LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class OLD HARROW DAYS OLD HARROW DAYS J. G. COTTON MINCHIN ( WITH ORIGINAL SKETCHES BY MISS F. HOLMS METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON 1898 One look back as we hurry o'er the plain, Man's years speeding us along One look back ! From the hollow past again, Youth, come flooding into song ! Tell how once, in the breath of summer air, Winds blew fresher than they blow ; Times long hid, with their triumph and their care, Yesterday many years ago ! BOWEN. u To MY WIFE 229793 " Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto " TERENCE CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. HARROW MASTERS I II. HARROW HEAD MASTERS 80 111. HARROW INSTITUTIONS .... 130 IV. HARROW CRICKET 144 V. OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL . . . 1 86 VI. OUR SCHOOL HEROES . . . .211 VII. A GLIMPSE OF HARROW UNDER DR GEORGE BUTLER 225 VIII. OLD HARROVIANS 24! APPENDICES A THE LATE MR JOHN MURRAY ON LORD BYRON 301 B THE GROVE 305 C DR GEORGE BUTLER'S " SELECTIONS OF THE LISTS OF THE SCHOOL BETWEEN 1770 AND 1826" 307 D ETON AND HARROW MATCHES . . . 312 E HARROVIAN OARSMEN 318 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE THE OLD SCHOOL .... Frontispiece THE FOURTH FORM ROOM .... 34 HEAD MASTER'S SEAT IN THE FOURTH FORM ROOM 80 SIXTH FORM GAME 144 DUCKER 164 FACSIMILES OF NAMES CUT IN FOURTH FORM ROOM . . . . . . . 278 BYRON'S TOMB 300 OLD HARROW DAYS CHAPTER I HARROW MASTERS TVT O class of men has so much to do with moulding the characters, not only of the brilliant Front Benchers but of the army of workers, as our public school masters. Yet there is no class of men about whom so little is known. The lives of our statesmen, our bishops, our travellers, our artists, our en- gineers, our millionaires, even our athletes, are written with a plethora of undigested informa- tion under which our book-shelves groan. Too busy (or, shall we say too lazy) them- selves to write their own Memoirs, the cus- todians of the nurseries of our geniuses and our failures leave this busy world with little to re- mind posterity of its deep indebtedness to them. Reflections such as these have induced me A I OLD HARROW DAYS to put together brief sketches of some Harrow masters and of some Harrow boys. The affectionate attention of a lifetime to things Harrovian may to some extent have fitted me for the task. The recollections of boyhood are among the most delightful and the most evanescent of human memories. It is easier to paint the vanishing rainbow than to call back to life a long bygone time. O the great days in the distance enchanted, Days of fresh air in the rain and the sun, How we rejoiced as we struggled and panted Hardly believable forty years on ! How happy would be the Harrow boy of to- day, if he only knew his own good fortune. He has Bowen's Harrow songs ; we had not. But there are compensations even for those who did not sing the Harrow songs as boys; they had Edward Bo wen himself, and John Smith, " Fred " Ponsonby, and "Bob" Grimston, the Castor and Pollux of our cricket field ! Oh yes, we in the fifties and the sixties had our compensations. The world went very well with us then. Mr Bosworth Smith and I came to Harrow the same term and took the same form he as 2 HARROW MASTERS master, I as boy. When my dear old tutor and I first (1864) looked at each other, like two strange dogs in surroundings that were equally strange to both of us, it was difficult to say which was the most afraid of the other. It was a low form a fact more creditable to the master than to the boy but it was not so low as that form in which my friend X succeeded in retaining his place as third even after the " Trials." l The parents of X were thoroughly satisfied they did not know that there were only three in the form. To be "lag" of the School, as Anthony Trollope was before him, was no discredit in itself. The second fourth was in those days taken in the old schoolroom, and was separated only by a curtain from Mr John Smith's form. "The world," says Taylor, "knows nothing of its greatest men." Most true, for what does the world know now of Cobden not Richard Cobden, the Free Trader, but Frank Carroll Cobden, the matchless bowler, as we then re- garded him. What a famous victory that was 1 " Trials " was the pathetic term applied by the boys to the examinations at the close of each term. OLD HARROW DAYS which he won in 1870 for Cambridge by bowl- ing the three last Oxford wickets in three suc- cessive balls ! He is not the first old Harrovian who has covered the School with glory by winning a hat, but whether Cardinal Manning's or Cobden's both old blues was the most creditable to the winner, what Harrovian can decide? We honour both. Where are you now, old classmate Cobden ? According to the School Register you are administering "indif 1 ferent " justice in Radnorshire. Where is the famous ball ? It rests under a glass case in the home of the Cobdens. Discharged convicts, they say, seldom meet either in the stalls of the Opera House, or at Lord's, or in the House. If these gentlemen rarely meet, with old Har- rovians the reverse is the case. Not only do the ancient seats of learning swarm with them, but they are to be found at every street corner, on every putting green, at up-country stations, and even in Rhodesia or Australia. Of course when in the solitudes of a South African Veldt, or of a great city, we come across an old school- fellow, we make much of him : one swallow does make a summer then and a very glorious one 4 HARROW MASTERS we kill the fatted calf, or rather smoke our pipes as we tell again the tales of the brave days when we were boys together. Sometimes the distinguished Harrow boy lies concealed in the even more distinguished man in Her Majesty's Ambassador, in a Judge of the High Court of Justice, or in my Lord Bishop. This re- minds me that I spent ten days with Sir Frank Lascelles, now Her Majesty's Ambassador at Berlin, without either of us referring to Har- row, of which he is so distinguished an orna- ment, but our silence will not be thought dis- loyalty when I mention that at the time there was being enacted under our very eyes one of the most thrilling episodes of modern history. The kidnapping of Prince Alexander of Bul- garia, followed by his abdication, was a drama of such intense interest that those who were favoured with front seats had neither the time nor the inclination to think or speak of aught else. But let it not be thought for one moment that we were heartless or indifferent spectators of the saddest scene that can ever be played on the world's stage that of a hero fighting against hopeless odds. It is idle to prate about diffi- 5 OLD HARROW DAYS culties being created for brave men to overcome them. The difficulties, which encounter some men, are unsurmountable. There are masters of Ravenswood in real life as well as in fiction. One man cannot oppose the power of Russia single- handed. Alexander of Bulgaria was another Marshal Ney, "the bravest of the brave," but all in vain. Sir Frank Lascelles and I in one sense returned to old Harrow days, for it was not a French comedy so often played on the stage of diplomacy, but a veritable Greek tragedy that we were called on to witness. The Conqueror of Slevnitza is in his grave, dying, like our own Cromwell, on the anniver- sary of his great victory. " Treason has done his worst j nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing Can touch him further." Of few men, even though they be old Har- rovians, can it be said that they have made History. This can be said of Sir Frank Lascelles. He has discharged and is discharging his trust in such a way as to make us all, Unionists and Liberals, old Harrovians and non-Harrovians, proud of him. 6 HARROW MASTERS Mr Bos worth Smith was my tutor ; but few of us attain Paradise by a single bound. Most of us have to go through Purgatory. My pur- gatory took the shape of Mr * *'s pupil room. Poor Mr * * now stands on firmer ground than he ever did on the Hill. Some wag said that Dr Busby, of birch-rod fame, regretted the tradi- tional shape of cherubs as rendering his custom- ary exercise impossible. The absence of boys would, I should say, be an immense relief to Mr* *. In his form room Mr * *, with all his good qualities, and he had plenty of them, was one of those square men arduously trying to fit him- self into the round hole, in which a mischievous providence had placed him. He was not an unfair man except, perhaps, when a son of his was also his pupil, and then Mr * * was better than an infidel. Mr * *, when reading out one Sunday after- noon the new week's order of his form, read out (as usual) the name of his son first, and remem- bering the expressions of incredulity which previ- ous announcements of the same kind had elicited, he followed up the name of his son rapidly 7 OLD HARROW DAYS with the interjection " Who said ' Oh ' ?" No one had had time to express his dissatisfaction, but the over-fond parent had voiced the thought that was uppermost in the minds of the boys. But this was long after my time. Then there was Davenport, whose fancy pleased him to sit in Mr * *'s class-room with his boots off. The boots, which were carefully placed in the centre of the room, caught Mr * *'s eye. " Whose are those boots ? " " Mine." " Put them on at once." " Please, sir, it is too hot." The verbal altercation went on, but the boots remained on the floor. It is difficult to say whether man or boy, conquered or conqueror, suffered most from this unseemly strife. The kindest-hearted master would be nagged into a would-be tyrant ; a gentlemanly boy would be transformed into a mere bully. But what sense of gentlemanly conduct or even of honour has the average boy when face to face with a master who had not the faculty of keeping order ? I well remember the boys in our "stinks" class roaring with laughter over some boyish joke. Mr George Griffith was at that moment referring to Sir Isaac Newton. "I never thought," he said, 8 HARROW MASTERS " to live to see the day when English boys would laugh at the illustrious name of Newton." We boys were no more laughing at Newton than at the great Khan of Tartary. It is needless to add that the rebuke made us roar louder than ever. What barbarians are boys ! A thought- ful and gentle master is with them sometimes like a monkish scholar amid the knights in mail of the middle ages. The following incident happened not in a low form, and among louts and dunces, but in the upper sixth with the picked boys of the school and in the palmy days of Dr Vaughan. One of the masters who took the upper sixth in com- position had not the knack of keeping order in the form. The boys never fail to find this out, and act accordingly. Suddenly one boy hit the desk beneath him and called out to the master "Sir, there's an earthquake." The master did not take much notice of this, but when another boy hit his desk and called the master's attention to another shock of earthquake, and this was followed in rapid succession by other boys, the master became furious. What the master did, or could do, in a white heat of 9 OLD HARROW DAYS passion is not recorded, but the next morning his tormentors advanced in good order into the form room and presented their umbrellas in serried line towards him. " What is the mean- ing of this ? " asked their unfortunate master. "Sir," shouted out the ringleader, "you are dangerous." This boy was quite the picked boy of his time both at work and play, and is now permanent secretary to the Home Office. It was another master who, overhearing in his form room the scarcely classical expression " You're a d d fool," at once put the cap on his head, and asked each of the boys in turn, beginning at the top and ending at the bottom, "Am I a d d fool?" One honest boy was at last found, who replied in the affirmative, and he was of course sent to, where truth is so often to be found, the bottom. This is almost incredible, yet, as we used to say at school, " It's Bible truth." It is only fair to say that of the classical masters, those who cannot keep order in their forms are quite the exception, not the rule. To the exceptions curiously belonged the Rev. William Oxenham, second master of the school, himself an old Harrovian, 10 HARROW MASTERS who died in 1863. No more kind-hearted man ever more completely failed to keep order in his form. Yet he must not be thought a failure, or a Joseph II. among masters, for the most riotous of his class probably loved him best. He is said to have once told a boy to write out the Bible as a punishment, but his anger was a mere flash in the pan. Originally Harrow School had its head master, and its usher or ostiarius he who kept the door. Mr Oxenham was the ostiarius, with singular privileges which (alas for his successors) have long since lapsed. Mr Oxenham was the last to draw a special salary in addition to his other dues, and to enjoy the privilege of birching the boys, now the exclusive prerogative of the head master. The old Fourth Form Room, whose panelled walls have seen so many Harrow boys birched, and heard the cries of so few, is classic ground. Whatever else may be said of Harrow boys, it must be admitted that they take their floggings like men. There was also a sort of sense of fair play, or was it irony, in the ancient cere- mony. In my time old "Sam," the custos, would open the fatal cupboard that held the ii OLD HARROW DAYS birches, and the victim would choose his own instrument of torture. If he were young and green, he would choose a young birch; if he were an old offender, he would choose a birch that had seen better days. This fine old room possessed a species of throne (flanked by the birch cupboard), on which the head of the first fourth form used to sit in Mr John Smith's time. Its lower panels are covered with names cut by the boys themselves, and among them can be traced the names of Palmerston, Peel, Byron and H. E. Manning. But to return to the last second master of Harrow who wielded the rod little more than thirty years ago Mr Oxenham might have been seen riding about the Harrow lanes in a bottle-green coat, such as Lord Brougham used to wear when he came to Speech Day. When one compares Mr Oxen- ham with the master of to-day, the gulf between them seems more like a century than forty years. Mr Oxenham was one of the old school, and had more in common with Dr Parr, or that still mightier schoolmaster Dr Samuel Johnson, than with his own chief, Dr Vaughan. It is, however, only doing justice to the 12 HARROW MASTERS Georgian school-masters to say that they would have regretted Mr Oxenham's habit of swearing. Harrow's former second master was, however, not a solitary survival. An Etonian friend tells me that the Rev. William Gifford Cookesley, one of Eton's best known masters forty years ago, was quite as eccentric as Mr Oxenham. Mr Cookesley only died in 1880. He was the tutor of Lord Dufferin, and was a favourite of Disraeli's. Mr Oxenham saw no harm in a d n, and possibly this accounted for his immense popu- larity with his boys. According to the Saturday Review, Dr Vaughan's two fortes were tact and Greek Iambics. This is of course a ridiculous underestimate of Dr Vaughan, who was in every sense of the word a great head master, but Mr Oxenham was always " agin the Govern- ment." He was jealous of his chief. The boys, knowing this, used mischievously to say, "Dr Vaughan likes this, Sir," a remark which merely drew from the second master, " D n the fool, d n the fool." At the risk of bestrewing my page with what was in Mr Oxenham's mouth an absolutely harmless ex- 13 OLD HARROW DAYS pletive, I mention the following anecdote, related to me by one of the culprits, now very high in Her Majesty's service. One night Mr Oxenham, being determined to catch the boys flagrante ddicto, took off his boots and crept upstairs. The boys, however, had anticipated him, and had strewn the stairs with nails. The consequence was a "D n, d n, d n," in crescendo as each stair was trod, and by the time he reached the bedroom, the boys were apparently sleeping the sleep of youth and innocence. The saying is that Mr Oxenham's dislike of his chief had some connection with the time- honoured practice of birching. Dr Vaughan would go away and lock up all the new birches, leaving only the second-hand ones for Mr Oxenham. Such are the causes of ctzlestium ir&. On one occasion, while Mr Oxenham was acting as Dr Vaughan's locum tenens> with a second-hand birch, a crowd of boys rushed in to the Fourth Form Room. Mr Oxenham did not abandon, but only enlarged his field 14 HARROW MASTERS of action. " Swish, swish," went the birch on the backs of the invading boys. This anecdote I heard from the lips of the monitor, whose duty it was to hold the door against the invaders. Mr Oxenham possessed so good a conscience that he was able to sleep up to a late hour, and on one whole holiday he did not appear at nine o'clock bill. The boys, of course, separated their different ways, but the monitor, who went up to the second master's bedroom to remind him that it was his bill, was not received with blessings. Kind-hearted Mr Oxenham, how deeply he resented X, a sixth form boy in his house, being sent away by Dr Vaughan. X had hung another sixth form boy in a clothes basket out of his window in a "small" house. X did this in conjunction with Z, and thought nothing about it, as he never even mentioned the escapade to his chums. But some one else mentioned it to Dr Vaughan, and the result was that Dr Vaughan sent him away the next day, while he spared Z, who was not a sixth form boy. Mr Oxenham was a survival. He belonged OLD HARROW DAYS to a bygone time of warm hearts and rough tongues, but his faults (and who is without them) have long since been forgotten, and only his services to the school are remembered. In 1865, the spire to our chapel was erected in memory of the late second master, " a man greatly beloved." There is another master belonging to a past generation, who left the year before my arrival. I can, therefore, only repeat what others have told me of him. I refer to the Rev. Benjamin Heath Drury, himself an old Harrovian, and the son of Byron's tutor. He is now President of Caius College, Cambridge. If the Dons of Caius feel for their President only half the affection which masters and boys alike felt for him on the Hill, Mr Drury must indeed be popular at Cambridge. Dr Butler has told us that Mr Drury and the late Mr Harris con- verted the calling out of the boys' names at bill to a fine art. By a fortunate accident when the Queen, just after her marriage, paid a flying visit to the School, and was present in the Fourth Form Room when bill was called over, it was the turn of these very two masters to 16 HARROW MASTERS call over bill. You may depend upon it that our Queen and the Prince Consort were duly impressed by the manner in which this function was performed. Mr Drury, like Mr Harris, was beloved by the boys in his house (called by us " Benites "), and, I am bound to add, not without reason. It was a curious fact that any boy in his house who in any other form would be, say 31 or 27 out of a form of 36 boys, when he got into Mr Drury's form, would never be lower than third. Oh happy Benites I When Mr Oxenham died, his house was taken by the Rev. Brooke Foss Westcott (now Bishop of Durham) ; his post as second master (sadly shorn of its financial and birching prero- gatives) by Mr Harris. Of Mr Westcott, Pope's line, " In wit a man, in innocence a child," is literally true. A singular tribute to his ignor- ance of this wicked world was paid him by the tradesmen of Harrow. The masters, suspecting that their butchers' charges were inordinately heavy, appointed a committee to enquire into the matter. As a result of this enquiry the committee found that all the masters had been charged too much, but the butchers had in- B 17 OLD HARROW DAYS vented a sliding scale of their own, and at the top as the least likely to find them out they placed the future Bishop of Durham. This utter ignorance of the world was shared by another equally learned man, Dr Whewell, the late Master of Trinity. He spoke to an Old Harrovian undergraduate (afterwards a well- known M.F.H., who repeated the story to me) about the long grass. The undergraduate explained, "That can be easily remedied. You have only to let butchers graze their sheep there." "But," the Master replied, "that would be very expensive ; just think what the butchers would charge me for allowing their sheep to eat my grass." Achilles had his heel and Mr Harris his waddle. Yet how much dignity there was in every motion of that short, round body. No two men could have been more unlike than Mr Oxenham and his successor as second master. The one a clergyman, peppery and outspoken; the other a layman, dignified and reserved. The class room of Mr Oxenham was a bear garden ; the class room of Mr Harris (so far as discipline went) a model. 18 HARROW MASTERS Mr Harris used to send before him his butler, a servant, if possible, more dignified than his master, whenever he paid a visit to the boys' quarters in his house. He used even sometimes to have a bell rung to give all boys fair notice of his coming. When one remembers that Mr Harris was scrupulously just, as well as honourable, it is needless to state that he was immensely respected. Mr Harris was always called the " Governor " by the boys in his house. This nickname had its origin in the great affection, not unmingled with awe, which they all felt for him. They could not create for Mr Harris a more honour- able title. Those of my readers who are not old Harrovians must know that we read our Greek authors in editions of the text without notes. It was the practice of Mr Harris to read out the Latin notes in his edition, not without the pomposity which was the good man's weakness. It was also the practice of the boys to take down these notes with the blunt end of their pencils. Their worthy master was much OLD HARROW DAYS pleased at these signs of industry but at the end of the week, when the boys produced their notes, Mr Harris had forgotten all about his commentator's footnotes, and, to tell the truth, was more concerned with the pages being free from blot and blemish than with their showing the intelligent interest of the boys in what they read. In fact, if a boy attempted to discuss in his notes some obscurity or beauty in the text, so far from scoring by it, he distinctly lost kudos. A boy soon found out that mediocrity paid better than brilliancy. To a budding scholar Mr Harris was about as genial as a black frost. Had Mr Harris been a master of a low form, not much harm would have been done, but as he was a master from whom many of us went straight to the University, it was a far more serious affair. Let it never be forgotten that, according to his lights, Mr Harris did his duty. In one sense, the noble language of Virgil, applied by Mr Gladstone to Sir George Cornewall Lewis, may be applied to him " Justissimus unus, Quifuit inTeucris." 20 HARROW MASTERS And, perhaps, some would complete the line with the still higher eulogy of "Et servantissimus sequi." The mention of Mr Harris reminds me of his fellow County Magistrate, as well as fellow master, Mr Holmes. Not that the two men had anything in common save their Conser- vatism. Mr Holmes was another of our masters who tried, as a square man, to fill a round hole. He was a good sportsman, and good company over the walnuts and the wine, but as a master he was a failure. On one occasion his love of sport stood us boys in good stead. We were plodding through some tedious pages of Xenophon. "Dogs, dogs, dogs ! " "I should have thought," interrupted Mr Holmes, " that English boys had heard of hounds." That familiar word brightened up to some of us, at least, that lesson. He could be most vindictive in his punishments. He gave a friend of mine " 300 lines " on Tuesday and "500 lines" or ^hursday, week after week, simply because the boy did not draw his map well. At last it dawned even on Mr Holmes 21 OLD HARROW DAYS that the boy's fingers were all thumbs, and that he was no hand at maps. "Why," he said, "I believe it is physically impossible for you to draw a map." " Well, sir, that is what I have been trying to make you believe the whole term." To another friend of mine he used to say : " If you and I were only out shooting together, we should be much better friends than we are here." The last glimpse I had of Mr Holmes was in the billiard-room of the Junior Carlton, an atmosphere more congenial to him than his pupils' room. The figure three seems to have a fascination for us, or is it the fact that Mr Harris, Mr Holmes, and Mr Middlemist were the three obstructives of Harrow? Well would it have been for Mr Holmes and Mr Middlemist, and for their unfortunate pupils, had these two masters resembled Mr Harris in his love of justice as they resembled him in his dislike to change. Mr Harris alone was the grand old man of Harrovian Toryism. Mathematics, forty and fifty years ago, were treated at Eton like dancing, as an extra. If things never quite came to such a pass at 22 HARROW MASTERS Harrow, we were not far removed from it. We, perhaps, more resembled the Fellows of King's in the good old days who never entered for the Mathematical Tripos for fear of mathematics spoiling their classics. Most of us at Harrow had no classics to spoil. The Latin we knew might be aptly described in Lord Lytton's phrase as "Baboo Latin," but whatever its quality we were determined to keep it uncontaminated by any knowledge of mathematics. In this endeavour we were ably assisted by our mathematical masters. Had the classical instruction been on a par with the mathematical, the severe remark of the German professor about our English universities doing " the least possible with the most possible" would have been true of Harrow School. There was a very old master, called Mr Jacob Francis Marillier, who came to the School originally as a writing-master in 1819. How, or why, he was promoted to the rank of a mathematical master history does not say. All we know is that he used to pronounce mathematics " mathema//'^ hence his nickname of " Tique" I remember, 23 OLD HARROW DAYS as a new boy, getting into his form, and as a new boy I was naturally disposed to do my lessons. My diligence did not escape the attention of a big boy near me. He gave me a dig in the ribs, and, pointing to my work, remarked : " That won't do in this form." I innocently asked him what he meant. "Why, you have been doing your sums," he replied, with quite an injured tone; then he added "while in this form you must understand that we are only going to do one example during one term," and in very clear language he advised me not to do more. Having constituted himself my adviser and guide, he kindly offered to explain his own method to me. It was simplicity itself, and could only have been the product of Calverley's brain, or some other great mind. " When you do a sum in ' Tique's ' form there '.s a strict rule for doing it. First you begin at the beginning of the sum and work on, then you look at the answer and work back, then for the middle you multiply what you please together well, then the sum is done." 24 HARROW MASTERS This system was admirably adapted to make the same sum do duty the whole term. Your treatment of the middle left room for infinite variety. Dear old "Tique" went through the preliminaries of the sum with some success, but when he came to the singular congestion in the middle, despair possessed the good man. He then would look at the answer, and, seeing that was right, would give up the tangled web in the central part, and merely remark to the boys " Well, you seem to have got it right, but it is not quite my way of doing it." The head and front of mathematical in- competence was the Rev. Robert Middlemist. It is impossible to speak the truth about this master without appearing to those who are not old Harrovians to be guilty of exaggeration. He was a terrible man. He taught you nothing, but Mr Marillier taught you nothing, and yet no one disliked "Tique." Mr Marillier, though he had outlived his usefulness, never outlived his kindness, but with Mr Middlemist you were never safe for an hour. He might take a dislike to the colour of your hair woe 25 OLD HARROW DAYS betide you if you chanced to be Mr Middle- mist's " Dr Fell." He would make your life a burden to you. The boy who in my time felt the full weight of his displeasure was Randall Davidson, the present Bishop of Winchester. The future prelate was a boy of a ruddy countenance. This pleasant and harmless feature used to call out all Mr Middlemist's thunder. " I see you're in a passion with me," he would exclaim, when he caught sight of his unfortunate pupil. Punishment followed punishment; Pelion was heaped on Ossa. The Bishop will remember his visits to Mr Middlemist's study, where he would sit at a respectful distance from his tormentor's table by the wall. The room might have been papered twenty years ago, but both paper and room were more fit for a Quilp than a Harrow master. "You're dirtying my paper," used to be Mr Middle- mist's greeting to Randall Davidson. The Bishop, as a Christian, has forgiven his former mathematical master, but as a man he will re- member all his life what he suffered at his hands. Mr Middlemist had a genius for select- 26 HARROW MASTERS ing the most blameless boy in his class as the butt for his flouts and sneers. He never bullied me, but in a sketch of our old school shadows as well as sunshine find their place. It is my belief that more harm than good is done by any attempt to suppress well-known facts. Nothing is more slanderous than veiled allusions to skeletons in cupboards. As the French charitably say Tout Savoir^ test tout pardonner. After Mr Middlemist's death it was discovered that he was a married man. As for more than thirty years he had passed at Harrow for a bachelor, the shock of the discovery on all the masters may be better imagined than described. And yet how much did this concealed marriage not only explain but even extenuate how it threw a light on what was otherwise incomprehensible in Mr Middlemist's conduct. There was one master ever ready to put the kindest and most charit- able construction upon all our acts. That master was Mr John Smith. The remark he uttered when informed that Mr Middlemist had left a wife and family is characteristic of him and of the lonely man who had then 27 OLD HARROW DAYS just passed away. "Thank God," said John Smith, "that there was somebody to love him." As to his marriage, it was probably one of the most honourable acts in Mr Middlemist's career. If he did not trouble himself much about justice to the boys, he had at least been just to his wife and family. There was nothing about the marriage which did not reflect honour on our old master, except its concealment. There can be no question but that the effects of this concealment on his character and influence were altogether disastrous. There was not a boy in the school who did not feel the consequences. " The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." Even his fellow masters did not escape. If one of them, in complete in- nocence, were to ask Mr Middlemist where he had spent his holidays, he was not likely to ask the question a second time. He trusted no one. The suspiciousness of his character, like a jungle growth, seemed to dwarf and kill every generous sentiment. It 28 HARROW MASTERS was said of him that he would allow no one else to post his letters. He was his own post- man, and would go up to London merely to post them. His house boys used to complain that whenever they had a house " Footer " match on, Mr Middlemist would come into dinner and see that they ate the stodgiest of " stodgy " puddings. Mr Middlemist would suspect some mischief even in an empty plate. The masters who dined with him on his birthday regarded the occasion with mixed feelings. It was an honour for a young master to dine with so old a master, but still he too felt that he had to mind his p's and q's. Luckily for his fellow masters that awful invitation could only come to them once in four years, as Mr Middlemist was born on the 29th of February ! The irony of this wretched business culmin- ated in the school chapel. If there were one spot at Harrow where the bullied and the weak could, for a few moments at least, forget their troubles and imagine themselves at home, that was the school chapel. But Mr Middlemist was the fly in our ointment even there. To have the exquisite prayers of our Church 29 OLD HARROW DAYS mumbled through by Mr Middlemist was to an imaginative boy poisoning religion at its very source. Mr Middlemist did on one occasion preach a good sermon. No one seemed, however, to have noticed its excellence until some one discovered that John Henry Newman had written it. No description of school life would be complete without some reference to cribs. It is much to be regretted that the use of cribs was not openly recognised by the masters. Had they been permitted, a wise and temperate use might have been made of them, but, as it was, they were used almost universally under the rose and tended to make some boys more sly than scholarly. Apart from moral considera- tions the results arising from the use of cribs were sometimes very funny. They gave you a kind of Dutch courage to face the enemy, but sometimes the enemy disarmed you with your own weapon. One of the straightest and cleverest men I ever met in after life was far too lazy at Harrow to teach himself mathe- matics. This is no slip of the pen. Forty 30 HARROW MASTERS and fifty years ago a boy had to teach himself mathematics, if he wished to learn any. My friend tells me that he always got through his algebra by the use of a crib. One day he gave a beautiful answer to a problem, but it was not the answer to the problem set to him. This opened the eyes of his master, one of the least suspicious of men. He thinks it was the Rev. H. W. Watson, F.R.S. Mr Henry Watson was second wrangler, and the very fact that cribs were used in his form is a proof that some mathematics were taught there. Under Mr Middlemist or Mr Marillier we had not even reached the stage of considering cribs necessary. One of the most brilliant Old Harrovians of recent years told me that the whole time he was under Mr Middlemist he never did any proposition of Euclid but the 27th of the first book. The coincidence was curious, as Mr Middlemist had been 27th wrangler. Cribs after all were but bladders on which we used to float on the not very deep waters of Harrovian education, but in Mr Marillier's and Mr Middlemist's class rooms the waters of instruction were too shallow to require them. OLD HARROW DAYS A Rugby friend of mine has told me that he remembers reading Demosthenes in the form of Mr Evans now Canon Evans. This Rugby master seems to have been not unlike our own John Smith. He was one of those men whose tears do not lie far from the surface, but whose tears were not the tears of weakness. He very soon discovered that all the construing was being done on the strength of a crib, and he fairly broke down. He put the whole form on their honour not to use a crib again. Each boy gave his word, and (it is believed) kept it. Boys are no exception to the universal rule that it is easy to practise self-denial for those we love. I feel certain that no boy ever used a crib with John Smith. To pass from Mr Middlemist to the Rev. John Smith is to pass from a very low type of humanity to the very highest. If humility, tenderness, absolute unselfishness and devotion to duty entitle a man to sainthood, Mr John Smith deserved canonisation as much as if his credentials had received the imprimatur of His Holiness the Pope. After nearly fifty years' experience of this world's goodness, as well as of 32 HARROW MASTERS its wickedness we have still to go back to Har- row for our ideal of the Christian character, and we find that ideal in John Smith. It may be urged by some that energy does not find a fitting niche in the temple of the Christian virtues, but this was not the case with Mr John Smith. He was a devoted servant of the school. With astonishing humility he would neither take a higher form than the first-fourth nor a big house, but this was not from any shirking of responsibility. He was a man who ever advo- cated the loftiest ideals, while he himself per- formed the humblest duties. It was his practice to speak to every new boy on religion. Some urged that he did more harm than good by this. This may possibly have been the case with a few, but with most of us the influence of John Smith was a blessed influence, and all for good. It is thought by some that the fault of the Arnold system is that it rouses a sense of religion at too early an age in boys. It requires great tact, and tact is not a quality generally found in a man who "Dares to be a Daniel, dares to stand alone," to speak on religion to a school- boy. John Smith (true to the best traditions c 33 OLD HARROW DAYS of Harrow) was one of the least dogmatic men that I have ever known. An Evangelical of Evan- gelicals, all dogma seemed to have evaporated, leaving only love for God and man behind. Of the many good things that have fallen to the lot of the present Marquis of Bute, he has never enjoyed a greater privilege than the friendship of John Smith. It is possible that if John Smith had been more of a dogmatist and less of a Saint his former friend and pupil might be still a member of our Church. John Smith has now gone " to where beyond these voices there is peace," and where there is a truer sense of the smallness of the differences which divide Christians. John Smith was dis- tinctly a humorist ; he refused (like Dr Farrar and our best masters) to confine his boys' attention to the barren round of grammar. To him as to the grand old freedman, nothing that was human was foreign. Cricket, politics, even horse racing, were all touched upon in their turn. I remember his asking his form for the name of the owner of Gladiateur, and on another occasion for the name of the Borough for which Lord Palmerston sat. He had not to go far 34 HARROW MASTERS down the form for the first, he had to go to the bottom before he got an answer to the last. So much smaller a part does a Prime Minister fill (even though he be an old Harrovian) in the imagination of an English schoolboy than the owner of the Derby winner, even though that owner be a Frenchman ! I doubt whether any- one ever knew John Smith's party politics, or whether he had any, but Disraeli was his pet aversion. Not that he had the slightest pre- judice against him on account of his race. Dis- raeli's devotion to his own people would only have filled him with admiration. No, his objec- tions to Disraeli would have arisen more on the ground of his suppleness, on the ground of his being, in slang phrase, "Too clever by half." There is some confusion in the public mind between suppleness and subtlety. These mental traits are not only not the same, but opposed ; one is the sign of a weak man and the other of a very strong one. It was because John Smith regarded supple- ness the art of crawling through tight places as unworthy of an English gentleman that he manifestly preferred Lord Palmerston, the noble 35 OLD HARROW DAYS lord the member for Tiverton, to Mr Disraeli, the Right Hon. member for Buckinghamshire. Besides, I remember on one occasion John Smith speaking with horror of the manner in which Disraeli had attacked Peel, a viper gnaw- ing a file, as Punch's famous cartoon portrayed them. We boys, at least those of us who felt John Smith's influence most, naturally agreed with him that a man who had attacked a great Harrovian was not worthy of the support of our form ! Flowers were a passion with John Smith. I shall never forget the kindly way in which he would say to you, if you brought him some " Enjoy life, laddie." He was practical too, and if a boy's boots or hands were not satisfactory, the culprit had to stand up and repeat again and again " cleanliness is next to godliness." John Smith had no favour- ites, for the simple reason that he saw good in every boy in his class. He had a marvel- lous knack of finding out what was good in us and there is something good in the worst of us and of kindling and blowing into flame "the smoking flax." Tuft-hunting, that moral leprosy, which has reduced some great teachers 36 HARROW MASTERS to the level of mere snobs, afflicted Harrow masters but slightly, and John Smith not at all. Like all men who have modelled their lives on the gospels, he regarded Equality as a divine doctrine, if rightly understood. Those who understand Equality as pulling down some one above them, no more understand Christ's doctrine than John of Leyden did, when he set himself up as King in place of the Prince Bishop. Those who appreciate Equality, as Sir Thomas More and Mr John Smith did, do not use the word as a cloak for hatred and malice and all uncharitableness. What Bentham said of Howard the philanthropist may be said of John Smith " His kingdom was not of this world. He lived the life of a saint and died the death of a martyr " for what is loss of reason but a martyrdom, the tree, as Swift expressed it, being blasted at the summit. John Smith found a kindred spirit in the Rev. Edward Bradby. This kind and excel- lent man kept perfect order in his form, but as Homer himself sometimes nodded, so Mr Bradby used sometimes to prose. The most industrious boys can be bored to death by their 37 OLD HARROW DAYS master. I remember a case in point in Mr Bradby's form. He determined to devote an hour to Latin grammar. He continued his cross-questioning with such wearisome repeti- tion that the boy who had won the lower school grammar prize and was the show boy of the class could at last stand it no longer. On being asked what was the superlative of parvus, he replied, without hesitation, " parvissimus." The dominant feature in Mr Bradby's charac- ter was its transparent sincerity. This, coupled with a charity that never failed, made him a man whom to know was to love. A friend of his has kindly furnished me with an extract from one of the sermons which Mr Bradby preached in the School Chapel, and which (as it has an auto- biographical value) may be quoted here. Mr Bradby denned charity as "a kind of divine credulity, a feeling which is far removed from weakness, but yet which prompts a man to see good, or the possibility of good, where others might see only evil, to be very slow to believe what is really bad of another, and very quick to credit him with the reverse." It is not often that a preacher unconsciously paints his own portrait. 38 HARROW MASTERS It is no disrespect to Mr Bradby to say that he was one of those rare spirits who seemed to fit himself for heaven as he ran his earthly course. He was a good Harrow master, he was a still better head master of Haileybury, and as a worker in the East End of London he was simply splendid. Well do I remember my visit to him in the enormous barrack of a house in which he lived overlooking the Mint. Blessed be his memory, for he was a friend to the poor and the unfortunate. As you came out of Mr Bradby's form you entered that of the Rev. Thomas Steel. I can- not say that you appreciated the change. Mr Steel was so long a master at Harrow that he survived his usefulness. No rule can be made to meet every case, and every lover of Harrow would grieve if the rule of a master retiring at sixty were applied to our two present oldest masters, but no one can question the excellence of the rule which Mr Welldon has so wisely put in force. With an interval of eight years Mr Steel was a master from 1835 to 1881. Naturally, long before this period had ex- pired, he had ceased to take much interest in 39 OLD HARROW DAYS his form. Such energy as was left to him was more devoted to the furtherance of his own cul- ture than that of his pupils. He was a scholar in the widest sense of the term a lover of the spirit rather than the letter. The classical in all literatures attracted him. Of all the Harrow masters none was less of a pedant than Mr Steel. Within the last few years of his life, and he lived to a green old age, he taught himself the Welsh language. To the last he continued (in Chaucer's phrase) to be "apt to learn," though no longer " apt to teach." One of his sons married the gifted authoress of " On the Face of the Waters," and it is probably owing to her husband and her brother J. Webster being Old Harrovians that a Harrow boy is mentioned in that fine historical novel. Whether it rained or shone, Mr Steel always carried a blue umbrella, and without it his identity, at least at Harrow, would have been questioned. Mr Steel in his kindly fashion was great at giving impositions. He used thus to address the boy in a scrape " We will write a column" (meaning a column of the Greek Lexicon), or, " We will write a hundred lines." 