LAMBKIN’S REMAINS
By H. B.
Author of “The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts,” etc
Published by
The Proprietors of the J.C.R. at
J. Vincent’s
96, High Street Oxford
1900
Lambkin on “Sleep” appeared in “The Isis.” It is reprinted here by kind permission of the Proprietors. The majority of the remaining pieces were first published in “The J. C. R.”
[All rights reserved.]
DEDICATION
TO
THE REPUBLICAN CLUB
I am determined
to
dedicate
this Book
and nothing shall turn me from
my Purpose.
DEDICATORY ODE.
I mean to write with all my strength
(It lately has been sadly waning),
A ballad of enormous length—
Some parts of which will need explaining.[1]
Because (unlike the bulk of men,
Who write for fame and public ends),
I turn a lax and fluent pen
To talking of my private friends.[2]
For no one, in our long decline,
So dusty, spiteful and divided,
Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
Or loved them half as much as I did.
The Freshman ambles down the High,
In love with everything he sees,
He notes the clear October sky,
He sniffs a vigorous western breeze.
“Can this be Oxford? This the place”
(He cries), “of which my father said
The tutoring was a damned disgrace,
The creed a mummery, stuffed and dead?
“Can it be here that Uncle Paul
Was driven by excessive gloom,
To drink and debt, and, last of all,
To smoking opium in his room?
“Is it from here the people come,
Who talk so loud, and roll their eyes,
And stammer? How extremely rum!
How curious! What a great surprise.
“Some influence of a nobler day
Than theirs (I mean than Uncle Paul’s),
Has roused the sleep of their decay,
And decked with light their ancient walls.
“O! dear undaunted boys of old,
Would that your names were carven here,
For all the world in stamps of gold,
That I might read them and revere.
“Who wrought and handed down for me
This Oxford of the larger air,
Laughing, and full of faith, and free,
With youth resplendent everywhere.”
Then learn: thou ill-instructed, blind,
Young, callow, and untutored man,
Their private names were⸺[3]
Their club was called Republican.
Where on their banks of light they lie,
The happy hills of Heaven between,
The Gods that rule the morning sky
Are not more young, nor more serene
Than were the intrepid Four that stand,
The first who dared to live their dream,
And on this uncongenial land
To found the Abbey of Theleme.
We kept the Rabelaisian plan:[4]
We dignified the dainty cloisters
With Natural Law, the Rights of Man,
Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters.
The library was most inviting:
The books upon the crowded shelves
Were mainly of our private writing:
We kept a school and taught ourselves.
We taught the art of writing things
On men we still should like to throttle:
And where to get the blood of kings
At only half-a-crown a bottle.
Eheu Fugaces! Postume!
(An old quotation out of mode);
My coat of dreams is stolen away,
My youth is passing down the road.
The wealth of youth, we spent it well
And decently, as very few can.
And is it lost? I cannot tell;
And what is more, I doubt if you can.
The question’s very much too wide,
And much too deep, and much too hollow,
And learned men on either side
Use arguments I cannot follow.
They say that in the unchanging place,
Where all we loved is always dear,
We meet our morning face to face,
And find at last our twentieth year....
They say, (and I am glad they say),
It is so; and it may be so:
It may be just the other way,
I cannot tell. But this I know:
From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
But something dwindles, oh! my peers,
And something cheats the heart and passes,
And Tom that meant to shake the years
Has come to merely rattling glasses.
And He, the Father of the Flock,
Is keeping Burmesans in order,
An exile on a lonely rock
That overlooks the Chinese border.
And One (myself I mean—no less),
Ah!—will Posterity believe it—
Not only don’t deserve success,
But hasn’t managed to achieve it.
Not even this peculiar town
Has ever fixed a friendship firmer,
But—one is married, one’s gone down,
And one’s a Don, and one’s in Burmah.
And oh! the days, the days, the days,
When all the four were off together:
The infinite deep of summer haze,
The roaring boast of autumn weather!
I will not try the reach again,
I will not set my sail alone,
To moor a boat bereft of men
At Yarnton’s tiny docks of stone.
But I will sit beside the fire,
And put my hand before my eyes,
And trace, to fill my heart’s desire,
The last of all our Odysseys.
The quiet evening kept her tryst:
Beneath an open sky we rode,
And mingled with a wandering mist
Along the perfect Evenlode.
The tender Evenlode that makes
Her meadows hush to hear the sound
Of waters mingling in the brakes,
And binds my heart to English ground.
