[i]

Engraved by C.H. Jeens from a Picture by G.F. Watts.

[ii]

[iii]

MEMOIR OF A BROTHER.

BY
THOMAS HUGHES,
AUTHOR OF “TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS.”

BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
1873.

[iv]

[v]

AUTHOR’S EDITION.

[vi]

[vii]

PREFACE.

This Memoir was written for, and at the request of, the near relatives, and intimate friends, of the home-loving country gentleman, whose unlooked-for death had made them all mourners indeed. Had it been meant originally for publication, it would have taken a very different form. In compiling it, my whole thoughts were fixed on my own sons and nephews, and not on the public. It tells of a life with which indeed the public has no concern in one sense; for my brother, with all his ability and power of different kinds, was one of the humblest and most retiring of men; who just did his own duty, and held his own tongue, without the slightest effort or wish for fame or notoriety of any kind. In another sense, however, I do see that it has a meaning and interest for Englishmen in general, and have therefore consented to its publication in the usual way, though not without a[viii] sense of discomfort and annoyance at having the veil even partially lifted from the intimacies of a private family circle. For, in a noisy and confused time like ours, it does seem to me that most of us have need to be reminded of, and will be the better for bearing in mind, the reserve of strength and power which lies quietly at the nation’s call, outside the whirl and din of public and fashionable life, and entirely ignored in the columns of the daily press. The subject of this memoir was only a good specimen of thousands of Englishmen of high culture, high courage, high principle, who are living their own quiet lives in every corner of the kingdom, from John o’ Groat’s to the Land’s-End, bringing up their families in the love of God and their neighbour, and keeping the atmosphere around them clean, and pure and strong, by their example,—men who would come to the front, and might be relied on, in any serious national crisis.

One is too apt to fancy, from the photographs of the nation’s life which one gets day by day, that the old ship has lost the ballast which has stood her in such good stead for a thousand years, and is rolling more and more helplessly, in a gale which shows no sign of abating, for[ix] her or any other national vessel, until at last she must roll over and founder. But it is not so. England is in less stress, and in better trim, than she has been in in many a stiffer gale.

The real fact is, that nations, and the families of which nations are composed, make no parade or fuss over that part of their affairs which is going right. National life depends on home life, and foreign critics are inclined to take the chronicles of our Divorce Court as a test by which to judge the standard of our home life, like the old gentleman who always spelt through the police reports to see “what the people were about.” An acquaintance, however, with any average English neighbourhood, or any dozen English families taken at random, ought to be sufficient to reassure the faint-hearted, and to satisfy them that (to use the good old formula) the Lord has much work yet for this nation to do, and the nation manliness and godliness enough left to do it all, notwithstanding superficial appearances.

A life without sensation or incident may therefore well form a more useful subject of study in such a time, than the most exciting narrative of adventure and success, the conditions being, that it shall have been truly lived, and[x] faithfully told. Readers will judge for themselves whether the former condition has been fulfilled in this case: I wish I could feel the same confidence as to the latter. I can only say I have done my best.

T. H.

[xi]

Dedication.

TO MY NEPHEWS AND SONS.

My dear Boys,

It has pleased God to take to Himself the head of the family of which you are members. Most of you are too young to enter into the full meaning of those words “family” and “membership,” but you all remember with sore hearts, and the deepest feeling of love and reverence, the gentle, strong, brave man, whom you used to call father or uncle; and who had that wonderful delight in, and attraction for, young folk, which most very gentle and brave men have. You are conscious, I know, that a great cold chasm has suddenly opened in your lives—that strength and help has gone away from you, to which you knew you might turn in any of the troubles which boys, and very young men, feel so keenly. Well, I am glad that you feel that it is so: I should not have much hope of you[xii] if it were otherwise. The chasm will close up, and you will learn, I trust and pray, where to go for strength and help, in this and all other troubles.

It is very little that I can do for you. Probably you can do more for me; and my need is even sorer than yours. But what I can do I will. Several of you have asked me questions about your father and uncle, what we used to do, and think and talk about, when he and I were boys together. Well, no one can answer these questions better than I, for we were as nearly of an age as brothers can be—I was only thirteen months younger—and we were companions from our childhood. We went together to our first school, when I was nearly eight and he nine years old; and then on to Rugby together; and were never separated for more than a week until he went to Oxford, where I followed a year later. For the first part of my time there, in college, we lived in the same rooms, always on the same staircase; and afterwards in the same lodgings. From that time to the day of his death we lived in the most constant intimacy and affection. Looking back over all those years, I can call to mind no single unkind, or unworthy, or untruthful, act or word of his; and amongst all the good influences for which I have to be thankful, I reckon the constant presence and[xiii] example of his brave, generous, and manly life as one of the most powerful and ennobling. If I can in any measure reproduce it for you, I know that I shall be doing you a good service; and helping you, in even more difficult times than those in which we grew up, to quit yourselves as brave and true English boys and Englishmen, in whatever work or station God may be pleased to call you to.

You have all been taught to look to one life as your model, and to turn to Him who lived it on our earth, as to the guide, and friend, and helper, who alone can strengthen the feeble knees, and lift up the fainting heart. Just in so far as you cleave to that teaching, and follow that life, will you live your own faithfully. If I were not sure that what I am going to try to do for you would help to turn you more trustfully and lovingly to that source of all truth, all strength, all light, be sure I would not have undertaken it. As it is, I know it will be my fault if it does not do this.

THOMAS HUGHES.

[xiv]

[xv]

CONTENTS.

[1]

MEMOIR OF A BROTHER.

CHAPTER I.
FIRST YEARS.

My brother was born on the 18th of September, 1821 at Uffington, in Berkshire, of which your great-grandfather was vicar. Uffington was then a very primitive village, far away from any high road, and seven miles from Wantage, the nearest town from which a coach ran to London. There were very few neighbours, the roads were almost impassable for carriages in the winter, and the living was a poor one; but your great-grandfather (who was a Canon of St. Paul’s) had exchanged a much richer living for it, because his wife had been born there, and was deeply attached to the place. Three George Watts’s had been vicars of Uffington, in direct succession from father to son, and she was the daughter of the last of them. So your grandfather, who was their only child, came to live in the village on his marriage, in an old farmhouse[2] close to the church, to which your grandfather added some rooms, so as to make it habitable. If you should ever make a pilgrimage to the place, you will not find the house, for it has been pulled down; but the grand old church is there, and White Horse Hill, rising just behind the village, just as they were half a century ago, when we first looked at them. We could see the church from our bed-room window, and the hill from our nursery, a queer upper room amongst the rafters, at the top of the old part of the house, with a dark closet in one corner, into which the nurses used to put us when we were more unruly than usual. Here we lived till your great-grandfather’s death, thirteen years later, when your grandfather removed to his house at Donnington.

The memories of our early childhood and boyhood throng upon me, so that I scarcely know where to begin, or what to leave out. I cannot, however, I am sure, go wrong in telling you, how I became first aware of a great difference between us, and of the effect the discovery had on me. In the spring of 1828, when he was seven and I six years old, our father and mother were away from home for a few days. We were, playing together in the garden, when the footman came up to us, the old single-barrelled gun over his shoulder which the gardener had for driving away birds from the strawberries, and asked us whether we shouldn’t like to go rook-shooting. We jumped at the offer, and trotted along by his side to the[3] rookery, some 300 yards from the house. As we came up we saw a small group of our friends under the trees—the groom, the village schoolmaster, and a farmer or two—and started forwards to greet them. Just before we got to the trees, some of them began firing up at the young rooks. I remember, even now, the sudden sense of startled fear which came over me. My brother ran in at once under the trees, and was soon carrying about the powder-horn from one to another of the shooters. I tried to force myself to go up, but could not manage it. Presently he ran out to me, to get me to go back with him, but in vain. I could not overcome my first impression, and kept hovering round, at a distance of thirty or forty yards, until it was time for us to go back; ashamed of myself, and wondering in my small mind why it was that he could go in amongst that horrible flashing and smoke, and the din of firing, and cawing rooks, and falling birds, and I could not.

I had encountered the same puzzle in other ways already. Some time before my father had bought a small Shetland pony for us, Moggy by name, upon which we were to complete our own education in riding. We had already mastered the rudiments, under the care of our grandfather’s coachman. He had been in our family thirty years, and we were as fond of him as if he had been a relation. He had taught us to sit up and hold the bridle, while he led a quiet old cob up and down[4] with a leading rein. But, now that Moggy was come, we were to make quite a new step in horsemanship. Our parents had a theory that boys must teach themselves, and that a saddle (except for propriety, when we rode to a neighbour’s house to carry a message, or had to appear otherwise in public) was a hindrance rather than a help. So, after our morning’s lessons, the coachman used to take us to the paddock in which Moggy lived, put her bridle on, and leave us to our own devices. I could see that that moment was, from the first, one of keen enjoyment to my brother. He would scramble up on her back, while she went on grazing—without caring to bring her to the elm stool in the corner of the field, which was our mounting place—pull her head up, kick his heels into her sides, and go scampering away round the paddock with the keenest delight. He was Moggy’s master from the first day, though she not unfrequently managed to get rid of him by sharp turns, or stopping dead short in her gallop. She knew it quite well; and, just as well, that she was mistress as soon as I was on her back. For weeks it never came to my turn without my wishing myself anywhere else. George would give me a lift up, and start her. She would trot a few yards, and then begin grazing, notwithstanding my timid expostulations, and gentle pullings at her bridle. Then he would run up, and pull up her head, and start her again, and she would bolt off with a flirt of her head, and never be content till[5] I was safely on the grass. The moment that was effected she took to grazing again, and I believe enjoyed the whole performance as much as George, and certainly far more than I did. We always brought her a carrot, or bit of sugar, in our pockets, and she was much more like a great good-tempered dog with us than a pony.

Our first hunting experience now came off. Some staghounds—the King’s, if I remember rightly—came down for a day or two’s sport in our part of Berkshire, and a deer was to be turned out on the downs, a few miles from our house. Accordingly the coachman was to take us both. I was to go before him on one of the carriage horses, made safe by leather strap which encircled us both, while George rode Moggy. He was anxious to go unattached, but on the whole it was considered better that the coachman should hold a leading rein, as no one knew how Moggy might behave with the dogs, and no one but I knew how completely she would have to do as he chose. We arrived safely at the meet, saw the deer uncarted, the hounds laid on, and lumbered slowly after, till they swept away over a rise in the downs, and we saw them no more. So, after riding about for some time, the coachman produced some bread and cheese from his pocket, and we dismounted, and hitched up horse and pony on the leeward side of an old barn. We had not finished our lunch, when suddenly, to our intense delight, the stag cantered by within twenty yards of us, and, by the time we were on horseback again,[6] the hunt followed. This time George and Moggy made the most desperate efforts for freedom, but the coachman managed to keep them in tow, and so the hunt went away from us again. I believe it was in consequence of George’s remonstrances when he got home that it was now settled he should be allowed to go to the next meet of the foxhounds in our neighbourhood without a leading rein. This is his account of that great event, in a letter to his grandmother, almost the first he ever wrote. Those of you who have been brought up in the country will see how respectfully he always treats the fox, always giving him a capital F when he mentions him.

On this first occasion, as you may see by the letter, your grandfather was out with him, and he had not been allowed[7] to follow. But soon afterwards his great triumph occurred, at a meet to which he and Moggy went off one morning after breakfast, in the wildest spirits. Your grandfather did not go out that day; so one of the farmers who happened to be going was to give an eye to Master George, and see that he got into no trouble, and found his way home. This he did about three o’clock in the afternoon, bearing the brush in his hand, with his face all covered with blood, after the barbarous custom of those days. He had been in at the death; and the honest farmer recounted to us in the broadest Berkshire the wonders which he and Moggy had performed together; creeping through impossible holes in great fences, scrambling along ditches and up banks to the finish, when he had been singled out from outside the ring of horsemen and led up to the master, the late Lord Ducie, to be “blooded” by the huntsman, and receive the brush, the highest honour the boy foxhunter can achieve.

And so it was with all our games and exercises, whether we were at football, wrestling, climbing, single-stick (which latter we were only allowed to practise in the presence of an old cavalry pensioner, who had served at Waterloo). He seemed to lay hold of whatever he put his hand to by the right end, and so the secret of it delivered itself up to him at once. One often meets with people who seem as if they had been born into the world with two left hands, and two left feet, and rarely with a few who have two right hands; and of these latter[8] he was as striking an example as I have ever known. Often as a boy, and much oftener since, I have thought over this gift, trying to make out where the secret lay. For, though never very ambitious myself, I was more so than he was, and had the greatest wish to do every exercise and game as well as I possibly could; and by dint of real hard work, and years of practice, I did manage, in one or two instances, to reach the point which he had attained almost as it were by instinct. But I never could get nearer to his secret than this, that it lay in a sort of unconsciousness, which I believe to be natural courage. What I mean is, that what might possibly happen to himself never seemed to cross his mind: that he might get a fall and hurt himself, for instance, or get his head or his shins broken, or the like. And so, not being disturbed by any such considerations about himself, he had nothing to hinder him from just falling at once into the very best way of doing whatever he took in hand. Of course, even then, it required a fine body, as I have known boys and men, of equal natural courage, who were awkward and slow because they were very clumsily put together. But, on the other hand, I have known many men with equally fine bodies who never could get any decent work out of them. Now, with all the thinking in the world about it, I never could have acquired this natural gift; but, by having an example of it constantly before my eyes, I got the next best thing, which was a scorn of myself for feeling fear. This by[9] degrees hardened into the habit of doing what I saw him do, and so I managed to pass through school and college without betraying the timidity of which I was ashamed.

Why do I make the confession now to you? Because I see the same differences in you that there were in us. One or two of you are naturally courageous, and the rest as naturally timid as I was. The first I hope will always bear with the others, and help them, as my brother helped me. If he had twitted me because I could not come under the trees at the rook-shooting, or because I was afraid of Moggy, I should probably never have felt the shame, or made the exertion, necessary to overcome my natural timidity. And to you who are not naturally courageous, I would say, make the effort to conquer your fear at once; you can’t begin too early, and will never be worth much till you have made it.

