Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography | Page 8

Inn
Fields. For which purpose a Scaffold was erected that Morning on that
side of the Fields next to the Arch going into Duke Street, in the middle
between the said Arch and the corner turning into Queen Street."
[2]
To the Editor of The Times.
SIR--As Links with the Past seem just now to be in fashion, permit me

to supply two which concern my near relations.
1. My uncle, Lord Russell (1792-1878) visited Napoleon at Elba in
December, 1814, and had a long conversation with him, which is
reported in Spencer Walpole's "Life of Lord John Russell." There must
be plenty of people now alive who conversed with my uncle, so this
Link cannot be a very rare one.
2. My second Link is more remarkable. My father (1807-1894)
remembered an old Highlander who had been "out" with Prince Charles
Edward in 1745. Of course, this "linking" took place at the extremes of
age, my father being a little boy and the Highlander a very old man. My
grandfather, the sixth Duke of Bedford, was one of the first Englishmen
who took a shooting in the Highlands (on the Spey), and the first time
that my father accompanied him to the north, Prince Charlie's follower
was still living near the place which my grandfather rented. Your
obedient servant, Sept. 6, 1910. GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL.

II
HARROW
Not to River nor Royal Keep, Low Meads nor level Close, Up to the
sturdy wind-worn steep, Levavi oculos; To four red walls on a skyward
climb, Towering over the fields and Time. E. MILNER-WHITE.
When Dr. Vaughan re-created Harrow School, after its long decadence
under Longley and Wordsworth, he wished that the number should
never exceed five hundred. Of late years the school has been greatly
enlarged, but in my time we were always just about the number which,
in Vaughan's judgment, was the largest that a Head-master could
properly supervise. That number is embalmed in Edward Howson's
touching song:--
"Five hundred faces, and all so strange! Life in front of me, Home
behind-- I felt like a waif before the wind, Tossed on an ocean of shock
and change."

Some of those faces I shall presently describe; but, in reviewing my life
at Harrow, my first tribute must be paid to my Head-master--for
forty-five years the kindest, most generous, and most faithful of friends.
Henry Montagu Butler, youngest son of Dr. George Butler, Dean of
Peterborough and sometime Head-master of Harrow, was born in 1833,
and educated at Harrow. He was Head of the School, made the
cock-score in the Eton match at Lords, was Scholar and Fellow of
Trinity, and Senior Classic in 1855. He was elected to the
Head-mastership of Harrow, in succession to Dr. Vaughan, when he
was only a few months over 26, and entered on his reign in January,
1860. It is not easy to describe what a graceful and brilliant creature he
seemed to my boyish eyes, when I first saw him in 1867, nor how
unlike what one had imagined a Head-master to be. He was then just
thirty-four and looked much younger than he was. Gracefulness is the
idea which I specially connect with him. He was graceful in shape,
gesture, and carriage; graceful in manners and ways, graceful in
scholarship, graceful in writing, pre-eminently graceful in speech. It
was his custom from time to time, if any peculiar enormity displayed
itself in the school, to call us all together in the Speech-Room, and give
us what we called a "Pi-jaw." One of these discourses I remember as
well as if I had heard it yesterday. It was directed against Lying, as not
only un-Christian but ungentlemanlike. As he stood on the dais, one
hand grasping his gown behind his back and the other marking his
points, I felt that, perhaps for the first time, I was listening to pure and
unstudied eloquence, suffused with just as much scorn against base
wrongdoing as makes speech pungent without making it abusive. It
should be recorded to Butler's credit that he was thoroughly feared. A
Head-master who is not feared should be at once dismissed from his
post. And, besides being feared, he was profoundly detested by bad
boys. The worse the boy's moral character, the more he hated Butler.
But boys who were, in any sense or degree, on the right side; who were
striving, however imperfectly, after what is pure and lovely and of good
report, felt instinctively that Butler was their friend. His preaching in
the School Chapel (though perhaps a little impeded by certain
mannerisms) was direct, interesting, and uplifting in no common
degree. Many of his sermons made a lifelong impression on me. His
written English was always beautifully pellucid, and often adorned by

some memorable anecdote or quotation, or