Sophocles’ Jebb: A life in letters

Sir Richard Jebb (1841–1905) was the most celebrated classical scholar in late Victorian Britain: his edition of Sophocles, which remains a classic, brought him a knighthood. Professor of Greek at Cambridge from 1889, and MP for the University from 1891 until his death, Jebb became a national spokesman for the humanities. “Sophocles’ Jebb” charts his career through 275 newly discovered letters, presented here with introductions and full annotation. By allowing Jebb and his contemporaries to speak in their own words, it enables a significant reassessment of a key cultural figure of late Victorian Britain and sheds fresh light on public and academic debate of the time. The volume ends with a new, comprehensive list of Jebb’s publications.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cambridge Philological Society
• Release date: May 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913701017

Book preview

Introduction

Sir Richard Jebb died at his home in Cambridge on 9 December 1905 at the age of 64. He had been Regius Professor of Greek at the University since 1889, a knighthood in 1900 recognising his major scholarly achievement, the edition of Sophocles (1883–96).¹ Elected as one of his university’s two Members of Parliament in 1891, he had subsequently become the leading public spokesman for the humanities in Britain, and his death came after his return from a journey to South Africa as president of the Education section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Jebb was involved in the founding of the British Academy in 1902, and became one of its first Fellows. In 1905 he was admitted to the Order of Merit by Edward VII. Both his status as scholar and public figure and the custom of the time almost demanded that a memorial volume be produced; and his widow Caroline, having failed to persuade others to write it, did the job herself.² As Lady Jebb explained in her preface, her task was made easier by the existence of a series of scrapbooks entitled ‘Servanda’ kept by her husband ‘in the latter half of his life’ (in fact, from 1876). In these he kept letters, reviews and newspaper reports – ‘matter of any kind which he wished to preserve’ (LL p. v). It is the rediscovery of these scrapbooks in 2002 which has made the present volume possible.

Why should Jebb’s life and work be re-examined? First of all, he was not only the most celebrated British classical scholar of his time, but the range of his achievements was much wider than the memory of him as the editor of Sophocles might suggest. Jebb was not just a sophisticated literary scholar. He was a powerful force in the foundation and early days of the Hellenic Society, and the moving spirit, against considerable difficulties, in the establishment of the British School at Athens. The subjects of his publications ranged from Schliemann’s excavations at Troy to the life of Richard Bentley; from Homer to the British Museum library catalogue; from Milton to Bacchylides. In his own day, Jebb was regarded as a complete scholar: a Hellenist who could master the systematic scholarship of Germany, while also producing elegant verses in Greek and Latin. But the position to which he rose in public life after he became an MP for his university in 1891 gave him an almost unique status; as Frederic Kenyon declared in a letter to Jebb in 1901, he held ‘a double authority in your public as well as academical position’ (248).³ Secondly, his papers throw light on a variety of aspects of the life of a scholar, literary figure and campaigner which are not visible in his widow’s memoir. In the academic battles Jebb fought, his major opponents were J.P. Mahaffy, A.H. Sayce and Heinrich Schliemann. The last of these appears briefly in Lady Jebb’s memoir (LL 242–4); Sayce and Mahaffy not at all. Their exclusion is doubtless due in part to their being (unlike Schliemann) still alive when she wrote. But she might in any case have wanted to avoid giving accounts of academic disputes. The scrapbooks, however, make it clear that the two men were often on his mind, and in his view constantly plotting against him – especially Mahaffy, whose critical review of Jebb’s Attic orators (1876) was only the beginning of a long history of mutual sniping and manoeuvring. Another area of activity which is invisible in his widow’s memoir is Jebb’s involvement in the foundation and early years of the Classical Review (1887–). His morbid sensitivity to hostile criticism led him to object strongly to unsigned reviews; and so he responded warmly in 1886 to the proposal of a classical journal with signed reviews made to him by J.B. Mayor, who became its first editor (139, 141, 148). Jebb’s papers throw considerable light on the inner workings both of the Review and of the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1880–), the organ of the Hellenic Society (85, 95, 210, 220, 224, 237). Caroline Jebb was not a scholar, and it is understandable that she chose not to explore the details of Jebb’s relationships with other scholars in her memoir. It is also understandable that Verrall chose to concentrate on Jebb’s literary work, especially the Sophocles edition, in his essay. The result, however, is to leave large areas of Jebb’s work unexplored; areas which, as I have suggested above, are illuminated by the material in Servanda.

