CHAPTER IV.
1842.
A tour in Wales in 1842.—Extracts from my journal of this tour.—My inborn love for beautiful materials.—Stay at Rhyl.—Anglesea and Caernarvon.—Reasons for specially remembering this tour.
The pleasantest recollections I have of my father are connected with a tour in Wales that he undertook with me and his eldest sister in the summer of 1842. My aunt made me keep a journal of that tour, which I still possess, and by its help those days come hack to me with a vividness that is very astonishing to myself. Being accustomed to live with grown-up people, and having no companions of my own age in the same house (though I had cousins at Hollins and friends at school), I had acquired a way of talking about things as older people talk, so that the journal in question contains many observations that do not seem natural for a child. The fact, no doubt, is that I listened to my father and aunt, and then put down many of their remarks in my little history of our tour; but I was very observant on my own account, and received very strong impressions, especially from buildings, such as old castles and cathedrals, and great houses, and I had a topographic habit of mind even in childhood, which made every fresh locality interesting to me and engraved it on my memory. Perhaps the reader may like to see a page of the diary. It seems rather formal and elderly to be written by a child eight years old, but it must be remembered that it was an exercise written by my father's desire and to please him. Letters to my cousins at the same date would have been more juvenile. Nevertheless, it was perfectly natural for me then to use words employed by older people, and the reader will remember that I had been learning Latin for more than two years.
"On the road from Rhydland to Abergele we saw Hemmel Park, the seat of Lord Dinorbin, lately burnt down. Near Rhydland is Penwarn, the seat of Lord Mostyn; the house is small and unpretending, the grounds are beautiful. There is a very handsome dog-kennel, in which are kept forty-four couple of fine fox-hounds ready for work, besides old ones in one kennel, and young ones in another: the dogs all in such good order and kennels so perfectly clean. In one field were sixteen hunters without shoes. Lord Mostyn does not live much at Penwarn, generally in London. He is an old man, and at present an invalid. We had several pleasant days' fishing in the Clwyd and Elway; a Mr. Graham at Rhyl has permission to fish in Lord Mostyn's preserve, and he may take a friend, which character Papa and I personated for the time.
"About eight miles from Rhyl is Trelacre, the seat of Sir Pyers Mostyn, a very excellent modern building; the grounds are laid out with most luxuriant taste, nothing is wanting to give effect to it as a whole. In the woods opposite the house is a rich but rather formal distribution of flower-beds; everything appeared to be in blossom. On an elevation is placed the most ingeniously contrived Grotto; at every turn there is a device of another character to the last, here a lion couchant, there the head of Momus, a wild boar's head, a heron, a skeleton, &c., &c. In one place were two old friars seated, each leaning on his stick, apparently in earnest conversation; all these are roughly, but with great accuracy, formed upon the numerous pillars which support a room or two above. The last object you arrive at is a hermit as large as life seated in his cell, with one book beside him and another on his knee, upon which his left hand is placed; his right is laid across his breast. The pillars are so contrived that the little cavern is light in every part; at the entrance is an immense sea-dragon with large glaring eyes and a long red tongue hanging half-way out. The monster had an effect somewhat startling. Next above the grotto is a small room hewn out of the rock, with sofas and pillows on each side the fireplace hewn out of the same rock. In the centre is a stone table, upon which were some beautiful antique bowls, cups, &c. The door to this apartment is a great curiosity, being made to appear as if of rock; we did not think at first that it was a real door. Over this room is another, the residence of a lame woman, who showed us upon the leads above her dwelling a very extensive prospect; amongst the objects was the mouth of the river Dee. She afterwards [took us] to a moss house, and several other nice points in the garden. The walks are covered with the material left in washing the lead ore, through which no weed can even peep. It is many-colored, and the glittering of here and there a bit of ore, lead, or silver, has a very pretty effect indeed."
The reader will have had enough of the journal by this time. Its only merit is the accurate noting down of details that I had seen; but many of the details are such as children of that age do not commonly pay attention to, as, for instance, in this bit about an old church:—
"The church at Dyserth has an east window which is considered the greatest antiquity in Wales; many figures of the saints are represented in colored glass, the lead betwixt the panes is the breadth of two fingers. The yard has several old trees—two very fine yews, and certainly the largest birch for miles round."
I notice a great interest in all beautiful materials throughout the pages of this journal; the kind of wood used for the suites of furniture is invariably mentioned, as, for example, the chairs of solid ebony in the dining-room at Penrhyn Castle, the old oak in the dining-room at Trelacre, and the light oak in the drawing-room, the carved oak ceilings and pillars at Penrhyn, and the use of stone from St. Helen's there, as well as the bedstead that is made of slate, and the enormous table of the same material in the servants' hall. The interest in materials is a special instinct, a kind of sympathy with Nature showing itself by appreciation of the different qualities of her products. This instinct has always been very strong in me, and I have often noticed it in others, especially in artists. Some poets are very fond of describing beautiful materials; but the instinct is not confined to poetical or artistic natures, being often found amongst workmen in the handicrafts, and it may be associated with a sense of the usefulness of materials, as well as with admiration of their beauty. With me the interest in them is both artistic and utilitarian; all metals, woods, marble, etc., are delightful to me in some way.
In 1842 Rhyl was a little quiet place known to the Liverpool people as a good bathing-place, but not spoiled by formal rows of houses and big hotels. There was at that time in Rhyl a gentleman who possessed a sort of genteel cottage in a relatively large garden, and though the house was small, it might have done for a widower like my father, and it was for sale. I remember urging my father to buy it, as Rhyl pleased me on account of the possibilities of boating and riding on the sands, besides which we had enjoyed some excellent fishing, which delighted me as a child, though I gave up the amusement afterwards. I mention the house here for a particular reason. It has remained very distinctly in my memory ever since, as my father's last chance of escape from his habits and associates. Whilst we were in Wales together he conducted himself as a man ought to do who is travelling with a lady and a child. He was not harsh with me, and notwithstanding my habitual fear of him, some of my Welsh days with him are pleasant to live over again in memory. Now, if he had bought that house, the sort of life we were then leading might have become habitual, and he might possibly have been saved from the sad fate that awaited him. However, though tempted for a moment, he refused because it did not seem a good investment, being a flimsy little building, not very well contrived.
Though my father would not buy the house to please me, he bought me a little bay mare at Rhyl that was a pretty and swift creature, and we took her on the steamer to Menai, where, for want of a convenient arrangement for landing horses, she was pitched into the sea and made to swim ashore. She had been in a hot place on the steamer, near the engines, and the sudden change to the cold sea-water was probably (so we thought afterwards) the reason why she became broken-winded, which was a great grief to me. I hardly know why I record these trifles, but they have an importance in the feelings of a boy, and I am weak enough to have very tender feelings about animals down to the present day.