But there was another natural difference between us which deserves a few words, as it will bring out his character more clearly to you; and that was, that he was remarkably quiet and reserved, and shy with strangers, and I the reverse. When we came down to dessert, after a dinner party, and had to stand by our father’s side (as the custom was then in our parts), and say to each guest in turn, “Your good health, Sir, or Madam,” while we sipped a little sweet wine and water, the ceremony was a torture to him; while to me it was quite indifferent, and I was only running my eye over the[10] dishes, and thinking which I should choose when it came to my turn. In looking over his earliest letters, I find in one, written to his mother a few weeks after we first went to school, this passage: “We are both very well and happy. I find that I like Tom better at school than I do at home, and yet I do not know the reason.” I was surprised for a moment when I came on this sentence. Of course, if love is genuine, the longer people know each other, the deeper it becomes; and therefore our friendship, like all others, grew richer and deeper as we got older. But this was the first time I ever had an idea that his feelings towards me changed after we went to school. I am not sure that I can give the reason any more than he could; but, on thinking it over, I daresay it had something to do with this difference I am speaking of.

I remember an old yeoman, a playfellow of our father’s, who lived in a grey gabled house of his own at the end of the village in those days, and with whom we used to spend a good deal of our spare time, saying to a lady, about her sons, “Bring ’em up sarcy (saucy), Marm! I likes to see bwoys brought up sarcy.” I have no doubt that he, and others, used to cultivate my natural gift of sauciness, and lead me on to give flippant answers, and talk nonsense. In fact, I can quite remember occasions of the kind, and George’s quiet steady look at them, as he thought, no doubt, “What a fool my brother is making of himself, and what a shame of you to encourage him!” Apart altogether[11] from his shyness, he had too much self-command and courtesy himself to run into any danger of this kind.

Now, the moment we got to school, my sauciness abated very rapidly on the one hand, and, on the other, I became much more consciously beholden to him. We had scarcely been there a week when the first crisis occurred which made us both aware of this fact. My form had a lesson in early Greek History to get up, in which a part of the information communicated was, that Cadmus was the first man who “carried letters from Asia to Greece.” When we came to be examined, the master asked us, “What was Cadmus?” This way of putting it puzzled us all for a moment or two, when suddenly the words “carried letters” came into my head, and, remembering the man with the leather bag who used to bring my father’s papers and letters, and our marbles and whipcord, from Farringdon, I shouted, “A postman, Sir.” The master looked very angry for a moment, but, seeing my perfect good faith, and that I had jumped up expecting to go to the head of the form, he burst out laughing. Of course all the boys joined in, and when school was over I was christened Cadmus. That I probably should not have minded, but it soon shortened into “Cad,” at which all the blood in my eight-year-old veins was on fire. The more angry I was, the more some of the boys persecuted me with the hateful name; especially one stupid big fellow of twelve or so, who ought to have been two forms higher, and revenged himself for[12] his place amongst us little ones by making our small lives as miserable as he could. A day or two after, with two or three boys for audience, he had got me in a corner of the playground, into which he kept thrusting me violently back, calling me “Cad, Cad,” while I was ready to fly at his throat and kill him. Suddenly we heard a step tearing down the gravel walk, and George, in his shirt sleeves, fresh from a game of rounders, rushed into the circle, and sent my tyrant staggering back with a blow in the chest, and then faced him with clenched fists, and a blaze in his eye, which I never saw there more than two or three times. I don’t think many boys, or men, would have liked to face him when it was there. At any rate my persecutor didn’t, though he must have been a stone heavier, and much stronger. So he slunk off, muttering to himself, to the disgust of the boys who hoped for a row, and I strutted out of my corner, while George went back to his rounders, after looking round and saying, “Just let me hear any of you call my brother ‘Cad’ again.” I don’t think I ever heard that nickname again at our first school, and it must have been very shortly after that he wrote home, “I find I like Tom better at school than I do at home, and yet I do not know the reason.” The strongest and most generous natures are always fondest of those who lean on them.

But I am getting on faster than I intended. We have not quite got away from home yet. And now let me turn[13] again to my story. You will, I am sure, be interested by the following letter, which was written to us by Miss Edgeworth. You probably have never read her books; but in our day, when there were very few children’s books, they were our great delight, and almost the only ones we possessed, after “Robinson Crusoe,” “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and “Sandford and Merton.” I forget how we discovered that the lady who wrote “Frank and Rosamond” was really alive, and that our grandmother actually had met her, and knew her. But, having made the discovery; we laid our heads together, and wrote two letters, asking her to tell us what were the contents of the remaining drawers in the wonderful Indian cabinet. Our grandmother sent her the letters, and in due time we received the following reply:—

In the winter, before we went to school first, we were left alone at home, for the first time, while our parents paid some visits. George was left in charge of the house (under the governess), with injunctions to see that all things went on regularly in the village. Our mother’s Saturday clothing club was to be held as usual, and we were not to neglect either the poor, or the birds, who were fed daily through the winter on a table on the lawn, just outside the dining-room window. The following letter will show you how conscientiously the trust was fulfilled:—

One other letter I will give to amuse you. You elder boys will say, that if he hadn’t learnt to answer questions better when he went to school, he would never have taken a high degree at Oxford:—

[16]

We went to school together, in the autumn of this year, at Twyford, near Winchester. On the way there we stayed a few days at Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, at the house of an old naval officer. He had another house near us in Berkshire, our favourite resort, as there were several little girls in the family of our own age, all very pretty. One of these little ladies took a fancy to some water-flower, as we were walking in the forest, the day before the school met. Without saying a word, George just jumped into the pond, and fetched it for her; thereby ruining a new suit of clothes (as your grandmother remarked) and risking his life, for there was no one but a nurse with us, and it was just as likely that the pond might be out of his depth as not. However, as it happened, no harm came of it, and we went on next day to Twyford.

[17]

CHAPTER II.
RUGBY.

We stayed at Twyford till the end of 1833, when our father resolved to send us to Rugby. Dr. Arnold had been a little his junior at Oriel; and, though considerably exercised by the Doctor’s politics, he shared that unhesitating faith in his character and ability which seems to have inspired all his contemporaries. In the meantime George had gone up rapidly into the highest form at Twyford, amongst boys two years older than himself, and generally carried off not only prizes for the school work but for all kinds of gymnastics. Twyford was a little before its time in this respect, as we had quite a number of gymnastic poles of different kinds in the playground, upon which we had regular lessons under a master who came over from Winchester. Every half-year we had a gymnastic examination, attended by the master’s daughters, and a lady or two from the neighbourhood, who distributed the prizes (plates of fruit and cake) at the end of the day to the successful boys. One special occasion I[18] well remember, in which the excitement ran particularly high. A new prize for vaulting was to be given, not for the common style “which any boy could do,” our master said; but for vaulting between the hands. I don’t want any of you to try it, for it is a dangerous exercise, and I wonder that some of us did not break our necks in attempting it. You had to place both your hands on the back of the vaulting horse, as far apart, or as near together, as you liked, and then spring over between them without lifting either, even for half an inch. Of course none but long-armed boys could do it at all; but there were enough of these for a large entry. Very soon, however, one after another fell out, either for touching with their feet, or shifting a hand during the vault; and George and a very active boy, a great friend of ours in after years, Charles Mansfield by name, were left alone. They two went on springing over the horse, without the least touch of foot or shifting of hand, until it was at last voted by acclamation that they should divide the great plate of grapes, apples, and sponge cakes, which stood ready for the winner.

But I must not tell you so much of all his successes in athletic games. These things are made too much of nowadays, until the training and competitions for them outrun all rational bounds. What I want to show you is, that while he was far more distinguished in these than any of you are at all likely to be (or indeed, as things stand, than I for one should wish you to be), he never[19] neglected the real purpose of a schoolboy’s life for them, as you will see from some of his early letters from Rugby to which school we went in February 1834, when he was only twelve years old. These are all addressed to his father and mother, and generally end, “Please consider this for grandmama as well as for yourselves.” No boy was ever more thoughtful of every one who had any possible claim upon him. Here is almost the first of them.

He writes home of everything, in these first years, except of what he knew would only give pain, and be quite[21] useless—the exceedingly rough side of school life as it then existed. A small boy might be, and very frequently was, fagged for every moment of his play hours day after day; and there was a good deal of a bad kind of bullying. But these things he took as a matter of course, making the best of what was inevitable. He used often afterwards to declare, that the boys of that generation made the best fields at cricket he had ever seen, and to set it down to the unmerciful amount of fagging they had to go through. Escape out of bounds before you were caught by a sixth form boy, was the only remedy; and, once out of bounds, there was the river for amusement, and the railway, upon which large gangs of navigators had just been put to work. George became a skilful fisherman, and a most interested watcher of the earthworks, and duly chronicles how he has caught a big eel in one letter; in another, how “the railway is going on very fast: they have nearly filled up one valley, and carried it over a stream;” in a third how “Mr. Wombwell’s show of wild beasts has come in, I believe the finest in England,” and including “four elephants, a black tiger and tigress, and two lions, one of which was the famous Wallace who fought the dogs.”

Before the end of the second year he had got through three forms, and was nearly the head of the fags, and anxious to try his hand for the single scholarship, which was then offered at Rugby for boys under fourteen. As there was only one, of course the competition was a very[22] severe one. But his first letter of that year contains a passage too characteristic to pass over. So I must leave the scholarship for a moment. We, with other boys who lived in Berkshire and Hampshire, were often obliged to post, or hire a coach to ourselves, as there was only one regular coach a day on those cross-country roads. We used to make up parties accordingly, and appoint one boy to manage the whole business, who had rather a hard time of it, while all the rest enjoyed themselves in the most uproarious manner. George was soon selected as the victim, and bearer of the common purse; and his conscientious struggles with postboys and hostlers, landlords and waiters, cost him, I am sure, more pain and anxiety than all the scholarship examinations he ever went in for. Thus he writes in February 1836, to tell of our safe arrival, and then goes on:—

And then, at the end of the half, when he has to begin arranging for the return journey, “the Doctor will not[23] take any account of these plaguey postboys, and so always allows us too little journey money.”

We were always encouraged to bring our friends home, but how scrupulous he was about using the privilege the remainder of the letter just quoted will show you:—

But I am forgetting the scholarship.

In his next of April 2nd, he communicates the result as follows, but not mentioning that six of his competitors were older than he, and in higher forms:—

[25]

He did well, as usual, and got into the fifth at the summer examination. Your grandmother had a small bookcase made on purpose for our prizes, which was being rapidly filled by George. He writes thus to her just before our holidays:—

On returning as a fifth form boy he describes the fifth form room, of which he is now free, with great delight, and reverence for its “two sofas, three tables, curtains, and large bookcase,” and adds—

But I shall not copy it out for fear of tiring you, and indeed I feel that I must hurry over the rest of his school life. When every line and word is full of life and interest to oneself, it is perhaps hard to judge where to stop for the next generation. A few short extracts, however, from his letters during his last three years will, I think, interest you. At least some of the references will show you what a time of revolution you were born into. When we were your ages there was no railway between London and Birmingham: and in all other directions, and on all other sides of English life, the change seems to me quite as great as in this of locomotion.

[29]

About this time a scribbling fever attacked the upper boys at Rugby. A year or two earlier the Rugby Magazine had gained considerable repute, from the publication of some of Clough’s early poems, and contributions by others of the Stanley and Vaughan generation; and had thus furnished a healthy local outlet for the literary secretions of the sixth form. But that journal was now no more, so we were thrown back on the periodicals of the outside world. To get a copy of verses, or a short article, into one of these, was looked upon as an heroic feat, like making fifty runs in a school match. And of all the magazines, and they were much fewer in those days, Bentley’s was the favourite; chiefly, I think, because of the “Ingoldsby Legends,” which were then coming out in it. Mr. Barham was an old friend of your grandfather; and I believe it was through him that George had the pleasure of seeing himself in print for the first time. The editor accepted some translations of Anacreon, which he had done out of school-hours. Here are two specimens, and though I do not care to see any of you writing for magazines, I should be glad to think that you could render a classic so well at the age of seventeen:—

When “Bentley” arrived at the school-house we were all in astonishment, and not a little uplifted at this feat, which seemed to link the school-house to the great world of literature. George took it very quietly, mentioning it thus in his next letter home:—

We now went always by rail to London, the guards of those days allowing us, for some time, to travel outside, where we scrambled about amongst the luggage, and climbed down into the carriages while the train was going. I often wonder that none of us broke our necks, especially the present Scotch Secretary of the Treasury, W. Adam, who was the most reckless of us all at these exploits. We always managed, during our few hours in town, to call on some of our father’s literary friends, who were wonderfully kind to us. Here is a specimen:—

In the summer of 1839 he went in for the Exhibition examination, and did so well that his success in 1840 (his last year) was almost a certainty. But he did not remain for another examination, and I must tell you the reason of his leaving before his time, because, though I was then furiously on the other side, I think now that he was in the wrong. It was one of those curious difficulties which will happen, I suppose, every now and then in our great public schools, where the upper boys have so much power and responsibility, and in which there are (or were) a number of customs and traditions as to discipline, which are almost sacred to the boys, but scarcely recognized by the masters.

It happened thus. Just at this time the sixth form boys were on the average smaller and younger than usual, while there were a great number of big boys, not high up in the school, but excellent cricketers and football players, and otherwise manly and popular fellows. They swarmed in the eleven, and big-side football, and were naturally thrown very much with George and his friend Mackie.[6] In some houses, no doubt, they were inclined[33] rather to ignore the authority of the sixth themselves, and of course their example was followed by the fags, so that the discipline of the school began to fall out of gear. At last matters came to a crisis. Some of the sixth form took to reporting to the Doctor cases which, according to school traditions, they ought to have dealt with themselves; and in other ways began to draw the reins too tightly. There were “levies” (as we called them) of the sixth and fifth, at which high words passed, and several of the sixth were sent to Coventry. This made the Doctor very angry, and he took the side of the disciplinarians. Then came a rebellious exhibition of fireworks one evening in the quadrangle. Then an Italian, with a lot of plaster casts, committed the unpardonable sin of coming into the Close without leave, and his wares were taken, and put up for “cock-shyes.” He went straight to the Doctor, who insisted that the sixth should discover and report the offenders; but those who would could not, and those who might would not. The Doctor’s face had been getting blacker and blacker for some time, and at last, one November morning, he sent half a dozen of the big fifth and middle fifth boys home, and told George and his friend Mackie, and one or two other sixth form boys, that they could not return after the end of the half-year.

And here I will give you two of your grandfather’s letters to us on these matters, to show you how we were[34] brought up. He was an old Westminster himself, and so quite understood the boys’ side of the dispute.

He begins to George, telling him first about home doings, and then goes on:—

Then, on the same sheet, follows a letter to me. I must explain that I had been one of the image breakers, but had come forward with one of the others and paid the damage.