The saving of Servanda

The history of Jebb’s scrapbooks is not without its own interest. Several years after his death, Lady Jebb sold his library to the Cambridge polymath C.K. Ogden, who kept a bookshop in King’s Parade. The scrapbooks were then rescued from Ogden’s shop by Jebb’s nephew, also Richard Jebb, who carried them away to the family home near Ellesmere in Shropshire. In the 1930s, Richard Jebb began disassembling them to reduce their bulk, removing material (e.g. newspaper clippings) which he thought equally accessible in their original form, and transferring the remainder to file boxes. He abandoned the enterprise about a third of the way through, but sent to the British School at Athens material relating to his uncle’s campaign to found the School in the 1880s. Fifty years later, in 1984, the scrapbooks were listed by an agent of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, who prepared a typescript report on the papers. For reasons which remain mysterious, however, the report was not included in the RCHM’s published listings. When I began to look for Jebb correspondence in the 1990s, I was struck by the remarkable dearth of material at Trinity College Library, given his long association with the college and the library’s established policy of collecting material relating to college fellows. Only in September 2002 did I come across letters from Richard Jebb Jr in the Hellenic Society archive in which he offered to send BSA material extracted from Servanda. An enquiry direct to the address from which he wrote immediately established that the papers were still there: 24 scrapbooks, some disbound, together with several hundred letters to his family in the period 1851–75.

If it was this rediscovery which has made it possible to assemble this account of Jebb’s life through his correspondence, it has also affected the nature of the account. This can be shown by comparison of the present volume with two similar collections of letters and with LL, which highlights some significant differences. The major difference has to do with the balance of in- and out-letters. The titles of Ward Briggs’s Letters of Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve (Baltimore, 1987) and Robert Ackerman’s Selected letters of Sir J.G. Frazer (Oxford, 2005) indicate their editorial policies. Briggs prints 191 letters, all by Gildersleeve; Ackerman includes 286 letters, of which only 25 are not by Frazer himself. Lady Jebb’s Life and letters (see above, n. 2) prints, in whole or in part, about 125 letters of Jebb’s, with only a handful of letters to him. In the present volume, Jebb’s letters to his family have been drawn on for Parts I and II; in his early years, as schoolboy and undergraduate, he wrote frequently to his parents, and in the 1860s he seems to have written to his mother almost daily.⁴ For Parts III and IV, however, the scrapbooks constitute the basic resource. Hence most of the available material for the period after 1876 consists of letters to, rather than from Jebb. In some cases, it has been possible to bring together both sides of a correspondence, as in the cases of Lilly Frazer, Gilbert Murray and Heinrich Schliemann, and this has, I hope, contributed additional depth to the material. Of the 275 letters included here, all but two date from Jebb’s lifetime. Of the 65 letters in Parts I and II of the present volume (1841–75) all are by Jebb himself, except one (56, from Robert Browning). Of the 96 letters in Part III (1876–89), 35 were written by him. Part IV (1889–1905) includes 111 lifetime letters; of these, 34 are from his pen, including 15 to his sister Eglantyne (‘Tye’). Thus Jebb’s voice runs through the collection, but the voices of family, friends and colleagues are heard more strongly after his appointment to the Glasgow Greek chair in 1875, and even more so after he gained the Greek chair at Cambridge in 1889. The portrait which results is thus one drawn from life, but increasingly in the mirror of others’ initiatives and responses. On the other hand, responses from others often make plain the vein in which he had written to them – notably the soothing letters of friends, to whom he often complained either about their own delay in acknowledging what he had sent them, or about the latest villainies of Mahaffy, Sayce and Schliemann (for example, 91, 94, 122–4, 133, 218, 221). On occasion we also witness his friends discussing him among themselves – as when they were concerned about his apparent drinking and mistreatment of his wife in the early years of their marriage (74).

