1842 TRACTS FOR THE TIMES 29 you a rogue was written in joke, but as you have chosen to take it in earnest, Remember-"qui capit, ille facit," "He whom the cap fits must wear it." I say also as you have assigned a reason why I am a fool, I will tell you why you are a rogue. You wish to break off all connection between us. Be it so. Read quickly. H. Palmer to E. W. B. (Reply to preceding.) E. W. B. Read this note as if nothing had arisen between us. I have mistaken and wronged you in your letter, and am sorry for it, but all the same you have wronged me. I did not suppose that your letter was a joke, but-knowing that your first was-I wrote one which was intended as a joke, but which from your second letter I thought you had wilfully misconstrued. You wrong me for supposing that I wished to get out of the Matthew Questions-such a purpose never entered my thoughtson the contrary, I have increased means of paying my share and an opportunity of very likely disposing of the whole. The letter, I did not send overweight on purpose. I am surprised you should think so. I do not wish to break off with you, and can explain why I was not disposed to receive your letter as a joke at this particular time. You mistake and deceive yourself in your threat. If you wish to make up with me as I do with you, I am waiting outside to see you. H. PALMER. Not long after my grandfather's death, my grandmother very wisely got my father a member's ticket for the Free Library at Birmingham. He fell in with the Tracts for the Times, and read them with avidity, finally taking out the book and reading it as he walked homewards. As he walked he heard behind him a light footstep, and looking up saw to his great surprise his mother who had walked into Birmingham. "What book have you got, White?" He handed it to her in silence, knowing that her strong Protestantism would take fright. She looked at the title and they walked on for some time in silence; presently she gave him the book back. "I don't care for the book, White, nor for the people who write such things: but I don't wish to stop you reading what you wish only you ought to think, would your father have approved of it?" "Yes, mother, I have thought of that, and I think he would wish me to be acquainted with what is going on in the Church." "Very well, White, then I haven't another word to say." When my father was in his sixteenth year an incident occurred which nearly changed the course of his whole life. A partner in a commercial house at Birmingham, who had been a personal friend of my grandfather's, hearing that Mrs Benson was not well off, wrote to her a very kind letter offering to take her eldest son into the business on very favourable terms, with an eventual prospect of a partnership: he added "it is as good as making his fortune." Mrs Benson consulted her late husband's half-brother William Jackson, who wrote to Prince Lee to ask his advice. Prince Lee replied that Benson was a boy of very great promise and should be kept at school. Mrs Benson thereupon went with William Jackson and his sister Mrs Chavasse, to call upon Prince Lee, who told her that he was confident that the boy would never make a man of business, but that he would probably do exceedingly well if he stuck to school and went to the University. The result of this was that William Jackson and John Benson Sidgwick offered to pay my father's expenses at school, and to start him at the University, an offer which was gratefully accepted. One word here must be said about the William Jackson 1829-1844 CANON HUTCHINSON'S RECOLLECTIONS 31 mentioned above. He was my grandfather's half-brother by Mrs White Benson's second marriage to the Rev Stephen Jackson. He was a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford, and Bampton Lecturer in 1875. He was a man of great gifts, an admirable preacher and a considerable antiquary. He gave my father the most liberal assistance in the form of books and money, and my father constantly consulted him and profited by his affectionate and sensible advice; I do not think my father ever had a truer or more generous friend. The impression which he produced on his schoolfellows was a very strong one. Canon C. B. Hutchinson, his lifelong friend, writes: He was a quick and eager reader, and his circle of subjects was very wide. The "Old Library" at Birmingham was an excellent one: there he might be found every day, between morning and afternoon school, intent on the volume he had before him. Long before he left school for Cambridge he had read, in his private work, the whole of Livy-a very unusual achievement for a boy at school-and the whole of Herodotus and Thucydides. His interleaved copy of Herodotus, with exquisitely written notes on every page, was an object of admiration-I had almost said of veneration-to his friends, and proved the care and thoroughness of his work. His memory was quick and retentive, and he could repeat poetry or prose, Greek, Latin and English, with delightful expression and unhesitating flow. Among other things, I think he could have recited most of the Psalter without a book, and a considerable part of