wJC'w; • '*\" .•■•¥ . ,-•■ ^ a* ".v • , _ t*^-. i^i . w.r .J . t^ f, - ^ , CTP*;'^-',. mv:i. , ^*».. .* • ■ 4*-. ," » Lj^-^>.^-v ^^fe.:< 1 ■ 'S'i" ' ■|^,'r.~ ( W'-i.'i v. ^ ■i|.-.<: : ^^^^^^K ' ^/ t ■ ^^^^^BL, --^' -* J; •*. ^^^^^^^F . ^T'-T'^^- ■ 1 ■,, ^m^,.ry-i- ' . \, A ; m^-2^-' i • >-- "■-•■:■■-'■■.,.,; , ■ 1 ;«•.'. v-/^- ■v'.- ^' . ' r ^ -(. /.,' ';;r " i "»'' J . f mf'A-:v^ ' ' ,4 ' • ,'■■ ~ * L t^rfV. -■ ?•>• . •' - .', '-A -;■•' ^i:*-^--:^---'.,^.-,v. t - «* . ■> - . >: .!.'.■■ ■ - .> ■« ' ', ,'■ ■ - ■ "^ •-■ • • •*' J" " * 1 S .'^v. ,v^.- ,> ..A ','< «■,'• L ••»•_-•. ' ' ' '-■.'. t.'! ■ V C^-.^-; V-"i. V- . ' ^ ' (■ ^ ' 'I /" ■■^^^^■^^ttjJ » . ^ ■^^'.^'^ •■ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Hr ' ^ " ^^ *.' .. ^^^^^^^^^^H , •, : " t» ,, , ', ..."■" ," ■ ^^^^H^'^ • -,♦■ . -.."> , :VT " ■ »" ^^^^^^^^^^^^^HpT* * ' , ■**»,■•'' P'PPiP'I'Pt? - •; V V .' . ' - • '■' '' *. rv^»t.>, ■- \i'^'i- '■! fx ."■■^ ^^H- ' ' \-y . : ^i ■.-' t' • , - /-v . - ^Hm|j||.>^ '/■^ •■' « ■ » ^^Hi^'-' '- f ^ "■ r _ ^^^^^^X' '^\;' '- <• '- " . £«**V» . , r,' i^iJjAV . »f'«v' li'l*'''-* , '• .•■' m- 828 Broadu'iiv .■.«3>^ 5 Columbia College Library- Madison Av. and 49th St. New York. Beside the maiti topic this book also treats of Subject No. On page I Sttbject No. On page A MEMORY OF EDWARD THRING l\r\l .; /yu^ a/^c^C^c,^"^ ^^€yZ ^ A MEMORY OF ( IV y v^ EDWARD THRING BY JOHN HUNTLEY SKRINE WARDEN OF GLENALMOND "Seeing the city is htdlt To music, therefore never built at all. And therefore built for ever." MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1890 The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, london and bungay. First Edition, 1889. Reprinted, 1890. PREFACE. This work is not a Biography of Edward Thring. It deals only with one main aspect of his career, during one period of it. It is what its title pro- fesses — a Memory : the memory of a single observer, unhelped by any materials beyond the few letters and memoranda which are in his own possession. But it is the memory of Edward Thring owned by one who for seven years was a boy in his school, and for five a pupil in his class ; who for fourteen years was a worker at his side, in ties of nearest intimacy ; and who has held this memorial to be a debt upon his future powers, since the evening when his great master bent over a young boy's rhyme, and said, " You shall write my epitaph." J. H. S. Glenalmond, October 22ftd, 1889. 109007 iBpitapf)ia» HSpme foas tbine asliing. iSut note, 5i5ai!5e in tf)p bictorics tone, ^slt, for our nurture="tiue, tjou, IBteti^ in tjy tattles untoon:— ileaticr, a foUobtr^s boh); dFatJer, ti)e trutj of a son. I DEDICATE THIS MEMORY OF OUR MASTER TO THOSE MANY WHO PRAISE IN SILENCE HIM WHO TAUGHT THEM THE WORTH OF LIFE. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Part I. THE MASTER. CHAPTER I. MY "big school." PAGE Romance — The Actual — An Uppingham Day — Ten o'clock — In the Fives Court — At the Board — An Assize — Studies CHAPTER n. THE RULER. A Legend of Uppingham Discipne — Bliullies and Others — Giant " Kill-dog " — Self- Government — Set Fights — The Secrets of Rule : Fear, Justice, Love — The Worth of a Life ..... c 27 X Contents. CHAPTER III. THE TEACHER. PAGE 35 Grammars — Letters — " To-Day " — The Divinity Lesson — A Soldier's Battle — A Great Teacher 47 CHAPTER IV. THE HERO AS SCHOOLMASTER. The Man — The Leader — The Hero 65 AN INTERLUDE. Alma Mater — VEcole dest Lici — The Oracle — Old Boys' Match — Glamour 83 Part II. AGAIN THE MASTER. CHAPTER I. FIGHTING THE SHIP. Prosperity and Ideals — A Lava Crust — A Crisis — The "Dead Hand" — A Commissioners' Frolic — The other "Dead Hand" — A Crucial Case — A Hard Saying — Friends Indeed — A Day of Battle — Buy- ing out a Founder — My Commission 95 Contents. xi CHAPTER II. OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY. PAGE Mountain Air — A Man of Intuitions — On Politics and other Things 113 CHAPTER III. THE SHADOW. In Partnership — A Theory Examined — Sacred Fire . . 135 CHAPTER IV. ARMA VIRUMQUE. Thorpe Windmill — A Dictatorship — A Tearless Victory — A Second Campaign 151 CHAPTER V. C ED ANT AR^L^ TOG.E. A Mother of Parliaments — At the Conference — Vox elamantis—A Franchise and its Perils 161 CHAPTER VI. BORTH. Success and its Penalties — A Storm Breaks — An Heroic Remedy — Gleaning after a Tale — Why we Stayed so Long— Necessity's Glorious Gain — Avibiguam tellure nova Salamina futuraui 171 xii Contents, CHAPTER VII. VIRGIN SOIL. PAGE Home Again— On a New Theatre — Music and Gym- nastic— A Festival Re-modelled— By the Fireside — The Fortunes of Serious Drama 197 CHAPTER VIII. A DECADE. The Borth Commemoration— The " School Society "— Honour to Lessons — The Tercentenary — An East End Concert — Conference of Headmistresses — Books and Addresses — " It Grows to Guerdon Afterdays" 213 CHAPTER IX. THE WORK. What was It? — An Omission Excused — Fruits of