H.R.H.
Prince Thomas of Savoy, Duke of Genoa, nephew of Victor Emmanuel, and
now an Admiral in the Italian Navy. He came to Harrow in 1869, and lived
with Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Arnold. He was elected King of Spain by a vote
of the Cortes on the 3rd of October 1869. He was quite a popular boy,
and no one had the slightest grudge against him; but, for all that,
everyone made a point of kicking him, in the hope of being able to say
in after-life that they had kicked the King of Spain. Unfortunately
Victor Emmanuel, fearing dynastic complications, forbade him to accept
the Crown; so he got all the Harrow kicks and none of the Spanish
half-pence. When I entered Harrow, the winner of all the classical
prizes was Andrew Graham Murray, now Lord Dunedin and Lord President of
the Court of Session; a most graceful scholar, and also a considerable
mathematician. Just below him was Walter Leaf, to whom no form of
learning came amiss; who was as likely to be Senior Wrangler as Senior
Classic, and whose performances in Physical Science won the warm praise
of Huxley. Of the same standing as these were Arthur Evans, the
Numismatist, Frank Balfour, the Physiologist, and Gerald Rendall,
Head-master of Charterhouse. Among my contemporaries the most
distinguished was Charles Gore, whose subsequent career has only
fulfilled what all foresaw; and just after him came (to call them by
their present names) Lord Crewe, Lord Ribblesdale, Lord Spencer, Mr.
Justice Barton of the Irish Bench, and Mr. Walter Long, in whom Harrow
may find her next Prime Minister. Walter Sichel was at seventeen the
cleverest school-boy whom I have ever known. Sir Henry McKinnon obtained
his Commission in the Guards while he was still in the Fifth Form.
Pakenham Beatty was the Swinburnian of the school, then, as now, a true
Poet of Liberty. Ion Keith-Falconer, Orientalist and missionary, was a
saint in boyhood as in manhood. Edward Eyre seemed foreordained to be
what in London and in Northumberland he has been--the model
Parish-Priest; and my closest friend of all was Charles Baldwyn
Childe-Pemberton, who, as Major Childe, fell at the battle of Spion Kop,
on a spot now called, in honour of his memory, "Childe's Hill." _De
minimis non curat Respublica_; which, being interpreted, signifies--_The
Commonwealth_ will not care to know the names of the urchins who fagged
for me.[12] But I cherish an ebony match-box carved and given to me by
one of these ministering spirits, as a