e staff at Harrow in 1819, and, as from my earliest days I had a love
of Links with the Past, I learned from Mr. Marillier a vast amount about
the ancient traditions of the School, which, even in 1869 (when he
resigned), were becoming faint and forgotten.

Yet a third oddity must be commemorated; but in this case it is
desirable to use a pseudonym. I think I remember in one of
Bulwer-Lytton's novels a family called Sticktoright,[3] and that name
will do as well as another. The Rev. Samuel Sticktoright was essentially
what is called a "Master of the old school." He was born in 1808, came
to Harrow in 1845, and had a large House for thirty years. I have just
been contemplating his photograph in my Harrow album, and he certainly
looks "the old school" all over, with his carefully-trimmed whiskers,
double-breasted waistcoat, and large white "choker," neatly tied. By the
boys generally he was regarded as an implacable tyrant, and I have heard
(though this was before my time) that a special victim of his
passionless severity was a pink-faced youth with blue eyes called
Randall Thomas Davidson. Personally, I rather liked him; partly, no
doubt, on the principle on which Homer called the AEthiopians
blameless--namely, that he had nothing to do with them. But there was a
sly twinkle in the corner of Mr. Sticktoright's eye which bespoke a
lurking sense of humour, and in the very few words which he ever
bestowed on me there generally was a suggestion of dry--very dry--fun.
He was, of course, the most uncompromising of Tories, and every form of
change, in Church or State or School, was equally abhorrent to him. In
local society he played a considerable part, both giving and receiving
hospitality; and it was the traditional pleasantry to chaff him as an
inveterate bachelor, at whom all the young ladies of the place were
setting their virginal caps. These jests he received very much as Tim
Linkinwater received the allusions of Mr. Cheeryble to the "uncommonly
handsome spinster," rather encouraging them as tributes to the fact
that, though now advanced in years, he was well preserved, and, as most
people surmised, well off.

These facetious passages were, of course, confined to the society in
which the masters moved, and we boys knew them only by hearsay. But what
we saw with our own eyes was that the only human being who ever dared to
"cheek" Mr. Sticktoright, or to interfere with his arrangements, or to
disregard his orders, was his