40 HARROW MASTERS Mr Cecil Clay (the champion racket player of his time, both at Harrow and Oxford) tells me that Mr Steel having set him a hundred lines, he brought him up fifty, and blandly remarked that he thought his master had written the other fifty. He has good reasons to remember this incident. As soon as he had uttered what he flattered himself was rather a good joke, and a genius for wit and whist are hereditary in the Clay family, Mr Steel graciously offered to show him his imposition book. " When I give a boy a hundred lines I put a dot against his name. You see your name," and Mr Steel proceeded to put two dots against it. On that occasion Clay did not repeat his joke, but applied the royal "we" entirely to himself. Caesar and Pompey were very alike, especially Pompey and so it was with Mr Steel's sermons. There was one passage which we always watched for with breathless interest. Parents and visitors attributed the excitement to some spiritual effect of the good man's words upon the boys. As a matter of fact we were waiting for an ever- memorable sentence. It was this : " The cal- careous exuviae of the microscopic animalculse." OLD HARROW DAYS This is how the exordium began, but how did it end ? The vast sigh of satisfaction and audible smile which pervaded the whole school blotted out the remainder of that memorable period from our memories. A volume on the humorous in the pulpit might easily be written. Mr Steel was second classic and one of the Chancellor's Medallists of his year, but he is not the first good scholar who has been amusing in the pulpit in spite of himself. Was there not Dean Burgon who, preaching on the English Martyrs, worked himself into a state of enthusiasm and finished his discourse with this startling utter- ance : " Would that I could live the life of a Taylor, and die the death of a Bull!" Mr Steel gave us boys one of the best (or should we say worst) instances of bathos that we can remember. He was describing, in the florid language so well known to us, "a touching incident in the American War." The sentence was something like this, and referred to a nurse in a Child's Hospital, though what con- nection that had with the American Civil War has never been clear to me. However, that is 42 HARROW MASTERS now an idle enquiry. We are engaged (as Dr Farrar would have expressed it) in finding an example of that figure of speech called Bathos. " Whenever the nurse saw that ebbing life was slowly expiring, she used to place in the child's hand her touching tribute a rose. Whenever she saw the faint glow of returning health paint with carnation hues the wan cheek of the suffering child, she would place in the child's hand a bun." Mr Steel was much respected by the boys in his house, indeed by us all, for his sermons did no one any harm, but only amused us. When he left the School he was asked by the boys what present he would like, and he selected a billiard table. The present he selected was given to him, but the only use the dear old gentleman ever made of that table was to have his coffin placed on it, Mr Henry Nettleship, who married one of Mr Steel's daughters, was a master at Harrow for five years. He was one of a family of sons, all of whom have distinguished themselves in their different paths in life. Mr Nettleship was afterwards Professor of Latin Literature at 43 OLD HARROW DAYS Oxford, and the fact that he was at one time one of our classical masters reflects credit on our School. He had a high opinion of Mr Steel as a scholar of many literatures. This was only natural, but, strange to say, he used frequently to be seen walking about Oxford with a blue umbrella a reminder to Harrovians of old Harrow days. The Rev. Frederick Rendall was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, that fine nursery of scholarship which gave to Durham its two great bishops of this century Lightfoot and Westcott; to Canterbury its great Archbishop Benson ; and to our Hill its beloved master, John Smith. Like the present master of Trinity, Mr Rendall was a Senior Classic. Harrow School never possessed as a master a sounder scholar or a better man than the Rev. Frederick Rendall, and yet truth com- pels me to say that he was not a good teacher. You could not have more convincing proof that a great teacher must be born, not made, than Mr Rendall's failure to teach. Something is needed besides learning, justice and forbearance, all of which Mr Rendall possessed. A man 44 HARROW MASTERS must rouse the enthusiasm of his pupils, as those three great teachers Dr Farrar, Mr Bowen and Mr Bosworth Smith undoubtedly did. You felt no inclination to yawn under Dr Farrar; you could do little else under Mr Rendall. The following anecdote is character- istic of the master and the boys. In all the pupil rooms it was the custom in my time to read Ovid's /ferrf that charming fairy tale book of antiquity. In the form at specified periods the boys were examined in the Fasti by their form master. The non-Harrovian reader will understand that the boys in the form belonged to different pupil rooms. A certain form master could not understand why it was that all the boys in his form who belonged to Mr Rendall's pupil room, whenever the periodi- cal examination in their pupil room work took place, were always found at the bottom of the class. The fact was indisputable, but no reason could be assigned. At last and a public school is a place where whatever is done in secret is finally proclaimed from the housetop the mystery was explained. It had become a point of honour and who have such queer 45 OLD HARROW DAYS points of honour as schoolboys? with Mr Kendall's pupils not to prepare their Fasti. How then did they satisfy their tutor ? Very easily. Mr Rendall's set question to each was, "Have you gone over your Fasti?" Each boy answered unhesitatingly, "Yes." What used to happen was this a copy of the Fasti was carefully placed in the doorway of the pupil room. As each boy entered the pupil room, he used to jump over the book. In this sense, and in no other, each boy had "gone over" his Fasti. The time has not yet come to write a bio- graphy of the present Dean of Canterbury, and it is doubtful whether the task will ever be ade- quately done. The character of Dr Farrar will remain an enigma to most of us, who, with keen vision for his few weaknesses, are blind to his many excellences. The truth is, Nature en- dowed Dr Farrar with showy qualities, and at the same time gave him a heart too kind to show them off. Once grasp this, and much that is inexplicable in the Dean becomes clear and natural. The son of a missionary, the future Dean of Canterbury went up to Trinity 46 HARROW MASTERS as a sizar. Nothing could be more to his credit, and yet it is doubtful whether he thought so. There are some self-made men who, like the late Sir Andrew Fairbairn, keep a pick and shovel metaphorically, if not actually, on their sideboards, or (like Prior) immortalized their humble origin in verse. Kinsale 1 Three hundred years have roll'd Since thy forefathers held the plough, And when in story this is told, Add that my kindred hold it now. It is one of the few drawbacks of a public school that you do not meet boys who can ever claim to be self-made. Dr Farrar owes all that he possesses to his own talents. With most men a mastership at Harrow, coupled as it was in his case with an F.R.S., would have satisfied their ambition ; not so with Dr Farrar. " Ex- celsior " has ever been his motto, and may his honourable love of distinction be still further gratified! For an old pupil to couple Dr Farrar's name with the phrase "Excelsior" is a little hard on our old master, seeing that he devoted a quarter of an hour to impressing on _ us boys the criticism that in dubbing his poem 47 OLD HARROW DAYS " Excelsior," Longfellow was a poor grammarian, if a good poet. I well remember the morning which brought Dr Farrar the pleasant intelli- gence that he had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He took away to his house some of the head boys of his form, and in honour of the event treated them to some dreadful compound which he called Falernian. No one will accuse me of disparaging Dr Farrar when I say that he was not exactly the host you would select to give a wine party. He used to boast "many times and oft" that he did not know the difference between beef, veal and mutton. The more's the pity, Dr Farrar this is no matter for boasting, but rather for sackcloth and ashes. There was another famous comrade of Dr Farrar's in the army of literature, who had also the misfortune to be disqualified for the pleasures of the table, but she did not boast of it. Miss Martineau (for she it was) once told a friend of mine that she would never forget the pleasure she once derived from eating a mutton-chop. For one miraculous moment the sense of taste was given to her. In referring to " Falernian," I quite forgot that HARROW MASTERS Dr Farrar has since become the Chrysostom of teetotalism, but at the time of which I write not a master or boy wore the blue ribbon. Drunkenness was not a form of vice the boys were partial to. An older generation say that on the day on which the Zingari played against the School, they used to bring down a coach stocked with champagne, and that champagne was to be had for the asking just outside the King's Head by any boy in the school. This monstrous custom was stopped before my time. I can only remember one teetotaller among the boys, P , in "Tommy's House," as we used to call Mr Steel's. He was one of those unfortunate (or fortunate) men who disliked the taste of wine. Speech day was the only day on which one saw the slightest trace of tipsiness. I remember p 00r x beginning with beer, until he had finished all the bottles he could lay hands on (for like the hero of the Opera Bouffe he " never mixed "), then going on to sherry, and finishing with port. The results were visible to the naked eye. After lock-up Dr Butler sent for X . Well do I remember assisting D 49 OLD HARROW DAYS K to support our friend up the staircase which led from the New House (as it was then called) to Dr Butler's study. We opened the wooden door we pushed the red baize door forward further than that K and I dared not go. We heard the heavy thud of X against the door. X was a gentleman, and fortunately for him Dr Butler was one also. "I fear, sir," said X , "I have not behaved as a gentleman should." "It is very sad," replied the doctor, "go to bed." As a matter of fact Dr Butler had sent for X for quite a different reason, and he never made any further allusion to it. As to X , this boyish escapade and Dr Butler's wise condonation of it proved the turning point of his career. Long before his death, X had won the respect of all who knew him. He left Harrow without reaching Dr Farrar's form ; and probably lost little by doing so, as Dr Farrar never appreciated mere physical energy. If a boy, however, chose to work, he was fortunate indeed to be under Dr Farrar, whose mental sympathies were simply bound- So HARROW MASTERS less. I never met a man who had so varied and so brilliant a store of intellectual weapons. If you liked reading our own glorious literature Dr Farrar's heart went out to you; if you sympathised with Prometheus, who as a Greek redeemer of mankind suffered for bringing good gifts to men, Dr Farrar spoke to you like a brother : if in Hume you had read the tale of Troy divine, the tale of English prowess at Poictiers and Agincourt, Dr Farrar's enthusiasm knew no limits. For a boy anxious to learn, it is impossible to imagine a better teacher than Dr Farrar. Himself a most accurate gram- marian as well as a brilliant rhetorician, it might have been supposed that he would have limited himself to the beaten track of Greek and Latin. Those who would think so do not know Dr Farrar. The fame of Harrow boys now stands high for knowledge of geography. This is owing mainly to two men Dr Farrar and Mr Bosworth Smith. It is the attribute of genius with a few words to impart more in- formation than the plodder can give in a lecture an hour long. None of us agree in our defini- tions of genius, but we all agree when we are OLD HARROW DAYS lucky enough to come across one. Dr Farrar was a genius, and in no part of his teaching did he shew it more conclusively than in his teach- ing of geography. I shall never forget how vivid were his descriptions of the peoples of Central Asia. Sometimes I fancy that my brain-pan must be adorned by a sketch map of the Khanates of Central Asia, as they existed in the sixties, when Dr Farrar drew them there. Like all men with picturesque minds Dr Farrar had the defect of his qualities. He painted only in two colours, black or white. A boy was, in his eyes, altogether an angel or some- thing far lower. He seemed almost reluctant to think well of a dunce. Well do I remember our reading Euripides' play of "Ion" in his class. Suddenly Dr Farrar broke in on the translation in that delightful manner of his, making all our hours of study light and pleasant, with the question, "What English author wrote a play called Ion'"? He went down the whole class to where my friend P , an excellent fellow, was sitting contentedly at the bottom. P was a 52 HARROW MASTERS reader of our own literature, though not of Greek. "Serjeant Talfourd," replied P . " What ! A serjeant in the army ? " queried Dr Farrar. Now P happened to be the son of a solicitor, and he was too wary to be caught "No, a serjeant-at-law." The form could have howled at Dr Farrar, as they regarded the second question as an attempt to wrest from P the credit of answering the first. Will it surprise my readers to hear that the Dean of Canterbury does not love street music ? By that hangs a tale. James Baillie Hamilton came to the school in January 1864, when he was only twelve years old, and entered Dean Farrar's form. He also happened to be placed in Mr Middlemist's mathematical class, and as under a cherubic exterior my old friend con- cealed profound astuteness, he soon captured the hearts of both his teachers. Both Dr Farrar and Mr Middlemist's class rooms were in the right wing of the old school house overlooking the street leading up to the church- 53 OLD HARROW DAYS yard. They were therefore exposed to the attacks of the organ grinder, and both sought the aid of the smallest boy in their class. "Will you go down and disperse that man, Hamilton?" Mr Middlemist used to say with his suave Scotch accent. Nothing loth the small boy used to trot away to " disperse " the Italian exile, and to eat an ice at Fuller's. The relaxation from Euclid and Horace was not disagreeable, and the thoughts of Baillie Hamilton naturally turned to creating a phantom organ grinder of his own. Accord- ingly he conspired with a boy in his house now dead to smuggle a musical box into Dr Farrar's form: to do so into Mr Middlemist's might, in the opinion of them both, have led to serious results. Baillie Hamilton, who was the boss of his form, placed his fellow conspirator near the open window an oriel window, one side of which was open and the other closed. The musical box was pushed through the open window on to the ledge of the closed window and duly turned on. Poor Dr Farrar ! All he could do was to appeal to his tormentor and dispatch him to "disperse that man." Baillie 54 HARROW MASTERS Hamilton was now in a dilemma he had either to stop the musical box and the fun, or lose his character of suppressor of nuisances. In this emergency he had recourse to " Bottles," who was a rat catcher. Now " Bottles," whose real name was Ambridge, was not the most reputable of Harrow characters. He was quite as much an Harrovian institu- tion as Matthew Arnold, and was as much of an original. Even Matthew Arnold would have recognised "Bottles'" high rank as a humorist had he seen him as we did, running with the harriers in a master's ragged gown and mortar board. The singular friendship between "Bottles" and Baillie Hamilton was due to Miss Marsh, "The Navvies' Friend." That excellent lady deputed her young friend to take some tracts to Ambridge, and although the tracts became, it was reported, food for " Bottles " and his bull dog, Ambridge after that became Baillie Hamilton's faithful hench- man. Thus it was that instead of going to Fuller's for an ice, Dr Farrar's emissary hied to the King's Head, near the bar of which " Bottles " was safe to be found. He explained 55 OLD HARROW DAYS to " Bottles " the part he was to act in the little comedy he had prepared. "Bottles" assured his young friend that having served in the Crimea he had no difficulty in imitating those " foreigneering chaps," and Baillie Hamilton impressed on him the importance of not commencing their dialogue under Dr Farrar's windows until the musical box struck up "Home Sweet Home," its last tune. The organ did drone out the famous tune, and then in the school-yard ensued a dialogue between Dr Farrar's prize boy and the out- of-bounds rat catcher, which beggars descrip- tion. The boys (at least those in the secret) were in fits of laughter, while the very British Italian of " Bottles " and the high treble notes of the boy floated into the quiet class room. That same evening my old friend made a clean breast of it to his master. Dr Farrar was far too much amused to punish his pupil. For so fascinating a boy to have been a favourite of Dr Farrar's was "according to Cocker," but, strange to say, he was also a favourite of Mr Middlemist. There used to be, and probably still is, in the Vaughan 56 HARROW MASTERS Library a copy of Euclid, in which the figures are drawn in colours. Baillie Hamilton discovered this book, and used to bring in his figures to Mr Middlemist, drawn in coloured chalks. Great was his master's delight, and much to our amusement he used to hold up his favourite pupil as an example to us all. Fortunate Baillie Hamilton, you knew no more than we did, but you were never found out. Sometimes the liberality of Dr Farrar's theology would impress even the idlest of us. I remember the electric shock which a young Harrovian in jackets gave to his evangelical parents by informing them that the Deluge was not universal "Dr Farrar said so." But this was thirty years ago and the Bishop of Worcester has since come to a very similar conclusion. Dr Farrar has told us elsewhere how he invited Dr Colenso to stay with him at Harrow from a Saturday to a Monday, how the Bishop of Natal gave the benediction in Chapel, and how Dr Butler received letters from indignant parents objecting to their sons being blessed by a "heretic." All this hap- 57 OLD HARROW DAYS pened during my time at Harrow. Dr Farrar (immensely to his credit) stood by Dr Colenso, not because he endorsed all his opinions, but because like those great Churchmen, Tait and Thirlwall, he has all his life hated anything that savoured of persecution. He has told us of Colenso's "boundless self-sacrifice, his incorruptible veracity, the charm of his simple Christian dignity, the blameless tenor of his innocence." But we boys were Gallios rather than theologians, and were more qualified to appreciate a pun from the lips of the author of Vanity Fair than a panegyric from those of the author of the Life and Labours of St Paul. "Colenso," remarked Thackeray, "is Bishop of Natal ; he ought to be Bishop not- at-all." Touching Dr Farrar's command of language, I remember Dr Butler once observ- ing to me that if the side wall of the room in which we were then sitting were to fall down and disclose a vast multitude, Dr Farrar could, without any preparation, keep them spell-bound for an hour or more on any subject connected with English History or literature: he would be equally successful HARROW MASTERS whether his hearers were a mob or members of the Athenaeum Club. This was a generous appreciation of the Dean, but perfectly just. Some of my readers may be surprised to hear that we boys did not admire Dr Farrar as a preacher. Our opinion of Dr Farrar as a preacher was exactly summarised by Dr Jowett, when he described his sermons as "all flowers and figures." But there is an element of growth in most men, and the Dr Farrar who preached pretty but ineffective sermons in the Harrow Chapel, and the Canon who preached with such suggestiveness and force in the Abbey, were two very different persons. The pulpit of Westminster Abbey may be said to possess a sounding-board which makes its occupant heard all over the Empire. It has been given to two men one, an old Harrow Master, and the other an Old Harrovian (Canon Gore) to make a noble use of this grand instrument. Never shall I forget a sermon preached there by Dr Farrar a sermon which rivalled Bossuet in eloquence and Robertson in breadth in which he exhorted us one and all to remember 59 OLD HARROW DAYS that "one kind deed is worth a million orthodoxies." In some respects in his varied intellectual tastes Mr Arthur Watson resembled Dr Farrar, but as you came to know the two better, you saw that each belonged to a very different school of thought. Mr Watson be- longed to the temperate zone, while Dr Farrar belonged to the tropics, but the divine truth remains ever true wisdom is justified of all her children. Mr Watson was a courteous and cultivated gentleman, a remarkably handsome man, a Fellow of All Souls, and a very typical Fellow too. It was his practice to ride with Dr Butler on half-holidays. His nickname of Vanity was given him by the boys from the V-like appear- ance of his legs when riding. Unfortunately I can neither wield the pencil nor the pen of a Thackeray, or I would draw here Mr Watson as he rode down the hill. His house boys loved him, even before his marriage with his popular wife, a sister of Mr Kenelm Digby, and that is the best proof that can be given that Mr Watson was one of the school's good bargains. By a sort of providential dispensa- 60 HARROW MASTERS tion the boy who had been petted by one master used to be snubbed by another. This was very good for us, apart from a kind of natural justice dear to schoolboys. Mr Watson took the form above Dr Farrar's, and as a just man he would not make his form too pleasant a place for the doctor's favourites. A friend of mine enjoyed this experience, but not for very long, as Mr Watson succumbed to the charm of manner which had captivated Dr Farrar. Mr Watson had in his constitution a touch of the best kind of cynicism that intellectual frost which freshens the mental atmosphere, and makes the language simple and direct. He detested "high falutin'," and naturally did not find in Dr Farrar's schoolboy books the true ring. He was contrasting Eric and St Winifred's with To m Brown^ very much to the disadvantage of the former, to a friend of mine, who, with innocence more apparent than real, replied, "Why don't you write a schoolboy book yourself, sir?" Mr Watson was one of the best critics I have ever met, but the remark of my friend fairly silenced him. Young as the form boy was, he thought it was Mr Watson's 61 OLD HARROW DAYS turn to write a book for Dr Farrar to criticise. There was one very characteristic incident in his Form which must be recorded. He asked the boys who won a certain naval vic- tory. It was not Salamis, but some English victory, for Mr Watson was no pedant, and took a keen interest in our own history. He began with the top boy "Nelson," "Howe," "Rodney," and so on. "Can nobody tell me ? " No, none of us knew. " Mrs Watson's uncle," replied our master. Comment is need- less. Blessed with good taste and genuine scholarship, Mr Watson was very severe on learned foppery in others. The boys, it is needless to say, are more given to foppery in their clothes than in their ideas, but Mr Watson was not one who thought his critical faculties given him only to criticise his pupils. I remember his being very satirical on an article by Mr Gladstone, in which Mr Gladstone, in quoting Bottom and Titania, had referred in an asterisk to " Mid-Summer's Night Dream." "I fear," said Mr Watson, "our Prime 62 HARROW MASTERS Minister is becoming a pedant in his old age." It may solace Mr Watson to know that he is not the first man of culture who has been pilloried by the boys of his own form. Before Dean Stanley studied elocution he used to be an examiner at Rugby, and the boys, on account of his voice, dubbed him " The Young Fledgling." Greek and Latin are languages so difficult that they render the learning of any other language at the same time an almost impos- sible task. The Cyril Flower prize may occa- sionally be won by some budding Professor Atkinson, who contemporaneously is editing the sacred books of Burmah and a dictionary of the Irish language. Let no one after this say that an Englishman cannot be a splendid linguist. Whether we were to blame for not mastering French and German at Harrow or not, certainly our two excellent masters, Mr Ruault and Mr Masson were not to blame. They ploughed the soil, though, for some reason beyond their control, the crop was not plentiful. 63 OLD HARROW DAYS The same curious process that we have ob- served in Mr Watson's and Dr Farrar's class rooms used to repeat itself in the class rooms of Mr Masson and Mr Ruault. If you were a favourite with Mr Masson, his friend Mr Ruault would set the balance even. Mr Ruault was a sort of rock ahead when you were en- joying yourself in Mr Masson's form. You had to take care not to get on too fast with your French or you would be considered qualified to learn German under Mr Ruault. Never was promotion more unwelcome. You left the cheeriest of forms and entered one of the most dismal. Mr Ruault was, to my knowledge, a most courteous gentleman, but how was it possible for him to compete in popularity with Mr Masson, who, on the slightest provocation, would recite to his class the Trial scene in Pickwick? Mr Ruault's conscientious efforts to knock into our heads some knowledge of German did not meet with much success. The glorious poems of Goethe and of Schiller were as much a closed book to us as the philosophy of Con- fucius. I remember one small boy, fresh from HARROW MASTERS Mr Ruault's form, visiting Germany. He was a sociable boy, who thought the tongue was given to us for some use. Accordingly, he opened fire on a German boatman with the one sentence which he remembered from Ollen- dorf. It was : " The cow of your grandmother is taller than the umbrella of your aunt." What was his astonishment when the man, with some heat, contested the truth of his statement, and ended by inviting him home to prove its incorrectness. Whether our Harrow boy accepted his invitation history does not say. If Mr Arthur Watson is one of the best of critics, Mr Masson was one of the brightest and most amusing of conversationalists. Were I to fill my pages with his good stories my volume would grow to large proportions, as every one knows who has enjoyed the de- lightful rapids of Mr Masson's conversation. There is one story of his which, being germane to Harrow, I will not abstain from relating. A certain plutocrat (or is it more polite to say millionaire?) had placed his boy in Mr Stogdon's house. The fond parent was not E 65 OLD HARROW DAYS satisfied with seeing his boy's house master; he must see the head master. Dr Butler was engaged at the time with Mr Bowen, and the footman told him so. Just then Mr Bowen happened to come out into the hall, and the paterfamilias, mistaking him for the butler, ran forward, and, slipping half a sovereign into Mr Bowen's hand, asked him to arrange an interview for him with the "governor." The comedy of errors did not end here. After his interview with Dr Butler, the millionaire produced his cigar-case and offered him a cigar. As Dr Butler stood in amused silence, the paterfamilias thought he was hesitating from a doubt as to their quality. "I can assure you, Dr Butler," he said, solemnly, "I should not offer the head master of Harrow any cigars but those of the best brand." Many of the best stories are involuntarily furnished by the idle boys themselves. The following was told me by Mr Masson in the eighties. The correct translation of the French was as follows : "In Corsica it is difficult to distinguish the 66 HARROW MASTERS domestic pig and the wild boar, on account of their great resemblance." The boy translated it as follows : ' ' In Corsica it is difficult to distinguish the boar and the woodcock, on account of their great resemblance." Mr Masson, who was the wit of the school, threatened to deprive the boy, who was a sportsman, of his license. It was the same boy who, being asked to write out the Lord's Prayer, succeeded in writing it out correctly, but finished it off with the Ninth Command- ment, "Thou shalt not," &c. This is a fact. We could match it by a boy in my first term. The son of a well-known M.P. was asked to describe on paper the course of the Jordan. He had recourse to the map and described it correctly enough, except that he reversed the order of nature. " The Jordan," he wrote, " rises in the Dead Sea, flows through the Lake of Gennesaret, and comes to a stop in Mount Hermon." Attic salt is still to be found on the Hill. I venture to present my readers with a Harrow master's witty, but severe, bon mot on the OLD HARROW DAYS present Archbishop of Canterbury" Our Temple has no polished corners." Dr Farrar was not the only genius among Harrow masters, for had we not our organist, Mr John Farmer? I speak not here of his musical talents, of which I am not competent to judge, though the composer of the music to all the earlier Harrow songs will always, in the prejudiced judgment of us old Harrovians, stand on a pinnacle from which neither Handel nor Mozart can dismount him. I speak of Mr Farmer as a genius because, like Dr Farrar, he owes his position to his talents alone, and not to rank or money. Mr Farmer used humorously to say that when he first came to the school, many of the masters made the vexed question whether they should call on him a matter of prayer. Be this as it may, not to know Mr Farmer now is, at least among old Harrovians, to argue oneself unknown. If geography owes its present position in the school to the efforts of a Farrar and a Bosworth Smith, music owes her recognition at Harrow to Dr Butler. Dr Butler is a staunch friend, and from first to last he stuck to Mr Farmer. 68 HARROW MASTERS Nor is Mr Farmer unworthy of such a friend. The son of a Nottingham weaver, he was so miserably poor that up to the age of nine he never tasted white bread. He ran away from Nottingham, and, shoeless and penniless, found his way to Wagner's house at Bayreuth. Who should let him in but the great composer him- self. The poor famished English lad told the German master of his craft, that he (Farmer) was the only man in England who appreciated his music. This clearly entitled Farmer to at least one meal, and Wagner gave him one. Then Wagner kept him, and, finally, more or less, adopted him. Little did the famous com- poser know that he was educating a musical missionary who would convert the Hill of Harrow into a tuneful Parnassus. There was one trait in Mr Farmer's musical campaign which would scarcely have recommended itself to Wagner. Supposing two brothers came before Mr Farmer the one with a fine voice, but a duffer at cricket ; the other with an indif- ferent voice, but in the flannels of the eleven Mr Farmer would incontinently reject the boy with the fine voice, and prefer the boy who OLD HARROW DAYS bowled or batted well. It was all part of a settled policy to adopt every means in his power to make music popular in the school. Mr Farmer had not been a term at Harrow without finding out that excellence at cricket was a varnish which covered all ugliness. I do not blame Mr Farmer for this, for I was an English schoolboy, but a German musician would have denounced it as truckling to the English Juggernaut athletic sports. Just so it was, but Mr Farmer had to catch his hare before he cooked him. Never did a man more completely succeed in the task he set before himself than did Mr Farmer. His personal influence, too, with the boys was good. We liked him. I well remember a boy in our house with a very Jewish name and a very Jewish face. In those days there were no professed Jews in the school. All the boys went to Chapel, though I fear we did not all learn charity there, as we should have done. Consequently, poor led what would have been to an Englishman, not of Jewish extrac- tion, a dog's life. On one of our musical evenings the poor lad was being badgered 70 HARROW MASTERS for his Jewish origin, and, as usual, stoutly denied it. " Don't say that," broke in Mr Farmer, who overheard the altercation, " don't deny the fact, but be proud of belonging to the most glorious race that God ever created." This was a new light to us ignorant boys. The three masters who, in the seventies, were a link between our Hill and the outer world were Dr Butler, Mr Bowen, and Mr Bosworth Smith. Dr Farrar and Mr Bradby had left ; Mr John Smith's time was devoted to a form of small boys, who could not be ex- pected (as Dr Farrar expressed it) to know " the difference between a Radical and a radish." There was nothing of the Chinese mandarin about the three masters I have named. Dr Butler's princely generosity to all Harrow objects is well known, but he was equally anxious to aid with his purse and his brains all well-considered public schemes tending to strengthen the Empire and to improve the condition of the less fortunate, who (whatever be our prosperity) must ever remain in the majority. Mr Bowen stood for Parliament at OLD HARROW DAYS Hertford in '80 against Mr Arthur Balfour. What a feast for the gods must have been furnished to those fortunate electors by two such candidates as "Prince Arthur," the old Etonian, and Edward Bowen, the poet of Harrow. The only elector to be pitied would be the old Harrovian who felt himself bound to vote against his old Master ! And yet it is more than doubtful whether such an elector was not rendering Mr Bowen as well as Harrow a service in not voting for him. I claim to be second to none in my admiration for Mr Edward Bowen. He is far more than an able man. He is a man of genius and exceptional energy. In fact you may safely challenge the production of a second Bowen. He possesses all the powers of thought and expression which won for his brother a seat in the Court of Appeal, and he is even more of an original. No impartial critic, who knew the two brothers, will question the justice of this view. But after giving him his full due, the fact remains that he is too subtle to have been a success in the House of Commons. 72 HARROW MASTERS That critical Assembly would have called him a hair-splitter, and not without reason. The fate, which even a Burke could not escape, would have befallen Mr Bowen. Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining, And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining. Some of my readers might finish the quotation of the character "And cut blocks with a razor," and think that that also applied to Mr Bowen as a teacher of boys. Happily this is not the case. Mr Bowen has never belonged to that class of men who think themselves superior to their calling. His conscientiousness and love of athletics both conspire to make him a model master. Having played "footer" with him a quarter of a century ago, I am able to testify to his skill in that department. If any one and no Harrovian would questions Bowen's right to be called a genius, let him read his Harrow Songs. It is no exaggeration to say that among these are poems which would have added to the fame of a Beranger. They appeal to all ages, 73 OLD HARROW DAYS but especially to the older among us. When we hear them sung by Harrow boys, we are young again. Thomas Gray is one of the glories of Eton, yet his lines on his old school do not seem to go from the heart and to the heart as the simpler words of our Harrow poet. There is not an old Harrovian who would not rather have written Bowen's Raleigh or Giants than Gray's polished but stilted ode On a Distant Prospect of Eton College. We may say more. Tom Hood would not have suc- ceeded, had he attempted, in parodying Forty Years On, while his poem On a Distant Prospect of Clapham Academy is excruciat- ingly funny. There are some who censure the devotion of masters and boys alike to athletics. Such critics of our public schools must if they were logical find in Mr Bowen an unfortunate proof of the unsoundness of their own argu- ment. Mr Bowen is the walking embodiment of the mens sana in corpore sano. The use of this trite phrase must be pardoned, as it hits off Mr Bowen (as the saying is) to a T. I remember going down to Harrow to see a 74 HARROW MASTERS nephew in the autumn of 1893. The boys were then coming up from " footer," the pea- cock hues of their flannels covered with mud. What was my surprise when from among a crowd of youthful players emerged Mr Bowen. Twenty- five years had passed since last we met upon the "footer" fields, but time seemed to have had no influence on the poet of Forty Years On. It is difficult within my limits to do full justice to Mr Bosworth Smith. We Old Harrovians who were in his pupil-room or house have good reason to remember his charming wife and his hospitable home. Mr Bosworth Smith is a first- rate schoolmaster, a good shot, a keen naturalist, a discriminating critic, and a publicist with a European reputation. He is the only Harrow master whose two works (" Mohammed and Mo- hammedanism," and " Carthage and the Cartha- ginians") have each received an appreciative review in the Revue des Deux Mondes. To be praised in that review is, in the opinion of a literary Frenchman, to have your name in- scribed on a French " dome of St Paul's." The author of that review on Mahommed carefully 75 OLD HARROW DAYS compared the views of Mr Gladstone (then, as now, engaged on an anti-Turkish crusade) and Mr Bosworth Smith, and gave the palm to the Harrow master. A victory of Harrow over Eton, which may at least claim to rank with a victory at Lord's. Every time a question of English foreign policy arises, our famouo Hill is (thanks to the owner of The Knoll) in the thick of it. " Who said ' Atrocities ' ? " says Punch to the Gladstone terrier. " Who said ' Uganda ' ? " asks the Harrow chronicler of Mr Bosworth Smith. The retention of Uganda as part of our Empire is more due to our old friend than to any other individual man. Ask Mr Labou- chere, if you question the accuracy of this. "We are still disputing about ideas," wrote . Disraeli ; " we do not know which are the right ones, but with words we govern men." Just so, and the coiner of the phrase, "continuity of moral policy," has much to answer for, re- plies the Little Englander if such a person really exists. The phrase, " continuity of moral policy," tickled the fancy of Lord Rosebery, who then happened to be the man at the wheel. Reverence for our glorious past is a link in HARROW MASTERS common between the owner of Ladas and the biographer of Lord Lawrence. The mention of South Africa reminds us of the once famous Bishop of Natal. Dr Colenso (unfortunately for our mathematics) left Harrow before the fifties, but I may claim to have seen him revisit the scene of his honourable labours. I was one of the boys who cheered him down the school steps in 1866. It will please old Har- rovians to know that this mark of respect for Dr Colenso deeply pleased his wife. She spoke about it in 1893. This venerable lady must then (1893) have been the eldest surviv- ing widow of any Harrow master. She was a link between the times of Mr Welldon and those of Dr Wordsworth. Mr Bosworth Smith in his zeal for great causes does not forget to take interest in us poor strug- glers. He follows the fortunes of old pupils, and continues to develop what is best in them long after they have left the school. Harold Brown is an instance of this. Brown had visited the north-east portion of Albania, the least known corner of Europe, and many other strange corners of Asia and Africa. He used to write 77 OLD HARROW DAYS letters to his old tutor, and on one occasion wrote to him from South Africa. Mr Bosworth Smith thought this letter so excellent that he forwarded it to the Pall Mall, where it ap- peared, of course, anonymously. The Pall Mall went out in due course to its constant reader, Mr Cecil Rhodes. That founder of an Empire is always on the look-out for a man, and he recognised a man in the writer of that letter. He at once instituted inquiries, and did not rest until he had secured him. Whom are we to admire most, asked Mr Bosworth Smith, Harold Brown or the statesman who discovered him? It seems that Mr Bosworth Smith has even more right to the credit of the discovery than Mr Cecil Rhodes. If there is one title more than another that Mr Bosworth Smith merits, it is that of discoverer of boys who up till then passed for idle or even stupid. Had Cecil Rhodes not read that letter, Harold Brown would not have taken his last stand in that ring of Englishmen on the Shangani River on the 4th December 1893. Nothing in the making of our Empire was more touching than the heroic impulse which moved Major Wilson's 78 HARROW MASTERS party, while awaiting certain death, with bared heads, to sing " God Save the Queen." Thank God that Harrow can at least claim two sons Harold Brown and Harry Kinloch among that band of heroes. 