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SPRINGTIME
AND OTHER ESSAYS

BY SIR FRANCIS DARWIN

AUTHOR OF “RUSTIC SOUNDS”
AND OTHER ESSAYS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1920

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

The above illustrations are all taken from “Old English Instruments of Music,” by the kind permission of Canon Galpin.

TO
F. C. C.

SPRINGTIME [1]

“Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year.”

—Autolycus’ Song.

Governesses used to tell us that the seasons of the year each consist of three months, and of these March, April, and May make the springtime. I should like to break the symmetry, and give February to spring, which would then include February, March, April, and May. It has been said that winter is but autumn “shyly shaking hands with spring.” We will, accordingly, make winter a short link of two months—an autumnal and a vernal hand—December and January. It is a little sad for autumn to have to make room for chill November alongside of the happier months of September and October. But autumn is a season of decadence and cannot justly complain.

The autumnal flowers, which may be allowed to figure as a prelude to spring, are few in number. My favourite is lady’s tresses (Spiranthes), so called from the spiral twist in its inflorescence, which suggests braided hair. Gentiana amarella I should like to include, but its flowering-time is from 12th August to 8th September, and summer has the

stronger claim on it. Other autumnal flowers are laurustinus and ivy. If we go by the mean date nothing flowers in October or November, and in December only the Christmas rose (Helleborus niger) is recorded by Blomefield.

But the autumn months have a glory of their own which may vie with the brightest hues of flowers. This great and beautiful panorama begins with the yellowing of the lime-leaves, which may occur as early as 17th August, but on the average is seen on 14th September. It is followed towards the end of September by a brown tint, showing itself in the leaves of the horse-chestnut. It is appropriate that these two species, which are not indigenous, [2] should be the first to fade into glory. But I must not insist on the point, for we see wych-elm leaves fall 24th September, while the date for the common elm is 28th October; and the elm is a foreigner compared to the wych-elm, and retains a mark of its alien origin in not setting seeds.

The syringa (Philadelphus) is another foreigner, which early shows autumnal tints—yellowing on 27th September. Then follow some native trees: the beech and birch both turning yellow on 1st October, and being followed by the maple on 7th October. I like the motherliness of the half-grown beech, who refuses to drop her dead leaves in autumn, hoping (as I imagine) that they will shelter her tender leaves in the chilly springtime. The older beeches give up this anxious care, and

doubtless laugh among themselves over the fussiness of young mothers. They forget, no doubt, that in the scrub at the feet of their own boles the habit persists.

With regard to the fall of leaves, the sycamore begins to lose them 2nd October; birch and cherry, 8th October; maple and walnut, 12th October; aspen, 13th October; beech and elder, 13th October; ash, 14th October; Lombardy poplar and Virginian creeper, 18th October; honeysuckle, 22nd October; hazel, 26th October; elm, 28th October; whitethorn, 30th October; plane, 3rd November. Judging by a single observation of Blomefield, the larch is the last performer in the drama of autumn. It turns yellow on 8th November, and its leaves fall 15th November.

Blomefield [3] records that on 29th November the trees are “everywhere stript of leaves,” so that some sort of colour-drama has been in progress from the middle of September to the end of November. It may be objected that what has been said of autumn is but a catalogue of names and dates. And this is true enough; but when we realise the glory of autumnal decadence, it seems (however baldly recounted) to be a fitting prelude to the great outbreak of new life—green leaves and bright flowers that spring gives us.

In Blomefield’s “Calendar” the difference between December and January is exaggerated. For, as it stands, it suggests that plants know that a new year has begun, and all burst into flower

on 1st January. But that careful naturalist points out [4a] “all those phenomena which are referred to 1st January, as the earliest date, may be considered as occasionally showing themselves in December of the previous year.”

The plants that bloom in winter, i.e. December and January, are few enough. The Christmas rose gives us its white or pink flowers in December, and the primrose may flower in the first days of January—indeed, I seem to remember it in Kent before Christmas, but I will not answer for it. According to Blomefield, the honour of being the first plant to awake must be given to the honeysuckle (Lonicera caprifolium), which unfolds its leaves between 1st January and 22nd February, i.e. on 21st January on the average. This bold behaviour is all the more to its credit since it is said by Hooker [4b] to be a naturalised plant.

Then follow in order the flowers of furze, hazel, winter aconite (Eranthis), hellebore (H. fœtidus), daisy, and snowdrop; so that the winter flowers make a most pleasant show, and tempt us to raise January to the rank of the first month of springtime—but we must allow the credit to be justly due to winter. In winter, too, we must be grateful to the ivy of the bare hedgerows shining in the sun, its leaves glistening like the simple jewels of a savage.

With February, we are agreed that spring comes in, but it is a springtime that keeps something of

the graveness of winter: though, when the silver sunshine begins to be decorated with the singing of birds, we must call it spring.

In February, too, the roads are no longer edged with dead white grass, but show the fresh green of wayside plants—cow-weed, nettle, dock, and cleavers.

The trees still stand naked, their leaf-buds waiting for a better season. I like to think of wintering plants not as being asleep, but rather as silent. They sing with all their green tongues when spring releases them from the cupboards (which we call buds) where she has kept them safe.

The service-tree is a hardy creature, for its buds are naked and unprotected, like Pampas Indians who are proud of sleeping uncovered, and of seeing, as they rise, their forms outlined in the hoar-frost. I have only recently noticed the purple tint of alder-buds; [5] and I am reminded of the character in Cranford, who needs Tennyson’s words “Black as ash-buds in March” to teach him the fact. Some trees show their flowers early. For instance, the hanging tassels of the hazel, from which the dusty pollen can be shaken out, and the tiny red tufts which are all the female flower has to show. The alder, too, has a brave crowd of lambs’ tails. The elm should flower about the middle of March, and its pink stamens make a pleasant sight. These plants are called anemophilous—that is, wind-loving, as though grateful to the wind for carrying their

pollen without payment. I can imagine that the plants employing insects to carry pollen from one to another feel superior to the wind-fertilised clan. We may fancy the duckweed (speaking of the pine) to say: “Of course, he is very big and of an ancient family, but for that very reason he is primitive in his habits. I know he boasts that he employs the winds of heaven as marriage priests, but we are served by the animal kingdom in our unions—and that, you must allow, is something to be proud of.” [6] But duckweeds grow so crowded together that they are probably fertilised, to a great extent, by contact with their neighbours, without aid from the animal kingdom. We may also imagine the duckweed reproving the pine for his extravagance in the matter of pollen production. This, however, is necessary, because the pollen being sown broadcast by the wind, it is a matter of chance whether or not a grain reaches the stigma of its own species, and the chance of its doing so is clearly increased by multiplying the number of pollen-grains produced. Enormous quantities of the precious dust are wasted by this prodigality. We read of pollen swept from the decks of ships, or coating with a yellow scum lakes hidden among Tyrolean pinewoods. Pollen is so largely dispersed in the air that it has been supposed to be a cause of hay-fever.

Blackley found, by means of a sticky plate, which

could be exposed and covered again, when raised high in the air on a kite, that pollen is dispersed to considerable altitudes. Wherever vegetable débris collects, pollen-grains may be found. Kerner found them, together with wind-borne seeds and scales of butterflies’ wings, sticking to the ice in remote Alpine glaciers.

Another characteristic of wind-borne pollen is dryness or dustiness; the grains are smooth, not sculptured like the pollen meant to be carried by insects; nor are they sticky or oily, as is often the case with entomophilous pollen. The advantage to the plan is obvious; the grains, from the absence of the burr-like quality, or of any other kind of adhesiveness, do not tend to hold together in clumps, but separate easily from one another, and float all the more easily. [7]

Several adaptations are found to favour the dispersal of the pollen. Wind-fertilised plants are generally tall; thus in Europe, at least, the commonest representatives of the class are shrubs or trees—witness the fir-trees, yew, juniper, oak, hazel, birch. And where the plants are lowly—e.g., grasses and sedges, and the plantains—the flowers are more or less raised up on the haulm. An exception must be made of some water-plants—e.g., the Potamogetons, where the flower-stalk is but slightly raised above the surface.

Wind-fertilised plants have many characteristics which favour the dispersal of the pollen. The grasses

have long pendent stamens, and versatile anthers, from which the pollen is easily shaken out by the wind. There are, of course, exceptions to these generalisations. Such plants as Hippuris and Salicornia have no particular adaptations: the filaments are short, and the plants themselves are not of sufficient height to be able to scatter forth their pollen efficiently by the mere bending of their stems. The need for exposure to the wind is shown in another way—namely, by the habit of the Cupuliferæ (oak, hazel, etc.), of flowering before the leaves appear; this not only favours the start of the pollen on its flight, but is probably still more useful in increasing its chance of reaching the stigma.

If the pollen is exposed to the wind it will be liable to be wetted and injured. Catkins—such as those of the walnut or hazel—give some protection to the pollen, since the stamens are covered in by tile-like scales; but where—as in the grasses and plantains—the anthers hang far out of the flowers, the pollen is easily injured. Some of the cereals protect themselves against injury by means of a remarkably rapid growth of the filaments; thus the anthers remain hidden within the flowers until the last moment, and, under the influence of a warm sunny morning, rapidly protrude themselves. If the scales of the flower are artificially separated, the growth can be produced by warmth and moisture; Askenasy describes a trick of country children, who put ears of rye in their mouths and thus produce a miraculous growth of stamens. The growth or rapid turgescence takes place, according to the same

writer, at the pace of one millimetre in three minutes.

The explosive male flowers of the nettle have a somewhat similar meaning. The young stamen is bent so that the upper end of the anther touches the base of the filament. On the inner concave side of the stamen are large cells, whose turgescence tends to unfold the filament: I do not know by what means the unfolding is prevented, but whatever the cause may be, it is at last overcome and the stamen uncurls with a jerk, and scatters forth the pollen. Here, as in the rye, the pollen is protected until the actual moment when it starts on its voyage through the air.

Another of the Nettle tribe, Pilea serpyllifolia—a plant often cultivated in our greenhouses—is also explosive, and its little puffs of smoke-like pollen have gained for it the popular name of the artillery plant. Its power of explosion must be of value to it as counterbalancing the disadvantage, to a wind-fertilised plant, of such a lowly habit.

The adaptations found in the female organs are chiefly such as increase the surface capable of receiving the pollen, and therefore increase the chance of fertilisation. A big stigmatic surface is common: not only is the receptive part of the style large, but it usually bears very large stigmatic papillæ, which gives a velvety hoary look to this type of stigma. In the grasses the three divisions of the stigma are always more or less conspicuous; and reach a climax, in this respect, in the huge beard-like tangle of the maize.

Some of the most interesting cases of wind fertilisation are those in which an isolated instance occurs in a Natural Order otherwise served by insects. Thus in the Rosaceæ, Poterium sanguisorba is wind fertilised, and has long pendent stamens, and a tufted stigma; while the closely allied Sanguisorba officinalis, although it secretes nectar (and this can only mean that it hopes to attract insects), retains the tufted stigma of its anemophilous relatives.

In the case of the Kerguelen cabbage (Pringlea antiscorbutica), the cause of its degeneration seems to be the want of winged insects on the wind-blown shores on which it grows. It has acquired some anemophilous characters—e.g., increased stigmatic surface and exserted anthers. Its flowers are inconspicuous like those of wind-fertilised plants in general, and it seems in fair way to lose its petals altogether—many flowers only retaining a single one. The entomophilous ancestry of Pringlea is clearly shown by the occasional remnants of coloured markings in the petals, like those which in other flowers serve as finger-posts to visiting-insects, and are called nectar-guides.

