BALLIOL MEMORIES.BY THE HON. A. E. GATHORNE-HARDY.
BY THE HON. A. E. GATHORNE-HARDY.
On March 28, 1916, in a blizzard of snow and a tempest of wind, which might bear comparison with the storm during which Oliver Cromwell passed away, celebrated by Tennyson’s ‘Talking Oak’—
‘When that wild wind made workIn which the gloomy brewer’s soulWent by me, like a stork’
‘When that wild wind made workIn which the gloomy brewer’s soulWent by me, like a stork’
‘When that wild wind made workIn which the gloomy brewer’s soulWent by me, like a stork’
‘When that wild wind made work
In which the gloomy brewer’s soul
Went by me, like a stork’
—the gentle and loving spirit of James Leigh Strachan-Davidson passed away. During his early manhood his health had been so weak that he had been regularly compelled to winter abroad, and few would have anticipated that he would have exceeded by three years the Psalmist’s allotted span of threescore and ten; but his dauntless courage, serene patience, and strong sense of duty carried him through a long career of usefulness.
I had known and loved him for more than half a century, and when I saw the news inThe Timesof the following morning my thoughts went back to the last occasion when we met at a rather remarkable gathering of old Balliol contemporaries which had taken place annually during all that period, nothing but the sternest necessity keeping any of us away. We had dined together once every year since 1867, generally on the second day of the University cricket match, and we met for the last time under the presidency of Sir Horatio Shephard, long a distinguished Indian Judge, on July 6, 1914. Although there was a full attendance, two or three had dropped out of our ranks since the last meeting, when twenty-three out of a possible twenty-four had been present, but gaps were to be expected when the youngest of the gathering, myself, was on the verge of seventy, and I voiced a pretty general feeling when I proposed that after our next dinner (actually the 46th) we should wind up voluntarily, finishing in 1915 with a special Jubilee Festival. My resolution was carried unanimously, but, alas for the vanity of human wishes! in one short month Armageddon was upon us, and in 1915, when the day came round for the University match and our dinner, the rival blues, both sides one khaki-clad phalanx, were fighting side by side ‘somewhere in France’ or on the shrapnel-sweptheights of Gallipoli; and we ourselves, with sons and grandsons at the front, had no heart for festivities. Our ‘Balliol dinner’ was fated to die a natural death, but it should not be allowed to come to an end ‘without the meed of a melodious tear.’ I typed a copy of the book in which all our meetings are recorded in the hands of the successive presidents, from the first dinner, under the presidency of Archer Clive, in 1867, at the Castle Hotel, Richmond, with all the names of those attending, excuses for absence, and comments upon the quality of the menu, the wine, and the waiting. We were forty-three in all from first to last, and the bright promise of that generation of Balliol undergraduates had in many cases ripened into fulfilment. Among politicians we numbered the Marquis of Lansdowne, the Earls of Morley and Jersey, Matt Ridley, afterwards the first Lord Ridley, and Sir William Anson, even more distinguished as an embodiment of the spirit of Oxford, Warden of All Souls, Vice-Chancellor, and historian of the Constitution, than as a member of Parliament, Privy Councillor, and Minister of Education. We had altogether three Heads of Colleges, Anson, our dear Master of Balliol, and Wright Henderson, Warden of Wadham; Wood was Head Master of Harrow, while Raper and Papillon held their place high among choicest representatives of Oxford scholarship. John Julius Hannah, Dean of Chichester, Canon Argles, and a round dozen of beloved Rectors and Vicars, doing excellent and unostentatious work in various country parishes, represented the Church. Then we had the head officials at the table of both Houses of Parliament; Sir Henry Graham, Clerk of the Parliaments, was and still is leading luminary in the House of Lords, and Sir Courtenay Peregrine Ilbert occupies a similar place as first Clerk in the House of Commons. Other lesser luminaries distinguished in the Civil Service were Sneyd Kynnersley, who has recorded his career as a School Inspector with rich humour in that amusing book ‘H.M.I.,’ and Charles Vertue and Hamilton Hoare, of the Education Office. Sir Francis