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MEMOIR OF A BROTHER
THOMAS HUGHES,
AUTHOR OF "TOM BROW'N's SCHOOLDAYS."
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
Late Tickxor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
1873.
AUTHOR'S EDITION.
PREFACE.
This Memoir was written for, and at the request of, the
near relatives, and intimate friends, of the home-loving
country gentleman, whose unlooked-for death had made
them aU mourners indeed. Had it been meant originally
for publication, it would have taken a very different form.
In compiling it, my whole thoughts were fixed on my
own sons and nephews, and not on the public. It tells
of a life with which indeed the public has no concern
in one sense ; for my brother, with all his ability and
power of different kinds, was one of the humblest and
most retiring of men; who just did his own duty, and
held his own tongue, without the slightest effort or wish
for fame or notoriety of any kind. In another sense,
however, I do see that it has a meaning and interest for
Englishmen in general, and have therefore consented to
its publication in the usual way, though not without a
viu PREFACE.
sense of discomfort and annoyance at having the veil
even partially lifted from the intimacies of a private
family circle. For, in a noisy and confused time like
ours, it does seem to me that most of us have need to
be reminded of, and will be the better for bearing in
mind, the reserve of strength and power which lies
quietly at the nation's call, outside the whirl and din of
public and fashionable life, and entirely ignored in the
columns of the daily press. The subject of this memoir
was only a good specimen of thousands of Englishmen
of high culture, high courage, high principle, who are
living their own quiet lives in every corner of th^e
kingdom, from John o' Groat's to the Land's-End, bringing
up their families in the love of God and their neighbour,
and keeping the atmosphere around them clean, and pure
and strong, by their example, — men who would come to
the front, and might be relied on, in any serious national
crisis.
One is too apt to fancy, from the photographs of the
nation's life which one gets day by day, that the old ship
has lost the ballast which has stood her in such good
stead for a thousand years, and is rolling more and more
helplessly, in a gale which shows no sign of abating, for
PREFACE.
her or any other national vessel, until at last she must
roll over and founder. But it is not so. England is in
less stress, and in better trim, than she has been in in
many a stiffer gale.
The real fact is, that nations, and the families of which
nations are composed, make no parade or fuss over that j)art
of their affairs which is going right. National life depends
on home life, and foreign critics are inclined to take the
chronicles of our Divorce Court as a test by which to judge
the standard of our home life, like the old gentleman
who always spelt through the police reports to see " what
the people were about." •An acquaintance, however, witli
any average English neighbourhood, or any dozen English
families taken at random, ought to be sufficient to reassure
tlie faint-hearted, and to satisfy them that (to use the
good old formula) the Lord has much work yet for this
nation to do, and the nation manliness and godliness
enough left to do it all, notwithstanding superficial
appearances.
A life without sensation or incident may therefore well
form a more useful subject of study in such a time, than
the most exciting narrative of adventure and success, the
conditions being, that it shall have been truly lived, and
X PREFACE.
faithfully told. Eeaders will judge for themselves whether
the former condition has been fulfilled in this case: I
wish I could feel the same confidence as to the latter.
I can only say I have done my best.
T. H.
TO MY NEPHEIVS AND SONS.
My deak Boys,
It has pleased God to take to Himself the head of
the family of which you are memhers. Most of you are
too young to enter into the full meaning of those words
" family " and " membership," but you all remember with
sore liearts, and the deepest feeling of love and reverence,
the gentle, strong, brave man, whom you used to call
father or uncle ; and who had that wonderful delight in,
and attraction for, young folk, which most very gentle and
brave men have. You are conscious, I know, that a great
cold chasm has suddenly opened in your lives — that
strength and help has gone away from you, to which you
knew you might turn in any of the troubles which boys,
and very young men, feel so keenly. "Well, I am glad that
you feel that it is so : I should not have much hope of you
DEDICATION.
if it were otherwise. The chasm will close up, and you
will learn, I trust and pray, wliere to go for strength and
help, in this and all other troubles.
It is very little that I can do for you. Probably you can
do more for nie ; and my need is even sorer than yours. But
what I can do 1 will. Several of you have asked me ques-
tions about your father and uncle, what we used to do, and
think and talk about, when he and I were boys together.
Well, no one can answer these questions better than I, for
we were as nearly of an age as brothers can be — I was
only thirteen months younger — and we were companions .
from our childhood- We went together to our first school,
when I was nearly eight and he nine years old ; and then
on to Eugby together ; and were never separated for more
than a week until he went to Oxford, where I followed a
year later. For the first part of my time there, in college,
we lived in the same rooms, always on the same staircase;
and afterwards in the same lodgings. From that time to the
day of his death we lived in the most constant intimacy
and affection. Looking back over all those years, I can call
to mind no single unkind, or unworthy, or untruthful, act or
word of !?is ; and amongst all the good influences for which
I have to be thankful, I reckon the constant presence and
DEDICATION.
example of his brave, generous, and manly life as one of
the most powerful and ennobling. If I can in any measure
reproduce it for you, I know that I shall be doing you a
good service ; and helping you, in even more difficult times
than those in which we grew np, to quit yourselves as
brave and true English boys and Englishmen, in whatever
work or station God may be pleased to call you to.
You have all been taught to look to one life as your
jnodel, and to turn to Him who lived it on our earth, as to
the guide, and friend, and helper, who alone can strengthen
the feeble knees, and lift wp the fainting heart. Just in so
far as you cleave to that teaching, and follow that life,
will you live your own faithfully. If I were not sure that
"what I am going to try to do for you would help to turn
you more trustfully and lovingly to that source of all
truth, all strength, all light, be sure I would not have
Undertaken it. As it is, I know it will be my fault if it
does not do this.
THOMAS HUGHES.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAOK
FIRST YEARS <. 1
CHAPTER II.
RUGBY 17
CHAPTER III.
â–² father's letters 49
CHAPTER IV.
DXFORD r.> 59
CHAPTER V.
OEGREE ••••3«3 80
CHAPTER VI.
n-ART IN LIFE ••• c8
xvi CONTENTS.
CHAFTER VII.
PAGE
1849-50 : an episode 109
CHAPTER VIII.
ITALY ,....• l'2i
CHAPTER IX.
MIDDLE LIFE .•. c ....*... • 130
CHAPTER X.
IKTTERS TO HIS BOYS ...151
CHAPTER XI.
CONCLUSION .• . . . 170
MEMOIR OF A BEOTHER.
CHAPTEE T.
FIEST TEARS,
My brother was "born on the 18th of Septemher, 1821
at Uffington, in Berkshire, of which your great-grandfather
was vicar. Uffington was then a very primitive village,
far away from any high road, and seven miles from
Wantage, the nearest town from which a coach ran to
London. There were very few neighbours, the roads were
almost impassable for carriages in the winter, and the
living was a poor one; but your great-grandfather (who
was a Canon of St. Paul's) had exchanged a much richer
living for it, because his wife had been born there, and
was deeply attached to the place. Three George Watts's
had been vicars of Uffington, in direct succession from
father to son, and she was the daughter of the last of them
So your grandfather, who was their only child, came to
live in the village on his marriage, in an old farmhouse
2 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
close to the cliurch, to whicli your grandfather added some
rooms, so as to nuake it habitable. If you should ever
make a pilgrimage to the place, you will not find the
house, for it has been pulled down; but the grand old
church is there, and White Horse Hill, rising just behind
the village, just as they were half a century ago, when we
first looked at them. We could see the church from our
bed-room window, and the hill from our nursery, a queer
upper room amongst the rafters, at the top of the old part
of the house, with a dark closet in one corner, into which
the nurses used to put us when we were more unruly than
usual. Here we lived till your great-grandfather's death,
thirteen years later, when your grandfather removed to his
house at Donnington.
' The memories of our early childhood and boyhood throng
upon me, so that I scarcely know where to begin, or what
to leave out. I cannot, however, I am sure, go wroug in
telling you, how I became first aware of a great difference
between us, and of the effect the discovery had on nie.
In the spring of 1828, when he was seven and I six
years old, our father and mother were away from home
for a few days. We were playing together in the
garden, when the footman came up to us, the old single-
barrelled gun over his shoulder which the gardener had
for driving away birds from the strawberries, and asked
us whether we shouldn't like to go rook-shooting. We
jumped at the offer, and trotted along by his side to the
I.] FIRST YEARS. 3
rookery, some 300 yards from the house. As we came up
we saw a small group of our friends under the trees — the
groom, the village sclioolmaster, and a farmer or two —
and started forwards to greet them. Just before we got
to the trees, some of them began firing up at the young
rooks. I remember, even now, the sudden sense of startled
fear which came over me. Mj brother ran in at once under
the trees, and was soon carrying about the powder-horn
from one to another of the shooters. I tried to force
myself to go up, but could not manage it. Presently he
ran out to me, to get me to go back with him, but in vain.
I could not overcome my first impression, and kept
hovering round, at a distance of thirty or forty yards,
until it was time for us to go back; ashamed of myself,
and wondering in my small mind why it was that he
could go in amongst that horrible flashing and smoke,
and the din of firing, and cawing rooks, and falling birds,
and I could not.
I had encountered the same puzzle in other ways al-
ready. Some tin»e before my father had bought a small
Shetland pony for us. Moggy by name, upon which We
were to complete our own education in riding. "We had
already mastered the rudiments, under the care of our
grandfather's coachman. He had been in our family
thirty years, and we were as fond of him as if he had
been a relation. He had taught us to sit up and hold
the bridle, while he led a quiet old cob up and down
B 2
4 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
with a leading rein. But, now tliat Moggy was come, we
were to make quite a new step in horsemanship. Our
parents had a theory that boys must teach themselves, and
that a saddle (except for propriety, when we rode to a
neighbour's house to carry a message, or had to appear
otherwise in public) was a hindrance rather than a help.
So, after our morning's lessons, the coachman used to take
us to the paddock in which Moggy lived, put her bridle on,
and leave us to our own devices. I could see that that
moment was, from the first, one of keen enjoyment to
my brother. He would scramble up on her back, while
she went on grazing — without caring to bring her to the
elm stool in the corner of the field, whicli was our mount-
ing place — pull her head up, kick his heels into her sides,
and go scampering away round the paddock with the
keenest delight. He was Moggy's master from the first
day, though she not unfrequently managed to get rid of
liim by sharp turns, or stopping dead short in her
gallop. She knew it quite well; and, just as well, that
she was mistress as soon as I was on her back. For
weeks it never came to my turn without my wishing
myself anywhere else. George would give me a lift
up, and start her. She would trot a few yards, and then
begin grazing, notwithstanding my timid expostulations,
and gentle pullings at her bridle. Then he would run up,
and pull up her head, and start her again, and she would
bolt off with a flirt of her head, and never be content till
1.] FIRST YEARS.
I "was safely on the grass. The moment that was effected
she took to grazing again, and I believe enjoyed the whole
performance as much as George, and certainly far more
than I did. We always brought her a carrot, or bit of
sugar, in our pockets, and she was much more like a great
good-tempered dog with us than a pony.
Our first hunting experience now came off. Some stag-
hounds — the King's, if I remember rightly — came down for
a day or two's sport in our part of Berkshire, and a deer was
to be turned out on the downs, a few miles from our house.
Accordingly the coachman was to take us both. I was to
go before him on one of the carriage horses, made safe by
a leather strap which encircled us both, while George rode
Moggy. He was anxious to go unattached, but on the
whole it was considered better that the coachman should
hold a leading rein, as no one knew how Moggy might
behave with the dogs, and no one but I knew how com-
pletely she would have to do as he chose. We arrived
safely at the meet, saw the deer uncarted, the hounds laid
on, and lumbered slowly after, till they swept away over a
rise in the downs, and we saw them no more. So, after
riding about for some time, the coachman produced some
bread and cheese from his pocket, and we dismounted, and
hitched up horse and pony on the leeward side of an old
barn. W^e had not finished our lunch, when suddenly, to
our intense delight, the stag cantered by within twenty
yards of us, and, by the time we were on horseback agaia.
e MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
the hunt followed. This time George and Moggy made
the most desperate efforts for freedom, but the coachman
managed to keep them in tow, and so the hunt went away
from us again, I believe it was in consequence of George's
remonstrances when he got home that it was now settled
he should be allowed to go to the next meet of the fox-
hounds in our neighbourhood without a leading rein.
This is his account of that great event, in a letter to his
grandmother, almost the first he ever WTote. Tliose of
you who have been brought up in the country will see
how respectfully he always treats the fox, always giving
him a capital F when he mentions him.
" Uffington.
"Dear Grandmama,
" Your little dog Mustard sometimes teases the hawk
by barking at him, and sometimes tlie hawk flies at
Mustard. I have been out hunting upon our black pony,
Moggy, and saw the Fox break cover, and the hounds
follow after him. I rode fifteen miles. Papa brought me
home the Fox's lug. I went up a great hill to see the
hounds drive the Fox out of the wood. I saw Ashdown
Park House : there is a fine brass nob at the top of it.
Tom and I send best love to you and grandpapa.
" I am, your affectionate grandson,
" George Hughes."
On this first occasion, as you may see by the letter, your
grandfather was out with him, and he had not been allowed
L] Jl'IRST YEARS.
to follow. But soon afterwards his great triumpli occurred*
at a meet to which he and Moggy went off one morning
after breakfast, in the wildest spirits. Your grandfather
did not go out that day ; so one of the farmers who happened
to be going was to give an eye to Master George, aod see
that he got into no troiible,and found his way liome. Tliis he
did about three o'clock in the afternoon, bearing the brush
in his hand, with his face all covered with blood, after the bar-
barous custom of those days. He had been in at the death ;
and the honest farmer recounted to us in the broadest
Berkshire the wonders which he and Moggy had performed
together ; creeping tln-ough impossible holes in great fences,
scrambling along ditches and up banks to the finish, when
lie had been singled out from outside the ring of horsemen
and led up to the master, the late Lord Ducie, to be
" blooded " by the huntsman, and receive the brush, the
highest honour tlie boy foxhunter can achieve.
And so it was with all our games and exercises, whether
we were at football, wrestling, climbing, single-stick
(which latter we were only allowed to practise in the
presence of an old cavalry pensioner, who had served
at Waterloo). He seemed to lay hold of whatever he
put his hand to by the right end, and so the secret of
it delivered itself up to him at once. One often meets
with people who seem as if they had been born into the
world with two left hands, and two left feet, and rarely
with a few who have two right hands ; and of these latter
8 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
he was as strikiiig an example as I have ever known.
Often as a boy, and much oftener since, I have thought over
this gift, trying to make out where the secret lay. For,
though never very ambitious myself, I was more so than
he was, and had the greatest wish to do every exercise
and game as well as I possibly could ; and by dint of real
hard work, and years of practice, I did manage, in one
or two instances, to reach the point which he had attained
almost as it were by instinct. But I never could get
nearer to his secret than this, that it lay in a sort of uncon-
sciousness, which I believe to be natural courage. What
I mean is, that what might possibly happen to himself
never seemed to cross his mind : that he might get a fall
and hurt himself, for instance, or get his head or his shins
broken, or the like. And so, not being disturbed by any such
considerations about liimseK, he had nothing to hinder him
from just falling at once into the very best way of doing
whatever he took in hand. Of course, even then, it required
a line body, as 1 have known boys and men, of equal natural
courage, who were awkward and slow because they were
very clumsily put together. But, on the other hand, I
have known many men with equally fine bodies who never
could get any decent work out of them. Now, with all
the thinking in the world about it, I never could have
acquired this natural gift ; but, by having an example of
it constantly before my eyes, I got the next best thing,
which was a scorn of myself for feeling fear. This by
l] first yeaes.
degrees hardened into the habit of doing what I saw him
do, and so I managed to pass through school and college
without betra}dng tlie timidity of which I was ashamed.
Why do I make the confession now to you ? Because
I see the same differences in you that there were in us.
One or two of you are naturally courageous, and the rest as
naturally timid as I M-as. The first I hope will always bear
with the others, and help them, as my brother helped me.
If he had twitted me because I could not come under the
trees at the rook-shooting, or because I was afraid of
Moggy, I should probably never have felt the shame, or
made the exertion, necessary to overcome my natural
timidity. And to you who are not naturally courageous,
I would say, make the effort to conquer your fear at once ;
you can't begin too early, and will never be worth much
till you have made it.
But there was another natural difference between us
which deserves a few words, as it will bring out his
character more clearly to you ; and that was, that
he was remarkably quiet and reserved, and shy with
strangers, and I the reverse. When we came down to
dessert, after a dinner party, and had to stand by our
father's side (as the custom was then in our parts), and
say to each guest in turn, " Your good health. Sir, or
Madam," while we sipped a little sweet wine and water,
the ceremony was a torture to him ; while to me it was
quite indifferent, and I was only running my eye over the
10 MEMOIR OF A BEOTHEB. [chap.
dishes, and thinking which I should choose when it came
to my turn. In looking over his earliest letters, I find in
one, written to his mother a few weeks after we first went
to school, this passage : " We are both very well and happy.
I find that I like Tom better at school than I do at home,
and yet I do not know the reason." I was surprised for a
moment when I came on this sentence. Of course, if love
is genuine, the longer people know each other, the deeper
it becomes ; and therefore our friendship, like all others,
grew richer and deeper as we got older. But this was the
first time I ever had an idea that his feelings towards me
changed after we went to school. I am not sure that I
can give the reason any more than he could; but, on
thinking it over, I daresay it had something to do with
this difference I am speaking of.
I remember an old yeoman, a playfellow of our father's,
who lived in a grey gabled house of his own at the end of
the village in those days, and with whom we used to spend
a good deal of our spare time, saying to a lady, about her
sons, " Bring *em up sarcy (saucy), Marm ! I likes to see
bwoys brought up sarcy " I have no doubt that he, and
others, used to cultivate my natural gift of sauciness, and
lead me on to give flippant answers, and talk nonsense.
In fact, I can quite remember occasions of the kind, and
G eorge's quiet steady look at them, as he thought, no doubt,
" What a fool my brother is making of himself, and
what a shame of you to encourage him ! " Apart alto-
I.] FIRST YEABS. 11
getter from his shyness, he had too much self-command
and courtesy himself to run into any danger of this kind.
Kow, the moment we got to school, my sauciness abated
very rapidly on the one hand, and, on the other, I became
much more consciously beholden to him. We had scarcely
been there a week when the first crisis occurred which
made us both aware of this fact. My form had a lesson
in early Greek History to get up, in which a part of the
information communicated was, that Cadmus was the first
man who "carried letters from Asia to Greece." AVhen
we came to be examined, the master asked us, " What was
Cadmus ? " This way of putting it puzzled us all for a
moment or two, when suddenly the words " carried letters "
came into my head, and, remembering the man with the
leather bag who used to bring my father's papers and
letters, and our marbles and whipcord, from Farringdon,
I shouted, "A postman. Sir." The master looked very
angry for a moment, but, seeing my perfect good faith, and
that I had jumped up expecting to go to the head of the
form, he burst out laughing. Of course all the boys joined
in, and when school was over I was christened Cadmus.
That I probably should not have minded, but it soon
shortened into " Cad," at which all the blood in my eight-
year-old veins was on fire. The more angry I was, the more
some of the boys persecuted me with the hateful name ;
especially one stupid big fellow of twelve or so, who ought
to have been two forms higher, and revenged himself for
13 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. i^citap.
his place amongst xis little ones by making our small lives
as miserable as he could. A day or two after, with two or
three boys for audience, he had got me in a corner of the
playground, into which he kept thrusting me violently
back, calling me " Cad, Cad," while I was ready to fly at
his throat and kill him. Suddenly we heard a step tearing
down the gravel walk, and George, in his shirt sleeves,
fresh from a game of rounders, rushed into the circle, and
sent my tyrant staggering back with a blow in the chest,
and then faced him with clenched fists, and a blaze in
his eye, which I never saw there more than two or three
times. I don't think many boys, or men, would have
liked to face him when it was there. At any rate my per-
secutor didn't, though he must have been a stone heavier,
and much stronger. So he slunk off, muttering to him-
self, to the disgust of the boys who hoped for a row, and
I strutted out of my corner, while George went back
to his rounders, after looking round and saying, "Just
let me hear any of yoii call my brother ' Cad ' again."
I don't think I ever heard that nickname again at
our first school, and it must have been very shortly after
that he wrote home, " I find I like Tom better at school
than I do at home, and yet I do not know the reason."
The strongest and most generous natures are always fondest
of those who lean on them.
But I am getting on faster than I intended. We have
not quite got away from home yet. And now let me turn
rO FIRST YEARS. 13
again to my story. You will, I am sure, be interested
by the following letter, which was written to us by Miss
Edgeworth. You probably have never read her books ;
but in our da}", when there were very few children's books,
they were our great delight, and almost the only ones
we possessed, after " Eobinson Crusoe," '' The Pilgrim's
Progress," and "Sandford and Merton." I forget how we
discovered that the lady who wrote "Prank and Eosa-
mond " was really alive, and that our grandmother actually
had met her, and knew her. But, having made the dis-
covery, we laid our heads together, and wrote two letters,
asking her to tell us what were the contents of the re-
maining drawers in the wonderful Indian cabinet. Our
grandmother sent her the letters, and in due time we
received the following reply: —
" Edgeworth's Town, July 2<)tli, 1828>
** To my dear young readers, Geoege and Thomas Hughes.
" I am glad that you can write as well as read; your
two letters were both very well written, and I had pleasure
in reading them. I am glad that you like Harry and Lucy
and Prank and Eosamond. I wish I could tell you any-
thing more that would entertain you about the other nine
drawers of the India cabinet; but what I am going to
tell you will disappoint you I daresay, and I cannot lielp
it. When Eosamond opened the 4th drawer she found in
it— nothing — but a sheet of white paper at the bottom of
the drawer, and on the paper was written only the word
China. The writing was in a large round hand, like that iu
14 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
which your letter to me was written. Eosamond shut this
drawer and opened the next, which was the 5th — empty !
On the paper at the bottom of this drawer, in the same
handwriting, was Constantinople. The 6th, the 7th, the
8th which she opened, one after another as fast as she
could, were all empty ! On the paper in the 6th drawer,
which was very deep, was written— TA^ North Pole and
Iceland — Norway — Sweden and Lapland. In the 8th
drawer was written Rome and Naples — Mount Vesuvius
and Pompeii. At the bottom of the 9th drawer, Persia —
Arabia and India.
" Tlien on the paper in the 9th drawer was written in
small-hand and cramped writing without lines, and as
crookedly as might be expected from a first attempt
without lines, what follows : —
" * I, little Matt, (which is short for Matthew), pro-
mise my dear good kindest of all aunts, Aunt Egerton,
whom I love best in the world, that when I am grown up
quite to be a great man, and when I go upon my travels
as I intend to do when I am old enough and have money
enough, I will bring her home all the greatest curiosities
I can find for her in every country for these drawers. I
have written in them the names of the countries I intend
to visit, therefore I beg my dear aunt will never put any-
thing in these 9 drawers till my curiosities come home.
I will unpack them myself. N.B. — I have begun this
morning to make a list from my book of travels and
voyages of all the curiosities I think worthy my bringing
home for the India cabinet.' (M. E. — A true copy.)
" My dear young readers, this is all I know about the
matter. I am sorry I can tell you no more ; but to no one
else have I ever told so much. This letter is all for your-
selves — from one who would like to see you very much,
and who hopes that you would like her too if you knew
L] first YJSAES. 15
her, though you might not like her at first sight ; for she is
neither young nor pretty, but an old good-natured friend, •
(Signed) " Makia Edgeworth."
In the winter, before we went to school first, we were
left alone at home, for the first time, while our parents paid
some visits. George was left in charge of the house (under
the governess), with injunctions to see that all things went
on regularly in the village. Our mother's Saturday cloth-
ing club was to be held as usual, and we were not to
neglect either tlie poor, or the birds, who were fed daily
through the winter on a table on the lawn, just outside the
dining-room window. The following letter will show you
how conscientiously the trust was fulfilled : —
"Dear Mama, "Janua^-y 2ist, isso.
"We ct're all well, and quite free from colds. All the
people brought their money correctly last Saturday. Tims
had his chimney began more than a week ago, and no doubt
it is finished by this time. I have told cook about making
broth and gruel for any who are sick. We constantly feed
all your birds, and they eat as much as would give baby
two meals. We shall be glad to see you and Papa.
*' I am, your dutiful son,
"Geoege Hughes."
One other letter I will give to amuse you. You elder
boys will say, that if he hadn't learnt to answer questions
better when he went to school, he would never have taken
a hioh decree at Oxford : —
16 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
«My DEAE Mama, "January 2m, 1830.
" We thank you for the conundrums you sent us, and
I think we have found out two of them : — ' If all the letters
were asked out to dinner, which .of them would not go ? '
The one that asked them would not go. ' What thing is
that which lights the eyes, yet never fails to blind ? ' The
sun. You must tell us when you write whether these are
right or not. We cannot find out the other one. Give
my love to papa, and tell him that I will write to him
next week. We shall be delighted to see you home again.
I think I am going on well with my Latin, and I hope
Papa will be satisfied with me.
" I am, your affectionate son,
"George Hughes."
We went to school together, in the autumn of this year,
at Twyford, near Winchester. On the way there we stayed
a few da3's at Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, at the house
of an old naval officer. He had another house near us in
Berkshire, our favourite resort, as there were several little
girls in the family of our own age, all very pretty. One
of these little ladies took a fancy to some water-flower, as
we were walking in the forest, the day before the school
met. Without saying a word, George just jumped into the
pond, and fetched it for her; thereby ruining a new suit of
clothes (as your grandmother remarked) and risking his
life, for there was no one but a nurse with us, and it was
just as likely that the pond might be out of his depth
as not. However, as it happened, no harm came of it, and
we went on next day to Twyford.
CHAPTER n.
RUGBY.
We stayed at Twyford till the end of 1833, when our
father resolved to send us to Eugby, Dr. Arnold had
been a little his junior at Oriel ; and, though considerably
exercised by the Doctor's politics, he shared that unhesi-
tating faith in his character and ability which seems to
have inspired all his contemporaries. In the meantime
George had gone up rapidly into the highest form at
Twyford, amongst boys two years older than himself, and
generally carried off not only prizes for the school work
but for all kinds of gymnastics. Twyford was a little
before its time in this respect, as we had quite a number of
gymnastic poles of different kinds in the playground, upon
which we had regular lessons under a master who came
over from Winchester. Every half-year we had a gym-
nastic examination, attended by the master's daughters,
and a lady or two from the neighbourhood, who distri-
buted the prizes (plates of fruit and cake) at the end of
the day to the successful boys. One special occasion I
18 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
well remember, in which the excitement ran particularly
high. A new prize for vaulting was to be given, not for
the common style " which any boy could do," our master
said ; but for vaulting between the hands. I don't want
any of you to try it, for it is a dangerous exercise, and I
wonder that some of us did not break our necks in attempt-
ing it. You had to place both your hands on the back of
the vaulting horse, as far apart, or as near together, as you
liked, and then spring over between them without lifting
either, even for half an inch. Of course none but long-
armed boys could do it at all ; but there were enough
of these for a large entry. Very soon, however, one after
another fell out, either for touching with their feet, or
shifting a hand during the vault ; and George and a very
active boy, a gi-eat friend of ours in after years, Charles
Mansfield by name, were left alone. They two went on
springing over the horse, without the least touch of foot or
shifting of hand, until it was at last voted by acclamation
that they should divide the great plate of grapes, apples,
and sponge cakes, which stood ready for the winner.
But I must not tell you so much of all his successes in
athletic games. These things are made too much of now-
adays, until the training and competitions for them out-
run all rational bounds. What I want to show you is,
that while he was far more distinguished in these than
any of you are at all likely to be (or indeed, as things
stand, than I for one should wish you to be), he never
n.] RUGBY. 19
neglected the real purpose of a schoolboy's life for them,
as you will see from some of his early letters from Itughy
to which school we went in February 1834, when he was
only twelve years old. These are all addressed to hi?
father and mother, and generally end, " Please considei
this for grandmama as well as for yourselves." No boy
was ever more thoughtful of every one who had any
possible claim upon him. Here is almost the first oi
them,
"Rugby, April 25th, 1834.