it in the Latin Version, of which he was very fond. This gift of his was a special enjoyment to a few intimate companions, with whom he used to take long walks in holiday afternoons, or still longer excursions on the few "whole holidays" that were given, as the Queen's birthday, and Founder's Day. On one of these we started, Benson and Lightfoot and I, to walk from Birmingham to Coventry and examine its churches and quaint buildings; and I remember that as we walked there he gave us a clear account of the arguments on either side, in Cardinal Wiseman's Controversy with Dr Turton, the Bishop of Ely and on our way back he cheered our flagging spirits and put fresh springiness into our tired legs by his graphic stories, or vigorous recitations. And so, instead of dropping on the road, we accomplished our 40 miles' walk, and reached home quite lively. He was very fond of architecture and could sketch quickly, with a light and effective touch; and as he always read up the history and antiquities of the places or churches we visited, he was an admirable guide and companion. It was while still at School that he laid the foundation of his remarkable knowledge of Liturgies and Church Ritual; studies that he pursued con amore; for with a spirit of devotion and reverence, he united a love of order and dignity in Ceremonial: and it was a thoroughly characteristic answer that he gave to a friend who asked him "What he would like to be." "I should like to be a Canon, and recite the daily offices in my Cathedral." His entire freedom from affectation or self-consciousness, his modesty and courtesy and consideration for others, with his constant high standard of thought and conduct, and his winning smile and sympathetic manner, secured him great influence and esteem amongst all his schoolfellows. As an illustration of the effect produced on others by the simple dignity and graciousness of his manner, a leading Physician of the Midland Counties who had invited Benson with other schoolfellows to keep his son's birthday, ventured a prophecy as he pointed at Benson-"that boy is a born courtier, and he will prove it later on." But it was not this feature that impressed his companions, though they never had a doubt that a brilliant future awaited him; it was the feeling that there was in him something higher, purer, more spiritual than they could realise elsewhere, which made us all feel while with him that we could live a better life, frame fairer ideals, and feel more able to carry them into practice than at other times. A schoolfellow met us one morning on our way down to First Lesson,-"And how is the Bensonian Etheriality?" he said. The euphuistic affectation was absurd: but I have often since thought it conveyed a striking truth: for indeed he seemed to live in a refined pellucid atmosphere. "Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely," were the objects that he set before him, and exemplified by thought and word and deed. The Rev. R. M. Moorsom, another schoolfellow, writes: He did not play at cricket or football or racquets or fives or even hockey, nor at rounders and cloisters-cricket, except very 1829-1844 EARLY LETTERS 335 33 rarely; and as he had pluck and enthusiasm we often wondered why he did not join in our games. But gradually a vague unexpressed idea arose in our minds that he had to begin the struggle of life earlier than the rest of us, that his father being dead he had to prepare early to work for the support of his mother and sisters and crippled brother, and that he was even then putting away the pleasures of life and at its outset choosing its duties rather than its enjoyments. So we honoured him, though he could not throw away halfcrowns on amusements, or spend his afternoons in games with us; he had to fill his father's works again with machinery and workmen; that was his youthful ambition, and we thought him a nobler fellow than ourselves for turning away from what delighted us and choosing what would aid his family; and we respected him greatly. Even when at school he was a keen Churchman; he astonished us by the energy with which he spoke of the crime of plundering the Church in the sixteenth century, of the cruelties inflicted on the monks, and of the just vengeance of God in punishing those families who still held to their sacrilege and their booty. He would glory in the thought that he was being educated in a Church school founded with Church money, by wise Churchmen who had rescued Church property from the greedy hands of the King. I subjoin one of my father's early letters, written when he was nearly fifteen. To his Mother: on a visit to Mrs William Sidgwick, MY DEAR MAMA, his great-aunt. SKIPTON CASTLE. I arrived in Manchester on Tuesday morning without any very serious accident; the utmost damage I sustained was breaking the egg in my coat pocket, and getting my fingers well bedaubed. There were many things that struck me as I passed them, but I have forgotten them all, for railway travelling is to me just like dreaming. The only things I remember are Stafford Station, and Stafford Castle "Bosom'd high 'mid tufted trees." B. I. 3 |