DRAMA, THEATRE, MUSIC, AND ART

are like to march off with an ague in this mud-basket’; he added that he would probably die – apologising for ‘a very bad pun’ – ‘not martially but marsh-ally.’

Fiona MacCarthy, in Byron: Life and Legend (2002), suggests that Byron’s real heroism at Missolonghi was the sacrifice of his frequent need for quiet and solitary withdrawal. As soon as he arrived he was exposed to repeated visits by the chiefs and primates, each with his own large noisy following of undisciplined armed men, and since his presence and opinions were in continual demand his house was the meeting place of everyone concerned with planning the war. ‘He, whose irritability was so intense, had to cope with the various military factions at Missolonghi, the constant sound of gunfire in the street. The writer disgusted by the brutal facts of war now had to endure the massacres and horrors of a primitive and savage confrontation in which prisoners were slaughtered without compunction.’ Byron’s days of selfindulgence were over. The romantic swing of this poem hardly conceals a reluctant acceptance that his life was changing:

So we’ll go no more a-roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving And the moon be still as bright.

He wrote to Teresa Guiccioli, ‘Of course you might suppose that this is not exactly the place to pass the carnival in.’

As representative of the London Greek Committee, which was raising a large loan to support the war, he had frequently to complain to its members about their unrealistic ideas – ‘high-flown notions of the sixth form at Harrow or Eton’. He derided the often-irrelevant material sent to support the Greek cause, ‘for instance the Mathematical instruments are thrown away – none of the Greeks know a problem from a poker […] The use of trumpets too may be doubted – unless Constantinople were Jericho – for the Hellenists have no ear for Bugles – and you must send us somebody to listen to them.’ Aided by his sardonic humour and acute sense of the ridiculous, the poet was finding his feet as man of action. Increasingly he was becoming the voice of practical common sense.

Much of Byron’s time was spent trying to keep the peace between the three rival armed parties in different regions of Greece whose bitter feuds prevented united action against the Turks. A rich man, he had sold the remainder of his property in England and was now devoting his entire fortune to the Greek cause. While waiting for the loan from the London Committee, he used his own money to relaunch the Greek fleet lying at Hydra, and to plan an assault on the fortress port of Lepanto (Nafpaktos) using 500 Souliote warriors he now took on his payroll.

On 22 January 1824, the night before his thirty-sixth birthday, he had worked on a poem. Some of its verses proved to be prophetic.

My days are in the yellow leaf: The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker and the grief Are mine alone! […] The Sword, the Banner, and the Field, Glory and Greece, around me see! The Spartan, borne upon his shield, Was not more free. […] If thou regret’st thy youth, why live? The land of honourable death Is here: – up to the Field, and give Away thy breath! Seek out – less often sought than found – A soldier’s grave, for thee the best; Then look around, and chose thy ground, And take thy Rest.

Byron’s health was deteriorating. He had a serious fit in February, following an earlier attack some months before. Depression and fears for his mental health led to dieting, purgatives and heavy drinking. ‘I especially dread, in this world, two things […] growing fat and growing mad.’ He might have added, ‘and growing old’. He was appalled at the signs of ageing, which were becoming all too apparent.

Byron was also in love – with his page-boy Lukas Chalandritsanos, feelings which were not returned. In the poem for his birthday he tried to overcome these emotions:

Tread those reviving passions down, Unworthy manhood! – unto thee Indifferent should the smile or frown Of Beauty be.

Byron’s main sexual energies were directed towards women, but his attraction to adolescent boys was never far below the surface. He and his friends made every effort to keep these feelings hidden: in Byron’s day for the crime of sodomy you could be hanged. And yet he still wrote:

Thus much and more – and yet thou lov’st me not, And never wilt – Love dwells not in our will – Nor can I blame thee – though it be my lot To strongly – wrongly – vainly love thee still.

These and other references to the love that dare not speak its name were carefully removed by his friends after his death; and in a famous fireside scene in the office of John Murray, his London publishers, Byron’s friends and executors consigned his memoirs to the flames.

GUY STAGG

Guy Stagg (The Park 2001³) made a pilgrimage from Canterbury to Jerusalem in 2013. For ten months, he hiked alone on ancient paths, crossing ten countries and more than 5,500 kilometres. The Crossway is an account of this extraordinary adventure.

FROM THE CROSSWAY

It was the last week of May, and the temperature was rising: twenty-four degrees, twenty-five, twenty-eight. Setting off in midwinter, I had given no thought to hiking in the heat, but now I became listless. Though I walked in T-shirt and swimming trunks, my boots were heavy, my feet hot, and my eyes ached behind sunglasses.

An overexposed light haunted the coast, making the shoreline look stripped, the settlements neglected. The hotel doorways were boarded up and the cafes had newspapered windows. Beach grass grew shaggy on the sand, while the sea was banded like rock strata – layers of cobalt and azure, purple and black. Each afternoon I knelt in the shallows to wash the sweat from my face, or else dived into the dark water and hid from the sun.

At the end of the month I reached Asprovalta and started moving east again – three hundred kilometres to the border. On the plains of Thrace, I wandered down roads with no signs and through hamlets with no names, or entered villages in the noonday still and felt like I was trespassing. No birds sang in the heat, no shadows formed in the light. The men smiled when they did not understand me, the children stared but would not meet my eyes. I saw no women. And I missed the settled rhythm of Mt Athos, for here little seemed lasting.

In early June I arrived at the Nestos Delta, a flat expanse of farmland at the foot of the Rhodope Mountains. Villages floated on the wheat fields – gliding closer towards me, drifting farther away, closer towards me, farther away – and the cornhusks made a burning noise in the breeze, their dry hairs crackling. I kept pushing east, though my knees clicked and my ankles ticked, as if the machinery in my legs were coming loose.

Lagoons punctured the shore beyond the Nestos River, breaking the land into spits and bars, islands and islets. Swarms of midges turned the air opaque, obscuring the rushes and reedbeds. Sunshine floated like soap scum on the water.

That evening I stopped at a campsite. Although a light was on above the gates, the place was abandoned. I tramped round in the gloom, between rows of caravans in black cladding. Their metal shells resembled elephant corpses, the campsite some overgrown graveyard. A few had smashed windows or folded roofs, others were penned in behind plastic fencing, but not one of them was occupied. And yet, despite the darkness, I noticed odd signs of life: a blackened barbecue propped on bricks, or a string of fairy lights with broken bulbs, or a fuse box hanging half-open, its circuits glinting like icons in a dingy grotto.

Pine trees divided the caravans from the beach, their cones sewn together with cobweb. As I pitched my tent beneath the trees, I spotted a bonfire down by the water. The flames cast quivering shadows over the sand, where six teenagers were sitting in a circle, laughing exhausted laughs. A seventh teenager danced in the waves, making a sound like a siren.

‘Sleep anywhere!’ one of them shouted. ‘We occupy the campsite.’

Another member of the group asked why I was here. I explained that I had been hiking across the Balkans, via Ohrid, Bitola and Thessaloniki. But, when she asked where I was going, I paused. By this point I was certain I should cut short my pilgrimage in Turkey, so I told her I was aiming for Istanbul.

The girl looked troubled. ‘Istanbul is fire,’ she said, but I did not understand. She began to punch the air, wave an imaginary flag, and then lay on her back as if fainting, but still I did not understand. Eventually a third member of the group showed me his phone. It was playing a clip from the news, the footage cutting between a park covered in tents and a street heaving with demonstrators. Riot police marched through the smoke – but still, still I did not understand.

‘Istanbul is fire,’ the girl repeated. ‘Is fire.’

ROBERT PEEL

Sir Robert Peel (Harrow 1800) served twice as prime minister, from 1834–35 and from 1841–46. He also served twice as Home Secretary. He founded the Metropolitan Police Service. Biographer Norman Gash wrote that Peel ‘looked first, not to party, but to the state’. He also wrote that Peel had ‘capacity for work, personal integrity, high standards, a sense of duty [and] an outstanding intellect.’

FROM HIS SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION, 5 FEBRUARY 1829

I think that the Roman Catholic Question can no longer remain what is called an open question, but that some definite course must be taken with respect to it by His Majesty’s servants in their collective capacity.

It is not consistent with the character of the Government – with the proper exercise of authority in Ireland – nor with the permanent interests of the Protestant Establishments – that the Roman Catholic Question should continue to be thrown loose upon the country – the King’s Ministers maintaining neutrality, and expressing no opinion in common upon the subject.

Experience must have convinced us that neither a divided Government in Ireland, not a Government in that country united in opinion, but acting under a divided Government in this, can administer the law with that vigour and authority which are requisite in the present condition of Irish affairs…

The more I consider the subject the more I am satisfied that a Government ought to make its choice between two courses of action, either to offer united and unqualified resistance to the grant of further privileges to the Roman Catholics, or to undertake to consider without delay the whole state of Ireland, and to attempt to make some satisfactory adjustment on the various points which are involved in what is called the Catholic Question.

If it be admitted that such are the alternatives, it remains to be considered which of the two it is most practicable or most expedient to adopt.

Can the first be adopted? Can a Government be formed on the principle of unqualified resistance, which shall be composed of persons of sufficient ability and experience in public life to fill with credit the high offices of the State, and which can command such a majority of the House of Commons as shall enable it to maintain the principle on which it is founded, and to transact the public business?

I think it must be granted that the failure of such a Government – either through its sudden dissolution or its inability to conduct public business on account of its weakness in the House of Commons – would have a prejudicial effect generally, and particularly in reference to the Catholic Question. It would surely render some settlement of the question in the way of concession unavoidable, and would in all probability materially diminish the chances of a safe and satisfactory settlement.

No man can therefore honestly advise the formation of an exclusive Protestant Government, unless he believes that it can maintain its ground, and can conduct with credit and success the general administration of the country.

