MIA > Archive > Hyndman > Adventurous Life
There is every reason to believe I was born at 7 Hyde Park Square on the 7th of March 1842, though birth, being the most important incident in the life of men, is precisely that which none of them can remember, and I am, of course, no exception to the rule. I passed the house this year, just two full generations later, and it is the same alike in position and the character of its surroundings that it was then: there is no beauty or poetry about a birthplace in a London Square, and nobody can take the least satisfaction out of such an abode where he first saw the light.
My father, John Beckles Hyndman, was an Eton and Trinity Cambridge man, at which college, being then possessed of a very large income, he was a Fellow-Commoner. After taking his degree and having eaten his dinners at the Inner Temple he was duly qualified to exercise the legal profession and was called to the Bar. So far as I know he never had or tried to obtain a brief, but none the less he was entitled to call himself Barrister-at-Law, and remained a member of this highly-respectable and rigid Trade Union until the day of his death. He was, I have been told, popular at College and in the world, as men of good means and good temper generally are, and laid up for himself treasure in Heaven by benefactions of which I, his eldest son, can scarcely in honesty say that I approve. My mother, Caroline Seyliard Mayers, was a good mathematician, a good classical scholar, and generally a woman of great ability and accomplishments, numbering the well-known Mary Somerville among her intimate friends. In those days really well-educated women were rarer than they are to-day.
I don’t think there is any doubt that, going farther back, I come, like most well-to-do people of the upper middle class in this island, from a decent piratical stock. My forbears, whose name was Hyndeman, which means the headman of the hynde or hundred, lived in the North Country for many generations. They landed there as freebooters and homicides, and remained as farmers and raiders. When they got too thick upon the ground some of these Hyndemans of the Border thought it was high time to follow the example of their ancestors, and taking ship after the manner of their ancient progenitors they proceeded to remove from active life people in an adjacent island, whose farms and freeholds formed thereafter a convenient property for themselves. This was the honourable origin of the family known locally as “the Hyndmans of Ulster,” a set of English marauders of that title having settled in the north of Ireland in the reign of James I, to the discomfort of the native stock, whom the new-comers evidently regarded as mere interlopers.
I know little or nothing of the history of these worthies myself. But my dear old friend Michael Davitt – what would the Hyndmans of old time have said of such friendship? – used laughingly to declare that they were beyond question Rapparees, which, I am told, constitutes in Ireland scarcely a claim to distinction, at any rate among Celts and Catholics. Coming nearer to our own time I can state, with some legitimate satisfaction, that my great-grandfather took an active part in the unfortunately unsuccessful Protestant insurrection of 1798; which came to a bad end because Irishmen of diverse creeds, I understand, were unable to keep their fingers off one another’s throats until they had left themselves a fair field for the settlement of their cherished differences by jointly expelling the common enemy. At any rate, my great-grandfather, having handsomely avoided a more elevated destiny, died comfortably in his bed, as all good revolutionists should, at the reasonable age of eighty-five.
My grandfather inherited, apparently, the roaming and appropriating spirit of the original marauders of his race. Leaving Ulster early in life, he had an exceedingly adventurous career, which ended in his accumulating a very large fortune. That this fortune must have been exceptional in magnitude I judge from the fact that I find people still coming back from the West Indies, where he gained his wealth, rejoicing in the euphonious patronymics of Hyndman-Jones, Hyndman-Brown, and Hyndman-Robinson, a tribute to my grandfather’s eminence in expropriation, and conveyance to his own use, which I fully appreciate. As at one period of his life he was so sore put to it for ways and means of providing nourishment that he was compelled to play the violin in public-houses, in order to keep body and soul together, his later success in turning the labours of his negroes so considerably to his advantage must obviously have been the reward of quite unusual merit. It is, I venture to think, unfortunate for me, his grandson, that I have not inherited his faculty for rapid accumulation.
There is a story told of this respected Hyndman, who died in all the odour of wealth and its concomitant sanctity, which must ensure to him the regard and esteem of all high-toned money-getters. He was always kept well informed on matters which concerned his own individual advantage or afforded him the prospect of great gains; from which I judge that he was a bold and successful speculator who understood the art of remuneration and bribery. Very early news was brought to him that under the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain the Dutch were to surrender to this country part of Guiana, now known as Demerara or British Guiana; that also the Dutch planters, fearing that they would be deprived of their properties, were eager to sell at ridiculously low prices for cash, in order to save something out of the wreck of their fortunes. My grandfather at once saw his opportunity and proceeded to take advantage of it.