But these are digressions—sidepaths of tempting detail which have lured me from the straight highway. However, they have brought me back to the main road.

In Blomefield’s Observations in Natural History (p. 332), he points out that “however much the seasons may differ in different years, the phenomena generally follow one another in the same order. And it follows that those which occur together any

one year, will occur at or nearly [at] the same time every other.” This indeed is what we might expect, from the circumstances of any interruption in the time of their occurrence, due to seasonal influence, necessarily affecting them all equally. One of the examples by which he supports his view is the parallel behaviour of the ground-ivy (Nepeta Glechoma) and the box-tree, whose flowers appear simultaneously on 3rd April, as an average date; while in a certain backward year they flowered later, but still close together—namely, 20th April and 19th April. There is to me an especial charm in these duets. Thus I like to imagine that the larch is waiting to put on its new green clothes till it hears the black-cap. Or is it that the larch rules the orchestra, and with his green baton signals to the songster to strike into the symphony? [11]

Shakespeare is right to make the daffodil come before the swallow dares, since according to Blomefield the average of seventeen annual observations gives 12th March for the daffodil’s flowering-day, and the swallow does not appear till 9th April at the earliest. Browning, too, is scientifically safe in letting his chaffinch sing now “that the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf.” Indeed, the most dilatory chaffinch must have been singing since 19th February, and in fortunate seasons might have been heard on 7th January. A floral calendar may be useful as an interpreter in antiquarian problems. Thus

Blomefield [12a] says that “the flos-cuculi, or cuckoo-flower of the older botanists, was so called from its opening its flowers about the time of the cuckoo’s commencing his call.” The botanist referred to may have been Gerarde, and the flower seems to be Cardamine pratensis, known as lady’s smock, also as the cuckoo-flower. Now the cuckoo begins his song (as the average of Blomefield’s seventeen years’ observation near Cambridge) on 29th April, [12b] and lady’s smock blossoms 19th April. [12c] The coincidence is but moderate, but it is cheering to find in Gilbert White’s Calendar, with its earlier South Country dates, that the events occur together: lady’s smock, 6th to 20th April; cuckoo, 7th to 26th April.

Wood-sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) was known as cuckoo-sorrel by the Saxons. In Stillingfleet’s Calendar of Flora (1755), it is said to flower on 16th April, and the cuckoo to begin his song on 17th April. It is pleasant to find, in a Swedish calendar of flora, that the cuckoo sings on 12th May, and the wood-sorrel flowers on 13th May. Lychnis flos-cuculi, the ragged robin, flowers on 19th May, and seems to have no kind of right to the name of a cuckoo-flower, though Gerarde remarks that it “flowers in April and May, when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her pleasant notes without stammering.” [12d]

I remember being told by a physician that a celebrated Polish violinist in his old age could not bear the sound of concerted music, but he would weep over a musical score of which he said, “These beggars don’t play out of tune.” This is also true of the great symphony of colour which the springtime unfolds. The trees are double-basses, and doubtless some are contra-fagotti, though I confess that I cannot speak positively on this point. Then come a mass of beautiful shrub-like plants which make up the rest of the string-band. As one who loves wind-instruments, I like to think that the flutes, oboes, and clarinets are the flowers of my vernal orchestra, decorating the great mass of stringed instruments with streaks and flames of colour.

In real music, we cannot say why certain sounds make an appropriate opening for a symphony; nor can we understand why the chorus of flowers should (as above pointed out) be led by mezereon (Daphne mezereum), followed by furze, hazel, the daisy, and the snowdrop.

Of course, their dates are not rigorously fixed: the plants just referred to vary in their dates of flowering in the following way:

Mezereon, 11th January to 2nd February;

Furze, 1st January to 4th April;

Hazel, 1st January to 20th February;

Snowdrop, 18th January to 16th February;

the mean dates being: mezereon, 22nd January; furze, 24th January; hazel, 26th January; snowdrop, 30th January. One cause of variation in the date

of flowering is temperature, and in the early months of the year this is probably the principal cause. Temperature must in the same way affect the flowering of summer plants, though the result is not so striking as in the springtime. In my article “A Procession of Flowers” (in this volume) I have given the range of the dates of flowering for different months.

The spring is the happiest season for those who love plants, who delight to watch and record the advent of old friends as the great procession of green leaves and beautiful flowers unwinds itself with a glory which no familiarity can tarnish.

I cannot resist giving the names of some of the flowers that make this familiar show that February and March give us. Field-speedwell (Veronica agrestis), butcher’s broom, Pyrus japonica, primrose, red dead-nettle, crocus, dandelion, periwinkle, celandine, marsh-marigold, sweet violet, ivy-leaved veronica, daffodil, white dead-nettle, colt’s-foot (Tussilago farfara), dog’s mercury, buttercup (Ranunculus repens), hyacinth, almond-tree, gooseberry, wood-sorrel, ground-ivy, wall-flower. The order in which they occur is taken from the mean dates of flowering given by Blomefield. To a lover of plants, this commonplace list will, I hope, be what a score is to a musician, and will recall to him some of the charm of the orchestra of living beauty that springtime awakens.

SOME NAMES OF CHARACTERS IN FICTION [15]

To some readers the personality of the characters in fiction is everything, and the names under which they appear of no importance. This is doubtless a rational position, but to me, and I think to many other novel-readers, the names which our imaginary friends and enemies bear is a matter of the greatest interest. To us it seems unbearable to have a Mr B. as a principal character, and the same objection applies to the names of places—“the little town of C. near the cathedral town of D.” is too depressing. Trollope, who does not rank high as a name-artist, entirely satisfies us with his Barchester and its Bishop Proudie and Archdeacon Grantley. George Eliot, too, has been able in the case of Stonyshire and Loamshire to give convincing names to counties, and never offends in the names of her characters, though they have no especial attractiveness.

In some cases it is hard to say whether or no a given name is appropriate. In Jane Austen’s books, for instance, we have grown up in familiarity with the characters and we cannot associate them with others. It would be unbearable to have Emma’s

lover called Mr William Larkins and his servant George Knightley. And this is not merely the result of old acquaintance; there is, I cannot doubt, a real dignity in one name and a touch of comedy in the other. For this statement one can but rely on instinct, but a real William Larkins (and I must apologise to him if he exists) will doubtless take a different view of the matter.

But Jane Austen, like George Eliot, makes no pretence to be an artist in nomenclature. She merely aims, I imagine, at names which, without being colourless, are free from meaning and in every way possible.

Thackeray is the outstanding instance of a novelist who makes a fine-art of nomenclature. With him there is an obvious delight in coining names. Thus there would be no harm in Clive Newcome going to Windsor and Newton’s shop to buy paint brushes, but Thackeray sends him to Messrs Soap and Isaac—a parody of that highly respectable firm which always pleases me.

I have with some little labour made a rough index of Vanity Fair, and I find in the second volume (which is probably a fair sample of the names in the whole book) that there are 247 names. The author evidently takes a delight in their invention. For instance, at one of Becky’s great dinner parties (vol. ii., p. 172), the eminent guests who come in after dinner are principally cheeses [16]—Duchess (Dowager) of Stilton, Duc de la Gruyère, Marchioness of Cheshire, Marchese Alessandro Strachino, Comte

de la Brie, Baron Schapzuger. The list also contains the name of Chevalier Tosti, who, I take it, is toasted cheese.

The titles he gives to business firms are not always complimentary. For instance, we have (vol. ii., p. 283) the case of poor Mr Scape, who was ruined by entering the great Calcutta house of Fogle, [17a] Fake and Cracksman. Both Fogle and Fake had left the firm with large fortunes, “and Sir Horace Fogle is about to be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna.”

A similar type of name is the title of Becky’s solicitors, Messrs Burke, Thurtell and Hayes, [17b] who forced the Insurance Company to pay the amount for which poor Jos Sedley’s life had been insured (vol. ii., p. 391). It is interesting to find (vol. ii., p. 341) that the author introduces himself in the person of Mr Frederick Pigeon, who “lost eight

hundred pounds to Major Loder and the Honourable Mr Deuceace.” This may remind us of Thackeray’s own loss of £1500 in a similar way (Dict. of Nat. Biog.). In some instances the author evidently could not take the trouble to coin effective names, as for instance in his reference to the firm of Jones, Brown and Robinson [18] (vol. ii., p. 130). A member of this firm became 1st Baron Helverlyn, when he altered his name to Johnes. His unfortunate daughter became the wife of Lord Gaunt. The subsidiary titles of this nobleman are pleasant—Viscount Hellborough, Baron Pitchley and Grillsby.

Other firms are represented as purely Jewish, e.g., Mr Lewis representing Mr Davids, and Mr Moss acting for Mr Manasseh, who complimented Becky “upon the brilliant way in which she did business” when she was making arrangements for Rawdon’s debts (vol. ii., p. 10).

There are many good names of shady people, e.g., Lady Crackenbury (vol. ii., p. 140), whom Becky cut, and Mrs Washington White, to whom she “gave the go-by in the Ring”; Mrs Chippenham (p. 160) and Mme de la Cruchecassée are of the same type. There is also Lady Slingstone, who said that Lord Steyne was “really too bad,” but she went to his party.

Among the virtuous folks, I am particularly fond of Sir Lapin Warren (vol. i., p. 207), whose lady was about to present him with a thirteenth child. A variant occurs in vol. ii., p. 286, where we read of

“thirteen sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev. Felix Rabbits.”

One might quote names for ever, but I must be satisfied with but a few more.

Among the professionally religious folks we have Rev. Lawrence Grills. Among the fashionables Lady FitzWillis of the Kingstreet family; Major-General and Lady Grizzel Macbeth (she had been Lady G. Glowry, daughter of Lord Grey of Glowry [19]); and Mrs Hook Eagles, who patronised Becky.

Names that seem to me bad are Fitzoof, Lord Heehaw’s son, Mrs Mantrap, and Lord Claude Lollypop. But there are innumerable other good ones: Macmurdo, who was to have been Rawdon’s second in a duel with Lord Steyne; Captain Papillon of the Guards, attending the young wife of old Methuselah (a bad name); young May and his bride, “Mrs Winter that was, and who had been at school with May’s grandmother.”

Viscount Paddington was a guest at Becky’s “select party” in May Fair. Finally, the Earl of Portansherry and the Prince of the house of Potztausand-Donnerwetter are good although obvious.

