Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

66

read an essay, or to stroll out with him for an hour or so, coaching" as they strolled. The subject of this peripatetic teaching was usually the Republic, and the scene the first mile or two of the pleasant road to Loch Tay-hence known to us as "Republican Road." In his common talk there was something of a Platonic strain, which, I suppose, was catching: "That sounds very like Plato," he said of a remark of one of his pupils, and was gratified by the reply: "No wonder, we breathe Plato here.""

'He took a lively interest in all we did, would ask for news of our bathing and fishing, and was pleased to be gently satirical about our smoking. "Did you ever smoke, sir?" I asked. "Yes, I once smoked a cigarette abroad, with a lady 1." Omnes: "With a lady! Name, name!" Jowett: "She made me promise never to reveal the name, when in England." H.: "But we are not in England, this is Scotland." Jowett: "That, sir, is a sophism."

'He was always a fanatic for fresh air, and the windows at Tummel stood open night and day, until a sultry season brought us such a plague of gnats that we were driven to close our bedrooms against their incursions. Jowett held out for two or three nights, but at last he also had to succumb. Next morning at breakfast he recounted to us the discomfiture of the enemy. He stood at his window for several minutes with a lighted candle, watching them maliciously as they battered against the panes, myriads of them, in a vain attempt to get at him. Are these details too Boswellian? Boswell's " great friend" would have been satisfied with the colour of Jowett's tea. Do you remember how he used to agitate the pot with a little circular motion before pouring out, to make sure that the brew was strong enough? "By Jove," exclaimed Tavistock one day, "what tea the Master gives you! It nearly blows your head off."

'Besides the books which he was consulting for his Plato, Jowett always had a few favourite authors lying about-Sydney Smith, the Cambridge Shakespeare, and a well

1 Jowett told me that a doctor once advised him to smoke; 'and I did smoke every day for a

month. I never smoked before or since.'-E. A.

worn little Imitatio in limp calf. His last gifts to me, some twenty years ago, were a copy of the Imitatio similarly but more daintily bound, and an English version of the Confessions of St. Augustine, which, he said, had long been a great favourite of his.

[ocr errors]

Our company at Tummel usually consisted of Jowett and three or four undergraduates; but it was enlarged from time to time by the arrival of some Balliol man of an older generation, who would spend a few days or even a few weeks with us. Then there was "good talk." Campbell would air the latest parallel he had discovered between Shakespeare and Sophocles; the jovial Lancaster, fresh from the courts, raised points of law for his famous case against the "lady medicals"; and Swinburne— who shall tell of Swinburne's paradoxes and hyperboles, and how he "set the table in a roar" with his recitations of Mrs. Gamp, and how he and the Master capped quotations from Boswell against each other ad infinitum? In the autumn of 1870 the war was naturally a frequent theme of discussion, and the great event of our day was the arrival of the mail coach from Pitlochry with the Times and the latest news of the campaign. Some of us were for Germany and others for France; Jowett, I remember, was warmly and steadily French; and his sympathies found vent in such sayings as that "La belle France had conferred far greater benefits on mankind than Germany," and that "Voltaire had done more good than all the Fathers of the Church put together." He even had a kind word for Louis Napoleon.

'After an early dinner-too soon afterwards for easy digestion, for Jowett was less of a physician than he imagined-we used to sally forth for a mountain climb or a long moorland walk, returning in the dusk to tea. Once a slight mist overtook us, and we were glad to catch sight at last of the lights of the inn. "How far that little candle throws his beams," quoted the Master; "so shines a good deed in a naughty world." Another evening, as the night fell and the stars appeared, I remember his repeating softly, half to himself, the whole of Tennyson's "Break, break, break," and then, after a pause, he went on with Wordsworth's "She dwelt among the untrodden ways." Some eighteenthcentury verses, which he was very fond of, and often repeated,

I have forgotten; but perhaps you can recover them.
remember of them is :-

"Thus age and sad experience, hand in hand,
Led him to God, and made him understand
That all his life he had been in the wrong 1."

All I

'The country folk about Tummel had a great regard for Jowett, whom they knew as "the Professor," but his dealings with the Sabbath were something of a stumbling-block to them. He was in the habit of attending morning service at the little kirk; but that duty done, the rest of the day was always devoted in fine weather to some distant expedition-a drive to the Black Wood of Rannoch, or to Glen Lyon, or to the remoter shores of Loch Tay. On these occasions he would take a volume of Shakespeare with him, and when the road grew tame and conversation flagged, would lose himself in a scene of King Lear, or the Merry Wives. Our great Sunday feat and annual festival was the ascent of Schiehallion. I think I see Jowett now in an easy suit of grey, a wideawake on his head, and a stout stick in his hand, trudging sturdily up the rough mountain side. Halfway up he would call a halt at a cool spring, draw from his pocket a silver flask engraved with the cheerful legend, "Drink wine and let water go to the mill," and qualify our draughts with a little brandy. How triumphant he was when we attained the summit; and how eager to point out to us the lie of the land or to name the distant peaks! Night would be upon us before we reached home to discuss the adventures of the day over a merry meal, half dinner and half tea. "Very good 'confused feeding'" Jowett called it.

'Years afterwards-so many that these scenes had become to him, as he said, "like pictures"-he would refer to them in 1 The lines are from Rochester's poem, 'A Satyr against Mankind': "Thus Old Age and Experience, hand in hand, Lead him to Death and make him understand,

After a search so painful and so long,

That all his life he has been in the wrong.'

See Johnson's English Poets (1790), vol. xv. p. 46. I owe the identification to the Rev. H. E. D.

Blakiston, of Trinity College,
Oxford.

conversation or in letters, as among the happiest recollections of his life. They are among the most cherished memories of some of his old pupils. As I write, the little inn rises before me, and the kind face of the Master; and I feel again the warm grasp of the hand, and hear the cordial "God bless you," which were his welcome and his good-bye.'

In December I came to stay with Jowett at Balliol. I had not been in Oxford for more than six years, and the many changes which have been recorded had taken place in the interval. There was Jowett in the Master's Lodge, the right man in the right place, happy and hospitable; there was the new front of the College quadrangle-which I could not bring myself to think the finest of recent buildings in Oxford, though I did not venture on criticism! In the daytime we were both occupied in different ways, but in the evening we met at dinner, and talked away the time till Jowett retired to his work. On the Sunday afternoon we went to New College Chapel, for the Term had ceased and there was no longer service at Balliol. The stirring event of my visit was the contested election of Dean Stanley as Select Preacher, which animated Oxford even in the torpor of a vacation. Dean Burgon, who was then a Fellow of Oriel and Vicar of St. Mary's, a' character' such as would now be sought in vain at Oxford, kindly yet ferocious, simple yet vain, learned yet ignorant, who scented heresy from afar and snorted for the battle, endeavoured to get Stanley rejected by the votes of Convocation. So from all quarters men gathered to Oxford, some for, others against Stanley. Jowett was of course most zealous on his friend's behalf, and not less so because Burgon was the leader of the opposition. He had a warm welcome for every one who came up to give his vote for Stanley. How delighted and touched

« PreviousContinue »