In conclusion, to George:—

George’s answer produced the following from your grandfather:—

I believe that no boy was ever more regretted. Since he had been in the sixth, and especially in his last year, when he was the Captain of Big-side Football and third in the Eleven, bullying had disappeared from the school-house, and house fagging had lost its irksomeness. The House had regained its position, having beaten the School at football. He had kicked the last goal from “a place” nearly sixty yards from the post. The tradition of that kick was handed down for many years, and, I remarked, was always getting back some few yards; so that, by the time it expired, I have no doubt it had reached 100 yards, and become as fabulous as many other traditions. His rule was perhaps rather too easy. The loafers, who are always too numerous, had a much better time than they deserved; and I doubt whether the school-house first lessons were done so well as at other times; for, instead of each boy going off to his own study after supper, and stern silence reigning in the[41] passages till bed-time, groups of bigger boys would collect round the fires, and three or four fags in one study, and thus much time which should have been given to themes and verses was spent in talking over football and cricket matches, and the Barby and Crick runs at hare and hounds. I know that George himself regretted very much what had occurred, and I believe, had he had a second chance, would have dealt vigorously with the big boys at once. But he had to learn by the loss of his exhibition, as you will all have to learn in one way or another, that neither boys nor men do get second chances in this world. We all get new chances till the end of our lives, but not second chances in the same set of circumstances; and the great difference between one boy and another is, how he takes hold of, and uses, his first chance, and how he takes his fall if it is scored against him.

At the end of the half, Dr. Arnold, with his usual kindness, and with a view I believe to mark his approval of my brother’s character and general conduct at the school, invited him to spend part of his holidays at the Lakes. His visit to Foxhow, and Yorkshire, at Christmas 1839, before he went up to Oxford, delighted him greatly. He had never seen a mountain before, and the fact of seeing them for the first time from his old master’s house, with schoolfellows to whom he was warmly attached, doubled his pleasure. I have only room, however, for one of his letters:—

[42]

The ride to Keswick, mentioned in this letter, is alluded to also in one which I received in this last sad month of[45] May from one of his companions, who has allowed me to use it for your benefit. Its natural place would perhaps be at the end of this memoir, but I prefer to insert it here:—

From Foxhow George went to visit another of his most intimate school friends. During that visit he gave another proof of coolness and courage of a rare kind, and also of his singular modesty. We at home only heard of what had happened through the newspapers, and never could get him to do anything more than pooh-pooh the whole affair. In fact, the first accurate description of the occurrence came to me after his death, in the letter to his sister which follows. It is written by the schoolfellow just referred to:—

[49]

CHAPTER III.
A FATHER’S LETTERS.

If this memoir is to do for you, his sons and nephews, what I hope it may, you must be told of his weak points. You have seen already that he had to leave school half a year sooner than he would otherwise have left, because he was too easy-going as a sixth-form boy, and would not exert himself to keep order; and he had a constitutional indolence, which led him to shirk trouble in small matters, and to leave things to manage themselves. This fault used to annoy your grandfather, who was always exceedingly particular as to business habits, such as answering letters, and putting things in their right places. When we first were allowed to use guns, he gave us special instructions never to bring them into the house loaded. At the end of the Christmas holidays, just after George was made a præpostor, we brought our guns in loaded, and left them in the servants’ hall during luncheon. After lunch, when we went to take them out again, by some carelessness George’s went off, and he narrowly escaped being shot, and[50] the charge went through two floors. Your grandfather said nothing at the moment, but, soon afterwards, George’s neglect to answer some questions on business matters produced from him the first of a series of letters, which certainly did us much good at the time, and I think may be just as useful to you. Most boys have the same kind of faults, and I cannot see that any of you need such advice less than we did.

George’s reply appears to have contained some statement as to his intentions in the matter of reading, as well as satisfactory answers to the neglected questions. Your grandfather, however, returns to the charge again:—

Again in 1840, referring to this indolent, easy-going habit, your grandfather writes:—

And again in 1842:—

[57]

The last reference of this kind which I find in your grandfather’s letters, which we’re always carefully preserved by George, occurs in 1846. After referring to an omission to notice the transfer of some money to his account, your grandfather goes on:—

As a slight illustration of the effect of these letters, I may add here, that to the end of his life, when he came in from shooting, my brother never rested until he had cleaned his gun with his own hands. When asked why he did not leave it to the keeper, he said he preferred its being done at once, and thoroughly; and the only way of being sure of that, was to do it himself. In some respects, however, he never got over his constitutional love of taking things easily, and avoiding bother and trouble.

[59]

CHAPTER IV.
OXFORD.

My brother went up to Oxford full of good resolves as to reading, which he carried out far better than most men do, although undoubtedly after his first year, his popularity, by enlarging the circle of his acquaintance to an inconvenient extent, somewhat interfered with his studies. Your grandfather was delighted at having a son likely to distinguish himself actually resident in his own old College. In his time it had occupied the place in the University now held by Balliol. Copleston and Whately had been his tutors; and, as he had resided a good deal after taking his degree, he had seen several generations of distinguished men in the common room, including Arnold, Blanco White, Keble, Pusey, and Hampden. Moreover, there was a tradition of University distinction in his family; his father had been Setonian Prizeman and Chancellor’s Medallist at Cambridge, and he himself had carried off the Latin verse prize, and one of the English Odes recited before the United Sovereigns, when they[60] paid a visit to the Oxford Commemoration in 1814, with Wellington, Blücher, and a host of the great soldiers of that day.

His anxiety as to George’s start at Oxford manifested itself in many ways, and particularly as to the want of punctuality, and accuracy in small matters, which he had already noticed. As a delicate lesson on this subject, I find him taking advantage of the fact that George’s watch was in the hands of the maker for repairs, to send him his own chronometer, adding: “As your sense of trustworthiness in little and great things is a considerably multiplied multiple of your care for your own private property (which doubtless will grow to its right proportion when you have been cheated a little), I have no doubt old Trusty will return to me in as good order as when he left me. Furthermore, it is possible you may take a fancy to him when you have learnt the value of an unfailing guide to punctuality. In which case, if you can tell me at the end of term that you have, to the best of your belief, made the most of your time, I will with great pleasure swap with you. As to what is making the best of your time, you would of course like to have my ideas. Thus, then”—and your grandfather proceeds to give a number of rules, founded on his own old Oxford experience, as to reading, and goes on:—

You will see by his answer how readily George entered into some of his father’s ideas, though I don’t think he ever sent for his horse. A few weeks later, in 1841, he writes:—

Your grandfather accepted the post with great pleasure; and there are a number of his letters, full of hints and directions as to study, which I hope you may all read some day, but which would make this memoir too long. You will see later on how well satisfied he was with the general result, though in one or two instances he had sad disappointments to bear, as most fathers have who are anxious about their sons’ work. The first of these happened[63] this year. He was specially anxious that George should write for the Latin Verse, which prize he himself had won. Accordingly George wrote in his first year, but, instead of taking his poem himself to the Proctor’s when he had finished it, left it with his College tutor to send in. The consequence was, it was forgotten till after the last day for delivery, and so could not be received. This was a sad trial to your grandfather, both because he had been very sanguine as to the result, and because here was another instance of George’s carelessness about his own affairs, and want of punctuality in small things. However, he wrote so kindly about it, that George was more annoyed than if he had been very angry, and set to work on the poem for the next year as soon as the subject was announced, which I remember was “Noachi Diluvium.” You may be sure that now the poem went in in good time, but in due course the Examiners announced that no prize would be given for the year. I do not know that any reason was ever given for this unusual course, which surprised everyone, as it was known that several very good scholars, including, I believe, the late Head-master of Marlborough, had been amongst the competitors. Your grandfather was very much vexed. He submitted George’s poem to two of his old college friends, Dean Milman and Bishop Lonsdale, both of whom had been Latin prizemen; and, when they expressed an opinion that, in default of better copies of verses, these should[64] have been entitled to the prize, he had them printed, with the following heading:—

The real fact I believe to have been, so far as George was concerned, that there were two false quantities in his verses; and though these were so palpable, as your grandfather remarked, “as to be obvious to any fifth-form boy, and plainly due to carelessness in transcription, and want of revision by a second person,” the Examiners were clearly not bound to make allowances for such carelessness.

Many years after, in a letter to his sister, on some little success of her boy at Rugby, George writes:—

But I must return to his freshman’s year at Oxford.

I have told you already that this was our first separation of any length. I did not see him from the day he went to Oxford in January until our Rugby Eleven went up to Lords, at the end of the half-year, for the match with the M.C.C. It was the first time I had ever played there, and of course I was very full of it, and fancied the match the most important event which was occurring in England the time. One of our Eleven did not turn up, and George was allowed to play for us. He was, as usual, a tower of strength in a boys’ Eleven, because you could rely on his nerve. When the game was going badly, he was always put in to keep up his wicket, and very seldom failed to do it. On this occasion we were in together, and he made a long score, but, I thought, did not play quite in his usual style; and on talking the matter over with him when we got home, I found that he had not been playing at Oxford, but had taken to boating.

I expressed my sorrow at this, and spoke disparagingly of boating, of which I knew nothing whatever. We certainly had a punt in the stream at home, but it was too narrow for oars, and I scarcely knew a stretcher from a rowlock. He declared that he was as fond of cricket as ever, but that in the whole range of sport, even including[66] hunting, there was no excitement like a good neck-and-neck boat-race, and that I should come to think so too.

At this time his boating career had only just begun, and rowing was rather at a discount at Oxford. For several years Cambridge had had their own way with the dark blues, notably in this very year of 1841. But a radical reformer had just appeared at Oxford, whose influence has lasted to the present day, and to whom the substitution of the long stroke with sharp catch at the beginning (now universally accepted as the only true form) for the short, digging “waterman’s” stroke, as it used to be called, is chiefly due. This was Fletcher Menzies, then captain of the University College boat. He had already begun to train a crew on his own principles, in opposition to the regular University crew, and, amongst others, had selected my brother, though a freshman, and had taken him frequently down the river behind himself in a pair-oar. The first result of this instruction was, that my brother won the University pair-oar race, pulling stroke to another freshman of his own college.

In Michaelmas Term, 1841, it became clear to all judges of rowing that the opposition was triumphant. F. Menzies was elected captain of the O. U. B. C., and chose my brother as his No. 7, so that on my arrival at Oxford in the spring of 1842, I found him training in the University crew. The race with Cambridge was then rowed in the summer, and over the six-mile course, between Westminster[67] and Putney bridges. This year the day selected was the 12th of June. I remember it well, for I was playing at the same time in the Oxford and Cambridge match at Lord’s. The weather was intensely hot, and we were getting badly beaten. So confident were our opponents in the prowess of their University, that, at dinner in the Pavilion, they were offering even bets that Cambridge would win all three events—the cricket match, the race at Westminster, and the Henley Cup, which was to be rowed for in the following week. This was too much for us, and the bets were freely taken; I myself, for the first and last time in my life, betting five pounds with the King’s man who sat next me. Before our match was over the news came up from the river that Oxford had won.

It was the last race ever rowed by the Universities over the long six-mile course. To suit the tide, it was rowed down, from Putney to Westminster Bridge. My brother unluckily lost his straw hat at the start, and the intense heat on his head caused him terrible distress. The boats were almost abreast down to the Battersea reach, where there were a number of lighters moored in mid stream, waiting for the tide. This was the crisis of the race. As the boats separated, each taking its own side, Egan, the Cambridge coxswain, called on his crew: Shadwell, the Oxford coxswain, heard him, and called on his own men, and when the boats came in sight of each other again from behind the lighters, Oxford was well ahead. But my[68] brother was getting faint from the effects of the sun on his head, when Shadwell reminded him of the slice of lemon which was placed in each man’s thwart. He snatched it up, and at the same time F. Menzies took off his own hat and gave it him; and, when the boat shot under Westminster Bridge with a clear lead, he was quite himself again.

In our college boat—of which he was now stroke, and which he took with a brilliant rush to the head of the river, bumping University, the leading boat, to which his captain, F. Menzies, was still stroke, after two very severe races—he always saw that every man had a small slice of lemon at the start, in memory of the Battersea reach.

Next year (1843), owing to a dispute about the time, there was no University race over the London course, but the crews were to meet at the Henley Regatta. The meeting was looked forward to with more than ordinary interest, as party feeling was running high between the Universities. In the previous year, after their victory in London, the Oxford boat had gone to Henley, but had withdrawn, in consequence of a decision of the stewards, allowing a man to row in the Cambridge crew who had already rowed in a previous heat, in another boat. So the cup remained in the possession of the Cambridge Rooms, a London rowing club, composed of men who had left college, and of the best oarsmen still at the University. If the Cambridge Rooms could hold the challenge cup this year also, it would become[69] their property. But we had little fear of this, as Menzies’ crew was in better form than ever. He had beaten Cambridge University in 1842, and we were confident would do it again; and, as the Rooms were never so strong as the University, we had no doubt as to the result of the final heat also. I remember walking over from Oxford the night before the regatta, with a friend, full of these hopes, and the consternation with which we heard, on arriving at the town, that the Cambridge University boat had withdrawn, so that the best men might be draughted from it into the Rooms’ crew, the holders of the cup. Those only who have felt the extraordinary interest which these contests excite can appreciate the dismay with which this announcement filled us. Our boat would, by this arrangement, have to contend with the picked oars of two first-class crews; and we forgot that, after all, though the individual men were better, the fact of their not having trained regularly together made them really less formidable competitors. But far worse news came in the morning. F. Menzies had been in the Schools in the previous month, and the strain of his examination, combined with training for the race, had been too much for him. He was down with a bad attack of fever. What was to be done? It was settled at once that my brother should row stroke, and a proposal was made that the vacant place in the boat should be filled by one of Menzies’ college crew. The question went before the stewards,[70] who, after long deliberation, determined that this could not be allowed. In consequence of the dispute in the previous year, they had decided, that only those oarsmen whose names had been sent in could row in any given race. I am not sure where the suggestion came from, I believe from Menzies himself, that his crew should row the race with seven oars; but I well remember the indignation and despair with which the final announcement was received.