79 CHAPTER II HARROW HEAD MASTERS nPHE two names that specially deserve to live in grateful Harrow memories are those of Thackeray and Vaughan. Dr Thackeray was, as Dr Butler aptly called him, "the second Founder of the School " ; Dr Vaughan was its Restorer. The two families that have given more faithful servants to the school than any other are those of Butler and Drury. The Butlers father and son filled the head master's chair for close upon half a century. Dr Joseph Drury worked in the School for the long term of thirty-six years, the last twenty as Head Master. Dr Thomas Thackeray (1746-1760) was a remarkable man, but considering how much he did, it is irritating how little is known about him. The only book in which any account of him can be found is the memorials of the Thackeray family, of which only one hundred copies were printed. Very few of my readers will have seen this book, and 80 HARROW HEAD MASTERS even those who have been fortunate enough to do so will allow me to quote the description there quoted of our second Founder. He was " a man of a very graceful and portly stature, of a most humane and candid disposition, and generally beloved by all his acquaintance." He had the good fortune to marry a beautiful woman, whose charming portrait, as an old lady, in Mrs Thackeray Ritchie's home, still bears traces of that beauty which won the heart of our old chief. She bore him sixteen children. The youngest of these, William Makepeace Thackeray, was the grandfather of the author of " Vanity Fair." Among his other merits Bishop Hoadly had the merit of appreciating Dr Thackeray, and he conferred on him the Arch- deaconry of Surrey. This was tantamount to a gift of .130 a year. It is not pleasant to con- template that our head master should accept with gratitude a benefice of so small a value, but the fact that he did so only accentuates our obligations, because it shows how very poorly he was remunerated for his splendid services. " Noble he was, contemning all things mean, His truth unquestion'd, and his soul serene." F 8l OLD HARROW DAYS His sudden death is well known, and not even the "Thackeray Memorials" throw any light upon it. One day I was speaking of it to his lineal descendant, Mrs Thackeray Ritchie, whose genius has conferred distinction even on her father's family. " I believe," she said, "Arch- deacon Thackeray had been dining with the Prime Minister of the day, who told him of the king's intention to make him a bishop. The good man went home and died of joy. So you see," added Mrs Thackeray Ritchie, "his death was not an unhappy one." To Dr Thackeray succeeded Dr Sumner (1760-1771), and it was under him and his assistant, Dr Parr, that the Marquess of Hast- ings, future Governor-General of India, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan were educated. When in 1771 Dr Sumner died at the early age of forty-one, the governors elected Dr Heath as his successor. It is probably due to the elec- tion of Dr Heath that we are unable to reckon the great Duke of Wellington among old Har- rovians. " Nothing is wanting to his glory ; he is wanting to ours." The Marquis Wellesley, who finished his life as an enthusiastic old 82 HARROW HEAD MASTERS Etonian, began his life as an Harrovian. In those days, incredible as it may now appear, the boys took sides on the election of a new head master. On the retirement of Dr Drury in 1805, three candidates appeared in the field Mark Drury, Benjamin Evans, and Dr George Butler. The leader of the Drury party was Lord Byron, but in spite of the violence of his opposition, or perhaps by reason of it, Dr George Butler was elected. On the occasion of an earlier vacancy in the eighteenth century Vis- count Wellesley (as he then was) was the ring- leader of the boys who supported the election to the post of head master of the famous Dr Parr, then one of the assistant masters. Few of us now remember much of Dr Parr, as the only modern biography of him is a very slight and very unfair notice by De Quincey; but that writer of delightful English seems to have forgotten that Dr Parr was honoured with the friendship of his political opponent, Dr John- son, and with the youthful enthusiasm of Lord Wellesley. However, we Harrovians have no reason to rejoice over the Parr-cum- Wellesley defeat. Viscount Wellesley objected to the 83 OLD HARROW DAYS appointment of Dr Parr's rival, on the ground that he had been a master at Eton. Had his objections remained academical, or at least been restricted to the viva voce stage, all would have been well for him and for us ; but alack the day he broke up the carriage of one of the school governors ! For this act of insubordination he was taken away from Harrow by his relation Cornwallis, Archbishop of Canterbury, and sent to Eton. All his younger brothers, including Arthur, followed suit and went to Eton. Had it not been for the untoward incident that Dr Heath was elected head master instead of Dr Parr, the battle of Waterloo would have been won on the playing fields of Harrow, and not of Eton! Dr Joseph Drury, who filled the head master's chair for twenty years (1785 to 1805), probably enjoys a more lasting fame than any of our other head masters. This is not so much due to his own paternal wisdom as to Byron's love for him. Our school flourished under him as it had never done before, and its numbers mounted up to three hundred and fifty. Dr George Butler won the head mastership 84 HARROW HEAD MASTERS partly owing to the support of Porson and Parr, the one a glory of Eton, the other of our own Hill. No more versatile and many-sided man has ever presided over the destinies of a great school. He read classics with Porson. He was Senior Wrangler in 1 794, and vanquished one of the ablest men that ever competed for Cambridge honours Lord Chancellor Lynd- hurst, who was second. This was before the establishment of the Classical Tripos, but not before the establishment of the Chancellor's Classical Medals. The Chancellor's Medallists of 1794 were Doncasterand Taddy, Dr George Butler being prevented from competing by an illness. He was, however, Senior Smith's prizeman and classical tutor of his college. He was also distinguished for his proficiency in science and for his knowledge of French, German, and Italian. More than one dis- tinguished Old Harrovian has written to Dr Butler to say that he owes his interest in physical science to his father's lectures. How Dr George Butler found time for these studies is a marvel, more especially as he lived in a pre-scientific age. It may be mentioned here OLD HARROW DAYS that at the beginning of the century the head master used to have a pupil room of his own. In Dr George Butler's pupil room Sir Thomas Acland, who is happily still with us, and many other eminent men received the most valuable part of their Harrow education. French and Italian were the fashionable languages of Byron's day; an English scholar then rarely troubled himself to learn German. Dr George Butler's knowledge of German did not pass without its reward: About 1798 he visited Weimar, and called on both Goethe and Schiller. By Schiller the young Englishman was most kindly received. The great poet took him into the room where his wife and children were at tea, and recited to him a speech from his then unpublished Wallensteiris Tod. On his leaving, Schiller presented him with four or five volumes of his poems, which, it is needless to add, are care- fully preserved in the Butler family. Wallen- steirfs Tod was put on the stage in 1799, and was not printed till 1800. In 1842 Dr George Butler was appointed by his former pupil, Sir Robert Peel, to the 86 HARROW HEAD MASTERS Deanery of Peterborough. In January 1843 the Dean was riding from Gayton to North- ampton. It was a bitterly cold day. Crossing a bridge over a canal, he noticed the dress of a woman in the water, and at once plunged into the canal and rescued her. He had great difficulty in lifting her out, owing to the steep- ness of the sides of the canal, but he succeeded. No one better deserved the gold medal of the Royal Humane Society than our old head- master, who was then in his seventieth year. Charles Stretton, the author of " Memoirs of a Chequered Life," was at Harrow in the early twenties under Dr George Butler. His book is probably quite unread by the present genera- tion, and scarcely deserves to be read. The only reason of its being referred to here is that it gives the only published evidence of the reasons for that decline in the School which began under Dr George Butler, continued under Dr Longley, and nearly finished off the School under Dr Wordsworth. Later on I give extracts from the (unpublished) memoir and letters of J. S. Gambier and G. M. Batten, but I am prevented by obvious considerations 8? OLD HARROW DAYS from publishing the names of others who, when they were alive, made no secret of their having participated in such exploits as are hinted at in Stretton's " Chequered Life." For instance, under Dr George Butler there was a sixth form boy, who was such a terrible bully that the fags sent him up a round robin informing him that if he returned next term, they would " nail him up" in his room not meaning by that that they would crucify him, but that they would nail up his door. He did return, and was "nailed up"; he had to escape through his window. This happened so long ago that no man now living would remember the in- cident, but this sixth form boy subsequently rose to one of the highest positions in the land, and what is more, became a saintly man. It is a lesson to us all never to despair of a bully. He is an aggravating beast when you have the misfortune to be in the same house with him, but you must "lick him," if you can, and if he "licks" you, why, comfort yourself with the thought that you are aiding in the evolution of some future Bishop or some leader of the Radical Party ! 88 HARROW HEAD MASTERS All the members of the "Red Nightcap" Club, that " Hell-fire" Club of Harrow in the twenties, have long since joined the majority. How proud they were of the red cap, " emblazoned with a pot of porter standing on two crossed pipes, all in gold lace, with the exception of the froth, which was admirably imitated in silver." With " The First Gentleman of Europe" setting an example for more than thirty years, can we be surprised that drunkenness and dissipation sank deep into the social life of Harrow during the first forty years of this century? Is it to be wondered at that the School steadily went down both in numbers and reputation? It would have been much to the discredit of the country if this had not been the case ; if, in fact, the School had continued to enjoy popularity after it had ceased to deserve it. I have myself known men of my own generation who, though the sons of old Harrovians, were not sent to Harrow. Why was this ? Simply because their parents had seen the blackguardism rampant on the Hill before the time of Vaughan, and refused to subject their sons to the same temptations. Charles Stretton furnishes us OLD HARROW DAYS with one example, and that not an extreme one, of what heights or depths want of dis- cipline had then reached. "The day of the Spring Meeting arrived, and I managed to be there (having previously contrived to get on the sick list), and had I returned direct from Epsom I should not have been discovered \ but meeting with some young friends in London, I was induced to remain over two days; was finally met by my tutor at ii o'clock P.M. whilst riding up Harrow Hill.'" A friend of mine, who is not an old Har- rovian, considers that he lost ^7000 a year through the " skylarking " and bullying that went on at Harrow in the twenties. His elder brother of the half blood who was at Harrow, and afterwards at Trinity, Cambridge, intended to make him his heir. He died, however, before he came of age, and therefore before he could execute his will. His constitution was com- pletely undermined by what he had gone through on the Hill. One of the early heads of the School (1834) 1 "Chequered Life," vol. i., p. 20. 90 HARROW HEAD MASTERS under Dr Longley Jack Norton was well known to my father. Like Byron he was both a cricketer and a poet, though the graceful sonnets he wrote at Merton are less known than they deserve to be. He rose to be Sir John Norton, Advocate-General, and Member of the Legislative Council at Madras. Jack Norton was an impulsive man of strong senti- ment, and was often carried away by his feel- ings in Court. His friends, knowing his weak as well as his strong points, used to "chaff" him by saying that he advertised to his native clients " In tears fifteen gold mohurs extra." In some respects Jack Norton reminded us of a better known Jack at the English Bar " honest Jack Holker " (Disraeli's " elephant of an Attorney General"), whose eulogy was so feelingly spoken by Lord Coleridge. The year after "Jack" Norton, W. H. Gregory (1835) was head of the School. Sub- sequently W. H. Gregory won his Parliamentary spurs by heading the poll for Dublin in 1842, and finished his public career by becoming one OLD HARROW DAYS of the best Governors that was ever sent out to Ceylon. Dr Longley told Lord Clonbrock that Gregory was the cleverest boy he ever had under him. Yet what does Sir William Gregory in his bright Autobiography record of his school life. " At that time fishing and shooting were my constant occupations, and there was not a field within miles of Harrow in which I had not poached by day, or a pond I had not dragged at night, with a celebrated loose character, Billy Warner by name." 1 It is curious to find that Sir William in the early thirties had a Mr James Marillier for his mathematical master. Says Sir William : " Of Euclid and Algebra I was entirely ignorant; there was, it is true, a French and Mathe- matical Master, the same man performing the double function, but good-natured, laugh- ing M. Marillier, was a perfect Gallic as regards tuition. He " cared for none of these things." This was Mr James Marillier (brother of our Mr Marillier) who is said to have carried Mrs 1 The predecessor of "Bottles " of our day. 92 HARROW HEAD MASTERS Kennedy out of the "Grove," when it was burning. Gregory's time was wasted, like hundreds of other boys, in writing " silly Latin verses." Then, as later, there was little attempt (save by a few exceptional masters) to make a boy think. Sir William does, however, con- tend that the teaching at Harrow was no worse than that at any other school of the time, Arnold's Rugby always excepted. "Excepting the case of the Rugby boys, slovenliness of style and incorrectness in writing English were the characteristics of public school boys." Such was the judgment passed by Dean Liddell of Christ Church, addressing his pupil, the former head of our School. It is only fair to Dr Longley to add that his favourite pupil returned his affection with interest. " I loved him so very dearly, that when I found him distant in his manner, and yet at times looking upon me so kindly and so sadly, the better principle prevailed." Dr Longley was head master of Harrow from Easter 1829 to Easter 1836. He came with a great reputation from Christ Church, and the 93 OLD HARROW DAYS School, on his appointment, made a spurt in numbers, but soon settled down into what must have appeared a hopeless decline. Dr Longley and his successor, Dr Wordsworth, were poor disciplinarians. Under Longley and Wordsworth skylarking continued to be the order of the day. The greater part of this skylarking was pure fun, but alongside of, and under cover of it, many practices were indulged in that were neither manly nor innocent. Dr Longley's nickname was " Jacob," but it was the boys who beguiled him, and not he the boys. The favourite amusement of those days was hare and hounds at night, the hare running with a lantern, which he would carefully place at times on the further side of a ditch full of water. This hare and hounds of nights was, of course, forbidden, but forbidden fruit is proverbially sweet. Another recreation of Harrow boys in the thirties afforded more fun to themselves than to their victims. The King's Head was and is a favourite resort for Cockneys on Sundays. The ostlers would place a ticket number on each 94 HARROW HEAD MASTERS carriage, and a similar number on the horses' hoof. It used to be the practice of some of our boys to alter the numbers, with the result that many a visitor to the King's Head would in the evening be the owner of a better nag than he owned in the morning, and vice versa. I was told this by an old Rugbeian, who heard of these practical jokes when he was at Rugby with Vaughan, the future restorer of Harrow. Under the severe but healthy discipline of Dr Arnold, my Rugby friend used to hear, rather with envy, of the skylarking that went merrily on at Harrow under the very different rule of Longley and Wordsworth. There was a saying in the school that Dr Longley one night caught a boy out of bounds. The boy eluded his grasp, but left one of his swallow tails behind him. Ah ! thought "Jacob," I have got the boy now, but the next morning fifty of the boys appeared with their coats minus one tail ! A barrister friend of mine, who went to Harrow in the first year of Dr Vaughan, tells me that the new boys used to nickname those who had been under the late head master 95 OLD HARROW DAYS " Words worthians." This nickname was not a synonym for industry and scholarship, but quite the reverse. He remembers a party of " Words- worthians" collected outside Dr Vaughan's windows looking at my friend doing his work, as if he had been a strange animal whose curious habits were worthy of some attention. One day our " Wordsworthians " carried their detestation of work beyond the contemplative stage. They selected two industrious boys, H. N. Oxenham and , and placed them, or rather their heads, as if they had been nuts, within the hinges of the school gates. This was just before the four o'clock " Bill," and the master to call "Bill" that day was the Rev. William Oxenham. The bell was ringing for "Bill," and Mr Oxenham (followed by my friend) walked up the gentle eminence which leads to our school gates. Mr Oxenham, who suspected nothing, suddenly came upon the improvised pillory with his own son's head sticking out of it. The face of " Billy " was a study ! My friend remembers it now after the lapse of fifty-two years ! Dr Christopher Wordsworth, our head master, HARROW HEAD MASTERS was educated at Winchester. Charles Words- worth, second master of Winchester, was edu- cated at Harrow. It was a case of exchange, and now that both brothers are dead there can be no harm in saying that our school suffered through it. As a disciplinarian as well as an athlete Christopher Wordsworth was no match for his brother Charles. Neither Dr Longley nor Dr Christopher Wordsworth could have felt much regret at vacating our head master's chair. For sixty years the destinies of Harrow have been in the hands of four senior classics. Four more brilliant or accomplished scholars than Christopher Wordsworth, Charles Vaughan, Montagu Butler, and James Welldon have never succeeded each other at any public school. So far as scholarship went it would be invidious and impossible to put one before the other, but as head masters there can be no comparison between Dr Wordsworth and his three successors. They have been as successful as he was the reverse. The attenuated space which his consulship fills in the school register speaks for itself. He came in '35 j happily for Harrow he left in '44. Had he remained much G 97 OLD HARROW DAYS longer the School would have become a thing of the past, and Macaulay's New Zealander would have asked, "Where was Harrow?" In plain language, Dr Wordsworth reduced the school to seventy-eight boys, and these were mostly home boarders. As it was said of Augustus that he found Rome brick and left it marble, so it may be said of Dr Vaughan that he found Harrow dwindling back into a grammar school and restored it to its proper position as a public school. The present number of boys in the school is about six hundred. Dr Longley, who as Primate of all England rose to the highest position ever attained by a Harrow head master, was the least distinguished of any Harrow head master of this century in his college career. He is also the only head master that Oxford has given to Harrow since the dismissal of Mr Cox (a Merton man) in 1746. From Thackeray to Welldon all our head masters (with the exception of Dr Longley) have been Cambridge men ; from Drury to H. M. Butler (with the same excep- tion) all have been Trinity Cambridge men. Mr Welldon, like his two great predecessors, 98 HARROW HEAD MASTERS Archdeacon Thackeray and Dr Heath, hails from King's College. When we turn to the public schools which have given Harrow her head masters (and I do not refer here to the dark ages which preceded Archdeacon Thackeray) we find that Westminster has given us two (Drury and Longley) ; Winchester, one (Wordsworth); Rugby, one (Vaughan); Harrow, one (H. M. Butler) ; and Eton, four (Thackeray, Sumner, Heath, and Welldon). Dr George Butler alone was educated at a private school his own father's school at Chelsea. Harrow has been unable to return the compliment to her great rival, for the simple reason that Eton only took her head masters from among her own alumni After Dr Longley and Dr Wordsworth the reaction was bound to come; that it came to stay was due to the energy and tact of Dr Vaughan. Harrow has flourished under her young head masters. Dr Vaughan was twenty- eight when elected, Dr Butler twenty-six, and Mr Welldon thirty-one. Like all men of character, Dr Vaughan had his enemies, who questioned his sincerity. The fact was, Dr Vaughan was kind to 99 OLD HARROW DAYS the offender but severe on the offence, and while he did his duty to the school, he shrunk from inflicting pain on individual boys. That Dr Vaughan would never tolerate anything base or vile is a self - evident proposition to all Harrow men. Sir Charles Bruce, K.C.M.G., who was in Mr Oxenham's house and is now Governor of Mauritius, was telling me of the effect pro- duced on him by a sermon of Dr Vaughan in the School Chapel " Cast forth that evil person from among you." He remembered it after an interval of more than forty years ! A preacher must be sincere for his sermon to enjoy so long an immortality ! It is, however, a noteworthy fact that Dr Vaughan seems to have been more a favourite with the boys than the masters. Dr Butler always spoke of him with unbounded enthusiasm, but this, one would expect from so warm-hearted a man, who was also his successor. I have rarely heard any other master refer to him. Sir Richard Harrison, R.E., K.C.B., made, as any one who knows him would expect, a soldierly and striking speech at the Old 100 HARROW HEAD MASTERS Harrovian Dinner of '97. He stated how, at the time of the Crimean War, he got a commission in the Engineers, and how on his return to the school in very high spirits he called on the head master to thank him for his letter to the Master General of the Ordnance, to which he owed his appointment. " You are throwing yourself away," replied Dr Vaughan. "Forty years on," and General Harrison, then covered with medals and decorations, was ap- pointed to the command of the Forces in the West of England. There, in his quiet Welsh Deanery, he found his old chief and repeated to him his former speech " You are throwing yourself away." "Well, didn't you?" replied the Dean of Llandaff. Now, if the impression the gallant General wished us to derive from this anecdote was that Dr Vaughan was in- different to the Army, he was unwittingly guilty of an injustice. No head of a great public school ever took a warmer interest in the welfare of the Army than did Dr Vaughan. I remember an Old Harrovian, who is more of a philosopher than a Radical, a clergyman, remarking that he hoped to live to see the IOT OLD HARROW DAYS day when an army chaplain would be thought a contradiction in terms. This is a train of argument I cannot follow here, except to say that it was not the view either of Dr Vaughan or of Dr Butler. Those two great head masters were far too practical to dream of what the world may be centuries hence. The words used by Dr Vaughan to Sir Richard Harrison, and repeated by him to the largest gathering of old Harrovians that has ever sat down together, are capable of the follow- ing explanation. If a father leaves his mark either at the Bar or in Parliament, or in the Indian Civil Service, he probably desires his son to follow in his footsteps, and is dis- appointed if he does not. If this be a weak- ness, it is a very human one. So with our head masters, one must never forget that they are essentially great scholars, and that they desire to keep the government of our two ancient Universities in the hands of their own pupils. The relations of a head master to a clever and promising pupil are almost those of father and son. Not unnaturally your scholastic father wishes to see you follow in 102 HARROW HEAD MASTERS his own footsteps and confer distinction on the School by winning University honours. In my time an exceptionally brilliant boy the late Major J. Jervois, R.E. who would cer- tainly have won a Balliol Scholarship, followed his distinguished father, the late Lt-Col. Sir Wm. Jervois, into the army. Dr Butler prob- ably felt this was a loss to the School, though not to the boy himself, as no one has a truer appreciation of the value to the nation of a soldier's career than the Master of Trinity. This explanation, which is probably the true one, naturally did not occur to Sir Richard Harrison. He is the last person to recognise the fact that he would have won a high position at the University, and that his not doing so may be regarded (without disrespect to the Service) as a loss to our School, though not to our Queen. Dr Vaughan loved the army, and it was he who, on the 28th June 1858, opened the new aisle of our chapel in memory of the Har- rovians who had fallen in the Crimean War. Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston were both present, but it was Lord Palmerston 103 OLD HARROW DAYS who, as one of us, spoke. John Addington Symonds was then in the School, and he wrote his sister at the time the following description of Lord Palmerston's speech : "His speaking disappointed me, since it consisted of a series of commonplaces, disposed of in short barks." l This was not always so, as Lord Palmerston spoke with humour and point, when in pour- ing rain he laid the foundation stone of the Vaughan Library. On that occasion our grand Old Harrovian rode down, and back to the House of Commons, without so much as changing his wet clothes or eating his lunch. Dr Vaughan was a favourite pupil of Dr Arnold's, and introduced into Harrow his system of trusting to the boys' honour; and long may it flourish there! If there was one trait in Dr Vaughan which more than another roused the enthusiasm of Old Harrovians for their beloved chief, it would be that of his never doubting a boy's word. A friend of mine only told me the other day this characteristic anecdote. "You 1 " J. A. Symond's Biography," p. 91. 104 HARROW HEAD MASTERS have been smoking," said Dr Vaughan. The distinguished cricketer thus accosted denied the accusation. "Well," replied the head master, " you have been reported to me as hav- ing been seen smoking." " Upon my honour I have not been smoking." "If you give me your word that you have not, , that is quite sufficient." Such a notion as dis- believing a boy's word never entered Dr Vaughan's mind. There is no sentence that can fall from a master's mouth which does more incalculable harm than that hopeless \ phrase, " I don't believe you." It was Dr Vaughan who placed the upper sixth in their position of power and influence, and it was he who made the monitors only "a little lower than the angels," I mean masters. But in his teaching of the upper sixth Dr Vaughan was perhaps less in sympathy with the modern spirit. It is beginning to dawn on our school- masters that, even in Greek and Latin, matter is even more important than form. Grammar is a means to enjoy Greek and Latin, but not the end of classical education. Dr Vaughan was a teacher of pure and un- OLD HARROW DAYS diluted grammar. Learned discussions on the M and av occupied the attention of the sixth form, and no purely literary digressions were encouraged. If you judge by results of scholar- ship you cannot be dissatisfied, as Harrow has never turned out a more brilliant scholar than the present Master of Trinity. Whether this teaching turned out men as fitted to grapple with this world's difficulties (and the majority of boys even at a public school have their own way to make) is too vexed a question to dis- cuss here. On one point we shall most of us agree that Latin prose composition is so diffi- cult, that a boy who has mastered that can master anything. Richard Cobden evidently leaned to that opinion, for being too old to learn Greek or Latin, he selected for himself the most difficult modern language (outside the Slav tongues), and with the most complicated grammar. Perhaps I can illustrate the differ- ence in the teaching of forty years ago, and that now given at Harrow, by the following incident: A master gave his form as a lesson to make a drawing (not a map) of Loch Katrine. This could not have happened 106 HARROW HEAD MASTERS under Dr Vaughan. Omniscience was not a foible with Harrow boys then. Dr Vaughan (like his brother-in-law, Dean Stanley) always preferred influence to position. He belonged to that rare class of men who, on principle, decline bishoprics. Dean Church, in many respects, resembled Dean Vaughan. Both men possessed, in rich measure, that spirit of quietism and self-relinquishment which a great teacher (Dr Martineau) has taught us, both by word and example, to be the true attitude of the devout mind. The "Nolo episcopari " of each was absolutely sincere. But Dr Vaughan came of so splendid a stock, that one would have been surprised had Harrow not flourished under him. His family had produced as rich a crop of dis- tinguished judges, diplomatists, and physicians as that of another head master, Bishop Cotton. Then, again, if you judge Dr Vaughan by the rough and ready standard of the success of the school, Dr Vaughan was a great head master. It must never be forgotten that Dr Butler and Mr Welldon came after Dr Vaughan, and reaped what he had sown. Dr Butler 107 OLD HARROW DAYS came in 1860 and left in 1885. He told me himself, in 1883, that since he had been head master, 5000 boys had passed through his hands. Dr Vaughan's reign began in January '45 and closed in December '59. In his fifteen years, Harrow could not boast of 5000 boys; but then it must never be forgotten that Dr Vaughan succeeded Dr Christopher Wordsworth, while Dr Butler succeeded Dr Vaughan. At the Harrow dinner of 1897 the Master of Trinity read us a pathetic letter from Dr Vaughan, in which but I will not mar the charm of the original by giving any resume of it here. The effect of our chairman reading this letter was curious, for without any warning we were summoned from our cigars and our wine into that sick room where Dean Vaughan has so long lain. We learnt from our Horace that we are dust here and shade hereafter, but Dr Vaughan taught a nobler philosophy than that ofpulvis et umbra. Since the publication of the first Edition our beloved Chief, " after he had served his own generation," has "fallen on sleep." The following letter contains therefore his last words to the 108 HARROW HEAD MASTERS English public. It appeared in the Western Mail of 23rd June 1897 : "LLANDAFF, iztA fune 1897. "My DEAR SIR, I am touched by your kind wish for a few words from me on the great occasion which we live to see. But my pen is now an idle and almost rusty weapon, and I am compelled to lay it almost aside. In other days how nimbly would the pen have run on the topic which, both as a citizen and as a clergyman, I should have felt to be my appro- priate answer to your question. The leading feature of the Queen's long reign has been the approximation of man to man, class to class, peer to peasant, Churchman to Nonconformist. "To this picture I see no dark side. If I spoke of freedom of thought (as I might do), I should have to throw in a grain of salt. For my 'leading feature' I might suggest many influences at work, from Lord Shaftesbury's life of Christian philanthropy to that of Jerusalem Chamber, in which Churchmen and Noncon- formists sat side by side for more than twelve years in the microscopic study of the Word of God. Sincerely yours, C. J. VAUGHAN." 109 OLD HARROW DAYS " I am going down the hill steadily, but with pauses." If this be "going down hill," it is the going down of the sun, which will rise again. The Master of Trinity is perhaps at his best when you get him on Old Harrovians, for he has a good word to say upon each. Harrow has her Smith O'Briens and her Cunninghame- Grahams, as well as her Hamiltons and her Stanhopes. Dr Butler told me an interesting story about poor Smith O'Brien, the head of the "Young Ireland" party. The Hon. Arthur Hill Trevor (afterwards the last Lord Dungannon) entered the school in 1811, and was, therefore, a contemporary of Smith O'Brien. Mr Trevor took a very active in- terest in politics, but not on the side of his brother Irishman, Smith O'Brien. The fol- lowing anecdote was told to Dr Butler by Lord Dungannon. Having crossed over from Holyhead in '48, he was asked by the waiter in Dublin to sign a petition praying for the remission of the death sentence that had been passed on Smith O'Brien for high treason. "It is against my principles," replied Lord Dungannon. "I am very sorry for him, but no HARROW HEAD MASTERS a misguided young man, who breaks the law, must bear the consequences," &c. &c. On reaching his home he found another petition, and this also he returned unsigned to the sender, with a covering letter full of platitudes and good advice. The next day a letter reached him from Smith O'Brien's brother, Sir Lucius. The letter was a very short one. "Mv DEAR DUNGANNON, You won't let your old schoolfellow, my poor brother, be hung like a dog. Yours, &c." "That was too much for me," Lord Dun- gannon used to say. "I signed the petition, though it was quite against my principles," &c. "Blood," they say, "is thicker than water," and so is the love of our brotherhood. Dr Butler told me another story about Lord Dungannon. His Lordship was an enthusiastic Old Harrovian. Coming down to Harrow, and finding the son of his old friend, Dr George Butler, head of the school, he tipped him. As a natural sequence to the tip, he suggested a visit to Mother Parsons. Now Parsons was the predecessor of Fuller's ; who was the pre- decessor of , ask a present Harrovian. in OLD HARROW DAYS They went, and Lord Dungannon whispered to Butler to ask Mother Parsons whether she re- membered him. Mother Parsons made no sign. " My name was Bob Trevor then ask her whether she remembers Bobby Trevor?" Butler did ask her. The effect of the words was instantaneous. The old woman started from her seat and called out, " Bobby Trevor owes me five shillings pay me back." Lord Dungannon was an Irishman and an orator, but for once he was speechless. He walked back deeply chagrined to the speech-room with the head of the school doing his best to stifle his merriment. Talking of Irishmen, Dr Butler told me of a delightful suggestion of an old Harrovian of the Emerald Isle. He remarked that what Mr Gladstone ought to do (1883) was to proclaim martial law in Ireland and to have it administered, not by generals and colonels, but by captains and lieutenants. A curious coin- cidence about Irish government is that Lord Crewe and the three preceding Viceroys were all Old Harrovians. In that, if in nothing else, there was a continuity of policy. One Sunday Dr Butler showed us Drury's book. He was 112 HARROW HEAD MASTERS head master when Byron entered the school, and kept a book in which he entered the name of every boy on his entering the school. Among other well-known names Lord Althorp's was there. What is surprising is the age at which boys entered the school ; eight was no uncom- mon age, and boys even entered at the age of seven and one at six and a half ! No wonder that in those days there were dames' houses. The very early age at which boys went to Har- row enabled them to serve His Majesty in the navy, and to this we owe the honour of counting Rodney and Hood among Old Harrovians. George Rodney happened to possess aristo- cratic connections without which it was well- nigh impossible in the halcyon days of Whiggery to rise, even in the navy; and well it was for the nation that he possessed them. Captain Mahan's enthusiasm for our Old Harrovian is second only to his enthusiasm for Nelson. Biblical history was perhaps rather a strong feature in Harrovian education. The know- ledge of many a Harrow boy, who never dreamt of competing for the Beaumont prize, was far from contemptible. For instance, any boy in H 113 OLD HARROW DAYS the fifth form would have known that Habak- kuk was a minor prophet. But a friend of mine, an orientalist, not a Harrovian, was once a guest in the house of the famous Strauss. Each guest gave in turn a recitation from some ancient author. When it came to my friend's turn he recited some verses from Habakkuk. He was warmly applauded, and was asked where the passage came from. He replied, " Habakkuk." Instantly he was greeted with cries of " Qui est ce Monsieur Habakkuk ? " English history in the sixties was limited to the holiday task, and as to our knowledge of ancient history what Disraeli said of his wife might have been applied to us " She does not know whether the Greeks or the Romans came first." A sixth form boy at Harrow was being shown the sights of Edinburgh. The window was pointed out to him from which John Knox preached. "Who was John Knox?" " He was a Reformer." " Which Reform Bill did he pass ? " asked the Harrovian. 114 HARROW HEAD MASTERS Dr Butler told me of a boy in the upper sixth as he expressed it " quite too much of a swell to laugh at " who stated that Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott were contemporaries in the time of Queen Anne ! But why should I pillory others ? Did I not share in the universal ignorance of modern history? I knew all about Heliogabalus, but nothing about Peel. I had certainly never heard that Peel repealed the Corn Laws until after I had left school, though I certainly did know that statesman's connection with " Peelers " and "Bobbies." Our knowledge of contemporary politics was scrappy in the extreme. A boy who read a daily newspaper was reported as a prodigy. Certainly we did not take after our chief, Dr Butler, in our ignorance of English history. With the Master of Trinity its study amounts to a passion. " How sweet an Ovid was in Murray lost ! " Murray became the Lord Chief- Justice of Eng- land instead of developing into the Ovid of England, while Dr Butler has become the Master of Trinity instead of a Parliamentary Front Bench man. "5 OLD HARROW DAYS No one who loves our old School can regret that Dr Butler preferred a scholastic to a pro- fessional career. Of one thing we may be cer- tain, whatever he decided on doing he did from the highest motives and not from motives of personal aggrandisement. No general rule can be laid down as to the kind of education most likely to produce the best schoolmaster. To take three successful headmasters Dr Joseph Drury was an under- master at Harrow for about sixteen years before his appointment, while Dr Vaughan was taken from his Leicester living, and Dr Butler from Cambridge, to preside over Harrow. Fortunately for some of us Dr Butler did not go to the Bar. He entered the church before he ever dreamt that he had any chance of filling his father's chair. Dr Butler has pre- ferred the equally responsible though less showy task of fitting others to govern our Empire to competing with them for place and power. At the Harrow dinner in 1881 the late Mr Edward Stanhope, M.P., was in the chair, but the speech of the evening came not from the 116 HARROW HEAD MASTERS late Secretary of War, eloquent though he was, but from our head master. "Soon," he said, " it would not be a question whether we would retain this or that Afghan village, or grant this or that demand of the Irish agitation, but whether we would retain India and keep Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom." The latter was put to the electors sooner than even Dr Butler expected, and has (thank God) been answered more than once in a very decisive fashion. The head master was followed by a governor : " oh what a falling off was there." Another instance besides that of poor X may be given of Dr Butler's wise abstention from punishment. One summer day in '64 or '65 three friends one a Harrisite, the second a Tomyite, and the third a home boarder were walking down Peterborough Road so called after Dr George Butler, Dean of Peterborough. They saw a "kite" perched up in an elm- tree. What did they do ? They did what any schoolboy would do, they threw stones at it. As ill luck would have it, who should heave in sight but that dour man, Mr Middlemist. 117 OLD HARROW DAYS Now stone-throwing was a birchable offence, as my friend the Harrisite knew full well. Addressing Mr Middlemist with imperturbable sang froid, he remarked : " We are trying, sir, to describe a parabola." " You can describe a parabola on paper without throwing stones," replied Mr Middlemist. "I shall report you to Dr Butler to-night, and describe your parabola to him." He was as good as his word. At the time appointed, my friend with his two companions met the head master in his study, which they regarded as the ante-chamber to the historic fourth form room. My friend at once opened the conversation by informing Dr Butler that he and he only was to blame. This was just the kind of appeal which never missed its mark with our chief ; he invited the small boy before him to tell his own story. It so happened that a few days before Dr Butler had opened a cricket field for the town near the old north-western station. That ceremony Dr Butler had performed first by a short prayer, and then by bowling the first ball at an open wicket. Dr Butler had bowled the middle stump clean out of the ground. My friend 118 HARROW HEAD MASTERS had been an eye-witness of this bowling achievement. Accordingly, when called upon by Dr Butler to state what had occurred, he told him the facts, and then added : " The worst part of the thing was, we could not hit it." This naive view so much amused Dr Butler that he dismissed les trots mousquetaires of our Hill with a friendly caution. The next morning there was a hole in that kite, attributed by legend to Dr Butler, who was a far better thrower than any one of our friends. The most impressive words I ever heard uttered by Dr Butler were the words he addressed to his son when he presented him with the Beaumont Prize at the Speech Day in 1883. "You must never forget that you are the servant of the School, not only in the minds of the few who remember your grand- father, but also of the many who cannot dissociate this scene from the charming presence and hallowed memory of your mother." When I think of all the excellent sermons I 119 OLD HARROW DAYS have heard from Dr Butler since I left Harrow, I feel terribly ashamed of myself for having slept through so many of his sermons as head master, when I was a boy there. Yet the fault is not wholly mine. Dr Butler belongs to that class of men (of whom Goethe is the noble and glorious example) who develop their brains up to the last hour of their lives. Some of us only develop our muscles we cease to grow intellectually when we once leave the university or public school behind us. Not so Dr Butler, who grew into a far finer preacher in the seventies than he was in the sixties. On the afternoon of Saturday, the 24th June 1871, my old schoolfellow, George Cottrell, while standing umpire was killed by a ball struck to square leg by X , who afterwards played four years for the Cambridge cricket eleven, but at first it did not seem that he would ever touch a bat again. Poor fellow ! what torture he suffered from that terrible mishap. He was rather a reserved boy, and this must have only increased his sufferings. The sermon on Cottrell was 120 HARROW HEAD MASTERS preached the next day by Dr Butler from the text " If we believe that Jesus died and rose again" "Our subject," he said, "is chosen for us." Twenty years passed by before another funeral sermon upon a boy who had died in the School was preached by another head master in Harrow Chapel. By a curious coincidence each of these funeral sermons was preached on the third Sunday after Trinity. My wife and I were present in 1891. The sermon of Mr Welldon was a perfect work of art. A boy had died in the school that week. Mr Welldon's text was : " Is it well with the child ? It is well." He told us this was the text graven on the tomb- stone set up by the great Lord Shaftesbury (himself an old Harrovian) to his second son, who died at Harrow. It is only giving Mr Welldon's sermons their due to say that they appear to be modelled on Bacon's Essays. No one that has heard him will call this exagger- ated praise. To preach good sermons before boys is not throwing pearls before swine. Far from it. Nothing impresses a promising boy, or a boy not hopelessly vicious, more than a 121 OLD HARROW DAYS bright and pithy discourse of not more than ten minutes' duration. Such sermons, in fact, as are preached by the present head master. The halcyon days which Harrow now enjoys, the improved moral tone, are due (so far as the mysterious rise and fall of the spiritual barometer can be traced to human causes) largely to the effect of Mr Welldon's preaching. But to return to Dr Butler he was essentially a scholar of the new school. Nothing good in literature was foreign to him. Like Mr Dart and a few of our great conveyancing lawyers, Dr Butler knew and loved his Dante and Shakespeare as well as his Homer and Virgil. He wished the boys to learn English as well as Latin poetry by heart. He preferred Coleridge to Dryden or Pope, whom he re- garded rather as writers of English than as poets. As our talk is of sermons, by a curious coincidence I heard a sermon on President Garfield's murder from Mr Moncure Conway and from Dr Butler on the same day (Sep- tember 1881). I was taken to South Place Chapel by an Old Harrovian, a dear friend who has the knack of finding good in every- 122 HARROW HEAD MASTERS thing. The American Deist asked the question, " Will the blood of Jesus be able to save Guiteau (Garfield's murderer), who comes with the blood of Garfield on his hands?" The immediate answer of any humane man would be that he would be sorry if even Guiteau were "past praying for" (that dreadful phrase which we sometimes thoughtlessly utter 1 ), and no one would have pleaded more warmly for his mur- derer than Garfield himself. In the evening I heard Dr Butler on the same subject. No contrast could have been more marked. Had Mr Moncure Conway remained a Methodist, as he began, he could not have preached a sermon more bristling with dogma. It is true that he only set up dogma in order to " heave a brick N at it," but sometimes the dogma was stronger than the brick. One of the glorious attributes of Harrow Chapel in the fifties and sixties, and long may it retain the attribute, was the absence of dogma from the pulpit. If I were asked to summarize the effect of Dr Butler's preaching, I should say he taught the boys to be natural 1 Singularly enough, Shakespeare, who coins the phrase, puts it into the mouth of Falstaff. 