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MEMORIES 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 FAITH AND UNFAITH, AND OTHER 
 Essays. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 
 
 THOUGHTS OF BLAISE PASCAL. 
 Translated. Large crown 8vo. Parchment, 
 I2S. ; Vellum, 15s. Cheap Edition. Crown 
 8vo, 6s. 
 
 ON THE WAYSIDE. Fcap. 8vo, 
 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 London 
 Kegan Paul, Tkench, TkObner & Co. Ltd. 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 C. KEGAN PAUL 
 
 ' . . . At the last shall come old age, 
 Decrepit as befits that stage ; 
 How else wouldst thou retire apart 
 With the hoarded memories of thy heart. 
 And gather all to the very least 
 Of the fragments of life's earlier feasts 
 
 — R. Browning, The Flight of the Duchess. 
 
 ' . . . New measures, other feet anon ! 
 My dance is finished." 
 
 — R. Browning, A Grammarian*s Funeral. 
 
 LONDON 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LI? 
 
 PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD 
 1899 
 
 c 
 
Pi'm&E^ 
 
 The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &= Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Childhood, 1828-1836 . . . . i 
 
 II. School-days — Ilminster, 1836-1841 . . 36 
 
 III. Elan — The Fellows and Masters, 1841-1846 61 
 
 IV. Eton — School Life, 1841-1846 . . 108 
 V. College Life at Oxford, 1846-18$ i • • 135 
 
 VI. Clerical Life — First Experiences, 1SS1-18S4 173 
 
 VII. Conduct of Eton and Master in 
 College, 1833-1862 . 
 
 VIII. Vicar of Sturminster Marshall, 
 Dorset, 1862-1874 . 
 
 IX. Publishing — Holidays Abroad, 1874 
 
 X. Friends in London, 1874 
 
 XI. The End of Wandering, iSgo 
 
 Bibliographical Note 
 
 243 
 270 
 
 315 
 364 
 378 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 I 
 
 CHILDHOOD 
 1828-1836 
 
 ON April 17, 1883, the premises of Messrs. 
 Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. at No. i 
 Paternoster Square, E.C., were wholly de- 
 stroyed by fire. In them was burnt a volume 
 in which, for a few years past, I had been 
 writing my reminiscences from time to time, 
 and I have felt some disinclination to work at 
 them again. I wrote then with the feeling 
 that, whether I published or not, my children 
 would like to read the record, when they too 
 begin to live more in the past than in the 
 future : I write now, intending to publish, since 
 I have taken interest in the narratives of 
 several men I have known, and am inclined to 
 
 A 
 
2 MEMORIES 
 
 think that the careful memories of the some- 
 what varied life I have lived may prove in the 
 same manner entertaining to others. These 
 pages will not pretend to tell everything. The 
 morbid self-analysis of Rousseau needs all, and 
 more than all, his genius to make it tolerable, 
 and if it be pleasant reading under any cir- 
 cumstances, it is unprofitable. I will try to 
 write without undue self-blame or self-praise. 
 
 I was born on March 8, 1828, at White 
 Lackington, near Ilminster, Somerset, of which 
 village my father was curate in sole charge. He 
 was also incumbent of Knowle St. Giles's hard 
 by, a very small village with no parsonage. 
 
 My father was born December 20, 1 802, 
 and came of a Scotch stock, but I know nothing 
 whatever of his family beyond my grandfather, 
 who was a West India merchant, and also 
 owned an estate in St. Vincent, West Indies. 
 My father's mother was Mary Warner of 
 Bequia, a small island near St. Vincent. She 
 was very many years younger than her husband, 
 and was his god-daughter, a spiritual relation 
 which would have stood in the way of their 
 marriage had they been Catholics. My father's 
 childhood was mainly spent in London, as 
 
CHILDHOOD 3 
 
 whenever his parents happened to be in the 
 West Indies he lived with his father's partner. 
 He was educated at the Charterhouse school, for 
 which he always had a great affection. It will 
 serve to show the growth of London within the 
 present century to say that the two houses at 
 which he mainly spent his holidays were Mr. 
 Charrington's, the brewer's, in Stepney, and his 
 father's partner, Mr. Innes's, 5 1 Guildford 
 Street. Mr. Charrington's house was ap- 
 proached from London through country fields, 
 and stood in a park wherein were deer and a 
 good trout stream, for the sake of which stream 
 the brewery was probably there established ; 
 while the north side of Guildford Street was 
 unbuilt, and the south side looked north over 
 trees and hedges with an unbroken prospect of 
 Hampstead Hill. 
 
 Thence my father went to Caius College, 
 Cambridge, and was intended for the law, but 
 his health failing after he began to keep terms 
 in London, he went to join his father in St. 
 Vincent, of which island Mr. Paul was then 
 Lieutenant Governor. On my father's return 
 to England, it appeared to some of his friends 
 that they could aid him to Church preferment, 
 
4 MEMORIES 
 
 which would give him a fixed profession. 
 Therefore, though he had considerable means 
 from West Indian property, he took Orders, with, 
 no doubt, a determination to do his duty, but 
 without the high ideas of self-devotion which 
 all men are supposed to have, and many really 
 have, in these days. No West Indian diffi- 
 culties had then begun, and both at College 
 and in his early married life my father had an 
 ample, even a large income, and my mother 
 was considered to have done well for herself 
 in a worldly sense. 
 
 Though my mother was also West Indian, 
 and from the same island, the families had 
 never met or been known to each other in 
 those parts. Kingston Park, my grandfather 
 Paul's estate, was on the coast and on the out- 
 skirts of the main town of the island ; my 
 grandfather Home's estate was on the further 
 side of the mountain slopes. But when Mrs. 
 Paul, my grandmother, was left a widow she 
 came to England and settled in Bath, where 
 my father and mother met. 
 
 My mother, Frances Kegan Home, was born 
 in St. Vincent in July 1802. Her family was 
 old Colonial, having been settled in St. Vincent 
 
CHILDHOOD 5 
 
 for some generations. They had come origin- 
 ally from Holland, claiming kinship with the 
 Counts Horn, so well known in the history of 
 that country. My maternal grandmother was 
 Mary Kegan, of Irish descent. I only mention 
 these facts because they show in particular, what 
 we all know in general, how very mixed a 
 race we English are. I am English by birth, 
 residence, education, and prejudice, but racially 
 I am wholly and solely Scotch, Dutch, and 
 Irish. 
 
 I print here a copy of a document which 
 I found in type among my mother's papers, 
 as showing the care with which her grand- 
 father, Mr. Kegan, recorded the births and 
 god - parents of his children, and also for 
 the curious fact that one of her aunts was 
 christened Peter — a thing more common in 
 those days in Catholic than in Protestant 
 countries. 
 
 Joseph Kegan, Anguilla, was born 22nd September 
 173s, Old Stile. 
 
 Mary Virchild, St. Christopher's, was born 27th 
 November 1739. Died 7th March 1797. 
 
 Joseph Kegan and Mary Virchild were married 
 28th October 1758, by the Rev. Mr. ^George Paul. 
 
6 MEMORIES 
 
 Susannah Rebecca Kegan, St. Martin's, was born 
 19th November 1761. Baptized by the Rev. Mr. 
 Jonaihen Flemen ; David Hendry, Mathew Larton, 
 Johanna Gufnbes, and Rachael Carley Wright being 
 Sponsors. Died 21st August 1792. 
 
 Charles Kegan, St. Martin's, was born 22 nd 
 April 1763. Baptized by the Rev. Mr. John Runolds; 
 Mr. John Runolds, John Thomen, Mary Dogget, and 
 Margaret Virchild being Sponsors. 
 
 Margaret Virchild Kegan, St. Martin's, was 
 born 4th September 1765. Baptized by the Rev. Mr. 
 Howinch; Patrick Wilhon, Edward Gumbes, Kizia 
 Leverock, and Ann Willson being Sponsors. Died 
 27th August 1807. 
 
 Mary Kegan, St. Vincent, was born 4th August 
 1 767. Baptized by the Rev. Mr. Robertson ; Jeremiah 
 Pinniston, James Manwaring, Mary Jane Pinneston, 
 and Mary Dogget being Sponsors. 
 
 Frances Rachael Kegan, St. Vincent, was born 
 24th October 1769. Baptized by the Rev. Mr. 
 Robertson, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Oliver, Mrs. Hunt, and 
 Miss Elizabeth Ashe being Sponsors. Died March 
 1 6th 1796. 
 
 Peter Elizabeth Kegan, St. Vincent, was born 
 26th October 1771. Baptized by the Rev. Mr. 
 Robertson ; Ashton Warner Byam, godfather, Keziah 
 Leverock and Susanna Kegan, godmothers. She 
 departed this life, 2sthy««« 1772, by the smallpox. 
 
 Joseph Lambert Kegan, St. Vincent, was born 
 5th May 1773. Baptized by the Rev. Mr. Finktre ; 
 Robert Gent and Peter Duhon, godfathers, Maty 
 
CHILDHOOD 7 
 
 Dogget and Susanna Kegan, godmothers. He departed 
 this hfe 31st December 1774. 
 
 Joseph Kegan, St. Vincent, was born the 8th 
 February iT}$. Baptized by the Rev. Mr. Finletre. 
 
 Joseph Kegan sen. departed this life, 3rd August 
 1775 in the 40th year of his age. 
 
 My mother and her sisters were sent home 
 for education, and the younger ones made their 
 home, after the death of their parents, with 
 their eldest sister, Mrs. Keating, who married 
 early (literally from school) the brother-in-law 
 of her uncle, Mr. Kegan, a retired Indian 
 civilian. I mention this lady by name, because 
 she is a link with a state of things which has 
 not only passed away, but has been almost 
 wholly forgotten. In speaking of the West 
 Indies we are apt to consider only the White 
 Settlers, the Creoles, i.e. those of pure, un- 
 mixed, European blood, and the Negroes, 
 originally imported as slaves to the Planta- 
 tions, whose descendants were still slaves 
 when my parents were young. We do not 
 take into account the Caribs, the original 
 inhabitants, a yellow race of savages, who, 
 as the islands were colonized, had gradually 
 retreated to the mountains, and remained in 
 
8 MEMORIES 
 
 great numbers in some of the wilder islands. 
 They were for the most part unnoticed and 
 ignored, but now and then became dangerous 
 enemies hovering on the borders of civilized 
 life, like the North American Indians described 
 so well in Fenimore Cooper's romances. The 
 war between France and England at the end 
 of the last century, when so many of the 
 West Indian islands changed hands, stimulated 
 risings in various places. My aunt was born 
 in 1792, and her earliest recollection was of 
 being taken from her cot, when she was about 
 four years old, to flee to a place of shelter 
 nearer the coast, as a band of armed Caribs 
 were coming from the mountains against the 
 inland planters and their estates. There was 
 some slaughter and much damage, but the 
 planters rallied and retaliated ; the Caribs were 
 thereafter treated as wild beasts, and I suppose 
 have now absolutely ceased to exist. 
 
 About ten years later, and within my mother's 
 memory, occurred the great eruption of the 
 volcanic mountain La Soufifriere, which probably 
 helped to complete the discomfiture of the re- 
 maining Caribs. The catastrophe is well known 
 to the students of earthquakes and volcanoes, 
 
CHILDHOOD 9 
 
 and wrought vast havoc in the island. My 
 grandfather and his family again had to flee by 
 night, amid showers of stones, while a stream 
 of lava descended on his estate, and the whole 
 industry of many years was so utterly destroyed 
 that the very trace of where cultivation had 
 been was effectually blotted out. Dust from 
 the volcano fell on the decks of ships one 
 hundred miles away, and these were driven so 
 far from their course that their officers and 
 crew believed they had sailed over the very 
 place where St. Vincent had been. A sea 
 captain, a friend of the family, called on Mary 
 Home, then a girl at school in Kensington 
 Square, to tell her that St. Vincent had dis- 
 appeared, and she wore mourning for her family 
 for a considerable time, till reassuring news 
 arrived. It may be understood that, strong- 
 minded woman though she became, her recol- 
 lections and thought of the West Indies were 
 curiously compounded of aversion and terror. 
 My mother's recollections of the flight in the 
 darkness from the volcano were that the 
 whole thing, if alarming, was exciting and 
 even amusing. 
 
 While I am speaking of those days, I may 
 
lo MEMORIES 
 
 venture to give one word to old Mr. Christopher 
 Keating, my aunt's father-in-law, because it gives 
 also my own earliest recollection, — that is, of 
 my being sent round the breakfast table by the 
 old man, who was crippled and could not move 
 from his chair, to see that the spoons had been 
 driven through the lower ends of the eggs which 
 had been consumed, " lest the witches should 
 ride in them." Mr. Keating had few super- 
 stitions, and I suppose few prejudices, on the 
 subject of religion. In India, as a civilian, he 
 had had for many years a native companion, 
 as was the almost universal custom ; the bond 
 being persistent and abiding, in fact a morganatic 
 marriage. The lady in his case was a Moham- 
 medan, and even in those lax days, Mr. Keating, 
 high in station and a most able official, was 
 severely blamed and well-nigh dismissed, for 
 building a mosque to her memory when she 
 died. Yet he had this one superstition, partly 
 playful, but still more serious, about the eggs, 
 and it made so strong an impression on me 
 that I do not even now like to see any one 
 finish an egg without thrusting the spoon 
 through the bottom, and am always careful to 
 do it myself. 
 
CHILDHOOD II 
 
 When my father and mother married in May 
 1827, weddings were wont to take place at a 
 very early hour, and the breakfast was really 
 what it was called, little later than the normal 
 time. According also to the simple fashion of 
 the day, my father drove his wife home in his 
 own carriage to Lackington, about thirty-five 
 miles, stopping at Wells to dine. 1 was little 
 more than two years old when we left Lack- 
 ington ; therefore, though I knew the place well 
 in later years, it need hardly be said that I 
 have no personal recollections of our residence 
 in the little tumble-down cottage which then 
 served as a Rectory-house. But some tales 
 pertaining to that time made a strong impres- 
 sion on me as I heard them in after days. 
 
 One was of a very ghastly murder, still un- 
 discovered, and never probably to be discovered 
 in this world, of a Mr. Stuckey, who was, I 
 think, a land agent in the neighbourhood. My 
 father and mother were driving home in the 
 late twilight of a summer evening, when the 
 horse shied violently, and my father saw that 
 he had done so at three men crouching in the 
 hedge, evidently trying to avoid observation. 
 There was no attempt to stop the carriage, my 
 
12 MEMORIES 
 
 father whipped up the horse, and the incident 
 seemed over. Next morning, however, Mr. 
 Stuckey, who would have passed that spot very 
 shortly afterwards on his return from Crewkerne 
 market, was missing ; his pony arrived at his 
 door without the master, of whom nothing was 
 heard for several months. A gentleman in the 
 neighbourhood kept bloodhounds, which were 
 called into requisition, and the whole country- 
 side was searched, without effect. In August, 
 however, at harvest-time, the reapers came across 
 Mr. Stuckey's body in a field close to the spot 
 where my father had seen the men, where also 
 the ineffectual bloodhounds had endeavoured to 
 track them. The man had been murdered, but 
 I think not robbed : no clue to the assailants 
 was ever found, nor any reason for the murder 
 suspected. 
 
 Soon after I was two years old, my father, 
 retaining his living of Knowle, took the curacies 
 of Writhlington and Foxcote, about eight miles 
 from Bath. We lived at Writhlington for ten 
 years, and all my childish recollections are con- 
 nected with it. In spite of several collieries, 
 seen from the drawing-room windows, it was 
 a pretty and attractive home ; the country 
 
CHILDHOOD 13 
 
 people were simple and friendly ; we children 
 were left a good deal to ourselves, and we 
 roamed where we would and when we would. 
 I still seem to see a hedge of Roses de Meaux 
 (do such roses exist now ?) which formed a 
 fence to our field, and to smell the syringa in 
 the shrubbery, to taste the peppermint bull's- 
 eyes, which our neighbour the farmer, whose 
 suitable name was Mattick, used always to pro- 
 duce from his breeches-pocket, and am sure 
 there were never such fruit-trees as the quince, 
 the medlar, and the Siberian crab which grew 
 upon the lawn. 
 
 But to persons of riper years there were 
 drawbacks ; church restoration was as yet un- 
 dreamed of, and the fabric of the church was 
 disgraceful. As very few of the congregation 
 could read, the services were almost entirely 
 confined to a duet between the parson and 
 the clerk. The Communion table was a plain 
 four-legged piece of carpentry, without a cover, 
 such as might have stood in our kitchen ; 
 the whole service, when there was no Com- 
 munion, was read in the desk ; the Holy 
 Communion was administered about four times 
 a year, but always on Good Friday as well as 
 
14 MEMORIES 
 
 on Easter Sunday ; the surplice was a full 
 white gown, unrelieved by any stole or scarf. 
 My father's reading of the prayers was grave 
 and dignified, his doctrine old-fashioned and 
 orthodox, his sermons moral essays far over 
 the heads of his congregation, his parochial 
 ministrations above the average of those days. 
 I never remember seeing a baptism performed 
 in the church during my childhood, or a woman 
 churched during the service. Each of these 
 offices took place in private, generally on 
 Sundays after the rest of the congregation had 
 left church, or on any week-day when the 
 clergyman happened to be at home and could 
 come to the church. It is curious, however, 
 that certain pre- Reformation customs were 
 always kept up. Both men and women bowed 
 or genuflected to the altar, on entering church, 
 though, had they been asked, they would pro- 
 bably have thought that the custom was directed 
 to the squire's pew. Women always carried a 
 prayer-book, whether they could read or not, 
 wrapped up in a clean pocket-handkerchief ; and 
 this I believe to have been a reminiscence of 
 the Housel cloth that was carried by individuals 
 when not spread over the altar rails at the 
 
CHILDHOOD 15 
 
 time of Mass. The only attempt to give any 
 instruction was at the Sunday-school, and this 
 was held in the chancel. 
 
 Nearly all the colliers belonged to the village 
 club, and the funeral of a member was always 
 largely attended by his fellow-clubmen. We 
 had a very old green parrot, allowed to wander 
 at will about the house and garden. The 
 creature on one occasion climbed to the top 
 of a high fir-tree in the garden which over- 
 looked the churchyard, and seeing a very large 
 assemblage at a funeral below, screamed out 
 in most distinct tones : " O Lord, what fun ! 
 what fun ! O my eyes, what fun ! " This, 
 indeed, was an accident, but there was a 
 general want of decorum about the Church 
 services in those days. 
 
 But to return to the fabric. In the chancel 
 were monuments to the Goldfinch family, in 
 whose possession the old Manor-House had 
 once been, and in the vaults below were their 
 coffins mouldering to decay. On the walls was 
 an ominous green slime. The floor of our old 
 pew had several holes, and a frowsy smell 
 ascended to my sisters' and my noses, as we 
 were nearer to the floor than our elders. If 
 
i6 MEMORIES 
 
 the day chanced to be very fine, a ray of light 
 struck from the window through the said holes 
 to the bulging coffins and showed us their 
 nauseous state. Probably some faint attempt 
 had been made at embalming, for the odour 
 was not unbearable in those pre-sanitary days. 
 Now, however, I place to the account of those 
 dead Goldfinches a bad typhus fever from 
 which we children suffered, leaving its traces 
 in a rash on our heads. I only mention this 
 unpleasant circumstance for the sake of the 
 old-world remedy which was applied — bell oil, 
 after some village recipe — the stale, dirty, and 
 rancid oil used for the clappers of the Church 
 bells, to make them swing easily, with which 
 we were for some time anointed night and 
 morning. 
 
 Our residence at Writhlington was once 
 broken early in our stay there, and perhaps 
 that, next to the egg-shells, is my earliest re- 
 collection. My father went to St. Vincent 
 when West Indian affairs began to go wrong, 
 to settle matters connected with the estate. 
 Labour began to be dear when slavery was 
 abolished ; crops were insecure, land went out 
 of cultivation. Slavery was always hateful, 
 
CHILDHOOD 17 
 
 and though the actual slave-trade had ceased, 
 the memory rankled. My mother remembered 
 with a shudder seeing a very aged negro take 
 up her young brother in his arms, and mention 
 casually that he, before leaving Africa in his 
 early youth, had often helped to eat such 
 another plump piccaninny. On the estates of 
 my two grandfathers the negroes had been 
 exceptionally well treated ; but indeed, through- 
 out the islands of which I have known any 
 particulars, there was little to complain of in 
 actual condition of living, apart from the funda- 
 mental abomination that man was the chattel 
 of man. But undoubtedly emancipation was 
 ill managed, and the slave should have been 
 obliged to pass through a feudal and inter- 
 mediate state before complete freedom. We 
 all know the ruin and disaster which fell on 
 West Indian properties, perhaps justly, in punish- 
 ment for slavery, extravagance, absenteeism, 
 and racial contempt, but the ruin was hard 
 to bear at the time. Under the light-hearted- 
 ness of the negroes there was at work the 
 feeling of class hatred for all that had gone 
 before. I remember a snatch of a song I 
 heard in my youth, as having been sung in 
 
i8 MEMORIES 
 
 the islands about the time my father went out 
 to see if anything could be done. 
 
 " But 'Mancipation come, ha, ha ! 
 Den me wear Massa's coat, ha, ha ! 
 Me kiss him wife, 
 Me steal him knife 
 And cut him ugly throat, ha, ha ! " 
 
 My father, however, was in those days a man 
 of buoyant spirits, and he was able to throw 
 off the following epigram, which I found years 
 afterwards in an old commonplace book belong- 
 ing to my mother. 
 
 " ' No sweets without their bitters,' few 
 To prove this proverb fitter 
 Than poor West Indian planters, who 
 Find even sugar bitter." 
 
 My father's voyage was made by sailing ship 
 from Bristol, and it was more than three weeks 
 later than the intended date before the vessel 
 could leave the port, on account of contrary 
 winds. 
 
 When my father returned we went back to 
 Writhlington from Bath, where we had spent 
 the time of his absence, and shortly after this 
 one of my mother's brothers, with his wife 
 and family, arrived from St. Vincent to stay 
 
CHILDHOOD 19 
 
 with us. Never was such consternation and 
 amaze as Black Ann, the nurse, created in the 
 Somerset mining village. I seem to see her 
 now as she sallied forth to church on the 
 morning after her arrival ; low dress, bare arms, 
 a turban of flaming colours, her flashing eyes 
 and gleaming teeth set off by a skin blacker 
 than any collier's. Her absolute disregard of 
 her mistress's wishes was astonishing, and dis- 
 organising to our household. Peal followed 
 peal of the bell which sounded in the kitchen, 
 while she " turned her eyes tail up," and re- 
 marked languidly, " Let um ring again, and den 
 1 come." 
 
 There are not many things during childhood 
 which seem worthy of record as I look to those 
 days, except such as show the advance in 
 comfort and in the decencies of life. There 
 were no lucifer-matches, and nurseries for the 
 most part were illuminated at night by rush- 
 lights, which, or rather the edifice in which 
 they were burnt, are described by Dickens in 
 Pickwick. They were terrifying things to a 
 child ; the light through the holes used to 
 elongate itself on the walls and take strange 
 shapes as the night wore away, and the rush 
 
20 MEMORIES 
 
 candle burned low ; then as day dawned the 
 whole thing would go out with a splutter and a 
 stink, perhaps before the nurse had the wake- 
 fulness or the presence of mind to leap from 
 her bed and light the fire in winter. If she did 
 not, she had to turn to the tinder-box, with its 
 flint and steel, and hammer away till a chance 
 spark fell on the tinder and kept a feeble glow 
 to which a sulphur match could be applied. 
 This was often a long process, and the maid 
 shivered in the cold while the sparks refused 
 to fall and the tinder would not take fire. 
 
 We, and our elders also, slept on feather 
 beds, and with curtains tightly drawn round to 
 keep out every breath of air. It is wonderful 
 that we survived the frowsy atmosphere in 
 which we were put to sleep. The morning tub 
 was unknown after infancy : a foot-bath occa- 
 sionally, and a general wash once a week, was 
 all that was deemed needful or even wholesome. 
 But all sanitary matters were little considered, 
 and we lived in and bore with smells that now 
 would breed a pestilence. 
 
 There was no fire-damp in the Somerset coal- 
 mines, and the colliers used to go about with 
 tallow candles stuck in a little socket in front of 
 
CHILDHOOD 21 
 
 their caps. They were a pleasant, kindly set 
 of men, and on the best terms with us children. 
 The way of going up and down the mine was 
 a sort of barrel at the end of a rope, called a 
 hutch, and the upper edge of this was very 
 sharp, generally bound with iron. While we 
 were at Writhlington a man fell down the shaft, 
 and met an ascending hutch, which all but filled 
 the shaft. His neck struck on the edge, and 
 he was decapitated, his body falling to the 
 bottom of the shaft, while the head reached 
 the surface in the hutch. 
 
 The first visit to London that I remember 
 was made before I was eight years old. We 
 posted all the way, sleeping at Marlborough. 
 In London we stayed in Guildford Street; our 
 hostess was, of course, engaged about her own 
 avocations ; my mother was not with us, and 
 my father was absent most of the day on the 
 business which had brought him to town. I 
 could not go out alone, and was turned loose 
 on the books in the library. I remember 
 getting through the whole of Camilla, with in- 
 terest, though probably with little understand- 
 ing of what 1 read. I understood Gulliver's 
 Travels better, and the edition I read was en- 
 
22 MEMORIES 
 
 tirely unexpurgated. So also were the Arabian 
 Nights, and I am still of opinion that the only 
 way to render harmless the Bible, Shakspere, 
 the Arabian Nights and all other books dealing 
 with matters difficult and delicate, is that a 
 child should read them at an early age, when 
 all that is improper passes by with the harder 
 words ; the sense of the whole is grasped, but 
 not that of each component word. A charming 
 and pure-minded old lady spoke to me a few 
 years since, somewhat to my astonishment, of 
 the wit of Candide. I assented and did not 
 discuss. But when one of her daughters, a 
 mature and married woman, fell upon the 
 book, and came with horror and confusion to 
 protest, the good lady could only say : " I 
 daresay it may be very bad, my dear, but I 
 read it when I was twelve, and if it was im- 
 proper I did not understand it ; all I know 
 is that it was very amusing." 
 
 About the same time I devoured all the 
 poetry I could get hold of, and strange to 
 say Falconer's Shipwreck was the poem which 
 made on me the greatest impression. My 
 father had a fair modern library, and before 
 I was eight years old I had read the Waverley 
 
CHILDHOOD 23 
 
 novels, many of the volumes of an excellent 
 series called the Family Library, and, singularly 
 enough, a good deal of Theology. What I am 
 now saying about my reading may be taken 
 as applying to the age of twelve, so far as 
 my home life is concerned, since it is scarcely 
 possible to date each stage in intellectual 
 development. I suppose I was about ten 
 when I lighted upon a book called Downside 
 Discussions, which I read with profound in- 
 terest, if with little real understanding. Some 
 Protestant controversialist had challenged the 
 Downside Benedictines to a public argument 
 on the points of difference between Rome and 
 the Protestant Churches, and strange to say, 
 the challenge was accepted : a public dis- 
 cussion took place, and the matter ended as 
 such encounters usually end, without apparent 
 result. I do not remember any details, but it 
 was clear to me that the Protestant champion 
 had not answered all that was said on the 
 other side. 
 
 About the same time two books fell in my 
 way which would have done much to make me 
 a Catholic had there been any to guide me, 
 as it was the impression made on me by them 
 
24 MEMORIES 
 
 was quite indelible. One was the well-known 
 tale, Father Clement. In the life of Mr. Philip 
 Gosse, the naturalist, his son, Mr. Edmund 
 Gosse, tells us that the reading of that work 
 gave his father the strong abhorrence of Rome, 
 which remained with him throughout his life, 
 and no doubt such was the effect intended by 
 the author. 
 
 On me the influence was quite the reverse ; 
 the Protestant clergyman in the book, a 
 Presbyterian, but put forward as a type of a 
 Protestant minister, is asked where was his 
 Church before the Reformation. His answer 
 is at once so evasive, and so fatuous, that 
 it was, to me, impossible to accept it for a 
 moment, while the practices of piety inculcated 
 on the young Papists, and held up to scorn, 
 such as veneration for the Saints, fasting, the 
 sign of the Cross, &c., seemed to me meri- 
 torious, or at least perfectly innocent. And 
 in so far as the hero, Father Clement, had 
 Protestant leanings, he appeared to be leav- 
 ing the more for the less worthy cause. 
 
 The second book was The Nun, pubhshed 
 anonymously, but known to be written by Mrs. 
 Sherwood, the author of The Fairchild Family, 
 
CHILDHOOD 25 
 
 Little Henry and his Bearer, and other books 
 of a vehemently Protestant character. It is 
 of high literary merit and far more true to 
 fact than Father Clement. Subtracting certain 
 absurdities as to nuns kept in dungeons for 
 heretical opinions, and secret meetings in 
 underground chapels, in which the Bishop 
 urges putting a recalcitrant nun to death — 
 " When a limb is affected with gangrene, my 
 daughter, no ideas of false compassion should 
 prevent our cutting it off," — convent life is 
 not ill described, as seen through distorted 
 spectacles. 
 
 The book had been given to my mother 
 by her dearest friend, and for that friend's 
 sake it always lay on a table in her room. I 
 read it for its literary charm, till I knew it 
 almost by heart, and here my sympathies were 
 wholly with the orthodox nun Annunciata, 
 with the Abbess and the Bishop, who were 
 not, I was sure, guilty of the deeds attributed 
 to them, rather than with Angelique and Pauline, 
 who escape in the Revolution troubles to 
 become wives and mothers. But there was 
 no one to deepen these vague impressions ; 
 Roman priests and nuns, however interesting. 
 
26 MEMORIES 
 
 were much like the characters in fairy tales, 
 denizens of a world into which I never ex- 
 pected to enter. I was then but vaguely 
 conscious of a dignified Church beyond the 
 Anglican, and no mere body of Dissenters. I 
 began to be aware of the fact, when my mother 
 went one Holy Thursday to the Tenebrce 
 service at Prior Park, and gave me an account 
 of it. She had made acquaintance, how I do 
 not know, with a certain Father Logan, who 
 preached the Three Hours' devotion on that 
 occasion. I think my mother went to Prior 
 Park from time to time for some years, and all 
 that she told me impressed me deeply. 
 
 I trace my real awakening to the meaning 
 of literature, my intellectual " conversion," so 
 to speak, to the autumn in which I was 
 twelve years old. I had nearly died of 
 scarlet fever, and when convalescent went with 
 some relatives to Teignmouth for change of 
 air. They left me alone for one long day, 
 while they were absent on an excursion. I 
 read a play of Shakspere for the first time. 
 It was Antony and Cleopatra, which entranced 
 and delighted me, so that I became a diligent 
 reader and student of the greatest English poet. 
 
CHILDHOOD 27 
 
 This was the new birth, from which I date my 
 true mental hfe. I ought also to except the 
 Bible, my knowledge of which was consider- 
 able, chiefly from those nightly readings with my 
 mother of which I have already spoken. I can 
 conceive no better mode in which a mother can 
 know her children and gain their affection than 
 by visiting them after they are in bed ; more 
 confidences come in that peaceful hour than at 
 any other, and even after the lapse of fifty-five 
 years, when I am alone in my bedroom, I miss 
 the gentle presence, and think that I listen for 
 a step which I can never hear again. 
 
 We were wont to move for the winter into 
 the neighbouring city of Bath, where we 
 attended the Octagon Chapel, later Margaret's 
 Chapel, and, on rare occasions, the Abbey. 
 I believe my elders found something in the 
 services which aided their piety, but I re- 
 member nothing which increased my own. I 
 loathed church-going, though I was not an ir- 
 religious child. 
 
 In Bath there were still persons who retained 
 some tradition of the High Churchism of Queen 
 Anne's time, and we learnt from them that it 
 was an old and pious use to attend Services on 
 
28 MEMORIES 
 
 Wednesday and Friday. There was even one 
 chapel, attached to a hospital for old men, which 
 retained daily prayer. There also lingered the 
 tradition that it was well to practise some self- 
 denial in Lent. An old physician who was very 
 kind to us children then gave up snuff, and it 
 was the only season in which we could approach 
 him without sneezing. 
 
 Another reverent custom prevailed in the 
 churches in Bath, which has now gone out of 
 use or nearly so. Whenever the Lord's Prayer 
 occurred in the second lesson for the day, in 
 the Church Service, the whole congregation rose 
 and stood during the reading of it. 
 
 The first person who made much impression 
 on my childhood was James Brooke, afterwards 
 Rajah of Sarawak, who was and remains to me 
 the type of a grand and heroic nature. He 
 had been sent by his father from India, to my 
 great-uncle Mr. Kegan's care, and was almost 
 brought up with my mother. She was his con- 
 fidante in all his earliest troubles and scrapes ; 
 to her were written many of his earliest letters 
 when he went to India. When I, as a boy, 
 knew him, he had returned from his first Indian 
 expedition, and was full of that charm which 
 
CHILDHOOD 29 
 
 drew to him so many young men in his adven- 
 turous life. 
 
 James Brooke's Life was written by the late 
 Miss Jacob, sister of the Bishop of Newcastle, 
 and contains a very fair estimate of the man. 
 The earlier part was contributed by me. James 
 Brooke never married, and during his life, he 
 made over the government to his nephew, John 
 Johnson, the son of his sister ; but being dis- 
 satisfied with that gentleman's policy, he re- 
 turned to the East to set aside his previous 
 choice, and put in the place of the second 
 Rajah his younger brother Charles, who also 
 took the name of Brooke, and is now the third 
 Rajah. 
 
 Another friend of my mother was Mrs. 
 Thomas, widow of an Archdeacon of Bath, 
 and a daughter of Dr. Harrington, a descendant 
 of Sir John, the author of Oceana. Her re- 
 collections went back to the days when Bath 
 was in its old-world glory, and she used to tell 
 how gentlemen and ladies were wont to bathe 
 together in the hot baths, in long gowns, the 
 ladies with their hair dressed, the gentlemen in 
 their wigs. Each lady had with her a little 
 floating bowl of wood, in which she carried 
 
30 MEMORIES 
 
 her handkerchief, fan, and sometimes a snuff- 
 box. 
 
 These two and a Mr. Staples, whom I was 
 taken to see in London, were the only persons 
 who made much impression on me in my child- 
 hood. Mr. Staples was one of the few English- 
 men who remained in Paris all through the 
 Terror, had seen the king taken to execution, 
 and manj' other of the absorbing events of that 
 time. He gave me the iirst interest in that 
 great uprising of the New Age. Very many 
 years afterwards, when I was writing the Life 
 of Godwin, I read for the first time the remark- 
 able letter which Mary Wollstonecraft wrote on 
 having seen the king pass to his trial. 
 
 " About nine o'clock this morning (Dec. 26, 
 1792) the king passed by my window, moving 
 silently along — excepting now and then a few 
 strokes on the drum, which rendered the still- 
 ness more awful — through empty streets, sur- 
 rounded by the National Guards, who, clustering 
 round the carriage, seemed to deserve their 
 name. The inhabitants flocked to their 
 windows, but the casements were all shut ; 
 not a voice was heard, nor did I see anything 
 like an insulting gesture. For the first time 
 
CHILDHOOD 3T 
 
 since I entered France, I bowed to the 
 majesty of the people, and respected the 
 propriety of behaviour, so perfectly in unison 
 with my own feelings. I can scarcely tell you 
 why, but an association of ideas made the 
 tears flow insensibly from my eyes, when I saw 
 Louis, sitting with more dignity than I expected 
 from his character, in a hackney coach, going 
 to meet death where so many of his race have 
 triumphed." 
 
 As I read this I seemed to have heard it 
 all before, and then recollected what Mr. Staples 
 had told me as a boy. He too had seen that 
 strange and terrible procession, and the practical 
 identity of the two accounts was a witness to 
 their fidelity, and an evidence of the power 
 with which the scene had graven itself on the 
 memory of those who were eye-witnesses. 
 
 One more early recollection is connected with 
 Mary Wollstonecraft, or rather with her daughter 
 Mary. My aunt, Mrs. Keating, told me that in 
 1 8 14 she went to London with Mrs. Kegan, 
 that the latter might consult the great surgeon. 
 Sir Anthony Carlyle. He placed them in a 
 boarding-house, or rather in what would now 
 be called a private hospital kept by a lady 
 
32 MEMORIES 
 
 whom he had trained to watch such cases, as 
 was hers, for him. This lady was a friend of 
 the Godwins, and all their set, and my aunt 
 vividly remembered her landlady coming to 
 their sitting-room in strong agitation to say 
 that Mary Godwin had eloped with young Mr. 
 Shelley, that- Jane Claremont had gone also, 
 and that Mrs. Godwin had started in pursuit. 
 
 Our country neighbours were few, and the 
 roads atrocious, so as to prevent much com- 
 munication. But I have recollections of rare 
 dinner-parties at home, in fine weather, and 
 when there was a moon ; and of an occasional 
 visit with my father and mother to country 
 houses. The one thing that stands out promi- 
 nently is that it was by no means uncommon 
 for a country gentleman to be the worse for 
 liquor after dinner, not drunk, but in the con- 
 dition Miss Austen describes " stuffy uncle 
 Phillips, breathing port wine." 
 
 Our nearest doctor was in the village of 
 Chilcompton, six miles off, and the ordinary 
 doctoring of the village was done by my mother 
 from her own medicine chest, a real chest, full 
 of large bottles. From this also the doctor 
 made up his prescriptions, when he came, for 
 
CHILDHOOD 33 
 
 us and for the poor. The amount of calomel, 
 jalap, and other violent medicines then used 
 was frightful, while the lancet was called into 
 play for almost every ailment. People were 
 regularly let blood every spring and fall, and 
 women especially during every month of their 
 pregnancy. When the cholera first appeared 
 in England many people fell ill with fright, and 
 there was one awful evening, when the wind 
 blew a hurricane, with torrents of rain, that our 
 cook made sure she had cholera, rejected all 
 domestic remedies, and made the groom go 
 off on horseback for the doctor. He arrived 
 drenched to the skin, inspected the woman, 
 and then weighed out a dose of jalap, such 
 as even in those days my mother had not 
 dreamed of. " But it will kill the woman," she 
 objected. " No," said Mr. Leech — his real name 
 — " it will not kill her, for she is strong, but 
 as there is nothing whatever the matter with 
 her, it will cure her of fancying she has cholera 
 again." 
 
 As far as I remember there was one dame's 
 school in the village, of course under no sort 
 of control or inspection, and a Sunday-school 
 held in the chancel of the church, in which as 
 
 c 
 
34 MEMORIES 
 
 soon as I could read myself, I took a class. The 
 smell of Sunday corduroys, onions eaten for 
 breakfast, peppermints to be sucked in church 
 during the sermon, and " boys' love '' stuck 
 between the leaves of prayer-books, is never 
 to be forgotten. Sunday observance for the 
 elders of the parish was mainly confined to 
 washing, and it was difficult to recognise our 
 collier friends in their unaccustomed white skins. 
 A very small percentage came to church. 
 There were, however, a few who " got religion," 
 as the phrase was, and unable to find vent for 
 their fervour in the then chill services of the 
 Church, became Primitive Methodists, or Ranters, 
 as they were termed. In fine weather they 
 met on the open down, where the believers 
 from two or three small villages could come 
 together. Once as my father was riding from 
 Writhlington to Foxcote on Sunday to take an 
 afternoon service, they very civilly but firmly 
 barred his progress, then, holding his horse's 
 bridle, knelt down and prayed for his conver- 
 sion ; placing him in a somewhat embarrass- 
 ing position. Totally devoid of education, they 
 used in their prayers words of sonorous power, 
 but no meaning. While waiting outside a 
 
CHILDHOOD 35 
 
 cottage door, after knocking, my father once 
 heard these words spoken inside : " O Lord, 
 look down upon our forefathers and warm their 
 cold hearts." This was a prayer for the dead 
 with a vengeance ! 
 
 It was not at Writhlington, but at another 
 village with which I was well acquainted, that 
 the " Ranters," when they fell to prayer, took 
 the precaution of expelling the devil from their 
 midst. They prayed vehemently, and in their 
 petitions shouted so as to scare him ; then 
 feeling sure no devil could have resisted them, 
 closed all windows and doors fast, plugging 
 the keyhole with paper, and as it was summer 
 and no fire on the hearth, blocked the chimney 
 with a potato sack, and then prayed again in 
 security. But suddenly an excited woman ex- 
 claimed : " He baint gone ; I seed 'en, I seed 
 'en." "Wheer? wheer?" cried the assistants. 
 " I seed 'en look out of the nozzle of the 
 bellows." The devil had taken refuge in them. 
 Then the bellows were carried to the door, the 
 paper was removed from the keyhole ; and the 
 evil spirit being whiffed through, all went well 
 to the end of the exercise. 
 
II 
 
 SCHOOL-DA YS—ILMINSTER 
 1836-1841 
 
 WHEN I was eight years old it was 
 settled that I should go to school. 
 My mother's health was failing, and for more 
 than a year her eyes gave her great trouble, . 
 so that she lived chiefly in a darkened room, 
 and could take but little charge of her children. 
 She had had the main care of my education up 
 to this time, my father only teachng me Latin 
 and the Greek alphabet. The school chosen 
 for me was Ilminster, an old foundation in 
 the town close to my birthplace. Though in 
 after years I knew it so well that every tree 
 and stone in the neighbourhood seemed to 
 have been familiar to me from earliest infancy, 
 this was of course my first conscious intro- 
 duction to the place. My father and mother 
 
 drove to Lackington, spent a night at the 
 36 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 37 
 
 parsonage, and left me the next day to be 
 taken to school by Mrs. Johnson, the parson's 
 wife, sister of James Brooke. I cried myself 
 to sleep in the evening, and my window facing 
 the east, whereas our nursery at Writhlington 
 looked north, the morning on which 1 went to 
 school is the one on which I remember first 
 seeing the sun rise. It was a glorious October 
 morning, warm and bright as April, but the 
 sunrise was no true omen. That day was the 
 sunset of my childish ignorance, innocence, and 
 happiness : I was going to a school which was, 
 to me at least, a hell, and where life was one 
 long misery. 
 
 My box had been sent to Ilminster by carrier, 
 and soon after breakfast, Mrs. Johnson, Charlie 
 (the present Rajah of Sarawak), his sisters, and 
 I set out for our two miles' walk, or less, 
 through Dillington Park, to the town. I re- 
 member the rustle of our feet in the fallen 
 leaves, and the large bright horse-chestnuts 
 we picked up under the trees ! The old 
 house at Dillington was in process of de- 
 molition, to make way for the new quasi- 
 Elizabethan edifice, which would have been 
 so much better had Mr. Hanning-Lee waited 
 
38 MEMORIES 
 
 but a few years longer, for the revival of 
 architecture. 
 
 The Head-Master of Ilminster was the Rev. 
 John Allen, whom my father and mother had 
 known in Lackington days. My parents had 
 liked the Aliens, knowing nothing of their rela- 
 tions to the boys they undertook to educate. 
 
 I looked forward happily enough to entrance 
 into school life, for the town and neighbour- 
 hood were full of friends who were sure to 
 notice me for my mother's sake. They did 
 so. I still look back with pleasure to holidays 
 spent at Mr. Leathes', a wine merchant in 
 the town, whose wife showed me much affec- 
 tion ; and at the Mules's, one of whom was 
 vicar of the place, another the doctor who had 
 helped to bring me into the world. It was a 
 day of great delight in each summer when Mr. 
 Hoskins, rector of North Perrott, father of 
 Admiral Sir Anthony Hoskins, whose boys 
 were at the school, would drive over and take 
 half-a-dozen of us to a picnic at the top of 
 Heme Hill. He used to bring a delicious pie 
 called a crowdy pie, enclosed in a crust, top 
 and bottom alike, to save the danger of a 
 broken dish. But better still were the rare 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 39 
 
 occasions on which I gained leave to visit the 
 Cotterells, the relations of my mother's maid 
 Jane, who lived with us from my baby days 
 till after I went to Eton. Cotterell was a 
 master carpenter, who lived in a delightful 
 old-fashioned house in Ilminster with stone 
 mullions, and behind his house was a large 
 walled garden sloping to the south, producing 
 such fruit as I have never known since — figs, 
 apples, pears, filberts, medlars in inexhaustible 
 profusion as it seemed to me. The red Quar- 
 renden apple especially has never been so red 
 and so large since. But these days were mere 
 oases in the desert. 
 
 Allen and his wife were, I think, of all 
 people with whom I have ever had to do, the 
 least fitted to train the young. Allen was 
 a little wiry, energetic man, with a keen 
 eye, sharp-cut features, and short hair like a 
 blacking-brush, combed straight up from his 
 forehead, with perhaps the thought, not in 
 his case fallacious, of adding to his stature. 
 He was an able man, and for clever and 
 advanced boys was a good teacher, witness 
 such pupils as he turned out in the Rev. 
 Spencer Northcote, afterwards head of St. 
 
40 MEMORIES 
 
 Mary's Oscott, and the Rev. Canon Macmullen, 
 long the Catholic priest of Chelsea. These 
 two, going straight from Ilminster, gained 
 scholarships at Oxford, when very young. 
 So too the able Church historian, Canon 
 Perry, Sir George Cox, Canon H. Percy Smith, 
 and others, traced to Allen the foundation of 
 the good superstructure of learning they after- 
 wards raised. But those were boys who would 
 have succeeded anywhere, and they all entered 
 the school at a greater age than I, a child 
 of eight, who was necessarily left to under- 
 teachers. There was an ignorant fellow 
 named Sellick, who afterwards, I believe, be- 
 came a sort of clerk to the school at Marl- 
 borough. I am told that at Marlborough 
 Sellick was bursar's clerk, and managed the dis- 
 tributions of school-books, and weekly pocket- 
 money. He is remembered there as ' Slug,' 
 a name more suited to his appearance than 
 his temper, for, unlike most very fat men, he 
 was extremely irascible. There was also a 
 miserable little usher named Tweed, to whom 
 we boys, ill-treated ourselves, but not by him, 
 showed, I grieve to say, every possible indig- 
 nity, and who taught us nothing ; a person 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 41 
 
 named Coates, who set long punishments to 
 poor little fellows who could hardly write ; 
 and Dr. Routledge, Daddy, of the London 
 publisher's family, who was I believe a sound 
 scholar, but could not teach. He was a good 
 and kindly man, but living away from the 
 school with his family, and with boarders of his 
 own, knew nothing of the devilry of the school- 
 house except the floggings. But with these he 
 could not be expected to interfere, for in those 
 days all education was driven in with the cane. 
 
 So far as I came under Allen, I learnt, and 
 to him I certainly owe something of what little 
 I know. But the text-books used were bad, 
 the facilities for private preparation of lessons 
 were non-existent ; we children were never 
 helped to learn for ourselves ; we never heard 
 a word of kindness or encouragement ; furious 
 flogging for the majority, the grossest favourit- 
 ism for a few, appeared to be the only discipline 
 known or imagined. 
 
 The mode in which the floggings were carried 
 out was an ingenious piece of cruelty. The 
 head-master sat on a sort of dais at the end of 
 the room, at a high desk, in which he kept his 
 papers. The space between the dais and the 
 
42 MEMORIES 
 
 walls was filled by two closets open at the 
 top, so that, though gloomy, there was still 
 light enough to see, and even to read, unless 
 the day were dark. Just within the door 
 was a cupboard containing the canes used 
 for flogging. The canes were a trifle longer 
 than the cupboard, so that, when a little door 
 about four inches square was opened, a cane 
 started out like Jack-in-the-box, ready to the 
 hand. This box was connected with a spring 
 in the master's desk, some six feet distant. 
 When a boy was to be punished — and there 
 were few days, perhaps few lessons, without 
 such an occurrence — Allen used to fling his 
 gown behind him on his chair, and with a lithe 
 bound spring to the cupboard, having first 
 touched the spring in his desk ; the ominous 
 click which answered within the cupboard was 
 heard over the' hushed and expectant room. 
 Then driving the miserable child before him, 
 he shut the door, swung the victim across his 
 knee, and with the waxed cane ready to his 
 hand, he flogged till he was tired, and then 
 locked the boy in for an hour or two to recover 
 himself as best he might. I have felt, and 
 seen on others as well as on myself, the weals 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 43 
 
 caused by the cane, as thick as a finger, while 
 all between each stripe was livid, broken, and 
 bleeding. I have known the black-and-blue 
 bruises still on the skin for more than a month 
 after the flogging. I believe that with one 
 exception, his own son, a boy of my age, 
 Allen hated me above all others, and I do not 
 think that in either case there was reason or 
 justice for it. Withal he was a pious person, 
 and was said to preach good sermons. He 
 became a High Churchman when that phase 
 of faith grew into fashion, and I believe he 
 died regretted, except by those who had known 
 him as well as did his victims. 
 
 The one charm of the man was his voice. 
 He was a finished singer, not the least like an 
 amateur, but trained in all the best methods of 
 the best professional artists. His voice was a 
 vibrant sympathetic tenor, and both in singing 
 and speaking he used it with marvellous skill. 
 It charmed even boys not usually sensitive to 
 " fine shades " of this kind. I have been called 
 to account by Allen for some trifling misde- 
 meanour, and his voice has moved me like 
 the pathetic tones of a violin. I have felt 
 myself a sinner, and repented bitterly that 
 
44 MEMORIES 
 
 which needed no repentance. Only after I had 
 left him did the truth assert itself, and I felt 
 I had been tricked by the magic of musical 
 sound. My mother understood in after years 
 what Allen was, and what we had endured ; but 
 her sister, who was devoted to music, and 
 who had been charmed by Allen's voice, could 
 never be brought to believe that he who could 
 sing and speak so divinely was brutal to 
 his boys. No doubt, however, she believed 
 with her whole heart that the devil had once 
 quoted Scripture. Neither women nor men 
 are always logical. 
 
 Allen read as well as he sang, with a 
 strong Somersetshire accent, but I am by no 
 means an advocate for eliminating all nuances 
 of pronunciation from our speech. He always 
 gave the Somerset aspirate before the letter R, 
 and pronounced " read " as bread, " rabbit " as 
 hrabbit. He made his pupils read well also. 
 All those I have named as his pupils were 
 exceptionally good readers, and almost every 
 boy educated at Ilminster was at least a fair 
 elocutionist. 
 
 Mrs. Allen, though still young, was the 
 fattest woman I ever saw, and the hottest. 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 45 
 
 She would go out on frosty days into the 
 garden unbonneted, unshawled, in the hope 
 of getting cool. In her disposition she was 
 hard and coarse. No grain of motherly kind- 
 ness, no passing gleam of tenderness for the 
 child victims of her husband's floggings, ever 
 softened the asperities of our life. Her house- 
 hold was ill conducted and her servants were 
 profligate and immoral ; the food supplied to 
 the boys was bad, we were insufficiently 
 warmed — one small stove in the school-room 
 round which the elder boys clustered was 
 all the fire we ever came near — and cleanli- 
 ness was impossible. There was indeed a 
 solemn function once a week when our feet 
 were washed in hot water, and Mrs. Allen 
 herself attended to our heads with a small-tooth 
 comb, but for the rest, all that came between 
 head and feet, we washed only in the holidays. 
 The scanty supply of basins in which we 
 dipped our head and hands in the morning 
 hardly counts among the possibilities of true 
 cleanliness. Occasionally on " washing days " 
 a jug of rhubarb was handed round and drunk 
 out of wine-glasses, much in the fashion of Mrs. 
 Squeers's brimstone and treacle ; and the school 
 
46 MEMORIES 
 
 could take but little cow beef at dinner next 
 day. It always was cow beef, for 1 remember 
 that some of the boys considered a slice of the 
 udder as a delicacy. 
 
 Mrs. Allen took some of the teaching, not 
 in the school of course, but in the private 
 dining-room. She gave Sunday lessons in 
 Grossman's Catechism, a book of which I 
 have never heard since and do not know the 
 doctrine — and in French. She was certainly 
 a good teacher. She had been educated in 
 France, had an admirable accent, gave us a 
 good selection of books to read, and when I 
 went to Eton, the French master told me I 
 had been excellently grounded. 
 
 As may be supposed with such people at 
 the head, the moral influences of the school 
 were nought, and the tone of the school horribly 
 low. We hated the place and its ways, but 
 fell into these with facility. I must always 
 except from this general statement such excel- 
 lent people as my dear dead friend, Percy 
 Smith, who could walk through hell without 
 the smell of fire passing on him, and Frank 
 Churchill Simmons, always, boy and man, living 
 the noblest conceivable life, and, as was 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 47 
 
 natural, hated by Allen at Ilminster. Percy 
 Smith, however, was a favourite, perhaps as 
 being the nephew of Allen's old master, Bedford, 
 at Twyford, to whom he had been an assistant, 
 and who had taught him to flog. 
 
 The social condition of the hundred or more 
 boys at Ilminster was very varied. On the one 
 hand we had the sons of the upper landed 
 gentry, short of the aristocracy, in Devon 
 and Somerset — Spekes, Pagets, Hoskinses, 
 Fursdons, Mallocks, and also the sons, as day- 
 boys, now and then as boarders, of the small 
 tradesmen. Then there were a few people 
 who settled in Ilminster, because there was a 
 cheap school. 
 
 Friendship rarely exists among bullied boys. 
 There are few whom I recollect with pleasure, 
 save one or two I have named and a few 
 others — Arthur Paget, bright, affectionate, im- 
 pulsive, rash, who died too early, when, his 
 wild oats having been sown, he might have 
 settled down in his home at Cranmore, and let 
 his great talents have fair-play; Frank Simmons 
 and Arthur Paget were the friends who were 
 more than brothers, in those young days and 
 always. Percy Smith was a grave and reverend 
 
48 MEMORIES 
 
 senior to us, as was a certain big Irish boy 
 named Whelan, who was kind to me. Almost 
 the only other lad I remember with affection 
 besides my cousin, Edmund Cox, is a certain 
 Tom Larcombe, the son of a widow who let 
 lodgings in the town. I have never seen Tom 
 since, but have heard of him as a flourishing 
 ironmonger at Exeter. 
 
 In some respects the manners of the school 
 were curiously different from those of our own 
 days, when schools are more luxurious. Little 
 boys slept two in a bed, ;^5 a year extra 
 being charged for the privilege, which happily 
 was mine, of a single bed. Pudding at dinner 
 always came before meat, on the days when it 
 was given at all, and was usually either a heavy 
 suet, or an equally heavy batter pudding, which 
 diminished appetite at a very cheap rate. 
 
