Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a selection from his letters and a memoir

by Arthur Hugh Clough

‘In October Arthur went to school at Chester, and my father, mother, George and I sailed again to Charleston. This was practically the end of Arthur’s childhood.

‘Our father was most affectionate, loving, and watchful over his children. It was from him that we received many of the smaller cares which usually come from a mother, especially on the long voyages, during which my mother suffered greatly, when he took the care of us almost entirely, and comforted us in rough storms. This watchful and tender care for the feelings of others Arthur inherited in the largest degree from his father. My father was very lively, and fond of society and amusement. He liked life and change, and did not care much for reading. He had a high sense of honour, but was venturesome and over sanguine, and when once his mind was set on anything, he was not to be turned from it, nor was he given to counting consequences. My mother was very different. She cared little for general society, but had a few fast friends to whom she was strongly attached. In her tastes and habits she was rigidly simple; this harmonised with the stern integrity which was the foundation of her character. She was very fond of reading, especially works on religious subjects, poetry and history; and she greatly enjoyed beautiful scenery, and visiting places which had any historical associations. She loved what was grand, noble, and enterprising, and was truly religious. She early taught us about God and duty, and having such a loving earthly father, it was not difficult to look up to a Heavenly one. She loved to dwell on all that was stern and noble. Leonidas at Thermopylæ, and Epaminondas accepting the lowliest offices and doing them as a duty to his country; the sufferings of the martyrs, and the struggles of the Protestants, were among her favourite subjects. There was an enthusiasm about her that took hold of us, and made us see vividly the things that she taught us. But with this love of the terrible and grand she was altogether a woman clinging to and leaning on our father. When he left us Arthur became her pet and her companion. I cannot but think that her love, her influence, and her teaching had much to do with forming his character.’

From Charleston, as appears from what precedes, Arthur Clough went, in November 1828, to school at Chester; and, in the summer of 1829, he was removed to Rugby. His eldest brother, Charles, was with him at both schools, but Charles left Rugby before him, as early as the year 1831.

During these first years he was a somewhat grave and studious boy, not without tastes for walking, shooting, and sight-seeing, but with little capacity for play and for mixing with others, and with more of varied intellectual interest than usual with boys. He seems to have had a fondness for drawing; and he was perpetually writing verses, not remarkable except for a certain ease of expression and for a power of running on, not common at that early age. The influence of Dr. Arnold on his character was powerful, and continued to increase. We find him mounting rapidly through the lower forms and beginning to get prizes. It is also clear that, besides this application to his actual work, he exerted himself with great energy in the endeavour to improve the school and to influence his companions for good. This remarkable interest in Rugby matters is partly to be explained by the fact that he had no near home interests to distract his attention; partly it must be referred to that strong sense of moral responsibility which Arnold, first among schoolmasters, seems to have impressed upon his pupils.

Too early a strain seems to have been put upon him, especially as he had not till 1836 any home to go to in his holidays. Of kind and affectionate relations, who received him hospitably, there were plenty. His uncles, the Rev. Charles Clough, then Vicar of Mold, and the Rev. Alfred Clough, then Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, always showed him the greatest kindness; and he had a large connection of friendly cousins, his visits among whom gave him many opportunities for journeys into Yorkshire and in different parts of Wales. How lively a recollection he retained of this period of his life, and of the incidents of his holiday excursions, may be gathered from the picture he has painted in ‘Primitiæ,’ the first tale of ‘Mari Magno.’ He did thus enjoy much variety, but he lacked rest; and his family instincts and affections were so strong, that he evidently suffered greatly through his separation from those nearest and dearest to him. That a great strain and sense of repression were upon him at this time is clear from a letter written after the interval of twenty years. The self-reliance and self-adaptation which most men acquire in mature life were, by the circumstances of his family, forced upon him in his early youth.

In July 1831, his father and mother, sister, and youngest brother, came over for a visit from Charleston, and he spent his holidays with them; after which he went back to school, this time without his eldest brother. His sister remembers how their stay was unexpectedly prolonged till the beginning of the following Christmas holidays, by a delay in finding a ship, and how Arthur, hearing this, rushed off to Liverpool to spend their last two or three days together, bringing his new prize, Johnson’s ‘Lives of the Poets,’ in his bag, to show his mother, to whom it was his greatest enjoyment to pour himself out. His mother suffered greatly from the voyages, and from the uprooting consequent on such great changes; and she resolved never again to come to England till it should be her home. His father paid one more visit to England, alone, in 1833, when he took his three sons to London and over to Paris.