123 OLD HARROW DAYS in spiritual things, and spiritual in natural things. On that Sunday, in September 1881, he reminded us that we were approaching the centenary of the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis, and that a granddaughter of George III. was now mourning for the untimely death of a successor of George Washington. He closed his sermon in his usual manly way by exhorting the boys to be Christians, like Garfield, not merely for the saving of their own souls, but for the regeneration of their country. This reminds me of the grim advice it cannot be called a bon mot, " Always be selfish when you approach the Throne of Grace." The miserable desire to strike a bargain with one's Creator, the worm in the bud of Calvinistic theology, received short shrift at Dr Butler's hands. But to hear our headmaster discourse on the Georges one would imagine that he devoted his days and nights to Walpole and Wraxall's Memoirs. A great admirer of Dr Butler's admitted his pro- ficiency in English History since the landing of William III. at Torbay (and who could deny it), but he questioned his acquaintance with mediaeval history. " Try him on Hildebrand," 124 HARROW HEAD MASTERS he exhorted me, but not being a Civil Service Examiner I have refrained. Dean Merivale, the historian of the Roman Empire, is one of the old Harrovians we have reason to be proud of. He was as distinguished in the cricket fields below the Hill as he has since been in the fields of literature. In his presentation copy to the Vaughan Library of his History, he has written an inscription that he gave this work to his alma mater, where he had read through Gibbon and learnt Lucan by heart. This for a boy who also found time to play in the school cricket and football elevens was not so bad. Of course, none of the sixth form boys had any doubt about the matter they too (like any boy in the fourth) accepted without question the statement of one who had such an excellent athletic record : not so our chief. The Dean of Ely was breakfasting with Dr Butler, and so were several sixth form boys. " Have you really learnt the whole of Lucan by heart?" asked our host. The historian replied with a "Deanlike" blush that perhaps he had not learnt the last fifty lines oiPharsalia. The conversation then turned on memory, and '25 OLD HARROW DAYS the question was asked whether, if all the Miltons in the world were lost, Macaulay could from memory have given the world a complete edition? Dr Butler said he had been break- fasting with Macaulay (a great historian whom no public school can claim), when a lady pre- sent asked him that very question. Macaulay replied that it was not true, but that when he was canvassing Leeds, to rest his mind at the close of the day he had read the Paradise Lost, and in this way had learnt the first five books. He then went on to quote from Paradise Re- gained, so that he could (as he expressed it) have produced an edition of " very considerable fragments." Now as the Pharsalia runs to six books, our Harrovian historian had really rivalled if not beaten Macaulay on his own field of memory. But then Macaulay had the knack of learning Greek verse. Did he not repeat a great part of the Iliad between Holyhead and Kingstown, when he was paying his first visit to that "distressful country?" Breakfast is the meal for a literary man : no one need be in a hurry, not even a mere schoolboy at his headmaster's table. A dinner may be pre- 126 HARROW HEAD MASTERS ferable from a knife and fork point of view, but from the Boswellian view one breakfast is worth a dozen dinners, for is not every one who has a best, at his best "when morning gilds the sky." Boswell had (as he informs us in a foot- note) a good opinion of our public schools, and sent his two sons one to Eton and the other to Westminster. We may take this as a broad hint that the mighty lexicographer (with his unfailing common sense) approved of our public schools. If he did, and he had been himself a school- master, he only shared the opinion held both by Tyndall and by Huxley. The new learning is with us as well as the old. An eminent physician consulted Mr Huxley (who was then President of the Royal Society) as to what school to send his only son. "By all means," said the great scientist, " send him to a public school. That is the best course of education for the average English boy." Mr Huxley then either suggested or warmly ap- proved of Harrow. The boy went to Harrow, and will be a credit to us. But to return to Dr Butler's breakfast table of twenty years ago, and to the young Roman aristocrat who wrote the 127 OLD HARROW DAYS Pharsalia, when he was only twenty-five years of age, our host agreed with the Dean in thinking the poem a great work, but that it might have been much improved, had Lucan only had a tutor at his elbow to strike out his fine lines. Curiously enough another Dean Dean Stanley finished a public^speech, which he had just then made at Aberdeen, with a quotation from the very poet we were discussing. Dr Butler had written to Dean Stanley upon this speech, and the Dean of Westminster had replied that he thought Lucan was quite as full of quotable lines as " Maro " (Virgil). Oh those delightful breakfasts long ago ! Life brings us many good things, but never any social pleasure quite equal to those quiet talks on a cool summer morning with some old Harrovian. Never shall we forget the hostess who presided at her husband's table, and whose memory is hallowed to us all. I once had the temerity to speak to Dr Butler about what I was pleased to call "the vagueness " of Harrow teaching that you learnt nothing which you could pursue in after life. Dr Butler (and any obiter dictum of his on 128 HARROW HEAD MASTERS education is valuable) replied that education without Greek would be best for the majority. To learn, he said, two such difficult languages as Greek and Latin was too difficult for most of us, but if Greek were to be totally discon- tinued in the school, the affect of it would be that all the most brilliant boys would be sent to other public schools. Never was a man less of a dogmatist in Education than Dr Butler. On one occasion, in 1878, he talked of the problem of education as still unsettled, and showed anything but a blind preference for the system in force in our public schools. It is also a question whether one master can properly teach a form of thirty boys, but this (if it be a drawback) is a drawback to all public schools alike. There are plenty of Board Schools in which there are as many as a hundred boys in one class, and much honest work is done in them. The perfection of education seems to be that which some fortunate nephews of mine (when a boy I should have given them a different epithet) are receiving Harrow plus a holiday tutor. 129 CHAPTER III HARROW INSTITUTIONS 1VTO picture of Harrow in the sixties would be complete which did not contain some reference, however slight, to Matthew Arnold. We cannot claim him as a Harrow master, but we can claim him as a Harrow Institution. He was a regular attendant at the school chapel, and three of his sons were in the school, one dying there. Mr Matthew Arnold was well known to us boys as a writer of charming verse. I believe that the presence of Matthew Arnold at Harrow did distinct good, and acted as a sort of modern side which did not then exist. His presence reminded some of us visibly that there was such a thing as English poetry, as distinct from Greek and Latin poetry. I can well remember the aston- ishment of Mr Holmes, when he discovered that a boy might be a poor hand at Latin verse, 130 HARROW INSTITUTIONS and yet have a discriminating enthusiasm for Shakespeare and Milton. If we wretched boys were so severe on Mr Arthur Watson, I do not know what nickname would have been strong enough for Matthew Arnold had he been a Harrow master. Constituted as he was, the fact that he was not a public schoolmaster (like his illustrious father) was, both for the boys and for him, a fortunate escape. Yet what was more harmless than his vanity ! He met a friend of mine in Pall Mall, and, laying his hand affectionately on his shoulder, said : " I have just sent you a little book of mine. You will be charmed with it." Lord Lytton is perhaps the most distinguished public man Harrow has produced since the days of Palmerston and Peel, and the best known poet she has produced since the days of Byron. Government House at Calcutta was built by an old Etonian, and four times has it been tenanted by old Harrovians. Lord Lytton was the fourth of that honour- able class, 1 but he stands alone as an old Lord Teignmouth, Lord Hastings, Lord Dalhousie, and Lord Lytton. OLD HARROW DAYS Harrovian in the still more select class of statesmen who have filled both the offices of Viceroy of India and Ambassador at Paris. His colleague in that class is an old Etonian, Lord Dufferm. Lord Lytton, or " Owen Mere- dith," as he dubbed himself, is the most remarkable instance of hereditary literary gifts in this century. And it was "beneath the elms where Byron dreamed of love and Dalhousie of Empire" 1 that he nursed his boyish muse. In the world of books he was overshadowed by his father, whose name is a synonym for pre-eminence in every depart- ment of literature, but in the world of action he as much surpassed his father, as Lord Beacons- field (another instance of inherited literary gifts) excelled his. In private life no one was more charming than he, and no man more beloved or trusted by his own family. But it cannot be said that he enjoyed the curse of the Gospels popularity, at least not with his own countrymen. He was more 1 I have pleasure in quoting this epigram of Sir Henry Cunningham, K.C.I.E., an old Harrovian, and the son of Harrow's best known Vicar. 13* HARROW INSTITUTIONS popular in Paris than at Calcutta. Why was this? In the first place his was "a peculiar organisation." He enjoyed all Disraeli's wit and imagination without Disraeli's extraordinary self-control. He could not conceal his liking or dislike of you. The consequence was that he was but a poor diplomatist. The defini- tion of a diplomatist "an honest man sent to lie abroad for his country" did not apply to him. He did, indeed, render the Queen most signal services as her Ambassador at Paris, but that was because there was no occasion for him to conceal his partiality for the French, to whom he was attracted both by his wit and his sincerity. I do not say that the French are more honest than we are, but I do say they are less able to conceal their feelings, and in that sense more sincere. Then, too, Lord Lytton detested bores a positive fault in a man high up in the public service. He also used to indulge in the old-fashioned courtesy of kissing a lady's hand, a custom more in vogue at the Court of Louis XIV. than at that of Queen Victoria. Heavens, what an outcry this most innocent act called 133 OLD HARROW DAYS forth in Calcutta society ! Few who know Calcutta will deny that it has the most John Bull society of any city of our Empire, and all who knew Lord Lytton will admit that of all our public men he was the least of a John Bull. Even his wit was a rock of offence to the multitude who look with suspicion on what they themselves lack. There was a beautiful lady, an ornament of Calcutta society, in the days of the Lytton Viceroyalty. When this lady first entered Lord Lytton's reception room, the gallant Viceroy thus greeted her, while more suo he kissed her hand : "I now, for the first time, experience the pleasure of kissing the rod." The lady's name was Mrs Birch. Those two famous old Harrovians, Pal- merston and Lytton, vied with each other in their love of the Hill, and never was the wit of either more happy than when their topic was the old school. On the 26th January 1878 thirty old Harrovians sat down as the guests of the Viceroy in the Marble Hall at Government House. In deference to a wish expressed by his guests, his Excellency took the chair, and '34 HARROW INSTITUTIONS proposed the toast of the evening " Prosperity to Harrow." It was a delightful speech, re- dolent with humour and the love of the brotherhood, but we must content ourselves with one short extract : "It is a curious coincidence that Harrow School, like the British Power in India, was born during the reign of Queen Bess. Harrow School, like the British Power in India, has attained its highest development during the reign of Queen Victoria; and, as a Harrow schoolboy, I am glad to think that this coin- cidence of dates is not the only connection between them." I shall never forget the two days this delight- ful old Harrovian spent with me. Nothing could exceed the variety and brilliancy of his conversation, and how transparent was his sincerity ! He might take your two hands in saying goodbye, when an Englishman would give you a nod, but he never simulated a friendship which he did not feel. Happily the Prime Minister of that day was also not quite English, and he selected the son of his old friend as the best man to represent our Queen among the OLD HARROW DAYS millions of alien creeds and races in India. An orientalist (who was as far removed from English party politics as he was from Mother Grundy) was enthusiastic in his praise of Disraeli for making this appointment. "After so many respectable mediocrities, you have at last," he said, "sent out to India a man who will appreciate the genius of the Hindoo. What would you think," he asked, " if America were to send you a ruler who had never heard of Shakespeare, or we were to send to Germany a man who had never heard of Goethe, and yet that was what you have done hitherto in India." It is only fair to quote this, as Lord Lytton, as Viceroy of India, has been so unfairly and bitterly attacked. The second Lord Lytton had something else in common with Matthew Arnold besides his literary tastes; they were both liberal, though reverent, thinkers on religion. I did not need to be told that my guest had been a favourite pupil of Dr Farrar's, or that he had been the child of an unhappy marriage. What has struck me since was the substantial agreement between the views of Lord Lytton 136 HARROW INSTITUTIONS and Matthew Arnold. Mrs Matthew Arnold, who never read her husband's religious books, used to say of him " Matt is a good Christian at bottom." No wonder Matthew Arnold said of his wife that she had all his graces without his airs. There was another Harrow Institution of which we boys had a very shadowy knowledge, but a very real respect. "Let us receive the Governors standing" was Dr Butler's formula. The full title of these august personages was "keepers and gover- nors of the Possessions, Revenues, and Goods of the Free Grammar School of John Lyon." The Governors' speech day took place a week before the public speech day. The more cynical of us had our doubts whether the Governors ever did anything, but the long procession of ducks and green peas from the King's Head to the Speech Room did convince us that on that day at least the Governors were transacting business of a sort. Not many years ago Sir Archibald Geikie, F.R.S., one of our Governors, when called on for a speech, addressed us some- what as follows : 137 OLD HARROW DAYS " I have got a boy in the school. 1 He re- ported to me a conversation he heard between two small boys. Says the smallest : " ' What are these Governors, anyhow ? ' " ' Oh, they are an awful lot. They are so old that they don't understand English ; they have got to be talked to in Latin. They under- stand nothing that is going on, and all they ever do is to open a big black box, which Mr Well- don keeps in his cellar. Then they roll all the sovereigns about, lock up the box, and are taken off to eat ducks and green peas ! ' " The ducks and green peas typify the Gover- nors to a Harrow boy just as turtle soup typifies the London Alderman to a reader of Punch. The best known of the Governors in my time was Professor Tyndall ; he, like that other Pro- fessor, Matthew Arnold (who, by the by, detested being referred to as a " Professor ") was a great Harrow Institution. No man ever felt more keenly than Tyndall the mystery and beauty of the unknown in Nature, while he was for ever labouring to increase the sum of our know- ledge. The following story of an old Harrovian 1 R. Geikie, Head of the School in 1893. 138 HARROW INSTITUTIONS illustrates both his great reverence and his great shrewdness. One does not go for geography and accuracy to a great poet, and therefore even a Dorsetshire man must not complain that Tennyson has laid the scenes of his Arthurian legends, not in Dorsetshire, as he should have done, but in Cornwall. An old schoolfellow, a highly imaginative and poetical Harrow boy, devoted a holiday to working out on the spot, by the aid of " Morte d'Arthur " and other ancient volumes, the life and death of our famous sovereign. He trod every foot of ground be- tween St Adhelm's Head and Studland Bay. To enable him to carry out his poetical and archaeological investigations the better, a re- lation of his took the shooting round Corfe Castle. He was accompanied by two younger boys from another public school. One after- noon my friend, lulled by sound of "bees' in- dustrious murmur," fell asleep on Barrow Down. He was awakened by an odd sound. It was the charge of cavalry. On such a spot, looking over King's Mere and the King's Stables, and with the graves of Arthur's knights all around him, what cavalry could this be but the ghostly I 39 OLD HARROW DAYS chivalry of Britain's warrior king? My old schoolfellow said nothing about his discovery to his younger friends. One day, however, they came and told him that sleeping out on the same famous burial ground the Barrow Down they too had been wakened by the charge of cavalry through the glades of the forest. But these young boys had been more favoured than my friend, for the charge had been followed by the grandest burst of music they had ever heard in their lives. They de- scribed the music as like nothing earthly, unless it was the massed bands of all the Guard regi- ments playing together. My friend, being a Highlander, listened to their narrative with reverence and awe. It was clear to him that he was unworthy to hear this heavenly music. The charge of the king's cavalry alone reached his grosser ears. His friends were, by their more perfect innocence, kept " in tune with Heaven," and heard that music of which Shake- speare tells us that : " Such harmony is in immortal souls ; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 140 HARROW INSTITUTIONS That there was any physical cause for these beautiful sounds no more entered my friend's mind than it occurred to any Dorsetshire bump- kin, who avoided the glades of Barrowdown Forest as manifestly haunted. It so happened that my friend was related to Professor Tyndall. It is not often that a Harrovian, past or present, can put his mental troubles before a Governor and ask him to solve them. My friend enquired of the F.R.S. what pos- sible explanation he could give for these weird and beautiful sounds ? The Professor was immensely struck with the poetry of the tale, but while entering into the spirit of the boy's enthusiasm, explained to him the cause of v the apparent mystery. To divest the world of its mystery is to divest it of all its poetry : unless reverently done it is a work of sacrilege. May the unveiling of Nature's secrets be done in the scientific spirit of a Tyndall and not in the jeering vein of a Voltaire. The Professor explained how under the waters of the Bay of Biscay there was a stratum of limestone, and that this limestone was imme- diately connected with a " fault " in the cliffs of 141 OLD HARROW DAYS limestone on which Barrowdown was perched. He explained that the sounds which were known to the neighbourhood as "the King's Cavalry " and " the King's Music " were simply the result of the waves of the Bay of Biscay beating on the limestone basin with which the cliffs of Dorset were in direct telephonic com munication. It was for this reason that the " King's Cavalry " would charge and the "King's Music" would play always before a storm in the Bay of Biscay. Harrow was a fine, manly place. Non- Harrovians may good-humouredly smile at this, but none the less it is a just verdict, and in accordance with the evidence. There was no- thing namby-pamby about Harrow boys. The Debating Society of Harrow did not, I think, play so important a part in our school life as the "Pop" did at Eton, but the tone there, as else- where on the Hill, was healthy and anti-priggish. On one occasion, John Addington Symonds supported " the reality of ghosts." The debate must have been an amusing one. The ghost- champion thus described it in a letter to his sister : 142 HARROW INSTITUTIONS "I defended them (i.e., the spooks), and made my speech a definition of their (to me) real character, etc. Although I worked up the subject, etc., I am sorry to say that my audience was too sceptical. They derided me for un- founded assertions about females, and their influence on the fate of mighty nations." After my time, my old house-fellow, Dunbar P. Barton (now Solicitor-General for Ireland, and " the rising hope of the unbending Tories,") used to thunder in the Vaughan Library. He is half a Plunkett, and we all hope that he will rise even higher. Another Old Harrovian, who is also a member of Lord Salisbury's Govern- ment, is A. G. Murray, the Lord Advocate for Scotland. He won the Champion Racquet '68, and (I believe) succeeded H. N. Abbott as Head of Dr Westcott's House. '43 CHAPTER IV HARROW CRICKET T N the opinion of some cynics the real work of Harrow is carried on in the cricket and football fields, while the fine buildings on the top of the Hill are a mere screen, behind which the boys can continue their play. Now it must be admitted that there is some soup f on of truth in this. Not only the boys, but the masters, regard cricket and football in a serious light. All skill is admirable the skill shown in the running up of a bridge or of a good score at cricket, but the majority of boys only ad- mire skill at athletics. Even in athletics, their admiration is restricted to success in a few old favourites such as cricket, "footer," and racquets. A gymnasium has been built since my time, but even now it is doubtful whether skill in fencing which the entire Continent regard as the most manly of all sports is of much 144 HARROW CRICKET account with the boys. They are staunch Conservatives in their play as in their work. Another trait in public schoolboy opinion is the worship of all the members of the school cricket eleven. Now an eleven (as the anti- athletic fanatic must admit) is composed of eleven boys of exceptional physical energy. The consequence is, that within this small compass you find great variety. In one and the same eleven you will probably find some brilliant scholar like Merivale or H. M. Butler, and some irreclaimable dunce who never wore a tail coat except as a " charity," * some monitor like R. D. Walker or I. D. Walker, immensely respected from boyhood to old age, and some wretched blackguard who, in after life, sinks to be a billiard marker or (worse still) a billiard sharper. Even as early as at school, a boy, and he perhaps a handsome boy, has, in Thackeray's pregnant phrase, billiards and billiards only written across his face. There 1 Non-Harrovian readers should be informed that boys in the Sixth and Fifth Forms wear swallow-tail coats; boys in the lower Forms wear Eton jackets, but if very tall, they are permitted to wear tail coats, which in their case are called " charities." K 145 OLD HARROW DAYS are cases (let us hope rare ones) when the lessons of a dissolute home make all the efforts of schoolmasters hopeless. Even with a John Smith, such a lad is " aboon his might." The most important education, and that which is the most lasting in its effects, is that which is given in the main unconsciously at home, and yet we forget this when we condemn the poor vicious lad, who, reared in an unhappy home, brings discredit on his old school. But it is not only the boys who regard with feelings amounting to veneration ALL the members of the cricket eleven. The masters also worship at this shrine. One summer term, not fifty years ago, the Captain of the School Cricket Eleven, in a fit of the sulks, announced his intention of not playing at Lord's. The proper treatment of such a threat was contempt. Achilles would not have sulked in his tent when the teams met in the sight of all London. Would it be believed that a great head master, such as Dr Butler, should have entreated his pupil to play at Lord's. The head master's prayer was granted, the sulky boy condescended to play, and the reputation of the school was saved ! 146 HARROW CRICKET The prejudice against athletics is not only shared by prigs and donnish persons ; it is some- times expressed by men distinguished above their fellows by their energy and decision of character. The following is a good instance of the irra- tional dislike of sports which even a born leader of men, a typical Englishman in all but this, may indulge in. He may be unable to give reasons for his lack of faith in cricket, but no argument will move him. An Old Harrovian, who is quite one of the cleverest men I know, and who was in our cricket and "footer " elevens, was staying in a country house with Mr Cecil Rhodes. Late at night the founder of Rhodesia and he had a short conversation in the billiard- room. Mr Rhodes did not know who my friend was, but finding out that he was (like himself) an Oxford man, he began to speak of University cricket. "Games," said the statesman, "are a very fine thing, but men who are good at games are no good here," and with that he expressively touched his forehead. " Do you think so," replied my friend ; " well, OLD HARROW DAYS I am a barrister, and the names that occur to me ofthand of distinguished athletes, also dis- tinguished at the bar, are Lord Esher, Chitty, A. L. Smith, and Sir Robert Reid, the late Attorney-General. " Mr Rhodes only shook his head. " Well, then," continued my friend, " look to India look at the men governing there. Where would you find two better athletes than Lord Harris and Lord Wenlock?" Still no other answer than the shake of the Rhodian head. There was another guest staying in that country house whose opinion on athletic sports differs from Mr Rhodes'. The next day our old Harrovian went on to the links, where Mr Arthur Balfour was golfing with might and main, and promised him he would tell him a good story that night at dinner. When the dinner hour arrived the story was told, and my friend pointed it with a moral. "Take care, Arthur, what you are about, or Rhodes will refer to you as a golfer and find you wanting here," touching his head in the Rhodian fashion. 148 HARROW CRICKET A great school is only a microcosm of the greater world. The question will be asked " Did birth or wealth count in the estimation of the boys ? " Very little, if at all. A true anecdote occurs to me which illustrates this. A boy in our house was the son of a very wealthy and much- respected M.P. This boy took home on his exeat a friend whom we will call X, and who was not in the same room with him. A few days after the exeat was over Dr Butler received a letter from the M.P. asking him to put X in the same room with his son, "because," con- tinued the father, " when X was here he threat- ened to thrash him. As I desire to keep my son free from sycophants, X is the kind of boy I wish him to be with." The M.P., as a wise man, regarded tuft-hunting as far more harmful than bullying. It is my own belief that London society does more in one season to develop tuft-hunting than Harrow does in a decade. Nature detests a vacuum ; human nature de- tests equality. Go where you will over the face of the globe, you will find the inequalities of race, colour, and even religion. Whether it be an ancient city of Hindoostan or a mushroom 149 OLD HARROW DAYS town in the Far West, you are certain to find a body of men who regard themselves, and prob- ably are regarded by those around them, as the aristocracy of the place. Who then were the aristocrats of Harrow, for our Hill was not likely to be the only spot on the world's surface with- out an aristocracy. Ours was an aristocracy of the finest cricketers and " footer " players that the School could for the time being produce. No thinking man will blame us for idolising the athlete. The cricketer in his flannels was our hero, not the student immersed in his books. Can there be any question as to which is the more picturesque figure ? Was there ever a race more intellectual than the ancient Greeks, and did they not worship the human form divine ? Are we to be censured because we too have our Olympian games? Most assuredly not. It is no exaggeration to say that cricket and football have " grown with our growth and strengthened with our strength." The fortune of our ancient school will stand so long as we can produce, not only scholars like Vaughan Hawkins, and Walter Leaf, but cricketers such as V. E. Walker, R. D. Walker, and I. D. Walker. HARROW CRICKET It is difficult to speak the truth about the Walkers without appearing to exaggerate. Every year the Hill turns out some famous bat or bowler. But without any disparagement to our fine cricketers of the past thirty years, our school will never produce three brothers who will beat the three Walkers. Never is a dangerous word, but in this connection it may be safely used. In the first place, all three play with their heads as well as their hands. R. D. Walker and I. D. Walker were both monitors. V. E. Walker would have been a monitor had he stayed. They were all equally good at cricket, "footer, "and racquets. R. D. Walker is one of the four Oxford cricketers who played for his University five years ! At the same time he was already playing for the Gentlemen against the Players. V. E. Walker has been President of the Marylebone Cricket Club. Dr W. G. Grace, in his appreciative notice of R. D. Walker in his book on Cricket (p. 398), and referring to his marvellous leg hit, says : " Where he got the quickness to do it I do not know ; possibly his racquet training at Oxford may account for it." With deference '5* OLD HARROW DAYS to the great doctor, it was possibly his racquet training at Harrow that gave our R. D. Walker his "indescribable quickness." What the English champion, W. G. Grace, thinks of the Walkers, and of that other famous Harrovian, A. J. Webbe, can be seen in his book, and need not be repeated here. What I would lay stress upon is the originality which R. D. Walker has imported, not only into cricket, but into every other game he plays. He is not content with doing a thing well ; he does it differently from anyone else. Cricket, football, racquets, billiards, whist, lawn tennis, even croquet in all he excels. Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. I. D. Walker still captains the Harrow Wan- derers, and long may he continue to do so! The only man to approach him in his staying powers is A. N. Hornby, who, at the age of fifty, captained Lancashire at cricket. If I have overstated or understated his age by one year, my old schoolfellow must forgive me. I fancy he is one year younger than Dr. W. G. Grace. Two old Butlerites were the guests of the head master on the Saturday of our famous victory at Lord's in 1 878. We won by seventeen HARROW CRICKET runs the most exciting match that had been played for a long time. We Old Harrovians were much delighted, and none more so than the old blue of 1851. Dr Butler touched on the respect which Harrow boys have for a member of the cricket eleven as a thing by itself. There was nothing like it, he said, in after life, except the respect paid by society to a brave officer. His friends asked Dr Butler about his part in the Eton and Harrow match of 1851, but upon the part he had played our head master was (as ever) obstinately silent. He talked of the winning hit being made by George Crawley, and of his captain, whom he described as a fine cricketer, indifferent to cricket, or at least to cricket fame : " The Hartington of the cricket field, a leader in spite of himself." The mention of the name of Crawley reminds me of an instance of heredity at cricket In 1851, George Baden Crawley (of Dr Butler's year) played for the school against the town, and made his century. A century was not again made for the school against the town till 1883, an d tne batsman was again a Crawley. 153 OLD HARROW DAYS This was H. Ernest Crawley, the son of George Crawley. The fact that father and son should thus distinguish themselves against the town so impressed Dr Butler that he "dropt into poetry " : " In '51 the Town we played George Crawley made a hundred, The score went up, the sun went down, We watch'd and cheer'd and wonder'd. ' In '83 the Town again, Oh ! shades of Drake and Raleigh ! He made a hundred all his ain, And still your heir's a Crawley." I believe the Crawley family may lay claim to having furnished Harrow with more fine cricketers than any other. It is a curious fact that the three younger Crawleys are friends of the three famous Walkers. There were the two brothers George and David Crawley who got their flannels in the fifties, and the three sons of George Crawley who got their flannels, two (Ernest and Eustace) in the eighties, and a third (Stafford) in the nineties. Eustace Crawley (now in the i2th Lancers) was in the Cambridge Eleven ('87-'89), HARROW CRICKET and the first year he played he made 103 not out. He is the winner, with Captain East- wood (an old Etonian), of the Inter-Regi- mental Racquet Cup for five years ('92 to '94, '96 to '97). He is a very fine horseman, as is shown by the following incident : He was riding in a military steeplechase, and his horse fell at the third fence. Instead of giving up, he pluckily remounted, and although the reins were broken by his horse, he cleared the last two fences, and won the race without reins or stirrups. Ernest Crawley was our captain in '83 and '84, and was afterwards the racket and tennis player for Cam- bridge. To return to Lord's, and our matches against Winchester and Eton, which up to 1855 were always played in the holidays, V. E. Walker played in our last match against Winchester (1854). The match lasted over four days, and resulted in a victory for our side ; then we played Eton (a three days' match), and won. In '55 we played and beat Eton. In '56 there was no match between the two schools. I believe the reason for 155 OLD HARROW DAYS this was that the head master of Eton said he would not take any boy back in the School who played at Lord's. In '57 H. J. Mon- creiff, who now sits on the Scotch Bench, was twelfth man, but there was no Lord's match. In '58 the present system of two days' match in term time, instead of three days in the holidays, was started. In '59 R. D. Walker played for us, and we won in one innings. In '60 the first drawn match between Harrow and Eton was played. This again occurred in '61 and '63, and how often since is only too well known to all of us. In '64 C. F. Buller, who came to Harrow as a finished cricketer, was our captain. We won in '64, '65 and '66. In '66 ten of our eleven got into double figures. Those were the happy days when sheep used to browse at Lord's, and grass grew green between the wickets. Then bowlers had a fair chance. In '67 there was a draw. In '68 we won, and in '69 we were beaten. In '70 the match was one of the closest matches that had been played for many a year. Eton was got out for 189, and, HARROW CRICKET thanks to E. P. Baily's fine innings of 76, our side made 205. Eton made 151 for its second innings, and Harrow 114, which meant a victory for Eton. E. P. Baily kept up the traditions of Home Boarder cricket In '73 Harrow, and in '74 Eton won. This '74 victory was won in spite of A. J. Webbe's total in two innings of 157. As time went on it seems to have been thought fair and sportsmanlike to play for a draw. Then timid prudence infected both sides, and our far stronger eleven of this year put off de- claring their innings closed until too late, forgetting (as R. D. Walker most astutely observed to me) that if the Etonians had had fewer runs to make, they would probably have tried to make them, and failed. It was the very hopelessness of their task that tempted our opponents this year to make a draw of it. Columns of excellent sense have appeared in the Times. It would be presumptuous in me to increase the growing volume of litera- ture on the great Eton and Harrow match, but to me the outcry against the boys being in London in their holidays seems to be OLD HARROW DAYS ridiculous. Rugby was playing Marlborough at Lord's last week ; then why should there be any nervousness about our boys? What is sauce for the Rugbeian goose is sauce for the Harrovian gander. Mr R. D. Walker's house is mighty convenient to Lord's, and his gener- ous hospitality is proverbial. We may be sure that he would kindly entertain the Harrow eleven, and some distinguished Etonian might render the same service to his own School. As for the rank and file, well only those who or whose parents love the game would remain in town in August, and a boy who is not able to " get his flannels " is not necessarily a frequenter of music halls. The question is beset with practical diffi- culties, and one would be curious to know what is the view of the Master of Trinity. He possesses peculiar qualifications for judg- ment He is not only one of our two sur- viving ex-head masters, but he played for Harrow in the old days when the match was a three days' match, and used to be played in the holidays. Does he think a restoration desirable ? The most conservative of us feel 158 MARROW CRICKET that the present two days' match is not worth conserving, and that some change is abso- lutely necessary if we are to save our fine old match. Whether the match is to be played in term time or the holidays must be left to the two head masters to decide. No one who has played in a " Cock-house " match, whether at cricket or " footer," is likely to forget it. That is the genuine article the game and nothing but the game. On those occasions the best side always won. The writer once played in a "cock-house" match at "footer" (1868) between Butlerites and Tommyites, the first day of which resulted in a draw, each side winning a goal, but that was a kind of draw which reflected no discredit on either side. One of the most exciting "cock- house matches " at cricket that ever took place was that between the " Billyites," as we used to call the boys in the Rev. William Oxen- ham's house, and the Tommyites (i.e. the house of the Rev. Thomas Steel). It was the last cricket match ('60) that R. D. Walker played in as a Harrow boy. It was the finish of the match when the Billyites had one wicket to go 159 OLD HARROW DAYS down and very few runs to make. "Robert Elphinstone (afterwards Sir Robert Elphinstone) was bowling, and he bowled a ball which went to longstop, and he returned it to the wicket- keeper, who, however, failed to stop it and it was picked up by the bowler, half way between the wickets. Elphinstone then perceived that the boy who was in at his end had left his ground to pick up his hat which had been blown off by the wind, he threw the ball at the wicket and hitting it asked the umpire Charles Barclay, ' How's that ? ' The decision was 'Not out,' but in the same breath it was corrected to 'Out.'" Then ensued a lively scene and altercation as to the power of an umpire to reverse his decision, and this knotty point was referred to Fred Ponsonby, who decided that Barclay was to give his decision again. Barclay gave it " Out " and the Tommy- ites won the match. Need I add that his decision was accepted by the Billyites without a murmur. They felt a little sore about it that day, which was the last Saturday in term, but on the following Monday the two elevens the "cock-house" and 1 60 HARROW CRICKET the honourably vanquished sat down to dinner together and parted the best of friends. Oh those happy days, when we " Loved the ally with the heart of a brother, Hated the foe with a playing at hate ! " In his capital speech at the Harrow dinner of 1897 Lord George Hamilton gave us an incident illustrating what is best in athletics. After one of his political meetings near Eton, held a few days before our Lord's match, some Eton masters and boys entered into conversa- tion with him. "We ought to win next Friday," said an Etonian, "if " and the boy stopped. " If what ? " asked Lord George. The boy was reluctant to finish his sentence, but being pressed to do so, added: "If Harrow does not play their fine uphill game." It is impossible to conceive a more splendid eulogy than this passed on any body of men. If our Harrow eleven (as I contend they do) deserve the compliment, then in them is found the grit which has built up for Great Britain her united Empire. It is the Wellington mot over again. It is to the energy of men, mainly L 161 OLD HARROW DAYS unknown to fame, that Britannia owes her supremacy by sea and land. Such boys leave our famous Hill every year. Certainly no school not even our rival, Eton can boast of more advantages than Harrow possesses for excelling in athletic sports. On such a subject I would rather quote the opinion of an expert. I asked Mr R. D. Walker what he thought were the special athletic advantages that our school possesses in the matter of athletic games. He laid special stress on our "footer" fields, on our open racquet courts and on our "ducker." He pointed out that in the large open racquet court it was considered bad form to hit the side wall, and consequently you learnt to hit straight. The result of this has been the ac- knowledged supremacy of Harrow at racquets. He considered Sir William Hart Dyke to be the finest racquet player we have ever turned out. He based this opinion on the fact that the former vice-president of the Committee of Council was the only amateur who had ever beaten the champion professional. When our covered courts were first opened, in '64, they were opened 162 HARROW CRICKET by Sir William Hart Dyke and Mr R. D. Walker, who played against two professionals. We are so proud, and rightly proud, of Harrow's record at cricket, that we even forget how many claims on our gratitude our "footer" has. Mr R. D. Walker also pointed out to me that our " footer " was the mother of Asso- ciation football, and that Association football was Harrow "footer" minus the catch. Our great athlete was captain of our " footer " eleven in 1860, and both V. E. Walker and I. D. Walker were as good at "footer" as they are at cricket. R. D. Walker thought that few who knew our " footer " would deny that it was quite as original and perfect a game as Rugby football (" rugger "). Professionalism, which is making such havoc of adult football, cannot injure our School " footer." When speaking of Associa- tion football it is only natural to remember C. W. Alcock, its Founder, and the Secretary of the Association since its foundation. C. W. Alcock is an instance of an Old Harrovian, who was neither in our football nor our cricket eleven, passing into the front rank of athleticism after OLD HARROW DAYS leaving the school. He played for England against Scotland at football (1875). R. D. Walker's enthusiasm over "Ducker" almost surprised me, as the cricketers of my time could barely find time for it. We were the first, he said, to have an artificial bathing- place, and no school has anything equal to it. It was strange to hear this praise of our " ducker," when one remembers how Lord Shaftesbury and Charles Stretton could you possibly con- ceive two men more dissimilar than these two Old Harrovians, who were all but contemporaries referred, the one in his speech at a Harrow dinner, and the other in his autobiography, to the "abominable soup " of " Duck Puddle !" Those unacquainted with Harrow may be in- formed that " Ducker " was the school bathing- place. Since R. D. Walker left, "Ducker "has become a Capua of a swimming bath, the quint- essence of all that is luxurious for swimming. In my time it was simpler, but we thought it delicious. Many is the hour we have spent in taking headers into its shallow waters, or stretched in Adam's attire on its baking flags ! I believe that golf is the only game that 164 HARROW CRICKET R. D. Walker does not care for. In this he resembles Lord Justice Chitty, who does not appreciate the game which in Scotland is pre- eminently regarded as the serious game. There is a feature in the athletic career of Lord Justice Chitty in which he resembles some of our Old Harrovians. He began as a "dry bob" at Eton, and the wicket-keeper of their eleven, and ended as a "wet bob" at Oxford. So with many of our dry bobs, they take like ducks to the river at Oxford. W. H. Grenfell was in our Cricket Eleven, and afterwards in the Oxford Eight ('77-'78). J. M. Boustead rowed in the Oxford Eight three years ('75-'77). The late W. H. P. Rowe, who was head of the School ( J 75 J 76), and in the "footer" eleven, rowed in the Balliol Eight, which went head of the river ('79), and Henry C. Lowther rowed in the same Eight A. M. Channell (who since the first edition has obtained his well-earned pro- motion to the Bench) rowed for the Cambridge Eight for the Henley Grand Challenge Cup ('61). Turning to an earlier generation, Charles Wordsworth rowed in the first Inter-University Boat Race, and played in the first Inter-Uni- 165 OLD HARROW DAYS versity Cricket Match in the same week of 1829. John Pennefather rowed in the Oxford Eight ('36), and W. H. Solly in the Cambridge Eight the same year. This does not pretend to be an exhaustive list, but it will suffice to show that those who make good use of the athletic advantages of the Hill can afterwards get into the Eight if they have a mind to. Of the athletes of my time, those who have made the most lasting impressions on me were, perhaps, H. M. Stowe, Captain in '65 and '66, who is now an eminent solicitor; S. W. Gore, Captain of the Eleven in '69, and the brother of the Editor of Lux Mundi ; J. H. Ponsonby, who was the School wicket-keeper; J. M. Richardson, who was a singularly grace- ful field ; A. N. Hornby, my old Elstree school- fellow, the Lancashire Captain ; and John Ham- mond Morgan, who was afterwards President of the O.U.A.C. and winner of the Inter- University Three Miles' Race. John Maunsell Richardson, or "Pussy Dick," as his fellow Benites used to call him, has since dis- tinguished himself by winning the Grand 1 66 HARROW CRICKET National, and the Brigg Election at a critical junction in the fortunes of the Unionist Party. A. N. Hornby had the strength but not the stature of a Goliath. He was one of the very rare instances of a boy in the Fourth Form getting into the Eleven. It is unnecessary to say that we in his form were immensely proud of him. His glory reflected credit even on the smallest of us. A. N. Hornby will, how- ever, ' not take it in ill part when I remind him that on one occasion his very eminence at cricket caused us some anxiety. Mr John Smith used in the summer term to give a half holiday to his form, provided that every boy in his form could swim across " Ducker." To swim across "Ducker" was nothing when you knew how to swim, but to learn to swim requires a little time even of so exalted a personage as a member of the Harrow Eleven. Frankly, then, we were uneasy lest we should lose our half holiday through Hornby's atten- tion being centred in cricket. How could we expect our cricketing hero to trouble him- self about a matter which was only a life and death question to small fry like us. But OLD HARROW DAYS Hornby never failed anyone yet, and he did not fail us. When the hour arrived and John Smith at the side of " Ducker " called out each boy's name, Hornby answered to his name and swam across " Ducker." Our half holiday was saved. It is no part of my task to record the ex- periences of our famous cricketers after they left Harrow, but one incident in Hornby's career is so unique in county cricket as to merit mention. He was batting at Lord's some years ago. Lees Whitehead was bowling to him, and that player slipped, and the ball fell from his hand and went half way up the wicket. Hornby dashed out to hit it, but Whitehead got to the ball first and pitched it to the wicket-keeper, who put the stumps down. Hornby maintained that he was not out, and that the action of Whitehead really amounted to an obstruction of the bats- man, who had a right to his stroke. That con- tention was upheld by the umpire. In my time (and I am informed this pre- judice still lingers) there was a very unfair prejudice against Home Boarders. Some of the masters were not quite free from the taint themselves, and showed it in their deal- 168 HARROW CRICKET ings with the Home Boarders in their form. The social position of the Home Boarder was not unlike that of the scholar at Eton, but it was without the intellectual advantages which the Etonian enjoyed. Before the new Governing Body was started at Eton the Oppidan was not allowed even to compete for the Fellowships at King's. The only Etonian who was qualified to be- come a Fellow of King's with ^300 a year for life was the despised "tug-mutton." We had no nickname for the Home Boarder, but a boy in a House very rarely made a friend of one. The Home Boarder was not bullied ; he was more generally and very unjustly sent to Coventry until he could purge himself of his offence by acknowledged eminence in games. As for scholarships, there were no close Fellowships either for him or the House Boarder. Harrow is a poor school so far as endowment goes. The wealth of the school consists in the love of her sons. That has proved to her an inexhaustible mine. To give only one instance of princely generosity, the late Mr T C. Baring in 1886 purchased and 169 OLD HARROW DAYS anonymously presented to the School twenty acres of the football field. I do not know how or when the secret of the donor's name leaked out. The School income is probably about ^20,000 per annum not a bad income for a School that was only a Grammar School 150 years ago. This income is mainly derived from the boys at the school, and very little from endowments. There are a few entrance scholarships, which are only worth from 80 to ^30 a year, but these entrance scholars (unlike the scholars of Eton and Win- chester) are scattered through the Houses. As I was not a Home Boarder myself I may be accepted as an impartial witness when I testify to the high average of athletic success attained by Home Boarders. It is a curious fact, and shows the hold that cricket and football have on the average British house- holder, that Home Boarders, who were more under the direct influence of their parents, were even more keen on games (if it were possible) than we in the masters' houses who were away from home three-quarters of the year. The best all-round athlete of my time 170 HARROW CRICKET was a Home Boarder, F. G. Templer. The School register tells us that he was in the cricket eleven, the football eleven, and the shooting eleven. In my time we had a shoot- ing eleven ; it has since become an eight. But he was much more than this, he was the champion hurdle runner, the champion one hundred yards runner, the champion swimmer, the best field, and the maker of the champion score at Lord's. He only got his " flannels," 1 last but one, in the eleven a few days before Lord's, and well it was for the School that for once fairness scored a triumph over prejudice. Mr Bowen gives a cup for the best piece of fielding in the year. Of course F. G. Templer won it; what did he not win in athletics? I well remember his catch. He was fielding at long-leg, near the very simple pavilion, which in those days used to stand in the sixth form ground. The ball was hit hard and low. Templer ran (and who could run like he) and caught it close to the ground with his i The non- Harrovian reader may be informed that flannel trousers were only allowed to be worn by boys in the eleven. 