CHAPTER III

THE TALL STUDENT

Peterhouse—Quoits and Billiards—Trinity Hall—A Fellowship—Lincoln’s Inn.

[Sidenote: The new Under-graduate.]

Harry knew that for his father’s sake it was necessary for him to be self-supporting as soon as possible, and therefore chose his college on purely financial grounds. He went to Peterhouse, where the fellowships could be held by laymen, and were reported to be of unusual value.

His great friend, Sir Leslie Stephen, saw him there for the first time. We cannot do better than quote from Sir Leslie’s biography of Fawcett the impression his subject then made upon him:

‘I saw Fawcett for the first time a few months after his entrance (in October 1852).... I could point to the precise spot on the bank of the Cam where I noticed a very tall, gaunt figure swinging along with huge strides upon the towing path. He was over 6 feet 3 inches in height. His chest, I should say, was not very broad in proportion to his height, but he was remarkably large of bone and massive of limb.

‘The face was impressive, though not handsome. The skull was very large; my own head vanished as into a cavern if I accidentally put on his hat. The forehead was lofty, though rather retreating, and the brow finely arched.

‘The complexion was rather dull, but more than one of his early acquaintance speaks of the brightness of his eye and the keenness of his glance. The eyes were full and capable of vivid expression, though not, I think, brilliant in colour. The features were strong, and, though not delicately carved, were far from heavy, and gave a general impression of remarkable energy. The mouth long, thin-lipped, and very flexible, had a characteristic nervous tremor as of one eager to speak and voluble of discourse....

‘A certain wistfulness was a frequent shade of expression. But a singularly hearty and cordial laugh constantly lighted up the whole face with an expression of most genial and infectious good-humour.[3-1]

Footnote 3-1:

Sir Leslie Stephen, speaking of the photograph reproduced to face p. 26, says, ‘The rather peculiar expression of the eyes results from the weakness of sight presently to be noticed which made him shrink from any strong light.’

‘On my first glimpse of Fawcett, however, I was troubled by a question of classification. I vaguely speculated as to whether he was an undergraduate, or a young farmer, or possibly somebody connected with horses at Newmarket, come over to see the sights. He had a certain rustic air, in strong contrast to that of the young Pendennises who might stroll along the bank to make a book upon the next boat race.

‘He rather resembled some of the athletic figures who may be seen at the side of a north-country wrestling-ring. Indeed, I fancy that Fawcett may have inherited from his father some of the characteristics of the true long-legged, long-limbed Dandie Dinmont type of north-countryman. The impression was, no doubt, fixed in my mental camera because I was soon afterwards surprised by seeing my supposed rustic dining in our College Hall. I insist upon this because it may indicate Fawcett’s superficial characteristics on his first appearance at Cambridge.

‘Many qualities, which all his friends came to recognise sooner or later, were for the present rather latent, or, maybe, undeveloped. The first glance revealed the stalwart, bucolic figure, with features stamped by intelligence, but that kind of intelligence which we should rather call shrewdness than by any higher name.’

[Sidenote: Sports and Games.]

At first the men of his own year were inclined to estimate Harry as an outsider in sports and games. His simple provincial ways gave little sign of expert skill. But he won his way in dramatic fashion. An undergraduate nick-named the ‘Captain’ challenged him to a game of quoits. Salisbury’s native game is quoits; Harry was well trained, and won easily. Then the battle shifted to billiards. Captain’s score pushed steadily ahead until in a game of a hundred points he had ninety-six to Harry’s seventy-five: four points more for the Captain, twenty-five for Harry. The onlookers vociferously offered ten to one on the Captain. Fawcett gravely took all the bets offered at this rate, and any others that he could get, and then calmly, in a single break, made the twenty-five necessary points.

[Sidenote: A successful Game of Billiards.]

