Chapter 2: Schooldays
A scan of the original unannotated document can be accessed from the HathiTrust Digital Library collection at
The Life-Story of Sir Robert W. Perks, Baronet, by Denis Crane.
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Chapter II: Schooldays
Of the many decisions which parents have to make concerning their sons, none is more momentous than the selection of a tutor or the choice of a school. Character and destiny here both hang in the balance. Considerations of health, of temperament, and of vocation have to be carefully weighed, for a blunder often means for the victim, not only present torture, but also future incapacity and all the difference between failure and success.
On this point young Perks’s parents appear to have been wisely guided. They showed the same care in the education of their children as they did in their religious training. In Robert’s case public and private schools nicely divided their favour. When the family settled at Bath, he was at first sent to a seminary kept by a
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Mr. Shaw, who subsequently transferred his establishment, with gratifying success, to a London suburb. But close at hand was the New Kingswood School, the successor of the ‘Old’ Kingswood founded near Bristol by John Wesley in 1746[1]; and it was with a view to entering his son as a scholar there, and in order that he might be near him during his first terms, that Mr. Perks had accepted the call to the Bath Circuit. To New Kingswood, then, in 1858, Robert duly went.
The fascinating history of this remarkable foundation has been well told by ‘Three Old Boys’ in a comprehensive volume published a few years ago.[2] Widely as life at the new school differed from that at the old, it was nevertheless, even so late as young Perks’s time, sufficiently rigorous. Boys of the period have given varying accounts of the establishment. One speaks of it as ‘a rough, cruel place”, where the ‘punishments were brutal’; another says, ‘the tone was good, healthy, and fair’; and a third, that there was ‘little immorality, bullying, or unfairness, ‘yet the boys were cowed and spiritless.’
Probably the worst that could be said of it was that the religious atmosphere was none too
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wholesome. There is said to have been ‘too much spiritual analysis.’[3] But this in Robert’s case was a defect which parental training neutralized. Another mistake was that, although the situation of the school is one of exceptional beauty and full of historic interest, little use was made of the fact. The boys were unduly confined within the school precincts, and so came but little under the humanizing influence of the magnificent prospects by which they were surrounded.
Games were not so highly organized then as they are today. Cricket was played, though not under ideal conditions, and for a time young Perks was captain of his team. Football was allowed only in the asphalted playground, where special rules had to be made to meet the conditions ; moreover, it was usually prohibited in winter. Owing to the difficulties which beset these manlier games, minor pastimes, hardly less dear to the schoolboy’s heart, such as fives, racquets, prisoner’s base, I spy, marbles, tops, tallywags, and hopscotch, had all the greater vogue.[4]
A word must be said about the dietary. For breakfast and tea this consisted solely of milk and dry bread. The milk, which was
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warmed by the addition of hot water in very cold weather, was served in tin cans. Leaden spoons were also supplied, and tradition says that their handles were often much abbreviated, and that in many cases their bowls were punctured, the holes having to be plugged before the spoons could be of service. Happily, the supply of bread was practically unlimited ; when a boy had devoured his plateful of ‘wholes,’ he might come again for ‘halves,’ and yet again for ‘quarters.’ For dinner, beef and mutton were served six days a week, being followed chiefly by rice and treacle. The rice and treacle were boiled together, and both courses were served on the same plate. (Treacle and mutton gravy, ugh!) On Saturday there was originally only one course — bread and cheese. This, however, was altered by the Rev. Theophilus Woolmer, who, under the conviction that abstinence from meat for forty-eight hours was not conducive to health, substituted hash. When his committee objected to the expense, he sacrificed the whole of his meagre salary of a hundred pounds a year to maintain the change. The abolition of the bread-and-cheese diet
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did away with a famous delicacy of the boys’ own manufacture, known as ‘cheese-cakes.’ The recipe is given by the authors of the History of Kingswood : ‘Take one of the small bun-shaped loaves served out for Saturday’s dinner, and out of the thick flat crust at the bottom carefully cut a piece about an inch square. Scoop out the crumby interior and eat it at once. Cut up the cheese into small pieces, add salt and pepper. Stuff the hollowed loaf with the mixture, replace the square of crust, and tie all round with a bit of string. “Convey” the whole out of the hall, and, as soon as opportunity serves, put it in the hot ashes in one of the stoves, and there leave it for half an hour, or longer in case of any danger of discovery. After which, eat on the sly.’[5] Mr. Woolmer was followed in the governorship by the Rev. F. A. West, who, notwithstanding his many excellences, was extremely unpopular with the boys on account of his severity, which physical weakness and ill health undoubtedly aggravated. He held the office for seven years, the first five of which synchronized with the later years of Perks’s term at the school.[6] Twice during Mr. West’s
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governorship, once in 1863 and again in 1864-5, there was an outbreak of scarlet fever. On the former occasion there were twenty-four cases and four deaths; on the latter, one death. A not less serious epidemic of the same malady had occurred in 1860, when fifty boys, four masters, six servants, and all Mr. Woolmer’s seven children, were stricken down. On neither occasion, however, was young Perks attacked.