 In the outfit which every boy was required 
 to bring with him to school, nightcaps formed 
 an item, and a large portion of the school 
 wore them. It shows a curious change in 
 toilet requirements, that while these were 
 specified, there was no mention of sponge or 
 sponge-bag. The nightcaps were a part of 
 the regime which made people exclude every 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 49 
 
 breath of night air from the bed, between the 
 sheets of which, if the night were chill, a 
 warming-pan was passed. Readers of Pickwick 
 will remember that Mr. Pickwick wore a night- 
 cap and that a warming-pan was among his 
 luxuries. Their use began to die out about 
 the time I went to school ; though the demand, 
 uncomplied with, for nightcaps lingered in 
 school-lists for many a year afterwards. 
 
 Men of my age, looking back to their school- 
 days, will remember that almost every other 
 boy had warts on his hands. No doubt bodily 
 ailments have their times and seasons, and 
 increased cleanliness among school-boys is 
 probably not the only reason that warts are 
 almost unknown in the class of society of 
 which I speak. I mention the circumstance 
 because the " charming " of warts was extremely 
 common, and the charms, from whatever cause, 
 seemed to have efficacy and power. One was 
 cruel enough. A slug was taken on a spring 
 evening, and rubbed over the warts; it was 
 then spitted firmly on a black-thorn, and left 
 to die, rot and vanish away. The thorn and 
 the slug were visited each day, and as the 
 corpse diminished so did the warts. There 
 
50 MEMORIES 
 
 were other charms, some connected with verbal 
 incantation, which I have now forgotten. Many 
 years afterwards, when I was hving in Dorset, 
 the station-master at a little village professed 
 to " charm " warts. There was a poor fellow 
 with whom warts had grown into a regular 
 skin disease. Not only were his hands so 
 covered with these excrescences that he could 
 hardly do a stroke of work without making 
 them bleed, but his whole spine was set 
 with them, and his face not free. The 
 station-master charmed them, and in a few- 
 weeks every trace of them had vanished, 
 without any application even of the slime of 
 a slug. Of course this only tends to prove 
 how largely the body is dependent on the 
 mental condition, on imagination and faith. 
 
 With differences which may be gathered 
 from what I have said of the master, " Vice 
 Versa" gives a fair picture of life at private 
 schools fifty years ago. The one good thing 
 I brought away was love for English poetry, 
 encouraged in us by the great quantity we 
 had to learn by heart. Our school-book 
 on the subject was an admirable one, long 
 since out of print, called Readings in Poetry ; 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 51 
 
 certainly the best of its class I have known. 
 I was always a great reader both at home and 
 at school, chiefly, as I think best for boys, 
 of poetry and fiction. I do not remember 
 many books, however, which made a great im- 
 pression on me at Ilminster, beyond Fenimore 
 Cooper's novels. 
 
 In 1839 my father became Vicar of Wellow, 
 five miles from Bath and about four from 
 Writhlington, and pending the enlargement and 
 partial rebuilding of the Vicarage, we went to 
 live for a year at Westfield Villa in Weston, 
 near Bath, whence my father rode backwards 
 and forwards to Wellow. In 1840 we removed 
 to Wellow, and the first entrance into our new 
 home was saddened by disaster and sorrow. 
 The disaster was the final and complete failure 
 of the West Indian property, which had been 
 languishing ever since the slave emancipation. 
 However, there had always been some income 
 from the estate till the time of which I speak, 
 when the supplies failed wholly, and money 
 also was wanted to keep the estate going at 
 all. My father determined to take pupils, and 
 was fortunate in finding as many as he wanted 
 for some years. It was not a pleasant experi- 
 
52 MEMORIES 
 
 ment, my mother never liked it, and her health 
 was very unfit to cope with the situation, even 
 if she had not soon been saddened by the loss 
 of children. My father, though he taught fairly 
 well, as I believe, had not the smallest sympathy 
 for or understanding of boy nature, and pupils 
 had the effect, as is generally the case, of 
 breaking up our home life. 
 
 The sorrow was caused by the deaths of two 
 little brothers, one an infant, the other, who 
 died very suddenly, a promising boy of six. 
 With this child all the light and joy died out of 
 my mother's life for a long time to come. 
 
 I had left Ilminster the previous Christmas, 
 having been for some time laid up with a bad 
 knee, injured in jumping over forms in the 
 school-room. 
 
 Before, however, I pass to the record of 
 public school life, it may be well to chronicle 
 some points in which manners and customs 
 were different from those which now obtain. 
 
 In my early school-days all travelling was 
 done by coach and private conveyance. On 
 more than one occasion, my uncle and aunt, 
 who then and for many years travelled with 
 their own fat and leisurely horses, came to take 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 53 
 
 me from school ; at other times we went to 
 Bath by coach. Allen always used to end a 
 speech which he made at the end of each 
 term by saying, "And now, gentlemen, the 
 Bath coach is waiting for its passengers ; " 
 though of course it never waited, nor would 
 it have done so had we not been ready. Two 
 incidents of these journeys are very vividly 
 impressed on my memory ; one of a June day 
 when we drove into Ilchester, starting from 
 Ilminster after an early breakfast to find the 
 London mail, which had travelled all night, had 
 just arrived, and the tradesmen were putting 
 up their shutters on the news of the death of 
 William IV. The second was that the driver 
 of the stage-coach, on one of my journeys home, 
 drew up his horses in the chill morning at 
 the request of his passengers that they might 
 see a man hanged at Ilchester jail. We were 
 on the bridge, a good distance off, and the sight 
 was not very curious or indeed very terrible, 
 but the black figure swayed to and fro, and 
 the passengers were silent for some little time 
 afterwards. 
 
 I was interested in the execution, if not 
 horrified, for we boys at school not long 
 
54 MEMORIES 
 
 before had taken a very deep interest in the 
 murder of Lord William Russell by his valet, 
 Courvoisier, whose last dying speech had been 
 amongst the most popular, though not the most 
 edifying literature of the term. 
 
 Travelling by coach may seem pleasant in 
 these days, when a fine day is chosen for a 
 jaunt to Hampton Court or Dorking, and if the 
 day turn out ill, the train is always available 
 for the return journey ; but it was painful 
 work outside, or even inside, in bad weather, 
 when the journey was long, and cramp took 
 hold of the chilly limbs kept long in one posi- 
 tion. " Shall we change legs ? " was the re- 
 cognised phrase for altering the position, when 
 legs were dovetailed into legs of those who sat 
 face to face on the back seats of the coach, or 
 inside. 
 
 Perhaps the first indication to my young 
 mind that the Church of England was a 
 house divided against itself came from a con- 
 versation in the Bath coach. Two old gentle- 
 men, full of curiosity, put me through a long 
 catechism as to what Church my family attended 
 in Bath, what books we read on Sundays, what 
 clergymen my father invited to his house, and 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 55 
 
 the like. Then for the first time I heard the 
 words Evangelical and Orthodox, with the 
 decision, " Oh, Orthodox, yes, certainly Ortho- 
 dox," as the summing up of the opinions held 
 by my family. It was then the name for the 
 party which soon became known as High 
 Church, Puseyite, or Tractarian, though my 
 father and my family in general strove to hold 
 the mean and not belong to any party. 
 
 If my relations avoided party in Church 
 matters, they by no means did so in politics. 
 They were all Tories of the highest kind, and 
 every one who was not so was beyond the 
 pale of salvation in this world and probably in 
 the next. How men had voted was published 
 in a pamphlet, and the Blues would not deal 
 with the Yellows, and vice versa. My mother, 
 however, did not share this feeling, and went 
 to what seemed the best shops. Therefore on 
 one occasion she bought a dress at Jolly's, 
 the Radical haberdashers in Bath, and ordered 
 it to be sent to her brother-in-law's house, 
 where she was staying. Late in the evening 
 inquiry was made for a parcel from Jolly's. 
 " Oh," said my uncle, " a boy from Jolly's came 
 to the door, as I was coming in. I sent him 
 
S6 MEMORIES 
 
 back with a message that it must be a mistake, 
 since no one here could possibly deal at that 
 shop." The same relative once discharged 
 his coachman at a moment's notice, not even 
 allowing him to finish grooming the horse on 
 which he was engaged, because as he entered 
 the stable he heard the coachman observe to the 
 groom, "Well, says I, Roebuck for ever." 
 
 Though in recent days, since the Home Rule 
 agitation set in, there has been even in London 
 society some little friction in social life, nothing 
 that I have seen in later years has at all re- 
 minded me of the time of which I speak ; the 
 different parties never met, and even religious 
 creeds divided less than political. 
 
 Among the neighbouring clergy there were 
 some singular characters. One was the Rev. 
 Thomas Jolliffe, who never wore braces, but 
 buttoned his trousers over his waistcoat like 
 the old pictures of charity-school boys. In 
 this attire he attended a fancy ball in the 
 neighbourhood, and the reporter for the county 
 paper put him down as " The Rev. Thomas 
 Jolliffe, Fancy Dress." It was not at all un- 
 usual in those days to see middle-aged clergy- 
 men frequent attendants and dancers at the 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 57 
 
 public balls in Bath, just as they had been in 
 the days of Miss Austen. Very different from 
 these, however, was the Rev. Thomas Spencer, 
 Rector of Hinton Charterhouse. I do not 
 know what were his special religious views, 
 though I think he would have been called an 
 extreme Low Churchman ; but he was a tee- 
 totaller when no one else was so, a vegetarian, 
 and a Chartist, any one of which facts was 
 enough to set his neighbours against him. 
 I think my father's house was almost, if not 
 quite, the only one belonging to any one of his 
 class or caste which was open to him. 
 
 Education in the villages was at a very low 
 ebb. One of my father's first works at Wellow, 
 after the restoration of the church, was to 
 build a National school, to supplant a private 
 venture by an old man who objected to flogging, 
 but when further questioned as to what method 
 of punishment he used, had replied, " I hangs 
 them up by their thumbs." Though our 
 migration had been so short a distance we had 
 completely left the colliery district, and were 
 among a purely agricultural population. It was 
 a wonder to me to find that the colliers, who 
 had always been so kind and friendly, were 
 
58 MEMORIES 
 
 considered by the peasants as a lawless and 
 dangerous crew. It was scarcely a surprise 
 to the village when a man came into it one 
 morning and represented that he had been 
 robbed by colliers. They had carried out their 
 work with completeness, for he walked up to 
 the first house, which was the old school- 
 master's, without a single rag upon him, the 
 assailants having taken all his clothes. He 
 said he was an American, of Polish parentage, 
 recently landed at Bristol. The schoolmaster 
 wrapped him up in an old flannel dressing- 
 gown, which barely reached his knees, and 
 brought him to the Vicarage. There my father 
 believed his story and clad him in a whole suit 
 of clerical broadcloth, with accessories such as 
 shirt and shoes. Indeed it is difficult to see 
 what else could have been done with him in a 
 remote village, even if no one had believed in 
 him. The schoolmaster wanted his dressing- 
 gown, which indeed was his scholastic robe of 
 office. The victim went off clothed and fed, 
 and in the afternoon his own tattered garments 
 were discovered under a hedge about a hundred 
 yards from the house to which he had first 
 gone. It is curious that, so far as I know, no 
 
SCHOOL-DAYS— ILMINSTER 59 
 
 other tramp has ever adopted this ingenious 
 if audacious mode of fraud. My father happily 
 had a sense of humour which softened the 
 loss. 
 
 There was much to feed that sense among 
 the Somerset poor, and I wish I could record 
 half the curious experiences which fell to him. 
 Here, however, is a fair specimen. A small 
 farmer named Dagg came one evening to beg 
 that the Vicar would go to see his wife, who 
 was very ill. On arriving at the farm, my 
 father went to his ministrations in the sick- 
 room, leaving the poor husband a prey to the 
 deepest sorrow in the kitchen. " Well, sir, 
 what do 'ee think of her ? " he asked, when the 
 parson returned. The answer could only be 
 that he must prepare for the worst. " Oh, sir, 
 'tis hard to lose a wife again," he said ; " you 
 see, sir, she's my third." And then he went 
 on with a sudden and indescribable change of 
 tone and manner ; " I shouldn't wonder if I 
 were to shoe the horse all round." He did ; but 
 in the few months that elapsed, the farm had 
 gone to rack and ruin, for the third wife had 
 been a good manager, and the man, always 
 unthrifty, was quite unable to shift for himself. 
 
6o MEMORIES 
 
 and had kept one horse and cart only from the 
 general sale of his effects. He had become a 
 " tranter," doing odd jobs, haulage of manure, 
 and the like. He came by night once again 
 to say that he wished his banns cried next 
 Sunday, but would parson remit the fees, which 
 he could not afford to pay. My father pointed 
 out that this was an unthrifty beginning and a 
 bad precedent, which he was not inclined to 
 make. Dagg was crestfallen for a minute, and 
 then remembering that the Vicar had employed 
 him with his horse and cart for sundry small 
 services, his brow cleared, he slapped his thigh 
 with cheerful emphasis, and said, " Suppose we 
 take her out in a load of dung ? " 
 
Ill 
 
 ETON— THE FELLOWS AND MASTERS 
 1841-1846 
 
 T KNOW not how it came about that I was 
 
 * to go to Eton. My cousin George Cox had 
 
 gone to Rugby, and my dear friend Frank 
 
 Simmons was to do the same. I rather think 
 
 the fact that Arthur Paget and one or two other 
 
 Somerset boys at Ilminster were to go to Eton, 
 
 decided the matter, and decided also the choice 
 
 of a tutor, Goodford, afterwards Head-master and 
 
 Provost, himself a Somerset man. 
 
 Those were the days of nomination to college, 
 
 and one could have been obtained for me without 
 
 difficulty. But it was just at the time when 
 
 " college" was at it lowest ebb, in comforts, 
 
 morals, and numbers. My uncle and aunt 
 
 driving from London to Bath, in the summer 
 
 before I went to Eton, paid a visit of inspection, 
 
 and I remember a phrase in one of my aunt's 
 61 
 
62 MEMORIES 
 
 letters, that the "worst ward in the worst 
 hospital " was preferable to Long Chamber. 
 And those were the days of unreformed hos- 
 pitals ! The number of scholars had dwindled 
 from seventy to forty, simply because boys 
 could not be found to submit to the hardships 
 which awaited them ; but those who did, and 
 had any sort of ability, were certain of scholar- 
 ships, and ultimately of fellowships, at King's 
 College, Cambridge. Some therefore were 
 always found to avail themselves of the King's 
 foundation, and the pick of these returned to 
 Eton as masters, but it was whispered that 
 some boys were admitted as payment for bills 
 owing to their fathers, tradesmen in Windsor, 
 and one was the son of an ex-valet of George 
 IV. So I was to go as an Oppidan into Good- 
 ford's house. It was in some ways unfortu- 
 nate, for '' college " was reformed in a degree 
 the very year I went to Eton. 
 
 So far as I remember, the day I went to 
 Eton was the first time I travelled in a railway 
 train. The Great Western Railway was opened 
 in a piecemeal fashion. Not very long before 
 we had gone as a family to lunch at Twerton 
 Rectory, now destroyed, but then quite close 
 
ETON 63 
 
 on the line, to see the first passenger train 
 pass between Bath and Bristol, and as it went 
 at full speed, I need hardly say there was little 
 to see. In the spring of 184 1, we went to 
 Wootton Bassett by coach, and thence to 
 Slough by train. The short-sighted opposition 
 of Eton College, and I think of Windsor Castle 
 also, had the effect, as at Oxford, of keeping 
 the railway far from the sacred precincts. 
 Brunei had planned his line to pass through 
 Windsor and Oxford : it was many years before 
 there was a branch to Oxford from Didcot, and 
 at Slough the trains stopped for setting down 
 and taking up passengers, but there was at 
 first no regular station. My father went with 
 me to the house of his brother-in-law. Major 
 Bent, Wexham Lodge, near Slough, and the 
 morning after our arrival took me to be entered 
 at the head-master's house, then the Rev. E. C. 
 Hawtrey, D.D. As Hawtrey grew to be an old 
 man, his astonishing plainness was toned down, 
 and he gained in dignity, but in middle life it 
 was scarcely possible for a man to be more 
 grotesquely ugly. But he was kindly and 
 courteous. At Woodside, outside Windsor 
 Park, lived Mr. Parks, an old friend of my 
 
64 MEMORIES 
 
 father, who had married a cousin of Dr. Hawtrey, 
 and as I rose towards the top of the school, he 
 and Miss Hawtrey were so kind as now and 
 then to take me in their carriage when I dined 
 at Woodside. 
 
 It was at this house, I remember, that 
 on one occasion, a child, looking up from a 
 picture-book, asked the inconvenient question, 
 "What is the difference between a bull and 
 an ox ? " The head-master answered at once, 
 "The bull is the calf's papa, the ox is his 
 uncle." It is much to have a ready wit on 
 such emergencies ! The late Sir John Awdry, 
 once an Indian Judge, replied to a child who 
 asked, " Do cocks lay eggs ? " " Oh yes : 
 when he has laid one, he is called a cocoon; 
 when he has laid two, he is called a cockatoo; 
 when he has laid three, he is called a cocka- 
 trice" To go back to Hawtrey, I remember 
 little else of him at that time, except that in 
 one of the drives to Woodside, he expressed 
 his strong disapproval of the picture of Eton 
 life in Disraeli's Coningsby, which was just 
 published. He appeared to take the ex- 
 tremely narrow schoolmaster's view, and was 
 angry that Disraeli had not made himself ac- 
 
ETON 65 
 
 quainted with the length of time that a boy 
 might be away from Eton without having his 
 name called over at " absence." He, however, 
 showed from time to time, that he had wit in 
 other things than in the repartees to a child, 
 witness his epigram, perhaps now forgotten, 
 when the Bishop of Tuam's charge, published 
 in 1845, was discovered to have been taken 
 without acknowledgment from that of the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, published in 1841. 
 
 " Cantuariensis. 
 " Privatam monitus relinque chartam, 
 Meamque improbe pone concionem. 
 Quae scripsi mea sunt. 
 
 " Tuamensis. 
 
 " Tuam requiris ? 
 Frustra glorier hoc Episcopatu, 
 Tuam ni liceat Meam vocari." 
 
 At Eton, however, the head-master is not 
 the supreme authority. Above him in those 
 days were the Provost and Fellows, these last 
 being with few exceptions drawn from the 
 Eton masters. They came with little or no 
 special training, imbued with the old traditions, 
 from the same set among whom they had been 
 school-boys, from a College which was out of 
 
 E 
 
66 MEMORIES 
 
 the University competition, and in which there 
 was little general reading. It was strange 
 they should have done as well as they did, 
 under the singular circumstances in which they 
 had been pitchforked into their enormous 
 responsibility. 
 
 Let me endeavour in a very changed world 
 to give some notion of the College and school 
 authorities. I here reprint almost unchanged 
 what I wrote about the College on the occasion 
 of Mr. Wilder's death in 1892. He, when I 
 went to Eton, was the junior Fellow, and my 
 tutor had succeeded to his house. He was 
 the last survivor of the old regime. 
 
 Fifty-one years ago, when the Great Western 
 Railway was opened to Slough, Eton ceased to 
 be a sleepy country village, where the great 
 school lay under the protecting shade of the 
 Castle walls, where the Court and Eton boys, 
 and Cabinet Ministers in Windsor uniform, 
 mixed on the Castle terrace with a friendly 
 feeling of intimacy, which necessarily vanished 
 so soon as it took no longer to go from Pad- 
 dington to Windsor than from Charing Cross 
 to Paddington. The railway extinguished 
 
ETON 67 
 
 " Montem," a mediaeval fete, half ecclesiastical, 
 half the gambols of a band of mummers ; and 
 turned the 4th of June fancy-dress procession 
 of boats into a mere suburban regatta. 
 
 Coincidently almost with the advent of the 
 railway, Hawtrey became head-master, and, 
 strange as it may seem to those who knew him 
 in his later days, he began his career by being 
 a decided reformer, to whom are owing most 
 of the changes by which Eton differs from what 
 it was made so soon as it emerged from the 
 fire of the Reformation, and ceased to be a 
 mediaeval school. 
 
 When Hawtrey appeared as head-master 
 in a college cap, dropping the extraordinary 
 cocked hat always worn by Keate, and before 
 him by Goodall, perched on the top of a large 
 wig — when Hodgson, the Crown nominee, quite 
 out of touch with Eton traditions, became 
 Provost — the two men set themselves to carry 
 out reforms in the housing of the scholars as 
 well as in the teaching of the school. But 
 the Fellows, living apart in the seclusion of the 
 cloisters, gave for the most part but a languid 
 assent to reforms they could not resist, and de- 
 spite of railways, of the fact that arithmetic and 
 
68 MEMORIES 
 
 Euclid were made part of the school-work, and 
 that the Ash- Wednesday pig-fair in the College 
 Street was abolished, remained a community 
 the like of which the world is not likely to 
 see again. Mr. Wilder, just elected, and not 
 yet fossilised into College ways, alone was 
 eager for reform. He even declared that the 
 new buildings should be warmed by fires in 
 the boys' rooms rather than by hot water. 
 Hawtrey, however, insisted on facings of Caen 
 stone, and comfort gave way to what was 
 supposed to be superior architecture. 
 
 Of those who knew the Fellows, who indeed 
 had but little communication with the boys, 
 few had opportunities of verifying their re- 
 collections in after life, or hearing from the 
 lips of those who had known a still older 
 generation than theirs, stories of old Eton days. 
 But to me, who had such opportunities, all is 
 fresh and vivid as yesterday. 
 
 Now that the College is a mere governing 
 body sitting in London, the school is all in 
 all, except in so far as the management of 
 the revenue is concerned. But it was far 
 otherwise in the time of which I am speaking. 
 The College had been founded mainly as a 
 
ETON 69 
 
 community of priests to say masses for the 
 founder's soul ; and attached to this was a 
 school of seventy scholars, with a head and 
 lower master belonging to the foundation. 
 The education thus given gradually attracted 
 others, " town boys," most of them in "Dames' " 
 houses, to share it ; these necessitated other 
 " assistant-masters," who by degrees took 
 boarders into their houses. The Rev. Thomas 
 Carter, of whom more hereafter, was the first 
 to make the innovation, and Dames' houses 
 are now things of the past, though from old 
 habit boys still speak of mathematical and 
 science masters, not being their tutors, in 
 whose houses they board, as " My Dame." 
 But the assistElnt-masters had no real standing 
 as belonging to the College. It is true that 
 when a vacancy occurred among the Fellows 
 it was usually filled from among the assistant- 
 masters, but that was because, as former 
 scholars of Eton, and Fellows of King's, they 
 had already belonged to the Royal Foundations 
 of Henry VI., not because they were recog- 
 nised as assistants by the College ; yet in so 
 small a community everything was known with 
 the greatest minuteness, even if it was ignored. 
 
70 MEMORIES 
 
 In the thirties Provost Goodall asked Mr. Eliot, 
 then a young assistant, just appointed, who had 
 only one pupil, to dine with him at very short 
 notice. This was always understood as a sort 
 of royal command, but Mr. Eliot did not so 
 take the invitation, and declined it on the 
 ground that he " had pupil-room," the technical 
 phrase for preparatory work with pupils. The 
 Provost, when his guests were assembled, stood 
 on the rug, with Mr. Eliot's open note in his 
 hand, and said, " I am sorry that we are one 
 gentleman short ; Mr. Eliot is unable to come, 
 because he has pupil- room. Dear, dear, what 
 a clucking a hen makes when she has only 
 one chick ! " The same gentleman drew some 
 year or two later another wise saw from the 
 Provost, and one which has a far-reaching 
 application. The chapel windows were broken 
 by a catapult or sling, within a definite hour, 
 when the boys were in school. The windows 
 were commanded by one house only, and there 
 at that time were two boys who were " stay- 
 ing out" — that is, absent from school as not 
 being well. The tutor, in defence of his lads, 
 before they were questioned on the matter, 
 objected that these could not be the culprits, 
 
ETON 71 
 
 because they were such good boys. " Have 
 you yet to learn," said the Provost, "that it 
 is the very best boys who do the very worst 
 things ? " 
 
 But a year or two later, when we come 
 within the limits of our fifty-one years, Goodall 
 and his wig were gone, and Keate was a Canon 
 of Windsor. Provost Hodgson reigned in 
 Goodall's stead, and we who then read Byron 
 with deep delight and sympathy could not 
 understand how the fussy, plethoric, uninterest- 
 ing little man could have been the object of 
 Byron's enthusiastic friendship, to whom he 
 wrote in poetry, and had lent out of his own 
 then scanty means a thousand pounds. Ah 
 me ! We who read poetry in those days have 
 become prosaic enough since then, and our- 
 selves the givers and the recipients of no less 
 devoted friendship, have either forgotten, or 
 seem to have forgotten, all the romance of 
 school and college days. 
 
 Hodgson preached a course of sermons on 
 the Prayer-Book, which ran on during his 
 " residences " for five years, and possibly a good 
 deal longer. We never attended to them, in- 
 deed could scarce hear a complete sentence 
 
72 MEMORIES 
 
 but the text, and the constant recurrence time 
 after time of the words, " I will pray with the 
 spirit, and I will pray with the understanding 
 also," was wont to send the whole school into 
 a fit of giggles. But if he was a failure as a 
 preacher, no Eton Colleger ought to forget 
 that to his enlightened sway is due the whole 
 reform in the management for the boarding 
 of the King's scholars. It is almost inconceiv- 
 able that the same precise state of things 
 should have existed down to 1841 or 1842, 
 which had obtained in the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth, and was then scarcely changed from 
 much earlier times. It is true that before 
 " college " was reformed under Hodgson, glass 
 had been introduced into the windows, but it 
 was quite a modern innovation. Well into the 
 present century the windows were closed only 
 at night by heavy wooden shutters, and the 
 late Vice- Provost, the Reverend Thomas Carter, 
 father of " Tom " Carter of Clewer, and of 
 " Billy " Carter, the present Bursar, has assured 
 the writer that he had never slept so comfort- 
 ably as when the snow drifted under the 
 shutters on to the beds. The Duke of Cumber- 
 land, after Culloden, gave the boys new green 
 
ETON 73 
 
 cloth quilts, which, greatly prized, and used only 
 for a few weeks at election time each year, re- 
 mained even to within my recollection. They 
 were called Culloden rugs, and were accidentally 
 destroyed by fire some twenty-five years ago. 
 Queen Elizabeth had increased the boys' 
 commons, and the grateful inscription yet re- 
 mains in the Hall, cut by some hungry urchin 
 at the time, 
 
 Queene Elizabetha ad nos gave October X 
 2 loves in a Mes [sic]. 
 
 In old days the whole life of the boys was 
 spent in Long Chamber, except that meals were 
 taken in the Hall. By degrees the need of 
 privacy was felt, and the upper boys had each 
 their room or lodging in the town, each being 
 also assigned to the dame of one of the board- 
 ing-houses chosen by his parents or tutor, who 
 looked after him, more or less, in case of sick- 
 ness. By a series of reforms extending over 
 many years, " college '' was rendered as comfort- 
 able as a tutor's house, proper servants and 
 a resident master were appointed, but though 
 these were only completed in more recent times, 
 the initiative was due to Provost Hodgson. 
 
74 MEMORIES 
 
 The sixth-form boys maintained the privilege 
 of taking their supper in Long Chamber, rather 
 than cross the schoolyard to the Hall, and 
 this only ceased when the new buildings were 
 erected. Successive assistant-masters in college, 
 whose rooms were at the end of what had 
 been Long Chamber under the old system, 
 complained of a musty smell in the study, rising 
 where decay in the oak boarding of the floor 
 testified to a certain amount of damp. In 
 the summer holidays of 1858, the floor was 
 removed, and two large cartloads of bones, 
 chiefly of necks of mutton, were removed from 
 between the floor and the ceiling of the rooms 
 below. How they came there was explained 
 by Mr. Carter, then Vice-Provost. He told 
 me that when the sixth-form boys took their 
 supper in " Chamber " the rats were wont to 
 come out of holes in the floor and wainscot to 
 feed on the bones which were flung to them. 
 When these animals from time to time became 
 a nuisance by their numbers, a fag was sent 
 round while the rats were feeding, to insert 
 long stockings in the holes, with the apertures 
 carefully open. The modern sock was then 
 unknown. When this was done an alarm was 
 
ETON 75 
 
 given, the rats on rushing to their holes were 
 trapped in the stockings, which were then 
 drawn out, and the rats were banged to death 
 against the beds. "And you went into school 
 next morning in the same stockings, sir ? " 
 " Of course, of course," was the reply, " we could 
 not get clean stockings when we pleased." Mr. 
 Carter went among the boys by the name of 
 " Old Shoes," and died at the very advanced 
 age of ninety-four. He was a steady-going 
 average old gentleman, with a great power of 
 placing his relatives in college offices and 
 livings, and a plentiful lack of imagination. 
 He greatly amused us as boys by taking as his 
 text the words, " My sins are more in number 
 than the hairs of my head," his own pate being 
 as free from hair as an egg or a billiard ball. 
 In his tenure of office as Vice-Provost there 
 was talk of a new pulpit for the college chapel, 
 and some sanguine man vainly hoped to per- 
 suade the authorities that it ought to be de- 
 signed and erected by Mr. William Morris, 
 then just becoming known as an artist, who 
 had an office in Queen's Square. Mr. Carter 
 walked therefore into Mr. Morris's studio with 
 the words, " Do you keep pulpits ? " as though 
 
76 MEMORIES 
 
 he had been asking for tape or buttons. The 
 pulpit remained unchanged, a piece of furniture 
 as commonplace as the sermons ordinarily de- 
 livered in it. 
 
 It was an evil day for Art at Eton when 
 the mania for church restoration invaded the 
 minds of the respectable old gentlemen who 
 had the care of the fabric. Before the Re- 
 formation, the chapel had never been properly 
 finished. King Henry the Sixth had built the 
 walls with their great buttresses to carry a 
 vaulted stone roof like that of the sister chapel 
 at King's, but it was unfinished when the Wars 
 of the Roses broke out ; the building was 
 roofless, and the east wall with its great 
 window was still incomplete. When Edward 
 the Fourth was in want of funds for the col- 
 lege he was himself endowing at Windsor, he 
 bethought him of the unfinished buildings 
 at Eton, and desired to confiscate the Eton 
 revenues, on the ground that the buildings 
 were incomplete. The Provost and Fellows set 
 to work with a will, and it is said that in six 
 weeks the reproach had ceased to be true, and 
 the college fabric stood practically as it was 
 until AUestree built, about 1666, the Upper 
 
ETON 77 
 
 School, soon to be taken down and replaced by 
 the present building ; and until the chapel was 
 fitted up, tradition says by Wren, very much 
 in the style of the choir of St. Paul's. If 
 any one will take his stand in the Brewhouse 
 Yard facing west, he will see the history written 
 in stone and in brick. Before him is the great 
 east window, springing clear and clean until it 
 reaches the final arch, then huddled together at 
 the top, out of the line of any true curve, the 
 stones at the top of the window holding to- 
 gether as a mere pierced wall. The wooden 
 roof is modern, succeeding a former wooden 
 one of the most temporary and haphazard de- 
 scription, plainly not that intended to be sup- 
 ported by the great buttresses. Though the 
 chapel was thus finished in a scramble, the good 
 intentions of the college did not wholly succeed. 
 The foundation was not suppressed indeed, but 
 jewels, bells, and furniture were carried off to 
 Windsor. 
 
 On the spectator's right is the Hall, of which 
 the oriel window, projecting into the Brewhouse 
 Yard, has been still more incongruously finished, 
 the stone supplemented, and the upper muUions 
 filled in with coarsely built brickwork, but this 
 
78 MEMORIES 
 
 was not done till the seventeenth century, the 
 completion of the chapel having served its end 
 for the time. 
 
 When all had quieted down, after the inter- 
 ruptions of the Wars of the Roses, the neglect 
 of Edward the Fourth, the brief period of 
 prosperity under the Tudors, the intrusion of 
 Provost Rous, Speaker of the Barebones Parlia- 
 ment, a church reaction set in. Wren's fittings, 
 if indeed they were Wren's, required no de- 
 struction of what had gone before, and were 
 not too sharply incongruous with the Gothic 
 fabric. Renaissance though they were. There 
 were in fact next to no previous fittings to 
 displace, and if they hid a fancy carving on 
 the wall of a man being hanged, done by some 
 poor lad who winced under the tedium of a 
 Puritan sermon, no great harm was done, nor 
 were some frescoes on the walls any serious 
 artistic loss. Wren's great pillared canopy over 
 the altar, his black and white marble floor, his 
 stately pews and stalls, all disappeared to make 
 way for second-rate Gothic canopies, and a frigid 
 uniformity about the chapel now renders any 
 better work impossible, while much of the 
 history of the place is swept away. 
 
ETON 79 
 
 But the flood of light which invaded Wren's 
 dark corners removed some abuses scarcely 
 congruent with the decorum expected in a 
 school chapel. Till the Restoration all boys 
 with titles sat in the stalls among the Fellows. 
 There was a custom that if during the "half" 
 any one was elevated to this dignity, by the 
 succession of his father to a peerage, which 
 made him " honourable," or the death of his 
 father which made him a baronet, the new 
 occupant of the stalls had to provide half-a- 
 crown's worth of almonds and raisins, to be 
 consumed in Church, under the very noses of 
 the Fellows, who looked discreetly the other 
 way. This was called " Church sock." It is 
 recorded that when Dr. Goodford, then Provost, 
 went to the thanksgiving service at St. Paul's 
 for the recovery from sickness of the Prince of 
 Wales, he had provided himself with a paper of 
 sandwiches, and offered a portion to his neigh- 
 bour with the words " Church sock ! " 
 
 In those old days when fat Provost Hodgson 
 closed the procession into Chapel, he was pre- 
 ceded by Mr. Bethell, a tall, dignified, stately 
 person, very handsome, in a rubicund, aquiline- 
 nosed style ; and as stupid as handsome men 
 
8o MEMORIES 
 
 are wont to be. He had been Shelley's tutor, 
 and nothing more grotesquely incongruous 
 than this relation of pupil and tutor was 
 ever devised. There was a tradition that when 
 he took a class in school he simply called up 
 boy after boy to construe, and when the lesson 
 was finished just went over it again till the 
 hour of release struck, making no comments, 
 offering no illustrations. But to this there had 
 been in the years of his mastership two excep- 
 tions. A lad translated the words "duplice 
 ficu," " with a double fig." " Right," said Mr. 
 Bethell, "a kind of fig that was double." So, 
 again, to one who translated "postes aeratos," 
 " brazen door-posts," he said, " Right ! probably 
 so called because they were made of brass." 
 
 In school at this day, when a boy writes a 
 Latin or Greek exercise his tutor looks it over 
 privately, comments on it, suggests and makes 
 improvements, signs it with or without a note 
 of approbation as " fair," or " well " ; the boy 
 then copies it out and presents it in school, 
 with the " foul copy." Of old, the fair copy 
 only was presented, and the change is due to 
 Mr. Bethell. " I wish," said Dr. Keate to him 
 one day, "you would be more careful about 
 
ETON 8i 
 
 your pupils' exercises. A copy of Greek 
 Iambics shown up to me this morning had in 
 it eleven false quantities." " Ah ! " said Bethell, 
 " I dare say there were ; you should have seen 
 'em before I looked over 'em'.' And for the future 
 Keate did see, and drew his own conclusions. 
 
 He was the last man who wore a " spencer," 
 an over-jacket, which allowed the tails of what 
 we now call a dress coat, but which then was 
 worn both in morning and evening, to appear 
 below it, and he had a sonorous voice, with 
 which he imposed on his audience — quite un- 
 intentionally, for he was a simple-hearted and 
 modest man, who, though he seemed to do so, 
 hardly deserved the epigram on his sermons : 
 
 " Didactic, dry, declamatory, dull. 
 Big burly Bethell bellows like a bull. " 
 
 When he was made a Fellow, and for the 
 first time raised his voice in Chapel to begin 
 the Communion Service, with a sonorous " Our 
 Father " which rattled like thunder in the roof, 
 Okes, then a Master, afterwards Provost of 
 King's, turned to his next neighbour with the 
 remark " Paternoster Row;" and the boys were 
 wont to call him Papirius Bethell when he read 
 
 r 
 
82 MEMORIES 
 
 the Commination Service on Ash Wednesday, 
 regardless of the fact that the surname of the 
 Roman general " Cursor " had naught to do 
 with cursing. 
 
 He preached once at the opening of a long 
 disused chapel on the river, and a " cad at the 
 wall," who was, as may be imagined, "parens 
 deorum cultor et infrequens," attended the 
 service. His one comment was, ". Lord ! boys, 
 you should ha' seen the spiders run." 
 
 He was a kindly man, whose one desire was 
 to resist innovations. " You can't have a ser- 
 vice without a Fellow, and you won't get me 
 out of my bed at eight in the morning," was 
 the unanswerable argument when early prayers 
 in the College Chapel were proposed to him by 
 a Conduct instead of a service at ten, at which 
 the whole assistants usually were the Fellow, 
 the Conduct, the Clerk, and Silly Billy, a poor 
 idiot, who spent his time in running from St. 
 George's Chapel in Windsor, to that of Eton 
 College, so as to be present at four services 
 on every day in the week. 
 
 But Mr. Bethell's eccentricities were as no- 
 thing compared with those of Mr. Plumptre, 
 " Moses " as we called him, though none knew 
 
ETON 83 
 
 why. He was so staunch a Tory, so averse 
 to all change, that none could imagine why 
 he had ever married. It was obvious that when 
 he was left a widower, after a few months of 
 happy marriage, he would remain so to the end 
 of a long life. With great self-denial he never 
 moved from the worst house in the Cloisters, 
 though he might have had the best, and took 
 as his own»room a small one which could 
 scarcely hold two very large four-post bedsteads 
 with a mere ruelle between them. His practice 
 explained a difficult passage in The Vicar of 
 Wakefield, wherein Dr. Primrose speaks of his 
 only migrations having been those " from the 
 blue bed to the brown." Mr. Plumptre, too, 
 migrated every six months, not from bedroom 
 to bedroom, but from bed to bed, taking that 
 nearest to the window in summer, to the fire in 
 winter, if, indeed, one can speak of distance at 
 all in a room of some sixteen feet square. His 
 father, Dean of Gloucester, had taken Hoadley's 
 side in the Bangorian Controversy, and Mr. 
 Plumptre, out of sheer conservatism, always 
 used Hoadley's family prayers, despite of their 
 alleged unorthodoxy, himself one of the most 
 orthodox of men. This hatred of change was 
 
84 MEMORIES 
 
 inherited. He was wont to tell a story of his 
 father, the Dean, whose daughter, at the mature 
 age of forty, ventured to differ from him. The 
 Dean said gravely, as one who means what 
 he says, " Tryphena, you are not too old to be 
 whipped," and Miss Plumptre differed no longer. 
 
 The passing of the Bill for Catholic Emancipa- 
 tion was a great shock to Mr. Plumptre, both 
 on religious and political grounds, and it is 
 recorded that he and Mr. Briggs, a Fellow 
 like-minded with himself, paced round and 
 round the Cloisters the long night through, 
 waiting the morning announcement of the 
 division. They had sent a special messenger, 
 who was to bring the tidings direct. They 
 could not go to their beds while the fate of 
 Protestantism was, as it seemed to them, 
 trembling in the balance. Let us hope that 
 where they now are, they are not excluded 
 from the best Catholic society. 
 
 Very many years afterwards, about the year 
 1853-4, Mr. Plumptre called on Dr. Goodford, 
 then head-master, to find an elderly relative of 
 the latter staying with him. Dr. Goodford 
 introduced them and said : " Now, Aunt, here 
 is a gentleman with whom you will agree on 
 
ETON 85 
 
 politics." " I hope, sir," said the lady, " you 
 disapproved of Catholic Emancipation." "The 
 wickedest thing, ma'am, since the Crucifixion," 
 was the immediate and startling answer. 
 
 As Mr. Plumptre's sermons were delivered 
 in alternate shouts and gasps of almost total 
 silence, both in the same sentence, it was diffi- 
 cult to carry away any real impression of what 
 was said, but they were epigrammatic and racy, 
 the selection of the text verging even on the 
 comic. At Malvern, on the anniversary of the 
 Queen's Accession, he preached on the single 
 word " Shout " ; at Windsor, to the Blue-coat 
 Charity boys, on " She made him a little coat." 
 
 As he advanced in years he became rather 
 deaf, but always heard exactly what he wanted 
 to hear. When Edward Coleridge was made 
 Fellow, and came into residence for his first 
 course of sermons, Plumptre said : " When 
 Green preaches I hear only one word, God ; 
 when Coleridge preaches I hear only one word. 
 Devil," and in the epigram he hit off the char- 
 acteristic teaching of the two men. 
 
 As master, Plumptre occupied the old red 
 house at the north-east corner of what is now 
 Keate's Lane ; that in which Mary Wollstone- 
 
86 MEMORIES 
 
 craft stayed with Mr. Prior in 178 1, when she 
 recorded that the sixth-form boys were obliged 
 to receive the Communion once a term or pay 
 a fine of a guinea. Mr. Plumptre's pupil-room 
 being at once dark and small, he was wont to 
 stand at a desk near the open window, and his 
 pupils attended his "construing" in Keate's 
 Lane. 
 
 Plumptre was one of the most generous of 
 men, and his unobtrusive kindness to those from 
 whom he differed very widely will never be 
 forgotten by those who experienced it. 
 
 Mr. Dupuis was a Fellow who also lived to a 
 great age, and will be remembered, if remem- 
 bered at all, mainly by two sayings ; one, that 
 if a Royal Commission were sent to Eton, he 
 would meet it at the college gates, and scourge 
 it forth with dog whips ; of course in the end 
 he really met it with complete if grumbling 
 acquiescence. The second was uttered on an 
 occasion when one of the assistant - masters, 
 with the aid of the head-master, borrowed nine 
 volumes from the college library, on a special 
 subject at which he was working, and was 
 coming away with them under his arm. Mr. 
 Dupuis met him, counted the volumes slowly 
 
ETON 87 
 
 and said : " Nine volumes in one day ; I have 
 not taken out one volume in nine years." 
 
 Mr. Wilder was made Fellow in the year 
 1840, at the age of thirty-nine, and lived to the 
 age of ninety-one. He was a dull, kindly, and 
 hospitable man, who had some fine Lachryma 
 Christi wine. He was wont to draw attention 
 to this by offering his guests " some fine Italian 
 wine, which unfortunately has a most distress- 
 ing name." His munificence towards the 
 chapel and other college buildings was con- 
 siderable, but lacked discretion. He gave large 
 sums of money to the windows, desiring to 
 see them all filled with stained glass, but not 
 enough to fill them all well ; it would have 
 been better to fill them by degrees, and to 
 make each as perfect as possible. But such 
 was not Mr. Wilder's way ; uniformity and 
 completeness, if in mediocrity, was a passion 
 with him. 
 
 Luxmoore, Coleridge, Eliot, Durnford, W. 
 Carter, Balston, and others well remembered 
 by Eton men, all came after those of whom 
 we have spoken, and had their own special and 
 sometimes amusing peculiarities. But they were 
 not like those in whose ranks there was no 
 
88 MEMORIES 
 
 change for thirteen years, from 1840 till about 
 1853, when Hodgson died and Hawtrey became 
 Provost. It was the pause before the great 
 change, the calm flow of the cataract before it 
 dashed into the stormy waters of reform. Peace 
 to their memories. Would that we could still 
 see the quaint procession passing across the 
 schoolyard in their surplices to chapel, or on 
 ordinary days in their gowns, Mr. Plumptre 
 scorning a trencher cap, and wearing a tall 
 beaver hat as M.A. of Cambridge. Or that 
 we could see Mr. Bethell in spencer and gaiters 
 striding up Windsor Hill to enter Layton's shop 
 for lunch and say in those unforgotten tones : 
 " Mock turtle soup for Mrs. Bethell and myself, 
 and Parliament gingerbread for the young 
 people." Or Hawtrey coming to the 4th of 
 June Regatta in 1841 to recognise the ceremony 
 for the first time. Till then the river had been 
 out of bounds, and the masters were unable 
 to ride or walk along the river banks because 
 they might not witness the boating which was 
 nominally forbidden. And year after year Dr. 
 Keate, when asked that " Lock-up " on that 
 day might be at ten o'clock instead of a quarter 
 to nine, gave permission, but could not imagine 
 
ETON 89 
 
 why the boys wanted to be out so late. Nor 
 did Provost Goodall understand why Mrs. 
 Goodall dined at a different hour on that day. 
 
 Sir H. Maxwell Lyte has written a valuable 
 history of Eton. The best passage therein, 
 and this is no disparagement to the rest, was 
 written by the late William Cory, and contains 
 a kindly, if critical, account of Hawtrey. We 
 wish some one could write a whole account 
 of the inner life of Eton, and the real char- 
 acters of the men who made it what it was. 
 But the materials are scanty ; there are few 
 such pages as Mary WoUstonecraft's account of 
 her visit to Mr. Prior, few such correspondences 
 as the Paston Letters, though we trust some 
 such may yet leap to light in the library of 
 one of our country houses. To such a history 
 these recollections may contribute in a faint 
 degree. 
 
 Eton is reformed ; the head-master is an 
 athlete, also once Newcastle Scholar and Fellow 
 of All Souls' ; the French master can no longer 
 describe himself, as Mr. Henry Tarver did to 
 the Royal Commission, as an objet de luxe. 
 French is part of the education of a gentle- 
 man, in spite of Dr. Balston's assertion to the 
 
90 MEMORIES 
 
 contrary ; science flourishes ; and the Right 
 Honourable T. H. Huxley was a member 
 of the Governing Body, vice the Fellows 
 superseded. 
 
 But that which in old days was mainly 
 taught at Eton was how to learn. Plumptre, 
 Keate, Hawtrey, Goodford taught this ; they and 
 others like them sent out Wellesley, Canning, 
 Shelley ; their traditions were alive when present 
 statesmen and judges were at school ; we have 
 yet to learn what may be done by more varied 
 teaching under the Governing Body, with cer- 
 tainly no less difficulties than of old in the 
 Capua of a " summer half." 
 
 Among the masters, few need be recalled to 
 memory. Edward Coleridge, a nephew of the 
 poet, was one of the exceptions to the rule 
 that assistant-masters should be King's men. 
 He married a daughter of Dr. Keate, the 
 former head-master, and occupied his house at 
 the bottom of Keate's Lane. He was a hand- 
 some man of great energy, perhaps it may 
 also be said of considerable pretentiousness, 
 who impressed his personality on those who 
 came in contact with him. His house was 
 liberally conducted, and he had a remarkable 
 
ETON 91 
 
 set of pupils, both in ability and in family ; 
 though when he resigned it many years after- 
 wards to become a Fellow, the discipline in 
 it was not found to have been so good in 
 fact as it was in seeming. The boys in his 
 house and form were disposed to doubt if his 
 scholarship was impeccable. Among his pupils 
 was a relative of his own, who died early, 
 affectionately remembered by all who knew him, 
 admired for the bright promise of his boyhood, 
 loved for the unselfishness of his character. 
 This lad had scant respect for his uncle. Once 
 in pupil-room he broke down in construing 
 Homer. " Not know your Homer, idle boy ! " 
 thundered the tutor ; " why, were I cast on 
 a desert island I should be content with these 
 only books, my Bible and my Homer ! " " And 
 your Lexicon, sir ? " said the pupil, impenitent 
 and unabashed. It need hardly be said that 
 he was " put in the bill," i.e. sent up to the 
 head-master to be flogged, for " impudence.'' 
 
 Coleridge adopted with all his heart the 
 teaching of the Oxford school, and was the 
 friend and correspondent of Pusey. Selwyn, 
 then a private tutor, and Abraham, an assis- 
 tant, both afterwards Bishops in New Zealand, 
 
92 MEMORIES 
 
 were with him in this matter, and a moderate 
 High Churchism was, on the whole, the tone of 
 our teachers. 
 
 Cookesley, however, represented the extreme 
 Low Church party. He was not an ornament 
 to it, and was never a person who commanded 
 respect. Late and unpunctual in school, dis- 
 orderly in the pupil-room, lax in the discipline 
 of his house, he was yet a thoroughly stimu- 
 lating teacher in the short time he gave to his 
 work. He was the first Eton master who dis- 
 covered that there was a science of compara- 
 tive philology, and though his incursions into 
 that field would nowadays create astonishment, 
 he helped to set many on the right road of 
 scholarship, wrong as his own methods very 
 often were. I remember his discoursing to us on 
 the name of Hannibal, when he delivered him- 
 self thus : " Hanni = Hanno, Hanno = Johannes, 
 ibal = bal = lord : Hannibal = Lord John." The 
 following is, however, a better caricature of his 
 early teaching in comparative philology. Many 
 years after, when walking with some Oxford 
 friends, whilst passing the palace at Lambeth, 
 one of them said : " I wonder what is the 
 derivation of the name of this place." The 
 
ETON 93 
 
 other answered and said at once : " Oh, don't 
 you see, Lam = Lama = High Priest : Beth = 
 house : Lambeth = House of the High Priest." 
 His comments on the text of authors read in 
 school were vivid and picturesque, and no lesson 
 that he gave was ever dull. I look back to him 
 with gratitude for what he taught me, and the 
 way in which he taught it. Cookesley uncon- 
 sciously served as a model for the well-known 
 picture by Ward, R.A., "The Last Sleep of 
 Argyll." Ward then lived at Slough, and was 
 very intimate with Cookesley. Entering the 
 study one day he found Cookesley asleep on 
 the sofa, and sketched him for the picture then 
 in progress. 
 
 Pickering was one whom we boys considered 
 the most gentlemanlike of all our masters. He 
 was always kind and just, very particular about 
 the neatness of the boys in his form, though he 
 bore with one of the most sordid class-rooms 
 in the school buildings, and with a horrible 
 drawing of a devil behind him on the wall, 
 which a bucket of whitewash would have re- 
 moved during any holiday. But he would 
 call an untidy boy back after school, and show 
 him how a white tie could be arranged with a 
 
94 MEMORIES 
 
 neatness like his own. The boys and masters 
 alike wore white ties then as now. 
 
 Abraham taught History in the " Remove " 
 in such a way as to bring his High Church doc- 
 trines under the Provost's censure. Geography 
 was so taught as to encourage the making of 
 maps into a fine art, though the text-book 
 then used was so bad, and the conception of 
 the science so imperfect, that we learned little 
 more than the ancient names of modern Italian 
 cities. Connected with map making, however, 
 there was a curious practice in the school, that 
 I have elsewhere specified as illustrating the 
 true meaning of Catholic Indulgences. I 
 wrote : — " Some years ago, there was an 
 usage at Eton which seemed to the present 
 writer when only a boy of thirteen, exactly, 
 though no doubt unintentionally, framed on the 
 lines of ecclesiastical indulgences. The ' Re- 
 move ' was a part of the school in which Geo- 
 graphy and History were especially studied, and 
 the making of maps was a weekly exercise, to 
 which an importance was attached beyond their 
 real value as a means of teaching. The masters 
 of this form, and, as far as I remember, of this 
 form alone, were in the habit of giving what 
 
ETON 95 
 
 were termed ' exemptions ' for well-executed 
 maps. A small piece of the corner of the map 
 which deserved praise was torn off, signed with 
 the master's initials, and handed to the artist. 
 Perhaps a day or two afterwards the same 
 boy was accidentally late for school, and ordered 
 to write out fifty lines of Virgil as a punish- 
 ment. When the time came for producing the 
 lines he presented his exemption instead ; his 
 previous merit had gained him an indulgence. 
 I have some impression, though my memory 
 in this serves me but imperfectly, that the 
 transfer of exemptions was at least tacitly 
 allowed, even if not directly sanctioned, but I 
 speak under correction. If it so chanced that 
 a graver fault had been committed than the 
 more venial offence of being late for school, 
 talking in class, or the like, and that the 
 offender then presented an exemption, not 
 only was it not received in lieu of punishment, 
 but the very pleading the excuse was held to 
 deepen the fault, and here on a lower ground 
 was all the distinction between mortal and 
 venial sin." 
 
 Beyond these, the masters were mainly 
 colourless persons, with the exception of my 
 
96 MEMORIES 
 
 tutor, C. O. Goodford, afterwards Head-master 
 and Provost. He deserves a longer notice on 
 this account, and I cannot do better than repeat 
 in large measure the substance of the obituary 
 notices I wrote at the time of his death in 
 1884 in the columns of the Guardian and the 
 Academy. 
 
 Charles Old Goodford, born in 18 12, the 
 younger son of Mr. Goodford of Chilton 
 Cantelo, near Yeovil, himself also an Eton 
 man, was entered at an early age as a King's 
 Scholar, became Fellow of King's, Cambridge, 
 and was a master at Eton while still an under- 
 graduate. This was, however, of no import- 
 ance, since, as has been said, there was no 
 selection possible of men, based on their 
 standing in the class lists. Mr. Goodford, 
 with many others, was unable to test in the 
 schools the soundness of the scholarship he had 
 gained, as full and excellent in his case as it 
 was lacking in some others who had passed 
 through the same training and attained the 
 same position. 
 
 Young as Goodford was on becoming a 
 master, and even when after a year or two he 
 had charge of a house, succeeding his tutor, 
 
ETON 97 
 
 Mr. Wilder, who survived him, he never gave 
 his pupils the impression that he was a young 
 man. There was about him a grave and stately 
 dignity which his plain features and want of 
 personal grace never impaired ; there was a 
 gentlemanlike and high - bred tone about all 
 that he said and did, from which a strong 
 west-country accent did not detract. Fifty 
 years ago accent and dialect were less con- 
 formed than now to a London pattern, and it 
 may be doubted if it be a gain to the language 
 to have so far smoothed away linguistic differ- 
 ences. As a tutor Goodford had few equals. 
 Accurate, painstaking, patient, always ready to 
 invent or reproduce from others little aids to 
 memory for grammatical niceties, insisting on 
 accuracy and painstaking in his pupils, they 
 came to know that difficulties must be faced, 
 not shirked, and to conform in a degree to 
 their tutor's standard. He was in the habit of 
 stating paradoxes which at the time he meant, 
 as when a boy made a mistake, " Did you look 
 out that word, Jones ? " " No, sir, please, sir, 
 
 I thought " " Never think till you are in 
 
 the sixth form, — till then look out every word." 
 This however applied to boys who had some 
 
 G 
 
98 MEMORIES 
 
 turn at least for work, some intellect to culti- 
 vate. No man knew better than he did that 
 there were some boys who could not write 
 themes and make verses, for whom Latin and 
 Greek would ever remain dead languages, whose 
 only reading through life would be the sporting 
 papers, for whom the advantages of Eton, if 
 any, were that they should become less loutish 
 than Tony Lumpkin, the native growth in those 
 days of too many west - country houses. A 
 large proportion of his pupils came from his 
 own county and those adjacent. Where such 
 lads were under his charge, he did not attempt 
 the impossible, nor break his heart over their 
 dulness ; he let them be, minimising as best 
 he could their harmful example. For a respon- 
 sive boy he showed boundless zeal, allowed 
 him to borrow books from his excellent library, 
 explained or laid down a course of English 
 literature, encouraged the study of modern- 
 languages and mathematics — in those days no 
 part of school work. There are many of his 
 pupils who feel that they owe to him their first 
 introduction and stimulus to whatever literary 
 culture they now possess. 
 
