Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
"Polly Arnold" kept a stationer's shop, and, as a child, helping her
grand-mother in the same shop, had sold pens--some added cribs--to Byron
when a boy in the school. Here was a Link of the Past which exactly
suited me, and, if only Polly could have understood the allusion, I
should have said to her--"Ah, did you once see Byron plain?" I happened
to have a sister who, though exceptionally clever and lively, had
absolutely no chronological sense. I took her to see Polly Arnold one
day, when this conversation ensued--"Well, Miss Arnold, I am very glad
to make your acquaintance. I have often heard of you from my brother. He
tells me you remember John Lyon. How very interesting!" [N.B.--John Lyon
founded Harrow School in 1571.] To this tribute Polly replied with much
asperity--"I know I'm getting on in life, Miss, but I'm not quite three
hundred years old yet"--while my sister murmured in my ear--"Who _is_ it
she remembers? I know it's someone who lived a long time ago."
But the name of Arnold, when connected with Harrow, suggests quite
another train of thought. At Easter, 1868, Matthew Arnold came to live
at Harrow, with a view of placing his three boys in the School. The
eldest of the three was the invalid to whom his father referred in a
letter quoted in my first chapter: I was able to show him some little
kindnesses, and thus arose an intimacy with the parents, brothers, and
sisters which I have always regarded as--
"Part of my life's unalterable good."
FOOTNOTE:
[3] "The wood belonged to the Hazeldeans, the furze-land to the
Sticktorights--an old Saxon family if ever there was one." _My Novel_.
Book I.
III
HARROVIANA
"I may have failed, my School may fail;
I tremble, but thus much I dare;
I love her. Let the critics rail,
My brethren and my home are there."
W. CORY.
Everyone who travels by the North Western, or the Great Central, or the
Midland Railway, must be conversant with the appearance of that
"Pinnacle perched on a Precipice," which was Charles II.'s idea of the
Visible Church on Earth--the Parish Church of Harrow on the Hill. Anselm
consecrated it, Becket said Mass in it, and John Lyon, the Founder of
Harrow School, lies buried in it. When I was a Harrow boy, the
Celebrations of the Holy Communion in the School Chapel were rare, and
generally late; so some of us were accustomed to communicate every
Sunday at the 8 o'clock service in the Parish Church. But even in holy
places, and amid sacred associations, the ludicrous is apt to assert
itself; and I could never sufficiently admire a tablet in the North
aisle, commemorating a gentleman who died of the first Reform Bill.
"JOHN HENRY NORTH,
Judge of the Admiralty in Ireland.
Without an equal at the University, a rival at the Bar,
Or a superior in chaste and classic eloquence in Parliament.
Honoured, Revered, Admired, Beloved, Deplored,
By the Irish Bar, the Senate and his country,
He sunk beneath the efforts of a mind too great for
His earthly frame,
In opposing the Revolutionary Invasion of the Religion and
Constitution of England,
On the 29th of September, 1831, in the 44th year of his age."
Alas! poor Mr. North. What would he have felt if he had lived to see the
Reform Bills of 1867 and 1885? Clearly he was taken away from the evil
to come.
Until the Metropolitan Railway joined Harrow to Baker Street, the Hill
stood in the midst of genuine and unspoilt country, separated by five
miles of grass from the nearest point of London, and encompassed by
isolated dwellings, ranging in rank and scale from villas to country
houses. Most of these have fallen victims to the Speculative Builder,
and have been cut up into alleys of brick and stucco, though one or two
still remain among their hay-fields and rhododendrons. When I first
ascended Harrow Hill, I drove there from London with my mother; and,
from Harlesden onwards, our road lay between grass meadows, and was
shaded by hedgerow timber. Harrow was then a much prettier place than it
is now. The far-seen elms under which Byron dreamed[4] were still in
their unlopped glory, and the whole effect of the Hill was wooded. So an
Eton man and Harrow master[5] wrote:--
"Collis incola frondei
Nympha, sive lubentius
Nostra Pieris audies,
Lux adest; ades O tuis
Herga[6] mater, alumnis!"
"Goddess of the leafy Hill,
Nymph, or Muse, or what you will,
With the light begins the lay,--
Herga, be our guest to-day."
The site now covered by the externally hideous Speech-room--a cross
between a swimming-bath and a tennis-court--was then a garden. In truth,
it only grew strawberries and cabbages, but to the imaginative eye, it
was as beautiful as the hanging pleasaunces of Semiramis.
Dr. Butler, with a hundred gifts and accomplishments, had no aesthetic or
artistic sense; and, under his rule, the whole place was over-run by
terrible combinations of red and black brick; and the beautiful view
from the School-Yard, stretching away across the Uxbridge plain, was
obstructed by some kind of play-shed, with a little spout atop--the very
impertinence of ugliness.
Of the various buildings at Harrow, by far the most interesting is what
is now called "The Fourth Form Room," in the West wing of the Old
School. It is the original room which John Lyon designed--"A large and
convenient school-house with a chimney in it,"--and in its appearance
and arrangements it exactly bespeaks the village Day School that Harrow
originally was. Its stout brick walls have faced the western breezes of
three hundred years, and in their mellow richness of tint remind one of
Hatfield House and Hampton Court. This single room has been the nucleus
round which all subsequent buildings--Chapel and Library and
School-Rooms and Boarding-Houses--have gathered; and, as long as it
exists, Harrow will be visibly and tangibly connected with its Founder's
prescient care.