A lovely river, all alone,
She lingers in the hills and holds
A hundred little towns of stone,
Forgotten in the western wolds.
I dare to think (though meaner powers
Possess our thrones, and lesser wits
Are drinking worser wine than ours,
In what’s no longer Austerlitz)
That surely a tremendous ghost,
The brazen-lunged, the bumper-filler,
Still sings to an immortal toast,
The Misadventures of the Miller.
The vasty seas are hardly bar
To men with such a prepossession;
We were? Why then, by God, we are—
Order! I call the club to session!
You do retain the song we set,
And how it rises, trips and scans?
You keep the sacred memory yet,
Republicans? Republicans?
You know the way the words were hurled,
To break the worst of fortune’s rub?
I give the toast across the world,
And drink it, “Gentlemen: the Club.”
CONTENTS.
PREFACE
The preparation of the ensuing pages has been a labour of love, and has cost me many an anxious hour. “Of the writing of books,” says the learned Psalmist (or more probably a Syro-Chaldæic scribe of the third century) “there is no end”; and truly it is a very solemn thought that so many writers, furnishing the livelihood of so many publishers, these in their turn supporting so many journals, reviews and magazines, and these last giving bread to such a vast army of editors, reviewers, and what not—I say it is a very solemn thought that this great mass of people should be engaged upon labour of this nature; labour which, rightly applied, might be of immeasurable service to humanity, but which is, alas! so often diverted into useless or even positively harmful channels: channels upon which I could write at some length, were it not necessary for me, however, to bring this reflection to a close.
A fine old Arabic poem—probably the oldest complete literary work in the world—(I mean the Comedy which we are accustomed to call the Book of Job)[5] contains hidden away among its many treasures the phrase, “Oh! that mine enemy had written a book!” This craving for literature, which is so explicable in a primitive people, and the half-savage desire that the labour of writing should fall upon a foeman captured in battle, have given place in the long process of historical development to a very different spirit. There is now, if anything, a superabundance of literature, and an apology is needed for the appearance of such a work as this, nor, indeed, would it have been brought out had it not been imagined that Lambkin’s many friends would give it a ready sale.
Animaxander, King of the Milesians, upon being asked by the Emissary of Atarxessus what was, in his opinion, the most wearying thing in the world, replied by cutting off the head of the messenger, thus outraging the religious sense of a time to which guests and heralds were sacred, as being under the special protection of Ζεύς (pronounced “Tsephs”).
Warned by the awful fate of the sacrilegious monarch, I will put a term to these opening remarks. My book must be its own preface, I would that the work could be also its own publisher, its own bookseller, and its own reviewer.
It remains to me only to thank the many gentlemen who have aided me in my task with the loan of letters, scraps of MSS., portraits, and pieces of clothing—in fine, with all that could be of interest in illustrating Lambkin’s career. My gratitude is especially due to Mr. Binder, who helped in part of the writing; to Mr. Cook, who was kind enough to look over the proofs; and to Mr. Wallingford, Q.C., who very kindly consented to receive an advance copy. I must also thank the Bishop of Bury for his courteous sympathy and ever-ready suggestion; I must not omit from this list M. Hertz, who has helped me with French, and whose industry and gentlemanly manners are particularly pleasing.
I cannot close without tendering my thanks in general to the printers who have set up this book, to the agencies which have distributed it, and to the booksellers, who have put it upon their shelves; I feel a deep debt of gratitude to a very large number of people, and that is a pleasant sensation for a man who, in the course of a fairly successful career, has had to give (and receive) more than one shrewd knock.
The Chaplaincy,
Burford College,
Oxford.
P.S.—I have consulted, in the course of this work, Liddell and Scott’s Larger Greek Lexicon, Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities, Skeats’ Etymological Dictionary, Le Dictionnaire Franco-Anglais, et Anglo-Français, of Boileau, Curtis’ English Synonyms, Buffle on Punctuation, and many other authorities which will be acknowledged in the text.
Lambkin’s Remains
Being the unpublished works of J. A. Lambkin, M.A. sometime Fellow of Burford College
I.