The present state of the House of Commons appears to me an insuperable obstacle, if there were no other, to the successful issue of this experiment.… There are other considerations which incline me to think that the attempt to settle that question should be made.…

First – There is the evil of continued division between two branches of the Legislature on a great constitutional question.

Secondly – The power of the Roman Catholics is unduly increased by the House of Commons repeatedly pronouncing an opinion in their favour. There are many points in regard to the Roman Catholic religion and Roman Catholic proceedings in Ireland, on which Protestant opinion would be united, or at least predominant, if it were not for the difference which exists as to the civil incapacities.

Thirdly – In the course of the last autumn, out of a regular infantry force in the United Kingdom, amounting to about 30,000 men, 25,000 men were stationed either in Ireland or on the west coast of England with a view to the maintenance of tranquillity in Ireland – this country being at peace with the whole world. Fourthly – Though I have not the slightest apprehension of the result of civil commotion – though I believe it could be put down at once – yet I think the necessity of being constantly prepared for it while the Government is divided, and the two Houses of Parliament are divided, on the Catholic Question, is a much worse evil than its actual occurrence.

Fifthly – The state of political excitement in Ireland will soon render it almost impracticable to administer justice in cases in which political or religious considerations are involved. Trial by jury will not be a just or a safe tribunal, and, above all, not just nor safe in cases wherein the Government is a party.

These are practical and growing evils, for which I see no sufficient remedy if the present state of things is to continue; and the actual pressure is so great as fully to warrant, in my opinion, a recourse to other measures.

My advice therefore to His Majesty will be, not to grant the Catholic claims, or any part of them, precipitately and unadvisedly, but in the first instance to remove the barrier which prevents the consideration of the Catholic Question by the Cabinet – to permit his confidential servants to consider it in all its relations, on the same principles on which they consider any other great question of public policy, in the hope that some plan of adjustment can be proposed, on the authority and responsibility of a Government likely to command the assent of Parliament, and to unite in its support a powerful weight of Protestant opinion, from a conviction that it is a settlement equitable towards the Roman Catholics, and safe as it concerns the Protestant Establishment.

STANLEY BALDWIN, 1ST EARL BALDWIN OF BEWDLEY

Sir Stanley Baldwin (Small Houses and The Head Master’s 1881³) was a prime minister who faced a period of economic and political turmoil that included the General Strike of 1926 and the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936. By 1937, the year of this broadcast, the international outlook had turned very ominous, as the extreme nationalist policies of Nazi Germany increasingly threatened war. Under this shadow, Baldwin used his last speech as prime minister to make comparison with the positive qualities of the British way of life.

This is an edited extract from a longer recording.

FROM HIS LAST SPEECH AS PRIME MINISTER, 1937

Let me end in this, the last speech I shall make before a great audience as prime minister of this country. Let me proclaim my faith, which is the faith of millions of all races from end to end of the British Empire. Here we have ceased to be an island, but we are still an Empire.

And what is her secret? Freedom, ordered freedom, within the law, with force in the background and not in the foreground: a society in which authority and freedom are blended in due proportion, in which state and citizen are both ends and means. It is an empire organised for peace and for the free development of the individual in and through an infinite variety of voluntary associations. It neither deifies the state nor its rulers.

The fruits of a free spirit of men do not grow in the garden of tyranny. It’s been well said that slavery is a weed that grows in every soil. As long as we have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, men will turn their faces towards us and draw their breath more freely. The association of the peoples of the Empire is rooted and their fellowship is rooted in this doctrine of the essential dignity of the individual human soul: that is the English secret, however feebly and faintly we have, at times and places, embraced and obeyed it.

And the torch I would hand to you and ask you to pass from hand to hand along the pathways of the Empire, is a great Christian proof rekindled anew in each ardent generation: that is a message I’ve tried to deliver as prime minister of England in a hundred speeches, and I can think of no better message to give you to take away tonight than that.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Sir Winston Churchill (The Head Master’s 1888²) is celebrated for his time leading the country as prime minister from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. His four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is his most famous literary endeavour, reflecting attitudes towards Empire and the country’s past at the time of writing. The extract below is from one of his most celebrated speeches during the Second World War.

FROM HIS SPEECH ON 4 JUNE 1940

From the moment that the French defences at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken at the end of the second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the south could have saved the British and French Armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King; but this strategic fact was not immediately realised. The French High Command hoped they would be able to close the gap, and the Armies of the north were under their orders. Moreover, a retirement of this kind would have involved almost certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian Army of over 20 divisions and the abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore, when the force and scope of the German penetration were realised and when a new French Generalissimo, General Weygand, assumed command in place of General Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British Armies in Belgium to keep on holding the right hand of the Belgians and to give their own right hand to a newly created French Army which was to have advanced across the Somme in great strength to grasp it.

However, the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and rear of the Armies of the north. Eight or nine armoured divisions, each of about four hundred armoured vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut off all communications between us and the main French Armies. It severed our own communications for food and ammunition, which ran first to Amiens and afterwards through Abbeville, and it shore its way up the coast to Boulogne and Calais, and almost to Dunkirk. Behind this armoured and mechanised onslaught came a number of German divisions in lorries, and behind them again there plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute mass of the ordinary German Army and German people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own.

I have said this armoured scythe-stroke almost reached Dunkirk – almost but not quite. Boulogne and Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The Guards defended Boulogne for a while and were then withdrawn by orders from this country. The Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, with a battalion of British tanks and a thousand Frenchmen, in all about four thousand strong, defended Calais to the last. The British Brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned the offer, and four days of intense street fighting passed before silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable resistance. Only 30 unwounded survivors were brought off by the Navy, and we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however, was not in vain. At least two armoured divisions, which otherwise would have been turned against the British Expeditionary Force, had to be sent to overcome them. They have added another page to the glories of the light divisions, and the time gained enabled the Graveline water lines to be flooded and to be held by the French troops.

Thus it was that the port of Dunkirk was kept open. When it was found impossible for the Armies of the north to reopen their communications to Amiens with the main French Armies, only one choice remained. It seemed, indeed, forlorn. The Belgian, British and French Armies were almost surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighbouring beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far outnumbered in the air.

When, a week ago today, I asked the House to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our long history. I thought – and some good judges agreed with me – that perhaps twenty- or thirty-thousand might be re-embarked. But it certainly seemed that the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British Expeditionary Force north of the Amiens-Abbeville gap would be broken up in the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition. These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called upon the House and the nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole

root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British Armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity.

That was the prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved final was yet to fall upon us. The King of the Belgians had called upon us to come to his aid. Had not this Ruler and his Government severed themselves from the Allies, who rescued their country from extinction in the late war, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a fatal neutrality, the French and British Armies might well at the outset have saved not only Belgium but perhaps even Poland. Yet at the last moment, when Belgium was already invaded, King Leopold called upon us to come to his aid, and even at the last moment we came. He and his brave, efficient Army, nearly half a million strong, guarded our left flank and thus kept open our only line of retreat to the sea. Suddenly, without prior consultation, with the least possible notice, without the advice of his Ministers and upon his own personal act, he sent a plenipotentiary to the German Command, surrendered his Army, and exposed our whole flank and means of retreat.

I asked the House a week ago to suspend its judgment because the facts were not clear, but I do not feel that any reason now exists why we should not form our own opinions upon this pitiful episode. The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea more than thirty miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest Army his country had ever formed. So in doing this and in exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three corps forming the First French Army, who were still farther from the coast than we were, and it seemed impossible that any large number of Allied troops could reach the coast.

The enemy attacked on all sides with great strength and fierceness, and their main power, the power of their far more numerous Air Force, was thrown into the battle or else concentrated upon Dunkirk and the beaches. Pressing in upon the narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy began to fire with cannon upon the beaches by which alone the shipping could approach or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas; they sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than a hundred strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single pier that remained, and upon the sand dunes upon which the troops had their eyes for shelter. Their U-boats, one of which was sunk, and their motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic which now began. For four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armored divisions – or what was left of them – together with great masses of infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the ever-narrowing, ever-contracting appendix within which the British and French Armies fought.

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government – every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

HENRY EDWARD MANNING

Cardinal Manning (Small Houses 1821³) was ordained as an Anglican deacon in 1832 and became Archdeacon of Chichester in 1841. Manning converted to Catholicism in 1851 and was made Archbishop of Westminster in 1865. He was arguably the most important promoter of the definition of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council in 1870. His international reach was further extended through his role in the creation of Catholic social teaching, which has guided many Catholic nations throughout the world for over a century. He acquired the site for Westminster Cathedral, but prioritised the expansion of Catholic education. He personally intervened on behalf of workers in industrial disputes. Such was his popularity that, when he died in 1892, no London funeral had seen such a large, grateful crowd since that of the Duke of Wellington in 1852.

FROM HIS SERMON ‘LOVE OF GOD IN DARKNESS’

The bond of our union with God is the love of God above all things. He that dwelleth in charity dwelleth in God, and God in him. Here is the link of gold which binds the soul to God. Keep that link fast, and do not be afraid when the consciousness of your past sins and of your many temptations seems to come down upon you and to overwhelm you as a flood. In those darkest times, be sure that if you love God you are still united with Him. It is not when we walk in the brightness of the noonday only that we are united with Him. The purest union with God is when we walk with Him in the darkness, without consolation and without joy; having no other guide; our hand in His hand; going on like children, not knowing wither; but obeying the inspirations of God to do or not to do as He wills: out in the bleak cold sky, with no joy in our prayers and no rest of heart, in constant inward fears, with temptations all around, but always faithful to the guidance of the Spirit of God. ‘Whosever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God’ (Rom:8:14). There are two axioms in the Kingdom of God which shall never fail: no penitent soul can perish, and no soul that loves God can be lost. (10)

RUPERT WIELOCH

Rupert Wieloch (Rendalls 1972³) served in the 17th and 21st Lancers, as Captain and Expedition Leader. He is the author of non-fiction books and writes regularly on his website about history and the military.

