealth and power could give, reasserted the
love of God to the poorest, the meanest, the most repulsive of His
children, and placed again the simple Cross above all the treasures of
the world." Even "the unparalleled achievements, the matchless energy,
of the Jesuits" were duly recognized as triumphs of faith and
discipline; and the sermon ended with a passionate appeal to the Harrow
boys to follow the example of young Antony or the still younger
Benedict, and prepare themselves to take their part in reviving the
ascetic life of the English Church.
"It is to a congregation like this that the call comes with the most
stirring and the most cheering voice. The young alone have the fresh
enthusiasm which in former times God has been pleased to consecrate to
like services.... And if, as I do believe most deeply, a work at
present awaits England, and our English Church, greater than the world
has yet seen, I cannot but pray everyone who hears me to listen humbly
for the promptings of God's Spirit, if so be that He is even now calling
him to take a foremost part in it. It is for us, perhaps, first to hear
the call, but it is for you to interpret it and fulfil it. Our work is
already sealed by the past: yours is still rich in boundless
possibilities."
It may readily be believed that this discourse did not please either the
British Parent or the Common Schoolmaster. A rumour went abroad that Mr.
Westcott was going to turn all the boys into monks, and loud was the
clamour of ignorance and superstition. Westcott made the only dignified
reply. He printed (without publishing) the peccant sermon, under the
title "Disciplined Life," and gave a copy to every boy in the School,
expressing the hope that "God, in His great love, will even thus, by
words most unworthily spoken, lead some one among us to think on one
peculiar work of the English Church, and in due time to offer himself
for the fulfilment of it as His Spirit shall teach." Those who remember
that Charles Gore was one of the boys who heard the sermon may think
that the preacher's prayer was answered.
With the masters generally I was on the best of terms. Indeed, I can
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 AEthiopians
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.