No More Learning

Andrew Smith, who, some time since, had
followed the Bison into outer darkness, but a yet more formidable
figure, the Permanent Under-Secretary himself, Sir Benjamin Hawes--Ben
Hawes the Nightingale Cabinet irreverently dubbed him 'a man remarkable
even among civil servants for adroitness in baffling inconvenient
inquiries, resource in raising false issues, and, in, short, a
consummate command of all the arts of officially sticking in the mud'.

'Our scheme will probably result in Ben Hawes's resignation,' Miss
Nightingale said; 'and that is another of its advantages. ' Ben Hawes
himself, however, did not quite see it in that light. He set himself to
resist the wishes of the Minister by every means in his power. The
struggle was long, and desperate; and, as it proceeded, it gradually
became evident to Miss Nightingale that something was the matter with
Sidney Herbert. What was it? His health, never very strong, was, he
said, in danger of collapsing under the strain of his work. But, after
all, what is illness, when there is a War Office to be reorganised? Then
he began to talk of retiring altogether from public life. The doctors
were consulted, and declared that, above all things, what was necessary
was rest. Rest! She grew seriously alarmed. Was it possible that, at the
last moment, the crowning wreath of victory was to be snatched from her
grasp? She was not to be put aside by doctors; they were talking
nonsense; the necessary thing was not rest, but the reform of the War
Office; and, besides, she knew very well from her own case what one
could do even when one was on the point of death.

She expostulated vehemently, passionately; the goal was so near, so very
near; he could not turn back now! At any rate, he could not resist Miss
Nightingale. A compromise was arranged. Very reluctantly, he exchanged
the turmoil of the House of Commons for the dignity of the House of
Lords, and he remained at the War Office. She was delighted. 'One fight
more, the best and the last,' she said.

For several more months the fight did indeed go on. But the strain upon
him was greater even than she perhaps could realise. Besides the
intestine war in his office, he had to face a constant battle in the
Cabinet with Mr. Gladstone--a more redoubtable antagonist even than Ben
Hawes--over the estimates. His health grew worse and worse. He was
attacked by fainting-fits; and there were some days when he could only
just keep himself going by gulps of brandy. Miss Nightingale spurred him
forward with her encouragements and her admonitions, her zeal and her
example. But at last his spirit began to sink as well as his body. He
could no longer hope; he could no longer desire; it was useless, all
useless; it was utterly impossible. He had failed. The dreadful moment
came when the truth was forced upon him: he would never be able to
reform the War Office. But a yet more dreadful moment lay behind; he
must go to Miss Nightingale and tell her that he was a failure, a beaten
man.

'Blessed are the merciful! ' What strange ironic prescience had led
Prince Albert, in the simplicity of his heart, to choose that motto for
the Crimean brooch? The words hold a double lesson; and, alas! when she
brought herself to realise at length what was indeed the fact and what
there was no helping, it was not in mercy that she turned upon her old
friend.

'Beaten! ' she exclaimed. 'Can't you see that you've simply thrown away
the game? And with all the winning cards in your hands! And so noble a
game! Sidney Herbert beaten! And beaten by Ben Hawes! It is a worse
disgrace . . . ' her full rage burst out at last, '. . . a worse disgrace
than the hospitals at Scutari. '

He dragged himself away from her, dragged himself to Spa, hoping vainly
for a return to health, and then, despairing, back again to England, to
Wilton, to the majestic house standing there resplendent in the summer
sunshine, among the great cedars which had lent their shade to Sir
Philip Sidney, and all those familiar, darling haunts of beauty which he
loved, each one of them, 'as if they were persons'; and at, Wilton he
died. After having received the Eucharist, he had become perfectly calm;
then, almost unconscious, his lips were seen to be moving. Those about
him bent down. 'Poor Florence! Poor Florence! ' they just caught. ' . . .
Our joint work . . . unfinished . . . tried to do . . . ' and they could hear
no more.