Thring's Work as Master — A Founder in Education — First Thoughts and Second Thoughts 231 CHAPTER X. THE MAN. His "Word" — Faith Working — An Autumn Evening's Talk 245 CHAPTER XL UNTIL THE EVENING. Childe Roland—'' Ready "—A Last Walk Together— fiissu bnperatoris — The Passing 269 PART I. THE MASTER. B MY "BIG SCHOOL." B 2 NEW WALLS. Slow rose of breathed adatnant the wall Of Troy, as wave 07i wave of charmed sound Himg, crystal fixed, the holy cefitre round. Close-bonded light and music girding all. So on the old School came a spirit-call, Stirred the deep harp which thrice a hundred years Had strung with all their gladness, all their tears Made light a?id faith i?i living music fall. Then rose the stroiig foundations ; to the sound Of ghostly cha7it, a?td angel whispers grew Tier upon tier of melody spell-bound, To last while lasts the heavenly strain. O you. Who dwell within the circle, wiser found. Cheat not the immortal builder of his due. Edward Thring. liJiiAliY. UcTt- /^Z. A MEMORY OF EDWARD THRING. CHAPTER I. MY "BIG SCHOOL." " I AM on the eve of a romance. I am to go a journey, ten times as long as any I ever took, across England to my ' big school.' It is not a very big one, nor very well known yet. But it will be, some day, says my tutor, for the headmaster is a great man." So thought a youngster of twelve years, as he wished good-bye to home on a February morning ; and Tom Browiis Schooldays were in his head all the long journey. It ended in a tedious jolting, late at night, over snowy roads. He can still see the scrubby ash trees in the wayside hedge, jolting past the frozen windows ,' then the thin lights of a poor street. There is a stop before an archway, for the unclosing of some huge wooden gates, which let into a little quadrangle, with a half dozen 6 A Memory of Edzuard Thring. [ch. flitting- figufefe ih it : presently he is blinking in the lamp-light of a bright room. A short, firm, angular figure, with a keen eye, strides up to the door and welcomes me. It is the great man, I know. I remark to myself that he ought to be bigger, but it is something else than this want of size which makes me feel not afraid of him. Half an hour later, lying in bed, with the awful sense of some seven unknown and perhaps formidable beings behind the neighbouring curtains, I hear a quick, strong step at the door, and the light is turned out to a succinct, military " Good-night." I don't know what there was in those very familiar words, but, as I replied to them, my heart seemed to say to itself, " My headmaster ! " meaning it as a soldier might say " My general ! " Then I was gathered to dreamland. The disappointments of the next day are present still to my mind. In the course of the leisurely dress- ing of a new boy exempted from the first early school, I looked out of the dormitory window upon the schoolhouse quadrangle. A range of small cells, just wide enough for a window and a door opening upon the snows of the court, was before me. Pinched and bleak little places they looked. " The studies," I thought ; and then, " what a fuss my tutor made I.] My ''Big Schooir J about these poor little sentry-boxes." A dream of luxury had expired on the chill February air. Then, when I had breakfasted, undergone brief examination, and spent my first two hours in company of my benevolent class-master, I found a friend, and with him made the better acquaintance of Uppingham. " The town of Uppingham," says an old writer with injurious brevity, " consisteth of one meane streete." It consisted of no more when my schoolfellow and myself set out to warm our frozen toes on the kidney stones of its inhospitable pavement. But it had recovered in the last half decade from the dishevelment of a country town in decay, from the broken glass and notice-boards of derelict houses ; for there was new blood in the old veins again. Six boarding-houses, two of them new, the rest pinched and shabby, but made to serve the turn by piecing and patching, lined the street in its upper end near the schoolhouse. Other buildings the school had none, except the venerable but homely schoolroom of Archdeacon Johnson, bearing graven on it the date 1584 and a trilingual inscription, which served at this time for chapel ; and a gymnasium, quite lately built by the new headmaster, and the first owned by a public school, which stood at a corner of the 8 A Memory of Edwai^d Tliring. [ch. schoolhouse. In all this I could not discover the grandeur of a ''big school," as my dreams had painted it. The place had no presence. We left the town, and passing a gaunt, impressive, black- trunked windmill, escaped into the Rutland pas- tures. It is the most rural tract in England, and grows on the square mile one man to every three of other neighbourhoods, and, though the natural features of the country are not strongly marked, there is right pleasant wandering to be had over the deep rich