'•'My dear Papa and Mama,
" I received your letter to-day. I have got a little
cough now, but it is getting better every day. Tom is
quite well. I now generally keep among the four first
of my form, and I find that by application you are enabled
to do yourself greater credit than if yon trust yourself to
the assistance of books or that of other boys. Tbere are
two boys besides myself who always do our work together,
and we always take three-quarters of an. hour out ol
school, besides three-quarters which is allowed us in school,
to prepare our work. The work of our form is the Eume-
nides of ^schylus, Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Cicero's
Epistles. The half year is divided into two quarters, one
of which is for classics mostly, and the otlier for histoiy.
The books for the next quarter are Arrian's Expedition
of Alexander, and Paterculus's History of Pome, and
Mackintosh's English History. For Composition we do
Greek Iambics and Latin Veise, which is generally taken
from some English author, and we translate it into Latin.
We also do English and Latin themes once a week. Tlie
Easter business is just over; there were three speech days,
c 2
80 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
the rehearsal (or first day), the day on which the poor
people are allowed to come, and the grand day. On the
grand day the day was very fine, and there was a very
large assembly of people. The speeches and prize compo-
sitions and poems were —
Sixth Form.
Lake.^ — Latin essay : Bellum civile Mariannum.
Lake — Latin verse : Phoenicia.
Clongh.2 — English essay : The English language.
Clough. — English verse : Close of eighteenth century,
Arnold.^ — Greek verse : The murder of Becket.
Fifth Form Essay.
Jacson. — On the Sources of Pleasure,
Emeris. — Speech of Canning at Lisbon.
Simpkin. — Conclusion of Warren Hastings' triaL
" The speeches began at one o'clock ; they were ended
at three, and about 200 went to dine at the ' Spread Eagle.'
Here Dr. Arnold gained a complete triumph over Litch-
field and Boughton Leigh, who wanted to prevent his
health being drunk on account of his politics, or their
private malice. I have not much more to say now. Give
my love to cousins, uncle, grandmama, and everybody.
" I remain, your affectionate Son,
"G. E. Hughes."
He writes home of everything, in these first years,
except of what he knew would only give pain, and be quite
1 Now Dean of Durham. * A. H. Clough, the poet.
» The Rev. C. Arnold, of Eughy.
IT.] BUG BY. 21
useless — the exceedingly rough side of school life as it
then existed. A small boy might be, and very frequently
was, fagged for every moment of his play hours day after
day ; and there was a good deal of a bad kind of bullying.
But these things he took as a matter of course, making
the best of what was inevitable. He used often afterwards
to declare, that the boys of that generation made the best
fields at cricket he had ever seen, and to set it down to
the unmerciful amount of fagging they had to go through.
Escape out of bounds before you were caught by a sixth
form boy, was the only remedy ; and, once out of bounds,
there was the river for amusement, and the railway, upon
which large gangs of navigators had just been put to work.
George became a skilful lisherman, and a most interested
watcher of the earthworks, and duly chronicles how he has
caught a big eel in one letter ; in another, how " the rail-
way is going on very fast : they have nearly filled up one
valley, and carried it over a stream ;" in a third how
" ]\Ir. Womb well's show of wild beasts has come in,
I believe the finest in England," and including "four
elephants, a black tiger and tigress, and two lions, one
of which was the famous Wallace who fought the dogs."
Before the end of the second year he had got through
three forms, and was nearly the head of the fags, and
anxious to try his hand for the single scholarship, which
was then offered at Eugby for boys under fourteen. As
tliere was only one, of course the competition was a very
22 MEMOIR OF A BBOTEEB. [chap.
severe one. But his first letter of that year contains a
passage too characteristic to pass over. So I must
leave the scholarship for a moment. "We, with other
boys who lived in Berkshire and Hampshire, were often
obliged to post, or hire a coach to ourselves, as there was
only one regular coach a day on those cross-country roads.
We used to make up parties accordingly, and appoint one
boy to manage the whole business, who had rather a hard
time of it, while all the rest enjoyed themselves in the
most uproarious manner. George was soon selected as the
victim, and bearer of the common purse ; and his conscien-
tious struggles with j)ost-boys and hostlers, landlords and
waiters, cost him, I am sure, more pain and anxiety than
all the scholarship examinations he ever went in for. Thus
he writes in February 1836, to tell of our safe arrival,
and then goes on : —
"We had just enough money to pay our journey.
The worst of it is, tliat every postboy, when thpy see
that they are driving boys, at the end of the stage, when
you pay them their money, are never contented, and say,
' never given less than so and so ; ' and, ' shall be kept
up all night;' 'roads bad,' &c. &c., and keep on bothering
you till you really don't know what to do. However, that
is over now, and v/e are fairly settled again at Eugby, and
very comfortable."
And then, at the end of the half, when he has to begin
arranging for the return journey, "the Doctor will not
II.] RUGBY. 23
take any account of these plaguey postboys, and so always
allows us too little journey money."
"December llth, 1836. — About our journey money; I
do not think that Dr. Arnold gives us quite enough. I
suppose he does not exactly know the distance we have to
go. He only gives us 30s. each, I think you always give
us 61. (or 21. apiece) to go there, which just takes us, in-
cluding everything."
We were always encouraged to bring our friends home,
but how scrupulous he was about using the privilege the
remainder of the letter just quoted will show you : —
" There is a boy who will go all the way home with us —
G . He is a praepostor. He is going as far as Newbury
that day, where he is going to sleep, and go on in the
Oxford coach to Winchester, where he stops. Would you
think it any inconvenience to give him a iDcd ? It is not,
however, of the least consequence, only I think that being
a stranger in those parts he would take it kindly, and be
able to return the favour to Walter or Tom at Eugby. If
you think it the least inconvenience pray tell me, for it
does not signify one jot : I have not said a word to him
on the subject yet. We begin to smell the approach of
the holidays; the bills are being made up, the trunks
brought down, the clothes cleaned, &c. &c. I shall take
care to peep into the Museum on my road through Oxford,
as I did not half satisfy my curiosity before. 1 am glad
to hear that Dumple goes well in harness; also that the
wild ducks " habitant in flumine nostro, quos ego, maxime
gaudeo;" that Mr. Majendie has approved of my Lyric
24 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
verses, which, however, I cannot think merit such com-
mendation. There has been a great balloon mania in the
school lately ; everybody has been making a balloon. We
set them off with spirits of wine lighted under them, and
then run after them. They generally go about five miles,
and we always recover them after a hard run. I have cut
one out myself from tissue paper, and I will bring it home
that I may have the pleasure of setting it off before Jenny.
I think she would like to see it."
But I am forgetting the scholarship.
" Rugby, 3Iarch 16, 1836,
" I will now tell you what I was examined in for the
scholarship ; 1st, in composition, Latin theme ; subject, 'Est
natura hominum novitatis avida,' which, as you may imagine,
was very easy ; Latin verse, ' The Battle of Thermopylae ; '
English theme, ' Painting,' also very easy. In the Latin
verse I did seventeen verses in two hours, which was more
than any other of the candidates, and I quite satisfied
myself in the other two subjects. In Latin construing we
had a passage from Virgil and Caesar, and in Greek,
Homer's Odyssey. We were also examined in St. Paul,
and, thanks to your abbreviation, I answered all the
questions. We have yet to be examined in Mackintosh,
French, and mathematics.
" I think now I have satisfied you with respect to the
work of the scholarship."
In his next of April 2nd, he communicates the result as
follows, but not mentioning that six of his competitora
were older than he. and in higher forms : —
IT.] RUGBY. 25
"We are all quite well. I did not get the scholarship,
but I was third. I have been promoted out of the lower
into the middle fifth, and I am doing very well in it. We
read Demosthenes, Thucydides, Cicero in Verrem, and the
Antigone of Sophocles. The great examination at the end of
the half is soon going to be set. The middle hlth and
upper fifth are examined together, and if I do well in it I
may be high up in the fifth at the end of the half."
He did well, as usual, and got into the fifth at the summer
examination. Your grandmother had a small bookcase
made on purpose for our prizes, which was being rapidly
filled by George. He writes thus to her just before our
holidays : —
"June Qth, 1830. — I have got some good news for you.
I have got an addition to your rosewood bookcase, alias a
prize. It's called ' Piickman's Architecture.' It is very
nicely bound, and has some nice pictures of abbeys and
churches, with a description of all the fine cathedrals and
large churches, amongst which I saw our old Utiington
church. Uonnington Castle was also mentioned."
On returning as a fifth form boy he describes the fifth
form room, of which he is now free, with great delight, and
reverence for its " two sofas, three tables, curtains, and
large bookcase," and adds —
" I have got a nice double study to myself, but I wish I
had some more books, since I think that nothing makes a
study look so nice as books. I must bring some to Eugby
next half; I can take care of them now. I have lately
been engaged in making an English verse translation of a
26 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
chorus in the Eumenides, and I will give it you, if yoa
think it worth while reading. I wish you would criticize
it as much as you can. I know it is very imperfect, but
as it is the first regular copy of English verse I ever did, 1
think it is pretty good for me. Here it is," &c.
But I shall not copy it out for fear of tiring you, and
indeed I feel that I must hurry over the rest of his school
life. When every line and word is full of life and interest
to oneself, it is perhaps hard to judge where to stop for the
next generation. A few short extracts, however, from his
letters during his last three years will, I think, interest
you. At least some of the references will show you what
a time of revolution you were born into. When we were
your ages there was no railway between London and
Birmingham : and in all other directions, and on all other
sides of English life, the change seems to me quite as great
as in this of locomotion.
"April 1837. — They are getting on very fast with the
railroad, and 1 hear that it is to be finished in August. I
intend going to-morrow to Kilsby to see a very large tunnel
that they are making for the railroad there.
'â– There has been a row about fishing. Mr. Boughton
Leigh's keeper took away a rod from a fellow who was
fishing in a part of the river that has always been given to
the fellows to fish in, but which the keeper said was a
preserve of Mr. Leigh's. The fellows went in a body to
Mr. Leigh's house, but found he had gone to London ; they
are going to write a letter to him, asking the reason of
taking the rod. The fellow who had his rod takeu away
II.] BUGBY. 27
has caiiglit an immense quantity of pike, and this half he
caught in one afternoon two, one 5 lbs., the other three."
''June 1837. — I dare say you will be glad to hear that
Stanley ^ has got the English verse ; they say it is the best
since Heber's Palestine that has been written ; some part
of it was quoted in the 'Standard.' Vaughan ^ also has
got the Porsou's Greek verse, and the Greek Ode aud
Epigrams."
" Septcmler 1837. — There was a meeting at Rugby a
little while ago, got up by some horrid Radicals, about pay-
ing Church rates, whether they should pay them or not;
but there was a very large majority that they sliould pay
them ; although half the town are Dissenters, and another
quarter Radicals."
"November. — I suppose Tom has told you that I have
been raised to the sixth form, and am now a prsepostor. I
do not find the work much liarder than it was in the fifth.
A Mr. Walker, philosophical lecturer, has just been here,
and when he Ibund the fellows would not come to his
lectures, and heard that they were playing football, delivered
himself of this elegant sentence, ' Brutes, to prefer football
to philosophy ! ' which you may imagine caused a laugh, and
did not at all further his object of procuring an audience.
This same person afterwards caused an article to be put
into the Northampton Herald complaining of the conduct
of Dr. Arnold, in not allowing the boys to go without j)er-
mission of their parents. Yesterday the school house, after
a resistance of six days, were beaten ; but it is not quite
certain about whether it was a goal or not, and perhaps we
shall play it again. The classing examination is just going
* Now Dean of Westminster. ^ Master of the Temple.
28 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
to "begin. I believe I am pretty well prepared. Clough
has gone. Dr. Arnold has been away at London, at an
examination of London University. Dr. Arnold's two sons
are now at Kugby, having left Winchester. I have changed
my study, and have now a honibly dark place in the
bottom passage, which it is tlie fate of tlie bottom, prae-
postor in tlie house to have, but I shall leave it next half."
" March 1838. — I write to tell you that I should like to
write for one of the prizes, as I tln'nk it will be a good
exercise for me; I have no particular choice, but I should
prefer either the English prose, ' On the increased facility
of local communication, and its probable effects on society,'
or the Latin verse ' On the abdication of Charles the
Fifth ; ' and I wish you woiild tell me which you think
the best.
" The London and Birmingham Eailroad has been opened
from Eugby to Birmingham, and also from Stoney Strat-
ford to London, but, in consequence of Kilsby tunnel falling
in, it will not yet be opened the whole way : it is opened
all the way now except thirty miles in the middle. I saw
one of the trains go by yesterday for the first time in my
life, and I wtis very much astonished."
"June 1838. — Have you read Mr. Dickens' 'Nicholas
Nickleby ? ' I liked it very much, though I thought some
parts of it are very much exaggerated and unnatural ; par-
ticularly that about the school, if you have read it. I am
sure no one could help laughing at it ; but I think ' Oliver
Twist ' much superior.
"The Great London and Birmingham Eailroad is to be
opened throughout to-morrow week, I believe, t)o there
will be no more coaches to bother us."
n.] BUG BY. 29
A"bout this time a scribbling fever attacked the upper
boys at Eugby. A year or two earlier the Rughj Magazine
had gained considerable repute, from the publication of
some of Clough's early poems, and contributions by others
of the Stanley and Vanghan generation ; and had thus
furnished a healthy local outlet for the literary secretions
of the sixth form. But that journal was now no more, so
we were thrown back on the periodicals of the outside
world. To get a copy of verses, or a short article, into one
of these, was looked upon as an heroic feat, like making
fifty runs in a school match. And of all the maga-
zines, and they were much fewer in those days, Bentley's
was the favourite ; chiefly, I think, because of the " In-
goldsby Legends," which were then coming out in it. Mr.
Barham was an old friend of your grandfather ; and I
believe it was through him that George had 'the pleasure
of seeing himself in print for the first time. The editor
accepted some translations of Anacreon, which he had
done out of school-hours. Here are two specimens, and
though I do not care to see any of you writing for maga-
zines, I should be glad to think that you could render a
classic so well at the age of seventeen : —
ANACEEON MADE EASY.
The dark earth drinks the heaven's refreshing rain ;
Trees drink the dew ; the ocean drinks the air ;
30 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
The sun the ocean drinks ; the moon again
Drinks her soft radiance from the sun's bright glare.
Since all things drink, then — earth, and trees, and sea,
And sun and moon are' all on quaffing set.
Why should you quarrel, my good friends, with me.
Because I love a pot of heavy wet ?
QeXoi Xeyeiv ArpeiSa?
I wished the two Atreid£es' fame to sing,
And woke my lyre to a bold martial strain,
Ii vain, alas ! for when I touched the string,
The song to love and Cupid turned again.
I changed my string, then my whole lyre, I vow
Nought uwnld come out but sentiment and sighs.
Till Cupid broke my numskull with his bow :
" Learn your own place, presumptuous, and be wise.
If you sport epic verses, for your pains
Nought will you get, of that one fact I'm cartin.
Leave to old Grinding Homer blood and brains.
And stick to me, old boy, I'll make your fortin."
When " Bentley " arrived at the school-house we were
all in astonishment, and not a little uplifted at this feat,
which seemed to link the school-house to the great world
of literature. George took it very quietly, mentioning it
thus in his next letter home : —
"Sept. 1838. — ' 'Tis pleasant, sure, to see oneself in print.
I saw my production in Mr. Bentley's last number by the
side of much more deserving ones : I was very much
amused with the last number, particidarly with the report
n.] RUGBY. 31
of the proceedings of the IMiidfog Association. The idea
of giving the young noblemen and gentlemen a place
on purpose for their pranks was delightful, and likely I
should think to knock that sort of thing on the head."
We now went always by rail to London, the guards of
those days allowing us, for some time, to travel outside,
where we scrambled about amongst the luggage, and climbed
down into the carriages while the train was going. I
often wonder that none of us broke our necks, especially
the present Scotch Secretary of the Treasury, W. Adam,
who was the most reckless of us all at these exploits. We
always managed, during our few hours in town, to call on
some of our father's- literary friends, who were wonderfully
kind to us. Here is a specimen : —
"March 1839. — I then went and called on Mr. Barham,
and we went for a walk, first up into St. Paul's Library,
where I saw some very fine books. We then went to Drury
Lane Theatre, and Mr. Barham got us tickets for that night
from Mr. Peake, who is, I believe, stage manager. It was
curious to see the difference between the theatre in the day-
time, and when it was lighted up at night. We then went
to the Garrick Club and saw all the pictures there, which
were very interesting. We went to Drury Lane that night
and saw Mr. Van Amburgh and his lions, which was the
tH^^Xy thing worth seeing in the evening. I saw some other
lions, authors, &c. whom Mr. Barham knew ; I am sure I
think he knows everybody. I must hot forget to tell
you that we went through Alsatia, to a coal wharf Mr.
Barham wanted to visit,
" Have you seen Sir Eobert Peel's speech about the
S2 ME2I0IR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
Corn T-aws ? I should think he must have tired his legs and
his lun^s both, before he sat down : I don't understand
much about it, but it seems to cause a good deal of excite-
ment."
In the summer of 1839 he went in for the Exhibition
examination, and did so well that his success in 1840 (his
last year) was almost a certainty. But he did not remain
for another examination, and I must tell you the reason ot
his leaving before his time, because, though I was then
furiously on the other side, I think now that he was in
the wrong. It was one of those curious difficulties which
will happen, I suppose, every now and then in our great
public schools, where the upper boys have so much power
and responsibility, and in which there are (or were) a
number of customs and traditions as to discipline, which
are almost sacred to the boys, but scarcely recognized by
the masters.
It happened thus. Just at this time the sixth form
boys were on the average smaller and younger than usual,
while there were a great number of big boys, not high
up in the school, but excellent cricketers and football
players, and otherwise manly and popular fellows. They
Bwarmed in the eleven, and big-side football, and were
naturally thrown very much with George and his friend
Mackie.^ In some houses, no doubt, they were inclined
* Afterwards M.P. for Dumfriessliire, a fine scholar and great athlete,
who died only uiue months before hia old friend.
IL] BUaBT. 33
rather to ignore the authority of the sixth themselves,
and of course their example was followed by the fags,
so that the discipline of the school began to fall out of
gear. At last matters came to a crisis. Some of the
sixth form took to reporting to the Doctor cases which,
according to school traditions, they ought to have dealt
with themselves ; and in other ways began to draw the
reins too tightly. There were "levies" (as we called
them) of the sixth and fifth, at which high words
passed, and several of the sixth were sent to Coventry.
This made the Doctor very angry, and he took the side
of the disciplinarians. Then came a rebellious exhibi-
tion of fireworks one evening in the quadrangle. Then
an Italian, with a lot of plaster casts, committed the un-
pardonable sin of coming into the Close without leave, and
his wares were taken, and put up for " cock-shyes." He
went straight to the Doctor, who insisted that the sixth
should discover and report the offenders ; but those who
would could not, and those who might would not. The
Doctor's face had been getting blacker and blacker for
some time, and at last, one November morning, he sent
half a dozen of the big fifth and middle fifth boys home,
and told George and his friend Mackie, and one or two
other sixth form boys, that they could not return after the
end of the half-year.
And here I will give you two of your grandfather's
letters to us on these matters, to show you how we were
D
34 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [cnAr.
brought "up. He was an old Westminster himself, and so
quite understood the boys' side of the dispute.
He begins to George, telling him first about home doings,
and then goes on : —
" T have received a letter from Dr. Arnold deserving
attention, by which it appears that you have been remiss
in your duties as a prieposter, though he speaks fairly
enough as to your own personal conduct. He alludes
particidarly to the letting off of fireworks, and the man
whose images were broken, in neither of which you
appear to have shown due diligence in discovering or
reporting the boys concerned. Moreover, he thinks that
those prajposters who have been more active in enforcing
the school routine have been unjustly treated with con-
tempt and insult by the larger party of the boys — in fact,
either bullied, or cut ; and evidently he thinks that you
have been amongst the cutters. Now, it is impossible for
me to enter into the exact merits of the case at a distance ;
and possibly I may not be inclined to see it in all its
details with the eye of a zealous schoolmaster ; but, as
you are now of a thinking age, I will treat the matter
candidly to you, as a man of the world and a man of
business, in which capacities I hope to see you efficient
and I'espected in the course of a few years. Your own
conduct seems to be gentlemanly and correct. Very good ;
this is satisfactory as far as it goes. But cleaiiy, by the
regulations of the school, you have certain duties to per-
form, the strict execution of which may in some cases be
annoying to your own feelings, and to that esprit de corps
which always exists among boys. Nevertheless, they must
be performed. Those young men who have a real regard
for the character of their school, which all of you are ready
ii] RUGBY. 35
ciiou^^li to stickle for when you get outside its walls, must
not allow it to become a mere blackguard bear-garden, and
to stink in the nostrils of other public schools, by tolera-
ting, in those they are expected to govern, such things as
they would not do themselves. When you grow a little
older you will soon perceive that there is no situation in
life worth having, and implying any respect, where moral
firmness is not continually required, and unpleasant duties
are to be performed. Were you now in the army, you
woiild find that if you were not strict enough with your
men, you would have a pack of drunkards and pilferers
under your command, disgracing the regiment ; and would
receive a hint from your Colonel, in double quick time, to
mend your vigilance or sell out. Ditto, if you were older
and a college tutor. I remember a clever, amiable, and
learned man, whom our young fellows used to laugh at
behind his back, and play tricks on before his face, be-
cause he laboured under such a nervous gentlemanly
scrupulousness that he could not say Bo to a goose, and
therefore they learned little under him. I find myself that
a magistrate has many harsh and disagreeable duties to
perform, but he must perlbrni them, or the law of the land
becomes an old song, and his own person ridiculous. So
that, in fact, I only urge you to conform yourself, like a
sensible peison, to the general condition of human life. I
am inclined to think that the slackness in your case has
arisen moie from c(jnstitutional ease of temper than tor
fear of what a clique of disorderly fellows might say ot
you : for if it had been the latter motive, I am sure you
had it not by inheritance from your mother or me. But
this ease of temper njay be carried to a fault. In a word,
you must coirect it furthwith in your conduct as a prie-
poster, if you expect that 1 can treat you, as I wish to do,
in the light of a young man, and a responsible person : as
D 2
36 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [ohap.
to my affection, you will always have that, so long as your
own conduct is good. Now as to those crackers ; you must
have known the thing was childish and dangerous, and
forbidden for good reasons. Eemember poor Harrow.'-
Therefore you might have interposed in a firm and civil
way, and prevented it on pain of instant report to the
master, and no one could have complained that you did
anything ungentlemanly. As to the fellows who broke
the poor man's images and would not fork out the damage,
Iwish you had been more successful, perhaps more active,
in discovering them ; if you had broken their heads I
could not have blamed you. But on this I must write
to Tom. So good bye; and if you really value my
respect for your character, look sharper to your police
department. Eemember you are no longer a child."
Then, on the same sheet, follows a letter to me. I must
explain that I had been one of the image breakers, but
had come forward with one of the others and paid the
damage.
" I have heard an account of the affair of the images.
You should have remembered, as a Christian, that to insult
the poor is to despise the ordinance of God in making them
so : and moreover, being well born and well bred, and
having lived in good company at home, which, may be, has
not been the privilege of all your schoolfellows, you should
feel that it is the hereditary pride and duty of a gentleman
to protect those who perhaps never sat down to a good
meal in their lives. It would have been more manly and
creditable if you had broken the head of , or some
1 There had recently been a fireworks row at Harrow, the details of
which had got into the newspapers, creating much scandal.
U.] HUG BY. 37
pompous country booby in your back settlement, than
smashed the fooleries of this poor Pagan Jew, which ^vere
to him both funds and lauded estate. This strict truth
obliges me to say, though, if you had bought his whole
stock to indulge the school with a cock-shy, 1 should only
have said ' A fool and his money are soon parted.' It is
impossible, however, to be angry with you, as you came
forward like a lad of spirit and gentlenianly feeling to
repair your share, and perhaps more than your share, ot
the damage. The anxiety the poor fellow had suffered you
could not make up to him. And it is well that you did
make such reparation as you did ; had it not been the case,
you never would have recovered the place you would have
lost in my esteem. Remember, this sort of thing must
never happen again if you value that esteem. And have
no acquaintance you can avoid with the stingy cowards
who shirked their share of the damage : they can be no fit
company for you or any gentleman. I don't know what the
public opinion of Ivugby says of them. We plain spoken old
Westminsters, in the palmy days of the school, should have
called them dirty dogs ; and so much for them, more words
than they are worth. I am glad to find that your general
conduct is approved by the Doctor : and now that you
have put your hand to the plough, don't take it off; and
God bless you."
In conclusion, to George: —
" Don't cut, or look shy on, any of the prseposters who
have done their duty, if you do not think they are acting
from private pique, or love of power. This question you
have sense and honesty to decide for yourself. I have
hinted to Arnold that it may be so, but cannot know it as
well as you do, yea or nay. And if you do your own duty
without flinching, your opinion will have weight with all
S8 MEMOIR OF A BBOTEEB. [chap.
whom it may concern. The Doctor evidently thinks you
couhl be of essential use to him if you liked, and I am
sure he is much too fair and honourable a man to want to
make spies of his pupils. If you do not back him in what
he has a right to enforce, you pass a tacit censure on a
tnan you profess to esteem."
George's answer produced the following from your
grandfather : —
" I like the tone of your vindication much. It shows
the proper spirit which I wish to cultivate, and a correct
sense of what your duties are as a member of society. Be
assured that I hate as much as you do the character of a
talebearer and meddler, and a fellow who takes advantage
of a little brief authority to gratify his own spite and love
of importance. And in my reply to Dr. Arnold I said,
that having been bred up on the system of ' study to be
quiet and' mind your own business,' you might very likely
have fallen into the extreme of non-interference ; which I
thought was the best extreme for a gentleman to follow.
I also hinted that his pets might not be quite immaculate
in their motives, or deserve the good opinion of the more
gentlemanly boys of their own standing, who had a right to
form their own judgment and limit tlieir own acquaintance,
though not to interfere with the discipline of the school.
What you have said of the fellow who caused the expul-
sion (rustication I should call it) of the others, confirms
me. His conduct, in fact, if his words could be proved,
deserves a round robin to Arnold from the school ; and if
vou are sure it is so, I will back you with my full sanction
in cutting any such malicious rascal. I think you will see
after this that I do not speak from the notions of a pedant
or a disciplinarian, and that I do not care two straws how
11.] RTTGBT. 33
you stand in the opinion of Doctor this, or Doctor that,
provided you deserve your own good opinion as a Christian
and a gentleman, and do justice to good principles and
good blood, for which things you are indebted to sources
independent of liugby. But with all this I do not abandon
my position, of which indeed you seem convinced, that
order must be enforced at the expense of disagreeable
duties. All I wish is this : put Dr. A. out of the ques-
tion if you please, and enter into the views of the parents
•of the junior boys as if they were your own family friends :
with this view you will not only protect their sons in their
little comforts and privileges, but steadily check those
habits in them which might render them nuisances in
general society, or involve them in scrapes at school. After
all, Arnold was right as to the prevention of crackers in
the quadrangle, and you .ought to have stopped it ; on this
point you say nothing. As to the investigation of the
image matter : if you were not there at the time, you may
not be blameable for want of success, and if they expected
you to pump Tom, or employ any underhand means in
getting at the truth, they knew but little of your family
habits. Albeit, I wish the thing could have been traced.
It was mean and cowardly, and, if it happened often,
ruinous to the character of the school, inasmuch as the
fellows did not step forward at once in a manly way and
say, ' We were certainly wrong, and ready to pay for the
cock-shy ; but the pan-ots and Napoleons were irresistible.'