However, there was no help for it, and we ran down the bank to the starting-place by the side of our crippled boat, with sad hearts, cheering them to show our appreciation of their pluck, but without a spark of hope as to the result. When they turned to take up their place for the start, we turned also, and went a few hundred yards up the towing-path, so as to get start enough to enable us to keep up with the race. The signal-gun was fired, and we saw the oars flash in the water, and began trotting up the bank with our heads turned over our shoulders. First one, and then another, cried out that “we were holding our own,” that “light blue was not gaining.” In another minute they were abreast of us, close together, but the dark blue flag the least bit to the front. A third of the course was over, and, as we rushed along and saw the lead improved foot by foot, almost inch by inch, hope came back, and the excitement made running painful. In another minute, as they turned the corner and got into the straight reach, the[71] crowd became too dense for running. We could not keep up, and could only follow with our eyes and shouts, as we pressed up towards the bridge. Before we could reach it the gun fired, and the dark blue flag was run up, showing that Oxford had won.

Then followed one of the temporary fits of delirium which sometimes seize Englishmen, the sight of which makes one slow to disbelieve any crazy story which is told of the doings of other people in moments of intense excitement. The crew had positively to fight their way into their hotel, and barricade themselves there, to escape being carried round Henley on our shoulders. The enthusiasm, frustrated in this direction, burst out in all sorts of follies, of which you may take this as a specimen. The heavy toll-gate was pulled down, and thrown over the bridge into the river, by a mob of young Oxonians headed by a small, decorous, shy man in spectacles, who had probably never pulled an oar in his life, but who had gone temporarily mad with excitement, and I am confident would, at that moment, have led his followers not only against the Henley constables, but against a regiment with fixed bayonets. Fortunately, no harm came of it but a few broken heads and black eyes, and the local authorities, making allowances for the provocation, were lenient at the next petty sessions.

The crew went up to London from Henley, to row for the Gold Cup, in the Thames Regatta, which had just been[72] established. Here they met the Cambridge Rooms’ crew again, strengthened by a new No. 3 and a new stroke, and the Leander, then in its glory, and won the cup after one of the finest and closest races ever rowed. There has been much discussion as to these two races ever since in the boating world, in which my brother was on one occasion induced to take part. “The Oxford University came in first,” was his account, “with a clear lead of the Leander, the Cambridge crew overlapping the Leander. We were left behind at the start, and had great difficulty in passing our opponents, not from want of pace, but from want of room.” And, speaking of the Henley race, which was said to have been won against a “scratch crew,” he adds: “A ‘scratch crew’ may mean anything short of a perfectly trained crew of good materials. Anyone who cares about it will find the names of the Rooms’ crew at p. 100 of Mr. Macmichael’s book, and by consulting the index will be able to form a judgment as to the quality of our opponents. We had a very great respect for them. I never attempted to exaggerate the importance of the ‘seven oars’ race,’ and certainly never claimed to have beaten a Cambridge University crew on that occasion.” It will always remain, however, one of the most interesting of the heroic records of a noble English sport.

He announced his own triumphs at home as follows, from the Golden Cross, where the Oxford crew then stopped:—

[73]

The two great cups came to Donnington, and remained for the year on your grandfather’s sideboard, who could never quite make up his mind about them; pride at his son’s extraordinary prowess being dashed with fears as to the possible effects on him. George himself, at this time, certainly had no idea that he was at all the worse for it, and maintained in his letters that pulling “is not so severe exercise as boxing or fencing hard for an hour.” “You may satisfy yourselves I shall not overdo it. I have always felt the better for it as yet, but if I were to feel the least inconvenience I should give it up at once.”

One effect the seven-oar race had on our generation at Oxford: it made boating really popular, which it had not been till then. I, amongst others, was quite converted to my brother’s opinion, and began to spend all my spare time on the water. Our college entered for the University four-oar races in the following November Term, and, to my intense delight, I was selected for No. 2, my brother pulling stroke.

[74]

Our first heat was against Balliol, and through my awkwardness it proved to be the hardest race my brother ever rowed. At the second stroke after the start I caught a crab (to use boating phrase), and such a bad one that the head of our boat was forced almost into the bank, and we lost not a stroke or two, but at least a dozen, Balliol going away with a lead of two boats’ lengths and more. Few strokes would have gone on in earnest after this, and I am not sure that my brother would, but that it was my first race for a University prize. As it was, he turned round, took a look at Balliol, and just said, “Shove her head out! Now then,” and away we went. Of course I was burning with shame, and longing to do more than my utmost to make up for my clumsiness. The boat seemed to spring under us, but I could feel it was no doing of mine. Just before the Gut we were almost abreast of them, but, as they had the choice of water, we were pushed out into mid stream, losing half a boat’s length, and having now to pull up against the full current while Balliol went up on the Oxford side under the willows. Our rivals happened also to be personal friends, and I remember well becoming conscious as we struggled up the reach that I was alongside, first of their stroke, the late Sir H. Lambert, then of No. 3, W. Spottiswoode, and at last, as we came to the Cherwell, just before the finish, of our old schoolfellow, T. Walrond, who was pulling the bow oar. I felt that the race was won, for they had now to come across to us; and won it was, but only by a few feet.[75] I don’t think the rest of us were much more distressed than we had been before in college races. But my brother’s head drooped forward, and he could not speak for several seconds. I should have learnt then, if I had needed to learn, that it is the stroke who wins boat races.

Our next heat against University, the holders of the cup was a much easier affair. We won by some lengths, and my brother had thus carried off every honour which an oarsman can win at the University, except the sculls, for which he had never been able to enter. I cannot remember any race in which he pulled stroke and was beaten.

There are few pleasanter memories in my life than those of the river-side, when we were training behind him in our college crew. He was perhaps a thought too easy, and did not keep us quite so tightly in hand as the captains of some of the other leading boats kept their men. But the rules of training were then barbarous, and I think we were all the better for not being strictly limited even in the matter of a draught of cold water, or compelled to eat our meat half cooked. He was most judicious in all the working part of training, and no man ever knew better when to give his crew the long Abingdon reach, and when to be content with Iffley or Sandford. At the half-hour’s rest at those places he would generally sit quiet, and watch the skittles, wrestling, quoits, or feats of strength which were going on all about. But if he did take part in them, he almost always beat everyone else. I only remember[76] one occasion on which he was fairly foiled. In consequence of his intimacy with F. Menzies, our crew were a great deal with that of University College, and much friendly rivalry existed between us. One afternoon one of their crew,[10] R. Mansfield, brother of George’s old vaulting antagonist, rode down to Sandford, where, in the field near the inn, there was always a furze hurdle for young gentlemen to leap over. In answer to some chaffing remark, Mansfield turned round, and, sitting with his face towards his horse’s tail, rode him over this hurdle. Several of us tried it after him, George amongst the number, but we all failed; and of course declared that it was all a trick, and that his horse was trained to do it under him, and to refuse under anybody else.

The four-oar race was the last of my brother’s boating triumphs. At the end of the term he gave up rowing, as his last year was beginning, and he was anxious to get more time for his preparation for the Schools. I am not sure that he succeeded in this as, strong exercise of some kind being a necessity to him, he took to playing an occasional game at cricket, and was caught and put into the University Eleven. He pulled, however, in one more great race, in the Thames Regatta of 1845, when he was still resident as a bachelor, attending lectures. Number 6 in the Oxford boat broke down, and his successor applied to him to fill the place, to which he assented rather unwillingly.[77] The following extract from a letter to his father gives the result, and the close of his boating career:—

He always retained his love for rowing, and came up punctually every year to take his place on the umpire’s boat at the University race, to which he had a prescriptive claim as an old captain of the O.U.B.C. And this chapter may fitly close with a boating song, the best of its kind that I know of, which he wrote at my request. It appeared in Mr. Severn’s “Almanac of English Sports,” published at Christmas 1868. I had rashly promised the editor to give him some verses for March, on the University race, and put it off till it was time to go to press. When my time was limited by days, and I had to sit down to my task in the midst of other work, I found that the knack of rhyming had left me, and turned naturally to the brother who had helped me in many a copy of verses thirty years back. I sent him down some dozen hobbling lines, and within a post or two I received from him the following, on the March Boat Race:—

[78]

CHAPTER V.
DEGREE.

The Schools were now very near ahead of him, and, though not much behindhand with his work, considering the intensity of his exertions in other directions, he was anxious to make the most of the months that were left. He read very hard in vacation, but, when term began again, had to encounter unusual difficulties. His father’s half-hinted warnings against a large acquaintance proved prophetic. In fact, I used to wonder how he ever got his reading done at all, and was often not a little annoyed with many of my own contemporaries, and other younger men still, even to the last batch of freshmen, whose fondness for his society was untempered by any thought of examinations, or honours. Not one of them could give a wine, or a breakfast party, without him, and his good-nature kept him from refusing when he found that his presence gave real pleasure. Then he never had the heart to turn them out of his rooms, or keep his oak habitually sported; and when that most necessary ceremony[81] for a reading man had been performed, it was not respected as it should have been. My rooms were on the same staircase, half a flight below his (which looked into the quadrangle, while mine looked out over the back of the College), so that I could hear all that happened. Our College lectures were all over at one. It was well for him if he had secured quiet up to that hour; but, in any case, regularly within a few minutes after the clock had struck, I used to hear steps on the stairs, and a pause before his oak. If it was sported, kicking or knocking would follow, with imploring appeals, “Now, old ’un” (the term of endearment by which he went in College), “do open—I know you’re in—only for two minutes.” A short persistence seldom failed; and soon other men followed on the same errand, “for a few minutes only,” till it was time for lunch, to which he would then be dragged off in one of their rooms, and his oak never get sported again till late at night. Up to his last term in College this went on, though not to quite the same extent; and even then there was one incorrigible young idler, who never failed in his “open sesame,” and wasted more of my brother’s time than all the rest of the College. But who could be angry with him? He was one of the smallest and most delicate men I ever saw, weighing about 8st. l0lb., a capital rider, and as brave as a lion, though we always called him “the Mouse.” Full of mother wit, but utterly uncultivated,[82] it was a perfect marvel how he ever matriculated, and his answers, and attempts at construing, in lecture were fabulous—full of good impulse, but fickle as the wind; reckless, spendthrift, fast, in constant trouble with tradesmen, proctors, and the College authorities. But no tradesman, when it came to the point, had the heart to “court,” or proctor to rusticate him; and the Dean, though constantly in wrath at his misdeeds, never got beyond warnings, and “gating.” So he held on, until his utter, repeated, and hopeless failure to pass his “smalls,” brought his college career to its inevitable end. Unfortunately for my brother’s reading, that career coincided with his third year, and his society had an extraordinary fascination for the Mouse. The perfect contrast between them, in mind and body, may probably account for this; but I think the little man had also a sort of longing to be decent and respectable, and, in the midst of his wildest scrapes, felt that his intimacy with the best oar and cricketer in the College, who was also on good terms with the Dons, and paid his bills, and could write Greek verses, kept him in touch with the better life of the place, and was a constant witness to himself of his intention to amend, some day. They had one taste in common, however, which largely accounted for my brother’s undoubted affection for the little “ne’er do weel,” a passion for animals. The Mouse kept two terriers, who were to him as children, lying in his bosom by night, and eating from his plate by day.[83] Dogs were strictly forbidden in College, and the vigilance of the porter was proof against all the other pets. But the Mouse’s terriers defied it. From living on such intimate terms with their master, they had become as sharp as undergraduates. They were never seen about the quadrangles in the day-time, and knew the sound and sight of dean, tutor, and porter, better than any freshman. When the Mouse went out of College, they would stay behind on the staircase till they were sure he must be fairly out in the street, and then scamper across the two quadrangles, and out of the gate, as if their lives depended on the pace. In the same way, on returning, they would repeat the process, after first looking cautiously in at the gate to see that the porter was safe in his den. But after dusk they were at their ease at once, and would fearlessly trot over the forbidden grass of the inner quad, or sit at the Provost’s door, or on the Hall steps, and romp with anybody not in a master’s gown. So, even when his master’s knock remained unanswered, Crib’s or Jet’s beseeching whine and scratch would always bring my brother to the door. He could not resist dogs, or children.

I have always laid my brother’s loss of his first class at the door of his young friends, but chiefly on the Mouse, for that little man’s delinquencies culminated in the most critical moment of the Schools. The Saturday before paper work began he had seduced George out for[84] an evening stroll with him, and of course took him through a part of the town which was famous for town-and-gown rows. Here, a baker carrying a tray shouldered the Mouse into the gutter. The Mouse thereupon knocked the baker’s tray off his head. The baker knocked the little man over, and my brother floored the baker, who sat in the mud, and howled “Gown, gown.” In two minutes a mob was on them, and they had to retreat fighting, which, owing to the reckless pugnacity of his small comrade, was an operation that tried all my brother’s coolness and strength to the utmost. By the help, however, of Crib, who created timely diversions by attacking the heels of the town at critical moments, he succeeded in bringing the Mouse home, capless, with his gown in shreds, and his nose and mouth bleeding, but otherwise unhurt, at the cost to himself of a bad black-eye. The undergraduate remedies of leeches, raw beef-steak, and paint were diligently applied during the next thirty-six hours, but with very partial success; and he had to appear in white tie and bands before the Examiners, on the Monday morning, with decided marks of battle on his face. In the evening, he wrote home:—

His nervousness was out of place, as I ascertained afterwards from his tutor, that the Examiners were very much pleased with his paper work. Indeed, I think that he himself soon got over his nervousness, and was well satisfied with his prospects when his turn came for vivâ voce examination. I was foolish enough to choose the same day for sitting in the Schools, a ceremony one had to perform in the year preceding one’s own examination. It involved attendance during the whole day, listening to the attack of the four experts in row at the long table, on the intellectual works of the single unfortunate, who sat facing them on the other side. This, when the victim happens to be your brother, is a severe and needless trial of nerves and patience.

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For some time, however, I was quite happy, as George construed his Greek plays capitally, and had his Aristotle at his finger ends. He was then handed on to the third Examiner, who opened Livy and put him on somewhere in the bewildering Samnite wars, and, when he had construed, closed the book as if satisfied, just putting him a casual question as to the end of the campaign, and its effect on home politics at Rome. No answer, for George was far too downright to attempt a shot; and, as he told me afterwards, had not looked at this part of his Livy for more than a year. Of course other questions followed, and then a searching examination in this part of the history, which showed that my brother knew his Arnold’s Rome well enough, but had probably taken up his Livy on trust, which was very nearly the truth. I never passed a more unpleasant hour, for I happened to be up in this part of Livy, and, if the theories of Mesmerism were sound, should certainly have been able to inspire him with the answers. As it was, I was on the rack all the time, and left the Schools in a doleful state of mind. I felt sure that he must lose his first class, and told the group of our men so, who gathered in the Schools quadrangle to see the Honours list posted. The Mouse, on the other hand, swore roundly that he was certain of his first, offering to back his opinion to any amount. I did not bet, but proved to be right. His name came out in the second class, there being only five in the first; and we[87] walked back to Oriel a disconsolate band; the Mouse, I really believe, being more cast down than any of the party. I never told him that in my opinion he was himself not a little responsible.