Whatever modicum of truth there may be in Sir William Maule’s famous dictum, that whereas private schools turn out ‘poor creatures,’ public schools make ‘sad dogs,’ it would not seem from the foregoing sketch that there was any great danger of the Kingswood boys sacrificing to passing pleasures and surreptitious dissipations the energies more justly claimed by their studies; while, on the other hand, those characteristics of public-school life which tend to sharpen the faculties for dealing with human affairs existed to the full. Robert’s seven years at Kingswood were undoubtedly an excellent preparation for the career that lay before him, though it does not appear whether his parents had at the time any presentiment of what that career
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would be. ‘Possibly the best thing that can be said of Kingswood in those days,’ he stated some time ago, ‘is that the preachers’ sons were taught habits of endurance, fortitude, and self-reliance. We learned earlier than usual that life is a conflict, that friendships are fleeting, and that knowledge is not always power.’[7]
As to his school record, he attacked his studies with the seriousness and determination characteristic of him, gaining distinction in mathematics, while acquitting himself well in all subjects. The official school orders from 1858 to midsummer 1860 are incomplete. It is therefore impossible to follow closely his position during that period; but in July 1860 he held the ninth place in Class IV., there being sixteen boys in the class and seven classes in the school. At midsummer in the following year he appears in Class III. Then, unfortunately, the orders once more breakdown, and there is no further record of his name until July 1864. By that date he had won his way to the sixth place in Class I., a position which he retained throughout his last year.[8] Of the five classmates above him four at least have attained to positions open only to men of high character and undoubted
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ability. One was Richard Green Moulton, now Professor of Literary Theory and Interpretation at Chicago University; another was Thomas Frederick Lockyer, who graduated at London University and is today a distinguished Wesleyan minister; the third, George Joseph Morris, graduated at the Royal University of Ireland and at present occupies a responsible position in the Civil Service; while the fourth, Richard Waddy Moss, is well known as a Doctor of Divinity and a tutor in Systematic Theology at Didsbury College.[9] Among the young student’s contemporaries at one time or another were also Lord Justice Moulton[10], Dr. W. T. Davison, of Richmond College, the Rev. John Hornabrook, Secretary of the Wesleyan Conference, and George Perress Sanderson, the elephant-hunter. How did Robert impress his schoolmates? Some, who were in higher or lower classes, can recall no details of their associations with him, and retain, as one of his more distinguished fellow students puts it, ‘only a general recollection of an active, vivacious, energetic boy with considerable force of character.’ Others, like Dr. Waddy Moss, Rev. T. F. Lockyer, B.A.,
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and Mr. Morris, were more intimate, and have reminiscences of a more particular and interesting nature. Thus Mr. Lockyer says:
‘Robert W. Perks was one of those with whom my associations were closer than with most in my school-days at Kingswood between forty and fifty years ago, and the comradeship thus begun was continued in the years that followed. He was one for whom, even in boyhood, I had not only a liking, but a great respect. His character, already well formed, was sturdy and strong, and his judgement shrewd even in matters that usually lie outside a schoolboy’s cognizance. Anything mean could never be suggested in connexion with his name ; indeed, there was a wholesome severity on his part, both of tone and of look, which effectually discouraged such behaviour in others. While not exactly a brilliant scholar, he yet worked with such dogged determination that he held his own with most of his compeers, and left within a very few places of the captaincy of the school. Several times since our paths began to diverge I have owed much to his practical sagacity in matters upon which I have asked his advice, and still follow his career with unabated interest.’