We visited Anglesea and Caernarvon, and other places too well known for the reader to tolerate a description of them here. In those days the tubular bridge had not yet been thought of; but the beautiful suspension bridge at Menai was already in existence, and was the most remarkable bridge then existing in the world. I was more struck by the beauty of the structure than by its costliness or size; the journal says, "It is indeed wonderfully beautiful." On one of our excursions we saw what in rainy weather is a good waterfall, and I find a reference to this that I quote for the curious bit of Welsh-English that is included in it,—"We came to a little village, which has in a wet season a very fine waterfall; the driver said it would not be seen to advantage because there was 'few water.' There certainly was 'few water,' but the fine high rocks gave a powerful idea of what it would have been had the rushing of waters taken the place of the death-like stillness which then prevailed."
The reader will perhaps pardon me for having dwelt longer on this Welsh tour than the interest of it may seem to warrant; but I look back to it with lingering regret as the last agreeable association connected with the memory of my father. It was a most happy little tour. I had an intensely strong affection for my father's eldest sister Mary, who accompanied us, and whose dear handwriting I recognize in a few corrections in the journal. Besides, that year 1842 is absolutely the last year of my life in which I could live in happy ignorance of evil and retain all the buoyancy of early boyhood. A terrible experience was in reserve for me that soon aged me rapidly, and made a really merry boyish life impossible for me after having passed through it.
CHAPTER V.
1843-1844.
A painful chapter to write.—My father calls me home.—What kind of a house it was.—Paternal education and discipline.—My life at that time one of dulness varied by dread.
The writing of this chapter is so painful to me that the necessity for it has made me put off the composition of this autobiography year after year. Then why not omit the chapter altogether? The omission is impossible, because the events of the year 1843-1844 were quite the most important of my early boyhood, and have had a most powerful and in some respects a disastrous influence over my whole life.
Notwithstanding my father's kindness to me during our Welsh tour, my feelings towards him were not, and could not be, those of trust and confidence. He was extremely severe at times, often much more so than the occasion warranted, this being partly natural in a strong authoritative man, and partly the result of irritability brought on by his habit of drinking. When inflamed with brandy he became positively dangerous, and I had a well-founded dread of his presence. At all times he was very uncertain—he might greet me with a kind word or he might be harsh or silent, just as it happened. During my visits to him at Shaw, one of my two aunts invariably accompanied me and stayed as long as I stayed, which was a great protection for me. The idea of being left alone with my father, even for a day, was enough to fill me with apprehension; however, it did not seem likely that I should have to live with him, as I should probably be sent to some distant school, and only come home for the holidays.
This was the view of my future that was taken by my aunts and myself, when one day in the year 1843, I believe in the month of June, there came a letter from my father peremptorily declaring, in terms which admitted of no discussion, that although a child might live with ladies it was not good for a boy, and that he had determined to have me for the future under his own roof. The news came upon me like a thunderclap in a clear sky. I had grateful and affectionate feelings towards both my aunts, but to the elder my feelings were those of a son, and a very loving son, towards his mother. She had, in fact, taken the place of my mother so completely that I remained unconscious of my loss. I reserve for a pleasanter chapter than this the delightful duty of painting her portrait; at present it is enough to say that a separation from her in childhood was the most bitter grief that could be experienced by me, and my father's ukase made this separation seem destined to be eternal, except perhaps a short visit in the holidays. In a word, my filial life with her seemed at an end.
I was taken to my father's and left alone with him. Some years before, he had bought a house in Shaw called Ivy Cottage,—a house with a front of painted stucco, looking on a garden,—and though the gable end of the house looked on a street, the other end had a view over some fields, not then built over. My father rented one or two of these fields for his horses and cows, and some farm buildings just big enough for his small establishment. He did not keep a carriage, and had even given up his dogcart, but he always had a saddle-horse for himself and a pony for me; at one time I had two ponies. His horses were his only luxury, but he was as exacting about them as if he had been a rich nobleman. He would not tolerate careless grooming for an instant; bits and stirrups were always kept in a state of exemplary brightness, and when he rode through Shaw he was quite fit to be seen in Hyde Park. At that time he had a jet-black mare of a vicious temper, which only gratified his pride as a horseman, and it so happened (I am not inventing this for a contrast) that my pony was of the purest white with full mane and tail of the same, and shaped exactly like the sturdy war-horses in old pictures. As he was still a fine-looking, handsome man and I was a healthy boy, no doubt we looked well enough, and it is probable that many a poor factory lad envied me my good luck in being able to ride about in that way, instead of working in a mill; but I rode in constant dread of my father's heavy hunting-whip. It had a steel hammer at the end of the long handle, and if at any time its owner fancied that I was turning my toes out, he did not say anything, but with a dexterity acquired by practice he delivered a sharp blow with that hammer on my foot which made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up with my father's ill-tempered mare, so he would say, "D—n it, can't you whip her? Can't you whip better than that? The strokes of that whip of yours are so feeble that they wouldn't kill a fly!" Nobody could say that of his hitting. I had a little young dog that was very dear to me, and when it pleased my father one day to walk into the kitchen, it unluckily so happened that the dog was, or seemed to be, in his way, so he gave it a kick that sent it into the middle of the room, and there it lay quivering. He took no notice of it, said what he had to say, in his usual peremptory tone, and then left the room. I knelt down by the poor little dog, which was in its death-agony, and shortly breathed its last.
During our rides my dreaded companion would stop at many inns and private houses, where he slaked his perpetual thirst in stirrup-cups, or sometimes he would go in and sit for a long time whilst the horses were cared for by some groom. The effects of these refreshments could not fail to be evident as we returned home; and it was more by good luck than anything else, except his habitually excellent horsemanship, that he was able to ride at all in that condition. I clearly remember one particular occasion when he seemed to be keeping his seat with more than usual uncertainty, and at last fairly rolled out of it. We were riding along a paved street, so that the fall would have been very serious; but two or three men who were watching him foresaw the accident just in time, and rushed forward to catch him as he fell. On another occasion when I was not present (indeed this happened before my settled residence with my father) he fell in a most dangerous way, with his foot caught in the stirrup, and was dragged violently down a steep hill till the horse was brought to a stand. Fortunately my father wore a top-coat at the time, which was soon torn off his back by the friction, and so were his other clothes, and the back itself was almost flayed; but the doctor said that if he had been lightly dressed the accident would have been far more serious.
My father would sometimes send me on errands to a considerable distance with the pony, and as he hated all dawdling and loitering in others, though he had become a perfectly undisciplined man himself, he would limit me strictly to the time necessary for my journey, a time that I never ventured to exceed. In some respects the education that he was giving me, though of Spartan severity, was not ill calculated for the formation of a manly character. He quite understood the importance of applying the mind completely to the thing which occupied it for the moment. If he saw me taking several books together that had no connection with each other, he would say, "Take one of those books and read it steadily, don't potter and play with half-a-dozen."
