The account that Mr. W. L. Sargant gives of the school is not so favourable.[54]
“Hazelwood was so different from other schools, that there would inevitably be great varieties of opinion as to its merits. The men educated there have not generally done it justice, and I confess that I formerly shared in their depreciation of it; yet, when I once spoke slightingly of it to a near relative who had known me from childhood, he objected that so competent a judge as my father was well pleased to get such an education for me. I fancy that the Hills taught us to be unjust to themselves—that they stimulated us to aspire to a higher degree of excellence than they enabled us to reach; that they excited a thirst they could not quench, and thus sent us away with a painful consciousness of deficiencies.”
In another passage he writes: “Whatever fifty years ago might be the merits of Hill Top, it was a gain to a boy to be in daily intercourse with men of such ability.” He goes on to say:—
“By juries and committees, by marks, and by appeals to a sense of honour, discipline was maintained. But this was done, I think, at too great a sacrifice. The thoughtlessness, the spring, the elation of childhood, were taken from us; we were premature men.... The school was, in truth, a moral hot-bed, which forced us into a precocious imitation of maturity. I have heard an Oxford friend say that Arnold’s men had a little of the prig about them. I know too well that some of us had a great deal of the prig about us. I have often wished that I had the ‘giftie to see ourselves as others see us;’ but I have comforted myself with observing that in later life my schoolfellows (perhaps, therefore, I myself) outgrew this unamiable character. The Hazelwood constitution, discipline, instruction, were in a perpetual flux: the right to-day was wrong to-morrow; we learnt to criticise and doubt everything established; ‘whatever is, is wrong,’ might have been our motto. We had a conceit that we could amend everything, from education to driving a horse. This constituted our priggism.”
Rowland Hill as a schoolmaster was, in his way, as stern as Arnold. He voluntarily, indeed, gave up power, but he constantly held that a master must be first feared and then loved. He was certainly always feared by his pupils, and always respected; but he was never loved. Tender though his inward nature was, yet for their love he cared but little. He aimed at their welfare. In the discharge of the duty which he owed them, he was willing to make any sacrifice of his time, his liberty, and his pleasures. He ever strove to treat them with the strictest justice. But he asked for no return of their affection. Should he receive it, he was gratified; but was it refused him, he could do without it. No small insight into his character is given by the following passage in “Public Education”:—
“We perfectly agree with Rousseau, that the severest evil which children suffer is the bondage which they endure. We also agree with him, that the restraints of necessity are more easily borne than those which are imposed by the will of others. ‘It is in the nature of man,’ says he, ‘to endure patiently the absolute necessity of his circumstances.’ ‘It is all gone,’ is an answer against which a child never objects; at least, if he believes it to be true.’[55] Experience must establish the truth of this position in every mind; we all know that a child leaves off crying for the moon years before he submits without a struggle to the commands of his parents. The cause of this difference arises, we think, partly from the uniform regularity with which the natural restraints operate, and partly because the child observes that all around him are subjected to the same laws. If the child had ever had the moon, or if it had ever seen the moon in the possession of another person, it would not be so patient under the privation. Sagacious parents are aware of this, and take every means of showing their children that their determinations are as unalterable as those of nature; and certainly much may be done by prudently avoiding hasty determinations with respect to children, and by inflexibly persisting in all determinations when made.”
In governing his school, and in later years in governing all who were placed under his authority, this was the rule that he always aimed at carrying out. By nature, indeed, he was far too hasty in coming to a determination. Nay, he was hot-tempered, and even passionate. No sooner had he discovered his fault than he set about to find for it a cure. One of the methods that he took was certainly very strange. “He gave public notice to the boys that if any one saw him in a passion he might come up and tell him so; receiving a small reward for so doing. This reward was obtained more than once.” He was so rigidly just that no boy who had played the part of Gil Blas would have found in him an Archbishop of Granada. By his Code of Laws he still further put himself under restraint. Every breach of school law, every offence against a master, had its exact penalty fixed. But when once the penalty had been incurred, it was enforced to the full. His determinations, indeed, were as unalterable as those of nature. His strong will and his undaunted courage could not but have won his pupils’ respect. One of them has told me how he remembers a day at Hill Top, when a big fellow, who could easily have knocked his master down, set him at defiance before all the boys. “Rowland Hill ran up to him, seized him by the collar, and said, ‘If you don’t do it this moment, I will knock you down.’ The fellow was cowed in a moment, and, though he was by far the stronger of the two, at once obeyed.” This happened, I should add, in the days before the Constitution had been promulgated, and while the rod still flourished. No doubt he would have been better liked had he not been so over-worked and so over-weary. “There was always in him,” another of his pupils tells me, “a nervous fidgetiness that things should be done rightly.” His impatience arose from an over-wrought brain. But few signs of it were seen by those who knew him only in later life in his hours of repose. Life’s evening brought him calm.
Though the system that I have thus described was mainly Rowland’s, yet at no time was he without the help of at least one of his brothers in the management of the school. Matthew withdrew at an early period to go to the Bar. His place was taken by the fourth brother, Arthur. I find the following record in Rowland’s Journal:—
“Arthur has made himself master of Latin by very intense application. This circumstance is a considerable relief to my mind. When I first determined to follow, at least for the first part of my life, the business of a schoolmaster, I had no doubt that Matthew would remain with us, and that eventually we should become partners in the management of the school. As Matthew was a good classical scholar, I thought that he would take that department of instruction, and that I had better pursue the mathematics, a study better suited to my taste than any other. When Matthew entered as a student at Lincoln’s Inn, all my plans and hopes were disarranged. I have been long undetermined how to proceed, and lately I made up my mind to pursue the study of languages, as I considered a classical knowledge as absolutely necessary to the master of a school; but now Arthur has taken that department, and as I have no doubt he will manage it well, I shall pursue my mathematical studies with increased ardour.”
The young master soon gave proof of his vigour:—