HENRY GRAHAM DAKYNS.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR..]
Sin,—Henry Graham Dakyns more than served his genera- tion by his strenuous efforts at inculcating a manly spirit at Clifton College. His zeal, it is true, at times led him to utter what to the outsider would seem intemperate language, but he had such an honest hatred of the shirking of games and of loafing tendencies that he found it hard to repress his im- pulsive temperament when reproving a skulker, and the boys grew to understand this and respect him for his intentions. Generous to a degree, he on one occasion (it was in the begin- ning of the first school term of 1870) presented his whole form—of thirty odd—of the classical middle-fourth with a fives-bat apiece. Not very long afterwards be was questioning some boys as to whether they had spent their half-holiday in the College Close. One of them, who had been on the Promenade on Clifton Down, said that he had been on the Broad Walk. " Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction " was the rejoinder, "and the narrow way is the run in at football, and few there be that enter therein." Then that boy caught it, and was held up to derision
amidst his unsympathetic classmates. "I wish I had you completely under my control. I'd reform you. I'd get you to play bat-fives with me and hit you on the head if you didn't get out of my way quickly enough. Or I'd take you out for a walk and then say, 'Now let us run a bit,' and I'd bring you home half-dead. Or I'd ask you to come to my rooms, and then, quite in a friendly manner, say, Have a box,' no gloves or anything, and I'd maul you; by Jove! I'd maul you!" On another occasion be told one of his own house-boys that the latter had disgraced the house and himself by going a house-run with his coat on. He loathed and despised what he termed miserable private school notions of want of trust between boy and master, and seldom worked himself into greater anger than on one occasion, in the early seventies, when he caught a fellow in his form setting on a new boy, with the others abetting him. After reproaching the whole form for countenancing the proceedings he added, " And somebody called Cave ! as I Caine in Do you think I am set here to be a policeman over you? " He made the form honestly and thoroughly ashamed, and there was no repetition of that kind of thing. At the same time, did a new boy show any affectation Mr. Dakyns was prompt in repressing it. One new fellow in the lower-fifth came to grief in parsing a verb in a sentence which he had managed to construe. "Did you have any help with this lesson ?" enquired Mr. Dakyns blandly. " My father helped me a little," rejoined the youth in a rather superior tone. "But if the paternal M— helps you with your construing, you should also get the paternal M— to help you with the grammar," responded Mr. Dakyns. " It doesn't do to wear your father's wedding garment in this way." The boy turned as crusty as he dared (his father took him away from Clifton College a few weeks later). The next day he appeared in a new coat. " Is that your father's wedding garment ? " asked Mr. Dakyns cheerfully. He probably would have left the disgusted youth alone had he not recognized distinct symptoms of " side on"
Previous page