Desultory effort irritated him, and he was quick to detect busy idleness under its various disguises. He swore very freely himself, and as I heard so many oaths I was beginning to acquire the same accomplishment, when he overheard me accidentally and gave me such a stern lecture on the subject that I knew ever after I was not to follow the paternal example. What his soul hated most, however, was a lie or the shadow of a lie. He could not tolerate the little fibs that are common with women and children, and are often their only protection against despotism. "Tell the truth and shame the devil" was one of his favorite precepts, though why the devil should feel ashamed because I spoke the truth was never perfectly clear to my childish intellect. However, the precept sank deep into my nature, and got mixed up with a feeling of self-respect, so that it became really difficult for me to tell fibs. I remember on one occasion being a martyr for truth in peculiarly trying circumstances. It was before I lived permanently under the paternal roof, and on one of those visits we paid to my father. An aunt was with me (not the one who accompanied us to Wales), and she was often rather hard and severe. My father had made a law that I was to practise with dumb-bells a quarter of an hour every morning, and this exercise was taken in the garden, but before beginning I always looked at the clock which was in the sitting-room. On coming back into the house one morning, I met my father, who said, "Have you done your fifteen minutes?" "Yes, papa." "That is not true," said my aunt from the next room, "he has only practised for ten minutes; look at the clock!" My terrible master looked at the clock; the finger stood at ten minutes after eleven, and this was taken as conclusive evidence against me. I simply answered (what was true) that I had begun five minutes before the hour. This "additional lie" put my father into a fury, and he ordered me to do punishment drill with those dumb-bells for two hours without stopping. Of those hundred and twenty minutes he did not remit one. Long before their expiration I was ready to drop, but he came frequently to show that he had his eye upon me, and the horrible machine-like motion must continue. On other occasions I got punished for lying, when my only fault was the common childish inability to explain. "Why did you tear that piece of paper?" "Please, papa, I did not tear it; I pulled it, and it tore." Here is a child attempting to explain that he had not torn a piece of paper voluntarily, that he had stretched it only, and had himself been surprised by the tearing. In my father's code that was a "confounded lie," and I was to be severely punished for it.
His system of education included riding as an essential part, and that he taught me well, so far as a child of that age could learn it. But though there were harriers within a few miles he could not take me to hunt, as children are sometimes taken in easier countries, the fields in Lancashire being so frequently divided by stone walls. The nature of our neighborhood equally prevented him from teaching me to swim, which he would otherwise have done, as there were no streams deep enough, or left in their natural purity. To accustom me to water, however, he made me take cold shower-baths, certainly the best substitute for a plunge that can be had in an ordinary room. In mental education he attached great importance to common things, to arithmetic, for example, and to good reading aloud, and intelligible writing. His own education had been very limited; he knew no modern language but his own, and I believe he knew no Greek whatever, and only just enough Latin for a solicitor, which in those days was not very much; but if he was a Philistine in neglecting his own culture, he had not the real Philistine's contempt for culture in others and desired to have me well taught; yet there was nobody near at hand to continue my higher education properly, and I was likely, had we lived long together at Shaw, to become like the regular middle-class Englishmen of those days, who from sheer want of preliminary training were impervious to the best influences of literature and art. I might have written a clear business letter, and calculated interest accurately.
To accustom me to money matters, child as I was, my father placed gold and silver in my keeping, and whatever I spent was to be accounted for. In this way money was not to be an imaginary thing for me, but a real thing, and I was not to lose the control of myself because I had my pocket full of sovereigns. This was a very original scheme in its application to so young a child, but it perfectly succeeded, and I never either lost or misapplied one halfpenny of the sums my father entrusted to my keeping. He was evidently pleased with his success in this.
There was a village school near his house kept by a respectable man for children of both sexes, and there I was sent to practise calligraphy and arithmetic. During school-hours there was at least complete relief from the paternal supervision, and besides this I managed to fall in love with a girl about a year older than myself, who was a very nice girl indeed, though she squinted to an unfortunate degree. That is the great advantage of having the young of both sexes in the same schoolroom,—the manners of the brutal sex may be made tender by the presence of the refined one. Boys and girls both went to the Grammar School at Burnley, in the now forgotten days when Mr. Raws was head-master there; but that was long before my time.
My existence at Ivy Cottage was one of extreme dulness varied by dread. Every meal was a tête-à-tête with my father, unrelieved by the presence of any lady or young person, and he became more and more gloomy as his nervous system gradually gave way, so that after having been simply stern and unbending, he was now like a black cloud always hanging over me and ready, as it seemed, to be my destruction in some way or other not yet clearly defined. It was an immense relief to me when a guest came to dinner, and I remember being once very much interested in a gentleman who sat opposite me at table, for the simple reason that I believed him to be the Duke of Wellington. There was rather more fuss than usual in the way of preparation, and my father treated his guest with marked deference, besides which the stranger had the Wellingtonian nose, so my youthful mind was soon made up on the subject, and I listened eagerly in the hope that the hero of Waterloo would fight some of his battles over again. He remained, however, silent on that subject, and I afterwards had the disappointment of learning that our guest was not the Duke, but only the holder of a high office in the county.
CHAPTER VI.
1844.
My extreme loneliness.—Thoughts of flight.—My father's last illness and death.—Circumstances of my last interview with him.—His funeral.
It was one of the effects of the constant anxiety and excitement, and the dreadful wretchedness of that time, that my brain received the images of all surrounding creatures and things with an unnatural clearness and intensity, and that they were impressed upon it for life. Even now everything about Ivy Cottage is as clear as if the forty years were only as many days, and the writing of these chapters brings everything before me most vividly, not only the faces of the people and the habits and motions of the animals, but even the furniture, of which I remember every detail, down to the coloring of the services in the bedrooms, and the paint on my father's rocking-chair. An anecdote has been told in these pages about exercise with dumb-bells and an appeal to the clock. In writing that, I saw the real clock with the moon on its face (for it showed the phases of the moon), and my aunt standing near the window with her work in her hand and glancing up from the work to the clock, just as she did in reality.
Amongst other particular occasions I remember one night when the moon shone very brightly in the garden, and I was sitting near my bedroom window looking over it, meditating flight. My father's cruelty had then reached its highest point. I was always spoken to harshly when he condescended to take any notice of me at all, and was very frequently beaten. Our meals together had become perfectly intolerable. He would sit and trifle with his cutlet, and cover it with pepper, for his appetite was completely gone, and there was no conversation except perhaps an occasional expression of displeasure. The continual tension caused by anxiety made my sleep broken and uncertain, and that night I sat up alone in the bedroom longer than usual and looking down upon the moonlit garden. There was an octagonal summer-house of trellis-work on the formal oblong lawn, and on the top of it was a large hollow ball of sheet-copper painted green that had cost my grandmother three pounds. It is oddly associated with my anxieties on that night, because I looked first at it and then at the moon alternately whilst thinking. The situation had become absolutely intolerable, the servants were my only protectors, and though devoted they never dared to interfere when their master was actually beating me. I therefore seriously weighed, in my own childish manner, the possibilities of a secret flight. The moonlight was tempting—it would be easy to go alone to the stable and saddle the pony. On a fine night I could be many miles away before morning. There was no difficulty whatever about money; I had plenty of sovereigns in a drawer to be accounted for afterwards to my father, and meanwhile could employ them in escaping from him. Still, I knew that such an employment of his money would be looked upon by him as a breach of trust, and would, in fact, be a breach of trust. This consideration was not easily set aside, though I now see that it was needlessly scrupulous, and have no doubt whatever that if a child is left by the ignorance or the carelessness of superior authority in the hands of a madman, it has a clear right to provide for its own safety by any means in its power.