The Doctor would have laughed, and approved. I do not
wonder he was sore on the subject, feeling like a gentleman
for the character of his school, as Lord B would have
done for the character of his own parish, had a stranger
had his pocket picked in it. Nor do I want you to adopt
all his views or partialities. Only suppose yourself in his
place : fancy what you would have a right to expect, and
40 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
remember that it cannot be done without the help of the
prseposters. This you seem inclined to do, and you may
do it on your own independent footing, looking as coldly
as you please on any clique whose motives may be different
from your own. You have no need to court anybody's
favour if you cultivate the means of making yourself inde-
pendent ; and if you only fear God in the true sense, you
may snap your fingers at everything else, — which ends all
I have to say on this point. ' Upright and downright ' is
the true motto."
I believe that no boy was ever more regretted. Since
he had been in the sixth, and especially in his last year,
when he was the Captain of Big-side Football and third
in the Eleven, bullying had disappeared from the school-
house, and house fagging had lost its irksomeness. The
House had regained its position, having beaten the
School at football. He had kicked the last goal from
" a place " nearly sixty yards from the post. The tradition
of that kick was handed down for many years, and, I
remarked, was always getting back some few yards ; so
that, by the time it expired, I have no doubt it had
reached 100 yards, and become as fabulous as many
other traditions. His rule was perhaps rather too easy.
The loafers, who are always too numerous, had a much
better time than they deserved ; and I doubt whether
the school-house first lessons were done so well as at
other times; for, instead of each boy going off to his
own study after supper, and stern silence reigning in the
II.] RUGBY. 41
passages till bed-time, groups of bigger boys would collect
round the fires, and three or four fags in one study . and
thus much time which should have been given to themes
and verses was spent in talking over football and cricket
matches, and the Barby and Crick runs at hare and
hounds. I know that George himself regretted very
much what had occurred, and 1 believe, had he had a
second chance, would have dealt vigorously with the big
boys at once. But he had to learn by the loss of his
exhibition, as you will all have to learn in one way or
another, that neither boys nor men do get second chances
in this world. We all get new chances till the end of our
lives, but not second chances in the same set of circum-
stances; and the great difference between one boy and
another is, how he takes hold of, and uses, his first chance,
and how he takes his fall if it is scored against him.
At the end of the half, Dr. Arnold, with his usual
kindness, and with a view I believe to mark his approval
of my brother's character and general conduct at the
school, invited him to spend part of his holidays at the
Lakes. His visit to Foxhow, and Yorkshire, at Christmas
1839, before he went up to Oxford, delighted him greatly.
He had never seen a mountain before, and the fact of
seeing them for the first time from his old master's house,
with schoolfellows to whom he was warmly attached,
doubled tis pleasure. I have only room, however, for
one of his letters: —
42 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
"Foxijow, Jan. 6th, 1840.
"My dear Father and Mother,
" I will now give you a more lengthened account of
my proceedings than I did in my last.
" Last Saturday week I reached Ambleside, as you know.
As I was following my luggage to Foxhow I met Mrs.
Arnold, and visited Stockgill force.
" Sunday. — I did nothing particular, although it was a
splendid day, and we saw the mountains beautifully.
" 3fo7idai/. — Hard frost. We went up Lufrigg, the moun-
tain close by Foxhow, to try if we could get any skating,
but it would not bear my weight. I and Matt Arnold then
went down to a swampy sort of lake to shoot snipes :
we found a good number, but it came on to rain, and
before we got back from Elterwater (the name of the
lake) we were well wet through.
" Twsday — Wednesday. — Eain — rain !
" Thursday. — AVe were determined to do something, so
Matt, Tom, and I took horse and rode to Keswick, and
we had a most beautiful ride. We left Lady Fleming's
on the riglit, went along the shores of Eydale Lake, then
from Rydale to Grasmere, then tlirough the pass called
High Kocae (I don't know if that is rightly spelt), leaving
a remarkable mountain called the Lion and the Lamb on
the right — then to Thurlmere, leaving Helvellyn on the
right. Thurlmere is a beautiful little lake : there is a very
fine rock on the left bank called Eavenscrag, and on the
riuht Helvellyn rises to an immense height. Then the view
of Keswick was most beautiful : Keswick straight before
us — Bassenthwaite beyond Keswick in the distance ;
Derwentwater on our left — Saddleback and Skiddaw on
the right, one 2,780 and the other 3,000 feet high, and
Helvellyn (3,070 feet) behind us. It was a rainy, misty
II.] RUGBY. 43
day, so that we did not see so Piucli as we might have
done, and it was only at odd nionieuts that we caught a
glimpse of Helvellyn free from clouds, but we were lucky
in seeing it at all ; they gave us such a dinner at the
inn (without our requiring anything grand) as would
have made a Southern stare — all the delicacies of the
season, potted char among the rest — and charging us only
2s. apiece.
" Fridcui. — Eainy. Walked into Ambleside to see ]\Ir.
Cotton oft' by the mail, and afterwards as the weather
cleared up we went out on Windermere, and had a very
pleasant aftei'noon.
" Saturday. — A fine day. Tom and I determined to do
something 'gordgeous,' and so we set out to walk up
Helvellyn, and we had some precious good walking before
we got up. We started from the foot at a quarter past
eleven, and reached the summit at a quarter to one. One
hour and a' half, — pretty good walking, considering three-
quarters or more was as steep or steeper than the side of
Beacon HilP which we slide down. Although quite warm in
the valley, the top of the mountain was a sheet of ice, and
the wind blew quite a gale. It did not, however, prevent us
from enjoying a view of nearly fifty miles on all sides.
We saw Windermere, Coniston, and the sea towards the
south, as far as Lancaster. Ulswater close on the north-
east ; Skiddaw and Saddleback and Bassenthwaite Lake on
the north ; on the west the range of mountains in which
is Scawfell, 3,1(30 feet, the highest mountain in England.
We saw into Scotland, Cumberland, Cheshire, Lancashire,
and Yorkshire. It was a most splendid day, but there
was a sort of ndst in the very far distance which prevented
our seeing quite as much as we should otherwise.
Helvellyn on the side towards Ulswater descends in a
^ A hill in Lord Carnarvon's park at Higliclere, near Newbury.
44 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap
precipice 1,000 feet, and a long narrow ridge, called, I
think, Straddle Edge, from its narrowness, stretches o\it at
right angles from the mountain, on the same side. There
are innumeiable places in which a person might break his
neck, or be frozen to death without help, as few go up the
mountain at this time of the year, it being a continual
frost up there. We made ourselves very comfortable under
the lee of a cairn, or heap of stones, which had been raised
on the very highest point, round a tall upright pole. I got
up, and put a stone at the top, and we put a newspaper
which contained our grub into the middle of the heap,
having first taken out a quantity of stones ; how long it
will stay there I don't know. We then proceeded to grub
with uncommon appetite, — some hard ' unleavened bread,'
some tolerable clieese, and a lot of the common oat-cake
they make in the country. We had some good fun, loosen-
ing and rolling masses of rock down the precipitous side
into the ' Eed Tarn,' a largish bit of water, and into the
table-land below. We then came home by Gresdale.Tarn
and Grasmere, after a good long walk. This was last
Saturday.
" Dr. and Mrs. Arnold are very kind, and I have spent a
very pleasant week here. I go away on Tuesday to Escrick
Park. Next Wednesday week, or about that time, I shall
start for London again, and shall be with you about the
20th ; till which time
" I remain, your affectionate son,
"G. E. Hughes.
"Love to all."
The ride to Keswick, mentioned in this letter, is alluded
to also in one which I received in this last sad month of
II.] HUGBY. 45
May from one of his companions, who has allowed me to
use it for your benefit. Its natural place would perhaps
be at the end of this memoir, but I prefer to insert it
here : —
" Haerow, May 2Srd, 1872.
" My deae Hughes,
" I had seen so little of your brother George of late years
that I seemed at first to have no business to write about
his death ; but now, as the days go on, I cannot resist the
desire of saying a word about him, and of asking after his
wife and children. Not two years ago I had a delightful
day at Offley with him — the only time I ever was there;
and all I saw of him then, and on the very rare occasions
when we met by accident, confirmed my old remembrance
of him — that he w^as one of the most delightful persons to
be with I ever met, and that he had, more than almost
anybody one met, the qualities which will stand wear.
Everything about him seemed so sound ; his bodily health
and address were so felicitous that one thought of his
moral and intellectual soundness as a kind of reflex from
them ; and now it is his bodily health which has given
way! His death carries me back to old times, and the
glory and exploits (which are now so often presented so as
to bore one) of youtli, and strength, and coolness, have
their ideal for me in what I remember of him, and his era.
His taking the easy lead at golf latterly, as he did in his
old days at football and rowing, seemed to me quite
affecting. Tell me about his poor wife ; and what children
has he left, and what are they doing ?
" It will be a great loss to you too. Do you remember
our ride together to Keswick some thirty-two years ago ?
We have all a common ground in the past. I have told
Macmillan to send you a little book, of which the chief
46 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
recommendation is that I believe it is the sort of book
my father would have been impelled to make if he liad
had to do with schools for the poor. My kind regards to
your wife.
" Affectionately yours,
" Matthew Arnold."
From Foxhow George went to visit another of his most
intimate school friends. During that visit he gave another
proof of coolness and courage of a rare kind, and also
of his sirgular modesty. We at home only heard of what
had happened through the newspapers, and never could
get him to do anything more than pooh-pooh the whole
affair. In fact, the first accurate description of the occur-
rence came to me after his death, in the letter to his sister
which follows. It is written by the schoolfellow just
referred to : —
" DussELDORF, June 4th, 1872.
"My deak Mes. Senior,
" Your very kind letter of the 20th May has just reached
me here : and I cannot express in writing one tithe of what
I feel. I had no idea of the news it had in store for me ;
for, having been travelling about lately, I had missed the
announcement of the sad loss which we have all had ; and
so your letter fell on me as a thunderbolt. Poor dear old
George ! old in the language of affection, ever since we
were all at Rugby. Oh ! huw much I regret now that I
never found lime in these last few idle years of my life to
pay him a visit. And yet, to the brightness and pleasure
of my recollections of him, nothing could be added. To
11.] RVGBY. 47
the very last he was what he was at the very first : a giant,
with a giant's gentleness and firmness. You may perhaps
none of you know that he always felt sure boating was too
violent an exercise for anyone. I remember well (and
now how sorrowfully) one conversation in which he told
me how many of the best oars had fallen in the midst of
apparent healtli and strength. How little did I then think
he was to go ! and yet I recollect I carried away with me
from that conversation an idea that he suspected he had
hcHrt-complaint. Was this the case ?
" But 1 will not trouble yoii to write out to me abroad ;
for I trust I may soon return to England, and then I shall
take the lilierty of writing to ask you to see me at
Lavender Hill.
" You ask about his stopping the horses at Escrick.
It was in 1840 or 1841. He had been left with my two
eldest brothers to come home last ; and whilst these two
brothers were calling at our York Club, George was left
sitting alone in the carriage. Suddenly the driver fell off the
box in a fit, upon the horses, and they started off. George
remembered that in the six-mile drive home there are two
right-angled turns ; so he determined to get out, run along
the pole, and stop the horses. The first time he tried was
in vain : steadying himself with his hand on the horses'
quarters, he only frightened them more ; so he coolly
returned into the cairiage again and waited till they had
lost some of their speed. He then crept through the
window again; ran quicker along the pole, caught their
bearing reins, turned them round, and brought back the
carriage in triumph to my brothers, who were anxious
enough by that time ! And then the gentle modest look
he had when we all praised him the next morning, I never
can forget. Oh, he charmed all : a better creature never
lived.
48 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
"Tell his boys from me he never coiild have dreamt
even of any divergence from truth. As all men of power,
he seemed silent and receptive rather than busy ; and
where you left him, you picked him up ; though the
interval might have been ever so long a one.
" I remain, your most sincerely,
"Stephen W. Lawley."
CHAPTER m.
A FATHER'S LETTEBS.
If this memoir is to do for you, his sons and nephews,
what I hope it may, you must be told of his weak points.
You have seen ah^eady that he had to leave school half
a year sooner than he would otherwise have left, because
he was too easy-going as a sixth-form boy, and would not
exert himself to keep order ; and he had a constitutional
indolence, which led him to shirk trouble in small matters,
and to leave things to manage themselves. This fault
used to annoy your grandfather, who was always exceed-
ingly particular as to business habits, such as answering
letters, and putting things in their right places. When we
first were allowed to use guns, he gave us special instruc-
tions never to bring them into the house loaded. At the
end of the Christmas holidays, just after George was made
a praepostor, we brought our guns in loaded, and left them
in the servants' hall during luncheon. After lunch, when
we went to take them out again, by some carelessness
George's went off, and he narrowly escaped being shot, and
£
50 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
the cliarge went through two floors. Your grandfather
said notliing at the moment, but, soon afterwards, George's
neglect to answer some questions on business matters
produced from him the first of a series of letters, which
certainly did us much good at the time, and I think may
be just as useful to you. Most boys have the same kind
of faults, and I cannot see that any of you need such
advice less than we did.
" Three questions I put to you in recent letters. These,
supposing me simply a common acquaintance, and in a
position to ask the questions, should have been promptly
answered, and it is but reasonable to claim what is due to
any Mr. Jones or Mr. Jobson. Without self-command
enough to be punctual and methodical, you cannot realize
your plans as to more serious things than I now write
about ; nor, indeed, can you do anything effective in study
without it. Read as much as you will, it will be like
filling the sieve of the Danaids. But to drop fiae meta-
phors and come to plain English, in heaven's name begin
to be wide awake to the common exigencies and obser-
vances of life. You can see distant and abstracted things
well enough ; but in such common things as are under-
stood and practised by every boy behind a counter who
is worth his salt, you aie in xAm staie of a blind puppy in
the straw. I do not speak with the least anger on the
subject ; but, as a man of common worldly sense, I cannot
too pointedly and forcibly urge on you, that without a
complete alteration in this respect, everything of real im-
portance which you attempt in the business of life will be
an absolute failure. You swear by Scott. Eecollect
Athelstan the Unready. He gives ample proof of both
III.] A FATHEll'S LETTERS. 61
high valour and sound sense, and, when roused from his
ruminative state, is even forcibly eloquent (\\'here he floors
the insolence of De Bracy). Yet he is the butt of tlie
whole piece, because he is always ten minutes after time in
thought and action ; albeit lie is by nature a finer character
than Cedric, and twice as big and well-born. But every-
one minds Cedric because he knows his own will and
purpose, and carries it out promptly, with the power of
seeing such things as are directly before his nose."
George's reply appears to have contained some state-
ment as to his intentions in the matter of reading, as
well as satisfactory answers to the neglected questions.
Your grandfather, however, returns to the charge again : —
" I fully believe you have every desire and intention to
follow up the course I wish, though your own experience
in the vacation must have shown you that this desire is
not enough unlei?s backed by determination and method.
I should riot wish you to debar yourself of the full portion
of healthy exercise desirable at your age, which is like
' the meat aird mass which hindereth no man,' as our
quaint old English expresses it. But I certainly wish you to
recollect that the present year" [1838 — he was seventeen]
" is one of the most important in your life, as you are just of
the age when tlie character forms itself one way or the other,
and when time becomes valuable in a double degree. You
told me of your own accord that your wish was to distin-
guish yourself at Oxford. If you are as certain as I am
that this wish is a wise and desirable one, the next point
is, to let it become one of those determinations which are
only qualified by ' Deo volente.' With the foundation
which has been already laid, the thing is undoubtedly in
E 2
52 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
your power, with life and health ; and, if these fail us, the
fault lies not in ovirselves. The secret of attaining any
point is, not so much in the quantity of time bestowed
on it at regular and stated intervals, as in the strong will
and inclination which makes it a matter of curiosity and
interest, recurring to us at odds and ends of time, and
never out of the mind ; a labour of inclination rather than
a matter of duty — a chase, as it were, of a wild duck " [we
lived close to a river where wild ducks bred], "instead of
a walk for tlie promotion of health and appetite. This sort
of interest anyone may create on anything he pleases : for
it is an artificial taste, not perhaps so easily understood at
your time of life. . . . Industry in one's vocation, when an
honest and creditable one, is a Christian duty, although
followed by persons indifferent to anything but self-interest.
And it usually pleases God so to dispose of the course of
events, tliat those best qualified to be useful to others
in their generation have the best prospect of success in
it. . . . The knowledge of history, divinity, and the dead
languages, which you are now acquiring, are the basis of a
liberal education, and play into each other as natiirally as
the hilt of a weapon fits the blade : these therefore are the
])oints of leading interest in your life, in which your push
should be made. Composition also is a valuable thing, in
Older to impart clearly to others what you know yourself,
and prevent your candle from being hid under a bushel ; and
nothing bears a higher value in the world than this faculty.
Mathematics are good, as they strengthen the attention
and clear the head. In these I see you took a first class,
and as I think you have a turn for them, I trust you will
hold your present footing without sacrificing things which
hereafter may be more essential. A fair progress in modern
languages is not to be neglected ; but the great points of
interest are such as I have laid down, viz. knowledge of
ITI.] A FATHER'S LETTEES. 53
tlie connexion, and Iciuling features, of sacred and profane
history ; a true digestion of it in your head, and the power
of clearly expressing wliatever thoughts arise from it ; and
a critical acquaintance with the original languages from
which the knowledge is derived. This, I have no douht,
will correspond with Dr. Arnold's ideas as to the objects
and direction of study in your case. In short, make up
your mind what you will do, what you will be, and what
portion of success you may fairly hope for by fairly point-
ing your nose to the desirable end ; then keep it pointed
there as steadily as the pin of the dial (' gnomon ' if you want
to be learned). And remember, that ike more irksome any
liahit is in its formation, the more pleasantly and satisfac-
torily it sticlxs to you u-he7i formed. Order and clockwork
in small things is what you w'ant. Uxcmjoli gratia, the
key of the pew-box gave us a long hunt the other day, till
in going to church we found it sticking in the lock. Then,
none of you ever put a book in its place again. N. S
docs, because he learned the habit from compulsion, and it
has become second nature."
" DONNINGTON, 1839.
" Your mother and grandmother are both anxious that
some destination should be early fixed for all of you; but
on this I, who am more answerable, am I'ather cautious ;
feeling that much depends on what your own habits and
])redilections may be. At all events the right basis of
every one's education is this — to love God and your
neighbour, and do your duty with diligence in whatever
state of life circunist-mces may place you. No one can
live in vain acting on these principles, and whatever tends
not to their establishment is of very trifling importance.
1 have no time to pursue the subject further at present, as
this is a busy morning, and your mother will want a good
64 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [cHA?.
share of this paper. I have begun another folio to Jack.
N.B. You always have luck when I hegin a letter, as I
take a folio sheet in tlie spirit of foresight. Wat never
brought his fishing-rod in ; he is old enougli now to
cultivate orderly liabits, and eschew (not chew) mouse
pie. N.B. Eschew comes from Teutonic schauern, to
shudder at."
Again in 1840, referring to this indolent, easy-going
habit, your grandfather writes : —
"The temper of mind which I mean is often allied (and
in your case I trust and believe it is) to certain qualities,
good in a social and Christian sense : candour, good nature,
and a contented spirit; just as certain peculiar weeds are
frequently tlie indication of a sound and wholesome staple
of soil : but then they are weeds, and it is a Christian duty
to eradicate them in the labourer responsible for the care of
the soil. In this respect the children of this world are the
wisest in their generation. We may sai'ely take examples
of skill, activity, and abiding interest in a purpose, from
the worst and most seltish men ; and those who are wise,
as well as goctd, do take the example, and profit by it. Not
but that young persons coristitutionally indolent, if they
are also conscientious in their duty to their friends, and
correct in the general notion that industry in a calling is a
duty, do complete tlieir stated hours of study in an Ijonest
and competent niannei*. And this is precisely your case ;
a case which has put me in an awkward position in point-
m€Totcnv.
" I think there has been some improvement this year in
your briskness and precision, but there is room for more.
Straws show which way the wind blows. Videlicet, the
not having looked in the calendar.^ Then you keep your
watch with your razors, and never can tell me what's
o'clock. With respect to your capacity for giving your
might and main to a subject, when you are at it, I know
enough to be well satisfied, and have no criticism to
make."
^ As to sending in prize exercises at Oxford. A copy of his was too
late.
rj.] A FATHER'S LETTERIS. 57
The last reference of this kind which I find in your
grandfather's letters, which were always carefully preserved
by George, occurs in 1846. After referring to an omission
to notice the transfer of some money to bis account, your
grandfather goes on : —
" Ijy the bye, I certainly am under the impression that
you shrink from the trouble of details and cares of this
kind ; the same impression which I entertained five or six
years ago. You must yourself know best whether I am
right or not, and it is noio of importance that you should
candidly ask yourself the question, and, if self-convicted,
turn completely over a new leaf, on account of having
others soon to act and manage for, as master of a house.
I need hardly tell you I suppose that, in all points of para-
mount importance, your character has formed in a manner
which has given me thorough satisfaction, and that your
friends and relatives have just reason for appreciating you
highly as a member of society. I will also add, and with
truth, that I know no man of your age, who, if placed in a
difficult situation, would in my opinion act with more sense,
firmness, and disci'etion ; and this is much indeed. But
the possession of a naturally decisive and intluential cha-
racter is just what requires digested method in small and
necessary things ; otlierwise the defect is more ridiculously
anomalous than in a scatter-brained fellow, whom no one
looks up to, or consults. It is a godsend if a beggar is
any better tlian barefoot, but what would you say to a well-
dressed man otherwise, who had forgotten his feet, and
ca]ne into a drawing-room with a pair of greasy slippers ?
Without buttering you \\\), yours happens to be a character
which, to round it otT consistently and properly, demands
accuracy in small and iiksome tilings. In some respects
58 MEMOIR OF A BBOTEER. [CH. in.
I really think you have acquired this ; in others, are
acquiring it ; and have no doubt that when ten years
older, you will have progressed in a suitable degree. Mean-
time, if you are conscious that anything is wanting in these
respects, it is high time now to put on the steam."
As a slight illustration of the effect of these letters, I
may add here, that to the end of his life, when he came
in from shooting, my brother never rested until he had
cleaned his gun with his own hands. When asked why
he did not leave it to the keeper, he said he preferred its
being done at once, and thoroughly ; and the only way of
being sure of that, was to do it himself. In some respects,
however, he never got over his constitutional love of
taking things easily, and avoiding bother and trouble.
CHAPTER IV.
OXFORD.
My brother went up to Oxford full of good resolves as to
reading, which he carried out far better than most men
do, altliough undoubtedly, after his first vea.r. his popularity,
by enlarging the circle of his acquaintance to au iucon^
venient extent, somewhat interfered with his studies.
Your grandfather was delighted at having a son likely
to distinguish himself actually resident in his own old
College. In his time it had occupied the place in the
li^niversity now held by Balliol. Copleston and Whately
had been his tutors ; and, as he had resided a good deal
after taking his degree, he had seen several generations
of distinguished men in the common room, including
Arnold, Blanco White, Keble, Pusey, and Hampden.
Moreover, there was a tradition of University distinction
in his family ; his father had been Setonian Prizeman
and Chancellor's Medallist at Cambridge, and he himself
had carried off tlie Latin verse prize, and one of the Eng-
lish Odes recited before the United Sovereigns, when they
60 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
paid a visit to the Oxford Commemoration in 1814, with
Wellington, Bliicher, and a host of tlie great soldiers of
that day.
His anxiety as to George's start at Oxford manifested
itself in many ways, and particularly as to the want of
punctuality, and accuracy in small matters, which he had
already noticed. As a delicate lesson on this subject, 1
find him taking advantage of the fact that George's watch
was in the hands of the maker for repairs, to send him
his own chronometer, adding : " As your sense of trust-
worthiness in little and great things is a considerably
multiplied multiple of your care for your own private
property (which doubtless will grow to its right propor-
tion when you have been cheated a little), I have no
doubt old Trusty will return to me in as good order as
when he left me. Furthermore, it is possible you may
take a fancy to him when j^ou have learnt the value of an
unfailing guide to punctuality. In which case, if you can
tell me at the end of term that you have, to the best of
your belief, made the most of your time, I will with great
pleasure swap with you. As to what is making the best
of your time, you would of course like to have my ideas.
Thus, then" and your grandfather proceeds to give a
number of rules, founded on his oyvn old Oxford experience,
as to reading, and goes on : —
" All this, you will say, cuts out a tolerably full employ-
ment for the term. But when you can call this in your
IV.] OXFORD. 61
recollections, ' terminus alba cretd notandus,' it will be worth
trouble. I believe the intentions of most freshmen are good,
and the lirst term generally well spent : the second and third
are often the trial, when one gets confidence in oneself;
and the sense of what is right and honourable must come
in place of that deference for one's superior officers, which
is at first instinctive. I am glad you find you can do as
you please, and choose your own society without making
yourself at all remarkable. So I found, for the same
reasons that facilitate the matter to you. Domestic or
private education, I believe, throws more diificulties in
the way of saying ' No ' when it is your pleasure so to do,
and the poor wight only gets laughed at instead of culti-
vated. After all, one may have too many acquaintance,
unexceptionable though they be. But I do not know that
much loss of time can occur to a person of perfectly sober
habits, as you are, if he leaves wine parties with a clear
head at chapel time, and eschew^s supping and lounging,
and lunching and gossiping, and tooling in High Street,
and such matters, which belong more to particular cliques
than to a generally extended acquaintance in Cohege. In
all these things, going not as a raw lad, but as a man
of nineteen, with my father's entire confidence, I found I
could settle the thing to my satisfaction in no time: your
circumstances are precisely the same, and the result will
probably be the same. 1 applaud, and KvSl^e, and clap you
on the back for rowing: row, box, fence, and walk with all
possible sturdiness. Another thing : I believe an idea pre-
vails that it is necfssnry to ride sometimes, to show yourself
of equestrian rank. If you have any mind this way, write
to Franklin to send Stevens with your horse ; keep him
a few weeks, and I will allow you a £5 note to assert your
equestrian dignity, now or at any other time. This is a
better style of thing than piaffing about on hired Oxford
62 * MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
cocky-horses, like Jacky Popkin, and all such half-measures.
The only objection to such doings is, that you certainly do
bee a style of men always across a horse who are fit for
nothing else, and non constat that they always know a
hock from a stifle-joint. But this is only per accidens.
And if you have a fancy for an occasional freak this way,
remember I was bred, in the saddle, and, whatever my
present opinions may be from longer experience, can fully
enter into your ideas."
You will see by his answer how readily George entered
into some of his father's ideas, though I don't think he
ever sent for his horse. A few weeks later, in 1841, he
writes : —
" Now to answer your last letters. I shall be delighted
to accept you as my prime minister for the next two years.
Any plan of reading which you chalk out for me I think I
shall be able to pursue— at least I am sure I will try to do
so. lien reading for honours now generally emj)loy * a
coach.' If you will condescend to be my coach, I will try
to answer to the wliip to the best of my power,"
Your grandfather accepted the post with great pleasure ;
and there are a number of his letters, full of hints and
directions as to study, which I hope you may all read
some day, but which would make this memoir too long.
You will see later on how well satisfied he was with the
general result,\hough in one or two instances he had sad
disappointments to bear, as most fathers have who are
anxious about their sons' work. The first of these hap-
IV.] OXFORD. 63
pened this year. He was specially anxious that George
should write for the Latin Verse, which prize he himself
had won. Accordingly George wrote in his first year,
hut, instead of taking his poem himseK to the Proctor's
when he had finished it, left it with his College tutor to
send in. The consequence was, it was forgotten till after
the last day for delivery, and so could not be received.
This was a sad trial to your grandfather, both because he
had been very sanguine as to the result, and because here
was another instance of George's carelessness about his
own affairs, and want of punctuality in small things.
However, he wrote so kindly about it, that George was
more annoyed than if lie had been very angry, and set
to work on the poem for the next year as soon as the
subject was announced, which I remember was " Noachi
Diluvnim." You may be sure that now the poem went
in in good time, but in due course the Examiners an-
nounced that no prize would be given for the year. I do
not know that any reason was ever given for this unusual
course, which surprised everyone, as it was known that
several very good scholars, including, I believe, the late
Head-master of Marlborough, had been amongst the com-
petitors. Your grandfather was very much vexed. He
submitted George's poem to two of his old college friends,
Dean Milman and Bishop Lonsdale, both of whom had
been Latin prizemen ; and, when they expressed an opinion
that, in default of better copies of verses, these should
64 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
have been entitled to the prize, he had them printed,
with the following heading : —
" The refusal of the Official Committee of Examiners
to award any prize for the Oxford Latin verse of 1842,
has naturally led to a supposition that the scholarship and
intelligence of the competitors has fallen short of the
usual standard. Having, however, perused the following
copy of verses, which are probably a fair specimen of those
sent in, I am inclined to think, as a graduate and some-
what conversant with such subjects, that this discou-
raging inference is unfounded, and that the committee
have been intiuenced in their discretion by some unex-
plained reason, involving no reflection on the candidates
for the prize, as compared with those of former years."