Horner was a successful Commissioner of Woods, and the well loved ‘Mike,’ R. A. H. Mitchell, the mighty cricketer of the ’sixties, did useful work as one of the best and most popular of Eton House Masters. Truly a goodly company! And there were others of a promise as bright which never had time to ripen: Barratt, the Rugby Scholar who obtained the unprecedented number of five first classes, Classical and Mathematical ‘Mods’ and Greats, and Law and History, then the only other final school, and only stopped because, like Alexander, he could findno more worlds to conquer, and Archer Clive, the brilliant son of a distinguished Herefordshire family, who gained the highest honours at the University and a fellowship at Lincoln, but never attained that success at the Bar which his great intellect led his contemporaries to expect. He was chosen with Henry Northcote (the late Lord Northcote) to accompany Sir Stafford Northcote and his colleagues to America as Secretary to the Mission which negotiated the Alabama Treaty, and gained great credit from his chief in that capacity. A singular incident, now almost forgotten, occurred in the year when he took his degree at Oxford. After the examination some practical joker sent a forged ‘Greats’ Class List toThe Times. It failed in its object of deceiving anyone who really knew anything about the prospects of Honour Candidates, for it placed Archer Clive in the Third Class, which, as Euclid would have put it, was absurd. He ‘devilled’ at the Bar for Lord James of Hereford, whose pupil he had been and who entertained the highest appreciation of his abilities, but soon after his return from America he developed symptoms of pulmonary disease, which shortly afterwards proved fatal.
To return to Strachan-Davidson, the appreciative notice printed inThe Timesof March 29 says that when he and his friends were disappointed at his being passed over for the Mastership of Balliol on Jowett’s death in 1893 he bore it ‘like an angel.’ The expression is by no means too strong; whatever were his personal feelings, he sank them altogether in the interest of the College he loved, and devoted all his energies to help to make Dr. Caird’s Mastership a success. He was incapable of envy, jealousy, or huffiness, and on the two occasions when I met him and Caird together he showed his fine appreciation of his old friend’s character and seemed to delight to do him honour. The first was that of our Balliol dinner in July 1898, when, for the only time in our half-century of existence, we entertained a guest in the person of our Master, Caird, who was brought and introduced by Strachan-Davidson. A notable gathering it was, under the presidency of Sir Courtenay Ilbert, twenty-six being present out of a possible thirty-one, three of the five absentees being ill, one in India, and one in Norway. The second was that memorable gathering in the Hall of the old College when we celebrated Lord Newlands’ princely gift; and fathers and sons met under the presidency of Caird.
Jowett, great man as he was, did not show a like spirit when Scott was appointed to the place he coveted, and thought he had earnedAchilles sulked in his tent and chuckled over the difficulties of his predecessor as long as his reign continued. Certainly Scott, although ever a kindly and courteous gentleman, was rather a figurehead, and had no great influence in the College. There was a story of him—I will not vouch for its truth—that on a well-remembered occasion somewhere about 1865, when three undergraduates, two of them exhibitioners and distinguished and influential scholars, came to him to announce their conversion to Rome, he thought for a moment and then said ‘Have you considered, gentlemen, that the rash step you propose is not merely calculated to imperil your immortal souls, but also to do a great deal of harm to the College?’ Neither of these considerations availed to alter their determination, but the College, which now has many Roman Catholics among its fellows and members, still seems to manage to keep up its reputation, and maintains its high position. I give the story, but do not credit it. Scott, although inclined to be pompous, had a strong sense of humour, as I may evidence by his celebrated charade on ‘Toast-Rack,’ which I give from memory:
‘My first is found where wit and wineCombine to grace the festive board;My next, where captive wretches pineIn dungeons of some tyrant Lord.My whole, alas! contains the doomed;Twice tried by fire, ere once consumed.’