But where was I to go? My uncles were two very cool lawyers, always on the side of authority, and they would not be likely to believe my story entirely. A vague but sure instinct warned me that they would set me down for a rebellious boy who wanted to escape from justly severe paternal authority, and that they would at once send me back to Ivy Cottage. One of my two maiden aunts would be very likely to take the same view, but if the other received me with kindness, she could not have strength to resist my father, who would send or go to her at once and claim me. After thinking over all these things, I came to the conclusion that real safety was only to be found amongst strangers, and it seemed so hazardous to ask protection from unknown people that I decided to remain; but a very little would have settled it the other way. If those sovereigns had been really my own, I should probably have crept out of the house, saddled the pony, and ridden many miles; but so young a boy travelling alone would have been sure to attract attention, and the attempt to win deliverance would have been a failure. In after years, one of my elder relatives said that the attempt would almost certainly have caused my father to disinherit me by a new will, as my mother's property had been left to him absolutely. This danger was quite of a serious kind (more serious than the reader will think probable from what I choose to say in this place), as my father had another heir in view whom I never saw, but who was held in terrorem over me.
I awoke one bleak winter's morning about five o'clock, and heard the strangest cries proceeding from his room. His manservant had been awakened before me and had gone to the room already, where he was engaged in a sort of wrestling match with my father, who, in the belief that the house was full of enemies, was endeavoring to throw himself out of the window. Other men had been called for, who speedily arrived, and they overpowered him, though even the remnant of his mighty strength was such that it took six men to hold him on his bed. The attack lasted a whole week, and the house would have been a perfect hell, had not a certain event turned it for me into a Paradise.
I had not been able somehow to get to sleep late at night for a short time, when a light in the room awoke me. The horrible life I had been leading for many a day and night had produced a great impressionability, and I was particularly afraid of my father in the night-time, so I started up in bed with the idea that he was come to beat me, when lo! instead of his terrible face, I saw what for me was the sweetest and dearest face in the whole world! It was his sister Mary, she who had taken my mother's place, and whom I loved with a mingled sentiment of filial tenderness and gratitude that remained undiminished in force, though it may have altered in character, during all the after years. For the suddenness of revulsion from horror to happiness, there has never been a minute in my existence comparable to the minute when I realized the idea that she had come. At first it seemed only a deceptive dream. Such happiness was incredible, and I did not even know she had been sent for; but the sweet reality entered into my heart like sunshine, and throwing my arms about her neck I burst into a passion of tears. She, in her quiet way, for she hardly ever yielded to a strong emotion, though her feelings were deep and tender, looked at me sadly and kindly and told me to sleep in peace, as she was going to remain in the house some time. Then she left the room, and I lay in the darkness, but with a new light brighter than sunshine in the hope that the miserable life with my father had at length come to an end. It had only been six months in all, but it had seemed longer than any half-dozen years gone through before or after.
If this book were a novel, a very effective chapter might be written to describe my father's sufferings during his week of delirium, and all the dreadful fancies by which his disordered brain was oppressed and tortured; but I prefer to skip that week altogether, and come to a morning when his recovery was thought to be assured. He was no longer delirious, but apparently quite calm, though his manner was hard and imperious. He ordered me to be sent up to him, and I went almost trembling with the old dread of him, and with a wretched feeling that after my single week of respite the tyranny was to begin again. Such may have been the feelings of an escaped slave when he has been caught and brought back in irons, and stands once more in his master's presence. I tried to congratulate my master on his recovery in a clumsy childish way, but he peremptorily ordered me to fetch the "Times" and read to him. I began, as usual, one of the leading articles on the politics of the day, and before I had read many sentences my hearer declared that I was reading badly and made the article nonsense. Why had I put in such and such words of my own? he asked. His own precept that I was always to tell the truth under any circumstances had habituated me to be truthful even to him, so I answered boldly that I had not inserted the words attributed to me. Then I read a little farther, and he accused me of inserting something else that was not and could not be in the text; I said it was he who was mistaken, and he flew into an uncontrollable fury, one of those rages in which it had been his custom to punish me without mercy. What he might have done to me I cannot tell; he raised himself in bed and glared at me with an expression never to be forgotten. My aunt, however, had been listening at the door, thinking it probable that I should be in danger, and she now opened it and told me to come away. I have a confused recollection of reaching the door under a parting volley of imprecations.
It was a mistake to let my father see me, as, in the perverted state of his mind, the mere sight of me was enough to make him furious. Whether he hated me or not, nobody knows; but he treated me as if I was the most odious little object that could be brought before his eyes. Very soon after the scene about the article in the "Times," and probably in consequence of the excitement brought on by it, my father had a fit of apoplexy, and lingered till the next morning about nine o'clock. I was not in the room when he died, but my aunt took me to see him immediately after, and then I received an impression which has lasted to the present day. The corpse was lying on its side amidst disordered bedclothes, and to this day I can never go into a bedroom where the bed has not been made without feeling as if there were a corpse in it. That dreadful childish sensation received when I saw my father's body just as it lay at the close of the death-agony, can even now be revived by the sight of a disordered bed; such is the force of early impressions, especially when they are received by a nervous system that has been overwrought by the extreme of mental wretchedness.
The reader will hardly believe that the death of so hard a father could have been felt otherwise than as an inexpressible relief, and yet I was deeply affected by his loss. The kindest of fathers could hardly have been wept for more. My aunt's tears were more explicable; she was old enough to understand the frightful waste of the best gifts involved in that premature ending; as for my grief, perhaps the true explanation of it may be that I mourned rather the father who had been kind to me in Wales, than the cruel master at Ivy Cottage.
I sometimes try to imagine what he might have been under more favorable circumstances. There were times after his wife's death when he meditated a complete change of residence, which might have saved him. He would always have been severe and authoritative, but without alcohol he would probably not have been cruel.
I remember the day of the funeral quite distinctly. My father's two brothers came, though he had had scarcely any intercourse with them for years. They were most respectable men, quite free from my father's errors; but they had not half his life and energy. Such was the strength of his constitution that so recently as the time of our journey in Wales his health was not visibly impaired, and at the time of his death he had that rare possession for a man of thirty-nine, a complete set of perfectly sound teeth.
