Family Connections

Schoolmaster and author, Reginald Bosworth Smith was born on June 28, 1839, at The Rectory, West Stafford, in Dorset, one of twelve children of Reginald Southwell Smith and Emily Genevieve Simpson who were married in 1836.

His father was the fourth son of Sir John Wyldbore Smith, Baronet, of Sydling, Dorset. The living was presented to him by his early friend, John Floyer, the squire of Stafford.

Bosworth’s earliest memories were, strangely enough, not of his Stafford home, but of Madeira, whither in 1841 his father was sent, as it was thought, in an almost hopeless state of consumption. The family came back in 1842 to Stafford, and Canon Reginald Smith, though always delicate, lived on till 1896.

On September 17, 1849, Bosworth’s mother’s diary records : ” To-day my dear
husband told our dear boys, Henry and Bosworth, aged eleven and ten, of his intention of placing them at Mr. Penny’s school at Blandford, which they seemed to feel very much, specially dear Bosworth, who was quite depressed for some time;” Bosworth became in time head of the school and the winner of many prizes. From here he went in 1855 to Marlborough. “

At Marlborough began his friendship with John Shearme Thomas, who afterwards became his brother-in-law, and who, as Bursar of the College, for forty-seven years rendered such splendid service to the school.

“I was elected in 1858 to an Open Scholarship at Corpus College, Oxford. I obtained a First Class in Classical Moderations and a First Class in the Final Classical School (1862), and very shortly afterwards was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford, and became also lecturer at Corpus. Life at Oxford was never much to my liking although I made many friends there.” Such is Bosworth Smith’s own brief account of his University career.

In 1862 Bosworth was elected President of the Union without a contest; his chief effort there was a vehement three-quarters of an hour speech on the subject of Kagosima, and in January 1864 he made his first appearance in print by a letter on the subject in the Daily News.

There was no money, and it was necessary to settle on a profession as soon as possible. Mr. Matthew Arnold has frankly admitted that he adopted the profession of school-teaching in order to ‘marry, and in point of fact the same motive determined Bosworth Smith’s career ; schoolmastering seemed the only chance of obtaining a settled income immediately. At that time Rugby naturally stood high among public schools, and he was anxious to go there or to Marlborough, whither Mr. Bradley pressed him to return. But when an offer of a mastership at Harrow came from Dr. Butler, his friends strongly advised him to accept it, and he took up work there in September 1864. A year later he married.

The first impulse to write came to Bosworth Smith indirectly from Dr. Butler, who had initiated a kind of Essay Society among the masters. The essays were to be written on any subject that interested them outside their usual school work; and it was an essay, written in this way, that first suggested to Bosworth the possibility of independent study and composition.

His ” Mohammed and Mohammedanism” took the form of four lectures, which were first delivered in 1872 at Harrow before a small number of friends, and in 1874 before the Royal Institution of Great Britain. As soon as the course was over, they were published in book form by Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co.

Early in 1878 he gave seven lectures on Carthage at the Royal Institution, the success of which promised well for the success of his new book, the “Taking of Carthage” which was published in May 1878 by Messrs. Longman.

1n 1879 he was asked by the family of Lord Lawrence to undertake his biography. For the next three years, every hour that was not given to his school work was devoted to the fulfilment of his trust.The book was published in 1883. So well did it establish his reputation as a biographer that he was afterwards asked—among other such propositions—by the families of those concerned, to undertake the life of the first Earl Russell, of the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, of Lord Stratford de Rtdclyffe, and, by a firm of publishers, of the Duke of Wellington.

In 1895, Bingham’s Melcombe, “an old manor-house, which has every charm a house can have in my eyes,” came unexpectedly into the market. The place had been familiar to Bosworth Smith, as an ideal, at all events, all his life, and when the telegram came which announced that he was the successful purchaser, and that, thanks to the kind exertions of Sir Robert Pearce-Edgcumbe, the place was his, he was overjoyed. He could now leave Harrow without the desolate feeling that he was ” going into the world houseless and homeless, not knowing where I shall live.”

Bosworth Smith never believed that his school work suffered in any degree from the existence of interests which lay beyond it, or from his wide circle of friends. But the parting from Harrow was a wrench, all the more, perhaps, that it was rather long drawn. Dr. Wood, for whose continual kindness Bosworth Smith always felt warm gratitude, asked him to stay an additional two years after the age fixed for masters to retire. At the final house-supper on July 11, 1901, the largest gathering of its kind ever known in Harrow, their beloved master spoke to his old pupils for the last time; he reviewed his thirty-seven years at Harrow, and recalled old stories and characteristics with the simple pleasure which they had always given him.

Reginald Bosworth Smith was to spend the last seven yaers of his life at Bingham’s Melcombe. He took part, as far as his growing deafness would allow, in the public life of the county. He became a Vice-president of the Dorset Field Club, and often read papers before the Society, and greatly enjoyed their expeditions. He was lected a member of the Salisbury Diocesan Synod, and later, of the House of Laymen at Westminster.

Following an unsiccessful operation at a London nursing home in 1908, Bosworth returned to Bingham’s Melcombe on October 17th were he died only two hours later. He is buried in the little churchyard at West Stafford alonside his parents and siblings.

For more on his life read Reginald Bosworth Smith: A Memoir By his daughter, Ellinor Flora Bosworth Smith Grogan, published in 1909 and which is available in digital format here.