When the onward rush of a powerful spirit sweeps a weaker one to its
destruction, the commonplaces of the moral judgment are better left
unmade. If Miss Nightingale had been less ruthless, Sidney Herbert would
not have perished; but then, she would not have been Miss Nightingale.
The force that created was the force that destroyed. It was her Demon
that was responsible. When the fatal news reached her, she was overcome
by agony. In the revulsion of her feelings, she made a worship of the
dead man's memory; and the facile instrument which had broken in her
hand she spoke of forever after as her 'Master'. Then, almost at the
same moment, another blow fell on her. Arthur Clough, worn out by
labours very different from those of Sidney Herbert, died too: never
more would he tie up her parcels. And yet a third disaster followed. The
faithful Aunt Mai did not, to be sure, die; no, she did something almost
worse: she left Miss Nightingale. She was growing old, and she felt that
she had closer and more imperative duties with her own family. Her niece
could hardly forgive her. She poured out, in one of her enormous
letters, a passionate diatribe upon the faithlessness, the lack of
sympathy, the stupidity, the ineptitude of women. Her doctrines had
taken no hold among them; she had never known one who had appris a
apprendre; she could not even get a woman secretary; 'they don't know
the names of the Cabinet Ministers--they don't know which of the
Churches has Bishops and which not'. As for the spirit of
self-sacrifice, well--Sidney Herbert and Arthur Clough were men, and
they indeed had shown their devotion; but women--! She would mount three
widow's caps 'for a sign'. The first two would be for Clough and for her
Master; but the third--'the biggest widow's cap of all'--would be for
Aunt Mai. She did well to be angry; she was deserted in her hour of
need; and after all, could she be sure that even the male sex was so
impeccable? There was Dr. Sutherland, bungling as usual. Perhaps even he
intended to go off one of these days, too? She gave him a look, and he
shivered in his shoes. No! --she grinned sardonically; she would always
have Dr. Sutherland. And then she reflected that there was one thing
more that she would always have--her work.


IV

SIDNEY HERBERT'S death finally put an end to Miss Nightingale's dream of
a reformed War Office. For a moment, indeed, in the first agony of her
disappointment, she had wildly clutched at a straw; she had written to
M. Gladstone to beg him to take up the burden of Sidney Herbert's work.
And Mr. Gladstone had replied with a sympathetic account of the funeral.

Succeeding Secretaries of State managed between them to undo a good deal
of what had been accomplished, but they could not undo it all; and for
ten years more (1862-72) Miss Nightingale remained a potent influence at
the War Office. After that, her direct connection with the Army came to
an end, and her energies began to turn more and more completely towards
more general objects. Her work upon hospital reform assumed enormous
proportions; she was able to improve the conditions in infirmaries and
workhouses; and one of her most remarkable papers forestalls the
recommendations of the Poor Law Commission of 1909. Her training, school
for nurses, with all that it involved in initiative, control,
responsibillity, and combat, would have been enough in itself to have
absorbed the whole efforts of at least two lives of ordinary vigour. And
at the same time her work in connection with India, which had begun with
the Sanitary Commission on the Indian Army, spread and ramified in a
multitude of directions. Her tentacles reached the India Office and
succeeded in establishing a hold even upon those slippery high places.
For many years it was de rigueur for the newly appointed Viceroy, before
he left England, to pay a visit to Miss Nightingale.

After much hesitation, she had settled down in a small house in South
Street, where she remained for the rest of her life. That life was a
very long one; the dying woman reached her ninety-first year. Her ill
health gradually diminished; the crises of extreme danger became less
frequent, and at last altogether ceased; she remained an invalid, but an
invalid of a curious character--an invalid who was too weak to walk
downstairs and who worked far harder than most Cabinet Ministers. Her
illness, whatever it may have been, was certainly not inconvenient. It
involved seclusion; and an extraordinary, an unparalleled seclusion was,
it might almost have been said, the mainspring of Miss Nightingale's
life. Lying on her sofa in the little upper room in South Street, she
combined the intense vitality of a dominating woman of the world with
the mysterious and romantic quality of a myth. She was a legend in her
lifetime, and she knew it. She tasted the joys of power, like those
Eastern Emperors whose autocratic rule was based upon invisibility, with
the mingled satisfactions of obscurity and fame.

