CHAPTER I

WATERLOO, THE MAYOR, AND THE BABY

The Fisherman—The Battle of Waterloo—The Mayor of Salisbury—The Mayor’s Son—The Market-place—The Circus—Boarding-School and Fun—A Diary.

One midsummer day in 1815 a young draper’s assistant was gently fishing in the Salisbury Avon. William Fawcett was but lately come to Salisbury, yet he already knew his river. While trying a deep pool in the shadow of a bridge near the town he was startled by shouts from the roadway above. ‘News from the army! A great victory! Boney in flight!’

The fisherman forgot his fish, and hurried away to join the rejoicing crowd gathering in the market-place. There having been bustled to the roof of a stage-coach, and had the gazette containing the news thrust into his hands, he read out in his remarkably clear and resonant voice the account of the great battle of Waterloo.

[Sidenote: Rejoicings.]

Seventeen years later, when the shopkeeper had become the Mayor of Salisbury, he again led the town in rejoicings. The great Reform Bill had become law. Salisbury townsfolk were henceforth to have a voice in the councils of the nation, and the barren hill on which stood the pocket borough of old Sarum was no longer to mock them with its political power.

The town joyously prepared to celebrate the event. The houses were decorated. Elaborate illuminations were set up. Victory, assisted by Greek gods and goddesses, presided over a transparency in which Britannia throttled the hydra of corruption, while Wellington and Peel scowled in the background. Meat and beer were given to the poor; in the market-place, at great fires lighted in the open air, whole sheep were roasted. The smoke swirled blindly about the bustling crowd, and then surged up past the latticed windows of the Mayor’s house, to seek in ever thinning rifts the spire of the wonderful cathedral that for centuries has watched over the destinies of the town. The next day was held in the market-place a great banquet, at which the Mayor presided; and after dinner all adjourned to the Green Croft Cricket Ground, where his Worship led off the dance with a prominent and elderly lady of the town—the Mayor resplendent in plaited shirt frill and high stock, the buckles on his shoes twinkling as he cut ‘pigeon wings,’ the lady sedate in her wide brocade gown, her poke bonnet, and lace veil.

Fawcett’s heart was as light as his heels on that occasion. All his life he had been a reformer, a staunch Liberal, ardent for the extension of the franchise. It says much for his personal charm and worth that, in a close Tory borough such as Salisbury then was, he should have been chosen Mayor by his political opponents.

[Sidenote: The Mayor and his Wife.]

So dear to his heart was the spirit of freedom that the Mayor had forsooth to fall in love with the daughter of the solicitor who acted as agent for the Liberal party. Miss Mary Cooper was a good and clever woman, deeply interested in politics, and as ardent a reformer as the man she married.

The couple were sociable and humorous. They kept a good table, laid in an excellent stock of wine, and diffused such a pleasant atmosphere of hospitality that they became immensely popular, and many distinguished people sought their company. But William Fawcett was not only a good townsman, he was a good countryman as well, a great jumper, a keen sportsman, a good shot, and a renowned fisherman.

[Sidenote: The Brick-house Baby.]

In 1833, when the Princess Victoria was fourteen years old, when the negro slaves were being freed throughout the British Colonies, when Stephenson had completed his locomotive and the first railroads had been started, when all things seemed to be pushing and striving for independence and progress, in the Mayor’s old low red-brick house overlooking the market-place, in a wonderful Elizabethan room, on 26th August, Henry Fawcett was born.

The baby seems to have been singularly like most other babies. He shared the uneventful placidity of his nursery with an older brother, William, and a sister, Sarah Maria. Six years later there came another brother, Thomas Cooper.

[Sidenote: The Market.]

When Harry was four years old Queen Victoria, whom he was to serve in so distinguished a capacity, came to the throne. But it was still too early to find in Harry indications of the future statesman. He was delicate, and much spoiled at home, had a strong will of his own, and was on the whole rather selfish. He was not an imaginative child, though he loved at times, holding his sister Maria tightly by the hand, to venture into the great cathedral and see the coloured light as it filtered through the high windows, or to thrill in response to the thundering of the great organ. But more often we find him, still very tiny, standing squarely on his feet, inquiring with real interest the price of bacon, how much sheep and wool brought; or walking with his father and wearying him with ceaseless economic questions as to ‘Why are things cheaper to-day than last month?’ ‘Why does butter cost more than milk?’ until that patient man was heard to exclaim not too patiently, ‘Harry asks me so many questions that he quite worries me.’

He went to a Dame’s school, where his first teacher said that she had never had so troublesome a pupil, that his head was like a colander; but Harry puts the case more pathetically when he tells his mother that ‘Mrs. Harris says if we go on, we shall kill her, and we do go on,’ regretfully adding, ‘and yet she does not die.’ A schoolmate of these days says that Harry lisped very much, and that the boys used to tease him about it. He was also so slow about his lessons that they called him thickhead. But when school was out Harry entered the realms he loved. From his home on the market-place he had only to go outside the door to be at once in touch with the active world whose economic problems appealed to him so keenly. He made friends among the country folk, and talked of their crops and the money they would bring, and noted in his childish mind the rise and fall in the price of wheat.