His coffin was carried on the shoulders of six men from Ivy Cottage to the graveyard near the chapel. Shaw at that time had only a chapel, a hideous building on a bleak piece of rising ground, surrounded by many graves. It never looked more dreary than on that wretched January day in 1844, when we stood round as the sexton threw earth on my father's coffin. He was laid in the same tomb with the poor young wife who had loved him truly, and to whom he had been a tender and devoted husband whilst their short union lasted.
I am the only survivor of that day's ceremony. The little procession has all followed my father into the darkness, descending one by one into graves separated by great spaces of land and sea. And when this is printed I, too, shall be asleep in mine.
CHAPTER VII.
1845.
Dislike to Shaw in consequence of the dreadful life I led there with my father.—My guardian.—Her plan for my education.—Doncaster School.—Mr. Cape and his usher.—The usher's intolerance of Dissenters. —My feeling for architecture and music.—The drawing-master.—My guardian insists on my learning French.—Our French master, Sig. Testa.—A painful incident.—I begin to learn the violin.—Dancing.—My aversion to cricket.—Early readings.—Love of Scott.—My first library.—Classical studies.
One consequence of the horrible life I had led at Ivy Cottage was a permanent dislike to the place and the neighborhood, the evil effects of which will be seen in the sequel. For the present it is enough to say that I never went there again quite willingly. After my father's death my grandmother lived in the village, and I was taken to see her every year until her death; but though she was a very kind old lady, it was a trial to me to visit her. I used to lie awake in her house at nights, realizing those horrible nights I had passed at Ivy Cottage, with such extreme intensity that it seemed as if my father might enter the room at any time. This was not a superstitious dread of apparitions; but the association of ideas brought back the past with a clearness that was extremely painful. Even now, at a distance of more than forty years, I avoid whatever reminds me of that time, and am not sorry that this narrative now leads to something else.
My father had no great affection for his brothers, who on their part could not have much esteem for him, so there was a mutual coolness which prevented him from appointing either of them to be my guardian. Probably they felt this as a slight, for, although always kind to me, they held completely aloof from anything like paternal interference with my education. My father had named his eldest sister, Mary, as my sole guardian, with, two lawyers as co-executors with her. The reader will probably think it was a mistake to appoint an old maid to be guardian to a boy; but my aunt was a woman of excellent sense, and certainly not disposed to bring me up effeminately; indeed, her willingness to encourage me in everything manly was such that she would always inflict upon herself considerable anxiety about my safety rather than prevent me from taking my full share of the more or less perilous exercises of youth. As to my education and profession her scheme was very simple and clear, and would have been perfectly rational if I had been all that she wished me to be. According to her plan I was to go to good schools first, and then be prepared for Oxford by tutors, and become a clergyman. There was some thought at one time of sending me to one of the great public schools; but this was abandoned, and I was first sent to Burnley School again, and then, after the summer holidays of 1845, to Doncaster, where I was a boarder in the house of the head-master.
A word from me in favor of one of the public schools would probably have decided my guardian to send me there; but there was a vis inertiae in my total want of social and scholastic ambition. I never in my life felt the faintest desire to rise in the world either by making the acquaintance of people of rank (which is the main reason why boys of middling station are sent to aristocratic schools), or by getting letters put after my name as a reward for learning what had no intrinsic charm for me. In the worldly sense I never had any ambition whatever.
It seemed rather hard, after living at Burnley with my kind guardian, to be sent to Doncaster School and separated from her for five months at a time, but she thought the separation necessary, as there was nothing in the world she dreaded more than that her great affection might spoil me. Always gentle in her ways, always kind and considerate, that admirable woman had still a remarkable firmness of character, and would act, on due occasion, in direct opposition both to her own feelings and to mine, if she believed that duty required it.
In those days there was no railway station at Doncaster, and my guardian took me from Featherstone (where her brother-in-law, Mr. Hinde, was vicar) to Doncaster in a hired carriage. I remember that it was an open carriage and we had nobody with us except the driver, and it was a fine hot day in August. I remember the long road, the arrival at an inn at Doncaster not far from the new church, and my first presentation to Mr. Cape, the head-master, who seemed a very kind and gentle sort of clergyman to a boy not yet acquainted with his cane. Then I was left alone in the strange school, not in the best of spirits, and if it had been difficult to restrain tears when my guardian left me, it became impossible in the little iron bed in the dormitory at night.
There were not many boarders, perhaps a dozen, and three or four private pupils who were preparing for Cambridge. All these were lodged in the head-master's house, which was in a pleasant, open part of the town, on the road leading to the race-course, just beyond the well-known Salutation Hotel. Besides these, there were rather a large number of day scholars,—I forget how many, perhaps fifty or sixty,—and in those days the schoolhouse was a ground floor under the old theatre. We marched down thither in the morning under the control of an usher, who was always with us in our walks. This usher, whose name I well remember, but do not choose to print, was a vulgar, overbearing man whom it was difficult to like, yet at the same time we all felt that he was a very valuable master. Boys feel the difference between a master who is a gentleman and one who falls short of that ideal. We were clearly aware that the head-master, Mr. Cape, was a gentleman, and that the usher was not. Nevertheless, in spite of his occasional coarseness and even brutality, the usher was a painstaking, honest fellow, who did his duty very energetically. His best quality, which I appreciate far more now than I did then, was an extreme readiness to help a willing boy in his work, by clearly explaining those difficulties that are likely to stop him in his progress. Mr. Cape was more an examiner than a teacher, at least for us; with the private pupils he may have been more didactic. The usher evidently liked to be asked; he was extremely helpful to me, and thanks to him chiefly I made very rapid progress at Doncaster. Unfortunately an occasional injustice made it difficult to be so grateful to him as we ought to have been. Here is an example. One evening in the playground he told me to get on the back of another boy, and then thrashed me with a switch from an apple-tree. I begged to be told for what fault this punishment was inflicted, and the only answer he condescended to give me was that a master owed no explanation to a schoolboy. Down to the present time I have never been able to make out what the punishment was for, and strongly suspect that it was simply to exercise the usher's arm, which was a powerful one. He was a fair cricketer, though rather too fat for that exercise, and a capital swimmer, for which his fat was an advantage. He was an immoderate snuff-taker. Sometimes he would lay a train of snuff on the back of his hand and snuff it up greedily and voluptuously. In hot weather he sometimes sat in his shirt-sleeves, and would occasionally amuse himself by laying the snuff on his thick fat arm and then pass it all under his nose, which drew it up as the pneumatic discharging machines drew grain from the hold of a vessel. The odor of snuff was inseparable from his person.
On Sunday mornings we were made to read chapters in the Bible before going to church, and the usher, who was preparing himself to enter Holy Orders, would sometimes talk to us a little about theology. Once he said that the establishment of religious toleration in England had been a deplorable mistake, and that Dissent ought not to be permitted by the Sovereign. This frank expression of perfect intolerance rather surprised me even then, and I did not quite know whether it would be just to extirpate Dissent or not. My principal feeling about the matter was the prejudice inherited by young English gentlemen of old Tory families, that Dissent was something indescribably low, and quite beneath the attention of a gentleman. Still, to go farther and compel Dissenters by force to attend the services of the Church of England did seem to me rather hard, and on thinking over the matter seriously in my own mind, I came to the conclusion that our usher must be wrong, unless Dissenters were guilty of some crime I was not aware of; but this, after all, seemed quite possible.
