In 1857 my father came home from India on
furlough, and decided to send me to Westminster as
the family school, with a view to my being prepared
later for the Indian Civil Service, which might be
described with equal truth as the family profession.
26



CHAPTER III

WESTMINSTER School illustrates, in a re-
markable degree, the strength of Public
School sentiment among Englishmen. Unlike Eton
and Winchester and other great schools situated amid
beautiful surroundings, Westminster has nothing but
her traditions, and association with the glorious
Abbey, to keep alive the loyalty of her sons. Once
indeed she could boast like Eton of the silvery
Thames, but those days are gone never to return, and
the sentiment of the school has to survive as best it
can in the midst of a wilderness of bricks and mortar,
which make it difficult to say where the boundaries of
the school begin or end. Much the same fate over-
took Charterhouse and St. Paul's, but whereas those
two great schools thought it best to accept facts and
meet them by transporting themselves to more
favoured sites, the religio loci at Westminster is so
strong that whenever the question of removal has
been discussed at meetings convened for the purpose,
there has been an overwhelming feeling in favour of
non-removal. It has been said indeed of West-
minster that everything there is antique and nothing
antiquated, and I am sure it was because he felt so
strongly the spirit of the place, that my father deter-
mined to adhere to the old school which he loved so

27



Grain or Chaff

well, notwithstanding the outward change that had
taken place since the days he had been there
himself.