In Pendennis are many good names. Major Pendennis was proud of having made up the quarrel between Lady Clapperton and her daughter Lady Claudia. Lady John Turnbull, who spoke such bad French. Mr Kewsy, the barrister. Mr Sibwright, the luxurious young man in whose vacant chamber Laura Bell slept during Pendennis’ illness. The best of all

names must be given in Morgan’s own words, “Lord de la Pole, sir, gave him

I must reluctantly leave Thackeray and consider a very different maker of names, namely Dickens. It is sometimes said that his names are not invented but discovered by research. In my son Bernard’s A Dickens Pilgrimage (Times Series, 1914), he writes, p. 22: “Other people have been before us in seeing that Mr Jasper keeps a shop in the High Street of Rochester,” and that “Dorretts and Pordages are buried under the shadow of the cathedral.” He claims as his own the discovery that in the churchyard of Chalk (near Rochester) there are “three tombstones standing almost next door to one another and bearing a trinity of immortal names, Twist, Flight, and Guppy.” He adds that “the lady in Bleak House spelt her name Flite.” I fail to believe that anybody was ever called Pumblechook, and there are others equally impossible. But the great name of Pickwick is not an invention. Mr Percy Fitzgerald [20] gives plenty of evidence on this point, in a discussion suggested by the sacred name being inscribed on the Bath coach, to Sam Weller’s indignation. There was, for instance, a Mr William Pickwick of Bath, who died in 1795. Again, in 1807, the driver of “Mr Pickwick’s coach . . . was taken suddenly and very alarmingly ill on Slanderwick Common.” One member of the family “entered the army, and for some reason changed his name

to Sainsbury.” The object, as Mr Fitzgerald points out, is obvious enough. Mr Fitzgerald mentions (p. 16) the curious fact that Mr Dickens (the son of the author) once had to announce that he meant to call Mr Pickwick as a witness in a case he was conducting. The Judge made the characteristic remark, “Pickwick is a very appropriate character to be called by Dickens.”

With regard to the name Winkle, I cannot agree with Mr Fitzgerald [21] that Dickens took it from Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle.

Among the few names taken from real people is that of Mr Justice Stareleigh, who is generally believed to be Mr Justice Gaselee.

Sergeant Buzfuz in the same trial is believed on the authority of Mr Bompas to be Serjeant Bompas, the father of that eminent Q.C., but there seems to be no evidence that it is a portrait. In Pickwick some of the best names are those of various business firms, e.g., Bilson and Slum, who were Tom Smart’s employers. In the Judge’s chambers (which “are said to be of specially dirty appearance”) was a crowd of unfortunate clerks “waiting to attend summonses their employers had taken out, which it was optional to the attorney on the opposite side to attend or not, and whose business it was from time to time to cry out the opposite attorney’s name. For example, leaning against the wall . . . was an office lad of fourteen with a tenor voice; near him a common law clerk with a bass one. A clerk hurried in with a bundle of papers and stared about him.

“‘Sniggle and Blink,’ cried the tenor.

“‘Porkin and Snob,’ growled the bass.

“‘Stumpy and Deacon,’ said the newcomer.”

These are fairly good names, though they have not the touch of Thackeray. I like the names of the chief heroes in the cricket match at Dingley Dell. Dumpkins and Podder went in first for All-Muggleton, the bowlers on the other side being Struggles and Luffey. These names are so familiar that it is hard to judge them, but on the whole they seem to me fairly good, as being slightly comic and not impossible. But when we come to Horatio Fizkin, Esq., of Fizkin Lodge, and Hon. Samuel Slumkey, of Slumkey Hall, we are indeed depressed. But there are worse names in Pickwick. When Mrs Nupkins and her daughter have discovered Captain Fitz-Marshall to be a scamp: “How can we ever show ourselves in society?” said Miss Nupkins.

“‘How can we face the Porkenhams?’ cried Mrs Nupkins.

“‘Or the Griggs?’ cried Miss Nupkins.

“‘Or the Slummintowkens?’ cried Mrs Nupkins.”

This last seems to me about as bad a name as any writer ever invented. But Nockemorf, the name of Bob Sawyer’s predecessor in the apothecary business, is almost equally tiresome in a different style.

Why he chose such names it is hard to say, since he certainly could invent improbable names which are nevertheless appropriate. For instance, Smangle and Mivins are quite good names for the offensive scamps on whom Mr Pickwick is “chummed” in the Fleet Prison.

Daniel Grummer, the name of Mr Nupkins’ tipstaff, is roughly of the same type, and Wilkins Flasher, as an objectionable stockbroker is called, is quite a passable name. The only name in Pickwick which is comparable to those of Thackeray is Mrs Leo Hunter, while Count Smorltork, who occurs in the same scene, is unbearable. On the other hand, Captain Boldwig is quite a good name.

I now pass to Sir Walter Scott. It must be confessed that in the two books chosen for analysis—Guy Mannering and The Antiquary—he is disappointing as an artist in nomenclature. To begin with Guy Mannering, it is impossible to imagine why he gave such a name as Meg Merrilies to his magnificent heroine. It suggests “merry lies,” and makes us suspect that she was originally intended for a comic character. [23] And why, as she grew into a tragedy queen, he did not rename her I cannot understand. Fortunately he gave the colourless name Abel Sampson to another great character—the immortal Dominie. Again Dirk Hatteraick is a passable name. I cannot pretend to say whether it is a Dutch name, but as Dirk uses German (of a sort) when not speaking English, we may leave the question open. Among the names which are clearly bad are: Sir Thomas Kittlecourt, John Featherhead, Sloethorn (a wine merchant), Mortcloke the undertaker, Quid the tobacconist, Protocol the lawyer, and lastly the MacDingawaies, a Highland sept or clan.

The following seem to be bearable or fairly good, but I must confess to a want of instinct as to Scotch names: MacGuffog, a constable, Macbriar, Dandy Dinmont (although a dinmont is the Scottish for “a wedder in the second year”), MacCandlish. On the whole, as far as Guy Mannering is concerned, the author gets but few good marks and many bad ones.

The same is, I fear, true of The Antiquary. We find such bad names as Rev. Mr Blattergowl of Trotcosey (vol. i., p. 208); Baron von Blunderhaus; Dibble the gardener; Dousterswivel, the German or Dutch swindler; the Earl of Glengibber; Goldiword, a moneylender; Dr Heavysterne, from the Low Countries; Mr Mailsetter of the Post Office; Sandie Netherstanes the miller; Jonathan Oldbuck, the hero of the book; Sir Peter Pepperbrand of Glenstirym. Of the name Strathtudlem I cannot judge; it does not strike me as good, though possibly better than the immortal Tillietudlem of Old Mortality.

There are, of course, a number of names which do not offend, but there are few which are actually attractive. Among the last-named class are Edie Ochiltree, Francis of Fowlsheugh, Elspeth of Craigburnfoot, Lady Glenallan, Francie Macraw, Ailison Breck, but among these Edie Ochiltree is the only name which is undoubtedly in Class I.

It is disappointing to a lover of Sir Walter Scott to be obliged to show that as an artist in names he ranks low. But his sense of humour occasionally fails in other matters. I remember being reproved (when a young man at Cambridge) for saying that Scott showed a want of humour in Jeanie Deans’

letter to her father, in which she tells him that Effie has been pardoned. The author introduces in brackets: “Here follow some observations respecting the breed of cattle, and the produce of the dairy which it is our intention to forward to the Board of Agriculture.” I still think I was right, and that the eminent person who snubbed me was wrong.

Among the works of more modern writers I have analysed one of Trollope’s—the Small House at Allington. The names on the whole are harmless and normal, such as Christopher Dale of Allington; Adolphus Crosbie, the bad hero; Montgomerie Dobbs, his friend; Fothergill, factotum to the Duke of Omnium, and many others. Some names are only saved by our familiarity with them, e.g., Lady Dumbello or the above-mentioned Duke of Omnium. [25] Among the fanciful names Mr Fanfaron and Major Fiasco are in the bad rather than in the good class, though if they had more appropriateness they might be passed.

The positively bad names are numerous enough—the Marquis of Auldreekie; Basil and Pigskin, who keep a leather warehouse; Sir Raffle Buffle; Chumpend, a butcher; Lady Clandidlem; the Rev. John Joseph Jones is damned because he, an obvious Welshman, is described as of Jesus College at Cambridge instead of Oxford. Kissing and Love, two clerks in Johnny Eames’ office, might have been passed had not the author gone out of his way to refer to the lamentable jokes made in the office about them. Mr Optimist is an incredibly bad

name, and the same may be said of Sir Constant Outonites. The physician, Sir Omicron Pi, [26] may have a meaning of which I am ignorant. I think Thackeray would have spelled it Sir O’Micron Pye, which would have given a touch of reality.

There is one class of books which I have not noticed, namely, those in which all or nearly all the characters have names with an obvious meaning. The great instance of this type is Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, in which occur well-known names such as Mr Worldly Wiseman, Faithful, Mr Facing-both-Ways, Lord Desire-of-Vain-Glory, etc. There are two exceptions in The Pilgrim’s Progress, namely Demas, which is taken from 2 Timothy iv. 10, and Mnason (Acts xxi. 16).

An author of this type, with whom Bunyan would have objected to be classed, is Sheridan. In The Rivals we have the immortal names of Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Lucius O’Trigger, Mrs Malaprop, and Lydia Languish. Bob Acres has not so obvious a meaning, but is clearly meant to imply rusticity. The chief exception is Faulkland, and there are also David, Julia, and Lucy.

In St Patrick’s Day we have Dr Rosy, Justice Credulous, Sergeant Trounce, Corporal Flint. The hero, Lieutenant O’Connor, is the principal exception.

Finally, in The School for Scandal, we have Sir Peter Teazle (which suggests a prickly irritable nature), as well as names with a more obvious

meaning, e.g., Joseph Surface, Sir Benjamin Backbite, Snake, Careless, Sir Harry Bumper, Lady Sneerwell, and Mrs Candour.

The other characters have names without meanings, e.g., Rowley, Moses, Trip, and Maria. The fact that the very different characters, Charles and Joseph Surface, necessarily bear the same surname shows how difficult it is to carry out a system such as that on which Sheridan’s nomenclature is based.

THOMAS HEARNE, 1678–1735

To the everyday reader Thomas Hearne, if at all, is chiefly known by the Diary which he kept for thirty years, viz., from 1705 when he was twenty-seven years of age, until his death. This, in 145 volumes, is preserved in the Bodleian Library, and is, I believe, in course of publication. What I have to say is founded on Bliss’s Reliquiæ Hearnianæ, [29a] which consists of extracts from the above-mentioned diary. Mr Bliss naturally selected passages referring to well-known books or persons of note; but he was wise enough to include what a pompous editor would have omitted as trifling. It is these which are especially valuable to one who tries to give a picture of Hearne’s simple and lovable character.

The following account of Thomas Hearne, written by himself, is from the Appendix to vol. i. of The Lives of John Leland, Thomas Hearne, and Anthony à Wood, 1772. [29b]

Thomas was the son of George Hearne, Parish Clerk of White Waltham, Berks. He was born at Littlefield Green “within the said parish of White

Waltham.” Thomas, “being naturally inclined to Learning, he soon became Master of the English Tongue.” [30a]

Even when a boy Hearne was “much talked of,” and this “occasioned that Learned Gentleman, Francis Cherry, [30b] Esq., to put him to the Free School of Bray [30c] in Berks on purpose to learn the Latin Tongue, which his Father was not entirely Master of; this was about the beginning of the year 1693.” “Not only the Master himself, but all the other Boys had a very particular Respect for him, and could not but admire and applaud his Industry and Application.

“Mr Cherry being fully satisfied of the great and surprising Progress he had made, by the advice of that good and learned Man Mr Dodwell (who then

lived at Shottesbrooke), he resolved to take him into his own House, which accordingly he did about Easter in 1795 [31] and provided for him as if he had been his own Son.”

In the Easter Term 1696 he began life at Oxford as a Batteler of Edmund Hall, where he was soon employed by the Principal in the “learned Works in which he was engaged.”

