SCHOOLS To the old choir, cricket and football clubs were added, for which he laid down a ground at his own cost. He secured a playing-field for the boys and girls ; he founded a tennis club and gave methodical instruction to its recruits. He tried to improve Uppingham housekeeping by starting cookery and sewing classes. Carpentry provided a useful hobby, while drawing and elocution, with occasional lectures, ministered to the more refined interests. The execution of so gigantic a task was up- hill work for the leader. Most fortunate as he was on the whole in his lieutenants, there were many occasions of disagreement, the chief cause being Thring's uncompromising attitude towards any suggestion for increasing the number of boarders. No doubt they sometimes felt that a pedantic theory was robbing them of part of their deserved reward. Thring himself, how- ever, was the chief suiFerer — for the rest of his life he was oppressed by debt or want of money. An unfortunate appointment early in his reign involved him in considerable loss, as also did the undeserved notoriety which he gained as a flogging schoolmaster in 1862. It was with reference to this incident that Punch remarked : ' We don't know whether Mr. Thring trains the boys' minds, but he makes them mind their trains.' At no time did he receive much sup- port from the Governors ; General Johnson, of founder's kin and patron, was his chief supporter until 1863, then Mr. Robert Gladstone, and later, especially in the struggle with the Endowed Schools Commissioners and during the Borth emi- gration, Mr. W. T. Jacob of Liverpool, and Mr. T. H. Birley of Manchester. He received very little comfort from the Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission, and was driven to de- spair when the Endowed Schools Commissioners threatened to confiscate his interests. By dint of strenuous fighting he averted the disaster which was imminent. Contemporary with this trouble was the visitation of typhoid, through which — A school as old as an old oak tree, Fast by the roots, was flung up in the air, Up in the air without thought or care, And pitched on its feet by the sea, the sea, Pitched on its feet by the sea." Even when, the testing period past, he could look round with satisfaction and say — Exegi monumentum acre perennius, but when, with death not far removed, he no doubt acutely felt his need of money for his family,^' he received some unkind cuts, having " E. Thring, Uppingham School Songs and Borth i^inV/, The Colony, 47-50. In 1856 Thring com- posed a Cricket and a Fives Song, in 1866 the Foot- ball Song, and the School Song in 1873.
- = Thring at death only left behind an inherited
claim on the family estate in Somerset, and an insurance his salary reduced to the minimum scale in 1 886 and an application for increase refused next year. It will be seen that there was no originality in Thring's main educational aim ; the origi- nality came out in the details of interpretation and execution (' I take my stand on detail '). On the side of theory it was shown in the way in which he sifted already existent elements in the organization of a Public School, the modifi- cations which he made in such as he selected, the additions which he introduced, and his clear understanding of the proper relations of the parts to each other and the whole. His writings bristle with originality no less of thought than of expression. His appreciation in detail of the educational significance of buildings and their arrangement was also original, although the general doctrine had been preached eloquently and clearly enough by Plato more than 2,000 years before. The ' almighty wall ' for him included a good deal more than what is denoted by ' genius loci.' His practical originality was shown in the means which he adopted for carry- ing out his plans and the certainty and rapidity with which the task was achieved. No head master before him — himself a poor man — had in just over 10 years converted a decadent school of 30 into a flourishing one of 300, organized with so complete and real a grasp of the problem, by the unaided efforts of himself and his staff. The migration to Borth is a unique incident in the history of Public Schools. As to one result of his labours at Uppingham, the conversion of a local grammar school into a great Public School, it is possible to take different views, but unnecessary to discuss them. Mr. H. W. Eve, afterwards head master of University College School, then a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and an assistant at Wellington, visited Uppingham in 1866 for the Schools Inquiry Commission.^" He bore witness to the extent to which the recent development of the school was due to the generosity of the teach- ing staff. He singled out the ' complete division of labour in teaching,' by which the form-master was made entirely responsible for the teaching of his group, both in class and tutorial work, as the leading feature of the organization of the instruction. He saw no signs which justified the invidious reputation which Uppingham had gained, of sacrificing the clever to the average boy, while he regards it as an admitted fact that the average boy received full justice. Under protest from Thring, who contended that ' such flying examinations may be, and often are, utterly un- real as any test of average proficiency, though the effected on his life in his early days at Uppingham for the protection of his creditors (Parkin, op. cit. ii, 309)- '" Sch. Inq. Rep. For Thring's views on inspectioa and examination see Parkin, op. cit. ii, 130-7. 293
