Blake built the Temple reading-room and art museum, a new Big School with class-rooms under it, completed the new quadrangle, started the modern side, gave a swimming-bath in the Close, equipped school workshops under the gymnasium, and enriched the art museum with generous gifts, which he made ‘in the hope that leisure hours would be given by many boys to a delightful form of culture often too little thought of at home and school, and with the conviction that some few boys would draw great enjoyment, lifelong interest, and a new faculty from it’.
Jex-Blake's sermons preached at Cheltenham and Rugby (published under the title Life in Faith, 1876) illustrate the influence of Arnold, Jowett, and Temple on the school pulpit. He was in the school tradition which was derived from Thomas Arnold, cooled by the influence of John Stuart Mill and of Oxford liberalism of the 'fifties, energized a second time by Frederick Temple, and coloured by the culture of Ruskin. To his contemporary, Edward Thring [q.v.], of Uppingham, he stands as a portrait by Millais stands to a portrait by Manet. As a cultivated gentleman he recalled some of the attractive types sketched by Anthony Trollope.
In 1887, fatigued by his scholastic labours, Jex-Blake withdrew from Rugby, though not from his efforts on behalf of its further endowment, to the rectory of Alvechurch, Worcestershire. Four years later (1891) he became dean of Wells. Late in 1910 he resigned the deanery and passed the last years of his life in London, where he died 2 July 1915. He had striking beauty and grace of person, great dignity in address, and a kind disposition. He had two sons and nine daughters; two of the latter held high academic office, Henrietta being principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (1909–1921), and Katharine mistress of Girton College, Cambridge (1916–1922). His youngest sister, Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake [q.v.], was a brave pioneer in the medical education of women. The best portrait of Jex-Blake, that by Sir J. E. Millais, is in the possession of his son, Dr. A. J. Jex-Blake. There is also a portrait by Hermann Herkomer at Rugby School.
[The Times, 3 July 1915; W. H. D. Rouse, A History of Rugby School, 1898; H. C. Bradby, Rugby, 1900; private information; personal knowledge.]
JOHNS, CLAUDE HERMANN WALTER (1857–1920), Assyriologist, was born at Banwell, Somerset, 4 February 1857. He was the eldest son of the Rev. Walter Pascoe Johns, Wesleyan minister, of a yeoman family settled for generations at Wendron, Cornwall, by his wife, Eleanor, daughter of Charles Gilbert, of Mutford Hall, Suffolk. Educated at Queen Elizabeth's grammar school, Faversham, Johns won an exhibition at Queens' College, Cambridge (1875), after previously declining two scholarships. At Queens' he was presently elected to a minor scholarship, a foundation scholarship, and to a Goldsmiths' exhibition; and in 1880, while a master at the Leys School, Cambridge, he graduated as twenty-seventh wrangler, an accident having prevented him from taking the tripos examination earlier. His health, never very good, then compelled him to go abroad to Tasmania, where he became second master at Horton College (1880–1883); but he returned to England for family reasons in 1883 and, after a short period as a master at Paston grammar school, North Walsham (1883–1886), was ordained in 1887, becoming tutor at Peterborough training college (1887–1891). He served curacies at Helpston, Northamptonshire (1887–1888), and in Peterborough (1888–1892), in conjunction with his work at the training college. He returned to Queens' College as assistant chaplain in 1892, and was presented by his college to the living of St. Botolph's, Cambridge, in the same year. He held this living till 1909.
It was now that the interest which Johns had taken in Assyriology since 1875 began to bear fruit. The expedition to Nineveh undertaken in 1873 by George Smith [q.v.], of the British Museum, resulted in the further discovery of Deluge-tablet fragments, and the discussion on these roused Johns's interest. Subsequently, urged by the Orientalist, Sandford Arthur Strong [q.v.], he took up the study of cuneiform to such good purpose that he was made lecturer in Assyriology at Queens' College in 1895, and in 1904 lecturer in Assyrian at King's College, London. In 1903 he was elected to the Edwardes fellowship at Queens', and in 1909 proceeded to the degree of Litt.D., Jesus College making him a research fellow. A few months later he was elected to the mastership of St. Catharine's College, with its accompanying canonry at Norwich, which, while it conferred well-deserved recognition on Johns's capacity, unfortunately for Assyriology, absorbed the greater part of his time. Yet he did not lose touch with his Assyrian studies, for in 1910 he visited
299