Fawcett is quoted as having given this account, ‘Bets were forced on me; but the odds were really more than ten to one against my making twenty-five in any position of the balls, but I saw a stroke which I knew that I could make, and which would leave me a fine game.’ No matter by what magic the feat was achieved, it filled his pockets, and cleared for ever any doubts in his companions’ minds as to the capacity and shrewdness of ‘Old Serpent,’ as he was then dubbed, and by which nickname he went for a brief time.

He never gambled again. The story is paralleled in later years by an equally solitary financial speculation. He then showed the same quickness in seizing the facts and calculating the chances, the same boldness in acting on his own judgment, and the same restraint in not repeating the adventure.

He disapproved of gambling, and had a wholesome dislike of it. His sense of fun made it impossible for him ever to have a holier-than-thou attitude, but his common sense and natural goodness kept him singularly free from the failings so common among his associates. While anything but a Puritan, he ‘was in all senses perfectly blameless in his life.’

[Sidenote: Making Friends.]

He had a rare talent for friendship, attracting people to him as easily as he was attracted to them, and his faculty of making friends and keeping them held to the end. He was never known to lose a friend.

Those who knew him well appreciated his strong intellectual equipment. Perhaps his chief characteristics were his absolute normality, his remarkable freedom from self-consciousness, his common sense, and his ever-present sense of fun. These early years at the university, when the lank boy was emerging into the statesman, were years of great happiness and joviality. Fawcett found many congenial spirits, and formed intimacies among men destined to distinguished careers. Most of his associates were good workers, but not particularly given to intellectual subtleties. Music made slight appeal to him, and he was flagrantly ignorant of classics and modern languages, and made no pretence to culture. The young Cambridge men of this period were greatly afraid of sentimentality, and devotees of the ‘God of Things as they are.’

But there was one subject peculiarly attractive to the men with whom Fawcett consorted—political economy. And in those days political economy meant Mill. His book, gathering together all the last words of the science, had been written a very few years before Fawcett went to Cambridge. It had had a phenomenal success, and it and its author were enjoying a phenomenal authority. Edward Wilson, a brilliant Senior, well represented the feeling of his day, when he would confute all opposition by an apt quotation, leaving Mill triumphantly supreme, and then close his vindication with the cry, ‘Read Mill! Read Mill!’ Fawcett did, from early till late, until he knew the book by heart. As he was thoroughly inoculated with this cult, his reverence for Mill was one of his strong steadfast beliefs through life.

Fawcett begrudged time taken from his books, and never rowed in his college boat, although Sir Leslie Stephen writes:

[Sidenote: Boating.]

‘That he occasionally performed in the second boat, I remember by this circumstance, that I can still hear him proclaiming in stentorian tones and in good vernacular from an attic window to a captain of the boat on the opposite side of the quadrangle, and consequently to all bystanders below, that he had a pain in his inside and must decline to row. I have some reason to think that he had felt bad effects from some previous exertions, and had been warned by a doctor against straining himself. I have an impression that there was some weakness in the heart’s action. Fawcett, like many men who enjoy unbroken health, was a little nervous about any trifling symptoms. One day we found him lying in bed, complaining lustily of his sufferings, and stating that he had dispatched a messenger to bring him at once the first doctor attainable. A doctor arrived, and his first question as to the nature of Fawcett’s last dinner resolved the consultation into a general explosion of laughter, in which the patient joined most heartily.’

It was characteristic of Fawcett that he treated all men as equals, and took from them the best of what they had to offer. He became intimate with men of all ages. Mr. Hopkins, a Peterhouse man, with whom Fawcett read, had received his B.A. in 1827, twenty-five years before Fawcett’s appearance at Cambridge; but this difference in age did not prevent a close bond. Fawcett never alluded to Hopkins without great enthusiasm, and in the days of his grave trial this friend was the most helpful of all. He was of great service in the first years at Cambridge, urging Fawcett to regard the mathematical studies necessary for taking a good degree as valuable intellectual gymnastics. Fawcett with his usual keenness and common sense was quite alive to the fact that a good degree was a distinct commercial asset, and said that he would rather be Senior Wrangler in the worst year than second to Sir Isaac Newton. His definite aim in life—a political career—made any wanderings into study for its own sake of no interest to him. He planned through life so to select that he might obtain.

