Few sermons have ever impressed me so powerfully as this significant memorial of a life which lasted only nineteen years.
The morning and evening services in the Chapel were what is called "bright and cheerful"—in other words, extremely noisy and not very harmonious or reverent. We had two sermons every Sunday. The Head-master preached in the evening; the Assistant-masters in the morning. Occasionally, we had a stranger of repute. Dr. Butler's preaching I have already described, and also that of Farrar and Westcott. Mr. Steel's traditional discourses were in a class by themselves. But other preachers we had, not less remarkable. I distinctly remember a sermon by Mr. Sticktoright, who told us that we did not know in what way the world would be destroyed—it might be by fire, or it might be by water (though this latter alternative seems precluded by Genesis ix. 11). The Rev. James Robertson, afterwards Head-master of Haileybury, compared the difference between a dull boy and a clever boy to that between an ox and a dog. "To the ox, the universe comprises only the impassive blue above, and the edible green beneath; while the dog finds a world of excitement in hunting, and a demi-god in man." Dean Stanley, preaching on Trinity Sunday, 1868, thus explained away the doctrine of the Trinity—"God the Father is God in Nature. God the Son is God in History. God the Holy Ghost is God in the Conscience." And Thring of Uppingham bellowed an exposition of Psalm lxxviii. 70 with such surprising vigour that he acquired among us the affectionate nickname of "Old Sheepfolds." It is a pleasure to place in contrast with these absurdities the truly pastoral and moving sermons of Mr. John Smith, whose apostolic work at Harrow I have already commemorated. His paraphrase of 1. St. Peter iv. 7-8 still lingers in my ear—"Be watchful, be prayerful, be very kind." He is thus described on a Memorial Tablet in the Chapel:
To the Young a Father,
To friends in joy or grief a Brother,
To the poor, the suffering, and the tempted,
A minister of Hope and Strength.
Tried by more than common sorrows,
And upborne by more than common faith,
His holy life interpreted to many
The Mind which was in Christ Jesus,
The Promise of the Comforter,
And the Vision granted to the Pure in Heart.
It may seem odd that one should remember so much about sermons preached so long ago, but Bishop Welldon's testimony illustrates the point. "When I came to Harrow, I was greatly struck by the feeling of the boys for the weekly Sermon; they looked for it as an element in their lives, they attended to it, and passed judgment upon it." (I may remark in passing that Dr. Welldon promptly and wisely reduced the Sunday Sermons from two to one.)
But the day of days in Harrow Chapel was Founder's Day, October 10th, 1868, when the preacher at the Commemoration Service was Liddon, who had lately become famous by the Bampton Lectures of 1866. The scene and the sermon can never be forgotten. Prayers and hymns and thanksgivings for Founder and Benefactors had been duly performed, and we had listened with becoming solemnity to that droll chapter about "Such as found out musical tunes, and recited verses in writing." When the preacher entered the pulpit, his appearance instantly attracted attention. We had heard vaguely of him as "the great Oxford swell," but now that we saw him we felt a livelier interest. "He looks like a monk," one boy whispers to his neighbour; and indeed it is a better description than the speaker knows. The Oxford M.A. gown, worn over a cassock, is the Benedictine habit modified by time and place; the spare, thin figure suggests asceticism; the beautifully chiselled, sharply-pointed features, the close-shaved face, the tawny skin, the jet-black hair, remind us vaguely of something by Velasquez or Murillo, or of Ary Scheffer's picture of St. Augustine. And the interest aroused by sight is intensified by sound. The vibrant voice strikes like an electric shock. The exquisite, almost over-refined, articulation seems the very note of culture. The restrained passion which thrills through the disciplined utterance warns even the most heedless that something quite unlike the ordinary stuff of school-sermons is coming. "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." The speaker speaks of the blessedness and glory of boyhood; the splendid inheritance of a Public School built on Christian lines; the unequalled opportunities of learning while the faculties are still fresh and the mind is still receptive; the worthlessness of all merely secular attainment, however desirable, however necessary, when weighed in the balance against "the one thing needful." The congregation still are boys, but soon they will be men. Dark days will come, as Ecclesiastes warned—dark in various ways and senses, darkest when, at the University or elsewhere, we first are bidden to cast faith aside and to believe nothing but what can be demonstrated by "an appeal, in the last resort, to the organs of sense." Now is the time, and this is the place, so to "remember our Creator" that, come what may, we shall never be able to forget Him, or doubt His love, or question His revelation. The preacher leans far out from the pulpit, spreading himself, as it were, over the congregation, in an act of benediction. "From this place may Christ ever be preached, in the fulness of His creative, redemptive, and sacramental work. Here may you learn to remember Him in the days of your youth, and, in the last and most awful day of all, may He remember you."
Five minutes afterwards we are in the open air. Boys stare and gasp; masters hurry past, excited and loquacious. Notes are compared, and watches consulted. Liddon has preached for an hour, and the school must go without its dinner.