He went to his agents and bankers and asked for an immediate loan of £100,000 in cash. This was a very heavy demand, even in those days of ready money business in rich Colonies. The men of means, therefore, naturally demurred. “You are a very rich man, Mr. Hyndman,” they said – his fiddling days were then over – “but this is a very solemn sum of money you call upon us for, and we do not see our way to letting you have it. What do you want it for?” “That last,” he answered, “I cannot tell you, but it is all going into the hold of my schooner which is lying out there as you see.” This frightened them more still, and hardened their hearts and tightened their money-bags. But the borrower was even more persistent and obstinate. “Very well, gentlemen, if that is your decision I shall be obliged to transfer my agency and account to your rivals Messrs. So & So, and they will let me have the advance at once.” At last he got his £100,000 on loan, placed it safely in the hold of his schooner, and sailed for Guiana, having possibly promised the accommodating lenders a share of his booty if realised.
Arriving in Guiana, with this large sum at his disposal and in the very nick of time, he bought most of the fine plantations in the Colony, slaves and all, at rubbish prices, but to the infinite satisfaction of the Dutch vendors, who congratulated themselves upon having thus saved a percentage of their hard-earned fortunes from the nefarious grip of the conquering British Government. My grandfather was equally pleased with the transaction, which promised him at that time an income of at least fifty per cent on his investment. Scarcely, however, had the deeds been signed, the lands transferred, and the titles registered, than official information arrived from England that the new government would under no circumstances interfere with the rights of private property; that the Dutch settlers would be left in undisturbed possession of their lands; and that the Dutch laws of inheritance and succession would be fully maintained. Thereupon the Dutch planters were as keen to repurchase the newly-acquired Hyndman estates as they had been just before to dispose of them at any sacrifice.
My grandfather, it is said, met their legitimate desires in the whole-souled spirit of the successful man of affairs. He struck, that is to say, a fair average between the utmost they were prepared to give and the least he was prepared to take: the balance naturally inclining to the former alternative. Thus it came about that he returned again to his own plantations with more than cent per cent profit on the transaction in cash, and still possessing two of the best properties in the Colony, the last section of which I myself sold as my father’s administrator. As to my grandfather, he kept open house for many years on the proceeds of this and other able strokes in the organisation of industry: the ordinary profits of his plantations being steadily forthcoming on a large scale from the beneficial toil of his well-nourished negroes. And here I may add that, bad as chattel slavery is from every point of view, the big plantations were not by any means bad places for the negroes in the times of my grandfather. They enjoyed a good standard of life, they were fairly educated, and they were not allowed by law to work more than forty-five hours a week. If I had my choice of being a negro slave on a well-kept estate in the West Indies, or a sweated free white wage-earner in one of our great cities for the whole of my life I know very well which lot I should prefer. It is interesting to compare the Blue Books dealing with the child slavery of the Manchester Liberationist manufacturers in their cotton mills with the official records of the lives of the children and old people on my grandfather’s plantations.
These well-to-do planters were a free-handed folk, and tremendous collectors of old silver to decorate their tables at their great banquets. When my grandmother’s house was burnt down at St. John’s Wood, there was a quantity of this plate there, and the cellars, when the fire was over, were richer than the Potosi Mine with melted silver bullion. Though I have written in light vein about my grandfather, I believe he was really a very good fellow, generous, choleric, and openhearted, with a financial faculty that was scarcely in harmony with his other characteristics.
My father himself early developed a turn for expenditure and charity, which, I regret to say, was not accompanied by a similar talent for acquisition. He had neither the initiative and ability of his own father nor the revolutionary turn of the man of ’98, being, in fact, I believe, a member of the Conservative Club, and a supporter of the Tory Party. He was likewise greatly addicted to religion which, like heavy port-wine drinking, was quite fashionable in his youth. He took the matter seriously, however, and was a really decent Christian and Anglican Churchman of the straitest sect of the Low Church variety, now forgotten but then known as Simeonites from their head, the Rev. Mr. Simeon, whose successor at Cambridge in my day was a puritanical hot-gospeller of the name of Clayton. Being deeply imbued with these unattractive doctrines of ascetic life here, as necessary to avoid a ferocious hell hereafter, he was deeply moved by the death of his only and much-loved sister Catherine, though fully persuaded that she had only left this vale of tears in order to enter upon the exquisite felicity of Paradise. Partly at her death request, therefore, he deemed it right to expend very large sum, not less certainly than £150,000, upon building and endowing churches to her memory, the incumbents of which were always to Anglican Low Churchmen as Low as Low could be. Though this money was spent for so pious a purpose that it would be unfilial to express regret, it is allowable to pity the successive congregations who have been compelled, on my Aunt’s account, undergo the frequent penance of listening for seventy years to Simeonite sermons.