‘My first is found where wit and wineCombine to grace the festive board;My next, where captive wretches pineIn dungeons of some tyrant Lord.My whole, alas! contains the doomed;Twice tried by fire, ere once consumed.’
‘My first is found where wit and wineCombine to grace the festive board;My next, where captive wretches pineIn dungeons of some tyrant Lord.My whole, alas! contains the doomed;Twice tried by fire, ere once consumed.’
‘My first is found where wit and wine
Combine to grace the festive board;
My next, where captive wretches pine
In dungeons of some tyrant Lord.
My whole, alas! contains the doomed;
Twice tried by fire, ere once consumed.’
Many solvers have puzzled over the last line; and yet nothing could more accurately describe a slice of bread toasted on both sides and then eaten.
I think that the thing which struck me most by way of contrast between the Balliol of my own time and the same College when my dear son Alfred was there, and Strachan-Davidson, although not yet Master, was its ruling spirit, was the comradeship and real intimacy and affection which subsisted between the so-called Dons and the undergraduates. Their relations were more like those of elder and younger brothers of the same family than those of tutors and pupils. I remember one occasion when my son was confined to bed with a complication which proved slight, but might have been dangerous. I was written to, and hastened to the bedside, where I found Strachan-Davidson sitting and helping to wile away the irksomeness of the enforced confinement with his bright smile and cheerful flow of conversation and anecdote. I afterwards foundthat this incident was typical of the relations which subsisted between tutors and undergraduates. My boy always spoke of them with no want of respect, but with all the intimacy and frankness bred by understanding companionship, and he and all his contemporaries, after leaving, voluntarily contributed to the fund so nobly headed by Lord Newlands to increase the inadequate endowment of the College. Perhaps I may be pardoned a reference rather personal to myself, but I cannot forget that my last communication from the Master was a most touching and sympathetic letter when that beloved son fell at the head of his company on the blood-stained field of Loos. ‘Another name,’ wrote Strachan-Davidson, ‘on the list of honour on the Chapel door; no College gathering will ever be the same without our beloved “Tortoise”’; and with his dear words of sympathy he enclosed the prayer used daily at the College services, a model form of thanksgiving and intercession in which I seem to trace his inspiring spirit of lofty courage and resignation:
‘O God, with whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, we give Thee thanks for our brethren the members of this College who have willingly offered themselves, and have laid down their lives for us and for our country, and for the liberty of the world. Give us grace to follow their good example, that we may never lose heart, but may bear with patience and courage, as these have done, whatever Thy Providence calls upon us to endure. Comfort the bereaved, and grant to all of us that our afflictions may purify our hearts and minds to Thy glory. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
The Dons of my time were a distinguished body enough, brilliant scholars, kindly and sympathetic advisers, and inspiring and ardent teachers. No one could lightly underrate such men as ‘Jimmy’ Riddell, Edwin Palmer, Henry Smith, Green, Newman, and the great Jowett. With the last I was never brought personally much into contact, as, conscious of my deficiencies in the requirements for success as a classical scholar, I took the earliest opportunity of transferring my energies to the Law and History School, in which I saw more prospect of success. But I shall never cease to be grateful to him for a piece of advice which he gave me when looking over those weekly essays which were about the most useful part of our ordinary College education. He smiled rather grimly at some turgid and high-flown sentences of which I was inclined to be particularly proud, and suggested that my composition would be improved if I struck out any passage which I was inclined to think particularlyfine. I have ever since taken his advice to heart with great advantage, making it a rule, when revising, to apply the pruning knife unsparingly to ‘purple patches.’ Young authors, please copy! But whatever my gratitude may be to my teachers and masters—and I certainly owe my ‘First’ in the Final Schools to the inspiring History Lectures of Newman; his grasp of essentials and power of connoting the relations of cause and effect, in various movements, historical, political and philosophical, and imparting his views and their reasons to his disciples—there was never the frank companionship and confident and equal intercourse which I admired so much in the Balliol of Strachan-Davidson. Perhaps the difference should be ascribed to the times rather than to the persons. The relations between children and parents, and between husbands and wives, have likewise greatly altered during the half-century.