“As soon as ever Mr Hearne had taken the Degree of Batchelor of Arts [in Act Term 1699] he constantly went to the Bodleian Library every day, and studied there as long as the time allowed by the Statutes would admit.”

This led to his being appointed Assistant Keeper of the Bodleian.

“Being settled in this employment, it is incredible what Pains he took in regulating the Library, in order to which he examined all the printed Books in it, comparing every Volume with Catalogue set out many years before by Dr Hyde.” It seems that this was very imperfect, and Hearne supplied a new catalogue. He afterwards dealt with the MSS. and the collection of coins.

In 1703 he took his M.A., and was offered Chaplaincies at two Colleges, but was not allowed to accept either of them. In 1712 he became “Second Keeper” of the Library. This position he accepted on condition that he might still be Janitor without the salary attaching to that position. He desired to retain the office because it gave him access to the Library at all hours. In 1713 he declined the Librarianship of the Royal Society.

In January 1714/15 his troubles began with his election as “Architypographus and Superior or Esque Beadle in Civil Law.” But after he had been elected, the Vice-Chancellor appointed, as Architypographus, a common printer, and Hearne resigned the Beadleship, but “continued to execute the office of librarian as long as he could obtain access to the library; but on 23rd January 1716, the last day fixed by the new Act for taking the oaths to the Hanoverian Dynasty, he was actually prevented from entering the library, and soon after formally deprived of his office on the ground of ‘neglect of duty’” (Dict. Nat. Biog.).

It is not necessary to follow in detail the ill-usage he received. He was afterwards treated with more consideration. Thus in 1720 it appears that he might have had the Camden Professorship of History, but again the oaths stood in his way. He also declined the living of Bletchley in Buckinghamshire. In 1729 he refused to be a candidate for the place of Chief Keeper of the Bodleian Library. In his own words “he retired to Edmund-Hall, and lived there very privately . . . furnishing himself with Books, partly from his Study, and partly by the help of friends.”

It is evident that his literary work was well remunerated, because a “sum of money amounting to upwards of one thousand Pounds was found in his Room after his decease.” This statement, together with the date of his death (10th June 1735), are clearly part of the design to conceal the authorship of the biography.

In the following pages I have chosen what seem to me to be interesting extracts from Hearne’s Diary, which begins 4th July 1705, and concludes 1st June 1735. I shall give what especially illustrates the conditions of life at Oxford from the beginning of the eighteenth century until the date of the author’s death.

There was plenty of barbarism remaining in Oxford life, for instance, 4th September 1705:—

“The Book called The Memorial was burnt last Saturday at the Sessions house, by the hands of the common hang-man, and this week the same will be done at the Royal Exchange and Palace-Yard, Westminster.” In the same month, however, we find pleasanter record, e.g., the first mention of one who (though I think they never met) became his most valued correspondent.

“Last night I was with Mr Wotton (who writ the Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning) at the tavern. . . . Mr Wotton told me Mr Baker of St John’s College, Cambridge, had writ the history and antiquities of that college; and that he is in every way qualified (being a very industrious and judicious man) to write the hist. and antiq. of that university.”

Thomas Baker, b. 1656, d. 1740, was a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, but on the accession of George I. he would not take the oath of allegiance and lost his Fellowship. The College, however, treated him with consideration and he was allowed to remain as a commoner-master until his death. He worked indefatigably, and gained the deserved

“reputation of being inferior to no living English scholar in his minute and extended acquaintance with the antiquities of our national history” (Dict. Nat. Biog.).

There is often a pleasant irrelevance in Hearne’s Diary. For instance:—

18th Oct. 1705.—“Mr Lesley was in the public library this afternoon, with some Irish ladies. He goes under the name of Smith.”

I like the following outburst on the value of books:—

2nd Nov. 1705.—“Narcissus March, Archbishop of Armagh, gave 2500 libs for Bishop Stillingfleet’s library which, like that of Dr Isaac Vossius, was suffered to go out of the nation to the eternal scandal and reproach of it. The said archbishop has built a noble repository for them.”

6th Nov. 1705.—“Mr Pullen, of Magd. hall, last night told me that there was once a very remarkable stone in Magd. hall library, which was afterwards lent to Dr Plot, who never returned it, replying, when he was asked for it, that ’twas a rule amongst antiquaries to receive, and never restore.”

This was the more reprehensible in Dr Plot (1640–1696) inasmuch as he had been bred at Magdalen Hall. He was the author of A Natural History of Oxfordshire, and also of Staffordshire. The latter is apparently the better of the two, but it does not speak well for his sources of information that it should have been “a boast among the Staffordshire squires, to whom he addressed his enquiries, how readily they had ‘humbugged old

Plot.’” He was appointed Secretary to the Royal Society in 1682. He was also the first custos of Ashmole’s Museum, which could not have been an easy office since “twelve cartloads of Trades cant’s rarities” arrived in Oxford to form its nucleus. (Dict. Nat. Biog.).

18th Nov. 1705.—“When sir Godfrey Kneller (as Dr Hudson informs me) came to Oxon, by Mr Pepys’s order, to draw Dr Wallis’s picture, he, at dinner with Dr Wallis, was pleased to say, upon the Dr’s questioning the legitimacy of the prince of Wales, that he did not in the least doubt but he was the son of King James and queen Mary; and to evince this he added, that upon the sight of the picture of the prince of Wales, sent from Paris into England, he was fully satisfied of what others seemed to doubt so much. For, as he further said, he had manifest lines and features of both in their faces, which he knew very well, having drawn them both several times.”

18th Nov. 1705.—“After Mr Walker was turned out of University coll. for being a papist, he lived obscurely in London, his chief maintenance being from the contributions of some of his old friends and acquaintance; amongst whom was Dr Radcliff, who (out of a grateful remembrance of favours received from him in the college) sent him once a year a new suit of cloaths, with ten broad pieces, and a dozen bottles of the richest Canary to support his drooping spirits. This, Dr Hudson (from whom I received this story) was informed by Dr Radcliff himself.”

9th Dec. 1705, p. 78.—“To show that the Dutchess

of Marlborough (commonly called Queen Zarah) has the ascendant over the queen. . . . When prince George (who is lookt upon as a man of little spirit and understanding) sollicited the queen, his wife, for a place for some friend of his, Zarah, who happened to be by at that time, cryed out, Christ! madam! I am promised it before!”

30th Jan. 1705–6.—“Mr Thwaits tells me that the dean of Christ Church (Mr Aldrich) formerly drew up an epitome of heraldry for the use of some young gentlemen under his care. . . . He says ’twas done very well, and the best in its nature ever made.”

26th April 1705–6.—“Mr Grabe created D.D.; Dr Smalrich presented him with a cap, and after that with a ring, signifying that the universitys of Oxford and Francfurt were now joyned together, and become two sisters; and that they might be the more firmly united together, as well in learning as religion, he kissed Mr Grabe.”

This is of interest as showing that the custom of giving rings at the conferring of honorary degrees existed in England, as it does to this day at Upsala.

The following extract illustrates what we should now consider great license in the matter of smoking:

“When the bill for security of the church of England was read . . . Dr Bull sate in the lobby of the house of lords all the while, smoking his pipe.”

31st March 1708–9.—“We hear from Yeovill in Somersetshire by very good hands of a woman covered with snow for at least a week. When found she told them that she had layn very warm, and had slept most part of the time.”

A well-known case of the same sort is described in Gunning’s Reminiscences (1854).

22nd April 1711.—“There is a daily paper comes out called The Spectator, written, as is supposed, by the same hand that writ the Tatler, viz. Captain Steel. In one of the last of these papers is a letter written from Oxon, at four o’clock in the morning, and subscribed Abraham Froth. It ridicules our hebdomadal meetings. The Abraham Froth is designed for Dr Arthur Charlett, an empty, frothy man, and indeed the letter personates him incomparably well, being written, as he uses to do, upon great variety of things, and yet about nothing of moment. Queen’s people are angry at it, and the common-room say there, ’tis silly, dull stuff; and they are seconded by some that have been of the same college. But men that are indifferent commend it highly, as it deserves.”

17th Nov. 1712.—“On Thursday last (13th Nov.), duke Hamilton and the Lord Mohun being before Mr Oillabar, one of the masters of Chancery, about some suit depending between them, and some words arising, a challenge was made between these two noble men, and the duell was fought on Saturday (15th Nov.) in the Park. My lord Mohun was killed on the spot, and the duke so wounded that he died before he got home. This lord Mohun should have been hanged some years agoe for murder, which he had committed divers times.”

24th Nov.—. . . “The duke having given Mohun his mortal wound, and taking him up in his arms, as soon as Makartney saw it, he and col. Hamilton fell

to it; but Hamilton, though he was wounded by Makartney in the leg, disarmed Makartney, and threw his sword from him, and immediately went to Mohun to endeavour also to recover him. Mean time Makartney (who is a bloudy, ill man) runs and takes up his sword, comes to the duke, and gives him his mortal wound, of which the duke dyed before he could get home.”

It is of some interest to compare the above with Thackeray’s account of the duel in Esmond, book iii., chap. v.—

“’Twas but three days after the 15th November 1712 (Esmond minds him well of the date), that he went by invitation to dine with his General (Webb).” At the end of the feast Swift rushes to say that Duke Hamilton had been killed in a duel. “They fought in Hyde Park just before sunset.”

When I read the story in Esmond I was naturally struck by Thackeray’s making the duel occur three days after 15th November instead of on that day. I applied to my friend Dr Henry Jackson, who pointed out that the apparent error arises from the absence of a comma. The above passage should run:—

“It was about three days after, the 15th of November 1712 (Esmond minds him well of the date), that he went, etc.” This makes Thackeray’s account agree with Hearne’s. Dr Jackson has pointed out to me that the duel was fought at 7 A.M., not just before sunset as Swift is made to declare. The evidence is in Swift’s Journal to Mrs Dingley, of which extract Charles John Smith gave a facsimile in his Historical and Literary Curiosities, 1840:—

“Before this comes to your Hands, you will have heard of the most terrible Accident that hath almost ever happened. This morning at 8, my men brought me word that D. Hamilton had fought with Ld. Mohun and killed him and was brought home wounded. I immediately sent him to the Duke’s house in St James’s Square, but the porter could hardly answer for tears and a great Rabble was about the House. In short they fought at 7 this morning the Dog Mohun was killed on the spot, and wile (sic) the Duke was over him Mohun shortening his sword stabbed him in at the shoulder to the heart the Duke was helpt towards the lake house by the Ring in the park (where they fought), [39] and dyed in the Grass before he could reach the House and was brought home in his Coach by 8, while the poor Dutchess was asleep. . . . I am told that a footman of Ld. Mohun’s stabbd D. Hamilton; and some say Mackartney did so too. Mohun gave the affront and yet sent the Challenge. I am infinitly concerned for the poor Duke who was a frank honest good natured man, I loved him very well and I think he loved me better.

Jonat. Swift.

“London, 15th Nov. 1712.”

I insert the following extract as it records what was of great importance to Hearne personally, since he refused to recognise George I. as the legitimate monarch.