At school Arthur continued to prosper. He gained a scholarship, open to the whole school under fourteen, the only one which then existed. He was at the head of the fifth form at fifteen; and as sixteen was the earliest age at which boys were then admitted into the sixth, he had to wait a whole year for this. It was probably a misfortune to him that this rule prevented his advance through the school, and his proceeding at once to Oxford, as he was much exhausted by the intense interest and labour he expended on his moral work among the boys, and also on the ‘Rugby Magazine.’ This was a periodical which absorbed much of the writing powers of the cleverer boys, and to which he contributed constantly, chiefly poetry. For a considerable time he was also its editor. Besides this he took an active part in some of the school games, and his name is handed down in William Arnold’s ‘Rules of Football’ as the best goal-keeper on record. He was also one of the first swimmers in the school, and was a very good runner, in spite of a weakness in his ankles, which prevented his attaining proficiency in many games. He made at this time several close and intimate friendships, and gained a very high character among his schoolfellows in general; a sign of which is given by the story told by some of them at the time, that, when he left school for college, almost every boy at Rugby contrived to shake hands with him at parting. ‘The grace of his character when he was a boy,’ says one of his friends, ‘can be estimated by nothing so well as by the force with which he attracted the attachment of some, and the jealousy or encroachment of others.’ Another says: ‘I always said that his face was quite another thing from any of those of our own generation; the mixture of width and sweetness was then quite as marked as it was later.’ Dr. Arnold also regarded him with increasing interest and satisfaction; and, as another friend describes, at the yearly speeches, in the last year of Clough’s residence, he broke the rule of silence to which he almost invariably adhered in the delivery of prizes, and congratulated him on having gained every honour which Rugby could bestow, and done the highest credit to his school at the University. This was in allusion to his having just gained the Balliol scholarship, then and now the highest honour which a schoolboy could obtain. Some months previous to this (in July 1836), his father, mother, and sister came over from America, to settle in Liverpool; and thenceforth Arthur was no longer without a home in England. His sister describes him as she then saw him, after an interval of five years, as a blooming youth of seventeen, with an abundance of dark soft hair, a fresh complexion, much colour, and shining eyes full of animation. Though kind and affectionate as ever in his family, they now found him changed in mind; eager and interested in many fresh subjects; full of growing force, and of the fervour of youthful conviction. With boyish vehemence he stood forth on all occasions as the devoted disciple of his beloved master, Dr. Arnold, and the exponent of his various theories of church government and politics.

In November 1836 he had gained the Balliol scholarship, and the October following he went into residence at Oxford. There he soon made friends with some of those with whom he became afterwards intimate—Mr. Ward, Sir B. Brodie, and Professor Jowett;—a little later, with Dr. Temple and Professor Shairp; and, later still, with Mr. T. Walrond and the two eldest sons of Dr. Arnold, whose names frequently occur in his correspondence.

Now came the time which we regard as essentially the turning-point of his life. He began his residence at Oxford when the University was stirred to its depths by the great Tractarian movement. Dr. Newman was in the fulness of his popularity, preaching at St. Mary’s, and in pamphlets, reviews, and verses continually pouring forth eloquent appeals to every kind of motive that could influence men’s minds. Mr. Ward one of Clough’s first friends at Oxford, was, as is well known, among the foremost of the party; and thus, at the very entrance into his new life, he was at once thrown into the very vortex of discussion. Something of the same fate which, as a young boy, forced on him a too early self-reliance and independence in matters of conduct, followed him here; and the accident of his passing from the Rugby of Arnold to the Oxford of Newman and Ward, drove him, while he ought to have been devoting himself to the ordinary work of an undergraduate reading for honours, and before he had attained his full intellectual development, to examine and in some degree draw conclusions concerning the deepest subjects that can occupy the human mind. This must be felt to have been a serious disadvantage. As his friend Mr. Ward himself says with much feeling, when looking back on that time after many years, ‘What was before all things to have been desired for him, was that during his undergraduate career he should have given himself up thoroughly to his classical and mathematical studies, and kept himself from plunging prematurely into the theological controversies then so rife at Oxford. Thus he would have been saved from all injury to the gradual and healthy growth of his mind and character. It is my own very strong impression that, had this been permitted, his future course of thought and speculation would have been essentially different from what it was in fact. Drawn as it were peremptorily, when a young man just coming up to college, into a decision upon questions the most important that can occupy the mind, the result was not surprising. After this premature forcing of Clough’s mind, there came a reaction. His intellectual perplexity preyed heavily on his spirits, and grievously interfered with his studies.’

Another cause, also, which rendered him less able to endure the various demands made upon him in his new life was, that the strain of his school-work and interests at Rugby had evidently considerably exhausted him.