[Sidenote: The Circus.]

Then to the same open space came all sorts of travelling shows. Sometimes the circus spread its mysterious tents, and when the children were dragged away from the wild beasts and the seductive freaks and put to bed, the little Fawcetts would stealthily creep to the bedroom window overlooking the market and see the lights shining on all the wonderful but forbidden marvels, and hear the hurdy-gurdy and the band mix their triumphal blare with the solemn striking of the clock in the near-by cathedral.

[Sidenote: Boarding-School.]

In 1841 Harry’s father took a delightful farmhouse at Longford, about three miles south of Salisbury, with delectable streams full of fish. Harry loved to fish every day, and hated lessons, but, alas! grim fate backed the lessons, and sent him ruthlessly to school. He went as a boarder to Mr. Sopp at Alderbury, a few miles away.

There are many tales showing that Harry loved the fleshpots and that he had been much indulged at home. He writes, ‘I have begun Ovid—I hate it.’ ‘This is a beastly school—milk and water, no milk—bread and butter, no butter. Please give a quarter’s notice.’

And still more heartrending was the prayer to his mother, ‘Please when the family has quite finished with the ham bone, send it to me.’ Imagination can supply the effect of this on the family circle, and guess what a well-covered ham bone was shipped to the starving Harry. Starving or no, he grew immensely stronger and larger, and though he never admitted that he got enough to eat at any school, he became ultimately reconciled to his exile.

He used to come home often for half-holidays, and to go to Longford and revel in all country delights. Then began the close friendships with the cottagers about him which meant so much to him and influenced all his life.

In the summer that completed his tenth year there came to Salisbury two men who also loved the common people and sought to make their lives easier. It was the year of the great Free Trade campaign in the agricultural districts, and the men were Cobden and Bright. They visited Harry’s father, and perhaps Harry himself met them then for the first time. Lord Morley has said in his life of Cobden that ‘the picture of these two men, leaving their homes and their business, and going over the length and breadth of the land to convert the nation, had about it something apostolic.’ In a home where they and their teachings were so reverenced, to even hear of their journeyings would make a strong impression on a boy of Harry’s interests, and perhaps helped to give a definite aim to his ambitions.

At Mr. Sopp’s school he began a diary, of which the penmanship is admirable. On some days the only record is the startling fact, ‘It was a very fine day.’ June 21st, 1847, however, is a very eventful day, for he lists the capture of the first fish that he took with a fly, which weighed ‘about three-quarters of a pound.’

[Sidenote: Hedgehogs and Cake.]

Again, he is transported with joy by the gift of a hedgehog and four young ones, and he has a glorious time in going on board H.M.S. _Howe_, of one hundred and twenty guns. On one occasion he goes to the theatre, on another he is in court hearing a trial. He begins Greek, and this anguish is modified by the arrival of a cake for one of his schoolfellows, which Harry doubtless shares.

A change of scene is recorded in the diary when on 3rd August Henry becomes the first pupil at Queenwood College. In its previous career this temple of learning had been Harmony Hall, built by Robert Owen for his last socialist experiment. In 1817 it was opened as a school by Mr. Edmonson, a Quaker. Special emphasis was given to scientific training and English literature. The school seems to have been very congenial to Harry, and his intellect now began to develop rapidly.

[Sidenote: The Editor.]

To continue from the diary, we learn that ‘we elected the various school officers. J. Mansergh and I were elected without opposition editors of the _Queenwood Chronicle_.’ He had been at Queenwood but a fortnight, and was fourteen years old when this great honour came to him. Mr. Fawcett was delighted at this good news, and offered because of it and because Harry had been ’studying most determinedly’ to take the boy to Stonehenge. His aversion to books had distressed his family, and this new interest in his studies gave his father great pleasure. On reading a composition which Harry had sent home, Mr. Fawcett exclaimed to his wife, ‘I really think, mother, after all that there is something in that boy!’ His literary performances at this time indicate an increasing imagination, but in the main he never deviated from the practical paths of thought shown when as a tiny child he studiously investigated the Salisbury market. His schoolmates report him as ‘tall for his age, loose-limbed, and rather ungainly.’ He had become much of a bookworm, and though later good at games, at this time he preferred to wander off by himself and read. He was strongest in mathematics; languages did not much appeal to him; but he liked to learn long passages of poetry by heart. There was a disused chalk-pit near Queenwood where he would take refuge and declaim his lines. The extravagance of his gesticulations might well cause unexpecting passers-by to consider him the village loony.