And she found the machinery of illness hardly less effective as a
barrier against the eyes of men than the ceremonial of a palace. Great
statesmen and renowned generals were obliged to beg for audiences;
admiring princesses from foreign countries found that they must see her
at her own time, or not at all; and the ordinary mortal had no hope of
ever getting beyond the downstairs sitting-room and Dr. Sutherland. For
that indefatigable disciple did, indeed, never desert her. He might be
impatient, he might be restless, but he remained. His 'incurable
looseness of thought', for so she termed it, continued at her service to
the end. Once, it is true, he had actually ventured to take a holiday;
but he was recalled, and he did not repeat the experiment. He was wanted
downstairs. There he sat, transacting business answering correspondence,
interviewing callers, and exchanging innumerable notes with the unseen
power above. Sometimes word came down that Miss Nightingale was just
well enough to see one of her visitors. The fortunate man was led up,
was ushered, trembling, into the shaded chamber, and, of course, could
never afterwards forget the interview. Very rarely, indeed, once or
twice a year, perhaps, but nobody could be quite certain, in deadly
secrecy, Miss Nightingale went out for a drive in the Park.
Unrecognised, the living legend flitted for a moment before the common
gaze. And the precaution was necessary; for there were times when, at
some public function, the rumour of her presence was spread abroad; and
ladies, mistaken by the crowd for Miss Nightingale, were followed,
pressed upon, vehemently supplicated 'Let me touch your shawl'; 'Let me
stroke your arm'; such was the strange adoration in the hearts of the
people. That vast reserve of force lay there behind her; she could use
it, if she could. But she preferred never to use it. On occasions, she
might hint or threaten, she might balance the sword of Damocles over the
head of the Bison; she might, by a word, by a glance, remind some
refractory Minister, some unpersuadable Viceroy, sitting in audience
with her in the little upper room, that she was something more than a
mere sick woman, that she had only, so to speak, to go to the window and
wave her handkerchief, for . . . dreadful things to follow. But that was
enough; they understood; the myth was there--obvious, portentous,
impalpable; and so it remained to the last.

With statesmen and governors at her beck and call, with her hands on a
hundred strings, with mighty provinces at her feet, with foreign
governments agog for her counsel, building hospitals, training
nurses--she still felt that she had not enough to do. She sighed for
more worlds to conquer--more, and yet more.

She looked about her--what was left? Of course! Philosophy! After the
world of action, the world of thought. Having set right the health of
the British Army, she would now do the same good service for the
religious convictions of mankind. She had long noticed--with regret--the
growing tendency towards free-thinking among artisans. With regret, but
not altogether with surprise, the current teaching of Christianity was
sadly to seek; nay, Christianity itself was not without its defects. She
would rectify these errors. She would correct the mistakes of the
Churches; she would point out just where Christianity was wrong; and she
would explain to the artisans what the facts of the case really were.
Before her departure for the Crimea, she had begun this work; and now,
in the intervals of her other labours, she completed it. Her
'Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers After Truth Among the Artisans
of England' (1860), unravels, in the course of three portly volumes, the
difficulties hitherto, curiously enough, unsolved--connected with such
matters as Belief in God, the Plan of Creation, the Origin of Evil, the
Future Life, Necessity and Free Will, Law, and the Nature of Morality.

The Origin of Evil, in particular, held no perplexities for Miss
Nightingale. 'We cannot conceive,' she remarks, 'that Omnipotent
Righteousness would find satisfaction in solitary existence. ' This
being, so, the only question remaining to be asked is: 'What beings
should we then conceive that God would create? ' Now, He cannot create
perfect beings, 'since, essentially, perfection is one'; if He did so,
He would only be adding to Himself. Thus the conclusion is obvious: He
must create imperfect ones. Omnipotent Righteousness, faced by the
intolerable impasse of a solitary existence, finds itself bound by the
very nature of the cause, to create the hospitals at Scutari. Whether
this argument would have satisfied the artisans was never discovered,
for only a very few copies of the book were printed for private
circulation. One copy was sent to Mr. Mill, who acknowledged it in an
extremely polite letter. He felt himself obliged, however, to confess
that he had not been altogether convinced by Miss Nightingale's proof of
the existence of God. Miss Nightingale was surprised and mortified; she
had thought better of Mr. Mill; for surely her proof of the existence of
God could hardly be improved upon. 'A law,' she had pointed out,
'implies a law-giver. ' Now the Universe is full of laws--the law of
gravitation, the law of the excluded middle, and many others; hence it
follows that the Universe has a law-giver--and what would Mr. Mill be
satisfied with, if he was not satisfied with that?