 As a form-master he was not so good. The 
 
ETON 99 
 
 real work of Eton was then generally done in 
 the pupil-room ; the school lesson was often 
 treated as mere repetition to see if the work 
 were correctly known, illustration or explanation 
 being purposely left on one side. Boys used 
 to think that Goodford slept through most of 
 the lessons as fourth-form or remove-master — 
 he certainly always closed his eyes, but he 
 woke with immediate vigour and liveliness at 
 the sound of a mistranslation or a false quan- 
 tity. It is but fair to teachers of those distant 
 days to record that there were other masters 
 who took a different view of the school work, 
 and that the lessons given for instance by 
 Carter and by Cookesley, however perverse 
 and erratic, were no mere hearing of tasks, 
 but real and brilliant teaching. And Goodford 
 as head-master, when he took the sixth-form 
 boys, who are to a large extent emancipated 
 from tutorial supervision, showed himself the 
 able and scholarly teacher, sound if not always 
 inspiriting, that his pupils had known him 
 to be. 
 
 As a house-master, Goodford was eminently 
 liberal and kind. He was perhaps too unsus- 
 picious, too apt to credit all boys with the 
 
loo MEMORIES 
 
 moral excellence which had been his own as a 
 boy, and to hope for amendment when it was 
 hopeless. He kept many a pupil in his house 
 when a more far - seeing and rigid kindness 
 would have demanded removal. Hence there 
 was a time when the tone of his house was 
 indifferent, because he never thought that any 
 evils could exist beyond the trivial ones, which 
 he scented out with extreme vigilance, of an 
 occasional rubber of whist in the evening, or a 
 stealthy cigar behind a hedge. 
 
 In 1853 he became head-master in succes- 
 sion to Dr. Hawtrey, then elected Provost, 
 and the school at once felt the good effects of 
 the change. I have already mentioned the 
 graceful eloge of Hawtrey, in Sir H. Maxwell 
 Lyte's History of Eton. But there is another 
 side. Hawtrey, who began his head-master- 
 ship as an eager reformer, had grown reac- 
 tionary after twenty years of work. Rightly 
 conscious of the efficiency of his own reforms, 
 he could not see that more still were needed ; 
 his teaching had become mechanical and his 
 discipline lax. He gave those who were in his 
 form the impression of a tired man who had 
 had too long a tenure of office. But this does 
 
ETON loi 
 
 not contradict the more enthusiastic feeling 
 about him when he was in his prime, and an 
 able and energetic head-master. The details 
 of changes introduced by Goodford would not 
 be interesting, but they were many and far 
 reaching. He aimed at a very complete recon- 
 struction of the system of teaching ; he made 
 discipline a reality, while he abolished many 
 vexatious shams which had needlessly restricted 
 liberty. If his plans were but imperfectly 
 carried out the fault was not his but Provost 
 Hawtrey's ; for the Provost had a veto on 
 almost everything done at Eton, while the head- 
 master was ostensibly responsible. Goodford 
 always maintained that in school matters the 
 head-master should be responsible. That there 
 was no more friction in the working of the 
 school than really existed was owing to the new 
 head-master's patience, persistence, and loyalty 
 — always his most distinguishing characteristic. 
 The work of a head-master is unquestionably 
 less laborious than that of a tutor, and places 
 more time at his disposal. Dr. Goodford, as he 
 now became, used his leisure for greater study. 
 He was one of those fortunate persons who 
 could rise early and go to bed late. He had 
 
I02 MEMORIES 
 
 two rooms which composed his hbrary, and 
 used them alternately, descending, as soon as 
 he rose in the morning, to light his own fire, 
 in the room prepared for him over-night, that 
 it might be warmed while he was dressing. 
 He was rarely in bed after half-past five, and 
 for a long period timed his early rising by 
 the step of a labourer who passed under his 
 window at that hour on his way to work. 
 He then warmed a cup of cocoa in an Etna, 
 and sat down to hard work at German or 
 Italian, both of which languages he studied 
 thoroughly after he became head-master. Of 
 all literature in all languages known to him, he 
 was a diligent student, as conscientious with 
 himself as he had been with his pupils in earlier 
 days. Holding his own views, those of a 
 moderate High Churchman, he had the widest 
 toleration for the views of others, and he read 
 with delight and acquiescence Professor Jowett's 
 Essay on the Interpretation of Scripture in 
 Essays and Reviews. In these studies he 
 followed learning for learning's sake, and made 
 her her own great reward, for he never wrote, 
 or apparently desired to write, anything but 
 his sermons, unless the edition of Terence, 
 
ETON 103 
 
 which he printed to give as a " leaving book " 
 to his sixth-form boys, be considered an ex- 
 ception. The sermons were well written ; but 
 he was a singularly monotonous and ungrace- 
 ful reader ; the eloquence of Jeremy Taylor 
 would have failed to please had it been de- 
 livered by the head-master. 
 
 When Hawtrey died the Public School Com- 
 mission was preparing ; Goodford was in the 
 vigour of his life, and took the greatest interest 
 in the work of the Commission, looking forward 
 to it to aid his own and other reforms. He 
 had no desire to quit the post he filled so 
 well, and his nomination by the Crown to the 
 Provostship was an unmitigated distress to 
 him. Lord Palmerston, who knew nothing of 
 Eton politics, had named him to the Queen, 
 as it afterwards appeared, solely because he 
 thought, erroneously, that he was following 
 invariable precedent ; and Goodford acquiesced 
 because he would not harass her Majesty, 
 then recently left a widow, by giving her the 
 trouble of another selection. His exceeding- 
 loyalty led him to do violence to his own 
 feelings, and take an office which shelved him, 
 and he could ill afford. The death of his 
 
I04 MEMORIES 
 
 elder brother, which gave him not long after the 
 possession of the family estates, seemed then 
 far distant, and the renunciation of about two- 
 thirds of the income he had as head-master, 
 was a sign of the loyal and obedient spirit 
 which always characterised him. 
 
 His successor's rule was as narrow and 
 pedantic as, however thwarted, his own had 
 been large and liberal. Whatever was done 
 by Dr. Balston to meet the demands of the 
 time was grudgingly and unwillingly performed. 
 So far as in him lay he undid whatever of 
 reform had been introduced. It is, however, 
 but fair to say that the office was forced on 
 Dr. Balston, and that he gave it up, as he said 
 he should, at the end of six years. He was a 
 stop-gap, and perhaps too modest to regard 
 himself in any other light. And no doubt 
 great allowance must be made for a man who 
 had already retired, and was dragged from the 
 leisured conservatism of the Eton cloisters to 
 take a position he did not like. The fact re- 
 mains that he iilled it ill. 
 
 For many years Dr. Goodford's health had 
 been far from good. He maintained his old 
 studious habits, but the want of a regular 
 
ETON 105 
 
 occupation laid on him from outside irked him, 
 and made him less able to resist the encroach- 
 ments of illness. He would have been the 
 first to admit, what since his day has been so 
 abundantly clear, that a retired head-master 
 is not the best Provost. 
 
 The teaching at the date of my entrance was 
 entirely classical. I believe that in the lower 
 school the very little boys were taught writing, 
 but the " writing-master " so called was an 
 " extra master," and taught arithmetic, algebra, 
 and Euclid for a special extra fee. His name 
 was Hexter. He had been, I believe, a non- 
 commissioned officer, and Cookesley, who had a 
 genius for giving nicknames to his pupils and 
 colleagues alike, used to call him " Old Horse- 
 Guards." He was very old, quite incapable of 
 teaching, and had a chronic and distressing 
 cough, with an equally chronic and distressing 
 bad temper. He used to box our ears with a 
 slate, but was happily too feeble to inflict much 
 damage, and after such exertion his daughter 
 used to rush in from a neighbouring room, 
 and shake him up in his chair like Grandfather 
 Smallweed in Dickens. I was one of his 
 "extra" pupils, but learnt nothing from him, 
 
io6 MEMORIES 
 
 and the remainder of Hexter's pupils were in 
 somewhat the same case. The reform in this 
 matter came through a very flagrant job. Mr. 
 Stephen Hawtrey, cousin of the then head- 
 master, came as a private tutor to the school. 
 These private tutors were occasionally sent 
 with noblemen to board in dames' houses, and 
 exercised a certain useless supervision, but 
 with the exception of Selwyn, afterwards 
 Bishop of New Zealand, they were quite out 
 of touch with the regular school authorities. 
 Stephen Hawtrey proposed to his cousin that 
 the teaching of arithmetic should be placed 
 on a different footing ; and he was for a time 
 himself the writing-master, in the same position 
 as Hexter had been. The study was after- 
 wards made compulsory, on far too favourable 
 terms to " Stephen," as he was always called. 
 The arrangement had to be modified, and the 
 mathematical assistants took their place on the 
 regular staff; but while they were chosen by 
 and responsible to Stephen, the masters ap- 
 pointed were for the most part inferior men, 
 and the teaching quite inadequate. The extra 
 masters were as a rule in an wholly unsatis- 
 factory position, though Tarver, the French 
 
ETON 107 
 
 master, by the excellence of his teaching, and 
 Evans, the drawing-master, by an overpowering 
 manner (which, after the publication of Bleak 
 House, gained him among the boys the name 
 of Mr. Turveydrop), and the bigness of his 
 voice, managed to hold their own fairly well. 
 Evans was a good water-colour painter, and his 
 drawings have still a certain value. Of all 
 these men I owe much to Goodford, Cookesley, 
 and Tarver, but I think to no others, and many 
 were far less fortunate than I. Education at 
 Eton in those days was thoroughly haphazard, 
 though it must be said that if a boy chose to 
 work in the way of true scholarship he found 
 every possible aid from some of the masters, 
 nor was there any discouragement in the way 
 of miscellaneous reading. 
 
IV 
 
 ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 
 1841-1846 
 
 DESIDES the College and the masters, there 
 ^-^ was another feature of Eton which was 
 singular enough. These were the dames, who 
 kept many of the boarding-houses connected 
 with the school ; all now nominally at least in 
 the hands of masters. The rate of expense 
 was higher in a tutor's house than in a dame's, 
 in which the accommodation was in my days 
 much rougher. In a tutor's house all boys 
 had a separate private room, except that two 
 brothers were together, whilst in a dame's 
 there were often three or four boys, not rela- 
 tions. This was the case with Mrs. Holt's 
 house, where simplicity of manners lingered 
 long after some amount of luxury had invaded 
 other dames'. There were sanded floors, and 
 other Spartan surroundings, which would create 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 109 
 
 much astonishment in these days when an Eton 
 boy's room is often Hke his sister's boudoir. 
 Mrs. Holt had been a Miss Malthus, and the 
 hard life of her boarders was qualified, we 
 thought, to kill off the boys, and so check the 
 increase of population ; but we were possibly 
 pampered in tutors' houses. The curious part 
 of the dame system was that the lady was the 
 ruling power, and if she chanced to have an 
 husband, he existed as it were on sufferance. 
 There was a Mr. Holt, a clergyman, who had 
 some duty in the neighbourhood, but to the 
 boys he was a legend, and always effaced 
 himself. There was also a Mr. Roberts, a 
 dame's husband, at whom staircase mats were 
 always thrown if he ventured to appear in the 
 boys' quarters, and it was a legend that on his 
 complaining to the head-master, Hawtrey re- 
 fused to interfere, as he had intruded where he 
 had no business to be. The dame's husband, 
 if he were mentioned at all, was called the 
 dominie ; but if, as in the case of Evans, the 
 drawing-master, a dame's house was acciden- 
 tally in the hands of a man, he also was called 
 " my dame." It was impossible to imagine on 
 what grounds some of these ladies had been 
 
no MEMORIES 
 
 appointed. Some indeed had been lady house- 
 keepers to bachelor masters, and it was 
 reasonable enough that when their employers 
 married, they should as dames continue to look 
 after boys ; but some were so unfit for the 
 work that the wildest legends grew up as to 
 how they had come there. One old lady, no 
 doubt always perfectly respectable, was fully 
 believed by the boys to have been a cast-off 
 mistress of George IV., and to have gained the 
 post by royal favour ; in other cases the charge 
 of the house was hereditary. Each dame's 
 house was nominally under the control of a 
 tutor, who called " Absence " at " lock up " 
 when the boys had to be in the house at night, 
 and to him the dame could appeal if any 
 disciplinary problems arose. 
 
 To Harry Dupuis, one of the most fastidious 
 of masters, there came one evening a damp and 
 limp brown paper parcel, out of which fell a 
 greenish red lump, about a pound of almost 
 raw beef, with " Miss Bareblock's compliments, 
 and was it not quite fit for her boys' supper, 
 though they had refused to eat it." 
 
 Though boys now and then refused their 
 supper, they sometimes were ready to consume 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE iii 
 
 much more than was provided for them. If 
 
 a tutor or a dame was suspected of being 
 
 niggardly, it was determined to " brosier " him 
 
 or her. All the house would appear at supper, 
 
 whereas as a rule a well-known proportion did 
 
 not usually take that meal, and steadily make 
 
 their way through all that was provided, then 
 
 ask for more, which was not always forthcoming 
 
 at nine o'clock at night in the best regulated 
 
 larders. The boys would then retire in a more 
 
 or less disorderly fashion, asserting that they 
 
 were starved. This only once happened in my 
 
 day in my tutor's house, and he had to be 
 
 summoned from a dinner-party at a friend's, 
 
 because we would not leave the table, asking 
 
 for more cold meat. He said to one of the 
 
 ringleaders, " You are no gentleman," provoking 
 
 the retort, " Sir, you are no judge ! " The fact 
 
 that my tutor did not " complain " of him next 
 
 morning, disarmed all such hostihties for the 
 
 future. 
 
 Very shortly after my entrance into the 
 school, preparations began for the " Montem " 
 which occurred twice within my stay at Eton, 
 the second being the last " Montem " ever held. 
 This was a curious survival of a mediaeval 
 
112 MEMORIES 
 
 festival, which has called forth a good deal of 
 antiquarian lore, and has been connected with 
 the installation of the boy-bishop in various 
 places, or with such revels as Scott describes 
 in The Abbot. By degrees the ceremony had 
 come to be a means of providing the captain 
 of the school every third year with a purse to 
 pay his expenses at College, and the sum 
 collected often amounted to several hundred 
 pounds. There was, however, great uncertainty 
 as to the recipient. For if a Fellow of King's 
 College, Cambridge, died, resigned, or married, 
 the vacancy created among the scholars of 
 King's had to be filled by a scholar of Eton 
 within so many days, and there was often a 
 little jockeying about the vacancy. If, for in- 
 stance, a man about to be married wished to 
 help the second scholar in the school rather 
 than the captain, he might hasten his marriage, 
 and thwart the captain's hopes of " Montem " by 
 calling him off to King's at once. And sup- 
 posing all the play to be fair and aboveboard, 
 there was necessarily among so many persons 
 the chance of a death. Hence there was always 
 great anxiety as the time approached after 
 which it would be possible for the captain to 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 113 
 
 remain at Eton and take the proceeds of the 
 " Montem " even if he were summoned to King's. 
 This was called " Sure Montem night." If the 
 captain were popular, no one went to bed, and 
 when twelve o'clock struck Chamber became 
 a scene of wild uproar, and enthusiastic con- 
 gratulation ; the festivities on the occasion being 
 winked at by the authorities. 
 
 The actual celebration of " Montem " was as 
 follows. The whole school went into fancy 
 dress. The sixth form, both Collegers and 
 Oppidans, were got up as for a fancy dress 
 ball — Cavaliers, Roundheads, Italiati peasants 
 and the like. Each sixth-form boy had one 
 or two pages also in fancy dress. These 
 scoured the country from break of day, pene- 
 trating as far as they could run into the 
 neighbouring roads and villages. They stopped 
 coaches, post-chaises, and carriages, almost like 
 highway robbers, asking for " Salt," the school 
 slang for money, and, when this was given, 
 presented a printed slip with the words " mos 
 pro lege " upon it, which, like a turnpike ticket — 
 also a thing of the past — franked the recipient 
 against another marauder. By every road to 
 Eton arrived troops of friends to take part in 
 
114 MEMORIES 
 
 the celebration, so that the Cavalier or Planta- 
 genet who could go furthest to meet them gained 
 a larger amount of " Salt." On their return the 
 sum gained was handed over to the fortunate 
 captain. 
 
 Meanwhile the fifth-form boys had arrayed 
 themselves in scarlet coats, something like old- 
 fashioned hunting coats, but supposed to be 
 military, white trousers, cocked hats, yellow 
 waistcoats, swords and pumps, and the lower 
 boys in a faint imitation of a midshipman's 
 dress, but each carrying a white wand, and 
 each was for the day the servant of a fifth- 
 form boy, and carried the wand before him. , 
 
 Between eleven and twelve a procession was 
 formed in the school-yard, the sixth-form boys 
 and pages, followed by the rest of the school 
 as described, and, after marching round while 
 " Absence " was called, they went through the 
 cloisters and the playing fields to Salt Hill, 
 ad Montent, a tumulus near Salt Hill Hotel. 
 Here the royal family came in semi-state, with 
 outriders, and smart carriages from two counties 
 were full of those who had contributed or were 
 to contribute " Salt " ; the captain waved an enor- 
 mous flag which he had carried at the head 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 115 
 
 of the procession, and we dispersed to dine 
 in the gardens of Salt Hill Hotel, on a very 
 bad dinner, with far more wine than was good 
 for us. There was a senseless custom of 
 cutting and slashing with our swords at the 
 flowers and shrubs in the hotel gardens, and 
 of generally damaging the property, for which 
 the captain had to pay out of his " Salt," and 
 if he were at all unpopular, the damage done 
 was considerable. 
 
 So long as Eton was a country village, 
 which every one had to reach in his own 
 carriage, or in a post-chaise from London, this 
 old-world custom was tolerable ; but a railway 
 to Slough was felt to have destroyed the 
 whole. Even in 1 84 1 the crowd at Salt Hill 
 was almost unmanageable, and in 1844 an 
 attempt was made to confine the festivities as 
 much as might be to the playing fields, though 
 the flag was waved on Montem. We returned 
 to dine in tents on the Fellows' Eyot, but 
 the spirit of the railroad was over it all, it 
 was difficult to masquerade, demanding "Salt" 
 at Slough Station ; and " Montem " was no 
 more. 
 
 On the former of the two occasions at which 
 
ii6 MEMORIES 
 
 I assisted at " Montem," my fag-master made 
 sure of getting into the sixth form before the 
 great day arrived, and wished me to be his 
 page. This came to the ears of my tutor, 
 who knew well that my father would be by no 
 means prepared to meet so costly an outlay, 
 and I have always believed that this alone 
 prevented the number of the sixth being 
 filled by my master, who entered it the 
 week after " Montem," so that the expense 
 of the fancy costumes was saved to both 
 of us. 
 
 The cessation of " Montem " caused the re- 
 gatta on June 4th to rise into greater pro- 
 minence. It was made legal, whereas before 
 it had been a surreptitious joy, and Hawtrey 
 came in a carriage and four to the first re- 
 cognised " Fourth of June." The year before, 
 a boy named Montagu had been drowned just 
 below the bridge, and with the recognition of 
 the regatta, and of boating in general, water- 
 men were stationed in punts on that part of 
 the river which was in bounds, no boy was 
 allowed to go in a boat till he could swim, 
 and a committee of masters was established 
 who took charge of the bathing places, and 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 117 
 
 examined would - be swimmers in their pro- 
 ficiency. 
 
 To return to the boarding-house in which 
 I found myself. My tutor, Mr. Goodford, was 
 not married, and his house was managed by 
 Miss Edgar, who, subsequent to his marriage, 
 became a dame, with her sister who had been 
 lady house - keeper to another master. Miss 
 Edgar was a fussy and tiresome woman, and 
 we were glad when " my tutor " married, and 
 Mrs. Goodford presided over his house with 
 charm and dignity. For in those days the 
 tutor's wife did not think it beneath her posi- 
 tion to manage her husband's home, and did 
 it better, with the aid of good servants, than 
 I think it has been done since. It also obliged 
 the tutor, if his wife were young, to give his 
 own direct superintendence to many things 
 which otherwise would have been left to a 
 lady, and so came nearer the ideal school in 
 which the tutor is carefully linked at every 
 turn and in every detail with the boys' life. 
 Miss Edgar, as was not unnatural, considered 
 the boys as her direst enemies, dangerous 
 beings on whose actions she could never count; 
 and maintained as great an aloofness as was 
 
ii8 MEMORIES 
 
 possible. When afterwards she kept her own 
 house, she presided at her boys' dinner, girded 
 with an apron to carve, but took her own meal 
 apart afterwards. At the boys' dinner she 
 always said grace as follows : " Boys, for what 
 you are about to receive, may the Lord make 
 you truly thankful." 
 
 Under Miss Edgar there were two " boys' 
 maids " who made our beds, swept our rooms, 
 and laid the cloth for breakfast and tea, which 
 we took in our own rooms in " messes " of two 
 or three, or a lad might prefer to take those 
 meals alone. Each maid was responsible for 
 some twenty boys, and it was wonderful how 
 well they managed, and with what command 
 of temper, though of course in the actual 
 work of the breakfast- and tea-tables, the fag 
 system helped not a little. For the fags made 
 tea and toast for their masters, and afterwards 
 for themselves, bought for their masters what- 
 ever supplementary dainties were needed over 
 and above the three rolls and butter provided, 
 rendering the many little services of waiting 
 which would otherwise be done by a servant. 
 I can speak wholly in praise of the fagging 
 system. The apportionment of two or three 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 119 
 
 younger boys to an elder, taught obedience, 
 punctuality, cleanliness of hands, deftness ; 
 while the master placed in charge held a 
 certain amount of responsibility towards his 
 fags. If he were a bully he rarely ill-used 
 his fags, certainly less than he would have 
 done without such relationship ; if he were 
 immoral, he rarely showed that side of him- 
 self to those who were put directly under 
 him. And all the fag-masters were subject 
 to the captain of the house, to whom was 
 given considerable monitorial power. Different 
 houses varied very much in moral tone, and 
 I cannot say that ours was by any means 
 the best, though it was perhaps average. It 
 certainly was in all ways immensely above 
 the standard of Ilminster, so that 1 can look 
 back with pleasure to Eton, and the time spent 
 there. 
 
 Our house was not as a rule distinguished 
 for hard work. Thring, afterwards head- 
 master of Uppingham, was indeed a pupil of 
 Goodford, but he was a King's Scholar, and 
 affected our lives in no degree ; Scott, after- 
 wards head -master of Westminster, was in 
 the house, but his ungenial temper prevented 
 
I20 MEMORIES 
 
 our admiring, as we might otherwise have done, 
 his zeal for literature and his thirst for know- 
 ledge. 
 
 There were not many interesting boys in the 
 house, and my chief friends in the school lay 
 out of it. Strangely enough my most intimate 
 friend in the house was Astley, afterwards so 
 well known as Sir John Astley. We messed 
 together, that is, took our breakfast and tea 
 in each other's rooms for two years, till Astley 
 minor appeared on the scene, when the two 
 brothers naturally joined, and I left them. I 
 have often noticed that though a man's most 
 intimate friends in after life are his school 
 friends, it is not because of the school com- 
 panionship, but rather because the friendship 
 is knitted again at College or elsewhere for 
 other than schoolboy reasons. Some of my 
 closest friends at Oxford and through my life 
 were school friends, but only because our minds 
 developed in the same direction, the friendship 
 was so to speak re-made. Astley and I always 
 continued on most cordial terms when we met 
 at Oxford and in after life, but I remember his 
 open - eyed amazement at the things which 
 interested me, and at the fact that I could not 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 121 
 
 even pretend to care for the sports in which 
 he delighted. 
 
 The majority of my friends at Eton were 
 assuredly not to be found in the more intel- 
 lectual set, though Astley was perhaps the 
 most typical instance to the contrary. But I 
 myself read omnivorously ; my tutor most 
 kindly giving me the run of his library. 1 
 took much interest in French, not always 
 discreetly, as " Les Mysteres de Paris '' was 
 among my favourite books ; and at Eton I 
 learned to be a High Churchman. 
 
 Since I knew Eton so intimately in after life, 
 and have always continued my close relations 
 with it, it is not unnatural that I should be 
 scarce aware of the changes time has wrought, 
 so far as a boy's life is concerned, but I think 
 that almost every one would recognise the great 
 conservatism of the place, together with the 
 rigid traditionalism which has prevented inno- 
 vations in the short-lived generations of school- 
 boys. Yet certain things are different. When 
 I first went to Eton a considerable number of 
 boys played hockey in the winter, so that there 
 was at least a tertium quid between football and 
 mere loafing. There was a small section who 
 
122 MEMORIES 
 
 dared to introduce rounders, and even prisoners' 
 base, which had a success for a time, both 
 excellent games, and it is a pity that the tide 
 of fashion overwhelmed them. In summer 
 punting was allowed, and there is much charm 
 in the exercise. It was possible for two boys 
 " double punting " to gain " first locks " after 
 twelve, and get to Surley almost as soon as 
 the boats, and those of us who were good 
 punters, were enthusiastic in the pursuit. But 
 on the other hand, there were those who found 
 the backwaters and Clewer stream enticing ; it 
 was easy to conceal a can of beer in the well 
 of a punt, though the prohibition was hard on 
 those who had made a good and energetic use 
 of the privilege. 
 
 I do not know how far the humble sardine 
 and the various sorts of potted meats, almost 
 unknown fifty years ago, have been found 
 sufficient relish for breakfasts, and the bringing 
 of hot dishes from without is now forbidden, 
 but in my day, if not allowed, it was at least 
 winked at, and the furnishing such viands was 
 a lucrative trade. Somewhat back from the 
 road, where the red houses opposite Upper 
 School now stand, was a cottage occupied by 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 123 
 
 Mrs. Webber. The whole ground floor was a 
 very large kitchen, one side of the room 
 occupied by a gigantic grill at which Mrs. 
 Webber cooked chops, kidneys, sausages, &c., 
 for those who could afford to pay for them. 
 All the space in the room that was not fire 
 and Mrs. Webber herself, was full of fags 
 waiting their masters' breakfast, each clamour- 
 ing for his portion, kept in awe by the lady's 
 sharp tongue and furious temper. These 
 supplemental dishes led to much extravagance 
 and quite needless luxury, and it was well they 
 were suppressed. The vendors of pastry and 
 cakes at the Wall should also have been for- 
 bidden. It was one thing to go into a shop 
 if a boy really needed, or thought he needed, 
 such things, another to have them thrust before 
 him every time he went in and out of school, 
 together with the facilities for unlimited tick. 
 One of the men at the Wall with a tin full of 
 puffs and jam tarts was named " Le Marchant," 
 but always known as " Spankie " from a fancied 
 resemblance to Mr. Serjeant Spankie, father of 
 two boys of an earlier generation than my own. 
 This man deserves record, because he was the 
 most accurate and most extraordinary gene- 
 
124 MEMORIES 
 
 alogist I ever met. The late Archdeacon 
 Huxtable used to say that, taking in marriage 
 connections, he would undertake to show that 
 any given person was related to any other, 
 and Spankie had the same marvellous power 
 of knowing who every boy in the school was, 
 and who were his relations to the most distant 
 degree. I imagine him to have spent all the 
 time he was not vending his deleterious goods 
 on reading up Peerages, County Histories, and 
 the like ; these with a marvellous memory 
 both for names and faces, added to a few 
 searching, but always civil questions, laid a 
 boy's whole family open to his knowledge. 
 He would say to a boy who passed him : " I 
 
 saw Mr. go towards your tutor's a few 
 
 minutes ago ; he came in a carriage from 
 Slough, and I think he must be looking for 
 you, as I know he is your mother's cousin," 
 and in such things he was always correct. 
 Some reforming and younger masters attempted 
 to abolish him, and tried the question before 
 the magistrates whether he was not creating 
 an obstruction by standing where he did. 
 He came radiant from the encounter. " The 
 indictment is squashed, young gentlemen," he 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 125 
 
 said, " the indictment is squashed." " Well, 
 Spankie, what did you say to them ? " "I 
 said, ' Gentlemen, the road is the king's and 
 the tin is my own.' " After this Spankie became 
 in a measure recognised, and useful. Some 
 boys occasionally ran away, even from so 
 favoured a school as Eton ; and Spankie was 
 sent after them as a sort of amateur detective. 
 I remember a boy having bolted, under circum- 
 stances which induced Hawtrey to call us all 
 into Upper School and tell us so. " But," he 
 said, " I have sent a trustworthy person, who 
 will, I hope, return with the unhappy boy," 
 and a whisper, which from many hundred lips 
 had almost the power of a roar, uttered 
 " Spankie." 
 
 A custom, peculiar to Eton in my day, was 
 abolished by Dr. Goodford, so soon as he 
 became head - master. The actual college 
 bounds were small, and it was obviously im- 
 possible to restrict the boys to them. The 
 river was, as I have said, declared to be within 
 bounds. The street leading to it was nominally 
 forbidden. Hence what had once been a reality, 
 that a boy seen in the disallowed places should 
 run away, became a mere form, under the 
 
126 MEMORIES 
 
 name of "shirking," so that the masters' 
 authority was recognised. We bolted into the 
 nearest shop, behind the nearest hedge, and a 
 boy was often reproved, or even punished, not 
 because he was out of bounds, but because he 
 did not shirk properly. I do not know that 
 much harm was done by this patent and per- 
 mitted sham, but it was difficult to convince 
 strangers that the whole affair was a mere 
 form, and that we were not considered to be 
 doing wrong. For if a boy were really where 
 he ought not to be, no amount of shirking, 
 however well carried out, was of avail. 
 
 One of such absolutely forbidden places was 
 the lower part of Windsor especially at the time 
 of the annual fair. I never remember the very 
 smallest harm which came to any boys from 
 going there, nor how a giant, or a spotted lady, 
 or a horse with five legs could corrupt morals, 
 but it was assumed that the fair would be the 
 entrance and the initiation to terrible wicked- 
 ness : we were all agog to go, and as a 
 matter of fact did see most of the wonders on 
 show. The hot chases of the masters and the 
 hair-breadth escapes were amusing. At my 
 tutor's a boy, not I, arranged to get out of 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 127 
 
 a window, under which was a covered water- 
 butt. He was to scale the butt on his return, 
 tap at the window to wake the occupant of 
 the room, and get in by the same way. He 
 found the fair exceedingly tame, and returned 
 to find his friend so soundly asleep, that no 
 battering at the window could wake him. As 
 he prepared himself for a still more vigorous 
 effort the top gave way, and plunged him up 
 to the neck in water. Scrambling out he ran 
 up and down the lane, but finally, half-frozen, 
 he was obliged to knock meekly at the front 
 door, to be let in by Goodford himself, who 
 was sitting up late. His fate was a strong 
 deterrent, his account of the worthlessness of 
 the fair still greater. It had been, in fact, 
 what a lady of my acquaintance called an 
 entertainment she did not enjoy, " stupid fun." 
 
 " Tap " and " Cellar " were two public-house 
 bars or parlours which were tacitly permitted. 
 If a boy went to a Windsor public-house, or 
 to Salt Hill, the offence was serious ; but these 
 two public-houses, more mischievous because 
 more within reach, were winked at. The 
 masters avoided going past them at unexpected 
 times : they saw the men who were set to keep 
 
128 MEMORIES 
 
 watch looking out till they had passed, and 
 never took steps to prevent the mischief. The 
 matter was so well understood that when 
 " Tap " was removed from the old Christopher 
 Inn within the precincts of the College to 
 a house in the town, the proprietor sent a 
 notice of his removal to Goodford, then head- 
 master, with " thanks for past favours and a 
 hope of their continuance." The scandal con- 
 tinues to the present day. 
 
 The late Sir James Stephen has put it on 
 record that there was at Eton, in his time, a 
 complete absence of moral and religious en- 
 thusiasm. I am not disposed to agree with 
 him. The wave of the Oxford movement had 
 affected Eton, and there were certainly knots 
 of boys whose religion was almost perfervid, 
 who, on going to Oxford and Cambridge, at once 
 joined the extreme sections of the High Church 
 party, some of them stepping very soon over 
 the bounds which separates England from 
 Rome. Nor did the influence on religion of 
 such men as Selwyn, Abraham, and Edward 
 Coleridge count for nothing in the same direc- 
 tion. And although morals were often at a 
 sadly low ebb, there were many sets of lads 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 129 
 
 who exercised a repressive effect upon evil, 
 which should have been the duty of their 
 superiors, and whole houses, with perhaps a 
 somewhat pharisaic arrogance, prided themselves 
 on maintaining a lofty tone. At that time also, 
 the central part of the great East window was 
 filled with stained glass by the voluntary con- 
 tributions of the boys alone. It consists of 
 a very simple but vivid picture of the Cruci- 
 fixion, and many of us found in it a striking 
 lesson from Calvary, and, whatever was lack- 
 ing in the services, knew first in that chapel 
 what worship meant, drew strength against 
 sin, and learnt how to suffer and to strive 
 from the contemplation of that rood. The 
 chapel as I first remember it was a stately 
 and dignified Jacobean church, like many 
 College chapels still unrestored at Oxford, 
 and far more striking than the modern re- 
 storation. The stalls were pews, and the 
 whole arrangement was like the old unre- 
 stored choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, in which 
 sat the Provost and Fellows and the " noble- 
 men," including in this term sons of Peers 
 and Baronets. 
 
 I have elsewhere used the following words 
 
I30 MEMORIES 
 
 when speaking of the change from my Ilminster 
 to my Eton life. 
 
 At Eton, for the first time, I heard a chanted 
 " Cathedral Service," and week-day prayers in 
 church without the weariness of a sermon ; 
 there in 1841 such of us boys who were 
 inclined to think and read the newspapers 
 became conscious of the great stir which was 
 going on at Oxford ; a few of our masters 
 were falling under the influence of the new 
 theology, and this could not be without its 
 effect on the boys. 
 
 It had its bearing on our minds, but to an 
 extremely limited extent on our lives. There 
 are lads who, by the grace of God, have in 
 them a natural and ingrained purity of soul, 
 and a revolt from every wrong word and deed, 
 an instinct against evil, which preserves them 
 in ignorant innocence through the perils of 
 boyhood ; but as a rule an average English lad 
 is neither ignorant nor innocent. When he 
 ceases to say his nightly prayer at his mother's 
 knee, there is no one to force on him the 
 connection between religion and morals ; no 
 one, except from the distant pulpit, ever speaks 
 to him of his soul ; no one deals with him 
 
ETON— SCHOOL LIFE 131 
 
 individually, or helps him in his special trials. 
 A father is as a rule shy of his son, tutors are 
 apt to treat all trangressions as school offences, 
 and are unwilling to see what is not forced on 
 them, so that the boy's soul shifts for itself, 
 and for the most part fares badly. I can truly 
 say that for the five years I was at Eton, 
 between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, no 
 one ever said one word to me about my own 
 religious life, save always my mother, but she 
 could know nothing of a boy's dangers, and 
 was as one that fought the air. 
 
 But as a mere matter of intellectual opinion, 
 Church questions were extremely interesting. 
 The Christian Year became known to me 
 almost by heart ; it, and still more the Lyra 
 Apostolica, Miss Sewell's books, and among 
 them especially Margaret Percival, put before 
 me the Anglican Church theory, which I 
 accepted with eagerness ; nor was my pleasure 
 and acquiescence in it disturbed even by the 
 caricature of it which I found in Hawkstone, 
 a foolish and impudent book, though written by 
 a very able man, Miss Sewell's brother, the 
 Rev. William Sewell, soon to be my tutor at 
 Exeter College, Oxford. 
 
132 MEMORIES 
 
 There is little to be said of my home life 
 during the Eton holidays. I came in contact 
 with few or no interesting people, and no 
 books which influenced my life or thoughts 
 other than those of which I have spoken, ex- 
 cept Dickens and Tennyson. My father used 
 to read aloud each number of Pickwick and 
 its successors as it appeared, in the evenings, 
 to our great delight. Living as we did so 
 near Bath, the scenes connected with that city 
 were very interesting, none the less that we 
 thought we discovered my uncle's footman, 
 who wore red plush breeches as part of his 
 livery, in " Blazes " of the footmen's club. 
 There was such a club, and Dickens had pene- 
 trated there somehow as a guest. 
 
 I read Tennyson for myself, learning by 
 heart the greater part of the original volumes, 
 and thinking, as I still think, that for subtle 
 workmanship no one had at all approached 
 the same perfection since Milton. I did not 
 then recognise how little thought is contained 
 in that pomp and melody of verse, still less 
 how very little of what thought there is, is the 
 poet's own. For instance, a very large number 
 of people are apparently unaware that Tenny- 
 
ETON-SCHOOL LIFE 133 
 
 son's idyll " Dora " is simply a story in Miss 
 Mitford's Our Village broken up into blank 
 verse with poetic touches added, and in later 
 life his "Idylls of the King" are whole chapters 
 of Malory's Morte d^ Arthur and Lady Char- 
 lotte Guest's Mabinogion treated in the same 
 way. It would be an interesting study to any 
 one to work steadily through Tennyson and 
 trace how often and how constantly he has 
 touched up the work of other men. The late 
 Mr. Woolner, the sculptor, told me both 
 " Enoch Arden " and " Aylmer's Field " were 
 originally stories told by him to Tennyson, who 
 made him write them out at length, and then 
 broke up his narrative into blank verse. 
 
 So ran the five years away till it was time 
 for me to go to College, and I take leave of 
 the recollections of my Eton days with some- 
 thing of the same regret which I quitted the 
 place itself when the day of parting came 
 at Easter 1846. The family conclave had 
 often considered the question where I was to 
 go. It was thought possible that I should 
 obtain by nomination a Demyship at Magdalen, 
 Oxford, but the peculiarity of that College 
 then was that a Demy could only succeed to 
 
134 MEMORIES 
 
 the Fellowship attached to the county to which 
 he belonged. There was only one Somerset- 
 shire Fellowship, and there were already two 
 or more Somerset Demies, so that on consulta- 
 tion with the one Somerset Fellow, Mr. William 
 Robertson, an old family friend, it was decided 
 not to send me to Magdalen, as even for a 
 Demy it was an expensive College. Finally 
 Exeter was selected, mainly, I think, because 
 Mackenzie Walcott, my aunt's godson, had been 
 there, and because Dr. Richards, the rector, 
 was a friend of the Littlehales family into 
 which my mother's youngest sister had married. 
 My father went with me there to matriculate 
 in January 1846, I having leave from Eton 
 for three days for that purpose. At Easter 
 I left Eton, promising myself to do a great 
 deal of reading in the holidays, a promise 
 which, from circumstances, I was unable to 
 fulfil. 
 
V 
 
 COLLEGE LIFE AT OXFORD 
 1 846-1 85 1 
 
 IT became necessary to do some considerable 
 repairs at Wellow, and Mr. Harman, an old 
 school friend of my father, lent us Hardington 
 Park, near Frome, about ten miles from Wellow, 
 for the summer. Hardington was an old house, 
 with two good rooms and many bad ones. 
 It had sunk from a mansion to a shooting-box. 
 We were much cramped, pupils and family, 
 and my reading was of the scantiest. I there 
 became acquainted with Mr. Elwyn, afterwards 
 editor of the Quarterly, who was curate of 
 Hardington. He was an interesting and ac- 
 complished man, and gave me much good 
 advice about the course of my reading. In 
 his very poor poem " Glenaveril," Robert, Lord 
 Lytton, the younger, has sketched Mr. Elwyn 
 under the character of Edelrath. It is an 
 
136 MEMORIES 
 
 embellished, but in many ways a truthful, 
 portrait. In the summer I paid a visit to my 
 tutor at Eton, going back as an old boy, 
 and in October went up to Exeter, to enter 
 on a new phase of my life. 
 
 It was completely new, for there were then 
 very few Eton men at Exeter, and of the few 
 who went up about my time, I had not 
 happened to know any, save very slightly. 
 Charles Parker, of whom I have since lost 
 sight, as he lives wholly in Lincolnshire, went 
 up from Eton with me, and we became intimate. 
 My father, who went to start me, put into 
 my hands a long and kind letter, in which he 
 explained his circumstances, how little likely it 
 was that I should ever inherit anything from 
 him, and that a small amount settled on me 
 from my mother's fortune was all I could 
 ever expect, and this only at her death. Ah 
 me ! I little thought how near that would be, 
 which then seemed so distant that I wondered 
 my father spoke of the contingency. 
 
 Exeter was then very full, and an objection- 
 able arrangement was in force by which a 
 freshman had a room out for the day, and 
 occupied a bedroom in those sets which had 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 137 
 
 an extra bedroom, or rather closet, attached 
 to them, the giving up of this to a stranger 
 for a term being made the condition of taking 
 such a set of rooms. When, as in my case 
 a term or two afterwards, a man was able to 
 have a friend as his enforced lodger, the 
 arrangement had its advantages, but if men 
 were unacquainted, nothing could be less 
 pleasant. The man on whom I was quartered 
 resented the intrusion, and did nothing to 
 facilitate matters. My room was so small that 
 I had to get on my bed to undress and dress, 
 while washing satisfactorily had to be post- 
 poned till I reached my lodgings in New Inn 
 Hall Street. But the term was short, and my 
 troubles in that way were not of long continu- 
 ance. The term was on the whole dull, for 
 in that amphibious state I was cut off a good 
 deal from College companionship, coming up 
 as I did without acquaintance. Thus with one 
 or two exceptions, the men I knew best were 
 those who entered in the following term after 
 Christmas. 
 
 Here is the place, however, to name those 
 friends, who for three years to come filled so 
 large a part of my life, and made me know how 
 
138 MEMORIES 
 
 great is the power of friendship, in many ways 
 a nobler and higher, because a more unselfish 
 passion than love. 
 
 First among all my friends was, and is, 
 Richard Francis Bowles — Frank Bowles among 
 his friends — but the affection was perhaps 
 stronger on my side than on his. He is a 
 most accomplished man, a good artist, a good 
 rider, good shot, fairly read, thoughtful and 
 high-minded. He has had an uphill game in 
 life to play, through no fault of his own. 
 Frank was " best man " at my marriage, and 
 is godfather to my eldest son Louis. If we 
 have seen but little of each other of late it is 
 more from accident than design, though I 
 think he has very strongly disapproved of my 
 opinions. He is a staunch Anglican High 
 Churchman. 
 
 George Russell, afterwards by the death of 
 his brother Charles, Sir George, who has now 
 himself passed away, was another of my closest 
 intimates. Charles and I had been in the same 
 Remove at Eton, and he transferred as it were 
 his brother to me. There are few men about 
 whom I feel more regret that the accidents of 
 place and occupation severed us in after life. 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 139 
 
 Frank Du Boulay was a different man, and 
 in a different set to these, but I saw a great 
 deal of him, and in some ways still more 
 intimately. He had been brought up in a 
 school which I was only now beginning to 
 know, the High Church, as seen in country 
 parsonages and in actual practical life. One 
 day, after a long conversation, he gave me 
 a Christian Year, with a little inscription, 
 hoping " that the Christian love of which this 
 volume is a token may realise the idea of 
 friendship entertained by us both." Frank Du 
 Boulay invited me to his house, and I became 
 most intimate with all his family circle. His 
 mother, Mrs. Majendie, was for the second 
 time a widow, and lived first at Speen, then 
 at Torquay, with her five Du Boulay and two 
 Majendie children. Susan Du Boulay, the 
 eldest daughter, round whom the whole family 
 turned, who swayed them all, became a 
 Catholic nun. For her, while she was yet 
 an Anglican, I took possession on my way into 
 Cornwall of Miss Sellon's first house in Ply- 
 mouth, and set up the cross of Babbicombe 
 marble in the little oratory, the only bit of 
 furniture then in the house, until the sisters 
 
I40 MEMORIES 
 
 arrived in the evening. I dwell on this friend- 
 ship with these good and kind people because 
 my intercourse with them was pleasant, still 
 more because it showed me more than anything 
 else the strength and the weakness of the 
 Anglican system. If Anglican premisses are 
 true, Rome is the conclusion of them, and 
 Susan was the one logical member of her family. 
 I have lost sight of Frank, though when we 
 meet we are friendly, and I am sure he always 
 thinks of me as I of him with affection ; but 
 with his principles he must look on me with 
 stern disapproval, and he is not a man who 
 ever saw two sides of a question. With 
 James Du Boulay, somewhat younger, and not 
 in those days so much my friend, my intimacy 
 has increased and been maintained. He is god- 
 father to my son Maurice. 
 
 His other godfather is George David Boyle, 
 now Dean of Salisbury, and still my good kind 
 friend. He was always older than his years 
 at Oxford, and was better read than most of 
 us, who were only beginning to take a real and 
 intelligent delight in literature. It is a lasting 
 surprise to me that Boyle, though he has risen 
 to honourable preferment, has made no mark in 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 141 
 
 letters, or filled a more exalted place in the 
 Church. He has always belonged to the 
 moderately broad section of it. 
 
 James Aitken, Robert Hawtayne, Halifax 
 Wyatt, Alan Brodrick, and many others I 
 should like to name, are associated in my 
 memory with those old days, but "all, all are 
 gone, the old familiar faces." If we ever met 
 now, much of the old affection would revive, 
 but we are scattered abroad, and our paths in 
 life are different. 
 
 Out of College were Frank Simmons at 
 Lincoln, Percy Smith at Balliol, Arthur Paget 
 at Trinity, where my cousin George Cox was 
 a scholar, Arthur Charles Wilson, at Christ 
 Church. With all of these I was most inti- 
 mate, and through them I saw very varied and 
 many-sided society. 
 
 Two other friends from other Colleges may 
 be mentioned because they afterwards made 
 their mark in literature. 
 
 George Lawrence of Balliol, author of Guy 
 Livingstone, was as much the creator of the 
 short story of his day as Stevenson or Kipling 
 is in our time. The modern writers are purer 
 and better, and Guy Livingstone lent himself 
 
142 MEMORIES 
 
 more easily to caricature, but he at any rate 
 was one of the forces of his time. I knew 
 George Lawrence well before we either of us 
 went to Oxford ; our mothers were friends, and 
 he was much at our house during some years ; 
 somewhat older than I, he was just one of 
 those men who have a wonderful fascination 
 for younger men. I mention him because all 
 the characters in his book were careful and 
 finished portraits of persons as he saw them, 
 of his mother, his wife, another lady whose 
 lot was perhaps the happier in that she did 
 not marry him, of himself as he desired to 
 be. Dear George Lawrence ; I have loved 
 less many more ranged and orderly men. 
 
 Henry Kingsley was at Worcester, and was 
 in those days remarkable for his susceptibility 
 to mesmeric influences. We did not suspect 
 his future brilliancy as a writer, though many 
 of us now think that in his power as a story- 
 teller he is greater than Charles. There was 
 also a sister, Mrs. Chanter, who wrote a novel. 
 Over the Cliffs, quite unworthy of remem- 
 brance, save for one sentence. The heroine, 
 I think, fell " over the cliffs " and arrived at the 
 bottom " a tangled mass of hair and brains," 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 143 
 
 Henry Kingsley was, we thought, superior 
 to his surroundings, for Worcester had no 
 good name amongst us. George Russell went 
 to dine there, and said " it reminded him of 
 the Zoological Gardens. The men growled as 
 they ate." But George was always sarcastic. 
 
 Soon, from knowing few, I knew many, and 
 probably was as intimately acquainted with as 
 many phases of Oxford life as any of my 
 contemporaries. While through Du Boulay, as 
 I have said, I saw the working of the Trac- 
 tarian movement in the country, through George 
 Cox, mainly, I came to know the party formed 
 by it in Oxford, so far as it existed among 
 undergraduates. He was a year senior to me, 
 and was in the full swing of his fervour when I 
 went up. The whole thing was, I now think, 
 very unreal. Newman had gone, and taken with 
 him his mighty influence ; there was no one left 
 in his place ; Pusey had great weight with those 
 who sought his counsel, but they were then com- 
 paratively few, since he had not the attractive 
 power which Newman had possessed. And 
 while I by no means say that the young 
 men under Tractarian teaching did not lead 
 perfectly respectable lives, the attempt at 
 
144 MEMORIES 
 
 self-denial was spasmodic, fasting, when tried, 
 was under no rule, and the effort chiefly showed 
 itself in a dilettante love for architecture and 
 music, as represented by the Oxford Madrigal 
 Society. 
 
 One man, an undergraduate at Oriel, deco- 
 rated his room with texts, but that for his 
 bedroom was so pretty in illuminated design, 
 that he could not bring himself to put it inside, 
 where it would have admonished him, as he lay 
 in bed. But it certainly looked odd to see in 
 his sitting-room, above his bedroom door, the 
 injunction " Go to the ant, thou sluggard," as 
 if the ant lived inside. This youth was not 
 popular, and some other men broke into his 
 room one evening and wrecked them, carrying 
 casts of saints, &c., into the quadrangle. Clough, 
 then tutor, began to speak to him on the subject 
 
 next day with the words, " I am sorry, Mr. , 
 
 that they have broken your teraphim." One 
 day I was engaged to lunch with Hopkins of 
 Balliol, an old Eton acquaintance, whose rooms 
 were decorated in the most ecclesiastical manner. 
 I found him stripping texts from the walls in 
 wild haste, and appealing to those of his friends 
 who had arrived to help him to shove under 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 145 
 
 the bed a large crowned figure of the Blessed 
 Virgin. It appeared that he had just heard 
 that his father, a Berkshire squire, whose 
 contempt for ecclesiastical millinery, &c., was 
 most pronounced, was in Oxford, and even 
 then on his way to Balliol. The transformation 
 was effected, and the meeting between father and 
 son was unbroken by storms. I was spend- 
 ing a few days in Berkshire with Hopkins 
 some years ago, and was amused to find this 
 very figure of the Blessed Virgin presiding 
 over a well in the grounds, set in a little niche 
 against a tree. But she is there purely for 
 decorative and in no degree for devotional 
 purposes. Of course there were many with 
 whom the feeling was far deeper, witness Frank 
 Du Boulay, Alan Brodrick and Sam Bowles, 
 who carried out long afterwards in their country 
 parishes a noble self-devotion which they had 
 learnt at Oxford ; but the high tide had carried 
 many who went with it on to Rome, and as it 
 retreated left short of that height a good deal of 
 useless wreck on the shore. 
 
 This is perhaps enough to say of my friends 
 and the society into which I was carried. 
 Apart from these peculiarities the life was like 
 
146 MEMORIES 
 
 that of an University in all times. We read — 
 far less than we should have done — in the 
 mornings, we rode and boated in the after- 
 noons, or took long pleasant walks, pouring out 
 all our souls to each other, before life taught 
 us the need of reticence, and that daws peck 
 at hearts worn upon the sleeve ; we met in 
 each other's rooms after Hall, wasted those 
 evenings far too much, and read again too 
 seldom. 
 
 At Exeter it may fairly be said that there 
 was not much true encouragement to a studious 
 life, at least to those who were, with me, pupils 
 of the Rev. William Sewell. Sewell was at 
 that time Senior Tutor, and had been Sub- 
 Rector, as he again became before the end of 
 my stay at Oxford. He was one of the most 
 entertaining and clever of men, so far as 
 cleverness is consistent with egregious folly. 
 He had been a prominent member of the 
 Tractarian party, and was always a strong 
 High Churchman, but he had withdrawn him- 
 self from Newman, and preached a violent anti- 
 popery sermon on the text about Moses and 
 Aaron taking their censers to stand between 
 the dead and the living, so that the plague 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 147 
 
 was stayed ; the dead in his application were 
 those who had become Catholic. Hence it was 
 that one of the Oxford wits in those days said 
 that his name was Sewell, quasi suillus, a little 
 pig, because he would not go " the whole hog." 
 He had held the professorship of Moral Philo- 
 sophy, and in one of his lectures was said to 
 have drawn proofs of revealed from natural 
 religion in the manner following. After speak- 
 ing of the Trinity of the Divine nature, and 
 pointing out how there are three primary 
 colours, three notes in a musical chord, three 
 leaves in a trefoil, &c., he turned to the Unity 
 and said : " There is one sun, there is one 
 moon, there is one multitude of stars.''' Of all 
 men I have ever known, possessing any ability 
 at all, he was the most inaccurate, the most 
 erratic, and he was therefore the worst possible 
 tutor. During one term we were to read with 
 him Aristotle's Ethics, for our degree, and came 
 to the first lecture with a certain amount of 
 work prepared. But before beginning to trans- 
 late, Sewell gave us a short and interesting 
 disquisition on the different ethical systems of 
 Aristotle, St. Paul, and Shakspere. He then 
 bid us bring to our next lecture our Bibles and 
 
148 MEMORIES 
 
 our Shaksperes, and we read no more text of 
 Aristotle in our Aristotle lectures during the 
 whole of the term. 
 
 So, too, in a Greek Testament lecture, he 
 took to interpreting the account of St. Paul's 
 voyage as a prophetic account of the fortunes 
 of the Church's barque. He expounded that 
 when St. Paul was cast "upon a certain 
 island " which preserved his life, this really 
 meant that the Church in Ireland under St. 
 Columba had been the preservation of the 
 whole Church Catholic, and he was led to this 
 fanciful interpretation because he and others 
 had recently been engaged in the foundation of 
 St. Columba's College in Ireland. Those who 
 want to see what this eccentric person really 
 was should read his " Diary at St. Columba," 
 though it might now perhaps be difficult to 
 get a copy. Sewell afterwards founded and 
 became the second warden of Radley, in which 
 he was as complete a failure as in all else. 
 
 With such a man in charge of our instruc- 
 tion — and at Exeter the tutor had the whole 
 arrangement of his pupils' lectures under his 
 control — it was no wonder that very few of 
 his pupils took honours. For myself I soon 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 149 
 
 saw that it was hopeless to attempt it unless 
 I could shake myself free from Sewell's guid- 
 ance, which was not to be managed, and I 
 turned to a great deal of private reading, which 
 has perhaps stood me in better stead. I read 
 History, Philosophy, and Foreign Literature, 
 making great use of the Union library. At 
 the Union I also became a debater, and learned 
 considerable fluency in speech, which has since 
 proved very useful. 
 
