No.127
comparison with the special terrors
which faced Lowe as a nearly-
blind albino in an almost totally
unsupervised mob of teenage boys.
‘The ordeal I had to go through
was… really terrible. For the purposes
of relieving the weary hours of
enforced society I was invaluable.
No one was so dull as to be unable
to say something rather smart on
my peculiarities, and my short sight
offered almost complete immunity
to my tormentors.’ It was a cruel
apprenticeship, but Lowe later
reflected that it qualified him for a
life of enduring determination: ‘I
had effectually solved the problem
as to whether I was able to hold my
own in life, and proved by a most
crucial experiment that I was not too
sensitive nor soft for the business.’
And yet in the midst of this almost
unremitting darkness, Lowe finds
The Trusty Servant
words of praise for his tutor, Mr
Wickham: ‘I never shall forget the
pleasure in the midst of all I had to
endure to find that there was some
one, and that, a person placed so high
above me, who did not despise me for
being unlike other people, and who
took a hearty interest in my success.’
The abuse stopped eventually – ‘even
the most delightful amusements pall
by repetition’. And in due course
Lowe became a prefect. Prefiguring
Churchill’s remarks on headmasters
compared with prime ministers, he
declares that his position gave him
‘infinitely more power, with infinitely
less control, than I have ever had
since.’
He left Winchester for Oxford in
1829, where he was greatly influenced
by the reformist Benjamin Jowett. He
qualified for the bar and sailed for
Old Commoners
14
Australia in 1842, where he combined
his legal career with journalism and
politics.
In 1850 he returned to Britain and
became a leader-writer for The Times;
once he was elected as the Liberal
MP for Kidderminster in 1852 (Calne
from 1859), this journalistic pulpit
helped him rise quickly within party
ranks. He swiftly established himself
as an archetypal Victorian reformer,
with great range: his 1856 Joint Stock
Companies Act was the foundation
of modern company law with its
broadening of limited liability; his
1859 Public Health Act provided
for the compulsory vaccination of
children; his 1862 Revised Education
Code introduced payment by results -
school grants made conditional upon
results in an annual examination
by inspectors of pupils in the Three
Rs (a one-size-fits-all Gradgrindian