John Lyon knew nothing of Conscience Clauses. He ordained that all his
school-boys should attend the Parish Church; and so they did, stowed
away in galleries where hearing was difficult and kneeling impossible.
In 1836 Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, was
elected Head-master of Harrow, in succession to the genial but too
gentle Longley. Seeing that Worship was practically impossible for the
boys under existing conditions, he set to work to build a Chapel. It
occupied the same site as the present Chapel, but only one fragment of
it remains, embedded in the West wall of Sir Gilbert Scott's more
graceful structure. The Chapel was consecrated by the Visitor,
Archbishop Howley, in 1839. Dr. Wordsworth, justly proud of his
handiwork, invited his brother-master, Dr. Hawtrey of Eton, to view it.
Much to Wordsworth's surprise, Hawtrey did not take off his hat on
entering the Chapel; but, when he neared the altar, started back in
confusion, and exclaimed, in hasty apology, "I assure you, my dear
friend, I had no notion that we were already inside the Sacred Edifice."
So much for the aesthetics of Harrow Chapel as originally constructed,
but time and piety have completely changed it. In 1855, Dr. Vaughan
added a Chancel with an apsidal end, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott.
Next, the central passage of the Chapel became a Nave, with pillars and
a North Aisle. Then the South Aisle was added, and decorated with glass
before which one shudders, as a Memorial to Harrow men who fell in the
Crimea. So the Chapel remained till 1903, when two curious additions,
something between transepts and side-chapels, were added in memory of
Harrow men who fell in South Africa. The total result of these
successive changes is a building of remarkably irregular shape, but
richly decorated, and sanctified by innumerable memories of friends long
since loved and lost. A tablet, near which as a new boy I used to sit,
bears this inscription--
In mournful and
affectionate remembrance of
JOHN HYDE D'ARCY,
Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford,
and formerly Head of this School.
He passed through the Strait Gate
of Humility, Toil, and Patience,
into the clear light and true knowledge of Him
Who is our Peace.
"If any man will do His Will, he shall know of the doctrine."
Few sermons have ever impressed me so powerfully as this significant
memorial of a life which lasted only nineteen years.
The morning and evening services in the Chapel were what is called
"bright and cheerful"--in other words, extremely noisy and not very
harmonious or reverent. We had two sermons every Sunday. The Head-master
preached in the evening; the Assistant-masters in the morning.
Occasionally, we had a stranger of repute. Dr. Butler's preaching I have
already described, and also that of Farrar and Westcott. Mr. Steel's
traditional discourses were in a class by themselves. But other
preachers we had, not less remarkable. I distinctly remember a sermon by
Mr. Sticktoright, who told us that we did not know in what way the world
would be destroyed--it might be by fire, or it might be by water
(though this latter alternative seems precluded by Genesis ix. 11). The
Rev. James Robertson, afterwards Head-master of Haileybury, compared the
difference between a dull boy and a clever boy to that between an ox and
a dog. "To the ox, the universe comprises only the impassive blue above,
and the edible green beneath; while the dog finds a world of excitement
in hunting, and a demi-god in man." Dean Stanley, preaching on Trinity
Sunday, 1868, thus explained away the doctrine of the Trinity--"God the
Father is God in Nature. God the Son is God in History. God the Holy
Ghost is God in the Conscience." And Thring of Uppingham bellowed an
exposition of Psalm lxxviii. 70 with such surprising vigour that he
acquired among us the affectionate nickname of "Old Sheepfolds." It is a
pleasure to place in contrast with these absurdities the truly pastoral
and moving sermons of Mr. John Smith, whose apostolic work at Harrow I
have already commemorated. His paraphrase of 1. St. Peter iv. 7-8 still
lingers in my ear--"Be watchful, be prayerful, be very kind." He is thus
described on a Memorial Tablet in the Chapel:
To the Young a Father,
To friends in joy or grief a Brother,
To the poor, the suffering, and the tempted,
A minister of Hope and Strength.
Tried by more than common sorrows,
And upborne by more than common faith,
His holy life interpreted to many
The Mind which was in Christ Jesus,
The Promise of the Comforter,
And the Vision granted to the Pure in Heart.
It may seem odd that one should remember so much about sermons preached
so long ago, but Bishop Welldon's testimony illustrates the point. "When
I came to Harrow, I was greatly struck by the feeling of the boys for
the weekly Sermon; they looked for it as an element in their lives, they
attended to it, and passed judgment upon it." (I may remark in passing
that Dr. Welldon promptly and wisely reduced the Sunday Sermons from two
to one.)
But the day of days in Harrow Chapel was Founder's Day, October 10th,
1868, when the preacher at the Commemoration Service was Liddon, who had
lately become famous by the Bampton Lectures of 1866. The scene and the
sermon can never be forgotten. Prayers and hymns and thanksgivings for