The real fact I believe to have been, so far as George
was concerned, that there were two false quantities in
his verses ; and though these were so palpable, as your
grandfather remarked, " as to be obvious to any fifth-form
boy, and plainly due to carelessness in transcription, and
want of revision by a second person," the Examiners
were clearly not bound to make allowances for such
carelessness.
Many years after, in a letter to his sister, on some little
success of her boy at Eugby, George writes : —
" I congratulate you on Walter's success. We are much
more interested for our brats than we were for ourselves.
T remember how miserable my poor father made himself
once when I did not get a Latin Verse prize at Oxford, and
IV.] OXFORD. 65
how mucli more sorry I was for him than for myself. Any-
how, there is no pleasure equal to seeing one's children
distinguish themselves — it makes one young again."
But I must return to his freshman's year at Oxford.
I have told you already that this was our first separa-
tion of any length. I did not see him from the day he
went to Oxford in January until our Paigby Eleven went
up to Lords, at the end of the half-year, for the match with
the M.C.C. It was the first time I had ever played there,
and of course I was very full of it, and fancied the match
the most important event which was occurring in England
at the time. One of our Eleven did not turn up, and
George was allowed to play for us. He was, as usual, a
tower of strength in a boys' Eleven, because you could
rely on his nerve. When the game was going badly, he
was always put in to keep up his wicket, and very seldom
failed to do it. On this occasion we were in together, and
he made a long score, but, I thought, did not play quite in
his usual style ; and on talking the matter over with him
when we got home, I found that he had not been playing
at Oxford, but had taken to boating.
I expressed my sorrow at this, and spoke disparagingly
of boating, of which I knew nothing whatever. We cer-
tainly had a punt in the stream at home, but it was too
narrow for oars, and I scarcely knew a stretcher from a
rowlock. He declared that he was as fond of cricket as
fever, but that in the whole range of sport, even including
66 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
hunting, there was no excitement like a good neck-and-
neck boat-race, and that I should come to think so too. »
At this time his boating career had only just begun,
and rowing was rather at a discount at Oxford. For
several years Cambridge had had their own way with the
dark blues, notably in this very year of 1841. But a
radical reformer had just appeared at Oxford, whose in-
fluence has lasted to the present day, and to whom the
substitution of the long stroke with sharp catch at the
beginning (now universally accepted as the only true form)
for the short, digging "waterman's" stroke, as it used to be
called, is chiefly due. This was Fletcher Menzies, then
captain of the University College boat. He had already
begiin to train a crew on his own principles, in opposition
to the regular University crew, and, amongst others, had
selected my brother, though a freshman, and had taken
him frequently down the river behind himself in a pair-
oar. The first result of this instruction was, that my
brother won the University pair-oar race, pulling stroke
to another fresliman of his own college.
In IMiohaelmas Term, 1841, it became clear to all judges
of rowing that the opposition was triumphant. F. Menzies
was elected captain of the 0. U. B. C, and chose my
brother as his No. 7, so that on my arrival at Oxford in
the spring of 1842, I found him training in the Univer-
sity crew. The race with Cambridge was then rowed in
the summer, and over the six-mile course, between West-
IV.] OXFORD. 67
minster and Putney bridges. This year the day selected
was the 12th of June. I remember it well, for I was
playing at the same time in the Oxford and Cambridge
match at Lord's. The weather was intensely hot, and we
were getting badly beaten. So confident were our oppo-
nents in the prowess of their University, that, at dinner in
the Pavilion, they were offering even bets that Cambridge
would win all three events — the cricket match, the race at
Westminster, and the Henley Cup, which was to be rowed
for in the following week. This was too much for us, and
the bets were freely taken; I myself, for the first and
last time in my life, betting five pounds with the King's
man who sat next me. Before our match was over the
news came up from the river that Oxford had won.
It was the last rnce ever rowed by the Universities over
the long six-mile course. To suit the tide, it was rowed
down, from IHitney to Westminster Bridge. ]\Iy brother
unluckily lost his straw hat at the start, and the intense
heat on his head caused him terrible distress. The boats
were almost abreast down to the Battersea reach, where
there were a number of lighters moored in mid stream,
waiting for the tide. This was the crisis of the race. As
the boats separated, each taking its own side, Egan. the
Cambridge coxswain, called on his crew : Shadwell, the
Oxford coxswain, heard him, and called on his own men
and \A-hen the boats came in sight of each other again from
behind the lighters, Oxford was well ahead. But my
r2
68 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [cHAP.
brother was getting faint from the effects of the sun on
his head, when Shadwell reminded him of the slice of
lemon which was placed in each man's thwart. He
snatched it up, and at the same time F. Menzies took
off his own hat and gave it him ; and, when the boat
shot under Westminster Bridge with a clear lead, he was
quite himself again.
In our college boat — of which he was now stroke, and
which he took with a brilliant rush to the head of the
river, bumping University, the leading boat, to which his
captain, F. Menzies, was still stroke, after two very severe
races — he always saw that every man had a small slice of
lemon at the start, in memory of the Battersea reach,
Next year (1843), owing to a dispute about the time, there
was no University race over the London course, but the
crews were to meet at the Henley Regatta. The meeting
was looked forward to with more than ordinary interest, as
party feeling was running high between the Universities.
In the previous year, after their victory in London, the
Oxford boat had gone to Henley, but had withdrawn, in
consequence of a decision of the stewards, allowing a man
to row in the Cambridge crew who had already rowed in a
previous heat, in another boat. So the cup remained in
the possession of the Cambridge Rooms, a London rowing
club, composed of men who had left college, and of the best
oarsmen still at the University. If the Cambridge Rooms
could hold the challenge cup this year also, it would become
IV.] OXFORD. 69
their property. But we had little fear of this, as jNIenzies*
crew was in better form than ever. He had beaten Cam-
bridge University in 1842, and we were confident would
do it again ; and, as the Eooms were never so strong as the
University, we had no doubt as to the result of the final
heat also. I remember walking over from Oxford the
night before the regatta, wdth a friend, full of these hopes,
and the consternation with which we heard, ou arriving at
the town, that the Cambridge University boat had with-
drawn, so that the best men might be draughted from it
into the Rooms' crew, the holders of the cup. Those only
who have felt the extraordinary interest which these con-
tests excite can appreciate the dismay with which this
announcement filled us. Our boat would, by this arrange-
ment, have to contend with the picked oars of two first-
class crews ; and we forgot that, after all, though the
individual men were better, the fact of their not having
trained regularly together made them really less for-
midable competitors. But far worse news came in the
morning. F. Menzies ha;! been in the Schools in the
previous month, and the strain of his examination, com-
bined with training for the race, had been too much for
him. He was down with a bad attack of fever. What
was to be done ? It was settled at once that my brother
should row stroke, and a proposal was made that the
vacant place in the boat should be filled by one of Men-
zies' college crew. The question went before the stewards,
70 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
who, after long deliberation, determined that this could
not be allowed. In consequence of the dispute in the
previous year, they had decided, that only those oarsmen
whose names had been sent in could row in any given
race. I am not sure where the suggestion came from,
I believe from Menzies himself, that his crew should row
the race with seven oars ; but I well remember the indig-
nation and despair with which the final announcement was
received.
However, there was no help for it, and we ran down the
bank to the starting-place by the side of our crippled boat,
â– with sad hearts, cheering them to show our appreciation of
their pluck, but witliout a spark of hope as to the result.
"When they turned to take up their place for the start, we
turned also, and went a few hundred yards up the towing-
path, so as to get start enough to enable us to keep up
with the race. The signal-gun was fired, and we saw the
oars flash in the water, and began trotting up the bank
with our heads turned over our shoulders. First one, and
then another, cried out that " we were holding our own,"
that " light blue was not gaining." In another minute
they were abreast of us, close together, but the dark blue
flag the least bit to the front. A third of the course was
over, and, as we rushed along and saw the lead improved
foot by foot, almost inch by inch, hope came back, and the
excitement made running painful In another minute, as
they turned the coiner and got into the straight reach, the
lY.l OXFORD. n
crowd became too dense for running. "We could not keep
up, and could only follow with our eyes and shouts, as we
pressed up towards the bridge. Before we could reach it
the gun fired, and the dark blue flag was run up, showing
that Oxford had won.
Then followed one of the temporary fits of delirium
which sometimes seize Englishmen, the sight of which
makes one slow to disbelieve any crazy story which is toJd
of the doings of other people in moments of intense
excitement. The crew had positively to iight their way
into their hotel, and barricade themselves there, to escape
being carried round Henley on our shoulders. The enthu-
siasm, frustrated in this direction, burst out in all sorts of
follies, of which you may take this as a specimen. The
heavy toll-gate was pulled down, and thrown over the
bridge into the river, by a mob of young Oxonians
headed by a small, decorous, shy man in spectacles, who
had probably never pulled an oar in his life, but who had
gone temporarily mad with excitement, and I am confident
would, at that moment, have led his followers not only
against the Henley constables, but against a regiment with
fixed bayonets. Fortunately, no harm came of it but a few
broken heads and black eyes, and the local authorities,
making allowances for the provocation, were lenient at
the next petty sessions.
The crew went up to London from Henley, to row for
the Gold Cup, in the Thames Regatta, which had just been
72 MEMOIR OF A BtlOTEER. [chap.
established. Here they met the Cambridge Eooms' crew
again, strengthened by a new No. 3 and a new stroke, and
the Leander, then in its glory, and won the cup after one
of the finest and closest races ever rowed. There has been
much discussion as to these two races ever since in the
"boating world, in which my brother was on one occasion
induced to take part. "The Oxford University came in
first," was his account, " with a clear lead of the Leander,
the Cambridge crew overlapping the Leander. We were left
behind at the start, and had great difTicvdty in passing our
opponents, not from want of pace, but from want of room."
And, speaking of the Henley race, which was said to have
"been won against a " scratch crew," he adds : " A ' scratch
crew ' may mean anything short of a perfectly trained
crew of good materials. Anyone who cares about it will
find the names of the Eooms' crew at p. 100 of Mr. Mac-
michael's book, and by consulting the index will be able
to form a judgment as to the quality of our opponents.
We had a very great respect for them. I never attempted
to exaggerate the importance of the ' seven oars' race,' and
certainly never claimed to have beaten a Cambridge Uni-
versity crew on that occasion." It will always remain,
however, one of the most interesting of the heroic records
of a noble English sport.
He announced his own triumphs at home as follows,
from the Golden Cross, where the Oxford crew then
stopped : — •
IV.] OXFORD. 73
" j\Iy dear Father and Mother, — I should have been
with you yesterday, but was obliged to wait because they
had not finished the gold oars whicli we have won at
Putney. We have been as successful here as we were at
Heule}^, and I hope I shall bring home the cup to show
you. 1 sliall be home to-morrow, and very glad to get to
Donnington again. I don't feel the least unsettled by
these proceedings, and am in an excellent humour for
reading."
The two great cups came to Donnington, and remained
for the year on your grandfather's sideboard, who could
never quite make up his mind about them ; j)i'ide at his
son's extraordinary prowess being dashed with fears as to
the possible effects on him. George himself, at this time,
certainly had no idea that he was at all the worse for it,
and maintained in his letters that pulling " is not so severe
exercise as boxing or fencing hard for an hour." " You
may satisfy yourselves 1 shall not overdo it. I have always
felt the better for it as yet, but if I were to feel the least
inconvenience I should give it uj) at once."
One effect the seven-oar race had on our generation
at Oxford : it made boating really popular, which it had
not been till then. I, amongst others, was quite converted
to my brother's opinion, and began to spend all my spare
time on the water. Our college entered for the University
four-oar races in the following November Term, and, to
my intense delight, I was selected for No. 2, my brother
pulling stroke.
71 MEMOIR OF A BKOTHER. [cnAr.
Our first heat was against Balliol, and tlirougli my awk-
wardness it proved to be the hardest race my brother ever
rowed. At the second stroke after the start I caught a crab
(to use boating phrase), and such a bad one that the head of
our boat was forced ahiiost into the bank, and we lost not a
stroke or two, but at least a dozen, Balliol going away with
a lead of two boats' lengths and more. Tew strokes would
have gone on in earnest after this, and I am not sure that my
brother would, but that it was my first race for a University
prize. As it was, he turned round, took a look at Balliol,
and just said, " Shove her head out ! Now then," and away
we went. Of course I was burning with shame, and long-
ing to do more than my vitmost to make up for my clumsi-
ness. The boat seemed to spring under us, but I could feel
it was no doing of mine. Just before the Gut we were almost
abreast of them, but, as they had the choice of water, we
were pushed out into mid stream, losing half a boat's
length, and having now to pull up against the full current
while Balliol went up on the Oxford side under the willows.
Our rivals happened also to be personal friends, and I
remember well becoming conscious as we struggled up the
reach that I was alongside, first of their stroke, the late
Sir H. Lambert, then of Xo. 3, W. Spottiswoode, and at
last, as we came to the Cherwell, just before the finish, of
our old schoolfellow, T. Walrond, who was pulling the bow
oar. I felt that the race was won, for they had now to
come across to us ; and won it was, but only by a few feet.
IV.] OXFOBD. 75
I don't think the rest of ns were much more distressed
than we had been before in college races. But my brother's
head drooped forward, and he could not speak for several
seconds. I should have learnt then, if I had needed to
learn, that it is the stroke who wins boat races.
Our next heat against University, the holders of the cup
was a much easier affair. We won by some lengths, and
my brother had thus carried off every honour wliich an
oarsman can win at the University, except the sculls, for
which he had never been able to enter. I cannot remember
any race in which he pulled stroke and was beaten.
There are few pleasanter memories in my life than those
of the river-side, when we were training behind him in our
college crew. He was' perhaps a thought too easy, and did
not keep us quite so tightly in hand as the captains of
some of the other leading boats kept their men. But the
rules of training were then barbarous, and I think we were
all the better for not being strictly limited even in the
matter of a draught of cold water, or compelled to eat our
meat half cooked. He was most judicious in all the work-
ing part of training, and no man ever knew better when
to give his crew the long Abingdon reach, and when to be
content with Iffley or Sandford. At the half- hour's rest
at those places he would generally sit quiet, and watch
the skittles, wrestling, quoits, or feats of strength which
were going on all about. But if he did take part in them,
he almodt always beat everyone else. I only remember
76 MEMOIR OF' A BROTHER. [chab.
one occasion on whicli he was fairly foiled. In consequence
of his intimacy with F. Menzies, oiir crew were a great
deal with that of University College, and much friendly
rivalry existed between us. One afternoon one of their
crew,^ E. IMansfield, brother of George's old vaulting anta-
gonist, rode down to Sandford, where, in the field near the
inn, there was always a furze hurdle for young gentlemen
to leap over. In answer to some chaffing remark, Mans-
field turned round, and, sitting with his face towards his
horse's tail, rode him over this hurdle. Several of us tried
it after him, George amongst the number, but we all failed;
and of course declared that it was all a trick, and that his
horse was trained to do it under him, and to refuse under
anybody else.
The four-oar race was the last of my brother's boating
triumphs. At the end of the term he gave up rowing, as
his last year was beginning, and he was anxious to get
more time for his preparation for the Schools. I am not
sure that he succeeded in this as, strong exercise of some
kind being a necessity to him, ne took to playing an occa-
sional game at cricket, and was caught and put into the
University Eleven. He pulled, however, in one more great
race, in the Thames liegatta of 1845, when he was still
resident as a bachelor, attending lectures. Number 6 in
the Oxford boat broke down, and his successor applied to
him to fill the place, to which he assented rather un-
1 Author of " The Log of the Water Lily," &c.
nr.J OXFORD. 77
willingly. The following extract from a letter to his father
gives the result, and the close of his boating career : —
" You M-ill have seen that Oxford was unsuccessful in
London for the Grand Cup, but I really think we should
have won it had it not been for that unhicky foul. I only
consented to take an oar in the boat because they said
they could not row without me, and found myself well up
to the work."
He always retained his love for rowing, and came up
punctually every year to take his place on the umpire's
boat at the University race, to which he had a prescriptive
claim as an old captain of the O.U.B.C. And this chapter
may fitly close with a boating song, the best of its kind
that I know of, which he wrote at my request. It appeared
in Mr. Severn's " Almanac of English Sports," published at
Christmas 1868. I had rashly promised the editor to give
him some verses for March, on the University race, and
put it off till it was time to go to press. When my time
was limited by days, and I had to sit down to my task \u
the midst of other work, I found that the knack of rhym-
ing had left me, and turned naturally to the brother who
had helped me in many a copy of verses thirty years back.
I sent him down some dozen hobbling lines, and within a
post or two I received from him the following, on the
March Boat Eace : —
78 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
The wood sways and rocks in the fierce Equinox,
The old heathen war-god bears rule in the sky,
Aslant down the street drives the pitiless sleet,
At the height of tlie house-tops the cloud-rack spins by.
Old Boreas may bluster, but gaily we'll muster,
And crowd every nook on bridge, steamboat, and shore,
"With cheering to greet Cam and Tsis, who meet
Eor the Derby of boating, our f^te of the oar.
"Off jackets I" — each oarsman springs light to his seat.
And we veterans, while ever more fierce beats the rain,
Scan well the light form of each hardy athlete.
And live the bright days of our youth once again.
A fig for the weather ! they're off! swing together !
Tho' lumpy the water and furious the wind,
Against a " dead noser " ^ our champions can row. Sir,
And leave the poor " Citizens " panting behind.
" Swing together ! " The Crab-tree, Barnes, Chiswick are
past ;
Now INIortlake — and hark to the signaling gun !
While the victors, hard all, long and strong to the last,
Kush past Barker's rails, and our Derby is won.
Our Derby, unsullied by fraud and chicane.
By thieves-Latin jargon, and leg's howling din —
Our Derby, where " nobbling " and " roping " are vain,
Where all run their best, and the best men must win.
No dodges we own but strength, courage, and science;
Gold rules not the fate of our Isthmian games ;
In brutes — tho' the noblest — we place no reliance ;
Our racers are men, and our turf is the Thames.
^ " Dead noser," the Tyne phrase for a wind in your teeth.
w.] OXFOBD, 79
The sons of St. Dennis in praise of their tennis,
Of chnses and volleys, may brag to their fill ;
To the northward of Stirling, of golf, and of curling,
Let the chiels wi' no trousers crack on as they will.
Cricket, football, and rackets — but hold, I'll not preach,
Every man to his fancy — I'm too old to mend —
So give me a good stretch down the Abingdon reach.
Six miles every inch, and "hard all" to the end.
Then row, dear Etonians and Westminsters, row,
How, hard-tisted craftsmen on Thames and on Tyne,
Labuan,^ New Zealand, your chasubles ^ peel, and
la one spurt of hard work, aud hard rowing, combine
Our maundering critics may prate as they please
Of glory departed and influence flown —
Eow and work, boys of England, on rivers and seas.
And the old land shall hold, firm as ever, her own.
1 The Bisliops were famous oarsmen. Dr. Macdougal rowed bow oar in
Menzies' boat, and was a dear friend of my brother's.
■■^ Query: Do Bishops wear "chasubles]"— G. E. H. [Note appended
by my brother to the original copy.]
CHAPTER V.
DEGREE.
The Schools were now very near ahead of him, and,
though not much behindhand with his work, considering
the intensity of his exertions in other directions, he was
anxious to make the most of the months that were left.
He read very hard in vacation, but, when term began
again, had to encounter unusual difficulties. His father's
half-hinted warnings against a large acquaintance proved
prophetic. In fact, I used to wonder how he ever
got his reading done at all, and was often not a little
annoyed with many of my own contemporaries, and other
younger men still, even to the last batch of freshmen,
whose fondness for his society was unterapered by any
thought of examinations, or honours. Not one of them
could give a wine, or a breakfast party, without him, and
his good-nature kept him from refusing when he found
that his presence gave real pleasure. Then he never had
the heart to turn them out of his rooms, or keep his oak
habitually sported ; and when that most necessary cei"e-
v.] DEGREE. 81
mony for a reading man had been performed, it was not
respected as it should have been. My rooms were on
the same staircase, half a flight below his (which looked
into the quadrangle, while mine looked out over the back
of the College), so that 1 could hear all that happened.
Our College lectures were all over at one. It was well
for him if he had secured quiet up to that hour ; but, in
any case, regularly within a few minutes after the clock
had struck, I used to hear steps on the stairs, and a
pause before his oak. If it was sported, kicking or
knocking would follow, with imploring appeals, " Now,
old 'un " (the term of endearment by which he went in
College), "do open — I know you're in — only for two
minutes." A short persistence seldom failed ; and soon
other men followed on the same errand, " for a few
minutes only," till it was time for lunch, to which he
would then be dragged off in one of their rooms, and
his oak never get sported again till late at night. Up
to his last term in College this went on, though not to
quite the same extent; and even then there was one
incorrigible young idler, who never failed in his "open
sesame," and wasted more of my brother's time than all
the rest of the College. But who could be angry with
him ? â– He was one of the smallest and most delicate
men I ever saw, weighing about 8st. 101b,, a capital
rider, and as brave as a lion, though we always called him
" the Mouse." Full of mother wit, but utterly unculti-
G
82 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
vated, it was a perfect marvel how he ever matriculated,
aud his answers, and attempts at construing, in lecture
were fabulous — full of good impulse, but fickle as the
wind ; reckless, spendthrift, fast, in constant trouble with
tradesmen, proctors, and the College authorities. But no
tradesman, when it came to the point, had the heart to
" court," or proctor to rusticate him ; and the Dean, though
constantly in wrath at his misdeeds, never got beyond
warnings, and "gating." So he held on, until his utter,
repeated, and hopeless failure to pass his " smalls," brought
his college career to its inevitable end. Unfortunately
for my brother's reading, that career coincided with his
third year, and his society had an extraordinary fascination
for the Mouse. The perfect contrast between them, in
mind and body, may probably account for this ; but I
think the little man had also a sort of longing to be
decent and respectable, and, in the midst of his wildest
scrapes, felt that his intimacy with the best oar and
cricketer in the College, who was also on good terms with
the Dons, and paid his bills, and could write Greek verses,
kept him in touch with the better life of the place, and
was a constant witness to himself of his intention to amend,
some day. They had one taste in common, however, which
largely accounted for my brother's undoubted affection for
the little " ne'er do weel," a passion for animals. The Mouse
kept two terriers, who were to him as children, lying in
his bosom by night, and eating from his plate hy day.
v.] DEGREE. 83
Dogs ^ve^e strictly forbidden in Collepje, and the vigilance
cf the porter was proof against all the other pets. But
the ^Mouse's terriers defied it. From living on such,
intimate terms with their master, they had become as
sharp as undergraduates. They were never seen about
the quadrangles in the day-time, and knew the sound
and sight of dean, tutor, and porter, better than any
freshman. When the ]\Iouse went out of College, they
would stay behind on the staircase till they were sure he
must be fairly out in the street, and then scamper across
the two quadrangles, and out of the gate, as if their lives
depended on the pace. In the same way, on returning,
they would repeat the process, after first looking cau-
tiously in at the gate to see that the porter was safe in his
den. But after dusk they were at their ease at once, and
would fearlessly trot over the forbidden grass of the inner
quad, or sit at the Provost's door, or on the Hall steps,
and romp with anybody not in a master's gown. So, even
when his master's knock remained unanswered. Crib's or
Jet's beseeching whine and scratch w^ould always brmg
my brother to the door. He could not resist dogs, or
children.
I have always laid my brother's loss of his first class
at the door of his young friends, but chiefly on the Mouse,
for that little man's delinquencies culminated in the
most critical moment of the Schools. The Saturday
before paper work began he had seduced George out for
G 2
'84 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [cnAP.
an evening stroll witli him, and of course took him through
a part of the town which was famous for town-and-gown
rows. Here, a baker carrying a tray shouldered the Mouse
into the gutter. The Mouse thereupon knocked the
baker's tray off his head. The baker knocked the little
man over, and my brother floored the baker, who sat in
the mud, and howled " Gown, gown." In two minutes a
mol) was on them, and they had to retreat fighting, which,
cwiug to the reckless pugnacity of his small comrade, was
an operation that tried all my brother's coolness and
strength to the utmost. By the help, however, of Crib,
who created timely diversions by attacking the heels of
the town at critical moments, he succeeded in bringing
the Mouse home, capless, with his gown in shreds, and
his nose and mouth bleeding, but otherwise unhurt, at the
cost to himself of a bad black-eye. The undergraduate
remedies of leeches, raw beef-steak, and paint were
diligently applied during the next thirty-six hours, but
with very partial success ; and he had to appear in white
tie and bands before the Examiners, on the Monday
morning, with decided marks of battle on his face. In the
evening, he wrote home : —
" j\lY DEAK FaTHEE,
" The first day of paper work is over ; I am sorry to say
that I have not satisfied myself at all. Although logic was
my strongest point as I thought, yet through nervousness,
or some other cause, I acquitted myself in a very slovenly
v.] DEGREE. 85
manner; and I feel nervous and down-hearted about the
remainder of the work, because I know that I am not so
strong on those points as I was in logic. I feel inclined
myself to put off my degree, but I should like to know
what you think about it ; 1 could certainly get througl^,
but I do not think I should do myself any credit, and
I am sure I should not satisfy myself. I shall continue at
the pajDer work till I hear from you. I should be very
willing to give up any plans which I have formed for the
vacation, and read quietly at home ; and I am sure 1
could put the affair beyond a doubt with a little more
reading. But if you think I had better get rid of it at
once, I will continue. 1 am in very good health, only, as
I tell you, nervous and out of spirits.
"Yours affectionately,
"G. E. Hughes."
His nervousness was out of place, as I ascertained
afterwards from his tutor that the Examiners were very
much pleased with his paper work. Indeed, I think that
he himself soon got over his nervousness, and was well
satisfied with his prospects when his turn came for vivd
voce examination. I was foolish enough to choose the
same day for sitting in the Schools, a ceremony one had
to perform in the year preceding one's own examination.
It involved attendance during the whole day, listening to
the attack of the four experts in row at the long table, on
the intellectual works of the single unfortunate, who sat
facing them on the other side. This, when the victim
happens to be your brother, is a severe and needless
trial of nerves and patience.
86 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
For some time, however, I was quite happy, as George
construed his Greek plays capitally, and had his Aristotle
at his finger ends. He was then handed on to the third
Examiner, who opened Livy and put him on somewhere
in the bewildering Samnite wars, and, when he had
construed, closed the book as if satisfied, just putting him
a cas\;al question as to the end of the campaign, and its
effect on home politics at Eome. No answer, for George
was far too downright to attempt a shot ; and, as he told
me afterwards, had not looked at this part of his Livy for
more than a year. Of course other questions followed,
and tlien a searching examination in this part of the
history, which showed that my brother knew his Arnold's
Rome well enough, but had probably taken up his Livy
on trust, which was very nearly the truth. I never
passed a more unpleasant hour, for I happened to be up in
this part of Livy, and, if the theories of Mesmerism were
sound, should certainly have been able to inspire him
with the answers. As it was, I was on the rack all
the time, and left the Schools in a doleful state of mind.
I felt sure that he must lose his first class, and told the
group of our men so, who gathered in the Schools quad-
rangle to see the Ilonours list posted. The Mouse, on the
other hand, swore roundly that he was certain of his first,
otiering to back his opinion to any amount. I did not
bet, but proved to be right. His name came out in the
second class, there being only five in the first; and we
v.] ' DEGREE. 87
walked back to Oriel a disconsolate band ; the Mouse, 1
really believe, being more cast down than any of the party.