grass of the meadows, under the covert-sides, and along the oily little water-courses that trickle through the clays towards the Eye and the Welland. But at that iron season the long hill ridges, naked of trees except for a few wayside ashes, wore a cheerless, unhomely aspect to eyes fresh from one of the soft southern shires. The new boy came back to his Latin verses downcast and chill. " Where then is the romance of school t " Ah ! youngster, wait a little. The manner of our days at Uppingham was this. At seven o'clock, or in summer at half-past six, a bell broke our slumbers. Half an hour later or almost, we rushed past a praepostor with his hand on the hall door-handle, and fell into the ranks, fastening the last button as we did so, for morning I.] My ''Big School r 9 prayers. Under the great window at the top of the room stood the headmaster, gowned, and at this time of day somewhat grim, his eyes upon the door. Woe worth the praepostor who does not shut it at the last stroke of the church clock. One zealot of that order I recall (but that was long after), who banged the door just half a minute before the crazy old time-piece had signalled, upon two hundred and thirty boys and six masters. Excluded wretches prowled outside, like Hyeman- tes, till our devotions were ended : then entered, and at the headmaster's desk, under scorching eyes, wrote their names in the late-book. It was as if a soul were registering its own misdeed, under the dictation of the Recording Angel. Meanwhile, within, the Psalms are being read. He reads them as no one else, taking a great joy, as it seems to us, in the fierce ones. One verse we always looked out for, on the third evening of the month : " the foundations of the round world were discovered at thy chiding, O Lord : at the blasting of the breath of thy displeasiwe!' You heard the flap of the thunder as he rolled it out. Just so on a Sunday, at least during his early fighting years, he would bid us " pray for the whole state of Christ's Church," with a j>ause and an explosive lo A Memory of Edwm^d Thring, [ch. utterance of the " militant here in earth," as if he were giving a word of command under fire. And strangers who had been little impressed by an in- terview, would come away from a service, and say they thought of him differently now they had heard him read the Commandments. No wonder. As those deep, uncompromising tones dealt out the sentences, you felt that there stood before you " the categorical imperative individualized." Alas ! it was these he stood up to read to us that morning when But it is long ere that. Back to my story. Prayers over, we separated for first lesson in our classmasters' houses. Thence home to breakfast, and the hall fire — always crowded up with a three- deep circle, faces outwards, the littlest outermost and freezing, the big Triarii roasting against the blaze, small fags spitting vast squares of bread upon toasting-forks, and diving through the triple row of legs, in haste to make cinders of them for the sixth form table. (I thank the dear old peda- gogue who taught me Greek grammar, I never was a fag.) Then entry of sixth form, and a relief of the congestion, especially if the headmaster had recently had a fling in sermon or speech at " selfish louts who push a little boy from the fire." After I.] My ''Big Schooir ii breakfast, and an interval during which tasks were conned in the studies, we met again for a roll-call in the hall. It was a crowded and murmurous place, the hum of a hundred and a half repetition lessons going up, in the few minutes before ten o'clock and the headmaster's entry. Less occupied juniors would scuffle in the gangways, till the vigilant praepostor (they just were praepostors in those days) had cuffed their heads or otherwise inflicted not honourable wounds. Upon such a group would dash, springing up the steps aprino ciirsii^ like another great West Countryman, out of the tortuous passage from his study, the headmaster, asking with mock awfulness " Did they want him to shin his way through ? " That was if he was in a cheerful temper, and there were no severe busi- ness on hand. For it was at this time, after he had called the list, which he always did himself, that he would address us, if school successes had to be announced, or, more commonly, school sins con- demned. Perhaps we had been breaking a farmer's fences, or trampling his crops, and had to be re- minded how our large liberty to ramble where we liked hung on our own good sense, and might be jeoparded " by a few donkeys." Perhaps we had been engaging in venial but not chivalrous warfare 12 A Memory of Edward Thring. [cii. with the village boys, who laid ambushes for us in thievish corners, and it was well we should know at once what " cads " we were. Or we had been mis- behaving on the way to or from church, or on other solemn occasion, and he would set us up a glass in