Perhaps Mr. Mill might have asked why the argument had not been pushed
to its logical conclusion. Clearly, if we are to trust the analogy of
human institutions, we must remember that laws are, as a matter of fact,
not dispensed by lawgivers, but passed by Act of Parliament. Miss
Nightingale, however, with all her experience of public life, never
stopped to consider the question whether God might not be a Limited
Monarchy. Yet her conception of God was certainly not orthodox. She felt
towards Him as she might have felt towards a glorified sanitary
engineer; and in some of her speculations she seems hardly to
distinguish between the Deity and the Drains. As one turns over these
singular pages, one has the impression that Miss Nightingale has got the
Almighty too into her clutches, and that, if He is not careful, she will
kill Him with overwork.

Then, suddenly, in the very midst of the ramifying generalities of her
metaphysical disquisitions, there is an unexpected turn and the reader
is plunged all at once into something particular, something personal,
something impregnated with intense experience--a virulent invective upon
the position of women in the upper ranks of society. Forgetful alike of
her high argument and of the artisans, the bitter creature rails through
a hundred pages of close print at the falsities of family life, the
ineptitudes of marriage, the emptinesses of convention, in the spirit of
an Ibsen or a Samuel Butler. Her fierce pen, shaking with intimate
anger, depicts in biting sentences the fearful fate of an unmarried girl
in a wealthy household. It is a cri du coeur; and then, as suddenly, she
returns once more to instruct the artisans upon the nature of Omnipotent
Righteousness.

Her mind was, indeed, better qualified to dissect the concrete and
distasteful fruits of actual life than to construct a coherent system of
abstract philosophy. In spite of her respect for Law, she was never at
home with a generalisation. Thus, though the great achievement of her
life lay in the immense impetus which she gave to the scientific
treatment of sickness, a true comprehension of the scientific method
itself was alien to her spirit. Like most great men of action--perhaps
like all--she was simply an empiricist. She believed in what she saw,
and she acted accordingly; beyond that she would not go. She had found
in Scutari that fresh air and light played an effective part in the
prevention of the maladies with which she had to deal; and that was
enough for her; she would not inquire further; what were the general
principles underlying that fact--or even whether there were any--she
refused to consider. Years after the discoveries of Pasteur and Lister,
she laughed at what she called the 'germ-fetish'. There was no such
thing as 'infection'; she had never seen it, therefore it did not exist.
But she had seen the good effects of fresh air; therefore, there could
be no doubt about them; and therefore, it was essential that the
bedrooms of patients should be well ventilated. Such was her doctrine;
and in those days of hermetically scaled windows it was a very valuable
one. But it was a purely empirical doctrine, and thus it led to some
unfortunate results. When, for instance, her influence in India was at
its height, she issued orders that all hospital windows should be
invariably kept open. The authorities, who knew what an open window in
the hot weather meant, protested, but in vain; Miss Nightingale was
incredulous. She knew nothing of the hot weather, but she did know the
value of fresh air--from personal experience; the authorities were
talking nonsense; and the windows must be kept open all the year round.
There was a great outcry from all the doctors in India, but she was
firm; and for a moment it seemed possible that her terrible commands
would have to be put into execution. Lord Lawrence, however, was
Viceroy, and he was able to intimate to Miss Nightingale, with
sufficient authority, that himself had decided upon the question, and
that his decision must stand, even against her own. Upon that she gave
way, but reluctantly and quite unconvinced; she was only puzzled by the
unexpected weakness of Lord Lawrence. No doubt, if she had lived today,
and if her experience had lain, not among cholera cases at Scutari, but
among yellow-fever cases in Panama, she would have declared fresh air a
fetish, and would have maintained to her dying day that the only really
effective way of dealing with disease was by the destruction of
mosquitoes.