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Mr. G. J. Morris recollects that, although the rules did not rigidly enforce the wearing of the school uniform, his classmate generally wore his ‘sheepskin,’ as the college coat was called, even when he was one of the seniors. He also speaks of his friend’s ‘caustic wit,’ which was generally directed against objects justly regarded as reprehensible ; and declares, ‘He would not spare a sham or a humbug.’
Dr. Waddy Moss was at Kingswood for several years contemporaneously with Sir Robert, and for five quarters in succession the two were next to one another in the quarterly classification. He says:
‘Sir Robert was a very pleasant boy to sit next to — always kind and agreeable, and whilst a thorough boy, not given to cranks of an extreme type. During part of the time, his father was one of the resident ministers in Bath; and thereby associations with Bath houses were created, which were maintained afterwards. To several of the boys this proved a great convenience at a time when no one was allowed outside the school premises, except in the procession to chapel or under the personal charge of a master. The licence granted Sir Robert admitted of the delivery of messages,
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of dealings with a favourite shop in Guinea Lane, and occasionally of other surreptitious proceedings. There is a tradition of a visit to a racecourse, in which other boys took part; but it is better to think of Sir Robert as the sole culprit.
‘In those days the highest form was called the First Class. Sir Robert and myself were there: and his name was appended to several documents of which copies survive. One was a petition to the committee for the use of the field adjoining the desolate playground. It was a revolutionary proceeding, such as might have been expected from the character of the ringleaders, and it closed with the request that the reply of the committee might be communicated to the boys. They were unwilling to be treated with the disdain which had been shown the masters eight or ten months before.
‘Sir Robert was not the poet of the school in those days — no one would suspect him of that. The poet was a boy who has for many years acquitted himself well in a southern rectory. But Sir Robert was the intermediary between the school and the city, and either he, or an older boy, now a minister of
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some eminence, must be held responsible for the circulation of the lines beginning —
I’m a Kingswood boy, you see,
The height of aristocracy —
which first appeared on a doll dressed in the Kingswood costume of that day and exposed for sale at a bazaar in Bath.
‘In play and in study Sir Robert gave a good account of himself. He excelled in mathematics rather than in classics, but could hold his own in any subject. He was at once popular amongst his contemporaries, and independent ; and those who knew him best recall the memory of him with pleasure, and are proud of the good work he has done in the Church and State.’
Dr. Moss’s reference to his friend’s lack of the poetic sense — a defect probably inherited from his Scotch mother — finds amusing confirmation later on in this chapter, in connexion with Sir Robert’s first visit to Paris. It also recalls a remark of Dr. Morley Punshon at the centenary celebrations of Wesley’s Chapel. Sir Robert had preceded the famous orator, and had dropped some word or other which revealed his unpoetic strain, whereupon Dr.
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Punshon took him gently to task and declared with exquisite pleasantry that where there ought to have been on his young friend’s head the bump of reverence, there was a ‘deep hole.’