I never told liira that in ray opinion he was himself not a
little responsible.
He was obliged to take his own name off the books
shortly afterwards, and started for the Cape, leaving Crib
and Jet, the only valuable possession I imagine that he
had in the world, to my brother. They were lovingly
tended to a good old age. Their old master joined the
Mounted Eifles, in which corps (we heard at second hand,
for he never wrote a letter) he fully maintained his character
for fine riding and general recklessness, till he broke down
altogether, and died some two years later. It is a sad
little history, which carries its own moraL
CHAPTEE VI.
START IN LIFE.
My brother, after taking his degree, remained up at
Oxford in lodgings, attending lectures ; and, when I went
out of College in the term before my own examination, I
joined him, and once again we found ourselves living in a
common sitting room. I think it was a very great pleasure
to both of us ; and as soon as my troubles in the Schools
were over, and the short leisure time which generally
follows that event had set in, we began to talk over subjects
which had hitherto been scarcely mentioned between us,
but which, on the threshold of active life, were becoming
of absorbing interest. In the previous autumn I had made
a tour with a pupil in the North of England and Scotland.
I had gone, by choice, to commercial hotels in several of the
large northern towns, as I had discovered that commercial
rooms were the most likely places for political discussion,
and was anxious to talk over the great question of that day
with the very vigorous and able gentlemen who frequented
them. The Anti-Corn-Law agitation was then at its height,
VI.] START IN LIFE. M
and, to cut a long story short, I had come hack from the
North an ardent Freetrader. In other directions also I was
rapidly falling away from the political faith in which we had
been hrought up. I am not conscious, indeed I do not believe,
that Arnold's influence was ever brought to bear directly
on English politics, in the case even of those boys who (like
my brother and myself) came specially under it, in his own
house, and in the sixth form. What he did for us was, to
make iis think on the politics of Israel, and Eome, and
Greece, leaving us free to apply the lessons he taught us in
these, as best we could, to our own country. But now his
life had been published, and had come like a revelation
to many of us; explaining so much that had appeared
inexplicable, and tlirowing a white light upon great sections,
both of the world which we had realized more or less
through the classics, and the world which was lying under
our eyes, and all around us, and which we now began, for
the first time, to recognize as one and the same.
The noble side of democracy was carrying me away.
I was haunted by Arnold's famous sentence, " If there
is one truth short of tlie highest for which I would gladly
die, it is democracy without Jacobinism ; " and " the
People's Charter" was beginning to have strange attrac-
tions for me.
It was just one of those crises in one's life in which
nothing is so useful, or healthy, for one, as coming into
direct and constant contact with an intellect stronger than
90 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
one's own, which looks at the same subjects from a widely
different standpoint.
jSTow, in the Anti-Corn-Law agitation the leaders of the
League were in the habit of using very violent language.
Their speeclies were full of vehement attacks on the land-
lords and farmers of England, and of pictures of country
life as an inert mass of selfishness, tyranny, and stupidity.
My brother's hatred of exaggeration and unfairness revolted
against all this wild talk ; and his steady appeal to facts
known to us both often staggered my new convictions. On
the general economical question, imperfectly as I under-
stood it, I think I often staggered him. But, on the other
hand, when he appealed to the example of a dozen land-
lords whom I knew (including your grandfather), and made
me look at the actual relations between them and their
tenants and their labourers, and ask myself whether these
statements were not utterly untrue in their case and in the
county we knew ; whether they were not probably just as
untrue of other counties ; and, if that were so, whether a
cause which needed such libels to support it could be a just
one, I was often in my turn sadly troubled for a reply.
Again, though Arnold's life influenced him quite as
powerfully as it did me, it was in quite a different
direction, strengthening specially in him the reverence for
national life, and for the laws, traditions, and customs
with which it is interwoven, and of which it is the ex-
pression. Somehow, his natural dislike to change, and pre-
n.] START IN LIFE. 91
ference for the old ways, seemed to gain as much strength
and nourishment from the teaching and example of our
old master, as the desire and hope for radical reforms
did in me. As for democracy, not even Arnold's dictum
could move him. " The Demos " was for him always, the
fatuous old man, witli two oboli in his cheek, and a wide
ear for the grossest flatteries which Cleon or the Sausage-
seller could pour into it. Those of you who have begun
Aristophanes will know to what I allude. Now, if he had
been a man who had any great reverence for rank or privi-
lege, or who had no sympathies with or care for the poor,
or who was not roused to indignation by any act of oppres-
sion or tyranny, in the frame of mind I was in I should
have cared very little for anything he might have urged.
But, knowing as I did that the fact was precisely the
reverse — that no man I had ever met was more indifferent
to rank and title, more full of sympathy and kindliness
to all below him, or more indignant at anything which
savoured of injustice — I was obliged to admit that the
truth could not be all on my side, and to question my own
new faith far more carefully than I should have done
otherwise.
And so this was the last good deed which he did for me
when our ways in life parted for the first time, and I went
up to London to read for the Bar, while he remained at
Oxford. His plans were not fixed beyond the summer.
He had promised to take two or three Oriel men to Scot-
02 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
land on a reading party, and accordingly went with tliem to
Oban in July ; and, while there, accepted an offer, which
came to him I scarcely know how, to take charge of the
sons of the late Mr. Beaumont at Harrow, as their private
tutor.
I must own I was much annoyed at the time when I heard
of this resolution. I could see no reason for it, 'and many
against it. Here was he, probably the most popular man of
his day at Oxford, almost sure of a fellowship if he chose to
stay up and read for it, one of the best oars and cricketer3
in England, a fine sportsman, and enjoying all these things
thoroughly, and with the command of as much as he chose
to take of them, deliberately shelvi ig himself as the tutor
of three young boys. I am afraid there was also a grain of
snobbishness at the bottom of my dislike to the arrange
ment. Private tutors were looked upon then by young
men — I hope it is so no longer — as a sort of upper ser-
vants ; and I was weak enough, notwithstanding my newly
acquired liberalism, to regard this move of George's as a
sort of loss of caste. He was my eldest brother, and I was
very fond and proud of him. I was sure he would dis-
tinguish himself in any profession he chose to follow, while
there was no absolute need of his following any ; and it
provoked me to think of his making what I thought a
false move, and throwing away some of the best years of
his life.
However, I knew it was useless to remonstrate, as he had
VT.] STAET Ia\ LIFK
made up his mind, and so held my tongue, and came to see
that he was quite right. It was not till nearly three years
later, when his engagement was over and he had entered at
Doctors' Commons, that I came to understand and appre-
ciate liis motives. The first of these you may gather from
the following extract from a letter of your grandfather's,
dated February 23rd, 1849 : — " George, it seems, is un-
usually lively at the idea of going tooth and nail to woi'k
with men instead of boys ; and, now that he has for three
years gratified his whim of keeping himself wholly off my
hands, consents to be assisted like his brothers." This
"whim" of proving to his own satisfaction that he was
worth his keep, and could make his own living, is not a
very usual one nowadays, when most young Englishmen
seem to assume that they have a natural right to mainte-
nance at the expense of some one. He had then six other
brothers, on whom the example was not altogether thrown
away, though none of us were ever able quite to come up
to it. It had the effect, however, of making us thoughtful
in the matter of expenditure ; and, consequently, of the
four who went to the universities, and two who entered the
army, not one got into any money difficulties.
But George had other motives for this step besides the
" whim" of independence. He wished for leisure to make
up his mind whether he should take holy orders, as he had
at one time intended to do. And, since leaving Eugby, he
had had no time either for the study of modern languages
94 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
or for general reading, and he was anxious to make up his
arrears in both of these directions. This engagement
would give hira the leisure he wanted, while keeping
him at regular routine work. His resolve, though taken
at the risk of throwing himself back some years in his
future profession, whatever that might be, was thoroughly
characteristic of him, and owincr I think, in srreat measure
to your grandfather's own precepts. He was fond of telling
us family stories, and there was none of these of which he
was more proud than that of his maternal great- grand-
mother. This good lady was the widow of George Watts,
Vicar of Uffington, a younger son himself, who died at the
age of forty-two, leaving her in very poor circumstances.
She sold off everything, and invested the proceeds iu
stocking a lai-ge dairy farm in the village where she had
lived as the great lady, there being no resident squire in
the parish. If any of yon ever care to make a pilgrimage
to the place, you will find the farmhouse, which she
occupied nearly 200 years ago, close to the fish-pond
in Uffington. She was well connected, and her friends
tried to persuade her not to give up her old habits ; but
she steadily refused all visiting, though she was glad to
give them a cup of chocolate, or the like, when they
chose to call on her. By attending to her business, rising
early and working late, she managed to portion her
daughter, ,and give her son a Cambridge education, by
which he profited, and died Master of the Temple, where
VI.] START IN LIFE. 95
you may see liis monument. He was true to his mother's
training, and sacrificed good chances of further preferment,
by preaching a sermon at Whitehall before George 11.
and his mistress, on Court vices, on the text, "And
Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man." Such stories,
drunk in by a boy of a quiet, self-contained, thorough
nature, were sure to have their effect; and this "whim" of
George's was one of their first-fruits in his case. I must
add, that there is no family tradition which I would sooner
see grow into an article of faith with all of you than this
of thriftiness, and independence, as points of honour. So
long as you are in statu 23i(2nllari, of course you must live
at the expense of your friends ; but you may do so either
honestly, or dishonestly. A boy, or young man, born and
bred a gentleman, ought to feel that there is an honourable
contract between him and his friends ; their part being to
pay his bills, and make him such an allowance as they can
afford, and think right, and sufficient; his, to work steadily,
and not to get in debt, or cultivate habits and indulge
tastes which he cannot afford. You will see through life
all sorts of contemjDtible ostentation and shiftlessness on
every side of you. Nurses, if they aie allov/ed, begin with
fiddle-faddling about children, till they make them utterly
helpless, unable to do anything for themselves, and think-
ing such helplessness a fine thing. Ladies' maids, grooms,
valets, flunkeys, keepers, carry on the training as they get
older. Even at public schools I can see this extravagance
9G MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap,
and shiftlessness growing in every direction. There are
all sorts of ridiculous expenses, in the shape of costumes
and upholstery of one kind or another, which are always
increasing. The machinery of games gets every year more
elaborate. When I was in the eleven at Eugby, we " kept
big-side " ourselves ; that is to say, we did all the rolling,
watering, and attending to the ground. We chose and pre-
pared our own wickets, and marked out our own creases, tor
every match. We had no "professional" and no "pavi-
lion," but taught ourselves to play; and when a strange
eleven was coming to play in the school close, asked the
Doctor for one of the schools, in which we sat them down
to a plain cold dinner. I don't say that you have not
better grounds, and. are not more regularly trained
cricketers now ; but it has cost a great deal in many
ways, and the game has been turned into a profession.
Now, one set of boys plays just like another ; then, each of
the great schools had its own peculiar style, by wz-ich you
could distinguish it from the rest. And, after you leave
school, you will find the same thing in more contemptible
forms, at the Universities and in the world. You can't
alter society, or hinder people in general from being help-
less, and vulgar — from letting themselves fall into slavery
to the things about them if they are rich, or fiom aping
the habits and vices of the rich if they are poor. But
you may live simple manly lives yourselves, speaking your
own thought, paying your own way, and doing your own
n.] STAET IN LIFE. 97
work, whatever that may be. You will remain gentlemen
so long as you follow these rules, if you have to sweep a
crossing for your livelihood. You will not remain gentle-
men in anything but the name, if you depart from them,
though you may be set to govern a kingdom. And when-
ever the temptation comes to you to swerve from them,
think of the subject of this memoir, of the old lady in
the farmhouse by Uffington fish-pond, and the tablet in
the Temple Church.
Such a resolution as that which, as I have just shown
you, was taken by my brother at the end of his residence
at Oxford, is always a turning-point in character. If
faithfully and thoroughly carried out, it will strengthen
the whole man ; lifting him on to a new plane, as it were,
and enabling him, without abruptly breaking away from
his old life, to look at its surroundings from a higher
standpoint, and so to get a new and a truer perspective.
If repented of, or acted out half-heartedly, it is apt to
impair a man's usefulness sadly, to confuse his judgment,
and soften the fibre of his will. He gets to look back
upon his former pursuits with an exaggerated fondness,
and to let them gradually creep back, till they get a
stronger hold on him than ever, so that he never learns
to put them in their right place at all. The moral of
which to you boys is — think well over your important
steps in life, and, having made up your minds, never
H
98 MEMOIR OF A BIWTHEB. [cBAr.
look behind, George never did. From Oban he writes
home : " My forthcoming engagement occupies all my
thoughts, and indeed a good deal of my time ; for if I
intend to succeed, I must be well up in everything. I
shall not, therefore, be able to make many excursions
from Oban." Your grandfather had been a friend of
Sir Walter Scott, and had brought us up on his works ;
and had suggested to George that this would be a good
opportunity for visiting a number of the spots immor-
talized by the Wizard of the North. This was his answer.
In the same spirit I find him writing about the same
time as to a new cricket club, which was starting under
very favourable auspices in Berkshire, and in which he
had been asked to take a leading part : " I shall cei'tainly
not join the A. C. Club; and as for Tom, I should think
his joining more improbable still. Cricket is over for
both of us, except accidentally."
In this spirit he took to his new work ; and, going
into it heartily and thoroughly, found it very pleasant.
He occupied Byron House at Harrow, with his pupils,
in which his old friend Mr. M. Arnold afterwards lived.
There were several of his oid schoolfellows, and college
friends, among the Masters; and I, and others of his
old friends, used to run down occasionally, on half-
holidays, from London, and play football or cricket with
the boys, amongst whom the prestige of his athletic
career of course made him a great favourite and hera
VI.] START IN LIFE. 99
Thus he got as much society as he cared for, and found
time, in the intervals of his regular work, for a good
deal of general reading. In fact, I never knew him
more cheerful than during these yeare of what most of
us regarded as lost time, and in which we certainly
expected he would have been bored, and disappointed.
Tliis would not have been so perhaps had he proved
unsuccessful ; but his pupils got on well in the school,
and their father soon found him out, and appreciated
him. At the beginning of the first long vacation he
writes home : —
"Mr. Beaumont, finding I am fond of a gun, has
most kindly offered me a week's shooting on his moors.
I could easily manage it, and meet you in London in
time to visit Lady Salusbury. You will not think, I
know well, that I like shooting better than home; and
if you would like to see me before you go to London,
pray say so, and the moors will not occupy another
thought in my head. It is not everyone who would
have taken the trouble to find out that I liked shooting,
and I feel Mr. Beaumont's kindness ; in fact, he seems
as generous as a prince to everyone with whom he has
anything to do."
But it was in his own family, where he would have
wished for it most, that the reward came most amply.
He became in these years the trusted adviser of your
â– grandfather on all family matters, and especially with
respect to his three youngest brothers. The direction
of their education was indeed almost handed over to
H 2
lOy . . MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
him, and nothing could exceed the admiration and de-
votion with which they soon learnt to regard him. The
eldest of them was sent to Harrow in 1848 to be under
his eye, and you may judge of the sort of supervision
he exercised by this specimen of his reports: —
"1 think he has been suffering the usual reaction
which takes place when a boy goes to a new school.
He worked hard at first, and then, finding he had a
good deal of liberty and opportunity of amusement, grew
slack. He is too fond of exercise to be naturally fond of
work, as some boys are who are blessed with small animal
spirits ; and he is not yet old enough to see clearly the
object of education, and the obligation of work. I have
no doubt he will very soon find this out ; but, if not, it
will very soon be forced on his notice by the unpleasant-
ness of being beaten by his contemporaries."
Speaking of his letters of advice to the boys, your
grandfather writes : —
" They have given me at least as much pleasure as them.
You are doing a very kind thing in the most judicious way,
and have assisted the stimulus which they required. Good
leaders make a steady- going team, and allow the coachman
to turn round on his box. Arthur [the youngest] will in
his turn benefit by these fellows, I doubt not. You would,
I think, be pleased to see how naturally he takes to cricket.
In fact, take him altogether, he is a very good specimen of
a six-year-old."
But perhaps nothing will show you in a, short space
what he was to his younger brothers so well as cue of
VI.] START IN LIFE. 101
their own letters to him, and one of his to your grand-
mother. The first is from your uncle Harry, written
almost at the end of his first half at Eugby : —
"My dear George,
" I am very much obliged to you for writing such a
capital letter to me the other day, and for all your kind
adxace, which you may be sure is not entirely thrown
away. I remember all the kind advice you gave me last
winter, as we were coming from skating at Benham. You
warned me from getting into ' tick,' and you said you were
sure I should be able to act upon your good advice, and
from that moment I determined not to go on tick, without
I could possibly help. I haven't owed a penny to anyone
this half-year, and I don't mean to owe anybody anything
in the money way ; and I have not spent all my money
yet, and if I have not got enough to last me till the end of
the half-year, 1 am determined not to tick ; and I heartily
thank God that I have elder brothers to guide me and advise
me; I am afraid I should have done badly without them.
You advised me also in your kind letter to work steadily.
I fancy I am placed pretty decently ; the form I am in is
the upper remove. I keep low down in my form, princi-
pally from not knowing my Kennedy's grammar. I find
it very hard to say by heart. I should have been placed
higher, I think, if I had known it; and I should advise
Arthur to begin it now, if he is coming to Eugby, which I
hope he is. He will find it disagreeable now, but he would
find it wort^e if he did not know it when he came here. I
think if you would be kind enough to write to him, and
show him how necessary it is for him to learn it, he would
be only too glad to do it. I think the great fault in me
is, not so nmch forgetfulness, but a not having a determi-
nation to do a thing at the moment. I put it ofif. But I
WiTMD
mo -/
PUBLIC LiBRARY
102 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
have, I am sorry to say, innumerable other faults. Mamma
sent me a book of prayers, which I read whenever I have
got time, and I say my prayers every night and morning,
and I pray for all of you. I have now mentioned, I
think, everything that you seemed anxious about in your
letter."
The next letter is dated two years later, when the
question what profession the writer of the last was to
follow, had become important: —
" Dearest jVTothee,
" T will answer your questions as well as I am able.
Harry will not lower himself by farming. It might have
been so ten years ago, but the workl is getting less absurd,
and, besides, I think more gentlemen are now taking it up
as a profession (Mr. Iliixtable, for instance, and many
others), and are most highly resjiected. But to succeed in
farming in England now, one must be a remarkable man ;
one must thoroughly understand all practical details, and
be able to work oneself better than a labourer ; besides
this, th'e farmer must be a tolerable chemist and geologist,
must understand bookkeeping and accounts, and must be
enterprising and yet cautious ; as patient as Job, and as
active minded (and botlied) as anyone you can tiiink of.
Now Harry, aithougVi amiable, is rather indolent, and unless
lie can entirely get rid of this, he will ruin himself in a
year by farming in England. In Ireland or the colonies
it might be different. For the same reasons I would not
recommend the Bar for Harry. It is very laborious, the
confinement great, and it requires a hard head : moreover,
the education is quite as expensive as an Oxford one, if
that is any consideration. However, if you think that
Harry can acquire (not an ordinary, but) an extraordinary
VI.] â– START IN LIFE. 103
amount of diligence, let him come to the Bar or farm. I
confess I should discourage both ideas. If you can get a
cadetship for him, I would certainly accept it. The two
dangers of Indian military life are extravagance and dissi-
pation, and I don't think Harry inclined to either. He has
not been extravagant at Eugby, and the temptations of a
public school are as great as they are anywhere ; and t
think he is well-princijjled and kind-hearted, which will
save him from the other danger. The army is getting
much better, and officers begin to find out that they may
do immense good in their profession by looking after thft
condition of their men. If you should obtain a cadetship,
it will not be difhcult to make Harry understand that he
will have other duties besides drill, and I believe he would
perform them. I am sure he would be exceedingly popular
with officers and men, If he had been bad-tempeied, or
disobedient, or ill-conditioned, I should have recommended
the navy, as by far the best school f r such a character ; but
as he does not want such disciyjline, r s we have no interest,
as it is a poor profession in a worldly point of view, and as
he is (I fancy) rather too old, I think it is out of the ques-
tion. I confess I should hesitate much between orders and
the army. If I saw any likelihood of Harry's doing any-
thing at Oxford, I should like to see him a clergyman. I
am sure he would be a conscientious one, and therefore
happy. But I clo7it think he would do anything (though
of course he would pass), and there are the same tempta-
tions there as in the army. On the whole, I would try
immediately to procure a cadetship ; if you cannot get one,
I would try to induce Harry to take orders. I said some-
thing about Ireland and the colonies in connection with
farming. On second thoughts, I don't think Harry would
be a suitable person. Amiable tempers always require (at
first) some one to look up to and lean upon ; they are
104 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
longer in learning to stand alone. Now, no one is so much
isolated as a colonist. He is thrown entirely on his own
resources, and has no one to give him advice and sympathy.
In the army, and indeed in orders, one is generally trained
to bear responsibility. So I am for the cadetship. He will
be at once provided for, and will return to England in the
prime of life with a competence. This is always supposing
that he will escape the dangers of the 'profession (as I
think), ami that you and he do not think the advantages
counterbalanced by the separation. I have no doubt that
when communication with India is easier (and it wiU soon
be incredibly easier), officers will come home at shorter
intervals."
Meantime he was studying the same question carefully
in his own case, with a view to determining whether he
slioidd take orders when his work at Harrow was over.
His father and mother, though on the whole wishing that
he should do so, were perfectly content to let him thiuk
the matter out, and settle it his own way. They seem,
however, to have supplied him with specimens of contem-
porary pidpit literature, upon some of which he comments
in his correspondence, not, on the whole, with any enthu-
siasm. " Surely," he sums up some criticism on a popular
preacher of that day, " there is a pulpit eloquence equally
remote from line writing and familiarity, such as was
Dr. Arnold's. 1 am doubtful as to reading these books,
for T know that 1 ought not to think of the style, and
yet T cannot help it. It takes me down against my will."
Your grandfather replied : " The Church ought certainly
VI.] START IN LIFE. 105
to be a labour of love, and followed with zeal. If on a
final review of your sentiments, aided perhaps by the ad-
vice of some clergyman you look up to (why not Vaughan ?)
you do not think you could engraft this zeal on sound con-
victions, and an upright character, you are quite right in
deciding for the -Bar. In after life you will not be wholly
dependent on a profession, and many of our best men have
started as late."
In the end he made up his mind against taking orders,
but not on any of the grounds which deter so many young
men of ability now. " My only objection," he writes to
his mother, " to taking orders is, that it might not suit me.
Once ordained, it is impossible to change your profession ;
and unless a man has his whole soul in this profession, he
is useless, or worse."
And so, at the end of his three years at Harrow, he
resolved to go to the Bar, and choosing that branch of it
for which his previous reading had best qualified him, took
his degree of Doctor of Civil Law, and entered at Doctors'
Commons.
You will havfe recognized by this time how carefully
your gxandfather watched tlie development of character in
his sons, and that he was by no means inclined to over-
look their faults, or to over-estimate their good qualities.
The longer I live myself, the more highly I am inclined to
rate liis judgment of men and things, and this is the con-
clusion he had formed at this time of his eldest son's
106 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [cHAT.
character. It occurs in a letter to a relative then living,
and dated 25th January, 1849 : —
" I am glad you have had an opportunity (difficult to
get from his reserved character) of seeing what is in George
when put to the proof. There are many men of his age
with more active benevolence and habits of more general
utility, as well as perhaps warmer spiritual feeling, also
more useful acquired knowledge. His great forte rather
lies in those ([ualities which give men the ascendency in
more troubled times — perfect consistency of word and
purpose, great moral and physical courage, and a scru-
pulous sense of what is due to oneself and others in the
relations of social life, combined with the caution a man
should possess, who never intends to retract an opinion or
a profession. Much perhaps of the chevalier sans tache
who used to be the fashion in the rough times before steam
and 'ologies came in. In my time tliese sort of people
we^e always more popular among Oxford youngsters (who
are very acute in reading character) than mere wits,
scholars, or dashing men. I suppose it is so still, and
thereby account for the estimation which it seems he had
in Oriel. And I apprehend this sort of established cha-
racter must help a man in a profession where he means to
work, and I will answer for his doing so."
But there is one feature in George's character which
this estimate of it does not bring out. I mean his
great unselfishness. As an illustration of this, I will
show you how he treated a proposal made on account
of your grandfather while he was at Harrow. We
had had the first loss in our circle. Your uncle Walter,
whom none of you remember, a young officer in the
VI.] STABT IN LIFE. 107
Artillery, had died of an attack of yellow fever in
British Guiana. This had shaken your grandfather a
good deal, and his health was no longer strong enough
to allow him to follow, and enjoy, his country pursuits.
Besides, the house at Donnington was too big for the
shrunken family which now gathered tliere, and tliose
of us who had flitted were settled, or likely to settle, in
London. So it was thought that it would he well for
your grandfather, and all of us, if he were to follow, and
move up to the neighbourhood of town. In any case
George's opinion would have been the first taken on such a
step, but in this it was necessary that he should consent,
as Donnington was settled on him. He was very much
attached to tlie place in which we had all grown up ; and
local, and county, and family associations had a peculiarly
strong hold on him. But all these were set aside without
a second tliought. All he was anxious about was, that so
serious a change should be well considered. " I think,"
he writes to his mother, ''â– you should be cautious about
changing. In the first place, it will cause you personally
an immense amount of annoyance, which you ought
never to incur, especially now. Then you will miss your
garden, and your village occupations, and your neighbours.
My last letter might have led you to suppose that I
myself preferred Hampstead to Donnington, but that is
not the case. I should consider it desirable under certain
circumstances. If you and my father, and Jeanie and the
108 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [ch. vi.
rest, think these circumstances exist, I sincerely hope you
•will change, and lose no time about it. But do not do a
thing which will cause you a great deal of trouble and
annoyance without the clearest grounds. Above all, believe,
and this I say with the most perfect truth, that I stall
be equally happy whichever you do."
CHAPTEE Vn.
1849-50 :—AN EPISODE.
At the time when my brother's Harrow engagement
came to an end, I had just settled in a London house,
and, to my great delight, he proposed to come and live
â– with lis, and occupy our spare room in Upper Berkeley
Street. Besides all my other reasons for rejoicing at this
arrangement, which you may easily imagine for yourselves
"when you have read thus far, there was a special one just at
this time, which I must now explain. The years 1848-9
had been years of revolution, and, as always happens
at such times, the minds of men had been greatly stirred
on many questions, and specially on the problem of the
social condition of the great mass of the poor in all
European countries. In Paris, the revolution had been
the signal for a great effort on the part of the workmen ;
and some remarkable experiments had been made, both
by the Provisional Government of 1848, and by certain
employers of labour, and bodies of skilled mechanics,
with a view to place the conditions of labour upon a more
AlO MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
equitable and satisfactory footing ; or, to use the common
phrase of the day, to reconcile the interests of capital and
labour. The Government experiment of " national work-
shops " had failed disastrously, but a number of the private
associations were brilliantly successful. The history of
some of these associations — of the sacrifices which had
been joyfully made by the associates in order to collect
the small funds necessaiy to start them — of the ability
and industry with which they were conducted, and of their
marvellous effect on the habits of all those engaged in the
work — had deeply interested many persons in England.
It was resolved to try an experiment of the same kind
here, but the conditions were very different. The seed
there had already taken root amongst the industrial
classes, and the movement ]iad come from them. Here
the workpeople, as a rule, had no belief in association ex-
cept for defensive purposes. It was chiefly amongst young
professional men that the idea was working, and it was
necessary to preach it to those whom it most concerned.