Yet her mind, so positive, so realistic, so ultra-practical, had its
singular revulsions, its mysterious moods of mysticism and of doubt. At
times, lying sleepless in the early hours, she fell into long, strange,
agonised meditations, and then, seizing a pencil, she would commit to
paper the confessions of her soul. The morbid longings of her
pre-Crimean days came over her once more; she filled page after page
with self-examination, self-criticism, self-surrender. 'Oh Father,' she
wrote, 'I submit, I resign myself, I accept with all my heart, this
stretching out of Thy hand to save me. . . .
Oh how vain it is, the vanity
of vanities, to live in men's thoughts instead of God's! '

She was lonely, she was miserable. 'Thou knowest that through all these
horrible twenty years, I have been supported by the belief that I was
working with Thee who would bring everyone, even our poor nurses, to
perfection'--and yet, after all, what was the result? Had not even she
been an unprofitable servant? One night, waking suddenly, she saw, in
the dim light of the night-lamp, tenebrous shapes upon the wall. The
past rushed back upon her. 'Am I she who once stood on that Crimean
height? ' she wildly asked--'The Lady with a lamp shall stand. . . . The lamp
shows me only my utter shipwreck. '

She sought consolation in the writings of the Mystics and in a
correspondence with Mr. Jowett. For many years the Master of Balliol
acted as her spiritual adviser. He discussed with her in a series of
enormous letters the problems of religion and philosophy; he criticised
her writings on those subjects with the tactful sympathy of a cleric who
was also a man of the world; and he even ventured to attempt at times to
instil into her rebellious nature some of his own peculiar suavity. 'I
sometimes think,' he told her, 'that you ought seriously to consider how
your work may be carried on, not with less energy, but in a calmer
spirit. I am not blaming the past . . . But I want the peace of God to
settle on the future. ' He recommended her to spend her time no longer in
'conflicts with Government offices', and to take up some literary work.
He urged her to 'work out her notion of Divine Perfection', in a series
of essays for Frazer's Magazine. She did so; and the result was
submitted to Mr. Froude, who pronounced the second essay to be 'even
more pregnant than the first. I cannot tell,' he said, 'how sanitary,
with disordered intellects, the effects of such papers will be. '

Mr. Carlyle, indeed, used different language, and some remarks of his
about a lost lamb bleating on the mountains, having been unfortunately
repeated to Miss Nightingale, required all Mr. Jowett's suavity to keep
the peace. In a letter of fourteen sheets, he turned her attention from
this painful topic towards a discussion of Quietism. 'I don't see why,'
said the Master of Balliol, 'active life might not become a sort of
passive life too. ' And then, he added, 'I sometimes fancy there are
possibilities of human character much greater than have been realised. '
She found such sentiments helpful, underlining them in blue pencil; and,
in return, she assisted her friend with a long series of elaborate
comments upon the Dialogues of Plato, most of which he embodied in the
second edition of his translation. Gradually her interest became more
personal; she told him never to work again after midnight, and he obeyed
her. Then she helped him to draw up a special form of daily service for
the College Chapel, with selections from the Psalms under the heads of
'God the Lord, God the judge, God the Father, and God the
Friend'--though, indeed, this project was never realised; for the Bishop
of Oxford disallowed the alterations, exercising his legal powers, on
the advice of Sir Travers Twiss.

Their relations became intimate. 'The spirit of the Twenty-third Psalm
and the spirit of the Nineteenth Psalm should be united in our lives,'
Mr. Jowett said. Eventually, she asked him to do her a singular favour.
Would he, knowing what he did of her religious views, come to London and
administer to her the Holy Sacrament? He did not hesitate, and
afterwards declared that he would always regard the occasion as a solemn
event in his life. He was devoted to her--though the precise nature of
his feelings towards her never quite transpired. Her feelings towards
him were more mixed. At first, he was 'that great and good man'--'that
true saint, Mr. Jowett'; but, as time went on, some gall was mingled
with the balm; the acrimony of her nature asserted itself. She felt that
she gave more sympathy than she received; she was exhausted, and she was
annoyed by his conversation. Her tongue, one day, could not refrain from
shooting out at him: 'He comes to me, and he talks to me,' she said, 'as
if I were someone else. '


V

AT one time she had almost decided to end her life in retirement as a
patient at St. Thomas's Hospital. But partly owing to the persuasions of
Mr. Jowett, she changed her mind; for forty-five years she remained in
South Street; and in South Street she died. As old age approached,
though her influence with the official world gradually diminished, her
activities seemed to remain as intense and widespread as before. When
hospitals were to be built, when schemes of sanitary reform were in
agitation, when wars broke out, she was still the adviser of all Europe.
Still, with a characteristic self-assurance, she watched from her
Mayfair bedroom over the welfare of India. Still, with an indefatigable
enthusiasm, she pushed forward the work, which, perhaps, was nearer to
her heart, more completely her own, than all the rest--the training of
nurses. In her moments of deepest depression, when her greatest
achievements seemed to lose their lustre, she thought of her nurses, and
was comforted. The ways of God, she found, were strange indeed. 'How
inefficient I was in the Crimea,' she noted. 'Yet He has raised up from
it trained nursing. '

