Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
in a triumphant trill. To Desmond, that trill was the answer to the
quavering, troubled cadences of the first verse; the vindication of the
spirit soaring upwards unfettered by the flesh--the pure spirit, not
released from the human clay without a fierce struggle. At that moment
Desmond loved the singer--the singer who called to him out of heaven,
who summoned his friend to join him, to see what he saw--'the vision
splendid.'"[10]
I am conscious that, so far, I have treated the Moloch of Athletics with
such scant respect that his worshippers may doubt if I ever was really a
boy. Certainly my physical inability to play games was rendered less
bitter by the fact that I did not care about them. I well remember the
astonishment of my tutor, when he kindly asked me to luncheon on his
carriage at my first Eton and Harrow match, and I replied that I should
not be there.
"Not be at Lord's, my boy? How very strange! Why?"
"Because there are three things which I particularly dislike--heat, and
crowds, and cricket." It certainly was a rather priggish answer, but let
me say in self-defence that before I left the school I had become as
keen on "Lord's," as the best of my compeers.
That, in spite of his reprehensible attitude towards our national game,
I was still, as Mr. Chadband said, "a human boy," is proved by the
intense interest with which I beheld the one and only "Mill" which ever
took place while I was at Harrow.[11] It was fought on the 25th of
February, 1868, with much form and ceremony. The "Milling-ground," now
perverted to all sorts of base uses, is immediately below the
School-Yard. The ground slopes rapidly, so that the wall of the Yard
forms the gallery of the Milling-Ground. The moment that "Bill" was
over, I rushed to the wall and secured an excellent place, leaning my
elbows on the wall, while a friend, who was a moment later, sat on my
shoulders and looked over my bowed head. It would be indiscreet to
mention the names of the combatants, though I remember them perfectly.
One was a red-headed giant; the other short, dark, and bow-legged.
Neither had at all a pleasant countenance, and I must admit that I
enjoyed seeing them pound each other into pulp. I felt that two beasts
were getting their deserts. To-day such a sight would kill me; but this
is the degeneracy of old age.
Now that I am talking about school-fellows, several names call for
special mention. As I disliked athletics, it follows that I did not
adore athletes. I can safely say that I never admired a boy because of
his athletic skill, though I have admired many in spite of it. Probably
Sidney Pelham, Archdeacon of Norfolk, who was in the Harrow Eleven in
1867 and 1868, and the Oxford Eleven in 1871, will never see this book;
so I may safely say that I have seldom envied anyone as keenly as I
envied him, when Dr. Butler, bidding him farewell before the whole
school, thanked him for "having set an example which all might be proud
to follow--unfailing sweetness of temper, and perfect purity of life."
In one respect, the most conspicuous of my school-fellows was H.R.H.
Prince Thomas of Savoy, Duke of Genoa, nephew of Victor Emmanuel, and
now an Admiral in the Italian Navy. He came to Harrow in 1869, and lived
with Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Arnold. He was elected King of Spain by a vote
of the Cortes on the 3rd of October 1869. He was quite a popular boy,
and no one had the slightest grudge against him; but, for all that,
everyone made a point of kicking him, in the hope of being able to say
in after-life that they had kicked the King of Spain. Unfortunately
Victor Emmanuel, fearing dynastic complications, forbade him to accept
the Crown; so he got all the Harrow kicks and none of the Spanish
half-pence. When I entered Harrow, the winner of all the classical
prizes was Andrew Graham Murray, now Lord Dunedin and Lord President of
the Court of Session; a most graceful scholar, and also a considerable
mathematician. Just below him was Walter Leaf, to whom no form of
learning came amiss; who was as likely to be Senior Wrangler as Senior
Classic, and whose performances in Physical Science won the warm praise
of Huxley. Of the same standing as these were Arthur Evans, the
Numismatist, Frank Balfour, the Physiologist, and Gerald Rendall,
Head-master of Charterhouse. Among my contemporaries the most
distinguished was Charles Gore, whose subsequent career has only
fulfilled what all foresaw; and just after him came (to call them by
their present names) Lord Crewe, Lord Ribblesdale, Lord Spencer, Mr.
Justice Barton of the Irish Bench, and Mr. Walter Long, in whom Harrow
may find her next Prime Minister. Walter Sichel was at seventeen the
cleverest school-boy whom I have ever known. Sir Henry McKinnon obtained
his Commission in the Guards while he was still in the Fifth Form.
Pakenham Beatty was the Swinburnian of the school, then, as now, a true
Poet of Liberty. Ion Keith-Falconer, Orientalist and missionary, was a
saint in boyhood as in manhood. Edward Eyre seemed foreordained to be
what in London and in Northumberland he has been--the model
Parish-Priest; and my closest friend of all was Charles Baldwyn
Childe-Pemberton, who, as Major Childe, fell at the battle of Spion Kop,
on a spot now called, in honour of his memory, "Childe's Hill." _De
minimis non curat Respublica_; which, being interpreted, signifies--_The
Commonwealth_ will not care to know the names of the urchins who fagged
for me.[12] But I cherish an ebony match-box carved and given to me by
one of these ministering spirits, as a proof that, though my laziness
may have made me exacting, my exactions were not brutal.