The visit to the racecourse, notwithstanding the Doctor’s suspicious disclaimer that ‘it is better to think of Sir Robert as the sole culprit,’ was certainly not made alone. Indeed, on a fairly recent occasion one of Sir Robert’s fellow adventurers stood with him on a public platform. Borrowing the Doctor’s phraseology, however, it is perhaps ‘ better to think ‘ of the escapade as never having been wholly carried out, and as having been essayed rather in the spirit of a budding social reformer than in that of a would-be sportsman, seeing that a few years ago Sir Robert unequivocally declared: ‘Never in my life have I been on a race-course, and I have never made a bet.’[11]
On leaving Kingswood, in 1865, Sir Robert went to Eldon House, Clapham,[12] a private school kept by Mr. Henry Jefferson, his old head master at Bath. Mr. Jefferson was a man of beautiful character, of strong moral sense, and a teacher of transcendent power. He specially regretted the rule under which
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boys were compelled to quit Kingswood upon reaching the age of fifteen, and it was largely his failure to get this rule altered that led to his resignation.[13] Upon opening his own school at Clapham, the sons of the Methodist laymen, attracted by his scholarship, thronged to his establishment; but unfortunately its financial administration was not so sound as its curriculum, and in 1873 it was closed.
Sir Robert regards Mr. Jefferson as the most successful head master Kingswood ever had. Mathematics was his forte, and geology his hobby. Many a Saturday afternoon did Robert’s back ache carrying home bags of stones in which the poor head master hoped to find fossils, and, like many another mining speculator, found nothing. In spite of his mathematics and geologizing, Mr. Jefferson was something of a poet and romancer; a fact of which, some few years later, his old scholar had a curious illustration.
Sir Robert had earned a few guineas by an article in one of the reviews, and, the Franco-German War being just ended, he determined after a long balancing of ways and means to spend them on a first trip to Paris.[14] Waiting at Rouen on his way from Dieppe, whom
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should he encounter on the platform but Henry Jefferson.
‘Perks,’ said he, ‘we have half an hour to spend here. Let us go to the Market Place and see the spot where Joan of Arc was burned — we have just time.’
So away they started, the little head master striding in front and his young friend following. Threading their way among the stalls they came at length to a spot in the centre, facing the Cathedral, where La Pucelle laid down her life for France. ‘Little Jeff,’ as the scholars used to call him, stepped on to the historic slab, lifted his hat, spent some moments in contemplation, turned his eyes heaven-wards, and then, suddenly recollecting the time, cried to his companion as he moved from the spot —
‘Now, Perks, you have only a minute. Get on the stone.’
To please his old master and perhaps also from habit. Sir Robert did as he was told.
‘How do you feel?’ anxiously inquired his friend.
‘I feel, sir,’ he replied, ‘exactly the same as I did when I stood on that other stone.’
Mr. Jefferson heaved a sigh, and in a few
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moments they were back at the station, both doubtless wondering at the other’s strange bent of mind.
But, like most men of affairs, Sir Robert probably professes more indifference to the poetic side of life than he actually feels. At any rate, in those early days he was as susceptible to the romance and mystery of London as any other young man. When he left Eldon House he had no conception what he was going to be, and to himself seemed to have no special aptitude for anything. His father wished to send him to Cambridge, but for him this had indifferent attractions. Like a bit of plastic clay, therefore, ready for the potter, he roamed the magic streets of London, giving himself up to the feelings and historic memories they awakened. No great pageant passed through the city but he was there. He traversed the ancient and now demolished squares. He took journeys up and down the river. His imagination was fired by the recitals of an old minister who, when a boy, had tramped to London to attend John Wesley’s funeral, and who told how at that time there was not a single house between the ‘Angel’ at Islington and City Road Chapel, and how he well
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remembered getting over a stile at the top of Lombard Street into some fields. A memorable experience on these London wanderings was the hanging of some pirates at the Old Bailey.[15] Billingsgate Market, Covent Garden, and the old buildings now superseded by the Law Courts, with the fine civic mansions hard by, he knew well, as he did also that magnificent view of the city which is to be seen at dawn from the ball of St. Paul’s. ‘A great capital is a country in miniature, said Macaulay; and these trampings on foot through all corners of the metropolis and at all hours — the sole means by which cities can be studied to good purpose — have often proved of service to Sir Robert in one phase or another of his public or commercial life.