At other times, she was better satisfied. Looking back, she was amazed
by the enormous change which, since her early days, had come over the
whole treatment of illness, the whole conception of public and domestic
health--a change in which, she knew, she had played her part. One of her
Indian admirers, the Aga Khan, came to visit her. She expatiated on the
marvellous advances she had lived to see in the management of
hospitals--in drainage, in ventilation, in sanitary work of every kind.
There was a pause; and then, 'Do you think you are improving? ' asked the
Aga Khan. She was a little taken aback, and said, 'What do you mean by
"improving"? ' He replied, 'Believing more in God. ' She saw that he had a
view of God which was different from hers. 'A most interesting man,' she
noted after the interview; 'but you could never teach him sanitation. '

When old age actually came, something curious happened. Destiny, having
waited very patiently, played a queer trick on Miss Nightingale. The
benevolence and public spirit of that long life had only been equalled
by its acerbity. Her virtue had dwelt in hardness, and she had poured
forth her unstinted usefulness with a bitter smile upon her lips. And
now the sarcastic years brought the proud woman her punishment. She was
not to die as she had lived. The sting was to be taken out of her; she
was to be made soft; she was to be reduced to compliance and
complacency. The change came gradually, but at last it was unmistakable.
The terrible commander who had driven Sidney Herbert to his death, to
whom Mr. Jowett had applied the words of Homer, amoton memaniia--raging
insatiably--now accepted small compliments with gratitude, and indulged
in sentimental friendships with young girls. The author of "Notes on
Nursing"--that classical compendium of the besetting sins of the
sisterhood, drawn up with the detailed acrimony, the vindictive relish,
of a Swift--now spent long hours in composing sympathetic Addresses to
Probationers, whom she petted and wept over in turn. And, at the same
time, there appeared a corresponding alteration in her physical mood.
The thin, angular woman, with her haughty eye and her acrid mouth, had
vanished; and in her place was the rounded, bulky form of a fat old
lady, smiling all day long. Then something else became visible. The
brain which had been steeled at Scutari was indeed, literally, growing
soft. Senility--an ever more and more amiable senility--descended.
Towards the end, consciousness itself grew lost in a roseate haze, and
melted into nothingness.

It was just then, three years before her death, when she was
eighty-seven years old (1907), that those in authority bethought them
that the opportune moment had come for bestowing a public honour on
Florence Nightingale. She was offered the Order of Merit. That Order,
whose roll contains, among other distinguished names, those of Sir
Lawrence Alma Tadema and Sir Edward Elgar, is remarkable chiefly for the
fact that, as its title indicates, it is bestowed because its recipient
deserves it, and for no other reason. Miss Nightingale's representatives
accepted the honour, and her name, after a lapse of many years, once
more appeared in the Press. Congratulations from all sides came pouring
in. There was a universal burst of enthusiasm--a final revivification of
the ancient myth. Among her other admirers, the German Emperor took this
opportunity of expressing his feelings towards her. 'His Majesty,' wrote
the German Ambassador, 'having just brought to a close a most enjoyable
stay in the beautiful neighbourhood of your old home near Romsey, has
commanded me to present you with some flowers as a token of his esteem. '
Then, by Royal command, the Order of Merit was brought to South Street,
and there was a little ceremony of presentation. Sir Douglas Dawson,
after a short speech, stepped forward, and handed the insignia of the
Order to Miss Nightingale. Propped up by pillows, she dimly recognised
that some compliment was being paid her. 'Too kind--too kind,' she
murmured; and she was not ironical.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sir E. Cook. Life of Florence Nightingale.
A. W. Kinglake. The Invasion of the Crimea.
Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne. Scutari and its Hospitals.
S. M. Mitra. Life of Sir John Hall.
Lord Stanmore. Sidney Herbert.
Sir G. Douglas. The Panmure Papers.
Sir H. Maxwell. Life and Letters of the Fourth Earl of Clarendon.