He was obliged to take his own name off the books shortly afterwards, and started for the Cape, leaving Crib and Jet, the only valuable possession I imagine that he had in the world, to my brother. They were lovingly tended to a good old age. Their old master joined the Mounted Rifles, in which corps (we heard at second hand, for he never wrote a letter) he fully maintained his character for fine riding and general recklessness, till he broke down altogether, and died some two years later. It is a sad little history, which carries its own moral.

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CHAPTER VI.
START IN LIFE.

My brother, after taking his degree, remained up at Oxford in lodgings, attending lectures; and, when I went out of College in the term before my own examination, I joined him, and once again we found ourselves living in a common sitting room. I think it was a very great pleasure to both of us; and as soon as my troubles in the Schools were over, and the short leisure time which generally follows that event had set in, we began to talk over subjects which had hitherto been scarcely mentioned between us, but which, on the threshold of active life, were becoming of absorbing interest. In the previous autumn I had made a tour with a pupil in the North of England and Scotland. I had gone, by choice, to commercial hotels in several of the large northern towns, as I had discovered that commercial rooms were the most likely places for political discussion, and was anxious to talk over the great question of that day with the very vigorous and able gentlemen who frequented them. The Anti-Corn-Law agitation was then at its height,[89] and, to cut a long story short, I had come back from the North an ardent Freetrader. In other directions also I was rapidly falling away from the political faith in which we had been brought up. I am not conscious, indeed I do not believe, that Arnold’s influence was ever brought to bear directly on English politics, in the case even of those boys who (like my brother and myself) came specially under it, in his own house, and in the sixth form. What he did for us was, to make us think on the politics of Israel, and Rome, and Greece, leaving us free to apply the lessons he taught us in these, as best we could, to our own country. But now his life had been published, and had come like a revelation to many of us; explaining so much that had appeared inexplicable, and throwing a white light upon great sections, both of the world which we had realized more or less through the classics, and the world which was lying under our eyes, and all around us, and which we now began, for the first time, to recognize as one and the same.

The noble side of democracy was carrying me away. I was haunted by Arnold’s famous sentence, “If there is one truth short of the highest for which I would gladly die, it is democracy without Jacobinism;” and “the People’s Charter” was beginning to have strange attractions for me.

It was just one of those crises in one’s life in which nothing is so useful, or healthy, for one, as coming into direct and constant contact with an intellect stronger than[90] one’s own, which looks at the same subjects from a widely different standpoint.

Now, in the Anti-Corn-Law agitation the leaders of the League were in the habit of using very violent language. Their speeches were full of vehement attacks on the landlords and farmers of England, and of pictures of country life as an inert mass of selfishness, tyranny, and stupidity. My brother’s hatred of exaggeration and unfairness revolted against all this wild talk; and his steady appeal to facts known to us both often staggered my new convictions. On the general economical question, imperfectly as I understood it, I think I often staggered him. But, on the other hand, when he appealed to the example of a dozen landlords whom I knew (including your grandfather), and made me look at the actual relations between them and their tenants and their labourers, and ask myself whether these statements were not utterly untrue in their case and in the county we knew; whether they were not probably just as untrue of other counties; and, if that were so, whether a cause which needed such libels to support it could be a just one, I was often in my turn sadly troubled for a reply.

Again, though Arnold’s life influenced him quite as powerfully as it did me, it was in quite a different direction, strengthening specially in him the reverence for national life, and for the laws, traditions, and customs with which it is interwoven, and of which it is the expression. Somehow, his natural dislike to change, and preference[91] for the old ways, seemed to gain as much strength and nourishment from the teaching and example of our old master, as the desire and hope for radical reforms did in me. As for democracy, not even Arnold’s dictum could move him. “The Demos” was for him always, the fatuous old man, with two oboli in his cheek, and a wide ear for the grossest flatteries which Cleon or the Sausage-seller could pour into it. Those of you who have begun Aristophanes will know to what I allude. Now, if he had been a man who had any great reverence for rank or privilege, or who had no sympathies with or care for the poor, or who was not roused to indignation by any act of oppression or tyranny, in the frame of mind I was in I should have cared very little for anything he might have urged. But, knowing as I did that the fact was precisely the reverse—that no man I had ever met was more indifferent to rank and title, more full of sympathy and kindliness to all below him, or more indignant at anything which savoured of injustice—I was obliged to admit that the truth could not be all on my side, and to question my own new faith far more carefully than I should have done otherwise.

And so this was the last good deed which he did for me when our ways in life parted for the first time, and I went up to London to read for the Bar, while he remained at Oxford. His plans were not fixed beyond the summer. He had promised to take two or three Oriel men to Scotland[92] on a reading party, and accordingly went with them to Oban in July; and, while there, accepted an offer, which came to him I scarcely know how, to take charge of the sons of the late Mr. Beaumont at Harrow, as their private tutor.

I must own I was much annoyed at the time when I heard of this resolution. I could see no reason for it, and many against it. Here was he, probably the most popular man of his day at Oxford, almost sure of a fellowship if he chose to stay up and read for it, one of the best oars and cricketers in England, a fine sportsman, and enjoying all these things thoroughly, and with the command of as much as he chose to take of them, deliberately shelving himself as the tutor of three young boys. I am afraid there was also a grain of snobbishness at the bottom of my dislike to the arrangement. Private tutors were looked upon then by young men—I hope it is so no longer—as a sort of upper servants; and I was weak enough, notwithstanding my newly acquired liberalism, to regard this move of George’s as a sort of loss of caste. He was my eldest brother, and I was very fond and proud of him. I was sure he would distinguish himself in any profession he chose to follow, while there was no absolute need of his following any; and it provoked me to think of his making what I thought a false move, and throwing away some of the best years of his life.

However, I knew it was useless to remonstrate, as he had[93] made up his mind, and so held my tongue, and came to see that he was quite right. It was not till nearly three years later, when his engagement was over and he had entered at Doctors’ Commons, that I came to understand and appreciate his motives. The first of these you may gather from the following extract from a letter of your grandfather’s, dated February 23rd, 1849:—“George, it seems, is unusually lively at the idea of going tooth and nail to work with men instead of boys; and, now that he has for three years gratified his whim of keeping himself wholly off my hands, consents to be assisted like his brothers.” This “whim” of proving to his own satisfaction that he was worth his keep, and could make his own living, is not a very usual one nowadays, when most young Englishmen seem to assume that they have a natural right to maintenance at the expense of some one. He had then six other brothers, on whom the example was not altogether thrown away, though none of us were ever able quite to come up to it. It had the effect, however, of making us thoughtful in the matter of expenditure; and, consequently, of the four who went to the universities, and two who entered the army, not one got into any money difficulties.

But George had other motives for this step besides the “whim” of independence. He wished for leisure to make up his mind whether he should take holy orders, as he had at one time intended to do. And, since leaving Rugby, he had had no time either for the study of modern languages[94] or for general reading, and he was anxious to make up his arrears in both of these directions. This engagement would give him the leisure he wanted, while keeping him at regular routine work. His resolve, though taken at the risk of throwing himself back some years in his future profession, whatever that might be, was thoroughly characteristic of him, and owing, I think, in great measure to your grandfather’s own precepts. He was fond of telling us family stories, and there was none of these of which he was more proud than that of his maternal great-grandmother. This good lady was the widow of George Watts, Vicar of Uffington, a younger son himself, who died at the age of forty-two, leaving her in very poor circumstances. She sold off everything, and invested the proceeds in stocking a large dairy farm in the village where she had lived as the great lady, there being no resident squire in the parish. If any of you ever care to make a pilgrimage to the place, you will find the farmhouse, which she occupied nearly 200 years ago, close to the fish-pond in Uffington. She was well connected, and her friends tried to persuade her not to give up her old habits; but she steadily refused all visiting, though she was glad to give them a cup of chocolate, or the like, when they chose to call on her. By attending to her business, rising early and working late, she managed to portion her daughter, and give her son a Cambridge education, by which he profited, and died Master of the Temple, where[95] you may see his monument. He was true to his mother’s training, and sacrificed good chances of further preferment, by preaching a sermon at Whitehall before George II. and his mistress, on Court vices, on the text, “And Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man.” Such stories, drunk in by a boy of a quiet, self-contained, thorough nature, were sure to have their effect; and this “whim” of George’s was one of their first-fruits in his case. I must add, that there is no family tradition which I would sooner see grow into an article of faith with all of you than this of thriftiness, and independence, as points of honour. So long as you are in statu pupillari, of course you must live at the expense of your friends; but you may do so either honestly, or dishonestly. A boy, or young man, born and bred a gentleman, ought to feel that there is an honourable contract between him and his friends; their part being to pay his bills, and make him such an allowance as they can afford, and think right, and sufficient; his, to work steadily, and not to get in debt, or cultivate habits and indulge tastes which he cannot afford. You will see through life all sorts of contemptible ostentation and shiftlessness on every side of you. Nurses, if they are allowed, begin with fiddle-faddling about children, till they make them utterly helpless, unable to do anything for themselves, and thinking such helplessness a fine thing. Ladies’ maids, grooms, valets, flunkeys, keepers, carry on the training as they get older. Even at public schools I can see this extravagance[96] and shiftlessness growing in every direction. There are all sorts of ridiculous expenses, in the shape of costumes and upholstery of one kind or another, which are always increasing. The machinery of games gets every year more elaborate. When I was in the eleven at Rugby, we “kept big-side” ourselves; that is to say, we did all the rolling, watering, and attending to the ground. We chose and prepared our own wickets, and marked out our own creases, for every match. We had no “professional” and no “pavilion,” but taught ourselves to play; and when a strange eleven was coming to play in the school close, asked the Doctor for one of the schools, in which we sat them down to a plain cold dinner. I don’t say that you have not better grounds, and are not more regularly trained cricketers now; but it has cost a great deal in many ways, and the game has been turned into a profession. Now, one set of boys plays just like another; then, each, of the great schools had its own peculiar style, by which you could distinguish it from the rest. And, after you leave school, you will find the same thing in more contemptible forms, at the Universities and in the world. You can’t alter society, or hinder people in general from being helpless, and vulgar—from letting themselves fall into slavery to the things about them if they are rich, or from aping the habits and vices of the rich if they are poor. But you may live simple manly lives yourselves, speaking your own thought, paying your own way, and doing your own[97] work, whatever that may be. You will remain gentlemen so long as you follow these rules, if you have to sweep a crossing for your livelihood. You will not remain gentlemen in anything but the name, if you depart from them, though you may be set to govern a kingdom. And whenever the temptation comes to you to swerve from them, think of the subject of this memoir, of the old lady in the farmhouse by Uffington fish-pond, and the tablet in the Temple Church.

Such a resolution as that which, as I have just shown you, was taken by my brother at the end of his residence at Oxford, is always a turning-point in character. If faithfully and thoroughly carried out, it will strengthen the whole man; lifting him on to a new plane, as it were, and enabling him, without abruptly breaking away from his old life, to look at its surroundings from a higher standpoint, and so to get a new and a truer perspective. If repented of, or acted out half-heartedly, it is apt to impair a man’s usefulness sadly, to confuse his judgment, and soften the fibre of his will. He gets to look back upon his former pursuits with an exaggerated fondness, and to let them gradually creep back, till they get a stronger hold on him than ever, so that he never learns to put them in their right place at all. The moral of which to you boys is—think well over your important steps in life, and, having made up your minds, never[98] look behind. George never did. From Oban he writes home: “My forthcoming engagement occupies all my thoughts, and indeed a good deal of my time; for if I intend to succeed, I must be well up in everything. I shall not, therefore, be able to make many excursions from Oban.” Your grandfather had been a friend of Sir Walter Scott, and had brought us up on his works; and had suggested to George that this would be a good opportunity for visiting a number of the spots immortalized by the Wizard of the North. This was his answer.

In the same spirit I find him writing about the same time as to a new cricket club, which was starting under very favourable auspices in Berkshire, and in which he had been asked to take a leading part: “I shall certainly not join the A. C. Club; and as for Tom, I should think his joining more improbable still. Cricket is over for both of us, except accidentally.”

In this spirit he took to his new work; and, going into it heartily and thoroughly, found it very pleasant. He occupied Byron House at Harrow, with his pupils, in which his old friend Mr. M. Arnold afterwards lived. There were several of his old schoolfellows, and college friends, among the Masters; and I, and others of his old friends, used to run down occasionally, on half-holidays, from London, and play football or cricket with the boys, amongst whom the prestige of his athletic career of course made him a great favourite and hero.[99] Thus he got as much society as he cared for, and found time, in the intervals of his regular work, for a good deal of general reading. In fact, I never knew him more cheerful than during these years of what most of us regarded as lost time, and in which we certainly expected he would have been bored, and disappointed. This would not have been so perhaps had he proved unsuccessful; but his pupils got on well in the school and their father soon found him out, and appreciated him. At the beginning of the first long vacation he writes home:—

But it was in his own family, where he would have wished for it most, that the reward came most amply. He became in these years the trusted adviser of your grandfather on all family matters, and especially with respect to his three youngest brothers. The direction of their education was indeed almost handed over to[100] him, and nothing could exceed the admiration and devotion with which they soon learnt to regard him. The eldest of them was sent to Harrow in 1848 to be under his eye, and you may judge of the sort of supervision he exercised by this specimen of his reports:—

Speaking of his letters of advice to the boys, your grandfather writes:—

But perhaps nothing will show you in a short space what he was to his younger brothers so well as one of[101] their own letters to him, and one of his to your grandmother. The first is from your uncle Harry, written almost at the end of his first half at Rugby:—

The next letter is dated two years later, when the question what profession the writer of the last was to follow, had become important:—

Meantime he was studying the same question carefully in his own case, with a view to determining whether he should take orders when his work at Harrow was over. His father and mother, though on the whole wishing that he should do so, were perfectly content to let him think the matter out, and settle it his own way. They seem, however, to have supplied him with specimens of contemporary pulpit literature, upon some of which he comments in his correspondence, not, on the whole, with any enthusiasm. “Surely,” he sums up some criticism on a popular preacher of that day, “there is a pulpit eloquence equally remote from fine writing and familiarity, such as was Dr. Arnold’s. I am doubtful as to reading these books, for I know that I ought not to think of the style, and yet I cannot help it. It takes me down against my will.”