I have only once tried to influence the appointment by the Hyndman Trustees to any of these livings. This was in the interest of a very worthy, hard-working curate in Kent, who seemed at the time to have very little prospect of preferment. The Trustees professed themselves to be exceedingly gratified, in the first instance, that the eldest son of the Founder should take an interest in their choice. But when they discovered that the particular clergyman whom I thought qualified to undertake the duty at a Church and parish in one of the poorest parts of East London had serious doubts about the existence of a gruesome material hell, where severe physical torments would be inflicted on the vile bodies of all who had erred in this life, they decided with absolute unanimity that a man who held such notions as to the true Christian faith was quite unsuited to a cure of souls in that or any other locality which came within the purview of their Trust. I have not tried since to obtain for any clerk in Holy Orders an opportunity of deriving a stipend from the interest of my father’s funds. But if ever the Church of England should be disestablished and disendowed, I hope rather than believe that at any rate a percentage of the values realised from my father’s benefactions will pass to his eldest son.
By the way, how are we to account for the religious turn of mind or the contrary? Is heredity or environment the more determining factor in the tendency? The question baffles me. I cannot answer. I was born of strictly religious parents, indeed exceedingly devout. I was brought up in an atmosphere of the sincerest devotion, and was surrounded by prayer and praise to God and His Christ. Moreover, I believe in my way I am not devoid of religious feeling of a kind. Yet, somehow, even my mother, who was greatly disturbed at this peculiarity, was quite unable to get me to pray, and from then till now, though not, I hope, lacking in respect towards those who are worthy of it, I have never been able to accept the view that appeals to a personal deity could be anything more than a personal gratification of individual sentiment. My brothers and sisters, though not deficient in sagacity, no means shared my opinions on these points. They were true believers of a very ardent type, and Conservatives in politics as well; my only surviving sister, Mrs. D’Albiac, being an active Primrose Dame. I had therefore a majority of four to one against me in my own family from my youth up. What ancestor I threw back to I don’t know; but I imagine some old pagan forbear on one side or the other presided at my birth.
Wordsworth to the contrary notwithstanding, I take it that, as a rule, the recollections of childhood have in them very little that savours of immortality. At any rate, my recollections of London in the forties are confined to the gorgeous carriages and equally gorgeous footmen belonging to some City magnate who lived in our square, the ducks I used to feed in the Serpentine, the linkmen with their great flambeaux glaring through the fogs and frightening me with I know not what imaginings of bogeys to come, and, last not least, the glorious display of toys, all of which I wanted bought for me, at the old Soho Bazaar, then, strange as it may seem to-day, a very fashionable resort. I remember, too, an awesome work called Bingley’s Useful Knowledge, to which I was told to go in search of truth when I sought it, but which led me to the shelf above, that happily chanced to be devoted to fiction. I recall, too, a discussion which gave me dreadful dreams as to some aggressive move of the Catholic Church in England, that portended the revival of the burnings alive in Smithfield; the remarks to this effect which I took in earnest being, of course, made in jest. A country scene is impressed more strongly on my memory. My father and mother then had Pendell Court near Bletchingley, an old Elizabethan house with a moat round it, belonging to a member of our family. I believe there were ghosts, but I neither saw nor heard anything of them.
One cold afternoon in 1846, however, there came down the drive, leading to the porch, a large number of wretched-looking people, to my childish eyes quite a multitude. They were all of them miserable and ragged, and as they approached nearer to the house I was taken away to the back entrance and round to the nursery. With baby-like curiosity I wanted to see these strange folk again, and I managed to creep down into the hall and peer at them from under the footmen’s legs. By this time they were standing in a semicircle in front of the house, and were passing round from hand to hand the platefuls of food which had been sent out to them. They ate voraciously and seemed almost fierce and I felt afraid when I looked at their rough faces as they stood there, sad and woebegone, men and women of a new species to me. I think my parents were a little uneasy too, for the gardeners and grooms on the place were all gathered in the doorway and those behind had sticks. After these people had eaten and drunk all that was to be had they went away peacefully enough, their rags fluttering in the wind behind them. It all made a great impression upon me, and I dreamed of these hungry and miserable tramps for long afterwards. They formed, in fact, the main feature of my favourite nightmare for months. That was sixty-five years ago and Free Trade was just being introduced as a remedy. Times were often bad then. Are they much better now?