 In my second term I got rooms in College, 
 garrets in the staircase opposite the porter's 
 lodge, but afterwards excellent ones in the 
 staircase between the lodge and the hall, on 
 the second floor, left. They were all I could 
 wish, and are still in my memory ideal College 
 rooms. 
 
 Those were not days when an undergraduate 
 made many acquaintances older than men of 
 his own age ; Oxford society had not increased 
 as it now has, tutors were older, and the 
 line of separation between the Don and the 
 pupil was very marked. I made, however, 
 some few friends. Henry Coxe, the Librarian 
 of the Bodleian, was one of a family with 
 whom my mother had been very intimate as 
 
ISO MEMORIES 
 
 a girl, and he and his wife showed me great 
 kindness. Who that knew Henry Coxe can 
 ever forget him ? He was very handsome, 
 and the essence of courtesy and benevolence ; 
 his whole soul was in his work, yet he always 
 seemed at leisure for a visit, and to give a 
 few words of counsel to whomever sought him 
 in his den in the Bodleian. The library 
 floor was covered with India matting. I 
 never smell that fresh scent of the woven 
 reeds without thinking of the Bodleian and 
 Henry Coxe. 
 
 Then I became intimate at another house, 
 
 that of Dr. . The wife was extremely 
 
 beautiful, and the husband was one of the 
 kindest of men. They were thoroughly con- 
 trasted with each other — he prosaic, sensible, 
 and somewhat dull ; she clever, imaginative, 
 religious in an hysterical kind of way, always 
 entreating her director, Dr. Pusey, to tell her 
 she ought to go over to Rome, but not going 
 without the permission which he did not give, 
 devoted to works among the poor. She always 
 had half-a-dozen young men dangling about 
 her, and she did us no good. Now we had to 
 escort her late at night to some disreputable 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 151 
 
 lane where she was going to sit up all night 
 with a dying sufTerer — though she was, of 
 course, far more liable to awkward stoppages 
 by Proctors than if she had gone unattended, 
 or with her maid ; now she found riding 
 necessary for her health, and we must needs 
 ride with her ; now she insisted on our buy- 
 ing, at a ridiculous price, a piece of embroidery 
 she had worked in order to sell it for a 
 charity. She was a thoroughly good but a 
 very foolish woman. I was never more than 
 amused with her, nor became one of her 
 slaves, but there were those on whom the 
 effect was more serious, and she certainly 
 was not a wholesome influence in the Oxford 
 of that time. 
 
 Through her I knew Dr. Pusey. I' was 
 even in those days much disposed to think 
 Confession a most excellent thing to any one 
 who believes in its sacramental efficacy, and I 
 think that it would have been good for me, 
 who had then no doubts of any kind. But 
 Dr. Pusey, who wished to become my Con- 
 fessor, and spoke to me often on the subject, 
 was not a person who attracted me, and even 
 then I never separated the man from his 
 
152 MEMORIES 
 
 office as the believer should, theoretically, be 
 able to do. The opportunity was lost, and 
 of course now that faith in sacraments has 
 become mine again, I have sought them from 
 Catholics and not from Anglicans. 
 
 It was, I think, in my first term that my 
 dear mother said, in one of her wise and 
 beautiful letters to me, that though I was 
 always her son, she felt I was her child no 
 longer. It was true, and if the change had 
 not come quite so soon, I realised it in the 
 following summer which I spent partly with 
 the Du Boulays at Speen, and began to take 
 my place in society, to be invited to dinner, 
 to balls, &c. The Keatings came up to town 
 every summer, and I began to join them there, 
 making afterwards acquaintances for myself in 
 London, in Bath, and in Somersetshire, beyond 
 the bounds of our own circle. I came then 
 also to know the one dear friend of my early 
 manhood, who was not associated with Oxford 
 or Eton, Charles Whitworth Russell, Lieut., 
 R.N. He was a first cousin of my friend 
 George Russell, and his mother, a widow, 
 came to live in Bath. He was invalided from 
 the effects of African fever, and his naval 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 153 
 
 days were practically at an end. In all my 
 vacations for some years we were inseparable, 
 and scarce a thought of either was concealed 
 from the other. He married Miss Maria 
 Daubeney, and obtained an appointment as 
 Adjutant of Volunteers at Plymouth, where he 
 died. His photograph, in a frock coat, with 
 clasped hands, hangs in my room. I shall be 
 glad if one of my children will always keep 
 it, as the portrait of a man their father dearly 
 loved. 
 
 My life, however, was as a whole much like 
 that of other young men who live at home and 
 visit their friends, until my second long vaca- 
 tion in 1848, when came the one great and 
 unforgotten sorrow of my life, the death of my 
 dear mother. Six months before she had given 
 birth to her youngest child, Edith Brooke 
 Paul, who was born at the Keatings' house, 
 6 Crescent, Bath. The Rajah of Sarawak, 
 Sir James Brooke, was her godfather. He was 
 in England during that winter, and the last 
 Sunday of his stay was the last that my mother 
 was about, before her confinement. As that 
 day was the only one available, the Keatings 
 departed from their usual rule on Sundays, and 
 
154 MEMORIES 
 
 gave a large dinner, followed by an evening 
 party. The Rajah sat most of the evening by 
 my mother at her sofa, only leaving her now 
 and then to speak to an old friend, or to ask my 
 aunt, Mrs. Littlehales, to sing. Her scruples 
 were overborne, and I remember her magnificent 
 singing as though it was yesterday. She had 
 been when young a pupil of the celebrated male 
 soprano, Veluti. The next day I went back to 
 Oxford, the Rajah left Bath for London and 
 Sarawak, and Edith came into the world a day 
 or two after. She went first, as she came last, 
 of my five sisters. 
 
 When I went home at Easter, I found my 
 mother had made a good recovery, and at the 
 beginning of the long vacation she was in 
 better health and spirits than I had known her 
 since I went to Eton. A rigid economy at 
 home had put our finances into a somewhat 
 more satisfactory state, and she enjoyed my 
 driving her about in a pony carriage. She 
 entered more than she had done since my 
 brother's death into the society of the neigh- 
 bourhood, and exerted herself to make some new 
 acquaintances, the Parsonses especially, who 
 had settled at Freshfield, in Sir William Napier's 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 155 
 
 old house. Towards the end of July we drove 
 one hot day to call on Mrs. Fussell at Chantry, 
 who had just come into the neighbourhood as a 
 bride. It turned chill and rainy as we drove 
 home, and my mother caught a cold which 
 developed into acute bronchitis, under which 
 she sank rapidly, and died almost before we 
 had realised her serious danger, on August 4, 
 1848. 
 
 My mother stands out to me above all women 
 I have known in grace, beauty, wisdom, strength 
 of character, and charm of manner. I have 
 heard that some thought her cold, but I doubt 
 if it ever was so, for young men turned to her 
 as their adviser and friend, while her friendships 
 were devoted. She made few late in life ; Lady 
 Becher, formerly Miss O'Neil, was the one 
 person she took to her heart in the last years. 
 Her sweet household ways were all good ; to 
 this day her management of an establishment, 
 in all matters even the most trivial, are those 
 with which all others contrast unfavourably ; 
 she combined the housewifely qualities of the 
 last century with the grace and refinement of 
 modern days. Between her and her sisters 
 was always the deepest affection, and the great 
 
156 MEMORIES 
 
 love my aunt Mrs. Keating showed us was the 
 reflected love which had been given in all its 
 strength to her sister Fanny. 
 
 I have kept no letters on principle, but I 
 have from time to time regretted that I have 
 none of hers. One scrap of her writing acci- 
 dentally preserved in a desk is all I have. It 
 is a note written to me when she was in Bath 
 and I at Wellow, asking me to see that the 
 flowers round my brothers' grave were tended. 
 My father put up a stone tomb after the fashion 
 of that time, which became chipped and flaked 
 by the action of the weather. Since his death, 
 we, their children, have replaced it by a granite 
 cross, over the vault which my father made to 
 hold many, but in which she, and the two boys 
 taken before her death, alone have found, or are 
 likely to find, their rest. 
 
 My eldest sister was eighteen at that time, 
 and became mistress of my father's home, for 
 my cousins, Elizabeth and Annie Wilby, who 
 had long lived with us, had married, the one 
 two or three years before, and Annie, if I 
 remember rightly, that same summer, but 
 earlier. Elizabeth was the second wife of 
 Frederick Curteis, a Kentish squire of some 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 157 
 
 fortune ; she is now dead, but was a kind 
 friend and sister as long as she lived. Annie 
 married Robert Mitford, an old friend, nephew 
 of my godfather, Edward Boodle. They live at 
 Hampstead, and I am sorry we have wholly 
 lost sight of each other ; but we have little in 
 common, and I have never had the faculty of 
 adhering to relatives simply on account of the 
 tie of blood. I blame myself for this. My 
 sister Fanny was too young for her new charge, 
 all the more as we soon felt that my father was 
 certain to marry again. The house was not a 
 true home henceforward, though my sisters did 
 their best under great difficulties. 
 
 The following spring, 1849, at Oxford was 
 very important to me, as in it I formed a 
 friendship, which coloured many years of my 
 after life, with Charles Kingsley. He came 
 to Oxford, having just published the Saint's 
 Tragedy, to stay with Cowley Powles, one of 
 our Exeter tutors, his old school friend. Most 
 of my own set read the Saints Tragedy as 
 soon as it was published, and were curious to 
 see its brilliant author. Powles asked me to 
 breakfast, where also for the first time I met 
 Anthony Froude, afterwards Kingsley's brother- 
 
158 MEMORIES 
 
 in-law. It was, I think, their first meeting also. 
 After breakfast I walked to Iffley with Kingsley, 
 who wanted to see the church, and I think 
 Percy Smith went with us. Percy was about 
 to be ordained, and then, or soon after, it 
 was arranged that he should go as curate to 
 Eversley. There I visited him in the next 
 winter, and we spent the evening at the 
 rectory. Next morning came a note from 
 Kingsley, characteristically dated, " Bed this 
 morning,'' asking me to stay with him. I did 
 so, and the proposed visit of a day or two 
 became one of several weeks, the first of many 
 such in successive years. My recollections of 
 Kingsley are written at length in my Bio- 
 graphical Sketches, but all I have there said 
 is far short of the impression he made on 
 young and sensitive minds. 
 
 A large part of his character and a charming 
 description of his life is given in the Memoir 
 by his widow. The defect of the book is ex- 
 plained by the fact that it was written when 
 the sense of her bereavement was very recent, 
 so that the work is pervaded by a certain 
 solemnity and gloom which were quite alien to 
 the nature of the man as his friends knew him. 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 159 
 
 No doubt, like most persons of exuberant tem- 
 perament, Kingsley had his moments of deep 
 depression, and he was towards the end of his 
 hfe a disappointed man ; but at the time of which 
 I speak he was characterised by a sunny joyous- 
 ness, an abounding vitality, and a contagious 
 energy which were most attractive. He was in 
 no sense a learned man, nor a sound scholar, 
 nor a deep theologian, nor a well-read historian ; 
 he knew more of science than of all these put 
 together, yet was not really scientific. But on 
 almost all subjects conceivable he had read 
 enough to talk brilliantly, without any incon- 
 venient doubt that his equipment was entirely 
 sufficient. 
 
 To young men still in course of formation 
 this coruscating person, ten years older than 
 ourselves, but young in mind, and a born leader 
 of men, came as a kind of revelation. We had 
 never met any one like him, nor indeed have I 
 ever since encountered any one so impressive 
 to the young. What was most attractive to 
 me, and of course not to me alone, was that 
 this man, so varied in knowledge and so brilliant 
 in talk, athletic in habits and frame, a first-rate 
 horseman, keen sportsman, good quoit player. 
 
i6o MEMORIES 
 
 was also a man of prayer and piety, filled with 
 a personal, even passionate, love to Christ, 
 whom he realised as his Friend and Brother in 
 a fashion almost peculiar to the Saints. 
 
 I was at this ' time dissatisfied with the 
 Tractarian theory, and such biblical criticism 
 as I had read was inclining me to those 
 notions which were called afterwards " Broad," 
 and of these Kingsley was the incarnation. 
 He stiffened later in life into a stricter ortho- 
 doxy, and found it possible to defend the 
 Athanasian Creed ; but at that time he certainly 
 did not use it in his church"; and his talk on 
 biblical and dogmatic matters, while always 
 reverent, was extremely free. In those days 
 people actually troubled themselves — perhaps 
 some do now — about the early chapters of 
 Genesis, and Kingsley, Percy Smith, and I 
 were discussing the subject as we paced up 
 and down the garden. Kingsley, who stam- 
 mered dreadfully, tossed back his head, and 
 said with a gasp : " I've always thought that 
 the serpent was a serpent-worshipping black 
 tribe." We came to know that when Kingsley 
 said, " I've always thought," it meant that the 
 sometimes brilliant, always paradoxical, notion 
 
COLLEGE LIFE i6i 
 
 had just flashed into his head for the first 
 time. Percy said with an air of grave puzzle : 
 " Well ! Rector ! but — you know, negroes do 
 not go on their bellies." " No," said Kingsley, 
 not to be done, " they don't, but then snakes 
 don't eat dirt, and niggers do." Another time, 
 discussing the question of laughter in the 
 divine nature, he flashed out : " What ! God 
 not laugh ! What did He make a crab for 
 then ? " All this was consistent with the 
 most passionate and personal love for Christ, 
 as a Friend whom he knew and to whom he 
 spoke. He was absorbed in the work of his 
 parish — out of which he rarely stirred — and 
 found an excellent helper in Percy. " Ah ! 
 Mr. Smith," said an old woman at Eversley 
 to me, " he's a beautiful man ! No matter 
 what time of day or night 'tis, he whips in 
 and puts up such a prayer." 
 
 Kingsley's reading of the Bible, whether at 
 family prayer or in church, sounded like a true 
 message from God ; his sermons, thoroughly 
 unconventional, written in admirable English, 
 were vigorous, reverent, and inspiring. He 
 knew every man, woman, and child in his 
 scattered parish, and, with less effort than I 
 
i62 MEMORIES 
 
 have ever seen, with less sense of incongruity, 
 could pass from light badinage in any casual 
 meeting to deep religious talk on the state of 
 his interlocutor's soul. He was, theology apart, 
 the ideal pastor of his people, living among 
 them and for them, wholly devoted to what he 
 believed his divinely given work. 
 
 I remember that when the curate preached, 
 and Kingsley's part of the service was over, he 
 was wont to put off his surplice and take his 
 place in his usual dress in the pew under the 
 pulpit by his wife's side. When the sermon 
 was ended he would stand up there in the pew 
 and give the blessing in his cut-away coat, 
 without vestige of ecclesiastical garment. 
 
 But the services, if unconventional, were 
 reverent, and whatever deductions might be 
 drawn from his omissions, Kingsley's teaching 
 was sound on the great doctrines of the Christian 
 faith, as expounded in the Anglican formularies. 
 He was kind and tolerant to Nonconformists and 
 their doctrines, and the whole vials of his wrath 
 were reserved for Rome and the priests of 
 Rome. On the Catholic laity he looked with 
 compassion as foolish souls beguiled by liars. 
 In his first novel, Yeast, he introduces a priest 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 163 
 
 with a name which embodied this theory, Padre 
 Bugiardo. 
 
 The great effect Kingsley had on me was that 
 he made it possible for me to take Orders. It 
 had always been tacitly assumed at home that 
 I should do so, and for a long while I had no 
 other thought. But as I grew older I disliked 
 my father's humdrum life, and beheved, as I 
 still believe, that a country clergyman's life in 
 the Anglican Church is either idle or fussy. 
 He has next to nothing to do as clergyman, 
 or he worries his people to death. Then for 
 a time I was attracted by the High Church 
 vision of constant services and sacraments, till 
 I saw the thing did not work practically, except 
 in large town parishes, and that the model priest 
 and parish existed only on paper. Kingsley 
 showed me a different ideal. A man always at 
 work, treating his literary gifts, his schemes for 
 social, sanitary, and political reform, as part of 
 his priestly work ; he took a large view of 
 things, and gave me larger ones than I had ever 
 had before. When I felt the narrowness of the 
 Church, the statements of dogma which fenced 
 it from all the most attractive views of the 
 Catholic Church on the one side and those of 
 
i64 MEMORIES 
 
 the Protestant Churches on the other, Kingsley 
 had no doubt that the Church could and would 
 be widened from within, and become more and 
 more the religious expression of the thought of 
 the time. And it never occurred to him — or, 
 then, to me — to doubt that the thought of the 
 time, the Zeitgeist, must be right. So after a few 
 months of wavering, in which I thought of the 
 Bar and of Medicine, I went back to my early 
 intention, from which my family scarce knew, 
 if they did know, that I had swerved. 
 
 I was moved with Kingsley's enthusiasm, and 
 felt with his feelings ; to be a parson after his 
 pattern was my aim, and a desire to help my 
 fellow-men seemed as a call from God. My 
 mother had always wished to see me a clergy- 
 man, and her death, with the deeper feelings it 
 brought, gave me a push forward in the same 
 direction. I accepted the curacy of Tew, in 
 the diocese of Oxford, and was ordained deacon 
 in the Lent of 185 i. 
 
 My friendship and long residence with 
 Kingsley brought me to know well Frederick 
 Denison Maurice, who had been an old college 
 friend of my father ; Tom Hughes, whom 
 I had also known as a neighbour of Mrs. 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 165 
 
 Majendie ; J. M. Ludlow, and others who were 
 engaged in the Co-operative and Christian 
 Sociahst movements of the day, of which 
 Kingsley's novel Alton Locke (to be read in 
 its first, not in its later editions) is the ex- 
 ponent. I saw much of Maurice, but while 
 loving him personally, as all did who came in 
 contact with him, I am free to confess I never 
 could make head or tail of what he taught or 
 what he meant. 
 
 My association with Kingsley also increased 
 the intimacy already begun at Oxford with 
 Anthony Froude, whom I met at Eversley. 
 Froude was Fellow and Lecturer at Exeter, 
 and lived on terms of considerable intimacy 
 with the senior undergraduates. He was then 
 writing his remarkable book. The Nemesis oj 
 Faith, which, now almost entirely forgotten, 
 deserves to be remembered for two or three 
 pages describing the change which came upon 
 the world in early Christian days at the dis- 
 appearance of the old paganism. Froude was 
 in deacon's orders, and one night, talking over 
 his story with three or four of us, he told us 
 he was very much puzzled to iind a name 
 for it. " Call it The Sceptic Deacon," said 
 
i66 MEMORIES 
 
 Wiltshire Austin, and Froude was not pleased 
 with the title, which equally well suggested the 
 book and its author. 
 
 On the whole my association with these men 
 made me theologically a very broad High 
 Churchman, broad that is in doctrine, but with 
 a strong feeling for pomp of ritual, for music 
 in church, paintings and symbolism of all kinds ; 
 so that outwardly I may often have seemed to 
 belong to the extreme section of the High 
 Church party as it then existed, before what 
 is now called Ritualism had arisen. Politically 
 I became an extreme Radical — much to my 
 uncle Mr. Keating's annoyance — a Republican 
 and a Socialist, so far as these things can be 
 carried out without breach of public order. In 
 politics, at least, my creed has never changed 
 since I became able to formulate it, while it 
 has, on the religious side, passed through Posi- 
 tivism and landed me in the one true home of 
 Faith, the Roman Church. 
 
 Before I pass away from the account of my 
 Oxford days, I may mention that I was present 
 at the lecture in Hall, I think a Greek Testa- 
 ment lecture, in the course of which Sewell 
 burnt Anthony Froude's book, The Nemesis of 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 167 
 
 Faith. Another who was present has lately 
 announced to the world that the copy burnt by 
 Sewell was his own, and I am quite willing to 
 defer to his recollection, though I remember 
 that more than one of us who confessed to 
 having the book were sent to bring it. Blom- 
 field's was the one selected for sacrifice, and I 
 carried my own away with triumph. It was, 
 however, later committed to the flames by Miss 
 M. Daubeney, who equally with Sewell disliked 
 its teaching. 
 
 Few lectures at Oxford in my day were 
 more than mere dry bones of scholarship, though 
 occasionally they afforded matter for laughter 
 afterwards. I remember a tutor at New College 
 reproving the translation given by a man more 
 acquainted with secular than with biblical English. 
 He translated the word ydarrip, stomach, to 
 
 which Miller remarked, "I think, Mr. , 
 
 that ' belly ' is perhaps a more solemn word." 
 
 The examination for a degree was viva voce 
 and public ; and I heard a curious passage at 
 arms between Frank Palgrave, afterwards Fellow 
 of Exeter, and Jowett, who was examining. 
 Jowett said, "What is the reason, Mr. Pal- 
 grave, that the Church of England rejects the 
 
i68 MEMORIES 
 
 Apocrypha ? " " I suppose," answered Palgrave, 
 " because there are so many odd stories in it." 
 " Oh," said Jowett, " if that were the reason, I 
 should think she would go further and reject a 
 good deal more." 
 
 That fencing bout in the schools between 
 Jowett and Palgrave was at the time the talk of 
 all Oxford, and this was a sign that our minds 
 were gravely stirred at any apparent deviations 
 from orthodoxy. There were very few broad 
 Churchmen, and those few not regarded with 
 any favour. Men who were lax in morals and 
 discipline were as a rule most zealous in the 
 maintenance of the strictest verbal accuracy of 
 Holy Scripture. " Stanley," said a man at 
 University, who was certainly not one of the 
 ornaments of his college, " Stanley ! why, he 
 will explain you away anything, from the whale 
 downwards," as if the whole of Christianity 
 depended on the acceptance of the story of 
 Jonah. 
 
 My reading at Oxford was extensive and 
 multifarious. Browning and Mrs. Browning 
 are almost as much associated with my Oxford 
 life as Tennyson was with my Eton days. 
 Whilst staying with Kingsley on one occasion. 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 169 
 
 I had the great pleasure of making Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's acquaintance. She was staying with her 
 friend Miss Mitford at Three Mile Cross, which 
 was near Eversley, and one afternoon Miss 
 Mitford drove over to ask if Kingsley happened 
 to know of any one going up to London, as Mrs. 
 Browning, then with her, did not like to travel 
 up alone. I said I was going, and at once 
 oifered to escort Mrs. Browning. This I did, 
 and I put her in her husband's charge at 
 Paddington, and that was all that I ever saw 
 of her, although I became very intimate with 
 her husband in later years. 
 
 At this time too Carlyle became one of the 
 great influences of my life. My friend George 
 Boyle was an admirable reader, and constantly 
 read aloud to his friends passages of our 
 favourite authors, and from his lips I heard 
 a large part of the French Revolution. I 
 remember well his reading aloud in my room 
 the narrative of the flight to Varennes, and still 
 seem to see his hearers swaying backwards and 
 forwards with excitement, as they heard that 
 most dramatic episode. 
 
 In October 1849 I took my degree, a year 
 and a half before I was of an age to take 
 
lyo MEMORIES 
 
 Orders. This was a very unsadsl'actory time, 
 for I had nothing at all to do, and no particular 
 home. Wallow was not pleasant, for my father's 
 affairs were again in considerable difficulty, and 
 it was clear he thought me only in the way. 
 The Keatings' house was always a home, but 
 I did not care to be often in Bath. I lived 
 much at Eversley, and in the summer of 1850 
 went for the first time beyond London ; my 
 whole experience of the world being up to that 
 time bounded geographically between Truro and 
 London. 
 
 I visited my friends Eardley Knowles — 
 now dead — at Heysham Tower on the shores 
 of Morecambe Bay in Lancashire, and James 
 Aitken in Scotland. His mother and uncle 
 rented Springkell near Ecclefechan for the 
 summer. Thence I went in September for 
 a tour alone in the Highlands. I visited my 
 friend George Boyle, then reading at Oban, and 
 heard Jowett preach a sermon which has never 
 been forgotten by those who were privileged to 
 hear it. Sir M. E. Grant-Duff has recorded 
 his impression of it, but not quite in the words 
 as remembered by me. The peroration as I 
 recorded it is as follows : " From the weakness 
 
COLLEGE LIFE 171 
 
 of the sick-chamber, from the darkness and 
 corruption of the grave, we crawl like poor 
 worms into the light of God's presence." I 
 spent the winter once more in Bath, where my 
 sisters were staying with my aunt. I read 
 fairly hard for Orders. During this time my 
 intercourse with my dearest friend, Charlie 
 Russell, was my great delight daily. 
 
 My father was at Wellow with the younger 
 children, and he often came into Bath ; but his 
 relations with the Keatings were growing very 
 strained. It was plain he intended to marry, 
 and that he would not consult his children's 
 interests. During the winter he announced his 
 intention of marrying Miss Cossins, a lady we 
 knew by name and repute, and had every reason 
 to dislike. I admit her boldness in marrying 
 a man of fifty with next to no means and with 
 eight children ; but this audacity was her only 
 good quality. The Keatings did all they could 
 to receive her courteously and to know her 
 afterwards ; but it was of no avail, she was 
 furiously jealous of my dead mother, and 
 quarrelled with all our old friends. The mar- 
 riage took place from the house of some of 
 Miss Cossins' old friends in London, and at my 
 
172 MEMORIES 
 
 father's earnest request I went to the marriage 
 in the early spring of 185 i, returning to Wellow 
 while they were away on the wedding tour for 
 the few weeks before my ordination. My 
 sisters remained in Bath, and Charlie Russell 
 spent that time with me. 
 
VI 
 
 CLERICAL LIFE— FIRST EXPERIENCES 
 1851-1854 
 
 T^HROUGH Charles Parker, an old Oxford 
 * friend, I had heard of the curacy of Great 
 Tew in the North of Oxfordshire, near which 
 his brother-in-law had lived for a time. I had 
 visited it in the previous winter and agreed with 
 the Rev. J. J. Campbell to become his curate. 
 In Lent 185 1 I went to Cuddesdon for the 
 examination and subsequent ceremony. The 
 Bishop of Oxford, Wilberforce's Life is before 
 the world, and I need say no more of it than 
 that I always disliked and distrusted him, and 
 even at the ordination, which he made singularly 
 impressive, I did not believe in him. But I 
 thoroughly believed in it, and may honestly say 
 that never a man took Orders with more sincere 
 desire than I to do his duty in the Anglican 
 Church to the souls that should be given to my 
 
174 MEMORIES 
 
 charge. In the fervour of feehng at that time all 
 difficulties had left me. I had passed a good ex- 
 amination, and was commended by the Bishop. 
 The ordination took place in Cuddesdon Church, 
 and was a very solemn service. I made at 
 that time special acquaintance with Vernon 
 Blake, now Rector of Stoke Poges, and WilHam 
 Jenkins, Fellow of Jesus, Oxford, who were 
 ordained deacons at the same time, of whom I 
 saw much in the next year or two. 
 
 After a week spent at home with my father 
 and Mrs. Paul, my sisters also having returned, 
 in which I too clearly saw the misery which 
 was to come, I entered on my work at Great 
 Tew early in April. 
 
 Great Tew is what is called a model village. 
 There was not a cottage in it which had not 
 been rebuilt or beautified by Mr. Boulton, the 
 owner of the whole property and the patron of 
 the living. It slopes on a steep hill to the 
 north, possesses a village-green, with various 
 ornamental fountains here and there, the whole 
 place looking like a scene for a pastoral play. 
 The grounds of the great house ran down the 
 same hill, at the east of the village, and the 
 church and rectory stooJ above the whole at the 
 
CLERICAL LIFE 175 
 
 top. There was no house in which the curate 
 could find a lodging, and Mr. Boulton altered 
 and furnished for me a labourer's cottage, per- 
 haps that which of all in the village looked the 
 most like a theatre side-scene. The house con- 
 sisted of one little parlour, a kitchen, a good 
 bedroom above the parlour, and an attic. A 
 woman from the village, the wife of the rector's 
 man, undertook to do for me. She came in the 
 morning to get my breakfast and went away 
 when she had set my tea at night, much after 
 the manner of a college scout. I slept as a 
 rule in the best room, but could always give up 
 this to a friend, or to my sisters when they 
 came to stay with me, and the attic was terribly 
 cold in winter. 
 
 My special duties were to help Campbell in 
 the Sunday morning services at Great Tew, 
 preaching on alternate Sundays, and in the 
 evening I took a service in a school-room at 
 Little Tew about a mile off across the fields. 
 This was my district, and soon I knew every 
 one in it, and most people in Great Tew, though 
 Campbell did not wish me to visit there except 
 casually as a friend. In the winter we had a 
 night-school, one of the first in those parts, and 
 
176 MEMORIES 
 
 it proved a great success. I set myself at once 
 to get a church built at Little Tew, and Mr. 
 Street, the afterwards famous architect, then 
 beginning his career at Wantage, gave us for 
 nothing a design for a very pretty church — 
 chapel-like, with the roof in one span, which 
 was built for an incredibly small sum. This, 
 however, was not finished till I had left Tew. 
 
 The neighbourhood was not large, and con- 
 sisted of the clergy chiefly ; but all were very 
 kind to me. The Bishop even then struck me 
 as an astute and insincere man of whom a 
 typical story may here be told, though it belongs 
 in time to later days. Before he became a 
 bishop he had been Archdeacon of Surrey, and 
 his old Archdeaconry became a part of his later 
 Bishopric of Winchester. At a meeting of the 
 clergy at Clapham his chaplain told him that an 
 
 old Dr. , who had been many years in the 
 
 diocese, was vexed at having been forgotten. 
 " Yes," said the Bishop, " I have not the smallest 
 recollection of him, but I will make it all right, 
 and will go and speak to him. Which is he ? " 
 He was pointed out, and the Bishop made his 
 
 way to him. " My dear Dr. , I have not 
 
 had a moment for a real conversation with you. 
 
CLERICAL LIFE 177 
 
 I need not ask hovf you are after all these years. 
 Do you still ride your grey mare ? " " Yes, my 
 lord, how good of you to remember her," &c. &c. 
 The chaplain, who was within earshot, said when 
 he again came near the Bishop, " Then you did 
 remember Dr. — ■- — after all." " Not a bit of 
 it," said the Bishop ; " I saw the grey hairs on 
 his coat, and I chanced the sex." 
 
 Being so near Oxford I kept up my con- 
 nection with that place, and indeed made one 
 or two friendships with men I had not pre- 
 viously known, and improved some already 
 made. Walter Short, with whom I became 
 very intimate, was a friend of that year, whom 
 I came to know through Henry Kingsley, and 
 in Short's rooms I met Irving and Ormerod, 
 who became two of my closest friends, though 
 I had known Ormerod in a measure before. 
 
 I mention Short, Ormerod, and Kingsley here 
 particularly, because through them I became 
 acquainted with the phenomena of mesmerism, 
 then so much discussed, and really so potent a 
 power as an anaesthetic under operations, though 
 its use in that way has been superseded by the 
 discovery of chloroform. I found that I pos- 
 sessed considerable mesmeric powers, and that 
 
 M 
 
lyS MEMORIES 
 
 Short was a singularly susceptible patient. I 
 need not go into our experiments now, further 
 than to say that of the phenomena generally 
 called " mesmeric " I have no more doubt than 
 that I am writing these words with my own 
 hand. The powerful mesmeriser can influence 
 his subjects at a distance when they are un- 
 conscious of his intentions, can bring about 
 community of the sense of taste, and, in a 
 considerable degree, of thought, can lull pain, 
 and under certain circumstances produce organic 
 change as in the condition of a tumour or stiff 
 joint, and cause complete anaesthesia to surgical 
 operations. What is called clairvoyance, which 
 I have often seen, appears to me a combination 
 of the thoughts transferred from the mesmeriser 
 to his subject and ordinary dreaming, in which 
 the patient talks in his sleep. I believe the 
 whole affair to be purely physical, though I am 
 unable to explain it. But I am sure the prac- 
 tice of it is attended with great danger, except 
 in very careful hands. It has nothing, in my 
 opinion, to do with any of the manifestations of 
 " spiritualism " so called, which seem to be a 
 mixture of imposture and hysteria. 
 
 Ormerod remains one of my dearest friends. 
 
CLERICAL LIFE 179 
 
 Short and I are very friendly when we meet, 
 but time and distance have severed us a good 
 deal. Harry Kingsley is dead. I rarely saw 
 him in later life. 
 
 Martin Irving was a scholar of Balliol. He 
 is the only son of Edward Irving, and a strong 
 adherent to his father's opinions. With him 
 and his family I became very intimate, and I saw 
 much of the working of the Church to which 
 he belonged. He is in Austraha, and was for 
 some time head of a large school at Melbourne ; 
 and though we rarely correspond, I know well 
 that our affection each for the other is un- 
 altered. When Mrs. Oliphant published her 
 life of Edward Irving, Martin and his sister, 
 Mrs. Gardiner, asked me to review the book, 
 which I did in Eraser's Magazine, chiefly in order 
 that I might counteract what she said of Mrs. 
 Irving. Her whole notice of the lady was most 
 disparaging. Through Martin, I had come to 
 know his mother well. There was no house 
 in London at which in my visits I was more 
 warmly welcomed, and I grew to have a very 
 cordial feeling for my friend's mother. She 
 had adopted her husband's views in their 
 entirety, and after her husband's death she 
 
i8o MEMORIES 
 
 followed every development of the doctrine and 
 ritual of the Irvingite Church. On account of 
 this she is represented as a woman of no in- 
 tellect, who had really forced Irving to carry 
 out an engagement made without sufficient 
 thought, and as being altogether unworthy of 
 him. There never was a greater mistake. 
 It is perfectly true that an impressionable 
 man like Irving had more than one fleeting 
 fancy ; but at the same time he was genuinely 
 in love with his wife, a woman of very remark- 
 able intellect, and their life was thoroughly 
 happy. Mrs. Oliphant's disparaging view arose 
 from the fact that her only knowledge of the 
 lady was derived from Mrs. Carlyle, to whom, 
 as Jane Welsh, both Irving and Carlyle had 
 acted as tutor. Jane Welsh refused Irving 
 and accepted Carlyle, but the lady never forgave 
 the wife of her first love. She and Carlyle 
 both detested all the peculiarities of the Catholic 
 Apostolic Church, and laid the whole blame on 
 Mrs. Irving, as can be easily noticed, so far as 
 Carlyle is concerned, by any one who reads 
 his beautiful biographical notice of Edward 
 Irving. I ought in fairness, however, to add 
 that Mrs. Procter, a keen observer, did not 
 
CLERICAL LIFE i8i 
 
 think Mrs. Irving at all the equal of her 
 distinguished husband ; but that lady, sharp as 
 she was both in eye and tongue, was seldom 
 able to be or seem to be tolerant to others 
 of her own sex. The Catholic Apostolic 
 Church is an interesting experiment in church 
 making, but is confined to a few adherents, and 
 seems to be dying out. I cannot say I was 
 ever attracted by the special characteristics of 
 that Church, though its members, more than 
 most people I have known, lived up to their 
 principles. They really were in daily expecta- 
 tion of the immediate second coming of the 
 Lord. Martin Irving is now an " Angel " or 
 bishop of his church. He was in England in 
 1897, as youthful in spirit, as believing and as 
 true a friend as ever. 
 
 I remained at Tew more than a year — a 
 pleasant time, during which the Keatings paid 
 me a visit, staying at the little village inn. My 
 sisters were my guests more than once. Boyle, 
 Short, Percy Smith, Edward Goodlake, Charlie 
 Russell, and others paid me visits. I liked my 
 work, and my parishioners liked me. At Easter 
 1852 the Bishop came to confirm at Tew, and 
 asked me if I would take the sole charge of 
 
i82 MEMORIES 
 
 Bloxham, a very large village near Banbury, 
 and about six miles from Tew. The circum- 
 stances of the place were curious. The incum- 
 bent was over ninety, the curate over seventy. 
 The manner in which the services had been 
 performed had been a scandal for many years, 
 and in days of revived interest in Church 
 matters there was a cry for reform all through 
 the neighbourhood. The scenes which took 
 place in the church were almost incredible. 
 The wine at the communion was put on the 
 table in a black bottle, and on one occasion the 
 cork had not been drawn. Mr. Bell, the vicar, 
 turned to the intending communicants, as they 
 knelt at the rails, and asked, " Has any lady 
 or gentleman a corkscrew ? " This implement 
 having been obtained (I fancy from the public- 
 house opposite, where stimulants were occasion- 
 ally procured for the aged curate during the 
 sermon), the service proceeded. The rite was 
 only administered at Christmas, on Good Friday, 
 and on Easter Day. A very worthy old woman, 
 Mrs. Boffin, a lace-maker, went one Easter 
 Day. When the rector drew near her at the 
 rails, he said, " Hallo, Mrs. Boffin, you here 
 again ! Why, I gave it to you on Friday ; I 
 
CLERICAL LIFE 183 
 
 am not going to give it to you again; go away !" 
 which the poor woman did, with many tears. 
 She told me the story, which I ascertained to 
 be quite true, as a reason for having ceased to 
 be a communicant. These and other scandals 
 which would be tedious to tell brought down 
 the Bishop on Mr. Bell, who to avoid legal 
 proceedings gave up the whole parish into the 
 Bishop's hands, to put in his own curate. I 
 asked the Bishop what were to be my relations 
 to Mr. Bell. " Nothing but to be civil to him," 
 was the reply, and on those terms I accepted 
 the curacy. Mr. Sanders, the curate, was even 
 more infirm than Mr. Bell, and was only too 
 glad to resign, some small pension being secured 
 to him through the Bishop. I had not long 
 to be civil to Mr. Bell, for he caught cold, 
 and after a very short illness died on the 
 day I took possession, and the first duty I had 
 was to bury him. 
 
 This was an extremely awkward incident. 
 I had taken a small house for a year, which 
 I had furnished, and there was a prospect of 
 being turned out at once, since of course the 
 Bishop's arrangement was not binding on any 
 new incumbent. I heard, however, from Eton, 
 
i84 MEMORIES 
 
 the living being in the gift of that college, that 
 the Provost intended to offer it to a friend who 
 was a chaplain in India, and he, if he accepted 
 it, could not enter on it for nearly twelve months, 
 so that even if he did not, I was to be in 
 charge through the summer. 
 
 My work at Bloxham was singularly happy. 
 The place had been so neglected that the people 
 were glad to have any one to take interest in 
 them ; the few church-people left were delighted 
 with decent services. My preaching, for I wrote 
 my sermons with care, was at any rate fresher 
 and more intelligible than that to which the 
 people had been accustomed. Instead of some 
 twenty persons, the congregation soon filled the 
 large church. I was still a deacon, and there 
 was some little difficulty in carrying out the 
 Bishop's desire that I should institute monthly 
 communions ; but Mr. Wilson, the vicar of 
 Banbury, of which town my friend Vernon 
 Blake was curate, was extremely kind in allow- 
 ing me to exchange duties on the necessary 
 days with one of his staff. 
 
 The neighbours were very civil, and with one 
 family in the village my relations were close 
 and cordial. Mr. John Harman, a brewer at 
 
CLERICAL LIFE 185 
 
 Banbury, lived with his mother and sister at 
 Bloxham, and became my intimate friend. We 
 did not agree in church matters, he was low 
 and I broad-high ; but he knew how much 
 depended on the church being worked decently, 
 and he always gave me his warm support. 
 
 Among the clergy round who helped me 
 much was the Rev. Philip Hookins, whose 
 vigorous sermons were a refreshing change to 
 me, who heard few other than my own. The 
 oddities of his style came quite naturally to 
 him ; and he by no means sought for singu- 
 larity, though he attained it. One sermon that 
 he preached in aid of the schools ended thus : 
 " And mind you, you who can must give gold, 
 none of your paltry half-crowns for me, unless 
 you expect what is impossible, half a crown in 
 Heaven and half a palm branch." 
 
 I was ordained priest on Trinity Sunday, with 
 no diminution of the fervour and eagerness with 
 which I had been ordained deacon. I do not 
 remember whether it was on my ordination as 
 deacon or as priest that Kingsley made great 
 fun of the Bishop's arrangements — a procession 
 through the palace grounds, not as an orderly 
 way of going from point to point, but as a 
 
i86 MEMORIES 
 
 service in itself, and nothing to proceed with, as 
 Catholics carry the Host. The Bishop at that 
 time told me the Provost now thought his friend 
 in India would not take the living, and if not, 
 he did not intend to exercise his right of pre- 
 sentation ; in which case it would fall to Mr. 
 Bethell, and that he should be glad if Mr. 
 Bethell could be induced to present me. My 
 father, who was in London, went to Eton and 
 saw Mr. Bethell, who was very favourably 
 inclined, and for some time it seemed possible 
 that I should stay at Bloxham. The Provost, 
 however, once more changed his mind, and 
 appointed his cousin, the Rev. James Hodgson, 
 to be vicar of Bloxham. I spent the summer 
 at Bloxham — I was there exactly six months 
 — and it was memorable to me from family 
 matters. Then came the final break-up of our 
 home at Wellow, when my elder sisters made 
 a home with our uncle and aunt in Bath. 
 
 I was now in great doubt what was to be my 
 next move. The Bishop, who had been kind 
 about Bloxham, exerted himself to find me an- 
 other curacy ; and by his advice I applied to Mr. 
 Morrell, rector of Henley, for the post of senior 
 curate, which he agreed to give me. He heard, 
 
CLERICAL LIFE 187 
 
 however, of my having attended a meeting pre- 
 sided over by F. D. Maurice, at which Charles 
 Kingsley was one of the speakers, and grew 
 frightened at my opinions, or what he supposed 
 them to be, and threw me over at the last. 
 At this juncture I heard that a gentleman 
 residing abroad with his family wanted a tutor 
 in orders for his two elder boys, and as I had 
 never been abroad, and needed change and 
 rest, I offered myself for the post and was 
 accepted. 
 
 I left Bloxham and Oxfordshire with much 
 regret, and believe that if I had remained there 
 as vicar, I might have stiffened down into a 
 permanent high churchman, unconscious of the 
 stir of life around. While the occupations of 
 the clergyman of a small parish are not enough 
 to fill his time, and I had many hours on my 
 hands at Tew, Bloxham would have given me 
 little leisure for reading or thought. It is an im- 
 portant place, and I should have probably been 
 much absorbed in diocesan and preaching work, 
 so that my whole course would have been dif- 
 ferent. In those two curacies I learned to 
 know the English poor well, and to have a deep 
 sympathy with them. They are not stolid and 
 
i88 MEMORIES 
 
 stupid, as is so often assumed. What they 
 lack is book-learning, but for one who can talk 
 their language and understand their thoughts, 
 there is much to repay the attempt to know 
 them better. There is scarce any limit to the 
 influence which an unmarried clergyman, living 
 with and for his people, may not exercise over 
 his young men. But then the English Church 
 does not train her parsons for celibacy, and the 
 Roman Church alone has the secret of such 
 training. I hope and think my time as a 
 country curate was profitably spent : it was 
 certainly one of great happiness. I had now 
 settled down into that phase of thought which 
 seemed to satisfy me. I was a latitudinarian 
 in teaching, and a high churchman in external 
 observances ; the controversy between the 
 Churches had ceased to interest me, and there 
 was no reason to suppose I should adopt other 
 opinions than those into which I had drifted. 
 
 What is now called " Ritualism " was un- 
 known, most of us were old-fashioned high 
 churchmen. Very few held daily services, and 
 a good many still preached in black gowns : 
 even the stole was looked upon as something 
 remarkable. I imagine that my father's mode 
 
CLERICAL LIFE 189 
 
 of conducting service was the use of all the 
 churches in the neighbourhood, though I never 
 attended one. Hymn-books were unknown, 
 and such singing as took place was confined to 
 the version of the psalms at the end of the 
 Prayer Book ; and the selection of these was as 
 often as not left to the parish clerk. The Rev. 
 Richard Palairet, vicar of Philip's Norton, be- 
 came engaged to a lady during his holiday, and 
 when the service was over on the Sunday morn- 
 ing after his return the clerk said, " I hope you 
 were pleased, sir, with the selection of psalms 
 this morning." " Yes," said Mr. Palairet, " I 
 saw nothing to notice in them." " O sir, we 
 selected them out of compliment to you, hearing 
 as you were going to be married ; the first 
 
 ' My soul with grateful thoughts of love, 
 Entirely is possessed.' " 
 
 Wilson, of Banbury, it is true, had daily service, 
 but his father. Dr. Wilson, a clergyman also, 
 was a pronounced Evangelical of the old school. 
 He was Squire of Worton, and had given the 
 living to Mr. Lancaster, an Oxford don, also of 
 the old school, who shared with Tatham of 
 
I90 MEMORIES 
 
 Lincoln the credit of the story that he wished, 
 in the University pulpit, " that Jarman theology 
 and Jarman philosophy were at the bottom of 
 the Jarman Ocean." 
 
 Once at Dr. Wilson's a missionary was pre- 
 sent who gave a very bright picture of the 
 climes in which he had laboured. "And why 
 should not I go too ? " said old Mr. Lancaster ;- 
 " I'll take a young wife, I'll renew my youth." 
 " But what of Mrs. Lancaster ? " was demanded 
 — the old lady was quietly knitting at his side — 
 " Oh, Nancy, poor fool, I quite forgot Nancy ! " 
 was the amazing answer. Of the Wilson family 
 at Worton, Bishop Wilson of Calcutta was a 
 hero and evangelical Pontiff. In after years I 
 knew intimately many people who had lived in 
 Calcutta during his bishopric, amongst them 
 relatives of my own. He was a most grotesque 
 old man, and the stories told of him would 
 seem almost incredible, were they not so well 
 attested. I may give one which reached me 
 from two independent sources, both ear and 
 eye-witnesses. Dr. M'Dougall came up to 
 Calcutta to his consecration as Anglican bishop 
 of Labuan. Bishop Wilson hospitably enter- 
 tained a large number of the chief Indian 
 
CLERICAL LIFE 191 
 
 officials at dinner the evening before, and on 
 this occasion Dr. M'Dougall's spirits were as 
 uproarious as usual, combining the character- 
 istics of the medical student, which had been 
 his previous calling, with those of a spiritual 
 pastor. Bishop Wilson, as was his invariable 
 custom, had family prayers before his friends 
 left, and prayed extempore for the company 
 present. He ended with the prayer, "That the 
 Viceroy might properly fulfil the duties of his 
 high office ; that the Chief Justice (who was 
 present) might administer the law righteously," 
 &c. &c., and ended with praying, " Bless, O 
 Lord, this our brother, on whom, after the 
 example of the Holy Apostles, we are to-morrow 
 to lay our hands; may he be delivered from all 
 sins which most easily beset him, especially from 
 that of ' inordinate jocularity.' " The prayer 
 was interrupted by a shout of laughter from the 
 corner where M'Dougall was kneeling, and the 
 proceedings were brought to an untimely end. 
 
 I joined my pupils' father in London early in 
 the autumn of 1852, and started with him via 
 Paris and Strassburg to meet the rest of the 
 family, including my pupils, at Carlsruhe, where 
 we were to winter. 
 
192 MEMORIES 
 
 I am not sure that my next year was usefully 
 spent. A governess would have done equally 
 well for my pupils ; while the life in a family, 
 living economically abroad, and with few oppor- 
 tunities of mixing with intelligent people, was 
 not so improving as it should have been. 
 
 Carlsruhe was then a terribly dull place. 
 The Grand Duke was mad and the Prince 
 Regent unmarried. The dynasty had not long 
 been restored after the revolution of 1848, and 
 the Regent had not forgotten that he had been 
 thrown out of the barrack window in that 
 stormy time. The town, depending on the 
 Court as it did, was still duller than it would 
 have been in ordinary years, for the theatre 
 had been burnt down and was not yet rebuilt. 
 1 spoke no German, though I began at once to 
 take lessons ; and the residents were not given 
 to much civility, had I been able to speak their 
 tongue. There were no other English people 
 in the place, and my employers were no com- 
 panions. The father was a pompous person, 
 absorbed in the contemplation of his own 
 imaginary greatness ; his wife a very sweet and 
 charming woman, but afraid of him, not in 
 strong health, and much occupied. The gover- 
 
TUTORSHIP ABROAD 193 
 
 ness was a foolish, touchy httle woman, who 
 much resented the fact that I dined late, while 
 she dined early with her pupils. The children 
 made amends for a great deal. My pupils were 
 nice boys, and the little girls delightful. There 
 was also a family of Hoffmann, who lived in 
 the same house on the floor above us, whom I 
 visited a good deal, and I made a few friends 
 in the town, notably an attache from Vienna, 
 Baron von Reichenbach, with whom I took a 
 few walks. But for the most part my life was 
 extremely dreary, and as the season was a very 
 open one, we had not even the skating and 
 sleighing which sometimes lend life and anima- 
 tion to a German winter. The pleasantest 
 part of my stay in Carlsruhe is connected with 
 the music and services in the great Catholic 
 church. I made acquaintance with some of the 
 priests, and was in a degree enabled to under- 
 stand the rites I saw there. 
 
 At Christmas in that year I went to Wies- 
 baden to stay with my friends the Raymonds, 
 and saw something of gay family German life. 
 They were living in the house of Herr Hergen- 
 hahn, who had been Prime Minister to the 
 Duchy of Nassau, whose family were courteous, 
 
 N 
 
194 MEMORIES 
 
 cultivated people ; and there I saw my first 
 Christmas tree, an entertainment not then natu- 
 ralised and vulgarised in England. Thence I 
 went to a village near Coblentz to spend a day 
 or two with Colonel and Mrs. Moore, Mrs. 
 Campbell's father and mother. She had died 
 in childbirth soon after I left Tew, and the 
 old people were glad to see any one who 
 had known her. They were living in an Eng- 
 lish boarding-house, and only Trollope, or still 
 more his mother, Mrs. Trollope, could do 
 justice to the comic vulgarity of such an 
 establishment. 
 
 I returned to Carlsruhe to find that with 
 spring weather we were to go to Constance, 
 and our move accordingly took place in April. 
 We lived in a great house on the lake and 
 opposite the Hecht Hotel, then kept by a very 
 good fellow who had a villa some way off on 
 the shore to which we used often to row on 
 summer evenings. The stay at Constance was 
 most pleasant, and I shall always look back on 
 it with delight. Two acquaintances which I 
 made there were especially pleasant, Fraulein 
 Marie Ellenrieder, an old lady who was Hofma- 
 lerin to the Baden Court, and indeed, indepen- 
 
TUTORSHIP ABROAD 195 
 
 dently of that titular certificate, a charming 
 painter and most interesting woman. Her work 
 is but little known in England, and I think that 
 a picture which the Queen has at Windsor, in 
 the private apartments, of Saint Felicitas and 
 her seven sons, and a little sketch in my pos- 
 session, an infant Jesus with the Cross, may 
 be the only ones in this country. But she is 
 much appreciated in her own part of the world, 
 and many of the churches in Baden have her 
 works. The large martyrdom of Saint Stephen 
 in the Catholic church at Carlsruhe, over the 
 high altar, is by her. By the time we got to 
 Constance I was fairly fluent in German, and I 
 used to spend a long time with the old lady 
 when she was painting. Our conversations 
 almost always ended with the^ words, ''Ah, 
 Herr Paul, what a pity it is that you are not 
 a Catholic." 
 
 My other friend was Colonel Johnson, of the 
 Guards, an old Waterloo officer, at which battle 
 he had been one of the youngest combatants. 
 He was at that time an old bachelor, though he 
 afterwards married a very elderly dame, Lady 
 Eleanor Featherstonhaugh. He and I used to 
 pace for hours at night the path overlooking 
 
196 MEMORIES 
 
 the lake, between it and a swift stream which 
 bounded our garden, and on the old covered 
 wooden bridge. The one is now filled up, 
 the other destroyed by the railway. Colonel 
 Johnson was extremely well-read, especially in 
 poetry, and he had a good memory, so that 
 when the conversation flagged, or anything I 
 said set him off, he would quote Pope, Byron, 
 or Scott literally by the canto ; and I trace my 
 still enthusiastic admiration for Pope chiefly to 
 the long recitations and discussions with the 
 Colonel. 
 
 Here, too, I made the casual acquaintance 
 of an Irishman, afterwards M.P., a man of 
 about my own age, who was then, by no means 
 for the first or last time, in hiding from his 
 creditors. He was a most amusing fellow, and 
 joined us often in our evening walks. He 
 told one good story, which I have no reason to 
 doubt, of his experiences at a Catholic college. 
 I was asking him about Confession, and how 
 far it upheld discipline. He told me that the 
 Chaplain was the Confessor, and that when any 
 sin affecting school discipline was confessed, the 
 penance inflicted was that the penitent should 
 go and admit it, not under the seal of confes- 
 
TUTORSHIP ABROAD 197 
 
 sion, to the Rector. On one occasion he had 
 done something or other which would infallibly 
 have necessitated his removal from the college 
 had it come to the Rector's ears. Being there- 
 fore quite aware that any priest must hear a 
 confession if the penitent insists, he went 
 directly to the Rector, and begged him to hear 
 his confession, to which he consented, but with 
 some demur. When the grave matter in question 
 came out, the reason for this selection was ap- 
 parent. The Rector could not know out of con- 
 fession what he knew already in confession, and 
 there was no higher authority to whom to send 
 his penitent ; thus he was placed in the position 
 of the Lord of the Unjust Steward, who could 
 not but commend him because he had done so 
 wisely. " Go along wid ye, ye young divil," 
 were the words with which the narrator said he 
 was dismissed, but it is probable that he uncon- 
 sciously translated into Irish those which were 
 actually spoken. 
 
 In the early summer, through the absence 
 of their parents in England, I was left in sole 
 charge of the boys, and the governess was in 
 charge of the girls and younger children. The 
 boys and I dined at the hotel table-d'hote for the 
 
198 MEMORIES 
 
 most part, but we were a good deal away on 
 excursions in the neighbourhood. I remember 
 with especial delight a week spent at Schaff- 
 hausen. It was soon after our return thence, 
 still in the early summer, that I was attacked 
 by a serious fever, which I now believe to have 
 been typhoid. I was very ill and had no proper 
 doctor, for the Italian practising in Constance 
 evidently knew nothing of the case, nor proper 
 nursing, for the children's nurse could not 
 neglect her charges for me, and no one dreamt, 
 I less than any, of the need of a trained 
 nurse. However, with days of semi-delirium 
 and wretchedness, I got through the fever, and 
 was left terribly weak, which made it quite 
 necessary for me to throw up my tutorship. 
 