It was his mother’s desire to keep him at home, perhaps, more than his own lack of interest, which knocked the Cambridge project on the head. The urgent advice of an uncle, an Anglican dean and incumbent at Melbourne, who attributed his own ecclesiastical progress to his having been a student of King’s College, London, was, that his nephew should be sent to that closely preserved Anglican school of learning;[16] and as this counsel came less into
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conflict with his mother’s caution, or second-sight,[17] or whatever it was, that made her wish to keep her boy in London, it readily found acceptance. Nor has Sir Robert ever had reason to regret it.
For three years he attended King’s College, and never, his friends declare, did a youth work harder. He took most of the college prizes, one for divinity, one for mathematics, a third for modern languages, and sundry others. He also won the Dasent Prize given by the Editor of The Times for an essay on ‘The Influence of the Reformation on the Gentlemen of England, as shown by Spenser in his Faerie Queene.’ Another essay prize which fell to him was that founded by Sir James Stephen, the subject being ‘Ancient and Modem Systems of Colonization Compared.’ Altogether his career at King’s College was a brilliant one.[18] He matriculated at London University in honours[19], and gained honours in classics, English, and modern languages in his B.A. examination[20].
His tutors were nearly all Anglican clergy. Canon Lonsdale was his classics tutor, and he took the Canon’s prize for a Latin essay. His tutors in theology were Canon Jelf, whom he
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describes as ‘a high and dry old Churchman, a staunch believer in Church and State’; and Dean Plumptre, ‘a theologian of a far different stamp.’ His tutors in mathematics and English history were also canons. But the man to whom he owed most was the famous Preacher of the Rolls and historian of Elizabethan times, Dr. Brewer, under whose guidance he wrote every week a short essay on current topics, some literary, some historical, and some political.
Notwithstanding the strong Anglican atmosphere of the College, and in spite of the fact that every morning for three years he had to listen to the Anglican liturgy. Sir Robert freely confesses that not a soul interfered with his religious views. ‘I was, I think, the only Dissenter of my year,’ he says, ‘but I came through this fiery ordeal without, so far as I am aware, having the smell of clericalism or Anglicanism upon me.’
Whilst pursuing these studies he decided, much against his mother’s wishes, and with the tacit consent of his father, to enter for the Indian Civil Service. Thrice he sat for the examination and thrice he failed.[21] Each year the Government took fewer candidates.
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Once he escaped by only three places, another time by ten. Thwarted thus by destiny, and yielding to the dissuasions of his father’s friend, Sir Francis Lycett, he tried no more.[22] Had he succeeded, what influence would he have exercised on the administration of our great dependency? Would his penetration, tenacity, and genius for finance have raised him to eminence, or would the East have swallowed him up, as it has so many other gifted men? Interesting as the speculation is, it cannot here be pursued. Circumstances decided that he had to stay at home, and what has to be is best.
Before leaving this chapter, the reader may like to know which of his studies Sir Robert found most useful to him in making his way in the world. In reply to a question of that purport he once said:
‘I am speaking of forty years ago. Events have moved rapidly since. English life is not the same. Our cities are different. Commerce moves along new lines. Science has altered much. England is more of a cosmopolitan exchange and entrepôt for the world. Distances have been bridged. Men act more quickly and think less. Journalism does too
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much of the thinking. Men are less reliant. Woman has invaded the domains of trade, and wields less power in the home. Money can do more than it could forty years ago. There is less respect for authority. People are so keen to be thought “broad-minded” and “liberal” that they will tolerate anything rather than be thought “fanatical” or “bigoted.” All this has its reflex effect upon education. If you ask what branch of my study helped me most in my future work, I should say, first, mathematics and the kindred studies of physical science; next, the study of the literature and history of my own and other lands; and lastly, such acquaintance with modem languages as I was able, as a student, to acquire.’