From the days of declaiming in the chalk-pit at Queenwood, Fawcett had realised the value of public speaking.

[Sidenote: The Debater.]

The great Macaulay, Sir William Harcourt, and other distinguished men had tried their oratorical pinions in flights at the Debating Club called ‘The Union.’ Fawcett joined, and after some tentative efforts, despite his friends’ amusement and discouragement, boldly won his way, and became a good speaker. He worked over his orations carefully, and by great persistence gained an easy and fearless manner of speaking, and we find that he opened debates on National Education and University Reform.

In these years the events which led to the Crimean War provided the chief subjects of debate, such as the foreign policy of Austria and Prussia, the independence of Poland, and the character of the Emperor Nicholas. On these questions Fawcett did not share the views of John Bright, who was then making his great speeches on behalf of peace; but the undergraduate’s democratic sympathies are clearly shown in his advocacy of non-sectarian National Education, of a motion that ‘the party called “Cobdenites” have done the country good service,’ or in favour of a ‘considerable extension of the franchise,’ and of ‘University Reform.’

[Sidenote: Good-bye to Grandiloquence.]

It was during this period of careful self-training that Fawcett gradually reduced his style of speaking to that simplicity and directness which became so marked throughout his career. There is a lingering trace of grandiloquence and schoolboy rhetoric in an essay written on the merit of Pope’s poetry, but that seems to have been his swan-song to elocution with frills.

[Sidenote: The Friend of Friends.]

Fawcett left Peterhouse in his second year, and went to Trinity Hall as a pensioner, thus reducing the expense to his father. There chances for scholarship were alluring, and several immigrants from other colleges joined forces at Trinity Hall. There also he met Leslie Stephen, his lifelong friend and biographer, who speaks of this friendship as ‘one of the greatest privileges of my life.’

Fawcett set to work with a will to carry off the Senior Wranglership. We are told that in the Tripos, for the first and the last time in his life, Fawcett’s nerve failed. Though he got out of bed and ran round the college quadrangle to exhaust himself, he could not sleep, and failed to gain the success which meant so much to him. He sank to seventh; but in spite of his comparative failure he had shown marked ability, and made so great an impression by his work, that he was elected to a fellowship at Christmas 1856.

[Sidenote: Pounds and Pence.]

He adhered to his boyish ambition of entering Parliament, but there were still great obstacles in his way. Beyond his fellowship, which brought him £250 a year, he had no income of his own. His father was not a rich man, and the strain on his purse to support his other three children was sufficient. Harry resolved, therefore, to make his way by a career at the Bar, and while still at Cambridge entered Lincoln’s Inn. When he had won his fellowship he settled in London, and set himself to study law. No one who came in contact with him at this time had any doubt that he would arrive at his goal by main force. A friendly firm of solicitors had already promised that he should have opportunities, and his great talent for working well with all sorts of people, his genius for friendship, and his real business ability bid well for the success of his plan. His will was inflexible, his good-nature chronic, and his acuteness of mind and general ability far beyond the average.

In the mimic legislature of the Westminster Debating Society, which consisted of young barristers and journalists, Fawcett soon became the leader of the Radical party. The organisation followed the form of the House of Commons. It is said that Bulwer Lytton had once paid it a visit, and said afterwards that he had entered in a fit of abstraction, mistaking it for the House of Commons, and only discovered his error upon finding that there were no dull speeches and no one asleep, which seems to prove that it must have been a most remarkable society.

One of his contemporaries, who saw Fawcett in the height of these pseudo-Parliamentary triumphs, speaks of his ‘resonant voice, wild hair, and expressive eyes.’ But just at this point, when he seemed to be setting with full sail on the channel towards success, his eyes began to trouble him.