From their first meeting in 1871 until his death in 1905, Jebb wrote often to Caroline Jebb (formerly Slemmer, born Reynolds) whenever they were apart. Some of these letters were included in her memorial volume, as were a considerable number of his diary entries. Both these letters and the diaries have disappeared, probably destroyed by Lady Jebb.⁵ Since the scrapbooks were sold with Jebb’s library, we must conclude that his widow saw them as not part of the record of their life together; understandably, perhaps, as the letters they housed were almost all written by others, rather than by Jebb himself, and were mostly related to his life as scholar or MP. One way of looking at the present volume is as a complement to the book she assembled. Inevitably, however, it must also speak to it and of it. After a century in which Jebb has faded from sight and then re-emerged into visibility, and in which biography has been variously practised and theorised, Lady Jebb’s work of love and duty has to be both complemented and assessed. The style is largely bland and celebratory, but touches of humour can be found, the account of his death shows real feeling, and Jebb’s wayward pupil Arthur Verrall contributes a strikingly perceptive essay on Jebb as a scholar (429–87). Similarly, an examination of Caroline Jebb’s papers, now at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, has thrown light both on her life with Jebb, and the account of her by her great-niece Mary Reed Bobbitt: With dearest love to all (London, 1960). Bobbitt indicates omissions in letters by ellipses, but in some cases letters are cut or merged without any indication.⁶ There are also several errors of transcription.⁷

If Jebb is to be brought to the attention of modern readers, why should it be done in this way? Again, comparison with the work of Ackerman and Briggs is illuminating. Ackerman’s volume of letters follows his own standard biography of Frazer. His primary justification for doing so is that Frazer’s letter-writing was

absolutely central to the way Frazer saw what he was doing. He often compared himself to the spider at the centre of a web, one composed of gossamer threads leading to his many correspondents in the field. (Ackerman, Selected letters, p. 4)

Briggs’s selection has a different status. As he says in his introduction,

This collection presents its subject as classicist, Southerner, and man of letters … My wish is to present Gildersleeve … in the full range of his interests and accomplishments, and since there is no full-scale (or even half-scale) biography, I have selected many of these letters to account for many of the main events of his life, and a few simply to reflect the charm and grace of his personality … (Briggs, Letters, p. xiii)

There are two contrasts to be considered here, the first being that between a full biography and an edited selection of letters. I have chosen the second option because it offers readers a chance to hear the voices of the subject and his contemporaries in a relatively unmediated fashion.⁸ The second contrast is between letters narrating a life in context, and letters expressing an individual personality. Here the nature of the personality in question makes a significant difference. Briggs’s reference to Gildersleeve’s ‘charm and grace’ makes the point. In Jebb’s letters we often see a readiness to believe himself persecuted and a concern that others should respect his social or academic position, but we also find accomplished writing, a wry self-knowledge, and a boyish humour which on occasion extends to the knockabout (203, a letter to his sister which begins ‘Vot for you send me that extrait?’). Frazer, on the other hand, has been described by Ackerman as having a ‘thin and remote’ inner life, and as being ‘temperamentally averse to introspection’; ‘while hundreds of his letters have been preserved, most of them reveal little of what we would like to know about the man’.⁹ A comparison of Jebb and Frazer can hardly be attempted without referring also to their wives – both widows, both foreign (Lilly Frazer was Alsatian, Caroline Jebb American), both strong-willed and managing. Carrie Jebb found her husband to be like a child with money; she took over his finances, invested, organised and controlled. Lilly Frazer was a more domineering version of Carrie: she not only organised Frazer, but also kept other people from him to protect his work time.¹⁰ Once again, Gildersleeve stands out, his marriage being his wife’s first, and producing several children (two of four dying in infancy). While Gildersleeve had a wife who was the mother of his children, the other two men had wives who mothered them.¹¹