We were taken to the services in Doncaster old church, which was destroyed by fire many years afterwards. Though not yet in my teens, I had an intense delight in architecture, and deeply enjoyed the noble old building, one of the finest of its class in England. Our pew was in the west gallery, not far from the organ, and from it we had a good view of the interior. The effect of the music was very strong upon me, as the instrument was a fine one, and I was fully alive to the influence of music and architecture in combination. The two arts go together far better than architecture and painting; for music seems to make architecture alive, as it rolls along the aisles and under the lofty vaults. I well remember feeling, when some noble anthem was being performed, as if the sculptured heads between the arches added a noble animation to their serenity. Even now, the impression received in those early days still remains in my memory with considerable clearness and fidelity, and I believe that the habit of attending service in such a beautiful church was a powerful stimulus to an inborn passion for architecture.
I had already taken lessons in drawing, of the kind which in those days was thought suitable for boys who were not expected to be professional artists, so the drawing-master at Doncaster had me amongst his pupils. He was an elderly man, rather stout, and very respectable. His house was extremely neat and tidy, with proper mahogany furniture, and no artistic eccentricities of any kind whatever. He himself was always irreproachably dressed, and he wore a large ruby ring on the little finger of his left hand. To us boys he appeared to be a personage of great dignity, but we were not afraid of him in spite of the dignity of his manners, as he could not apply the cane. He was not unkind, yet in all my life I never met with anybody concerned with the fine arts who had so little sympathy, so little enthusiasm. On the whole, he was distinctly gentle with me, but I made him angry twice. He had done me the honor to promote me to water-color, and as I wanted a rag to wipe my slab and brushes, I ventured to ask for one, on which he turned upon me a glance of haughty surprise, and said, "Do you suppose, sir, that I can undertake to supply you with rags?" This will give an idea of the curiously unsympathetic nature of the man. On another occasion I was drawing a house, or beginning to draw one, when the master came to look over my shoulder and found great fault with me for beginning with the upper part of the edifice. "What stonemason or bricklayer," said he, "would think of building his chimney before he had laid the first row of stones on the foundation?" A young pupil must not correct the bad reasoning of his elders, but it seemed to me that the cases of a bricklayer building a real house and an artist representing one on paper were not precisely the same. Later in life I found that the best artists brought their works forward as much as possible simultaneously, sketching all the parts lightly at first, and keeping them all in the same degree of finish till the end. [Footnote: The most rational way to paint is first to paint all the large masses together, then the smaller or secondary masses, and finally the details, bringing the picture forward all together, as nearly as possible.]
Nevertheless, the drawing-lessons were always a delightful break in our week's occupation, and I remember with pleasure the walk in the morning down to the drawing-master's house, two days in the week, and the happy hour of messing with water-color that followed it. In those days of blissful ignorance I had, of course, no conception of the difficulties of art, and was making that delusively rapid apparent progress which is so very encouraging to all incipient amateurs. Not a single study of those times remains in my portfolios to-day, and I know not what may have become of them. This is the more to be regretted, that in the fine weather our master took us into the fields round Doncaster and taught us to sketch from nature, which we accomplished in a rudimentary way.
My dear, wise, and excellent guardian was always anxious that I should receive as good an education as my opportunities would permit, so she insisted on my learning French, and had herself taught me the elements of that language, which she was able to read, though she did not pretend to speak it. On going to Doncaster I found Latin and Greek so serious a business that I wanted to lighten my burdens, and begged to be excused from going on with French; but my guardian (who, with all her exquisite gentleness, had a very strong will) would not hear of any such abandonment, and wrote very determinedly on the subject both to me and to Mr. Cape. It is extremely probable that this exercise of my guardian's will may have had a great influence on my future life, as without some early knowledge of French I might not have felt tempted to pursue the study later, and if I had never spoken French my whole existence would have been quite different.
Our French master at Doncaster was an Italian of good family named Testa, one of the most perfect gentlemen I ever met, and an excellent teacher. My deepest regret about him now is that I did not learn Italian with him also, then or afterwards. [Footnote: It is astonishing how many chances of improvement young men foolishly allow to slip by them. It would have been quite worth while after I became a free agent to go and spend six months or more at Doncaster, simply to read Italian with so good a master as Testa.] I learned Italian later in life, and with a far inferior master. Signor Testa was a tall, thin man, of rather cold and stately manners, with a fine-looking, noble head covered with curly brown hair. He was always exquisitely clean and orderly, both about his person and the books and things that belonged to him in his rooms, where there was an atmosphere of almost feminine refinement, though their occupant was by no means effeminate in his thoughts or bearing. We understood that he had left Italy in consequence of some political difficulty, and we knew that he had still relations there. One day, as we were engaged with our lesson at his lodgings, he took some leaves and a faded flower or two that had just arrived in a letter from Italy, and said, with tears in his eyes, "These have come from my father's place." Now it so happened that the eldest boy in our class was liable to fits of perfectly uncontrollable laughter (what the French call le fou rire), and, as the reader is sure to know, if he has ever been troubled with that disease himself, the fit very often comes on just at the moment when the patient feels that he is called upon to look particularly grave. This is what happened in the present case. Our unlucky fellow-pupil was tickled with something in Testa's accent or manner, or perhaps as he was an English boy the foreigner's tenderness of feeling may have seemed to him absurd; but whatever may have been the reason, his face became convulsed with suppressed laughter, which burst forth at last uncontrollably. This made the rest of us laugh too—not at poor Testa, but at our unworthy comrade. I shall never forget the Italian gentleman's look on that occasion. His eyes were still brimming with tears, but he laid down the flattened leaves and flowers and looked at us all round with an expression that cut me, at least, to the quick. "Young gentlemen," he said, "I did not expect you to be so unkind." I longed to explain, but did not find words at the moment, and we went on with our lesson. The fact was that Testa had not the least sense of humor in his composition, and so he could not understand what had happened. A humorous man, acquainted with the nature of boys, would have understood the attack of fou rire, and forgiven it; but then a humorous man would have thought twice before appealing to a set of English boys for sympathy with the feelings of an exile. The incident certainly increased my feelings of respect for Signor Testa, and made me try to please him. The French lessons were very agreeable to me, and besides duly preparing them, I read some French on my own account, and acquired a liking for the language that has remained with me ever since.
