EDWARD THRING.
riN September 10th, 1853, Edward Thring came to a school-
house in rebellion, a handful of riotous boys, a single old schoolroom, and a salary of 2150 a year. Re came with no more knowledge of actual schoolmasterhood than such as he had gained in organising the squire's school in a Somersetshire village. But he brought to the work the pluck he had acquired in the Eton playing-fields, and the self-sacrifice and sympathy he had cultivated in his curacies at Gloucester and Marlow and Cookham Dean. He brought more. It has been said of him by a contemporary at Eton, that he made goodness possible among boys of his day there ; he had determined to teach and to prove that goodness was always possible among boys, and that lies and dishonour, and shame and cowardice, were not the natural aptitude of English youth. "Only trust boys, and they will rise to trustworthiness ;" this was his feeling. There was some- thing prophetic in his own family motto, Ora et labora. That work was prayer, he believed could be shown to young lads ; and if ever a man of prayer moved boys and men alike to a sense of noble endeavour, it was Edward Thring.
He had taken the Person prize in 1843, and had been elected to a Fellowship at King's in 1844. He was debarred by being a King's man from the Classical Tripes; but his old tutor used to say that, had he entered, he was one of two men of his year who would have competed for the place of first classic. But it was not only that he brought to Uppingham brilliant Greek scholarship. He brought sympathies with German scholarship also. His wife is a German lady of high accomplishment and sound judgment ; and not one of the least blessings that in these past thirty-four years of his schoolmaster's life have befallen Uppingham, has been the musical influence that, through his love of Germany, was brought by the late Head-Master to bear its due part in the education of young England. Slight of stature, Thring was wiry and muscular of frame. As a man of fifty, he could play Eton fives against the best players in the school; took his part in the House cricket-match and the football-bully like a youngster, when he was now grey-headed. "Work hard and play bard," was his rule ; and not a little of the success of Uppingham in the athletic world was due to the boys' feeling that in their Head-Master they had a man who was glad at prowess in sport as he was proud of intellectual attainment. "Every boy is good for something. If he cannot write iambics or excel in Latin prose, he has at least eyes, and a hand, and ears. Turn him into the carpenter's shop, make him a botanist or a chemist, encourage him to express himself in music,"—such used to be his words ; "and if he fails all round here, at least he shall learn to read in public clearly his mother-tongue, and write thoughtfully an English essay." Bat one thing from first to last Thring taught and wrought for. The boys he dealt with should be dealt with as individuals, and not as masses. He denied himself the privileges and con. venience of a large house, that he might the better show his assistant-masters that for such a principle it was well to be poor. He refused, on the same grounds, that the school should exceed a certain numerical limit. Character was what he aimed at, and character it was his pre-eminently to give. Fearless for truth, and willing, for what he felt to be right, to stand alone against public or private criticism, as he was, boys left Upping- ham with the feeling that popular theories and fashion were not always to be trusted, that each must think for himself, and dare to do the right and think the right, in scorn of consequences. "I don't want you lads to win dazzling honours; I want you to be dazzlingly honourable," he would say. " We cannot all be racers, but that is no reason why the tortoise should be forgotten." Pithy and packed with epigram as his works on school education are, his theories are not yet publicly accepted and popular here in England. But it was some comfort to him to know that in Minnesota, Fredericton, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Mai., in Hungary, and at Cologne, his ideas were received with enthusiasm. His books, "Education and School," "Life Science," and "Theory and Practice of Teaching," it is true, have been widely read here; but it was across the Atlantic that he has found the fullest echo for his words. It is not generally known how even in England Thring has been truly a pioneer in Public School education matters. Some years before other Publio Schools had adopted the plan of interesting school-lads in the lives of the working classes, Uppingham had its mission district at the Woolwich Docks. And the first purpose the ancient schoolroom of Archdeacon Johnston, the Elizabethan founder, was put to, when the new
schools were built, was a practical carpenter's shop, for teaching boys the use of their hands.
Thring has left behind him a name that will not die. For he was not only a Head-Master but a practical and active philanthropist. Wherever a good cause for the welfare of the people claimed his sympathy, it obtained it. He used to feel that it was the bounden duty of the school to enter in every possible way into the life of the town. His speech when, after a year's sojourn of the whole school at Borth, on the Cardigan coast, and after it had returned home without the loss of a boy or a word of blame upon the scholars, he returned thanks for the welcome accorded him by the townsmen, is proof of how strongly he felt in this matter. The Old Boys' Society for furthering philanthropic work in far-off helpless corners of the land, was the practical outcome of this feeling. A tireless correspondent, he spared no pains, but put at the disposal of any who sought advice, his thoughts, his aims, and his desires. "I am only a sower," he would say ; "let others reap." Others will reap, if the necessary machinery for carrying on Public School work is a factor in the success of it. He built up great ideas, but he built in wood and stone also. In place of a single boarding-house and schoolroom, through the courage with which he inspired his brave fellow-workers, he has raised into being a glorious chapel, the "great school," a sanatorium, a workshop, a forge, a gymnasium, a swimming-bath, twelve fives. courts, eleven boarding-houses, and a preparatory school. He has also laid out two cricket-grounds, and a public garden with aviary, and procured for school purposes ten acres of land in addition. We should be within the mark if we put down a capital sum of 290,000 as spent on such work during the past thirty-four years ; and if we add some 225,000 as the probable worth of school property, in addition, which his exertions have procured for the trust, without mention of private income he has himself sunk in the enterprise, we gain an idea of the money's-worth his labours have conferred on Uppingham. But we prefer to think of the name and the fame, better than gold, for pure and simple manly work, that Uppingham boys have gained through his influence. A born General, as Thring was proved to be by his daring manceuvre of transplanting the whole school at a few hours' notice to Borth by the sea, in 1875, to save the school from an epidemic of fever which threatened its existence, it may be affirmed of him that he was commander also of the affections of all with whom he came in contact. The Christian soldier's life was with him a constant metaphor and simile. "Die, rather than' desert your post," he would say. And though wearied of heart and brain, and glad enough to lay down arms and retire from active service, he never asked for promotion, he never sought either honour or retirement. It is a sad reflection to his friends that the national recognition of his arduous labours for which, without his knowledge, they were striving, never came. It is a sorrow for them to think that, had it come, his life might possibly have been spared. He had much work left in him, educational and literary; but the knowledge that he had been unable to effect any saving on which he could retire, and the thought that if taken away now, his widow and his children would be left almost unprovided for, wore him out, sapped his strength, and with all his forcible powers of spirit unabated, he has died, humanly speaking, before his time. " Injussu imperatmis non diacedam," used to be his answer to friends who urged him to apply for some honourable rest and retirement. His Captain has called him while his armour was still upon his shoulders. From the altar in the school chapel, whilst in the very act of administering Christ's soldiers' oath to his schoolboy sons, came the summons to him ; and with a look of willing and honourable surrender upon his face, without a call for aid, he walked down through the long rows of boys who knelt in prayer, and passed solemnly —almost proudly—to as calm a death-bed as a warrior of God ever died upon.
Previous page