FROM CHURCHILL’S ABANDONED PRISONERS: THE BRITISH SOLDIERS DECEIVED IN THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR

Everybody feels the need of a clear-cut policy in regard to Russia, and many people ask for a clear-cut policy. But it is a great deal easier to ask for a clear-cut policy, a clear, bold, wise, moderate, far-seeing, and decisive policy, in regard to Russia than it is to supply it. Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 5 November 1919

Without previous reference here, no negotiations which might be construed as recognizing the Bolshevik Government are on any account to be entered into. Winston Churchill’s telegram to the British Military Commander in Russia, 10 April 1919

They put me in dirty rooms and filled me up with lice; I could show you the marks on my back now. Henry Benjamin Jeffers, a Black British wine trader, released from a Moscow jail in the first round of prisoner exchanges, giving evidence in London on 15 June 1920

FROM CHAPTER 8: DASH FOR FREEDOM

…The next day was one of the worst for Emerson. Halted at the small station of Bolotnaya, only 118 versts from NovoNikolaevsk, he was called forward for his technical opinion and had the sad duty to inform everyone that their engine had finally given up. Horrocks went to the office of the besieged station master to negotiate for a new locomotive, but there were dozens of train commandants complaining about the unfair assignment of the engines, so he was unable to acquire a replacement from the poor man.

Reporting back to Vining, they discussed what to do. It would have been impossible to hire local sleighs, but by a piece of good fortune an officer from the Jaeger artillery regiment that Edward Steel mentored, who spoke fluent English, gave them a letter to his colonel asking him to provide them with a sleigh. Vining and the others set off to find the battery and by another stroke of fortune they met a driver who knew where it was camped. When they arrived at the battery, they saw that each gun had a small Union Jack painted on it and the horses were large Canadian animals. Graciously, the officer in charge of the battery agreed to give a lift and instructed them to jump onto the transport sleighs as they passed later that evening.

In the meantime, Horrocks arranged for the 24 ladies and unfit men to be transferred to a Polish train. They piled as much luggage into the one car which contained eight coupés and crammed boxes of canned food into it. The men then thrust a few personal items into kit-bags and they burned their classified documents and code books. The scene was desperate, surrounded by a large crowd; it was like evacuating a home that they had lived in for seven months in half an hour.

At 5p.m. the artillery regiment arrived and the British soldiers jumped on board the sleighs “passing like bats out of a cave” on the track parallel to the railway line. It was bitterly cold. Many of them had not slept for 72 hours and they were not prepared for a night on the sleighs perched on top of the baggage. It was almost dark when they set off in horrendous conditions, with the mercury rapidly dropping below twenty degrees Celsius.

At about midnight, they stopped in a small town, where they sheltered in the council house. Vining paid liberally with roubles, canned food and rum to rent the main chamber. They spread a blanket on the floor and very soon a medley of snores filled the room. Unfortunately, Private Percy James, who still wore the boots issued to British troops that were about as useful “as a sick headache”, had frozen feet. Vining wrapped them in a blanket and applied goose fat to the enormous blisters on the first and second toes and on his heel. He also bought a pair of felt boots, or pymwy, which probably saved Percy James from losing his foot to gangrene.

Breakfast the next morning, 16th December, was baked potatoes and butter. They thanked the artillery commander effusively for their rescue and hired two private droshkies and three ponies for 1,500 roubles. Sitting on top of their possessions, they clung on to what they could, but the tracks were rutted with many obstacles and the treacherous going caused them many problems.

After a couple of hours, Emerson, who sat on “a camel hump of saddlery”, fell asleep and suddenly found himself in the snow, having lost his precarious grip of the side of the sleigh. His spectacles fell off his nose and he floundered about, desperately searching for them with numb hands. As other sleighs passed by, he was hit by a horse’s perilous hooves, but he eventually retrieved his glasses and jumped aboard another cart that looked as if it had some space. Unfortunately, it was a Partisan’s sleigh and the driver headed off the main route into the forest before the other passengers threw their English stowaway overboard.

Lost in a desert of snow, Emerson started to retrace the tracks towards the main route, wading through the deep drifts. Just as he was about to give up hope, he saw a man on a pony and shouted out in his best Russian. The kindly horseman helped him up and agreed to take him to the next station in the easterly direction. They rode on for about thirty minutes and then as they descended into a gully, a queue of sleighs blocked their way. Emerson suddenly saw his comrades up ahead and breathed a huge sigh of relief!

He realized that he had been incredibly fortunate. If he had not been helped by the Jaeger, he would soon have become one of the hundreds of corpses that marked the side of the track. It was now so cold that everyone took turns to “run beside the sleigh for a mile or two” to keep their blood circulating. Fortunately, Emerson had also invested in a pair of pymwy, which protected him from frost bite. At last they arrived at a sizeable village and knocked on the door of a house belonging to a woman with five children. That night, eighteen of them had to crowd into a room that was twelve foot by ten. They lay down head to toe on the floor and were so exhausted that sleep came quickly, but in the morning the putrid smell in the room was unforgiving.

They were not alone invading the peasants’ houses along the route. These poor individuals had their possessions, food and animals commandeered by Kolchak’s soldiers and endured much suffering as a result. On one occasion, a homeowner politely asked the Russian soldiers to leave his hut, so that his wife could give birth. When they returned a short time later, the mother of the new born baby was making tea at the stove.

Most of the group tumbled off the sledge at one time or another. Francis McCullagh was fortunate to be hoisted aboard another sleigh by a Canadian riding behind the British after falling for the first time. On another occasion he became separated from Emerson’s group at night, but made his way to the next village where he tried to find a house for shelter. He forced himself into one room full of Russian officers, some of whom were sleeping whilst sitting up in the chairs. Suddenly, he realized that the man next to him was in fact dead and had probably expired from typhus, so he made a rapid exit and found a more welcoming nest.

The fellowship set off at four o’clock each morning to beat the rush hour. As they left the villages in the dark, they watched the flames of the huge fires in the pine forests where Russian soldiers, who had not been able to find a room in a village, had made themselves as comfortable as possible. When the wind increased, it acted like a whip across their faces and visibility dropped to a few feet. Icicles formed on their mufflers and even with their layers of clothes and fur overcoats, the cold penetrated their bones, so they had to pause every two or three hours to warm themselves in livestock barns before they collapsed from the cold. Incredibly, they all survived intact apart from Private James, whose frost-bitten heel turned black.

Despite their hardships, Vining’s cohort felt they had made a sensible decision to take to the sleighs. The queues of trains they passed were so bad that on 16th December the commander-in-chief of the Czech forces, General Syrovi, issued an order to uncouple all the engines conveying Russians and to use these locomotives to hasten the evacuation of the Czech Legion. He justified this order on the grounds that the Russians had not fulfilled their oft repeated promise to provide sufficient engines and fuel for the eastward move of his forces.

The general’s orders resulted in Admiral Kolchak’s personal trains being stopped outside Krasnoyarsk on 17th December. His entourage included the remnants of the Imperial Gold Reserve, although one quarter of this had been exchanged for war credits1. Despite his protests, the Czech in charge of the station refused to let the train move

any further. After furious telegrams were passed between Kolchak and the French head of the Allied forces, General Maurice Janin, he was eventually allowed to move on, but this turned out to be a critical delay for the Supreme Leader.

Meanwhile, Emerson and his group battled through the weather for five days. The sleighs and their occupants were a sorry sight. The wiry ponies were exhausted with their heavy burdens. The long hair on their heaving flanks was frozen in patches where the sweat had turned to ice. They frequently slipped into the deep snow and had to be fished out. Jets of vapour extended from their icicle framed nostrils and drooping muzzles into the frosty air.

Progress was very slow, but after covering ninety miles they reached Tayga, where the Polish commandant explained that the line ahead was clear. Suddenly, one of them saw the carriage with their women and children standing in the yard. The spontaneous greeting as they knocked on the carriage door was highly emotional. The women begged the men to stay with them, so they all crowded into the carriage, which was intended for only sixteen passengers.

That day, Kolchak’s rear-guard evacuated Tomsk, 100 miles east of Novo-Nikolaevsk as the Red Army approached. Their rapid speed magnified the fear further down the line and three days later, on 23rd December, the White Army fought its final battle in Siberia. Reporting on this comprehensive defeat, the Manchester Guardian2 commented that: “the shattered remains of Kolchak’s army scattered and all stores, munitions and practically all artillery were lost”. General Kappel issued orders to make for Krasnoyarsk as the next major defensive line. However, this proved impossible as forty-five echelons of the White Army were held up on the railway line with frozen engines, stuck between Bogotol and Kozulka.

The next evening, the British made the most of their situation. There was a babble of noise as forty people, squeezed into one carriage, ate their Christmas Eve supper of soup, rice and vodka. A whisky bottle was shared around and they held an impromptu sing song until 11.30 p.m. with a magnificent rendition of Helen of Troy and Give me the Moonlight.

1 During his research for this book, the author discovered evidence in the Hampshire Regiment Archives that some of the Imperial Treasury was removed from Omsk by 9th

Battalion in September 1919; see Cyclist Stanley Green’s diary excerpt in Chapter 5.

2 The Manchester Guardian published Leo Steveni’s account of the retreat in three episodes on 20, 21 and 22 July 1920. Captain Steveni, an Old Rugbean, had run British Military

Intelligence operations in Omsk for a year from November 1918.