E. Abbott and L. Campbell. Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett.
A. H. Clough. Poems and Memoir.




Dr. Arnold


IN 1827 the headmastership of Rugby School fell vacant, and it became
necessary for the twelve trustees, noblemen and gentlemen of
Warwickshire, to appoint a successor to the post. Reform was in the
air--political, social, religious; there was even a feeling abroad that
our great public schools were not quite all that they should be, and
that some change or other--no one precisely knew what--but some change
in the system of their management, was highly desirable. Thus it was
natural that when the twelve noblemen and gentlemen, who had determined
to be guided entirely by the merits of the candidates, found among the
testimonials pouring in upon them a letter from Dr. Hawkins, the Provost
of Oriel, predicting that if they elected Mr. Thomas Arnold he would
'change the face of education all through the public schools of
England', they hesitated no longer; obviously, Mr. Thomas Arnold was
their man. He was elected therefore; received, as was fitting, priest's
orders; became, as was no less fitting, a Doctor of Divinity; and in
August, 1828, took up the duties of his office.

All that was known of the previous life of Dr. Arnold seemed to justify
the prediction of the Provost of Oriel, and the choice of the Trustees.
The son of a respectable Collector of Customs, he had been educated at
Winchester and at Oxford, where his industry and piety had given him a
conspicuous place among his fellow students. It is true that, as a
schoolboy, a certain pompousness in the style of his letters home
suggested to the more clear-sighted among his relatives the possibility
that young Thomas might grow up into a prig; but, after all, what else
could be expected from a child who, at the age of three, had been
presented by his father, as a reward for proficiency in his studies,
with the twenty-four volumes of Smollett's History of England?

His career at Oxford had been a distinguished one, winding up with an
Oriel fellowship. It was at about this time that the smooth and
satisfactory progress of his life was for a moment interrupted: he began
to be troubled by religious doubts. These doubts, as we learn from one
of his contemporaries, who afterwards became Mr. Justice Coleridge,

'were not low nor rationalistic in their tendency, according to the bad
sense of that term; there was no indisposition in him to believe merely
because the article transcended his reason, he doubted the proof and the
interpretation of the textual authority'.

In his perturbation, Arnold consulted Keble, who was at that time one of
his closest friends, and a Fellow of the same College.

'The subject of these distressing thoughts,' Keble wrote to Coleridge,
'is that most awful one, on which all very inquisitive reasoning minds
are, I believe, most liable to such temptations--I mean, the doctrine of
the blessed Trinity. Do not start, my dear Coleridge; I do not believe
that Arnold has any serious scruples of the UNDERSTANDING about it, but
it is a defect of his mind that he cannot get rid of a certain feeling
of objections. ' What was to be done? Keble's advice was peremptory.
Arnold was 'bid to pause in his inquiries, to pray earnestly for help
and light from above, and turn himself more strongly than ever to the
practical duties of a holy life'. He did so, and the result was all that
could be wished. He soon found himself blessed with perfect peace of
mind, and a settled conviction.

One other difficulty, and one only, we hear of at this point in his
life. His dislike of early rising amounted, we are told, 'almost to a
constitutional infirmity'. This weakness too he overcame, yet not quite
so successfully as his doubts upon the doctrine of the Trinity. For in
afterlife, the Doctor would often declare 'that early rising continued
to be a daily effort to him and that in this instance he never found the
truth of the usual rule that all things are made easy by custom.

He married young and settled down in the country as a private tutor for
youths preparing for the Universities. There he remained for ten
years--happy, busy, and sufficiently prosperous. Occupied chiefly with
his pupils, he nevertheless devoted much of his energy to wider
interests. He delivered a series of sermons in the parish church; and he
began to write a History of Rome, in the hope, as he said, that its tone
might be such 'that the strictest of what is called the Evangelical
party would not object to putting it into the hands of their children'.
His views on the religious and political condition of the country began
to crystallise. He was alarmed by the 'want of Christian principle in
the literature of the day', looking forward anxiously to 'the approach
of a greater struggle between good and evil than the world has yet
seen'; and, after a serious conversation with Dr. Whately, began to
conceive the necessity of considerable alterations in the Church
Establishment.