The letters printed in this volume throw a flood of light on Jebb’s public and private life, his scholarly work and his friendship and enmities. But they also illuminate the world of Victorian schools and universities, the realm of clubs and common rooms, of lectures and libraries, from London, Oxford and Cambridge to Glasgow and Dublin. This world was dominated by men, but was beginning to be invaded, or rather infiltrated, by women; and Jebb’s own life was transformed by his marriage to Caroline Slemmer. The letters provide the biography of a scholar, but also a glimpse of the institutional contexts of his life; and they do so, in part, because Jebb was more than just a scholar. In a small way, perhaps, he was a culture hero. In his lifetime this made him adulated; after his death, dismissed as a symbol of an old order.¹² A century after his death, it is worth revisiting his life and work, and this the correspondence enables us to do.

¹The knighthood was originally offered in 1897 but refused: Jebb had hoped for a baronetcy.

²C. Jebb, The Life and letters of Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb (Cambridge, 1907: henceforth LL ). She had asked A.C. Benson to assemble the volume, but he felt unable to cope with the account of Jebb’s scholarship. In the event, this was dealt with by Jebb’s ex-pupil and colleague A.W. Verrall. A somewhat similar strategy was followed by Norman Page in his biography of A.E. Housman, in which the chapter on Housman’s scholarship consists largely of quotations from the memoir by A.S.F. Gow and an article by D.R. Shackleton Bailey.

³Figures in bold are used throughout to refer to the numbered letters in this volume.

⁴A few letters previously printed, in part or whole, in LL have been included ( 21, 24, 28, 56, 72 ). They are too good to leave out, and it can hardly be assumed that all readers of the present volume will have easy access to LL .

⁵See LL 42. In the 1860s, when he was at Cambridge as an undergraduate and then a young don, they appear to have been written for his cousin Susan Jebb ( LL 42) or for ‘the home people’ ( LL 77), to provide a running background account to be read in conjunction with his letters. The extracts Lady Jebb printed (e.g. LL 43, 77, 79–82, 83–4) indicate that the diaries were fairly detailed: their disappearance is a distinct loss.

⁶Cf. T. Pinney’s discussion ( Letters of T.B. Macaulay , I (Cambridge, 1974), p. xiii) of the conflation of letters by Macaulay’s nephew G.O. Trevelyan in his Life .

⁷Two examples: ‘… they are hardly models for mutation ’ (‘imitation’) (p. 113); ‘she treads on none of my corns, and I haven’t many’ (p. 119; the original has ‘some’ or ‘one’).

⁸I am happy to admit that this latter point probably reflects a personal reaction to the imposition of modern intellectual agendas on the voices of past actors.

⁹R. Ackerman, J.G. Frazer: His life and work (Cambridge, 1987), 4; review of R. Fraser, The making of The Golden Bough, Victorian Studies 35.3 (Spring 1992), 337–8.

¹⁰ Cf. the fearsome Lady Beazley, wife of Sir John Beazley, who literally barred his door to some callers. In his later years, Frazer had a series of female assistants who invariably suffered from Lilly Frazer’s bossiness. The last of them, who wrote an account of her difficulties under the pseudonym ‘Sarah Campion’, was in fact Mary Coulton, daughter of the infuriatingly bossy G.G. Coulton : see her memoir Father: A portrait of G.G. Coulton at home (London, 1948).

¹¹ Gildersleeve’s wife was ten years his junior; the other two wives were of roughly the same age as their husbands.

¹² For examples of posthumous opinions of Jebb, see the Afterword.