Your grandfather replied: “The Church ought certainly[105] to be a labour of love, and followed with zeal. If on a final review of your sentiments, aided perhaps by the advice of some clergyman you look up to (why not Vaughan?) you do not think you could engraft this zeal on sound convictions, and an upright character, you are quite right in deciding for the Bar. In after life you will not be wholly dependent on a profession, and many of our best men have started as late.”

In the end he made up his mind against taking orders, but not on any of the grounds which deter so many young men of ability now. “My only objection,” he writes to his mother, “to taking orders is, that it might not suit me. Once ordained, it is impossible to change your profession; and unless a man has his whole soul in this profession, he is useless, or worse.”

And so, at the end of his three years at Harrow, he resolved to go to the Bar, and choosing that branch of it for which his previous reading had best qualified him, took his degree of Doctor of Civil Law, and entered at Doctors’ Commons.

You will have recognized by this time how carefully your grandfather watched the development of character in his sons, and that he was by no means inclined to overlook their faults, or to over-estimate their good qualities. The longer I live myself, the more highly I am inclined to rate his judgment of men and things, and this is the conclusion he had formed at this time of his eldest son’s[106] character. It occurs in a letter to a relative then living, and dated 25th January, 1849:—

But there is one feature in George’s character which this estimate of it does not bring out. I mean his great unselfishness. As an illustration of this, I will show you how he treated a proposal made on account of your grandfather while he was at Harrow. We had had the first loss in our circle. Your uncle Walter, whom none of you remember, a young officer in the[107] Artillery, had died of an attack of yellow fever in British Guiana. This had shaken your grandfather a good deal, and his health was no longer strong enough to allow him to follow, and enjoy, his country pursuits. Besides, the house at Donnington was too big for the shrunken family which now gathered there, and those of us who had flitted were settled, or likely to settle, in London. So it was thought that it would be well for your grandfather, and all of us, if he were to follow, and move up to the neighbourhood of town. In any case George’s opinion would have been the first taken on such a step, but in this it was necessary that he should consent, as Donnington was settled on him. He was very much attached to the place in which we had all grown up; and local, and county, and family associations had a peculiarly strong hold on him. But all these were set aside without a second thought. All he was anxious about was, that so serious a change should be well considered. “I think,” he writes to his mother, “you should be cautious about changing. In the first place, it will cause you personally an immense amount of annoyance, which you ought never to incur, especially now. Then you will miss your garden, and your village occupations, and your neighbours. My last letter might have led you to suppose that I myself preferred Hampstead to Donnington, but that is not the case. I should consider it desirable under certain circumstances. If you and my father, and Jeanie and the[108] rest, think these circumstances exist, I sincerely hope you will change, and lose no time about it. But do not do a thing which will cause you a great deal of trouble and annoyance without the clearest grounds. Above all, believe, and this I say with the most perfect truth, that I shall be equally happy whichever you do.”

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CHAPTER VII.
1849-50:—AN EPISODE.

At the time when my brother’s Harrow engagement came to an end, I had just settled in a London house, and, to my great delight, he proposed to come and live with us, and occupy our spare room in Upper Berkeley Street. Besides all my other reasons for rejoicing at this arrangement, which you may easily imagine for yourselves when you have read thus far, there was a special one just at this time, which I must now explain. The years 1848-9 had been years of revolution, and, as always happens at such times, the minds of men had been greatly stirred on many questions, and specially on the problem of the social condition of the great mass of the poor in all European countries. In Paris, the revolution had been the signal for a great effort on the part of the workmen; and some remarkable experiments had been made, both by the Provisional Government of 1848, and by certain employers of labour, and bodies of skilled mechanics, with a view to place the conditions of labour upon a more[110] equitable and satisfactory footing; or, to use the common phrase of the day, to reconcile the interests of capital and labour. The Government experiment of “national workshops” had failed disastrously, but a number of the private associations were brilliantly successful. The history of some of these associations—of the sacrifices which had been joyfully made by the associates in order to collect the small funds necessary to start them—of the ability and industry with which they were conducted, and of their marvellous effect on the habits of all those engaged in the work—had deeply interested many persons in England. It was resolved to try an experiment of the same kind here, but the conditions were very different. The seed there had already taken root amongst the industrial classes, and the movement had come from them. Here the workpeople, as a rule, had no belief in association except for defensive purposes. It was chiefly amongst young professional men that the idea was working, and it was necessary to preach it to those whom it most concerned. Accordingly a society was formed, chiefly of young barristers, under the presidency of the late Mr. Maurice, who was then Chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn, for the purpose of establishing associations similar to those in Paris. It was called the Society for Promoting Working Men’s Associations, and I happened to be one of the original members, and on the Council. We were all full of enthusiasm and hope in our work, and of propagandist zeal: anxious to[111] bring in all the recruits we could. I cannot even now think of my own state of mind at the time without wonder and amusement. I certainly thought (and for that matter have never altered my opinion to this day) that here we had found the solution of the great labour question; but I was also convinced that we had nothing to do but just to announce it, and found an association or two, in order to convert all England, and usher in the millennium at once, so plain did the whole thing seem to me. I will not undertake to answer for the rest of the Council, but I doubt whether I was at all more sanguine than the majority. Consequently we went at it with a will: held meetings at six o’clock in the morning (so as not to interfere with our regular work) for settling the rules of our central society, and its offshoots, and late in the evening, for gathering tailors, shoemakers, and other handicraftsmen, whom we might set to work; started a small publishing office, presided over by a diminutive one-eyed costermonger, a rough and ready speaker and poet (who had been in prison as a Chartist leader), from which we issued tracts and pamphlets, and ultimately a small newspaper; and, as the essential condition of any satisfactory progress, commenced a vigorous agitation for such an amendment in the law as would enable our infant Associations to carry on their business in safety, and without hindrance. We very soon had our hands full. Our denunciations of unlimited competition brought on us[112] attacks in newspapers and magazines, which we answered, nothing loth. Our opponents called us Utopians and Socialists, and we retorted that at any rate we were Christians; that our trade principles were on all-fours with Christianity, while theirs were utterly opposed to it. So we got, or adopted, the name of Christian Socialists, and gave it to our tracts, and our paper. We were ready to fight our battle wherever we found an opening, and got support from the most unexpected quarters. I remember myself being asked by Mr. Senior, an old friend of your grandfather, to meet Archbishop Whately, and several eminent political economists, and explain what we were about. After a couple of hours of hard discussion, in which I have no doubt I talked much nonsense, I retired, beaten, but quite unconvinced. Next day, the late Lord Ashburton, who had been present, came to my chambers and gave me a cheque for £50 to help our experiment; and a few days later I found another nobleman, sitting on the counter of our shoemakers’ association, arguing with the manager, and giving an order for boots.

It was just in the midst of all this that my brother came to live with us. I had already converted him, as I thought. He was a subscribing member of our Society, and dealt with our Associations; and I had no doubt would now join the Council, and work actively in the new crusade. I knew how sound his judgment was, and that he never went back from a resolution once taken,[113] and therefore was all the more eager to make sure of him, and, as a step in this direction, had already placed his name on committees, and promised his attendance. But I was doomed to disappointment. He attended one or two of our meetings, but I could not induce him to take any active part with us. At a distance of twenty-two years it is of course difficult to recall very accurately what passed between us, but I can remember his reasons well enough to give the substance of them. And first, as he had formerly objected to the violent language of the leaders of the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, so he now objected to what he looked upon as our extravagance. “You don’t want to divide other people’s property?” “No.” “Then why call yourselves Socialists?” “But we couldn’t help ourselves: other people called us so first.” “Yes; but you needn’t have accepted the name. Why acknowledge that the cap fitted?” “Well, it would have been cowardly to back out. We borrow the ideas of these Frenchmen, of association as opposed to competition as the true law of industry; and of organizing labour—of securing the labourer’s position by organizing production and consumption—and it would be cowardly to shirk the name. It is only fools who know nothing about the matter, or people interested in the competitive system of trade, who believe, or say, that a desire to divide other people’s property is of the essence of Socialism.” “That may be very true: but nine-tenths of mankind, or,[114] at any rate, of Englishmen, come under one or the other of those categories. If you are called Socialists, you will never persuade the British public that this is not your object. There was no need to take the name. You have weight enough to carry already, without putting that on your shoulders.” This was his first objection, and he proved to be right. At any rate, after some time we dropped the name, and turned the “Christian Socialist” into the “Journal of Association.” And English Socialists generally have instinctively avoided it ever since, and called themselves “co-operators,” thereby escaping much abuse in the intervening years. And, when I look back, I confess I do not wonder that we repelled rather than attracted many men who, like my brother, were inclined theoretically to agree with us. For I am bound to admit that a strong vein of fanaticism and eccentricity ran through our ranks, which the marvellous patience, gentleness, and wisdom of our beloved president were not enough to counteract, or control. Several of our most active and devoted members were also strong vegetarians, and phonetists. In a generation when beards and wide-awakes were looked upon as insults to decent society, some of us wore both, with a most heroic indifference to public opinion. In the same way, there was often a trenchant, and almost truculent, tone about us, which was well calculated to keep men of my brother’s temperament at a distance. I rather enjoyed it myself, but learnt its[115] unwisdom when I saw its effect on him, and others, who were inclined to join us, and would have proved towers of strength. It was right and necessary to denounce the evils of unlimited competition, and the falsehood of the economic doctrine of “every man for himself;” but quite unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to speak of the whole system of trade as “the disgusting vice of shop-keeping,” as was the habit of several of our foremost and ablest members.

But what really hindered my brother from taking an active share in our work was not these eccentricities, which soon wore off, and were, at the worst, superficial. When he came to look the work fairly in the face, he found that he could not heartily sympathise with it; and the quality of thoroughness in him, which your grandfather notices, would not let him join half-heartedly. His conclusion was reached somehow in this way: “It comes to this, then. What you are all aiming at is, the complete overthrow of the present trade system, and the substitution of what, you say, will prove a more honest and righteous one. It is not simply a question of setting up, and getting a legal status for, these half-dozen associations of tailors and shoemakers, and these grocery stores. If the principle is good for anything, it must spread everywhere, and into every industrial process. It can’t live peaceably side by side with the present system. They are absolutely antagonistic, and the one must cast out the other. Isn’t that so?” I, of course,[116] could not deny the conclusion. “Well, then,” his argument went on, “I don’t see my way clearly enough to go on. Your principle I can’t object to. It certainly seems truer, and stronger, and more in accord with Christianity, than the other. But, after all, the business of the world has always gone on upon the other, and the world has had plenty of time to get to understand its own business. You may say the results are not satisfactory, are proofs that the world has done nothing but blunder. It may be so: but, after all, experience must count for something, and the practical wear and tear of centuries. Self-interest may be a low motive, but the system founded upon it has managed somehow, with all its faults, to produce a very tolerable kind of world. When yours comes to be tried practically, just as great abuses may be found inseparable from it. You may only get back the old evils under new forms. The long and short of it is, I hate upsetting things, which seems to be your main object. You say that you like to see people discontented with society as it is, and are ready to help to make them so, because it is full of injustice, and abuses of all kinds, and will never be better till men are thoroughly discontented. I don’t see these evils so strongly as you do; don’t believe in heroic remedies; and would sooner see people contented, and making the best of society as they find it. In fact, I was born and bred a Tory, and can’t help it.”

I remember it all very vividly, because it was a great[117] grief to me at the time, chiefly because I was very anxious to have him with us; but, partly, because I had made so sure of getting him that I had boasted of it to our Council, which included several of our old school and college friends. They were delighted, knowing what a valuable recruit he would prove, and now I had to make the humiliating confession, that I had reckoned without my host. He continued to pay his subscription, and to get his clothes at our tailors’ association till it failed, which was more than some of our number did, for the cut was so bad as to put the sternest principles to a severe test. But I could see that this was done out of kindness to me, and not from sympathy with what we were doing.

But my disappointment had at least this good result, that it opened my eyes thoroughly, and made me tolerant of opposition to my own most earnest, and deepest, convictions. I have been what I suppose would be called an advanced Liberal ever since I was at Oxford, but have never been able to hate or despise the old-fashioned Tory creed; for it was the creed of almost the kindest, and bravest, and ablest man I have ever known intimately—my own brother.

I must, however, add here, that he always watched with great interest the social revolution in which he could not take an active part. In 1851, the Industrial and Provident Societies’ Act, under which the co-operative societies of different kinds first obtained legal recognition, was passed, chiefly owing to the exertions of Mr. Ludlow and other[118] members of our old Council. There are now more than 1,000 societies registered under that Act in England alone, doing a yearly business of ten millions and owning property of the amount of £2,500,000 and upwards; and as he saw the principle spreading, and working practically, and, wherever it took root, educating the people in self-control, and thrift, and independence, he was far too good an Englishman not to rejoice at, and sympathise with, the result, though I doubt whether he ever quite got over the feeling of distrust and anxiety with which he regarded even a peaceful, and apparently beneficent, revolution.

You all know how much I wish that you should take a thorough and intelligent interest, and, in due time, an active part, in public affairs. I don’t mean that you should adopt politics as a profession, because, as matters stand in this country, poor men, as most of you will be, are not able, as a rule, to do this and retain their independence. But I want you to try to understand politics, and to study important questions as they arise, so that you may be always ready to support, with all the influence you may happen to have, the measures and policy which you have satisfied yourselves will be best for your country. Of course I should like to see you all of my own way of thinking; but this is not at all likely to happen, and I care comparatively little whether you turn out Liberals or Tories, so that you take your sides conscientiously, and hold to them through good and evil report; always remembering,[119] at the same time, that those who are most useful and powerful in supporting a cause, are those who know best what can be said against it; and that your opponents are just as likely to be upright and honest men as yourselves, or those with whom you agree. My brother’s example taught me this, and I hope it may do as much for you.

There is a little poem of Lowell’s, which brings out so well the contrast between the two forces constantly at work in human affairs, and illustrates so beautifully the tempers which should underlie all action in them, that I am sure you will thank me for quoting it here. It is called “Above and Below:”—

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CHAPTER VIII.
ITALY.