Enough has now been said about the Chapel and its memories. I must now turn to lighter themes. I remember once hearing Mrs. Procter, who was born in 1799 and died in 1888, say casually at a London dinner-party, when someone mentioned Harrow Speech-Day—"Ah! that used to be a pleasant day. The last time I was there I drove down with Lord Byron and Doctor Parr, who had been breakfasting with my step-father, Basil Montagu." This reminiscence seemed to carry one back some way, but I entirely agreed with Mrs. Procter. Speech-Day at Harrow has been for more than forty years one of my favourite holidays. In my time the present Speech-Room did not exist. The old Speech-Room, added to John Lyon's original building in 1819, was a well-proportioned hall, with panelled walls and large windows. Tiers of seats rose on three sides of the room; on the fourth was the platform, and just opposite the platform sat the Head-master, flanked right and left by distinguished visitors. There was a triumphal arch of evergreens over the gate, and the presence of the Beadle of the Parish Church, sumptuous in purple and gold, pointed to the historic but obsolescent connexion between the Parish and the School. The material of the "Speeches," so-called, was much the same as that provided at other schools—Shakespeare, Sheridan, Chatham, Aristophanes, Plautus, Molière, Schiller. An age-long desire to play the Trial in Pickwick was only attained, under the liberal rule of Dr. Wood, in 1909. At the Speeches, one caught one's first glimpse of celebrities whom one was destined to see at closer quarters in the years to come; and I never can forget the radiant beauty of "Spencer's Faery Queen,"[7] as I saw her at the Speeches of 1869.
While I am speaking of Celebrities, I must make a short digression from Speech-Day to Holidays. Dr. Vaughan, some time Head-master of Harrow and afterwards Dean of Llandaff, was in 1868 Vicar of Doncaster. My only brother was one of his curates; the Vaughans asked my mother to stay with them at the Vicarage, in order that she might see her son, then newly ordained, at his work; and, the visit falling in the Harrow holidays, they good-naturedly said that she might bring me with her. Dr. Vaughan was always exceedingly kind to boys, and one morning, on our way back from the daily service, he said to me—"Sir Grosvenor Le Draughte[8] has proposed to break his journey here, on his return from Scotland. Do you know him? No? Well—observe Sir Grosvenor. He is well worthy of observation. He is exactly what the hymn-book calls 'a worldling.'" The day advanced, and no Sir Grosvenor appeared. The Doctor came into the drawing-room repeatedly, asking if "that tiresome old gentleman had arrived," and Mrs. Vaughan plied him with topics of consolation—"Perhaps he has missed his train. Perhaps there has been an accident. Perhaps he has been taken ill on the journey"—but the Doctor shook his head and refused to be comforted. After dinner, we sat in an awe-struck silence, while the Vaughans, knowing the hour at which the last train from Scotland came in, and the length of time which it took to drive from the station, listened with ears erect. Presently the wheels of a fly came rumbling up, and Dr. Vaughan, exclaiming, "Our worst anticipations are realized!" hurried to the front door. Then, welcoming the aged traveller with open arms, he said in his blandest tones—"Now, my dear Sir Grosvenor, I know you must be dreadfully tired. You shall go to bed at once." Sir Grosvenor, who longed to sit up till midnight, telling anecdotes and drinking brandy-and-water, feebly remonstrated; but the remorseless Doctor led his unwilling captive upstairs. It was a triumph of the Suaviter in modo, and gave me an impressive lesson on the welcome which awaits self-invited guests, even when they are celebrities. But all this is a parenthesis.
I should be shamefully ungrateful to a place of peculiar enjoyment if I forbore to mention the Library at Harrow. It was opened in 1863, as a Memorial of Dr. Vaughan's Head-mastership, and its delicious bow-window, looking towards Hampstead, was my favourite resort. On whole-holidays, when others were playing cricket, I used to read there for hours at a stretch; and gratified my insatiable thirst for Biographies, Memoirs, and Encyclopædias. The Library was also the home of the Debating Society, and there I moved, forty-two years ago, that a Hereditary Legislative Body is incompatible with free institutions; and supported the present Bishop of Oxford in declaring that a Republic is the best form of Government. The mention of the Debating Society leads me to the subject of Politics. I have said in a former chapter that the Conservative Reform Bill of 1867 was the first political event which interested me. It was a stirring time all over the world, in France, in Italy, and in Mexico. There were rebellions and rumours of rebellion. Monarchical institutions were threatened. Secret Societies were in full activity. The whole social order seemed to be passing through a crisis, and I, like the Abbé Siéyes, fell to framing constitutions; my favourite scheme being a Republic, with a President elected for life, and a Legislature chosen by universal suffrage. But all these dreams were dispelled by the realities of my new life at Harrow, and, for a while, I perforce thought more of Imperial than of Papal Rome, of Greek than of English Republics. But in the summer of 1868, Mr. Gladstone's first attack on the Irish Church caused such an excitement as I had never before known. It was a pitched battle between the two great Parties of the State, and I was an enthusiastic follower of the Gladstonian standard. In November 1868 came the General Election which was to decide the issue. Of course Harrow, like all other schools, was Tory as the sea is salt. Out of five hundred boys, I can only recall five who showed the Liberal colour. These were the present Lord Grey; Walter Leaf, the Homeric Scholar; W. A. Meek, now Recorder of York; M. G. Dauglish, who edited the "Harrow Register," and myself. On the polling day I received my "Baptism of Fire," or rather of mud, being rolled over and over in the attempt to tear my colours from me. The Tory colour was red; the Liberal was blue; and my mother, chancing to drive through Harrow with the light blue carriage-wheels which my family have always used, was playfully but loudly hissed by wearers of the red rosette. Among the masters, political opinion was divided. Mr. Young, whom I quoted just now, was a Liberal, and a Tory boy called Freddy Bennet (brother of the present Lord Tankerville) covered himself with glory by pinning a red streamer to the back of Young's gown while he was calling "Bill."