When I was six, my mother having died at a very early age, to the deep grief of all her family old and young, I was sent from home to the school of a clergyman named Faithful, whose daughters afterwards played an active part in the beginnings of the woman’s movement, at Headley Rectory on the Surrey Hills, about three miles from Leatherhead. I don’t think this was by any means bad for me, and I am quite sure it was a very good thing for the rest of the family. When, therefore, I hear nonsense talked about the hardship of removing young children from the unhealthy slums of great cities to decent homes on the countryside, and the monstrous interference this would be with proper parental responsibility, I think of my own case and similar cases in well-to-do households, and as an active man of sixty-nine wonder how much I have suffered from this removal from home life. But the next step taken was not so wise. My name had been down for seven years at Harrow and I ought to have gone there after my so-called dame-school period was over. But my female relations had somehow conceived a horror of public schools without having any fear of the drawbacks of private tutors. So I went through a training of the latter, which has the great disadvantage of leading boys to think themselves men before they have really ceased to the be boys.
Two of the tutors who had me under their care are perhaps worth notice. The first gathered under his roof at Torquay as remarkable a set of lads as I suppose were ever found together within so small a number. There were never more than twelve or fifteen pupils during the two years and a half I was there, yet these comprised the present Lord Rayleigh; E.N. Buxton, one of the first Chairmen of the London School Board; Chester Macnaghten, for many years head of the Rajkumar College; Rajkote Kathiawar, who successfully trained in cricket and other departments ;Ranjitsinhji and numerous young Indian princes; a distinguished General who gained a peerage; three cricketers who were afterwards in the Cambridge University Eleven; two more who played for many years for their respective counties; Hamar Bass of “Sceptre” fame; and a Chilian named Abbott, who passed, first in and first out of l’Ecole Centrale and l’Ecole Normale at Paris. I doubt if such a remarkable collection of young people was ever before found in so small a school. Nothing of the kind has occurred before or since at the same place.
On leaving Torquay I found myself with a clergyman at Stockport, who himself was addicted to whisky but who had a charming family. I was a pretty good cricketer in those days, and before I knew that this was scarcely a method of improving my knowledge of mathematics I found myself playing in the first eleven of the Manchester Club, and going about the country with the men of the team to the various matches, quite on my own account. This was in 1858, when the famous Ernest Jones stood as a candidate for Manchester against the two great representatives of capitalism, Milner Gibson and John Bright. Jones was well beaten by working-class votes, in spite of the apparently overwhelming enthusiasm of the people in his favour. I remember hearing knots of workmen cursing the Free Traders for their treachery, and their own class for their folly, when they saw the Chartist leader and Socialist writer and orator at the bottom of the poll. I had then no grasp at all of the real issues at stake and could not understand their bitterness; though assuredly Stockport was a town in those days which ought to have impressed upon my mind the horrors of working-class existence. The conditions are not much better now, as I saw when I was there, for the first time for fifty-two years, a few months ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!
And writing now so long afterwards with understanding of what was then going on, I must record my tribute of sincere admiration and respect for that noble band of Chartist agitators who worked so hard and to all appearance so fruitlessly on behalf of the emancipation of the toilers from the tyranny of capital and the misery of wage-slavery. Not even yet is their great work understood or the merit of their self-sacrifice recognised. In days to come, however, I venture to predict Jones and O’Brien, Harney and Vincent, Stephens and Ball will be regarded with sympathy and even adoration as the pioneers of the new period who were born before their time. Had the workers of Great Britain followed the lead of these men, instead of giving ear to the fraudulent phrases of the profit-mongers and political hacks of the dominant class, the condition of the mass of the English people would be very different indeed from what it is to-day.