Accordingly a society was formed, chiefly of young bar-
risters, under the presidency of the late Mr. Maurice, who
was then Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, for the purpose of
establishing associations similar to those in Paris. It was
called the Society for Promoting Working Men's Associa-
tions, and I happened to be one of the original members^
and on the Council. We were all full of enthusiasm and
hope in our work, and of propagandist zeal : anxious to
VII.] l84d-50:— AN EPISODE. Ill
bring in all the recruits we could. I cannot even now
think of my own state of mind at the time without wonder
and amusement. I certainly thought (and for that matter
have never altered my opinion to this day) that here we
had found the solution of the great labour question ; but
I was also convinced that we had nothing to do but just
to announce it, and found an association or two, in order
to convert all England, and usher in the millennium at
once, so plain did the whole thing seem to me. I will not
undertake to answer for the rest of the Council, but I
doubt whether I was at all more sanguine than the
majority. Consequently we went at it with a will : held
meetings at six o'clock in the morning (so as not to inter-
fere with our regular work) for settling the rules of our
central society, and its offshoots, and late in the evening,
for gathering tailors, shoemakers, and other handicrafts-
men, whom we might set to work ; started a small
publishing oflBce, presided over by a diminutive one-eyed
costermonger, a rough and ready speaker and poet (who
had been in prison as a Chartist leader), from which we
issued tracts and pamphlets, and ultimately a small news-
paper ; and, as the essential condition of any satisfactory
progress, commenced a vigorous agitation for such an
amendment in the law as would enable our infant Asso-
ciations to carry on their business in safety, and with-
out hindrance. We very soon had our hands full. Our
denunciations of unlimited competition brought on U3
112 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
attacks in newspapers and magazines, which we answered,
nothing loth. Our opponents called us Utopians and
Socialists, and we retorted that at any rate we were
Cliristians ; that our trade principles were on all-fours
with Christianity, while theirs were utterly opposed to it.
So we got, or adopted, the name of Christian Socialists,
and gave it to our tracts, and our paper. We were ready to
light our battle wherever we found an opening, and got
support from the most unexpected quarters. I remember
myself being asked by Mr, Senior, an old friend of your
grandfather, to meet Archbishop Whately, and several
eminent political economists, and explain what we were
about. After a couple of hours of hard discussion, in
which I have no doubt I talked much nonsense, I retired,
beaten, but quite unconvinced. Next day, the late Lord
Ashburton, who had been present, came to my chambers
and gave me a cheque for £50 to help our experiment ;
and a few days later I found another nobleman, sitting
on the counter of our shoemakers' association, arguing
with the manager, and giving an order for boots.
It was just in the midst of all this that my brother
came to live with us. I had already converted him, as
I thought. He was a subscribing member of our Society,
and dealt with our Associations ; and I had no doubt
would now join the Council, and work actively in the
new crusade. I knew how sound his judgment was, and
that he never went back from a resolution once taken,
vii.] 1849-50 i—AN EPISODE. 113
and therefore was all the more eager to make sure of
him, and, as a step in this direction, had already placed
his name on committees, and promised his attendance.
But I was doomed to disappointment. He attended one
or two of our meetings, but I could not induce him to
take any active part with us. At a distance of twenty-
two years it is of course difficult to recall very accurately
what passed between us, but I can remember his reasons
well enough to give the substance of them. And first,
as he had formerly objected to the violent language of
the leaders of the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, so he now
objected to what he looked upon as our extravagance.
" You don't want to divide other people's property ? "
" No." " Then why call yourselves Socialists ? " " But wo
couldn't help ourselves : other people called us so first."
"Yes; but you needn't have accepted the name. Why
acknowledge that the cap fitted ? " " Well, it would have
been cowardly to back out. We borrow the ideas of these
Frenchmen, of association as opposed to competition as
the true law of industry ; and of organizing labour — of
securing the labourer's position by organizing production
and consumption — and it would be cowardly to shirk
the name. It is only fools who know nothing about the
matter, or people interested in the competitive system
of trade, who believe, or say, that a desire to divide
other people's property is of the essence of Socialism."
" That may be very true : but nine-tenths of mankind, or,
I
114 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [cbap.
at any rate, of Englislimen, come under one or the other
of those categories. If you are called Socialists, you will
never persuade the British public that this is not your
object. There \va,3 no need to take the name. You liave
weight enoiigh to carry already, without putting that on
your shoulders." This w^as his first objection, and he
proved to be right. At any rate, after some time we
dropped the name, and turned the " Christian Socialist "
into the " Journal of Association." And English Socialists
generally have instinctively avoided it ever since, and
called themselves ' co-operators," thereby escaping much
abuse in the intervening years. And, when I look back,
I confess I do not wonder that we repelled rather than
attracted many men who, like my brother, were inclined
theoretically to agree with us. For I am bound to admit
that a strong vein of fanaticism and eccentricity ran
through our ranks, which the marvellous patience, gentle-
ness, and wisdom of our beloved president were not enough
to counteract, or control. Several of our most active and
devoted members were also strong vegetarians, and pho-
netists. In a generation when beards and wide-awakes
were looked upon as insults to decent society, some of
us wore both, with a most heroic indifference to public
opinion. In the same way, there was often a trenchant,
and almost truculent, tone about us, which was well
calculated to keep men of my brother's temperament at
a distance. I rather enjoyed it myself, but learnt its
vri.] 1849-5U :—AN EPISODE. 115
unwisdom when I saw its effect on liini, and others, who
were inclined to join us, and would have proved towers
of strength. It was right and necessary to denounce the
evils of unlinnted competition, and the falsehood of the
economic doctrine of "every man for himself;" but quite
unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to speak of the whole
system of trade as " the dis.o-usting vice of shop-keeping,"
as was the habit of several of our foremost and ablest
members.
But what really hindered my brother from taking an
active share in our work was not these eccentricities, which
soon wore off, and were, at the worst, superficial. When
he came to look the work fairly in the face, he found that
he could not lieartily sympathise with it ; and the quality
of thoroughness in him, which your grandfather notices,
would not let him join half-heartedly. His conclusion was
reached somehow in this way : " It comes to this, then.
What you are all aiming at is, the complete overthrow of
the present trade system, and the substitution of what, you
say, will prove a more honest and lighteous one. It is not
simply a question of setting up, and getting a legal status
for, these half-dozen associations of tailors and shoemakers,
and these grocery stores. If the principle is good for any-
thing, it must spread everywhere, and into every industrial
process. It can't live peaceably side by side with the
present system. They are absolutely antagonistic, and the
one must cast out the other. Isn't tliat so ?" I, of course,
I 2
116 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
could not deny the conclusion. " Well, then," his argu-
ment went on, " I don't see my way clearly enough to go
on. Your principle I can't object to. It certainly seems
truer, and stronger, and more in accord with Christianity,
than the other. But, after all, the business of the world
has always gone on upon the other, and the world has had
plenty of time to get to understand its own business.
You may say the results are not satisfactory, are proofs
that the world has done nothing but blunder. It may be
so : but, after all, experience must count for something, and
the practical wear and tear of centuries. Self-interest may
be a low motive, but the system founded upon it has
managed somehow, with all its faults, to produce a very
tolerable kind of world. When yours comes to be tried
practically, just as great abuses may be found inseparable
from it. You may only get back the old evils under new
forms. The long and short of it is, I hate upsetting
things, which seems to be your main object. You say
that you like to see people discontented with society, as it
is, and are ready to help to make them so, because it is
full of injustice, and abuses of all kinds, and will never be
better till men are thoroughly discontented. I don't see
these evils so strongly as you do ; don't believe in heroic
remedies ; and would sooner see people contented, and
making the best of society as they find it. In fact. I was
born and bred a Tory, and can't help it."
I remember it all very vividly, because it was a great
VII.] 1849-50:— ^iV EPISODE. 117
grief to me at tlie time, chiefly because I was very anxious
to have him witli us; but, partly, because I had made so
sure of getting him tliat I had boasted of it to our Council,
which included several of our old school and college
friends. They were delighted, knowing what a valuable
recruit he would prove, and now I had to make the
Immiliating confession, that I had reckoned without my
host. He continued to pay his subscription, and to get his
clothes at our tailors' association till it failed, which was
more than some of our number did, for the cut was so bad
as to put the sternest principles to a severe test. But I
could see that this was done out of kindness to me, and
not from sympathy with what we were doing.
But my disappointment had at least this good result,
that it opened my eyes thoroughly, and made me tolerant
of opposition to my own most earnest, and deepest, con-
victions. .1 have been what I suppose would be called an
advanced Liberal ever since I was at Oxford, but have never
been able to hate or despise the old-fashioned Tory creed;
for it was the creed of almost the kindest, and bravest, and
ablest man I have ever known intimately — my own brother.
I must, however, add here, that he always watched with
great interest the social revolution in which he could not
take an active part. In 1-851, the Industrial and Provident
Societies' Act, under which the co-operative societies of
different kinds first obtained legal recognition, was passed,
chiefly owing to the exertions of Mr. Ludlow and other
118 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
members of our old Coimcil. There are now more than
51,000 societies registered under that Act in England alone,
doing a yearly business of ten millions, and owning pro-
perty of the amount of £2,500,000 and upwards ; and as
he saw the principle spreading, and working practically,
and, wherever it took root, educating the people in self-
control, and thrift, and independence, he was far too good
an Englishman not to rejoice at, and sympathise with, the
result, though I doubt whether he ever quite got over the
feeling of distrust and anxiety with which he regarded
even a peaceful, and apparently beneiicent, revolution.
You all know how nmch I wish that you should take it
thorough and intelligent interest, and, in due time, an
active part, in public affairs. I don't mean that you
should adopt politics as a profession, because, as matters
stand in this country, poor men, as most of you will be,
are not able, as a rule, to do this and retain their inde-
pendence. But I want you to try to understand politics,
and to study important questions as they arise, so that you
may be always ready to support, with all the influence you
may happen to have, the measures and policy which you
have satisfied yourselves will be best for your country. Of
course I should like to see you all of my own .way of
tliinking ; but this is not at all likely to happen, and I
care comparatively little whether you turn out Liberals or
'J'ories, so that you take your sides conscientiously, and
li')ld to them through good and evil report ; always remem-
VII.] 1849-50:— AN EPISODE. 119
bering, at the same time, that those who are most useful
and powerful iu supporting a cause, are those who know
best what can be said against it ; and that your opponents
are just as likely to be upright and honest men as yourselves,
, or those with whom you agree. My brother's example
taught me this, and I hope it may do as much for you.
There is a little poem of Lowell's, which brings out so
well the contrast between the two forces constantly at
work in human affairs, and illustrates so beautifully the
tempers which should underlie all action in them, that I
am sure you will thank me for quoting it here. It is
called "Above and Below :"—
ABOVE.
I.
dwellers in the valley land,
Who in deep twilight grope and cower,
Till the slow mountain's dial-hand
Shortens to noon's triumphant hour-
While ye sit idle, do ye think
The Lord's great work sits idle too.
That light dare not o'erleap the brink
Of morn, because 'tis dark with you?
Though yet your valleys skulk in night,
In God's ripe fields the day is cried.
And reapers, with their sickles bright.
Troop, singing, down the mountain-side;
Come up, and feel what health there is
In tliv, frank Dawn's delighted eyes,
As, bmding with a pitying kiss.
The night-shed tears of earth she drie0.
130 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [ch. vii.
The Lord wants reapers : oh, mount up,
Before Night conies, and cries "Too latel"
Stay not for taking scrip or cup,
The Master liungers wliile ye wait ;
'Tis from these heights alone j'our eyes
The advancing spears of day may see.
Which o'er the eastern hill-tops rise
To break your long captivity.
BELOW.
II.
Lone watcher on the mountain height I
Itns right precious to behold
The first long surf of climbing light
Flood all the thirsty east with gold :
But we, who in the twilight sit.
Know also that the day is nigh,
Seeing thy shining forehead lit
With his inspiring prophecy.
Thou hast thine office : we have ours :
God lacks not early service here.
But what are thine eleventh hours
He counts with us as morning cheer ;
Our day for Him is long enough,
And when He giveth work to do,
The bruised reed is amply tough
To pierce the shield of error through*
But not the less do thou aspire
Light's earlier messages to teach,
Keep back no syllable of fire —
Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech.
Yet God deems not thine aeried flight
More worthy than our twilight dim—
For brave obedience, too, is Light,
And following that is finding Hinu
CHAPTER Vin.
ITALY.
The pleasure of having my brother as an inmate was
scarcely dimmed by tliis disappointment, and he remained
with us until the autumn of 1850, a white nine months
in my life. Your grandfather wrote of him a year later,
when he had engaged himself to be married : " I cannot
exactly fancy George a married man, seeing that to the
latest period his ways in this house have been precisely
the same as when he was a Rugl)y boy — as few wants, and
as little assumption, though I have exhorted him to
swagger and order a little." And, as it was at Donnington,
so it had been in our diminutive town-house ; indeed, I
doubt whether any one of you, or any public school boy,
would give so little trouble. He read hard, starting with
me every morning directly after breakfast ; went into no
society, except that of a few old friends, and allured me
away occasionally on summer afternoons, from law, and
the reform of trade, to a game of cricket with the Hamp-
stead club, of which he had become a member, or in the
122 MEMOIR OF A BROTUEB. [chap.
Harrow playing-fields, where he was always more than
welcome.
After the long vacation of 1850 he had intended to
begin practice in Doctors' Commons, but was delayed by
an accident. He was struck in the eye by a spent shot^
in cover shooting, and, though the accident proved not to
be a serious one, he was ordered to rest his eyes en-
tirely, and accordingly settled to spend the winter in Italy.
The vexation of such a check at the opening of his
professional cafeer, was almost compensated, I think,
by the delight wliich this tour gave him. He had never
been abroad at this time, except for a few days in
France, and his education and natural tastes peculiarly
fitted him for enjoying Italy thoroughly, for he was pas-
sionately fond of art, as well as a fine classical scholar,
having never dropped his Latin and Greek, as most of
us are so apt to do the moment we have taken our
degrees.
He lingered a little in France, on his way south, chiefly
to accustom his ear and tongue to the language, and he
writes : —
" Marseilles, December 6th, 1850.
"T have not made much progress in French; everyone
speaks English except the ouvriers. I address a waiter in
a splendid snutence, which I expect will strike him with
awe, and impress him with my knowledge of the French
language, and he. takes me down by answering in English ;
as much as to say, ' For goodness' sake speak your own
Tin.] ITALY. 133
language, and I shall undevstand you better.' Tn such
a state of tilings, one can only listen to the conversation
of Frenchmen with one another, and try to imitate their
accent. In spite of beard and mustachios, it is Voila
les Anglais wherever we go. The only person who passes
for a Frenchman is one of our American fellow-travellers,
who has grown a most venerable beard; but. as he
pronounces French just as if it were English, and calls
Dijon 'Dec Ju/in,' he is afraid to open Ids mouth for fear
of being convicted as an impostor immediately. I think
an Englishman's walk betrays him ; I think there is an
unconscious swagger about it, which savours strongly of
'ros-bif,' and which the French detect in a moment.
However, they are most polite and obliging, and I think
they would be glad to do you any service."
In Italy, he went from city to city, revelling in picture
galleries and studios, as his eyes regained strength ; taking
lessons in Italian, visiting spots of historical interest, and
sympathising with, and appreciating, the Italians, while
wondering at their patience under the yoke of their Govern-
ments. It was, the same winter which jNIr. Gladstone
spent in Italy, and signalized by his pamphlet on the
political prisoners at Naples. Fortunately for my brother,
he found Mr. Senior and his family at Naples, and again
at Rome, and through their kindness, and that of Lady
Malcolm, saw as much of Italian society as he cared for.
A few selections from his letters will show yovi how he
spent his time, and the impressions which his Italian travel
left on his mind : —
124 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap
" Naples, January 7, 1851.
" There is a party of street-singers, and a Punch, outside
"under my window, who distract me horribly. They have
an eternal tune here, which every ragged boy sings ; it is
called, I believe, ' lo ti voglio' and is rather pretty, but
you may have too much of a good thing. The beggars are
most amusing, and certainly work very hard in their
vocation. There is an old woman who lies on the ground
in a tit all day long; another elderly female stands by her
in a despairing attitude, to draw attention to her protracted
sufferings, and receive the contributions of the credulously
benevolent. But the old lady is nothing to a boy, who lies
on the ground and bellows like a bull positively for three
or four hours together ; I quite admire the energy with
which he follows his profession. From the number of
crippled and deformed persons one sees, I am inclined to
believe that the Neapolitans purposely mutilate themselves
in order to succeed better in their favourite calling. They
will do anything sooner than work usefully. Punch and
the singers have gone, and I am at peace. All that I see
of continental countries makes me more glad that I am an
Englishman. None of them seem secure. The poor Pope is
kept at Rome by the French ; and here they say the King
is very rmpopular, except with the lowest class. This
consciousness of insecurity makes them very suspicious
and harsh. Two or three da3''s ago an Italian, the legal
adviser to our Embassy, was popped into prison on suspicion
of correspondence with Mazzini. Fancy Queen Victoria
putting an Englishman into Newgate on her own authority
for receiving a letter from a Chartist. I suppose they are
obliged to be harsh to prevent revolutions ; thank Heaven,
England is free and loyal."
" Naples, January 13, 1851.
" I have discovered a cousin on board the English war
steamer; he is one of the midshipmen, and on Thursday I
vin.] ITALY. ]25
took a boat to pay him a visit. I was obliged to obtain
permission from the police to go on board. There are a
quantity of miserable refugees lying concealed in Naples,
watching their opportunity to get on board the English
ship, where they are safe under the protection of our flag.
Four are on board already, but there are two police-boats
constantly on the look-out near our ship, to prevent more
from coming. Is it not a miserable state of things ?"
"Rome, January 1851.
"My deaeest Mother,
" . . . . Tell my father that I have been very
extravagant. I have bought a copy in marble of the Psyche
in the Museum at Naples ; a very clever artist is executing
it for me, and it will be finished about the middle of
April. Mr. Senior is also having a copy taken. I do not
know if my father knows the statue. It is attributed to
Praxiteles. Nothing has pleased me so much, except perhaps
the Dying Gladiator ; and as it is very simple, the cost of
the copy is comparatively trifling. It will look very well
against the dark oak of your drawing-room at Donnington,
and I hope you will approve of my taste."
" Rome, January 28, 1851.
" We saw two things yesterday which will interest you:
the catacombs in which the early Christian martyrs were
buried, and in which the Christians met during the perse-
cutions to worship God. They are immense subterranean
passages, extending, they sav, twenty miles ; but you can
only see a part, as they are closed, for fear of affording shelter
to thieves. The other thing was, a little church about two
miles from Eome, on the Aj)pian Road, to which a beautiful
legend is attached. It is said that 8t. Peter, during the
persecution in which he suffered martyrdom, lost heart,
and fled from Eome by the Appian Road ; he had arrived at
126 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. Tohap.
the spot where the church now stands, when onr Lord
appeared to him, going towards Rome. The Apostle ex-
claimed in astonishment, * Lord, whither goest thou V The
answer was, * I go to Rome to be crucified again.' Where-
upon Peter turned back, and re-entered the city, and
suffered the death which had been predicted for him.
There is no reason why this should not be true, but, true or
not, it is a beautiful story, and I was much interested by it.
They show a stone with the impression of our Lord's feet
upon it, which is kept as a relic."
"February 10, 1851. — I think that my Italian pro-
gresses favourably. My master tells me that I proyiounce
it better than any other of his pupils; and as he is very
strict, and finds fault with everything else, I suppose I
must believe that he speaks the truth."
"■February 18, 1851. — You will be glad to hear that
I have returned to Rome from my walking tour without
having been robbed, or murdered ; but, indeed, I must
repeat, that the good gentleman your informant must liave
been dreaming. We received nothing but kindness and
civility, and I believe that you might walk along the same
mountain paths with equal safety. As for us, we looked much
too rou<'h a lot to tempt robbers, being rather like banditti
ourselves. One of my companions wore a venerable beard,
and I am afraid we both looked picturesque ruffians. Our
other companion looked tame, and carried an umbrella.
We used to take a cup of coffee and a roll soon after
sunrise, then walk to some romantic village about ten
miles off, and there breakfast. Our breakfast consisted of
an omelette, ^.frittata- as they call it here, which we cooked
ourselves. We used to rush into an osteria di cucina in
a state of ravenous hunger. , my friend with the
beard, who is a very good cook, seizes the frying-pan, 1
beat up the eggs, and S is degraded into scullion, to
vm.] ITALY. 127
cut wp some ham and an onion ! ! I believe the people
think us mad. They covild not conceive vi^hy we liked to
cook our own breakfast, and walk when we might have
ridden. After breaktast, it was so hot that we used to
select a convenient spot on the hill-side, and lie down for
an hour, and then contini\e our walk till about sunset, wliei.
we reached our resting-place for the night. In this way
we saw some of the most beautiful country you can imagine.
Every little exertion we made in climbing a rock was amply
rewarded by something most strange and picturesque. The
towns are particularly striking, some of them being built on
the very top of mountains nearly 3,000 feet high, and
reached with difficulty, by a narrow winding path. I am
convinced that a walking tour is the only plan of really
seeing Italian scenery. I made some sketches, but am
sorry to say that, coming into Eome on Saturday night, my
pocket was picked of my sketch-book (a very useless prize
to anyone but the owner, and perhaps you), so. I lost them
all. I am excessively vexed, for I wanted to show you the
sort of places where we took our mid-day's rest. Tivoli was
our last stage, and perhaps the most interesting, — there
is such a splendid waterfall there. Even if I do not
see Turin, I shall be quite satisfied with my recollections
of it."
After this he hastened home, meeting with no more
serious adventure than the one recorded in a letter to
the same correspondent, as follows : —
" I travelled from Chambery to Lyons all alone in a
couple with an Italian lady ! Horrid situation ! and what
made it worse was, that the poor thing was very tired
this morning, and fell fast asleep, and whilst in a state
of oblivion, dropped her head comfortably on to my arm.
12R MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [ciiAP.
After revolving in my miud this alarming state of things,
I thought it would be best to feign to be asleep myself ;
and accordingly, when we jolted over a gutter, and she
awoke with a start, she found me with my eyes shut, and
snoring. I hope I acted it well, but could hardly help
laughing. I shortly afterwards rubbed my eyes and awoke,
and she gave me a roll and some chocolate, for which
I was very thankful ; so I suppose she approved of my
conduct."
He returned entirely restored to health, and so good an
Italian scholar, that he was able to write fluently in the
language, and to dedicate the little objects of art, which he
brought home as presents, in appropriate verse.
One of these was an inkstand in the shape of an owl,
now very common, which he presented to Lady Salusbury,
a kinswoman of your grandfather, to whose adopted
daughter he had lately engaged himself, with this in-
scription : —
" ' La stolidezza copresi talvolta di sembiante
Savio ; siccome per dar ricovero all' inchi ostro
Si fodera con piombo la civelta di bronzo
Immago dell' uccello di sapienza.'
" Ecco la finta pompa dell' uccello !
II quale, sotto '1 grave e savio viso
Avendo pur di piombo il cervello
Fra i tutti poi commuove il forte riso —
" Cos! si trova dal sembiante hello
Talvolta lo bel spirito diviso,
Si trova con la roba da Dottore
Di piombo pur la testa, ed anch' il cuore.**
vni.] ITALY. 129
To tlie young lady herself he wrote on his return:
" I have continued writing a journal, and you will be
astonished to hear that your name is not once mentioned
in it. It is, however, written in invisible ink across every
page. It may be absurd, but I consider my feelings
towards you so sacred, that I should not like to parade
them even to my nearest relations."
CHAPTEE IX.
MIDDLE LIFE.
On his return from liis Italian tour my brother at once
commenced practice in the Ecclesiastical Courts, and took
a small house in Bell Yard, Doctors' Commons, where he
went to reside, and which lie describes to his mother as
follows : —
"April 1851. — I am in excellent health and spirits. T
have a funny little house here : there are three floors and
two rooms on each : then there is a ground-floor, the front
]'oora of which I use as an office, and the back room as a
bath room, for I stick diligently to the cold-water system.
A kitchen below completes my establishment. I have a
liousekeeper, who sits downstairs in the kitchen and sleeps
in the top story ; she is miraculously clean and tidy, and
cooks very well, although I never dine at home. She is also
a wonderful gossip."
Here he practised for a few years regularly, and with
very fair success, but his professional career was destined
to be short and broken, and need not detain us. It is his
home life with which we are concerned, and it was the
CH. IX.] MIDDLE LIFE. 131
pressure of what he looked upon as a higher home duty
which decided him, after a struggle, to abandon his profes-
sion. He was married in the autumn of 1852, and, in the
course of a few years, the health of his wife's mother Ly
adoption made it desirable that they should be always
with her, and that she should spend the winter months
abroad. When it became clear that this was necessary,
he accepted it, and made the best of it ; though I find
abundant traces in his correspondence of the effort which
it required to do so. Thus he writes from Pau, the place
fixed upon for their foreign winter residence, " I always
found that changing one's residence and plans gave one a
fit of the blues for a time, sometimes longer, sometimes
shorter." And again : " The business of life is to be bored
in all directions. You must not imagine, however, that I
am ill, or out of spirits. I have no right to be either, and
won't be, please God." But the necessary want of regular
employment, the sinking into what is called " an idle man,"
and abandoning all active part in " the struggle for exist-
ence," was no small trial to one who held that the " full
employment of all powers, physical, mental, and spiritual,
is the true secret of happiness, so that no time may be left
for morbid self-analysis." You are all perhaps too young
to understand this, and probably, when you think about
such matters at all, imagine that the happiest life must be
one in which you would only have to amuse yourselves.
It may, I hope, shake any such belief to find that the
E 2
132 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
period ia my brother's life in which he was thus thrown
on his own resources, and had the most complete liberty
to follow his own fancies, was just that in which you may
find traces of ennui, and a tendency to be dissatisfied with
the daily task of getting through time.
He took the best course of getting rid of the blues, how-
ever, by throwing himself heartily into such occupations
as were to be had at Pau. The chief of these was a Pen
and Pencil Club, to which most of the English and
American residents belonged, and of which he became the
secretary. Besides the ordinary meetings, for which he
wrote a number of vers de society, on the current topics
and doings of the place, the Club indulged in private
theatricals. On these occasions he was stage manager,
and frequently author ; most of the charades and short
pieces, which you have seen, and acted in, at Offley, were
originally written by him for the Pen and Pencil Club at
Pau, " It was a mild literary society," an old friend
writes to me, " which he carried almost entirely on his
own shoulders, and made a success." Then he set to work
for the first time to cultivate in earnest his talent for
music, and took to playing the violoncello, communicating
intelligence of his own progress, and of musical doings at
Pau generally, to his sister, whom he looked upon as his
guide and instructress. These were not always devoid of
incident, as for instance the following : —
ex.] MIDDLE LIFE. 133
"Pau, Villa Salusbury.
"We have an opera here this season. The jorima donna
and the tenor are good ; the rest so-so. The orchestra and
chorus bad ; the basso execrable : when he doesn't bellow
like a bull, he neighs like a horse; however, he does his
best. I don't know how you feel, but to me a mediocre
opera is an unmitigated bore. I vrould rather by half hear
a good French play. There was a scene at the opera the
other night. The conductor of the orchestra is the amant
of the contralto. Just before the opera began, the conductor
in a jealous fit tried to strangle the contralto : whereupon
the basso profundo knocked the conductor down : where-
upon the conductor ran off towards the river to drown
himself: whereupon he was knocked down again to save
his life : whereupon he threatened to cut everybody's
throat : whereupon he was locked up in prison, and there
remains. So there is no conductor, and the contralto can't
sing from the throttling."
The violoncello soon grew to be a resource, and I believe
he played really well, though he used to groan to me as
to the impossibility of adapting adult fingers to the work,
and to mourn over the barbarism of our school days, when
no one ever thought of music as a possible study for boys.
Soon, however, other olijects of deeper interest began to
gather round him. His eldest boy was born in 1853, his
second in 1855, during their siimmer in England.
"The young one," he writes to his sister, "is like his
mamma, they say, and is going to be dark, which will be a
good contrast to Herbert, who is a regular Saxon. I want
his (Herbert's) yellow hair to grow long that it may be
134 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
done into a pigtail; I think it would look quaint and
create a sensation among the Cockneys, but I'm afraid I
shan't get my own way. To return to the new arrival, you
will be happy to hear that he inherits your talent ibr music ;
he is always meandering witli his hands as if he was play-
ing the violoncello ; it is a positive fact, I assure you, and
makes me laugh to bursting point. A must have been
more struck with my performances than I had credited.