Another member of our dining club with whom I was very intimate at Balliol was Jersey, seventh Earl, born in the same year as myself, and my contemporary both there and at Eton. At school I did not see a great deal of him, as, although he was in the lower division of the fifth form at the same time as myself, he was not in the same house, and had a different tutor. Two things, however, I especially remember about his time at Eton; I heard what was practically his funeral sermon preached! and afterwards saw him win the open mile race. His illness was so severe that the master who was preaching in chapel told us that he wished we were all as ready to face our end as the young companion just about to leave us. It was a rash prophecy, but certainly no one would have expected that the weak-lunged lad was destined to accomplish his seventy years, to shine as an athlete, and to enjoy exceptionally good health almost to the end of his strenuous labours in every kind of public and domestic usefulness. Paymaster-General, Governor of New South Wales, Lord Lieutenant of his County, President of the Royal Agricultural Society, and last, not least, first unpaid Chairman of the Light Railway Commission—in each of these varied spheres of activity he won golden opinions from all who had to do with him. By an odd coincidence I succeeded him in the last capacity, and my brother Commissioners, Colonel Boughey, and Henry Steward, the first Secretary of the Commission, are never weary of singing the praises of the ideal Chairman who gave so much of his valuable time and energy to striving to make Mr. Ritchie’s Light Railway Act a success. For causes which it would be foreign to my present purpose to dwell upon here, the work ofthe Commission has been light of recent years, but when Jersey first undertook the Chairmanship, he and his colleagues held hundreds of inquiries, travelled thousands of miles, and laid down principles and adopted methods which have stood all tests for twenty years. I have had many opportunities of ascertaining the views of those counsel and solicitors, engineers, local authorities and private individuals, who come before the Commission to promote or oppose Light Railway Orders, and one and all echo the praises of my colleagues. But when writing of Balliol my thoughts of Jersey rather go back to those last six months of my undergraduate life in 1867 when I was reading hard for my class, and used to walk or run round the ‘Parks,’ then ploughed fields, with him every morning before breakfast, and start my five hours’ morning work at nine invigorated and refreshed. I also had many long walks with him, and I particularly remember a Sunday walk I took with him to Henley, when we covered the distance of some twenty miles at an average rate of four-and-a-quarter miles an hour. He was always a good ‘stayer,’ and used to come with a tremendous spurt at the end of a long-distance race. He carried away all the honours for distances from four miles to one at his own University, but had to yield pride of place in the mile to Lawes, and in the four-mile race to the late Viscount Alverstone in the first Inter-University contest held at Cambridge. He also comes into my own début on the running path. My College instituted a half-mile handicap race, for which nearly everyone entered, myself included. I was given seventy yards start, and, being chaffed by a friend, took the odds he offered against me of £150 to £7, and when I began to train it was found that I could do the course in a much shorter time than most of those handicapped as favourably as myself. Jersey of course was scratch, but I was not much afraid of him, as I thought that with thirty-seven starters he would find a difficulty in getting through his horses. On the memorable day I was in good condition and rather a hot favourite, and might have hedged my wager on favourable terms, but I preferred ‘to put my fortune to the touch, to win or lose it all.’ I started at a great pace and kept the lead till nearly the end, when a dark horse, by name Garrett, an Australian, who had received sixty-five yards start, only five yards less than myself, caught me up and beat me. Jersey came with his usual rush at the end, and just got before me on the post, but I think I might have saved the second place had I known he was so near. Garrett afterwards turned out to be quite a good runner, taking the second prize in the open quarter-mile and longhurdles. In the following year I won the event pretty easily, although I had not been quite so generously treated by the handicapper, but I had no big gamble upon the event. I still have the silver-mounted claret jug I won on that occasion, and value it as the only trophy of success on the running path. Jersey might have filled a plate chest with the prizes he carried away.