3rd Aug. 1714.—“On Sunday morning (Aug. 1st)

died queen Anne, about 7 o’clock. She had been taken ill on Friday immediately before. Her distemper an apoplexy, or, as some say, only convulsions. She was somewhat recovered, and then made Shrewsbury lord treasurer. On Sunday last, in the afternoon, George Lewis, elector of Brunswick, was proclaimed in London King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, by virtue of an act of parliament, by which those that are much nearer to the crown by bloud are excluded.”

The following extract illustrates the feeling in Oxford under the first Hanoverian sovereign. Very few, however, showed Hearne’s consistent and courageous Jacobinism:—

29th May 1715.—“Last night a good part of the presbyterian meeting-house in Oxford was pulled down. There was such a concourse of people going up and down, and putting a stop to the least sign of rejoycing, as cannot be described. But then the rejoycing this day (notwithstanding Sunday) was so very great and publick in Oxford, as hath not been known hardly since the restauration. There was not an house next the street but was illuminated. For if any disrespect was shown, the windows were certainly broke. The people run up and down, crying King James the third! The true King! No usurper! The duke of Ormond! and healths were everywhere drank suitable to the occasion, and every one at the same time drank to a new restauration, which I heartily wish may speedily happen.”

I give the following extract as a record of the dinner hour in Oxford in 1717:—

24th April 1717.—“On Sunday morning last (being Easter-day) Dr Charlett, master of University college, sent his man to invite me to dinner that day. I sent him word that I was engaged, as indeed I was. Yesterday he sent again. I sent word I would wait upon him. Accordingly I went at twelve o’clock. When I came I found nobody with him but Mr Collins, of Magdalen coll., whom he had also invited.” [41]

Here is an interesting scrap of history:—

19th April 1718.—“. . . King William the Conqueror’s beard alwayes shaven, for so was the custome of the Norman. Thus were the Englishmen forced to imitate the Normans in habit of apparell, shaving off their beards, service at the table, and in all other outward gestures. The English before did not use to shave their upper lips.”

11th Nov. 1720.—“Dr Wynne. . . . This worthy doctor was the man also that put a stop to the selling of fellowships in All Soul’s college, as I have often heard him say; and I have as often heard him likewise say, that he always voted for the poorest candidaters for fellowships in that college, provided they were equally qualified in other respects; a thing not practised now.”

Here is a pleasant inversion of the relation between boy and schoolmaster:—

21st Jan. 1718–19.—“I remember that I heard formerly Tom Rogers, who was yeoman beadle, say, that when he was that year, when the plague raged, a school-boy at Eaton, all the boys of that school were obliged to smoak in the school every morning, and that he was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoaking.”

27th Feb. 1722–23.—“It hath been an old custom in Oxford for the scholars of all houses, on Shrove Tuesday, to go to dinner at ten o’clock (at which time the little bell, called pan-cake bell, rings, or at least should ring, at St Maries), and at four in the afternoon; and it was always followed in Edmund hall, as long as I have been in Oxford, till yesterday, when they went to dinner at twelve, and to supper at six, nor were there any fritters at dinner, as there used always to be. When laudable old customs alter, ’tis a sign learning dwindles.”

I hope that modern Oxford has returned to pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.

There is a pleasant touch of mediævalness in the following:—

10th July 1723.—“There are two fairs a year at Wantage, in Berks, the first on 7th July, being the translation of St Thomas à Becket, and the second on the 6th of October, being St Faith’s day. But this year, the 7th of July being a Sunday, the fair was kept last Monday, and ’twas a very great one; and yesterday it was held too, when there was a very great match of backsword or cudgell playing

between the hill-country and the vale-country, Berkshire men being famous for this sport or excercise.”

The following account makes one inclined to sympathise with Hearne’s avoidance of travelling:—

21st Sept. 1723.—“They wrote from Dover, Sept. 14, that the day before, col. Churchill, with two other gentlemen, arrived there from Calais, by whom they received the following account, viz., that on Thursday morning last, Mr Seebright and Mr Davis being in one chair, and Mr Mompesson and a servant in another chaise, with one servant on horseback, pursuing their way to Paris, were, about seven miles from Calais, attacked by six ruffians, who demanded the three hundred guineas which they said were in their pockets and portmanteaus. The gentlemen readily submitted, and surrendered the money; yet the villains, after a little consultation, resolved to murder them, and thereupon shot Mr Seebright thro’ the heart, and gave the word for killing the rest: then Mr Davis, who was in the chaise with him, shot at one of them, missed the fellow, but killed his horse; upon which he was immediately killed, being shot and stabb’d in several places. Mr Mompesson and the two servants were likewise soon dispatched in a very barbarous manner. During this bloudy scene, Mr John Locke coming down a hill within sight of them, in his return from Paris, the ruffians sent two of their party to meet and kill him; which they did before the poor gentleman was apprized of any danger; but his man, who was a Swiss, begging hard for his life, was

spared. This happening near a small village where they had taken their second post, a peasant came by in the interim, and was also murdered. They partly flead, and otherwise mangled, the horse that was killed, to prevent its being known; so that ’tis believed they did not live far from Calais. The unfortunate gentlemen afore mentioned, not being used to travel, had unwarily discovered at Calais what sums they had about them, by exchanging their guineas for Louis d’ors, which is supposed to have given occasion to this dismal tragedy.”

27th July 1726.—“This is the day kept in honour of the Seven Sleepers, so called, because in the reign of Theodosius the second, about the year 449, when the resurrection (as we have it from Greg. Turon.) came to be doubted by many, seven persons, who had been buried alive in a cave at Ephesus by Decius the emperor, in the time of his persecution against the Christians, and had slept for about 200 years, awoke and testified the truth of this doctrine, to the great amazement of all.”

In the following passage Hearne shows (as in some other instances) a certain antagonism to Sir Isaac Newton. I hope, however, that he was impressed by what he quotes from the Reading Post, viz. that “six noble peers supported the pall” at the funeral.

“Sir Isaac Newton had promised to be a benefactor to the Royal society, but failed. Some time before he died, a great quarrel happened between him and Dr Halley, so as they fell to bad language. This, ’tis thought, so much discomposed Sir Isaac as to hasten his end. Sir Isaac died in great pain,

though he was not sick, which pain proceeded from some inward decay, as appeared from opening him. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Sir Isaac was a man of no promising aspect. He was a short well-set man. He was full of thought, and spoke very little in company, so that his conversation was not agreeable. When he rode in his coach, one arm would be out of the coach on one side, and the other on the other.”

25th April 1727.—“Mr West tells me, in a letter from London of the 22nd inst., that being lately in Cambridgeshire, he spent two days in that university, both which times he had the pleasure of seeing my friend Mr Baker, who was pleased to walk with him, and shew him his college, the library, etc. What hath been given to the library by Mr Baker himself, is no small addition to it; Mr Baker being turned out of his fellowship for his honesty and integrity (as I have also lost my places for the same reason, in not taking the wicked oaths), writes himself in all his books socius ejectus. His goodness and humanity are as charming, to those who have the happiness of his conversation, as his learning is profitable to his correspondents. The university library is not yet put into any order.”

25th June 1728.—“The Cambridge men are much wanting to themselves, in not retrieving the remains of their worthies. Mr Baker is the only man I know of there, that hath of late acted in all respects worthily on that head, and for it he deserves a statue.”

3rd Aug. 1728.—“Yesterday Mr Gilman of St

Peter’s parish in the east, Oxford (a lusty, heartick, [46a] thick, and short man), told me, that he is in his 85th year of age, and that at the restoration of K. Charles II., being much afflicted with the king’s evil, he rode up to London behind his father, was touched on a Wednesday morning by the king, was in very good condition by that night, and by the Sunday night immediately following was perfectly recovered and hath so continued ever since. He hath constantly wore the piece of gold about his neck that he received of the king, and he had it on yesterday when I met him.”

I hope that Oxford, which had treated poor Hearne so ill, was impressed by the facts recorded on 10th June 1730:—

“On Thursday, June 4th, the earl of Oxford (Edw. Harley) was at my room at Edm. hall from ten o’clock in the morning till a little after twelve o’clock, together with Dr Conyers Middleton, of Trin. coll. Camb., and my lord’s nephew, the hon. Mr May of Christ Church, and Mr Murray of Christ Church.”

7th Aug. 1732.—“My friend the honble. Benedict Leonard Calvert [46b] died on 1st June 1732 (old stile) of a consumption, in the Charles, Capt. Watts commander, and was buried in the sea. When he left England he seemed to think that he was becoming an exile, and that he should never see his native country more; and yet neither myself nor any else could disswade him from going. He was as

well beloved as an angel could be in his station; (he being governour of Maryland); for our plantations have a natural aversion to their governours, upon account of their too usual exactions, pillages, and plunderings; but Mr Calvert was free from all such, and therefore there was no need of constraint on that score: but then it was argument enough to be harrassed that he was their governour, and not only such, but brother to Ld. Baltimore, the lord proprietor of Maryland, a thing which himself declared to his friends, who were likewise too sensible of it. And the same may appear also from a speech or two of his on occasion of some distraction, which tho’ in print I never yet saw. I had a sincere respect for him, and he and I used to spend much time together in searching after curiosities, etc., so that he hath often said that ’twas the most pleasant part of his life, as other young gentlemen, likewise then in Oxford have also as often said, that the many agreeable hours we used to spend together on the same occasion were the most entertaining and most pleasant part of their lives. As Mr Calvert and the rest of those young gentlemen (several of which, as well as Mr Calvert, were of noble birth) used to walk and divert themselves with me in the country, much notice was taken thereof, and many envyed our happiness.”

5th July 1733.—“One Handel, a foreigner (who, they say, was born at Hanover), being desired to come to Oxford, to perform in musick this Act, in which he hath great skill, is come down, the

Vice-Chancellor (Dr Holmes) having requested him so to do, and, as an encouragement, to allow him the benefit of the Theater, both before the Act begins and after it. Accordingly he hath published papers for a performance to-day, at 5s. a ticket. This performance began a little after five o’clock in the evening. This is an inovation. The players might be as well permitted to come and act. The Vice-Chancellor is much blamed for it.”

16th Sept. 1733.—“Mr Sacheverel, who died a few years since, of Denman’s Farm (in Berks) near Oxford, was looked upon as the best judge of bells in England. He used to say, that Horsepath bells near Oxford, tho’ but five in number, and very small, were the prettiest, tunablest bells in England, and that there was not a fault in one, except the 3d, and that so small a fault, as it was not to be discerned but by a very good judge.”

3rd Oct. 1733.—“I hear of iron bedsteads in London. Dr Massey told me of them on Saturday, 29th Sept. 1733. He said they were used on account of the buggs, which have, since the great fire, been very troublesome in London.”

17th Jan. 1733–34.—“Mr Baker of Cambridge (who is a very good, as well as a very learned man, and is my great friend, though I am unknown in person to him) tells me in his letter of the 16th of last December, that he hath always thought it a happiness to dye in time, and says of himself, that he is really affraid of living too long. He is above seventy, as he told me some time since.”

10th March 1733–34.— . . . “On the 7th inst.

Ld. Oxford sent me the chronicle of John Bever. He lends it me at my request, and says he will lend me any book he hath, and wonders I will not go to London and see my friends; and see what MSS. and papers are there, and in other libraries, that are worth printing. I could give several reasons for my not going either to London or other places, which however I did not trouble his lordship with. Among others, ’tis probable I might receive a much better welcome than I deserve, or is suitable to one that so much desires and seeks a private humble life, without the least pomp or grandeur.”