I feel quite flattered to possess an infant phenomenon wdio
played (or would have played) the violoncello, if we had let
him, from his birth. In the meantime that instrument
has been somewhat neglected by me. A , the baby, and
the partridges (what a conjunction), divide my allegiance.
However, my music mania is as strong as ever, in spite
of the rather excruciating tones which all beginners draw
from the instrument : they tell me that the sounds resemble
the bellowings of a bereaved cow ; luckily the house is a
large one,"
He took to farming also, as another outlet for superfluous
energy, but without mucli greater success than generally
falls to the lot of amateurs. Indeed, his long winter
absences from England kept him from gaining anything
more than a superficial knowledge of agriculture, such as
is disclosed in the following note to his mother, in answer
to inquiries as to crops and prospects : —
"Farming is better certainly this year than the last,
but we farmers always grumble, as you know, and I don't
like to say anything until the new wheat is threshed. You
ought to sow your tares and rye immediately, and they
will do very well after potatoes ; they ought to be well
manured. If you mean by ' rye ' Italian rye-grass, I don't
IX.] MIDDLE LIFE. 136
exactly know when it is best to sow it ; in the spring I
believe, but I have never had any yet, and you must ask
about it. One thing I know, that it ought to have liquid
manure, to be put on directly -after cutting ; this will give
you a fresh crop in a little more than a month."
When the Volunteer movement began, he threw him-
self into it at once ; for no man was more impatient of, or
humiliated by, the periodical panics which used to seize
the country. He helped to raise a corps in his own neigh-
bourhood, of which he became captain, and went to one
of the first classes for Volunteers at the School of INIusketry,
to make himself competent to teach his men. As to the
result he writes : —
" Undercliff, 18G0.
/ " Our schooling at Hythe terminated on Friday last, on
which day 100 lunatics were let loose upon society. I say
lunatics, because all of us just now have but one idea, and
talk, think, and dream of nothing but the ritle (call it
]\Iiss Enfield) morning, noon, and night. Colonel Welsford,
the chief instructor, is a charming man and a delightful
lecturer, and withal a greater hmatic than any of us — ^just
the right man in the right place. 1 shot fairly, but did
not distinguish myself as Harry did."
I spoke of his "vers de socUte" just now, and in this
connection will here give you a specimen of them. The
expenses of the corps of course considerably exceeded the
Government grant, and the deficiency had to be met some-
how. My brother started a theatrical performance in the
Town Hall, Hitchin, as a method at once of making both
186 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. Lchat.
ends meet, and of interesting the townspeople in the corps.
The last piece of the entertainment was one of his own.
The characters were played chiefly by members of his own
family. He himself acted the part of a pompous magis-
trate, and at the close spoke the following
EPILOGUE.
" Silence in Court ! what's this unseemly rumpus ?
Attention to the parting words of Bumpus.
Tired of disguise, of borrowed rank and station.
Thus in a trice I work my transformation.
His wig and nose removed, the beak appears
A simple officer of Volunteers,
Who to himself restored, and sick of mumming,
Begs leave to thank you each and all for coming.
Spite of cross roads, dark lanes, tenacious clay.
And benches not too soft, to hear our play.
Next, to those friends my warmest thanks are due
Who give their aid to-night, but chief to you
Who for my sake, and only for to-day,
O'ercome your natural shyness of display.
Now comes the hardest portion of my task,
A most momentous question 'tis to ask.
I pause for your reply with bated breath —
I humbly hope you've not been bored to death ?
Thanks for the signal which success assures ;
Welcome to all, but most to amateurs.
Thanks, gentle friends, your welcome cheers proclaim
We have not altogether missed our aim.
Not ours your hearts to thrill, your tears to move.
With Hamlet's madness, Desdemona's love.
„ We dare not bid in high heroic strain
n,] MIDDLE LIFE. 137
Wolsey or Richelieu rise and breathe again.
We walk in humbler paths, and cannot hope
(To quote the spirit-stirring verse of Pope)
' To wake the soul with tender strokes of Art,
To raise the genius and to mend the heart ;
To make mankind in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene and be what they behold.'
No — with deep reverence for these nobler views,
We seek not to instruct you, but amuse ;
To make you wiser, better, we don't claim —
To make you laugh, our only end and aim.
And as the test of everything, men say,
Is just this simple question — does it pay?
Well, then (I speak for self and comrades present),
Tliis acting pays us well ; we find it pleasant.
If at the same time it amuses you.
We reap a double gaiu vouchsafed to few.
To please ourselves and please our neighbours too.
Besides, to-night in more material seuse,
It pays us well in shillings, pounds, and pence.
Your dollars flush our regimental till.
But in more sterling coin we're richer still :
Yes, doubly, trebly, rich in your goodwill.
And so farewell ! but stop, before we part.
We'll sing one song and sing it from the heart.
Just one song more : you guess the song I mean :
Our brave time-honoured hymn, ' God save the Queen.' "
He continued also to act as mentor to his younger
brothers, two of whom went in due course to Cambridge,
and, to liis great delight, pulled in their college racing
boat (Trinity Hall), which was then at the head of the
river. He often visited them at Cambridge, and, when-
138 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
ever he could manage it, would spend some part of the
vacation with them, joining them in all their amuse-
ments, and helping them in their studies. You may
judge of the sort of terms they were on, by this extract
from a letter to his mother in August 1856 : —
"We shall be very happy to join you in Scotland.
I want to know whether good fishing tackle is procurable
at Stirling, or in the neighbourhood of Callender. At
Edinbro' and Glasgow I know it can be obtained, and
much cheaper than in London. Perhaps Harry can
inform me, if he is not too much occupied in discovering
the value of %, which I believe is the great object of
mathematics (I speak it not proffinel}'). Tell Harry
and Arthur I expect to find them both without breeches.
* Those swelling calves were never meant
To shun the public eye,'
as Dr. Watts remarks, or would have remarked if he
had written on the subject."
Such occupations as these, Avith magistrate's work, and
field sports taken in moderation, served to fill up his time,
and would have satisfied most men situated as he was.
But he could never in all these years get the notion quite
out of his head (though it wore off later) that he was
not doing his fair share of work in the world, and
was a useless kind of personage, for whom no one was
much the better but his wife and children, and whom
IX.] MIDDLE LIFE. 130
nobody but they would miss. This feeling showed itself
in his immense respect for those who were working in
regular professions, and in the most conscieTitious scrupu-
lousness about taking up their time. Often he has come
to my chambers, and, after hurrying through some piece
of family business, has insisted on gomg away directly,
though I might not have seen mm lor a month, and Wiis
eager to talk on fifty subjects. The sight of open papers
was enough for him ; and he had not practised long
enough to get the familiarity which breeds contempt, and
to know how gladly the busiest lawyer puts aside an
Abstract, or Interrogatories in Chancery, for the chance
of a pleasant half-hour's gossip.
I think, however, that I can show you clearly enough,
in a very few words, wliat his real work in the world was
during these yeais, and how perfectly unconscious he was
that he was doing it faithfully. In 1857, your grandfather
had a dangerous attack of illness, from which he never
recovered. George was with him and nursed him durin*?
the crisis. As soon as he was well enough to use a pen,
he wrote as follows to Lady Salusbury : —
" Amongst other things it occurs to me how much I
have had to thank God for through life, and how my
family have always drawn together in the way I wished
them. And here I should be doing injustice to George, if I
did not in my own mind trace much of this happy result to
his quiet and imperceptible influence as an elder brother,
in many ways of which my wife and I were not c-xactiy
140 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
cognizant at the time. Perhaps I am thinking more
f.bout him just now as he was in his natural place as my
right-hand man when I was taken unwell ; and when I
say truly, that neither his mother or I ever had even an
unkind word or disrespectful look I'rom him since he was
born, and that his constant study through life, as far as we
are concerned, has been to spare us ratlier than give us
trouble, and throw his own i:)ersonal interests over much
more than we chose to allow him, it is especially i'or the
purpose of giving dear A (her adopted daughtei) a
precedent to quote with her own lips in the training of
her own boys which I know will be particularly accept-
able to herself. It is the last theme on which he would
like to expatiate, but that siich was my deliberate and
true opinion, will be, I doubt not, one of these days, a,
source of satisfaction to them both, and to the children."
Your grandfather died shortly afterwards, and a year
later George wrote to his mother : —
" I feel that we have great cause for gratitude and
rejoicing as a family ; I mean for the way in which we
hang together, and the utter absence of any subject of
discord or disagreement between any of our members.
I think we may well be happy, even while thinking of
what happened this time last year, as 1 have done very
frequently of late."
He would have been impatient, almost angry, if any-
one had told him that the " hanging together," at which he
rejoiced, was mainly his own doing.
In the village, too, he was beginning to find occupation
of the most useful kind. Thus he opened a village reading-
a,] MIDDLE LIFE. 141
room for the labourers, -wliicli was furnished witli books
and papers, and lighted and warmed, every evening from
seven to nine. " Hitherto it is a great success," he writes
in 1868 : " we have fifty members who subscribe 2d. a
week, and we give them a cup of coffee and a biscuit for
Id. Some of them drink five or six cups a night.
Whether coffee will continue to beat beer I don't know,
but at present it keeps them from the public-house, and
saves their wages for their wives. Some of them are
very fond of reading, and the rest play draughts and
dominoes." Then there were frequent " laundry entertain-
ments," — penny readings, or theatrical performances in the
big laundry, — of which his sister writes : " The boys and
Mr. Phillips and I used to make the music, but the great
hits of the evening were always George's. He used to
recite ' The One-horse Chay,' or some Ingoldsby Legend, or
' The Old Woman of Berkeley,' or sing a comic song, and the
people liked his performances better than anything. Like
all very reserved people, he acted wonderfully well, and
always knew how every part should be done, so he used to
coach us all when a play was being got up. But he would
never criticise unless asked : he always thought that people
knew as well as he did how to do their parts, but they
did not. He was always so droll on these occasions.
When a performance was proposed by the boys, he used
to say it was too much trouble, and that he wanted to be
left quiet. But they always got their way, and when it
1 12 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
•was inevitable he would learn liis entire part while we
others were masteiing a page. I was always whip,
because I could not stand doing anything by halves, and
used to drive everyone mercilessly till the scenes began
to go smoothly. He would sometimes rehearse his part
almost under his breath, gabbling it off with the book in
his hand, and then I would remonstrate, and he would
go through it splendidly, as well as on the day of per-
formance."
But the reform which he had most at heart he never
lived to carry out. The industry of straw-plaiting, which
prevails in the neighbourhood, while it enables the women
and girls to earn high wages, makes them bad housewives,
all their cooking and cleaning being neglected, while they
run in and out of neighbours' houses, gossiping and
plaiting. In the hope of curing this evil he looked
forward to fitting up a large barn in the village as a sort
of general meeting-place. Here, when he had made the
roof air-tight, and laid down a good floor, there was to be
a stove for cooking and baking, and appliances for in-
struction in other household work. Under his wife and
sister there were to be " cooking classes, sewing classes,
and singing classes ; and, in the evenings, entertainments
for the poor people, a piano and night classes, some-
times theatricals, and often concerts, and when the boys
wanted to dance they M-ere to have their dances there. He
used to think that constant meetings in the barn v^ould
IX.] MIDDLE LIFE. 143
humanize lis all, and be a very pleasant thing for
making rich and poor meet on equal terms." It is
perhaps vain to dwell upon such things, but I cannot
help hoping that some day those of you who have the
opportunity of realizing such plans may remember to
what purposes the big barn was once destined. Of one
other part of his village work, his Sunday evening classes
for the big boys, I shall have to speak presently.
But you must not suppose from anything in this chapter
that he ever lost his interest in politics, or public affairs.
He was always a keen politician, retaining, however, all
his early beliefs. "You have all got far beyond me," he
writes to his sister ; " and my dear mother turning Radical
in her old age is delightful." Perhaps the most ardent
politician amongst us all is the best witness to call on
this subject. " I don't think anything was more remark-
able about George than his politics. He, who was so good
an old Tory in many ways, showed that he believed in a
universal principle and duty underlying all the political
opinions about the best means of carrying out reforms. I
think it is very rare, when people are discussing politics,
to find this constant recognition of something beyond
party nostrums. But (as in his father) I have always
detected it in George; and, when I have got very hot
whilst propounding Kadicalism against all the rest here,
have always found sympathy from him at the bottom ;
and I have always felt at last how much more truly liberal
144 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. ' [chap.
he was at heart than we Radicals, because we are always
wanting to force on our opinions our own way, whilst in
him I always recognized a divine sort of justice and
patience, which used to make me feel very conceited, and
wanting in faith. He was horn with aristocratic instincts,
being by nature intensely sensitive and refined, with a
loathing of anything blatant and in bad taste, and with
an intense love of justice ; and the unwise, violent, foolish
way in which many men like expound their doc-
trines disgusted him beyond measure, though he would
always recognize the real truth that lay at the bottom of
Radicalism."
But he shall speak for himself on one great event, which
you are all old enough to remember, the late war between
France and Germany. Almost the first incident of the
war — the despatch of the then Emperor, speaking of the
Prince Imperial's "baptism of fire" — roused his indignation
so strongly that it found vent in the following lines : —
* By ! baby Bunting,
Daddy's gone a hunting,
Bath of human blood to win,
To float his baby Bunting in.
By, baby Bunting.
"What means this hunting?
Listen ! baby Bunting —
Wounds — that you may sleep at ease.
Death — that you may reign in peace.
Sweet baby Bunting,
IX.] MIDDLE LIFE. UG
Tes, baby Bunting !
Jolly fun is hunting !
Jacques in front shall bleed and toil,
You in safety gorge the spoil.
Sweet baby Bunting.
Mount ! baby Bunting,
Eide to Daddy's hunting !
On its quiet cocky- horse,
Two miles in the rear, of course.
Precious baby Bunting.
Ah, baby Bunting !
Oftentimes a hunting,
Eager riders get a spill —
Let us hope your Daddy will.
\ Poor little Bunting.
Perpend, my small friend,
After all this hunting.
When the train at last moves on
Daddy's gingerbread "salon"
May get a shunting.
Poor baby Bunting !
Curse on such a hunting !
Woe to him who bloods a child
For ambitious visions wild.
Poor baby Bunting !
" October 6th, 1870.— I am, I think, rapidly changing
sides about this horrid war. You know I was a tremen-
dous Prussian at the outset, but (although the French
deserve all they get) I really can't stand the bombard-
ment of Paris ; besides, Bismarck is repulsive."
146 MEMOIR OF A BROTREB. [chap.
" Offlet, 1871.
" I think that the high and mighty tone assumed by
Herr Gustave Soiling (German superhuman excellence,
Handel, Beethoven, Minnesingers, &c.) the worst possible
vehicle for the defence of the German terms of peace.
When a man talks ' buncombe,' it shows that he has an
imeasy feeling that his case is a weak one. The cynical
line is the right one for the Germans ; why not say, in the
words of Wordsworth, —
' And why ? Because, the good old rule
Sufficeth them ; the sim])]e plan,
That thej'' should take who have the power.
And they should keep who can.'
But pray don't say this to our cousin, and thank her for
her translation. You know what I think about the
imatter ; I would have gone to war with the French to stop
•the war ; and I would have gone to war with the Germans
to stop the peace. There's an Irish view of it, from a
sincere war-hater."
The person who knew him best once wrote of your
grandfather's politics : " Men of all parties speak of him as
belonging to their clique. This proves to me, if I had
required the proof to strengthen the conviction, that there
is a point on the plain of politics at which the moderate
Tory, the sensible Whig, and the right-minded Eadical, in
otlier words all true patriots, meet ; like the vanishing point
in a picture to which all true and correct lines tend. And
thus it is with him : he has reached that point, and there
he foregathers with all of all parties, who, throwing aside
rx.] MIDDLE LIFE. 147
party prejudice, act and think for the good of their
fellow-creatures."
The description, I cannot but think, applied equally
well to my brother, though he continued nominally a
Tory to the end, and, as you will all recollect, lived as
quiet, methodical a country life as if he had no interests
in the world beyond crops, field sports, and petty sessions.
But that it must have required a considerable effort on his
part to do this comes out in much of his most intimate
coriespoudence. For instance, only a month or two before
his death he writes to his sister : — " Thanks, many, for
your letter, and ]Mrs. S 's. Hers is delightful, and I
so fully understand her feeling. I always feel uncomfort-
able in point-device places, where the footman is always
brushing your hat, and will insist upon putting out your
clothes, and turning your socks ready to put on, and, if
you say half a word, will even put them on for you. How
I hate being ' valeted I ' I should like to black my own
boots, like Mr. , but th-en he is (or was) a master of
foxhounls, and, being of course on that account a king
of men, can do as he pleases, in spite of Mrs. Grundy.
1 am also a gvpsey (is that rightly spelt ? That word, and
some others, are stumbling-blocks to me ; I am afraid all
my spelling is an affair of memory), a Bohemian at heart.
I sometimes feel an almost irresistible desire to doff my
breeches and paint myself blue. I should also like (I
woidd limit myself to one month per annum) to go with a
L 2
148 MEMOIR OF 4 BROTHER. [chap.
carpet-bag to tlie nearest station, and to rough it in all
sorts of outlandish places — but then A can't rough it,
and there are the brats, and lots of other impediments.
The very act of wandering anywhere delights me. I
think we spoil half the enjoyment of life by being too
particular ; how terrible dinner-parties are becoming !
But enough of my sermon. In spite of ray secret longings
I shall continue to do as my neighbours, and it would be
wicked in my case to be discontented. They threatened
to nominate me Chairman of the Board of Guardians here,
but finding that the Vice-chairman was standing (and
thinking him better qualified), I declined any contest, and
was not put up. I am sorry for it, for the office, although
troublesome, is capable of being made useful, and I think
I should have liked it in time;" and then comes a sen-
tence which may serve to explain to some of you your
feelings towards him — " I cannot forgive for putting
" (one of his nephews) " on a bolting horse. If you
do mount a boy, you ought to give him the cleverest and
quietest horse in your stable, and no sportsman would
do otherwise."
There is one more trait in his character which I must
not omit here, as I wish to give 3'ou as perfect 8 know-
ledge of him as I have myself. I have already told you
how very scrupulous he was with regard to money matters.
He had, indeed, a horror of debt which made him morbidly
sensitive on the subject ; and he recognized the fact, and
IX J MIDDLE LIFE. 119
treated himself for it as he would have done for a fit of
bile, or any other physical disorder. On more than one
occasion, when some unloosed for expenditure seemed
likely to bring on a more than usually severe attack,
he cured himself by some piece of unwonted extrava-
gance, such as buying a diamond ornament for his wife,
or making a handsome present to some poor relation.
The remedy answ^ered perfectly in his case; but I am
bound to add that it is one which I cannot recomm'end
as a specific without the warning, that, before using it,
you must satisfy yourselves, as he always did, that there
were no reasonable grounds for uneasiness.
But if he sometimes worried himself about money, he
kept his anxiety to himself, and was constantly doing
the most liberal acts in the most thoughtful manner. Of
the many instances I could give of this, I select one,
â– which an old friend has communicated to me with per-
mission to mention it. I give it in his own words : —
" There is one little incident connected with his personal
relations to me which I shall always remember with
feelings of gratitude and pleasure. When the Suez Canal
was opened I had an offer of a free passage out and
home in a P. and 0. steamer, and I was rather exercised
in my mind by not feeling it prudent to accept, as I
knew that living in Egypt for a fortnight at tiiat time
would be very expensive, and I knew that I could not
afford it. I happened to be writing to him about that
150 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [ch. ix.
time, and mentioned this in my letter. By return of post
he sent me a cheque for £50, begging me to accept it
as a loan, to be paid when I had as much to spare, or
never if I preferred it. I did not take advantage of his
generous kindness, and I declare I almost regret now
that I did not, as I believe I should have given him
sincere pleasure in so doing."
CHAPTEE X.
LETTERS TO HIS BOYS.
The doubts as to his own usefulness in the world, noticed
in the last chapter, wore off naturally as he fell into the
toutine of country life ; but it was the growth of the
younger generation — of you for whom this sketch is
written — which found him in work and interest during the
last years of his life. I could never have envied him any-
thing; but if there was one talent of his more than another
which I have longed to share, it was his power of winning,
not only the love, but the frank coutidence, of his own, and
all other boys. I think the secret was, that he was far
more in sympathy with them ; could realize more vividly
their pleasures, and troubles, than almost any man of his
age. And then, he had never given up athletic games
altogether, and was still a far better cricketer and football
player than most boys, and ready to join them in their
sports whenever they seemed to wish it.
Few things gave him more pleasure than taking up
again the thread of intimate relations with his old school.
152 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
which he did when his ehlest nephew entered there. He
accompanied him, to give him confidence and a good start,
and characteristically recounts that " we had a famous
football match, and I got my legs kicked to my heart's
content, thereby vividly recalling old times." He remarks
also, at the same time, " Engby is charming; only there is
rather too much what I call ' drill,' in the play as in the
work — not spontaneous enough." Not long after, in 1866,
his own eldest boy followed. He thus details that event
to his mother : —
" Offlet, September 27, 1866.
" We went to Eugby last Thursday, and the new-comers
were examined on Friday and Saturday. As we rather
feared, Herby failed to get into the Middle School. We
were rather disappointed, and he, poor boy, was in despair,
as he was afraid Arnold would not take him, and that he
would have to go to Mr. Furness ; however, Arnold offered
to make an exception in his case, and as we joyfully ac-
cepted it. Master Herby was duly installed in his uncle's
study, and we left him on Monday morning very happy,
and delighted with his new dignity of a public school boy.
Our visit to Eugby was very pleasant, and not a little
exciting. The sch(j(jl is much altered since my time — the
boys are much more accurately dressed, less rollicking, and
more decorous. The exceeding quiet of the town and play-
ground struck me particularly. I should like to have seen
a little more running about, and to have heard a little more
shouting; in fact a jolly curly-haired youngster with whom
I nuide a casual acquaintance, said to me, ' I am sure, sir,
you nmst have had much more fun in your time than we
have.' It is perhaps just as well that 'they should have
X.] LETTERS TO HIS BOYS. 153
become quieter. The recognized name for the anxious
parents who bring their boys up lor examination is the
' Early Fathers,' because, I suppose, they take care to be
at the schoolroom-door with their Hopefuls a quarter of
an hour before the examination begins. Jenny Lind's boy
has just gone to the School-house ; lie is, as boys say,
awfully 'cute, and came out nearly head of the examina-
tion. Jenny Lind was at chapel herself on Sunday ; her
husband has (ione much for the music of the school ; the
singing in chapel is exceedingly good, and the whole service
very impressive. The last time I was in chapel there was
in poor Arnold's time. The master of Herby's form, Mr.
Buckoil, was my old master when I was in the shell thirty
years ago ! Also jSIrs. Jacomb, of the principal tuck shop,
used to spoil our stomachs in my time. I felt myself
rather boyish again, without the boisterous spirits and
good stomach of boyhood."
From this time he constantly visited the school, and
kept his mother and sister informed of the progress of
the bo3's. I add a few extracts from his letters : —
" Novemhcr, 1866. — I was at Eugby last Saturday, and
stayed over Sunday. Walter breakfasted with me ou
Sunday "morning, and very jolly he was. He and Herby
won't see mucli of one another until they get higher in
the schoul. Junior boys never enter each other's boarding-
liouses. This is very absurd, but no power on earth can
alter boys' fashions."
" Eaton Socon, November 2Qth, 1867.
" Boys' letters get so full of school slang that it is hard
to imderstaud them. Herbert says in his last that he got
ir,4 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
100 lines from Chumley for tweaking. This was Hebrew to
us, as 'tweaking' was not a Rn.^by word in my time. On
referring the matter to Ned, he immediately informed us
that ' tweaking ' in boys' language was, shooting shot out of
a catapult, or other warlike engine."
" Offley, 1868.
" We have excellent accounts from Rugby. Herbert is
at the head of his form, and evidently finds his work
easier, and is in a high state of encouragement. One of
his schoolfellows has just shot himself in the leg with a
* saloon,' meaning a saloon pistol. Hang all pistols, but
boys will have them."
" Offley, October 7th, 1868.
" Concerning schoolboys' etiquette, it beats all other
etiquette. Public schools cultivate reserve, and so strongly
that I think one never gets quite rid of it, although one
gets better in after-life. I wish it was not so ; it is one of
the drawbacks of public schools, which are on the whole
excellent institutions. One must take the sours with the
sweets.
" Herbert would not think of speaking to a school-
fellow (not on a par with himself), unless first spoken to.
And in ])ublic schools the great 'swells' are those distin-
guished at cricket, football, &c. Then come the sixth, by
virtue of their legal power. Then the great middle class,
including clever, stupid, pleasant, unpleasant, &c., and then
the new boys, and the very small boys. All the power
and influence is in the hands of the athletes, and the
.sixth form, and all the rest pay them (the athletes) the
greatest respect, and the most willing obedience. They
obey the sixth (lawful authority) less willingiy. All this
is not quite satisfactory, but it might be worse. At all
events Temple, who is a tremendous itadical, knows it and
X.] LETTERS TO II IS BOYS. 155
allows, nay, encourages it. But I find tliat few people aro
Iladicals in their own departments."
"Offi.ey, November 7ih, 18G8.
" I went for tlie day to see the old Eug. match, and gave
Walter and Herbert a dinner at the ' Shoes ' before aoin^
away. Walter played in the matcn, and the young ones
gave it the old Kugs hot, much to my delight. Waiter
seemed wonderfully well, and ditto Herbert. He always
looks pale at school, but he was in high spirits, and
evidently enjoys school life. He is very different from me
in some things ; his study is awfully 'cute (that's boys'
English, and means tidy and full of knick-knacks) ; in fact
he is a bit of a dandy ; I was not. Also he nu;st be a
better boy than I was, for his character is really first-
rate in everything: and the masters used always to row
me for not doing as much as I could. That was the
burden of their song."
As a complement to these letters, I add here extracts
from those to his eldest boy : —
Thank you much for your letter received this morning ;
you are very good in writing so regularly, and I hope you
will keep up the habit, for (I repeat) there is no pleasure
to us so great as to receive your letters. We are glad to
hear you are ' all right ' in your form. I have no objection
to the Eifle corps. It would be odd if I had, as I was a
Volunteer myself ; ordy go into it heartily, and learn your
drill welL It is capital exercise, and it will do you good to
be ' set up,' as you stoop too much. I should not think,
however, that Temple would let tlie Paigby volunteers go to
Windsor. If he thinks proper to do so, of course I have no
objection. I suppose that as usual you are 'hard up,' so I
send you a P.O. order. You must learn to exercise u little
156 MEMOIR OF A BROTIJEE. [cHAP.
forethought and self-denial about money matters : you
spend more than your income. You must overcome this
habit, for it would embarrass and, perhaps, ruin you
hereafter."
The next extract refers to some help in his work which
his father sent him from time to time : —
" I depend upon your looking out all the words, and work-
ing it out for yourself with the help of my translation.
You promised me to do this, and I know you are a boy of
3'oar word, otherwise I shouldn't think it right to help you.
Your tutor may ask if you have any assistance. If he
does you must say you found it very hard (which it really
is for a boy of your age), and asked me to hulpyoa. There
is nothing like being open and truth-telling with your
masters, and every one. If he objects to my helping you,
you must do the best you can without it, like a iium ; but I
don't think he will object. Your place in the form seems
very satisfactory: if you do get out we shall be very much
pleased, but don't make yourself anxious about it, only do
your best. . .^ . ."
Again at the beginning of the following half-year : —
" The reason you give for having lost a few places is no
doubt the right one — that you have not got yet into the
swing — it will be all right in a week or two. I have no
doubt you will get your remove at the end of term easily
enough. The exam, (if I understand rightly) consists of
subjects which you prepare during term, and there is not
much ' unseen.' This will be an advantage to you over
the idle ones who don't prepare their work. I shall be
delighted to help you in any way, if you will only let me
know, and give me due notice. Perhaps you won't believe
me when I assure you again, that Latin prose will come to
X.] LETTERS TO HIS BOYS. ir.7
you as well as cricket and football in good time ; but it is
the truth nevertheless. At your age I often felt the same
discouragement which you feel. I had rather overgrown
myself like you, and was longer ' ripening ' (to use an ex-
pressive phrase) than many fellows who did not grow so
fast ; but it all came right in my case, as it will in yours.
