Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
Founder and Benefactors had been duly performed, and we had listened
with becoming solemnity to that droll chapter about "Such as found out
musical tunes, and recited verses in writing." When the preacher entered
the pulpit, his appearance instantly attracted attention. We had heard
vaguely of him as "the great Oxford swell," but now that we saw him we
felt a livelier interest. "He looks like a monk," one boy whispers to
his neighbour; and indeed it is a better description than the speaker
knows. The Oxford M.A. gown, worn over a cassock, is the Benedictine
habit modified by time and place; the spare, thin figure suggests
asceticism; the beautifully chiselled, sharply-pointed features, the
close-shaved face, the tawny skin, the jet-black hair, remind us vaguely
of something by Velasquez or Murillo, or of Ary Scheffer's picture of
St. Augustine. And the interest aroused by sight is intensified by
sound. The vibrant voice strikes like an electric shock. The exquisite,
almost over-refined, articulation seems the very note of culture. The
restrained passion which thrills through the disciplined utterance warns
even the most heedless that something quite unlike the ordinary stuff of
school-sermons is coming. "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy
youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou
shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." The speaker speaks of the
blessedness and glory of boyhood; the splendid inheritance of a Public
School built on Christian lines; the unequalled opportunities of
learning while the faculties are still fresh and the mind is still
receptive; the worthlessness of all merely secular attainment, however
desirable, however necessary, when weighed in the balance against "the
one thing needful." The congregation still are boys, but soon they will
be men. Dark days will come, as Ecclesiastes warned--dark in various
ways and senses, darkest when, at the University or elsewhere, we first
are bidden to cast faith aside and to believe nothing but what can be
demonstrated by "an appeal, in the last resort, to the organs of sense."
Now is the time, and this is the place, so to "remember our Creator"
that, come what may, we shall never be able to forget Him, or doubt His
love, or question His revelation. The preacher leans far out from the
pulpit, spreading himself, as it were, over the congregation, in an act
of benediction. "From this place may Christ ever be preached, in the
fulness of His creative, redemptive, and sacramental work. Here may you
learn to remember Him in the days of your youth, and, in the last and
most awful day of all, may He remember you."
Five minutes afterwards we are in the open air. Boys stare and gasp;
masters hurry past, excited and loquacious. Notes are compared, and
watches consulted. Liddon has preached for an hour, and the school must
go without its dinner.
Enough has now been said about the Chapel and its memories. I must now
turn to lighter themes. I remember once hearing Mrs. Procter, who was
born in 1799 and died in 1888, say casually at a London dinner-party,
when someone mentioned Harrow Speech-Day--"Ah! that used to be a
pleasant day. The last time I was there I drove down with Lord Byron and
Doctor Parr, who had been breakfasting with my step-father, Basil
Montagu." This reminiscence seemed to carry one back some way, but I
entirely agreed with Mrs. Procter. Speech-Day at Harrow has been for
more than forty years one of my favourite holidays. In my time the
present Speech-Room did not exist. The old Speech-Room, added to John
Lyon's original building in 1819, was a well-proportioned hall, with
panelled walls and large windows. Tiers of seats rose on three sides of
the room; on the fourth was the platform, and just opposite the
platform sat the Head-master, flanked right and left by distinguished
visitors. There was a triumphal arch of evergreens over the gate, and
the presence of the Beadle of the Parish Church, sumptuous in purple and
gold, pointed to the historic but obsolescent connexion between the
Parish and the School. The material of the "Speeches," so-called, was
much the same as that provided at other schools--Shakespeare, Sheridan,
Chatham, Aristophanes, Plautus, Moliere, Schiller. An age-long desire to
play the Trial in _Pickwick_ was only attained, under the liberal rule
of Dr. Wood, in 1909. At the Speeches, one caught one's first glimpse of
celebrities whom one was destined to see at closer quarters in the years
to come; and I never can forget the radiant beauty of "Spencer's Faery
Queen,"[7] as I saw her at the Speeches of 1869.
While I am speaking of Celebrities, I must make a short digression from
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 Encyclopaedias. 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 Abbe Sieyes, 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