2nd May 1734.—“Yesterday an attempt was made upon New college bells of 6876 changes. They began a quarter before ten in the morning, and rang very well until four minutes after twelve, when Mr Brickland, a schoolmaster of St Michael’s parish, who rang the fifth bell, missed a stroke, it put a stop to the whole, so that they presently set them, and so sunk the peal, which is pity, for ’twas really very true ringing, excepting five faults, which I observ’d (for I heard all the time, tho’ ’twas very wet all the while) in that part of the Parks which is on the east side of Wadham college, where I was very private; one of which five faults was the treble, that was rung by Mr Richard Hearne, and the other four were faults committed by the aforesaid Mr Brickland, who ’twas feared by several beforehand would not fully perform his part. . . .”

2nd May 1734. . . . “When I mention’d afterwards my observations to ye said Mr Smith, he told me, that tho’ he rung himself, yet he minded the faults

also himself. Upon which I asked him how many there were? He said three before that which stopp’d them. I told him that there just five before that, at which he admired my niceness.”

14th Oct. 1734. . . . “Dr Sherlock, now bp. of Salisbury, was likewise of that little house (Cath. Hall), and they look upon it as very much for the honour of that little house, that it has produced two of our principal prelates (Dr Sherlock and Hoadly, at Salisbury and Winchester). The last has usually (and regularly) gone to an Oxford man, as Ely to Cambridge.”

31st Dec. 1734. . . . “But having been debarr’d the library, a great number of years, I am now a stranger there, and cannot in the least assist him, tho’ I once design’d to have been very nice in examining all those liturgical MSS., and to have given notes of their age, and particularly of Leopric’s Latin Missal, which I had a design of printing, being countenanc’d thereto by Dr Hickes, Mr Dodwell, etc.”

RECOLLECTIONS

“To entertain the lag-end of my life
With quiet hours.”

—Henry IV., Pt. I.

I was born at Down on 16th August 1848: I was christened at Malvern—a fact in which I had a certain unaccountable pride. But now my only sensation is one of surprise at having been christened at all, and a wish that I had received some other name. I was never called Francis, and I disliked the usual abbreviation Frank, while Franky or Frankie seemed to me intolerable. I also considered it a hardship to have but one Christian name. Our parents began by giving two names to the elder children; but their inventive capacity gave way and the younger ones had each but one. It seemed, too, a singular fact that—as they afterwards confessed—they gave names which they did not especially like. Our godfathers and godmothers were usually uncles and aunts, but this tepid relationship was deprived of any conceivable interest by the fact that the uncles were usually represented by the parish clerk. This, of course, we only knew by rumour, but we realised that they gave no christening mugs—a line of conduct in which I now fully sympathise. My

brother Leonard did indeed receive a silver spoon from Mr Leonard Horner, but I fancy that this came to him on false pretences.

I have no idea at what age we began to go to church, but I have a general impression of unwillingly attending divine service for many boyish years. We had a large pew, lined with green baize, close beneath the clergyman’s desk, and so near the clerk that we got the full flavour of his tremendous amens. I have a recollection of entertaining myself with the india-rubber threads out of my elastic-sided boots, and of gently tweaking them when stretched as miniature harp-strings. The only other diverting circumstance was the occurrence of book-fish (Lepisma?) in the prayer books or among the baize cushions. I have not seen one for fifty years, and I may be wrong in believing that they were like minute sardines running on invisible wheels. In looking back on the service in Down church, I am astonished at the undoubted fact that whereas the congregation in general turned towards the altar in saying the Creed, we faced the other way and sternly looked into the eyes of the other churchgoers. We certainly were not brought up in Low Church or anti-papistical views, and it remains a mystery why we continued to do anything so unnecessary and uncomfortable.

I have a general impression of coming out of church cold and hungry, and of seeing the labourers standing about the porch in tall hats and green or purple smock-frocks. But the chief object of interest was Sir John Lubbock (the father of the late Lord

Avebury), of whom, for no particular reason, we stood in awe. He made it up to us by coming to church in a splendid fluffy beaver hat. My recollection is that we often went only to the afternoon service, which we preferred for its brevity. I have a clear recollection of our delight when, on rainy Sundays, we escaped church altogether.

A feature that distinguished Sunday from the rest of the week was our singular custom of having family prayers on that day only. When we were growing up we mildly struck at the ceremony, and my mother accordingly dropped it on finding that the servants took no especial interest in it.

On Sundays we wore our best jackets, but I think that, when church was over, we put on our usual tunics or blouses of surprising home-made fit. But I clearly remember climbing (in my Sunday clothes) a holly-tree on a damp Christmas Day, and meeting my father as I descended green from head to foot. I remember the occurrence because my father was justly annoyed, and this impressed the fact on me, since anything approaching anger was with him almost unknown.

In our blouses we might with impunity cover ourselves with the thick red clay of our country-side, and this we could always do by playing in a certain pit where we built clay forts, etc. We used also to run down the steep ploughed fields, our feet (grown with adhering clay to huge balls) swinging like pendulums and scattering showers of mud on all sides. Then we would come cheerfully home, entering by the back door and taking off our boots

as we sat on the kitchen stairs in semi-darkness and surrounded by pleasant culinary smells.

In later years, when we used to take long winter tramps along our flinty winding lanes, this unbooting on the back stairs was a prelude to eating oranges in the dining-room, a feast that took the place of five o’clock tea—not then invented.

In the early days of which I was speaking, we had schoolroom tea with our governess, while our parents dined in peace at about 6.30. We came down after our tea, rushing along the dark passage and descending the stairs with that rhythmic series of bangs peculiar to children. I do not know that we were really frightened at passing certain dark doorways, but I certainly remember enjoying a sort of sham terror. One of these doors led into my mother’s room and also to a store-room; I cannot think that this had any “night fears” for us, because it smelt so strongly of such everyday earthly things as soap and tallow candles. Why it was placed next to the bedroom I do not know. I have no clear remembrance of what we did in the evenings, but I seem to see a round table and a moderator lamp, such as occurs in John Leech’s pictures in Punch. I have also a faint recollection of black-coated uncles sitting by the fire and not unnaturally objecting to our making short-cuts across their legs. It was no doubt a pity that we were not reproved for our want of consideration for the elderly, and that, generally speaking, our manners were neglected. One of our grown-up cousins was reported to have called our midday dinner “a violent luncheon,” and I do not

doubt that she was right. We were fortunate in having a set of simple, kindly, old-fashioned servants with whom we could be on friendly terms. Thus it happens that recollections cluster about the kitchen and pantry. I have a vague remembrance of a Welsh cook, Mrs Davis, who was very kind to us in spite of constant threats of “tying a dish-cloth to your tail,” which, so far as I know, remained a threat, and was indeed never understood by me. We certainly could generally extract gingerbread and other good things from Daydy, as we called Mrs Davis. The butler, Parslow, was a kind friend to us all our lives. I do not remember being checked by him except in being turned out of the dining-room when he wanted to lay the table for luncheon, or being stopped in some game which threatened the polish of the sideboard, of which he spoke as though it were his private property. He had what may be called a baronial nature: he idealised everything about our modest household, and would draw a glass of beer for the postman with the air of a seneschal bestowing a cup of malvoisie on a troubadour. He would not, I think, have disgraced Charles Lamb’s friend Captain Burney, who welcomed his guests in the grand manner to the simplest of feasts. It was good to see him on Christmas Day: with how great an air would he enter the breakfast-room and address us:—“Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish you a happy Christmas, etc. etc.” I am afraid he got but a sheepish response from us. Among the outdoor servants there were three whom I remember well. There was Brooks,

the general outdoor man, who acted as gardener, cowman, etc. He had dark eyes and a melancholy, morose face. Of him I have told elsewhere [56a] the following anecdote:—

Brooks had been accused by the other gardener of using foul language, and was hailed before my father to be judged. I, as a little boy, standing in the hall, heard my father say, “You know you are a very bad-tempered man.” “Yes, sir” (in a tone of deep depression). “Then get out of the room—you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” At this point I rushed upstairs in vague alarm and heard no more.

Brooks lived in a cottage close to the cow-yard, with his wife, in whom I took an interest because her name was Keziah, and because she was the best smocker in the village. I have a vague recollection of a private in the Guards to whom I was introduced as a son of Brooks—a statement I regarded as surprising. Mrs Brooks was as melancholy as her husband, and I remember many years later, when the pair were pensioned off in the village, hearing Brooks say in her presence, “She ain’t no comfort to me, sir.” To this she made no retort, though a tu quoque would have been most just.

The under-gardener, Lettington (the man who objected to being sworn at), was a kindly person and a great friend of mine. It was he who taught me to make whistles [56b] in the spring and helped me with my tame rabbits. He also showed me how to make brick-traps for small birds, and a more elaborate trap

made of hazel twigs. In this last I remember catching a blackbird: I imagine that I must have been rather afraid of my captive, for the unfortunate bird escaped leaving its tail in my hands. I do not think I ever wanted to kill the few other birds caught in traps, but let them go free. I clearly remember looking with envy and admiration at Bewicke’s woodcuts of traps, e.g. that of the woodcock springe, and another of a sieve propped up over grain sprinkled as bait.

To return to Lettington. It was he who helped my father in his experiments on the crossing of plants: he lived to a great age, dying as a pensioner many years later. My father used to tell with amusement how Lettington never failed to remind him of a bad prophecy:—“Yes, sir, but you said so-and-so would happen.” The third outdoor man was Thomas Price, generally known as the Dormouse on account of his somnolent manner of working. We, as boys, believed him to be a deserter from the army on account of the military set of his shoulders, and because he had arrived in the village an unknown wanderer. He was a bachelor and spent more than was wise on beer. For the last few years of his life my mother made him save money by the simple process of retaining part of his wages in her own hands. In this way he unwillingly acquired some £20 or £30, but as he refused to leave it to those who took care of him in his last illness, it went to the Crown, to whom I hope it made up for the loss of T. Price’s very doubtful military services.

In later years it occurred to us that the methods of gardening at Down were antiquated, and we persuaded our parents to engage an active young Scotchman whom I will call X, and who was placed in command of Lettington and the Dormouse (the gloomy Brooks having been pensioned). The two old servants were dreadfully bustled by X, and I well remember their flushed faces after the first morning’s digging in the serious Scotch manner. After a time, finding that matters were very little looked after, X began some mysterious dealings in cows with a neighbouring farmer, and it was suddenly discovered that a cow had disappeared. I remember my shame at finding I did not know how many cows we ought to have, nor could I swear to their personal appearance. But by dint of cross-examination I was enabled to draw up a statement of how cow A had been sold, cow B bought, and cow C exchanged for cow D, etc. Finally the ingenious X was discharged, and the rejoicing Lettington and Dormouse reinstated. But before this fortunate conclusion, I had at my father’s bidding taken steps to obtain a summons against X. I remember thinking what a fool I should look when cross-examined before the magistrates. Another circumstance is impressed on my mind. The affair occurred in that remarkable October in which the trees were greatly injured by a snowstorm, and as I drove in a dog-cart through Holwood Park in search of the summons, I thought, as the trees cracked like pistols, that it was hardly worth while being crushed to death for the sake

of any number of cows. Finally X was not prosecuted, and departed in peace.