171 OLD HARROW DAYS left hand, rolling over and over with the speed at which he was racing. The field rang again and again with our cheers. My admiration for F. G. Templer is some evidence of the tre- mendous hold which athletic energy has on the imagination of us Harrow boys. Templer's brother Jim, now Colonel and Head of the War Balloon Department, was equally fleet of foot. He was once at Newmarket when a British mob mistook our Old Harrovian for a "welcher." Templer ran. He was pursued by a crowd that would literally have torn him limb from limb could they have laid hands on him ; but, thank God, that was beyond their power. A fearless heart and a swift foot enabled Templer to distance his pursuers. The supre- macy of Home Boarders in athletics is also testified by the enormous proportion of the sons of masters who win their "flannels." 1 These are, of course, not technically Home Boarders. They do not play in the Home Boarders' eleven, but in the elevens of their 1 E. M. Hadow was another splendid cricketer, who began his career as a Home- Boarder. In the Lords' Match of '8 1 he made 94 ; he was also school racquet player with the Kemps. 172 HARROW CRICKET fathers' houses, but in spirit they are Home Boarders, as they are always under their father's influence. In my time there were no masters' -sons in the school except G. H. Kendall, whose triumphs were won in other fields. That good man, his father, was Senior Classic, and his son was Fourth Classic. In the eighties and the nineties there has been a splendid galaxy of cricketers hailing from Harrow homes. H. D. Watson was head of the School and in the cricket eleven, while A. K. Watson's fine score for the School at Lord's will not soon be forgotten. In '52 Wm. Marillier, the son of dear old "Tique," was Captain of our Cricket Eleven, and in '85 E. M. Butler. Then there are Edgar Stogdon, who was in our football eleven ; John H. Stogdon, who was in our cricket eleven and School racquet player; A. H. M. Butler, who was in our cricket eleven, and also won for us the Public Schools Racquets; and my friend, Nigel Bosworth Smith, who was head of the School and in the cricket and football eleven and School racquet player. After this it will 173 OLD HARROW DAYS be admitted that no class of Her Majesty's subjects have produced better cricketers than Harrow masters. Has the same boy ever been head of the School and captain of the School Eleven? Only four such instances are known to me. C. S. Roundell, formerly M.P. for Grantham; H. J. Torre, Robert J. P. Broughton, and Herbert Leaf, who com- bine 1 in their own persons the merits of a Walter Leaf 1 and an A. J. Webbe. Mr Roundell is a Governor of the School, and long may he remain with us, but by some unfortunate accident Herbert Leaf is not a master at Harrow, but at Marlborough. While the majority of boys who win their flannels deserve them, there are also a few who get their flannels more by favour than by merit. That " kissing goes by favour " is a truth soon learnt by schoolboys. In my time there was a flagrant instance of this. An indifferent cricketer (who is dead now, poor fellow) got his flannels, while M. P. Betts, a first-rate cricketer, was made captain of the Fifth Form i Walter and Herbert Leaf are brothers. It is im- possible to say which of the two has reflected most credit on the School. 174 HARROW CRICKET game, apparently with the express object of keeping him out of the school eleven, which was then exclusively drawn from the Sixth Form game. They were both in the same house cricket eleven, and in one of our house matches the boy in the eleven got two or three runs in all the splendour of his flannels, while Betts made his century. All the favouritism in the world could not enable to make Betts' scores. There was not and could not be any suspicion of favouritism in the football field. When a boy knocked you down at " footer," his merits were incontestable. Many traced this spirit of favouritism to Ponsonby and Grimston, but most unjustly. I do not think that fairer-minded men ever coached the young idea to bowl and bat than those two grand Old Harrovians. The best proof that can be given of " Bob " Grimston's fairness is the following anecdote, which is well known to Harrovians. Mr Ponsonby was in our eleven, but Mr Grimston was not. The reason for this is thus explained by Mr R. Broughton (the well-known solicitor), who, being the only boy left of the 1833 eleven, had to select a new team. 175 OLD HARROW DAYS " Grimston at that time was a very fair bat, but a bad field, and I had my doubts whether he ought to be in the eleven. He was a friend of mine, and I did not like to hurt his feelings, so I asked him to help me in making up an eleven. Coinciding in opinion with his captain, Mr Grimston left himself out. To the last he always contended that he had not been good enough." Mr Grimston I had not the privilege of know- ing personally, but Lord Bessborough I knew well. The last candidate this dear old gentle- man proposed at the Marylebone Cricket Club was my son, then two months old. If the boys who are the most looked up to are the eleven, the boy who is most commiserated with is the twelfth man. The twelfth man is the Peri at the Gates of Eden. A twelfth man (and he had experienced most of the serious sorrows of life) once told me that he was only just beginning to forget the disappointment he had suffered twenty years before in being left out of the eleven. I remember a boy being talked of for the eleven for three years, and ending with being twelfth man on his fourth and last year. 176 HARROW CRICKET Mr Welldon preached a beautiful sermon on the friendship of Jonathan and David. This was meant to be a consolation sermon, but a twelfth man belongs to the class of the inconsolables. There is a tendency with some to " Praise new-born gawds, Though they are made and moulded of things past." As the same wise mentor reminds us : "The present eye praises the present object." When we see and admire the play of F. S. Jackson, our Captain in '89, and of Archie MacLaren, our Captain in '90, we may forget for the moment that the Hill possessed splendid cricketers in the fifties, the sixties, and the seventies, and will produce them again and again "forty years on." Harrow has never produced at Lord's finer batting than T. G. O. Cole's 142, and to match it you have to go back to '85, when A. K. Watson made 135 for Harrow. E. M. Dowson's bowling cannot be passed over in silence. The reason why it was not more effective in the second innings, and why consequently the match resulted in a draw, M 177 OLD HARROW DAYS was the unfair state of the ground for bowling, and his own exhausted condition. Had he declared his own innings closed before lunch, he would have had nearly two hours' rest, and would have repeated his first innings' perform- ance. To be a fine cricketer you require the subtlety of the serpent as well as the innocence of the dove. But it is easy to be wise after the event. We are all proud of Cole and Dowson, and confidently rely on their proving themselves worthy successors of the Walkers. Cricket is a Derby that is never won. But this must in justice be said of F. S. Jackson and Archie MacLaren, that the standard of Harrow cricket has never been higher than in their strong and capable hands. I remember once talking cricket with an all-round West- minster athlete. He admitted the pre-eminence of the then Walker brothers as Old Harrovian cricketers, and then said : " But F. S. Jackson (believing he was not an Harrovian) may rank with them." "Perfectly true," I replied, "and he too hails from the Hill." F. S. Jackson, Archie MacLaren, and Captain Wynyard(an Old Carthusian) were the only three then public 178 HARROW CRICKET school cricketers who played for the combined England Eleven against the Australians in '96. The other three gentlemen players on the side of England in that never-to-be-forgotten match were Dr W. G. Grace, Prince Ranjitsinjhi and Stoddart, none of whom can be claimed by any public school. It is well known that Mr Arthur Balfour's skill as a golfer has helped the spread of Unionist opinion in Scotland, and the prowess of our old Captain, F. S. Jackson, has furthered the Unionist cause in the great county for which he plays. The average Yorkshire- man is a cricketer first, and a Unionist or Radical next. All Yorkshire nay, all England are agreed that F. S. Jackson is an all-round cricketer, batsman, bowler, field, and splendid in each capacity. Unfortunately Archie Mac- Laren does not play as often as lovers of cricket could desire. But when he does play, why, then you see what Harrovian energy can accomplish. The following incident will bring my brief record down to date. On Friday, July 3oth of this year, Archie MacLaren played for Lanca- shire, captained by another old Harrovian, A. N. Hornby, against Hampshire. The match 179 OLD HARROW DAYS was played at Manchester. Lancashire had only twenty-eight runs to make to win. Having per- formed his share of this task, and carrying his bat out, Archie MacLaren takes the train to Liver- pool, and knocks up a score of forty-seven for Harrow Wanderers, captained by that veteran, I. D. Walker. But Archie MacLaren's modest and retiring nature is well known. He was dining with a Harrow master, when the con- versation turned on cricket. The young lady sitting next to him, ignorant that she was speaking of war in the presence of a Hannibal, remarked: " Do you play cricket ?" "A little," replied Archie MacLaren. In bidding farewell for the present to Harrow cricket, we may ask ourselves what is "the conclusion of the whole matter?" To devote one's school days to cricket most assuredly not. It is the old story of the golden mean, and of enjoying each good gift in turn. Hard intellectual work is one of the good things of life, and you rise from it refreshed. Cricket, racquets, and (as you grow older) golf, are also good things to be enjoyed like hard work, but in greater moderation. It is one of 1 80 HARROW CRICKET the pleasing features of Harrow athletics, that so many ot our best known cricketers and " footer " players were, and are, hard workers : Charles Wordsworth, 1 Charles Merivale, 2 Wm. Nicholson, 8 Henry M. Plowden, 4 R. D. Walker, I. D. Walker, Kenelm Edward Digby, 5 H. R. T. Alexander, 6 Henry W. Acland, 7 Henry E. Hutton, 8 M. H. Stowe, C. L. Tupper, 10 A. K. 1 Captain of our Cricket Eleven (1824-25), and Bishop of St Andrews. 2 In our Cricket and Football Elevens (1824) ; Dean of Ely ; Historian. 3 Captain of our Cricket Eleven (1843); M.P. for Petersfield (1866-74, '80-85). 4 In our Cricket Eleven (1858), in the Cambridge Cricket Eleven ; Senior Judge of the High Court of Punjaub. 5 Captain of our Cricket Eleven for three years (1853-55), in the Oxford Cricket Eleven ; Fellow of C.C.C., Oxford ; Bencher of Lincoln's Inn. 6 Captain of our Cricket Eleven (1861) ; Solicitor. 7 In our Football Eleven ; School Racquet Player ; Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford University ; K.C.B. 8 In our Cricket Eleven (1846-47) ; Assistant Master for thirty-five years. Captain of our Cricket Eleven (1865-66), and 01 the Cambridge Cricket Eleven; Solicitor. 10 In our Football Eleven (1865); late Chief Secretary to Government of the Punjaub. 181 OLD HARROW DAYS Watson, 1 A. J. Webbe, 2 M. C. Kemp, 3 E. H. Crawley, C. Wm. Walker, 4 J. H. Stogdon, 5 W. B. Money, 6 Edward Stanhope, 7 P. T. Maw, our captain of this year, were all monitors. These names occur to me at hap- hazard, but a much longer list of men who have been pre-eminent both in our work and our play could be given. Indeed, our school can reckon among those who have " got their flannels " one Senior Wrangler (Charles Perry), one Cardinal (H. E. Manning), and one Senior Classic (H. M. Butler). All the names just mentioned are those of monitors, but there were, of course, many boys of marked ability 1 Entrance scholar; in our Cricket and Football Elevens ; in the Oxford Cricket Eleven ; Assistant Master at Rugby. 2 Captain of our Cricket and in our Football Elevens (1874); in the Oxford Cricket Eleven. 3 Captain of our Cricket and in our Football Elevens (1880); in the Oxford Cricket and Football Elevens; Assistant Master at Harrow. 4 Captain of our Cricket and Football Elevens (1870). 5 In our Cricket Eleven (1893) ; in the Cambridge Cricket Eleven. 6 Captain of our Cricket and in our Football Elevens (1867); Captain of Cambridge Cricket Eleven; Rector of Weybridge. 7 In our Cricket Eleven (1859) ; Statesman. i8a HARROW CRICKET who left before they had reached the sixth form, but not before they had got into the cricket eleven. The names that occur to me of Harrovian cricketers who were not monitors, but who have since distinguished themselves in public life, are E. Chandos Leigh and Walter H. Long. Both of them are representatives of old Harrovian families. E. Chandos Leigh was captain of our cricket eleven in 1851 ; in the Oxford cricket eleven and president of the Marylebone Cricket Club (1887). His record at the Bar is equally good. He is a Q.C., Bencher of the Inner Temple, and Counsel to the Speaker. Walter H. Long was both in our football and cricket elevens (1873). He is now helping Sir Matthew White Ridley, Mr Henry Chaplin, and Lord George Hamilton, to keep up our average in the Cabinet, which is high, in spite of our having had no Harrovian Prime Minister since the death of Palmerston. As our talk is of those who have loved cricket wisely, but not too well, we naturally remember William Law, that modest athlete. To write a book on Harrow without referring 183 OLD HARROW DAYS to him would be something worse than a sole- cism. Whether Law, who was a " Tommy ite," ever fell under the influence of John Smith I do not know, but never did I meet a man who carried John Smith's teaching into action with more zest. We were fortunate, indeed, to secure him as first vicar for the Harrow mission. Law the cricketer will be remembered by his contemporaries for his singular habit of always fielding capless in the blazing sun. He was for three years in our cricket and " footer " elevens, and then played four years in the Oxford eleven. My dear old school companion is an instance of how much good can be done by a cheery spirit. His influence was enormous, and all for good. His early death saddened not a few of us. It has been by no means uncommon to find the head of the school in the cricket or football eleven, and often in both: Frederick North, "Jack" Norton, C. Soames, 1 G. C. Cherry, 2 Alexander 1 In our Cricket Eleven (1844); in the Cambridge Cricket Eleven ; Rector of Mildenhall, Wilts. 2 In our Cricket Eleven (1840); in the Oxford Cricket Eleven ; late Chairman of Berkshire Quarter Sessions. 184 HARROW CRICKET Grant, 1 R. J. P. Broughton, 2 J. A. Cruikshank, 8 Harold Carlisle, 4 Herbert Leaf, H. D. Watson, 5 and Nigel Bosworth Smith, 6 all filled this honourable and enviable position. As long as no impassable gulf is fixed between our workers and our players, we may be sure that Harrow boys are acting up to the advice of their old chief. "Strive," said the Master of Trinity, "to preserve a right balance between your different enthusiasms." Our boys are striv- ing, and may God keep the balance even ! 1 In our Cricket Eleven (1844); Principal of Edin- burgh University ; Author. 2 Captain of our Cricket Eleven (1834-35) ; in the Oxford Cricket Eleven ; Solicitor. 3 In our Football Eleven (1858-59) ; Assistant Master at Harrow for twenty-five years. 4 In our Cricket and Shooting Elevens (1871) ; a Rancher in Colorado. 5 Entrance scholar ; in our Cricket Eleven (1887-88) ; in the Oxford Cricket Eleven ; in the Indian Civil Service. 6 Entrance scholar ; in our Cricket and Football Elevens (1891-92); in the Oxford Football Eleven; in the Indian Civil Service. For centuries at Lords, see Appendix. -85 CHAPTER V OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL TT ARROW had to wait long for her Lord Mayor, but at last, in 1891, she secured one in Sir Joseph Savory. He deserves all the honours he has received both from the Queen and from his fellow-countrymen. Long may his charming wife and he be spared to enjoy them. This must be the wish of each one of those 400 Old Harrovians whom he entertained in the Egyptian Hall on July 8th, 1891. The occasion was unique, and is never likely to occur again in our lifetime. Some brief notice of it may therefore be given in these pages devoted to things Harrovian. Our host sat between our two head masters Mr Welldon to his right and Dr Butler on his left. Next to them came three Cabinet Ministers, then the Peers, then the Privy Councillors and Ambassa- dors, and then the general body of Old Harro- 186 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL vians. I had a parson on one side of me (and who had not), but he was a parson of the Sydney Smith stamp, and told me one capital Harrow story. The Rev. Thomas Steel, with a flash of humour which should not go unrecorded to his credit, wrote down on the conduct sheet of a certain boy, "Dirty, but good." This boy's aggrieved parents foolishly repeated this to their son, and he still more foolishly repeated it to his schoolfellows, for the epigram clung to him like a Nessus shirt. The speeches were of very unequal merit. The House of Lords on that occasion came off through their representatives distinctly second best. Sir George Trevelyan and the late Sir Robert Peel both spoke well especially the latter. Unfortunately Sir Robert did not avoid party politics, and his allusion to Mr Gladstone (which was harmless enough) called forth audible dissent. I could not but regret that the bearer of such a name, dear to all Englishmen, especially Old Harro- vians, should not have met with a more synv pathetic reception. We evidently forgot that his father was not only Prime Minister of Eng- land, but that he enjoyed the even more singular 187 ~* OLD HARROW DAYS distinction of being the chum of Lord Byron. Next to Sir Robert Peel sat an Old Harrovian, who had enjoyed a unique experience. Sir Thomas Wade, K.C.B., G.C.M.G., had then exchanged the post of a plenipotentiary at the Court of Pekin for a professor's chair. He had been for years the Nestor of our Foreign politics in China, and was then Professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge. I wonder whether our Old Harrovian was more fortunate in the number that attended his classes than was his brother professor at the University of Paris. That Eastern scholar had only one Western pupil, but that solitary pupil married his professor's daughter and succeeded him in the chair. The Parisian joke was that the son- in-law hesitated to accept the nomination to the professorship on the score that he knew no Chinese. His father-in-law silenced this scruple by saying, " No more do I." Sir Robert made a jesting reference to Sir Thomas Wade as (unlike Sir Robert) never having troubled him- self with English politics. I have forgotten now whether another Old Harrovian diplomatist, Sir George Wyndham, K.C.M.G., our former 1 88 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL Minister at Belgrade, was present. If he was, the Lord Mayor's table was graced by the presence of an authority on the politics of the Near East, as well as by one who was an authority on the politics of the Far East. Mr Welldon's speech was as clever and witty as a speech could be. Dr Butler's speech appealed to us all. Every word of it reminded us of our dear old school. He told us anecdotes of the cricket field of the ball being hit into the pond and of thirty-six runs being run for it of the old umpire asking whether the ball was in sight, and if so, declaring it was not a "lost ball " of his old cricket captain sitting then in front of him, and of his having given him (Butler) the happiest day of his life, when he gave him his flannels. No one who has had that delightful experience will question the truth of that statement. At the risk of the lea'rned judge committing me for contempt, I must admit that the humour of Mr Justice Jeune was very dry, but he was clear and brief. The same can not be said of Canon Farrar. His reply for the Church was an extraordinary jumble of references to "his dear son-in-law 189 OLD HARROW DAYS Montgomery," and to "a blessed resurrection." Not that one of us who remembers the present Bishop of Tasmania (H. H. Montgomery), when he was both in the cricket and football elevens ('64 to '66), is likely to forget it. If some of the speeches were simply splendid, what are we to say of the singing of Lord Folkestone ! The strength of the school in Lord Salisbury's Cabinet (then as now) was certainly remark- able. Mr Chaplin, Mr Edward Stanhope, Lord George Hamilton, and Lord Knutsford were Ministers for Agriculture, War, the Navy, and the Colonies, while Sir Wm. Hart Dyke, as Presi- dent of the Council, was in deed though not in name the Minister for Education. Mr Howson hit off well this salient feature of Harrow direct- ing through her sons the fortunes of our Empire. " Who recks to-night of party spite Or Irish agitation, Of dull debates, and estimates For freeing Education ? Enough to ken that Englishmen To-night at peace are sleeping, While schools and farms and fleet and arms Are safe in Harrow's keeping." The new spirit that inspired an Englishman to 190 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL look upon his kith and kin across the ocean no longer as Colonists, but as heirs with him of England's deathless fame this new spirit which inspires our sons to rival in the future the Byrons, the Peels, and the Palmerstons of the past this new spirit was reflected in the con- cluding verse : " So once again your glasses drain, And may we long continue From Harrow School to rise and rule By heart and brain and sinew ; And as the roll of Harrow's scroll Page after page is written, May Harrow give the names that live In Great and Greater Britain ! " Lord Folkestone sang this as a solo. What followed could not be called applause ; it was a hurricane of cheers. Needless to say he had to sing the last verse again. The older Harrow poet was not forgotten. " Forty years on, when afar and asunder " was sung as a chorus through- out by the whole 400 guests standing. This dinner naturally leads up to the subject of Old Harrovians. The three oldest Harro- vians I have personally known were Sir Thomas Bernard, Mr Hamilton Hall, and Canon Murray. 191 OLD HARROW DAYS They were respectively under Dr Drury, Dr George Butler, and Dr Longley. Sir Thomas Bernard had the singular good fortune to be at Harrow with Byron and at Eton with Shelley. He was also at Westminster, but as that famous school has given us no poets of the first order since the time of Cowper, Sir Thomas had little to say about Westminster. The very early age at which boys were then taken in at our public schools enabled our ancestors to go not to one but to several. Sir Thomas was only nine when he went to Harrow. He told me he went there in September 1800. The Harrow School Re- gister (p. 9) records that he went to the school in September 1803. As Lord Byron entered the school in April 1801 and left at Midsummer 1805, and as he and Bernard shared the same bedroom, Sir Thomas would have been more a contemporary of Byron's had he entered in Sep- tember 1800. Whichever date is correct, his recollection of Byron (whom he referred to as Birron) \vas very distinct indeed. He spoke of him as " a terrible bully." The indictment was probably deserved. Byron has himself told us, " I was a most unpopular boy, but led latterly, 192 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL and have retained many of my school friend- ships, and all my dislikes except to Dr Butler." Thomas Dundas, afterwards first Earl of Zet- land, and whose schoolfellow, G. J. Perceval, served at Trafalgar, only died in 1873. He told an old friend of mine that he well remem- bered Byron coming up and asking another boy who had been bullying Dundas, and on being told that Lord Herbert (afterwards eleventh Earl of Pembroke) was the culprit, Byron merely re- marked, " I like licking a Lord's son," and he did " lick " Lord Pembroke's son. Lord Zetland always remembered his champion with gratitude. Sir Thomas was quite right when he re- marked that the secret of longevity was good temper. He proved it in his own case, for he died at the age of ninety-one. Sir Thomas was Tory M.P. for Aylesbury, but when he retired from Parliament, he recommended as his successor the present Lord Rothschild (whose son was in Mr Bowen's house). It is true that Mr Rothschild was a Whig, and that thirty years ago the Whigs and the Tories had not coalesced in that patriotic amalgam which is now known as the Unionist Party; but Mr N 193 OLD HARROW DAYS Rothschild was a large landed proprietor, and that, in the opinion of so good a Tory as Sir Thomas, entitled its owner, irrespective of politics, to a seat in the House of Commons. The Borough of Aylesbury is now disfran- chised, but it returned as one of its last members an Old Harrovian G. W. E. Russell. It was George Russell who, from his seat in Parliament, informed his amused listeners that the wealth of Aylesbury found a fitting repre- sentative in a Rothschild, while its culture was represented by him who had then the honour of addressing them. Family history throws a side light on our institutions. It at least affords evidence of the opinion entertained of them some eighty years ago. The following incident from my own family annals may not therefore be without in- terest. My great-grandfather, General Hamilton Hall, was an Ulsterman and a Presbyterian. With a liberality rare indeed at any time, and almost unexampled in the days of the Napoleonic Wars, he married a French lady and a Catholic. Harrow was selected as the school for their only son, as the English school where a boy 194 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL could be religiously brought up without being taught to be intolerant. This striking tribute to Dr George Butler is a good set-off to Anthony Trollope's splenetic attack upon him. Both Sir Thomas Bernard and Mr Hamilton Hall have long since joined the majority. Canon Murray is still with us, and long may he remain so. Canon Murray was under Dr Longley and in Mr Kennedy's House (The Grove). It was strange to hear this saintly man speak of having been flogged twice, and of his having had 4000 lines of Homer to write out in his Easter holidays. " I richly deserved this," he said, " because I stoned a boy from a private school who was walking in the Grove." Then he added "I should not have minded this had not my father met Dr Longley at the Levee and told him." These chance meetings of our house masters and our fathers have been unpleasant in their consequences to many of us. Canon Murray did not tell me what resulted to him from the interview, but his silence was significant. One of the Canon's floggings was for letting off fire- works on Guy Fawkes Day that Protestant 195 OLD HARROW DAYS anniversary which one would not now connect with this eminent High Churchman. The discipline of* the School in his day (1832 to 1835) seems to have been non-existent. The Canon used to go out nightly, and was actually out "skylarking" in the Grove when Mr Kennedy 1 sent for him to give him a leaving prize. If this is the record of a good boy, what would be the record of a bad one ? He described the Rev. Henry Drury (famous for all time as Byron's tutor) as completely past work. " He (Drury) used to eat fruit in class." As for religious instruction, that does not seern to have been given at all under Dr Longley. The Canon deplored the cold and formal services in the Parish Church, where the masters sat apart in one pew, while the boys, isolated in the galleries, neither joined in the responses nor the singing. Very different from the mighty roar it can scarcely be called singing which goes up now in the School 1 Mr Kennedy afterwards became head master of Shrewsbury, and was quite one of the best classical masters Harrow ever had. The late Sir Wm. Gregory was a favourite pupil of his. 196 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL Chapel. Such was the Canon's energy, and such his enthusiasm for Harrow, that only a few years ago he went up to Wigan to meet a few old schoolfellows at dinner, and returned the next morning to preside at a diocesan council in Kent. No one who knows country life in England, or who has studied human nature, will deny that to be a successful parish priest requires moral qualities of a high and rare order. These qualities are possessed in an eminent degree by Canon Murray, and have won him the respect of all his parishioners (including the Nonconformists). When he first came as its Rector to Chislehurst, its beautiful Common was for an entire week in each year entirely given up to a veritable saturnalia of cock-fighting and debauchery. Canon Murray has altered all that. He has recently recovered from a most serious illness Deo gratias. All his parishioners (whether they agree with him in all his views or not) are at one in their wish that their Rector may long be spared to them. A kindred spirit to the Rev. Canon Murray was Father John Morris. John Morris, who 197 OLD HARROW DAYS was under Dr Wordsworth, joined the Church of Rome at Cambridge, and as his relation I can testify to the absolutely conscientious grounds of his conversion. His father was not only an able man, but a very ambitious one, and he would have left no stone unturned to push forward his gifted son. And Father John Morris was a man of rare gifts. Impartial and competent judges have declared that his conversation was so brilliant as to remind them of Mr Gladstone. Later on he became a Jesuit and private secretary to Cardinal Wise- man. Fortunate Father, fortunate Cardinal ! The same good luck (though it was not what the world calls good luck) pursued my cousin to the last. He died in harness in the pulpit preaching what he regarded as the Divine Truth. While one freely admits his singleness of purpose, one is also bound to admit that he was in one point absolutely inhuman. He was incapable of a doubt. Of Cardinal Manning, " the noblest Roman of them all," it is difficult to say anything which is at once new and true, but the follow- ing, at least to most of us, complies with both 198 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL requirements. Very few Old Harrovians, how- ever varied their experiences, have (like Smith O'Brien and Cunninghame Graham) seen the inside of a prison, otherwise than as visiting justices. The curse of prison life, we are told, is its monotony. To this rule neither its chapel nor the sermons preached there are any exception. Apparently the favourite topic with the preacher is the parable of the Prodigal Son. The convicts themselves view the subject other- wise. They were all weary to death of the Prodigal Son, and sick of his very name. One day in the Roman Catholic Chapel of Millbank a high ecclesiastic they knew that from his violet cassock preached to them, and as usual his theme was the Prodigal Son. The convicts settled themselves down to sulky inattention. Before the sermon was over, even the most hardened among them were sobbing. The preacher was Cardinal Manning. Boyle O'Reilly, a Fenian prisoner, who heard the sermon, told Father John Morris that this sermon endeared the Cardinal to him for the rest of his life. One is tempted to say much more about our only Harrovian Cardinal 199 OLD HARROW DAYS who showed his practical mind in desiring to be Radical M.P. for Marylebone, but a wise old Greek has said that the half is better than the whole. Until you dig and delve, you have no conception of the variety as well as the wealth of the products of Harrow soil. For instance, take from the Roman Catholic Church her Old Harrovian converts, and you deprive her of some of her most devoted and ablest sons. Cardinal Manning and Father Morris have already been referred to. Then there is F. W. Faber, the hymn writer, who resigned his living and became head of the Brompton Oratory. Henry Nutcombe Oxenham was in a double sense one of us he was educated at Harrow and was the son of that master who was "much beloved." He was a poet and a liberal thinker, who sometimes attended the services of the church which he had left. He was the friend of Dr Dollinger and Lord Acton, and though a loyal was never a sub- missive Roman Catholic. It is my belief that he belonged to the same Devonshire family as John Oxenham, the brave sea-captain, whom the Spaniards hung at Lima as a pirate, but 200 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL whom his comrades in the West Country venerated as a martyr. Readers of " Westward Ho ! " will remember the " true and tragical history of Mr John Oxenham." Mr Henry Oxenham was a dreamer of dreams, but Professor St George J. Mivart, F.R.S., the famous biologist, and the Marquis of Bute are both intensely practical. Both are Old Harrovian converts to the Roman Catholic Church. Professor Mivart crossed the Rubicon at the early age of seventeen, Lord Bute at that of twenty-one. The late Rev. Isaac Williams, who was in Mr Evans' house, was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, and wrote several Tracts of the Times. Williams' old school- fellow, Godfrey Thomas Vigne, used his energies in a very different field. He played in our Cricket Eleven (1818), and became, not a "friend," as the School Register has it, but an honoured guest on more than one occasion of Ranjit Sing. I traverse the word "friend" on the ground that the Lion of the Punjab never possessed a friend. The School Register also describes the late Godfrey T. Vigne as 201 OLD HARROW DAYS " the first Englishman who went to Kabul." This is a manifest error. In the first place, when Mr Vigne visited Kabul in 1836, he was the guest of Mr Masson, the East India Company's correspondent at Kabul. Who then was the first Englishman that went to Kabul ? Far from claiming this distinction for himself, Mr Vigne throws some light on this interesting question : " At a burial-ground, opposite the Peshawur Gate of Kabul, is a tombstone, on which is cut in English letters the name of Hicks, the son of William and Elizabeth Hicks. By its date, if I mistake not, he must have lived a hundred and fifty years ago. I could never learn anything of his history. It may be inferred that he was not alone when he died, unless we suppose him to have written his own epitaph ; but if so, his native place would have been mentioned." 1 If our author is right in accepting the evidence of this tombstone, there was one Englishman, if not several of them, in Kabul more than two hundred years ago ! Old 1 A Personal Narrative of a visit to Ghuzni, Kabul, and Afghanistan, by G. T. Vigne, F.G.S. 202 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL Harrovians are now found dotted over India from Peshawur to Travancore. Our School can claim to have reared in Orme the earliest historian of Hindoostan, and in Vigne the first Englishman to visit Little Tibet (1835). The one-eyed and diminutive Ranjit Sing had many French and Italian officers in his native army, and how did he reward them? By keeping their pay constantly in arrear, and by never allowing one of them to visit Kashmir. Ranjit himself never visited his lovely province, but he allowed our Old Harrovian to visit it. Godfrey T. Vigne wrote a book on the Alps of the Punjab, and fortunately for himself and his readers he was also a good draughtsman. If Harrow has not given many men to science, those she has given have become recognised leaders in their own departments. One of these was the late William Spottiswoode. He received the greatest honour that can be conferred on an Englishman. He was buried in Westminster Abbey (1883). Like Sheridan, he left the Hill without distinction; but in later life he, like Sheridan, did nothing but distinguish himself. 203 OLD HARROW DAYS He was President of the Royal Society, and ad- mirable in every relation of life. Both the sons of Admiral F. E. Vernon-Harcourt are Old Harro- vians, and both can write F.R.S. after their name. Augustus George Vernon-Harcourt is (or was) General Secretary to the British Associa- tion. He is a distinguished chemist ; while his brother, Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt, is a recognised authority on all that pertains to civil engineering. The achievements of the two brothers are the more remarkable, as both of them, like Francis Balfour, were educated long before a modern side was dreamt of on the Hill. Francis Maitland Balfour was my contem- porary a quiet, studious boy, and more studious in the fields than in the school-room. Within eight years of his leaving Harrow Balfour was elected an F.R.S. It is sad to think that this brilliant scientist a man not unworthy of being the successor of Newton and of Darwin ; a man who would have been as much a leader in science as his brother Arthur is in politics should have lost his life on a virgin Alpine peak (July igth, 1882). 204 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL He shared the fate of three other Old Harro- vians. Douglas Robert Hadow was killed in the first ascent of the Matterhorn (July i4th, 1865), Henry Arkwright, who was in our and the Cambridge cricket eleven, was lost in an avalanche on Mount Blanc (October i3th, 1866), and Henry A. Cohen, who was lost in the Alps (July 1895). Hal- four's great friend at Harrow was Arthur Evans, a philologer and wit as brilliant as the late Lord Strangford, who was also an Old Harrovian. Before his fatal visit to Switzerland, Francis Balfour and Arthur Evans twice visited Lap- land. Francis Balfour was a man absolutely fearless. On one occasion he and Evans wished to visit some falls. Several guides refused to accompany them, and the guide who consented was at the last moment stopped by his wife. Balfour was intensely annoyed. He had made his will in England before leav- ing, and he saw no reason why the will should be of no use to him. On another occasion he and Evans and another friend visited a part of Finland which was infested by a terrible species of mosquito, one bite of which was said to be 205 OLD HARROW DAYS able to kill a man. Their more prudent com- panion was for retreat, but Balfour and Evans insisted on going on. The result was many bites and an epigram from Evans : " Variety my path beguiles Whilst through this world I jog : Last year I roamed through Bogomils, 1 And this through miles of bog." It is not generally known, but it is a fact, that one of Dr Thompson's most oft-quoted mots was called forth by Francis Balfour. Our old schoolmate was the first Professor of Animal Morphology at Cambridge University. He was also a Fellow of Trinity College, of which Dr Thompson was the master. At a meeting of the Fellows of his College, Balfour was speaking on College reform, and advocating a limitation of the master's power, though, of course, in a most impersonal way. When he had sat down, the master arose and uttered what is perhaps the most famous of his famous epigrams : " Of course we are none of us in- fallible not even the Junior Fellow." i Bogomils were the ancient heretics of Bulgaria. My friend Arthur Evans has written an admirable mono- graph on them. 206 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL Of Arthur Evans it is dangerous to write, for he is a specialist, and though his speciality the Eastern Question interests many of us, it does not appeal to all. But there is nothing that he touches which does not from his touch scintil- late with wit His memory too is extraordinary. On my congratulating him on his not having to support himself by stone-breaking in a profes- sion, he replied with a line of Claudian : "Plus habet hie vitae, plus habet ille viae." He then quoted from memory the entire poem from which this line was taken. The "viae" referred to his house in Ragusa, from which he had been banished by the Austrians, merely because he refused to give their officers informa- tion which he had learnt in friendly intercourse with the peasants of Crivosic and which the Austrians would have used in their campaign against the Crivoscians. Not that Evans ever questioned the right of the Austrians to expel him from their Empire, but he did question their right to imprison him on charges that utterly broke down. Few of us in England knew what a narrow escape our old school- 207 OLD HARROW DAYS fellow had. Fortunately for him both his father and his father-in-law (the historian E. A. Free- man) were men of influence, and his father was a neighbour of Lord Salisbury, then our Foreign Secretary. Mr Gladstone's knowledge is so universal and so microscopic that I feel bound to record the only instance with which I am acquainted of his being instructed by anyone and that indirectly by an old Harrovian. The district of Crivosic became part of the Austrian Empire after Waterloo. It is a sort of Franz Joseph Land of rock and stone. Now for the one piece of ignorance of the G.O.M. he did not know until Mr Freeman (it was the Esau Evans speaking by the voice of the Free- man Jacob) told him that the Austrians had attempted to impose the military conscription on the Crivoscians in 1869, and had failed. They succeeded ten years later, because they then occupied with their troops Bosnia, the Hinterland of Crivosic. In '82, Evans, with an Englishman's tenacity, would not sell his leasehold house in Ragusa, because he said his lease of twenty years would survive the collapse of the Austrian Empire. Does he still hold on ? 