Memoir of a Brother

by Thomas Hughes

My brother, after taking his degree, remained up at Oxford in lodgings, attending lectures; and, when I went out of College in the term before my own examination, I joined him, and once again we found ourselves living in a common sitting room. I think it was a very great pleasure to both of us; and as soon as my troubles in the Schools were over, and the short leisure time which generally follows that event had set in, we began to talk over subjects which had hitherto been scarcely mentioned between us, but which, on the threshold of active life, were becoming of absorbing interest. In the previous autumn I had made a tour with a pupil in the North of England and Scotland. I had gone, by choice, to commercial hotels in several of the large northern towns, as I had discovered that commercial rooms were the most likely places for political discussion, and was anxious to talk over the great question of that day with the very vigorous and able gentlemen who frequented them. The Anti-Corn-Law agitation was then at its height, and, to cut a long story short, I had come back from the North an ardent Freetrader. In other directions also I was rapidly falling away from the political faith in which we had been brought up. I am not conscious, indeed I do not believe, that Arnold’s influence was ever brought to bear directly on English politics, in the case even of those boys who (like my brother and myself) came specially under it, in his own house, and in the sixth form. What he did for us was, to make us think on the politics of Israel, and Rome, and Greece, leaving us free to apply the lessons he taught us in these, as best we could, to our own country. But now his life had been published, and had come like a revelation to many of us; explaining so much that had appeared inexplicable, and throwing a white light upon great sections, both of the world which we had realized more or less through the classics, and the world which was lying under our eyes, and all around us, and which we now began, for the first time, to recognize as one and the same.

The noble side of democracy was carrying me away. I was haunted by Arnold’s famous sentence, “If there is one truth short of the highest for which I would gladly die, it is democracy without Jacobinism;” and “the People’s Charter” was beginning to have strange attractions for me.

It was just one of those crises in one’s life in which nothing is so useful, or healthy, for one, as coming into direct and constant contact with an intellect stronger than one’s own, which looks at the same subjects from a widely different standpoint.

Now, in the Anti-Corn-Law agitation the leaders of the League were in the habit of using very violent language. Their speeches were full of vehement attacks on the landlords and farmers of England, and of pictures of country life as an inert mass of selfishness, tyranny, and stupidity. My brother’s hatred of exaggeration and unfairness revolted against all this wild talk; and his steady appeal to facts known to us both often staggered my new convictions. On the general economical question, imperfectly as I understood it, I think I often staggered him. But, on the other hand, when he appealed to the example of a dozen landlords whom I knew (including your grandfather), and made me look at the actual relations between them and their tenants and their labourers, and ask myself whether these statements were not utterly untrue in their case and in the county we knew; whether they were not probably just as untrue of other counties; and, if that were so, whether a cause which needed such libels to support it could be a just one, I was often in my turn sadly troubled for a reply.

Again, though Arnold’s life influenced him quite as powerfully as it did me, it was in quite a different direction, strengthening specially in him the reverence for national life, and for the laws, traditions, and customs with which it is interwoven, and of which it is the expression. Somehow, his natural dislike to change, and preference for the old ways, seemed to gain as much strength and nourishment from the teaching and example of our old master, as the desire and hope for radical reforms did in me. As for democracy, not even Arnold’s dictum could move him. “The Demos” was for him always, the fatuous old man, with two oboli in his cheek, and a wide ear for the grossest flatteries which Cleon or the Sausage-seller could pour into it. Those of you who have begun Aristophanes will know to what I allude. Now, if he had been a man who had any great reverence for rank or privilege, or who had no sympathies with or care for the poor, or who was not roused to indignation by any act of oppression or tyranny, in the frame of mind I was in I should have cared very little for anything he might have urged. But, knowing as I did that the fact was precisely the reverse—that no man I had ever met was more indifferent to rank and title, more full of sympathy and kindliness to all below him, or more indignant at anything which savoured of injustice—I was obliged to admit that the truth could not be all on my side, and to question my own new faith far more carefully than I should have done otherwise.

And so this was the last good deed which he did for me when our ways in life parted for the first time, and I went up to London to read for the Bar, while he remained at Oxford. His plans were not fixed beyond the summer. He had promised to take two or three Oriel men to Scotland on a reading party, and accordingly went with them to Oban in July; and, while there, accepted an offer, which came to him I scarcely know how, to take charge of the sons of the late Mr. Beaumont at Harrow, as their private tutor.

I must own I was much annoyed at the time when I heard of this resolution. I could see no reason for it, and many against it. Here was he, probably the most popular man of his day at Oxford, almost sure of a fellowship if he chose to stay up and read for it, one of the best oars and cricketers in England, a fine sportsman, and enjoying all these things thoroughly, and with the command of as much as he chose to take of them, deliberately shelving himself as the tutor of three young boys. I am afraid there was also a grain of snobbishness at the bottom of my dislike to the arrangement. Private tutors were looked upon then by young men—I hope it is so no longer—as a sort of upper servants; and I was weak enough, notwithstanding my newly acquired liberalism, to regard this move of George’s as a sort of loss of caste. He was my eldest brother, and I was very fond and proud of him. I was sure he would distinguish himself in any profession he chose to follow, while there was no absolute need of his following any; and it provoked me to think of his making what I thought a false move, and throwing away some of the best years of his life.

