164 sportsmen Parsons in Peace and War 



seventy thousand pounds, after refusing all his life to pay Mr. 

 Lockwood his tithe of eighteen pounds a year. The rector's 

 delivery was rather melancholy as a rule, but when one of his 

 three pet subjects was the order of the day he became strong 

 and effective. 



Next to hunting came teaching in his affections. It is 

 wonderful that there should be people who really enjoy in- 

 structing fellow-mortals. The average person's hair begins to 

 turn grey at the very thought, but Mr. Lockwood revelled in it 

 and was never happier than when jockeying pass-men at Oxford 

 through their examinations. 



As a youngster he was not intended for the Church, and 

 joined the 13th Bengal Cavalry in the Peshawar division, which 

 was then commanded by his relative. General Sir Sydney Cotton ; 

 but he did not stay in India long, as his health broke down and 

 he came home on sick leave. It was decided that he was not 

 strong enough for the army, so he sent in his papers, and made 

 up his mind to take Orders. As he was too old to enter a 

 college in the ordinary way, he went to St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, 

 to work for his degree. He had forgotten all the Greek he had 

 learned at Westminster — if he ever learned any there ; he always 

 stoutly maintained that he never learned anything at school 

 whatever. As a consequence he had to start all over again with 

 the Greek alphabet, but perseverance pulled him through, in 

 spite of the fact that he hunted three or four days a week each 

 season. He must have been helped through his time at Oxford 

 by his exceptional memory. It does not sound like a very 

 grand memory when I say that he had forgotten all his Greek 

 so soon, but we know he had not learnt much at Westminster, 

 as he said, for the fact remains that he really had a very fine 

 memory, and Wilberforce, then Bishop of Oxford, who ordained 

 him, told a relative of Lockwood's afterwards that he had been 

 the best of all the candidates in Greek ! 



He was always a voracious reader, and ransacked his friends' 

 libraries for fresh books to read. Once he had been through a 

 book he could quote extensively from it for years afterwards, 

 so that in time friends found it hard to find him something he 

 had not already read. The " Pickwick Papers " he could quote 

 from ad lib. Scott and Dickens were his favourite authors, 

 Marryat's " Peter Simple " he was very fond of, but works on 