208 OUR SCHOOL CARDINAL A braver man never walked this earth than Francis Balfour. Alas for us ! alas for all who think and feel his bravery leaned on rashness' side. How he must sometimes have envied his schoolmates who were soldiers. How much must we all, whether professors or not, envy our soldier schoolfellows. An officer cannot be too brave. " Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die ! " The attraction to serve in the Army, in the ranks, rather than be left out in the cold as a civilian, is felt by some of us when we are young. Three Old Harrovians to my know- ledge enlisted, and all three with credit to them- selves. Captain John E. Acland (better known to me as John Troyte of Huntsham), after having taken his degree at Oxford, served for sixteen months in the ranks in the 4th King's Own, and obtained his commission. Wilfrid Gore-Browne, now Vicar of St Hilda's, Darling- ton, enlisted in the nth Hussars. Both Captain John Acland and the Rev. W. Gore-Browne have written books recording their experiences in the ranks. They are with us still, but Percy o 209 OLD HARROW DAYS Finlay, Lance-Corporal of the Black Watch, is one of "the unreturning brave." Like many of the best Harrovians Finlay was poor at Greek, but he possessed a lion's heart. In his life- time he served in the ranks, but a glorious death has placed him among the Heroes of our School. 910 CHAPTER VI OUR SCHOOL HEROES the morning of the i2th September 1882, the day before the night march to Tel-el-Kebir, five Old Harrovians break- fasted together. The attack was made at daybreak on the following day, and lasted for about twenty or thirty minutes. In that half hour two of the five old schoolfellows were killed, two severely wounded, and one alone remained untouched. You sometimes hear complaints that army men have too good a time of it in peace, that they are the favourites of the ladies, and rubbish of that character. No one who talks like this can have any knowledge of what a soldier's life consists, or what his fate may be in battle. All the varnish has been rubbed off for those who have followed a campaign either as soldiers or as special correspondents. 211 OLD HARROW DAYS Poor Dudley Kays met his end like a hero, but unlike his old schoolfellow, Tom Graham- Stirling, his was not an instantaneous death. Shot through the lungs, he turned to his old schoolfellow and tried to speak. To check (if they could) the rush of blood they propped him up on a rifle, but it was all in vain the torrent of blood carried away his young life, and his last words remained unspoken. His companion of old Harrow days stood by him speechless and helpless. Of the other Old Harrovian (Thomas Graham-Stirling), an officer of the Black Watch, who fell at Tel-el- Kebir, his end was more merciful, as he was shot through the forehead. On the night of his death, in far-off Scotland, his father, little knowing the blow that had fallen on his house, was giving a dinner party. A telegram had been received by his butler, but he, filling rather the post of a family friend than of a family servant, kept it back from his master. He felt that bad news lay hidden there. His face, however, revealed his secret. In the middle of the dinner his master asked him what he knew, as he felt sure he was keeping 212 OUR SCHOOL HEROES something back from him. The fatal telegram was then handed to him. Dudley Kays and Tom Graham-Stirling were not the first valuable lives that our School lost in this campaign. Henry Chol- mondeley Gribble of the 3rd Dragoon Guards fell at Kassassin (28th August 1882). This was the action where the enemy first advanced to attack with 12 guns and 8 battalions. General Graham had only 5 guns and 2^ battalions with a small force of cavalry and mounted infantry, but on being reinforced by another battalion he attacked in front, and the cavalry under Baker Russell charged in flank. Part of the Life Guards and part of the yth Dragoon Guards took part in this midnight charge and cut down the Egyptians at their guns. H. C. Gribble was serving as a volunteer with the yth Dragoon Guards, and was missing after the charge. His body was found in the desert at the same place on the 9th September, and was brought in and buried. This was only five years after he had left the school. Another Old Harrovian who volunteered 213 OLD HARROW DAYS for the campaign of '82 was the late Major Henry Herbert Edwards of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He was attached to the Royal Irish Regiment, but was acting with the mounted cavalry at the moment he was wounded. He was taking part in a recon- naissance, and found himself in a perfect hailstorm of bullets. Edwards was wounded, and a poor brother officer, who had not been married three months, mortally. Our men were on the bank of a canal, and Edwards asked for water. This was brought to him, but as the bottle was being handed to him, it was smashed by an enemy's bullet. Edwards was wounded on the same day on which H. C. Gribble fell. He recovered from that wound, was mentioned in the despatches, was appointed to the Hon. Corps of Gentle- men-at-Arms, but has since died. He was a brave man and a good fellow. Two other Old Harrovians Captain Henry Brandram Headley (who was in our Football Eleven) of the 2oth Regiment, and Herbert Wybault Colvin, Lieutenant in the Royal Marines, both died at the close of this campaign. 214 OUR SCHOOL HEROES In the Soudanese Campaign of '84 the old School lost two valuable lives. The thin red line was dangerously thin when we fought in the Soudan. It was British pluck that licked the Mahdi. "There are 100,000 of the enemy and 28,000 of us, so the chances are four to one against us ; but we are well-trained men, and they are poor undisciplined heathens." 1 The best account that has appeared of the battle of El Teb is from the pen of this brave trooper, William H. Saunders, in the iQth Hussars : " We were the leading squadron (the regiment being formed up in squadron column), and our commanding officer galloped us still on, the consequence being we were cut off from the main body and surrounded by some 700 or 800 of the enemy, who thought that they had us. 'Troops, right about wheel!' and every man gripped his sword as though his life was in his hand, and we went back again through the black beggars. It was five minutes' hard riding, but we did it." Unfortunately one of those who did not get back through " the black beggars " was i A Private Soldier in Egypt. The Nineteenth Century, June 1885. "5 OLD HARROW DAYS Captain Frederick Arthur Freeman, who fell gallantly fighting against overwhelming odds (2 Qth February 1884). At Tamai we were as much outnumbered by the enemy as we were at El Teb; 4300 British troops, with only 12 guns and 6 machine guns, encountered 10,000 savages. And how those savages fought! Mahomet had studied human nature down to the dregs when he invented the houri. Ask any private of the Black Watch which is the uglier customer the rush of fanatic spearmen or a charge of cavalry, and he will give the palm to the follower of the Mahdi. It was on the 1 3th March 1884 that the Black Watch formed square at Tamai. The attack of our brave enemy broke the square, and Major Aitken was surrounded and cut off from his men. Lance-Corporal Finlay at once rushed back, and with another corporal endeavoured at the cost of their own lives to rescue their Major. They all three fell with their faces to the foe, buried under a crowd of spears. The Victoria Cross would have been Percy Finlay's had he lived, but in the opinion of his old schoolfellows even the Victoria Cross 216 OUR SCHOOL HEROES could not have made his death more glorious. In the Soudan campaign of 1885 our old school lost five valuable lives. The campaign of '85 was a most extraordinary one. Our cavalry were mounted on camels, our infantry on horses, while our sailors were fighting in the middle of the desert. I was reminded of this by the fate of my old Elstree and Harrow schoolfellow, Benjamin Ingham Tidswell, a Major in the ist Royal Dragoons. He died while serving with the Heavy Camel Regiment of the Nile Expedition on the i8th June 1885. I am the more anxious to mention his name here as there happens to be no monument to him in the aisle of our School Chapel. Very few names are missing from those consecrated walls of those who fell in the Crimean War and subsequently. There certainly is not a more brilliant name upon our Chapel walls than that of Frederick Gustavus Burnaby. He was an extraordinary athlete, a ready writer, a brilliant linguist, a splendid officer, and a fearless man. In athletics and in languages he was emphatic- 217 OLD HARROW DAYS ally the strong man of Harrow. He could break a poker across his neck and shoulders, and could address you fluently in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian, and fairly well (so I am told) in Turkish and Arabic. His jumping feats were as extra- ordinary as Calverley's, but Burnaby went in for high and Calverley for long jumping. He possessed both in mind and person all that wins and retains the admiration of his fellows. Unfortunately there was one honour which had not fallen to his lot, and which, as a brave man, he coveted. That was the Victoria Cross. It was to win this glorious decoration which has been won by my old schoolfellow, Lord Gifford, V.C., and other Old Harrovians that Burnaby volunteered for the Soudan. One who knew him tells me that with the lightheartedness that was his second nature, Colonel Burnaby^ went out with a shot-gun to the Soudan much as if he were going on a sporting tour. His last act at Abu Klea (January i7th, 1885) was the fitting close of a brilliant career. He endeavoured to save a non-commissioned officer's life r and 218 OUR SCHOOL HEROES lost his own. Pity is wasted on a hero. He beat even his own record by his glorious death. The brave Burnaby was not the only Harrovian we lost at Abu Klea. Viscount St Vincent died of wounds he received at that battle. John E. Leveson Jervis (as he then was) entered the School with me, and we went up from form to form together. A kinder-hearted companion than Jervis never walked the Hill. Poor fellow! he served through the Zulu War of '79, the Afghan War of '80, the Transvaal Campaign of, '81, the Egyptian Campaign of '82, but did not survive our last Soudanese Campaign. The late Major-General Wm. Earle, C.S.I., C.B., who belongs to one of our best known Harrovian families, was one of the most dis- tinguished officers that our school can claim. He served throughout the Crimean War and the Egyptian Campaign of '82. Our old schoolfellow's death at Kerbekan is thus feel- ingly referred to in the despatch of General Brack enbury. 219 OLD HARROW DAYS " CAMP OPPOSITE DULKA ISLAND, " loth February 1882. "Having found enemy in position, Gen. Earle concentrated Staffordshire Regiment and Black Watch here yesterday, reconnoitred this position, and advanced this morning to attack it." ..." The enemy's numbers were not great, but their position was extremely strong and difficult, and they fought with the most determined bravery. . . . Gen. Earle was amongst the foremost in the attack, and, to the deep sorrow of every officer and man in the force, was killed on the summit of the Koppie." When General Earle gave the order to charge the enemy, Colonel Eyre of the Staffordshire Regiment was the first up the hill, and, turning round, shouted, "Come on, you men of Staffordshire ; I'll take this point or die in the attempt." The men responded to the call, and bayoneted every Arab on the hill, but those two splendid officers, General Earle and Colonel Eyre, were both shot down. No public school can claim the honour of educating Colonel Eyre, for he rose from the ranks. The 220 OUR SCHOOL HEROES victory at Kirbekan was due, in the first place, to General Earle's tactics. He had the courage to abandon the practice of fighting in square, and returned to the older traditions of the British Army. The enemy at Kirbekan "numbered 15,000 men, armed mostly with Remingtons, yet General Earle, with 1000 infantry in all and two guns, after five hours' fighting, turned them out of all their defences one of them being a fort on the summit of a steep hill, only to be reached by climbing on hands and knees the result being a larger comparative loss to the enemy than in any of the previous battles, with a loss to ourselves in killed of less than one per cent" 1 Captain Herman Frederick Elliot of the Black Watch served under General Earle. He survived the Soudanese Campaign of '85, but has since died. His monumental stone stands near those of his two brother officers (General Earle and Tom Graham-Stirling) and Lance- Corporal Finlay of his regiment, in the Chapel of the school which is proud of all four. 1 " Our System of Infantry Tactics," by Sir Patrick MacDougall. The Nineteenth Century, May 1885. 221 OLD HARROW DAYS James Bernard Richardson, who was Head of Mr Hutton's House, was also lost in this campaign, but how he met with his death was never known. It was probably on the day of the fight at MacNeilPs Zereba as he was out on vedette duty. Two or three days after the fight his whistle was found, but noth- ing else. At the time this sentence is written, the last Old Harrovians to whom monuments have been reared in our chapel are Francis Alexander Kinglake Foster of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, and Captain Herbert Richard Browne, Political Officer at the Looshai Hills. F. A. K. Foster was killed on the Chin-Lushai Expedition, Burmah, on the 1 2th January 1890, little more than four years after he had left the school. Captain H. R. Browne was killed by Looshais in September 1890. The Chief Commissioner of Assam spoke of him in the highest terms. Of the blood-tax that we have to pay to maintain our Empire, Harrow bears her full share. Whether it be on the veldts of South 222 OUR SCHOOL HEROES Africa, the sands of Upper Egypt, the swamps of Burmah, or the passes of Afghanistan, there are Old Harrovians ready to die for their Queen and country. It is the lot of few to die in such a blaze of glory as did Teignmouth Melvill ; but all his schoolfellows are ready, like him, to lay down their lives in the discharge of their duty. Captain Teignmouth Melvill, V.C., of the 24th Regiment, was one of the most unas- suming men I have ever known. He was the younger son of the late Mr Philip Melvill, the last Military Secretary to the East India Com- pany, and the father and grandfather of old Harrovians. In 1879 Mr Melvill had attained a patriarchal age. His life had not only been one of exceptional length and usefulness, but also of exceptional happiness. When the fatal news of Teignmouth's death reached Cornwall (January 22nd, 1879), they were afraid to tell their father. Their fears were groundless. When he heard how his son had fallen, while attempting, with Captain Coghill (after the battle of Isandlwhana), to save the colours of his regiment, the noble old man could, after the first burst of grief, with difficulty conceal his 223 OLD HARROW DAYS pride and his joy. This feeling was naturally not diminished by the unique honour subse- quently conferred on his son. Teignmouth Melvill is the only old Harrovian who received the Victoria Cross after his death. Teign- mouth MelvilPs son joined his father's regiment, the 24th. A few weeks ago, at the Trooping of the Colours at Gibraltar, the colours which had been saved, attached to Teignmouth MelvilPs belt, were carried by his son. Of Teignmouth Melvill, V.C., as of every soldier whose name is inscribed with honour on the walls of his old school chapel, Scott's lines are true: " He died a gallant knight, With sword in hand for England's right." 224 CHAPTER VII A GLIMPSE OF HARROW UNDER DR GEORGE BUTLER TT is not many Harrovians that write their reminiscences. Through the kindness of my friend, Captain J. W. Gambier, R.N., the well-known writer in the Fortnightly, I have been favoured with a perusal of the un- published Memoir of his father (the Rev. Samuel James Gambier) who was both a monitor and in the cricket eleven at a time when the School was rich in boys destined to become famous. S. J. Gambier entered the School in 1821 as a boarder in the House (The Grove) of Mr Batten, who had married a daughter of that renowned Evangelical, Venn of Clapham. He seems to have entertained the greatest regard and affection for Mr Batten, "but" (and here are quoted ipsissima verba with the omission of the diarist's de- p 225 OLD HARROW DAYS scription of the then Vicar of Harrow) "for a time he (Rev. S. E. Batten) was alienated into doing me the greatest injustice, but this at the instigation of his wife, the creature and lamb of the flock of Cunning- ham, the Vicar, who was disappointed that I had not become 'one of his/ as a nephew of Lord Gambier, . Through this for the first time I was 'sent up,' 1 and now after fifty years I can see Dr George Butler's face of wonder and dismay at my humilia- tion." To appreciate the allusion to Lord Gambier, one must remember that he was an Evan- gelical Peer and the Evangelical Admiral of the Fleet. On board his flagship prayers were said every morning. He was also a species of nautical John Howard. He thought the amount of grog allowed to our sailors excessive, and as a Lord of the Admiralty he carried this view into action. He did much more, and had he been an old Har- rovian I might have been permitted to linger 1 To be " sent up " to the head master was tantamount to a birching. 226 HARROW UNDER BUTLER on a few of the reforms which this brave old salt carried out at the Admiralty, but he was not an old Harrovian, so I must regretfully go on my way. Adolphus Trollope (who left Harrow in 1820) tells us that the Hill was in his time tenanted by two factions the Druryites and the Cunning- hamites. The Rev. J. W. Cunningham was not only the Vicar of the Parish, but a Governor of the School, while of the six under-masters in Trollope's time three were Drurys, and one, the Rev. Harry Drury, enjoys immor- tality as Byron's tutor. Between these Har- rovian Capulets and Montagues Dr George Butler had to keep the balance even, and so did his pupil, S. J. Gambier, though in a different spirit to his head master. S. J. Gambier was emphatically an anti-Cunning- hamite; but this did not prevent him also being an anti-Druryite. His description of the Rev. Harry Drury is very similar and almost identical to Adolphus Trollope's in his "What I Remember." As neither Gambier nor Trollope were Evangelicals, the fact that Harry Drury was also not one did not 227 OLD HARROW DAYS prejudice either against him. The question therefore that all lovers of Byron and his School would ask is: Was the Rev. Harry Drury the kind of tutor for an extremely sensitive, erratic, and impressionable boy of genius? After reading Trollope and Gambier one is tempted to think that to the list of Byron's unfortunate connections father, mother, and wife may be added still one more, that of his tutor. At the Speech Day of 1825, S. J. Gambier made two speeches. It was his recitation from the (Edipus Tyrannus that drew from the mouth of Sir Robert Peel the remark that " James Gambier bore off the palm against all competitors," and the diarist adds, "even against Charles Wordsworth, the general favourite." James Gambier's triumphs were not limited to Speech Room. He was in the Cricket Eleven in 1825, an eleven memorable for its episcopal character. The team included Charles Words- worth, Bishop of St Andrews (Captain), and Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster. " I played at Lord's," writes S. J. Gambier, "against Eton and Winchester, the latter's first 228 HARROW UNDER BUTLER appearance there. Bad as was our score, mine was the best I forget what. Both matches were lost by Charles Wordsworth's panic and bad play." James Gambier's friends at Harrow were this same Charles Wordsworth, Richard Chevenix Trench, Sir Thomas Acland, and Sidney Herbert. Verily in those days there were giants in the school. It is a pleasant duty to mention the fact that our distinguished Old Harrovian Trench was a favourite poet of John Bright's. Our Puritan statesman was too great a man to exclude a bishop from his sympathy. Still it is not too much to say that a bishop had to prove his mettle before he was admitted into that Rochdale sanctum on an equal footing with John Milton, James Russell Lowell, and John Greenleaf Whittier. It is a singular fact that the War Secretary during our only war against Russia was himself half a Russian. Sidney Herbert's mother was a Russian lady, and this perhaps partly accounted for his charm of manner, as any one who has mixed in Russian society will admit. It was to the young Harrovian that the older Harrovian, Sir Robert Peel, turned, when, after one of 229 OLD HARROW DAYS Cobden's onslaughts on the Corn Laws, he said, " You must answer this, for I can't." " The Soldier's Friend " was not the only Old Harro- vian who came of Russian stock. Prince Lieven, the Russian Ambassador at the Court of St James's after the Battle of Waterloo, sent his three sons, Paul, Alexander, and Constantine, all to Harrow. Count de Jarnac, afterwards French Ambassador at the Court of St James's, and a well-known French author, was a Harrow boy. Prince Charles of Leiningen (the son of our British Admiral), now an officer in the Prussian Guards at Potsdam, is an Old Harrovian. There is a certain cosmopolitan flavour about the old Hill, for have we not had the Duke of Genoa, the nephew of the King of Italy, the son and nephew of the King of Siam, and the cousin of the present Khedive of Egypt. It is a note- worthy fact that the last head of the school, A. Mavrogordato, bears the same name and belongs to the same family as the Prince A. Mavro- gordato, who as the head of the Provisional Government of Western Greece signed (i8th April 1 8 24) the proclamation of a national mourn- ing for Byron, " the great man who is gone." 230 HARROW UNDER BUTLER The last decade of Dr George Butler's reign was rich in interesting men. Another contem- porary of Gambler's was the late Henry Fowler Broadwood, who was the constructor of the first grand piano with frame entirely of iron. Another contemporary was Alexander Ellice, afterwards Senior Wrangler and First Smith's Prizeman. Another contemporary was the late C. J. Harenc, who ranked as the finest gentleman bowler of his day. Another contemporary was the late Octavius E. Coope, M.P. for Middlesex, and well known to us all for his famous firm of Ind Coope & Co. The mention of his name re- minds us that in the ancient and honourable mystery of brewing hops Herga can almost claim a monopoly of excellence. For a don vivant it is not only difficult but impossible to drink beer which has not been brewed by an Old Harrovian. The two Burton firms, which possess a world-wide reputation, are Bass and Allsopp. Lord Burton (Bass), the late Lord Hindlip (Allsopp), and Mr John Gretton, M.P. (Bass), are Old Harrovians. But this does not complete our list of famous brewers. Macaulay's schoolboy knows how Dr Johnson sold to Bar- 231 OLD HARROW DAYS clay-Perkins " not a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." One of the present directors of Thrale's old brewery is T. G. Barclay, an Old Harrovian. Barclay-Perkins may lay claim to be the only brewery which, thanks to Mrs Thrale and Dr Johnson, has still an aroma of literature. Assuredly if all the products of Herga were on a par with her beer she would " whip the world." Through the kindness of another friend, Mr George H. M. Batten, late Secretary to the Government of India, a number of letters written from Harrow (1819 to 1825) 1 by 1 The School Register gives 1817 as the year of his entry, but this is incorrect. He was born on 7th April 1808, and was therefore almost eleven when he entered in the Easter term of 1819. He died young in 1834 in India. In pointing out a few inaccuracies I am not unmind- ful of the obligations which all Old Harrovians are under to the compilers of the Harrow School Register. With many of us this volume stands in the favourite corner of our library. Our grateful thanks are due to Messrs R. C.Welch, E. Graham, E. W. Howson, B. P. Lascelles, M. G. Dauglish, and to the " four old Harrovians " who would not allow their names to be mentioned by Mr Welch for what must have been to them a labour of love, and for what to us is a " golden treasury " of Harrovian lore. 232 HARROW UNDER BUTLER George Maxwell Batten to his parents, the Rev. J. H. Batten, D.D., Principal of the East India College, Hertford, and Mrs Batten, have been placed at my disposal. Rarely have I enjoyed reading letters more. G. M. Batten was in the house of the Rev. S. E. Batten, his uncle. Like any one else con- nected with Harrow he refers to the Rev. Mark Drury being " very kind " to him. It is strange to find the formal manners of his times cropping up in a schoolboy's letters, as he refers to a new boy, not as Fane, but as "Mr Fane." The following reference to one of the first scientific instruments ever exhibited to Harrow boys is not without interest as showing the faint dawn of scientific teaching on the Hill. After describing an orrery very fairly for a boy of ten years of age (March i4th, 1819) "Dr Butler spoke very highly of it indeed. He said the man whose name is Bird had applied to him last year for his leave to show it, but he refused it, but now he said the head masters of Winchester and Rugby had approved of it, and that the interest which the boys at those places had in it had been 233 OLD HARROW DAYS very great indeed." He also said, "that he had considered a good deal about it, and his only seeming objection was that it would inter- fere with the time in which the boys did their Latin theme and other exercises." When only 14! years old we find G. M. Batten quoting Latin to his father, referring to his being "dethroned" by "Martineau first and Wordsworth second." Wordsworth is our old friend, the athlete, grammarian and Bishop. Arthur Martineau was subsequently head of the School. Referring to A. Martineau, Batten writes : " He is about a year older than I am ; and if nobody else could keep me from wrong here, his example would." Our correspondent is in the sixth form before he is fifteen. He evidently liked Dr George Butler, and was liked by him. The following is not a bad description of his teacher by his pupil, aged 14! years (Feb- ruary 23rd, 1823) "I like the sixth form very well; the Dr (i.e. Dr George Butler) is very par- ticular in everything, he is very minute in little things, so that when one is thinking of poetry, etc., he is thinking whether you have put your right stops, marks of exclamation, etc., but never- 234 HARROW UNDER BUTLER theless he attends to the other things." Very often a boy, who is thought stupid or indolent, is mentally criticising his master as thinking only of the anise and cumin of grammar, while neglect- ing the weightier matters of matter and form. No critic uses his eyes better than the critic who has to hold his tongue. We find Batten attending the auction of Lord Northwick's furniture in October 1823 "The books went very cheap, a fine quarto edition of Malthus on ' Population ' was knocked down to one of the boys for six shillings." Political economy must have been better understood in the twenties than in the sixties for a boy to have bought the work of that most original of our political economists. The name of "Parson Malthus" was not even known to us as a magni nominis umbra. Malthus was Professor of Political Economy at the East India College, and was therefore a friend of the Batten family. He happened to be our monitor's godfather, but this does not explain away the curious fact that another Harrow boy should have thought it worth his while to pay six shillings for his book. 235 OLD HARROW DAYS We have a glimpse of the " Cunninghamite ladies." Batten writes (October 3oth, 1823): " My uncle and aunt (Mr and Mrs Batten) are particularly kind to me, and I am always with them, which throws me into the company of all the Cunninghamite ladies, who already call me 'George' and season their intimacy with sub- scriptions to Bible Associations, Missionaries, etc., etc." In one of his letters occurs a de- scription of a school ceremony long obsolete. " And now I must acquaint you that last Mon- day week I was Rolled into the Hall ! ! ! Fancy to yourself, my head barely covered with a coat, and my arms to protect it at their own expense, projected over a table, from which, at the dis- tance of four yards, four boys with a dozen of rolls apiece threw at me with all their might and will for a minute, which seemed terribly long. The sensation at the time was really more painful than I could have conceived, for the strokes on the brain came so close one upon another that one feels smashed to pieces. In- deed they all allow that if the time was more than a minute nobody could endure it. This went off after breakfast, but my poor noddle 236 HARROW UNDER BUTLER could not sustain the pressure of a hat for two days. These miseries ceased after three days more, and now I am George Batten, and enjoy the comforts of the Hall company, and a Fag very much." In this letter we find a reference to a modern scourge, which shows that there is nothing new under the sun. " There is a sort of influenza going about Harrow. All Dr Butler's servants are very ill, and so is his little boy." A reference may be interpolated here to another school custom long since obsolete " squash." It was in full swing in the fifties, as Mr Charles Barclay, who wore his flannels in '56 and '57, has given me a full account of this interesting ceremony. The Sixth Form, Fifth Form, Shell and Fourth Form used to elect per forms their respective club-keepers for their cricket grounds. The ostensible object of the election was to secure self-government to the boys in their games. This was the ostensible object, but the real object seems to have been to give the majority an opportunity of wiping out old scores against unpopular boys. As soon as he had declared for whom he voted, 237 OLD HARROW DAYS a general melee took place, and the unhappy elector was kicked, cuffed, and hustled by all his form fellows. The delights of "squash" were not reserved for boys personally unpopular, but were afforded in ample measure to the boys of any unpopular house, and of course to all Home Boarders. What you see in Dame Europa's School you would also see in John Lyon's a House unpopular by reason of its undeniable success. An insignificant House was never unpopular. Let none of my readers regard the "squash" as a joke. It more re- sembled in the case of an unpopular boy kicking down the School steps, that terrible punishment inflicted on very rare occasions by boys on one of their own number, which no one who has seen is likely to forget. So serious was the hustling at " squash " that many boys used to declare themselves candidates for the sole reason of divesting themselves of their electoral privileges. There certainly never was a suffrage with more unpleasant consequences to those who exercised it. Both customs, "rolled into hall" and "squash," are proofs not only of the brutality of boys, but of their happy knack of 238 HARROW UNDER BUTLER calling a spade a spade. Both names hit off what used to take place to a nicety. To return to our friend George Batten, we find him writing to his father (November 27th, 1823) "that Dr Butler means to come down to you about the beginning of December in order to be present at the trial of the murderers Thurtell, Hunt, &c." Byron died on the igth April 1824, and on the igth May 1824 Batten (who was then sixteen years of age and a Monitor) writes to his father as follows : "The death of Lord Byron has caused a great sensation here; Mr H. Drury is one of his executors, and he has expressed in his will a particular request to be buried in Harrow Churchyard in a spot he describes. The people about remember that he used to fix himself for hours there, midst storms and rain, as if deeply thinking, and often crying bitterly. A child of his was buried there last year." He refers more than once to his having to deliver at Speech Day "Lord Byron's beauti- ful address to Greece in his Introduction to the Giaour." 239 OLD HARROW DAYS " No breath of air to break the wave That rolls below the Athenian's grave. " To descend from Mount Olympus to Harrow Hill, Batten tells us (i3th June 1825) that his uncle bought the Grove for ^5 125. The landowners of Harrow may thank its masters and boys for their unearned increment. While the school toils and spins rents go up by leaps and bounds. Sic vos non vobisl What must be the value of the Grove now? Only a portion of this property has this year been sold for double the sum. 240 CHAPTER VIII OLD HARROVIANS TN a book devoted to Harrow, a few words about those who have built up her fame will not be out of place. That she can boast of three of the Queen's Prime Ministers (Lord Palmerston, Lord Aberdeen, and Sir Robert Peel), and two earlier in the century (Mr Percival and Lord Goderich), is known not only to the Macaulay schoolboy, but to every Harrow schoolboy. We also know our Bowen's Songs, and learn from them that " grandpapa's grandpapa was at the school with Bruce, who travelled far," and with Rodney, who "beat the French and de Grasse." James Bruce was at Harrow under Dr Cox in 1742. The perusal of the Life of this famous traveller draws your attention to the extraordinary change which has come over the public mind in the reception they Q 241 OLD HARROW DAYS accorded then and now to books of travel. Bruce returned to England in 1774. He was frank and open in his manner, and both in London and Paris discussed the wonders that he had seen. Instead of being received with the cordiality and enthusiasm which Mr H. M. Stanley and Dr Nansen have aroused, Bruce was received with a universal cry of suspicion and distrust. When Dr Nansen lectured at Harrow this spring, Mr Welldon exhorted the boys to give him a cheer. We must all regret that no head master of his day could have welcomed in as hearty a fashion our British traveller. The only explanation that can be offered for the treat- ment of the Scotch traveller was that Society was then saturated with the Voltairean virus of disbelief. The truly accursed doctrine of nil admirari, which was scotched though not destroyed by the French Revolution, had taken possession of even so great a man as Dr Johnson. In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1789 it is stated that he had declared to Sir John Hawkins, "that when he first conversed with Mr Bruce, the Abyssinian 242 OLD HARROVIANS traveller, he was very much inclined to be- lieve that he had been there, but that he had afterwards altered his opinion." One is tempted to ask whether the lexicographer could have uttered so atrocious a sentiment had James Bruce been an English squire instead of being a Scotch laird. To give only one instance of the unjust scepticism of the British Public of that day towards their own countryman, they thought our Old Harrovian a liar, because he described men and beasts as flying before an army of little flies. Curiously enough my wife and I were present (ist November 1892) when another great traveller, Mr H. M. Stanley, gave a lecture in the Harrow Speech Room, and laid the very greatest stress on this self-same fly. He described the Mahommedan conqueror who rode into the Atlantic Ocean and de- manded more worlds to conquer. "Why," he asked, "did not this valorous person go south? Because a little fly bade the con- queror ' Halt ! ' " His grown-up hearers will also remember his epigrammatic description of Emin Pasha, as "one who knew all the 243 OLD HARROW DAYS ologies, but not his own mind." It was an admirable lecture. Dr Welldon was himself struck with it, for he called my attention to the fact that it lasted an hour and a half and yet the smallest boy in the school en- joyed it. Fancy schoolboys listening to a sermon half that length without a cough or a shuffle of the feet! Very tardy justice has been done to James Bruce, and so far as I know, no monument or portrait of him is to be found at Harrow. His memory is, however, embalmed in Bowen's verse, and that confers immortality on an old Har- rovian. This fearless man, who had tra- velled unharmed through the darkest places of the earth, met his end by tumbling down his own stairs. Bruce of Kinnaird had reason to be proud of his ancestors, but his pos- terity has still more reason to be proud of him. The unpopularity of James Bruce stands out in striking contrast to the popularity of Sir William Jones. Dr Thackeray and Dr Sumner divide between them the honour of producing the first linguist and scholar of whom Harrow 244 OLD HARROVIANS can boast. The great Jones and that large family has not produced a greater knew thirteen languages thoroughly and twenty-eight fairly well; but he was specially famous as the first Englishman to master Sanskrit. Like Nelson, his work was completed before the age of fifty, and like Nelson he was buried in St Paul's an honour that falls to few old boys of any school. Unlike James Bruce, Sir William Jones' excellences were universally recognised in his lifetime. In his case there was a con- spiracy of praise, not to say adulation. It is rather a disagreeable surprise to find that his only detractor is his old school chum, Dr Parr. " When Jones dabbled in metaphysics he forgot his logic, and when he meddled with Oriental literature he lost his taste." This is a new version of David and Jonathan. The remark surprises us the more, as Dr Parr was a warm- hearted and generous man. He could not read Kant even in a translation, and therefore was hardly qualified to condemn Sir William's meta- physics. Parr had his faults, like other men, but he is generally held to be the most remark- able pedagogue that has ever held office in 245 OLD HARROW DAYS Harrow School. He was in a threefold sense the product of the Hill, for he was born there, educated there, and himself taught there. He was one of the first to encourage the boys to play cricket, but he also encouraged pugilism, and arranged that the "mills" should take place on a spot which he could see from his study window. The grass now grows on our ancient milling ground. Fights no longer take place there. As human nature remains the same, and as the milling ground was a safety valve, I for one am not so sure that Dr Parr was not right and posterity wrong in their condemnation of schoolboy pugilism. Whether Dr Parr was in any sense a patron of the Ring is more than I should like to say probably as he was a clergyman, he was not, but Mr Conan Doyle has reminded us that in our Doctor's time statesmen and philanthropists, like Windham, Fox, and Al thorp, were to be found at the side of the Ring. So gentle and refined an Old Harrovian as " Barry Cornwall," who only died in 1874, took lessons in boxing of Tom Cribb. When a subscription was got up for Tom Sayers, the English champion, in the House of Commons 246 OLD HARROVIANS not much more than thirty years ago, Lord Palmerston was a liberal subscriber. The Ring is now as dead as cock-fighting, which, by the by, lingered on at a farmhouse near Harrow almost to my own time. We may congratulate our- selves on the extinction of the Ring, but whether our milling ground, where boys never fought for prizes of any kind, as richly deserves extinction is another matter. A school is so different from after life in this respect that as a man you can generally avoid contact with one thoroughly disagreeable to you, but at school this is often impossible. You may be bound by a triple cord of house, form, and room to a bully. If this were so, in my time there were two Cities of Refuge open to you the Chapel and the milling ground. Experto crede I had recourse to both. German philosophy furnishes us with the only suitable terms. The chapel was the subjective place of refuge ; the milling ground the objective. You might forgive the bully in your prayers, but for- giveness did not remove the bully, who stood like a lion in your path both at work and at play. The boy who submitted tamely to be 247 OLD HARROW DAYS bullied, in the opinion of his fellows, deserved all that he could get the remedy was always in his hands. He had only to challenge his bully to fight in the school milling ground. He would probably be "licked," for Lamb was right in asserting that brutality is often found awkwardly coupled with valour. But van- quished or conqueror, he would walk from or more probably was carried from that milling ground a free man. No one would ever bully him again. As we are on this topic, and as, owing to the tragedy that has recently been enacted at Haileybury, the question of bullying at our public schools is much discussed, I may mention that once, speaking to a distinguished Wykehamist, who left Winchester early in the sixties, I asked him whether in his time there was bullying at Winchester. "Bullying?" he replied. "I am almost inclined to ask was there anything else ? " No such remark could be made about Harrow in the sixties at least not with truthfulness. If bullying means physi- cal torture, it was almost non-existent. But of teasing, which has only to be continued long enough to amount to mental torture, there was 248 OLD HARROVIANS far too much. It was not confined to the large houses, as one of the worst cases of bullying in my time took place in a small house. There was a curious notion current in my time that a boy must confine his bullying to his own house. I well remember a boy in our house complaining of being bullied by one or two bigger boys in another house. Immediately our big fifth formers, all more or less tarred with the same brush, pounced on the two boys who had had " the cheek " to tease one of our small fry, and gave them a sound thrashing. Poaching was not to be permitted at any price ! If it be true, as I am told it is, that a bully is now as extinct on the Hill as a dodo, that is a convincing proof of Harrovian progress. I remember, in the autumn of 1894, accompanying my old tutor when he read his house prayers. I noticed that one very bright and intelligent boy remained standing, while the rest of course knelt. After prayers Mr Bosworth Smith called this boy up and introduced him to me. He was Prince Ibrahim, 1 cousin of the reigning Khedive of 1 This boy has since distinguished himself by carrying off more than one prize from his English competitors. 249 OLD HARROW DAYS Egypt. Entering into conversation with the Prince, I asked him whether he knew what bullying meant. The word was absolutely with- out meaning to him. I asked a schoolfellow one of the Clan Gilbey who stood near him, whether there was any way of enlightening this Egyptian darkness. He shook his head. Happy Prince ! Happy School ! One of the most characteristic of Byron's schoolfellows was Theodore Hook. "Does anyone merit the title of Snob more than that poor fellow?" asks Thackeray, and then he answers his own question : "I think poor 'Crook's' life a wholesome one. It teaches you not to put your trust in great people in great, splendid, and titled snobs." We are only reminded of poor Hook now by allusions of this character, yet Hook's novels are both amus- ing and instructive. They give you the views of an Eldonian Tory sixty or seventy years ago. In this year of Jubilee, when our fellow-sub- jects from the Colonies are the most honoured of our guests, Hook's views on the Colonies strike you as positively ludicrous. His hero (?) Peregrine Bunce goes to Australia. Thus does 250 OLD HARROVIANS the novelist dismiss him : " If luck does not desert him, he will become the unfortunate hus- band of some rich Australian squaw, bearing the closest possible resemblance to a kangaroo ! " It is now many years ago since the Melbourne Punch remarked that when Victoria next applied for a loan in London, the kangaroo must come disguised as a Turk! Such a joke would not pass muster now, even in the columns of a comic paper. Generous Coleridge said that Hook was as much a genius as Dante. His life was almost as unhappy. He lived into the Queen's reign, but two other Old Harrovians, even more famous in literature, have only recently left us. I refer to the brothers Adolphus and Anthony Trollope. 