If the reader has the sound old-fashioned notions about education by which all subjects were strictly divided into the two classes of serious and frivolous pursuits, he will already have suspicions about the soundness of a training that included the two idle accomplishments of Drawing and French, and what will he say, I wonder, when music is added to the list? My initiation into music took place in the following manner. We had a dancing-master who came regularly to Mr. Cape's house to prepare us to shine in society, and his instrument was the convenient dancing-master's pocket fiddle or kit. Although this instrument gives forth but a feeble kind of music, I was far more enchanted with it than by the dancing, and wrote a most persuasive letter to my good guardian imploring her to let me study the violin. Those were the happy times when one had energy for everything! I had already three languages on hand, and the art of painting in water-colors, besides which I was in a mathematical school where boys were prepared for Cambridge, [Footnote: Doncaster School at that time was a sort of little nursery for Cambridge. Mr. Cape was a Cambridge man, and so was his brother, the able master of Peterborough School.] but there seemed to be no reason why the art of violin-playing should not be added to these pursuits. My guardian, before consenting, prudently wrote to Mr. Cape to ask if this new accomplishment would not interfere too much with other matters, and his answer was in these words: "The lad is getting on well enough with his studies, so if he wants to amuse himself a little by scraping catgut, even let him scrape away!" It will be seen that Mr. Cape did not assign to music the high rank in education which has been attributed to it by some famous thinkers in ancient and modern times. Few musical sensations experienced during my whole life have equalled in intensity the sensation of hearing our dancing-master play upon a full-sized violin, after the weak and thin tones that our ears had been accustomed to by his kit. I was so little in the way of hearing music at Doncaster that the richer note of the violin seemed musical as the lyre of Apollo. A contrast so striking made me more passionately eager to learn, but I was informed by one of the private pupils who exercised considerable authority over the younger boys, that although I might study the violin with the dancing-master, I was never to practise it by myself. This restriction was pardonable in one who might reasonably dread the torturing attempts of a beginner, but it was certainly not favorable to my progress. However, in course of time it came to be relaxed; that is, as soon as I could play tunes.
It is very odd that any one who dislikes dancing as heartily as I have always disliked it in manhood, should have been rather a brilliant performer when a boy. Our dancing-master was extremely pleased with me, and encouraged me by many compliments; nay, he even went so far as to teach me a sailor's hornpipe, which I danced in public as a pas seul when the school gave a theatrical entertainment on the approach of the Christmas holidays. All this is simply inconceivable now, for there is nothing which bores me so thoroughly as a ball, and I would at any time travel fifty miles to avoid one.
At school the principal amusement was cricket, for which I soon acquired an intense aversion. All games bore me except chess and billiards, and it was especially hard to be compelled to field out to please the elder boys, and so waste the precious holiday afternoons. Our cricket ground was on the racecourse, and when I could get away I did so most joyfully, and betook myself to a quiet place amongst the furze nearer to the Red House than the Grand Stand. There my great delight was to read Scott's poems, which I possessed in pocket volumes. The same volumes are in my study now, and simply to handle them is enough to bring back many sensations of long-past boyhood. Of all the influences that had sway over me in those days and for long afterwards, the influence of Scott was by far the strongest. A boy cannot make a better choice. Scott has the immense advantage over dull authors of being almost always interesting, and the equally great advantage over many exciting authors that he never leaves an unhealthy feeling in the mind. I began with "The Lady of the Lake," then read "Marmion," and "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" and the Ballads, and finally "Rokeby." These were in separate small volumes, which gave me a desire to possess other authors in the same convenient form, so I added Goldsmith, Crabbe, Kirke White, and Moore's "Irish Melodies." A prize for history gave me "Paradise Lost" in two volumes of my favorite size, and two school-fellows, who saw that I had a taste for such volumes, kindly gave me others. During the holidays my guardian authorized the purchase of a Shakespeare in seven pocket volumes, and the "Spectator" in eight, so I had quite a little library, which became inexpressibly dear to me. It is very remarkable that for a long time I knew Scott thoroughly as a poet without having read a single novel by him. Having been invited by one of my school-fellows to a country house not very far from Doncaster, I was asked by the lady of the house what authors I had read, and on mentioning Scott's poems was told that he was greater as a novelist than as a poet, and that the Waverley novels were certainly his finest works. This seemed incredible to me then, the poems being so delightful that they could not possibly be surpassed. On another occasion I happened to be standing with Mr. Cape in the little chapel at Conisborough Castle, and having heard from an older school-fellow that Athelstane had died there, I asked Mr. Cape if it was true. "Yes," he answered, "if you believe Sir Walter Scott." Not having read "Ivanhoe," I was under the impression that the Athelstane in question was an historical personage.
Nothing in the retrospect of life strikes me as more astonishing than the rapid mental growth that must have taken place between the date of my father's death and its second or third anniversary. When my father died I was simply a child, though rather a precocious one, as the journal in Wales testifies; but between two and three years after that event the child had become a boy, with a keen taste for literature, which, if it had been taken advantage of by his teachers, ought to have made his education a more complete success than it ever became.
The misfortune was that the classics were not taught as literature at all, but as exercises in grammar and prosody. They were dissected by teachers who were simply lecturers on the science of language, and who had not large views even about that. Our whole attention being directed to the technicalities of the pedagogue, we did not perceive that the classic authors had produced poems which, as literature, were not inferior to those of our best English poets. So it happened that those of us who had literary tastes were content to satisfy them in reading English authors, and left them, as it were, at the door of the classroom. I worked courageously enough at the Latin books which were set before me, but never found the slightest enjoyment in them; indeed, it was only much later, and through the medium of French and Italian, that I gained some partial access to the literary beauty of Latin. As for Greek, I began it vigorously at Doncaster, but I did not get beyond the rudiments during my stay there.
CHAPTER VIII.
1845.
Early attempts in English verse.—Advantages of life at Doncaster.—A
school incident.—Fagging.—Story of a dog.—Robbery.—My schoolfellow,
Henry Alexander.—His remarkable influence.—Other schoolfellows.
—Story of a boat.—A swimming adventure.—Our walks and battles.
The love of literature was naturally followed by some early attempts at versification in English, which is generally looked upon as a silly waste of time in a boy, though if he writes Latin verses, which we were taught to do, he is thought to be seriously occupied. Prom the age of eleven to that of twenty-one I wrote English verses very frequently, and am now very glad I did so, being quite convinced that it was a most profitable exercise in the language. My early verses were invariably echoes of my dearly beloved Sir Walter Scott, a master whom it is not very difficult to imitate so far as mere versification is concerned. One little incident about this early verse-making is worth mentioning in this place. I was staying for a few days with a school-fellow at a house near Doncaster, when I dreamed a new ballad about a shipwreck, and on awaking wrote it down at once. The thing would not be worth quoting, if it were possible to remember it; but it was correct enough in rhymes and metre.
