The knowledge that these things were so gave Whit bread a peculiar authority in the House of Commons. His independence was absolute and assured. He was, if any politician ever was, unbuyable; and though he was a sound Party man, on whom at a pinch his leaders could rely, he yet seemed to rise superior to the lower air of partisanship, and to lift debate into the atmosphere of conviction. The St. James's Gazette once confessed that his peculiar position in the House of Commons was one of those Parliamentary mysteries which no outsider could understand. He seemed, even amid the hottest controversies, to be rather an arbiter than an advocate. Once Mr. T. W. Russell, in a moment of inspiration, described him as "an umpire, perfectly impartial—except that he never gives his own side out." Whereupon Whitbread, with a quaint half-smile, whispered to the man sitting next to him: "That hit of 'T. W.'s' was not very bad." A singular tribute to Whitbread's influence, and the weight attaching to his counsel, is found in the fact that, in the autumn of 1885, before Mr. Gladstone had announced his conversion to Home Rule, Whitbread was one of the very few people (Goschen was another) to whom he confided his change of view. Of the estimation in which Whitbread was held by his neighbours, even after he had ceased to represent them in Parliament, the present writer once heard a ludicrous, but illuminating, instance. Among the men sentenced to death after the Jameson Raid was one connected by ties of family with Bedford. For a while his kinsfolk could not believe that he was really in danger; but, when ominous rumours began to thicken, one of his uncles said, with an air of grave resolve: "This is becoming serious about my nephew. If it goes on much longer, I shall have to write to Mr. Whitbread."
In the general course of politics Whitbread was a Whig, holding to the great principles of Civil and Religious Liberty, Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform; but he was a Whig with a difference. He stuck to the party after it had been permeated by Gladstonianism, advanced in Liberalism as he advanced in years, and became a convinced Home Ruler. His political prescience, founded on long experience and close observation, was remarkable. Soon after Lord Salisbury's accession to power in the summer of 1895, he said to the present writer: "I fancy that for two or three years the Government will go on quietly enough; and then, when they find their popularity waning, they will pick a quarrel with somebody, and go to war. It is always difficult for an Opposition to attack a Government which is conducting a war, and I think Chamberlain is just the man to take advantage of that difficulty."
In religion Whitbread was an Evangelical of the more liberal type, mistrusting extremes, and always on the friendliest terms with Nonconformists. As regards the affairs of common life, he was a most hospitable and courteous host; a thorough agriculturist, and a keen sportsman. His size and weight debarred him from hunting, but he was a first-rate shot, whether on the moor or in the stubble, and a keen yachtsman. At home and abroad, everywhere and in all things, he was a gentleman of the highest type, genial, dignified, and unassuming. Probity, benevolence, and public spirit were embodied in Samuel Whitbread.
VII
HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER
The loved and honoured friend whose name stands at the head of this section was the fourth son and, youngest child of Dr. George Butler, Dean of Peterborough, and sometime Head Master of Harrow. Montagu Butler was himself-educated at Harrow under Dr. Vaughan, afterwards the well-known Master of the Temple, and proved to be in many respects the ideal schoolboy. He won all the prizes for composition, prose and verse, Greek, Latin, and English. He gained the principal scholarship, and was Head of the School. Beside all this, he was a member of the Cricket Eleven and made the highest score for Harrow in the match against Eton at Lord's.
In July, 1851, Montagu Butler left Harrow, and in the following October entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a Scholar. He won the Bell University Scholarship, the Battie University Scholarship, the Browne Medal for a Greek Ode twice, the Camden Medal, Porson Prize, and First Member's Prize for a Latin Essay, and graduated as Senior Classic in 1855. Of such an undergraduate career a Fellowship at Trinity was the natural sequel, but Butler did not long reside at Cambridge. All through his boyhood and early manhood he had set his heart on a political career. He had a minute acquaintance with the political history of modern England, and his memory was stored with the masterpieces of political eloquence.
In 1856 he accepted the post of Private Secretary to the Right Hon. W. F. Cowper, afterwards Lord Mount Temple, and then President of the Board of Health in Lord Palmerston's Administration. In this office he served for two years, and then, retiring, he spent eleven months in foreign travel, visiting in turn the Tyrol, Venice, the Danube, Greece, Rome, Florence, and the Holy Land. During this period, he changed his plan of life, and in September, 1859, he was ordained Deacon by Bishop Lonsdale of Lichfield, on Letters Dimissory from Bishop Turton of Ely. His title was his Fellowship; but it was settled that the College should present him to the Vicarage of Great St. Mary's, Cambridge; and till it was vacant he was to have worked as a classical tutor in Trinity. Then came another change. "Dr. Vaughan's retirement," he wrote, "from the Head Mastership of Harrow startled us. We all took quietly for granted that he would stay on for years." However, this "startling" retirement took place, and there was a general agreement among friends of the School that Vaughan's favourite pupil, Montagu Butler, was the right man to succeed him. Accordingly, Butler was elected in November, 1859, though only twenty-six years old; and, with a view to the pastoral oversight of Harrow School, he was ordained priest, again by Bishop Lonsdale, at Advent, 1859.
In January, 1860, Montagu Butler entered on his new duties at Harrow, and there he spent five-and-twenty years of happy, strenuous, and serviceable life. He found 469 boys in the School; under his rule the numbers increased till they reached 600.
Butler's own culture was essentially classical, for he had been fashioned by Vaughan, who "thought in Greek," and he himself might almost have been said to think and feel in Latin elegiacs. But his scholarship was redeemed from pedantry by his wide reading, and by his genuine enthusiasm for all that is graceful in literature, modern as well as ancient. Under his rule the "grand, old, fortifying, classical curriculum," which Matthew Arnold satirized, fought hard and long for its monopoly; but gradually it had to yield. Butler's first concession was to relax the absurd rule which had made Latin versification obligatory on every boy in the School, whatever his gifts or tastes. At the same time he introduced the regular teaching of Natural Science, and in 1869 he created a "Modern Side." An even more important feature of his rule was the official encouragement given to the study of music, which, from an illicit indulgence practised in holes and corners, became, under the energetic management of Mr. John Farmer, a prime element in the life of the School.