Harrow School

“ Again, Harrow School is happily so near to the metropolis, as to afford frequent opportunities for occasional visits to similar scenes of contagion and fashionable dissipation, that the scholars do not fail to seek advantages of taking lessons in all those delectable sciences. ”

“ NW. of York; it enjoys a wide repute for its sulphurous, saline, and chalybeate springs.
Harrow (6) , a town of Middlesex, built on an eminence 200 ft. high, 12 m. from St. Paul's, London; its church, St. Mary's, founded by Lanfranc, is a Gothic structure of great architectural interest. Harrow School, a celebrated public school, was founded in 1571 for the free education of 30 poor boys of the parish, but subsequently opened its doors to "foreigners," and now numbers upwards of 500 pupils.
Harry, Blind, a famous Scottish minstrel who flourished in the 15th century ”

“ Again, the commencement of life seemed [Pg 5] discouraging: he had been placed at Harrow School, at the age of seven, but had his thigh-bone broken at nine, and was compelled to be from school for twelve months. Such was his progress, in spite of these untoward circumstances, and although characterised, let it be especially observed, as a boy “remarkable for diligence and application rather than superiority of talent,” that he was removed into the upper school, at Harrow, in his twelfth year. ”

“ At Easter, 1848, I left Harrow for the holidays, little imagining that I should never return there. I should have been very sorry had I known it. On the whole, the pleasurable “adventures” of a public-school life had always outweighed its disagreeables; though I was never in strong enough health for any real benefit or enjoyment. ”

“ He started with Harrow and the Rifle Brigade, and had been many things, from a rancher in California to an artist, before he found his vocation in literature. The Hill, his famous Harrow school novel, increased his popularity wonderfully, but he was an admirable writer from the first, both in story and style. I have heard it stated that on one of his great books his publishers made the sporting suggestion that he should receive no advance on account of royalties, but a thirty per cent. ”

“ The chief interest of Harrow is, of course, the famous school, that ranks second only to Eton amongst the great centres of education in England, and is intimately associated with the memory of many distinguished men, including amongst the headmasters Dr. ”

“ No English case has been found of a bill for an injunction to restrain the appointment or removal of a municipal officer. But an information in the court of chancery for the regulation of Harrow School, within its undoubted jurisdiction over public charities, was dismissed so far as it sought a removal of governors unlawfully elected ”

“ For when the fragile little boy was sent into his cousin's blacking warehouse, he entered a better school, as it happened, than his father could have chosen for him. It was an infinitely more painful school than Harrow or Eton, but for one whose destined work was to describe the poorer houses and streets of London, and the many varieties of life, odd and sad, laughter-moving and pitiful, that swarmed in them, it was a more instructive school, it was the true road to knowledge. ”

“ He is made to understand that he is on The Hill but not of it. He recognises frankly enough the greatness of Harrow tradition and the glory of Harrow history, but he rightly reserves his enthusiasm over such things for his own school; and there are moments when he feels inclined to bawl out to the author that he envies Harrow nothing—except perhaps Forty Years On.
In other words, The Hill, owing to the insistent fashion in which it puts Harrow first and general schoolboy nature second, must be regarded more as a glorified prospectus than as a representative novel of English school life. ”

“ In the following year our Politics found a fresh vent through the establishment of The Harrovian. I had dabbled in composition ever since I was ten, and had printed both prose and verse before I entered Harrow School. So here was a heaven-sent contributor, and one morning, in the autumn of 1869, as I was coming out of First School, one [9] of the Editors overtook me and said—
"We want you to contribute to The Harrovian. We are only going to employ fellows who can write English—not such stuff as 'The following boys were given prizes.'" Purism indeed! ”

“ Harrow is consecrated ground; and we could easily select a long list of illustrious men educated within its walls. The first classical mention of Harrow as a school, is by William Baxter the learned author of the Glossary, and editor of several of the classics, who was educated here. ”

“ At Harrow, in those days—how it may be now I know not—no “fagging” was authorised or permitted by the masters. No boy had any legitimate authority over any other boy. And inasmuch as it was, is, and ever will be, in every large school impossible to achieve such a Saturnian state of things, the result was that the bigger and stronger assumed an authority supported by sheer violence over the smaller and weaker. At Winchester, on the other hand, the subjection of those below them in college to the “prefects” or upper class, was not only recognised but enforced by the authorities. ”

“ When the sailor boy leaves his home, his future is settled, but for other boys who choose their career at a more advanced age, the home instruction is carried on so as to fit them for a preparatory school, usually chosen with a view to the public school to which they are to be sent. There are some schools which prepare for Eton, Harrow, and Winchester, as well as other public schools. ”

“ He goes out with his umbrella rolled up, and he finds he is swaggering; or he carries it by its middle, or under his arm, or he walks on the middle terrace after chapel, or he innocently wears his “blues” open when it is hot, or turns his trousers up when it is wet, and again he is swaggering. Lady visitors sometimes think small boys at Harrow rude. It is not rudeness which leads boys to stick close to the wall, even when coming up covered with mud from football, and shoulder the world into the gutter, it is modesty ”

“ 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 [48] in search of eggs and flowers, which we painted afterwards most carefully and perseveringly ”

“ Now the public school system may not work satisfactorily, but it works; the public schools may not achieve what we want, but they achieve what they want. The popular elementary schools do not in that sense achieve anything at all. It is very difficult to point to any guttersnipe in the street and say that he embodies the ideal for which popular education has been working, in the sense that the fresh-faced, foolish boy in “Etons” does embody the ideal for which the headmasters of Harrow and Winchester have been working. ”