What shall I say of Lansdowne, Viceroy of India, Governor of Canada, Leader of the Conservative party in the House of Lords, and distinguished in many more public capacities? The world knows his fame as a statesman, but I can tell them something of his ability as a cook. He taught me to make excellent omelettes, an accomplishment which has stood me in good stead at many camps and picnics. We were in the same division at Eton, and I was second to him in Collections the half I left Eton, when we were both ‘up to’ Joynes, afterwards Lower Master. Boy and man, he always had the same refined and genial manners, without the least trace of ‘side’ or conceit. One interest we shared in common was a love of fishing, and when I was writing my volume on the Salmon for the ‘Fur, Feather, and Fin’ series he lent me the account of his doings on the Cascapedia River, in Canada, for the four years when he was Governor-General of the Province. My mouth waters as I glance over the figures for the four years: 1245 salmon, weighing 29,188 lb.; 210 fish over 30 lb. The largest fish 35 lb.
Sir William Anson, who died somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly just before our last Balliol dinner, making a sadly conspicuous gap in our narrowing circle, was one of my oldest and most valued friends. We saw a great deal of one another from our boyhood onwards. We went up to Eton at the same time, and were neighbours at home in Kent. There was a half-way house where we frequently met: Bedgbury, the hospitable seat of Alexander Beresford-Hope, the Member of Parliament and Privy Councillor, whose criticism of the ‘Caucasian Mystery’ invited Disraeli’s retort about his ‘Batavian grace.’ Anson was a great favourite with Lady Mildred, who had much of the ability and sarcastic humour of her brother Lord Salisbury, whom she greatly resembled also in personal appearance. After Eton, we were contemporaries at Balliol, where we matriculated on the same day, although I, being nearly two years younger, did not actually come up till a term later. I was a candidate for the All Souls Fellowship on the occasion when he and the present Lord Justice Phillimore were elected on the foundation over which he afterwards presided with such eminent success, and shortly afterward was afellow pupil with him of the great Thomas Chitty, the pleader, in whose chambers so many sucking lawyers destined to become great legal luminaries, from Lord Chancellor Cairns to A. L. Smith, Master of the Rolls, learnt the elements of pleading before the Common Law Procedure Act put a final end to declarations and demurrers. We were a merry as well as an industrious party, and I remember a game of cricket in which Anson took part, played with two volumes of Blackburn and Ellis for bat and wicket, and some crumpled sheets of draft paper for a ball. Even the long-suffering Chitty sent up his clerk to request us to make a little less noise.
I should not omit some notice of the part taken by Anson when at Eton in the foundation of the ‘Eton Observer,’ a magazine conducted by a committee of editors which numbered among its members Vincent Stuckey Coles, now the beloved head of Pusey House, and John Andrew Doyle, afterwards fellow of All Souls and historian. It had quite a long life for such a venture, and contained some very promising productions, notably the easy and flowing verse of Vincent Cracroft Amcotts, who was afterwards also our friend and contemporary at Balliol: the dramatist of the ‘Shooting Stars,’ an amateur dramatic club, which performed very successfully operettas founded upon Meilhac and Halévy’s librettos with Offenbach’s music. ‘Helen, or Taken from the Greek’ (‘La Belle Hélène’), and ‘Lalla Rookh,’ which adapted the story of Moore’s poem to the music of ‘Orphée aux Enfers,’ were the most notable of these compositions; in the latter, Anson, always an admirable amateur actor, took the part of Fadladeen, first the hostile critic, and afterwards the ardent admirer of the disguised prince and poet. I have photographs of him in character among the faded portraits of College contemporaries, which call up many memories when I glance at my old album. Amcotts died young, or he might have emulated the literary fame of his Balliol friend, Andrew Lang, or of his St. John’s contemporary, H. D. Traill, who when at Oxford was, like himself, a successful librettist and actor.
