filled with flowers!"—a pair of lilac gloves, a silk Bachelor's gown and a cap completed the vision. But I think that he must have been always old-fashioned in the matter of dress, since, when Headmaster of Wellington, he used at first to wear a dress coat in the mornings and maintain that it was not only more proper but more economical. My father's colleagues at Rugby were certainly a distinguished body; rarely have there been collected at any public school so many men who made their mark in the world afterwards. Besides Dr Goulburn and Dr Temple, the Headmasters under whom he served, there were the Rev. C. T. Arnold (died 1878), the Rev. H. Highton, afterwards Principal of Cheltenham (died 1874), R. B. Mayor, late Rector of Frating and Canon of St Albans, G. G. Bradley, afterwards Headmaster of Marlborough and now Dean of Westminster, J. C. Shairp, afterwards Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and Principal of St Andrews, T. S. Evans, afterwards Canon of Durham and Professor of Greek in Durham University, Charles Evans, afterwards Headmaster of King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Canon of Worcester, Berdmore Compton, afterwards Vicar of All Saints, Margaret Street, and Prebendary of St Paul's, the Rev. P. Bowden Smith who died in 1894, T. W. Jex-Blake, afterwards Principal of Cheltenham, Headmaster of Rugby and now Dean of Wells, A. G. Butler, afterwards Headmaster of Haileybury and now Vice-provost of Oriel College, Oxford, and C. B. Hutchinson, now Canon of Canterbury. It is a remarkable list; and it is not to be wondered at that my father found the society of such colleagues stimulating and encouraging. My father wrote an interesting reminiscence of Principal Shairp in 1887 shortly after the death of the latter. In it he said: 1853 PRINCIPAL SHAIRP 119 His exclusive love of Scotland was delicious....I remember well being one of a committee of four to settle a History subject for an examination in Dr Goulburn's study. One suggested one period and one another. But Shairp objected to a political period as full of the worst premature lessons for boys, and to the French Revolution as too horrible, and to the Great Rebellion as a good cause overthrown by its own badness, and to French periods generally as mad or selfish, and to the Conquest because nothing was known about it, and to others as dry or badly told-until we asked him to settle his own subject, when he said, so far as boys were concerned, the only real History was the History of Scotland—and the best and most feeling narrative was the Tales of a Grandfather. Similarly someone commended in his hearing a fellow-countryman of his own who spoke English so purely that there was not a trace of northern pronunciation or accent. Shairp said in the broadest yet most polished of Scotch tones, “I never knew the man who deliberately tried to be rid of his natural brogue, but there was something radically base in the man." My father kept a somewhat spasmodic diary at Rugby, summarising the events of months in a few lines he writes in March 1853. I am so much in arrear with my diary that I shall never fill it up. A few happy days at Redland, a few more with my sisters at Pennsylvania', two or three with Prince Frederic at Combe, my journey with him to Cambridge, Southampton, Winchester-all had their pleasures and distinct impressions. Then my seven happy weeks at Cambridge, my delightful summery rooms in the deep shade of the avenue, my first perusal of Chaucer with Mr Martin, strolling and sitting in the Roundabout when it was too hot to walk out; my most unexpected appointment to Rugby and visit of Eleanor and Em. with Mrs S., Miss Crofts and Minnie and Henry to Cambridge, closing all with a delightful week-the seal of my Cambridge life -all the scenes of this most happy year. The good-natured rallying of the masters on my youthful looks set me at ease with them, and Chas. Evans soon put me in the way of my work, and soon I was settled and busy-I had fifty-two private pupils at once, form work for a first lesson only, 1 A suburb of Exeter, where his uncle William Jackson was living. |