J. ANDREW KIRK

J. Andrew Kirk (The Grove 1950³) is a theologian, teacher, international lecturer and writer. His book Being Human explores the complexity of human existence and experience. Other books he has published include What is Mission? Theological Explorations and The Abuse of Language and the Language of Abuse.

FROM BEING HUMAN: AN HISTORICAL ENQUIRY INTO WHO WE ARE CHAPTER 12: THE GAINING OF WISDOM?

“What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet.” (Psalm 8: 4–6).

“We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.” (Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)).

“Rather than a science or a dogma, humanist thought proposes a practical choice: a wager. Better to wager that they are capable of acting willfully, loving purely and treating one another as equals than the contrary...The humanists of the French tradition do not necessarily believe in final causes, but they judge it useful to act as if this way were really open to men. It is true that, unlike Pascal, they do not promise those who wager “an eternity of life and happiness,” but only a fragile and fleeting felicity.” (Tzvetan Todorov, Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism (2002))

PRELUDE

These three quotations, from vastly different epochs in my historical inquiry over the past half millennium about what it means to be human, have come to substantially different conclusions. The response of many inhabitants of presentday Western culture might well be, “so what?” “does it matter?” “Is not one of the glories of our modern secular, humanistically-oriented societies in the West that they promote free-thought?” Sartre forcefully portrays an existential reality that we have at last grasped for ourselves after several centuries:

“man will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature since there is no God to conceive of it...man is nothing than what he makes of himself”.1

We are at liberty to choose the wager of which Toderov speaks: to believe that humans are, generally speaking, “more capable of acting willfully, loving purely and treating one another as equals than the contrary.” And, even though life may appear at times spiritually, mentally and physically painful and incomprehensible, it does afford some “fragile and fleeting felicity.” Trying to wrestle with the empirical and philosophical complexities of being human may be of interest to a small minority of intellectually inclined people, but frankly it does not fascinate the majority of humankind.

This conclusion to an inquiry like this one may seem relatively commonsensical to most people, and yet, in reality... the notion that we owe ourselves the duty of discovering our own identity as a member of the human species is not entirely absent. One author has made the point:

“in the contemporary sense the term ‘humanism’ denotes the view that whatever ethical outlook we adopt, it has to be based on our best understanding of human nature and the human condition.”2

It is not too difficult to cite countless examples of “in reality,” where convictions about what is authentically human greatly influence our laws, our institutions, the way we treat people and our own self-assessment. What sort of creatures we are in relation to the teeming myriads of other creatures that inhabit the same planet becomes a key question in ecological matters to do with environmental care. Human rights spring from and depend, in their

1 Sartre, Jean-Paul, Existentialism is Humanism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007, 22. 2 Grayling, Anthony C., 'Humanism, Religion and Ethics' in Cummings, Dolan (ed.), Debating Humanism. Exeter: Societas, 2006, 47 (emphasis – the author).

interpretation and application, on society’s consensus about the significance, purpose and value of the human person. So, in actual fact, societies and cultures do not easily dismiss the fundamental importance of searching for the truth about being human.

ASSUMPTIONS

Unlike Sartre’s type of existentialist belief, we are not born as though we were clean slates, on which we can write our own versions of what we want to call ourselves. Along the way, through parental nurture, education, the media, our peer group or people we respect, what we pick up to read, we acquire assumptions that guide what we believe. We have perceived in every chapter of this inquiry that such a process is inevitable. Assumptions are opinions we adopt as foundational beliefs or principles that allow us to organize our thoughts into more or less coherent convictions that then direct our actions.

In the course of this study, we have encountered two fundamental assumptions, from which flow numerous lesser ones, that give rise to criteria to which we adhere. The first assumption, prevalent and predominant in the Western world from approximately the second quarter of the fourth century, when the Christian faith became the officially recognized religion of the Roman Empire, until the late eighteenth century, when the Ancien Regime was overthrown in France and select divine rights were contested elsewhere, was that of theism. A supreme spiritual being who “inhabits eternity,”3 known in the Hebrew Scriptures as Yahweh and in the Christian Scriptures as Pater hemon (“our Father”) was acknowledged as the creator of the universe, the solar system and within it a small planet known as earth. Everything that exists, and ever existed, was due to the creative act of this Being. Not only did this God set the universe in motion, as though God was a kind of pre-eminent watch-maker that wound the whole machinery up and, thereafter, allowed it to continue perpetually under its own mechanism, but maintained a moment by moment creative involvement in its life and development.

According to this assumption, this same, sole, divine Being, created another being like himself, with whom he communicated through specially chosen messengers, known as prophets and apostles. What they heard in the conversations are recorded, in their own words, in a variety of publications and collected together in one single volume known as the Bible. The central thesis of God’s action has been his own short residency in the world, in the person of his beloved Son (or Messiah), to bring a message that God’s rule over all peoples had now arrived. The meaning of this event is summarized in two short statements from the prophet Isaiah:

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace (shalom), who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’”4

“I will give you (my people) as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”5

So, the principal assumption, which totally shapes the way Christians perceive the reality of human life on this small planet, is that all this truly happened in space and time, and this is the right framework within which the role of human living is to be played out. In the course of the Church’s lengthy history, many accretions have been added to the essential, core statement of belief, some faithful to the original communication, and many erroneous. The latter have, undoubtedly, damaged the purity of faith and caused the watching world to walk away in disgust.

The second major assumption carries the name of materialism. 6 It has appeared under a number of different names and in a variety of assorted forms. They are all linked together with one overriding core conviction: all that humans can possibly know about themselves and the entire environment in which they live is limited to what can be assessed by the senses or derived, by deduction, from what they are capable of perceiving and conceiving. Anything knowable, beyond the world of the material, belongs to a world of make-believe, for it is not open to observation or investigation.

3 The Book of Isaiah 57:15. 4 Isaiah 52:7. 5 Isaiah 49:6. 6 Some might have expected the alternative assumption to have come with the name of humanism. This, however, would be incorrect for two reasons. Firstly, humanism has its own distinct Christian interpretation, as Jacques Maritain has showed (True Humanism), and therefore cannot be expropriated as a definition by one particular philosophy.

Secondly, materialism denotes the specific alternative to theism, in that it proposes a radically different, restricted ontology. It cannot, therefore, be a source of factual knowledge and understanding. Freud, for example, mirrored the belief of many that the only knowledge that can be justified as true is that which can be demonstrated by means of empirically proven evidence. It is important, then, to note that, within this framework, when it comes to tracing the origin of the human species and the rise of its moral sentiments, it is obliged to adopt a genealogical approach, i.e. to resort to an historical (or even pre-historical) search of evidence that might be counted as sufficiently credit-worthy to be classified within the bounds of the natural sciences.

Materialism, by its very nature, is compelled to dismiss the entire notion of an extra-material reality, usually referred to as a spiritual or transcendental realm, that can also be a reliable cause of knowledge and understanding of human existence. Perhaps the easiest and quickest way of accomplishing this end is by ridding the human imagination and fancy of the conviction that a deity, deities or lesser spirits exist in a parallel domain from that which humans inhabit, but undetectable by them. The most famous example of this deicide is Nietzsche’s madman, whom he portrays as answering his own question in the public square: “Where is God?” “We have killed him – you and I...God is dead. And we have killed him.”7 For Nietzsche and all atheists, of course, God was never alive. He never was, except in the mythological world of a false vision.

Strict materialists, as a consequence, are convinced that they live in a purely natural order, totally devoid of any extraterrestrial explanation. In Nietzsche’s fable, God’s alleged assassins, are those who are now prepared, firstly to rejoice at being relieved of God, and secondly to take up the task of creating a different world-order from that handed down by religions. Nietzsche called it the revaluation of all values:

“All sciences must, from now on, prepare the way for the future work of the philosopher: the work being understood to mean that the philosopher has to solve the problem of values and that he has to decide on the hierarchy of values.”8

Nietzsche was the most consistently dedicated to this task. There was nothing of Christian morality that he wished to keep. It was, he believed, the morality of the herd, kept in moral bondage by a dominant body (the priests of the church) who wished to impose their illusory beliefs on the population and, thus, keep themselves in power.

If there is no God, there is no creator. Faith in an eternally existing supreme Being, who is the source of all being and meaning, is a myth in the sense of a fantastical day-dream. All the deeply human questions that the Christian faith thinks it has solved have to be re-opened: such as, the origin of life on earth; the origin of the first members of a fully human species; a convincing and dependable foundation for human behaviour; the creation of a worthwhile meaning for one’s existence; a plausible explanation of the human belief in evil; the intuition that personal life does not cease at death. Secular materialistic humanism has no right to build its beliefs and values on foundations which it has disowned. Or, as Tolstoy intimated, to go on picking chosen flowers once the roots had been destroyed.

If there is no creator of all that exists, it follows that the universe must be self-generating and self-sufficient. It has no personal cause: life on planet earth has not arisen as the act of an unrestrained, self-determining being, but rather has evolved out of the most primitive of living cells through a long process of phenomena emerging at successive levels of complexity. This is what a materialist has come to accept as a proven and coherent theory. If this is the logical conclusion from the materialist assumption, and the assumption is now taken for granted, the materialist should be prepared to live consistently with all the rational consequences of the belief, as should Christian theists with their beliefs. Both sets of assumptions are founded on hypothetical-deductive theories, warranted by different types of evidence, but ultimately guaranteed by extra-scientific presuppositions. To a certain extent, both a theist and a materialist confirms as a belief what he or she has already assumed. Freud acknowledged this reality:

“people are seldom impartial where ultimate things, the great problems of science and life, are concerned. Each of us is governed in such cases by deep-rooted internal prejudices, into whose hands our speculation unwittingly plays.”