From the smoke and dirt of Stockport to wandering alone up the valley of the Rhine and making solitary excursions through the beautiful country, then wholly unspoiled by factories, mining and the great industry generally, was a delightful change; and while staying with an uncle, a Colonel who went yearly to Wiesbaden, I heard the talk of the Austrian and Prussian officers from the double garrison then quartered at Mayence, and thus learnt a good deal, apart from the language, which was useful to me long afterwards. I would gladly have remained and enjoyed myself in that glorious Rhine country; but there was the university career to be thought of, and luckily I was not my own master, though I at times pretended to myself I was.
And so I went off, on my return home, to another and last tutor whose memory I have always cherished with regret and affection. This was the Reverend Alexander Thurtell, Rector of Oxburgh Rectory in Norfolk. His early career had been a very difficult one. He had fought his way up to Cambridge against many drawbacks and disadvantages, when a blow fell upon him that would have crushed a weaker man. The murder of Mr. William Weare is still remembered as one of the most cold-blooded crimes ever committed in this country. It stirred the whole country with horror from end to end, and the name of the murderer was as widely execrated as that of Burke or Hare. This name was Thurtell, and the criminal was my old tutor’s own brother. The prejudice aroused was terrible. The young student just going up to Caius College, Cambridge, was seriously advised even by his own family to change his name, and to this no objection would have been raised. He refused to do this, and unfortunately suffered a great deal both openly and secretly in consequence. He worked the harder for the prejudice, read hard and steadily, overcame the difficulties which he encountered, took his degree as third wrangler in quite an exceptionally good year, became fellow and tutor of his college, was universally esteemed in that and other positions, and going down to a satisfactory Caius living became as good a parson as was to be found in the county; maintaining at the same time most friendly relations with the Catholic priest who had a little flock in the village, the old Catholic family of Bedingfield being its leaders.
I have always regarded the two years and a half I spent at Oxburgh as the most useful portion of my educational life, for though I rode to hounds and played cricket, I worked at mathematics most assiduously and read hard in other directions too. My fellow-pupils there were the present General Sir Frederick Maurice, so well known for his writings on strategy, and Edward Abbott of Salonica, who, poor fellow, was battered to pieces by the Turks with iron staves torn from palings at the beginning of the Turco-Servian War. Cigarette smoking, now so popular, was then almost unknown, and Abbott, who always smoked the finest Turkish tobacco which he rolled up into cigarettes for himself, was the first devotee of this habit I encountered.
Norfolk, it is needless to say, was and is a sporting county, and the race of fox-hunting parsons had not then died out. Thurtell did not ride to hounds, but he was a very good shot and was on excellent terms with all the strict game-preserving landowners and squires in the neighbourhood, who not unfrequently came to dine with him. It was on one of these occasions that a very dramatic and amusing incident befell. The old gentleman had two splendid cats of exceptional size and beauty, one black and the other white, which went by the name of “Gown” and “Surplice.” During dinner a guest had been reproaching the rector for the depredations which he accused these favourite cats of making upon the game. The imputation was stoutly repudiated by their owner, when to his horror and confusion, but to the irrepressible laughter of his friends, “Surplice” carefully deposited a fine hen pheasant at the window. Those two handsome marauders fell victims to gamekeepers shortly thereafter. Thurtell could scarcely complain after this.
There were two stories of an old parson of the great sporting period which Thurtell was very fond of telling, and which return to me now. They related to a Rev. Mr. Hewitt who held a fat college living – there were fat college livings in those days – near Cambridge. Mr. Hewitt was devoted to sport of all kinds, and his assiduity in this respect led him to take a very easy view of his care of souls. His flock was well supplied at need with port wine and other spirituous aids to physical regeneration, but spiritual consolation both in and out of church was a little hard to come by. One Sunday, so the tale went, a friend of his came from Cambridge to attend service in the morning and called upon Hewitt intending to go with him to church. It was a very cold winter day and the snow lay thick upon the ground. To his astonishment and horror he found Hewitt in his study arrayed in his surplice, a white night-cap on his head, engaged in carefully chalking the barrel of his gun. “Why, Mr. Hewitt,” he said, “what are you doing? It is just eleven o’clock and the people will all be in church. We must start at once.” “My dear fellow,” was the reply, “there will be no service this morning. In such cold weather as this my parishioners will be far more comfortable by their own firesides than sitting in that draughty church. I myself intend to worship the Creator in the midst of His works, and by the help of the Lord I shall shoot a few ducks!”