INTRODUCTORY
It is without a trace of compunction or regret that I prepare to edit the few unpublished essays, sermons and speeches of my late dear friend, Mr. Lambkin. On the contrary, I am filled with a sense that my labour is one to which the clearest interests of the whole English people call me, and I have found myself, as the work grew under my hands, fulfilling, if I may say so with due modesty, a high and noble duty. I remember Lambkin himself, in one of the last conversations I had with him, saying with the acuteness that characterised him, “The world knows nothing of its greatest men.” This pregnant commentary upon human affairs was, I admit, produced by an accident in the Oxford Herald which concerned myself. In a description of a Public Function my name had been mis-spelt, and though I was deeply wounded and offended, I was careful (from a feeling which I hope is common to all of us) to make no more than the slightest reference to this insult.
The acute eye of friendship and sympathy, coupled with the instincts of a scholar and a gentleman, perceived my irritation, and in the evening Lambkin uttered the memorable words that I have quoted. I thanked him warmly, but, if long acquaintance had taught him my character, so had it taught me his. I knew the reticence and modesty of my colleague, the almost morbid fear that vanity (a vice which he detested) might be imputed to him on account of the exceptional gifts which he could not entirely ignore or hide; and I was certain that the phrase which he constructed to heal my wound was not without some reference to his own unmerited obscurity.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men! Josiah Lambkin! from whatever Cypress groves of the underworld which environs us when on dark winter evenings in the silence of our own souls which nothing can dissolve though all attunes to that which nature herself perpetually calls us, always, if we choose but to remember, your name shall be known wherever the English language and its various dialects are spoken. The great All-mother has made me the humble instrument, and I shall perform my task as you would have desired it in a style which loses half its evil by losing all its rhetoric; I shall pursue my way and turn neither to the right nor to the left, but go straight on in the fearless old English fashion till it is completed.
Josiah Abraham Lambkin was born of well-to-do and gentlemanly parents in Bayswater[6] on January 19th, 1843. His father, at the time of his birth, entertained objections to the great Public Schools, largely founded upon his religious leanings, which were at that time opposed to the ritual of those institutions. In spite therefore of the vehement protestations of his mother (who was distantly connected on the maternal side with the Cromptons of Cheshire) the boy passed his earlier years under the able tutorship of a Nonconformist divine, and later passed into the academy of Dr. Whortlebury at Highgate.[7]
Of his school-days he always spoke with some bitterness. He appears to have suffered considerably from bullying, and the Headmaster, though a humane, was a blunt man, little fitted to comprehend the delicate nature with which he had to deal. On one occasion the nervous susceptible lad found it necessary to lay before him a description of the treatment to which he had been subjected by a younger and smaller, but much stronger boy; the pedagogue’s only reply was to flog Lambkin heartily with a light cane, “inflicting,” as he himself once told me, “such exquisite agony as would ever linger in his memory.” Doubtless this teacher of the old school thought he was (to use a phrase then common) “making a man of him,” but the object was not easily to be attained by brutal means. Let us be thankful that these punishments have nearly disappeared from our modern seminaries.
When Josiah was fifteen years of age, his father, having prospered in business, removed to Eaton Square and bought an estate in Surrey. The merchant’s mind, which, though rough, was strong and acute, had meanwhile passed through a considerable change in the matter of religion; and as the result of long but silent self-examination he became the ardent supporter of a system which he had formerly abhorred. It was therefore determined to send the lad to one of the two great Universities, and though Mrs. Lambkin’s second cousins, the Crumptons, had all been to Cambridge, Oxford was finally decided upon as presenting the greater social opportunities at the time.[8]
Here, then, is young Lambkin, in his nineteenth year, richly but soberly dressed, and eager for the new life that opens before him. He was entered at Burford College on October the 15th, 1861; a date which is, by a curious coincidence, exactly thirty-six years, four months, and two days from the time in which I pen these lines.
Of his undergraduate career there is little to be told. Called by his enemies “The Burford Bounder,” or “dirty Lambkin,” he yet acquired the respect of a small but choice circle who called him by his own name. He was third proxime accessit for the Johnson prize in Biblical studies, and would undoubtedly have obtained (or been mentioned for) the Newdigate, had he not been pitted against two men of quite exceptional poetic gifts—the present editor of “The Investor’s Sure Prophet,” and Mr. Hound, the well-known writer on “Food Statistics.”
He took a good Second-class in Greats in the summer of 1864, and was immediately elected to a fellowship at Burford. It was not known at the time that his father had become a bankrupt through lending large sums at a high rate of interest to a young heir without security, trusting to the necessity under which his name and honour would put him to pay. In the shipwreck of the family fortunes, the small endowment was a veritable godsend to Josiah, who but for this recognition of his merits would have been compelled to work for his living.