 At this juncture I heard from my old tutor 
 at Eton, who had now become head -master, 
 that a conductship or chaplaincy was vacant, to 
 which was attached the curacy of the parish 
 of Eton, and that he had suggested me to the 
 Provost to fill the post. 
 
 I accepted it with pleasure, and agreed to 
 enter on my duties in the following November, 
 when it was convenient to Mr. Harrison, my 
 predecessor, to leave Eton and the house, near 
 
TUTORSHIP ABROAD 199 
 
 the cemetery, which I was to occupy. I took 
 leave of my employers with much friendliness, 
 and being still extremely weak, adopted the 
 way which gave me most water travel, going to 
 Heilbronn, then down the Necker and Rhine. 
 I was really too ill to enjoy either, and could 
 not leave the steamer at Heidelberg. On my 
 arrival in England I went to Weymouth, where 
 I soon grew stronger. 
 
 In September I paid a long visit to the 
 Harmans at Bloxham, taking the duty for a 
 while at Mr. Harrison's new living about ten 
 miles off, to which John Harman drove me. 
 Hodgson was administering the parish with 
 much High Church vigour, but by no means 
 acceptably to the people, and was busying him- 
 self with a college founded by his curate, Mr. 
 Hewett, which was to be a second Radley, but 
 failed lugubriously. In other hands, and with 
 all connection with the Parish Church severed, 
 it is doing well enough as a secondary school. 
 I sent my brother Willie there for a time, till 
 I could have him with me at Eton or arrange 
 to send him to an Eton dame's. Hodgson was 
 maintaining a daily service single-handed, which 
 I undertook to keep up while he took a holiday. 
 
200 MEMORIES 
 
 Harman's house being close at hand. This had 
 been a great tie, and Hodgson had scarce gone 
 beyond the bounds of the village for a year and 
 more. I remember the delight with which he 
 started on his holiday with the words, " I'm 
 so much obliged to you. Please God, I won't 
 go to church for a month." He made other 
 arrangements for his Sunday duty. 
 
VII 
 
 CONDUCT OF ETON AND MASTER 
 IN COLLEGE 
 
 1853-1862 
 
 IT was arranged that my elder sister should 
 come to me at Eton and keep house for 
 me as soon as my house there was ready. My 
 old tutor asked me to come and stay with him 
 for as long as I pleased. I accepted his in- 
 vitation, and entered on my duties at Eton on 
 November 5th, 1853. There were then two 
 conducts, who shared between them the whole 
 parish work and the services in the Chapel 
 of Ease — St. John's Church was not then built 
 — and in the schoolroom at Eton Wick ; we took 
 alternate weeks in the College Chapel, and had 
 our districts in the parish. My colleague, Mr. 
 Marshall, was easy enough to get on with, 
 though we never became intimate. The house 
 near the cemetery, then half the size it now 
 
202 MEMORIES 
 
 is, just held us with one spare room. All the 
 people at Eton were extremely kind, and I 
 liked my new work well. I was near enough 
 to see a great deal of my dear friend Charles 
 Kingsley, and except that it was very hard 
 to live on my small stipend of ;£^I20 a 
 year, my time at the Cottage was a happy 
 one. The small sum which came to me at 
 my dear mother's death was partially spent in 
 starting me in life, and I had also lent a con- 
 siderable portion to my father. I thought all 
 along it was a gift, and so it proved. Let it be 
 distinctly understood, however, that I do not 
 blame my father. He was always sanguine, 
 and fully believed that he would be able to 
 repay my loan. He believed, and so did I, 
 that the sum was properly secured to me at 
 his death ; that it was not so secured was not 
 his fault. 
 
 My next summer holidays after I went to 
 Eton were spent in Wales. Martin Irving 
 took a reading party with him to Aber near 
 Bangor, and invited me to share their lodgings. 
 Walter Short was of the party, and the stay 
 was in every way pleasant. I was glad to 
 have time for reading while the others were 
 
CONDUCT OF ETON 203 
 
 hard at work, and our afternoon excursions up 
 the mountain, Carnedd Llewellyn, which lay 
 immediately behind us, gave us plenty of vigo- 
 rous exercise. I had then for some consider- 
 able time adopted a vegetarian diet, and was 
 pleased to find that my powers of endurance 
 were quite equal to those of the rest of the 
 party. My belief in the possibilities of that 
 diet are as great as ever, but the difficulties 
 of carrying out such a mode of life in a flesh- 
 eating community, unless one live a hermit life, 
 are great. I have more than once adopted it 
 since, once for two years ; and each time I 
 abandoned it with regret, through stress of 
 difficulty in getting anything to eat without 
 discomposing the habits of all around me. It 
 has never been a matter of conscience to me, 
 as for many years past total abstinence from 
 strong drink has been ; but I still think with 
 Mrs. Anna Kingsford that abstinence from flesh 
 of all kinds may be called, "The perfect way 
 in diet." 
 
 My stay in Wales is ever memorable to me, 
 however, from my having there read the book 
 which did much to shake my faith in revealed 
 religion. I do not remember what turned 
 
204 MEMORIES 
 
 my attention to Positivism — it may have been 
 my casual meeting with Dr. Congreve, with 
 whom, when he was tutor at Wadham, I 
 had been intimate at Oxford ; but I was 
 induced to study the Philosophic Positive, and 
 took with me into Wales Miss Martineau's 
 translation and abridgment of that work. It 
 had on me a very great effect, but its 
 leaven worked for some years without my 
 knowing all that it had done. For nearly 
 twenty years thereafter I believed I had ac- 
 cepted Comte's teaching only in politics and 
 in social matters, that I was Positivist only as 
 so many are at the present day, when the 
 mode of thought which Comte formulated is in 
 the air. It still seemed possible to be Positivist 
 and Christian, even Christian priest, and I felt 
 of Comte, then, what I feel now, in George 
 Eliot's words : " that I would not submit to 
 him my heart or my intellect." Though I still 
 considered that the Church of England might 
 be widened from the inside and made com- 
 mensurate with English thought — though for 
 twenty years to come I found it possible to 
 remain within her boundaries, and that the 
 " vivre pour autrui," Comte's great maxim, could 
 
CONDUCT OF ETON 205 
 
 best be carried out by me in the Church of 
 Christ, whose principle was the same : — the 
 study of the Philosophie Positive was the 
 beginning of the end of my connection with 
 the Established Church, and, for the time, with 
 theology. 
 
 But if Comte's influence made me lose faith 
 for a time, he did better for me than this. It 
 may seem strange, but, till I did so under his 
 direction, I had never read the Imitation oj 
 Christ. Comte bids all his followers meditate 
 on this holy book, teUing them to substitute 
 humanity for God. The daily study of the 
 Imitation for several years did more than aught 
 else to bring me back to faith, and to bring 
 faith back to me. 
 
 I had been a year at Eton when Hardisty, 
 the master in college, who was assistant in the 
 Lower School, took a boarding-house, and neces- 
 sarily resigned his post. The head-master, with 
 the Provost's consent, offered me the vacancy, 
 which I accepted. This, in fact, had been his 
 intention all along in bringing me to Eton. No 
 salary was at first attached to it, but simply 
 rooms in college, and a third Conduct was 
 appointed in consequence of my withdrawal 
 
2o6 MEMORIES 
 
 from a considerable part of my previous 
 duties. 
 
 The mastership in college was a compara- 
 tively new appointment. Up to the year 1845, 
 or thereabouts, when the new buildings were 
 finished, the head-master was personally respon- 
 sible for the care of the collegers. The real 
 rule, or rather horrible tyranny, was adminis- 
 tered by the sixth-form boys, and the head- 
 master only occasionally appeared on the scene, 
 preceded by a servant carrying a lantern. From 
 certain windows his advent could be noted a 
 minute or two before his arrival, time enough to 
 put out of sight all that was illicit, and at one 
 of these windows a fag was posted to keep 
 watch. So thoroughly was this understood, 
 that on very cold nights Dr. Kcate had been 
 known to send his compliments to the captain 
 of the school to say he was not coming into 
 college, in order that the poor little boy-watch 
 might be relieved from his chilly post. 
 
 Hawtrey had rarely appeared on the scene, 
 and when on one occasion he tasted the beer at 
 the boys' supper and found it laced with gin, 
 he only remarked, " Vile coachman's drink ! " and 
 went his way without further comment. Any- 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 207 
 
 thing more dangerous than the introduction of 
 spirits ad libitum can hardly be imagined. The 
 domestic comforts of the boys were looked after 
 by an old woman for the little boys, and a man 
 and his wife for the elders. These made the 
 beds and tidied up the breakfast and tea-rooms 
 rather less well than the same thing might be 
 done in a workhouse ward. Each boy was 
 apportioned to a dame, at whose house he 
 was supposed to have a room in case of sick- 
 ness ; she sent his clothes to the wash, and 
 had a general care of his health, but the 
 dame rarely reserved the room she was bound 
 to keep free for the use of her collegers. The 
 sixth-form boys were allowed the use of a 
 sitting-room " up town," a lodging, that is, for 
 the day, over which no one whatever had the 
 smallest control. 
 
 The state of bullying, discomfort, and misery 
 in college was such that at the time when 
 Hodgson stirred himself to provide new build- 
 ings for the collegers, only forty boys were 
 found to avail themselves of the privileges 
 meant for seventy, and those were appointed 
 by nomination. The improvement was great, 
 and the numbers rose. A keen competition was 
 
2o8 MEMORIES 
 
 established for the election, and what was actu- 
 ally done was to give forty-nine boys each a 
 small room as in Oppidan houses, keeping only 
 twenty-one in the old long-chamber, all little 
 boys. The rooms " up town " were abolished, 
 the sixth-form boys were allowed to " stay out," 
 that is, to be ill in their own rooms, if they were 
 only suffering from some trivial ailment ; but in 
 all other respects the system remained the same. 
 Abraham, who was then one of the younger 
 masters, very generously offered to give up his 
 boarding-house and live, or at least sleep, in 
 college, and restore something like discipline ; 
 and no doubt some good was done, but the 
 whole change was miserably inadequate, and it 
 was resented by big boys who had enjoyed 
 their lawlessness. It had come to be a tradition 
 that "Tugs" were big and rough and brutal, 
 and they did not like the civilising influence 
 brought to bear on them. 
 
 Abraham after a time decided to cast in his lot 
 with his friend Selwyn, who had become Bishop 
 of New Zealand ; he resigned his post to Mar- 
 riott, who had been an old colleger and one of 
 our lecturers at Exeter. For him rooms were 
 made out of part of the old buildings, communi- 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 209 
 
 eating with the college, like a rather larger set 
 of Oxford rooms. But this was for him only a 
 stepping-stone to a tutor's house, as it was with 
 Hardisty, who succeeded him. The old " Tug " 
 tradition remained in full force ; the master had 
 no true authority, and Hardisty in going his 
 rounds used to knock at a door before entering, 
 and even suffered it without remonstrance to be 
 locked against him. 
 
 The head-master, Goodford, wished that so 
 far as possible the state of things in college 
 should be conformed to that of an oppidan 
 house, and therefore put me in, who knew 
 nothing of and cared nothing for college tradi- 
 tions. There were considerable difficulties in 
 my way, not the least of which was that the 
 captain at the moment, who resented all changes, 
 was one whose family I knew well at home. 
 I need not, however, go into the means by 
 which after a time discipline was restored and 
 many grave abuses rectified, through all of 
 which I had the general feeling of the boys 
 with me. It is impossible to speak too grate- 
 fully of all that the boys were to me. I lived 
 for them and with them, and thought of them 
 only, and as a rule they were to me like 
 
2IO MEMORIES 
 
 younger brothers and dear friends. I made 
 some mistakes in character, but on the whole 
 am glad to have trusted even bad boys as I did ; 
 they were the better for being trusted, and but 
 few abused the confidence I placed in them. 
 Nothing could exceed the head-master's kind- 
 ness to me in any difficulty ; he gave me the 
 most constant support against any of my col- 
 leagues who thought me a dangerous innovator, 
 and against some of the Fellows who feared I 
 was too high a churchman. 
 
 Among the masters who gave me consistent 
 and hearty support were Ottiwell Waterfield, 
 Augustus Birch, and E. D. Stone. My good 
 friend Edward Hale had not then a house, but 
 afterwards when he had, he gave me a cordial 
 and affectionate support. Certain lay masters, 
 notably William Johnson and John Walford, 
 turned over to me the preparation of their 
 pupils for Confirmation, though a few others, 
 namely Russell Day and Wolley Dod, con- 
 sidered that my religious influence was danger- 
 ous. As time went on my own collegers 
 began to return as masters ; and one and all, 
 I believe, administered their houses on the 
 principle on which I had conducted college, 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 211 
 
 giving me their most hearty support, notably 
 Frank Cornish, whose friendship, begun when 
 he was a boy in college, is among the most 
 prized possessions of my life. 
 
 An illness which attacked a boy was among 
 the causes which led to a reform of the arrange- 
 ments in college. He was not at that time in 
 the sixth-form, though he was only just below 
 it ; he was feeling extremely ill, and told me how 
 uncomfortable he was at his dame's, where no 
 proper accommodation was provided for him, and 
 asked my leave to stay in college. I could not 
 give this, but obtained the head-master's per- 
 mission that he should stay with me in my 
 rooms, returning into college only at night. 
 This was resented by his dame, who received 
 a trifle extra for each day a boy " stayed out." 
 When it appeared that the complaint was 
 measles, he had of course to go to his dame's, 
 but it brought prominently before the head- 
 master that there were great discomforts and 
 inconveniences attending the existing system. 
 
 It came to my knowledge that at the same 
 dame's, in another serious case, no proper 
 arrangement had been made for a boy of 
 eighteen, but that when he was unable to leave 
 
212 MEMORIES 
 
 his room or even his bed, he had been placed 
 in the same room with a fourth-form boy, who 
 as best he could had to act as sick nurse. At 
 another boarding-house, a boy who broke his 
 leg had a pallet placed in the lady-housekeeper's 
 sitting-room, who continued to use it as such. 
 With the head-master's concurrence I embodied 
 these facts in a memorandum addressed to the 
 college ; and it was decided to build on the site 
 of the disused college stables proper rooms for 
 servants, to allow me to engage a housekeeper, 
 to provide rooms for boys staying out, and in 
 fact to make " college " into a proper boarding- 
 house. The authorities, however, with very 
 questionable economy, gave an exceedingly 
 small sum for all these arrangements, and the 
 class of servants we could get was not first 
 rate. Some of the rooms in the new buildings 
 were darkened by those erected for servants, 
 and the living arrangements for the collegers 
 are still susceptible of great improvement, if 
 indeed college as a separate institution ought 
 to exist at all. 
 
 I have no doubt that it would be far better 
 to distribute the money given in scholarships 
 among the school at large, and very probably 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 213 
 
 the scholars might be raised to the number 
 of a hundred instead of seventy when the 
 expenses of the master in college, the staff 
 of servants, the college servants for hall, &c., 
 were removed. This would infuse a spirit of 
 work into the whole school, whereas at present 
 the collegers are considered too much as a 
 separate class, the oppidans having a certain 
 right to be lazy. No salary was at first attached 
 to the post I held, but I was allowed to take 
 two private pupils, and did so. The experiment 
 was by no means satisfactory ; the boys be- 
 longed neither to me nor to their school tutor, 
 and were a great hindrance to my work, how- 
 ever convenient on monetary grounds. After 
 a while a definite though still inadequate salary 
 was attached to the post of master in college. 
 
 Mrs. Marindin, the mother of one of my 
 boys in college, had settled in Eton soon after 
 her widowhood in 1851 in order to give her 
 sons a cheaper education by removing the two 
 eldest from the oppidan house in which they 
 were, and keeping them at home. At her 
 house, where I soon became very intimate, I 
 met her sister, Margaret Agnes Colvile, who 
 in 1856 became my wife. Before going back 
 
214 MEMORIES 
 
 to Eton we paid our first and last visit to my 
 father, who was then living at Warminster, 
 having resigned Wellow and taken temporary 
 duty till such time as a living in Ireland, 
 shortly to be vacated and in the gift of a friend, 
 should be ready for him. Mr. Keating was 
 prepared to present me to Wellow, but that 
 was for many reasons wholly out of the ques- 
 tion, even had I liked Wellow, which I never 
 did, not thinking it at all a desirable living. 
 
 We took up our work at Eton again at the 
 beginning of the next school term, and soon 
 afterwards were enabled to give up private 
 pupils. Our house was most unfit for a 
 married man's residence, especially as my wife's 
 health proved far from strong ; but we made 
 it do for five years, and three children were 
 born to us there. Margaret's life was not a 
 cheerful one at Eton ; she did not like the boys 
 to whom my thought and life were so much 
 devoted, and a wife in such a position was 
 necessarily left much alone. I am quite con- 
 vinced that an unmarried master is the fittest 
 person to have the charge of boys in so confi- 
 dential and brotherly a position as I filled with 
 regard to mine. Mrs. Marindin left Eton when 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 215 
 
 her elder boys had done with the school, to 
 live at her own little property in Shropshire. 
 Our house was more and more unfit for a 
 family residence as children came ; and though 
 my own work had elements of delight and use- 
 fulness in it, far more than was the case else- 
 where, it became clear that we should have to 
 move so soon as circumstances rendered this 
 possible. 
 
 My relations with the clergy in the neigh- 
 bourhood were of the most cordial character, 
 though it became obvious to all who could 
 understand that my views were growing even 
 more liberal and less in accordance with any 
 of the great parties in the Church. I suppose 
 that then and for many years onward they 
 were essentially those held by the more liberal 
 members of the Unitarian body. 
 
 I may here say that in my opinion the whole 
 theology of the almost extinct Broad Church 
 party is simply Unitarian. Of course when a 
 distinction had to be made, it was possible to 
 make it by quoting Creeds and Devotions which 
 had been retained by the Church of England 
 from the old Catholic worship. But what I 
 mean is that the sermons preached in Broad 
 
2i6 MEMORIES 
 
 Churches might have been dehvered in any 
 Unitarian pulpits, and that Broad Churchmen 
 ignored as far as possible the Catholic side 
 of the teaching of the Church of England. 
 Unitarianism is, however, inconsistent and illo- 
 gical ; the true contradictory of Catholicism is 
 Positivism, though I did not then see it. 
 
 The fact that my work tied me so closely at 
 Eton when the boys were there, and that in the 
 holidays Scotland and Bath had claims on us 
 kept me a good deal separate from Charles 
 Kingsley, and those of whom I saw most among 
 the clergy were Tom Carter, the rector of 
 Clewer, and Charles Eliot, the evangelical rector 
 of Binfield. I also saw much of Conyngham 
 Ellis of Brachnell. At Carter's request I was 
 for a time one of the Council of the House of 
 Mercy at Clewer, an interesting experiment, 
 but I have the strongest opinion, which grew 
 upon me from the day I was first associated 
 with it, that Rome alone with its organised 
 authority can manage religious houses of the 
 conventual sort. When the House of Mercy 
 was about to be established. Prince Albert, 
 who was much interested in all philanthropic 
 plans in the neighbourhood, sent for one of 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 217 
 
 those connected with the work and asked him 
 if he could account for the fact that Eton and 
 Windsor were said to be exceptionally bad 
 from a moral point of view. To this his 
 interlocutor had the courage to say, " I think, 
 sir, it is easily explained by the fact that 
 in those two towns there are two Barracks, 
 two Ecclesiastical Foundations, and a Court." 
 And the Prince did not resent this plain 
 speaking. 
 
 At Eton, as I have said, our three eldest 
 children were born, and during o.ur stay there 
 my father and Mrs. Colvile died, so soon after 
 our eldest son's birth that none of my children 
 have ever known a grandparent. Mrs. Colvile 
 had long been in failing health, and we had 
 feared the end was near, in a visit we paid 
 her in Scotland during the summer of 1858. 
 Louis was born in the autumn, and a few days 
 after his birth Mrs. Colvile came up to London 
 extremely ill. She died about three weeks 
 afterwards. 
 
 On the break up of the Craigflower home, 
 for Sir James Colvile was on the point of 
 retiring from the Chief Justiceship of Bengal, 
 and was almost on his way to England when 
 
2i8 MEMORIES 
 
 his mother died, my sisters-in-law settled at 
 Beaconsfield, within easy distance of us at 
 Eton. 
 
 About i860 a book was published, the fame 
 of which was from accidental circumstances 
 beyond its deserts, Essays and Reviews. For 
 a few years past a series of Oxford essays 
 and Cambridge essays had been published on 
 subjects of interest to scholarly and thoughtful 
 persons, and it was considered that a combination 
 volume by Oxford and Cambridge men united 
 on subjects bearing on the interpretation of 
 Scripture would be of interest. The men who 
 wrote were all liberals, but they had no com- 
 mon purpose or concert, except generally to 
 bring out the results of modern criticism. 
 Bishop Colenso's speculations were alarming 
 the orthodox mind not a little, and German 
 criticism was scarcely known in England. The 
 book undoubtedly ran counter to many orthodox 
 prejudices, though there is scarce a word in it 
 which might not now be preached without fear 
 or offence in any Protestant pulpit in England. 
 Two essays, however, were specially singled 
 out for attack, Mr. H. B. Wilson's and Dr. 
 Rowland Williams', and they were made the 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 219 
 
 subject of legal proceedings, with the result in 
 both cases that the views held in them were 
 declared tenable within the limits of the Church 
 of England. The Convocation of the Province 
 of Canterbury condemned the book, and all those 
 who did not protest against it were considered 
 heretical. The views expressed in it were in 
 the main such as I had long held, and had 
 been known to hold, but since I, almost alone in 
 our clerical society, did not protest, together with 
 the innocent fact of my buying the work at the 
 sale of our Eton book-club, I became still more 
 identified with those views in the sight of my 
 neighbours and friends. 
 
 At this juncture Mr. Maurice, Tom Hughes, 
 and others conceived the notion of starting 
 a series of Tracts for Priests and People 
 which, while putting forth liberal opinions, 
 should yet tend to calm men's minds and 
 show that it was possible within the Church 
 to hold comprehensive views. Some of us met 
 at Hughes' house, and certain subjects were 
 assigned to those who were in sympathy with 
 the plan. I undertook to write one on the 
 Boundaries of the Church of England, and did 
 so with the signature C. K. P- It was thought 
 
220 MEMORIES 
 
 by my friends that having an official position 
 at Eton it would be better not to put my full 
 name, while my somewhat distinctive initials 
 would leave no doubt as to the author on the 
 minds of any who cared to know, and certainly 
 the last thing I wished to do was to shirk any 
 personal responsibility. The foolish printer, 
 however, put The Rev. C. K. P., which just made 
 it look as if I did so wish. My position in the 
 tract was that the very minimum of dogma 
 was required from lay members of the Church 
 of England, that on them the Apostles' Creed 
 only was binding, and that as interpreted by 
 themselves ; I did not say a word to imply that 
 was all / held — nor was it ; neither did I say 
 that no more was required of the clergy, in fact, 
 I made it very plain that from them far more 
 was required. The tract, on looking at it now 
 after all these years, seems to me a very harm- 
 less one to have been written by an Anglican, 
 and in these days what is there said would be 
 by many considered almost a truism. 
 
 But Provost Hawtrey, who was growing old 
 and also faihng in mind, was in a great fright 
 about orthodoxy and Essays and Reviews, and 
 was ready to take any alarm which was sug- 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 221 
 
 gested to him. Roper, my colleague in the 
 conductship, a dull, narrow, though pious man, 
 with whom I had never been on cordial terms, 
 thought it his duty to bring this tract before 
 the Provost. The poor old man was in a 
 great and immediate flurry, but it was difficult 
 to see what he could do. He wrote to me, 
 and I at once acknowledged the authorship of 
 the tract ; when I asked in what it was objec- 
 tionable he could only reply that he dissented 
 from its whole tone. He called the head-master 
 into council, who saw no reason for dismissing 
 me ; he called a College meeting, at which the 
 Provost was reminded that as conduct I was 
 his curate, over whom the Fellows had no direct 
 reponsibility, even if they cared to exercise it, 
 and that as master in college the head-master 
 saw no fault in me. He wrote to the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, to the Visitor, and to the 
 Bishop of the Diocese, and the two first said 
 they did not agree with the tract, but that I had 
 a right to my opinions, and there was nothing 
 that the Provost could do or ought to do. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford, Wilberforce, took a 
 very different line. Always anxious to please 
 any one in power, he wrote to the Provost a 
 
222 MEMORIES 
 
 letter full of the most unmeasured abuse of my 
 tract. There were no words bad enough for it 
 or for me, but he lamented that in the then 
 state of the Church it was impossible to prose- 
 cute me, and he deeply sympathised with the 
 Provost, who must let me alone. This letter 
 the Bishop marked " private," evidently thinking 
 that while he would gratify the Provost by 
 agreeing with him, I should never know the 
 charges of heresy and unbelief he made against 
 me behind my back. But the Provost, whose 
 mind was, as I have said, weakened, and whose 
 health was failing, did not see the matter in 
 that light ; and sending for me, said, " I have 
 received a letter from the Bishop, which, as he 
 has marked it ' private,' I may not show you, 
 but I am justiiied in reading it to you, which I 
 will therefore do." The effect of this was of 
 course only to manifest the Bishop's duplicity ; 
 the practical result was nil. 
 
 My colleagues were kind and sympathetic, 
 and I shall always remember with gratitude 
 that William Johnson wrote me that his purse 
 and person were entirely at my disposal. It is 
 of course uncertain what the Provost might 
 ultimately have decided to do, probably the 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 223 
 
 affair would have blown over, but his illness 
 rapidly increased and he died early in 1862. 
 Almost at the same time Mr. Heathcote, 
 Wilder's brother-in-law, vicar of Sturminster 
 Marshall, was promoted to a better living, and 
 I had the offer of Sturminster from the College, 
 a fact which shows how little the other members 
 of it had shared in the Provost's dread of my 
 views. The Vice Provost asked me to explain 
 that I had not in my tract asserted that the 
 clergy had an equal right to the latitude I had 
 claimed for the laity, and this I had no hesita- 
 tion in doing. I heard afterwards that an 
 attempt had been made to show that this was 
 a recantation, and I had to write and assert 
 that it was nothing of the sort. Meanwhile 
 the Bishop of Salisbury, who had heard of the 
 late Provost's fears, wrote to know if it were 
 possible to keep a heretic out of his diocese, 
 and was assured by the College that the 
 majority of the members had not considered 
 me heretical. It was no doubt a trial to Bishop 
 Hamilton that Sturminster Marshall of all places 
 should fall to me. For Heathcote was one of 
 the Bishop's most trusted advisers, and it was 
 in his study that the prosecution of Dr. Rowland 
 
224 MEMORIES 
 
 Williams for heresy had been arranged. How- 
 ever, the College deciding to present, and the 
 Bishop deciding not to oppose, the living, as I 
 said, was offered to me, and I went to visit it. 
 I joined my visit with a run to Bath to be 
 present at the fiftieth wedding day of my uncle 
 and aunt. 
 
 I should not have cared to leave Eton, but 
 that the birth of a third child intensified the 
 great discomfort of our rooms in college. More- 
 over, these, such as they were, would yet further 
 be restricted. For the late Provost had allowed 
 me to fit up a disused room for my servants 
 under Election Chamber, really belonging to 
 the Lodge, and this was required for the house- 
 hold of the new Provost. This was Goodford, 
 late head-master, in whose place Balston was 
 appointed, a narrow-minded person, pedantic 
 and little read, who began at once to undo what 
 Goodford had done, and it was clear my work 
 under him would be far from congenial. I ac- 
 cepted Sturminster therefore, and determined to 
 leave Eton at Easter. 
 
 I look back to my Eton days as those of my 
 life in which I was of distinct use. I might 
 have done more if I had had no parish work, 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 225 
 
 but had joined to the office of conduct, as I 
 wished and suggested, the librarianship of the 
 college library. This was always held by one 
 of the Fellows, and was a completely sinecure 
 office : the library being of very little use to 
 any one. Dr. Goodford and I were almost the 
 only persons who ever took out books, and 
 I, after many struggles with the late Provost, 
 had only been grudgingly allowed to use Dr. 
 Goodford's key. Now I believe the masters 
 are all permitted access to the library. 
 
 During the time that I remained as master 
 in college, after the departure of the few boys 
 who at first resisted my authority, I had nothing 
 but cordial assistance and loyalty from the 
 whole of those placed under my charge. They 
 were, as far as intellect was concerned, the 
 pick of the school, and mostly hard workers. 
 It seems hardly fair, when all were so kind, to 
 pick out any for special notice, as time and 
 place have severed me so widely from those 
 over whom I then bore rule. But I cannot 
 refuse myself the pleasure of naming a few of 
 whom I did not lose sight afterwards. H. J. 
 Nelson, afterwards a judge in India, who died 
 at home in 1898, was one of those who, though 
 
226 MEMORIES 
 
 not popular with his schoolfellows or with the 
 masters, was always most true and courteous 
 to me ; and among those I knew most intimately 
 from the time I went into college, his was the 
 most mature intellect with which I ever came 
 into contact in a boy of his age, and there 
 was scarcely anything he might not have done. 
 He, Frank Warre-Cornish, now Vice Provost 
 of Eton, Augustus Austen Leigh, Provost of 
 King's, Felix Cobbold, and Sir William Young, 
 Fellows of the same college, are those of whom 
 I think with greatest regard. I was a very 
 young master, and they — or most of them 
 — were senior boys at the time, so that the 
 difference between us was not so great as might 
 seem from our respective positions. 
 
 When I left Eton the great majority of boys 
 in college combined to give me a very hand- 
 some salver in remembrance of our long associa- 
 tion. I knew nothing of this until it was 
 actually presented, and therefore was unable to 
 put a stop to it. One of the tradesmen, how- 
 ever, told me that it was in the minds of a 
 number of the townspeople to give me also a 
 testimonial, but owing to his kind offices this 
 plan was nipped in the bud. I have a very 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 227 
 
 strong feeling that such gifts are a great 
 mistake. They either come to be almost a 
 necessary gift to any one who vacates an office, 
 or they pronounce a judgment between two 
 holders of it. It is, moreover, extremely diffi- 
 cult for those who do not wholly approve of 
 such a gift to disassociate themselves from it, 
 and it is often a heavy tax on the subscribers. 
 
 Here is the place to say a few words on 
 those of my colleagues and others with whom 
 I had most to do as master in college. Some 
 of them had been masters when I was a 
 boy, others came back as masters who had 
 been under me as collegers, some of these 
 again became better known to me when my 
 elder son was at Eton ; I am not sure if I 
 can always separate the judgments framed at 
 these different times. 
 
 Of Balston, head-master, I should mention 
 that it was he who said of Provost Hawtrey, 
 always a great book-collector, that " when he 
 was made Provost, he would have time to 
 read the books he had talked about all his Ufe." 
 He himself will perhaps be remembered, so long 
 as he is remembered at all, as having said be- 
 fore the Public School Commission that he con- 
 
228 MEMORIES 
 
 sidered French was no necessary part of a 
 gentleman's education. 
 
 Coleridge, Cookesley, and Young had all 
 been masters when I was a boy, and I never 
 became intimate with any of them. Cookesley, 
 indeed, was extremely hostile to me, thinking 
 me an advanced High Churchman, but he did 
 me no harm. 
 
 William Johnson, who took afterwards the 
 name of Cory, had left Eton as a boy about 
 the time I went to Eton, and had come there 
 as a master after I left it. I first made his 
 acquaintance in London, he being one of those 
 who came about Mr. Maurice. He welcomed 
 my coming to Eton, and was one of the most 
 remarkable men there : full of a wide interest 
 in literature, and a man of most encyclopaedic 
 reading. He had given up his boarding-house 
 when I went back to Eton to his sister, Mrs. 
 Vidal, and occupied bachelor rooms in what 
 had been the " Old Christopher Inn," communi- 
 cating with Mrs. Vidal's house. My intimacy 
 with Johnson was at once close and fitful. 
 He and I took very different views of some 
 boys who were his pupils, but under my 
 charge in college, and he thought it therefore 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 229 
 
 best that each of us should go his way inde- 
 pendent of the other. When, however, I came 
 into trouble with Hawtrey on account of my 
 theological opinions, Johnson wrote me a most 
 cordial letter, in which, as I have noted, he 
 placed himself and his purse entirely at my 
 disposition. He afterwards retired from Eton on 
 a competence and lived on his family property 
 in North Devon, but beyond his means, both in 
 regard to expenditure on the estate and in 
 munificence to others. He fell into ill-health 
 and retired to Madeira, where he married 
 a very young woman, the daughter of one of 
 his Devon neighbours. When he was able to 
 return to England he lived a secluded life at 
 Hampstead, finding his great occupation and 
 delight in teaching a few young ladies, mainly 
 the daughters of former friends. He died 
 after much suffering in 1892, leaving an only 
 son. Mrs. Cory became a Catholic a few 
 years before his death. Cory, himself long a 
 very unorthodox man, became a moderate High 
 Church Anglican. Not long before his death his 
 wife suggested he should see one of the Domini- 
 can Fathers, but he said, " It is too late now, 
 and I must be satisfied with the religion which 
 
230 MEMORIES 
 
 was enough for my mother." His death left a 
 void in the hearts of many who will always 
 remember him with deep affection ; but he 
 left little to show those who did not know 
 him what he was. A fragmentary History of 
 England in the early years of this century, 
 written for an imaginary Hindoo pupil, is full 
 of brilliant wit and profound learning, but is 
 known to few. He also left some of the 
 choicest lyrics in the language, embedded among 
 many not so good, in a little anonymous volume 
 called " lonica." It is difficult to say enough 
 and not too much in regret for one so dear, so 
 brilliant, and so incomplete. 
 
 Edward Hale, who came to Eton as assistant 
 mathematical master, or rather, as he then was, 
 assistant to Stephen Hawtrey, somewhat before 
 my own return, always, till his untimely death 
 in 1893, my great and kind friend, was the 
 very opposite in every way of WiUiam Cory. 
 He was known to and beloved by all, not a 
 student, nor a man of deep knowledge, but a 
 good talker on most subjects, and popular with 
 every one ; a gossip, but always good-natured, 
 master of a full and favourite house, an affec- 
 tionate husband and father, he was the very 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 231 
 
 type of a broad Anglican clergyman, a hard 
 worker, a good preacher, not especially ortho- 
 dox, but quite satisfied with his position. He 
 had been curate to Stephen Hawtrey at Holy 
 Trinity Church, Windsor, and a painstaking 
 clergyman in some of the worst districts in the 
 town. To his friends and colleagues he was 
 always genial and kind. He was invariably 
 a good influence in Eton life, ever tolerant, 
 and casting his influence on the side of 
 right. 
 
 William Wayte was one of my constant 
 companions. He was as learned as John- 
 son, but lived more with his fellows, being a 
 sociable man, always ready for walks. His 
 knowledge was so great and accessible that it 
 came to be a saying in any difficulty, " We 
 must look it out in Wayte," as though he had 
 been a dictionary, and we always found the 
 information required. With Wayte and C. C. 
 James — I forget who was the fourth — I read 
 in the evenings during my first year in 
 college Dante's Divina Commedia. Wayte was 
 a strong Whig in politics, one of the few real 
 Whigs I have known, and a Liberal in Church 
 matters. He retired while yet in the vigour 
 
232 MEMORIES 
 
 of his age and devoted himself to active literary 
 work in London. 
 
 With these of whom I have spoken I was 
 in much sympathy as well as in constant inter- 
 course ; there were others of whom I saw a 
 good deal, but who opposed me, distrusting the 
 influence I had on their pupils. Among them 
 Wolley Dod was perhaps the one whom I liked 
 the best, as being always honest and out- 
 spoken. He often disapproved very strongly of 
 sermons delivered by me in the college chapel, 
 not on the ground that he personally disagreed 
 with them, but because they were not in accord 
 with the traditional tone of safe Anglicanism 
 which he considered should be held by a teacher 
 at Eton. His whole tone was lay rather than 
 clerical, and except that he thought it his duty 
 always quieta non movere, he had no views or 
 enthusiasms about his work. 
 
 John Walford represented the active High 
 Church party among the masters. After he left 
 Eton he became a Jesuit priest. I cannot do 
 better than repeat what I said at the request of 
 his brethren for a collection of notes privately 
 printed by them. 
 
 My dear friend John Thomas Walford came to 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 233 
 
 Eton as a King's Scholar just as I was leaving 
 the school, and I only then saw him once or twice. 
 He was a bright-eyed, fresh-coloured boy of good 
 manners and excellent character. Dr. Goodford 
 — his former tutor — who always watched his 
 career with interest, brought him back to Eton, 
 well knowing that he would carry out the 
 methods learned from his old tutor. 
 
 In due course Walford became Scholar and 
 Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. At Eton 
 he had profited much by his tutor's careful and 
 accurate scholarship, but as he lived out of the 
 house he had not been one of that inner ring 
 of pupils who had the run of Goodford's library 
 and owed so much of their taste for literature 
 and modern languages to his wide and enthusi- 
 astic culture. The same was the case at King's. 
 Walford's scholarship was fostered and in- 
 creased, but the whole tendency of the learning 
 at King's was classical, and Walford at no time 
 had any considerable training in general litera- 
 ture, nor do I think that he was at any time a 
 great reader. After taking a good degree he 
 became for a short time an assistant-master at 
 Harrow, but was soon after appointed to a 
 similar post at Eton, at the time when assistant- 
 
234 MEMORIES 
 
 masters were still usually drawn from the 
 Fellows of King's. 
 
 From that time and for about eight years I 
 was in close and constant relation with Walford. 
 He had I think at that early date made up his 
 mind to a celibate life. He felt very strongly 
 that a good schoolmaster, whether clerical or 
 lay, could do his duty better without tie of wife 
 or family ; that in fact such an one must live 
 for his boys alone, who should be always first 
 in his thought. 
 
 And having made up his mind to this he did 
 not take a boarding-house, always a lucrative if 
 onerous position, but lived as a boarder in a 
 dame's house, taking as pupils only those boys 
 who themselves boarded in dames' houses or 
 were King's Scholars. He was a most devoted 
 tutor, and though, as I have said, not especially 
 literary himself, he fostered a taste for literature 
 in others. 
 
 I remember his bringing me with delight 
 some poems written by one who in thought, 
 heart, and intention was a Catholic, but cut off 
 by too early death before his intention could be 
 carried into act ; and this early literary promise 
 was watched with enthusiastic hope by Walford. 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 235 
 
 He went little into general society at Eton, 
 and was intimate with few of his colleagues, 
 living for his boys ; but of those few he was a 
 devoted and confidential friend. One cause of 
 his isolation, for such it may be called, was 
 that he soon became, in principle and practice 
 alike, an extreme High Churchman, far beyond 
 the point then considered correct at Eton. A 
 moderate and decorous Anglicanism was all 
 very well, but Walford soon became convinced 
 that for boyish needs and for boyish sins con- 
 fession and frequent communion were the only 
 safeguard and cure, and working quietly and 
 in his own way for the souls of his boys, he 
 could not associate much with those who would 
 not at all have agreed with his methods or his 
 theories. 
 
 "What he inculcated for others he practised 
 himself, and one of the causes which brought 
 him into the Church was the inadequacy of the 
 manner in which the Sacrament of Penance was 
 administered in the Anglican Communion, even 
 by those who thought they did administer it. 
 The incompleteness of the training which two 
 men especially, both prominent clergymen, to 
 whom he went to confession had had, their 
 
236 MEMORIES 
 
 faltering advice, their burdensome and ill-con- 
 sidered penances, their over-scrupulous dealing 
 with scruples, convinced him that these were 
 not the appointed guides of his soul. 
 
 When I left Eton in 1862 to take a college 
 living, and parted from Walford, I had not in 
 any degree realised that the Church would and 
 must be his goal. It had not seemed to him 
 expedient to tell a colleague, who at that time 
 differed considerably from his views, precisely 
 what they were ; but in his frequent letters, 
 when we were not working in union, he was 
 much more open, and the end became plain to 
 me before it was so to himself. Indeed to him 
 it became a vague possibility long before it 
 became a certainty. 
 
 Goodford, our old tutor, had become Provost 
 of Eton, and Dr. Balston was head-master. 
 Walford went to him so soon as his doubts 
 had attained any shape, and said he thought 
 it wise to resign his mastership, because the 
 time might come when he would have to join 
 the Roman Church. Balston did not accept 
 the resignation, but with a kindness and breadth 
 of mind which were wholly unexpected, said he 
 trusted Walford to resign when, and only when, 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 237 
 
 the end became certain and not a possibility. 
 He went on to ask that if Walford found it 
 necessary to resign, he would promise not to 
 become a Catholic for one year after leaving 
 Eton. To this Walford agreed, reserving only 
 the case of serious illness, saying that should 
 he leave Eton with the intention of becoming 
 a Catholic that intention must be carried out 
 at once if he were in danger of death. I am 
 not prepared to say how far he was right in 
 making even the concession he did, I know 
 only that it was made with the best intention 
 and loyally kept. Some months after this 
 promise was given the time came ; the master- 
 ship was resigned with grief, and a sundering 
 as of soul from body. He prepared himself 
 by much seclusion and a long retreat, and just 
 one year from the time of leaving Eton he was 
 received into the Church in a religious house 
 in Ireland. 
 
 His first visit was paid to me and my family 
 at our home in Dorset. His plans were quite 
 vague, but he believed he had a vocation to 
 the priesthood — he had not taken Anglican 
 orders — and he hoped again to take up teach- 
 ing. Cardinal Newman offered him a master- 
 
238 MEMORIES 
 
 ship at Edgbaston, which he accepted with 
 alacrity, and threw himself into the new work 
 with interest all the keener because he had 
 been for some time idle from what was so 
 great a delight to him — the work of teaching 
 and guiding the young. 
 
 His letters to me were full of the difference 
 between Catholic schools and those of which 
 he had experience, and he was greatly struck 
 by the simple faith of the lads with whom he 
 was now brought into contact. I remember 
 his delight that a rather dull boy who was 
 going up for matriculation at Oxford sent a 
 sovereign to the Poor Clares, asking that they 
 would pray for his success in the examination. 
 He was also struck with the manliness of the 
 Edgbaston boys and the fervent piety of many, 
 the combination not having been frequent in 
 his previous experience. The bearing of the 
 Sacrament of Penance, not only on individual 
 souls, but on the discipline and purity of school 
 life, came to him like a revelation. 
 
 While happy in his work he felt little, if 
 any, inclination to join the Oratorian Congrega- 
 tion. It seemed to him that his own need was 
 that he should be under vows of obedience, not 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 239 
 
 only under a strict rule from which he might 
 free himself at any moment. He talked over 
 his future life with Cardinal Newman, who, while 
 expressing his entire satisfaction with Walford's 
 work at the Oratory, said, " I think St. Ignatius 
 wants you," and those words decided his fate. 
 
 He accepted all that came to him in his new 
 life with the most absolute, unquestioning, and 
 happy obedience. An instance of this seemed 
 very striking to me when Edward Hale and 
 I visited him at Manresa, during his novitiate. 
 It was some weeks after the Clerkenwell ex- 
 plosion, and somehow the conversation worked 
 round to it. " Ah," said Walford, " I am in- 
 terested in what you say. I heard it when I 
 was sweeping up the weeds in the garden, 
 and wondered what it was." The self-discipline 
 which prevented his ever asking what the cause 
 of the noise and shock was, even in recreation 
 time, seemed to us at the time very strange, but 
 to the speaker it was a matter of course. 
 
 At Beaumont, at Malta, and elsewhere he 
 did good work for education. I visited him 
 at Beaumont, and was struck with the way in 
 which he had introduced there also one of his 
 Eton reforms. An Eton " pupil-room " was 
 
240 MEMORIES 
 
 as a rule a bare and cheerless room, which 
 made work in it unattractive — where boys 
 naturally inked the floor and furniture, and 
 cut their names surreptitiously on the desks. 
 Walford had made his pupil-room pleasant to 
 the eye, with prints on the walls and curtains 
 to the windows, and had made it a matter of 
 pride and honour with the boys to treat it as 
 a gentleman's sitting-room. He gained per- 
 mission to do the same at Beaumont, with, as 
 he told me, a marked effect on the manners 
 and taste of his pupils. 
 
 After his leaving Beaumont I saw Walford 
 at distant intervals, only to find him sinking 
 more and more into ill-health, which led me to 
 doubt whether he was as useful to the society 
 as the society had been to him. The fact was 
 that he had entered late, he aged while yet young, 
 and the best of his life had been given else- 
 where. He returned to Manresa some years 
 since, to be laid on the shelf and wait quietly 
 for death. In ordinary intercourse with the 
 friends who visited him the decline of his powers 
 was painful. He was always pleasant and cheer- 
 ful, but the conversation was merely anecdotical, 
 comprising more or less trivial reminiscences of 
 
MASTER IN COLLEGE 241 
 
 old Eton days. If, however, he had to con- 
 centrate his attention, to write a letter on 
 spiritual matters, to give a retreat, or hear a 
 confession, it was wonderful how completely he 
 could pull himself together and become collected, 
 clear, alert-minded, and wise. But the reaction 
 after such effort was marked. 
 
 My last visit to him was when he was quite 
 confined to his invalid couch, was unable to say 
 Mass, had, I think, received extreme unction, 
 and was waiting patiently and hopefully for the 
 end. He was more himself than I had seen 
 him for some time, and sent his love, with the 
 assurance of his constant prayers, to a friend 
 whose conversion had long been a matter very 
 near his heart. He gave me his blessing, and 
 asked me to make a point of attending his requiem, 
 which when the time came I was unable to do, 
 through the accidental miscarriage of a letter. 
 
 I have paid a visit to Eton since his death, 
 and was glad to find his memory green in the 
 hearts of some who differed from him widely. 
 In my own he will always remain as a dear 
 friend of old, and one whose simple faith, and 
 no doubt also earnest prayers, aided me to 
 follow him into the fold. 
 
 Q 
 
242 MEMORIES 
 
 It was a great pleasure to me when Cornish 
 came back to Eton as a master. As a boy, as 
 a colleague, and now that I have long left Eton 
 and he is Vice Provost, he was and is one of 
 my very dearest friends. It is quite impossible 
 to express in any poor words of mine my sense 
 of his worth, his charm, his learning, and his 
 friendship. 
 
VIII 
 
 VICAR OF STURMINSTER MARSHALL, 
 DORSET 
 
 1862-1874 
 
 STURMINSTER MARSHALL was a living 
 of but small value. The vicarage, or 
 rather Bailie House, which had become the 
 vicarage, was an old farm-house, changed and 
 improved by many incumbents, but dating in 
 part, as was supposed, from Elizabeth's reign. 
 It was a very rickety structure ; with the ex- 
 ception of two or three rooms at the east end, 
 it was thatched, a costly covering, and had 
 large and expensive gardens. But it was a 
 roomy and comfortable house, in which many 
 previous vicars had taken pupils, and it was 
 clear that I must do so too. We left Eton 
 therefore at Easter 1862, with keen regret. 
 
 Mr. Kingdon, now I think a Colonial Anglican 
 bishop somewhere in Africa, and at that time 
 
244 MEMORIES 
 
 Mr. Heathcote's curate, agreed to stay on for a 
 while, for I had promised the Bishop to keep 
 up, at least for the present, Mr. Heathcote's 
 daily services, and I took a house first at Bourne- 
 mouth and then at Wimborne till the needful 
 repairs and alterations were made at Bailie. 
 Kingdon, however, was called away by Heath- 
 cote much sooner than he expected, and I, bound 
 by my promise to the Bishop, walked over to 
 Sturminster from Wimborne every day for the 
 5 P.M. daily service, generally spending the 
 day at Bailie to make acquaintance with my 
 parishioners. Mr. Heathcote died suddenly 
 very soon after Mr. Kingdon had joined him, 
 and the dilapidations on Bailie were only 
 partially paid, so that having undertaken con- 
 siderable repairs on the strength of these 
 I began my life there a good deal crippled 
 financially. 
 
 The parish, on a nearer inspection, had not 
 much to recommend it. It was situated on the 
 river level, though a mile from the water, in the 
 great gravel plain which forms the valley of the 
 Stour. Though beautiful country was within 
 reach from the tops of the hills, it was not 
 pretty, and it was relaxing. The house and 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 245 
 
 garden were attractive, but the mile from church 
 was a great addition to work. The squire 
 and the farmers were good souls in their way 
 and after their lights, but they were narrow 
 and bigoted in Tory opinions, and we never 
 really got on well, with my strong views about 
 the rights of the labourer, especially about 
 his right to take his labour to the best market 
 and to improve his condition when jie could. 
 The labourers were a decent, pleasant people 
 in many ways, and the children were as a rule 
 particularly engaging, and so were many of 
 the young men. There was a good deal of 
 drunkenness, but not more than usual in 
 country parishes, and on the whole I was 
 lucky in the people. They gave me hearty 
 help in choir, they came well to church, and 
 were always loyal and good to me. My heart 
 will always warm to a Dorset peasant. 
 
 We settled into Bailie late in the summer, 
 and I found two pupils at once, and others came 
 shortly. Our first intention was to take small 
 boys preparing for school, but I was gradually 
 offered others, and by degrees dropped the 
 small boys and took only those who had left 
 school and were preparing for college or the 
 
246 MEMORIES 
 
 army. I will not chronicle my pupils at length, 
 there were few who really interested me, being 
 in this respect sadly unlike the boys whom I 
 had left at Eton. The position of a private 
 tutor in the country is a pre-eminently unsatis- 
 factory one. The boys are as a rule those 
 who have not done well at school from vice 
 or idleness, and go to a private tutor needing 
 just that discipline which he of all men can 
 give least. For there is no sanction of rewards 
 and punishments, there is no tradition, there 
 can be but few rules. The lads are in the 
 family without the position of sons ; they gene- 
 rally lack employment when the lessons of the 
 day are over. With a few exceptions, my 
 boys were not vicious, but they were idle 
 and for the most part dull ; they destroyed 
 family life sadly. Pupils enabled us to live, 
 and to live in comfort when we could not have 
 existed on the income of the living, but I saved 
 nothing, and I never knew a private tutor who 
 did. For the whole living is necessarily pitched 
 on an expensive scale for the boys, and it is 
 impossible to keep a check on it. The boys, 
 I think, liked me, but I had not the hold on 
 them that I had on my Eton lads, and my 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 247 
 
 tutor days are not satisfactory in the retro- 
 spect. Yet it is difficult to say, even apart 
 from the question of finance, what I could have 
 done but take pupils, for most assuredly the 
 work of a small country living is not enough 
 for an active-minded man. 
 
 Through the whole of my life my great 
 delight has been in trying to raise boys who 
 came under my influence in the social scale. 
 Nothing shows the innate conservatism of an 
 Englishman more than the fact that so few 
 escape from their surroundings ; and very often 
 those who seem most charming when quite 
 young fall back only too easily into their 
 hereditary groove. Once when an Eton 
 master was staying with me at Sturminster 
 one of my parish school-boys came into my 
 study and remained for some time in frank 
 conversation with us. After his departure 
 the Eton master said, " Now where, except 
 that this lad speaks broad Dorset, is the differ- 
 ence from an Eton boy ? " He has risen in 
 life, not indeed so remarkably as I once ex- 
 pected, but is one of the very few examples of 
 a complete change of life. 
 
 The one instance of entire success in this 
 
248 MEMORIES 
 
 matter was the late John Sedding, the architect, 
 who, when I first became acquainted with him, 
 carried about rolls in a basket for his uncle, 
 a baker, at Eton. John's father had been a 
 schoolmaster at Bakewell, Derbyshire, and two 
 of his sons, another besides John, rose to be 
 architects and men of letters. John Sedding 
 used to borrow books from me, and I noticed 
 that each volume that he took away was a 
 proof of yet higher and higher culture. At 
 last I lent him Ruskin's Seven Lamps of 
 Architecture, in which one of the illustrated 
 pages had become loose ; he brought me back 
 the book with a copy of the illustration, and I 
 had to look closely at it for some time before 
 I discovered which was the original and which 
 the copy. Mr. Street, the architect, was com- 
 ing down for the day, and I showed him the 
 drawing, telling him how much I wished to 
 raise John Sedding from his then position. 
 He took him into his office. John Sedding 
 became a successful architect, and at the same 
 time, as I knew, he became a thorough gentle- 
 man. Whilst I was at Sturminster he wrote 
 and asked me if he might come and see me. 
 He did so ; and his object in coming was to 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 249 
 
 request me to write to the father of the lady 
 he wished to marry to tell him the whole story. 
 This I did, and like a sensible man the father 
 gave his consent to the marriage, which proved 
 in every way a happy one. 
 
 The poor people of my parish interested me 
 personally, as I have already stated ; I was 
 also much struck by the dialect peculiar to that 
 part of the country, and I may as well throw 
 together some words used in it, of which it 
 may be said it would be well if some of them 
 might again find place in general use. 
 
 Beal, a weazel. "One of them guinea-pigs 
 has been bitten by a beair 
 
 Crip, to talk finely, to " talk tall." " How he 
 do crip." 
 
 Fay means to do. Query fait from the French 
 faire. " We'll just put it up and try it (some 
 carpenter's work), and if we can't get it to fay, 
 we'll take it down again." 
 
 "Ferrule of a book," means the corner. 
 " Do you mean that one with the yellow 
 ferrule." 
 
 Gridger — cake, baked on a girdle, a flat, 
 circular plate of iron used for that purpose. 
 
250 MEMORIES 
 
 " She is always on the grig" " very griggy," 
 fretful. 
 
 "The heel of my hand," the ball of the 
 thumb. 
 
 Neck, throat. " I'd never pour that stuff 
 down my neck." That is, drink it. 
 
 " He is very plasted a'ready," said of a dead 
 child, which would seem to mean swollen and 
 decomposed. 
 
 " Why do you quirk so ? " — call out suddenly. 
 
 " She will not sess " or " cess to it," meaning 
 take to it. 
 
 " The smiche nearly choked me when I was 
 droshin." The chaff nearly choked me when 
 I was thrashing. 
 
 " Bird starving " — bird scaring. 
 
 " To tail a trap," to set or bait it. 
 
 " Vinny," mouldy. " The last mushroom 
 spawn you got was all vinny" " Blue vinny 
 cheese." 
 
 " I have a west coming in my eye." A stye. 
 