1. Richard Jebb aged 10

I Childhood and youth, 1841–58

Letters 1–18

Richard Claverhouse Jebb was born on 27 August 1841 in the village of Claverhouse, near Dundee.¹ His parents, Robert and Emily Jebb of Dublin, were visiting his maternal grandfather Heneage Horsley, Dean of Brechin.² On his father’s side Jebb was descended from a line of Irish lawyers and ecclesiastics, an ancestor having moved to Ireland from England in the early eighteenth century. His grandfather’s brother had been Bishop of Limerick; his grandfather’s cousin John Jebb, fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, had narrowly failed in an ambitious campaign to reform the university curriculum.³ His mother’s paternal grandfather was Samuel Horsley, Bishop of St Asaph. Richard Jebb was brought up in Dublin, where he was at first taught at home by his father. On 10 August 1853, just short of his twelfth birthday, he was sent to St Columba’s College, an Anglican boarding school in Rathfarnham, then near Dublin, now a suburb. The College had been founded in 1850 by John Beresford, Archbishop of Armagh.⁴ The founding Warden was a Cambridge man, George Williams, who resigned after a disagreement with the Archbishop on church policy.⁵

Jebb’s letters home from St Columba’s show us a talented schoolboy who rose rapidly through the school. They also reveal, already well developed, the morbid sensitivity to criticism which his friends remarked and his enemies seized on later in his life. His earliest surviving composition, a set of elegiac couplets written when he was twelve, shows a comfortable talent, though not the mature brilliance evident in his published work. Jebb left St Columba’s at the end of the autumn term of 1854; next spring he was sent to Charterhouse, then still in London. William Tuckwell, one of his teachers at St Columba’s, claimed after Jebb’s death that he had outgrown the teaching there. It may be, however, that he was removed because of the disagreements between Warden Williams and the Archbishop of Armagh, which erupted in 1853 and led to expectations of Williams’s resignation in 1854.⁶

Little record survives of Jebb’s time at Charterhouse, though he seems to have been happy there. At that time all boys, from the second form upwards, were obliged to write Latin verses every Wednesday. Gerald Davies, who was two years below Jebb in the school, recorded that

In that day, when Richard Claverhouse Jebb was in Gownboys [the scholars’ house], there was generally to be found, outside his study door, a queue of vicarious poets waiting to get some verses done for them. It was good for Jebb perhaps if for no one else. And at least it ensured a consistent style in the Latin verse of the School.⁷

Jebb left Charterhouse on 5 May 1858, after carrying off a clutch of prizes at the school prize-giving, including medals for Latin prose and Greek verse composition.

1 To John Jebb

⁸

Saturday 18th[?November 1847]

My dear Uncle

I am going today with papa to see the lathes in Mr Kennan’s workshop; we have not got a night telescope, but I can see some constellations without a glass; we are going to get a lathe, we expect it home on Saturday.⁹ I am very fond of reading; my favourite book is Sandford and Merton,¹⁰ and I like the Arabian Nights very much. I like Tales of My Grandfather¹¹ too; in short, Uncle, I could never tell you all the books I like.

Love to Aunt Jebb, and Believe me,

Your affecte nephew, R.C. Jebb

2 From Eglantyne Jebb

¹²

29 September 1851

Richard Jebb esq.

My dear Mr Jebb

I beg to apologise for the short notice I have given you; and hope that you will honour me with your company at tea tonight.