Is there any possibility that these great debates about ultimate things can ever be settled? ...Keith Ward9 argues that, as an explanation of human experience in the universe, materialism as an alternative to theism is deficient in

7 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science, in Pearson, Keith and Large, Duncan, The Nietzsche Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 224. 8 Nietzsche, Genealogy, in The Nietzsche Reader, 17. 9 Ward, Keith, The God Conclusion: God and the Western Philosophical Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2009); see, chapter 11, ‘Materialism and its Discontents’.

its ability to explain a number of ultimate questions: the final basis of matter, consciousness, moral sensibility, the universal longing for a sense of purpose, the commitment to rational thinking and the existence of the universe. These are precisely the questions, and there are others (such as aesthetic appreciation and the intrinsic dignity of human beings), can only be answered when the means of arriving at truth are properly recognised.

It is curious, however, that a theistic world-view (rejected by metaphysical naturalism) gives a perfectly adequate, rational explanation of each one of these questions. It is, perhaps, not surprising that some atheists are prepared to concede that, although in their opinion theism is false, human beings nevertheless function better on the supposition that it is true. This, of course, though not a demonstration of its truth, may be a reliable indication.

© KIRK

SIMON SEBAG-MONTEFIORE

Simon Sebag-Montefiore (The Knoll 1978³) has written numerous books about history, including Young Stalin; Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar; Catherine the Great and Potemkin; Titans of History; and Jerusalem: The Biography. Jerusalem was the winner of the Wenjin Book Prize.

FROM JERUSALEM PONTIUS PILATE: THE TRIAL OF JESUS

The Roman prefect, guarded by his auxiliary troops and watched by a tense crowd, held court on the Praetorium, the raised platform outside Herod’s Citadel, the Roman headquarters near today’s Jaffa Gate. Pontius Pilate was an aggressive, tactless martinet out of his depth in Judaea. He was already loathed in Jerusalem, notorious for his ‘venality, violence, theft, assaults, abuse, endless executions and savage ferocity’. Even one of the Herodian princes called him ‘vindictive with a furious temper’.

He had already outraged the Jews by ordering his troops to march into Jerusalem displaying their shields with images of the emperor. Herod Antipas led delegations requesting their removal. Always ‘inflexible and cruel’, Pilate refused. When more Jews protested, he unleashed his guards, but the delegates lay on the ground and bared their necks. Pilate then removed the offending images. More recently he had killed the Galilean rebels ‘whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices’.

‘Art thou the King of the Jews?’ Pilate asked Jesus. After all, Jesus’ followers had acclaimed him king when he entered Jerusalem. But he answered, ‘Thou sayest it,’ and refused to add anything more. But Pilate did learn he was a Galilean. ‘As soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction’, Pilate sent his prisoner to Herod Antipas as a courtesy to the ruler of Galilee, who had a special interest in Jesus. It was a short walk to Antipas’ palace. Herod Antipas, says Luke, ‘was exceeding glad’ for he had wanted to meet John the Baptist’s successor for a long time ‘and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him’. But Jesus so despised the ‘fox’, killer of John, that he did not even deign to speak to him.

Antipas played with Jesus, asking him to perform his tricks, presented him with a royal robe and called him ‘king’. The tetrarch was hardly likely to try to save John the Baptist’s successor, but he appreciated the opportunity to interview him. Pilate and Antipas had long been enemies but now they ‘made friends together’. Nonetheless, Jesus was a Roman problem. Herod Antipas sent him back to the Praetorium. There, Pilate tried Jesus, two so-called thieves and Barabbas, who, says Mark, ‘lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him’. This suggests that a handful of rebels, who perhaps included the two ‘thieves’, were being tried with Jesus.

Pilate toyed with releasing one of these prisoners. Some of the crowd called for Barabbas. According to the Gospels, Barabbas was released. The story sounds unlikely: the Romans usually executed murderous rebels. Jesus was sentenced to crucifixion while, according to Matthew, Pilate ‘took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person’.

‘His blood be upon us and our children,’ replied the crowd.

Far from being a mealy-mouthed vacillator, the violent and obstinate Pilate had never previously felt the need to wash his hands before his blood-letting. In an earlier dispute with the Jews, he had sent his troops in civilian disguise among a peaceful Jerusalem crowd; at Pilate’s signal, they had drawn their swords and cleared the streets, killing many. Now Pilate, already faced with the Barabbas rebellion that week, clearly feared any resurgence of the ‘kings’ and ‘pseudoprophets’ who had plagued Judaea since Herod’s death. Jesus was inflammatory in his oblique way, and he was undoubtedly popular. Even many years later, Josephus, himself a Pharisee, described Jesus as a wise teacher.

The traditional account of the sentencing therefore does not ring true. The Gospels claim that the priests insisted they did not have the authority to pass death sentences, but it is far from clear that this is true. The high priest, writes Josephus, ‘will adjudicate in cases of dispute, punish those convicted of crime’. The Gospels, written or amended after the destruction of the Temple in 70, blamed the Jews and acquitted the Romans, keen to show loyalty to the empire. Yet the charges against Jesus, and the punishment itself, tell their own story: this was a Roman operation.

Jesus, like most crucifixion victims, was scourged with a leather whip tipped with either bone or metal, a torment so savage that it often killed the victim. Wearing a placard reading ‘KING OF THE JEWS’ prepared by the Roman soldiers, many of them Syrian-Greek auxiliaries, and bleeding heavily after his flagellation, Jesus was led away, on what was probably the morning of 14th of Nisan or Friday 3 April 33. Along with the other two victims, he carried the patibulum, crossbar, for his own crucifixion, out of the Citadel prison and through the streets of the Upper City. His followers persuaded a certain Simon of Cyrene to help bear the crossbar while his women admirers lamented. ‘Daughters of Jerusalem,’ he said, ‘weep not for me but weep for yourselves and your children,’ because the Apocalypse was imminent – ‘the days are coming’.

Jesus left Jerusalem for the last time, turning left through the Gennath (Gardens) Gate into an area of hilly gardens, rock-cut tombs and Jerusalem’s execution hill, the aptly named Place of the Skull: Golgotha.

JOSEPH BANKS

Sir Joseph Banks (Harrow 1753) kept a journal during his voyage on board HMS Endeavour (1768–71) during Captain James Cook’s first great voyage of discovery. His journal is a fascinating account of the journey and his discoveries, revealing the thoughts and values of this 18th-century explorer, coloniser and biologist. He was president of the Royal Society.

FROM THE ENDEAVOUR JOURNAL OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS

1770 April 28. Botany Bay reached

The land this morn appeard Cliffy and barren without wood. An opening appearing like a harbour was seen and we stood directly in for it. A small smoak arising from a very barren place directed our glasses that way and we soon saw about 10 people, who on our approach left the fire and retird to a little emminence where they could conveniently see the ship; soon after this two Canoes carrying 2 men each landed on the beach under them, the men hauld up their boats and went to their fellows upon the hill. Our boat which had been sent ahead to sound now aproachd the place and they all retird higher up on the hill; we saw however that at the beach or landing place one man at least was hid among some rocks who never that we could see left that place. Our boat proceeded along shore and the Indians followd her at a distance. When she came back the officer who was in her told me that in a cove a little within the harbour they came down to the beach and invited our people to land by many signs and word[s] which he did not at all understand; all however were armd with long pikes and a wooden weapon made something like a short scymetar.

During this time a few of the Indians who had not followd the boat remaind on the rocks opposite the ship, threatning and menacing with their pikes and swords – two in particular who were painted with white, their faces seemingly only dusted over with it, their bodies painted with broad strokes drawn over their breasts and backs resembling much a soldiers cross belts, and their legs and thighs also with such like broad strokes drawn round them which imitated broad garters or bracelets. Each of these held in his hand a wooden weapon about 2½ feet long, in shape much resembling a scymeter; the blades of these lookd whitish and some though[t] shining insomuch that they were almost of opinion that they were made of some kind of metal, but myself thought they were no more than wood smeard over with the same white pigment with which they paint their bodies. These two seemd to talk earnestly together, at times brandishing their crooked weapons at us as in token of defiance.

By noon we were within the mouth of the inlet which appeard to be very good. Under the South head of it were four small canoes; in each of these was one man who held in his hand a long pole with which he struck fish, venturing with his little imbarkation almost into the surf. These people seemd to be totaly engag’d in what they were about: the ship passd within a quarter of a mile of them and yet they scarce lifted their eyes from their employment; I was almost inclind to think that attentive to their business and deafned by the noise of the surf they neither saw nor heard her go past them. At 1 we came to an anchor abreast of a small village consisting of about 6 or 8 houses. Soon after this an old woman followd by three children came out of the wood; she carried several peice[s] of stick and the children also had their little burthens; when she came to the houses 3 more younger children came out of one of them to meet her. She often lookd at the ship but expressd neither surprize nor concern. Soon after this she lighted a fire and the four Canoes came in from fishing; the people landed, hauld up their boats and began to dress their dinner to all appearance totaly unmovd at us, tho we were within a little more than ½ a mile of them. Of all these people we had seen so distinctly through our glasses we had not been able to observe the least signs of Cloathing: myself to the best of my judgement plainly discernd that the woman did not copy our mother Eve even in the fig leaf.