To return to my childhood: I came between George and Leonard, and was a companion to both of them, but I do not think we made a trio as Leonard and Horace and I did more or less. I have a clear recollection of Leonard in a red fez, and bare legs covered with scratches, but I cannot distinctly call up images of the others. I seem to remember a great deal of purposeless wandering with my younger brothers; but with George, playing was an organised affair in which I was an obedient subordinate, as I have described in Rustic Sounds. Our chief game was playing at soldiers; we had toy guns to which home-made wooden bayonets were fixed, knapsacks, and I think shakos—whether we had any uniform coats I cannot remember. In the cloakroom under the stairs our names and heights were recorded, and George conscientiously constructed a short foot-rule so that our height should come to something like six feet. I had to keep sentry at the far end of the kitchen garden until released by a bugle-call. George being a sergeant was exempt from sentry work, and was merely responsible for the bugle-blowing. Indoors there was much playing with tin soldiers. I remember a regiment of dragoons whose coats my mother had laboriously reddened with sealing-wax to convert them into British soldiers. The troopers were in a ferocious charging attitude with swords raised, but the blades were mostly broken, and I innocently believed that they were all raising crusts of bread

to their mouths. Another indoors game was the hurling of darts at one another in the long passage upstairs; we had wooden shields on which the javelins used to strike briskly enough, since they were weighted with lead. On these occasions we were knights or men-at-arms, but out of doors we were savages. George could hurl hazel-spears, using the Australian throwing-stick, an art I never acquired, but I was fond of slinging stones. To make a sling a bit of leather was necessary, and this meant a visit to the village cobbler, Parker by name, who was a short, sallow man with the bristling chin which, according to Dickens, [60] is the universal attribute of cobblers. I remember the pleasure of sending, with my sling, a pebble crashing into the big ash-tree in the field from what seemed to me a great distance.

Another pursuit was walking on stilts, of which we had two kinds; on the smaller ones even girls had been known to walk, but of the larger (which I remember as of imposing height) only the male sex was capable. The garden at Down was originally a bare and windy wilderness, but our parents constructed mounds of raw red clay on which laurel and box finally grew and made shelter. One of these mounds, covered with dwarf box-trees, was known to us as the Pyrenees, and our pleasure was to traverse the passes on stilts. There was a slight sense of danger and a certain romance in climbing the heights from the lawn and descending in what was legally a part of the orchard, where

the last of the limes grew and a particular crab-tree of which I was fond.

Then there were two swings, one of the orthodox kind between those twin yew-trees that gave a special character to the lawn, and one consisting of a long rope fixed high up on the tall Scotch fir that grew on the mound. The rope of the latter had a short cross-bar at its lower end which served as a seat or a handle. There were various tricks, some of which were almost sure to bump the head of a strange child against the tree trunk, to our private satisfaction.

A similar rope hanging from the ceiling of the long passage at the top of the house supplied a more complicated set of tricks, which all had special names. Of these, I remember that spangle meant a method of sitting on one side of the cross-bar at the end of the rope. The stairs leading to the second floor jutted out into the passage; we used to stand with one foot on each banister-supporting post and make it a starting-point for a swing on the rope, also a landing-place, and if we succeeded in getting back into position with a foot on each banister-post we were pleased with ourselves, especially if it was done at night without a light. The rope, working on the hooks fixed into the ceiling, made a grinding or squeaking noise which must have been annoying to guests, especially when mixed with much crashing and banging and shouting.

In later years we played stump cricket and lawn tennis, but in the early days of which I am thinking the only game I clearly remember was the practice

of the village cricketers in our field. It seems improbable, yet I am decidedly of opinion that the pitch was the footpath, the unmown condition of the grass making bowling elsewhere an impossibility; on the other hand it made fielding an easy affair. I remember clearly the runs being recorded by notches cut on a stick, a method of scoring which has its place in literature in the match between All Muggleton and Dingley Dell. [62]

It is curious to remember how solitary our life was. We had literally no boy-friends in the whole neighbourhood; there were plenty of boys within reach but we never amalgamated with them, and were, I imagine, despised by them as outside the pale of Eton-dom. No opportunity was made for us to learn to shoot; I used to wander with a gun and shoot an occasional hare and various blackbirds, but I never had even the meanest skill, and after suffering miseries of shame at one or two shooting-parties I am glad to think I gave it up.

Fishing there was none in our dry country, and it was only very much later, on the beautiful Dovey in North Wales, that I learned something of the art.

Riding we did learn in a casual, haphazard way, and some of us hunted a little with a mild pack (the Old Surrey) in our bad hunting country—but all this was much later and hardly concerns my present subject.

The best practice I had as a boy was riding

twice or thrice a week (from perhaps my tenth to my twelfth year) to Mr Reed, Rector of Hayes, to be taught Latin and a little arithmetic. Our ponies were shaggy, obstinate little beasts, who had the strongest possible dislike of their duties. I remember well how my pony turned round and round, and at last consented to proceed till a new excuse occurred for a bolt towards home. It was a secret delight to me when one of my brothers was beaten in the pony-fight and was brought ignominiously home.

Mr Reed was the kindest of teachers, and after a short spell of Latin he used to give me a slice of cake and allow me to look at the wonderful pictures in an old Dutch Bible. Even under the mild discipline of this kindest of men I used to dissolve in tears over my work.

When I was twelve years old, i.e. in the summer of 1860, I went to the Grammar School at Clapham kept by Rev. Charles Pritchard. I was two years under Pritchard, and when he left [63] I remained under his successor, Rev. Alfred Wrigley, until I went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, 1866. Wrigley had none of the force of Pritchard, nor had he, I fancy, his predecessor’s gift of teaching. Mathematics formed a great part of our curriculum, and for these I had no turn. I am, however, grateful to Wrigley for having made me work out a great many logarithmic calculations which had to be shown up (as he expressed it) in a “neat, tabular

form.” As I have said in my article on my brother George in Rustic Sounds, my “recollections of George at Clapham are coloured by an abiding gratitude for his kindly protection of me as a shrinking and very unhappy ‘new boy’ in 1860.”

From school I went to Trinity College, Cambridge. I lodged first with a tailor called Daniells in Bridge Street, nearly opposite to the new chapel of St John’s—the slow rise of which I used to watch from my windows. Afterwards I moved into rooms on the ground floor to the left of the New Court Gate that leads out into the Backs. Why the architect made the sitting-rooms look into the Court and all its mean stucco decorations I cannot imagine. My bedroom looked out on the Backs and its avenue of lime-trees, where the nightingales sang through the happy May nights.

I hardly made any permanent friends till my second year, when I had the good fortune to become intimate with Edmund Gurney and Charles Crawley, both of whom died early. Crawley was drowned in a boating accident in which he tried in vain to save the women of the party. Edward Stirling, an Australian, has only recently (1919) died. I am glad to think that my undergraduate friends (except those removed by death) are still my friends.

Among the Dons who were friendly to students of natural science the first place must be given to Alfred Newton, the Professor of Zoology, who most kindly invited us to come to his rooms in Magdalene any and every Sunday evening. There we smoked our pipes and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We

had the advantage of meeting older members of the University. It was in this way I became acquainted with G. R. Crotch, of St John’s, who was an assistant in the University Library. He was a strikingly handsome man with a long silky beard and wonderful eyes. His passion was Entomology, and he had a great knowledge of the Coleoptera, and used sometimes to take me out beetle-catching, but I never became a collector. He was eccentric in his habits; for instance, he dressed entirely in black flannel—shirt, coat, and trousers—which were made for him by Brown, the tailor, who was a brother entomologist. He finally gave up his librarianship and went off beetle-catching to the United States, where he died in what would have been miserable conditions but for the tender care bestowed on him by a complete stranger, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten. There, too, I occasionally saw Clifford, the well-known mathematician, who died early—also Kingsley on at least one occasion. I remember him, too, at the New Museums (where I was dissecting some beast or other) reproving me for my white shirt, and telling me that flannel was far more suitable for dissections. John Willis Clark (who afterwards became Registrary of the University) was then Curator of the New Museums, and encouraged me to work in his department, and I well remember my pride when my preparation of a hedgehog’s inside was added to the Museum. J. W. Clark was the kindest of men, and I, like many another undergraduate, used to dine with him and his mother at Scrope

House. There some of us were introduced for the first time to good claret. I remember Mrs Clark (rather a masterful old lady) saying, “Drink your wine like a good boy and don’t talk nonsense,” as though these precepts contained the whole duty of undergraduate man. J. W. Clark was the patron and director of the undergraduates’ Amateur Dramatic Society (the A. D. C.), and occasionally took a part himself. I have a clear recollection of hearing him (attired in red tights) exclaim in his peculiar pronunciation, in which the letters l and r were indistinguishable, “I am the srave of the ramp.”

I had left to the last the man whose kindness towards me as an undergraduate I valued most highly, and whose friendship it is still my good fortune to possess—I mean Henry Jackson, now Professor of Greek, but at that time a Trinity lecturer. I have an image of him walking up and down his room in Neville’s Court with a pipe in his mouth (which burned more fiercely than did the pipes of other men), and talking with a humour and enthusiasm which were a perpetual delight. A literary venture, The Tatler in Cambridge, originated among undergraduates under the editorship of the present Canon Mason. To this I contributed a paper On the Melancholy of Bachelors, which was accepted, chiefly, I think, through the kindness of E. Gurney. I shall never forget my delight when, on the day of its publication, Henry Jackson came round to my rooms to tell me that he liked it.

I must now return to my more serious

employments. It was at the suggestion of E. C. Stirling that I became a medical student and began to work for the Natural Sciences Tripos. In order to get more time for the last-named examination I kept my small stock of mathematics simmering as it were, and managed (without giving much time to the subject) to get a mathematical degree as fifth among the Junior Optimes in 1870. I had the pleasure of being coached for this examination by James Stuart—the only man, I imagine, who ever made mathematics entertaining and even amusing to an unmathematical pupil.

I then had a clear year in which I could devote myself to Natural Science. I did not succeed in finding a coach who was of any use to me. But in Comparative Anatomy I did a fair amount of undirected work: in this way I dissected a good many creatures such as slugs and snails and freshwater mussels, dragonflies, etc. I have a dim recollection of catching the mussels in the Cam with Gordon Wigan, the son of the celebrated actor—and indeed that kindly personage joined us in one of our boating expeditions.

On leaving Cambridge I went to St George’s Hospital with the intention of becoming a practising physician. But happily for me the Fates willed otherwise. The late Dr Cavafy of St George’s Hospital urged me to learn something of Histology, and sent me to Dr Klein, whose pupil I had the good fortune to become at the Brown Institute. I have elsewhere [67] said something of my debt of gratitude to

Dr Klein. Under his guidance I produced a paper which served as a thesis for my M.B. degree. I had another interesting experience during my time at St George’s. I used to go to the Zoological Society’s dissecting-room, where the late Dr Garrod (the Prosector) allowed me to investigate some of the daily quota of dead animals. But it was not of any real educational value, I fancy. Still it may have helped the impetus of Klein’s teaching to suggest that medicine [68a] should be given up and that I should become the assistant to my father.

The old nursery at Down had been turned into a laboratory, and when (on the death of my wife) I came to live in the house of my parents, they converted the billiard-room into a sitting-room for me.