Believe me yours truly E.L. Jebb

PS tea hour 7 o’clock

3 To Richard Jebb

¹³

Desmond,¹⁴ 25 March 1853

My dear Uncle Richard

It is a very long time since I have written to you, but I have been, and will be for some time to come, very busy indeed. We are all quite well here, and I very much wish and hope that you will come and pay us a visit when you can get holidays, which I know are scarce with you. In March finer weather than what we have been having nearly all this month might have been expected. We have had continual snow, sleet, and wind, but today is much finer, & we hope for change in the weather. We were of course at Church this morning; poor Mr Sleater reads slower, if possible, than when you were here, & both he and the Clerk make perpetual mistakes. We have Aunt Fanny¹⁵ here: she came back from a visit to some Dublin friends on the 16th of this month. We liked the pantomime at the Theatre Royal in Dublin very much. It was Tiny’s¹⁶ first night of the theatre: she was very much delighted; unfortunately, as it was a juvenile night, & the house was much crowded, we had to be content with 2nd & 3rd rows.

Tiny, as I dare say you have heard, is with Aunt Tiny¹⁷ at Killarney. She is enjoying herself very much, & often writes to us. She has been amusing herself lately with making, or rather working, very pretty book markers: she sent Papa & me each one. The ‘PHOENIX’ is in capital order. Last year a piece of her port bulwark at the bow was stove in, but Papa mended it. As her Gaff-top-sail was lost, I got another made of the finest linen, carefully cut and rolled at the edges. She gets new cording and flags every year. The Fanny is now (as her former rigging was destroyed) schooner rigged.¹⁸ We all send you our love, &c, with love to Uncle Jebb.¹⁹ Believe me your affec. nephew R.C. Jebb

4 To Richard Jebb

St Columba’s College 18 August [1853]

My dear Uncle Richard

My sailing is fairly over, for I luffed up, and came to moorings, not to say anchor, at St Columba’s on the 10th. I like it as well, but by no means better, than I expected. First I was put at the bottom of the 2nd form (the 6th is the highest), but I am now one from the bottom of the 3rd. My boats are well, as I settled up the Phoenix before I left home. I rigged the Fanny like the America, except that she has a jib, & her pace is truly wonderful, she throws the water from her bows ‘like anythink’. We have such hard work now that I enjoy my play time & my sleep very much. There was a cricket match yesterday, in which the Warden, the organist, and Mr Greene (Sub-Warden) played.²⁰

Dear Uncle Richard, I must now finish, so, for the present, Good bye. Believe me, your very affect. nephew, R.C. Jebb

(Turn over)

PS My address is

St Columba’s College

Rathfarnham

Co Dublin, Ireland

If you come to Desmond be sure to come and see me. R.C. Jebb

5 To Robert Jebb

St Columba’s 21 September [1853?]

My dear Papa,

I want to ask your advice about a thing that has lately happened – Browne getting into a passion at breakfast this morning, called me a liar twice, saying that I had said quite enough disgusting things, while I was here, without adding more. Everybody at the upper end of the table sided with him, and I was actually borne down with their abuse. I asked Browne on the spot to retract – he refused – After breakfast I asked him again, twice – he refused again. I told him that if we were at another school there would have been a much more summary way of settling the question – but that, as that was out of the question, I desired that all communication may cease between us.

The fact of the matter is, that I have no character in the eyes of the upper fellows here – but may be called lout, liar and Sneak as often as they like, being rather unpopular, whenever such an accusation is brought against me, he is supported by all. And the rules of this place prevent me either putting a stop to these accusations – or vindicating my own honour. How I should like to be at a school where one boy could not call another a liar and Sneak without feeling the consequences – and where honour and character are a little more respected.

Your affectionate Son

R.C. Jebb

6 To Robert Jebb

[St Columba’s November 1853]²¹

Dear Papa

Examination began Monday last – 1st part finished on Monday night. The 2nd part was delayed till yesterday (Friday), Mr Tuckwell²² had us on Monday morn, Mr Greene (alas) on Monday evening. It is expected to finish on Monday next. I shall not tell you place as hitherto, till Wednesday, when we probably will know our places.

Ever yr affec son, R.C. Jebb

7 To Robert Jebb

St Columba’s 12 November 1853

Dearest Papa

I delayed writing, till the result of the Examination was quite certain. It was made so yesterday afternoon, at School time, by the Warden. I have surprisingly good news for you – I AM HEAD OF THE 3RD FORM!!