Therefore en avant and don't be discouraged "
" We are very glad to hear that you are in upper-middle
one, and it will make us very happy if you can get anotlier
remove at Christmas. It is to be done if you like, and as
you cannot play football just now (worse luck) you will
have more time. Don't you want some help in your tutor
work ? If so, send me the book ; or is there anything else
in which I can help you? You are now rapidly becoming
a young man, and have probably some influence in the
school, and will have more. Be kind to the new boys and
juniors; even if they are 'scrubby,' your business is to
polish them, and you will do this much better by a little
kind advice than by making their lives a burden (I don't
say, mind, that you are unkind to them). Don't 'bosh'
your masters. Eemember that they are gentlemen like
yourself, and that it is insulting them to ' bosh ' them
when they are taking trouble with you. As to the sixth
form, I don't quite approve of all the customs thereof, but
it is an institution of the school, and, on the whole, bene-
ficial, and it is no use kicking against it. Now I have
done with my preaching. I don't know that it is neces-
sary, but it can do you no harm, and I know you respect
my opinion. Your mother is horrified at your signing
yourself 'Hughes,' tout court (as the French say), so to
please her don't forget to put in ' your affectionate son '
(as I know you are). God bless you.
"Yours most affectionately,
"G. E. Hughes."
153 MEMOIR OF A BROTHEB. [chap.
" I was much pleased by your writing so openly to me.
It will make me very happy if you will treat me with
perfect confidence in all matters. You need have no fear
tliat I shall not understand and sympathise with you, for
althongh (as we have said in joke) I was a Eugbeian in
the time of the ancient Britons, when we had no breeches,
and painted ourselves bliie for decency's sake, it seems to
me a very short time since I was as you are, and I have
a very vivid recollection of my youth, feelings, prejudices,
faults, and all the rest of it."
And then, after some advice about his matriculation at
Oxford, his father goes on : —
"I am not going to preach to you about billiards. If
there had been a table at Rugby in my time (there was
none), I might very possibly have played myself; although,
like yon, I should certainly not have made a habit of it,
preferring, as I did and do, more active amusements.
Don't play again at Eugby ; it would be childish, as well
as wrong, to risk leaving the school under a cloud, for such
a paltry gratification. I don't agree with you in comparing
billiards to your school games : billiards (public) generally
involve smoking, and a certain amount of drinking, and
losing money (or winning, which is worse) ; and engender a
sort of lounging habit. I am afraid you have rather a fast
lot at Eugby, and what you tell me about card-playing
makes me rather anxious aboiit Jack. It is altogether
abominably bad form, and I wish you would get up an
opposition to it. It ought to be put down for the credit of
the school. I must say that there was no such card-
playing in my time. Ifaving said my say, I must leave
you to do what you can, in concert with any other big
X.'] LETTERS TO HIS BOYS. ^^^
fellows in the house, who may be brought to see the
matter in my light."
The " Jack " referred to in the last letter was his third
boy, who was now in his first term at a preparatory school
fur Kugby. This chapter may fitly close with his letters to
this, the youngest of his boys whom he lived to see launched
at school. He was a favourite subject of study to his father,
who writes of him at Pau, years before : " Jack will be, I
think, the strongest of the lot. He always clears his plate,
fat and all, and always clears his lesson, however dis-
agreeable;" and again, to his sister, who was the boy's
godmother : —
Your favoiirite Jack is always running after me, and
is a very good boy, and surprisingly good company too.
He has not quite furgotten how to ' beak ' himself when
he feels insulted. About a week ago the children had
some shrimps for tea, and Jack was offended because he
was presented with a ' baby ' shrimp instead of a big one ;
so he pushed his chair from the table, and prostrated
himself on his knees, with his nose in the carpet. After
remaining for five minutes in that position, he felt better.
It is a more amusing way of getting rid of steam than
crying. Children have the funniest fancies in the world.
There is a Scotch terrier next door to us, with a grave
and venerable face, and a long grey beard. Jack said one
day, 'that doGfgy like Moses coming down de mountain;'
and so he really is like Moses, in one of those little wood-
cuts in whicli children delight, but I should never have
thought of such a ridiculous comparison."
160 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
"Westward Ho, October 1871.
*' Dearest Old Boy,
" Here we are all ripht, and I wish we had your jolly
face at the other end of the table, for we miss you very
nmch. I have begun golf, but there are not many golfers
here yet ; however, there is one very good player named
Olipliant, so I have not much chance of the medal. Your
friends the Molesworths are both gone to Eadley School,
near Oxford. There are only 100 boys there, but it is a
nice place, and being near the Thames, they get plenty of
rowing ; in fact, that is their chief amusement. Ned plays
golf with me, but has not got into his play yet. You are
a good old boy for writing so often, and I hope you will
continue it. Nothing gives us so much i)leasure as your
letters and Herbert's, and don't think that anything that
happens to you is too trifling to tell us of Now about your
letter. I always thought that you would find the lessons
rather a grind at first : you see it is your first school, and
you have had no experience in working with a lot of other
boys, perhaps making a row, and idling around you. Never
mind. It will get easier every day, and besides, I believe
that you have something of the bull-dog about you, and
won't be discouraged by a little hardship and difficulty at
first. I hope you will be one of your fifteen, for then I
shall come up to see you play, but anyhow I am as certain
as I can be of anything that you will be first-rate at foot-
ball some day, and a first-rate schohir too, I hope. The
two things often go together. All well, and send best love.
Mamma and Argy hope your shoulder is not much hurt,
and I have no doubt it is all right again. God bless you.
" Yours most affectionately,
" G. E. H.
"P.S. — I shall never think anything that you write
awful bosh.' "
X.] LETTERS TO HIS BOYS. 161
" Offlfa', "Westward Ho, 1871.
"Dearest Jack,
" Thank you for your letters, which interest ns
immensely. Boys make the most absurd customs, as
you will find out : it is Letter to give way to their customs
in a good-tempered way ; new boys are not admitted at
once to the full privileges. It does not much matter, as I
hope you won't be long at , Boys think it very fine
and manly not to prepare their lessons, whereas in fact
nothing can be more childish. Take your own way, and
never mind them. It is half pretence with them, and they
will respect you more if they see you have your own way.
You need not stand being ' sat upon,' and yet you can be
good-tempered and obliging, but, above all, don't forget
what I said to you when we parted. Don't forget the
lessons you have learnt at home (I don't mean Latin and
Greek). God bless you. Write as often as you have
time.
" Yours most affectionately,
" G. E. H."
"October 1871.
" Dearest Old Boy,
" Thank you for your letters. They are well written
and spelt, and creditable to you in every way. Although
it is not pleasant to us to hear that you are miserable (or
rather uncomfortable, for ' miserable ' is a strong word), yet
we always like to hear exactly what you feel. I don't
think you can be exactly miserable, for I believe that you
are doing your best. God will not suffer us to be miserable
(at least not for any time) whilst we do our duty. Don't
be discouraged about your work ; you see it is your first
plunge into school. All your schoolfellows have had more
experience than you : practice will give you the quickness
and accuracy that you want.
M
162 MEMOIR OF A BROTEEB. [chap.
" Your feelings towards us are quite natural : when you
are at home, perfectly happy, although you do not love
-us less, you do not feel it so much ; when you are thrown
among a lot of people who do not much care about you,
you hud out the value of our love for you, and think more
of us. However, you have Herbert, and I daresay you
think that you love him better now than ever you did at
home. As we are all sinful and imperfect creatures, I have
no doubt that you have sometimes done and said things
which we should be sorry to hear of. You must ask God
to help you to do better in future ; but I must say that I
have always found you good and obedient, and you have
never given us any anxiety. There is one lesson which
you ought to learn from your present feelings of discomfort
and worry ; when you are a big boy at Eugb}^, and see any
poor little fellow worried and uncomfortable, you must say
a kind word to him (remembering what you once felt
yourself) ; you have no idea how much good a kind word
from a big fellow (what you call a swell) will do to a poor
little begear. You remember how kind Gardner was, and
how much he was liked at Kugby for it. All are well, and
send best love. I fully intend to come to see you when
I get back to Ofiley — perhaps to the old Eug. match.
God bless you.
" Yours most affectionately,
" G. E. Hughes."
"Dearest Old Boy, " November, \i,n.
" I know why you feel rather down in the mouth just
now. You have (to use a phrase in athletics) lost your
first wind, and haven't yet got your second wind. The
novelty of excitement of school life has gone off, and you
are too new to it yet to enjoy what there is enjoyable in it.
Courage ! I know your feelings well, having experienced
X.] LETTERS TO HIS BOYS. 163
them myself. So has Herbert : so, in short, has everyone
who has ever been at school. You will soon get over it
all, and like your school life, although of course it is not
BO pleasant as home. Most schoolboys are selfish and bad-
mannered, and there are always plenty of snobs and bullies
amongst them ; but there is always a minority of nice
fellows. I am inclined to believe that as you go so often
to Arnold's, you have not made much acquaintance with
your schoolfellows. Perhaps it would be better to culti-
vate their acquaintance more. Don't be afraid about not
getting into Rugby. You ought to have heard Herbert's
doleful forebodings about never being able to get out of
lower school : he was nmch more doleful than you, but if
you were to remind him of it, he would probably not
remember it at all ; neither will you a year hence. If
you are hungry, can't you buy grub in the town ? I
mean, something like sausage-rolls, or hard eggs. I will
give you the money for it ; or can you suggest any way
in which we can supply you ? What do you do on
Sundays ? and to what church do you go ? I wish we
could have you with us occasionally, just as much as you
do. All are well, and join in best love. God bless you.
" Yours most affectionately,
" G. E. Hughes."
" Dearest Old Boy, " Offley,
" I believe your mamma has written to you, but I
must give you a few lines to say how much we were
pleased with your report which came this morning.
There is no happiness in this world so great to us as the
assurance that you and your brothers are doing well. I
am very sorry that you were down in the mouth at my
departure. I should like to have you always with me,
but you (being a boy of good sense) must know very
M 2
1G4 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
well that it cannot be : you must (like all others) fly
from the nest some time or other, and school is the pre-
paration for a longer flight. I have no doubt that now
you are all right again. You won't be downhearted long,
if you only work well and do your duty. At your age the
spirits are very elastic, and soon recover any depression.
" We shall be anxious to hear about your cough and
Sharp's opinion. God bless you,
" Yours most affectionately,
"G. E. H."
"Offlet, Sunday, Nov. 26th, 1871.
"Deaeest Old Boy,
" I have nothing particular to tell you, but must write
a line in return for your jolly letters, which are very plea-
sant to us. I am very sorry that your cough is not better,
I am afraid that you will not get rid of it until we get you
at home, and nurse you properly. You will soon be with
us now ; in the meantime take care of yourself, and make
the most of your time (I don't think I need tell you to
work, as you seem so well inclined already). I will
write about your coming home, and also about your
going up for the entrance Exam, after Christmas. I
wish very much that you should go up. I really don't
see why you should go to Kugby three days before the
Exam. ; but if they insist upon it, I suppose it must be
so. I liope you won your match yesterday. It is very
unfortunate that you could not play as you would have
done but for this unlucky cough. Never mind, you have
plenty of time before you for football. All are well, and
join in best love to you. God bless you,
" Yours most aflectionately,
" G. E, Hughes.
" The hounds come to Wellbury to-morrow. I hope your
game was good. Let us know."
X.] LETTERS TO HTS BOYS. 165
At the beginning of the next term Jack went to Eugby,
and ahnost the first letter he received from his father was
the following Valentine, which species of missive appears
to have become popular amongst boys : —
"February 23, 1872.
" This is the month when little Cu-
-pid robs us of our senses, oh !
'Tis he inspires me to renew
My doleful strains of love to you,
Oh, charming, fascinating cru-
-el Walter Jacky Mansfield Hugh-
-es, Scholse Eugbeiensis, oh!
) " I learn to dance and sew, while you
Are learning Latin tenses, oh !
How I should like to dance with you,
Instead of with my frightful grew-
-some governess, oh ! charming cru-
-el Walter Jacky Mansfield Hugh-
-es, Scholae llugbeiensis, oh !
" I'm sure the least that yoii can do
To calm my nerves and senses, oh I
Is (though 'tis slightly overdue)
To take this little billet-doux.
And be the Valentine so true
Of her who signs herself your Su-
-san, charming, fascinating cru-
-el Walter Jacky Mansfield Hugh-
-es, Scholae Eugbeiensis, oh !
" YouE Susan."
166 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
In explanation of an allusion in the next letter, I insert
an extract of the same date, from one to his sister : —
" Jack is in high force, but has been having extra lessons
(with all his schoolfellows), in consequence of (what he
calls) a ' towel fight,' and subsequent ' war dance,' in
which the school indulged in an irrepressible burst of
youthful spirits. What geese boys are ! "
" Offley, March 1872.
"Dearest Jack,
" I hope you got the hamper all right, and that the
'grub ' was good and of the right sort. Your ' war dance '
amused us excessively, and of course there is no harm in a
war dance ; but, if it is forbidden, what an old goose you
are to risk having impositions and extra lessons for it !
But schoolboys are always the same, and T can't expect you
to be wiser than the rest.
" If you can't make out why your copies are wrong, why
don't you ask one of your schoolfellows ? I suppose some
of them are good fellows, and would tell you your mistake ;
or say openly to the master that you can't find out, and I
should think he would enlighten you. At least, he ought.
We shall have you home in about tliree weeks, and right
glad we shall be. Go at it hard for the remainder of the
term, for remember the entrance Exam, You must work a
little in the holidays to keep up what you know. The boys
are better, and have been playing football vigorously. Best
love to Herbert ; ask him whether he wants any cricket
practice. I mean Hughes to bowl. God bless you.
" Yours most affectionately,
" G. E. H."
Westward Ho, from which several of the preceding letters
were wiitten, had become liis favourite watering-place. He
X.] LETTERS TO HIS BOYS. 167
liad gone there at first by chance, and, finding links and a
golf club, had taken to the game with his usual success.
At Pau he had played a little, but certainly never handled
a club till he was past forty. Nevertheless, though it is
a game in which, I am told, early training and constant
practice is almost an essential condition of success, he
entered for, and succeeded in winning the champion's medal
in the annual gathering of 1870. Soon after his return
from the meeting he wrote to me.
" We spent three very pleasant weeks at Westward Ho.
I wish that I could infect you with * golfomania.' Golf is
the middle-aged man's game. I mean by the middle-aged
man, the man who could ooice, but cannot now, get down
upop a leg shooter. We had a dozen hard-worked men
from the city, besides doctors, lawyers, soldiers on leave,
etc., all perfectly mad whilst it lasted. I was quite as mad
as the rest, and having now ' relapsed ' into sanity, I am
able to look back upon it with the most intense amuse-
ment. The humour of the whole thing was positively
sublime. You have heard squires at their wine after a
good run — bless you, they can't hold a candle to golfers.
Most of the players were Scotch, and the earnestness with
which the Scotch ' play ' is a caution. I think of trying my
liand at a rhapsody about golf."
The rhapsody was, I believe, never written, but he con-
tinued to like and practise the game till his death, which
indeed is, in my mind, rather painfully connected with it.
My last visit co Offley was in the short Easter vacation of
this year, and I thought I had never seen him better, or
168 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
in more full vigour of body and mind. On the SOtli of
March he mounted me, and I rode with him and two of
his boys to a meet near Offley. We had a run early in the
day, and got home to a late lunch, after which he went out
into his plantations and worked till dark. Indeed, when
I left the same evening by the mail train for the north, I
beguiled my journey by thinking that the whole kingdom
might be searched in vain to find a finer specimen of a
man. On that day four weeks I received a telegram from
Hoylake to say that he was lying there very dangerously ill.
He had gone on there, after leaving his boys at Eugby, to
take part in the golf tournament. He went down with a
bad cold, but paid no attention to it, and went round the
links with some friends on the first evening. The next
day he became much worse, and was obliged to take to his
bed, from which he never got up. The cold had settled on
his lungs, and violent inflammation was set up. His wife
and children were summoned at once, and his mother and
sister and myself two days later. When I arrived, the
lower part of the lungs had suppurated, and the medical
man gave very slight hopes of his recovery. He could
only speak with exceeding difficulty, but retained his
strength, and the grip of his hand was as strong as ever.
He met death with the same courage as he had shown
throughout life, giving me a few clear instructions for a
codicil to his will, while his youngest boy lay with his
head on his shoulder, crying bitterly, and almost with h^°
X.] LETTERS TO HIS BOYS. 109
last breath regretting the trouble he was giving his nurse.
On the afternoon of May 1st he received the Sacrament
with all of us, and at four on the morning of the 2nd
passed away, leaving behind him, I am proud to think, no
braver or better man. But you shall have better testimony
than mine on this point. Out of the many letters to the
same purpose which I received, and two of which have
found a place in the earlier part of this memoir, I select
an extract from one written by Bishop MacDougal, who,
thirty years ago, had rowed behind him in the University
boat.
" I must just write a line to express my heartfelt sym-
pat^hy with you in your sad, sad bereavement. Dear old
George ! "What an irreparable loss to you and all ]iis old
friends ! I have myself been heavy-hearted ever since I
heard he had been called away from us, and shall never
think of his cheery voice, his hearty greeting, his kindly,
loving words, without a sharp pang of regret that I shall
no more in this life meet with him I loved so well, and
admired as the finest specimen of the high-minded, earnest,
true-hearted English gentleman it has been my lot to meet
with. He was too good for tliis hard, selfish generation,
and he is in God's mercy called away to that better world,
where love and truth and peace dwell undisturbed in the
presence of our blessed Lord, May we, my dear Tom,
have grace given us so to fight tlie good fight of truth and
faith, that when our work is done we may be called thither
to join your dear brother and our other loved ones, who
have gained the victory over self and the world, and havo
been called to tlieii- rest before us."
CHAPTER XI
CONCLUSION.
On looking through the preceding pages, I have been
struck with one special shortcoming. I am painfully
conscious how poor and shallow the picture here attempted
will be, in any case, to those who knew my brother best.
Nevertheless, those for whom it was undertaken will,
I trust, be able to get from it some clearer idea of the
outer life of their father and uncle, but of that which
underlies the outer life they will learn almost nothing.
And yet how utterly inadequate must be any knowledge
of a human being which does not get beneath, this surface !
How difficult to do so to any good purpose! For that
" inner," or " eternal," or " religious " life (call it which you
will, they all mean the same thing) is so entirely a matter
between each human soul and God, is at best so feebly
and imperfectly expressed by the outer life. But, difficult
as it may be, the attempt must be made ; for I find that
I cannot finish my task with a good conscience without
making it.
CHAP. XI.] CONCLUSION. 171
There is not one of you, however young, hut must be
living two lives — and the sooner you come to recognize
the fact clearly, the better for you — the one life in the
outward material world, in contact with the things which
you can see, and taste, and handle, which are always
changing and passing away : the other in the invisible, in
contact with the unseen ; with that which does not change
or pass away — which is the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever. The former life you must share with others,
with your family, your schoolfellows and friends, with
everyone you meet in business or pleasure. The latter
you must live alone, in the solitude of your own inmost
being, if you can find no Spirit there communing with
yours — in the presence of, and in communion with, the
Father of your spirit, if you are willing to recognize that
presence. The one life will no doubt always be the
visible expression of the other; just as the body is the
garment in which the real man is clothed for his sojourn
in time. But the expression is often little more than a
shadow, unsatisfying, misleading. One of our greatest
English poets has written —
" The one i-emains, the many change and pass.
Heaven's light for ever shines, eailh's shadows fly.
Time, like a dome of many coloured glass,
Stains the bright radiance of eternity.
Until death tramples it to fragments."
And so you and I are living now under the dome of many-
172 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
coloured glass, and shall live as long as we remain in these
bodies, a temporal and an eternal life — "the next world,"
which too many of onr teachers speak of as a place which
we shall first enter after death, heino- in fact "next " only
in the truest sense of the word ; namely, that it is " nearest "
to us now. The dome of time can do nothing more (if we
even allow it to do that) than partially to conceal from us
the light which is always there, beneath, around, above us.
" The outer life of the devout man," it has been well
said, " should be thoroughly attractive to others. He
would be sim]jle, honest, straightforward, unpretending,
gentle, kindly ; — his conversation cheerful and sensible ; he
would be ready to share in all blameless mirth, indul-
gent to all save sin." And tried by this test, tlie best we
have at command, my brother was essentially a devout man.
The last thirty years, the years of his manhood, have
been a period of great restlessness and activity, chietiy
of a superficial kind, in matters pertaining specially to
religion. The Established Church, of which he was a
member, from conviction as well as by inheritance, has
been passing through a crisis which has often threatened
her existence; faction after faction, as they saw their
chance, rising up and striving in the hope of casting out
those whose opinions or practices they disliked. Against
all such attempts my brother always protested whenever he
had an opportunity, and discouraged all those with whom
he had any influence from taking any part in them.
xi.l CONCLUSION. 173
"I have no patience," for instance, he writes at one of
these crises, " witli for mixing himself up with Church
politics. I believe you know what I think about them,
namely, that both parties are right in some things and
wrong in others, and that the truth lies between the two.
I hope I shall always be able to express my dissent from
both without calling names or imputing motives, and when
I hear others doing so, I am always inclined, like yourself,
to defend the absent. I was very sorry to hear that
has given up his parish. I cannot understand his excessive
attachment to what is, after all, only the outside of religion ;
but he is so good a man, so hard-working, so self-denying,
that one feels what a great loss he must be."
Outside the Church tlie same religious unrest has had
several noteworthy results, perhaps the most remarkable of
these being a negative one : I mean, the aggressive attitude
and movement of what is popularly known as scientific
thought. Amongst its leaders have been, and are, some of
the best, as well as the ablest, men of our time, who have
had, as they deserved to have, a very striking influence.
But the tone of scientific men towards religion has been
uniformly impatient or contemptuous, not seldom petulant.
" Why go on troubling yourselves and mankind about that
of which you c^n know nothing ? " they have said. " This
* eternal ' or ' inner ' life of which you prate is wholly beyond
your ken. We can prove to you that much of your
so-called theology rests on unsound premises. Be con-
174 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
tent to work and learn with us in the material world,
of which alone you can get to know anytliing certain."
That challenge has shaken the foundations of much
v.'hich called itself faith in our day. I never could
discover that my brother was ever seriously troubled
by it. Dissertations on the Mosaic cosmogony, theories
of the origin of species, speculations on the antiquity
of man, and the like, interested, but never seemed to rouse
in him any of the alarm or anger which they have excited
in so many good Christians. Granting all that they tend
to prove, they deal only with the outward garment, with
the visible universe, and the life which must be lived in it,
leaving the inner and real life of mankind quite untouched.
He was, however, neither so tolerant of, nor I think so fair
to, the stirring of thought within the Church, which has
resulted in criticisms supposed to be destructive of much
that was held sacred in the last generation. His keen
sense of loyalty was offended by anything which looked like
an attack coming from within the ranks, and so he shared
the feeling so widely, and I think wrongly, entertained
by English Churchmen, that the right of free thought
and free speech on the most sacred subjects should be
incompatible with holding office in the Church.
As to his own convictions on such subjects, he was
extremely reserved, owing to a tendency which he believed
he had detected in himself to religious melancholy, which
be treated simply as a disease. But no one who knew
XI.] CONCLUSION. 176
him at all could ever doubt that a genuine and deep
religious faith was the basis of his character, and those
who knew him best testify unanimously to its ever in-
creasing power. " I don't know if you were ever told,"
his sister writes, " of the singular desire dying people
had that George should be with them. You know how
reserved he was, and he would always think that people
would prefer some one who talked more to them, but I
think it was his great gentleness and strength which
made the dying feci him such a comfort. He never volun-
teered ; but when sent for, as was often the case, always
went to them, and read and prayed constantly with them
as long as they lived. There was one poor young man who
died of consumption, and George was constantly with him
to the last. The father was a very disreputable character,
and George seldom saw him. But some time after the
young man's death, the father met George in the fields,
and threw himself on his knees to bless him for his love
for his dead son. George came home much shocked that
the man should have knelt to him. One old man, whom
he used to go to for weeks and weeks during his long last
illness, really adored him, and, when George was away for
a short time, prayed that he might live till he saw him
again. And George was back before he died,"
Of this old man, he v/rites himself to his mother: —
" My old friend died on Saturday morning. I mean
Tom Pearse, for fifty years an honest labourer in this
176 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [chap.
pnrish. T am very sorry that (as he died in the short
hours) T covild not he with hhn at the last, hut very glad
that he died before I left Oflfley. So was he. He prayed
every day to die, not that he suffered, hut he had such a
strong faith that death would he much hetter. He said
to me almost the last time I saw him, ' I thought, sir, I
should have been home before this.' And when he was
taken worse at last, he aslced the nurse, ' Am I going home ?'
' Yes.' ' I'm so glad,' he answered, and died soon after.
What an euthanasia ! All good people call death going
home. ' Let me die the death of the righteous, and my
last end be like his.'"
Intercourse of the most sacred and intimate kind with
the old, and dying, and suffering of another station in life
is, however, far easier to a man of reserved temper than it
is with the young and healthy. The most difficult class
to reach in country villages, as in our great towns, is that
which is entering life, not that which is thinking of
quitting it. You may get young men together for cricket
or football, or even for readings, or in a club, and attain in the
process a certain familiarity with them, useful enough in
its way, but not approaching the kind of intimacy which
should exist between people passing their lives in the
same small commnnity. The effort to do anything more
with a class just emancipated from control, full of strength
and health, and as a rule suspicious of advances from those
in a rank above their own, must always be an exceedingly
difficult one to make for such a man as my brother, and is
rarely successful. He made it, and succeeded. During all
XI.] CONCLUSION. -177
the winter months, on every Sunday evening the young men
and the elder boys of the village were invited to his house,
and quite a number of them used to come regularly. Tliey
were received by him and his wife. First he would read a
passage of Scripture, and explain and comment on it, and
afterwards he or his wife read to them some amusing book.
He used to speak with the greatest delight of tlie pleasure
which these meetings seemed to give, and of their excellent
effect on his own relations with the young men and boys
who frequented them. When the time for separating
came, they used all to say the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's
Prayer, and the following short prayer, which he wrote ^
for the purpose : —
" Lord God, Thou knowest all things. Thou seest us
by night as well as by day. We pray Thee, for Christ's
sake, forgive us whatever we have done wrong this day.
May we be sorry for our sins, and believe in Jesus Christ,
who died for sinners. May the Holy Spirit make us holy.
Take care of us this night, whilst we are asleep. Bless
our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and all our
relations and friends, and do them good, for Christ's sake.
Help us to be good as long as we live, and wlien we die,
may we go to heaven and be happy for ever, because Christ
died for us. Amen."
If I were to write a volume, I could throw no clearer
light on the inner life of my brother than shines out of
^ Since this was printed I have heard that the prayer was not written
by him, but only adapted for the use of the boys from a collection of soma
Church Society.
N
178 MEMOIR OF A BROTHER. [ch. xi.
this short, simple prayer, written for village boys, and re-
peated with them week by week. Nor is there any other
picture of him that I would rather leave on your minds
than this. When I tliink of the help and strength which
lie has been to me and many more, the noble lines on All
Saints' Day, of the poet I have already quoted in this
memoir, seem to be haunting me, and with them I will
end.
" Such lived not in the past alone,
But thread to-day the unheeding street.
And stairs to sin and sorrow known
Sing to the welcome of their feet.
"The den they enter glows a shrine.
The grimy sash an oriel burns.
Their cup of water warms like wine,
Their speech is filled from heavenly urns.
"Around their brows to me appears
An aureole traced in tenderest light,
The rainbow gleam of smiles thro' tears.
In dying eyes by them made bright,
*' Of souls who shivered on the edge
Of that chill ford, repassed no more.
And in their mercy felt the pledge
And sweetness of the farther shore."
FINIS.
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