Many solvers have puzzled over the last line; and yet nothing could more accurately describe a slice of bread toasted on both sides and then eaten.
I think that the thing which struck me most by way of contrast between the Balliol of my own time and the same College when my dear son Alfred was there, and Strachan-Davidson, although not yet Master, was its ruling spirit, was the comradeship and real intimacy and affection which subsisted between the so-called Dons and the undergraduates. Their relations were more like those of elder and younger brothers of the same family than those of tutors and pupils. I remember one occasion when my son was confined to bed with a complication which proved slight, but might have been dangerous. I was written to, and hastened to the bedside, where I found Strachan-Davidson sitting and helping to wile away the irksomeness of the enforced confinement with his bright smile and cheerful flow of conversation and anecdote. I afterwards found that this incident was typical of the relations which subsisted between tutors and undergraduates. My boy always spoke of them with no want of respect, but with all the intimacy and frankness bred by understanding companionship, and he and all his contemporaries, after leaving, voluntarily contributed to the fund so nobly headed by Lord Newlands to increase the inadequate endowment of the College. Perhaps I may be pardoned a reference rather personal to myself, but I cannot forget that my last communication from the Master was a most touching and sympathetic letter when that beloved son fell at the head of his company on the blood-stained field of Loos. ‘Another name,’ wrote Strachan-Davidson, ‘on the list of honour on the Chapel door; no College gathering will ever be the same without our beloved “Tortoise”’; and with his dear words of sympathy he enclosed the prayer used daily at the College services, a model form of thanksgiving and intercession in which I seem to trace his inspiring spirit of lofty courage and resignation:
‘O God, with whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, we give Thee thanks for our brethren the members of this College who have willingly offered themselves, and have laid down their lives for us and for our country, and for the liberty of the world. Give us grace to follow their good example, that we may never lose heart, but may bear with patience and courage, as these have done, whatever Thy Providence calls upon us to endure. Comfort the bereaved, and grant to all of us that our afflictions may purify our hearts and minds to Thy glory. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
The Dons of my time were a distinguished body enough, brilliant scholars, kindly and sympathetic advisers, and inspiring and ardent teachers. No one could lightly underrate such men as ‘Jimmy’ Riddell, Edwin Palmer, Henry Smith, Green, Newman, and the great Jowett. With the last I was never brought personally much into contact, as, conscious of my deficiencies in the requirements for success as a classical scholar, I took the earliest opportunity of transferring my energies to the Law and History School, in which I saw more prospect of success. But I shall never cease to be grateful to him for a piece of advice which he gave me when looking over those weekly essays which were about the most useful part of our ordinary College education. He smiled rather grimly at some turgid and high-flown sentences of which I was inclined to be particularly proud, and suggested that my composition would be improved if I struck out any passage which I was inclined to think particularly fine. I have ever since taken his advice to heart with great advantage, making it a rule, when revising, to apply the pruning knife unsparingly to ‘purple patches.’ Young authors, please copy! But whatever my gratitude may be to my teachers and masters—and I certainly owe my ‘First’ in the Final Schools to the inspiring History Lectures of Newman; his grasp of essentials and power of connoting the relations of cause and effect, in various movements, historical, political and philosophical, and imparting his views and their reasons to his disciples—there was never the frank companionship and confident and equal intercourse which I admired so much in the Balliol of Strachan-Davidson. Perhaps the difference should be ascribed to the times rather than to the persons. The relations between children and parents, and between husbands and wives, have likewise greatly altered during the half-century.
