He was my junior by three years, so that I did not witness his development from the young boy into the VI Form boy, in which capacity he gave proof of his quality. But I remember his physical vigour in the earlier stage, and his great assiduity (too great I thought, for it seemed somewhat to restrict the growth of his stature) to exercise in the old gymnasium. Later he just missed the School Athletic Championship, and the energy of his attack in the single-stick competition is spoken of almost with awe by an eye witness. I belive, too, and remembering his fearless but successful intercourse with Jowett, this terror of undergrads, I readily believe that his power of answering divinity questions in Thring's classroom (those who know them will understand me) was almost unexampled. Already at school he was in these ways the 'Hardie' of later life. But for my own tribute to his memory I will reserve two things, and these of higher import. The first is that he seems to me to have had a career of very perfect self-fulfilment. In the race of a mortal time he was one of those able runners who succeed in putting forth all the strength that is in them, and 'running themselves out.' I mean that he was able to make the gifts of mind and spirit which were his do all or nearly all the work for social good of which they were capable, and this he did, not as powerful but selfish characters may do from the sense and pride of self-realisation, bit out of . . . of his fellow-men and of righteous causes.
The other is still fitter for these pages of the School Magazine. He was in the fullest sense a son of the School that reared him. In his character and career he carried the Uppingham 'legend', which is not legendary but is living fact. His godfather, Edward Thring, was very truly father in God to his godson. That word which was ever on his great teacher's lips, 'true life', a mystic word and more clearly realised perhaps in the soul than in the mind of its speaker, has been nobly and luminously interpreted by the vivid career of generous social helpfulness which is the story of Hardie Rawnsley. In that life of vital service the master will have seen an answer to his prayer for a pupil that he should 'here or elsewhere still continue the living life which Christ has given us here'.
[Extract from the obituary written by John Huntley Skrine and printed in Uppingham School Magazine, 1920, pp. 119-123.]