“ That school should be reserved for those useless individuals, who toil not neither do they spin, nor should I send a boy to Harrow who intended to go in for trade or anything save one of the learned professions. Those who have a big business to go into might be sent to Rugby or Clifton, but I should prefer to let them attend St. Paul’s or the London University School, or else send them to Bedford or a similar establishment. ”

“ He soon showed literary tastes, and was again conveyed to England, where he was first sent to one or two preparatory schools, and then entered at Harrow in 1839. Although he began in the lowest form, he left in five years at the head of the school. ”

“ To speak of the other public schools—Harrow, Westminster, Shrewsbury, Marlborough, Wellington, Clifton, Repton, and the rest—would of course be interesting, but I could scarcely hope to illustrate more clearly what a public school really is. At all of them the boys live in "houses," much as men at the universities live in colleges. ”

“ For many years he spent twenty marks a year on the education of poor children. On 13 Feb. 1571–2 he obtained from Queen Elizabeth a charter and letters patent for the foundation of a free grammar school for boys at Harrow, constituting his trustees a body corporate as governors of the ‘Free Grammar-school of John Lyon.’ He bought lands in Marylebone in 1571, to be held by himself, his wife, and the governors of his school, the rents to be applied to the repair of the high-road between Edgware and London, and the surplus to the repair of the road between Harrow and London. ”

“ Secondly, John played in a house-game at football, and learned the difference between a scrimmage at a small preparatory school and the genuine thing at Harrow. Lawrence insisted that all new boys should play, and the Caterpillar informed him that he would have to learn the rules of Harrow "footer" by heart, and pass a stiff examination in them before the House Eleven, with the penalty of being forced to sing them in Hall if he failed to satisfy his examiners. ”

“ In the days of our voluntary school I have seen a room full of children in a state of nervous tension, and the mistress and pupil-teachers in tears, as the result of inconsiderate reprimands and irritable speech. My sympathies have been strongly aroused on such occasions with a child's terror of being made an exhibition before the others. As a boy at Harrow, in the form of the Rev. F.W. Farrar, afterwards Dean of Canterbury, I had an unpleasant experience, though it was no fault of his and quite unintentional. ”

“ A lad coming up to an English University finds himself in an enlarged and enlightened public school. If he has passed through Harrow and Eton there is no very abrupt transition between the life which he has led in the sixth form and that which he finds awaiting him on the banks of the Cam and the Isis. ”

“ The nice gentleman never refers to anyone else’s father, the nasty gentleman never refers to his own. That is the only difference, the rest is the public-school manner. But Eton and Harrow have to be aristocratic because they consist so largely of parvenues. The public school is not a sort of refuge for aristocrats, like an asylum, a place where they go in and never come out. It is a factory for aristocrats ”

“ Both the Universities, and most of the colleges, run "Settlements," where laymen, in the intervals of professional work and social enjoyment, spread religion, culture, and physical education amid the "dim, common populations" of Camberwell and Stratford and Poplar.
The Public Schools, formerly denounced as "the seats and nurseries of vice," make their full contribution to active religion. Eton and Winchester and Harrow have their Missions in crowded quarters of great towns. At one school, the boys have a guild of devotion ”

“ Why, he gave his daughter 1000l. on her wedding-day, and I know it has cost him nearly another thousand to educate his son for the Church."
"Was not that a waste of money, if he intended him to be a schoolmaster as he now is?"
"No, certainly not; with a university education, a man who has been accustomed from his boyhood to teaching and school routine is beyond all others most suitable to conduct a school. And besides," continued Mr. Drummond, "what are the head masters of Eton and Harrow, or Rugby, but schoolmasters and gentlemen? ”

“ Moreover, under the condition permitting any school winning it in three consecutive years to retain the challenge cup permanently, Harrow became possessed of three cups, having won the championship 1871–1874 inclusive, 1879–1881 inclusive, and 1883–1887 inclusive. The next most successful school has been Eton, eight times champion; Charterhouse having won five times, and no other school more than three times. ”

“ To one like myself, to whom it has fallen to visit almost every country on the face of the globe, there is always a tinge of melancholy in revisiting the familiar High Street of Harrow. It is like returning to the starting-point at the conclusion of a long race. The externals remain unchanged. Outwardly, the New Schools, the Chapel, the Vaughan Library, and the Head-Master's House all wear exactly the same aspect that they bore half a century ago. They have not changed, and the ever-renewed stream of young life flows through the place as joyously as it did fifty years ago. ”

“ Miss Heerwart took charge of a training college for Kindergarten teachers in connection with the British and Foreign School Society; the Froehel Society was founded, and Madame Michaelis took the Kindergarten into the newly established High Schools for Girls. For the children of the well-to-do Kindergartens spread rapidly, but for the children of the poor there was no such happiness; the Infant School was too firmly established as a place where children learned to read, write and count, and above all to sit still. Infants' teachers received no special training for their work ”

“ Musical "At Homes", too, were favorite amusements at Harrow, and at these my facile fingers made me a welcome guest.
A very pleasant place was Harrow to a light-hearted serious-brained girl. The picked men of the Schools of Oxford and Cambridge came there as junior masters, so that one's partners at ball and croquet and archery could talk as well as flirt. Never girl had, I venture to say, a brighter girlhood than mine. Every morning and much of the afternoon spent in eager earnest study: evenings in merry party or quiet home-life, one as delightful as the other. ”