1 Adolphus, the less known author of "The Siren," unfortunately for his popularity did not lay the scene of his novels in England. He was the more powerful thinker, but less of a humorist than his brother. Nathaniel Hawthorne's eulogy of 1 Adolphus and Anthony Trollope were both sub- sequently " Collegers " at Winchester as well as Home Boarders at Harrow. OLD HARROW DAYS Anthony Trollope's novels, "written on the strength of beef and through the inspiration of ale," is well known and well deserved. But it is not so much Trollope the novelist, as Trollope the old Harrovian, that is referred to here. He is the great instance in our literature of a successful man of letters who cordially hated his alma mater which un- fortunately for us happened to be Harrow. Absolutely free from all humbug witness his respect for Longman's name, but his liking it best at the bottom of a cheque he could no more simulate an affection which he did not feel than change his skin. He had been a Home Boarder at Harrow, and had drunk the cup of bitterness to the dregs. Nothing that he has written is more interesting and more full of vigour than the following extract from his "Autobiography" (Vol. I. p. 225) : "In my boyhood, when I would be crawl- ing up to school with dirty boots and trousers through the muddy lanes, I was always tell- ing myself that the misery of the hour was not the worst of it, but that the mud and solitude and poverty of the time would en- 252 OLD HARROVIANS sure me mud and solitude and poverty through my life. Those lads about me would go into Parliament, or become rectors and deans, or squires of parishes, or advo- cates thundering at the Bar. They would not live with me now but neither should I be able to live with them in after years. Nevertheless I have lived with them." As Anthony Trollope has spoken out so plainly, it is only fair to call the witnesses for the defence. Sir William Gregory's opinion of the future author of "Barchester Towers," so far as externals went, is almost identical with that of Dr George Butler, as recorded by the novelist himself. Writes Sir William : " I became intimate with Anthony Trollope, who sat next to me. He was a big boy, older than the rest of the form, and without exception the most slovenly and dirty boy I ever met. I avoided him, for he was rude and uncouth, but I thought him an honest, brave fellow. He was no sneak." x You may regret it, but external faults are i Sir William Gregory's " Autobiography," p. 35. 253 OLD HARROW DAYS just the faults for which Harrow boys refuse to make any allowance whatever. With them want of cleanliness is want of godliness. A spotless shirt in their eyes covers all moral ugliness. You are therefore not surprised to learn from Trollope's old schoolfellow that Anthony had not a single friend, but you are surprised to hear that he "was regarded by masters and by boys as an incorrigible dunce." In advanced old age Anthony Trollope met a Harrovian contemporary of mine. On ascertaining that his fellow guest also came from the Hill, the famous novelist remarked with asperity " I never liked Harrow." In my days " Orley Farm " was painted on a gate, and from the road you could see the lawn, which fifty years before had been so favourite a camping place for bailiffs. "The Story of my Life," by Augustus J. C. Hare, is the latest contribution to Harro- vian autobiography. It is well worth reading. S. J. Gambier's Memoir and G. M. Batten's Letters, with the reminiscences of the brothers Trollope, give us the lights and shade of Dr 254 OLD HARROVIANS George Butler's last decade. Sir Wm. Gregory's " Autobiography " contains a life-like sketch of Dr Longley. The Rev. H. J. Torre, who was head of the school under Dr Wordsworth, has in his "Recollections" rendered a similar service to his chief. Augustus J. C. Hare gives a vivid account of the school at a period (1847) when Dr Vaughan was beginning to brace up the school discipline. Writing to his mother, this is the picture he gives : " 1847, Feb. 12. Yesterday, contrary to rule, Dr Vaughan called Bill, and then told all the school to stay in their places, and said that he had found the keyhole of the cupboard in which the rods were kept stopped up, and that if he did not find out before one o'clock who did it, he would daily give the whole school, from the sixth form downwards, a new pun. of the severest kind." * What a contrast this strong man was to the second master, the Rev. Wm. Oxenham. The same hand gives us a picture of " Billy " asleep in class with the boys sticking his hair in curl papers ! Hare speaks of the bullying as i "The Story of My Life," Vol. I., p. 219. 2 55 OLD HARROW DAYS " terrible." He says that if you did not " keep up " at footer, you were flogged with thorn-sticks 'till the blood poured down outside your jersey." Nothing approaching this ever took place in my time twenty years later. He complains of the small boys being made to box in the evening for the delectation of the fifth form. This custom did survive into the sixties, at least in Dr Butler's House, and was known to us as " three room." The name was derived from the room in which the boxing took place. It was the only room in the house in which three boys used to sleep. It was not a custom that assisted the occupants of that room in their studies, a fact I may testify to, as I once was one of the three. A niche must be found here for two old Harrovians, whom Thackeray and Carlyle loved. The one, Charles Buller, who left the school in 1821, died young; the other, B. W. Procter, a pupil of Dr Joseph Drury, and subsequently of Tom Crib, lived into extreme old age. A politician requires the lungs of a "footer" player, and, unfortunately, Charles Buller pos- sessed only a hard head. Monckton Milnes' 256 OLD HARROVIANS epitaph on his friend is well known ; not so Thackeray's elegy. " Who knows the inevitable design ? Blest be he who took and gave ! Why should your mother, Charles, not mine, Be weeping at her darling's grave ? We bow to Heaven that will'd it so, That darkly rules the fate of all, That sends the respite or the blow, That's free to give or to recall." To B. W. Procter, known to posterity as Barry Cornwall, Thackeray dedicated his first great work may we not say his greatest work "Vanity Fair," and thus immortalised their friendship. To talk of Thackeray is to re- member another old Harrovian, who, had he but used the satirical powers Nature gave him, might have left, like him, an imperishable name. I refer to Calverley, known at Harrow as C. S. Blayds. He died comparatively young, like Charles Buller, but even had he enjoyed length of days, like Barry Cornwall, his incurable indolence would not have allowed him to leave, I will not say monumentum cere perennius, but some work not purely ephemeral. It is only natural to quote Horace when speaking R 257 OLD HARROW DAYS of Calverley, but the difference between the freedman's son and our old Harrovian was that the one secured lasting fame per laborem plurimum, while the other failed to secure it through lack of industry. Harrow has produced many lovers of Horace, but only one boy who is said to have jumped from the top to the bottom of the old school steps. The mention of this achievement of Calverley's reminds me of another recorded by Dr Butler of his old schoolfellow. Mr Harris went into Calverley's room one night after the orthodox hour for putting lights out, and found his candle burning. Mr Harris, in his unemotional way, ordered Calverley to learn the First Book of the Iliad, and say it in a week's time. Immediately after Mr Harris's exit from the room, Calverley relit his candle, and whether he learned or refreshed his memory by reading what he already knew, is uncertain, but immediately lessons were over at first school on the following morning, he presented himself to Mr Harris and expressed his wish to say his task. It is recorded that a slight trace of wonder passed over Mr Harris's countenance, but he took the book and bade 258 OLD HARROVIANS Calverley go on. Tried in various places throughout the book, he was found to have committed it all to memory, and his fault was expiated. x Calverley was nothing if not whimsical. In his days the favourite spot for smoking was on a stile down the Pinner Road which looked half a mile each way. Here the smoker could put out his pipe in safety if a master hove in sight. This kind of safe smoking did not suit Calverley. In the early fifties there was an old-fashioned 'bus which used to stand a derelict of coaching days in the Green in the front of the King's Head. Calverley selected this 'bus right under the noses of the masters as his favourite spot for a smoke. Calverley was tried for the Eleven, but did not win his flannels a distinction which he would have appre- ciated. In fact, he probably felt the disap- pointment of not being in the Eleven more than not being Senior Classic. It is vexatious to his old schoolfellows to think that he was only Second Classic, for had he been Senior Classic, Harrow could have boasted of three Senior Classics three years running. In 1854 1 " Literary Remains of Calverley, " page 22. 259 OLD HARROW DAYS Vaughan Hawkins was Senior Classic; in 1855 H. M. Butler ; and in 1856 Calverley was only a " might have been." Vaughan Hawkins was one of the youngest at the time of his examination, yet is reputed to have obtained (as Senior Classic) one of the largest number of marks upon record. The friendship of the two Senior Classics Vaughan Hawkins and H. M. Butler dates from Harrow days. The last of the Harrow Senior Classics was Walter Leaf, bracketed with Rawlins, an old Etonian (1874). May this honourable rivalry between our two ancient Schools long continue ! Walter Leaf (now Governor of the School) illustrates a pleasing feature in our school life, which it is not possible for all of us to imitate. He married the daughter of an Old Harrovian John Addington Symonds who in his turn had married the daughter of an Old Harrovian, Charles North of Rougham, who was the only son of Frederick North, Head of our School (1817-18), and for many years M.P. for Hast- ings. It is earnestly to be hoped that my friend's son, whose father, grandfather, great- granflfather, and great-great-grandfather were 260 OLD HARROVIANS all distinguished Harrovians, will himself come to the School. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of our School keeping up its old ties and associations. I have in a footnote 1 mentioned a few family names which have been represented in the School in the long period that stretches from Dr Drury to Mr Welldon. I have omitted many, which, like the respected names of Arkwright, Balfour, Beresford, Pon- sonby, do not quite run into double figures, and have rigidly restricted myself to those which do. Nor have I taken names which represent not one, but several families. The presence of these names, and such as these in the School bill books, is a proof that the Hill is true to its best traditions both at work and at play. If such names as these vanished from our bill books, and such is far from the case at present, Harrow would be "nodding to its fall." The nightmare with every Old Har- rovian is the fear lest his grand old School should become the school of boys whose parents 1 Acland, Barclay, Bosanquet, Bouverie, Bridgeman, Buxton, Digby, Dundas, Grimston, Hamilton, Kenyon, Long, and Peel. 261 OLD HARROW DAYS do not wish their sons to work. It seems scarcely conceivable that any one outside bed- lam should harbour so idiotic a wish, yet all acquainted with our great public schools will bear me out that this class of parents not only exists, but is on the increase. Mr Welldon, our man at the wheel, will keep our good ship Harrow off the rocks of plutocracy. There is no magic in this world but that of industry, and the lack of it would make the glories of Harrow as " a tale that is told." As a proof that ideality and unselfishness have not abandoned our Hill, the name of Clement Harris, who left the School so recently as '86, may be mentioned here. Clement Harris followed the example and shared the fate of Byron. He was only twenty-four years of age when, on the heights of Pentepigadia, in the spring of this year, he received his death wound. His musical ability was extraordinary, and his friends confidently predicted for him a great career, when his generous and enthusiastic character caused him to embark on a hopeless cause. Had he devoted his life to personal ends he might have attained all that men prize, 262 OLD HARROVIANS but he preferred to lay down his life for his friends. Among the best known of living Harrovian men of letters are Augustus J. C. Hare, Sir G. O. Trevelyan, who may now have time to complete his delightful life of Charles James Fox, Sir Henry Cunningham, the biographer of Lord Bowen, Walter Sichel, the author of several brilliant articles in the Quarterly, T. B. Harbottle, whose " Dictionary of Classical Quotations " is now in the press, Walter B. Harris (the brother of Clement), who speaks Arabic more fluently than most of us speak French, Lord Frederick Hamilton, the Editor of the Pall Mall Magazine, L. J. Maxse, the Editor of the National Review, and Edward T. Reed, for whose initials we seek so eagerly in our weekly Punch. Among the best known of Harrovian newspaper proprietors are W. M. Johnstone of The Standard and Thomas and Henry Sowler of The Manchester Courier. In giving the stage its greatest writer of comedy since the days of Shakespeare, Harrow has done more for Thespis than any other public school. But Sheridan has had no Harrovian 263 OLD HARROW DAYS followers ; a great captain indeed, but one with- out an army. Harrow does not lie within the confines of Bohemia. Yet when one remem- bers the blameless lives that were led by those gentlemen of the stage David Garrick, Charles Young, Charles Kean, and Wrn. Charles Macready (not to mention some still with us), one can only regret that so few Harrovians are found in their ranks. Since the produc- tion of The School for Scandal the only connection of Harrow with the stage is the very honourable fact that Dr Drury Byron's head master assisted to establish Charles Kean the elder at Drury Lane Theatre, a sign of liberality in a churchman more rare in his days than in ours. Then there was James Bradshaw, M.P. for Canterbury (an Old Harro- vian), more happy in his connection with the stage than in his utterances about our Queen. He married the elder Miss Tree. No litera- ture, even one so varied as our own, can boast of many masterpieces, but The School for Scandal is one of them. Tom Moore reminds us that nearly all our first-rate comedies have been the productions of very 264 OLD HARROVIANS young men. Congreve wrote all his comedies before he was five and twenty. Farquhar produced The Constant Couple in his two and twentieth year. Vanbrugh was a young Ensign when he sketched out The Relapse and The Provoked Wife. Sheridan was twenty- six when he wrote The School for Scandal. It is no disparagement to these dramatists to say that knowledge of human nature formed but little part of their stock in trade. The comedies of Shakespeare and Moliere stand in a totally different category, but to discriminate is not to disparage, and in the demesne of "Comedies of Manners," the comedy of our Old Harrovian has long been considered the high water mark of genius. "I cannot thole to hear sic a sot as Sherry aye classed wi' Pitt and Burke." So speaks the shepherd in Noctes Ambrosiana, but the shepherd was wrong, and posterity will always classify "Sherry" with Pitt and Burke. The reason of this eminence is not far to seek. It is the old tale of the ugly duckling. The story of Sheridan's life reads like a fairy tale. The boy who (as Dr Parr wrote) possessed industry 265 OLD HARROW DAYS " just sufficient to protect him from disgrace " developed into one of the most industrious men that has ever hewed his way to fame. Of all our men of letters and of all our statesmen, Sheridan emphatically merits the title of the industrious apprentice. There was in my time, and possibly it still lingers on the Hill, a prejudice against a " swat " (an opprobrious term for a worker) as a boy who could not be brilliant. Nothing is further from the truth. When Sheridan had become famous at the age of twenty-six, he might, like Congreve, have remained an idle man for the rest of his days. Such works as The Rivals and The School for Scandal almost entitled their author to a life-long holiday. This was not Sheridan's view. Having con- quered one world, he aspired to conquer another, and he did conquer that other. Upon this the opinion of the greatest of his contemporaries may be quoted. Edmund Burke said to Fox, while Sheridan was delivering his famous speech against Warren Hastings : " That is the true style : something between poetry and prose, and better than 266 OLD HARROVIANS either." Burke also said of this speech that it was "the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united of which there is any record or tradition." This is the noblest eulogy ever passed upon a son of Harrow. If Sheridan was the most industrious of apprentices, he was also one of the most inadequately paid. As long as " Sherry " amused us, he was well paid, but as soon as he devoted himself in Parliament to the sacred cause of justice, liberty, and humanity, all avenues to honest emolument were closed to him. As he himself stated to Mr Addington, he possessed "an unpurchasable mind." The circumstances attending his death may have been exaggerated, but even allowing for ex- aggeration, they are sad enough. A political career is not, except with the base, a road to fortune : for Sheridan it proved a road to ruin. Always on the lookout for the last links with the mighty dead, I once met one who at least had seen Richard Brinsley Sheridan. My in- formant, then in extreme old age, was an elector of Stafford, and he remembered seeing (when 267 OLD HARROW DAYS he was a boy) a gentleman standing by the polling-booth with a bag in his hand, out of which he was handing sovereigns to each free and independent elector as he came up to vote. He had no doubt as to who this giver of largesses was, because his attention was pointedly called to him as Sheridan, their famous member. Tom Moore gives the following account of Sheridan's election expenses: "R. B. Sheridan, Esq. Expenses at the Borough of Stafford for Election, Anno. 1784 248 Burgesses paid ^5, 55. each, ^1302. " Some of us may remember the Freeman's shake. It differed from any other hand-shake. As the Freeman grasped the hand of the candi- date or his agent, he made a hollow of his own palm into which the sovereign was to slip. No one can regret that this class of electors, who battened upon Sheridan, should have been re- formed out of existence. According to Mr Fraser Rae, Sheridan's last and best bio- grapher, he failed to be returned again for Stafford in 1812, because "he could not pay the price exacted by the free and independent 268 OLD HARROVIANS burgesses." In what consists the fascination of politics to which all sorts and conditions of men succumb? Byron hits off the truth in one of his letters to Mr Dallas (August 25th, 1811), when he says, that "one loves squabbling and jostling better than yawning." This is the secret of the attraction of politics. On the slightest provocation we cast off our professional gar- ments, and plunge in the mud-bath of an election. The horse-play of an election takes us older candidates back to our school days, and we do not dislike the transportation. That this rude by-play is not a matter of past history, that unfortunate candidate for one of the divi- sions of the Black Country in '95 found to his cost, when an egg, only fit for political uses, entered his mouth as he was addressing his supporters. No one would have appreciated the humours of an election more than Byron. He loved his joke, but was never rude to those he respected. The story of Byron giving a bible to John Murray II. is, his grandson Mr Hallam Murray assures me, purely apocryphal. Lord Byron never gave a bible to his publisher, 269 OLD HARROW DAYS and certainly never gave one with the deletion of the word "robber" and the substitution of the word "publisher" in the passage "Now Barabbas was a robber." The anecdote was told of another publisher by another poet (Thomas Campbell), and by some curious process the story became part of the Byronic Legend. Probably if we delved into the roots of things, we should find the joke no more originated with Campbell than with Byron, but that it is the echo of some ruder wag, possibly John Dennis, who also happened to be an Old Harrovian. Poor Dennis now lives only in the verse of Pope an immortality on the rack. Unfortunately for Lord Byron he was dis- qualified from taking part in our elections; he had to confine himself (with his usual ill luck) to an assembly with which he had little in common. Not so with hundreds of his schoolfellows, members or would-be members of the House of Commons, some of whom " Lie beneath the churchyard stone, And some before the Speaker." As an Old Harrovian it is easy to approach 270 OLD HARROVIANS the question absolutely without party feeling, but it is difficult to avoid a quagmire of names. No one has any desire to write a catalogue that will vie with Homer's ships. No Public School has produced more House of Commons veterans than ours. No greater Parliamentarian ever lived than Lord Palmerston. He was a member of every Government from 1807 to 1865, except those of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Derby; and he sat in sixteen Parliaments, and was elected to sit in the seventeenth. In addition to "Pam of the prosperous past," Harrow can lay claim to Christopher R. M. Talbot, Sir Matthew Wilson, Henry Bulwer (the first Lord Dalling), and Sir Harry Verney. It would be im- possible to name four other Englishmen who could rival them in their experience of Parlia- mentary life. Mr Talbot was M.P. for the same constituency (Glamorganshire) for fifty- five years, and on his constituency being split up by the Reform Bill of '84, he continued to sit for one of its divisions till his death. He was the Father of the House and declined a peerage. Then there was Sir Matthew Wilson, 271 OLD HARROW DAYS a man immensely respected by Conservatives and Liberals alike, who sat in Parliament for about forty-six years, and who now stands in stone in his own town of Skipton. Lord Dalling had over forty years' experience of the House of Commons and of diplomacy. Sir Harry Verney, one of the best men that even the Verney family has sent into the House, approaches Mr Talbot in the duration of his Parliamentary services. He sat for various constituencies for about fifty-four years. Then there was Tom Duncombe, the Radical member for Finsbury, who sat in the House for thirty- four years. He began life in the Coldstream Guards, and, an aristocrat down to his finger tips, it was he who presented the Chartist Petition to the House of Commons. All these five Old Harrovians sat on the Liberal side, a fact hard to believe when you remember how absolutely the other way the v,*hole school seemed to go even before the collapse of the Liberal Party in '86. In '68, when Mr Labouchere was one of the sitting members for Middlesex, and Lord George Hamilton, then winning his political spurs, was one 272 OLD HARROVIANS of the Conservative candidates, the only Liberals I can remember among my school companions were Francis Hyde Villiers, Albert Grey, Walter Leaf, W. A. Meek, and George Russell, the last of whom was "almost killed" for the faith. It is needless to say that we used to shout ourselves hoarse for our old schoolfellow, and speak of Mr Labouchere as if he were the " old gentle- man" himself. It was, however, but "a play- ing at hate." Had Mr Labouchere addressed us as humorously as he does the cobblers of Northampton, Lord George's popularity might have been in danger : " I am not going to vote for the annexation of a country (Uganda) in- habited by savages, who wear no boots." This unreported epigram would have taken our school by storm, as it did Northampton. Possibly my old house-fellow, Cunninghame- Graham, was taking secret lessons in Radical- ism from the chief, whom he was hereafter to look upon as a reactionary. I say " secret," as no one would have foreseen the ultra-Socialist the politician verging on the Anarchist in the quiet, reserved, and rather exclusive boy of s 273 OLD HARROW DAYS thirty years ago. There is one thing, however, about Cunninghame - Graham in which we Unionists take as much pleasure and pride as any Radical the dignity and composure with which he bore the punishment he so richly deserved. Unlike some of our other dema- gogues, who skulk into some place of safety after doing all in their power to hound on others to break the law, Cunninghame-Graham's great desire was, as far as feasible, to receive all the stripes on his own shoulders. In reply to some message of sympathy, he penned me a letter from the dock of the Old Bailey, and never has an Old Harrovian behaved himself with more self-respect in that ill-omened spot than he did. A very different Harrovian is Lord Tweed- mouth, or Marjoribanks, as he was then. The feat that dwells in our memories as connected with his name was his going down to the "Footer" fields to play for the House when he was staying away from form on the ground of sickness. This we boys called "pluck," but the masters had another name for it. Certainly Marjoribanks was not destitute of " cheek," as 274 OLD HARROVIANS he showed by ordering his "fez" before the Captain of the House "Footer" Eleven had given it to him. It is a curious thing that the Liberal Party seems likely to return to its old love Harrow, the school that gave them Lord Palmerston. After losing its grand old Etonian, Mr Gladstone, and " shedding " its grand young Etonian, Lord Rosebery, the Liberals will very likely end in adopting as their Leader Lord Spencer, an old Harrovian, and Chairman of our School Governors, pace Mr Labouchere. The Unionists remain true to Eton with Lord Salisbury as their Leader in one House and Mr Arthur Balfour in the other. Mr W. H. Grenfell is one of those M.P.'s whom we can ill spare from the House. His absence is, we all trust, only temporary. He is (as we his old schoolmates know) a famous oarsman, cricketer, and sportsman, but we who have not been his constituents do not know what an excellent reply he can give to the heckler. It is one of the drawbacks of being a Liberal candidate (if you happen to be fond of shooting) that some ill-conditioned fellow will heckle you on the game laws, and we do not all survive the ordeal 275 OLD HARROW DAYS as successfully as Grenfell did. "There are three classes of persons who take an interest in the Game Laws landlords, tenant farmers, and poachers. Are you a tenant farmer?" asked the exasperated candidate. "No," re- plied his tormentor. "Well," replied Grenfell, "I leave it to you, gentlemen, to say whether my friend looks like a landlord." The mention of Grenfell's name reminds us of another Old Harrovian who has taken front rank in the political world Walter Long, the President of the Board of Agriculture. Our Public Schools have not produced many men that are eminent in the field of imagination, but they have produced a rich crop of men eminent in the field of action. England would have produced her Shakespeare and her Newton had our Public Schools never been founded, but we may safely say that without them there would have been no Greater Britain. The seed of Empire has been sown by the strong arms and watered by the blood of our Public School boys. Walter Long is a typical product of our Public Schools. He is no heaven-born states- man, but a practical man who never puts his 276 OLD HARROVIANS hand to any undertaking which he does not bring to a thoroughly satisfactory completion. The child is father of the man, the athlete of the Minister. In the Michaelmas Quarter of 1872 Walter Long found himself and another boy the only boys left in their House who had been in their house "footer" eleven the previous year. Their house was Hutton's a "large House" but only containing about 40 boys. The chances of their being anything in the House ties seemed remote indeed, but to Long, as to his father's great leader Disraeli, difficulties are made only to be overcome. He set himself to work with a will. Blind and halt had to play ; no excuses were taken. The result was that the coveted prize was won Hutton's was " Cock-house " at "footer" in 1872. From 1870 to '72 George Russell was joint editor of The Harrovian^ a paper which was then edited by Harrow boys, and not (as at present) by two Harrow Masters. He wrote in that paper a most amusing account of an imaginary debate in the School Debating Society. The Harrovian used then to be sent to no less a person than John Ruskin, and 277 OLD HARROW DAYS John Ruskin wrote to a friend of mine with a warm eulogy on Russell's article. In proposing the health of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Harrow Dinner of 1897, the Master of Trinity reminded us how the Prince brought his beautiful wife to Speech Day in 1864. It was a critical time. We know now what we did not know then, that Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell were both in favour of declaring war against Prussia and Austria, who at that time were fighting Denmark, but were overruled by the rest of their Cabinet. The Speech delivered by the Head of the School, H. M. Lindsell, was Lord Brougham's speech against the Holy Alliance. Dr Butler said it was the only Speech Day oration he could remember that was taken in earnest by those who heard it. Every sentence was cheered to the echo. The enthusiasm was tremendous, but there was one man in that crowded assembly who showed his feelings more than the youngest of us, and that was the aged Lord Brougham himself. It was a sight to remember the hero of a hundred Parliamentary fights listen- 27 8 THU '\ FACSIMILES OF THE NAMES CUT IN THE FOURTH FORM ROOM, BY LORD BYRON, SIR ROBERT PEEL (THE PRIME MINISTER), CARDINAL MANNING AND LORD PALMERSTON, WHEN THEY WERE BOYS AT HARROW OLD HARROVIANS ing to the young Head of the School de- claiming his own eloquent periods. But Lord Brougham, keenly as he enjoyed it, did not probably enjoy the attack on brute force more than our " sea-king's daughter from over the sea." When the Prince and Princess of Wales returned to the head master's house, the Princess turned to her host and said : "What an admirable speech that young man made ! Did he compose it all himself?" Dr Butler did not tell us his reply. Lord Palmerston was also present at that memorable Speech Day. Of course you can- not ride from Piccadilly to the Hill without becoming rather dusty, and the legend is that having dismounted and sent back his horse to the King's Head, the Prime Minister pre- sented himself at Dr Butler's door and was refused admission. With difficulty they say he established his identity. How he loved Harrow! Only a few days before his death (i8th October 1865) he was speaking of a scrape he got into at Harrow for throwing stones, and the excess of laughter he was un- uble to restrain was the first indication to Lady 279 OLD HARROW DAYS Palmerston of how very weak he had become. The aged statesman loved Harrow to the last. "Dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos." Any monograph on Harrow which made no reference to Lord Shaftesbury would be very incomplete. In the field of philanthropy he was by far her greatest son, perhaps England's greatest son. Mr Hodder's Life of "Rob Roy" Macgregor is stuffed with references to "the good Earl," and they are naturally all laudatory. He quotes a remark of Lord Shaftesbury, that "applause is the daily bread of the philanthropist." Now my only reason for referring to this is that these words so exactly hit off the attitude of the public school boy. Be he a good or be he a bad boy, an Harrovian is for ever looking to his reputation among the boys around him. During the whole time I was at Harrow I only knew one boy who was totally indifferent to the applause or censure of his fellow school- fellows. He was a clever boy, but not dis- tinguished. He used to speak of his in- difference to public opinion as a danger 280 OLD HARROVIANS signal, and wondered whether the gallows was in store for him. He has grown into an excellent clergyman. The idea embalmed in that wonderful mot, " Non sum rex sed Casar? is absolutely foreign to public school life. We cannot conceive the existence of any excellence there unless it be recognised by others. To be a king among your mates satisfies your ambition. To be a Caesar, indif- ferent to the praise or blame of men, is an idea that did not come within our ken. In this respect some of us outgrow our stature as boys; apparently "the good Earl" did not The Bar of England is almost as plentifully furnished with Old Harrovians as the Church. That nothing is more likely to form a stumbling- block to a man's progress at the Bar than a competence is well known, and explains to some extent the fact that so few Old Harrovians have sat among the Law Lords or in the Court of Appeal. Harrow very nearly secured the grand position of Lord Chief-Justice of England for one of her sons, when fate gave the post to his rival and friend, an Old Etonian. Some of us are old enough to have heard John Burgess 281 OLD HARROW DAYS Karslake speak. Those of us who have are not likely to forget it. His manner was the most perfect that can be imagined not a hair of his wig awry, not a word ill-chosen, not a sentence that was not clear and luminous. His words were sweeter than honey or the honeycomb. He erred (like his great rival Coleridge) on the side of excessive courtliness. Karslake was Disraeli's Attorney-General; Coleridge was Mr Gladstone's. The Attorney-General is entitled to the Chief-Justiceship if the post falls vacant while he is in office. To which of these eminent men the Old Harrovian who had not been to Oxford, or the Old Etonian who had would this great office fall? It looked as if Karslake would grasp the prize, as his Party returned to power in 1874, and Sir Alexander Cockburn, the then Chief Justice, was waxing old. Dis aliter visum. Sir John Karslake was smitten with blindness, and Sir John Coleridge suc- ceeded Cockburn as Lord Chief Justice of England. His elder brother, Edward Kent Karslake, was head of the school (1837) and Fellow of Balliol. He was unquestionably a brilliant scholar, and must have felt the 282 I OLD HARROVIANS following hit. He was arguing in the Court of Appeal, and was lightening his argument (as was his wont) with a quotation from a classical poet. Lord Justice Mellish inter- rupted him, and gravely informed him he had been guilty of a false quantity. Karslake at once quoted another passage to show that he was right and the Lord Justice was wrong. " Yes," said the Judge, " but that is poetry ; you are prosing." No Harrow institution has a stronger hold on the imagination of old boys than her Chapel. It is not only our soldier heroes that have monuments there, but also our masters, boys who died at the school, or who distin- guished themselves since leaving it. The monument of my dear old house-mate and form-mate, M. F. Argles, who went out to Calcutta as a missionary and died from the effects of the climate, has been placed by Dr Butler among our soldiers' monuments. Both he and they died in the discharge of their duty. Then there are monuments to Mr Grimston and Lord Bessborough, "the playmate of our boyhood, the friend of our manhood, and the leader in every effort for the greatness 283 OLD HARROW DAYS and welfare of the School." Then there is a monument to John Smith, who has " answered to his name, and stands in the presence of The Master." The saddest memorial is the simplest that to Joseph Jones, "the only child of his parents, and head of this School." The monu- ment with the most beautifully worded epitaph is that of Sir Henry Jackson, Bart., Q.C., for many years M.P. for Coventry. This epitaph on one of his favourite pupils was written by Dr Vaughan, and, unlike most epitaphs, it only tells the truth. No more strenuous, straight- forward, warm-hearted man ever discharged the arduous duties of leader of his Court. If genius be the art of taking pains, then he had genius. Unfortunately, this is a world in which a small fraction often get work more than they can attend to, while the rest from the rich to the destitute swell the ranks of the unem- ployed. Sir Henry killed himself by overwork. He did reach the goal of his ambition, it is true, but not to enjoy it. He was appointed a Judge of the High Court, and died before taking his seat. 284 OLD HARROVIANS The latest appointment to the High Court Bench was that of Mr Justice Edward Ridley, a former head of our School. This reminds me of a remarkable fact that the younger brother Edward succeeded his elder brother Mathew as head of the School. Such a suc- cession is unprecedented in the annals of Harrow. Some say that one hears very little of the majority of Senior Wranglers in after life. Senior Wranglers as a class are well capable of defending themselves, and as Harrow can only lay claim (I believe) to three Senior Wranglers, The Very Rev. Alexander Ellice, Charles Perry, Bishop of Melbourne, and Lord Rayleigh, F.R.S., the subject does not come within the four corners of this book. It may be urged that heads of schools are merely precocious boys, who are not likely to possess that staying power which is required for coming to the front in after life. This view is a mis- taken one. All the heads I have known, and I knew several, did good work in after life. To be head of Harrow is to fill a unique position, which combines the dignity of a Lord Chan- 285 OLD HARROW DAYS cellor with the worries of a Prime Minister. Dr Butler once spoke to me of the burden of respon- sibility which a head of the school has to carry. Another head well known to me in after life was the Rev. J. A. Cruikshank, one of our assistant masters. He is a man of exceptional conscientiousness. If Mr Cruikshank was ever capable of an injustice to a boy, and he could only have been guilty of one unwittingly, a sleepless night would have been his punish- ment. I have never known a man in whom "scruple the spasm of the soul" was more strongly developed. Luckily for him, as for his brother-in-law, Dr Butler, the love of games like the sense of humour (which they each possess) loosens the tightened bow-string. It would not be fair to take the heads after 1870, as they may not have had time to win prizes in after life. It would not be fair to take the heads before 1850, as the School was at that time suffering an eclipse under Dr Words- worth. I have therefore taken the twenty years from 1851 to 1870, which is nine years of the School's life under Dr Vaughan and eleven years under Dr Butler. During that period of 286 OLD HARROVIANS time Harrow had twenty-two heads. Among these we find two future Cabinet Ministers (Sir George Trevelyan and Sir Matthew White Ridley), one future Master of Trinity (H. M. Butler), one Judge of the High Court (Mr Justice Ridley), one well-known member of " the fourth estate " (Mr H. Yates Thompson, at one time proprietor of the Pall Mall Gazette), one Advising Counsel to the Educa- tion Department (H. M. Lindsell), one Tutor of his College (C. H. Prior), one eminent Solicitor (H. N. Abbot), one future Head Master of Charterhouse School (G. H. Rendall), one Assistant Master of Harrow (Rev. J. A. Cruikshank), one Archdeacon of Bath, deservedly distinguished for his know- ledge of architecture (Rev. Hilton Bothamley), one Surrogate of Chester Diocese (the Hon. and Rev. W. T. Kenyon), one soldier who passed first from the Staff College (Lt.-Col. John Wallace Hozier), one Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (W. A. Meek), one Barrister (R. D. Wilson), one Assistant Master at Win- chester (Rev. E. W. Sergeant), and one former Assistant Secretary to English Church Union 287 OLD HARROW DAYS (Rev. C. G. Browne). This is no bad record of work done after school hours. Of the five left, three (Joseph Jones and his successor, J. E. Bourchier, and W. T. Hope Edwards) died young. One of the best heads the School ever had was H. M. Lindsell, but to appreciate an anecdote about him a word must be said about our compulsory "Footer." Every boy had to go down to " footer," unless he had a doctor's certificate. To do us justice these certificates were not sought by us on shamming excuses. Our fault lay the other way. There was a boy in Dr Butler's house, who was supposed to suffer from heart complaint, and who was advised at home not to play. Did he act on that advice? Certainly not. He won his "fez." 1 For he was as brilliant off iThe boys in the house "footer" elevens wore fezes, and each house eleven had its distinct fez. The Butlerite house colours were pink and white, and when we were "cock-house" at "footer," we used to sing in the hall the house-song " The pink and the white may be pretty, And fit for a lady to wear, But those who have met us in 'footer' Have not found us ladylike there." 