After dinner the boats were mann’d and we set out from the ship intending to land at the place where we saw these people, hoping that as they regarded the ships coming in to the bay so little they would as little regard our landing. We were in this however mistaken, for as soon as we aproachd the rocks two of the men came down upon them, each armd with a lance of about 10 feet long and a short stick which he seemd to handle as if it was a machine to throw the lance. They calld to us very loud in a harsh sounding Language of which neither us or Tupia understood a word, shaking their lances and menacing, in all appearance resolvd to dispute our landing to the utmost tho they were but two and we 30 or 40 at least. In this manner we parleyd with them for about a quarter of an hour, they waving to us to be gone, we again signing that we wanted water and that we meant them no harm. They remaind resolute so a musquet was fird over them, the Effect of which was that the Youngest of the two dropd a bundle of lances on the rock at the instant in which he heard the report; he however snatchd them up again and both renewd their threats and opposition. A Musquet loaded with small shot was now fird at the Eldest of the two who was about 40 yards from the boat; it struck him on the legs but he minded it very little so another was immediately fird at him; on this he ran up to the house about 100 yards distant and soon returnd with a sheild. In the mean time we had landed on the rock. He immediately threw a lance at us and the young man another which fell among the thickest of us but hurt nobody; 2 more musquets with small shot were then fird at them on which the Eldest threw one more lance and then ran away as did the other. We went up to the houses, in one of which we found the children hid behind the sheild and a peice of bark in one of the houses. We were conscious from the distance the people had been from us when we fird that the shot could have done them no material harm; we therefore resolvd to leave the children on the spot without even opening their shelter. We therefore threw into the house to them some beads, ribbands, cloths etc. as presents and went away. We however thought it no improper measure to take away with us all the lances which we could find about the houses, amounting in number to forty or fifty. They were of various lenghs, from 15 to 6 feet in length; both those which were thrown at us and all we found except one had 4 prongs headed with very sharp fish bones, which were besmeard with a greenish colourd gum that at first gave me some suspicions of Poison.

The people were blacker than any we have seen in the Voyage tho by no means negroes; their beards were thick and bushy and they seemd to have a redundancy of hair upon those parts of the body where it commonly grows; the hair of their heads was bushy and thick but by no means wooley like that of a Negro; they were of a common size, lean and seemd active and nimble; their voices were coarse and strong. Upon examining the lances we had taken from them we found that the very most of them had been usd in striking fish, at least we concluded so from sea weed which was found stuck in among the four prongs. – Having taken the resolution before mentiond we returnd to the ship in order to get rid of our load of lances, and having done that went to that place at the mouth of the harbour where we had seen the people in the morn; here however we found nobody.--At night many moving lights were seen in different parts of the bay such as we had been usd to see at the Islands; from hence we supposd that the people here strike fish in the same manner.

JOHN WILLIAM STRUTT, 3RD BARON RAYLEIGH

Lord Rayleigh (West Acre 1857¹) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1912 ‘for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies’. This extract from his Nobel Lecture, ‘The density of gases in the air and the discovery of argon’, provides evidence of his excellent scientific practice, by which he confirmed results by using different methods. He explores the different methods, expressing the importance of enhancing rather than hiding discrepancies, magnifying lack of understanding and investigating further. This, he believed, was the way to make progress. Indeed, it was by pursuing this discrepancy that he discovered argon.

FROM HIS NOBEL LECTURE ‘THE DENSITY OF GASES IN THE AIR AND THE DISCOVERY OF ARGON’, DECEMBER 12, 1904

Turning my attention to nitrogen, I made a series of determinations, using a method of preparation devised originally by Harcourt, and recommended to me by Ramsay. Air bubbled through liquid ammonia is passed through a tube containing copper at a red heat where the oxygen of the air is consumed by the hydrogen of the ammonia, the excess of the ammonia being subsequently removed with sulphuric acid. In this case the copper serves merely to increase the surface and to act as an indicator. As long as it remains bright, we have security that the ammonia has done its work.

Having obtained a series of concordant observations on gas thus prepared I was at first disposed to consider the work on nitrogen as finished. Afterwards, however, I reflected that the method which I had used was not that of Regnault and that in any case it was desirable to multiply methods, so that I fell back upon the more orthodox procedure according to which, ammonia being dispensed with, air passes directly over red hot copper. Again a series in good agreement with itself resulted, but to my surprise and disgust the densities obtained by the two methods differed by a thousandth part – a difference small in itself but entirely beyond the experimental errors. The ammonia method gave the smaller density, and the question arose whether the difference could be attributed to recognized impurities. Somewhat prolonged inquiry having answered this question in the negative, I was rather at a loss how to proceed. It is a good rule in experimental work to seek to magnify a discrepancy when it first presents itself, rather than to follow the natural instinct of trying to get quit of it. What was the difference between the two kinds of nitrogen? The one was wholly derived from air; the other partially, to the extent of about one-fifth part, from ammonia. The most promising course for magnifying the discrepancy appeared to be the substitution of oxygen for air in the ammonia method, so that all the nitrogen should in that case be derived from ammonia. Success was at once attained, the nitrogen from the ammonia being now 1/200 part lighter than that from air, a difference upon which it was possible to work with satisfaction. Among the explanations which suggested themselves were the presence of a gas heavier than nitrogen in the air, or (what was at first rather favoured by chemical friends) the existence in the ammonia-prepared gas of nitrogen in a dissociated state. Since such dissociated nitrogen would probably be unstable, the experiment was tried of keeping a sample for eight months, but the density was found to be unaltered. On the supposition that the airderived gas was heavier than the “chemical” nitrogen on account of the existence in the atmosphere of an unknown ingredient, the next step was the isolation of this ingredient by absorption of nitrogen. This was a task of considerable difficulty; and it was undertaken by Ramsay and myself working at first independently but afterwards in concert. Two methods were available – the first that by which Cavendish had originally established the identity of the principal component of the atmosphere with the nitrogen of nitre and consisting in the oxidation of the nitrogen under the influence of electric sparks with absorption of the acid compounds by alkali; the other method was to absorb the nitrogen by means of magnesium at a full red heat. In both these ways a gas was isolated of amount equal to about one per cent of the atmosphere by volume and having a density about half as great again as that of nitrogen. From the manner of its preparation it was proved to be non-oxidizable and to refuse absorption by magnesium at a red heat, and further varied attempts to induce chemical combination were without result. On this account the name argon was given to it. The most remarkable feature of the gas was the ratio of its specific heats, which proved to be the highest possible, viz. 1.67, indicating that sensibly the whole of the energy of molecular motion is translational.

Argon must not be deemed rare. A large hall may easily contain a greater weight of it than a man can carry.

NICHOLAS PATRICK

Nicholas Patrick (Newlands 1978¹) is an engineer and a former NASA astronaut. His flight on the 2006 Discovery STS116 mission made him the fourth person from the United Kingdom to go into space.

FROM HIS SPEECH AT CHURCHILL SONGS, ROYAL ALBERT HALL, LONDON, 2012

Your Royal Highnesses, Lady Soames, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is a great honour to be here tonight, and to have the chance to share some of the inspiration behind my boyhood dream of flying in space, and some of the experiences that I have had along the way.

Thirty-five years ago, as a new boy in Newlands, I first opened a Harrow songbook. Like the boys around me in Speech Room, I sang Forty Years On; and like them I had no idea how it would feel to look back on those years. But I was lucky enough – even then to have some idea of how I would like to fill those years: an idea that involved engineering, flying, maybe working for NASA, and perhaps eventually flying in space.

After Harrow, I read Engineering at Cambridge, and learned to fly with the Royal Air Force (whose motto is appropriately enough Per Ardua ad Astra). After a brief stint in industry, I went to MIT to work on a doctorate in Engineering, and then to Boeing, before joining NASA in 1998 as a Mission specialist. Throughout this time, I kept up my flying, becoming a flight instructor, and eventually learning to fly helicopters. And so it was that two and a half years ago, on my second space flight, I found myself suited up, opening the hatch, and stepping outside into the blackness of space.

I was a crew member on the Space Shuttle Endeavour for its penultimate mission. We were docked to the International Space Station, 250 miles up, moving at over 17,000 mph, and therefore orbiting the earth every 90 minutes. Our two-week mission was to finish the construction of the space station by adding a life-support module, and a magnificent set of windows. On one particular morning, during a spacewalk, I was hanging weightless from the bottom of the station. Connected only by a thin wire tether, I was holding on to a handrail with just the tips of the fingers of one hand as I waited for Mission Control to shut off the power to some cables, before I could work on them. So I had a few unexpected moments of idle time 0 something it’s very hard to find in a mission that’s pre-planned to the minute, let alone during a spacewalk. Oddly, I was very comfortable in those surroundings, so I was able to enjoy the moment, and take in the view. As luck would have it, we were flying eastward over southern England, just after dawn on that February morning. As I looked down on London, and found Harrow, I thought of the start of a typical day at school …. and I remembered trudging across the Hill to breakfast, scarf high to keep out the cold wind.

When I think back to that spacewalk now, I realise that I was also looking down on one of the birthplaces of space flight: that short span between the Continent and London, a route travelled in the later days of World War Il by the infamous and ingenious V-2 rocket.

The man responsible for the V-2, Werner von Braun was – among other things – a man of extraordinary vision: capable of seeing that which didn’t yet exist – that which many thought impossible – and making it a reality.

When the builders of the V-2 were defeated, von Braun was taken to America, where he went on to become the chief designer of the Saturn V rocket that lifted Apollo astronauts to the moon. It is in no small part thanks to his vision that we are able to fly into space today, and in no small part thanks to Winston Churchill that von Braun applied his skills to the more peaceful purpose of manned spaceflight.

On this side of the channel, we had our own space visionary, no less involved in the war effort: Arthur C. Clarke. As the inventor of the communications satellite, his influence on all our lives has been enormous. As an author and futurist, his influence on my dreams – and those of many scientists and engineers I know – was also significant. Through stories like The City and the Stars and The Sentinel (which later became the film 2001: A Space Odyssey), I was exposed not just to the idea of space flight as routine, but to the romance of space exploration.