During the following years I went to work under Sachs at Würzburg and afterwards under De Bary at Strassburg. Sachs was most kind and helpful, and under his direction I contributed a small paper to his Arbeiten. I made some good friends at Würzburg—Stahl, who is now Professor of Botany at Jena; Kunkel, the Pharmacologist, who died young; the Finlander Elfving, who is now Professor of Botany at Helsingfors; and Goebel, now the well-known Professor of Botany at Munich. He and I walked side by side to receive our degrees at the 1909 meeting in Cambridge. [68b] I had the great

pleasure of seeing Elfving on the same occasion, and we have never ceased to correspond, though at irregular intervals. I had once the satisfaction of receiving Stahl as my guest at Cambridge. He is still Professor of Botany at Jena, and in spite of rather weak health has published a mass of good work.

I am sorry to think that my relationship with Sachs came to an unhappy ending. I published what seemed to me a harmless paper, in which I criticised some of his researches. I wrote to him on the subject but received no answer. Partly on account of his silence and partly to pay a visit to a friend, I travelled to Würzburg. I found Sachs in the Botanic Garden; he seemed to wish to avoid me, but I went up to him and asked him why he was angry with me. He replied: “The reason is very simple; you know nothing of Botany and you dare to criticise a man like me.” I had no opportunity of replying, for at that moment one of his co-professors addressed him, asking if he could spare a moment. “Very willingly, Herr Professor,” said Sachs, and walked off without a word to me. And that was the last I saw of the great botanist. I was undoubtedly stupid, but I do not think he showed to advantage in the affair.

I continued to work with my father at Down, and in spite of the advantages I gained by seeing and sharing in the work of German laboratories, I now regret that so many months were spent away from him.

OLD INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC [71]

Mr Galpin has written an admirable book on old musical instruments. His knowledge, which is first hand, is the harvest of many years’ research; and, like the best type of learned authors, he has the power of sharing his knowledge with the ignorant.

His book begins with a study of stringed instruments, which occupies about half the book, the remainder being given up to the wind band.

My own experience of instruments of music is confined to the latter division. I remember as a small boy at school struggling with an elementary flute: or was it a penny whistle? I believe it was a flute, for I have a dim recollection of pouring water into it before it would sound. I tried to teach the instrument—whatever it was—to a friend, and wrote down the fingerings by a series of black and white dots, in the manner quoted from Thomas Greeting’s Pleasant Companion, 1675, by Mr Galpin (p. 146). Then when I was about fifteen or sixteen years old I began under that admirable teacher, the late R. S. Rockstro, to work regularly at the flute. As a Cambridge undergraduate I remember playing flute

solos at the University Musical Society’s concerts. And I can still recall the pleasant sound of the applause which on one occasion called for a repetition of my performance. Since those days I took up the bassoon under the guidance of another admirable teacher, Mr E. F. James. But nowadays my chief interest is the recorder, which is best known to the unmusical world from the well-known passage in Hamlet. Of this instrument I shall have something to say in the sequel. I give these personal details to show how small a right I have to do more than give an abstract of Mr Galpin’s admirable book.

The first instrument dealt with is the harp, the essential feature of which is that each string gives but one sound. [72] It is not clear to me why the psaltery and dulcimer are separated from the harp, since they also have unstopped strings and therefore unalterable notes. Whereas the interpolated chapter ii. is concerned with instruments—the gittern and citole—whose tones are alterable in pitch by “stopping,” i.e., altering the length of the vibrating part of the string. I can only suppose that the author considers that the fact of the gittern and citole being sounded by plucking the strings, brings these instruments into alliance with the harp. I confess that I should like to have seen Class I. (strings unalterable in tone) including the harp, the rote, the psaltery, dulcimer (Plate I.), the æolian-harp, and the piano. Then would come a class of instruments some at least of whose strings

produce a variety of tones by stopping, i.e., shortening the vibrating region of the string, and this would include gittern and citole, lute, etc. But doubtless the author has good reason for his arrangement, and I have not knowledge enough to be his critic.

At p. 4 (Galpin) is represented the simple Irish harp or lyre which was known as the cruit or crot; it is essentially a harp, although it seems, in its infancy at any rate, to have had but five or six strings. The name cruit or crot afterwards developed into rotte, and under this name is described a remarkable instrument apparently dating from the fifth to the eighth centuries, which is figured at p. 34 (Galpin). It was found in the Black Forest in the grave of a warrior, together with his sword and bow, and seems to have been clasped in his arms, as though he had especially valued it. The true harp, which in its simplest form (Galpin, p. 8) chiefly differs from the rote in shape, [73a] is characterised by the picturesque triangular outline that is so familiar. It was of Teutonic origin, and Mr Galpin tells an admirable story of a Saxon who disguised himself as a Briton, by playing the rote instead of the harp, which would have revealed his nationality. In spite of its Saxon parentage the Irish adopted the harp, and a beautiful instrument of the early thirteenth century is preserved at Trinity College, Dublin (Galpin, p. 12). The Irish for harp is Clairsech, [73b] a word

that reminds me of an Irish friend who used to quote—

“Old Tracy and old Darcy
Playing all weathers on the Clarsy.”

Mr Galpin tells a pleasant story of St Ealdhelm, who was Bishop of Sherborne in the year 705. When he was about to preach he found the church empty; he therefore took his harp, and “standing on a bridge hard by, soon attracted a considerable crowd by his playing. Then he delivered his sermon.”

Chapter ii, p. 20, is devoted to the gittern and citole. In the first-named instrument we have the ancestor of the guitar, which it resembled in its flat back, and in the curving inwards of the vertical sides. [74a] It has generally been believed that the “waist” thus produced was an adaptation to the use of the bow, but, as the author points out, this form occurs long before the existence of bowed instruments. [74b] At p. 22 (Galpin) is given an early fourteenth century illustration of a gittern-player, holding in his right hand the plectrum with which he sounds the strings. The most curious point, however, is the depth of the neck of the instrument, which is pierced by a large hole to admit the left thumb; without this curious device it would apparently be impossible to stop the strings. On the same plate is given an illustration of the precious gittern at Warwick Castle, believed to date from about 1330,

in which the thumb-hole is more clearly shown. The guitar, which may be considered a descendant of the gittern, is said to have completely eclipsed its ancestor in the seventeenth century. And at the present time it, together with the mandoline and the banjo, are the only representatives of the type in every-day use.

Mr Galpin places the citole in the same class as the gittern. He says that this instrument has been much misunderstood, and since I do not desire to add my quota to the injustice under which this unfortunate instrument suffers, I shall pass on to the mandore and lute. The essential characteristic of these instruments is that their bodies, instead of having the flat back of the guitar, are rounded. Though the body is now built of strips of wood or ivory, its form is “reminiscent of the time when the body or resonator consisted of a simple gourd or half-gourd covered with skin.” In this they resemble the instruments of Oriental races, and the author traces the form of the rebec and mandoline as well as that of the mandore and lute to Persian, Arabic, and Moorish influence in the Middle Ages.

The European lute had at first only four strings, but in the “elaborate instruments of the seventeenth century there were twenty-six or thirty strings to be carefully tuned and regulated.” No wonder that a lutenist should have been said to spend three-quarters of his existence in tuning his instrument. The mandore was a small form of lute, and is chiefly of interest because in a yet smaller form it still

survives as the mandoline, which, however, usually has both wire and covered strings, and is played with a plectrum. To return to the lute, its most obvious characteristic is that the head (in which are the pegs for tuning the strings) is bent at right-angles to the general plane of the instrument. It is not clear what is the meaning of this curious crook in the instrument, but it is some comfort to the ignorant since it enables us to recognise a lute when we see one. Henry VIII. and his daughters Mary and Elizabeth are said to have been good lutenists. The smaller gut strings, called by the pleasant name of minnikins, were easily broken, and a gift of lute-strings was considered a present fit for a queen, and one which the great Elizabeth did not disdain.

There was also an archlute, which in its largest form—six feet in height—was known as the chitarrone. It had not the rectangular bend in the neck of the ordinary lute; it was also characterised by having four or five free or unstopped strings. A fine reproduction of Lady Mary Sidney and her archlute faces the title-page of the book.

Mr Galpin (p. 46) quotes from Thomas Mace’s Musick’s Monument, 1676, the proper method of “fretting” a lute or similar instrument. The frets, or horizontal strings or wires which make cross ridges on the neck of lutes, viols, etc., I had ignorantly imagined to be guides to the beginner as to where to stop the string; but it appears (Galpin, p. 46) that they “add to its tone and resonance by keeping the string from touching the

finger-board too closely.” The word “fret” is said to be derived from the old French ferretté, i.e., banded with iron. [77a]

In Mace’s [77b] book above referred to he discourses with a child-like enthusiasm on his favourite instrument. He does not follow the elder lutenists, whom he describes as “extreme shie in revealing the Occult and Hidden Secrets of the Lute.” He gives the following examples of “False and Ignorant Out-cries against the Lute”:—

(1) “That it is the Hardest Instrument in the World.

(2) “That it will take up the Time of an Apprenticeship to play well upon It.

(3) “That it makes Young People grow awry.

(4) “That it is a very Chargeable Instrument to keep; so that one had as good keep a Horse as a Lute for Cost.

(5) “That it is a Woman’s Instrument.

(6) “And lastly (which is the most Childish of all the rest), It is out of Fashion.”

The following extracts from Mace will give some idea of his style and of his method of treating the subject:—

“First, know that an Old Lute is better than a New one: Then, The Venice Lutes are commonly Good. There are diversities of Mens Names in Lutes; but the Chief Name we most esteem, is Laux Maler, ever written with Text Letters: Two of which Lutes I have seen (Pittifull Old, Batter’d, Crack’d Things) valued at 100 l. a piece (p. 48).

“When you perceive any Peg to be troubled with the slippery Disease, assure yourself he will never grow better of Himself, without some of Your Care; therefore take Him out, and examine the Cause (p. 51).

“And that you may know how to shelter your Lute, in the worst of Ill weathers (which is moist) you shall do well . . . to put It into a Bed, that is constantly used, between the Rug and the Blanket; but never between the sheets, because they may be moist with Sweat (p. 62).

“Strings are of three sorts, Minikins, Venice-Catlins, and Lyons (for Basses).

“I us’d to compare . . . Tossing-Finger’d Players to Blind-Horses, which always lift up their Feet, higher than need is; and so by that means, can never Run Fast, or with a Smooth Swiftness” (p. 85).

He says, “You must be Very Careful (now, in your first beginning) to get a Good Habit; so that you stop close to your Fretts, and never upon any Frett; and ever, with the very End of your Finger; except when a Cross, or Full Stop is to be performed” (p. 99).

Bowed Instruments.

Mr Galpin (p. 75) gives a figure of a man playing a Crowd with a bow, instead of plucking the strings with the fingers as shown in sculptured Irish Crosses. What makes the figure so especially interesting, is that there is clearly no means of stopping the strings, i.e., of altering the length of the vibrating region, and therefore altering the pitch. No one, I fancy, would have guessed that the bow was of more ancient lineage than the fiddle. The finger-board, which transforms the instrument into an undeniable relative of the violin, is known to have existed in the thirteenth century. It is a striking fact that what is practically a cruit or rotte survived in use until the nineteenth century in this country, in the form of the Welsh crwth or crowd shown on Plate III. There is a specimen dated 1742 in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The crwth here figured was made last century by Owain Tyddwr of Dolgelly, an old man who remembered the instrument as it was in his younger days, and took great pleasure in its reconstruction.