288 OLD HARROVIANS the Hill at games as on the Hill at work. Like many of us he outlived his physicians, and long may he discharge his duty as a country gentleman in Lincolnshire. At "footer" there were certain boys who bore what was to us the title of honour of " slavedrivers." It was our duty at four o'clock Bill on half holidays in the Michaelmas Term to stand by the two monitors who asked each boy as he came out of the old fourth form room " Down " (meaning were you down at " footer "). Our business was to check the accuracy of the replies, but really our office was a sinecure. No boy lied to another boy, That would have been shockingly bad form. On one occasion a small boy had by pure mistake been detained in Mr Harris' pupil room from two to four, and had amused himself there by writing an elegy in which he linked Mr Harris' name and pupil room with u the waters of Babylon." The skit was meritorious from a literary point of view, but not exactly com- plimentary to Mr Harris nor intended for his perusal. The first person to read the MS. after it left the author's hands was Mr Harris. T 289 OLD HARROW DAYS That just man, with his usual calmness, questioned his pupil, and on discovering that the gravamen of the poem that the poet had done no wrong was founded on fact, he at once dismissed him without further comment. In his hurried escape from " the Governor's " pupil room, my friend forgot to arm himself with the scrap of paper that would satisfy the slavedrivers that he had been absent from "footer" for good cause shown. Accordingly when he came out of four o'clock Bill and replied "No" to the head of the school's (Lindsell) query "Down," he received an invitation to come up to his rooms the next morning to be "wopped." Now Lindseil was Head of " Tommy's " House. Non-Harrovian readers must understand that a foss way used to lead and still leads up from the road to the churchyard, and this foss way skirted the Grove (Mr Steel's house). This foss way was out of bounds to the whole school, unless you were a happy boy in "Tommy's." One of the drawbacks therefore to these invitations of Lindsell's was that as you had to go up this foss way to enter his sanctum, you 290 OLD HARROVIANS enjoyed the probability of being stoned on the way by the " Tommyites," and the certainty of being well caned when you reached your bourne. My friend escaped the stoning, or possibly his well-earned popularity preserved him, but again he had forgotten to bring the scrap of paper from "the Governor." He, however, told the facts to Lindsell, who called "Boy." The sixth form boys used to call "Boy" when they wanted a fag. My friend not unnaturally thought Lindsell was sending the fag out for a new cane. What was his sur- prise when he heard the head of the School tell the fag to go for two more sausages. He came to be " wopped," and stayed to breakfast ! In its music Harrow is more distinguished for quality than quantity. It has produced Baillie Hamilton the inventor of the Vocation, whose beautiful sounds can be heard within the walls of Westminster Abbey. But it is Baillie Hamilton the boy, rather than Baillie Hamilton the musician, who concerns us at present. When offered the Captaincy of our Rifle Corps, he accepted it and declared his in- 291 OLD HARROW DAYS tention of capturing for the School both the Spencer Cup and the Ashburton Shield. He was as good as his word, but then he went about his task like a Statesman. He com- bined the subtlety of the serpent with the innocence of the dove. Having noticed that what boys need most when shooting at Wimbledon was nerve, he signalised his accept- ance of office by giving a cup to be fired for immediately after a hurdle race. It was an idea worthy of the inventor of the Vocation. Naturally boys who could take a flight of hurdles and then hit the bull's eye proved capable of keeping their nerve in presence of the cheering crowds and the dazzling sunshine of the Wimbledon Common. Baillie Hamilton also secured a Boer, who could write his name with shots on the target, to coach the boys, and the aid of Mr Farmer and a brass band was also called in. The result of this generalship was that in that year (1870) we won both the Ashburton Shield and the Spencer Cup, and the bells of Harrow Church were rung for what was I believe the third occasion in the history 292 OLD HARROVIANS of the School. But the great treat in store for those who threw themselves into the work of the Rifle Corps came in the holi- days. Baillie Hamilton arranged that the Rifle Corps eleven should shoot against an eleven of ladies, who shot with bows and arrows. This was a stroke of boyish states- manship worthy of Bismarck himself. What boy would grumble at being absent from the cricket field or "ducker" when he knew he had such a treat in store for him? No won- der the Rifle Corps went up by leaps and bounds from 60 to 360 ! What came of Harrow's encounter with the fair is beside the mark. Somewhere among my school archives there is a photograph on which are little medallions of these eleven pretty girls and of the eleven fortunate boys. The follow- ing names occur to me : The late C. E. S. Hemery, who won the Spencer Cup (1870) for Harrow; H. L. Doulton, the son of Sir Henry, "the potter"; H. Carlisle, the Head of the School and in the Cricket Eleven; J. W. Newall; Charles Longman, the pub- lisher; Albert Grey, now the Administrator 2 93 OLD HARROW DAYS of Rhodesia, and X., who afterwards for a time joined a Trappist Monastery, but who was known to his house-mates as " Cherry Ripe," and Edward P. Baily, Captain of the Cricket Eleven and one of Harrow's most brilliant athletes. Albert Grey was, as a boy, as fascinating, as his then rifle corps captain, James Baillie Hamilton. We heard he was a great favourite with the Queen, and could well believe it. We also heard that he was collaterally de- scended from Lady Jane Grey. Whether he was so in fact we knew not, but his charm 01 manner quite merited such ancestry. He has, too, a right royal memory. A quarter of a century had passed since he and I had met, when we ran up against each other in Cornhill. In a moment he remembered not only my name, but my hobby. Baillie Hamilton after- wards entered the Artists' Corps, but the body of men from whose ranks that Corps is sup- posed to be drawn cannot boast of many old Harrovians among them. Drawing is the pivot on which all technical education turns in Germany. If a German pedagogue were asked what was the first, the second, and 294 OLD HARROVIANS the third most important factor both in classical and commerical instruction, he would answer "Drawing, drawing, drawing." The very unimportant part that drawing did play in Harrow education is happily a matter of past history. Drawing is the teacher of exactitude and accuracy, and in this sense holds the key to all knowledge. We all stand in need of it. The soldier, the lawyer, the architect, the surveyor, the manufacturer, the schoolmaster, the scientist, the journalist each and all are better fitted for success in their profession, if they are good draughtsmen. And yet at Harrow, drawing was treated as of no account an extra, about on a par with gymnastics. Dr Butler rendered a service to the School by importing Music into its curriculum. A service of equal importance to the success of our School is being ren- dered by Mr Welldon, who, with Mr Hine, our present able drawing master, is developing Harrow drawing from a sickly hyssop into a mighty tree, from which future R.A's. may take wing. When I was desired to enter a certain Uni- 295 OLD HARROW DAYS versity, the old German Professor interrogated me as to what was my father, where I was born, etc., with true German thoroughness. At last he questioned me as to where I had been educated. "Harrow." "What; the school of Byron ! " I shall never forget the gleam of interest which passed over the bored features of that worthy man when he discovered that he could associate me, however remotely, with Byron. This interview, followed up by scores of others with Germans, Frenchmen, Slavs, and Americans, has long since satisfied me that Harrow owes much of her fame to her immortal son. If a vote were taken to-day, both at home and abroad, as to who are our three greatest poets, Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron would head the poll. If there be any doubt as to any one of these three, the doubt could not be about Byron, but about Milton. It is not the author of Paradise Lost that follows closely after Shakespeare in popular estima- tion abroad, but the author of Childe Harold. How much John Milton and Byron have in common. They are both not poets, but the poets of liberty. Milton lost his eyesight in 296 OLD HARROVIANS liberty's defence, Byron his life. Take away their consuming love of liberty, and you lower each in the estimation of posterity. Milton becomes a recluse and Byron a man of pleasure. But in some respects Byron is, we cannot say a greater poet, but a more original genius than Milton. The author of those exquisite poems, Al- legro and // Penseroso, owed much to his schoolmasters ; we cannot say the same of the author of The Giaour and Child* Harold. Some would go so far as to say that Byron owed even less to Harrow than to the House of Lords, but this would be an exaggeration. Byron's time at Harrow was not absolutely wasted. If he learnt little from the masters, he learnt much from the boys. The great lesson of our public schools and it is a lesson which none are too stupid to learn is noblesse oblige. This old French motto is nothing else but an exhortation to make no bad use of our liberty. The extraordinary degree of liberty enjoyed at Harrow and our other great public schools excites the hopeless envy of foreign schoolmasters. 297 OLD HARROW DAYS Goethe observed it, and in one of his letters remarks that the young Englishmen at Weimar, though far less learned than his own country- men, were better qualified than they to fight their way through the world. One of these young Englishmen at Weimar was William Makepeace Thackeray, through whose novels his old school of Charterhouse runs like a silver thread. And why is it that the English boy was, according to Goethe, better fitted than the German for the campaign of life? Simply because from his earliest childhood he has drawn the air of liberty. No, incalculable as is the debt of Harrow to him who is by far her greatest son, she, too, may claim to have done something for him. If the glamour of Byron's name has descended, like the mantle of the prophet, on his old school, and if our motto, " Stet Fortuna Domus? is (thanks to him) now as well known as " Floreat Etona" Harrow taught her lesson not in vain to her illustrious son. The lesson was an un- conscious one ; but so are all the most lasting lessons like the prayer we learn at our mother's knee, and remember long after we have lost 298 OLD HARROVIANS her. The lesson Byron learnt at Harrow was the truth that freedom is the only thing in this world for which too great a price cannot pos- sibly be paid. It is this that has linked him in glorious brotherhood with John Milton. One may apply to him the lines which his friend Shelley wrote of Greece : " For Greece and her foundations lie Based beyond the tide of war, Built on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity." As with Greece, so with her Poet he has entered the national Pantheon, though a mis- taken Dean did succeed in keeping his life- less form out of our national Abbey. But though he has gone, his spirit is still with us. Dust may gather on the volumes of other writers, but Byron is the hero of each succeeding generation of Harrow boys. He is the poet of the English race, free as the winds which blow across our seas and com- mons. Harrow is not likely to produce a second Byron. The aloe tree flowers but once in the century. But Harrow still turns out every year men, 299 OLD HARROW DAYS who by their lives and deaths advance some noble cause. As the years go on the struggles of life make us turn to the playground of our boyhood as to a haven of rest we are once more in the "footer" fields with life all before us. The affection that each Old Harrovian feels for the Hill becomes an heirloom in his family. To our sons be given the good fortune of kicking the ball of Harrow's fame still higher, and of winning more bases for the Old School than were ever put to our score I " 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 ? God give us bases to guard or beleaguer, Games to play out, whether earnest or fun ; Fights for the fearless and goals for the eager Twenty and thirty and forty years on." THE END 300 APPENDICES THE LATE MR JOHN MURRAY ON LORD BYRON TDELIEVING that the opinions of the late Mr John Murray (the third of his dynasty) on our Harrow poet will be of in- terest, and not only to Harrovians, I have recorded here a conversation which I had with my revered friend in 1886. For encyclopaedic knowledge both of the poet's life and works, the late Mr John Murray was without his peer. He knew his Byron as the proverbial Englishman knows his Bible. The exact words which this hereditary friend of our Harrow bard uttered are quoted here. The language as well as the ideas are his own. He regretted that Byron, who had received so wretched an education, had not known Scott more intimately, as Scott was the one 301 APPENDICES man who might have saved him. " When Byron began to write poetry, Scott at once gave up the field to him, and luckily for us began to write novels. When Byron first saw Scott, it was just after the failure of Scott's publishers, and Scott still wished to preserve his in- cognito. As Byron entered his room, Scott very carefully locked up what he was writing and put the keys in his pocket. Little did Scott, the most humble of men, suspect what his influence might have been on Byron. When the Magician of the North was labour- ing day and night to pay off debts which he had not personally contracted, he never turned away from any poor man who asked his aid. He was as generous with his time as with his money." Mr Murray spoke of him as a perfect character, and gave an in- stance (hitherto unpublished) of his goodness. "A Scotch minister sent him a bulky MS. of his own poetry. Scott not only read it through, but wrote the author a detailed criticism. This labour of love was entirely thrown away, as nothing more was heard of the minister and his MS." 302 APPENDICES Scott was the only "Scotch Reviewer" to whom our " English Bard " would have listened with respect. The two met again in the drawing-room of his (John Murray's) father's house in Albemarle Street, which seems to have been the Athenaeum of those days. Mr Murray had often heard Tom Moore sing his songs there. His usual bad luck seems to have pursued Byron even after his death, for what worse mis- fortune can befall a man than to have a snob and a backbiter for his biographer. Tom Moore was both. It is an unfortunate coin- cidence that has made him the biographer of Harrow's two most brilliant sons Sheridan and Byron. "Tom Moore," continued Mr Murray, " was fond of coming to town without his wife, and then he would say that his wife did not care to do so." He also referred to Tom Moore backbiting Croker at the very time he was writing the Secretary to the Admiralty letters couched in the warmest terms of friend- ship. There was (I must interpolate) one relation in life in which Byron was exception- ally fortunate, and that was in his publisher, 303 APPENDICES John Murray, the second of his dynasty. Over the mantelpiece of the drawing-room of Albe- marle Street hangs a portrait of Byron by Phillips, R.A. Phillips painted two portraits of the poet one in English and the other in Greek costume, and offered John Murray II. his choice. "My father," said Mr Murray, "chose this, because it reminded him of the Byron he knew." "But," queried another guest, a well-known writer, " did Byron actually walk about London in those loose open collars? " " No that was a fancy costume." This portrait hangs over the grate in which Mr John Murray, in the presence of Tom Moore, burnt the poet's Memoirs. There are not many men who would destroy on the sole ground of duty Memoirs that would bring them in such a fortune as Byron's Memoirs would have brought in to John Murray's firm in 1824. But why need we specialise the year? Byron the man died at Missolonghi on i gth April 1824, but as a poet he is immortal. We prate of the immortality of this or that poet, but we know their verses only as school exer- 304 APPENDICES cises. As grown men we had far rather praise than read them. With Byron it is quite other- wise. My venerable friend upheld Byron's claims to be regarded as a far greater poet than Wordsworth, Keats, or Shelley, and re- marked that he (Byron) would survive the present (1886) preference for minor poets. Eleven years have passed since these words were spoken, and they are as true now as then. B THE GROVE THIS fine old house, which stands on the highest point of the Hill, was first opened as a Boarding-House by the Rev. Samuel Ellis Batten, and is one of the oldest of the large houses. On the death of Mr Batten in 1830 it was taken by the Rev. Benjamin Hall Kennedy, who afterwards made Shrews- bury School such a nest of scholars. The Rev. Thomas Steel, who, strange to say, first came to Harrow as a mathematical master u 305 APPENDICES in 1835, took the Grove over from Mr Kennedy, but he retired in 1843. The term "large house" must have sounded a mockery under Dr Wordsworth, when the School was dwindling every term. The "large houses" must have looked like deserted hotels, when the number of the boys in the School did not amount to one hundred. The famous Greek scholar, the Rev. Richard Shilleto, was brave enough to take the Grove, but one year was enough for him. He preferred editing the Greek classics to keeping an empty boarding-house. At this juncture Dr Vaughan accepted the head master's chair, and the curate of Hurstmonceaux and the friend of the Hares, the Rev. J. N. Simpkinson (whom the boys called " Simmy "), took over the Grove (1845). He was a master of the School for ten years, and on his retirement the Rev. Thomas Steel resumed occupation of his old house. He remained there till his retirement in 1881, when Mr Edward Bowen succeeded him. Thus this famous house has been owned by one Senior Classic (Kennedy), two Second Classics (Steel and Shilleto), and by the first Master of the Modern Side (Bowen). 306 APPENDICES "SELECTIONS OF THE LISTS OF THE SCHOOL BETWEEN 1770 AND 1826." THANKS to the kindness of my old school- fellow, W. Gladwyn Turbutt of Ogston, I have at length before me this small but interesting volume. It contains five Bills of the School for 1770, 1771, 1775, 1780, and 1796, besides others of the present century. In 1770 there were 236 boys in the School under Dr Sumner ; in 1780 there were 139 under Dr Heath. Dr Drury's reign was drawing to a close in 1803 with 345 ; while Dr George Butler began his reign in 1805 with 257 boys. In 1770 John Sayer (who founded the Sayer Scholarship fifty years later) was head of the School, while you find representatives of old Harrovian families, such as Lord Althorp and the two Townshends (sons of Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer) ; the Marquis of Abercorn ; Yorke (afterwards Earl of Hardwicke); three future 307 APPENDICES Governor-Generals of India Lord Hastings, Shore, and Lord Wellesley ; Grimston ; Bridge- man (afterwards Earl of Bradford) ; Lord Euston (afterwards Duke of Grafton) ; and Lord Herbert (afterwards Earl of Pembroke). Of Lord Wellesley I have already spoken. Dr George Butler adds this note to his name: "At the death of Dr Sumner, 1771, he quitted Harrow for Eton, where his admission is briefly noted" "Lord Wellesley, Third Form, 1771" (" Quis desiderio ? "). In this Bill Book occurs the name of Malthus. Against this the Dean has made the following annotation " (Author 'On Population') Trin. C, C." It would have been an honour to any school to count " Parson " Malthus among its alumni, and that so original a thinker should have been educated at a classical school would have been in itself a suggestive fact ; unfortunately it is not a fact. Thomas Malthus was born in 1766, and therefore could not have been at Harrow in 1770, nor did he go to Trinity, but to Jesus College, Cambridge. The article on Malthus in the " Dictionary of National Biography " is written by Mr Leslie Stephen, a writer who APPENDICES would not and does not omit the names of Malthus's schools before he went to Cambridge ; but, quite apart from this, it is well known that Malthus was not sent to any public school. As regards the Forms in 1770, there were only four monitors and no sixth form. The upper School consisted of 119 boys, divided into fifth, fourth, and third forms. The under school consisted of the Scan and Prove Class, the Ovid Class, Phedrus, Upper Selects, Under Selectae, the Nomenclature, the Grammar Class, the Accidence and Unplaced. In the 1771 Bill Book we find a form with the still odder name of " Prayer Book," and in the 1 796 Bill Book we first find the name " Remove," which does not sound odd to our ears, as its use has survived to the present day. In the 1774 Bill Book we find the name of Spencer Perceval, subse- quently Prime Minister, and in 1775 tnat f Lord Elgin of the Elgin Marbles, and that of Newton, the representative of the heir-at-law of Sir Isaac Newton. Another name we find is that of George Holroyd, afterwards the well- known Judge of the King's Bench. I am tempted to give a witty reply of this old Harro- 309 APPENDICES vian which is not to be found in Foss's " Judges of England," and which has, I believe, been only orally handed down to posterity. Some one asked him what his politics were. " I have no politics," replied the future judge, "I am a special pleader." The record a brief one of the Harrovians of the eighteenth century who rose to the English Bench Sir George Holroyd was educated under Dr Sumner, Sir John Richardson under Dr Heath, C. C. Pepys (afterwards Lord Chancellor Cottenham) and T. J. Platt (afterwards a Baron of the Exchequer) under Dr Drury. One of the best scholars that Dr Drury turned out was Bartholomew Frere, subsequently our Minister at Constantinople (1821). In the 1796 Bill Book occurs the name of "Mr Temple," known to fame as Lord Palmerston. The 1803 and 1805 Bill Books are very in- teresting, for in the first Byron's name occurs as top of the fifth form, and in the latter as a monitor and third boy in the School. To say after this that Byron only spent hours of idle- ness at Harrow would be rather unkind to his old chief, Dr Joseph Drury. STO APPENDICES Sir Robert Peel had left when Byron was a monitor, but Edward Drummond, who, as Private Secretary to his old schoolfellow, the then Prime Minister, was afterwards assassin- ated, was in the School in 1805. One of the most curious and suggestive entries in the 1803 Bill Book is the following : "Lord Hartington. John King. Charles King." Lord Hartington became the sixth Duke of Devonshire. He never married, but was dis- tinguished for his generosity and love of books. John and Charles King were the sons of Rufus King, who twice represented the United States at the Court of St James's. He was the unsuccessful candidate of the Federal Party for the Presidency of the United States against James Monroe, but the only feature in his public career that can be noticed here was his determined opposition to Slavery. Thanks to their father's (and I may add their Harrow) teaching, both John and Charles King strenuously resisted the fugitive slave law. The father opposed the admission 3" APPENDICES to the Union of Missouri as a Slave State; the son pursued the same policy as to the admission of California as a State. True to Harrovian teaching, John King was an active member of the Episcopal Church. He is, I believe, the only Old Harrovian who has sat in Congress or filled the post of Governor of the State of New York. His brother Charles was also a credit to his old school. He was the President of Columbia College, and a distinguished educationalist. That more Americans do not send their sons to our famous Hill, is a matter for sincere regret. ETON AND HARROW MATCHES I HAVE to thank " Cricket " for much kind as- sistance. The following summary of results of the Eton and Harrow matches has been taken from Wisden's Almanack. 1805 Won by Eton by an innings and 2 runs. 312 APPENDICES 1818 Won by Harrow by 13 runs. 1822 87 1823 Eton an innings and 32 runs. 1824 9 wickets. 182 5 7 182 7 6 1828 3 1832 an innings and 1 56 runs. 1833 Harrow 8 wickets. 1834 ,,13 runs. 1835 Eton 165 1836 Harrow 9 wickets. 1837 Eton ,,8 1838 an innings and 30 runs. 1839 8 wickets. 1840 ,,31 runs. 1841 an innings and 1 75 runs. 1842 Harrow 65 runs. 18 43 >, 20 1844 Eton an innings and 69 runs. 18 45 n i94 M 18 46 135 18 47 9 wickets. 1848 Harrow ,,41 runs. 18 49 77 APPENDICES 1850 Won by Eton by 7 wickets. 1851 Harrow 8 1852 71 runs. 1853 3 wickets. 1854 98 runs. 1855 an innings and 66 runs. 1858 7 1859 .1 48 1860 Drawn. 1861 1862 Won by Eton by 64 runs. 1863 Drawn. 1864 Won by Harrow by an innings and 67 runs. *"^5 > 5* 1866 136 1867 Drawn. 1868 Won by Harrow by 7 wickets. 1869 Eton an innings and 1 9 runs. 1870 21 runs. 1871 an innings and 7 7 runs. 1872 6 wickets. 1873 Harrow 5 1874 Eton 5 1875 Drawn. 1876 Won by Eton by an innings and 24 runs. APPENDICES 1877 Drawn. 1878 Won by Harrow by 20 runs. 1879 Drawn. 1880 Won by Harrow by 95 runs. 1881 112 1882 Drawn. 1883 1884 1885 Won by Harrow by 3 wickets. 1886 Eton ,,6 '887 5 1888 Harrow 156 runs. 1889 9 wickets. 1890 Drawn. 1891 Won by Harrow by 7 wickets. 1892 64 runs. 1893 Eton 9 wickets. 1894 Drawn. 1895 1896 1897 It will therefore be seen that Eton led easily at the start with seven wins out of the first nine matches, but Harrow has pulled up steadily APPENDICES since 1851, and now leads by one, the result of the matches being as follows : Eton victories . . . 28 Harrow victories . . . 29 Drawn 15 Total . . 72 Lord Byron's contribution to our score in 1805 was small 7 in the first and 2 in the second innings. One player alone on our side (Lord Ipswich) made double figures in both innings viz., 10 and 21, and the total of our first innings was only 35, and of our second 65. Our wit seems (according to Charles Box's " Game of Cricket ") to have been superior to our play. The following was said to have been sent by the Eton Captain to the Harrow Captain after the match : " Adventurous Boys of Harrow School Of cricket you've no knowledge ; You play not cricket, but the fool, With Men of Eton College." To this the Harrow Captain replied : 316 APPENDICES " Ye Eton wags ! to play the fool Is not the boast of Harrow School ; What wonder then at our defeat ? Folly like yours could not be beat. " Was Byron the author of this epigram ? Byron's match of 1805 was played on what is, or was, Dorset Square. The match of 1818 was the first match between the schools played on the present Marylebone ground. In 1832, when Eton won in one innings, nearly one-seventh of their large score of 249 was "extras." The same thing happened in 1835, when we won, but our "extras" (89) were in excess of the runs from the bat. In 1841 we presented Eton with 41 wides and 21 byes. There has been a great change for the better in this respect even the most critical must admit. Centuries have been made by Harrow cricketers at the Harrow and Eton matches at Lord's only on six occasions since 1858. In 1860 our captain A. W. T. Daniel made 112 runs (not out). In 1885 Eustace Crawley made 100 and A. K. Watson 135. In 1888 R. B. Hoare made 108, in 1895 J. H. Stogdon APPENDICES made 124, and in 1897 T. G. O. Cole made 142. HARROVIAN OARSMEN JUST as this book is going through the press, my attention is called to the fact that when the Balliol Eight went head of the river, four of the oars were old Harrovians, viz.: Bow, W. H. P. Rowe; 5, H. C. Lowther; 6, A. A. Wickens; and stroke, W. A. B. Musgrave. W. H. P. Rowe and H. C. Lowther are already mentioned. W. H. P. Rowe was the brother of Francis C. C. Rowe (a monitor), who was chaired at Lord's after our victory in '78, and who afterwards played for Cambridge. There is another fine athlete who may be mentioned here Arnold Frank Hills (a monitor), who was captain of our " footer " eleven in 1875. He was afterwards winner of champion mile of the Inter-University three miles, and played for England against Scotland in the Association football team. We 318 APPENDICES find A. F. Hills described as President of the Vegetarian Federal Union. It would be in- teresting to know how much of his splendid athletic record has been done on a vegetarian diet. Another member of our " footer " eleven who has done much good work since is H. O. D. Davidson, now one of our assistant masters. But to return to the Balliol boat in '79, the stroke (W. A. A. B. Musgrave) has transferred his energies to the Bar, but A. A. Wickens, the son of the late Vice-Chancellor Wickens, is dead. It is pathetic to think that two out of our Harrow quartette, both men of unusual promise, should have already left us. Duncan Darnoch rowed in the Cambridge Eight of 1859; Charles Isham Strong and J. Young rowed in the Oxford Eight of '60; C. H. St J. Hornby rowed in the Oxford Eight of '90; Walter Laudale rowed in the Cambridge Eights of '91 and '92. Three Old Harrovians rowed in the Cambridge Eight of '95 T. J. G. Duncanson, F. C. Stewart and H. A. Game. This is some evidence that muscle and sinew are not on the decline on our HilL INDEX Names to which a * is prefixed are names of Old Harrovians. * ABERDEEN, Lord (Prime Mini- ster), 241. * Abbott, H. N. (Head of the School), 287. Abu Klea, 218, 219. *Acheson, E. A. B., Major the Hon. (Cricketer), 160. *Acland, Sir Henry W., Bart., 181. *Acland, J. E. Troyte, Capt., 209. *Acland, SirT. D., Bart. (Head of the School), 86, 229. *Alexander, H. R. T. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 181. Alexander, Prince of Bulgaria, 5-6. *Alcock, C. W. (Footer player), 163. *Althorp, Lord, 113, 307. Ambridge, (" Bottles") and Dr Farrar, 56-58. *Argles, M. F. (his death), 283- *Arkwright, Henry (his death), 205. *' Aristocracy" of Harrow School, 150. Arnold, Dr Thomas (of Rugby), 93, 95, 104- Arnold, Matthew, 130, 131, 136, 138. Arnold, Mrs Matthew, 137. Association Football, 163. Atkinson, Prof, (the Linguist), 63- " BABOO Latin," 23. *Baillie-Hamilton, James, and Dr Farrar, 56-57, 58, 291, 292-294. *Baily, Edward P. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 153, 294. Balfour, Right Hon. Arthur, 72, 148, 275. *Balfour, Francis Maitland (F.R.S.), 204, 205, 206, 209. *Baring, T. C. (School bene- factor), 169. *Barclay, Charles, 160, 237. *Barclay, T. G., 232. *Barton, Dunbar P., Q.C., M.P., 143- Batten, George H. M., 232. *Batten, G. M. (Monitor under Dr George Butler), 232, 239- Batten, Rev. Samuel Ellis (Master), 225, 226, 305. Bentham (quoted), 37. *Bernard, Sir Thomas, 192-193- *Bessborough, Lord, 160, 176, 283. *Betts, M. P. (Cricketer), 174. *Blayds, Charles Stuart (see Calverley). Bogomils, A. Evans's epigram, 206. 3 2I INDEX Boswell, James (sends his sons to public schools), 127. *Bosworth Smith, B. N. (Head of the School), 173, 185. Bosworth Smith, Reginald (Master), 2, 46, 53, 71, 75- 78, 249. *Bothamley, H. (Head of the School), 287. *Bourchier, J. E. (Head of the School), 288. *Boustead, J. M. (Oarsman), 165. Bowen, Edward Ernest (Master), 66, 71, 72, 74, 75, 170. Bradby, Rev. Edward Henry (Master), 37, 38-39. *Bradshaw, James (M.P.), 264. Bright, Right Hon. John, 229. *Broughton, Robert J. P. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 174-75, l8 5- *Brown, Harold (his death), 78-79. *Browne, C. G. (Head of the School), 288. *Browne, Capt. H. R. (his death), 222. *Bruce, Sir Charles (on Dr Vaughan's preaching), 100. *Bruce, James (Traveller), 241. *Buller, Charles (Statesman), 256. *Buller, C. F. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 156. Bullying at Harrow, 88, 248, 249, 256. Burgon, Dean, 42. *Burnaby, Frederick Gustavus (his death), 217-219. Burke, Edmund, 73. *Burton, Lord, 231. *Bute, Marquis of, 34, 2OI. *Butler, A. H. M. (Cricketer), 173- ^Butler, E. M. (Cricketer), 173. Butler, Dr George (Head Master Dean of Peter- borough), 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 99, 195, 226, 227, 231, 233, 234, 239, 307-312. *Butler, Dr Henry Montagu (Head Master and Master of Trinity), 44, 51, 110-112, 115-118, 119-123, 124, 128-129, 145, 154, 158, 182, 185, 256, 260, 285, 287, 295. *Byron, Lord (the Poet), 83, 192, 193, 230, 239, 269-270, 296, 297-299, 302-303, 304, 310, 316, 317. *CALVERLEY, (Charles Stuart Blayds), 24, 218, 258, 259. "Carlisle, Harold (Head of the School), 185, 293. " Centuries " at Eton and Har- row matches, 317-318. *Channell, A. M. (Q.C.), 165. *Chaplin, Right Hon. Henry, 183, 190. "Charities," 145. Chequered Life, Memoirs of a, 87. *Cherry, G. C. (Head of the School), 184. Chitty, Lord Justice (Athlete), 165. 322 INDEX Church, Dean, compared to Dean Vaughan, 107. *Clay, Cecil (Racquet Player), 41. *Cobden, Frank Carroll (Bowler), 3. Cobden, Richard (learns Ger- man), 106, 230. " Cock - house " match at cricket, 159, 160. *Cohen, Henry Alfred (his death), 205. *Cole, T. G. O. (Cricketer), 177. Colenso, Dr John William (Master), 77. Colenso (Mrs), 78. Coleridge, on T. Hook, 251. *Colvin, H. W. (his death), 214. Con way, Moncure, 123. Cookesley, Rev. Wm. Gifford, 13- *Coope, O. E. (M.P.), 231. Cotton, Bishop, 107. *Cottrell, George (his death), 120. Cox, Dr James (Head Master), 98, 241. *Crawley, Rev. David (Cricketer), 155. *Crawley, George (Cricketer), 154- *Crawley, H. Ernest (Cricketer), 154-156. *Crawley, Eustace (Cricketer), 155. 3I7- *Crawley, Stafford (Cricketer), 155- *Crewe, Earl of, 112. Cribs, use of, 30-32. *Cruikshank, James Alexander (Head of the School), 185, 285, 286. *Cunninghame-Grahame,Robt., 273. 274- Cunningham, Rev. J. W., 226, 227. * Cunningham, Sir H. S., 132, 263. " Cunninghamite ladies," 236. *DALHOUSIE, Lord (Governor- General of India), 131. *Dalling, Lord, 271. *Daniel, A. W. T. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 317. *Darnoch, Duncan (Oarsman), 3!9- *Dauglish, M. G., 232. *Davidson, H. O. D. (Assistant Master), 319. *Davidson, Randall T. (Bishop of Winchester), 26. Debating Society of Harrow, 142. Debating Society of Eton, 142. *Devonshire (sixth), Duke of, 311. *Digby, Kenelm Edward (Cap- tain of Cricket Eleven), 181. Disraeli, Right Hon. B., 13, 35, 36, 114, 135, 136. *Doulton, H. L. (Rifle Corps), 293- *Dowson, E. M. (Bowler), 177. Drawing at Harrow, 294-295. *Drummond, Edmund, 311. *Drury, Rev. Benjamin Heath, 16, 17. 323 INDEX Drury, Rev. Henry Joseph Thomas, 196, 227-228, 239. Drury, Rev. Joseph (Head Master), 83, 84, 99, 112,256, 264, 307 -3 10. Drury, Rev. Mark, 83, 233. Drury family, 80. Dufferin, Marquis of, 132. *Duncanson, T. J. G. (Oars- man), 319. *Duncombe, Tom (M.P.), 272. *Dungannon, Lord (anecdotes about), 1 10- 1 1 2. *Dyke, Sir Wm. Hart, 162, 163, 190. *EARLE, Wm., Major- General, 219, 220. *Edwards, Henry Herbert (wounded), 214. *Elgin, Lord (of the Elgin Marbles), 309. *Ellice, A. (Senior Wrangler), 231, 285. *Elliot, H. F. (his monument), 221. El Teb, 215. Eton and Harrow Match, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158-159, 312- 3*5> 3J6. Evans, Canon of Rugby, 32. *Evans, Arthur, 205, 207, 208, 3I7- Evans, Benjamin (Master), S3- Eyre, Col. (his death), 220. *FABER, F. W. (Hymn writer), 200. Fairbairn, Sir Andrew, 48. Families, Representative Har- row, 261, 307. Farmer, John (Organist), 68, 69-70, 292. Farrar, Rev. Frederic Wm. (Master Dean of Canter- bury), 46, 48-50, 53, 59, 61, 71, 136, 189. Fasti, "gone over," 47. *Finlay, Percy, 209, 216. ' ' Flannels getting your, "171. *Folkestone, Lord, at Harrow Dinner, 190, 191. Forms, names of, 309. Fourth Form Room, n. "Footer," 175, 256, 288. * Foster, F. A. K. (his death), 222. Freeman, E. A. (the Histor- ian), 208. *Freeman, Capt. F. A. (his death), 216. *Frere. Bartholomew (Minister), 310. GAMBIER, Lord, 226. Gambier, Capt. J. W. (R.N.), 225. *Gambier, Rev. S. J., 227, 228, 229. *Game, H. A. (Oarsman), 319. Garfield, President (sermons on assassination of), 122. Geikie, Sir Archibald (Gover- nor), 137. *Geikie, R. (Head of the School), 138. *Genoa, Duke of, 230. Geography at Harrow, 53. Giaour, The, 239. 324 INDEX 'Gifford, Lord, V.C., 218. Gladstone, W. E., Right Hon., 62, 76, 112, 208, 275, 277. "God Save the Queen," on the Shangani River, 79. 'Goderich, Lord (Prime Minis- ter), 241, 276. 'Gore-Browne, Rev. W., 209. 'Gore, Charles (Canon), 59. 'Gore, S. W. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 166. Governors of Harrow School, 137, 138- Grace, Dr W. G., 151, 152. 'Graham, E. (Master), 232. 'Graham - Stirling, T. J. (his death), 212. 'Grant, Alexander (Head of the School), 185. 'Gregory, W. H. (Head of the School), 91, 92. 'Grenfell, W. H. (Athlete), 165, 275, 276. 'Gretton, John (M.P.), 231. 'Grey, Albert (now Earl Grey), 273. 293. *Gribble, Henry Cholmondeley (his death), 213. Griffith, George (Master), 8. "Grimston, Hon. Robert (Cricketer), 2, 160, 175, 176. Grove, The, 240, 305. HABAKKUK, anecdote about, 114. *Hadow, D. R. (his death), 265. *Hadow, E. M. (Cricketer), 172. "Hall, Hamilton, 191. * Hamilton, Lord Frederick, 263. * Hamilton, Lord George, 161, 183, 190, 272. *Harbottle, T. B., 263. *Hare, Augustus J. C., 254, 255, 256, 263. *Harene, C. J. (Bowler), 231. Harris, George Frederick (Master), 16, 17, 18-22, 259, 289. *Harris, Clement H. G. (his death), 262, 263. *Harris, Walter B., 263. *Harrison, Sir Richard, 100- 102. Harrow Dinners, 100, 116, 134, 161, 186-191. Harrow School Chapel, 29, 98, 123, 217, 221, 222, 247, 248, 283, 307-3". Harrow School Register, 232. *Hastings, Marquis of (Gover- nor-General of India), 82. *Hawkins, F. Vaughan (Senior Classic School Governor), 260. *Headley, Henry Brandram (his death), 214. Heads of the School in the Cricket Eleven, 184-185, 286-288. Heath, Dr Benjamin (Head Master), 82, 99, 307. *Hemery, C. E. S. (Rifle Corps), 293. "Herbert, Lord ("licked" by Lord Byron), 193. "Herbert, Sidney, 229. 325 INDEX *Hills, A. F. (Captain of Foot- ball Eleven), 318, 319. *Hindlip, Lord, 231. Hine,W. E. (Drawing Master), 295- * Hoare, Robert Basil (Cricketer), 317. Holmes, Cecil Frederick (Master), 21, 130. *Holroyd, George (Judge), 309, 310. Home Boarders, 170, 256. *Hood, Viscount (Admiral), "3- *Hook, Theodore (Wit), 250. *Hope-Edwardes, W. J. (Head of the School), 288. *Hornby, A. N. (Cricketer), 152. *Hornby, C. H. St J. (Oars- man), 319. Howson, E. W. (Master), 190, 232. *Hozier, J. W. (Head of the School), 287. *Hutton, Henry Edward (Master), 181. Huxley on Harrow, 127. *!BRAHIM, Prince, 249. Ignorance of English History, 114-115. "Ion" (Anecdote about), 54- * Ipswich, Lord (his score at Lord's in 1805), 316. Isandlwhana, 223. *JACKSON, F. S. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 178-179. *Jackson, Sir Henry Mather (Judge), 284. *Jarnac, Count de (French Am- bassador), 230. *Jervis, John E. Leveson (his death), 219. *Jervois, Major J., 103. *Jeune, F. H. (Judge), 189. Johnson, Dr Samuel, 242. *Johnstone, W. M. (Proprietor of The Standard)^ 263. *Jones, J. H. (Head of the School), 287. *Jones, Sir Wm. (Linguist), 245. *KARSLAKE, E. K. (Head of the School), 282-3. *Karslake, Sir John (Attorney- General), 281-2. *Kays, Dudley (his death), 212. *Kemp, Manley Colchester (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 182. Kennedy, Rev. Benjamin Hall, 305- *Kenyon, Hon. W. T. (Head of the School), 287. Kerbekan, 219. *King, Charles (President of Columbia College), 312. *King, John (Governor of State of New York), 311, 312. King, Rufus (American Min- ister at St James's), 311. *Kinloch, Harry (his death), 79. *Knutsford, Lord, 190. LABOUCHERE, 273- Henry, 272, 326 INDEX Lascelles, B. P. (Librarian of Vaughan Library), 232. * Lascelles, Sir Frank (Ambas- sador), 5. *Laudale, Walter (Oarsman), 3*9- *Law, Wm. (first Vicar of Har- row Mission), 184. *Leaf, Herbert (Head of the School), 174, 185. *Leaf, Walter (Senior Classic), 174, 260, 273. *Leigh, E. Chandos, Q.C., 183. *Leiningen, Prince Charles, 230. Liddell, Dean, on Public School Education in the Forties, 93. Lieven, Prince, three sons of, 230. *Lindsell, H. M. (Head of the School), 278, 287, 290-291. *Long, Right Hon. Walter H., 183, 276. Longley, Dr Charles Thomas (Head-master Archbishop of Canterbury), 93, 94, 97, 99- *Longman, Charles (Rifle Corps), 293. *Lowther, H. C. (Oarsman), 165, 318. *Lytton, Earl of, 131, 132, 133- 134, 135- MACAULAY, Lord, 126. *MacLaren, Archibald Camp- bell (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 177, 180. Malthus, Thomas, On Popula- tion, 235, 308-309. *Manning, Henry Edward (Car- dinal), 178, 179, 182, 198- 199, 228. Marillier, Jacob Francis (Master), 23, 24-25, 92. *Marillier, Wm. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 173. Martineau, Miss, 50. Martineau, Dr, 107. *Martineau, A. (Head of the School), 234. Masson, Gustave (Master), 65, 66, 67. Mathematics at Eton, 22. Mathematics at Harrow, 23-26. *Mavrogordato, A. (Head of the School), 230. *Maw, P. T. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 182. *Maxse, L. J., 263. *Meek, W. A. (Head of the School), 273, 287. *Melvill, Teignmouth, V.C. (his death), 223-224. *Merivale, Charles (Dean and Historian), 124, 127, 145, 181. Middlemist, Rev. Robert (Mas- ter), 22, 25-30, 58, 117. *Mivart, St George J. (F.R.S.), 201. *Moncreiff, H. J. (Scotch Judge), 156. * Money, W. B. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 182. * Montgomery, H. H. (Bishop of Tasmania), 190. Moore, Tom, 264, 303. 327 INDEX *Morgan, John Hammond (Athlete), 166. * Morris, Father John, 197- 198. "Murray, A. G. (Lord Advocate), 143- Murray, John (third of his dynasty), 301, 302-305. *Murray, F. H. (Canon), 195, 196. Music at Harrow, 69-70. *Musgrave, W. A. B. (Oars- man), 318. NETTLESHIP, Henry (Master), *Ne 4 wall, J. W. (Rifle Corps), 293- *Newton (representative of Sir Isaac Newton's family), 309. *North, Frederick (Head of the School), 184, 260. *North, Charles, 260. *Norton, John (Head of the School), 91, 184. *O'BRIEN SMITH, sentence on, IIO-III. Old Harrovians, 101-103, 112, 131, 211-224, 231-232, 241, 263, 271, 276, 281, 319. "Orley Farm," 254. *Orme, Robert (Historian), 203. *Oxenham, Rev. William (Master), 10, 11-15, 9 6 - *Oxenham, Rev. H. N., 96, 200. *PALMERSTON, Lord, 35, 104, 271, 275, 278, 279, 310. *Parr, Rev. Samuel (Master), 82, 83, 85, 245, 246, 265. Parsons, Mother (anecdote about), 112. *Peel, Sir Robert (Prime Mini- ster), 86, 229, 241, 311. *Peel, Sir Robert (third), 187, 188. *Pennefather, John (Oarsman), 166. *Pepys, C. C. (Lord Chancellor Cottenham), 310. *Perceval, Right Hon. Spencer (Prime Minister), 241, 309. *Perry, Charles (Senior Wran- gler and Bishop), 182, 285. *Platt, T. J. (Judge), 310. *Plowden, Sir H. M. (Cricketer), 181. *Ponsonby, Hon. Fred, (see Lord Bessborough), 2. *Ponsonby, J. H. (Cricketer), 1 66. Person, 85. *Prior, C. H. (Head of the School), 287. Prior, Matthew (quoted), 48. *Proctor, B. W., 246, 256. QUEEN, The (visits Harrow), 1 6. RANJIT Sing, 201-203. *Rayleigh, Lord (F.R.S.), 285. Red Night Cap Club, 89. *Reed, E. T. (on staff ot Punch), 263. Rendall, Rev. Frederick (Master), 45, 46-47. INDEX *Rendall, G. H. (Head of the School), 173, 287. Revue des Deux Mondes> 75. Rhodes, Cecil, 77, 147-148. Rhodesia, first Administrator, an Old Harrovian, 294. * Richardson, James Barnard (his death), 222. *Richardson, J. M. (Cricketer), 166. *Richardson, Sir John (Judge), 310. *Ridley, E. (Judge), 287. *Ridley, Sir Matthew White (Head of the School), 183, 287. Ritchie, Mrs Thackeray, 81, 82. *Rodney, George (first Lord), "3- "Rolled into Hall" (school custom), 236. Rosebery, Lord, 76. Rothschild, Lord, 193. *Roundell, C. S. (Governor of the School), 174. *Rowe, W. H. P. (Head of the School), 165, 318. *Rowe, Francis C. C. (Cricketer), 318. *Ruault, P. M. Gustave, 64-65. *Russell, G. W. E., 194, 273, 277. Ruskin, John, 277. *ST VINCENT, Lord, 219. "Sam "(Gustos), II. *Savory, Sir Joseph (Lord Mayor), 186. *Sayer, John (Head of the School in 1770), 307. Y 329 Senior Classics, our, 259-260. Senior Wranglers, our, 285. *Sergeant, E. W. (Head of the School), 287. *Shaftesbury, Lord, 121, 164. *Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 82, 203, 263, 264, 266, 267, 268. Shilleto, Rev. Richard (Master), 306. *Sichel, Walter, 263. Simpkinson, Rev. John Nassau (Master), 306. "Squash," description of, 237- 238. "Slave-drivers, "289. Smith, Rev. John (Master), 27, 32, 33-34, 35-37, 146, 167. *Soames, C. (Head of the School), 184. *Solly, W. H. (Oarsman), 166. Soudan Campaign of '84, 215- 216. Soudan Campaign of '85, 217- 222. *Sowler, Thomas (Proprietor of The 263. Manchester Courier), *Sowler, Henry (Proprietor of The Manchester Courier)^ 263. Speech Day in 1825, 228, 239. Speech Day in 1864, 278. Speech Day in 1883, 119. *Spencer, Earl (Chairman of Governors), 275. *Spottiswoode, 203. (P.R.S.), *Stanhope, Right Hon. Edward, 116, 182, 190. INDEX Stanley, Dean, 63, 107, 128. Stanley, H. M. (lectures at Harrow), 243. Steel, Rev. Thomas Henry (Master), 39, 40, 41-43, 44, 45, 75-78, 187, 305-306. Steel, Mrs (Novelist), 40. *Stewart, F. C. (Oarsman), 319. *Stogdon, Edgar (Footer player), 173. *Stogdon, John Hubert (Cricketer), 172, 182, 317. *Stowe, H. M. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 166, 181. *Strangford, Lord (Philologer), 205. *Stretton, Charles, 87, 89, 90, 164. *Strong, C. I. (Oarsman), 319. Sumner, Dr Robert (Head Master), 82, 99. *Symonds, John Addington, 104, 143, 260. "TALBOT, Christopher R. M. (Father of the House of Commons), 271. Tamai, 216. *Teignmouth, Lord (Governor General), 131. Tel-el-Kebir, 211-212. Temple, Dr (Archbishop of Canterbury), 67. *Templer, F. G. (Athlete), 171- 172. Thackeray, William Make- peace, 145, 250, 256, 298. Thackeray, Dr Thomas (Head- Master), 80, 81-82, 99. The Nineteenth Century (quoted), 215, 221. *Thompson, H. Yates (Head of the School), 287. Thompson, Dr (Master of Trinity), 206. "Three Room, "256. *Tidswell, B. T. (his death), 217. *Torre, Rev. H. J. (Head of the School), 255. *Trench, R. C. (Archbishop of Dublin), 229. *Trevelyan, Right Hon. Sir George (Head of the School), 187, 263, 287. *Trollope, Adolphus, on Rev. Harry Drury, 227, 251. *Trollope, Anthony, 251, 252, 253 254. *Tupper, C. L., 181. *Tweedmouth, Lord, 274. Twelfth man, sorrows of a, 176-177. Tyndall, Professor (Governor), 127, 138, 141. UGANDA, retention of, 76. VAUGHAN, Charles John (Head Master Dean of Llandaff), 13, 15, 80, 97, 98-99, 100, 102, 103, 104-105, 106-108, 109, 255, 306. Vaughan Library, 104, 143. *Verney, Sir Harry (M.P.), 272. *Vernon - Harcourt, A. G. (F.R.S.), 204. *Vernon - Harcourt, L. F. (F.R.S.), 204. 330 INDEX *Vigne, G. T. (Traveller), 201, 202. *Villiers, Francis Hyde, 273. *WADE, Sir Thomas (Minister), 188. *Walker, C. W. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 182. * Walker, I. D., 145, 150, 152. * Walker, R. D., 145, 150, 151, 152, 157, 1 60, 164. * Walker, V. E., 150, 151, 156. Warner, "Billy, "92. Watson, Arthur George (Master), 60, 61-63, 65. * Watson, Arthur Kenelm (Cricketer), 173, 177, 182, Si?- * Watson, H. D. (Head of the School), 185. Watson, Rev. H. W. (Master, F.R.S.), 31. *Webbe, A. J. (Captain of Cricket Eleven), 152, 153. * Welch, R. C., 232. *Wellesley, Marquis of, 82, 83- 84, 308. Welldon, Rev. James Edward Cowell (Head Master), 38, 1 39, 97, 98, 99, 121, 177, 189, 242, 244, 261, 262, 295- Wellington (first), Duke of, 82. Westcott, Dr Brooke Foss (Master Bishop of Dur- ham), 17. Whewell, Dr (anecdote about), 18. *Wickens, A. A. (Oarsman), 318. * Williams, Rev. Isaac, 201. * Wilson, Sir Matthew (M.P.), 272. *Wilson, R. D. (Head of the School), 287. Wiseman, Cardinal, 198. *Wordsworth, Dr Charles, 97, 165, 228-229, 234. Wordsworth, Dr Christopher (Head Master Bishop of Lincoln), 96-99. *Wyndham, Sir George (Mini- ster), 1 88. *YOUNG, J. (Oarsman), 319. *ZETLAND (first), Earl of, 192. 331 PRINTED BY TURNBULL AND SPEARS, EDINBURGH RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT TO ^ 202 Main Library LOAN PERIOD 1 HOME USE 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW AUTOOISC.DEC14 APR 04 198! UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELi FORM NO. DD6 BERKELEY, CA 94720 YB 17739 U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 22979,3