Before I flew, I wrote to Clarke, to thank him for the ideas he had unknowingly given me, and to invite him to the launch. In our exchange, I learned that he had introduced von Braun to scuba diving, on the grounds that von Braun needed to experience something of the weightlessness to which he was subjecting astronauts. Now, astronauts spend

hundreds of hours underwater, practising spacewalks in simulated weightlessness. It’s great training, but on a technical note, while a suit can be made to float in a pool, the person inside the suit is still being pulled down by gravity, making the suit quite uncomfortable. In space I found that I floated inside the suit, which was a pleasant change.

PREPARATION

My journey into space didn’t start at Harrow, although no place has played a more significant role in my preparation. It started when I was five, when my fåmily and I (and 500 million others) watched Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the Moon. This achievement would have been considered impossible by most just a few years earlier, but it was something that my generation grew up with as a historical fact. Proof of the science-fiction writer’s theory that humans are capable of leaving their Earthly cradle. And I wanted to be a part of it.

It is often said that the most important things are learned when you’re young. For engineers and scientists, I think this means in your teen years. Indeed, most of the physics I have used in my professional career, I learned at Harrow from Mr Bagnall and Mr Crofts, in the classroom, in the shooting range, and on school ski trips. In maths, Mr Vargas taught us the trigonometry aide-memoire: ‘Old Harrovians Are Hairy Old Apes’. I still use it often in my work! (If you don’t remember the reference, I’m sure Mr Vargas – who’s here this evening – will be happy to remind you!). The engineering I learned at Cambridge and at MIT, I actually use less frequently.

Boarding school is good preparation for spaceflight in other ways: you learn the importance of teamwork, you learn to live in close quarters with people from many cultures, and you learn to live on a tight schedule. In my day, we would have said that school food was also good preparation for space but now that I’ve eaten NASA’s rehydrated freezedried shrimp cocktail, I look back on it rather more fondly. Today’s school food is – sadly – far too good to provide this kind of training!

When you look around the Old Schools and Speech Room you are surrounded by reminders that so many of the great explorers, thinkers, and leaders of the past received the same education as you. This too helped give me the confidence to follow my path.

When I arrived at NASA, a seasoned astronaut who had just learned of my background said; “You went to an English boarding school? You’ll be perfect for a trip to Mars – a trip of two and a half years.” So, when I met my wife, I felt the need to warn her that if I were offered a place on a flight to Mars – which seemed a real possibility in the late 90s – I would want to go. She agreed and I, in turn, agreed to give up motorcycling. As you get older, it becomes more important not to take unnecessary risks!

Since my flights, I have spent a lot of time talking about my experiences in space. And I’ve been asked a lot of questions, ranging from the sublime “Did it change your view of creation?” (the answer is no), to the prosaic “How do you eat in space?” (the answer is “carefully”), to the frankly embarrassing! I’ve really enjoyed these questions – especially the ones children ask about aliens (l tell them I’ve never seen aliens, which many of their parents believe is just the answer the US government requires us to give!). But one of the most thought-provoking questions was one my shuttle commander asked me during my first mission. It was “Now that you’re in space, what’s your biggest surprise?” I had to think for a moment.

I thought about the view, which is unforgettable, and constantly changing as you fly around the planet at five miles a second. During the day, you can look down on the golden deserts of the Middle East, the green canopy of the Amazon, and the red continent of Australia. At night, you can recognise individual cities from the patterns of their major roads, or the shapes of their rivers – the Thames is instantly recognisable. Of course, you’re moving so quickly that if you reach around for a camera to photograph something, it’s gone by the time you turn back.

I thought about the sensation of floating, like scuba diving in air, and about what weightlessness does to everything you take for granted if you drop something it floats away soundlessly, perhaps not to reappear for days! I thought about the challenge of getting dressed in space, and the way that tapping your foot on the floor after a few days of weightlessness leads to an unexpected feeling of pins and needles, as though your feet just don’t want to be used anymore And I thought about how food floats around in your stomach, leading to the occasional, uncomfortable sensation of extreme fullness. Eventually I realised that my biggest surprise was that there were no big surprises! My commander was disappointed with this answer, but I don’t think he should have been. There were no big surprises because I was very well prepared for the strange experience of being in space. First, as I’ve mentioned, I grew up in a world full of images taken by earlier astronauts. Second, I ‘d been training like most astronauts of my era for about eight years for the flight. But, most importantly I believe, I had had a really solid grounding in science – particularly physics – during my teenage years at Harrow. For this I must thank my parents, for choosing Harrow, and the beaks of my day for their tireless work and enthusiasm.

You can do extraordinary things – break the sound barrier, live underwater (as I’ve done for 20 days during my training), launch into space, or hang from the bottom of an orbiting space station – if you are able to ignore your gut feeling about a situation and instead trust your understanding of physics. And, of course, if you have faith in the work of the thousands of people who helped put you there.

In fact, I didn’t spend much time worrying about safety during my flights, even though I can remember to the inch where I was when I learned of Challenger’s fate, or when I lost seven friends and colleagues on Colombia. There just isn’t time. What I did worry about was making mistakes. As important as preparation is, the correct execution of your tasks is critical. So it’s no surprise that the astronaut’s prayer – appropriately translated for this occasion – is: “Lord, please don’t let me mess up.”

THE FUTURE

I was lucky enough to fly on the shuttle twice before the program ended last year, with each of the three remaining shuttles retired to a different corner of the States. It was a fairly sad event for the men and women of NASA, made more so by the fact that there is still no home-grown replacement ready to take crews to and from the Space Station. For now, the only option is to travel on a Russian spacecraft from Kazakhstan. But we should take heart: when the Apollo program ended in the early 1970s, it generated a diaspora of scientists, engineers and technicians, each with skills new to industry. For decades, they could be found scattered throughout high-tech businesses in the US and elsewhere.

The shuttle program is producing a similar diaspora. Many of us have moved into the blossoming commercial space flight industry, where a dozen companies are vying to provide inexpensive access to space, not just for governments, but for ordinary people. Others have moved into energy, aviation and manufacturing; taking with them the hardlearned lessons of manned spaceflight.

As an Englishman living in the States, I’ve learned that you can reach almost all audiences by quoting either Churchill or Monty Python. To quote Churchill now:

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

Churchill wasn’t talking about spaceflight, but he may as well have been. In the 55 years since Sputnik marked the dawn of the space age, we have made enormous strides towards the stars, but we’re still just at the beginning of the path. The human race needs to leave its cradle and climb out into the solar system. More than anything because it’s in our nature to explore.

CLOSING

Harrovians are used to looking decades or centuries into the past in their history classes, millennia for those who study Latin or Greek, and millions in Biology. All of those time scales are interesting and useful but, to me, none is more thought-provoking than the timescale on which the universe has evolved. With Harrow’s new Rayleigh telescope, opened just yesterday evening, they will be able to look so far into the universe that they will be seeing light generated nearly 2.5 billion years ago. So I’m confident that the School will keep up the great work of preparing Harrovians to be the well-rounded citizens the world so needs: linguists, scientists, historians, explorers, as well as the occasional prime minister and astronaut.

I would encourage Harrovians to choose subjects and activities you love, pursue them with passion, and see where they lead. While I always listened to the advice I was given, I didn’t always take it. For example, I chose a set of A levels many thought would limit my academic career: Engineering instead of the second Maths, but it was what I loved studying, and my teachers and I somehow made it work. I would also encourage Harrovians to imagine not just where your interests and passions might lead you in your careers, but where they might help you lead others.

Parents, encourage your children to follow their dreams, however terrifying they may occasionally seem. My parents wanted me to sing. I wanted to fly. Somehow my mother endured thousands of hours of my flying, probably by turning a blind eye, only to have the NASA commentator at my first launch describe exactly how many tons of TNT my crew and I were sitting on top of.

Each day on orbit starts with a wake-up call from Mission Control – a radio call in which they play a piece of music chosen by one of the crew. For my flight on Endeavour, I chose Forty Years On, in part because it reminded me of Harrow, and in part to inspire the current generation of Harrovians to think about where they might be 20, and 30, and 40 years on.

Since leaving Harrow, I have travelled 11 million miles during over 400 orbits of Earth. But one day I hope, somebody else from Harrow – perhaps someone here today in the Royal Albert Hall – will travel much, much further. Perhaps as far as Mars, or one of Jupiter’s moons. Perhaps to the nearest star. And I’m sure they’ll take Forty Years On with them too.

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL

Horace Annesley Vachell (Small Houses and Moretons 18763) spent a short period in the Rifle Brigade before becoming a writer. He produced over 50 volumes of fiction, including a popular school story, The Hill: A Romance of Friendship, which gives an idealised view of the life at the School and of the friendship between two boys.

FROM THE HILL: A ROMANCE OF FRIENDSHIP CHAPTER FIVE: FELLOWSHIP

“Fellowship is Heaven, and the lack of it is Hell.”

John was squelching through the mud, wondering whether his nose was broken or not, when Lawrence touched his shoulder.

“Never mind, Verney,” he said cheerily; “the Manor will be cock-house at Torpids next year, and I venture to prophesy that you’ll be Captain.”

“Oh, thanks, Lawrence,” said John.

But, much as he appreciated this tribute from the great man, and much as it served to mitigate the pangs of defeat, a yet happier stroke of fortune was about to befall him. Desmond, who always walked up from the football field with Scaife, conferred upon John the honour of his company.

“Where’s Scaife?” said John.

“The Demon is demoniac,” said Desmond. “He’s lost his hair, and he blames me. Well, I did my best, and so did he, and there’s no more to be said. It’s a bore that we shall be too old to play next year. I told the Demon that if we had to be beaten, I would sooner take a licking from Damer’s than any other house; and he told me that he believed I wanted ‘em to win. When a fellow’s in that sort of blind rage, I call him dotty, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said John.

“You played jolly well, Verney; I expect Lawrence told you so.”

“He did say something decent,” John replied.

