LITMIR.BIZ

      Fox How, Ambleside

       Dr. Thomas Arnold's holiday home.

       Mrs. Arnold continued to reside at Fox How until her death, in 1873

      As in dealing with the Universities, so also in dealing with the Public Schools, Arnold found it difficult to liberate himself from his early environment and prepossessions. He was the son of a Wykehamist, who had become the greatest of Head Masters; he himself was both a Wykehamist and a Rugbeian; he was the brother of three Rugbeians, and the father of three Harrovians. Thus it was impossible for him to regard the Public Schools of England with the dispassionate eye of the complete outsider. It is true that, when he gave rein to his critical instinct, he could not help observing that Public Schools are "precious institutions where, for £250 a year, our boys learn gentlemanlike deportment and cricket"; that with us "the playing-fields are the school"; and that a Prussian Minister of Education would not permit "the keepers of those absurd cock-pits" to examine the boys as they choose, "and send them jogging comfortably off to the University on their lame longs and shorts about the Calydonian Boar." But, when it came to practical dealing, he had a tenderness for the "cock-pit"—even for the playing-fields—almost for the Calydonian Boar—which hindered him from being a very formidable or effective critic. Rugby, with which he was so closely connected, and to which he was so much attached, owes nothing, as far as one knows, to his suggestions or reproaches. At Harrow he lived for five years, on terms of affectionate intimacy with the Head Master and the staff; and, though he was keenly alive to the absurdities of the "catch-scholarship," as he called it, which was cultivated there, and to the inefficiency of the Principia and Notabilia, on which the Harrovian mind was nourished, his adverse judgment never made itself felt. Marlborough he praised and admired as "a decided offspring of Rugby." At Eton his fascinating essay on "Eutrapelia" was given;11 and he in turn was fascinated by the Memorials of "An Eton Boy," which he reviewed in the Fortnightly for June, 1882.12 That boy, Arthur Baskerville-Mynors, was certainly a most lovable and attractive character, and he was thus commemorated in the Eton College Chronicle: "His life here was always joyous, a fearless, keen boyhood, spent sans peur et sans reproche. Many will remember him as fleet of foot and of lasting powers, winning the mile and the steeplechase in 1871, and the walking race in 1875. As master of the Beagles in 1875, he showed himself to possess all the qualities of a keen sportsman, with an instinctive knowledge of the craft." On this last sentence Arnold fastened with his characteristic insistence, and used it to point the moral which he was always trying to teach. The Barbarian, as "for shortness we had accustomed ourselves to call" a member of the English upper classes, even when "adult and rigid," had often "invaluable qualities." "It is hard for him, no doubt, to enter into the Kingdom of God—hard for him to believe in the sentiment of the ideal life transforming the life which now is, to believe in it and even to serve it—hard, but not impossible. And in the young the qualities take a brighter colour, and the rich and magical time of youth adds graces of its own to them; and then, in happy natures, they are irresistible."

      And so he goes on to give a truly appreciative and affectionate sketch of young Arthur Mynors; and then he quotes the sentence about the Master of the Beagles, and on this he comments thus: "The aged Barbarian will, upon this, admiringly mumble to us his story how the battle of Waterloo was won in the playing-fields of Eton. Alas! disasters have been prepared in those playing-fields as well as victories; disasters due to inadequate mental training—to want of application, knowledge, intelligence, lucidity. The Eton playing-fields have their great charm, notwithstanding; but with what felicity of unconscious satire does that stroke of 'the Master of the Beagles' hit off our whole system of provision of public secondary schools; a provision for the fortunate and privileged few, but for the many, for the nation, ridiculously impossible!" This is his last word on the Public Schools, as that title is conventionally understood. He had a much fuller and more searching criticism for the schools in which the great Middle Class is educated.

      It may perhaps be fairly questioned whether great humourists much enjoy the humour of other people. If we apply this question to Arnold's case and seek to answer it by his published works, we shall probably answer in the negative. From first to last, he takes little heed of humorous writers or humorous books. Even in those great authors who are masters of all moods, it is the grave, rather than the humorous mood, which he chooses for commendation. He was a devout Shakespearian, but it is difficult to recall an allusion to Shakespeare's humour, except in the rather oblique form of Dogberry as the type of German officialdom. Swift he quoted with admirable effect, but it was Swift the reviler, not Swift the jester. He says that he made a "wooden Oxford audience laugh aloud with two pages of Heine's wit"; but the lecture, as we read it, shows more of mordant sarcasm than of the material for laughter. Scott he knew by heart, and Carlyle he honestly revered; but he admired the one for his romance and the other for his philosophy. Thackeray, sad to remember, he "did not think a great writer," and so Thackeray's humour disappears, with his pathos and his satire, into the limbo of common-place. The imaginary spokesman of the Daily Telegraph in Friendship's Garland reckons as "the great masters of human thought and human literature, Plato, Shakespeare, Confucius, and Charles Dickens"; and there, to judge from the great bulk of his writing, Arnold's acquaintance with Dickens begins and ends.

      But it was one of his amiable traits that, whenever he read a book which pleased him, he immediately began to share his pleasure with his friends. In the year 1880, he writes to his colleague, Mr. Fitch, "I have this year been reading David Copperfield for the first time.13 Mr. Creakle's School at Blackheath is the type of our English Middle Class Schools, and our Middle Class is satisfied that so it should be."

      It would seem that he made this rather belated acquaintance with Dickens' masterpiece, through reading it aloud to one of his children who was laid up with a swelled face. But, however introduced to his notice, the book made a deep impression on him. In the following June he contributed to the Nineteenth Century an article on Ireland styled "The Incompatibles." In that article he suggests that the Irish dislike of England arises in part from the fact that "the Irish do not much come across our aristocracy, exhibiting that factor of civilization, the power of manners, which has undoubtedly a strong attraction for them. What they do come across, and what gives them the idea they have of our civilization and its promise, is our Middle Class."

      The mention, so frequent in his writings, of "our Middle Class," seems to demand a definition;

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