As it was, his peculiar powers were set free to plan his great monograph on “Being,” a work which, to the day of his death, he designed not only to write but to publish.
There was not, of course, any incident of note in the thirty years during which he held his fellowship. He did his duty plainly as it lay before him, occasionally taking pupils, and after the Royal Commission, even giving lectures in the College hall. He was made Junior Dean in October, 1872, Junior Bursar in 1876, and Bursar in 1880, an office which he held during the rest of his life.
In this capacity no breath of calumny ever touched him. His character was spotless. He never offered or took compensations of any kind, and no one has hinted that his accounts were not accurately and strictly kept.
He never allowed himself to be openly a candidate for the Wardenship of the College, but it is remarkable that he received one vote at each of the three elections held in the twenty years of his residence.
He passed peacefully away just after Hall on the Gaudy Night of last year. When his death was reported, an old scout, ninety-two years of age, who had grown deaf in the service of the College, burst into tears and begged that the name might be more clearly repeated to him, as he had failed to catch it. On hearing it he dried his eyes, and said he had never known a better master.
His character will, I think, be sufficiently evident in the writings which I shall publish. He was one of nature’s gentlemen; reticent, just, and full of self-respect. He hated a scene, and was careful to avoid giving rise even to an argument. On the other hand, he was most tenacious of his just rights, though charitable to the deserving poor, and left a fortune of thirty-five thousand pounds.
In the difficult questions which arise from the superior rank of inferiors he displayed a constant tact and judgment. It is not always easy for a tutor to control and guide the younger members of the aristocracy without being accused of pitiless severity on the one hand or of gross obsequiousness on the other. Lambkin, to his honour, contrived to direct with energy and guide without offence the men upon whom England’s greatness depends.
He was by no means a snob—snobbishness was not in him. On the other hand, he was equally removed from what is almost worse than snobbishness—the morbid terror of subservience which possesses some ill-balanced minds.
His attitude was this: that we are compelled to admit the aristocratic quality of the English polity and should, while decently veiling its cruder aspects, enjoy to the full the benefits which such a constitution confers upon society and upon our individual selves.
By a genial observance of such canons he became one of the most respected among those whom the chances of an academic career presented to him as pupils or parents. He was the guest and honoured friend of the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Pembroke, the Duke of Limerick (“Mad Harry”), and the Duke of Lincoln; he had also the honour of holding a long conversation with the Duke of Berkshire, whom he met upon the top of an omnibus in Piccadilly and instantly recognised. He possessed letters, receipts or communications from no less than four Marquises, one Marquess, ten Barons, sixteen Baronets and one hundred and twenty County Gentlemen. I must not omit Lord Grumbletooth, who had had commercial dealings with his father, and who remained to the end of his life a cordial and devoted friend.[9]
His tact in casual conversation was no less remarkable than his general savoir faire in the continuous business of life. Thus upon one occasion a royal personage happened to be dining in Hall. It was some days after the death of Mr. Hooligan, the well-known Home Rule leader. The distinguished guest, with perhaps a trifle of licence, turned to Lambkin and said “Well, Mr. Bursar, what do you think of Hooligan?” We observed a respectful silence and wondered what reply Lambkin would give in these difficult circumstances. The answer was like a bolt from the blue, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” said the Classical Scholar, and a murmur of applause went round the table.
Indeed his political views were perhaps the most remarkable feature in a remarkable character. He died a convinced and staunch Liberal Unionist, and this was the more striking as he was believed by all his friends to be a Conservative until the introduction of Mr. Gladstone’s famous Bill in 1885.
In the delicate matter of religious controversy his own writings must describe him, nor will I touch here upon a question which did not rise to any considerable public importance until after his death. Perhaps I may be permitted to say this much; he was a sincere Christian in the true sense of the word, attached to no narrow formularies, but following as closely as he could the system of Seneca, stiffened (as it were) with the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, though he was never so violent as to attempt a practice of what that extreme stoic laid down in theory.
Neither a ritualist nor a low-churchman, he expressed his attitude by a profound and suggestive silence. These words only escaped him upon one single occasion. Let us meditate upon them well in the stormy discussions of to-day: “Medio tutissimus ibis.”
His learning and scholarship, so profound in the dead languages, was exercised with singular skill and taste in the choice he made of modern authors.