The result of this neglect of his duties and addiction to sport was that the irreligious condition of the parish became a bye-word in the district, and one of the young Fellows of Caius, who felt he “had a call,” persuaded Mr. Hewitt to allow him to bring the light and warmth of Christian truth to bear upon the people. This he did for some time with earnestness and success. The parishioners became devout and attentive, the women and children were visited and taught, the church was filled each Sunday with a reverent and attentive congregation. One of Mr. Hewitt’s friends congratulated the old rector upon this change, and said something in praise of the zealous clergyman who had brought it all about. “Yes, sir,” said Hewitt, “he is no doubt a most praiseworthy young man, and the best of it is he does it all free, gratis, for nothing. They tell me the parish church is crowded to hear his sermons. All the tag-rag and bobtail of the place collected there. But happily I can always abate the nuisance by taking the duty myself.”
There is another old yarn which is worth telling as giving at any rate the impression of what was supposed to be the character of the various grades of the Anglican clergy in those days. A new Bishop was appointed to the See of Norwich who wished to make acquaintance with all the clergy in his diocese at their respective homes. He was an active man physically and intellectually, who took broad views of life, which latter trait was just as well for his general comfort. Coming to one well-known village without notice he put up his carriage and horses at the inn and went off on foot to call upon the rector. In answer to his ring a respectable footman made his appearance, and on being asked if his master was at home replied he was not. To further inquiry as to when he would return the servant answered that he was quite unable to guess. “His reverence went out with the foxhounds early this morning, and it was quite impossible to say when he might get home.” “Very well, I am sorry not to have seen him. Please say the Bishop of Norwich called. Can you direct me to the curate’s house?” The required directions were given, and the Bishop trotted off to a well-kept cottage of large size, the door of which was opened by a smart maid. “Can I see the curate of the parish?” “I’m afraid not, sir; he went off to hunt with the pack of harriers about an hour ago, and he said he wouldn’t be back till late.” The Bishop again left his name, and inquired his way to the sexton’s, where he might get the keys of the church, which he wished to see. Having learnt this the Bishop went his way and found the sexton’s wife seated at her door knitting. “Where is your husband, the sexton, my good lady? I want him to bring the keys of the church with him and show me round.” “I’m very sorry, your reverence, but he is not at home, and he took the church keys with him when he went out, as he means to come back that way when he has finished a bit of ratting.” And the Bishop returned to lunch in the inn.
This Bishop, by the way, was of a very different character from one of his brethren of an earlier date who sat on the episcopal throne of Ely. He was remarkable for the unblushing manner in which he contrived to secure all the best livings in the diocese for his sons and sons-in-law. These near relatives were persons of low and disorderly life, quite unbeseeming to their station as rectors of parishes and clerks in Holy Orders. The thing became a terrible scandal, which was not lessened when a brilliant preacher in the great Cathedral took for his text, before a full congregation, the words, “Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial,” and proceeded to enlarge upon the drawbacks of improper behaviour on the part of the relations of high-placed men of God, and the evil example such conduct set to the people in general. The which if not true is well invented.
I worked hard at mathematics at Oxburgh, and, when I left to go up to Trinity, Mr. Thurtell thought I was quite safe to take a very high degree, saying I could then be in the first ten wranglers and ought to be safe to get into the first three. I saw him a few years later, and he kindly told me it was the disappointment of his life that I didn’t. As a matter of fact, I read everything but what I ought to have read at Cambridge, and gave up too much time to amusement of various kinds during the whole of my University life. Those three or four years, whatever you may do with them, leave a profound impression on the mind. They are long remembered, and the events of that time are so keenly felt that even the smallest incidents can be brought back to mind. Thus I remember, as if it were yesterday, my tutor, poor W.G. Clark, who ended his life by walking himself to death up and down the platform of York Station, comparing the ghost of Clytaemnestra, hovering round Orestes at the altar, in the Eumenides, to the ghost of Banquo rising at the table to confront Macbeth; as well as a little contretemps when one of the mathematical lecturers actually forgot the demonstration of the mathematical problem he was illustrating to his class on the black-board. So great is the influence of their University career upon some men that they are always harking back to those three or four years as if that period alone were supremely important. This sometimes takes a silly shape; but there is no escaping from the fact, and I confess to feeling something of the same sentiment myself, though, as said above, I took but little advantage of the opportunities afforded me, and have always regarded my college career as the complete failure it really was.
