The Psalmist fixed three score and ten years as the limit of man’s age; but he did not go into the question of efficiency. That has been settled with less liberality by the rules of the Civil Service, which “pluck away five lagging winters and five wanton springs” from the more generous sum, and decree that survivors shall be put on the Pension List at 65.
But this, as Isabella (she of Measure for Measure) would say, is for the soldier: the captain is free. The Prime Minister[52] is five years my senior: the Secretary for India, and the late Secretary for Ireland, now Ambassador in Washington, took their degrees at Oxford in my first or second year. These hoary statesmen, still as I write, flourish like green bay-trees, and I am become a lean and slippered pantaloon. For these high offices, says the Treasury, there is no need of restriction; but for posts requiring activity and intelligence (such as the Inspectorate of schools) there must be an age limit.
Nay, more: a later circular of the Board regrets that men should be kept on to 65 when “in many cases they have lost that freshness and originality which, &c., &c.” And it proposes to cut down the limit by degrees to 60.
On the other hand, I have read that the Prime Minister has appointed one right reverend gentleman, aged 67, to be Bishop of A.; another reverend gentleman, aged 71, to be Dean of B.; and a third, who graduated a year before me, to be Bishop of C. But the Premier himself is 71, and this alters a man’s point of view. I admit that a dean requires little freshness and originality: but in the annals of another branch of the public service I read, that in 1857, when the Indian Mutiny broke out, the Government asked Sir Colin Campbell to take command of the British forces in India, he being then 65, and that he started in 24 hours.
“It’s Tommy this an’ Tommy that, an’ Tommy go away,
But it’s good grey ’eaded ’ero, when the band begins to play.”
I have taken a slight liberty with Mr. Kipling’s lines.
However, the arrangement suited me admirably, and it is only to preserve my British right to grumble, that I grumble. I had intended to retire at the age of sixty, when I became eligible for a pension: but, like Andrew Fairservice, whom I have already twice quoted, I had “e’en daikered on frae year’s end to year’s end.” Therefore when the spring of 1906 clearly revealed to me that the coming December would bring me freedom, I made no complaint. That spring had added Salford, with 220,000 people, to my already enormous family. Salford, be it known to southern readers, adjoins Manchester much as Westminster adjoins London, but in part as Westminster adjoins Lambeth; for the Irwell is the boundary for some distance. Salford is a County Borough with three members of Parliament: there is no visible boundary between the Manchester and Salford types of M.P.: they have all bathed in Irwell. Nor is there any visible boundary between the two styles of school architecture: there, too, Manchester has set the fashion, and Salford, nimium vicina Cremonae, has followed it; but Salford, being the poor relation, is in a more deplorable state. Educationally, however, Salford is now full of zeal. We got on very well together, and—so far—I should have been glad to stay for another six months, in order to weld together the inspecting machinery of the two towns. “There’s aye something to saw that I would like to see sawn, or something to maw that I would like to see mawn, or something to ripe that I would like to see ripen,” said the same Andrew; but it could not be. My hands were full. I yearned to empty them, and fold them, and write no more reports with them. The prospect of another November in Manchester was unendurable, and I determined to retire on October 1st, thus incidentally relieving the country of the burden of maintaining me on the active staff for the two months before my birthday. “What loss is it to be rid of care?” said the deposed Richard II.
But the Board of Education, which would wrangle doggedly for three weeks about a charge of sixpence in travelling expenses, is both considerate and generous in greater matters. It was, they said, convenient to them that changes should be made at the end of the summer holidays, and if I liked to go at the end of September, they would give me “leave of absence” with full pay for the remaining two months. I gratefully accepted this really handsome offer: bought a new bicycle with the latest improvements to carry my tottering limbs, and went off to the Isle of Man to prove it.
On my previous visits to the island I had relied on trains and carriages, and had found some parts difficult of access. With a bicycle exploration is easy. There are rudimentary railways, which put one down at convenient spots, and thence there are good roads to nearly all the schools. It is advisable to make the journey agree with the wind, if possible, for the breeze is often fresh; but, with so much caution, there is unbounded delight. Two journeys stand out in my memory: one in the wild flat country to the north of the island, from sea to sea, and finally over T. E. Brown’s Ballaugh Curragh: the other from Peel over the shoulder of I forget what hill, and then with free running wheel for miles down a smooth road to Port Erin. It was June, and I was only sixty-four.
Here let me record an event which certainly does not belong to the island, but may be conveniently hidden away here. I had been cycling, and inspecting, and cycling again all day, and I was weary as I got nearer home. There was a long stretch of smooth footpath, and no one in sight: the prospect of relief from “the ’ammer, ’ammer of the ’ard ’igh road” tempted me, and I strayed from the macadamised road of virtue to the cinder path of illegality. Suddenly a policeman shot out from a side lane and blocked my path. He demanded my name, and wanted to know whether the high road was not a good high road. I praised his high road fulsomely, but I went on to point out that I had been out all day, riding twenty miles on H.M. Service, and that I was wearied in doing good works. And I put it to him whether he did not think that members of the Civil Service, like himself and me, were entitled to some little indulgence. He was much moved, but not more than an official should be moved. He could not admit the justice of my plea, but he would “name it to the sergeant.” I heard no more of it, and I asked no questions.