 Our neighbours were very humdrum folk 
 as a rule, but all civil and kind. With the 
 clergy I got on well for some years, in spite 
 of many differences, and the Dorset Clerical 
 Society, under the presidency of Mr. Dayman 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 251 
 
 of Shillingstone, was a really pleasant and 
 friendly business for some time. Only a few 
 sets of friends became more than mere acquaint- 
 ances — Mr. and Mrs. Bastard, Sir Percy and 
 Lady Shelley, Mrs. Ritchie, Mr. and Mrs. Pike, 
 and Colonel and Mrs. Sullivan. Mr. Bastard 
 was an old-fashioned free-thinker, and his wife 
 shared his opinions. He was an enthusiastic 
 educational reformer, who built and endowed 
 a school in Blandford, of which he made it a 
 fundamental rule that no clergyman of any 
 denomination was ever to be a trustee, nor 
 was any religious teaching given, and these 
 two points set all the clergy against him. He 
 did much by money and influence to keep the 
 Westminster Review going, and was a genuine 
 Liberal in all ways. I need hardly say that he 
 held himself aloof from all public worship. He 
 died a year or two ago aged over a hundred, 
 holding all his opinions unchanged. 
 
 Sir Percy and Lady Shelley lived at Bos- 
 combe Manor, near Bournemouth. He was the 
 only surviving son of Shelley the poet, by his 
 second marriage, with Mary Wollstonecraft 
 Godwin. Those who did not know him well, 
 and thought of Shelley only as a poet, could not 
 
252 MEMORIES 
 
 understand that he should have been the son of 
 such parents, but those who were intimate with 
 him understood that there was a great vein of 
 fancy and no small amount of literary skill in 
 his nature ; nor were many aware that in 
 Shelley the poet was a strong mechanical strain, 
 which came out in a still more marked manner 
 in the son. I was much attached to him, and 
 found him always interesting and agreeable. 
 His wife had been a Mrs. St. John, left a widow 
 at an early age ; she married Sir Percy in his 
 mother's lifetime, and, living with her as a most 
 affectionate daughter, adopted all the Shelley 
 and Mary traditions in their extremest form. 
 In a room leading out of her own sitting-room 
 at Boscombe were collected many memorials 
 of Shelley and his friends — a copy of the 
 Shelley tomb at Christchurch, many of the 
 MSS. of his works, the book he had clasped in 
 death, locks of his and of Byron's hair — and 
 the whole was treated as though it had been a 
 mortuary chapel with sacred relics. 
 
 After Mrs. Shelley's death. Sir Percy and 
 Lady Shelley asked Mr. and Mrs. Esdaile (lanthe, 
 Harriet's daughter) to come and see them. They 
 accepted, but stipulated that family matters should 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 253 
 
 not be discussed. The morning after the arrival 
 the hosts were obliged to go out for all the morn- 
 ing, and Mr. Esdaile went for a long walk. Lady 
 Shelley, who remembered the story of Blue- 
 beard, gave Mrs. Esdaile the key to the MSS. 
 case, telling her she might read all except the 
 journals in a certain drawer. These contained 
 the true story of Harriet, as now told, correctly, 
 by Professor Dowden. Of course lanthe read 
 them, and next day was impelled to tell Lady 
 Shelley so, and that her whole view with regard 
 to her father's conduct was changed. 
 
 On one of my visits to Boscombe Sir Percy 
 showed me a large cabinet full of family papers, 
 and offered to send it over to Bailie, in order 
 that I might look them over. They consisted 
 of a vast number of Godwin's letters, in part 
 arranged by Mrs. Shelley, and such of the 
 Shelley papers as were not in the Shelley room. 
 These formed the materials for the Life of 
 Godwin, which I published in 1876 with Sir 
 Percy's full approval. 
 
 Another family with whom I became very 
 intimate, were Mr. and Mrs. William Pike of 
 Wareham. They were Unitarians and strong 
 Liberals, and therefore quite out of the county 
 
254 MEMORIES 
 
 and clerical society in which we were sup- 
 posed to live ; but they were clever and well- 
 read people, and Mrs. Pike became one of my 
 greatest friends, while I had a cordial regard 
 for her husband. He was engaged in large 
 clay works in the neighbourhood, paying a 
 royalty on the china clay found near Ware- 
 ham, with a little private railway from the clay 
 pits to Poole harbour, whence it was taken to 
 the potteries. Mr. and Mrs. Pike were friends of 
 Miss Muloch, afterwards Mrs. Craik, the novelist, 
 who drew them in her work, Agatha's Husband. 
 Colonel and Mrs. Sullivan settled for a 
 short time at Upper Henbury in Sturminster 
 parish, and I looked with some alarm at their 
 coming, knowing that Mrs. Sullivan was of 
 pronounced evangelical opinions and a strong 
 teetotaller. The very day after they settled at 
 Henbury I received a note from Mrs. Sullivan 
 asking me what I would do for the cause she 
 had so much at heart. I told her I should be 
 very glad if she could convert from drink any 
 of my drunken parishioners, and mentioned some 
 half-dozen names which I thought might be 
 useful to her. In about a week she came and 
 said I had not given the names of several to 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 255 
 
 whom she had spoken with effect. I said that 
 though it was possible that they occasionally 
 drank too much, I had no reason to think that 
 they were habitually intemperate. " You do 
 not think they would tell you, who are not an 
 abstainer, their trouble ; they tell me because 
 I am ! " I found this to be so true that having 
 lent my school for a temperance meeting I 
 became an abstainer myself, and have never re- 
 gretted it in the twenty-seven years that have 
 passed since that date. Mrs. Sullivan became 
 one of my best and kindest friends. 
 
 I may here repeat the story I wrote at her 
 death of what it was given her to accomplish. 
 
 The fact that Colonel Sullivan was long on 
 active service with the army brought his wife into 
 various districts at different times, and, wher- 
 ever she came, for many years, she was known 
 as one who visited her poorer neighbours, un- 
 wearied in acts of kindness, and in speaking to 
 them of religion. But it was while residing for 
 a year or two at Dewlish House, Dorset, after 
 her husband's retirement from the army, that 
 her attention was more closely turned to the evils 
 of drink. To enable others to put from them so 
 great a snare, she abandoned herself what had 
 
256 MEMORIES 
 
 seemed to her a needful stimulant in fatigue, and 
 found, as we all find, that she was able to do 
 much more. From Dewlish, at the end of the 
 lease, the family removed to Henbury Park, near 
 Wimborne, and this being less isolated than 
 Dewlish House, Mrs. Sullivan's influence was 
 felt beyond the bounds of the parish in which 
 she lived. 
 
 The points in her work which most struck 
 me were her courage, her diligence, and her 
 extraordinary sympathy. She would speak to 
 a drunkard of whom the neighbours or the 
 clergyman said it was safer not to enter his 
 house because he was so violent and insolent ; 
 would go from house to house late, and on bad 
 days, when most persons would have thought 
 work was over, because those whom she wished 
 to find would be at home ; she never turned 
 impatiently from any, however weak, however 
 fallen. She had indeed the largest sympathy 
 with fallen women, to whom so often their own 
 sex show themselves the most intolerant. There 
 were many, and those not by any means only 
 among the poor and the drunken, who might 
 almost have applied to her the words, " To 
 whom also I owe my own soul." 
 
VICAR OF StURMINSTER 257 
 
 Nor did she ever forget those whose names 
 were on her pledge-book, and this necessitated 
 a large, ever-increasing correspondence. Her 
 position as the mistress of a large establish- 
 ment and the mother of grown-up daughters, 
 took her much into society from time to time, 
 nor was it among the least remarkable features 
 in her character that one who was so thoroughly 
 at home in the homes of the most degraded, or 
 in speaking to " roughs " in a village school-room, 
 was the light and life of every drawing-room 
 she entered, though always ready to talk of 
 the subject nearest her heart, and to testify 
 against sensuality among high and low. 
 
 Colonel Sullivan was unable to get a long 
 lease of Henbury, and after residing there for 
 a year and a half removed to Hatherton Hall, 
 Stafford. There total abstinence had at the 
 time scarcely been heard of, and the work was 
 all fresh to do. I need not say that it was 
 done. As before, visits from house to house, 
 meetings, a night-school, a bible-class, were at 
 once set on foot, the nucleus of which were 
 one or two steady young men taken from 
 Dorset, and every letter for her last two years 
 at Hatherton had spoken of hopeful though 
 
258 MEMORIES 
 
 up-hill work. But her heart had been in 
 Dorset, and the fact that two of their daughters 
 were married in that county had turned her and 
 her husband's thoughts towards a fixed and 
 permanent residence in their old neighbour- 
 hood. It was not so to be. Her Master 
 had called her, and the last tidings spoke of 
 the " peaceful, happy smile," with which she 
 obeyed the summons. 
 
 Besides my work in parish, church, and 
 schools, and my reading with private pupils, I 
 had some other interests to which I look back 
 with nothing but satisfaction. One was my 
 connection with the Dorset County Temperance 
 Association. There had been for many years 
 a society under that name, chiefly among the 
 tradespeople in Poole, Blandford, and Swanage, 
 and in connection with various country Dissent- 
 ing chapels. It had taken very little hold of 
 the clergy of the Church of England. It was, 
 however, obvious to me that no real spiritual 
 work could be done so long as the clergy held 
 aloof from so very important a work. Greatly 
 aided by Mrs. Sullivan, I joined this, and 
 soon had pleasure in associating with me 
 some of the clergy in the neighbourhood, one 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 259 
 
 of whom — the Rev. Owen Mansel — succeeded 
 me as Chairman of the Association. I am glad 
 to think that a large number who became tee- 
 totallers more than five-and-twenty years ago 
 are still true to their pledge ; and I am as much 
 convinced as ever that this movement is neces- 
 sary to all social improvement in every rank of 
 society ; that it is possible for every man and 
 woman in health, is now beyond argument. 
 
 In 1872, Mr. Arch's movement for a 
 higher rate of wages among the labourers 
 reached Dorset, and he carried his agitation 
 into our neighbourhood with the aid of the 
 Hon. Auberon Herbert. I threw myself into 
 this movement with all my heart. Mr. Herbert 
 and Mr. Arch spent some days with me, during 
 which we visited many large meetings of 
 labourers, and in spite of the opposition of 
 farmers, squires, and clergy we had the satis- 
 faction to know that we raised the rate of 
 wages at least two shillings a week all round. 
 The good that was then done has never been 
 undone ; although it is still extremely probable 
 that a large number of comfortable clergy are 
 even less persuaded of the right of the labourer 
 to earn decent wage than they are of the neces- 
 
26o MEMORIES 
 
 sity of keeping him from over-indulgence in 
 strong drink, the end of the agitation will pro- 
 bably result in producing a yeoman class, i.e. 
 men who own land and cultivate it themselves, 
 for there seems no room for three to share the 
 profits on land, and the middle-man must go. 
 
 Our pleasant time at Sturminster was one 
 of good health on the whole. I mention only 
 one exception, for its singularity, as showing 
 the want of the most obvious hygienic pre- 
 cautions in country villages at that time, and 
 probably at this time also. A village girl, who 
 was in service in Southampton, came home 
 with a rash and feeling very ill ; she went to 
 bed with her mother, who was then just re- 
 covering from her confinement. The girl 
 proved to have virulent small-pox, which the 
 mother of course took, and died. Although the 
 cause of death was well known, a number of 
 neighbours from the village went to see the 
 body, out of curiosity, and no less than thirteen 
 deaths took place among those who went to 
 see her, besides a very large number of cases 
 through the parish. I went to visit the woman, 
 in discharge of my duty, caught small-pox, and 
 was very ill. This is curious, as I had had 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 261 
 
 small-pox when a child, in spite of vaccination, 
 and had been vaccinated but a short time 
 before. I am the third of my own immediate 
 family who have had small-pox twice and with 
 whom vaccination has always taken. Besides 
 this, one of my father's sisters died of small-pox, 
 having had it the first time as a child by in- 
 noculation. 1 do not feel the smallest doubt 
 that I should catch small-pox again if I came 
 within the scope of its influence, and am in- 
 clined to doubt whether the crusade against 
 vaccination be not thoroughly justified. It is 
 perfectly true that the proportion is extraor- 
 dinarily small of people marked with the small- 
 pox to what it was when I was young, but it 
 may be doubted whether this is not from better 
 nursing, from better treatment of the disease, 
 than prevailed in the first half of the century. 
 
 My residence in Dorsetshire did not bring 
 me into very close relationship with either 
 clergy or my neighbours. I did not feel in 
 touch with the former and did not see much 
 of the latter. 
 
 The Rev. D'Oyley Snow, who had resigned 
 his living and was residing on his property 
 near Blandford, was the only one with whom 
 
262 MEMORIES 
 
 I was in full sympathy. I saw a great deal 
 of two Broad Church clergymen in the diocese : 
 one the Rev. Robert Kennard of Marnhull, 
 and the other the well-known Dr. Rowland 
 Williams, one of the authors of Essays and 
 Reviews, They were both, in fact, Unitarian 
 in teaching, though Dr. Rowland Williams had 
 the peculiarity, not confined to himself, of 
 believing that his was the only orthodox 
 form of faith, and that he was the only ex- 
 ponent of the Church's doctrine. His books 
 are not now nearly so well known as they 
 should be, but two of them ought to live : 
 one, a volume of sermon - essays called 
 Rational Godliness, and another, called Chris- 
 tianity and Hinduism, on the religions in 
 the East. Dr. Williams, though one of the 
 most charming of men, silver tongued and 
 kindly in speech, was one of those whose pen 
 dripped with vitriol so soon as he began to 
 write. He was a master of epigram, and never 
 could resist one in a letter even at the cost 
 of his best friends. 
 
 Through Mr. Kennard I also became intimate 
 with the Rev. H. B. Wilson, another essayist 
 and reviewer, and one of the four tutors who 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 263 
 
 had protested at Oxford in Newman's days 
 against Tract 90. He little thought, nor 
 would ever have allowed, that in his writ- 
 ings he needed the tolerance he had re- 
 fused to Newman. His Bampton Lectures 
 at Oxford, in which he took a completely 
 Zwinglian view of the sacraments, made a 
 very deep impression upon me in my early 
 clerical days ; and though I have long passed 
 away from any shadow of his teaching, he 
 remains to my mind one of the few masters of 
 English style whom I should venture to place 
 on the same level with John Henry Newman 
 and the first Sir James Stephen. 
 
 The mention of these various persons with 
 whom I associated on terms of so great intimacy 
 will show that my own opinions had become 
 gradually out of sympathy with those usually 
 held in the Church of England ; and I had ceased 
 to find that I took much pleasure in the parish 
 work wherein I was expected to say that which I 
 did not believe. It seemed to me quite possible 
 that though I felt ministration in the Church of 
 England was dishonest, I might remain for some 
 time in lay communion. This, however, I found 
 possible for a short time only. 
 
264 MEMORIES 
 
 It will serve to indicate my theological views 
 at this time, if I quote various mottoes written 
 on a fly-leaf of a Bible which then and for some 
 years past I had used in the pulpit and in the 
 preparation of my sermons. 
 
 " Hie liber est, in quo quserit sua dogmata quisque, 
 Invehit et pariter dogmata quisque sua." 
 "Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most 
 gratuitous."— G. Eliot. 
 
 " Les miracles ce sont des coups d'etat celestes." 
 
 — Massimo d'Azeglio. 
 
 " Inspiration : a clear perception of those heavenly 
 truths which the Holy Ghost reveals to man, as the 
 abiding thoughts of God, which ever repeat themselves 
 in His eternal plan." — ROWLAND WILLIAMS, Rational 
 Godliness, Sermon XII. 
 
 " Inspiration : the inflexible love of Truth which being 
 inseparable from the spirit of Christianity would itself be 
 a sufficient guarantee for fidelity and honesty." — Dean 
 MiLMAN, History of Christianity. 
 
 About the year 1870, while retaining my 
 liking for ornate services and a great deal of 
 music in church, my opinions had, as I have 
 already said, become practically Unitarian. I 
 had for some time been a pretty constant con- 
 tributor to the Theological Review — an extinct 
 quarterly, then edited by the Rev. Charles 
 Beard. I was quite prepared to join a society. 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 265 
 
 which was in fact Unitarian, called the Free 
 Christian Union. The intention was to promote, 
 if possible, a general union of all persons holding 
 Unitarian theology within the various orthodox 
 churches and sects. It was joined by a very few 
 clergy of the Church of England, a few French 
 Protestant pastors, among whom the most 
 important was the Rev. Athanase Cocquerell 
 fils, and a few Congregational ministers. We 
 were all extremely in earnest, and unable to 
 see that there was a comic side to the whole 
 movement. We might have been described in 
 the words Mr. Lowell uses in his Fable for 
 Critics of Theodore Parker : — 
 
 " He went a step further without cough or hem. 
 He frankly declared he believed not in them, 
 And before he could be jumbled up or prevented, 
 From their orthodox kind of dissent, he dissented ; 
 There was heresy here you perceive, for the right 
 Of privately judging means simply that light 
 Has been granted to me for deciding on you, 
 And in happier times, before Atheism grew, 
 The deed contained clauses for cooking you too.'' 
 
 The Free Christian Union began and ended 
 its operations by a service in London, at which 
 two sermons were preached, one by Athanase 
 Cocquerell, the other by myself. To say that 
 
266 MEMORIES 
 
 my sermon was one that I had preached at 
 Eton long before I went to Sturminster, with 
 the smallest possible alteration, is simply to 
 say that an Unitarian theology had long been 
 unconsciously mine. It made, however, more 
 " to-do " than might have been expected, from 
 the fact that a reporter from the Pall Mall 
 Gazette misheard and therefore misquoted a 
 sentence of mine, which made the words sound 
 more dangerous than they really were. This 
 report in the paper had no effect whatever on 
 my parishioners, who probably never saw it ; 
 but it made me a still more marked man among 
 the clergy of the neighbourhood, and caused the 
 removal of one of my pupils, though the parents 
 of all the others showed me the greatest possible 
 confidence, and did not believe that I should 
 teach them anything contrary to the belief of 
 their parents. 
 
 It is always difficult to say at what moment 
 an intellectual position, long held with loosening 
 grasp, becomes untenable ; it is so easy to 
 acquiesce for awhile, so hard to deny what after 
 all the heart continues to desire when the in- 
 tellect rejects it ; but at last I had to face the 
 fact that I could no longer use in any honest 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 267 
 
 sense the Prayer Book of the Church of England, 
 nor minister at her altars, nor preach a definite 
 message when " all my mind '' was " clouded 
 with a doubt." 
 
 When entering upon my duties at Stur- 
 minster the chaotic state of parties, dogma, and 
 discipline in the Church of England was forced 
 at once on my attention. For many years, 
 up to the time of my predecessor, the vicar 
 had been non-resident, and the curate in 
 charge was a pronounced, even extreme, Low 
 Churchman. On the death of the vicar the 
 living fell into the hands of a very prominent 
 member of the ultra-Tractarian party, who at 
 once established daily services and ornate 
 ritual, restoring the church well, contradicting 
 in his every word and deed the teaching 
 and example of the former curate, who moved 
 only to the next parish, and did all that in 
 him lay to neutralise the work of the new 
 vicar. 
 
 When this gentleman was preferred to a 
 benefice in another county, the Bishop frankly 
 told me he wished for no Broad Churchmen, 
 and would, if it were possible, have refused to 
 accept a man of my opinions, which had become 
 
268 MEMORIES 
 
 known by various essays contributed from time 
 to time to current literature. But as he could 
 not help himself, he trusted 1 would at least 
 continue the outward character of the services 
 now fixed in the parish, which indeed was quite 
 in accordance with my own intention. 
 
 It struck me, however, as most grotesque 
 that the chief pastor of a diocese should have 
 no voice whatever in the selection of the men 
 appointed to serve under him, no power to 
 inhibit what he considered false doctrine, and 
 should have to appeal to the forbearance and 
 good sense of his clergy to hinder a complete 
 reversal of an established ritual approved by 
 himself. The failure of his attempt to declare 
 Dr. Rowland Williams an heretic, brought into 
 still greater prominence the weakness of the 
 Anglican Episcopate. 
 
 All through the ministrations of three clergy- 
 men — Low, High, Broad— the villagers, the 
 farmers, and in great measure the few resident 
 and educated gentry were scarce aware that 
 there were any other than outward differences 
 in the mode of conducting worship ; these, and 
 not the doctrines, were points to which objec- 
 tion was occasionally raised, and provided the 
 
VICAR OF STURMINSTER 269 
 
 parson went on the principle of qiiieta non 
 niovere, he might preach what he pleased, 
 orthodoxy or heterodoxy, the doctrines of 
 Rome, or Wittenberg, or Geneva. 
 
 Yet again, for some years, my doubts were 
 silent. At last, however, the time came when 
 I could no longer with any honesty continue 
 my ministrations, and a death in the circle of 
 my nearest relations, which called me to Bath 
 and obliged me to take a holiday, gave me an 
 opportunity for resigning my preferment as 
 quietly as possible ; for I was by no means 
 anxious to make any stir about the matter. 
 
 The final decision that I must leave the 
 Church of England was given by a word of 
 General, now Sir Richard, Strachey, who, at 
 the house of his and my brother-in-law, Sir 
 James Colvile, said to me suddenly, " When 
 are you coming out ? " This enabled me, as 
 by a flash of light, to see myself as others 
 saw me, and to recognise that the place I 
 filled ought to be mine no longer. 
 
 I resigned my living and came up to London. 
 
X 
 
 PUBLISHING— HOLIDAYS ABROAD 
 
 1874 
 
 FOR some time past I had been engaged in 
 reading books for Mr. Henry S. King, 
 publisher in Cornhill ; and almost coincidentally 
 with my quitting Sturminster, he offered me a 
 more intimate post in his business in London. 
 I accepted this, and for five-and-twenty years 
 thereafter was in various manners connected 
 with the publishing business in London. 
 
 There was much in the career and the char- 
 acter of Mr. Henry Samuel King that was 
 exceptional and remarkable in days which tend 
 to reduce lives to so much of dull uniformity, 
 and I will here say a few words about him, 
 the pith of what I wrote of him when he died 
 in 1878. His grandfather, Mr. King, was the 
 senior partner of the Lewes Bank, and the 
 
PUBLISHING 271 
 
 family was of long standing and good position, 
 a circumstance which stimulated Henry's efforts 
 in no small degree when, at a very early age, 
 he had to earn his own livelihood and to choose 
 his own career. For his father, having realised 
 a sufficient fortune, did not enter the bank, and 
 lost the whole of that fortune while his children 
 were still very young. At the age of thirteen 
 Mr. King had to go out into the world to fight 
 his way absolutely alone, with the proverbial 
 half-crown in his pocket. 
 
 I have heard him describe with the greatest 
 simplicity his eager and successful struggles to 
 save enough out of his small earnings to help 
 his family, to educate himself, and to get on in 
 the world ; and the tale seemed to the hearer at 
 once romantic and heroic, though to the narrator 
 it was the record of mere duty, as it appeared 
 to him, within the reach of all. At the age of 
 twenty he and his elder brother started on 
 their own account as booksellers at Brighton. 
 The elder, so soon as he could afford it, left 
 the business and took Orders ; the younger 
 maintained the business alone. 
 
 At Brighton, and in his then occupation, he 
 was able to carry out his self-education more 
 
272 MEMORIES 
 
 satisfactorily than before. Of course his culture 
 was and always remained deficient on some sides : 
 he knew no language but his own ; he was 
 only acquainted through translations with the 
 stores of classical and foreign literature. But 
 his knowledge of English literature was wide 
 and accurate, his reading careful, his memory 
 singularly retentive ; while for books — the 
 shrines of literature— he had a real passion and 
 a sort of personal affection. Hence he became 
 a bookseller of a type which is getting rarer 
 each day — one who rises far above the mere 
 tradesman, the friend and literary associate of 
 his customers, who look to him as, in some 
 sense, the judge and critic of his wares. Among 
 his Brighton friends the most conspicuous was 
 Frederick Robertson, who lived on affectionate 
 terms with Mr. King, and made him one of 
 his executors. 
 
 In June 1850 Mr. King married Miss Ellen 
 Blakeway, and, becoming by this alliance brother- 
 in-law of Mr. George Smith, he afterwards 
 joined the firm of Smith, Elder & Co. as a 
 partner, and moved his home to the Manor 
 House, Chigwell, Essex. 
 
 The firm combined the various and, as it 
 
PUBLISHING 273 
 
 would seem to an outsider, almost incongruous 
 business of Indian agency, banking, and publish- 
 ing ; but Mr. King found himself equally at 
 home in each branch, and the energy of the 
 two leading partners made both successful. 
 Every one knows that Smith, Elder & Co. 
 were Thackeray's publishers, and started the 
 Cornhill Magazine, under his editorship ; that 
 they recognised the merit of the Brontes ; that 
 they gave Ruskin's earlier books to the world in 
 a manner which satisfied even their fastidious 
 author ; that they were the publishers of 
 Robertson's Sermons, the most wide-spread 
 literature of that kind which has ever issued 
 from the press. It would be impossible, and, 
 if possible, invidious to distinguish the part 
 played by each member of the firm in their 
 excellent work in this or the other departments 
 of their business. 
 
 Mr. King's one literary effort, however, must 
 not be passed over; the arrangement and editing 
 of the successive volumes of Robertson was his, 
 and his alone ; and it was a task of no common 
 difficulty and delicacy. Robertson was an 
 extempore preacher ; he wrote out some of his 
 sermons afterwards, but the MS. draft was not 
 
 s 
 
274 MEMORIES 
 
 always so good and striking as that which had 
 been delivered ; some of his congregation took 
 notes, and these when placed in the editor's 
 hands were found to differ much from each 
 other. The preacher was bold, and might seem, 
 as Faber puts it, now and then " to stray under 
 the shadow of condemned propositions " in 
 expressions which it would not be always fair 
 to repeat, since he had no opportunity of 
 pruning his words — the publication being pos- 
 thumous — while honesty demanded a faithful 
 rescript. In all this Mr. King's rare memory 
 and his close friendship with the preacher aided 
 him, while his tact and literary judgment com- 
 bined to produce an example of almost perfect 
 editing. And the work was done quietly, and, 
 as it were, in secret ; no editor's name was 
 known : Mr. King effaced himself for his friend. 
 It is not too much to say that, but for him, 
 Robertson's words would have been lost when 
 the voice that uttered them ceased. 
 
 In 1 868 the partners in the house of Smith, 
 Elder & Co. separated, and Mr. King retained 
 the Indian business in his own name, the 
 publishing business going with the name of the 
 firm to the senior partner. Mr. King bound 
 
PUBLISHING 275 
 
 himself not to engage for three years in the 
 business carried on by the other partner. At 
 the time of the separation Mr. King had no 
 intention of becoming again a publisher. That 
 each business stood better alone is plain from 
 the extension of both when severed from the 
 other, and from the great impulse given to 
 Messrs. King's own trade and to the publishing 
 business, which they sold, when these were 
 finally divided. And at first Mr. King's atten- 
 tion was solely given to the extension of the 
 banking and agency business. But books were 
 Mr. King's delight, and books he must have as 
 a relaxation, which proved, however, to be very 
 hard work. As soon as he was able to do so 
 under the terms of his agreement, he resumed 
 business as a publisher, the first book issued 
 being Mr. Stopford Brooke's volume. Freedom 
 in the Church of England. The Robertson 
 family soon transferred Mr. Frederick Robert- 
 son's books to their old friend, the original 
 editor, and the business increased with rapidity 
 and success. 
 
 The very fact of such a career shows a man 
 of no ordinary force of character ; and few ever 
 approached Mr. King without being aware of 
 
276 MEMORIES 
 
 at least some features of it — great urbanity to 
 all who were first introduced to him, unwearied 
 attention to business, a large power of generali- 
 sation combined with extraordinary attention to 
 details, an almost unexampled memory, and 
 an iron will. And under the urbanity this 
 iron force was very apparent ; not all were 
 able to penetrate below it. Those who did 
 so found an extremely tender heart, a most 
 loving and lovable nature, a high and stern 
 sense of duty for himself and others, with 
 great toleration prevailing over a seeming in- 
 tolerance. 
 
 After I had assisted Mr. King for a few years 
 as his literary adviser, he determined to sell 
 his publishing business and devote himself 
 entirely to his Indian agency. I was able to 
 make arrangements with a partner to purchase 
 this business, which many years afterwards 
 was made into a company under the name 
 of " Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.," 
 although I remained the managing director. 
 It is no part of my intention to describe my 
 life as a publisher ; especially because to do so 
 would be to mention various persons who are 
 still alive, who would very probably not agree 
 
PUBLISHING 277 
 
 in everything I might say, and would not care 
 that I should tell confidential matters that were 
 common to others. I shall therefore confine 
 myself to saying with regard to my office life 
 of those twenty-five years, that publishing is 
 not by any means the ready road to wealth 
 that many people think it, and that it is very 
 inexpedient for any one without a large capital 
 and considerable literary skill to enter such a 
 business. Supposing, however, any one to 
 have the capital and the literary skill, I can 
 imagine no more interesting work. 
 
 I ought to say also, after a long experience 
 both in publishing and editing, that every book 
 sent to a publisher and every article sent to a 
 magazine or newspaper is quite sure to be fairly 
 considered. It is often supposed that an intro- 
 duction is necessary, but this is by no means 
 the case. A publisher wants authors quite as 
 much as these want a publisher, and they may 
 always be sure that the MSS. are fairly con- 
 sidered. That difference of opinion may take 
 place is no more than likely, since it cannot be 
 expected that an author and critic will always 
 take the same view of the excellence of an MS. ; 
 but a really good book is pretty sure of accept- 
 
278 MEMORIES 
 
 ance before it has gone to many publishers. 
 The legends of first-rate works having been the 
 round of all the publishers in London may be 
 fairly rejected as having an extremely small 
 amount of truth, if any, in them. It is certain, 
 however, that publishing in the last few years 
 has fallen on somewhat evil days, and I am 
 perhaps, from my age, necessarily a laudator 
 temporis acti, and do not think that so many 
 good books come in the way of publishers as 
 was the case some years ago. Since Browning, 
 Mrs. Browning, and Tennyson were all stars of 
 the literary firmament at the same time no one 
 has appeared whose verses (save a few lines 
 now and then) could move me in any degree. 
 There seems to me no one now worthy of 
 being called a poet unless it be Mr. Wilfrid 
 Blunt, Mr. Coventry Patmore, Mrs. Hamilton 
 King, and Mr. William Morris. Since George 
 Eliot's death and the publication of Mr. Thomas 
 Hardy's earlier novels no great writer of fiction 
 has come to the front, though as a writer of 
 short stories Mr. Rudyard Kipling has made 
 a deserved success. Scottish stories of the 
 Kail-yard, --and the snippets of tales in vogue 
 with the publishers of the one volume novels, 
 
PUBLISHING 279 
 
 have not the charm of the stories of older days. 
 But it should be remembered that at any given 
 time the real men of letters can be counted by 
 twos and threes, and that the literary clique is 
 invariably composed of very second- or third- 
 rate people, just as it was in Dr. Johnson's 
 days, though he, a giant among the pigmies, 
 rose superior to them all. 
 
 At a dinner-party soon after I came to 
 London there were no less than six persons 
 present who had published volumes of poems, 
 and as we went in to dinner Mrs. Tom Taylor 
 said to me, " We have all the poets here to- 
 night, or shall we say all the Poetasters." 
 And the second word was the truer of the two. 
 It was a great disappointment to me as to 
 others with a real love of poetry that the 
 laureateship was not allowed to die out after 
 it had been honoured by such names as 
 Southey, Wordsworth, and Tennyson. 
 
 The principal work of Mr. Henry S. King 
 was the " International Scientific Series," the 
 intention of which was to bring so much of 
 each separate science as might be thought 
 necessary for the ordinary layman within the 
 compass of a single volume, which, while being 
 
28o MEMORIES 
 
 accurate, should also be in a " tongue under- 
 standed of the people." The initiatory move- 
 ment came from America, and a distinguished 
 scientific American came over to England to 
 find a publisher ready to take up the venture. 
 Mr. King, then resuming business as a pub- 
 lisher after his separation from Messrs. Smith 
 and Elder, offered extremely hberal terms, too 
 liberal indeed to make the " Series " a great 
 financial success. Some of the most distin- 
 guished contributors gave merely old magazine 
 articles, while others were not well known to 
 the world in general as men of scientific im- 
 portance. There were indeed some, of whom 
 Professor Huxley was a notable example, 
 who gave new and admirable original work, 
 but in these cases the cost of illustration was 
 far greater than could reasonably have been ex- 
 pended for the price at which these volumes 
 were sold. 
 
 The " Series " was well under way by the 
 time that I joined Mr. King, and my first con- 
 nection with it was not fortunate. A book on 
 " Photography " was translated from the German, 
 and only reached my hands when the proofs 
 were to be passed for press. Mr. King had 
 
PUBLISHING 281 
 
 placed the translation in the hands of a 
 thoroughly competent man, and a considerable 
 sum was agreed upon for translation. Shortly 
 after it was undertaken, the translator called 
 upon Mr. King to explain that he had really 
 promised more than his time could allow, 
 and begged to turn the work over to his 
 brother-in-law, who was, he said, a most ac- 
 complished person, while he would be respon- 
 sible for reading the proofs. This second 
 translator, without leave, turned the matter 
 over to his wife, while the first did not keep 
 his promise of reading the proofs. The con- 
 sequence was that a sentence which should 
 have been translated " Photography by the 
 aid of chromium compounds " appeared as 
 " Chromo-Photography," and the proofs posi- 
 tively bristled with instances of equal igno- 
 rance. The whole edition of 1250 copies had 
 to be condemned as waste-paper, and a new 
 translation to be made by a careful chemist. 
 
 The " Series " ought to have been placed 
 from the first in the hands of some responsible 
 man of science. Instead of this, Mr. King 
 asked three persons of the highest scientific 
 reputation to become nominal editors, giving 
 
282 MEMORIES 
 
 them each a retaining fee of ^^lOO. For such 
 a fee they neither did, nor were expected to do, 
 more than give general advice about the sub- 
 jects to be included, and in case of translations, 
 of translators ; but the real editorship remained 
 then, as it always has remained since, with the 
 publishers, and with them alone. It is fair to 
 say that one of these three distinguished men, 
 finding that he was doing nothing for his re- 
 taining fee, returned the ;£^ioo after some 
 years. Our discovery of the careless manner 
 in which translations might be done naturally 
 placed me on my guard. The real fact, though 
 little understood, is that translation is one of 
 the most difficult of literary feats, instead of 
 being, as generally considered, one of the 
 easiest. Every book in a foreign language 
 ought to be treated with the same conscien- 
 tiousness as a professor of Latin or Greek 
 brings to the editing of a classical author. 
 
 About the time that the " Series " was 
 begun an American firm sent a translation of 
 Ribot's Sur EHeredite to be taken up by 
 us and printed in England. I naturally ex- 
 amined this with some care, although the 
 American publishers assured us that any ex- 
 
PUBLISHING 283 
 
 amination was quite unnecessary, the translator 
 being one of the first French scholars it was 
 possible to find. I dipped into the book quite 
 at hazard and came on the following remarkable 
 evidence of the translator's skill : " Un gar9on 
 arm6 de son arc, allait a la fete d'une commune 
 voisine " — " A boy, armed with his bow, went 
 to the feast of a woman in the neighbourhood." 
 It was impossible not to remember Mrs. Gamp's 
 apostrophe to the "Ankwerk's Package," in 
 which she was "appearing to confound the 
 Whale with the Prophet," on seeing how the 
 translator confounded the lady with the village, 
 and took away her character in doing so. It 
 will hardly be credited that the translator 
 demurred to our objection to his work, main- 
 taining that as no scientific fact was involved, 
 it really did not matter whether the boy went 
 to visit a neighbouring woman or a neighbour- 
 ing parish. 
 
 At a later time we determined to bring out 
 a translation of Moltke's Letters from Russia, 
 and I was again less wise than I should have 
 been. I accepted the services of a lady who 
 was reputed to be an accomplished German 
 scholar, and paid for her translation of the 
 
284 MEMORIES 
 
 book on its receipt. Before sending it to the 
 printer, however, I opened the book quite at 
 random and found that in a letter to his wife 
 Moltke had described the coronation of the 
 Emperor of Russia : " The Archbishop poured 
 the oil on his head, und zwei Bischofe trocknefen 
 die Spuren ab," "and two bishops fastened on 
 his spurs," by which rendering the whole pro- 
 ceeding of the translator was laid bare. The 
 word " Spur " was unknown to her, and how 
 could it mean anything but " spurs " ? And 
 abtrocknen could therefore mean nothing but 
 " fasten on." The revision of each of these 
 books, Ribot's Sur UHere'dite and Moltke's 
 Letters, occupied the better part of a well- 
 earned holiday. 
 
 As we had paid for the latter, it was not 
 worth while pointing out her many blunders 
 to the translator ; for an attempt to recover 
 the money paid would have been to imitate 
 the elfin harper who could harp " blood out 
 of a stone." As the lady was ignorant of 
 her mistakes, it was not surprising to receive 
 from her a translation of a certain Life of 
 Von Bismarck. Before declining this, how- 
 ever, I glanced at the first page and found the 
 
PUBLISHING 285 
 
 curious statement that on a given night Bis- 
 marck, having " received the Holy Communion 
 in his chambers," went off to join the emperor 
 before Paris. This struck me as very odd, and 
 I turned to the original to find as I expected 
 that Bismarck started for Paris at night hav- 
 ing had his supper. The book was accepted 
 by another publisher, we having given no 
 reason for declining it, and the lady's reputa- 
 tion as a translator being what it was, the 
 blunder appeared. The Times, in reviewing 
 the book, commented on the cynical wickedness 
 of the German chancellor : Punch also alluded 
 to it, and English readers believed the story. 
 So true is it, as Mr. Spurgeon said, that "a 
 lie will go half round the world while Truth is 
 putting on her boots." 
 
 I do not think I was ever caught again 
 publishing a translation without careful examin- 
 ation ; but many years afterwards a most impu- 
 dent attempt was made by an ignorant woman 
 to palm off upon us a translation of a German 
 History. On a careful inspection of this I 
 found that " Cardinal Cusa was the son of a 
 mussel fisherman near Treves," these words 
 being supposed to be a rendering of: "War 
 
286 MEMORIES 
 
 der Sohn eines Moselfischers bei Trier." The 
 gentleman who brought me the translation from 
 his friend was surprised to find that I con- 
 sidered this sentence showed at once an igno- 
 rance of German, of geography, and of natural 
 history. That translation, I believe, has never 
 appeared. While mentioning these blunders, it 
 is fair to say that Mrs. Clara Bell, who did much 
 work for us as publishers, was as unlike these 
 ladies as it is possible to imagine. She is not 
 only an accomplished linguist, but is possessed 
 of admirable scientific research, patience, and skill. 
 
 The earlier of these discoveries, though not 
 that of the Cardinal of Cusa, were made during 
 the time of my association with Mr. King. He 
 had before I joined him gathered around him, 
 in addition to the writers of the " International 
 Scientific Series," several well-known men, 
 many of whom are now dead, whom I consider 
 it a great privilege to have known. Among 
 those who are gone was Mr. Walter Bagehot, 
 who deserved all that is said of him by his 
 friend Mr. Hutton of the Spectator, and whose 
 books on economic science are likely, for a 
 long time, to keep their place. 
 
 To Mr. King, also, we owe the publication of 
 
PUBLISHING 287 
 
 the sermons of George Dawson, whom I never 
 saw, and the works of James Hinton. He also 
 encouraged the publication of " The Disciples," 
 by his second wife, Mrs. Hamilton King, who 
 survives him. A review of that poem in the 
 Examiner by me was the cause of my own 
 literary connection with Mr. King. To him 
 also is due the discovery of the gentleman who 
 then was known as " a new writer," Sir Lewis 
 Morris. 
 
 All these had taken their due and fitting 
 place in literature before I had the honour of 
 making their acquaintance. In regard to some 
 others, I am hardly able to say whether their 
 books first appeared in Mr. King's days or with 
 Mr. Trench and myself after Mr. King's mantle 
 had fallen on our shoulders. But whether they 
 first appeared in literature with the imprint of 
 Henry S. King & Co. or not, they remained 
 and remain for the most part my kind and 
 cordial friends. 
 
 The most remarkable book published by Mr. 
 Trench and myself, remembered for the circum- 
 stances attending its publication, as well as for 
 the name of the author, was the Last Journals 
 of General Gordon, When it was known that 
 
288 MEMORIES 
 
 these journals had been recovered and were in 
 the hands of his brother, Sir Henry Gordon, 
 much curiosity was felt as to which would be 
 the fortunate firm to whom Sir Henry might 
 offer them. A few days after they reached 
 England I received a note from Sir Henry 
 asking me to call upon him the next afternoon 
 at a given hour. It appears that he had asked 
 five publishers to call upon him at different 
 hours during the day, with sufficient intervals 
 of time to ensure our not meeting. " Now,'' 
 said Sir Henry when I entered his study, " I 
 have sent for you to show you my brother's 
 journals, and should like you to make an oflFer 
 for them ; I can only give you a few minutes 
 to turn them over " — and he himself hurriedly 
 turned over the MS., in which he had placed 
 pieces of paper, giving no sufficient time for a 
 real inspection of any part of the work. It was 
 not possible even to guess the sized book that 
 might be made of it, or the price at which it 
 would be possible to sell it. In fact, the in- 
 spection accorded was of the very slightest 
 kind. Sir Henry said he wished an oflFer for 
 the book to be made by twelve o'clock the 
 next day, and intimated that in fact he was 
 
PUBLISHING 289 
 
 prepared to sell the work to the highest bidder, 
 and would give an answer immediately. After 
 consulting with Mr. Trench, we wrote oifering 
 5000 guineas for this pig in a poke, and ours 
 proved the highest offer. The nearest bid to 
 ours was ;^5000, and, as Sir Henry afterwards 
 told me, the irritated nearest bidder exclaimed 
 that " it was those damned shillings that had 
 done it ! " 
 
 At the moment that the MS. came into our 
 hands the excitement over Gordon was at its 
 height, and had we been able to bring it out 
 at once, no doubt we should have realised a 
 very large sum. Sir Henry, however, made 
 it a condition that a relative of his should 
 edit the work, though no such editing was at 
 all necessary. The translation of many Arabic 
 papers took a long time, and there were other 
 delays. The various expenses connected with 
 editing, translating, and printing raised the sum 
 to ;^7000 before a single copy was ready. No 
 one was to blame for this, but the delay was 
 most vexatious. Public opinion moves so fast 
 in England that other interests had taken the 
 place of Gordon before the book was out, and 
 although it was a distinct gain to -us, the gain 
 
290 MEMORIES 
 
 was not nearly so large as we hoped for our 
 blind and somewhat risky venture. 
 
 Another series of publications by which 
 the firm of Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. may 
 still be remembered is the Parchment Library. 
 The intention of this series was to present 
 in thoroughly good paper and print some of 
 the most distinguished English classics, and 
 we certainly set the fashion of really beauti- 
 ful books. No doubt many have now surpassed 
 them, but at the time these reprints were a 
 distinct advance. 
 
 As may be well imagined, Mr. Trench set 
 great store by the due presentation of his father 
 the late Archbishop of Dublin's works ; and to 
 his determination that the most popular of these, 
 on the " Miracles and Parables of Our Lord," 
 should be brought within the reach of all, not 
 only of scholars ; and to his desire, therefore, 
 that the notes in classical language should be 
 translated into English, I owe my friendship 
 with Mr. Alfred Pollard of the British Museum, 
 who performed his task admirably. I will say 
 no more of this friendship than that it has 
 been one of the greatest pleasures of the later 
 period of my life. 
 
PUBLISHING 291 
 
 Even more than the fact that Mr. Alfred 
 Trench was my partner, our literary association 
 with his books brought me into contact with 
 the Archbishop. At a very early period in our 
 acquaintance the question came before us as 
 to what attitude we should take with regard 
 to books against religion, such as some of the 
 works in the " International Scientific Series " 
 and others of a free-thinking or agnostic nature, 
 and we naturally referred the question to Arch- 
 bishop Trench. He thought that the day was 
 long past in which the questions discussed in 
 those books could be shelved ; that our attitude 
 should be that when they were treated in a 
 reverent and serious spirit we should by no 
 means refuse to publish works of a free-think- 
 ing or agnostic type ; but that we should sternly 
 reject any that were merely flippant and written 
 for the sake of destruction. On this advice 
 we always acted, sometimes to the great indig- 
 nation of persons who wished us to publish 
 anti-Christian books which were as bad from 
 the Archbishop's literary standpoint as they 
 were from that of his theology. 
 
 And this brings me to the general question 
 of how far a publisher does well to consider 
 
292 MEMORIES 
 
 literature rather than fashion in the books he 
 takes up. It may, I think, be laid down that 
 a literary man is not as a rule a good pub- 
 lisher. He is on the one hand tempted to 
 accept books unlikely to succeed because they 
 fall in with his own literary tastes, and on the 
 other, to reject those which may have a con- 
 siderable sale at the time, because they are in 
 no true sense literature. I call to mind several 
 books, which for obvious reasons I will not 
 specify, rejected by our firm which, in other 
 hands, proved a great financial success, but 
 happily will never be heard of beyond the 
 decade which saw their production. 
 
 This leads to the further conviction, in 
 which I shall probably run counter to the 
 opinion of many — that literature is not in 
 itself a profession. With perhaps the exception 
 of Dr. Johnson and Lord Tennyson, it is diffi- 
 cult to name any men who, writing really 
 good works, lived by those works and by the 
 pensions conferred upon them on account of 
 those works. With those exceptions, I can 
 think of no one whose books have lived or are 
 likely to live, who have not either had an 
 independent fortune or a profession quite apart 
 
PUBLISHING 293 
 
 from literature, by which they gained at least a 
 decent livelihood. One of the branches of her 
 Majesty's Civil Service has been termed " a 
 nest of singing birds," so many clerks in that 
 office have published volumes of poetry ; and 
 except certain newspaper writers and popular 
 novelists, whose works will shortly be as dead 
 as those of Mrs. Gore, so popular in my youth, 
 the number of those who gain a livehhood by 
 literature is extraordinarily small. An abso- 
 lutely first-rate book — and the number of such in 
 any generation may be counted on the fingers — 
 is sure to succeed. A totally worthless book 
 is nearly as sure of success, but the dictum of 
 Horace still remains true in other as well as 
 poetic literature : — 
 
 . . . . " Mediocribus esse poetis 
 Non Di, non homines, non concessere columnae." 
 
 These have to take their chance, and the suc- 
 cesses are far less in proportion than the failures. 
 The author who has nothing to fall back upon is 
 in a bad way. I ought to say, and it is a great 
 satisfaction to me to do so, that without an excep- 
 tion the Catholic works published by our firm have 
 been successful, but they are few in number, and 
 the Catholic monde is not a book-buying one. 
 
294 MEMORIES 
 
 As I have already mentioned, one who Hved 
 by literature alone is Lord Tennyson, who 
 for many years was associated with us and 
 with whom our relations were always friendly 
 and pleasant. He was, however, a thorough 
 man of business, and our final parting at the 
 end of one of our periods of agreement was 
 that we, as publishers, and he, as author, took 
 a different view of his pecuniary value. 
 
 Among the poets with whom we were asso- 
 ciated and with all of whom our relations were 
 most pleasant, were Mr. Aubrey de Vere, Arch- 
 bishop Trench, and Sir Henry Taylor. I name 
 these three poets together because they belong 
 essentially to the same school, whose works 
 will always be studied so long as graceful 
 and scholarly poetry is valued ; but no one of 
 them is likely to become in any sense popular. 
 Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. Frederick Locker, Mr. 
 Edmund Gosse, and, above all, Mr. Austin 
 Dobson were poets of a very different stamp, 
 of lighter quality, but the last seated perhaps 
 on a higher platform of the Hill of Hehcon. 
 Higher still by far I should place Mr. Wilfrid 
 Blunt. 
 
 For good or evil our firm always preferred 
 
PUBLISHING 295 
 
 to be literary and scholarly, and nothing was 
 so great a delight, both to Mr. King and to 
 ourselves, as to lend a helping hand to any 
 young authors in whom we saw promise rather 
 than immediate profit. 
 
 I may now mention a few of those with 
 whom literature brought me into pleasant com- 
 panionship — some such, as I have mentioned 
 already, who had their spurs to win, others 
 veterans in the field. Among the oldest of 
 these was the Dorset poet, William Barnes, 
 who, if Dorsetshire were as large as Scotland, 
 might truly be called the Dorset Burns. His 
 poetry will live when his philological researches, 
 resting on unsound bases, are forgotten. 
 
 Sir Richard and Lady Burton were among 
 those for whom we published, and Lady Burton's 
 Syria and Palestine was of great interest. It 
 was one of the few passages in her life in 
 which she did not entirely merge herself in the 
 personality of her distinguished husband. They 
 both of them perhaps rated their doings and 
 discoveries at too high a rate, but were pleasant 
 and interesting persons. Lady Burton was 
 anxious to assure me that her book must become 
 the indispensable guide-book for every one who 
 
296 MEMORIES 
 
 travelled in the Holy Land, and to this end she 
 was extremely desirous that we should publish an 
 edition of her work interleaved with the historical 
 parts of the Bible, the Prophets and Gospels, 
 because, she said, every one must take her book 
 as a travelling companion, and it was by no means 
 certain that they would take the Bible also. My 
 relations with these two distinguished people 
 were always cordial ; and I wish I could per- 
 suade myself that Lady Burton's certainty that 
 Sir Richard was received into the Catholic 
 Church on his death-bed was correct ; instead 
 of which the verdict must be, " not proven.'' 
 
 We were glad to bring out a new edition of 
 Sir George Cox's Aryan Mythology. He is 
 not only a first cousin of my own, but one of 
 my earliest friends at school. We were at 
 Ilminster, under the Rev. John Allen, before 
 he went to Rugby, or I to Eton. He is one 
 of those writers whose careful research and 
 literary talents do not perhaps reach the very 
 highest standard of excellence ; therefore, good 
 as his books are, I should doubt whether their 
 pecuniary has ever equalled their literary value. 
 
 With Mr. Austin Dobson, Professor Edward 
 Dowden, and Mr. Edmund Gosse my relations 
 
PUBLISHING 297 
 
 were always of the most friendly kind, and all 
 three are among those, the loss of whose com- 
 panionship through illness is a great and con- 
 stant regret. With Mr. Gosse, especially, I 
 was associated privately in many pleasant tours 
 abroad as well as in literature, and indeed 
 literature was often discussed on these travels. 
 In one of these tours we arranged that he 
 should undertake the life of his father, Mr. 
 Philip Gosse, the distinguished naturahst. " I 
 hope," said Mr. Gosse, as we discussed his 
 treatment of the subject, "you do not think 
 that the natural piety of the son should entirely 
 eclipse his sense of humour in dealing with his 
 father's peculiarities." I assured him that I 
 should be entirely satisfied with the treatment 
 he might think fit to give to the Life, but 
 asked him to specify an instance of what he 
 meant. He spoke of his father, in his later 
 years, having gone to the dedication of a 
 chapel, at which, greatly to his dislike as a 
 staunch Plymouth Brother, an organ accom- 
 paniment to the hymn formed part of the 
 ritual. On his return he was asked how the 
 service had gone off, and his only comment was, 
 " There were harpers harping on their harps." 
 
298 MEMORIES 
 
 Robert Stephen Hawker, the Cornish High 
 Church poet, was another with whom and his 
 widow we were closely associated. Mr. Hawker 
 was one of the very few persons whose modern 
 ballad has been accepted as ancient. Sir Walter 
 Scott being, perhaps, the only other instance. 
 
 " Trelawney he's in keep and hold, 
 Trelawney he may die, 
 But there's fifty thousand Cornish men 
 Will know the reason why." 
 
 Trelawney was one of the seven bishops com- 
 mitted to the Tower by James II., and the 
 ballad will be remembered when the contro- 
 versy between Mr. Baring Gould and Mrs. 
 Hawker, as to whether her husband was re- 
 ceived into the Catholic Church on his death- 
 bed, is long forgotten. 
 
 Thomas Hardy and George Meredith are the 
 two most distinguished novel-writers with whom 
 we ever had relations. For a true appreciation 
 of the former it is perhaps necessary to know 
 Dorset, or, as Mr. Hardy is pleased to call it, 
 Wessex. 
 
 To understand George Meredith, it is perhaps 
 necessary to belong to a somewhat esoteric 
 circle who can enter into a literature which will 
 
PUBLISHING 299 
 
 probably increase as time brings a wider 
 education. 
 
 One of the most popular books published 
 by us was the Life of Sister Dora, by Miss 
 Margaret Lonsdale. Sister Dora was as re- 
 markable in her way as her brother, my dear 
 friend the Rev. Mark Pattison, was in his ; 
 and in Miss Lonsdale she found a worthy 
 biographer. 
 
 It is a great satisfaction to me that we were 
 associated with Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. 
 R. L. Stevenson, neither of whom had attained 
 the fame which he was afterwards to enjoy. 
 With regard to the first of these, it has been 
 always a regret to me, as to many others, 
 that the brilliancy of his fugitive work has 
 interfered with the production of some exhaus- 
 tive treatise on one of the many subjects in 
 which he is a master, worthy of a place in the 
 permanent literature of our time. 
 
 Some years since I was asked to deliver an 
 article on the production of books, which has 
 been reprinted in a volume of essays called 
 Faith and Unfaith. I may mention here 
 some stories which have found place therein, 
 and show publishing life on its more amusing 
 
300 MEMORIES 
 
 though often irritating side. A printer's devil, 
 so called, is the boy who runs to and fro 
 between the printing-office and the publishers, 
 but the real devil seems often to stand at the 
 right hand of the compositor in the printing- 
 office, and to be the cause of many astound- 
 ing blunders. Messrs. Henry S. King & Co. 
 printed an edition of Tennyson's works with 
 the greatest possible care. The author and the 
 printer's reader attended to every word and stop 
 with close attention, and the work was passed 
 to press with, as it seemed, no fault. A 
 jog to the printer's elbow was the cause of a 
 most ghastly misprint. When all was done, 
 what ought to have been a faultless edition 
 was marred by what seemed the grossest 
 carelessness. 
 
 Some years ago a writer, intending to describe 
 a tract of land between the base of a volcanic 
 mountain and the sea, related that the whole 
 of it was strewn with " erratic blocks." This 
 appeared " that the whole plain was strewn 
 with erotic blacks." When Louis XVIII. was 
 dying in Paris, the bulletin one evening con- 
 tained the words, " Sa Majeste se porte mieux." 
 The next morning appeared the misprint, " Le 
 
HOLIDAYS ABROAD 301 
 
 vieux persiste encore." It is, however, difficult 
 to prevent an author from regarding these things 
 as dehberate on the part of the printer, and 
 no doubt it is well that some one should be 
 able to justify the fact that he does well to 
 be angry. 
 