The pleasure of having my brother as an inmate was scarcely dimmed by this disappointment, and he remained with us until the autumn of 1850, a white nine months in my life. Your grandfather wrote of him a year later, when he had engaged himself to be married: “I cannot exactly fancy George a married man, seeing that to the latest period his ways in this house have been precisely the same as when he was a Rugby boy—as few wants, and as little assumption, though I have exhorted him to swagger and order a little.” And, as it was at Donnington, so it had been in our diminutive town-house; indeed, I doubt whether any one of you, or any public school boy, would give so little trouble. He read hard, starting with me every morning directly after breakfast; went into no society, except that of a few old friends, and allured me away occasionally on summer afternoons, from law, and the reform of trade, to a game of cricket with the Hampstead club, of which he had become a member, or in the[122] Harrow playing-fields, where he was always more than welcome.

After the long vacation of 1850 he had intended to begin practice in Doctors’ Commons, but was delayed by an accident. He was struck in the eye by a spent shot, in cover shooting, and, though the accident proved not to be a serious one, he was ordered to rest his eyes entirely, and accordingly settled to spend the winter in Italy. The vexation of such a check at the opening of his professional career, was almost compensated, I think, by the delight which this tour gave him. He had never been abroad at this time, except for a few days in France, and his education and natural tastes peculiarly fitted him for enjoying Italy thoroughly, for he was passionately fond of art, as well as a fine classical scholar, having never dropped his Latin and Greek, as most of us are so apt to do the moment we have taken our degrees.

He lingered a little in France, on his way south, chiefly to accustom his ear and tongue to the language, and he writes:—

In Italy, he went from city to city, revelling in picture galleries and studios, as his eyes regained strength; taking lessons in Italian, visiting spots of historical interest, and sympathising with, and appreciating, the Italians, while wondering at their patience under the yoke of their Governments. It was the same winter which Mr. Gladstone spent in Italy, and signalized by his pamphlet on the political prisoners at Naples. Fortunately for my brother, he found Mr. Senior and his family at Naples, and again at Rome, and through their kindness, and that of Lady Malcolm, saw as much of Italian society as he cared for. A few selections from his letters will show you how he spent his time, and the impressions which his Italian travel left on his mind:—

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After this he hastened home, meeting with no more serious adventure than the one recorded in a letter to the same correspondent, as follows:—

He returned entirely restored to health, and so good an Italian scholar, that he was able to write fluently in the language, and to dedicate the little objects of art, which he brought home as presents, in appropriate verse.

One of these was an inkstand in the shape of an owl, now very common, which he presented to Lady Salusbury, a kinswoman of your grandfather, to whose adopted daughter he had lately engaged himself, with this inscription:—

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To the young lady herself he wrote on his return: “I have continued writing a journal, and you will be astonished to hear that your name is not once mentioned in it. It is, however, written in invisible ink across every page. It may be absurd, but I consider my feelings towards you so sacred, that I should not like to parade them even to my nearest relations.”

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CHAPTER IX.
MIDDLE LIFE.

On his return from his Italian tour my brother at once commenced practice in the Ecclesiastical Courts, and took a small house in Bell Yard, Doctors’ Commons, where he went to reside, and which he describes to his mother as follows:—

Here he practised for a few years regularly, and with very fair success, but his professional career was destined to be short and broken, and need not detain us. It is his home life with which we are concerned, and it was the[131] pressure of what he looked upon as a higher home duty which decided him, after a struggle, to abandon his profession. He was married in the autumn of 1852, and, in the course of a few years, the health of his wife’s mother by adoption made it desirable that they should be always with her, and that she should spend the winter months abroad. When it became clear that this was necessary, he accepted it, and made the best of it; though I find abundant traces in his correspondence of the effort which it required to do so. Thus he writes from Pau, the place fixed upon for their foreign winter residence, “I always found that changing one’s residence and plans gave one a fit of the blues for a time, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter.” And again; “The business of life is to be bored in all directions. You must not imagine, however, that I am ill, or out of spirits. I have no right to be either, and won’t be, please God.” But the necessary want of regular employment, the sinking into what is called “an idle man,” and abandoning all active part in “the struggle for existence,” was no small trial to one who held that the “full employment of all powers, physical, mental, and spiritual, is the true secret of happiness, so that no time may be left for morbid self-analysis.” You are all perhaps too young to understand this, and probably, when you think about such matters at all, imagine that the happiest life must be one in which you would only have to amuse yourselves. It may, I hope, shake any such belief to find that the[132] period in my brother’s life in which he was thus thrown on his own resources, and had the most complete liberty to follow his own fancies, was just that in which you may find traces of ennui, and a tendency to be dissatisfied with the daily task of getting through time.

He took the best course of getting rid of the blues, however, by throwing himself heartily into such occupations as were to be had at Pau. The chief of these was a Pen and Pencil Club, to which most of the English and American residents belonged, and of which he became the secretary. Besides the ordinary meetings, for which he wrote a number of vers de société, on the current topics and doings of the place, the Club indulged in private theatricals. On these occasions he was stage manager, and frequently author; most of the charades and short pieces, which you have seen, and acted in, at Offley, were originally written by him for the Pen and Pencil Club at Pau. “It was a mild literary society,” an old friend writes to me, “which he carried almost entirely on his own shoulders, and made a success.” Then he set to work for the first time to cultivate in earnest his talent for music, and took to playing the violoncello, communicating intelligence of his own progress, and of musical doings at Pau generally, to his sister, whom he looked upon as his guide and instructress. These were not always devoid of incident, as for instance the following:—

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The violoncello soon grew to be a resource, and I believe he played really well, though he used to groan to me as to the impossibility of adapting adult fingers to the work, and to mourn over the barbarism of our school days, when no one ever thought of music as a possible study for boys. Soon, however, other objects of deeper interest began to gather round him. His eldest boy was born in 1853, his second in 1855, during their summer in England.

He took to farming also, as another outlet for superfluous energy, but without much greater success than generally falls to the lot of amateurs. Indeed, his long winter absences from England kept him from gaining anything more than a superficial knowledge of agriculture, such as is disclosed in the following note to his mother, in answer to inquiries as to crops and prospects:—

When the Volunteer movement began, he threw himself into it at once; for no man was more impatient of, or humiliated by, the periodical panics which used to seize the country. He helped to raise a corps in his own neighbourhood, of which he became captain, and went to one of the first classes for Volunteers at the School of Musketry, to make himself competent to teach his men. As to the result he writes:—

I spoke of his “vers de société” just now, and in this connection will here give you a specimen of them. The expenses of the corps of course considerably exceeded the Government grant, and the deficiency had to be met somehow. My brother started a theatrical performance in the Town Hall, Hitchin, as a method at once of making both[136] ends meet, and of interesting the townspeople in the corps. The last piece of the entertainment was one of his own. The characters were played chiefly by members of his own family. He himself acted the part of a pompous magistrate, and at the close spoke the following

He continued also to act as mentor to his younger brothers, two of whom went in due course to Cambridge, and, to his great delight, pulled in their college racing boat (Trinity Hall), which was then at the head of the river. He often visited them at Cambridge, and, whenever[138] he could manage it, would spend some part of the vacation with them, joining them in all their amusements, and helping them in their studies. You may judge of the sort of terms they were on, by this extract from a letter to his mother in August 1856:—

Such occupations as these, with magistrate’s work, and field sports taken in moderation, served to fill up his time, and would have satisfied most men situated as he was. But he could never in all these years get the notion quite out of his head (though it wore off later) that he was not doing his fair share of work in the world, and was a useless kind of personage, for whom no one was much the better but his wife and children, and whom[139] nobody but they would miss. This feeling showed itself in his immense respect for those who were working in regular professions, and in the most conscientious scrupulousness about taking up their time. Often he has come to my chambers, and, after hurrying through some piece of family business, has insisted on going away directly, though I might not have seen him for a month, and was eager to talk on fifty subjects. The sight of open papers was enough for him; and he had not practised long enough to get the familiarity which breeds contempt, and to know how gladly the busiest lawyer puts aside an Abstract, or Interrogatories in Chancery, for the chance of a pleasant half-hour’s gossip.

I think, however, that I can show you clearly enough, in a very few words, what his real work in the world was during these years, and how perfectly unconscious he was that he was doing it faithfully. In 1857, your grandfather had a dangerous attack of illness, from which he never recovered. George was with him and nursed him during the crisis. As soon as he was well enough to use a pen, he wrote as follows to Lady Salusbury:—

Your grandfather died shortly afterwards, and a year later George wrote to his mother:—

He would have been impatient, almost angry, if anyone had told him that the “hanging together,” at which he rejoiced, was mainly his own doing.

In the village, too, he was beginning to find occupation of the most useful kind. Thus he opened a village reading-room[141] for the labourers, which was furnished with books and papers, and lighted and warmed, every evening from seven to nine. “Hitherto it is a great success,” he writes in 1868: “we have fifty members who subscribe 2d. a week, and we give them a cup of coffee and a biscuit for 1d. Some of them drink five or six cups a night. Whether coffee will continue to beat beer I don’t know, but at present it keeps them from the public-house, and saves their wages for their wives. Some of them are very fond of reading, and the rest play draughts and dominoes.” Then there were frequent “laundry entertainments,”—penny readings, or theatrical performances in the big laundry,—of which his sister writes: “The boys and Mr. Phillips and I used to make the music, but the great hits of the evening were always George’s. He used to recite ‘The One-horse Chay,’ or some Ingoldsby Legend, or ‘The Old Woman of Berkeley,’ or sing a comic song, and the people liked his performances better than anything. Like all very reserved people, he acted wonderfully well, and always knew how every part should be done, so he used to coach us all when a play was being got up. But he would never criticise unless asked: he always thought that people knew as well as he did how to do their parts, but they did not. He was always so droll on these occasions. When a performance was proposed by the boys, he used to say it was too much trouble, and that he wanted to be left quiet. But they always got their way, and when it[142] was inevitable he would learn his entire part while we others were mastering a page. I was always whip, because I could not stand doing anything by halves, and used to drive everyone mercilessly till the scenes began to go smoothly. He would sometimes rehearse his part almost under his breath, gabbling it off with the book in his hand, and then I would remonstrate, and he would go through it splendidly, as well as on the day of performance.”

But the reform which he had most at heart he never lived to carry out. The industry of straw-plaiting, which prevails in the neighbourhood, while it enables the women and girls to earn high wages, makes them bad housewives, all their cooking and cleaning being neglected, while they run in and out of neighbours’ houses, gossiping and plaiting. In the hope of curing this evil he looked forward to fitting up a large barn in the village as a sort of general meeting-place. Here, when he had made the roof air-tight, and laid down a good floor, there was to be a stove for cooking and baking, and appliances for instruction in other household work. Under his wife and sister there were to be “cooking classes, sewing classes, and singing classes; and, in the evenings, entertainments for the poor people, a piano and night classes, sometimes theatricals, and often concerts, and when the boys wanted to dance they were to have their dances there. He used to think that constant meetings in the barn would[143] humanize us all, and be a very pleasant thing for making rich and poor meet on equal terms.” It is perhaps vain to dwell upon such things, but I cannot help hoping that some day those of you who have the opportunity of realizing such plans may remember to what purposes the big barn was once destined. Of one other part of his village work, his Sunday evening classes for the big boys, I shall have to speak presently.

But you must not suppose from anything in this chapter that he ever lost his interest in politics, or public affairs. He was always a keen politician, retaining, however, all his early beliefs. “You have all got far beyond me,” he writes to his sister; “and my dear mother turning Radical in her old age is delightful.” Perhaps the most ardent politician amongst us all is the best witness to call on this subject. “I don’t think anything was more remarkable about George than his politics. He, who was so good an old Tory in many ways, showed that he believed in a universal principle and duty underlying all the political opinions about the best means of carrying out reforms. I think it is very rare, when people are discussing politics, to find this constant recognition of something beyond party nostrums. But (as in his father) I have always detected it in George; and, when I have got very hot whilst propounding Radicalism against all the rest here, have always found sympathy from him at the bottom; and I have always felt at last how much more truly liberal[144] he was at heart than we Radicals, because we are always wanting to force on our opinions our own way, whilst in him I always recognized a divine sort of justice and patience, which used to make me feel very conceited, and wanting in faith. He was born with aristocratic instincts, being by nature intensely sensitive and refined, with a loathing of anything blatant and in bad taste, and with an intense love of justice; and the unwise, violent, foolish way in which many men like —— expound their doctrines disgusted him beyond measure, though he would always recognize the real truth that lay at the bottom of Radicalism.”

But he shall speak for himself on one great event, which you are all old enough to remember, the late war between France and Germany. Almost the first incident of the war—the despatch of the then Emperor, speaking of the Prince Imperial’s “baptism of fire”—roused his indignation so strongly that it found vent in the following lines:—

“October 6th, 1870.—I am, I think, rapidly changing sides about this horrid war. You know I was a tremendous Prussian at the outset, but (although the French deserve all they get) I really can’t stand the bombardment of Paris; besides, Bismarck is repulsive.”

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The person who knew him best once wrote of your grandfather’s politics: “Men of all parties speak of him as belonging to their clique. This proves to me, if I had required the proof to strengthen the conviction, that there is a point on the plain of politics at which the moderate Tory, the sensible Whig, and the right-minded Radical, in other words all true patriots, meet; like the vanishing point in a picture to which all true and correct lines tend. And thus it is with him: he has reached that point, and there he foregathers with all of all parties, who, throwing aside[147] party prejudice, act and think for the good of their fellow-creatures.”

The description, I cannot but think, applied equally well to my brother, though he continued nominally a Tory to the end, and, as you will all recollect, lived as quiet, methodical a country life as if he had no interests in the world beyond crops, field sports, and petty sessions. But that it must have required a considerable effort on his part to do this comes out in much of his most intimate correspondence. For instance, only a month or two before his death he writes to his sister:—“Thanks, many, for your letter, and Mrs. S——’s. Hers is delightful, and I so fully understand her feeling. I always feel uncomfortable in point-device places, where the footman is always brushing your hat, and will insist upon putting out your clothes, and turning your socks ready to put on, and, if you say half a word, will even put them on for you. How I hate being ‘valeted!’ I should like to black my own boots, like Mr. ——, but then he is (or was) a master of foxhounds, and, being of course on that account a king of men, can do as he pleases, in spite of Mrs. Grundy. I am also a gypsey (is that rightly spelt? That word, and some others, are stumbling-blocks to me; I am afraid all my spelling is an affair of memory), a Bohemian at heart. I sometimes feel an almost irresistible desire to doff my breeches and paint myself blue. I should also like (I would limit myself to one month per annum) to go with a[148] carpet-bag to the nearest station, and to rough it in all sorts of outlandish places—but then A—— can’t rough it, and there are the brats, and lots of other impediments. The very act of wandering anywhere delights me. I think we spoil half the enjoyment of life by being too particular; how terrible dinner-parties are becoming! But enough of my sermon. In spite of my secret longings I shall continue to do as my neighbours, and it would be wicked in my case to be discontented. They threatened to nominate me Chairman of the Board of Guardians here, but finding that the Vice-chairman was standing (and thinking him better qualified), I declined any contest, and was not put up. I am sorry for it, for the office, although troublesome, is capable of being made useful, and I think I should have liked it in time;” and then comes a sentence which may serve to explain to some of you your feelings towards him—“I cannot forgive —— for putting ——” (one of his nephews) “on a bolting horse. If you do mount a boy, you ought to give him the cleverest and quietest horse in your stable, and no sportsman would do otherwise.”