It is very odd, and I don’t pretend to account for it at all. I have myself led a very active and adventurous life. I have had my turns of popularity and success as well as my periods of the most harassing worry and disappointment conceivable – enough, one would think, to obliterate finally matters of passing interest from nineteen to twenty-two. Yet having been in the “sixteen” at Cambridge and playing for years in the Sussex County team I declare that I feel at this moment, fifty years later, my not playing for Cambridge against Oxford in the University Cricket Match as a far more unpleasant and depressing experience than infinitely more important failures have been to me since. Nay, when but the other day I heard that two famous cricketers of that time, chatting over the men of our year at a Club, both declared that I ought to have been in the eleven in my first year and every year thereafter I felt quite a little glow of satisfaction. Very funny that, I consider. It shows how seriously one may take quite useless games in this country, and how our whole educational system gives far too much importance to such matters. I remember hearing my father, who was an Eton boy himself, say, “The captain of the boats at Eton is next to the King,” and at the Universities the President of the University Boat Club and the Captain of the Eleven were quite on a level with the Senior Wrangler and the Senior Classic of the year. It is very absurd when you come to think of it. But so it was in my day, and so it appears to me it is now.
I was very unlucky, like all men of my time, in never seeing the Cambridge University boat row first past the winning post for eleven years – from 1861 to 1872, that is to say. I have no doubt myself that the character of the two rivers used for training made all the difference, as the boats got lighter and lighter, and I do not believe any change for the better would have taken place but for the transfer of the practice first to the stretch of water below Ely and afterwards to the Thames, coupled with the admirable coaching of George Morrison, himself a famous Oxford oar. In my first year as an undergraduate I was walking down the bank with my old friend, John Chambers, who had been captain of the boats at Eton and was afterwards captain of the University Boat Club. The University boat rowed by. It looked very pretty indeed, and to my untutored eye seemed a very good boat. “Is that a good boat?” I asked. “Yes,” said Chambers, “it is not a bad boat.” “Has it any chance against Oxford?” I went on. “Not a ghost of a chance,” replied Chambers. “Why not?” “Because they have no stroke.” “But can’t they make a stroke?” inquired I in my innocence. “No,” was the answer, “I have often heard of a stroke making a boat, but I’m damned if I ever heard of a boat making a stroke.” How many times I have quoted that simple saying against the empty-headed fools of democracy who imagine, or pretend, that because men should be socially equal therefore leadership and initiative and in a sense authority become unnecessary. Show me the stroke and, other things being equal, I can judge of the boat.
As I have begun also to talk about cricket, I cannot leave the subject without a word or two. It is the fashion nowadays to say that the play is much better than it used to be. I am not so sure about that. As to the grounds, there is no comparison, and the “boundary” for hard through hits saves the batsman greatly as compared with running them out. Otherwise, I see no great improvement, while certainly batsmen play more at the pitch and less at the ball. Consequently, I observe that when there comes a little continuous bad weather and the ground at all approximates to the sort of wicket we used often to have even in County Matches, the scores, good pitch and all, are then no longer than they were forty or fifty years ago; while nothing like the same risks are taken, as a rule, in order to finish the game out one way or the other. The only two men I ever saw who played almost equally well on bad grounds and on good were Ranjitsinhji and W.G. Grace. The former was a genius: the latter had worked up batting to an exact science. The first time I had the misfortune to play against “W.G.” he was only a lad of eighteen. The match was the Gentlemen of Sussex against the Gentlemen of Gloucestershire. Grace went in first and took the first ball which I bowled. He scooped a gentle catch into Harry Brand’s mouth at mid-off. Brand let it trickle down his chest and stomach comfortably to the ground. “W.G.” made 276 thereafter. Years later Brand, then Lord Hampden, came to see me on an important matter of business. No sooner did his eye light upon me (he did not know he was going to meet me) than he walked up to me and said, “Have you ever forgotten that catch I dropped off you from ‘W.G.’?” I never had. We laughed then: we didn’t laugh at the time.