In vivâ voce examination I was head with an overplus of marks above any body else, I had the best Caesar paper, in a paper examination which followed – & yesterday the Warden proclaimed me head! I am now sitting at the desk of the Head of the 3rd form! I will sit next Mr Tuckwell at the top of the Lower table today, and at breakfast and tea I am at the Senior table.

List of 3rd form.

Now dearest pappy, tell mamma this news.

Ever, in haste, your affect. (but tired) son

R.C. Jebb

8 To Robert Jebb

St Columba’s 8 March 1854

My dear Pappy

I have not had time to write to you till now: and now I am afraid the dinner bell will soon ring: but I will write as long a letter as I can. About those verses (I mean my own) which you wished me to send you, I am afraid you must be content with those I did last week instead, as Mr Tuckwell so altered the ones you saw, that I can’t remember all his alterations. The subject was the Carnival at Rome, held before the Lent, with masquerades, torch lighting, bon-bon giving, &c &c.²³ You will see the verses on the next page. I very much fear from all accounts that we are only to have from the Monday after Easter Sunday, to the Thursday – however this is one day more than the ordinary allowance – and therefore is something gained. Last Sunday afternoon, after you left us we actually walked to the top of the Three Rock Mountains,²⁴ and back again: I had had a great deal of walking before in the morning, and felt heartily tired out when we got back. I am afraid my dear pappy, I have no more news: give my love to all and believe me, ever yr most affect. son R. C. Jebb.

PS In O’Brien max’s verses, I have marked the mistake which was found out.

Saturnalia, ante annua jejunia Romae habita

Huius nunc horae, faustus Deus adsit amoenae,

Et mitis veniat pax sua dona ferens:

Et nunc insolito festum celebretur honore,

Et laetam ducat turba jocosa diem!

Surgit festa dies: turbis impletur amoenis

Plebs, quas e tectis annua jura vocant.

Non jam sanguineos, (Antiquae gaudia Romae)

Exturbant acies: ficta sed arma gemunt.

Urbis jamque vias implet simulata caterva,

Oraque ridiculo tegmine quisque tegit.

Nox venit: emittunt festivae lumina taedae:

Alterius flammas sternere quisque petens.

Mellea (venturi, proh! fundamenta doloris!)

Inter se cari mittere dona solent.

O Tempus veniat, currum cum rursus in urbe,

Ornatum spoliis, victor amoenus agat.

Cum famae Pectus Romanum ardebit amore,

Incolet et solitas gloria prisca domus!

9 To Robert Jebb

²⁵

St Columba’s 27 March [1854]

My dear Pappy

I have been very busy indeed lately, and have not had time to write. As to the ‘nefanda’ – I told the ‘propeller’ of the College Car to call for them – but he said he could not get them without a note. So I suppose I must execute an Epistle, which shall be short and pithy, containing a peremptory injunction to deliver ‘The Unspeakables’ and not keep me in longer suspense. Tell Mamma I am very sorry I had not time to write, but I hope soon to have more leisure. I am going to ask you to get me 2 books, which would be of the greatest service to me, both now and at Examination. (I have just this moment discovered that I have been writing on the wrong side of the paper – but I must apologise, not having time to recommence.)

To resume the subject, these two books are

1st Major’s Hecuba²⁶ – it has a great many English notes, and would help me greatly. If you cannot get me Major’s Hecuba, any other with English notes would do quite as well.

2nd An Anthon’s Horace²⁷ – it has capital English notes, and is almost necessary for getting up Examination. However, as about the Hecuba, so about this – any other with English notes would answer the purpose.