On the 15th of June, 1871, Harrow School celebrated the three-hundredth
anniversary of its foundation. Harrovians came from every corner of the
globe to take part in this Tercentenary Festival. The arrangements were
elaborated with the most anxious care. The Duke of Abercorn,
affectionately and appropriately nicknamed "Old Splendid," presided
over a banquet in the School-Yard; and the programme of the day's
proceedings had announced, rather to the terror of intending visitors,
that after luncheon there would be "speeches, interspersed with songs,
from three hundred and fifty of the boys." The abolition of the second
comma dispelled the dreadful vision of three-hundred-and-fifty
school-boy-speeches, and all went merry as a marriage-bell--all, except
the weather. It seemed as if the accumulated rain of three centuries
were discharged on the devoted Hill. It was raining when we went to the
early celebration in the Chapel; it was raining harder when we came out.
At the culminating moment of the day's proceedings, when Dr. Vaughan was
proposing "Prosperity to Harrow," the downpour and the thunder drowned
the speaker's voice; and, when evening fell on the sodden
cricket-ground, the rain extinguished the fireworks.
On that same cricket-ground nine days later, in the golden afternoon of
Midsummer Day, George Clement Cottrell, a boy beautiful alike in face
and in character, was killed in an instant by a blow from a ball, which
struck him behind the ear when he was umpiring in the Sixth Form game.
On the 29th of June his five hundred school-fellows followed him to his
resting-place in the Churchyard on the Hill, and I believe we
unanimously felt that he whom we had lost was the one, of all our
number, of whom we could say, with the surest confidence, that he was
fit to pass, without a moment's warning, into the invisible World.
_Beati mundo corde_.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Writing to John Murray in 1832, Byron said--"There is a spot in the
Churchyard, near the footpath, on the brow of the Hill looking towards
Windsor, and a tomb under a large tree (bearing the name of Peachie, or
Peachey), where I used to sit for hours and hours as a boy: this was my
favourite spot."
[5] The Rev. E. M. Young.
[6] Herga is the Anglo-Saxon name of Harrow.
[7] Charlotte Seymour, Countess Spencer, died 1903.
[8] The name is borrowed from "Sybil." The bearer of it was an ancient
physician, who had doctored all the famous people of his time, beginning
with "Pamela."
[9] Mr. R. de C. Welch.
[10] _The Hill._ Chapter vi.
[11] Some authorities say that it was the last on record.
[12] This paper appeared in _The Commonwealth_.
IV
OXFORD
"For place, for grace, and for sweet companee,
Oxford is Heaven, if Heaven on Earth there be."
SIR JOHN DAVIES.
The faithful student of "Verdant Green" will not have forgotten that
Charlie Larkyns, when introducing his Freshman-friend to the sights of
Oxford, called his attention to a mystic inscription on a wall in Oriel
Lane. "You see that? Well, that's one of the plates they put up to
record the Vice's height. F.P.--7 feet, you see: the initials of his
name--Frederick Plumptre!" "He scarcely seemed so tall as that," replied
Verdant, "though certainly a tall man. But the gown makes a difference,
I suppose."
Dr. Plumptre was Vice-Chancellor of Oxford from 1848 to 1851, and Master
of University College for thirty-four years. He died in 1870, and the
College thereupon elected the Rev. G. G. Bradley, then Head-master of
Marlborough, and afterwards Dean of Westminster, to the vacant post. It
was an unfortunate choice. Mr. Bradley was a man of many gifts and
virtues, and a successful schoolmaster; but the methods which had
succeeded at Marlborough were not adapted to Oxford, and he soon
contrived to get at loggerheads both with Dons and with Undergraduates.
However, there existed at that time--and I daresay it exists still--a
nefarious kind of trades-unionism among the Headmasters of Public
Schools; and, as Bradley had been a Head-master, all the Head-masters
advised their best pupils to try the scholarships at University College.
So far as I had any academical connexions, they were exclusively with
Trinity, Cambridge; and my father was as ignorant of Oxford as myself.
All I knew about it was that it was the source and home of the Oxford
movement, which some of my friends at Harrow had taught me to admire.
Two or three of those friends were already there, and I wished to rejoin
them; but, as between the different Colleges, I was fancy-free; so when,
early in 1872, Dr. Butler suggested that I should try for a scholarship
at University, I assented, reserving myself, in the too probable event
of failure, for Christ Church. However, I was elected at University on
the 24th of February, 1872, and went into residence there on the 11th of
the following October. The Vice-Chancellor who matriculated me was the
majestic Liddell, who, with his six feet of stately height draped in
scarlet, his "argent aureole" of white hair, and his three silver maces
borne before him, always helped me to understand what Sydney Smith meant
when he said, of some nonsensical proposition, that no power on earth,
save and except the Dean of Christ Church, should induce him to believe
it. As I write, I see the announcement of Mrs. Liddell's death; and my
mind travels back to the drawing-room and lawns of the Deanery at Christ
Church, and the garland of beautiful faces
"Decking the matron temples of a place
So famous through the world."
The 13th of October was my first Sunday in Oxford, and my friend Charles
Gore took me to the Choral Eucharist at Cowley St. John, and afterwards
to luncheon with the Fathers. So began my acquaintance with a Society
of which I have always been a grateful admirer. But more exciting
experiences were at hand: on the 20th of October it was Liddon's turn,
as Select Preacher, to occupy the pulpit at St. Mary's. The impressions
of that, my first University sermon, have never faded from my mind. A
bright autumn morning, the yellow sunlight streaming in upon the densely