Another member of our dining club with whom I was very intimate at Balliol was Jersey, seventh Earl, born in the same year as myself, and my contemporary both there and at Eton. At school I did not see a great deal of him, as, although he was in the lower division of the fifth form at the same time as myself, he was not in the same house, and had a different tutor. Two things, however, I especially remember about his time at Eton; I heard what was practically his funeral sermon preached! and afterwards saw him win the open mile race. His illness was so severe that the master who was preaching in chapel told us that he wished we were all as ready to face our end as the young companion just about to leave us. It was a rash prophecy, but certainly no one would have expected that the weak-lunged lad was destined to accomplish his seventy years, to shine as an athlete, and to enjoy exceptionally good health almost to the end of his strenuous labours in every kind of public and domestic usefulness. Paymaster-General, Governor of New South Wales, Lord Lieutenant of his County, President of the Royal Agricultural Society, and last, not least, first unpaid Chairman of the Light Railway Commission—in each of these varied spheres of activity he won golden opinions from all who had to do with him. By an odd coincidence I succeeded him in the last capacity, and my brother Commissioners, Colonel Boughey, and Henry Steward, the first Secretary of the Commission, are never weary of singing the praises of the ideal Chairman who gave so much of his valuable time and energy to striving to make Mr. Ritchie’s Light Railway Act a success. For causes which it would be foreign to my present purpose to dwell upon here, the work of the Commission has been light of recent years, but when Jersey first undertook the Chairmanship, he and his colleagues held hundreds of inquiries, travelled thousands of miles, and laid down principles and adopted methods which have stood all tests for twenty years. I have had many opportunities of ascertaining the views of those counsel and solicitors, engineers, local authorities and private individuals, who come before the Commission to promote or oppose Light Railway Orders, and one and all echo the praises of my colleagues. But when writing of Balliol my thoughts of Jersey rather go back to those last six months of my undergraduate life in 1867 when I was reading hard for my class, and used to walk or run round the ‘Parks,’ then ploughed fields, with him every morning before breakfast, and start my five hours’ morning work at nine invigorated and refreshed. I also had many long walks with him, and I particularly remember a Sunday walk I took with him to Henley, when we covered the distance of some twenty miles at an average rate of four-and-a-quarter miles an hour. He was always a good ‘stayer,’ and used to come with a tremendous spurt at the end of a long-distance race. He carried away all the honours for distances from four miles to one at his own University, but had to yield pride of place in the mile to Lawes, and in the four-mile race to the late Viscount Alverstone in the first Inter-University contest held at Cambridge. He also comes into my own début on the running path. My College instituted a half-mile handicap race, for which nearly everyone entered, myself included. I was given seventy yards start, and, being chaffed by a friend, took the odds he offered against me of £150 to £7, and when I began to train it was found that I could do the course in a much shorter time than most of those handicapped as favourably as myself. Jersey of course was scratch, but I was not much afraid of him, as I thought that with thirty-seven starters he would find a difficulty in getting through his horses. On the memorable day I was in good condition and rather a hot favourite, and might have hedged my wager on favourable terms, but I preferred ‘to put my fortune to the touch, to win or lose it all.’ I started at a great pace and kept the lead till nearly the end, when a dark horse, by name Garrett, an Australian, who had received sixty-five yards start, only five yards less than myself, caught me up and beat me. Jersey came with his usual rush at the end, and just got before me on the post, but I think I might have saved the second place had I known he was so near. Garrett afterwards turned out to be quite a good runner, taking the second prize in the open quarter-mile and long hurdles. In the following year I won the event pretty easily, although I had not been quite so generously treated by the handicapper, but I had no big gamble upon the event. I still have the silver-mounted claret jug I won on that occasion, and value it as the only trophy of success on the running path. Jersey might have filled a plate chest with the prizes he carried away.
What shall I say of Lansdowne, Viceroy of India, Governor of Canada, Leader of the Conservative party in the House of Lords, and distinguished in many more public capacities? The world knows his fame as a statesman, but I can tell them something of his ability as a cook. He taught me to make excellent omelettes, an accomplishment which has stood me in good stead at many camps and picnics. We were in the same division at Eton, and I was second to him in Collections the half I left Eton, when we were both ‘up to’ Joynes, afterwards Lower Master. Boy and man, he always had the same refined and genial manners, without the least trace of ‘side’ or conceit. One interest we shared in common was a love of fishing, and when I was writing my volume on the Salmon for the ‘Fur, Feather, and Fin’ series he lent me the account of his doings on the Cascapedia River, in Canada, for the four years when he was Governor-General of the Province. My mouth waters as I glance over the figures for the four years: 1245 salmon, weighing 29,188 lb.; 210 fish over 30 lb. The largest fish 35 lb.