End Notes to Chapter 2
[1] The Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland (DMBI) records the “Old” Kingswood as having been founded in 1748, and relocated from its site east of Bristol to new premises overlooking Bath in 1851. The school was formally opened on 24 June 1748. Crane seems to be referring here to the date of Wesley’s laying the foundation stone (7 April 1846).
[2] The History of Kingswood School: Together with Registers of Kingswood School and Woodhouse Grove School and a List of Masters, “By Three Old Boys”, Charles H. Kelly, London, 1898. This book is available on Internet Archive. The preface identifies the authors as: Arthur Henry Law Hastings, W. Addington Wills and W.P. Workman.
[3] This series of quotes is taken from pp. 258-260. The book’s authors do not name the old boys who make the statements they report there.
[4] This section on games is taken from p.265. some members of the school cricket team of 1862 are named there, but Perks is not among them.
[5] Cranes section on “the dietary” is a summary of pp. 267-268.
[6] Francis Athow West (1801-1869) was appointed Governor of Kingwood School by the W.M. Conference in August 1860, and held the post until 1867. It should be noted that the headmastership of the school was a separate role from that of Governor. Henry Jefferson (1826-1893) was headmaster throughout the period Perks was a pupil at the school.
[7] Crane appears to be quoting here from Perks’s article “My Methodist Life”, published in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine of 1906. But the wording there was slightly different: “Possibly the best thing that can be said of Kingswood in those days is that the preachers’ sons were taught habits of endurance and independence. We learned earlier than usual that life is a conflict, that friendships are fleeting, and that knowledge is not always power.” (op. cit., pp. 95-96). In 1886, at the annual dinner of Kingswood and Woodhouse Grove Old Boys, Perks said “He left Kingswood knowing nothing, and it took him ten years to make up the leeway. He had few pleasant memories of the school.” (Methodist Times, 8 April 1886, p. 7).
[8] It is somewhat surprising that Crane does not mention Perks’s success in the Oxford Local Examinations held in May 1864. Perks was a candidate at the junior level of these examinations — open to those below 15 years of age on 1 January 1864. A list of successful candidates from the Bath area was published in the Bath Chronicle of 11 August 1864 (p. 3). Perks’s name appears among those credited as having passed in the “Second Division”. On 24 November 1864 a ceremony was held at the Guildhall in Bath to present certificates to the successful candidates (ibid, 1 December 1864, p. 7). The total number of students who sat the junior level of this round of the Oxford Local Examinations was 758, of whom 519 passed: 52 in the first division and 141 in the second division (The Educational Times, December 1864, pp. 201-03).
[9] The Kingswood School Order for June 1865 listed a total of eleven pupils in Class I. The four named by Crane here are the first four in the list (in the order Crane gives them). Fifth is James Fison (1850-1904), who was admitted a fellow of University College London in 1872, obtained a London University M.A. in 1875, and in the early 1880s was headmaster of St. John’s Hill House School, New Wandsworth, later becoming headmaster of Selborne House School, Brighton. Moulton, Lockyer and Moss had passed the 1864 Oxford Local Examinations in the first division (see endnote 8), with Moulton ranked seventh in the nation-wide order of merit. Fison was a year younger than most of his classmates. He sat for the 1865 round of Oxford Local Examinations, passed in the first division, and was ranked seventh in the national order of merit (Bristol Chronicle, 17 August 1865, p. 5). Morris, although a few months younger than Perks, had sat and passed the Oxford junior examinations in 1863 (see Bristol Chronicle, 3 Sept 1863, p. 8).
[10] John Fletcher Moulton (1844-1921) was an older brother of Richard Green Moulton (1849-1924). He left Kingswood in 1861, having been permitted to spend one further year at the school beyond the normal compulsory leaving age. He became a Q.C. in 1885 and was appointed a Judge of the Court of Appeal in 1906. For more on the Moulton family see Harold K. Moulton, “A Methodist Family: Ministerial Succession and Intermarriage”, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, Vol. 43, December 1981, pp. 49-58.