As to bowling, that is certainly straighter on the whole than it used to be, though I think Alfred Shaw would have held his own, even on that point, with any of the men of to-day, and the straightness is partly to be attributed to the raising of the arm in delivering the ball well above the level of the shoulder. But the greatest bowler I ever saw or batted to was of the long ago – a drunken old chap named William Buttress at Cambridge. He would now be called, in the slang of the day, a bowler of “googlies.” But he could do what he liked with the ball and he bowled at batsmen’s weak points to an extent and with a precision I never saw equalled. The spin he put on was amazing. At the end of the match the ball itself was all cut about with the imprints of his nails. In fact he was the only really scientific bowler I have ever known. I remember in one match the captain of the University Eleven, one “Peter” Bagge, was in. It was almost impossible to get him out on a slow wicket and he was a hard hitter too. Buttress tried every possible device to induce Bagge to let go. Nothing would tempt him and he had scored over sixty runs. On a sudden Buttress threw up his hands and cried “that’s got him.” Sure enough, Bagge could not resist having a try for a big hit and was caught at deep square leg. He bowled for that catch as other men bowled for a wicket. The difficulty was to keep Buttress sober. The United All England Eleven contrived to do so in one match at Lord’s against the All England Eleven, for the first day, and he actually bowled Hayward, Daft, and George Parr, the three greatest batsmen of their time, out in one over. For the next forty-eight hours he was in a state of hopeless imbecility. Buttress was a genius, and I wonder nobody has ever studied and practised his methods. I was a member of the Marylebone Club for more than thirty years and I never saw any bowler try to do so.
I was at Trinity in the same year as the late King and I knew several of his intimate friends very well. Nobody thought him brilliant, though he did say that “at the time when it comes to my turn to be King of England thrones will be going by competitive examination.” He was regarded as a good-natured common-sense man, rather strictly looked after, who wished to enjoy life and didn’t like losing at games. That he would become a popular and dexterous monarch none imagined. Among my own intimate friends and acquaintances at Trinity I numbered several who have since distinguished themselves and three or four who have reached the top of the tree in their professions. Only one of them, however, Lord Rayleigh, has made any important additions to the knowledge of mankind, has materially helped on the progress of the race, or will be remembered after his death. His undoubted success in science, however, was not due to his University training.
Close friendships made at this time of life are very enduring. No matter how widely men may differ afterwards and how far apart their careers may lie the remembrance of intimacy in those early years always binds them together. That has certainly been the case with me. One of my brothers having been at Magdalen College, Oxford and my other brother at St. John’s I knew Oxford almost as well as I knew Cambridge, and my close friends of those years are my close friends now. I doubt indeed whether anyone ever makes very intimate friendships after the age of twenty-five. There is so very much unknown on both sides later and character has formed.
When I had taken my degree I came to London, had rooms in Bury Street, was an original member, and on the Committee, of the New University Club, ate my dinners at the Temple – digestion at that time rendering examination unnecessary – and read for the Bar in Chambers, playing cricket in the summer and whist and billiards in the winter. My legal training, in consequence, was as imperfect as my University career had been useless. The famous Judah P. Benjamin, whom I knew well, and listened to in three great arbitration cases, told me if I would seriously follow my profession I should certainly attain to the front rank. I was quite ready to believe him; for genial appreciation is always grateful, even when it takes the shape of good-natured flattery. But I disliked the idea of battering out my brains over disputes about other people’s property, I took little interest in whether criminals of varying degrees of turpitude were condemned or acquitted, and the atmosphere of the Courts was as unwholesome to me physically as legal shop was unpleasant to me mentally. In fact, I was lazy and as I had just sufficient income to render hard work at what I didn’t like unnecessary, I was content to follow my bent of the time. I am now paying for my disinclination to drudgery as a young man by doing a portentous amount of work for nothing as an old one.
The late Canon Heavyside of Norwich was a most pleasing conversationalist and bon-vivant. Dining one evening with my guardian at Taverham his attention was directed at the close of dinner to some very fine old Madeira which had been buffeted round the Cape and back again in the days of long ago. He took a glass of it and appreciated the merit of that delicious but gouty wine. He was pressed to take another. He sighed and said, “No, the end of dinner, as Paley truly says, is like the end of life, one always thinks one might have done better.” I don’t myself believe Paley ever said anything of the sort. But I suppose we all of us feel as we get towards seventy that there are many regrettable things we have done in the past which – we should much like to do again. That is exactly my case. At any rate I had what Boccaccio calls a good time (e con ella aveva buon tempo): there is always the eternal feminine somewhere about. But my memory of this period lingers not at all around women but takes me to Lord’s, at the wicket, out in the field or on the top of the pavilion, and recalls many a pleasing incident and enjoyable acquaintance all over England. I feel sad as I think how many of my friends and companions of that day have already passed away.
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Last updated on 30.7.2006