If you would leave them ‘quam primum’ at your chambers, I shall tell the College Car to call for them. My dear Pappy, I have to go to my Verses, which are ‘Pocula Circes’.²⁸

So believe me ever yr most affect son (with love to all)

R.C. Jebb

10 To Robert Jebb

St Columba’s College 31 March [1854]

My dearest Pappy

I got yr. note last night – and am much obliged to you for getting me the books – I was afraid you would not have been able to get them in Dublin – I am sorry to say there is no prospect of the College Car going in for ever so long – and Sunday requireth beseeming garments. Therefore, O Pappy, if it is within the range of human possibility, could you dispatch the breeches and books to me any time tomorrow, by a ἱππεύς?²⁹ If it is inconvenient, disturb not yourself concerning it; it is merely my present straits as to ‘nefanda’ that prompted such a request. I wish I had some news for you – but every thing is as stupid as possible. Therefore, I fear I must conclude.

Believe me, every yr most affect. son, R.C. Jebb

11 To Robert Jebb

St Columba’s 17 May [1854]

My dearest Pappy,

Let this Epistle be common property, for I have not time to write home. I am much amused with Uncle Richard’s account of the wedding. I am not quite done with it: I will send it back when I am. I am going to give you an account of a scrape I have got into: Elwood came to see us last Sunday, and, by way of amusing him, I told him that Knox had done a great quantity of examination (i.e. prepared it), which was perfectly true; for Knox had been ‘swatting’ his very life out. I used some vague expression: I think I said ‘He has done his examination about five times over’, of course in play. Knox by some unlucky chance heard of this, and got into a furious rage, saying ‘You better not tell any more cracks about him.’ And all from that hour cut me dead. This was on Sunday. Yesterday morning, while we were preparing our Horace, Knox said aloud, while Mr Bradshaw³⁰ was standing by, ‘It’s all very well for the fellows that have English notes; they can prepare their lesson.’ Mr Bradshaw of course asked who had; and Knox replied, ‘Roche and Jebb’. Mr Bradshaw asked us to show him our Books, and being struck with mine, took it up to class to examine it while hearing us. This is exactly what Knox wanted. He smiled at me triumphantly; sneered at my Book, and nudged his next neighbours, till he made me the laughing stock of the whole class. I was in a tremendous passion; and small blame to me; and meeting him after the Lesson, called him a Sneak. Immediately after tea, Knox went to the Warden and complained of me. Of course the Warden called me in directly after Chapel, and gave me such a ‘Jaw’ as I suppose I never got before. He said he was extremely displeased at this ‘business’: saying that I had committed a serious offence against him, and the discipline of the School; and that if such conduct went on, he must allow thrashing among the boys to go on: and declaring I was bound to beg Knox’s pardon. He then brought me into the Library, and confronted me with Knox. On hearing what was the cause of the quarrel (i.e. what I said to Elwood on Sunday) he told me that made the matter much worse: declaring that it was a lie: and attaching the same importance to it as if I had said it in the most serious humour, and with the blackest intent. He ended in half forcing me to beg Knox’s pardon (who by the way is a great cronie of his). But this was not all. This morning he called me in. (But before I go on I must tell you the state of the case about the Anthon’s Horace. I hadn’t the least idea that it was against Rule: farther than that Brown (who is a sort of Job’s comforter) had sometimes said ‘Nefas’, in an awful voice, when he passed me. But I did not think him sufficient Authority for laying aside my Author: besides that, Roche (the bottom of the 5th form) had frequently brought his Author up to class, and the Warden had not forbidden him.)³¹

Well, the Warden called me in, and told me I was very dishonest in using this book, seeing that he had forbidden it; and that I had been told so by the boys: alluding, I suppose, to Brown. I explained exactly the state of my case, and my ignorance of his prohibition. This did not alter his mood: after ‘jawing’ me very severely, he at last looked at me as if he could have eaten me alive: & told me I might go. The fact is, he will always dislike me: and as for Mr Bradshaw, he spites me openly. This is not very encouraging; seeing all we have to do, we want a kind word now and then: whereas at every single lesson we do, Mr Bradshaw manages to ‘stick’ me: and always