[11] I have not been able to trace a record of the “unequivocal” declaration Crane attributes to Perks here. In an unsigned article published in 1905, it was stated: “Mr Perks drives a dozen splendid horses, but he is not as racing man. He sees no harm in a horse-race, but detests the associations which have gathered around the Turf. Consequently, though he delights in driving — especially about the country lanes — he never attends a horse-race, and he does not even know the meaning of ‘betting odds’. Twice he has seen a race — once when a boy at Kingswood School he ran away to witness the Bath races, and was soundly flogged for the escapade, and later in life, when staying at Dieppe, and races took place opposite his hotel, he saw them from the windows.” (page 15 of “Some Stories of Mr Perks M.P.”, C.B. Fry’s Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 19, October 1905, pp. 13-15).
[12] Crane is in error here. Perks spent the 1865-66 academic year attending the private school Henry Jefferson had established at 27 Oberstein Road, New Wandsworth. It was not until January 1867 that Jefferson relocated his school to Clapham Common and began to call it “Eldon House”. A notice published in The Methodist Recorder of 21 December 1866 (p. 440, column 1) stated: “Mr Jefferson has taken commodious premises on Clapham Common, into which he intends to remove during the Christmas Vacation.” Readers were invited to apply to 27 Oberstein Road to obtain the new prospectus for the school. A follow-up notice was published in January under the heading: “Eldon House, Clapham Common, S.” and read: “Mr. H. Jefferson M.A. begs to announce his removal to the above address, where he has secured large and convenient premises. School duties will be resumed on Thursday, January 31st 1867” (ibid, 4 January 1867, p. 1, column 3).
[13] The senior level of the Oxford Local Examinations had been specifically designed to be sat by pupils over 15 (and up to 18). Jefferson was frustrated that the Kingswood age-ceiling restricted Kingswood pupils from sitting for those senior level examinations unless they obtained special permission to attend for an extra year, or were sufficiently talented to sit a year “early”. Richard Green Moulton and George Joseph Morris sat the Oxford senior examinations in June 1865, before they left Kingswood, and both were successful. They were the only pupils from Perks’s class to be entered for the exams that year. Perks sat for the senior level of the Oxford Local Examinations toward the end of his year at Henry Jefferson’s school at Oberstein Road. Along with the other successful candidates from across the London area, and was presented with his certificate at a ceremony held on 5 December 1866 (Morning Post, 6 December 1866, p. 2). Nationally the total number of candidates for the Oxford senior level examinations that year was 312, of whom 203 passed (Illustrated London News, 24 November 1866, p. 7).
[14] Perks’s article “Modern Armies” was published in The London Quarterly Review, Vol. 36, No. 71, April 1871, pp. 131-154. In his Notes for an Autobiography Perks states that he was paid eight guineas for his article, and that his father added £2 to this to help with his visit to France (op. cit., p. 29).
[15] The two Perks recollections which Crane describes here seem to be taken from a passage in the unsigned article “Mr. R.W. Perks, M.P.” published in The British Monthly of January 1903: “… the two incidents which he recalls most vividly were the entry of Garibaldi into London, and the hanging of a number of pirates at Newgate, which he slipped off very early one morning to see. Also he tells us that to his house one day came an old minister named Tranter, who lived to be over a hundred. The ancient preacher entranced the boy by telling him that when a boy himself he had tramped to London to attend John Wesley’s funeral, and that there was not a single house between the ‘Angel’ at Islington and City Road Chapel, and that he well remembered getting over a stile at the top of Lombard Street into some fields” (op. cit., pp. 78-79). The Rev. William Tranter was born in Little Dawley, near Madeley, in May 1778 and died in Salisbury in February 1879. In his youth he had attended Wesleyan classes in Madeley and thus is likely to have known the Perks family from that time. (See The Sheffield Independent, 25 January 1877, p. 3). Five pirates were hanged on 22 February 1864 in the public street in front of Newgate prison known as Old Bailey. This “spectacle” attracted a large crowd and was the subject of a number of newspaper editorials condemning the continued practice of public executions in Britain. (See for example Newcastle Daily Journal, 24 February 1864, p. 2). The date of the last public execution in Britain was 26 May 1868.
