Fifteen Chapters of AutobiographyRussell, George William Erskine
History
Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
Russell, George William Erskine
Politicians -- England -- Biography; Russell, George William Erskine, 1853-1919
When I speak of masters who were also friends, I should be ungrateful
indeed if I omitted Arthur George Watson, in whose House I was placed as
soon as the doctors were satisfied that the experiment could be tried
without undue risks. Mr. Watson was a Fellow of All Souls, and was in
all respects what we should have expected a member of that Society
(elected the same day as the late Lord Salisbury) to be. It was said of
C. P. Golightly at Oxford that, when he was asked his opinion of Dr.
Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, he replied: "Well, if I were forced to choose
the epithet which should be least descriptive of the dear Provost, I
should choose _gushing_." Exactly the same might be said of Mr. Watson;
but he was the most high-minded and conscientious of men, a thorough
gentleman, inflexibly just, and a perfect House-Master. The days which
I spent under his roof must always be reckoned among the happiest of my
life.
Among masters who were also friends I must assign a high place to the
Rev. William Done Bushell, who vainly endeavoured to teach me
mathematics, but found me more at home in the sphere (which he also
loved) of Ecclesiology. And not even the most thoughtless or
ill-conditioned boy who was at Harrow between 1854 and 1882 could ever
forget the Rev. John Smith, who, through a life-time overshadowed by
impending calamity, was an Apostle to boys, if ever there was one, and
the Guardian Angel of youthful innocence. Dr. Vaughan, no lover of
exaggerated phrases, called him, in a memorial sermon, "the Christ of
Harrow;" and there must be many a man now living who, as he looks back,
feels that he owed the salvation of his soul to that Christ-like
character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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