He read says one of his contemporaries) to climb across. German and was pleased with Uhland, while Heine he detested; the very thought of Heine made him shudder. He took a few pupils, but describes himself as being very lazy and sauntering about in the summer mornings in the Backs with a book, only to find on his return that it was not the book he had intended to take. A But this life of leisure and rest, much needed after all he had gone through, did not last very long. In 1852, Dr Goulburn, the Headmaster of Rugby, offered him a mastership there; my father has told me how he was leaning out of his window one summer morning, and saw Dr Goulburn, whom he knew by sight, strolling up the lime avenue. minute afterwards there was a knock at his door, and on going to open it, he found the Headmaster standing there, who introduced himself, and then and there asked him to come to Rugby. This offer was singularly congenial. He was to assist Dr Goulburn with the Sixth Form, but was only to have one hour's teaching a day and some composition; he was also to have the Schoolhouse boys as private pupils, some fifty in number. It was understood that he wanted time to read for his Fellowship, and this was expressly stated. After some consultation he accepted it. He had always been ambitious to be a schoolmaster ever since he had read as a boy Stanley's Life of Arnold, and that he should find himself teaching Arnold's Sixth Form, in Arnold's library, was not the least attractive feature of the post. But further, it gave him an immediate opportunity of taking upon himself the education of his brothers and sisters. Grateful as he had always been for the kindness of relations who had undertaken this, the obligation had constantly weighed on him. There was a further point which influenced him. Mrs Wm. Sidgwick, his cousin, was intending to settle at Rugby for the education of her boys Henry and Arthur: my father's youngest sister Ada was living with them. To Mrs. Sidgwick he was devoted; but besides that there was his little cousin Mary Sidgwick, called Minnie, then a girl of twelve, to whom he was already tenderly attached, and who (he had confided to the pages of his Diary in many entries too sacred for quotation) he already hoped some day might become his wife. He boarded at first in lodgings on the Dunchurch Road, but it was soon arranged that he should live with the Sidgwicks. Mrs Sidgwick inhabited a pleasant house in the suburbs of the town, called the Blue House from the colour of its bricks, with a large garden, with open ground in front of it, agreeably planted with elms. The household was a singular one. Besides Ada Benson, Mrs Sidgwick's sister, Henrietta Crofts, lived with them, a lady of masculine appearance, with a deep voice, moods of dark depression, and a most incongruous sense of humour. William Sidgwick, the eldest son, was shortly to win a Scholarship at Corpus, Oxford. Henry and Arthur were very promising boys at Rugby; and a cousin, Edward Sidgwick, now a solicitor, lived with them and also attended the school. Never were so many people collected under one roof of whom each so instinctively desired to have his or her own way. My father, though not even nominally the head of the house, naturally dominated a society in which he lived. Miss Crofts was of a generous but morbidly jealous disposition; Mrs Sidgwick, the most sweet-tempered and affectionate woman, had a misplaced belief in the process of "talking people round"; Ada Benson, my father's sister, a clever attractive girl, was fully as determined as himself. But, in spite of occasional contretemps, the household enjoyed extraordinary happiness. Rugby in those early years, and as I first remember it a few years later, was a very different place from what it is now. The School-buildings, of a somewhat Puginesque Gothic, were well-proportioned and almost venerable. The incongruous and streaky additions and the flimsy gazebo known as the Chapel Tower were non-existent. The streets bore the appearance of those of a quiet country town. The station had not assumed the prominence that it now bears, and the tract of land between the town and the station had but a few respectable houses, instead of the new and uninteresting streets that now cover it. The country, the flatness of which Dr Arnold used to deplore, is pleasant pasture land, rich in wood and water, and great grass fields. My father used often to describe how delightful his work was. He had only the first lesson in school; he used to read most of the morning, and in the afternoon ride all over the country. He acquired at this time that extreme love for horses and riding, which never left him. In the evening he worked with individual pupils. The first year that he went in for his Fellowship, Lightfoot and Hort were elected, though he was second to Lightfoot in Classics, chiefly from a beautiful rendering into Greek Hexameters of a part of the Morte d'Arthur'. He was elected the following year. My father was very fond of talking about Rugby and his early days; he delighted to recall the guise in which it was thought proper to attend Chapel on Sundays. Before he was ordained he used to assume on Sundays light pearl grey trousers, a blue frock coat, collars which rose to the middle of the cheek, and an expansive silk tie tied in a hard knot and very much fluffed out at the ends with a wonderful ornamentation of "birds like toucans or bit-baskets 1 Life and Letters of Fenton J. A. Hort, vol. 1. p. 232. |