However, I knew it was useless to remonstrate, as he had made up his mind, and so held my tongue, and came to see that he was quite right. It was not till nearly three years later, when his engagement was over and he had entered at Doctors’ Commons, that I came to understand and appreciate his motives. The first of these you may gather from the following extract from a letter of your grandfather’s, dated February 23rd, 1849:—“George, it seems, is unusually lively at the idea of going tooth and nail to work with men instead of boys; and, now that he has for three years gratified his whim of keeping himself wholly off my hands, consents to be assisted like his brothers.” This “whim” of proving to his own satisfaction that he was worth his keep, and could make his own living, is not a very usual one nowadays, when most young Englishmen seem to assume that they have a natural right to maintenance at the expense of some one. He had then six other brothers, on whom the example was not altogether thrown away, though none of us were ever able quite to come up to it. It had the effect, however, of making us thoughtful in the matter of expenditure; and, consequently, of the four who went to the universities, and two who entered the army, not one got into any money difficulties.

But George had other motives for this step besides the “whim” of independence. He wished for leisure to make up his mind whether he should take holy orders, as he had at one time intended to do. And, since leaving Rugby, he had had no time either for the study of modern languages or for general reading, and he was anxious to make up his arrears in both of these directions. This engagement would give him the leisure he wanted, while keeping him at regular routine work. His resolve, though taken at the risk of throwing himself back some years in his future profession, whatever that might be, was thoroughly characteristic of him, and owing, I think, in great measure to your grandfather’s own precepts. He was fond of telling us family stories, and there was none of these of which he was more proud than that of his maternal great-grandmother. This good lady was the widow of George Watts, Vicar of Uffington, a younger son himself, who died at the age of forty-two, leaving her in very poor circumstances. She sold off everything, and invested the proceeds in stocking a large dairy farm in the village where she had lived as the great lady, there being no resident squire in the parish. If any of you ever care to make a pilgrimage to the place, you will find the farmhouse, which she occupied nearly 200 years ago, close to the fish-pond in Uffington. She was well connected, and her friends tried to persuade her not to give up her old habits; but she steadily refused all visiting, though she was glad to give them a cup of chocolate, or the like, when they chose to call on her. By attending to her business, rising early and working late, she managed to portion her daughter, and give her son a Cambridge education, by which he profited, and died Master of the Temple, where you may see his monument. He was true to his mother’s training, and sacrificed good chances of further preferment, by preaching a sermon at Whitehall before George II. and his mistress, on Court vices, on the text, “And Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man.” Such stories, drunk in by a boy of a quiet, self-contained, thorough nature, were sure to have their effect; and this “whim” of George’s was one of their first-fruits in his case. I must add, that there is no family tradition which I would sooner see grow into an article of faith with all of you than this of thriftiness, and independence, as points of honour. So long as you are in statu pupillari, of course you must live at the expense of your friends; but you may do so either honestly, or dishonestly. A boy, or young man, born and bred a gentleman, ought to feel that there is an honourable contract between him and his friends; their part being to pay his bills, and make him such an allowance as they can afford, and think right, and sufficient; his, to work steadily, and not to get in debt, or cultivate habits and indulge tastes which he cannot afford. You will see through life all sorts of contemptible ostentation and shiftlessness on every side of you. Nurses, if they are allowed, begin with fiddle-faddling about children, till they make them utterly helpless, unable to do anything for themselves, and thinking such helplessness a fine thing. Ladies’ maids, grooms, valets, flunkeys, keepers, carry on the training as they get older. Even at public schools I can see this extravagance and shiftlessness growing in every direction. There are all sorts of ridiculous expenses, in the shape of costumes and upholstery of one kind or another, which are always increasing. The machinery of games gets every year more elaborate. When I was in the eleven at Rugby, we “kept big-side” ourselves; that is to say, we did all the rolling, watering, and attending to the ground. We chose and prepared our own wickets, and marked out our own creases, for every match. We had no “professional” and no “pavilion,” but taught ourselves to play; and when a strange eleven was coming to play in the school close, asked the Doctor for one of the schools, in which we sat them down to a plain cold dinner. I don’t say that you have not better grounds, and are not more regularly trained cricketers now; but it has cost a great deal in many ways, and the game has been turned into a profession. Now, one set of boys plays just like another; then, each, of the great schools had its own peculiar style, by which you could distinguish it from the rest. And, after you leave school, you will find the same thing in more contemptible forms, at the Universities and in the world. You can’t alter society, or hinder people in general from being helpless, and vulgar—from letting themselves fall into slavery to the things about them if they are rich, or from aping the habits and vices of the rich if they are poor. But you may live simple manly lives yourselves, speaking your own thought, paying your own way, and doing your own work, whatever that may be. You will remain gentlemen so long as you follow these rules, if you have to sweep a crossing for your livelihood. You will not remain gentlemen in anything but the name, if you depart from them, though you may be set to govern a kingdom. And whenever the temptation comes to you to swerve from them, think of the subject of this memoir, of the old lady in the farmhouse by Uffington fish-pond, and the tablet in the Temple Church.

Such a resolution as that which, as I have just shown you, was taken by my brother at the end of his residence at Oxford, is always a turning-point in character. If faithfully and thoroughly carried out, it will strengthen the whole man; lifting him on to a new plane, as it were, and enabling him, without abruptly breaking away from his old life, to look at its surroundings from a higher standpoint, and so to get a new and a truer perspective. If repented of, or acted out half-heartedly, it is apt to impair a man’s usefulness sadly, to confuse his judgment, and soften the fibre of his will. He gets to look back upon his former pursuits with an exaggerated fondness, and to let them gradually creep back, till they get a stronger hold on him than ever, so that he never learns to put them in their right place at all. The moral of which to you boys is—think well over your important steps in life, and, having made up your minds, never look behind. George never did. From Oban he writes home: “My forthcoming engagement occupies all my thoughts, and indeed a good deal of my time; for if I intend to succeed, I must be well up in everything. I shall not, therefore, be able to make many excursions from Oban.” Your grandfather had been a friend of Sir Walter Scott, and had brought us up on his works; and had suggested to George that this would be a good opportunity for visiting a number of the spots immortalized by the Wizard of the North. This was his answer.