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"Heaven gives us friends to
bless the present scene ;
Removes them, to prepare us for the next."
Young {Night Thoughts).
OF those
who were at the Academy when I first went there, and whom I knew, there are
few left. Probably the two most distinguished men in physical science were
Clerk Maxwell and Peter Guthrie Tait. I can recall at that time hearing it
said, in my father's house, that some work that Clerk Maxwell had done
astonished by ;its power the savants of the day. He certainly
proved himself later to be among the first—if not the first— of the men of
science of the time. He was for many years the most quoted as an authority
in what I read of physical science as an amateur. Peter Tait I knew well.
When I was introduced to him many years after my schooldays, and when he had
become Professor of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh University, I said to
him. "I have desired to meet you for a long time, that I might apologise to
you for giving you a black eye." He stared and laughed, and I told him the
story. When he was in the sixth class and I was in the second, on an
occasion when there was snow in the yards, we little fellows took advantage
of the big sixth—who had to go into class before our time—to set upon them,
and to make believe we had driven them off the field. They took our
onslaught good-naturedly. I, like an imp as I was, ran forward to deliver my
last snowball on the retreating foe.Just as I aimed at Tait's back, he
turned round, and my ball, which was slushy, and which I had pressed as
tight as I could, caught him straight in the eye, shot from a distance of a
few feet. I was proud of myself, and he was certainly hurt pretty severely.
He and I became good friends, and ;in the late Seventies I have
played golf with him at St. Andrews at six in the morning, a time when no
other player would turn out, and when no caddy thought it worth his while to
get up so early to earn the fee of a round, so we had to carry our own
clubs,, His talk as we trod the green was quite interesting and most
instructive. : he good-natured way in which he tried to make
things clear to the amateur was characteristic of the man. How proud he was
of his son Freddy as a golfer. I cannot doubt that his sad death in the Boer
war did much to bring Tait to his end.
Henry
Smith, who became the head of the City of London Police, Colonel Cadell, V.C.,
Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff, and Sir John Batty Tuke, who was Member for the
Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews, were a class-fellows of mine.
Scott- Moncriefil is one of the few men for whom prayer has been made in all
the mosques of a district in Egypt. By his skilful and daring engineering
work, he brought the blessing of irrigalion water to a large tract of
country, desolate before, and although he belonged to the hated race of
"Christian dogs,' gratitude overflowed in prayer to Allah in many a mosque
for his welfare —a most praiseworthy inconsistency of the Moslem. Of
lawyers, I was a fellow-scholar with John Blair Balfour, William Mackintosh,
and Robert Finlay. The Academy of that time produced its full share of
distinguished men in most walks of life, of which we Academicals are proud—
it is to be hoped not inordinately. One whose sad fate it was to be drowned
at Oxford was Luke, one of the most distinguished scholars of his time.
As
regards the Academy of to-day, it is a joy to an old Academical to be able
to say, from intimate knowledge as a Director, that it has never been in a
more flourishing—indeed has never been in such a flourishing condition as it
is to-day, the number of scholars being about 200 greater than it was when I
first joined the Board, and staff, and equipment, and system being now at a
highly efficient standard, while munificent gifts of buildings will cause
the names of Messrs. Grabble and Gilmour and Ford to be ever remembered as
benefactors.
Before
concluding references to school life, I suppose it is a duty in speaking of
one's school years to be frank. There is one advantage in having 1little to
say that is good of oneself, that there is no need to consider questions of
modesty.
"Of
their own merits, modest men are dumb,"
but he
who has to confess does well to be outspoken. I therefore say at once that I
was not a good, far less a model scholar. If I was not so far down as to be
classed with the "rubbishing tail", it was a surprise if I found myself more
than halfway up in the class, and I can believe that when this happened my
teacher was at least as surprised as myself. I had left school before I
learned what it was to work. My prizes, which were few, were for English. At
the close of the session a senior class was brought to the English room to
hear us recite and read, and by the votes of the upper boys of that class
went the prizes. I had a tough tussle with my friend Tuke—alas, lately taken
from us—and we read time after time, and at last the Archdeacon announced
that the votes were eequal, and that each of us should have a prize. I can
well remember the frightful row that followed, and saw next day what had
caused it. My brother, who was in the senior class, was seated on a high
book press, and when I was announced as a prize-winner his heels beat a
terrific tattoo on the press door. Many a time did I look at the deep dints
upon that door afterwards, a testimony of brotherly love. Once again I took
this prize, the dangerous Tuke being out of the way. Later I indulged hope
of taking a prize for Biblical knowledge, but will never forget my
disappointment. I literally slaved at preparation, sitting up late when I
was supposed to be in bed. Having heard of the extraordinary questions
sometimes put by examiners, I was prepared if called on to give the whole
genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew from memory, and could answer
every question in the primer we were supplied with. But, alas! the night
before examination day my overwork brought me to nervous breakdown. All
through the dark hours a continuous jumble passed through my little head.
