A SAINT
BOOKS OF THE DAY
By HENRY W. NEVINSON IN my long life I have known a few saints, such as Scott Holland and Samuel Barnett, but I call Horton pre-eminently a saint. Of Wesleyan stock, he was born a saint, and he never deviated. At six years old he preached to tables and chairs in his home. Like myself and most children of Evan- gelical families, he was taught to abhor drink, smoking, dancing, playing games on Sundays, and any thought of sex, for each of those sins was a broad avenue to hell, and the mind must always be fixed on God and eternity. In the course of youth and later years, most of us changed our views, often after an anguish of struggle. But Horton did not change, and in matters of faith his doubts were never tormenting. When he was my schoolfellow in the Sixth at Shrewsbury he was regarded by all as a model of rectitude, and no boy in his presence would have talked the dirty stuff in which schoolboys delight. He was not exactly popular, for, though a pretty fair oar, he was no good at games with balls, owing to his short sight and rather stiff movements. Besides, he gathered in his study a few boys for prayer and preaching. We called them "The Ranters" and treated them with every sign of violent disapproval, until the Headmaster at last intervened.
But we never doubted his sincerity or his distinction of mind. His translations of the classics, delivered from the " rostrum " in that accent and cadence which we called "Wolverhampton," were always excellent, though his Latin and Greek verses were seldom up to our exacting standard. Once when some Old Boy had got a First in Greats at Oxford, the Headmaster, himself a superb classical scholar, looked round the Sixth, and then said, "Horton, you will do the same." Horton covered his face with his hands and remained silent. I have no doubt he was praying to God to preserve him from being puffed up with self-conceit. To a few of us he was known as a ready composer of English verse, and I remember a poem of his on the terrible thought, "It might have been." After a description of the Last Judgement, it ended : "A cry shall rise from Hell to Heaven, 'It might have been ! ' " But, though respected for his position as second boy in the school, and for his upright character (sym- bolised, I used to think; by his carefully straightened back and deliberate walk), he was not a favourite, for his deeply religious heart held him rather aloof from the crowd of us young pagans. He left Shrewsbury without regret, being indifferent to the beauty of the ancient city and to the attraction of her river's .mountain torrent.
At first, as a. scholar of New College, he appreciated Oxford more, even for her beauty. Once when I was walking with him across " Peck " quad in my own Christ Church, I lamented the mouldering stone which through age was then scaling off in large flakes, and he replied, "But that is. the very beauty of Oxford ! " I think I was right, and I do not regret the recent patching up of "Peck" and the- Library with new stone that may last another two hundred-fears, until the c;ty becomes a huge manufacturing town like Leeds or Man- chester:or, perhaps is bombed to dust from the air, but I was surprised that Horton, who had despised our old school, should be enthusiastic over Oxford. Enthusiasm for the inner life of the University soon passed.- Nonconformists had only recently been admitted there, and Raton was Non- conformist in the soul.
His college naturally valued him. His. First in " Mods " Robert Forman Horton. By Albert Peel andl. A:12.--Marriott. (Allen and tinwin. los. 6d.) was a rather narrow thing, but in Greats he won the very rare distinction of getting a First on every paper. He became one of the best speakers at the Union, at that time a nest of future orators—Milner, Asquith, Curzon, E. T. Cook, and Baumann. It was always a delight to hear Horton, so careful in preparation, so eloquent, and yet sincere, a true Liberal, taking Gladstone and Bright as his Leith: and models. Some- times he was definitely Nonconformist, as when in a great speech he attacked the Clerical Fellows, and in enumerating their qualifications mentioned that some of them had pretty daughters. Yells of " Name ! Name ! " of course arose and Dean Liddell's daughters (one of them the Alice in
Wonderland) were sitting in the gallery. But Horton only remarked "Even a layman might be capable of that." Of course he was elected President of the Union, and was the most attractive of my time, though Milner already spoke as an experienced and elderly statesman.
But, though Jowett and T. H. Green were at Balliol then, the real centre of religious life lay at Christ Church under the inspiration of Scott Holland and Francis Paget, with Pusey and Liddon in support. After some hesitation Horton turned from Oxford, and for fifty years remained the admired or adored Minister of the large Congregational church in Lynd- hurst Road at Hampstead. Such adoration might well have ruined a sensitive and emotional man, as it ruined Edward Irving. Certainly it debarred many like myself—that and his eloquence, sometimes descending into rhetoric. In this volume is quoted a passage from a criticism written by one who knew him well and had served under him : "Horton is made up of two men, the on: broad, manly, intellectual —the other weak, extravagant, almost sensational ; nor do the two blend into one, they remain side by side, and he will rapidly pass from the one into the other."
As Sir John Marriott says in his preface, it would be easy
for one of the fashionable biographers, whose first object it is to pick holes and detect errors in any' noble character, to make a cynical mockery of such a man.
Horton's own Autobiography (1917) would make it easy, and his prolonged friendship with Rosa Oakes would make it easier still. Like most boys of sixteen, he fell in love with a girl six years older ; the strange thing was that, though she married Mr. Oakes, the deep friendship remained unsullied till her death in 1910, many years after she and her husband had been 1;viag in the same house with hiin at Hampstead. We are now told that to,000 letters were exchanged between her and Horton, and in any crisis of his career he received from her wise guidance and even restraint. He married Miss Violet Basden in 1918, and his perional happiness was increased by the companionship of their daughter Genevieve.
The years after the War were saddened by a falling off of his congregation, his growing blindness, his diminishing bodily and mental power, but, above all, by the increasing indifferenee of the young to his aspect of religion. To the last he continued his varied labours, and his power of work dirotighout life was amazing. He knew the truth of T. H. Green's saying "What a grand friend work is ! " and when I attended his funeral service in his own church, at Easter three . years ago, my first thought was of the vast amount of valuable work that he had accomplished since we were boys together. My second thought was of his unshaken stability in the one purpose of his soul, and how great would have been his joy if he could have heard his Master saying to him, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."'
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