[16] The uncle referred to here is Charles Thomas Perks (c.1825-1894), the elder of the two younger brothers of G.T. Perks. After some years in business as an iron-monger and glass dealer, he had enrolled for theology studies at King’s College from the commencement of the academic year 1849-50. He was made a Deacon by the Bishop of Norwich in November 1850, sailed to Australia in 1851, and was ordained a priest by the Bishop of Melbourne later that year. He was appointed vicar of the parish of St. Stephen’s, Richmond from the beginning of 1852, and was a “rural dean” of the diocese of Melbourne. During 1858-59 he spent a sabbatical year in Britain. But any “urgent advice” from him at this time would need to have been by mail.
[17] This is the second reference Crane makes to the “second sight” of Perks’s mother. See his page 21 in Chapter One.
[18] The two prestigious essay prizes Crane refers to here were awarded to Perks by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the prize ceremony held on 3 July 1868, at the end of Perks’s second year at King’s College. Crane accurately records the titles that had been set for those prizes that year, but makes a slip when he states that the English Essay prize had been founded by “Sir James Stephen”. That should have read “Sir Geroge Stephen”. At the end of his first year at King’s, Perks had been awarded six prizes, but apart from two (the divinity prize and the Latin essay prize) these were second or third tier awards. At the end of his third year at King’s, Perks does not appear to have been awarded any prizes. Source: Calendars of King’s College London, held at King’s College Archives, The Strand, London).
[19] Perks sat for the matriculation examination for London University towards the end of his third year at King’s College, in mid-1869. He was one of the 55 candidates who passed the examination in the “honours division”. He was ranked 43rd out of the 55 in “the order of proficiency” in that division. (Pall Mall Gazette, 22 July 1869, p. 7). Perks’s Kingswood school-fellow who had been top of Class I in 1865, Richard Green Moulton, passed the London University matriculation exam two and a half years earlier than Perks — in January 1867, being ranked number one in the honours list. George Joseph Morris, Richard Waddy Moss, and James Fison all passed the London University examination at that same time, being ranked 22nd, 25th, and 4th respectively. George Means Savery (1850-1905), who had been ranked below Perks in Class I at Kingswood in June 1865, also passed the London University matriculation examination in January 1867.
[20] There is a crucial word missing from the last part of Crane’s last sentence here. It is true that Perks gained honours in his “First” B.A. examinations, which he sat in the summer of 1870. But the University of London Calendars contain no record of Perks having sat for the “Second” (or final) B.A. examinations. By omitting the word “First”, Crane seems to be inviting his readers to believe that Perks had completed the London University B.A. degree which he commenced in the 1869-1870 academic year.
[21] The entry for R.W. Perks in the Dictionary of National Biography states: “He competed for four years in succession for the Indian civil service.” But in Perks’s Notes for an Autobiography (at p. 47), he gives the figure for his number of attempts as three. I have correspondence with the writer of the Oxford DNB entry on Perks to try to discover the source of the figure four for the number of attempts, but this has proved unsuccessful.
[22] The wording here suggests that Perks could have chosen to sit the Indian Civil Service examination again, but was dissuaded from doing so. At this time, in order to be eligible to sit for the I.C.C. exam a candidate needed to be over 17 but under 21 on a specified date in the March preceding the April in which the exam was held. This means that Perks would have been eligible to sit for the I.C.C. exam on four occasions only: in April 1867, April 1868, April 1869 and April 1870. If he had sat in April 1870, there would have been little point in anyone attempting to dissuade him from trying again — as he would not have been eligible to do so.