Patriarchs and kings, prophets true and false, widows of Samaria, Ahab,
Jeroboam, and all the rest, coursed through my consciousness, vivid but
confused, and when day-light came, all around me looked greeny as I fought
with the horrors of a bilious attack, such as I have never endured since.
Oh, how keenly I felt it, the one great effort of my school days doomed to
end in bitter disappointment. Among the many doings that "gang agley in
life", I have never encountered one which was a trial more poignant.
One other
prize I fought for, but only got a place, the Recitation prize. I was at
that time but a poor creature physically, and gave my aid to the medical
profession pretty freely, being threatened with lung trouble, causing me to
be taken from school for a year. I fancy that to a certain extent this was a
handicap for a reciter. Marcellus' speech to the Mob was one of the
recitations prescribed which tested our powers, and my poor physical state
made a speech like that, with its varying emotional stages, to be beyond me.
It was one of the few keen disappointments of my boy-life that I could not
rise to the place required for recitation. But these contests recall an
incident which was most amusing to those who witnessed it. Outside the
class-room there had been a paraphrasing of Marcellus' utterance, and with
mock solemnity a comical rhyming version had been shouted in unison by
laughing groups during play interval on wet days. When the reciting
competition was taking place, a chum of my own had got well through the
opening and the pause over Caisar's coffin, but coming to the climax, down
came from the shelf of memory and out came at the lips the paraphrased
version;
"Run to
your houses, fall upon your knees,
And pray to the gods for
bread and cheese"
The
reciter corrected himself in vain, for such a shout went up from rector,
masters, and pupils that "to interdict the plagues'* reached no one's ear,
and my poor friend crept back to his seat with the crimson of shame, which
he had been invoking from his supposed Romans, upon his own cheeks.
When it
is necessary to speak on self-depreciation, there is some comfort in being
able with emphasis to declare that one has to do so in such good company as
Lord Cockburn. It is something to be able to say that you can apply his
account of himself as if his words were your own, and speaking of yourself.
He tells of himself: "I never got a single prize *—neither did I in
classics; and he adds: "I once sat
booby at the annual examination." So did I.
Probably his case was like mine. The desire to evade sitting at the bottom
led first one and then another to absent himself, and we were in reality
only nearly boobies, though having to fill the place. If there was no other
good quality, I think he could claim, and I could claim, an award for pluck.
I fear he got no recognition. 1 did, and it forms a rather funny incident.
When the class met in the following session the master called me up, and
commenting on the injustice inflicted by the desertion of many —so far as I
can remember it was more than the first double figure—said I had been
awarded a prize, which was handed to me, the first time a
booby
prize had ever been delivered as a real reward. The inside label was not
filled up, and I went to the writing- master, Mr. Hamilton, told him the
circumstances, and left him to write in what seemed to him good. He did so,
and I still possess my volume, on which is stamped in gold:
"Hoc ingenii feliciter
exculti
Pr(emium donav-erunt
Academic? Edinensis Curatores" and which bears
the label, "Extra
Prize for Scholarship." This must, I think, be
unique.
While at
the Academy a tutor was provided for me in the evening to assist in
preparing the lessons for the next day, and one of these tutors was a
student, Alexander Nicolson, who afterwards became a well-known man in
Edinburgh, and who went by the soubriquet of "The Celt", he hailing from
Skye, from whence my father came.
He
was a Celt from head to toe, with a good share of
pawky humour, and a considerable power of versification, both serious and
comic. He was engaged in the Advocates' Library on catalogue work, and
somewhat later in life than is usual he became an advocate. I refer to this,
because I think our relations at the Bar were unique. I had several times
the honour of being his leader in Court proceedings. Such a thing as the
pupil being senior at the Bar to his former tutor has not, I suppose, ever
occurred before, and is not likely to occur again. Our friendship was
cordial, and only ceased when he was carried off a good many years ago.
Those who can remember him are now but few. He was a very capable man, and
might have shone in literature, but his easy-going temperament militated
against his attaining a marked success. He had not an enemy, and he had many
friends. |
