Havergal College - Magazine Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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Havergal College Magazine several chairs on the platform for this piece and he played the part of each lady in turn, screaming and jumping on chairs and doing all the things that a lady is supposed to do on the ap- proach of a mouse. A certain dear old visitor, Hannah Cadbury, was a great favorite. She was little and plump and pink-cheeked, and she wore eye-glasses attached by a cord ; she laughed constantly, and every time off would drop her glasses ! We liked her to come round the classes and we liked to show her our work, because she invariably aside, Very nice, dear, very nice, to all and sundry. It is a far cry from Winnipeg, The Queen of the Prairie, to the quiet little Ackworth village. But if any Havergalian ever finds herself in Yorkshire and visits the school, she will be able to see for herself the same old gray stone buildings, and the splendid playing fields, and will further realise the place that Ackworth must hold in the hearts of all who know her. G. M. S. A BURIED TREASURE. Among the treasures of Havergal is a calf-bound volume which looks like an office ledger, or a complete English Dic- tionary. Its title, Baker ' s Chronicle, is not very illuminat- ing, its cover is not attractive, and its size is most certainly against it, but anybody whose courage or curiosity is sufficient to carry them beyond dull brown leather and faded red edges, will be rewarded by much that is interesting and, indeed, by much that is entertaining within. The book came to us three years ago — the gift of Mr. G. W. Baker, whose ancestor was the author of the Chronicle, and such has been our respect for its age and worth that it has ever since been carefully preserved among volumes of cor- responding size, bulk and apparent dullness, on the bookshelves of the Staff Sitting Room. It is not a book that can be easily circulated, and it is too valuable to trust to what might possibly be careless hands, and this may account for the seclusion in which it has lived so long. At the same time it is worthy of much more attention than it now receives ; hence — this article. There are few books that we do not like the better for knowing something of the authors, and of the circumstances under which they wrote. The story of Sir Richard Baker is somewhat pathetic (though Sir Richard might resent our pity!). He was born in Kent in the days of Queen Elizabeth, probably in 1568, and in due time went up to Oxford. There he shared rooms with Sir Henry Wootton, whom we know as the author of two charming little poems included in our Golden Treasury. 23

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Havergal College Magazine or cousins might walk up and down together. When a boy wanted his sister he had to stand at the top of the Flags and wait; sometimes there would be quite a little crowd standing, and the sisters would then go and join them ; or it might be the sister who had to wait fo r her brother at the corner of the green. Games were entered into keenly; we played cricket and tennis and croquet in the summer, and hockey and chivey (prisoner ' s base) in the winter. The playgrounds were very large, there were two of them besides the green and the ash tennis courts. The boys had their own playground and fields for cricket and football. When I was at Ackworth we had a fine open-air swimming bath, but we were never allowed to stay long in the water, as it was usually chilly until the end of June, when we went home for the holidays. As a result the standard of swimming was a poor one. I recollect well one day in our half-hour ' s recess going down to the bath with the only four other girls who could swim and we all five, one by one, attempted and succeeded in swimming the width ! We each received s ixpence, as a prize ! Since then the bath has been covered in and swimming and life saving and diving have gone forward wonderfully, and I have pleasure in recording the fact that within the last three years Ackworth has been awarded the Hundred Guinea Gold Cup offered by the Roj al National Life Saving Institution, in open competition over the two hundred other schools which entered for it. A number of visitors used to come to the school during the course of the year, some of them came frequently and we got to know them and to look forward to their coming. One old man in especial we used to find most entertaining. He was tall and had a very long snow-white beard. His hobby was elocution. He used to come into all the classes and give us demonstrations and then we had to try the passages after him. Out of school hours he would sometimes suddenly appear from nowhere, armed with a huge basket of oranges or apples ; when a crowd had collected he would say, Any girl who catches can have, and then he used to throw the fruit high into the air. Very often he recited to the whole school in the lecture room. Pieces after the style of Peter Piper had a fascination for him, he used to get the headmaster to time him and he always tried to beat his own record. There was one piece that began something like this, There were two boot-blacks, a white boot-black and a black boot-black. And the white boot-black said to the black boot-black, ' Black these boots black! ' And the black boot-black said ' No ! ' and blacked the face of the white boot-black. Another piece depicted the alarm of some ladies when a mouse ran across the floor. The old man used to have 22

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Havergal College Magazine Sir Richard Baker travelled on the Continent, was knighted by King James in 1603, and became sheriff for Oxfordshire. Here his good fortune ended. When he married he generously, but foolishly, made himself responsible for some debts contracted by his wife ' s family. He was never able to pay them, the burden of them increased, and he became debtor to the Crown. At last in 1635 his estates were confiscated, he was penniless, and he had to seek refuge in the Fleet — the debtors ' prison. There he stayed till his death in 1645, but life there was not unbear- able. He turned his mind to Literature and, at the age of 67, began to write. The storm of his estate, says Fuller, the Jacobean divine, forced him to flye for shelter to his studies and devotions. In prison he wrote poetry, meditations on the Lord ' s Prayer and the Psalms, and what chiefly concerns us here, compiled his Chronicle. How he gathered his materials, we do not know. The Chronicle is prefaced by a most formid- able list of authorities — 93 in all — but it is most improbable that Sir Richard had access to, or any first hand acquaintance with half of them. The book, however, wiled away the hours in prison, and he believed he was doing a great piece of work. In fact in the Epistle to the Reader the author states quite frankly his belief that if all other of our Chronicles should be lost, this only would be sufficient to inform Posterity of all Passages memorable or worthy to be known. Poor Sir Rich- ard ! He little dreamed of the disparaging remarks and damag- ing criticisms that would pursue his valuable Chronicle later; nor could he foresee that it would at last be the subject for an article in a School Magazine. The History was well received in his own day, and four years after his death was translated into Dutch. The narrative was carried on to 1658 by Edward Philipps, Milton ' s nephew, and the book passed through several editions, and was con- stantly brought up-to-date, till it was discarded altogether. The volume possessed by Havergal was printed and published in 1679 at Ye Golden Ball in Hosien Lane. From the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century Baker ' s Chronicle was part of the equipment of every country gentleman ' s library. Sir Roger de Cover- ley kept a copy of it in his hall window; he studied it a whole summer, and it was the source of all the knowledge he dis- played when he went with the Spectator to see the tombs in Westminster Abbey. Fielding tells us that it was part of the furniture of Sir Thomas Booby ' s country house. We do well to respect a book that had such worthy patrons in its life-time. Sir Richard Baker ' s Chronicle differs in every respect from a modern History book. Its very size suggests the difference, and a glance at any page within accentuates it. There are two 24