The Caterpillar joined them as they were passing through the stile. “We should have won,” he said deliberately, “if the Demon hadn’t behaved like a rank outsider.”

“Scaife is my pal,” said Desmond, hotly.

The Caterpillar shrugged his shoulders, and held high his well-cut, aquiline nose, as he murmured–

“One doesn’t pretend to be a Christian, but as a gentleman one accepts a bit of bad luck without gnashing one’s teeth. What? That Spartan boy with the fox was a well bred ‘un, you can take my word for it. Scaife isn’t.”

The Caterpillar joined another pair of boys before Desmond could reply. John looked uncomfortable. Then Desmond burst out with Irish vehemence–

“Egerton is always jawing about breeding. It’s rather snobbish. I don’t think the worse of Scaife because his grandfather carried a hod. The Egertons have been living at Mount Egerton ever since they left Mount Ararat, but what have they done? And he ought to make allowances for the old Demon. He was simply mad keen to win this match, and he has a temper. You like him, Verney, don’t you?”

John hesitated, realizing that to speak the truth would offend the one fellow in the school whom he wished to please and conciliate. Then he blurted out—

“No – I don’t.”

“You don’t?” Desmond’s frank, blue eyes, Irish eyes, deeply blue, with black lashes encircling them, betrayed amazement and curiosity – so John thought – rather than anger. “You don’t?” he continued. “Why not? The old Demon likes you; he says you got him out of a tight place. Why don’t you like him, Verney?” John’s mind had to speculate vaguely whether or not Desmond knew the nature of the tight place – tight was such a very descriptive adjective – out of which he had pulled Scaife. Then he said nervously—

“I don’t like him because – because he likes – you.”

“Likes me? What a rum ‘un you are, Verney! Why shouldn’t he like me?”

“Because,” said John, boldly meeting the emergency with the conviction that he had burnt his ships, and must advance without fear, “because he’s not half good enough for you.”

Desmond burst out laughing; the clear, ringing laugh of his father, which had often allayed an incipient mutiny below the gangway, and charmed aside the impending disaster of a snatch-division. And it is on one’s own side in the House of Commons that good temper tells pre-eminently.

“Not good enough for me!” he repeated. “Thanks awfully. Evidently you have a high opinion of – me.”

“Yes,” said John.

The quiet monosyllable, so soberly, so seriously uttered, challenged Desmond’s attention. He stared for a moment at John’s face – not an attractive object. Blood and mud disfigured it. But the grey eyes met the blue unwaveringly. Desmond flushed.

“You’ve stuck me on a sort of pedestal.” His tone was as serious as John’s.

“Yes,” said John.

They were opposite the Music Schools. The other Manorites had run on. For the moment they stood alone, ten thousand leagues from Harrow, alone in those sublimated spaces where soul meets soul unfettered by flesh. Afterwards, not then, John knew that this was so. He met the real Desmond for the first time, and Desmond met the real John in a thoroughfare other than that which leads to the Manor, other than that which leads to any house built by human hands, upon the shining highway of Heaven.

Shall we try to set down Desmond’s feelings at this crisis? Till now, his life had run gaily through fragrant gardens, so to speak: pleasaunces full of flowers, of sweet-smelling herbs, of stately trees, a paradise indeed from which the ugly, the crude, the harmful had been rigorously excluded. Happy the boy who has such a home as was allotted to Harry Desmond! And from it, ever since he could remember, he had received tender love, absolute trust, the traditions of a great family whose name was part of English history, an exquisite refinement, and with these, the gratification of all reasonable desires. And this magnificent upbringing shone out of his radiant face, the inexpressible charm of youth unspotted – white. Scaife’s upbringing, of which you shall know more presently, had been far different, and yet he, the cynic and the unclean, recognized the God in Harry Desmond. He had not, for instance, told Desmond of the nature of that “tight” place; he had kept a guard over his tongue; he had interposed his own strong will between his friend and such attention as a boy of Desmond’s attractiveness might provoke from Lovell senior and the like. It is true that Scaife was well aware that without these precautions he would have lost his friend; none the less, above and beyond this consciousness hovered the higher, more subtle intuition that the good in Desmond was something not lightly to be tampered with, something awe-inspiring; the more so because, poor fellow! he had never encountered it before.

Desmond stood still, with his eyes upon John’s discoloured face. Not the least of Cæsar’s charms was his lack of self-consciousness. Now, for the first time, he tried to see himself as John saw him – on a pedestal. And so strong was John’s ideal that in a sense Desmond did catch a glimpse of himself as John saw him. And then followed a rapid comparison, first between the real and the ideal, and secondly between himself and Scaife. His face broke into a smile.

“Why, Verney,” he exclaimed, “you mustn’t turn me into a sort of Golden Calf. And as for Scaife not being good enough for me, why, he’s miles ahead of me in everything. He’s cleverer, better at games, ten thousand times better looking, and one day he’ll be a big power, and I shall always be a poor man. Why, I – I don’t mind telling you that I used to keep out of Scaife’s way, although he was always awfully civil to me, because he has so much and I so little.”

“He’s not half good enough for you,” repeated John, with the Verney obstinacy. Unwittingly he slightly emphasized the “good.”

“Good? Do you mean ‘pi’? He’s not that, thank the Lord!”

This made John laugh, and Desmond joined in. Now they were Harrow boys again, within measurable distance of the Yard, although still in the shadow of the Spire. The Demon described as “pi” tickled their ribs.

“You must learn to like the Demon,” Desmond continued, as they moved on. Then, as John said nothing, he added quickly, “He and I have made up our minds not to try for remove this term. You see, next term is the jolliest term of the year – cricket and ‘Ducker’ and Lord’s. And we shall know the form’s swat thoroughly, and have time to enjoy ourselves. You’ll be with us. Your remove is a ‘cert’ – eh?”

John beamed. He had made certain that Cæsar would be in the Third Fifth next term and hopelessly out of reach.

AUGUSTUS HARE

Augustus Hare (The Grove 18473) left Harrow after just one year because of ill health. He became an artist and an author, with his books ranging from biographies and memoirs to historical accounts of various countries and cities, for example Walks in Rome and Walks in London. This extract is taken from his autobiography, published in 1900.

FROM THE STORY OF MY LIFE

That I got on tolerably well at Harrow, even with my “armour” on, is a proof that I never was ill-treated there. I have often, however, with Lord Eustace Cecil (who was at Harrow with me), recalled since how terrible the bullying was in our time – of the constant cruelty at “Harris’s,” where the little boys were always made to come down and box in the evening for the delectation of the fifth form:- of how little boys were constantly sent in the evening to Famish’s – halfway to the cricket-ground, to bring back porter under their greatcoats, certain to be flogged by the head-master if they were caught, and to be “wapped” by the sixth form boys if they did not go, and infinitely preferring the former:- of how, if the boys did not “keep up” at football, they were made to cut large thorn sticks out of the hedges, and flogged with them till the blood poured down outside their jerseys. Indeed, what with fagging and bullying, servility was as much inculcated at Harrow in those days as if it was likely to be a desirable acquirement in after life.

I may truly say that I never learnt anything useful at Harrow, and had little chance of learning anything. Hours and hours were wasted daily on useless Latin verses with sickening monotony. A boy’s school education at this time, except in the highest forms, was hopelessly inane.

In some ways, however, this “quarter” at Harrow was much pleasanter than the preceding ones. I had a more established place in the school, and was on more friendly terms with all the boys in my own house; also, with my “armour,” the hated racket-fagging was an impossibility. I had many scrambles about the country with Buller in search of eggs and flowers, which we painted afterwards most carefully and perseveringly; and, assisted by Buller, I got up a sort of private theatricals on a very primitive scale, turning Grimm’s fairy stories into little plays, which were exceedingly popular with the house, but strictly forbidden by the tutor, Mr. Simpkinson or “Simmy.” Thus I was constantly in hot water about them. One day when we had got up a magnificent scene, in which I, as “Snowdrop,” lay locked in a magic sleep in an imaginary cave, watched by dwarfs and fairies, Simmy came in and stood quietly amongst the spectators, and I was suddenly awakened from my trance by the sauve qui peut which followed the discovery. Great punishments were the result. Yet, not long after, we could not resist a play on a grander scale – something about the “Fairy Tilburina” out of the “Man in the Moon,” for which we learnt our parts and had regular dresses made. It was to take place in the fifth form room on the ground-floor between the two divisions of the house, and just as Tilburina (Buller) was descending one staircase in full bridal attire, followed by her bridesmaids, of whom I was one, Simmy himself suddenly appeared on the opposite staircase and caught us.

These enormities now made my monthly “reports,” when they were sent home, anything but favourable; but I believe my mother was intensely diverted by them: I am sure that the Stanleys were. A worse crime, however, was our passion for cooking, in which we became exceedingly expert. Very soon after a tremendous punishment for having been caught for the second time frying potato chips, we formed the audacious project of cooking a hare! The hare was bought, and the dreadful inside was disposed of with much the same difficulty and secrecy, and in much the same manner, in which the Richmond murderess disposed of her victims; but we had never calculated how long the creature would take to roast even with a good fire, much more by our wretched embers: and long before it was accomplished, Mrs. Collins, the matron, was down upon us, and we and the hare were taken into ignominious custody.

Another great amusement was making sulphur casts and electrotypes, and we really made some very good ones.

My great love for anything of historic romance, however, rendered the Louis Philippe revolution the overwhelming interest of this quarter, and put everything else into the shade. In the preceding autumn the murder of the Duchesse de Praslin had occupied every one, and we boys used to lie on the floor for hours poring over the horrible map of the murder-room which appeared in the “Illustrated,” in which all the pools of blood were indicated. But that was nothing to the enthusiastic interest over the sack of the Tuileries and the escape of the Royal Family: I have never known anything like it in after life.