 As regards the publishing business, I may 
 venture to say that like many other businesses 
 it is greatly over-stocked, and that every such 
 business ought to be an autocracy. There 
 must, however, be ups and downs, and an old- 
 established firm may take a new lease of life, or 
 a new firm spring into pre-eminence so soon as 
 any really remarkable author needs a middle-man 
 between himself and the general public. 
 
 From the time that I went to Sturminster, in 
 1862, I adopted the plan which I never dis- 
 continued as long as I had health, of spending 
 every possible holiday on the Continent. I 
 have a strong opinion that a more complete 
 change is to be got in this way than by any 
 vacation taken in England. The entire altera- 
 tion of all surroundings is a clear gain, and even 
 a few days in France or Belgium is worth 
 double the time spent in holiday at home. 
 
 These tours were taken with members of my 
 
302 MEMORIES 
 
 own family or with one of my pupils when at 
 Sturminster. I was then a great deal at Paris ; 
 but when my daughters were at school at 
 Fontainebleau and my sons had left school and 
 were resident in French and German families, 
 they were extended further. For the health of 
 one of my daughters, who had to spend the 
 winter in Madeira, I paid a short visit to settle 
 her in Funchal, and had the pleasure of knowing 
 the delight of that delightful climate. I re- 
 member waking up in the morning after I got 
 there, in the end of one December, drinking in 
 the sweet spring air and summer sunlight at 
 the open window. The lines of Wordsworth 
 came surging into my mind : — 
 
 " Bliss was it in that Dawn to be alive, 
 But to be young was very Heaven." 
 
 Not every chance visitor, however, was as 
 charmed with the island as I was in my short 
 experience of it. I met lately with the follow- 
 ing criticism : " a Madere on existe, ou plutot 
 on vdgfete. On meurt quelquefois ; mais on ne 
 se marie jamais.'' 
 
 In Paris, in one such parson's holiday, I saw 
 much of Miss Charlotte Ritchie, for many years 
 a resident there, and a cousin of Mr. Thackeray. 
 
HOLIDAYS ABROAD 303 
 
 She was one of those persons who so shrink 
 from anything like pubHcity and live so beautiful 
 a life unseen and almost unknown except by 
 her friends, that to say more of her would be 
 like rending a sacred veil asunder. But one 
 characteristic story of her is so touching that it 
 seems almost a duty to record it. On a cheerless 
 wintry day a friend saw a pauper's funeral 
 borne through one of the low quarters of Paris 
 towards a poor suburban cemetery. Behind this 
 walked alone through the snow and mire Miss 
 Charlotte Ritchie. The friend went to offer his 
 aid, and asked how she came to be there. She 
 answered that seeing a funeral unaccompanied 
 by any friends or attendants, she was so touched 
 by the squalor and sadness that she had turned 
 aside to follow the unknown pauper to his grave. 
 The friend of course went with her and only 
 these two, who never knew the name of the 
 dead man they were following, attended him on 
 his long last journey. 
 
 Through Miss Ritchie I became acquainted 
 with M. and Mme. Mohl, and was for many 
 years an attendant at her Salon, in the Rue 
 du Bac, whenever I happened to be in Paris. 
 Mme. Mohl was an Englishwoman, a Miss 
 
304 MEMORIES 
 
 Clarke, who quite late in life married the dis- 
 tinguished oriental scholar and gathered round 
 her all that was most remarkable in Paris. To 
 many of us it seemed that the only bond of 
 union among the distinguished people at her 
 house was hatred of the Emperor Napoleon III., 
 and with that qualification all creeds and all 
 politics were alike welcomed by her. On the 
 same evening were to be seen M. Renan and 
 M. de Montalembert. I only saw the latter once, 
 but became intimate with M. and Mme. Renan, 
 an intimacy never broken. 
 
 M. Renan's Autobiography is, or ought to be, 
 known by all. I need only add what has, how- 
 ever, been observed by many besides myself, 
 that he never lost the stamp impressed upon 
 him by the seminaries in which he was educated 
 for the priesthood, far as he wandered from the 
 doctrines inculcated upon him. He was, how- 
 ever, so tolerant of the faith he had abandoned 
 that he never could understand how it was people 
 were so little tolerant of his own extravagations. 
 I was sitting with him on one occasion, when 
 he asked me how it was that Englishmen of all 
 opinions had been so shocked with his Vie de 
 Jesus, and professed himself quite unable to 
 
HOLIDAYS ABROAD 305 
 
 understand this English standpoint. I said 
 that I would tell him one thing which had 
 revolted most English people — the passage in 
 which he speaks of the resurrection of Lazarus 
 as being probably a trick of which our Lord 
 might Himself have been an accomplice. M. 
 Renan said, with an air of considerable 
 astonishment, " Mais, mon ami, ce n'etait 
 qu'une hypothese," and remained quite unable 
 to see that such an hypothesis was as dis- 
 honouring to its holder as would have been a 
 direct assertion. 
 
 Although my holiday was usually spent in 
 France, either in Paris or the country districts, 
 I visited at different times and with different 
 companions parts of Germany before unknown 
 to me, Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland. I 
 will not attempt to describe what is so well 
 known to many of my readers, but I may as 
 well throw together what has seemed to me 
 worth preserving in various notes containing a 
 record of these tours. 
 
 In Paris, I think it was in 1865, I gained 
 permission to attend the emperor's Mass on 
 Sunday at the Tuileries, and was much scanda- 
 lised at all I saw, except the devotion of the 
 
3o6 MEMORIES 
 
 empress, which was evidently sincere. The 
 whole performance seemed to me more a glori- 
 fication of the emperor than of Him who was 
 supposed to be worshipped. The Mass had to 
 wait for the emperor's time, and previous to the 
 entrance of the court, an usher, tapping his staff 
 on the floor, marched up to the altar, turning 
 his back to it and his face to the royal gallery, 
 and proclaimed in loud tones and with the same 
 sort of raps that herald the rising of the curtain 
 at the opera, " I'Empereur ! " The royal party 
 then filed in and took their places ; the priest, 
 a Jewish gentleman who has since, I believe, 
 reverted to the faith of his fathers, coming in 
 and taking his place as the usher vacated it. 
 The ceremony was a Low Mass and reduced 
 to its shortest span. 
 
 In my tours in France I came to the con- 
 clusion that all the turmoil and fret of modern 
 France is confined to the large towns ; provincial 
 France is quiet, orderly, conservative in the 
 best sense, and Catholic. When I say Catholic, 
 I remember that the Abbd Martin, in a walk I 
 took with him through Paris, asserted that the 
 working men even there were at heart Catholic, 
 and he said, " They all come to us at the 
 
HOLIDAYS ABROAD 307 
 
 hour of their death." The French workman, 
 however, is very different to the German work- 
 man, who, with scarce an exception, is proud of 
 his education and the place taken by his country 
 in consequence of this education. Once when 
 in Amiens with my daughter I took a boat on 
 the Somme, and we had a long and interesting 
 conversation with the boatman on elementary 
 education. He rested on his oars, and while 
 we allowed ourselves to drift with the current, 
 he said, " Mais, voyez-vous. Mademoiselle, plus 
 on est instruit, plus on est bete," — a sentiment 
 with which many country squires in England 
 would be found cordially to agree. 
 
 The French workman is always ready to 
 make friends with anybody who will give him- 
 self the trouble to be interested in his occu- 
 pations and pursuits. One Easter Day when 
 staying at Dinant, I was present at a vesper 
 service at a little village church which was 
 filled to overflowing. The village orchestra 
 were in the singing-gallery and performing their 
 parts very well except on one occasion when 
 there came a bass note in frightful discord with 
 the rest of the voices. A village workman, who 
 stood next to me in the aisle, turned and said 
 
3o8 MEMORIES 
 
 to me, as trusting wholly in my sympathy : 
 " C'est Pierre qui a fait 9a." 
 
 Few congregations show such rapt devotion 
 as those in French churches. Mr. Browning, 
 whose sturdy Protestantism is evident through- 
 out his books, as well as his sympathy with 
 forms of faith not his own, once clutched the 
 arm of a friend of his and mine at the moment 
 of the Elevation, and said, " O Arthur, this is 
 too good not to be true." 
 
 For several years a band of six friends, W. H. 
 Gray, H. W. Watts, H. J. Hood, T. Hamond, E. 
 Gosse, and I, went together for a short Easter 
 holiday in France, and these tours are among 
 the most delightful days of my life ; unclouded 
 by the smallest shadow of a difference, brightened 
 to me by incessant acts of kindness from all, 
 and by the unfailing gaiety of Gosse. 
 
 We were often delighted with his criticisms 
 on current literature, which we afterwards re- 
 cognised in their printed form. He was par- 
 ticularly severe on the poems of a lady (who 
 never had any admirers beyond her very en- 
 thusiastic husband), and had described the 
 movements of her soul as those of a butterfly 
 escaping from its chrysalis ; and he pretended 
 
HOLIDAYS ABROAD 309 
 
 to believe that she was the author of an epitaph 
 which he had somewhere seen : — 
 
 " She felt herself so foul within 
 She broke the slough and crust of sin 
 And hatched herself a cherubin." 
 
 I quote rather incongruously what I said in 
 1870 of the picture of the "Adoration of the 
 Lamb " of Ghent, in case it may lead any who 
 do not know it to make acquaintance with this 
 great work. 
 
 " Every one knows or guesses, if they have 
 not seen the picture, that the motive of it is 
 the Mystic Lamb of the Revelation, ' as it had 
 been slain,' and the great company of the 
 redeemed who came to worship him. But 
 they worship in no mystic ideal heaven ; no 
 clouds are rolled about a throne in an unsub- 
 stantial sky. A soft light from the west falls 
 on a sweet Rhine-land landscape, on a green 
 meadow studded with daisies. Trees of foliage 
 and flowers strange to Germany grow indeed 
 in the bosquets, through which pathways lead 
 to the central field, but they are trees of earthly 
 growth, and do not seem incongruous. The 
 Lamb, with a human look of life in his tender 
 eyes, stands on a central altar before which 
 plays a fountain of pure water, and all that is 
 
3IO MEMORIES 
 
 idealised is the stream of blood which flows 
 into a chalice from his pierced heart. That is 
 ideal, for there is in it no suggestion of the 
 shambles or of sacrifice to death ; it is a living 
 heart that lives still, but gives of its love 
 thus symbolised. Those who are gathered are 
 types of men of all classes and kinds ; in front 
 are the great saints, and patriarchs, and apostles. 
 From the blooming thickets come those who 
 had done for mankind great charity, who had 
 founded abbeys of learning and 'of rest, and 
 the holy women who had loved and died. 
 There is no hint of rejection, none of the dark 
 doctrines of sin and death. It is a bright, 
 happy, human company gathered before the 
 symbol of love, as it seemed to men of that day. 
 Of the technical merits of the picture it is not 
 for me to speak : I am no painter, no art critic — 
 like that company, I can stand only and adore. 
 
 " The great picture is set in a disused chapel, 
 where now no tapers flare, no Mass is said, 
 no relics are enshrined, no censer sends up its 
 smoke. It is not love for art as such that 
 leaves the picture here alone, for the traveller 
 may see the works of very great artists darkened 
 by smoke in many a Belgian town ; it is not that 
 the trappings of the altar would interfere with 
 
HOLIDAYS ABROAD 311 
 
 it, for it could well hang elsewhere and out of 
 the way. 
 
 " Rather is it that into the sluggish souls of 
 Belgian canons has penetrated some conscious- 
 ness of the divinity which dwells in the great 
 painting. An altar which is crowned by this 
 has no need of any other presence in order to 
 consecrate it." 
 
 Of a tour in Holland in 1876 I will quote a 
 few lines as showing what even twenty years 
 ago appeared to a then non-Catholic observer 
 of the revival of the Church in Holland. 
 
 "It is of course easy to generalise from a 
 few particulars, and it may be difficult to do 
 so correctly, but the speakers in hotels and 
 railway carriages who care to give information 
 to travellers, and who show by their conver- 
 sations that they are acquainted with their 
 subjects, are no bad index to the feeling of a 
 people. And on religion and on politics we 
 have had several conversations with interesting 
 men. From these it seems that the same sort 
 of action and reaction is going on in the 
 religious world here as in England, the same 
 conflict between a renascent Catholicism and 
 extreme free-thought, the same revival of 
 
312 MEMORIES 
 
 Catholic architecture, not yet here yielding to 
 a quasi Queen Anne style, the same strife 
 among the sects, the same growing conviction 
 that, though existing kings and queens may be 
 harmless and even meritorious, one shake would 
 bring them down like the tumbling ranks which 
 a child makes of his father's worn packs of cards. 
 
 "One of these court cards, the Crown Princess 
 of Prussia, won all hearts at Scheveningen this 
 summer. So said several, especially a Prussian 
 ex-Uhlan, now a horse-dealer in Holland, with 
 whom there came into our carriage an atmos- 
 phere as of a whole cavalry stable. He was a 
 cheery, voluble person, likely to drive a good 
 bargain, who consumed much cognac, ' all in 
 the way of business,' as he told us, though it 
 scarcely appeared how it aided his trade at 
 that particular time. Of ' unsere Victoria ' he 
 said that she was ' eine edle, noble, gebildete, 
 liebenswDrdige Frau,' while her husband was 
 ' echter Soldat,' and if all royal people did their 
 trade as well as those two, the republic which 
 must come in the end would be long postponed. 
 
 " It is no wonder that royal personages who 
 can afford it go to Scheveningen in the season. 
 Even now, with the shrill wind stripping the 
 
HOLIDAYS ABROAD 313 
 
 oak trees in the wood of the Hague, with a 
 long row of disused restaurants and closed 
 shutters, the vast stretch of firm, silver sands, 
 and the miles of tumbling sea, the picturesque 
 fishermen and fishwives, the great boats with 
 their sails of ruddy brown made a pleasant 
 picture under the bright sun and clear sky. It 
 must be a very paradise for children, and the 
 immediate neighbourhood of the Hague would 
 prevent the most clubbable pere de famille from 
 being bored. Fancy the wildest part of the 
 Lancashire shore, Fleetwood or Poulton-le-Sands, 
 brought as close to Pall Mall as is St. John's 
 Wood ! " 
 
 It may be noticed by those who are good 
 enough to read these recollections that I have 
 said nothing of the books which particularly 
 moved me after my Eton days. This is because 
 from that time onward I read everything I 
 could, and steeped myself, so far as might be, 
 both in English and foreign literature. It 
 would be quite true were I to explain how 
 large a part of myself became the poems of 
 Clough and Matthew Arnold, the novels of 
 George Eliot and Thomas Hardy ; but it would 
 seem unfair to many others who perhaps 
 
314 MEMORIES 
 
 affected me as much. Living as I did in 
 Dorsetshire, I was able perhaps to understand 
 how absolutely true to life are the pictures in 
 Hardy's early books. 
 
 When Far from the Madding Crowd came 
 out I was reading it aloud to my wife, when 
 one of our little girls being in the room, 
 looked up and said, " Why, mother, those people 
 talk exactly like Mr. Singleton." Mr. Singleton 
 was the carter whose cart stable-yard skirted 
 our garden and constantly allowed our children 
 to ride his great horses bare-back to watering. 
 This unconscious criticism of a mere child was 
 a perfect tribute to the naturalness of Hardy's 
 descriptions and to the conversations of his 
 peasants. At our table afterwards, when he 
 was living in London, a lady sitting between 
 him and me asked him where was the Egdon 
 Heath described in The Return of the Native. 
 To which he replied, " You must ask Mr. Paul, 
 as he is the one man in England who knows 
 Dorsetshire as well as I do." In those earlier 
 books, even when he seems to get away to 
 Cornwall, the real scenery remains Dorset ; and 
 William Worm is as true a Dorset labourer as 
 any D'Urberville of his later works. 
 
X 
 
 FRIENDS IN LONDON 
 
 1874 
 
 NEARLY all that I have to say about my 
 life in London falls under the recollec- 
 tions of various interesting persons whom I 
 have known well, who have honoured me 
 with their friendship during the last twenty- 
 five years. 
 
 With few exceptions, I must speak only of 
 those who have already passed into the hidden 
 life, and these few will, I am sure, forgive me 
 for mentioning what has been to me so great 
 a pleasure. 
 
 One of the foremost of those with whom I 
 became very intimate was Miss Thornton, who 
 died in 1887, at the age of ninety. To her I 
 owe the following paper of questions on Miss 
 Austen's Emma, drawn up by Mr. Rose, 
 rector of Weybridge, which is worthy to take 
 
3i6 • MEMORIES 
 
 rank with Calverley's like and well-known ex- 
 amination paper on Pickwick. 
 
 1. Indicate by a careful statement of distances in 
 miles the exact locality of Highbury, mentioning 
 briefly the occasions on which these distances are 
 stated. On what coach road and on what river was 
 it situated ? Prove by exact internal evidence that it 
 was in the vicinity of a coach road and of a river. 
 
 2. Draw a plan of Highbury Street, marking the 
 relative positions of Randall's, Ford's, the Crown, and 
 Miss Bates' house. Insert any other position of 
 places which in your opinion can be determined, 
 giving an account of the passages on which you rely. 
 
 3. State all you know about "the Sucklings" — 
 their home, their circumstances, their accomplish- 
 ments, and their neighbours. 
 
 4. Give the Christian names of James's daughter, 
 of Frank Churchill, of Mrs. Weston, Emma's grand- 
 mother. Miss Bates, Mr. Knightley, Mr. Elton, Mr. 
 Woodhouse, and say in what context the* names of 
 Emma's grandmother and Miss Bates occur. 
 
 5. Put down all you know about Mrs. Bates' shawl. 
 
 6. Who was the proprietor of the Crown ? When 
 do we first hear of it ? Describe the ball-room and 
 its appearance. How was it generally used ? How 
 many steps were there between it and the supper- room. 
 
 7. Give an account of all the forms of food and 
 drink mentioned in Emma, and the occasions in 
 which they respectively occur. 
 
 8. State all you know about the household of 
 Mrs. Goddard. When she spent an evening at 
 Hartfield how was the time passed ? 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 317 
 
 9. What good service had Mr. Dixon rendered 
 to Jane ? 
 
 10. Mention the months in which the chief inci- 
 dents occurred. 
 
 11. What graceful acts are recorded of Frank at 
 his first visit ? 
 
 12. What references are there in Emma to works 
 of literature ? 
 
 13. When was Emma first conscious that she 
 loved Mr. Knightley ? 
 
 14. What signs of love does Mr. Knightley mani- 
 fest before his offer ? 
 
 15. Describe Emma's complexion, eyes, and hair, 
 stating your authority. What was her fortune ? 
 
 16. Describe Harriet's vacillations at Ford's, if 
 possible in the words of the author. 
 
 1 7. In the same manner write down Mrs. Elton's 
 monologue in the strawberry beds at Donwell. 
 
 18. Describe in his own words Mr. John Knightley's 
 views of society. 
 
 19. Describe Jane Fairfax's face and character, and 
 say what hope you have of her future happiness, as 
 also of the future happiness of Mr. Martin. 
 
 20. Give the chief incidents of the Cole dinner- 
 party. 
 
 21. Give the context or the occasion of the follow- 
 ing words : — 
 
 " If it had been handed round once." 
 " I smile because you smile." 
 " They are all very different." 
 " Rather he than I." 
 "What do you deserve?" 
 
3i8 MEMORIES 
 
 I ought to speak of my friend Professor 
 W. K. Clifford, who died after a lingering 
 illness at Madeira in 1878. The reason for 
 going there was not any idea of saving a life 
 already doomed, but of making his last hours 
 more easy. I never knew a man who was a more 
 complete agnostic than Clifford, but it always 
 seemed to me that, had a longer span of life 
 been allowed him, he would have gone the 
 whole round of disbelief and found the solution 
 of all his difficulties in the Catholic Church. I 
 subjoin a paper which he drew up not long before 
 he went to Madeira to die ; it expresses views 
 which breathe to my mind the spirit of most 
 earnest piety, though outside the bounds of all 
 creeds : I ought to say that I have found most 
 deep and true indications of Christian spirit in 
 those who seemed alien to it, and amongst these 
 I would especially name Clifford, Dr. Congreve, 
 and George Eliot : — 
 
 "TO LABOUR IS TO PRAY. 
 
 Let him who would raise himself by communion 
 with what is highest and best in his own soul, or in 
 the universe, labour for our father Man who is 
 within us : 
 
 That his name may be counted holy among men ; 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 319 
 
 That his kingdom may come, the kingdom of the 
 light and the right, in which there shall be no more 
 priest or Caesar ; 
 
 That his will may be done in fact, as it is in the 
 ideal world ; 
 
 That with him we may day by day make good our 
 daily step of progress ; 
 
 That our trespasses may not be forgiven, but 
 repaired ; for there is no sin but sin against Man ; 
 
 That our common efforts may lead us out of dark- 
 ness and deliver us from the deceiver. 
 
 For Man's is the light, and the right, and the 
 striving upwards, from the beginning to the end of 
 the ages." 
 
 Another lady who attained almost the great 
 age of Miss Thornton, but had lived far more in 
 general society, was Mrs. Procter, formerly Miss 
 Skepper, and stepdaughter of Basil Montagu. 
 Like Miss Thornton, she was full of sharp say- 
 ings, but there was a certain dash of gall in 
 them. The daughter who lived with her died, 
 and I know well how great was the grief to her 
 mother. She might have said of her daughter's 
 death what Mrs. Kingsley said to me, "that 
 only a sense of humour carried her through 
 the dreadful weeks immediately succeeding her 
 husband's death." With the same sense of 
 humour, Mrs. Procter told me that another 
 
320 MEMORIES 
 
 daughter, a nun, came to visit her after her 
 daughter Edith's death, and according to the 
 rules of her Order she could not come alone. 
 She brought, therefore, another nun with her, 
 who was quite unknown to Mrs. Procter. Mrs. 
 Procter related how the first thing which gave 
 her any hope 'that she might recover from the 
 great blow she had suffered was when she and 
 her daughter were talking and weeping over the 
 one they had lost, " I saw the other nun, who 
 could not have cared about my dear Edith, 
 snivelling in the corner, and I so entered into 
 the absurdity of it that I felt that I might 
 regain my spirits." 
 
 I will here reprint what I wrote of her at 
 her death, in the Academy, because no longer 
 biography exists of her. By her desire all 
 her letters and papers were burnt by her 
 granddaughter, who lived with her for some 
 years before her death. 
 
 " Our readers may not unnaturally have ex- 
 pected to see in the Academy last week some 
 obituary notice of a lady so well known as Mrs. 
 Procter, who, if not literary herself, has been 
 closely connected with almost every eminent man 
 and woman of letters since the beginning of 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 321 
 
 the century. The present paper was not at once 
 written, in deference to the wishes of the dead, 
 who often expressed to the writer her feeling 
 that obituary notices were hurried and ill- 
 considered, and that in most cases silence was 
 the fitting form of respect and sorrow. She 
 had also the strongest dislike to the view, not 
 uncommon — as it would seem — that death re- 
 moves all seals of secrecy, that private letters 
 may be read by the world, and private affairs 
 revealed so soon as the voice which would have 
 protested is hushed for ever. Bearing her 
 wishes on the subject in mind, the writer only 
 now speaks when, other notices having already 
 appeared, some of the nearest relatives and 
 friends wish that some further slight account 
 of Mrs. Procter should be placed on record by 
 one who had the honour to know her well. 
 
 " Anne Benson Procter was born at York on 
 September 11, 1799. Her father, Mr. Skepper, 
 was a Yorkshire squire of small landed pro- 
 perty, but descended and deriving his name 
 from the German Scheffer, the partner of Fust, 
 the earhest printer. Her mother was a Miss 
 Benson, of the same county, and aunt of the 
 present Archbishop of Canterbury. Mrs. Skep- 
 
322 MEMORIES 
 
 per, early left a widow, married Mr. Basil 
 Montagu, Q.C., the well-known reformer of the 
 bankruptcy laws and editor of Bacon. Though 
 he had been married twice before, he was still a 
 young man, occupying a good social and literary 
 position, and able to introduce his brilliant 
 young wife to a circle in which she took a 
 prominent part. Mr. Montagu was fourteen 
 when Dr. Johnson, whom he knew, died ; he 
 was the intimate associate of Godwin, Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth ; he watched by Mary Wollstone- 
 craft's deathbed ; Sir James Mackintosh helped 
 to steady those liberal principles which were 
 growing somewhat wild under Godwin's influ- 
 ence ; his home was the haunt not only of 
 Londoners like Charles Lamb, but of young 
 men from the country before they grew famous, 
 if only they had promise in them, like Edward 
 Irving and Carlyle. 
 
 " Thus from her early childhood Anne Skepper 
 was surrounded by liberal and literary influ- 
 ences which moulded her strong and bright 
 nature. The word liberal is used, however, 
 only to designate her independent, vigorous 
 thought ; for in politics Mrs. Procter was, and 
 remained, a high Tory, a Church and State 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 323 
 
 woman of the old school, accepting in these 
 later years the principles of the Primrose 
 League, and wearing its badge with pleasure. 
 Her recollections of those early days were most 
 interesting ; but she was so full of life to the 
 last, and so in touch with all that was around 
 her, that the talk about them was quite unlike 
 ordinary senile memories : Lamb and Godwin 
 might have passed from us but yesterday. Not 
 long since a letter from Lamb to Mrs. Basil 
 Montagu found its way into the autograph 
 market, in which he expressed contrition for 
 having allowed himself to become the worse for 
 liquor at her table. Mrs. Procter said, ' But 
 they have not seen the second letter, which I 
 have upstairs, written next day, in which he 
 said that my mother might ask him again with 
 safety, because he never got drunk twice in the 
 same house.' 
 
 " She would speak as if it had been a romance 
 of last week, of how zealously Mrs. Montagu 
 threw herself into young people's love affairs, 
 so that Irving's marriage with Miss Martin took 
 place from her house ; and at the age of eighty- 
 five, as many of Mrs. Procter's friends will 
 remember, Mrs. Montagu's daughter engaged 
 
324 MEMORIES 
 
 with inherited zeal in the arrangements for 
 another marriage opposed by the lady's family. 
 She was ever ready to do battle for her mother 
 and stepfather if they were misunderstood or 
 misrepresented in the smallest degree. It 
 was not enough to her generous nature that 
 their high characters and their name in the 
 world should speak for themselves. Thus, 
 when Carlyle's disparaging remarks on Basil 
 Montagu's patronage and the kindness of his 
 wife were brought to light with ill-nature and 
 unwisdom, she printed and circulated widely 
 early letters which showed Carlyle as a grateful 
 suppliant for favour ; and it was with difficulty 
 that some of her friends persuaded her to sup- 
 press a scathing motto from Othello, which 
 seemed to her to fit the facts of the case. 
 
 "In 1823 Miss Skepper married Bryan Waller 
 Procter, known in literature as ' Barry Corn- 
 wall,' who was shortly after called to the Bar. 
 Means were small, Mr. Procter was ' a simple, 
 sincere, shy, and delicate soul,' as Mr. Coventry 
 Patmore calls him, and his wife's spirits often 
 had to do for both. She retained her old 
 literary friends, and made by degrees many 
 more, who loved herself and her husband for 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 325 
 
 their own sakes. During great part of their 
 early married life they lived with the Montagus, 
 so that the two circles of friends were fused 
 into one. 
 
 " Mr. Procter's poems are probably now known 
 but to few ; but when he was a young man, 
 in the third decade of this century, they had 
 a vogue which would now be scarcely under- 
 stood. Popular composers set his songs — 
 much better than words to music were wont 
 to be — and schoolboys had them by heart. 
 Still, though more than fifty years have gone 
 by since he saw them, the present writer could 
 repeat a poem on London streets, which were 
 not found to be paved with gold — 'King 
 Death,' 'The Sea,' and many others — read 
 in school hours under the shelter of a friendly 
 desk-lid. Nor did we schoolboys think them, 
 as Lamb did, 'redundant.' In July 1827 
 Lamb wrote to Patmore : ' Procter has a wen 
 growing out of the nape of his neck, which his 
 wife wants him to have cut off; but I think it 
 rather an agreeable excrescence — like his poetry 
 
 redundant.' The wen is probably as much 
 
 imagination, or banter, as the next sentence : 
 ' Godwin was taken up for picking pockets.' 
 
326 MEMORIES 
 
 " Six children, in somewhat rapid succession, 
 left scant time for society ; but it was never 
 dropped, and in one way or another the Procters 
 knew most people worth knowing in London. 
 They were, as Mr. Patmore says — we may 
 make his words plural — ' the friends of almost 
 every person of character in art or letters. 
 They had after a while sufficient means, Mr. 
 Procter having been appointed in 183 1 Com- 
 missioner in Lunacy — an office which he held 
 for thirty years. Mr. Procter died in 1 8 74, 
 and had reached the precise age which his 
 wife also attained. During all those years, 
 when as Miss Skepper in her mother's house, 
 and afterwards in her own, so many persons 
 passed before her, it is not to be expected that 
 she would, or could, view all with equal liking, 
 and in truth she piqued herself on being as 
 good a hater as she was a friend. It would 
 not be fair to specify later names ; but there 
 can be no harm in telling that her pet aversion 
 was the pedant philosopher Godwin. He was 
 the type of the persons for whom she could 
 feel no tolerance. 
 
 " During Mr. Procter's failing health his wife 
 was a good deal withdrawn from the society of 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 327 
 
 all but her intimate friends — ^and they were 
 many; but for the last thirteen years few 
 people have been better known in London, nor 
 till quite within the last few months would 
 any one have learnt from her conversation or 
 manner that she had passed from middle life 
 to old age. What she was at fifty she was at 
 eighty and long past that time. 
 
 " ' Our Lady of Bitterness,' one among her 
 friends has named her, and she did not shrink 
 from the title ; but neither he nor any one who 
 knew her well would recognise it as more than 
 an accidental description. Her conversation 
 and her criticism were always tonic ; and there 
 must be a dash of bitter in every tonic, how 
 pleasant and healthful soever it may be. She 
 always sat very upright, with her whole figure 
 as it were on the alert. Then, when need was, 
 she seemed to straighten herself still more, 
 and with a sparkle of mischief in her eyes, 
 bright to the last, she flashed out her verbal 
 dagger, whose blade was so keen that the in- 
 terlocutor admired the weapon more than he 
 felt the wound. She never was prosy, though 
 she now and then repeated to her hearers a 
 good thing she had said on another occasion — 
 
328 MEMORIES 
 
 " ' I found myself, my dear/ she said, ' in 
 
 such odd company last night, at Mr. 's. 
 
 I don't know how the man came to ask me or 
 
 why I went. But when I saw Lady 
 
 (who had just been divorced) I could not resist 
 saying to her, " What an odd party this is ! 
 All the men have been co-respondents, and all 
 the women, except you and me, have lost their 
 characters ! " ' 
 
 " But this sharpness of tongue was accom- 
 panied by the greatest kindness of heart and 
 action. When Mrs. Jameson was in need, Mrs'. 
 Procter's untiring energy gained from her friends 
 a sufficient sum to settle on her an adequate 
 annuity. She was even too chivalric and self- 
 denying for the sake of those who told her a 
 story which worked on her sympathies. And 
 she was equally pleased to sit for an evening 
 with an invalid or poor friend in humble lodgings 
 as at a great entertainment where she was the 
 life of the party. She kept herself young in a 
 measure through the young, whose confidante 
 and adviser she was on many occasions. 
 
 " Her reading was, with limitations, extremely 
 various, one curious limitation being that she 
 knew no language but her own. Some phrases 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 329 
 
 of French every one must learn if they live a 
 certain number of years in the world, but she 
 refused to admit that she knew any ; and if by 
 chance in her presence a French story was told, 
 or a French phrase used, her whole figure grew 
 stony, and her countenance was as that of the 
 deaf adder that stoppeth her ears. It might 
 almost be thought that, as M. Renan is said to 
 have avoided learning English lest he should 
 injure the perfection of his French style, so 
 Mrs. Procter avoided foreign tongues for the 
 sake of her English. A very few weeks before 
 her death she was speaking of the novel. The 
 New Antigone, of which she had read every 
 word, and praised it for the sake of the con- 
 versations. ' People speak in it as they were 
 taught to speak when I was young. They use 
 good grammar, and always finish their sentences: 
 that is rare both in books and talk now.' It is 
 quite true that her own words were as finished 
 as they were incisive. There is, perhaps, no one 
 else in recent days, with the exception of George 
 Eliot, whose spoken words, if taken down in 
 shorthand for a book, would have left no room 
 for correction. But Mrs. Procter was by far the 
 more rapid and conversational of the two. 
 
330 MEMORIES 
 
 " Her energy and interests were marvellous, 
 and her physical powers great. On a day, for 
 instance, when she was ' at home,' and received 
 visitors all the afternoon, she would dine out, 
 and go to an evening party, at which she rarely 
 sat down, as fresh at midnight as at noon. 
 
 "It would be, however, a complete mistake to 
 consider Mrs. Procter as one who lived merely 
 for society, much as she enjoyed it. It was, 
 she said herself, a question of temperament. 
 There was no reason why, if she enjoyed seeing 
 her friends abroad, she was not doing as good 
 a work as if she had been asleep in her chair. 
 She did not go at all on the French principle — 
 that a man is as young as he feels, and a 
 woman as old as she looks ; feeling was to her 
 the test in the cases of both sexes. Much the 
 same rule applied to her entrance into society 
 again after the deaths of husband and daughters. 
 That those who were gone would have wished 
 her to do so, that a pretence of not liking it 
 better than moping alone would have been 
 mere hypocrisy, were adequate reasons for 
 doing as she wished ; nor was there in this 
 any want of affection. The touching way in 
 which she was wont to speak of 'my Adelaide,' 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 331 
 
 my Edith/ showed how present and vivid 
 were the memories of those who had left her 
 side. She could not endure the way in which 
 many people think it a sign of reverence to 
 change or sink their voices in talking of their 
 dead relatives, ' as if they had done something 
 to be ashamed of, as you would speak of a 
 bankrupt uncle.' 
 
 " In regard to her daughters and other mem- 
 bers of her family who followed in their steps, 
 she showed a wise tolerance. One after another 
 of them became Catholics, one a nun. The 
 family union was in no way broken for this 
 cause. The granddaughter who ministered to 
 her last days did the same. She was free as 
 her aunts had been to act on her honest con- 
 victions. On her own faith Mrs. Procter was 
 reticent, no doubt believing that ' it was that of 
 all sensible people, which sensible people never 
 tell.' But if it be one of the signs of a mind 
 at rest to be sunny and cheerful, then she had 
 such a mind, the outcome of a good life. 
 
 " If Mrs. Procter was interesting as an ac- 
 quaintance, she was still more valuable as a 
 friend. Probably in later years it was only 
 by some accident that any were admitted to 
 
332 MEMORIES 
 
 this inner circle. One such friend entered into 
 it, owing to an accidental conversation with her 
 daughter a few weeks before her death. That 
 the hand of death was on Miss Procter was 
 only too evident, but the mother and the 
 daughter each trying to spare the other, the 
 subject was avoided. Miss Procter told a 
 friend how near the end was, that she grieved 
 only for the suffering it would cause her 
 mother, how deep was her own inward peace, 
 and how great the comfort of her faith. The 
 end came at last suddenly ; and Mrs. Procter 
 blamed herself with calm, unshrinking bitter- 
 ness that she had not told her daughter of its 
 near approach. The friend was able to remove 
 the notion that death had been unexpected, 
 and will always remember the relief to the 
 mother's heart, the unforgetting gratitude during 
 the remaining years for so slight a service. 
 
 " There are other old ladies living in society, 
 clever and bright, but Mrs. Procter stood alone. 
 She was always simple, spoke her whole mind, 
 and was entirely herself. Any transparent arti- 
 fice was never intended to conceal. If her hair 
 was not grey, but a blond cendre, it was because 
 all women of fifty years ago wore a front ; 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 333 
 
 never was false hair so completely en evidence. 
 If she differed from a speaker, she said so ; and 
 if she thought him silly it appeared in her tone, 
 but always with a kindly tolerance. 
 
 " In her passes away one whom many have 
 liked, and an inner circle have loved, who sat 
 at the feet of those who talked with Johnson 
 and Boswell, and about whose chair have 
 gathered most of the wisest and most entertain- 
 ing men who succeeded them, down to the poets 
 and the novelists who are yet young. She 
 wrote next to nothing herself, only bright little 
 letters which will never be published, in a hand- 
 writing clear, precise, and lady-like as herself. 
 If those who came about her live as long as she 
 did, or longer yet, it will always be among their 
 pleasantest and happiest memories — not alwa3'^s 
 perhaps possible to make clear to others, since 
 no evidence of what she was will remain — that 
 they knew Mrs. Procter, or better still, were 
 honoured by her friendship." 
 
 Not long before her death Mr. Browning, 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold, and I were standing in 
 front of the fireplace one Sunday afternoon, 
 talking about the various incomes made by 
 prominent persons, and Mrs. Procter was giving 
 
334 MEMORIES 
 
 her own reminiscences of barristers' and physi- 
 cians' fees, and the sums obtained by Hterature 
 by men known to her in her youth. 
 
 Mr. Browning thereupon told how at the house 
 of a distinguished surgeon he had met an exalted 
 personage, who to much bonhomie joins an in- 
 ordinate curiosity. He said to the surgeon, " I 
 should like to know, of course I do not speak 
 of present company, what a first-rate surgeon 
 makes in his profession." " Well, sir," said 
 the host, "I should say that about ;£^i 5,000 a 
 year would be the mark." " What," said the 
 prince, turning to the then acknowledged leader 
 of the English Bar, "what does a great barrister 
 make?" "I suppose, sir, .£^25,000 would hit 
 the mark." Sir John Millais was also present, 
 and he was the third asked. " Possibly, sir, 
 ;£^35,000 a year." "Oh, come, come," said 
 the questioner. "Well, sir," said Sir John 
 Millais, rather nettled, " as a matter of fact, 
 last year I made ;£40,000, and might have 
 made more, had I not been taking holiday 
 longer than usual in Scotland." When he had 
 finished speaking Mr. Browning put his arms 
 through Mr. Arnold's and mine, and said, 
 " We don't make that by literature, do we ? " 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 335 
 
 Soon after coming to London I became ac- 
 quainted with G. H. Lewes and George Eliot, 
 who were then living at the Priory, North Bank, 
 Regent's Park, and very soon grew extremely 
 intimate with them. At my first visit Mrs. 
 Paul was absent from London, and when she 
 came home I asked her to call with me one 
 Sunday afternoon. This she did not wish to 
 do, but had no objection to my going alone. I 
 did not, however, choose to visit at any house 
 without her, and in consequence simply did not 
 go. A few Sundays after Mrs. Paul, not wishing 
 to shut me off from what had been so evident 
 a pleasure, made up her mind to accompany me, 
 and when walking home, she said, " I am con- 
 vinced that she is a good and pure woman, and 
 I will go whenever you like." I imagine that 
 the larger number of those who were intimate 
 at North Bank made up their minds that they 
 were visiting altogether exceptional people, 
 under exceptional circumstances, without being 
 able to define to themselves wherein the excep- 
 tion consisted. But a few persons, who wished 
 to seem quite consistent, affected to believe that 
 the first Mrs. Lewes was dead and that Lewes 
 and George Eliot had been married in Sweden 
 
336 MEMORIES 
 
 This was an absolute fiction, in no way counte- 
 nanced by themselves. I was on one occasion 
 at their house when no one was present but 
 Mr. and Mrs. Lewes and myself, and we were 
 talking of social proprieties. " You know," 
 said Lewes to her, " how completely we have 
 set these at defiance, and how often we have 
 doubted whether we were wise in doing so." 
 
 George Eliot's Salon on Sundays was a 
 stately reception, in which her talk was always 
 well worth hearing : she raised conversation on 
 whatever subject she touched to a higher level. 
 Miss Anna Swanwick is the only other person 
 I know with the same immediate power of 
 raising the conversation with apparent con- 
 tinuity and without seeming to force it. George 
 Lewes used to flit about the room talking at 
 large and brilliantly, though to many of us who 
 were, as he described us, " pratiquants " at his 
 house, his calling George Eliot "Polly" was 
 rather a shock. In days when we were fortu- 
 nate enough to be asked to the house when they 
 were not at home to everybody they were both 
 still more interesting, and when Lewes died 
 some years before George Eliot, it was not only 
 a grief but a surprise to many of us to find 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 337 
 
 how much we had loved him. After his death 
 my wife and I remained on most affectionate 
 terms with George Eliot ; and in the last 
 summer of her life, after she returned from 
 abroad with her husband, Mr. Cross, we were 
 the only ones of her old friends who saw 
 very much of her, as we happened to inhabit 
 for the summer a house close to their Witley 
 home. 
 
 I was at that time bringing out a new 
 edition of The Imitation of Christ, of which she 
 has spoken so beautifully in the Mill on the 
 Floss. She wrote telling me the date at which 
 they were to arrive in London, and I sent to 
 her a day or two afterwards the first finished 
 copy of the work which came into my hands. 
 Mr. Cross wrote me a note telling me at the 
 same time of her short illness and of her 
 death ; and also that my book only reached 
 the house in time to be laid on her coffin. 
 I attended her funeral, going from the house 
 at Chelsea in the same carriage with Mrs. 
 Browning and Mr. Blackwood, her publisher. 
 She always took the deepest interest in my 
 researches into the life of Mary WoUstonecraft, 
 on which I was able to throw much light, as 
 
 Y 
 
338 MEMORIES 
 
 one who like herself set conventionalities at 
 defiance, and triumphed over the usual feelings 
 of society. 
 
 At the Priory I also first met, after coming 
 up to London, Robert Browning, with whom 
 also I became intimate. Mr. Browning, who 
 frequently dined at the same houses with my- 
 self, always made a point of walking home, how- 
 ever far, at night, and on these occasions I was 
 very often his companion. He, as can be easily 
 understood from his letters, was a man of most 
 varied and wide information on almost every 
 possible subject, however unexpected. On one 
 occasion, at the table of Mr. Leighton, the father 
 of Lord Leighton, the conversation turned on 
 murder, and to the surprise of everybody Mr. 
 Browning showed himself acquainted with the 
 minutest details of every cause ce'lebre of that 
 kind within living memory. He quoted a ghastly 
 stanza on Thurtell's murder of Mr. Weare — 
 
 " His throat they cut from ear to ear. 
 His brains they battered in," 
 
 and was rather piqued that another guest was 
 able to complete the lines with 
 
 " His name was Mr. William Weare, 
 He lived at Lyon's Inn." 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 339 
 
 Certainly no one posed less as a poet in society. 
 On one occasion we were dining out together. 
 He had just published one of his dramatic 
 studies, I think it was the " Prince of Hohen- 
 stielschwangau." While passing from the dining- 
 room to the drawing-room he said to me, 
 " Well, do you like my new volume ? " I 
 answered, "Yes, Mr. Browning, but your old 
 admirers, who have known you for so many 
 years,- wish that you would give us some more 
 lyrics." Whereat he answered in a tone of con- 
 tempt, " Lyrics, if you want lyrics, I can give you 
 buckets full." In his absolute simplicity he was 
 a great contrast to Tennyson, with whom it is 
 almost as futile to compare him as it is in a Ger- 
 man household to compare Goethe and Schiller. 
 Tennyson always posed. Matthew Arnold did 
 not pose as a poet, but he had a certain grandiose 
 manner which he never laid aside. Browning 
 was always the simple man of the world. 
 
 So long as Professor Huxley lived in London 
 we were much at his house. He was an 
 interesting and brilliant talker so long as he 
 kept to his own studies. He was, however, 
 totally uninteresting both in conversation and 
 in writing when he touched on theology. This 
 
340 MEMORIES 
 
 was not at all his own view, for he seemed to 
 believe himself little short of an inspired teacher 
 on biblical questions, just as Mr. Gladstone, to 
 the despair of scholars who admired him, posed 
 as a great teacher on Homer. 
 
 Though I was not in those days a Catholic, 
 I had the honour of knowing both the great 
 cardinals, then living, Newman and Manning, 
 and also the man who so constantly crossed the 
 path of both of them. Dr. Ward, the author 
 of an Ideal Christian Church. I frequently 
 met the last of these three at Mr. Tennyson's 
 in the Isle of Wight. They were near neigh- 
 bours and cordial friends. Of Manning I will 
 only say that he struck me still more as a 
 statesman than as a theologian. He once said 
 to me, " Were I not Cardinal Archbishop of 
 Westminster, I would wish to be a great 
 demagogue." And he was then gaining the 
 hearts of the working men of England as very 
 few of our generation have gained them. To 
 Newman I can only express my daily and hourly 
 gratitude. His writings and character have been 
 my study and my model since my earliest Oxford 
 days, and when I came to know him, it was only 
 to regard him with increased admiration. 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 341 
 
 The two men were very different, and 
 perhaps a Httle story may serve to show 
 how different. When about to bring out the 
 new edition of the Imitation, of which I have 
 already spoken, each of the two cardinals, at dif- 
 ferent times, asked me in what way the revised 
 text differed from those in general use. I gave 
 to each as a specimen a passage in which it 
 seemed to me that Bishop Chaloner and most 
 translators had missed the meaning. Newman 
 answered without a moment's hesitation, " I 
 quite agree with you, but I do not know the 
 usual English translations, for I have never 
 read the book in English." Cardinal Manning 
 said to the same quotation, with his peculiar 
 snuffle, " Yes, I agree with you, you are right ; 
 but is it well to say it ? " 
 
 I ought to mention a friend, of just my own 
 age, who with his wife became very dear to 
 me — Charles Earle. There are few people 
 during my whole life with whom I have been 
 in more thorough sympathy ; and his sudden 
 death by a bicycle accident has been one of 
 the greatest sorrows of the last few years. 
 
 Through them I came to know well Mrs. 
 Earle's brother-in-law, Robert, Lord Lytton, 
 
342 MEMORIES 
 
 whose life of his father was among the books 
 published by me. Contrary to my advice he 
 insisted on the publication of the earlier volumes 
 of this book without waiting for the completion 
 of the whole ; and as so often happens, he 
 found that he had undertaken it on too large 
 a scale, and also that there were many details 
 which he would not care to give to the world. 
 It remains therefore, and will remain, only a 
 fragment, though it is full of interest. It will 
 be many years before the first Lord Lytton is 
 forgotten as a novelist, though his books are 
 little read by those who have passed their teens. 
 For young men, however, entering into life, 
 they will for a long time to come put into 
 words their own unspoken ye'arnings after the 
 ideal, and show that it is possible for a states- 
 man to be also a poet and a dreamer. 
 
 Robert, the second Lord Lytton, however, 
 was a far more interesting figure. Few men 
 have ever been so praised by another poet as 
 he has been by his friend Wilfrid Blunt in a 
 sonnet called " To One in High Position," when 
 he was Viceroy of India. Lord Lytton himself 
 looked upon his life as rather a failure. He 
 said to me with infinite pathos, " I gave the 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 343 
 
 best of my life to India, my deepest thoughts, 
 my most ardent anxieties, and my reward was 
 to hear scarce anything but blame about my 
 Indian policy. I went as ambassador to Paris, 
 about which I did not care, and the work of 
 which never touched my heart, to hear that I 
 was a most admirable ambassador, and had at 
 last found my true position." Lord Lytton was 
 fond of his beautiful place Knebworth, although 
 his father, whose taste was never good, had 
 done his best to spoil it by false stucco 
 ornaments externally, in the way of gargoyles 
 and quasi Gothic pinnacles. On these time 
 worked its inevitable revenge with even 
 greater rapidity than might have been ex- 
 pected ; and each frost brought down, in the 
 life of his son, some pinnacle which (despite its 
 composition) his father had deemed permanent. 
 I was walking one morning with the late Lord 
 Lytton up and down the lawn in front of the 
 house, after a sharp night's frost, when the 
 gardener came to tell him of the fall of another 
 gargoyle with these words : " If you please, 
 my lord, there is another of them bloody 
 monkeys fallen down in the night." 
 
 While the elder Lord Lytton was far more 
 
344 MEMORIES 
 
 interesting in his books than in himself, Robert, 
 Lord Lytton, was more interesting than his 
 books. Lucille is a very clever novel in 
 verse; Glenaveril is a failure, which, however, 
 ought to be remembered for a time. The story 
 of Glenaveril is one of changed children, and 
 the one supposed to be the heir is to be 
 nourished by a nurse after the mother's death. 
 It is proposed to this good lady that she shall 
 undertake to supply the needs of both children, 
 to which she replies : — 
 
 "A wet nurse, sir, is not a table d'hSte" — 
 
 a line at any rate worth preserving. The book 
 may be remembered also for its presentment 
 of his friend the Rev. Whitwell Elwyn, once 
 editor of the Edinburgh Review, who is pic- 
 tured in Glenaveril under the name of Edelrath. 
 Finding him in this book took me back to my 
 younger days again when I knew Mr. Elwyn, 
 not at all as Edelrath, but as a very fervent 
 preacher who used to storm in his little country 
 curacy of Hardington as though he would take 
 the roof off the church. 
 
 Through Lord Lytton I came to know the 
 friend of whom I have already spoken, Wilfrid 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 345 
 
 Blunt, whom I take to be one of the two or 
 three living poets of the present day. It may 
 be a prejudice on my part, but among those 
 few moderns whom my old age counts as true 
 poets are three Catholics — Coventry Patmore, 
 Wilfrid Blunt, and Mrs. Hamilton King. 
 
 In those years I saw a great deal more of 
 some people I had known before, but not on 
 the same terms of intimacy — among others. 
 Lady Eastlake and Mrs. Oliphant. The former 
 of these was a complete survival of a lady of 
 the last generation. I never saw her either 
 sitting on a sofa or in an easy chair, but she 
 sat up at a table with a little slanting writing- 
 desk before her, surrounded with the stiffest of 
 furniture, although priceless works of art hung 
 upon the walls. The mixture of these with 
 her husband's works, to which she always 
 showed the most touching devotion, was curious 
 to those of a generation which had been formed 
 rather by Ruskin than by Sir Charles Eastlake. 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant was always far more interest- 
 ing than her books, and my frequent Sunday 
 afternoons at Eton were rendered even more 
 delightful when I paid a visit to her at 
 Windsor. She always appeared to me to 
 
346 MEMORIES 
 
 have begun her books with great enthu- 
 siasm, but to have got tired of her creations 
 too soon ; and to me, therefore, her books 
 seemed never worth reading to the end. But 
 this was not so with her friends. She never 
 tired of them, and treated them with the greatest 
 kindness and sympathy. I seldom knew any 
 one with such great toleration, such constant 
 patience among many sorrows, and with such 
 unwavering faith in a future life. 
 
 With James Anthony Froude, also, I knitted 
 up an old Oxford acquaintance. Yet I cannot 
 say I either trusted or believed in him. Even 
 before I became a Catholic I loved Newman 
 too much to feel drawn to any one who played 
 to him a traitor's part. Froude was, I believe, 
 the author of the " Life of Saint Bettelin," in 
 the Lives of the English Saints, and was so 
 trusted by Newman that he sent the Life to 
 the press unread. The little postscript, in which 
 the whole was admitted to be an ingenious 
 fiction, really put an end to the series. 
 
 "And this is all that is known and more 
 than all, but nothing to that which the angels 
 know, of the life of a servant of God, who sinned 
 and repented and did penance and washed out 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 347 
 
 his sins, and became a saint and reigns with 
 Christ in Heaven." 
 
 Such, however, had not always been Fronde's 
 attitude to Newman. He was one of the in- 
 mates of the quasi monastery at Littlemore, 
 which played so large a part in the later 
 Anglican years of Cardinal Newman's life. 
 When Newman was at Littlemore, preparing 
 for the inevitable change, Cardinal Manning, 
 still an Anglican, preached his University 
 sermon on November 5 th, Guy Fawkes' day, 
 and took occasion to fulminate against the 
 Church of Rome, as though by his own elo- 
 quence to reaffirm himself in his waning 
 allegiance to the English Church. In the 
 afternoon he walked over to Littlemore to call 
 on Newman, but the rumour of his sermon had 
 preceded him, and Newman refused to see him. 
 Sending a message to that effect by a young 
 novice, the two had an eager conversational 
 dispute at the door ; and the refusal being 
 persistent, they walked away towards Oxford 
 together. So eager was their conversation that 
 it was not till they got close to Magdalen 
 Bridge that they became aware that people 
 were looking at them curiously, and the younger 
 
348 MEMORIES 
 
 man discovered that he had walked all the way 
 without his hat, so vehement had he been in talk. 
 The young novice who then took Newman's 
 side was none other than James Anthony 
 Froude. As though to show the truth of 
 Mephistopheles' saying, " Du bist am Ende was 
 du bist," Mr. Froude's attempt to smirch the 
 memory of his second great teacher, Carlyle, 
 is within the knowledge of us all. 
 
 At Mrs. Gordon's, Pixholme, near Dorking, 
 I made the acquaintance of Mrs. Drummond, 
 widow of Mr. Drummond, the Irish secretary, 
 who soon became one of my great friends. 
 There, too, I met and for a time saw much 
 of Mr. George Meredith and his charming wife, 
 whose courage and sweet temper in a long and 
 painful illness has often come to my memory 
 and helped me to bear my own suffering. I 
 will here say how great a delight it was to 
 me to know well one whom I had long regarded 
 as among the first of living writers, whose 
 novel. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, I put on 
 the highest level of English literature. 
 
 Of Mrs. Drummond I do not speak at length, 
 because at her daughters' request I wrote a 
 little Life of her. Both in her days, and own 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 349 
 
 in those of her daughters, I was most kindly 
 received at Fredley and in London. 
 
 At Mrs. Drummond's I was frequently able 
 to meet many of her political friends ; and 
 there had the great pleasure of an acquaintance 
 with Mr. Bright. He was a most agreeable 
 companion, very simple, very eloquent, but with 
 a curious power of will and determination to 
 be the leader. Of his simplicity I remember a 
 very characteristic trait. He was staying in 
 the house, and Mrs. Drummond, who thought 
 so old a man would probably bring a servant 
 with him, had arranged that his man should 
 have the dressing-room attached to his bed- 
 room. When we sat down to dinner, she said, 
 " I hope, Mr. Bright, your man found every- 
 thing comfortable for you." " Man," he said, 
 " I never travel with a man." " I hope, then, 
 that my man made you comfortable." " Well," 
 he said, " I found that he had squandered my 
 clothes all about my room, and that, I suppose, 
 is what he meant to do." On the Sunday 
 afternoon, as twilight fell, before it was time to 
 dress, some one suggested he should read aloud. 
 He said, "What shall I read?" One of 
 the party handed to him a volume of Shelley 
 
350 MEMORIES 
 
 which happened to be on the table. He put it 
 aside with the simple words, " Shelley was an 
 atheist," as though that entirely settled the 
 question. I forget what he did read, but was 
 struck with the beauty and the power of his 
 voice. 
 