Sir William Anson, who died somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly just before our last Balliol dinner, making a sadly conspicuous gap in our narrowing circle, was one of my oldest and most valued friends. We saw a great deal of one another from our boyhood onwards. We went up to Eton at the same time, and were neighbours at home in Kent. There was a half-way house where we frequently met: Bedgbury, the hospitable seat of Alexander Beresford-Hope, the Member of Parliament and Privy Councillor, whose criticism of the ‘Caucasian Mystery’ invited Disraeli’s retort about his ‘Batavian grace.’ Anson was a great favourite with Lady Mildred, who had much of the ability and sarcastic humour of her brother Lord Salisbury, whom she greatly resembled also in personal appearance. After Eton, we were contemporaries at Balliol, where we matriculated on the same day, although I, being nearly two years younger, did not actually come up till a term later. I was a candidate for the All Souls Fellowship on the occasion when he and the present Lord Justice Phillimore were elected on the foundation over which he afterwards presided with such eminent success, and shortly afterward was a fellow pupil with him of the great Thomas Chitty, the pleader, in whose chambers so many sucking lawyers destined to become great legal luminaries, from Lord Chancellor Cairns to A. L. Smith, Master of the Rolls, learnt the elements of pleading before the Common Law Procedure Act put a final end to declarations and demurrers. We were a merry as well as an industrious party, and I remember a game of cricket in which Anson took part, played with two volumes of Blackburn and Ellis for bat and wicket, and some crumpled sheets of draft paper for a ball. Even the long-suffering Chitty sent up his clerk to request us to make a little less noise.
I should not omit some notice of the part taken by Anson when at Eton in the foundation of the ‘Eton Observer,’ a magazine conducted by a committee of editors which numbered among its members Vincent Stuckey Coles, now the beloved head of Pusey House, and John Andrew Doyle, afterwards fellow of All Souls and historian. It had quite a long life for such a venture, and contained some very promising productions, notably the easy and flowing verse of Vincent Cracroft Amcotts, who was afterwards also our friend and contemporary at Balliol: the dramatist of the ‘Shooting Stars,’ an amateur dramatic club, which performed very successfully operettas founded upon Meilhac and Halévy’s librettos with Offenbach’s music. ‘Helen, or Taken from the Greek’ (‘La Belle Hélène’), and ‘Lalla Rookh,’ which adapted the story of Moore’s poem to the music of ‘Orphée aux Enfers,’ were the most notable of these compositions; in the latter, Anson, always an admirable amateur actor, took the part of Fadladeen, first the hostile critic, and afterwards the ardent admirer of the disguised prince and poet. I have photographs of him in character among the faded portraits of College contemporaries, which call up many memories when I glance at my old album. Amcotts died young, or he might have emulated the literary fame of his Balliol friend, Andrew Lang, or of his St. John’s contemporary, H. D. Traill, who when at Oxford was, like himself, a successful librettist and actor.
The ‘Eton Observer’ differed from such predecessors as Canning’s ‘Microcosm’ and Winthrop Mackworth Praed’s ‘Etonian’ by being started and conducted by boys comparatively low down in the School, two years before they reached the glories of Sixth Form. The irate ‘Swells’ assailed it both in prose and verse, comparing the ambitious editors to the frog in the fable who tried to make himself a bull! This roused the wrath of that kind and popular house master ‘Billy Johnson,’ himself to be celebrated as a poet later under his better known name of William Cory, the author of ‘Ionica,’ and he fulminated against the critics in the following impromptu epigram, which somehow still sticks in my memory:
‘The frog in the fable’s a thorough impostor!