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Wooll, the present Head-master of Rugby school, is a book which, although it contains a faithful representation of his life and character by one who had been his pupil, and though it is enriched with a collection of letters between some of the men most distinguished in literature during his time, is yet so much less known than it deserves, that in speaking of it to Mr.
John MacAlpine, head-master of Eden Valley Academy, said a few severe words on the afternoon's lack of discipline, and prophesied in highly coloured language the exemplary manner in which any repetition of it would be treated on the morrow. Then he doubled all home lessons, besides setting a special imposition to each class.
Bland the Head-Master, or Francis Goode the Usher. Among his school-fellows were some who subsequently attained to high dignities in the State, and still remained his friends. Foremost of these was George Lyttelton, later the statesman and orator, who had already commenced poet as an Eton boy with his "Soliloquy of a Beauty in the Country."
My old cronies, fellows not half so clever as I am, are all doing well. There's Tom Stevens, my very fag at Eton snivelling little dog he was too! just made under-secretary of state. Pearson, whose longs and shorts I always wrote, is now head-master to the human longs and shorts of a public school editing Greek plays, and booked for a bishopric.
Williamson, head-master in 1828, drew attention in a pamphlet to the proper costuming of the performers; and when, in 1847, there was a talk of abolishing the plays, a memorial signed by six hundred old "Westminsters" was sent in, stating it as their "firm and deliberate belief, founded on experience and reflection, that the abolition of the Westminster play cannot fail to prove prejudicial to the interests and prosperity of the school."
I remember well, when I was still the junior boy in the school, Dr. Butler, the head-master, stopping me in the street, and asking me, with all the clouds of Jove upon his brow and the thunder in his voice, whether it was possible that Harrow School was disgraced by so disreputably dirty a boy as I! Oh, what I felt at that moment! But I could not look my feelings.
Parr discerned that Richard, with all his faults, was by no means an impenetrable dunce. Both he and Sumner, the head-master of Harrow, discovered in the schoolboy Sheridan great talents which neither of them was capable of calling into action. Richard Sheridan came from Harrow School and Harrow playgrounds to London, and, later on, to Bath.
He lived to conscience, not for show, and few men carry through life so white a soul. A notice of Mr. Clough understood to be written by one who knew him well gives the outline of his life. "Arthur Hugh Clough was educated at Rugby, to which school he went very young, soon after Dr. Arnold had been elected head-master.
He told Alice Hardy the whole circumstances, and she was as indignant as himself, and warmly agreed that the head-master should be punished for his unjust suspicions. "And do you say he is really going to be expelled to-morrow?" she asked, in a tone of horror. "So the fellow said, my dear; but he shall smart for it, and the laws of the land shall do Frank justice."
Not an official part in the service was Mr. Yorke taking, that afternoon; the duty was being performed by the head-master, whose week it was to take it. Very few people were at service, and still less of the clergy; the dean was present, but not one of the chapter. Arthur Channing sat in his place at the organ.
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