He was ignorant of Italian, but thoroughly conversant with the French classics, which he read in the admirable translations of the ‘Half-crown Series.’ His principal reading here was in the works of Voltaire, wherein, however, he confessed, “He could find no style, and little more than blasphemous ribaldry.” Indeed, of the European languages he would read German with the greatest pleasure, confining himself chiefly to the writings of Lessing, Kant, and Schiller. His mind acquired by this habit a singular breadth and fecundity, his style a kind of rich confusion, and his speech (for he was able to converse a little in that idiom) was strengthened by expressions of the deepest philosophic import; a habit which gave him a peculiar and individual power over his pupils, who mistook the Teutonic gutturals for violent objurgations.
Such was the man, such the gentleman, the true ‘Hglaford,’ the modern ‘Godgebidden Eorldemanthingancanning,’ whose inner thoughts shall unroll themselves in the pages that follow.
II.
Lambkin’s Newdigate
POEM WRITTEN FOR “NEWDIGATE PRIZE” IN ENGLISH VERSE
By J. A. Lambkin, Esq., of Burford College
N.B.—[The competitors are confined to the use of Rhymed Heroic Iambic Pentameters, but the introduction of Lyrics is permitted]
Subject: “THE BENEFITS CONFERRED BY SCIENCE, ESPECIALLY IN CONNECTION WITH THE ELECTRIC LIGHT”
For the benefit of those who do not care to read through the Poem but desire to know its contents, I append the following headings:
Invocation to the Muse
Hail! Happy Muse, and touch the tuneful string!
The benefits conferred by Science[10] I sing.
His theme: the Electric Light and its benefits
Under the kind Examiners’[11] direction
I only write about them in connection
With benefits which the Electric Light
Confers on us; especially at night.
These are my theme, of these my song shall rise.
My lofty head shall swell to strike the skies,[12]
And tears of hopeless love bedew the maiden’s eyes.
Second Invocation to the Muse
Descend, O Muse, from thy divine abode,
Osney
To Osney, on the Seven Bridges Road;
For under Osney’s solitary shade
The bulk of the Electric Light is made.
Here are the works, from hence the current flows
Which (so the Company’s prospectus goes)
Power of Works there
Can furnish to Subscribers hour by hour
No less than sixteen thousand candle power,[13]
All at a thousand volts. (It is essential
To keep the current at this high potential
In spite of the considerable expense.)
Statistics concerning them
The Energy developed represents,
Expressed in foot-tons, the united forces
Of fifteen elephants and forty horses.
But shall my scientific detail thus
Clip the dear wings of Buoyant Pegasus?
Poetical or Rhetorical questions
Shall pure statistics jar upon the ear
That pants for Lyric accents loud and clear?
Shall I describe the complex Dynamo
Or write about its commutator? No!
The Theme changes
To happier fields I lead my wanton pen,
The proper study of mankind is men.
Third Invocation to the Muse
Awake, my Muse! Portray the pleasing sight
That meets us where they make Electric Light.
A picture of the Electrician
Behold the Electrician where he stands:
Soot, oil, and verdigris are on his hands;
Large spots of grease defile his dirty clothes,
The while his conversation drips with oaths.
Shall such a being perish in its youth?
Alas! it is indeed the fatal truth.
In that dull brain, beneath that hair unkempt,
Familiarity has bred contempt.
We warn him of the gesture all too late;
Oh, Heartless Jove! Oh, Adamantine Fate!
His awful fate
Some random Touch—a hand’s imprudent slip—
The Terminals—a flash—a sound like “Zip!”
A smell of Burning fills the startled Air—
The Electrician is no longer there!
He changes his Theme
But let us turn with true Artistic scorn
From facts funereal and from views forlorn
Of Erebus and Blackest midnight born.[14]
Fourth Invocation to the Muse
Arouse thee, Muse! and chaunt in accents rich
The interesting processes by which
The Electricity is passed along:
These are my theme, to these I bend my song.
Description of method by which the Current is used
It runs encased in wood or porous brick
Through copper wires two millimetres thick,
And insulated on their dangerous mission
By indiarubber, silk, or composition,
Here you may put with critical felicity
The following question: “What is Electricity?”
Difficulty of determining nature of Electricity
“Molecular Activity,” say some,
Others when asked say nothing, and are dumb.
Whatever be its nature: this is clear,
The rapid current checked in its career,
Baulked in its race and halted in its course[15]
Transforms to heat and light its latent force:
Conservation of Energy. Proofs of this: no experiment needed
It needs no pedant in the lecturer’s chair