 Though I had known Mark Pattison at 
 Oxford, my real acquaintance with him was in 
 the later years of his life, during which time he 
 became a most kind friend and adviser to my 
 daughters, as well as a valued friend of my 
 own. A friend of Newman's and his collaborator 
 in the Lives of the English Saints, he was at 
 one moment on the very point of reception into 
 the Catholic Church, and had made all arrange- 
 ments for this step at Birmingham. The mere 
 accident of his missing the coach one morning 
 gave him further time for consideration, and the 
 opportunity neglected never was given him 
 again. He is generally considered to have 
 been a mere dry scholar, but he was in fact a 
 man full of enthusiasm, and a most kind, tender 
 friend. He always made a point of celebrating 
 the communion in his college chapel when Rector 
 of Lincoln, and never delegated this duty to 
 any one, a touching instance of the hold the 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 351 
 
 memory of his former convictions still had 
 upon him. 
 
 Romanes was a man who, beginning his 
 career in wide revolt against orthodoxy of all 
 kinds, had gradually worked his way back to 
 belief through science ; and is one of those 
 who, like Clifford, would, I believe, have found 
 his way into the Church of Rome had time 
 been allowed him. 
 
 At the invitation of one of the directors of 
 the company in which my former firm was 
 merged, I met at dinner at his house the noto- 
 rious Madame Blavatsky, the Russian spiritist. 
 I had for many years taken some interest in 
 the phenomena called " occult or spiritual," and 
 investigated them when possible before I became 
 a Catholic. It was no surprise to me to find 
 how deeply the Church discourages all such 
 researches. Some years before this I had 
 accompanied a friend to a stance at which 
 flowers were showered on us by " spirit " hands, 
 and was at several similar seances from time to 
 time at the house of Mr. Priaulx in Cavendish 
 Square, stepfather of my friend J. H. Nelson. 
 Mrs. Priaulx was an ardent believer, Mr. 
 Priaulx and Nelson, hard-headed materialists. 
 
352 MEMORIES 
 
 At these seances it was clear that whenever I 
 or any other unbeliever was next the medium 
 no phenomena occurred, while when "believers" 
 were in immediate contact with him flowers 
 rained, accordions played, and " spirit " forms 
 appeared. I do not mean that such persons 
 were in conscious collusion with the medium, 
 but they expected what took place, and were 
 unsuspicious of the fraud, which to me at 
 least was often plain. 
 
 When I met Madame Blavatsky no pheno- 
 mena took place, or were invited. We met only 
 as guests at dinner, at which she ate nothing, 
 but smoked cigarettes incessantly during dinner, 
 and talked about spiritualism. She struck me as 
 a vulgar woman, with an inordinate power of 
 fiction and a vast amount of impudence. I after- 
 wards met a high Indian official who was pre- 
 sent in India at the celebrated picnic at which 
 Madame Blavatsky produced a teacup said to 
 come from some remote distance, and this, he 
 said, was a commonplace and ordinary bit of 
 conjuring. When she appeared in India, accom- 
 panied by an American, Colonel Olcott, a 
 rumour got about that she was a Russian spy, 
 and Lord Lytton, then Viceroy, thought it ex- 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 353 
 
 pedient, or was warned from home (I am not 
 sure which), to have her watched. 
 
 Lord Lytton himself told me the following 
 story. He sent for the proper authority, and 
 said that Colonel Olcott and Madame Blavatsky 
 must be under police surveillance, but with great 
 caution, and that a private report was to be 
 made in case of any suspicion. A day or two 
 afterwards Lord Lytton received a formal com- 
 plaint from Colonel Olcott that he and Madame 
 Blavatsky were " shadowed," and their lives 
 rendered intolerable. He sent for the official to 
 whom he had given the order, and was assured 
 that he had been obeyed with scrupulous care 
 and discretion. "Well, tell me exactly what 
 has been done." " My lord, wherever the 
 suspected persons have gone they have been 
 followed by two mounted sowars.'' 
 
 My deliberate view of spiritualism, long 
 before I became a Catholic, was that the 
 " mediums " are invariably fraudulent, but the 
 believers not necessarily, nor perhaps often so, 
 and that there is some truth, eked out by im- 
 posture, in the phenomena. I regarded Mr. 
 Browning's poem, " Mr. Sludge, the Medium," 
 as a convenient summary of my own attitude 
 
 z 
 
354 MEMORIES 
 
 of mind. Now I go further, and am inclined 
 to believe there is in spiritism much direct 
 Satanic agency, and that those who tamper 
 with it are, consciously or unconsciously, in 
 most cases working with the devil. They often 
 start with what in skilled hands is legitimate, 
 mesmerism to relieve pain being as harmless 
 as anodyne drugs — but use it rashly, as they 
 often use a beneficent drug, or a poison. From 
 this some of those who tamper with what 
 is forbidden by the Church fall into the detest- 
 able sins described by M. Huysmans in his 
 novel. La Bas. 
 
 The same acquaintance at whose house I 
 saw Madame Blavatsky met at my office a 
 Jesuit friend of mine, that they might discuss 
 " occult " phenomena. The conversation, at 
 first animated, resolved itself more and more 
 into a mere harangue on tl^e part of my 
 acquaintance and pained silence on the part 
 of my friend, who, as he afterwards told me, 
 could see in it a terrible indication of spiritual 
 pride on the part of one " given over to strong 
 delusion to believe a lie." Such also was the 
 impression in my own mind. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky and many of those about 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 355 
 
 her, notably the acquaintance through whom I 
 knew her, beheved in reincarnation, but the 
 most thoroughgoing exponent of that doctrine 
 was Miss Blackwell, who visited me at Stur- 
 minster in company with a lady who sent 
 me her son as a pupil. Miss Blackwell not 
 only believed that we had all been other people, 
 and would again appear in other forms in life, 
 but also that to her had been given the power 
 of knowing who she and others had been ; and 
 this she explained was indeed a rare gift. She 
 was greatly agitated at my house because my 
 daughter's little dog barked at her. The dog 
 was in the child's arms, and she explained her 
 fear by saying, " I have always been afraid 
 of dogs since they ate me : I was once 
 Jezebel," and she went on to say, " In none 
 of my previous incarnations was I less than 
 a queen." She was then appearing on earth as 
 the correspondent of an American newspaper. 
 
 She knew who I had been, though she 
 would not tell me, but said that Mr. Bradlaugh 
 had asked her the same question a few days 
 before, "And even as he spoke I saw a black 
 cloud form itself behind his head, and on it 
 was written in letters of a horrid grey, the name 
 
356 MEMORIES 
 
 Torquemada ! " She also said that the sex was 
 often changed in a reincarnation, and that my 
 pupil had been in a previous life Ninon de 
 I'Enclos. 
 
 While I am dictating the latter part of these 
 reminiscences the papers are full of the 
 Dreyfus case, and I confess to having very 
 small sympathy with Jews, though Captain 
 Dreyfus seems to me to have been convicted 
 on very insufficient grounds. In fact, my dis- 
 like to the Jews as a race has always been 
 strong ; though from time to time different 
 members of the race have been among my 
 close friends. The one who always showed 
 me very great kindness when her own health 
 allowed it was Lady Goldsmid, widow of Sir 
 Francis Goldsmid. At her house I once had 
 a curious proof of the persistence of Jewish 
 feeling and custom even when the religion 
 as a dogmatic theology seemed completely to 
 have vanished. Looking round the table at a 
 large dinner-party, I saw that my wife and I 
 were the only non-Semitic guests. I was on 
 one side of the hostess and Herr Richter on 
 the other. Lady Goldsmid was speaking of 
 the entire freedom from all Jewish customs 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 357 
 
 which had come on her with advancing years. 
 I said, "And yet in all probability all the meat 
 which we are eating at dinner is Kosher." 
 She said, " Of course it is, but what do you 
 know about Kosher ? I always use it not be- 
 cause it is ordered me as a Jew, but because 
 it is by far the most wholesome." I felt she 
 had really given a strong argument on my side, 
 and so Herr Richter admitted. Hers was a 
 house at which one was always sure of hearing 
 the best possible music ; and there were few 
 houses more delightful to me. 
 
 At the beginning of these reminiscences I 
 have spoken of the fire which destroyed our old 
 premises in Paternoster Square. This was 
 unfortunate to others besides ourselves. Not 
 only did I lose several pieces of personal 
 property much prized by me, but also a volume 
 of sketches in Sicily, taken by my wife during 
 a winter that she spent there, two of which I 
 had used in one of our publications. These 
 had only been returned to me the very day 
 before the fire. A MS. of Dante, of great 
 beauty and considerable value, which had been 
 lent me by a friend, the late Professor Middleton, 
 was also destroyed. 
 
358 MEMORIES 
 
 I saw much of Middleton at a time when he 
 was more in sympathy with my Positivist views 
 than with the CathoHc creed, which was once 
 his own. I owe to him a letter from a Coptic 
 Patriarch in regard to some MSS. placed at his 
 disposal, which is perhaps as good a testimony 
 as can be imagined towards his zeal for antiqui- 
 ties and research. The Society for the Protec- 
 tion of Ancient Buildings, having heard that 
 destruction and plunder was taking place in 
 certain Coptic churches in Egypt, and that 
 articles had been removed and sold by the 
 priests of those churches, requested Middleton 
 to write to the Patriarch of Alexandria on the 
 subject. This was done, and as Middleton 
 was a private friend of the Patriarch, he took 
 occasion also to express his sympathy with the 
 Coptic churches for the sorrow they had sus- 
 tained through the war in Egypt. The following 
 is Middleton's translation of the answer, received 
 in December 1882 : — 
 
 " From Cyril, the Servant of God, by Grace of God 
 Patriarch of the Churches of Christ, which are in 
 Egypt and Abyssinia, to his friend Henrik ibn 
 Johann, peace and all spiritual greetings, in the 
 7th day of the month Hator, in the year of the 
 martyrs 1460. 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 359 
 
 "Truly, oh my son, we have received thy letter, 
 and my heart was gladdened : we ever remember 
 thee when the diptych is read at the Holy Office, as 
 one who, though of the race of the Feringhees, is not 
 without grace. And we have written these things in 
 the name of God ; let them be hidden, truly they are 
 secret. 
 
 "Our heart is heavy and our faces are blackened. 
 Was not Arabi ibn Achmet our friend, for whom 
 prayers were said in every church of the Kubt, that 
 the Lord would strengthen his hand against the 
 accursed, the Feringhees, under whom we were 
 grievously oppressed. Was not their yoke heavier 
 than the yoke of Ismail ibn Ibrahmi ibn Mehemet. 
 
 "And what wrong had we, the Kubt of Misr, done 
 to the people of your Feringhee Queen ; why has she 
 sent armies and slaughtered both the Kubt and the 
 Muslimeen of Misr together? Verily of my people 
 have they slain 1200 men. Surely God will requite 
 them to the blackening of their faces in the day 
 of doom. 
 
 "And I was grieved when I received the message 
 from the Society of learned men, who commanded 
 you to write to me about the Churches. To them, 
 although Polyphysites, I send greeting and my Patri- 
 archal benediction Es Salaam, Es Salaam Aleikum. 
 
 "Truly my heart was contracted when I heard of 
 the robbing of the Churches, and I wrote to all the 
 Priests of the Churches of Misr, an Encyclical Letter, 
 and I said, O dogs ! and Sons of Bitches ! what is this 
 that I hear? Can it be that the very Infidels cry 
 out against you, that your Churches are spoiled and 
 your Altars defiled ? And if they will not hear, they 
 
360 MEMORIES 
 
 shall be Anathema, and I will cut them off from their 
 inheritance with our Father St. Mark in Paradise. 
 Truly they are pigs — they keep Harems in the 
 Churches and sell the treasures to the accursed ones, 
 such as are 
 
 "And behold Abon Chrysostom, Abbot of St. Maca- 
 rius is with me in Kahira to-day, and he sends greet- 
 ings to you and says, ' Be comforted, O my son, for 
 of the cats there was a remnant, and they have 
 increased exceedingly, and they fill the monastery and 
 the rats are few. Come, O my son, and visit us, our 
 Crypt is full of beans and oil, and we are at peace with 
 the Bedaween, and we will kill a Camel for you, and 
 you shall read all old books, as many as you will. 
 And Joachim ibn Suleyman ibn Daoud had found 
 more old books hidden under the oil vats and they 
 are neither Arabic nor Kubt. There you shall read.' 
 This is the message of Abon Chrysostom to you, oh 
 my Son, and to you also I say. Come and visit us. 
 
 "Signed by one Cyril, Bahaek Keneesat Amba 
 markos, and written by me Tadrush ibn Gregorio 
 the Scribe. From our Palace of Mist el Kahira in 
 Daina Sameh." 
 
 During several years of my life I was much 
 connected with this Society for the Preservation 
 of Ancient Buildings, and was thus brought 
 into connection with the late Mr. William 
 Morris. I at no time shared the extreme views 
 of many members of the society, nor would I 
 be understood as objecting to all restoration ; 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 361 
 
 but it is well that there should always be such 
 a society to act as " L'Avvocato del diavolo," to 
 suggest every possible difficulty in the way of 
 restoration, in order that none which is not 
 thoroughly justifiable should be carried out. 
 
 On the occasion of one of our protests 
 against the restoration of a cathedral, the dean 
 and chapter consented to meet a deputation 
 from the society, and Mr. Morris, Professor 
 Middleton, and I were selected as the deputa- 
 tion. When the day came I was prevented 
 going and some one else took my place. Middle- 
 ton kindly writing me an account of what had 
 occurred. He described how the dean and 
 others had met them in the cathedral and went 
 carefully over the whole of the edifice. He 
 wrote, " You should have seen Mr. Morris 
 turning from time to time into a side chapel — to 
 swear," probably the first time that the chapel 
 had been devoted to that purpose. 
 
 If I were to write of more friends, it would 
 be to tell many stories of persons still living. 
 This would not, I think, be right, as their names 
 have not become, as the others may well be 
 considered, public property. Enough to say 
 that the recollection of those with whom I have 
 
362 MEMORIES 
 
 lived so many years of intimacy has become 
 " now the most precious memory of mine age." 
 It is probable that many have noticed with me 
 a matter which has always seemed to me a 
 truth, that whereas boys and young men are 
 constantly drawing to themselves fresh and 
 fresh friends and repairing the breaches in their 
 circle made by time and circumstances, when 
 middle life is once passed men make few 
 friends of their own age, only acquaintances. 
 These are as necessary as friends to the ordi- 
 nary conduct of life and are full of pleasure ; 
 but when a man past middle age makes new 
 friends, as distinct from mere new acquaint- 
 ances, these are almost always women, or else 
 men very much younger than themselves. My 
 experience has been that many young men 
 are graciously willing to make friends of older 
 men, among the young whom they gather to 
 themselves. Wordsworth has noticed the pro- 
 babilities of friendship of those of very different 
 ages in his lines : — 
 
 " We talked with open heart and tongue, 
 Affectionate and true, 
 A pair of friends though I was young 
 And Matthew seventy-two." 
 
FRIENDS IN LONDON 363 
 
 Three exceptions in my case prove the rule. 
 One was the late Mr. Button, chairman of the 
 London and South-Western Railway, another 
 C. W. Earle, and the third Cardinal Vaughan. 
 With all of them I felt that I had knitted a 
 friendship of the same kind that I was wont to 
 make with other young men in days of old. 
 
XI 
 
 THE END OF WANDERING 
 1890 
 
 WHEN I came to London I was able for 
 the first time during many years to con- 
 sider my position calmly and fairly. While 
 doing my duties as best I could, it had not 
 been easy to realise how completely I had fallen 
 away from the faith. Now, as a layman, with 
 no external obligation to use words in which 
 it was necessary to find some meaning consis- 
 tent with my opinions, the whole services of 
 the Church of England seemed distasteful and 
 untrue. The outward scaffolding on which I 
 had striven to climb to God, every sacramental 
 sign under which I had sought to find Him, 
 had crumbled into nothingness. I was in no 
 conscious relation to Him, God had practically 
 no part in my life ; though I did not deny Him, 
 
 nor cease to believe that a First Cause existed ; 
 
 364 
 
THE END OF WANDERING 365 
 
 simple atheism is a rare, and perhaps an im- 
 possible position. I was content not to know, 
 and to wait. 
 
 But in the meantime certain things were 
 abundantly clear. Human relationships exist — 
 the family, society, our country, the race ; 
 towards all these we have duties which must 
 be organised ; some conception of history, philo- 
 sophy, and science must be framed, if not 
 depending on God, at least in relation to man. 
 The system formulated by Auguste Comte had 
 long attracted me on its historical and social 
 sides ; a friend who, in and since Oxford days, 
 had swayed my life more than he knew, had 
 found it sufficient for himself, and he placed 
 before me the religious side also of this grave 
 and austere philosophy. 
 
 It is not a paradox, but sober truth, to say 
 that Positivism is Catholicism without God. 
 And it does, after a fashion, give order and 
 regularity to life, inculcates simplicity of manners, 
 aims at a certain amount of discipline, and cari- 
 catures, unconsciously, and with some effect, the 
 sacraments, the cultus of Saints, the place of our 
 Lady in worship, making of humanity the ideal 
 woman, the great mother and mistress of all. 
 
366 MEMORIES 
 
 It should in fairness be said that in this 
 faith, if so it may be called, men and women 
 live high, restrained, ascetic lives, and find in 
 Humanity an object, not self, for their devo- 
 tion. Like the men of Athens they would 
 seem ignorantly, and under false names, to 
 worship God. And for myself I may say that 
 I doubt if I should have known the Faith but 
 for Positivism, which gave me a rule and 
 discipline of which I had been unaware. The 
 historical side of Comte's teaching still remains 
 in large measure true to my mind, based as it is 
 on the teaching of the Church. Comte had the 
 inestimable advantage of having been Catholic 
 in his youth, and could not, even when he tried, 
 put aside the lessons he had learnt. 
 
 So long as my Positivism lasted I brought 
 into it a fervour and enthusiasm to which I 
 had been a stranger, and I was therefore long 
 in discovering that these were unreal and 
 forced. On many Sundays, when the service 
 was over, I was wont to walk home with a 
 younger friend, whose experiences had been 
 largely my own, save that his loss of faith had 
 arisen from revolt against the extreme Calvinism 
 which had been presented to him in his youth. 
 
THE END OF WANDERING 367 
 
 He also had wandered out into Agnosticism, 
 and discovered that he needed an external rule 
 against the temptations of life, which for awhile 
 he thought to find in the Religion of Humanity. 
 In long walks across the the park homewards 
 in summer and winter noons we both found 
 that the fervour of the services evaporated, and 
 left nothing behind them ; there was none of 
 that sense of a power abiding within us which 
 the Catholic worshipper brings away from 
 before the Tabernacle, even if he cannot always 
 maintain the intensity of devotion which has 
 been granted him during the action of Holy 
 Mass or in the Benediction Service. 
 
 Once more I saw that my soul was stripped 
 and bare, when it had seemed fully clothed. 
 Such also was my friend's experience ; and God 
 has given him grace to find, as I have found, 
 the truth after which we both were seeking. 
 Positivism is a fair-weather creed, when men 
 are strong, happy, untempted, or ignorant that 
 they are tempted, and so long as a future life 
 and its dread possibilities do not enter their 
 thoughts ; but it has no message for the sorry 
 and the sinful, no restoration for the erring, no 
 succour in the hour of death. 
 
368 MEMORIES 
 
 In the training of my intellect and literary 
 feculty, such as it is, one man had always held 
 predominant sway. Those young men who 
 entered on their Oxford careers towards the 
 end of the decade 1840— 1850 found that one 
 prophet at least had gained honour in his own 
 country, even if he had experienced also scorn 
 and rejection. John Henry Newman was a 
 moving intellectual force along with Tennyson, 
 Browning, Ruskin, and Carlyle. I came to 
 know the two poets as I know my Bible, if it 
 be not irreverent to say so, in such a way that 
 after a time I needed no longer to read them, 
 because the exact words surged up in memory 
 when thought was directed to them, and there 
 was no need of the printed page. Ruskin and 
 Carlyle delivered their message and passed on, 
 but Newman abode, and his intellectual influence 
 developed into one that was moral and spiritual, 
 preparing my soul for the great grace and reve- 
 lation which God had yet in store. 
 
 Like Thomas a Kempis, so Newman, studied 
 day by day, sank into my soul and changed it. 
 Since Pascal none has put so plainly as he the 
 dread alternative, all or nothing, faith or unfaith, 
 God or the denial of God. I had not denied 
 
THE END OF WANDERING 369 
 
 Him, but had left Him on one side, and now, as 
 it were, God took His revenge. This is no 
 place to explain in detail how in sorrow and 
 desolation of spirit God left His servant alone 
 for awhile to clutch in vain for some help in 
 temptation, for some solution of doubt, and find 
 none, if it were not God and the old creeds. 
 It were to lay the secrets of the soul too bare 
 to declare minutely how each hesitation to 
 submit to what was becoming intellectually 
 clear was followed by some moral or spiritual 
 fall, as though the Father would allow His child 
 to slip in miry ways, if nothing else would teach 
 the need of guidance. 
 
 But apart from the direct leadings of God's 
 grace, and the general effect of the Imitation and 
 Newman's writings, it may be well to specify 
 more closely some of the arguments which 
 weighed with me to accept the Faith I had so 
 long set at nought. 
 
 First, and above all, was the overwhelming 
 evidence for modern miracles, and the conclu- 
 sions from their occurrence. A study of Pascal's 
 Life, when I was engaged in translating the 
 Pense'es, directed my special attention to the 
 cure of Pascal's niece, of a lachrymal fistula, by 
 
 2 A 
 
370 MEMORIES 
 
 the touch of the Holy Thorn preserved at Port 
 Royal. It is impossible to find anything of the 
 kind better attested, and readers may judge for 
 themselves in the narrative written of the facts 
 by Racine, and the searching investigations by 
 unprejudiced, and certainly not too credulous, 
 critics, Sainte - Beuve and the late Charles 
 Beard. 
 
 Next in importance were the miracles of 
 Lourdes, one of which, as wrought on a friend 
 of my own, came under my notice. I do not 
 mean, especially in the former case, that these 
 facts proved any doctrines ; that the miracle of 
 the Thorn made for Jansenist teaching, or those 
 at Lourdes for the Immaculate Conception ; but 
 rather, that the Thorn must, from its effects, 
 have been one that had touched the Sacred 
 Head, that the spring at Lourdes could only 
 have had its healing powers by the gift of God, 
 through our Lady. It was not that miracles 
 having been declared in the Bible made these 
 later occurrences possible, but that these, pro- 
 perly attested in our own days, and in times so 
 near our own, made the Bible miracles more 
 credible than they were before, adding their 
 testimony to that which the Church bears to 
 
THE END OF WANDERING 371 
 
 Holy Scripture. And it was on the testimony 
 of a living Church that I would accept the 
 Scripture, if I accepted it at all, for surely of 
 all absurd figments, that of a closed revelation 
 to be its own interpreter is the most absurd. 
 
 The books which mainly aided me at this 
 period, when I had accepted in a more definite 
 way than ever before the being of a God who 
 actively, daily, and visibly interposes in His 
 creation, were the Gramma}' of Assent, by 
 Cardinal Newman, and Religio Viatoris, by 
 Cardinal Manning. Both works postulate God 
 and the human soul, and on that foundation 
 build up the Catholic faith. They are very 
 different in their method, and perhaps, as a 
 rule, helpful to different classes of mind, but 
 both aided me. The re-reading the Grammar 
 of Assent as a theological treatise, and with the 
 wish to believe, was quite a different matter to 
 my earlier study of it on its publication, when 
 I regarded it only as an intellectual effort, 
 interesting as the revelation of a great mind, 
 but not as yet recognising that it had any 
 special message for me. But in these later 
 days it proved to be the crowning gift of the 
 many I received from that great teacher, who 
 
372 MEMORIES 
 
 had been my guide through the years of my 
 pilgrimage, httle though I knew it. 
 
 It is not possible to state precisely the 
 moment at which definite light came upon my 
 soul, in preparation for the fuller day. As 
 Clough says truly of earthly dawn : — 
 
 " And not by eastern windows only, 
 
 When daylight comes, comes in the light ; 
 In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly. 
 But westward, look, the land is bright." 
 
 About 1888 I had light enough to attend 
 Mass pretty frequently, but even then was not 
 definitely Catholic in my belief and sympathies. 
 There was one of my own family, having a 
 right to speak, who distrusted my evident lean- 
 ings, not so much from want of sympathy with 
 religion, as from a fear that as my opinions had 
 been so long in a state of change, this also 
 might be a passing phase. I said to myself, 
 whether rightly or wrongly I cannot judge, that 
 a year should elapse before I made up my mind 
 on the question, though I began to see which 
 way it must be answered. This was in the 
 spring of 1889; but so weak is memory that 
 towards the end of the year I was misled by a 
 
THE END OF WANDERING 373 
 
 date, and supposed it had been in the late 
 summer. 
 
 In May 1890 I went for a short tour in 
 France, as I had done for some years past, and 
 a profound sense of dissatisfaction with myself 
 filled my whole soul. In other days the cathe- 
 drals and their services, the shrines and their 
 relics, places of pilgrimage, venerated images 
 had all been connected with a faith in which no 
 one who studied the workings of the human 
 mind could fail to take an interest, but they had 
 no relation to my own soul. Now it seemed to 
 me that I was an alien from the family of God, 
 unable to take a part in that which was my 
 heritage, shut out by my own coldness of heart, 
 my own want of will. And, as had long been 
 the case, what attracted me most were just 
 those things in the cult of Rome which most 
 offended my companions. 
 
 A distinguished ecclesiastic was talking in 
 Rome with a lady who while in England had 
 shown some disposition towards the Church, 
 but lamented that in the Holy City she had 
 seen much that was to her disedifying, and quite 
 unlike the pious practices she had known at 
 home. He replied, "Ah, madame, il ne faut 
 
374 MEMORIES 
 
 pas regarder de si prfes la cuisine du Bon Dieu." 
 It was this which interested me and drew me 
 to it. At Tours the heap of crutches in the 
 house devoted to the cullus of the Holy Face, 
 the pathetic agony of the engraving of the same, 
 seen in so many churches of that diocese, ap- 
 pealed more to me than the celebration of High 
 Mass in the cathedral ; the rude image of our Lady 
 at Chartres more than many a fairer statue. 
 
 At Beaulieu, near Loches, the end came. We 
 had walked there from Loches, and while my 
 companions were resting under the trees in the 
 little Place, and taking a photograph of a neigh- 
 bouring mill, I remained in the church in con- 
 versation with the cure, who was superintending 
 some change in the arrangements of the altar. 
 We spoke of Tours and St. Martin, of the re- 
 vived cult of the Holy Face, of M. Dupont, 
 " the holy man of Tours," whom the cure' had 
 known, and at last he said, after a word about 
 English Protestantism, " Mais Monsieur est sans 
 doute Catholique ? " I was tempted to answer, 
 " A peu prfes," but the thought came with over- 
 whelming force that this was a matter in which 
 there was " no lore of nicely-calculated less or 
 more " ; we were Catholics or not, my interlo- 
 
THE END OF WANDERING 375 
 
 cutor was within the fold, and I without, and if 
 without, then against knowledge, against warn- 
 ing, for I recognised that my full conviction had 
 at last gone where my heart had gone before, 
 the call of God had sounded in my ears, and I 
 must perforce obey. But when ? 
 
 The promise which I had made to myself that 
 I would wait a year was binding on me as 
 though made to one for whose sake I had made 
 it, and the date at which the promise would 
 expire seemed far off. But early in August I 
 discovered that I had been in error as to the 
 time, and that I was already free. On the 1 2 th 
 of August, at Fulham, in the Church of the 
 Servites, an Order to which I had long felt an 
 attraction, I made my submission to the Church, 
 with deep thankfulness to God. 
 
 It was the day after Cardinal Newman's death, 
 and the one bitter drop in a brimming cup of 
 joy was that he could not know all that he had 
 done for me, that his was the hand which had 
 drawn me in when I sought the ark floating on 
 the stormy seas of the world. But a few days 
 afterwards, as I knelt by his coffin at Edgbaston 
 and heard the Requiem Mass said for him, I felt 
 that indeed he knew, that he was in a land 
 
376 MEMORIES 
 
 where there was no need to tell him anything, . 
 for he sees all things in the heart of God. 
 
 Those who are not Catholics are apt to think 
 and say that converts join the Roman com- 
 munion in a certain exaltation of spirit, but that 
 when it cools they regret what has been done, 
 and would return but for very shame. It has 
 been said of marriage that every one finds 
 when the ceremony is over that he or she has 
 married another, and not the bride or groom 
 who seemed to have been won ; and Clough 
 takes the story of Jacob as a parable represent- 
 ing this fact. We wed Rachel, as we think, 
 and in the morning, behold it is Leah. So the 
 Church bears one aspect when seen from a 
 distance, ab extra, another when we have given 
 ourselves into her keeping. 
 
 But the Church is no Leah, rather a fairer 
 Rachel than we dared to dream, her blessings 
 are greater than we had hoped. I may say for 
 myself that the happy tears shed at the tribunal 
 of Penance, on that 12 th of August, the fervour 
 of my first communion, were as nothing to 
 what I feel now. Day by day the mystery of 
 the altar seems greater, the unseen world 
 nearer, God more a Father, our Lady more 
 
THE END OF WANDERING 377 
 
 tender, the great company of saints more 
 friendly, if I dare use the word, my guardian 
 angel closer to my side. All human relation- 
 ships become holier, all human friends dearer, 
 because they are explained and sanctified by 
 the relationships and the friendships of another 
 life. Sorrows have come to me in abundance 
 since God gave me grace to enter His Church, 
 but I can bear them better than of old, and the 
 blessing He has given me outweighs them all. 
 May He forgive me that I so long resisted 
 Him, and lead those I love unto the fair land 
 wherein He has brought me to dwell ! It will 
 be said, and said with truth, that I am very 
 confident. My experience is like that of the 
 blind man in the Gospel who also was sure. 
 He was still ignorant of much, nor could he 
 fully explain how Jesus opened his eyes, but 
 this he could say with unfaltering certainty, 
 " One thing I know, that whereas I was bUnd, 
 now I see." 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 From 1853, when I returned to England 
 from Germany, I have been a pretty frequent 
 writer in periodicals and of pamphlets and 
 prefaces, but need not specify these, having 
 collected in books all that are worth pre- 
 serving. It may be well to specify those books 
 by which I care to be known, but they will 
 probably soon be forgotten, if they are not so 
 already. Few books can interest men except 
 those of their own time, and I have no reason 
 to complain of the reception accorded to what I 
 really wish to preserve. 
 
 They are : — 
 
 I . A Translation of Faust, in the metres of the 
 original. I did this while at Sturminster, and 
 had the kind revision of one of my pupils, 
 Richard Brandt, of German birth, who at least 
 preserved me from such foolish blunders as 
 those of some former translators ; notably what 
 
 Faust says of the spirits which swarmed about 
 
 378 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 379 
 
 him, " Und lispeln englisch wenn sie lugen," 
 which has been turned, "And speak in English 
 when they He " ; and " kurz gebunden," which 
 another translator applies to the length of 
 Gretchen's petticoats ! " And oh ! how short 
 her kirtle trim." My translation, strange to say, 
 is sold out, but is not worth reprinting. 
 
 2. Life of Godwin. This was undertaken 
 with the cordial approval of his grandson, Sir 
 Percy Shelley, who placed unreservedly at my 
 disposal all the immense mass of papers be- 
 longing to him. 1 undertook it, not because 
 I admire Godwin, but because of the society of 
 which he was the centre, and for the light his 
 papers threw on his time and on such people as 
 Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Lamb, Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, Bulwer, &c. &c. It had a consider- 
 able success, and I have often thought of reissu- 
 ing it in a condensed form, but to do so would 
 need so many changes and explanations to 
 bring it into accord with my present point of 
 view, that I shall now never do so. 
 
 3. Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, edited 
 by me with prefatory memoir, expanded from 
 
38o MEMORIES 
 
 what I had written of her in the Life of 
 
 Godwin, 
 
 4. Biographical Sketches. This went through 
 two editions and is out of print. 
 
 5. Pascal's Thoughts, translated. This has 
 gone through several editions and exists in 
 more than one form. 
 
 6. Maria Drummond, a Sketch, a short 
 memoir of Mrs. Drummond, of Fredley, near 
 Dorking, my dear and kind friend, written at 
 the request of her surviving daughters, Mrs. 
 Kay and Miss Drummond, who, however, 
 allowed me an absolutely free hand in my 
 treatment of the subject. I cannot thank them 
 enough for their trust in me. 
 
 7. Faith and Unfaith, a collection of scattered 
 essays such as seemed to me worth preserving, 
 and by which I should wish to be remembered, 
 if any one remember my writings at all. 
 
 8. En Route, translated from the work of 
 the same name by M. Huysman, together with 
 a preface. Ill health prevented my translating 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 381 
 
 the sequel to this, La Cathe'drak, and I was 
 only able to write the preface. 
 
 9. By the Way Side, a collection of a few 
 verses, written from time to time, which some 
 partial friends have desired to gather where 
 they fell, before time has trodden them wholly 
 under foot. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abraham, Bishop, assistant- 
 master of Eton, 91, 94, 
 208 
 Aitken, Rev. James, 141, 170 
 Allen, Rev. John, head-master 
 of Ilminster School, 38 
 Appearance and character, 
 
 39 
 Musical voice, 43 
 Reading, 44 
 
 Allen, Mrs., appearance and 
 character of, 44 
 As teacher, 46 
 
 Alloit Locke, exponent of co- 
 operative and Chris- 
 tian Socialist movements 
 of the day, 165 
 
 Ancestors, West Indian, 4 
 
 Anglican system, strength and 
 weakness of, 140 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, readingof, 
 z6 
 
 Arabian Nights, reading of, 22 
 
 Arch, Mr., and labourers' wages, 
 259 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 33 
 
 Astley, Sir John (Bart.), boy at 
 Eton, 120 
 
 Awdry, Sir John, ready wit of, 64 
 
 383 
 
 B 
 
 Balston, head-master of Eton, 
 
 104, 224, 227 
 Barnes, William, the "Dorset 
 
 Burns," 295 
 Bastard, Mr. and Mrs., 251 
 Bath, custom in churches, 28 
 
 High Churchism in, 27 
 Beard, Rev. Charles, editor of 
 
 Theological Review, 264 
 Bell, Rev., vicar of Bloxham, 183 
 Bethell, 79, 81, 82 
 
 Rev. — , Vice-Provost of 
 
 Eton, 186 
 Bible, reading of, 27 
 Birch, Aug., assistant-master at 
 
 Eton, 210 
 Birthplace, 2, 1 1 
 Blake, Rev. Vernon, 174 
 Blavatsky, Mme., 351, 352, 354 
 Bloxham, 182, 183, 184, 185 
 Blunt, Wilfred, 296, 344 
 Bowles, Rich. Francis, descrip- 
 tion of, 138 
 Bowles, Rev. Samuel, 145 
 Boyle, Very Rev. (>. D., Dean of 
 
 Salisbury, 140, 169, 170 
 Boys, rise in social scale of, 247 
 Briggs, Fellow of Eton, 84 
 Bright, John, 349 
 
384 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Brodrick, Rev. Alan, 141, 145 
 Brooke, Sir James, first Rajah 
 
 of Sarawak, 28, 29, 153 
 Brooke, John Johnson, second 
 
 Rajah of Sarawak, 29 
 Brooke, Sir Charles, third Rajah 
 
 of Sarawak, 29 
 "Brosier," Eton custom, ill 
 Browning, Robert, 168, 333, 338 
 Browning, Mrs., 168, 169 
 Burton, Sir Richard and Lady, 
 29s 
 
 Camilla, reading of, 21 
 Campbell, Rev. J. J., vicar of 
 
 Tew, 173 
 Caribs, original inhabitants of 
 
 the West Indies, 7 
 Carlyle, influence of, 169 
 Carlyle, Mrs., 180 
 Carter, Rev. Thomas, rector of 
 
 Clewer, 216 
 Vice-Provost of Eton, 69, 72 
 Description and death of, 
 
 75 
 Cathedral services, 373 
 Cholera alarm, 33 
 Churches, Bath, 27, 28 
 Church questions, interest in, 131 
 Church services, manner of, 188 
 ' ' Church sock," custom at Eton, 
 
 79 
 Church, Writhlington, 13 
 Clergy, influence, 187, 188 
 Clewer, House of Mercy, 216 
 Clifford, Professor W. K., 318 
 Cobbold, Felix, 226 
 
 Cocquerel, Rev. Athanase, mem- 
 ber of Free Christian 
 Union Society, 265 
 
 Coleridge, Rev. Edward, master 
 at Eton, 85, go, 91, 228 
 
 College, entrance on life at, 136 
 
 Colliers, Somersetshire, 20 
 
 Colvile, Margaret Agnes, Z13 
 Mrs., death of, 217 
 
 Comforts of life, advance in the, 
 19 
 
 Conductship at Eton, 198, 201 
 
 Congreve, Dr., 204 
 
 Cookesley, Rev. W. G., Eton 
 master, 92, 228 
 
 Cornish, Frank Warre, 211, 
 226, 242 
 
 Cossins, Miss, 171 
 
 Country neighbours, 32 
 
 Cox, Rev. Sir George (Bart.), 
 
 40. 143 
 Coxe, Rev. Henry Octavius, 
 
 Bodleian librarian, 149 
 Curacy at Tew, 164, 173 
 
 D 
 
 Dames' houses, creation of, 69, 
 
 108 
 Day, Rev. Russell, assistant- 
 master at Eton, 210 
 Dayman, Rev. — , President of 
 
 Dorset Clerical Society, 250 
 Dobson, Mr. Austin, 294, 296 
 Dod, Rev. WoUey, 210, 232 
 Dorset, Clerical Society, 250 
 County Temperance Asso- 
 ciation, 258 
 
INDEX 
 
 higher 
 
 385 
 
 Dorset, movement for 
 wages in, 259 
 Clergy, 261, 262 
 Dorsetshire dialect, 249 
 Dowden, Professor Edward, 296 
 Du Boulay, Rev. Frank, 139, 
 
 I4S 
 Rev. James, 140 
 Dupuis, Rev. G. J., Fellow of 
 Eton, 86 
 
 Earle, Charles, 341 
 Eastlake, Lady, 345 
 Eliot, George, account of, 335- 
 
 338 
 EUenrieder, Frl. Marie, 194 
 Elwyn, Rev. Whitwell, 135 
 Emma, questions on Miss 
 
 Austen's, 316 
 Epigram, Bethell's sermons, 81 
 Hawtrey's, 65 
 On West Indian emancipa- 
 tion, 18 
 Plumptre's, 85 
 Williams, Rowland, as 
 master of, 262 
 Esdaile, Mr. and Mrs., 252 
 Essays and Reviews, 218 
 
 Effect on Hawtrey and 
 Wilberforce, 220, 221 
 Eton, assistant-masters, posi- 
 tion of, 69 
 Boys, Astley, 120 
 Scott, 119 
 Thring, 119 
 Changes at, 121 
 
 Eton chapel, east window, 129 
 Choice of, 6i 
 Church restoration, 78 
 Conductship, 198, 201 
 
 Roper, 221 
 Culloden rugs, gift of, 72 
 Customs, III, 116, 118, 
 
 122, 125, 127 
 Dames, abuses, io8, 211 
 Description of, 66 
 Description of chapel, 76 
 Growth of luxury, 108 
 History of, by Sir H. Max- 
 well Lyte, 89 
 Inscription in Hall, 73 
 Long Chamber, rats, 74 
 Map-making in Remove, 
 
 94 
 Masters, support of, 210 
 Neighbouring clergy, 216 
 Reforms at, 89 
 Religion and morality, 128 
 Teaching at, 105, 107 
 Eton College, 61, 65, 207 
 
 Collegers and Oppidans, 
 
 212 
 Foundation of, 68 
 Fourth of June at, 116 
 Life, retrospect, 225 
 Mastership in, 205, 206 
 Reforms, 72, 73, 207, 208, 
 
 209, 211, 212 
 Residence at, 214 
 Evans, drawing-master at Eton, 
 
 107 
 Examination at Oxford, 167 
 Exeter College, life at, 146 
 Expurgated editions, concern- 
 ing, 22 
 
 2 B 
 
386 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Fagging system, ii8 
 Father, early life of, 2, 3 
 
 Marriage pf, 1 1 
 Father Clement, influence and 
 
 reading of, 24 
 Fire, destruction of premises by, 
 
 1.357 
 Floggings at Ilminster School, 
 
 41 
 Foxcote, my father's curacy at, 
 
 12 
 "Free Christian Union'' So- 
 ciety, intention of, 265 
 Friends at Sturminster, 251 
 
 The making of, 362 
 P'riendship, power of, 138 
 Froude, James Anthony, 157, 
 165, 346 
 At Littlemore, 347 
 The Nemesis of Faith, 165, 
 166 
 
 Ghent, account of picture in, 
 
 309 
 Godwin, Mary, elopement of, 
 
 32 
 Godwin, Life of, materials for, 
 
 253 
 Goldfinch family, monuments 
 
 and vaults of the, 15 
 Goldsmid, Lady, and a Jewish 
 
 custom, 356 
 Goodford, Rev. C. O., D.D., 
 
 obituary, 96 
 Head-master, 84, 100, 209, 
 
 232 
 
 Goodford, Provost, 100, 103, 
 224 
 And " Church sock," 79 
 And College reforms, 209 
 House of, 117 
 Gordon, General, Last Journals 
 
 of 287 
 Gosse, Edmund, 296, 308 
 Gulliver's Travels, reading of, 21 
 
 H 
 
 Hale, Rev. Edward, account 
 
 of, 230 
 Rev. Edward, 210 
 Hamilton, Bishop of Salisbury, 
 
 fears of, 223 
 Hardington Park, residence at, 
 
 135 
 Hardisty, assistant-master at 
 
 Eton, 205, 209 
 Hardy, Thomas, 298 
 
 Novels of, 314 
 Harman, John, 184, 199 
 Hawker, Rev. Robert Stephen, 
 
 ballad of, 298 
 Hawtayne, Rob., 141 
 Hawtrey, Rev. E. C, D.D., 
 head-master of Eton, 63, 
 67 
 Death of Provost, 103, 223 
 Provost, 100, 227, 229 
 Provost, effect of Essays 
 
 and Reviews on, 220 
 Retrospect of his head- 
 
 mastership, 100 
 Views on Coningsby, 64 
 Wit of, 64, 65 
 
INDEX 
 
 387 
 
 Hawtrey, Rev. Stephen, pri- 
 vate tutor at Eton, 106 
 Heathcote, Rev. — , vicar of 
 
 Sturminster, 223, 244 
 Herbert, Hon. Auberon, 259 
 Hexter at Eton, 105 
 High Church at Eton, 121 
 Highlands, tour in the, 170 
 Hodgson, Rev. James, vicar of 
 Bloxham, 186 
 Work at Bloxham, 199 
 Hodgson, friend of Byron, 7 1 
 Hookins, Rev. Philip, his ser- 
 mons, 185 
 Hughes, Tom, 164 
 Huxley, Professor, 339 
 
 Ilminster School, introduction 
 to, 36 
 Manners and lack of luxury, 
 
 4S>48 
 Moral influences, 46 
 Work, 41 
 Imitation of Christ, study of, 
 
 205 
 Inspiration, motto on, 264 
 Irving, Martin, 177, 179, 181, 
 202 
 Mrs. Edward, 179 
 Irvingite Church, the, 181 
 
 Jambs, Rev. C. C, 231 
 Jenkins, Rev. William, 174 
 Johnson, Col., 195 
 
 Johnson, William (Cory), 210, 
 222 
 
 Account of, 228 
 JoUiffe, Rev. Thomas, 56 
 Jovifett, and Palgrave, 167 
 
 Sermon by, 170 
 
 K 
 
 Keating, Christopher, 10 
 Mr. and Mrs., 171 
 Mrs., 7, 156 
 Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 
 publications, 279, 287, 
 288, 290, 295, 296, 299 
 Kennard of Marnhull, the Rev. 
 
 Robert, 262 
 King, Henry S., career and 
 character of, 270-76 
 Purchase of his publishing 
 business, 276 
 King, Mrs. Hamilton, a true 
 
 poetess, 345 
 Kingdon, Rev. — , curate of 
 
 Sturminster, 243 
 Kingsley, Rev. Charles, 157, 177, 
 179, 187, 202, 216 
 As pastor, 161-63 
 First visit to, 158 
 His influence on my reli- 
 gious opinions, 160, 163 
 Memoir of, 158 
 Personality of, 159 
 Recollections of, in Bio- 
 graphical Sketches, 158 
 Kingsley, Henry, 142 
 Knowles, Eardley, visit to, 
 170 
 
388 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 299 
 La Souflfri^re, eruption of, 8 
 Lawrence, George, as author, 141 
 Lectures at Oxford, 167 
 Leigh, A. Austen, 226 
 Lent, Self-denial in, 28 
 Lewes, G. H., and George Eliot, 
 
 account of, 335-38 
 Literature as a profession, 292 
 Littlehales, Mrs., 154 
 Ludlow, J. M., 165 
 Lyte's, Sir H. Maxwell, History 
 
 of Eton, 89 
 Lytton, Edward, Lord, 353 
 Robert, Earl of, 341 
 
 M 
 
 Macmullen, Very Rev. Canon, 
 40 
 
 Manning, Cardinal, 340, 347 
 
 Mansel, Rev. Owen, and the 
 Dorset County Tempe- 
 rance Association, 259 
 
 Manuscripts, destruction by fire 
 
 of, I. 357 
 Map-making, practice at Eton, 
 
 94 
 
 Marriage, 213 
 
 Marriott, Rev. W., assistant- 
 master at Eton, 208 
 
 Marshall, Rev. S., colleague at 
 Eton, 201 
 
 Maurice, Rev. Fred. Denison, 
 164, 187 
 
 Meredith, George, 298, 348 
 
 Mesmerism, 177 
 
 Methodists, Primitive, 34, 35 
 
 Middleton, Professor, 358, 361 
 Patriarch of Alexandria's 
 letter to, 358 
 Miracles, 264, 369 
 Mohl, M. and Mme., 303 
 " Montem," custom at Eton, iii 
 
 Effect of railway on, 115 
 Morris, William, 36c, 361 
 Muloch, Miss (Mrs. Craik), 254 
 
 N 
 
 Negro nurse, 19 
 Nelson, H. J., 225 
 Newman, Cardinal, 340 
 At Littlemore, 347 
 Influence of, 368 
 The Lives of the English 
 Saints, 346 
 Northcote, Very Rev. Spencer, 
 39 
 
 O 
 
 Oliphant, Mrs., 345 
 Ordination, 164, 173, 174, 185 
 Ormerod, Herbert, 177, 178 
 Orthodox, use of term, 55 
 Oxford movement, effect on 
 
 Eton, 128 
 Oxford, society at, 149 
 
 Paget, Arthur, 47, 141 
 Palgrave, Frank, and Jowett, 
 
 167 
 Parker, Charles, 136, 173 
 Patmore, Coventry, a true poet, 
 
 345 
 
INDEX 
 
 389 
 
 Pattison, Mark, 350 
 Perry, Rev. Canon, 40 
 Philosophie Positive, Comte's 
 
 influence in the, 204 
 Pickering, Rev. E., assistant- 
 master at Eton, 93 
 Pike, Mr. and Mrs. W., 251, 253 
 Plumptre, 82 
 
 Character, 86 
 
 Eccentricities of, at Eton, 
 
 83 
 Epigram, 85 
 Sermons of, 85 
 Political opinions, 166 
 Pollard, Alfred W., 290 
 Positivism, attraction of, 365 
 Attention first drawn to, 
 204 
 Powles, Rev. Cowley, 157 
 Procter, Mrs., 180 
 
 Account of, 319-33 
 Prophecy, motto on, 264 
 Public-houses at Eton, 127 
 Publishers, attitude of, towards 
 
 religious books, 291 
 Publishing as a career, 277 
 Publishing work, humours of, 
 299 
 With Mr. H. S. King, 270 
 Pupils at Sturminster, 243, 245 
 
 My father's, 52 
 Pusey, personal influence of, 
 143, 151 
 
 R 
 
 Railway, first experience of, 62 
 Ranters' story of the devil, 34, 
 35 
 
 Rash, curious remedy for, 16 
 Reading, early, 21-27 
 
 At Oxford, 168 
 Regatta, or "Fourth of June" 
 
 at Eton, 116 
 Re-incarnation, stories of, 355 
 Religious opinions, 188, 364-77 
 Agnosticism and Positivism, 
 
 364 
 Books, religious, 371 
 Broad High Churchman, 
 
 166 
 Effect of Charles Kingsley's 
 
 influence, 163 
 Effect of Positivism, 204 
 Influence of Unitarianism, 
 
 264 
 Leave Church of England, 
 
 269 
 Newman, influence of, 368 
 The end, 374 
 
 The faith, reasons for ac- 
 cepting, 369 
 Want of sympathy with 
 the Church of England, 
 263 
 Renan, M. and Mdme., 304 
 Ritchie, Miss Charlotte, 302 
 
 Mrs., 251 
 Robertson, Rev. Frederick, 
 272 
 His sermons, 273 
 Rous, Provost of Eton, 78 
 Routledge, Rev. Dr. ("Daddy "), 
 
 41 
 Russell, Charles Whitworth, 
 
 152 
 Sir Charles (Bart.), 171 
 Sir George (Bart.), 138 
 
390 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sanders, Rev. — , curate of 
 
 Bloxham, 183 
 Sarawak, Rajahs of, 28, 29, 153 
 School "Dames," 33 
 
 Friends, 47, 120 
 
 Ilminster, 36-60 
 
 Outfit, nightcaps, 48 
 
 Sunday, classes, 33 
 
 Visits and holidays, 38 
 Sedding, John D., architect, 248 
 Sellick, or "The Slug," 40 
 Selwyn, Bishop, private tutor at 
 
 Eton, 91 
 Sewell, Rev. William, founder 
 of Radley, 148 
 
 Senior tutor at Exeter, 146, 
 166 
 Shelley, Eton boy, 90 
 
 Memorials, 252 
 
 Sir Percy and Lady, 251 
 " Shirking " at Eton, 125 
 Short, Rev. W. R, 177, 179, 202 
 Simmons, Rev. Frank Churchill, 
 
 46, 141 
 Slave song, old, 18 
 Smith, Rev. Canon Percy, 40, 
 
 46, 141, 158, 160 
 Snow, Rev. D'Oyley, 261 
 "Spankie" at Eton, 123 
 Spencer, Rev. Thomas, 57 
 Spiritualism, 351, 352, 353 
 Staples, Mr., 30 
 Stephen, Sir James, 128 
 Stone, Rev. E. D., assistant- 
 master at Eton, 210 
 Street, Mr., 248 
 Stuckey, Mr., murder of, II 
 
 Sturminster Marshall, country 
 dialect, 249. 
 
 Life at, 223, 224 
 
 Living of, 243 
 
 Neighbours and friends, 250 
 
 Parish, 244 
 
 Pupils at, 243, 245 
 
 Resignation of living, 269 
 
 Smallpox in, 260 
 SuUivan, Col. and Mrs., 251 
 
 Mrs., account of, 254 
 Sunday, observance of, 34 
 
 Tarybr, French master at Eton, 
 
 106 
 Tennyson, reading and criticism 
 
 of, 132 
 Tew, clergy in neighbourhood, 
 176 
 Curacy at, 164, 173, 181 
 My house at, 175 
 The village of, 174 
 Work at, 174, 175 
 The Nun, reading of, 24 
 Theological Review, my contri- 
 butions to the, 264 
 Theological views and mottoes, 
 
 264 
 Thomas, Mrs., 29 
 Thornton, Miss, 315 
 Thring, boy at Eton, 119 
 Tours abroad, 302, 305, 3°^' 
 
 308, 311, 373 
 Tractarian movement, 143 
 Tracts for Priests and People, 
 219 
 
INDEX 
 
 391 
 
 Translators, ignorance and blun- 
 ders, 281-86 
 Travelling, modes of, 52 
 Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, 
 
 290 
 Tutorship abroad, Carlsruhe, 192 
 
 Constance, 194 
 
 Illness at Constance, 198 
 
 Leave England, 191 
 
 Schaffhausen, 198 
 
 Wiesbaden, 193 
 Tutor, private, position of, 246 
 Tweed, an usher, 40 
 Typhus fever, attack of, 16 
 
 U 
 Unitarianism and the Broad 
 Church party, 215 
 Influence of, 264 
 
 Vaccination, experience of, 
 
 261 
 Vegetarianism, 203 
 
 W 
 
 Wales, holiday in, 202 
 
 Walford, John Thomas, account 
 of, 232-42 
 Eton master, 210 
 
 Warts, "charming" of, 49 
 
 Waterfield, Ottiwell C, Eton 
 master, 210 
 
 Wayte, Rev. William, assistant- 
 master at Eton, 231 
 
 Wellow, break up of home at, 
 186 
 Humorous experiences, 59 
 National School, 57 
 People at, 57 
 Removal to, 51 
 
 West Indies, business in the, 16 
 Failure of property, 51 
 Inhabitants of the, 7 
 
 Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, 
 
 173 
 Effect of Essays and He- 
 views on, 221 
 Wilder, Rev. John, Fellow of 
 
 Eton, character of, 87 
 Williams, Dr. Rowland, and his 
 
 books, 262 
 Wilson, A. C, 141 
 
 Dr., an Evangelical, 189 
 Rev. H. B., essayist and 
 Bampton Lecturer, 262 
 WoUstonecraft, Mary, letter 
 describing trial of king, 
 30 
 On an Eton custom, 85, 89 
 Wren, his work in Eton chapel, 
 
 78 
 Writhlington, description of, 12 
 
 My father's curacy at, 12 
 Wyatt, Halifax, 141 
 
 YoNGE, Rev. John, assistant- 
 master at Eton, 228 
 Young, Sir William, 226 
 
 Printed by Ballantyhe, Hanson &^ Co. 
 Edinburgh &= London