which we scanned the lineaments of "parish louts " lately emancipated from school. Of denunciatory terms he had a repertory Shake- sperian in its wealth and pungency : — " unmitigated jackasses," " stupendous idiots," " unadulterated mooncalves," " grocer's assistants " (name of doubt- ful interpretation), '' louts," " dolts," " noodles," "sneaks," "traitors," "rebels," ''pothouse heroes," "dead horses," "curveting carthorses," "supercilious ditto," etc., etc. This is but a hasty and beggarly florilegium. But indeed when I recall the note of joy, infectious joy, in strenuous epithets, which lent a novel quality even to the most familiar accents of abuse, I feel that any collection is but a hortiis siccus of specimens, from which the bloom and aroma have exhaled. But perhaps it was a case of bullying. Then he was tremendous. If a bully were really the coward which a pious fiction pronounces him, he could hardly have survived the storm. But there was no hurling of epithets. It was too bad for I.] My ''Big Schooir 13 that. The unfeigned, pent-up indignation spoke far plainer in the simple, searching, moderated phrase for which he exchanged his hyperboles whenever he was deeply moved. Bullying could not have thriven under him if he had done no more than speak, and as a fact that evil old custom was, I believe, by no one put down so soon and so irrevocably, as by Edward Thring at Uppingham. He knew how to sear the hydra as well as cut its head off. Yet he was most himself when it was a case of dishonesty in work. Some one has been caught, let us say, using a " crib," or copying his neigh- bour's verses. Then the sequel would be this : — " A very disgraceful thing has been brought to my notice. Two of you have been cheating in work. I mean the school to know what I think of this kind of thing. I hold that to cheat a master is inexpressibly base. You may call it what you please : I call it sheer, unmitigated, contemptible lying : you who do it are liars and cheats. Oh ! yes, I know the mean things you say to yourselves, some of you, in your mean hearts, about its being natural for boys, and * they all do it at other schools,' and the rest of the pitiful talk. But we are not 'other schools.' There have been times, 14 A Memory of Edward Thring. [ch. and I knew them well enough, when schools were like prisons, and there was some wretched kind of excuse for cheating your gaolers. But you don't live in a prison here. We make your life free and pleasant, we trust you, we make your temptations few, we make it easy to live a true life — and then you turn traitors to truth. Now, which you will ! The prison, if you prefer ; bars and bolts (I could make a prison if I chose) ; or the free life of a true society. But you sha'n't have both. You shall not be traitors and have the privilege of true men. " Now I am not going to waste words upon A and B . I hold that the whole school is responsible for these wrong-doings. Any society can put down offences committed by individuals, if it chooses. Why don't thieves break the windows of jewellers' shops in Regent Street ? The policeman, you say 1 Why, he may be safe round the corner. No ; it's because the rogue knows that every honest hand in the crowd would be upon him. People don't like thieves. It is society that keeps down stealing. And your society can keep down lying and cheating. And I am going to help you. The form, in which the cheats are, will be excluded from the cricket field for a week, and will take their exercise walking two and two on the Leicester I.] My ''Big School:' 15 Road, attended by R . (This gentleman was the school-porter, an old friend of mine, who will agree with me that Mercury, the conductor of ghosts, scarce drove a more sad and unwilling flock.) " For the rest of you, all of you at least who can see how despicable these schoolboy notions and these ' thieves' honour ' ways are, I call on you to remember what is at stake. I hold that we are not, as some choose to think, just like other schools. This school is being built up on the belief that if boys are treated truly, they can live as truly as men. We stand here for truth and true life. Remember, in other things other schools will be your equals and superiors : in things which are their glory, they will beat you ; yes, they will beat you as far as numbers, and social reputation, and intellect-power goes. Our glory will be to show the world that in a school there can be true life. There you can be first. Win that. That is what you can do, from the oldest to the least, for the name of Uppingham. I call on you to be true to it." These shall be thy arts, O Roman ! Did the Roman thrill at his poet's Romane^ mejnento^ more than some of us at our great leader's .'* Were the words too proud, kind reader .'' I can 1 6 A Memory of Edward Thring. [ch. but tell them as they were spoken. And this, recollect, was a quarter of a century ago.