All who knew him during these years were profoundly impressed by the
earnestness of his religious convictions and feelings, which, as one
observer said, 'were ever bursting forth'. It was impossible to
disregard his 'deep consciousness of the invisible world' and 'the
peculiar feeling of love and adoration which he entertained towards our
Lord Jesus Christ'. 'His manner of awful reverence when speaking of God
or of the Scriptures' was particularly striking. 'No one could know him
even a little,' said another friend, 'and not be struck by his absolute
wrestling with evil, so that like St. Paul, he seemed to be battling
with the wicked one, and yet with a feeling of God's help on his side. '

Such was the man who, at the age of thirty-three, became headmaster of
Rugby. His outward appearance was the index of his inward character;
everything about him denoted energy, earnestness, and the best
intentions. His legs, perhaps, were shorter than they should have been;
but the sturdy athletic frame, especially when it was swathed (as it
usually was) in the flowing robes of a Doctor of Divinity, was full of
an imposing vigour; and his head, set decisively upon the collar, stock,
and bands of ecclesiastical tradition, clearly belonged to a person of
eminence. The thick, dark clusters of his hair, his bushy eyebrows and
curling whiskers, his straight nose and bulky chin, his firm and
upward-curving lower lip--all these revealed a temperament of ardour and
determination. His eyes were bright and large; they were also obviously
honest. And yet--why was it? Was it in the lines of the mouth or the
frown on the forehead? --it was hard to say, but it was
unmistakable--there was a slightly puzzled look upon the face of Dr.
Arnold.

And certainly, if he was to fulfil the prophecy of the Provost of Oriel,
the task before him was sufficiently perplexing. The public schools of
those days were still virgin forests, untouched by the hand of reform.
Keate was still reigning at Eton; and we possess, in the records of his
pupils, a picture of the public school education of the early nineteenth
century, in its most characteristic state. It was a system of anarchy
tempered by despotism. Hundreds of boys, herded together in
miscellaneous boarding-houses, or in that grim 'Long Chamber' at whose
name in after years aged statesmen and warriors would turn pale, lived,
badgered and overawed by the furious incursions of an irascible little
old man carrying a bundle of birch-twigs, a life in which licensed
barbarism was mingled with the daily and hourly study of the niceties of
Ovidian verse. It was a life of freedom and terror, of prosody and
rebellion, of interminable floggings and appalling practical jokes.
Keate ruled, unaided--for the undermasters were few and of no
account--by sheer force of character. But there were times when even
that indomitable will was overwhelmed by the flood of lawlessness. Every
Sunday afternoon he attempted to read sermons to the whole school
assembled; and every Sunday afternoon the whole school assembled shouted
him down. The scenes in Chapel were far from edifying; while some
antique Fellow doddered in the pulpit, rats would be let loose to scurry
among the legs of the exploding boys. But next morning the hand of
discipline would reassert itself; and the savage ritual of the
whipping-block would remind a batch of whimpering children that, though
sins against man and God might be forgiven them, a false quantity could
only be expiated in tears and blood.

From two sides this system of education was beginning to be assailed by
the awakening public opinion of the upper middle classes. On the one
hand, there was a desire for a more liberal curriculum; on the other,
there was a demand for a higher moral tone. The growing utilitarianism
of the age viewed with impatience a course of instruction which excluded
every branch of knowledge except classical philology; while its growing
respectability was shocked by such a spectacle of disorder and brutality
as was afforded by the Eton of Keate. 'The public schools,' said the
Rev. Mr. Bowdler, 'are the very seats and nurseries of vice. '

Dr. Arnold agreed. He was convinced of the necessity for reform. But it
was only natural that to one of his temperament and education it should
have been the moral rather than the intellectual side of the question
which impressed itself upon his mind. Doubtless it was important to
teach boys something more than the bleak rigidities of the ancient
tongues; but how much more important to instil into them the elements of
character and the principles of conduct! His great object, throughout
his career at Rugby, was, as he repeatedly said, to 'make the school a
place of really Christian education'. To introduce 'a religious
principle into education', was his 'most earnest wish', he wrote to a
friend when he first became headmaster; 'but to do this would be to
succeed beyond all my hopes; it would be a happiness so great, that, I
think, the world would yield me nothing comparable to it'. And he was
constantly impressing these sentiments upon his pupils.