BIOGRAPHIES IN A NUTSHELL 159 



hunting. But Mr. Russell was not a brilliant scholar, 

 though some of his biographers have suggested that 

 he was. His boast was that he could construe the 

 words of human kindness better than he could 

 construe Latin elegiacs or Greek iambics. This 

 I believe to be the only boast that he ever made 

 in his life, and, unlike most boasts, it was true. The 

 late Bishop of Exeter, Doctor Phillpotts, said that 

 he was the best preacher of a charity sermon in his 

 diocese. On one occasion, at a private dinner, the 

 Bishop expressed this opinion to his hostess, who 

 replied, " Yes, my lord, Mr. Russell is very good in 

 the wood, but I should like your lordship to see 

 him in the pigskin." The lady referred to the 

 pulpit, but Mr. Russell thought that she referred 

 to his headpiece, and replied, " Madam, when my 

 head was so wooden that scholarship could not be 

 knocked into it, it was whacked in at a more sensitive 

 spot." Mr. Russell told me this story in his peculiar 

 humorous way, and I omitted to ask him if the 

 lady blushed. This whacking process took place at 

 Plympton Grammar School, which turned out such 

 scholars as Dean Gaisford, Bishop Coplestone, and 

 Lord Coleridge. 



After leaving Plympton Grammar School Mr. 

 Russell was sent to a school at Tiverton, whence 

 he went to Exeter College, Oxford. The anecdotes 

 concerning his Oxford career are too numerous for 

 me to allude to. It was during his undergraduate 

 days that the Christ Church Grinds were inaugurated, 



