Matthew Arnold
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“Rugby Chapel” is an elegy that Matthew Arnold wrote to his father fifteen years after his father’s death. It is remarkable to find not a trace of ill-will toward a man whose “radiant vigor” is brought back through contemplation of the word “gloom” (Arnold 186). But perhaps this is the mark of not only a mature poet, but a mature man. Perhaps Arnold looked back on the tough road created by the cold, austere headmaster of Rugby with thanks. Arnold may have felt an intense connection between his past and who he was as a person. Fifteen years without the shelter “Of [the] mighty oak” (Arnold 287) that was his father may have taught him to celebrate the strength, courage and wisdom that were nourished by his years with his hard-to-please father. Or perhaps he thought that his father had been the gateway and possessor of what some term a romantic myth—knowledge of the Truth. Culler states that the young Arnold believed that through his own work, the work of his father, the work of the “faithful shepherd! to come, / Bringing thy sheep in thy hand” (Arnold 290), survived and continued: “he had developed a strong sense that in his school work and his religious and social essays he was continuing the work that his father had begun” (Culler 272). There are few relationships in a man’s life that are as impacting as that which one has with one’s father. Whether one’s father is altogether absent or overbearingly present,
. . .
Not without action to die
Fruitless, but something to snatch
From dull oblivion, not all
Glut the devouring grave! (Arnold 288)
Thomas Arnold was a man from the old school of thought. As I mentioned earlier, he was man who thought that he was in possession of the Truth and the discoveries of the Enlightenment did not shake his self-confidence. His personal crusade was one against the moral disintegration that all moralists seem to see in their society. For Thomas Arnold, it was the old that deserved reverence. Tradition, especially the religious tradition in which he was raised, was that “absolute truth” before which we should prostrate ourselves. Thomas Arnold was an intellectual and a religious thinker whose fervent nature fueled his activities as a school reformer. The public schools were in dire need of Christian reformation and Thomas Arnold took this task upon himself: “The public schools of his day were in a sorry state. Drunkenness and disorder were rife and bullying was such that new boys returning home at the end of their first term at Rugby were often said to take lessons from local farmhands in boxing in order to defend themselves on their return next term. . . It all seemed an entirely adequa
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Approximate Word count = 1916
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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