The ‘Eton Observer’ differed from such predecessors as Canning’s ‘Microcosm’ and Winthrop Mackworth Praed’s ‘Etonian’ by being started and conducted by boys comparatively low down in the School, two years before they reached the glories of Sixth Form. The irate ‘Swells’ assailed it both in prose and verse, comparing the ambitious editors to the frog in the fable who tried to make himself a bull! This roused the wrath of that kind and popular house master ‘Billy Johnson,’ himself to be celebrated as a poetlater under his better known name of William Cory, the author of ‘Ionica,’ and he fulminated against the critics in the following impromptu epigram, which somehow still sticks in my memory:
‘The frog in the fable’s a thorough impostor!No one can write verse but a sixth form prepostor.The frog in the fable; we know what that means,A priggish, impertinent usher in teens.’
‘The frog in the fable’s a thorough impostor!No one can write verse but a sixth form prepostor.The frog in the fable; we know what that means,A priggish, impertinent usher in teens.’
‘The frog in the fable’s a thorough impostor!No one can write verse but a sixth form prepostor.The frog in the fable; we know what that means,A priggish, impertinent usher in teens.’
‘The frog in the fable’s a thorough impostor!
No one can write verse but a sixth form prepostor.
The frog in the fable; we know what that means,
A priggish, impertinent usher in teens.’
When we were both called to the Bar, Anson and I went the old Home Circuit and the Kent Sessions together for some years and during the Assize fortnight at Croydon, where in those days important London causes were tried and the provincial town was full of big merchants and City solicitors, we were more than once guests of the Daniells at Fairchilds, their beautiful country place outside the town. John Daniell, our host, was married to Katherine Bradshaw, a cousin of my mother, who still retained much of the beauty and charm which earlier had inspired some characteristic lines of Tennyson; I may be pardoned for quoting them, as I do not think they have ever yet found their way into print:
‘Because she bore the iron nameOf him who doomed the King to die,I dreamt her one of stately frameWith look to awe the passer-by,But found a maiden tender, shy,With soft blue eyes and winning, sweet,And longed to kiss her hand and lieA thousand summers at her feet.’
‘Because she bore the iron nameOf him who doomed the King to die,I dreamt her one of stately frameWith look to awe the passer-by,But found a maiden tender, shy,With soft blue eyes and winning, sweet,And longed to kiss her hand and lieA thousand summers at her feet.’
‘Because she bore the iron nameOf him who doomed the King to die,I dreamt her one of stately frameWith look to awe the passer-by,But found a maiden tender, shy,With soft blue eyes and winning, sweet,And longed to kiss her hand and lieA thousand summers at her feet.’
‘Because she bore the iron name
Of him who doomed the King to die,
I dreamt her one of stately frame
With look to awe the passer-by,
But found a maiden tender, shy,
With soft blue eyes and winning, sweet,
And longed to kiss her hand and lie
A thousand summers at her feet.’
One day Katherine Bradshaw, driving with her mother and Alfred Tennyson, looked at her watch. ‘Don’t do that,’ said the Poet; ‘if it looks at you it will stop!’
She was as clever and delightful as she was beautiful, and those were happy days when we lounged in the summer evening in that beautiful garden, so near and seeming so far from the ‘fumum et opus strepitumque’ of the noisy Courts we had just left. Her children, who still live there, gathered round us while we read or recited poetry. I can remember Alfred Thesiger’s rendering of Tennyson’s ‘Gardener’s Daughter,’ all its vivid nature touches appealing the more to us because we were camped where ‘the cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade,’ ‘the voices of the well-contented doves’ forming a fit accompaniment to the musical lines. I think the presence of her brother Henry Bradshaw, the beloved Cambridge Librarian, who much resembled his sister,added a charm which those of his friends who are still living will recall with gratitude and affection. The tragedy which burst like a thunder-cloud upon this peaceful holiday group fell with its full weight upon Willie Anson. I shall never forget that day in August 1873 when a messenger of ill tidings broke in upon us with the news of the terrible accident at Wigan which wrecked the carriage in which Sir John Anson and his two daughters were travelling north, killing him instantly. The calamity touched me the more closely as the father and sisters were on their way to Poltalloch, where I was myself shortly due for one of those happy ‘Autumns in Argyllshire’ which had already begun.