There is one more trait in his character which I must not omit here, as I wish to give you as perfect a knowledge of him as I have myself. I have already told you how very scrupulous he was with regard to money matters. He had, indeed, a horror of debt which made him morbidly sensitive on the subject; and he recognized the fact, and[149] treated himself for it as he would have done for a fit of bile, or any other physical disorder. On more than one occasion, when some unlooked for expenditure seemed likely to bring on a more than usually severe attack, he cured himself by some piece of unwonted extravagance, such as buying a diamond ornament for his wife, or making a handsome present to some poor relation. The remedy answered perfectly in his case; but I am bound to add that it is one which I cannot recommend as a specific without the warning, that, before using it, you-must satisfy yourselves, as he always did, that there were no reasonable grounds for uneasiness.

But if he sometimes worried himself about money, he kept his anxiety to himself, and was constantly doing the most liberal acts in the most thoughtful manner. Of the many instances I could give of this, I select one, which an old friend has communicated to me with permission to mention it. I give it in his own words:—“There is one little incident connected with his personal relations to me which I shall always remember with feelings of gratitude and pleasure. When the Suez Canal was opened I had an offer of a free passage out and home in a P. and O. steamer, and I was rather exercised in my mind by not feeling it prudent to accept, as I knew that living in Egypt for a fortnight at that time would be very expensive, and I knew that I could not afford it. I happened to be writing to him about that[150] time, and mentioned this in my letter. By return of post he sent me a cheque for £50, begging me to accept it as a loan, to be paid when I had as much to spare, or never if I preferred it. I did not take advantage of his generous kindness, and I declare I almost regret now that I did not, as I believe I should have given him sincere pleasure in so doing.”

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CHAPTER X.
LETTERS TO HIS BOYS.

The doubts as to his own usefulness in the world, noticed in the last chapter, wore off naturally as he fell into the routine of country life; but it was the growth of the younger generation—of you for whom this sketch is written—which found him in work and interest during the last years of his life. I could never have envied him anything; but if there was one talent of his more than another which I have longed to share, it was his power of winning, not only the love, but the frank confidence, of his own, and all other boys. I think the secret was, that he was far more in sympathy with them; could realize more vividly their pleasures, and troubles, than almost any man of his age. And then, he had never given up athletic games altogether, and was still a far better cricketer and football player than most boys, and ready to join them in their sports whenever they seemed to wish it.

Few things gave him more pleasure than taking up again the thread of intimate relations with his old school,[152] which he did when his eldest nephew entered there. He accompanied him, to give him confidence and a good start, and characteristically recounts that “we had a famous football match, and I got my legs kicked to my heart’s content, thereby vividly recalling old times.” He remarks also, at the same time, “Rugby is charming; only there is rather too much what I call ‘drill,’ in the play as in the work—not spontaneous enough.” Not long after, in 1866, his own eldest boy followed. He thus details that event to his mother:—

From this time he constantly visited the school, and kept his mother and sister informed of the progress of the boys. I add a few extracts from his letters:—

As a complement to these letters, I add here extracts from those to his eldest boy:—

The next extract refers to some help in his work which his father sent him from time to time:—

Again at the beginning of the following half-year:—

And then, after some advice about his matriculation at Oxford, his father goes on:—

The “Jack” referred to in the last letter was his third boy, who was now in his first term at a preparatory school for Rugby. This chapter may fitly close with his letters to this, the youngest of his boys whom he lived to see launched at school. He was a favourite subject of study to his father, who writes of him at Pau, years before: “Jack will be, I think, the strongest of the lot. He always clears his plate, fat and all, and always clears his lesson, however disagreeable;” and again, to his sister, who was the boy’s godmother:—

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[161]

[165]

At the beginning of the next term Jack went to Rugby, and almost the first letter he received from his father was the following Valentine, which species of missive appears to have become popular amongst boys:—

[166]

In explanation of an allusion in the next letter, I insert an extract of the same date, from one to his sister:—

Westward Ho, from which several of the preceding letters were written, had become his favourite watering-place. He[167] had gone there at first by chance, and, finding links and a golf club, had taken to the game with his usual success. At Pau he had played a little, but certainly never handled a club till he was past forty. Nevertheless, though it is a game in which, I am told, early training and constant practice is almost an essential condition of success, he entered for, and succeeded in winning the champion’s medal in the annual gathering of 1870. Soon after his return from the meeting he wrote to me.

The rhapsody was, I believe, never written, but he continued to like and practise the game till his death, which indeed is, in my mind, rather painfully connected with it. My last visit to Offley was in the short Easter vacation of this year, and I thought I had never seen him better, or[168] in more full vigour of body and mind. On the 30th of March he mounted me, and I rode with him and two of his boys to a meet near Offley. We had a run early in the day, and got home to a late lunch, after which he went out into his plantations and worked till dark. Indeed, when I left the same evening by the mail train for the north, I beguiled my journey by thinking that the whole kingdom might be searched in vain to find a finer specimen of a man. On that day four weeks I received a telegram from Hoylake to say that he was lying there very dangerously ill. He had gone on there, after leaving his boys at Rugby, to take part in the golf tournament. He went down with a bad cold, but paid no attention to it, and went round the links with some friends on the first evening. The next day he became much worse, and was obliged to take to his bed, from which he never got up. The cold had settled on his lungs, and violent inflammation was set up. His wife and children were summoned at once, and his mother and sister and myself two days later. When I arrived, the lower part of the lungs had suppurated, and the medical man gave very slight hopes of his recovery. He could only speak with exceeding difficulty, but retained his strength, and the grip of his hand was as strong as ever. He met death with the same courage as he had shown throughout life, giving me a few clear instructions for a codicil to his will, while his youngest boy lay with his head on his shoulder, crying bitterly, and almost with his[169] last breath regretting the trouble he was giving his nurse. On the afternoon of May 1st he received the Sacrament with all of us, and at four on the morning of the 2nd passed away, leaving behind him, I am proud to think, no braver or better man. But you shall have better testimony than mine on this point. Out of the many letters to the same purpose which I received, and two of which have found a place in the earlier part of this memoir, I select an extract from one written by Bishop MacDougal, who, thirty years ago, had rowed behind him in the University boat.

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CHAPTER XI.
CONCLUSION.

On looking through the preceding pages, I have been struck with one special shortcoming. I am painfully conscious how poor and shallow the picture here attempted will be, in any case, to those who knew my brother best. Nevertheless, those for whom it was undertaken will, I trust, be able to get from it some clearer idea of the outer life of their father and uncle, but of that which underlies the outer life they will learn almost nothing. And yet how utterly inadequate must be any knowledge of a human being which does not get beneath this surface! How difficult to do so to any good purpose! For that “inner,” or “eternal,” or “religious” life (call it which you will, they all mean the same thing) is so entirely a matter between each human soul and God, is at best so feebly and imperfectly expressed by the outer life. But, difficult as it may be, the attempt must be made; for I find that I cannot finish my task with a good conscience without making it.

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There is not one of you, however young, but must be living two lives—and the sooner you come to recognize the fact clearly, the better for you—the one life in the outward material world, in contact with the things which you can see, and taste, and handle, which are always changing and passing away: the other in the invisible, in contact with the unseen; with that which does not change or pass away—which is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. The former life you must share with others, with your family, your schoolfellows and friends, with everyone you meet in business or pleasure. The latter you must live alone, in the solitude of your own inmost being, if you can find no Spirit there communing with yours—in the presence of, and in communion with, the Father of your spirit, if you are willing to recognize that presence. The one life will no doubt always be the visible expression of the other; just as the body is the garment in which the real man is clothed for his sojourn in time. But the expression is often little more than a shadow, unsatisfying, misleading. One of our greatest English poets has written—

And so you and I are living now under the dome of many-coloured[172] glass, and shall live as long as we remain in these bodies, a temporal and an eternal life—“the next world,” which too many of our teachers speak of as a place which we shall first enter after death, being in fact “next” only in the truest sense of the word; namely, that it is “nearest” to us now. The dome of time can do nothing more (if we even allow it to do that) than partially to conceal from us the light which is always there, beneath, around, above us.

“The outer life of the devout man,” it has been well said, “should be thoroughly attractive to others. He would be simple, honest, straightforward, unpretending, gentle, kindly;—his conversation cheerful and sensible: he would be ready to share in all blameless mirth, indulgent to all save sin.” And tried by this test, the best we have at command, my brother was essentially a devout man.

The last thirty years, the years of his manhood, have been a period of great restlessness and activity, chiefly of a superficial kind, in matters pertaining specially to religion. The Established Church, of which he was a member, from conviction as well as by inheritance, has been passing through a crisis which has often threatened her existence; faction after faction, as they saw their chance, rising up and striving in the hope of casting out those whose opinions or practices they disliked. Against all such attempts my brother always protested whenever he had an opportunity, and discouraged all those with whom he had any influence from taking any part in them.

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“I have no patience,” for instance, he writes at one of these crises, “with —— for mixing himself up with Church politics. I believe you know what I think about them, namely, that both parties are right in some things and wrong in others, and that the truth lies between the two. I hope I shall always be able to express my dissent from both without calling names or imputing motives, and when I hear others doing so, I am always inclined, like yourself, to defend the absent. I was very sorry to hear that —— has given up his parish. I cannot understand his excessive attachment to what is, after all, only the outside of religion; but he is so good a man, so hard-working, so self-denying, that one feels what a great loss he must be.”

Outside the Church the same religious unrest has had several noteworthy results, perhaps the most remarkable of these being a negative one: I mean, the aggressive attitude and movement of what is popularly known as scientific thought. Amongst its leaders have been, and are, some of the best, as well as the ablest, men of our time, who have had, as they deserved to have, a very striking influence. But the tone of scientific men towards religion has been uniformly impatient or contemptuous, not seldom petulant. “Why go on troubling yourselves and mankind about that of which you can know nothing?” they have said. “This ‘eternal’ or ‘inner’ life of which you prate is wholly beyond your ken. We can prove to you that much of your so-called theology rests on unsound premises. Be content[174] to work and learn with us in the material world, of which alone you can get to know anything certain.” That challenge has shaken the foundations of much which called itself faith in our day. I never could discover that my brother was ever seriously troubled by it. Dissertations on the Mosaic cosmogony, theories of the origin of species, speculations on the antiquity of man, and the like, interested, but never seemed to rouse in him any of the alarm or anger which they have excited in so many good Christians. Granting all that they tend to prove, they deal only with the outward garment, with the visible universe, and the life which must be lived in it, leaving the inner and real life of mankind quite untouched.

He was, however, neither so tolerant of, nor I think so fair to, the stirring of thought within the Church, which has resulted in criticisms supposed to be destructive of much that was held sacred in the last generation. His keen sense of loyalty was offended by anything which looked like an attack coming from within the ranks, and so he shared the feeling so widely, and I think wrongly, entertained by English Churchmen, that the right of free thought and free speech on the most sacred subjects should be incompatible with holding office in the Church.

As to his own convictions on such subjects, he was extremely reserved, owing to a tendency which he believed he had detected in himself to religious melancholy, which he treated simply as a disease. But no one who knew[175] him at all could ever doubt that a genuine and deep religious faith was the basis of his character, and those who knew him best testify unanimously to its ever increasing power. “I don’t know if you were ever told,” his sister writes, “of the singular desire dying people had that George should be with them. You know how reserved he was, and he would always think that people would prefer some one who talked more to them, but I think it was his great gentleness and strength which made the dying feel him such a comfort. He never volunteered; but when sent for, as was often the case, always went to them, and read and prayed constantly with them as long as they lived. There was one poor young man who died of consumption, and George was constantly with him to the last. The father was a very disreputable character, and George seldom saw him. But some time after the young man’s death, the father met George in the fields, and threw himself on his knees to bless him for his love for his dead son. George came home much shocked that the man should have knelt to him. One old man, whom he used to go to for weeks and weeks during his long last illness, really adored him, and, when George was away for a short time, prayed that he might live till he saw him again. And George was back before he died.”

Of this old man, he writes himself to his mother:—

Intercourse of the most sacred and intimate kind with the old, and dying, and suffering of another station in life is, however, far easier to a man of reserved temper than it is with the young and healthy. The most difficult class to reach in country villages, as in our great towns, is that which is entering life, not that which is thinking of quitting it. You may get young men together for cricket or football, or even for readings, or in a club, and attain in the process a certain familiarity with them, useful enough in its way, but not approaching the kind of intimacy which should exist between people passing their lives in the same small community. The effort to do anything more with a class just emancipated from control, full of strength and health, and as a rule suspicious of advances from those in a rank above their own, must always be an exceedingly difficult one to make for such a man as my brother, and is rarely successful. He made it, and succeeded. During all[177] the winter months, on every Sunday evening the young men and the elder boys of the village were invited to his house, and quite a number of them used to come regularly. They were received by him and his wife. First he would read a passage of Scripture, and explain and comment on it, and afterwards he or his wife read to them some amusing book. He used to speak with the greatest delight of the pleasure which these meetings seemed to give, and of their excellent effect on his own relations with the young men and boys who frequented them. When the time for separating came, they used all to say the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the following short prayer, which he wrote[14] for the purpose:—

If I were to write a volume, I could throw no clearer light on the inner life of my brother than shines out of[178] this short, simple prayer, written for village boys, and repeated with them week by week. Nor is there any other picture of him that I would rather leave on your minds than this. When I think of the help and strength which he has been to me and many more, the noble lines on All Saints’ Day, of the poet I have already quoted in this memoir, seem to be haunting me, and with them I will end.

FINIS.