Our friendship remained unbroken, and we had many happy meetings, although Anson drifted away from the Bar into other spheres of greater usefulness. I was more than once his guest at All Souls, where the two sisters who happily escaped from the accident which robbed him of a father made ideal hostesses. He was hardly ever absent from our Balliol dinner in the Match week, and was President in 1884 and 1907. Another bond of union arose between us when he became a fellow director of the old Law Life Assurance Society, where we had many happy weekly Wednesday gatherings until that ancient and successful institution allowed its existence to be absorbed by and renewed in the Phœnix. Balliol was strongly represented on the Board, which numbered among its eight Barrister Directors my brother-in-law, W. R. Malcolm, the doyen of Coutts’ Bank, Sir Henry Graham, Anson, and myself.
As the youngest member of the Club I formed a link with a somewhat junior generation of Balliol men who added a Lord Chancellor, a Lord Justice of Appeal, and a Judge of the High Court to this notable list. I remember how we welcomed ‘Bob’ Reid, prince of scholars, cricketers, and athletes, when, much to the disgust of the President of Magdalen, he flung up his demyship at that College to compete for the open scholarship at Balliol, which he gained with the greatest ease. He came up from Cheltenham with a high reputation for running, among his Crichton-like gifts, but never competed in the University or College sports. Once at least he kept wicket for the University at Lord’s, and his career as a scholar gave promise of the eminence he afterwards attained in the profession over which he presided on the woolsack as Lord Loreburn. He only once competed for a fellowship, and when he did not obtain the success to which he believed he was entitled on the merits, his strong and firm, some would say obstinate, character forbade him to become candidate for another College,though doubtless many Common Rooms would have welcomed such an addition to their numbers.
Bargrave Deane, the Judge of the Probate and Divorce Court, was then and is still one of my most valued friends. He was a fine cricketer, having played in the Winchester Eleven before he came up to the University, and although he never got his ‘blue’ he was a most useful member of the College team, and often played in University matches, though not at Lord’s. He also rowed in his College Eight, and was an officer of the Oxford Volunteers, as he was later in the Devil’s Own, of which I think he was for some time colonel. He was a magnificent rifle shot, and showed equal skill in the forest and at the competitions at Wimbledon—it was before the days of Bisley. His father, the Queen’s Advocate, Sir James Parker Deane, used to take a moor in Scotland, where I was privileged to share the sport; I remember seeing Bargrave bring down with a rifle a grand roebuck, running away from him at a long range, and how I envied and admired his skill. He was a fine fisherman, and not only cast a beautiful line, but made flies for salmon and sea-trout as well as he used them. Farwell, the late Lord Justice of Appeal, I did not know so well, but he was much looked up to and respected when at Balliol, and was very popular throughout his long and successful career at the Bar and on the Bench. Of Lansdowne, as Viceroy of India, Governor of Canada, statesman and politician, I need say nothing. Here I think rather of the boy who was with me at Eton. He was a great favourite with Jowett, who early recognised his outstanding ability and promise.
Since my time many Balliol undergraduates of intermediate generations have risen to high positions. To-day we boast of the Prime Minister, the Speaker, and Earl Curzon, Chancellor of the University, to name only three of the most important. But at this time of our national need I prefer to dwell upon that noble band who have willingly offered themselves in their country’s service. By October 1915 no less than fifty-four members of my old College had already given their lives in the War; two had gained the Victoria Cross, three the Distinguished Service Order, eight the Military Cross, one corporal (now a Captain) the Distinguished Conduct Medal, while twenty had been mentioned in despatches, and three had gained foreign Orders. To-day the empty halls and lecture rooms bear even more eloquent witness than they did when full to overflowing to the debt England owes to my beloved College.