My life at Doncaster was not on the whole unhappy, and the steady discipline of the school was doing me much good. Mr. Cape was a very severe master, and he used the cane very freely; but to a boy who had lived under the tyranny of my father Mr. Cape's severity seemed a light affliction. He kept up his dignity by seldom appearing in the schoolroom; he sat in his library or in the dining-room in a large morocco-covered arm-chair, holding a book in one hand whilst the other was always ready to clasp the cane that he kept close by. Any failure of memory would cause him to dart a severe look at the delinquent, a false quantity made him scowl, and when he suspected real carelessness the cane was resorted to at once. Unfortunately he could not apply it and keep his temper at the same time. The exercise roused him to fury, and a punishment which in his first intention was to have been mild became cruel through the effect of his own rapidly increasing irritation. Mr. Cape's health was not good, and no doubt this added to the natural irritability of his temper. There was one unfortunate youngster whose hands were covered with chilblains, and who was constantly displeasing Mr. Cape by inattention or inaccuracy, so he incurred such perpetual canings that his hands were pitiable to see, and must have been extremely painful. Our head-master was no doubt laudably, or selfishly, anxious that we should get on with our work so as to do him credit at Cambridge, where most of us were expected to go; but he seemed almost incapable of pity. I remember having the intense pleasure of playing him a little trick just after he had been caning a lad who was a very good friend of mine.
It happened in this way—but first I must describe the topography of the place. Mr. Cape's house was a tall brick building that looked upon the street on one side, and on our playground (which had formerly been a garden) on the other. At the other end of the garden was a wash-house with the schoolroom over it, and in the wash-house there was a large copper for boiling linen. In the house the dining-room looked over the play-ground, and it somehow happened (perhaps it was in the Easter holidays) that there were no pupils left in the place but my friend Brokenribs and I. [Footnote: We always called him Brokenribs, which recalled his real name by a sort of imitation; besides which, though his ribs had not actually been broken, he had suffered from a good many bruises.] Mr. Cape called him up into the dining-room after dark, and began to thrash him. Brokenribs, after some time, began to think that a sufficient number of strokes had been administered, and put the dining-table between himself and his adversary, who could not get at him any longer. I was in the playground, and understood all that was passing by the shadows on the window-blinds.
It was most amusing to me, as a spectator, to see the shadow of Brokenribs flit rapidly past, and still better perhaps to see it followed by that of Mr. Cape, with bald head and uplifted cane. When this entertainment had lasted some time I heard a great banging of doors, and Brokenribs issued from the house, rushing like a hunted deer the whole length of the playground. "Cape's after me!" he said. "Where shall I hide?" "In the copper!" I answered with a sudden inspiration, and ran into the wash-house with him, where I lifted the lid and stowed him away in safety. The lid had but just been replaced when Mr. Cape appeared in the playground and asked if I had seen Brokenribs. "Yes, sir, certainly; he was running this way, sir." I accompanied Mr. Cape into the wash-house, which had an outer door giving access to a lane, and observed with pleasure that he was forced to the irresistible conclusion that Brokenribs had taken flight. The lad's parents lived at an accessible distance (perhaps twenty miles), so Mr. Cape was tormented with the unpleasant idea that the lad had gone home to tell his own story. He therefore ordered a gig and drove off so as to catch Brokenribs during his flight. As my friend had been sitting in cold water, I got him out when the coast was clear, and made him go to bed, where the housekeeper sent him a treacle posset. After driving many a mile in vain, Mr. Cape returned very late, and never said a word on the subject to either of us.
Poor Brokenribs was not only very often caned, but he was fag to a tyrannical private pupil, who made him suffer severely. The private pupils upheld the sacred institution of fagging, which gave them a pleasant sense of authority, and as they sat like gods above us, they were not in danger of retaliation. Brokenribs was fag to a young man who determined that he should learn two things,—first, to endure pain without flinching, and secondly, to smoke tobacco. To achieve the first of these great purposes, he used to twist the lad's arms and administer a certain number of hard blows upon them. This he did every day so long as the whim lasted. As for the smoking, poor Brokenribs had to smoke a certain number of pipes every day. A single pipe made him look ghastly, and the whole series made him dreadfully ill. I remember his white face at such times; but he attained his reward in becoming an accomplished and precocious smoker.
I was fag myself at one time to a private pupil; but he was not very tyrannical with me, and only ordered me to light fires, which was a valuable element in my education.
It gives one a fine independence of servants to be able to light a fire quickly and well. This accomplishment enables a man to get up as early as he chooses, even in winter, and I have never forgotten it; indeed, I lighted a fire an hour before writing this page. In my opinion, it would be wise to teach every boy the art of doing without servants on occasion.
The private pupils exercised authority in other ways than by converting us into fags. It so happened that I became possessor of an unfortunate tawny dog. How one boy should be owner of a dog at school when the others had nothing to do with him may be difficult to understand; and indeed my ownership did not last for very long, but it was pleasant to me whilst it lasted. The poor beast, if I remember rightly, belonged to somebody who did not want him, and was going to have him slain. I had always an intense affection for dogs, and begged Mr. Cape to let me keep this one, promising that it should not be a nuisance. I was rather a favorite with the head-master, so he granted this very extraordinary request, and it was understood that the dog was to lodge in a box in the wash-house. I bought some fresh straw for him, and took the greatest care of him, so that he soon became strongly attached to me. Had there been no private pupils the creature would have been safe enough, as I would have fought any lad of my own age in his behalf, and Brokenribs, who was older, would have fought the bigger boys; but we none of us dared to resist the privates, who were grown men. One of the privates thought that a small boy ought not to possess a dog, and began to affirm that the animal was a nuisance. He then said it would be an improvement to cut off its tail, which he did accordingly, in spite of all my remonstrances. I pitied the poor beast when it lay suffering with its bleeding stump, and did all that affection could suggest for its consolation; but shortly afterwards the same private pupil, who had a taste for pistol-shooting, thought it would be good fun to shoot at a living target, so he took my dog away into a field and shot him there. I knew what he was going to do, but had no power to prevent it, as he had begun by persuading Mr. Cape that the poor beast was a nuisance, which he certainly was not. He was a very quiet, timid dog, of an anxious, apprehensive temperament, having probably never had reason to place much trust in the human species.
There was one lad at the school who was a coarse bully, and I remember his playing a trick on me which was nothing less than pure brigandage. He ordered me to give him my keys, and rummaged in my private box. He found a small telescope in it which was to his liking, and took it. I never got any redress about that telescope, as the bully coolly said it had always belonged to him, and he was powerful enough to act on the great principle that la force prime le droit.
It is most astonishing how some boys gain a great ascendency over others when there seems to be no substantial reason for it. One of my school-fellows, who was cousin to some of my cousins, and bore my surname as one of his Christian names, had quite a remarkable ascendency over boys, and yet he had not the physical size and strength which usually impose upon them. He was slight and small, though he had a handsome face; but he had an aristocratic temperament, which inspired a sort of respect, and a governing disposition, which made other boys yield to him. Nothing was more curious than to see how completely the bully effaced himself before that young gentleman's superiority. The bully was also a snob, and probably believed that Henry Alexander belonged to the highest aristocracy. He was well descended and well connected (there was an abeyant peerage in his family), but in point of fact, his social position was not better than that of some other boys in the school. I remember well the intense astonishment of the bully when he found out one day that Alexander bore my name as a Christian name, and learned the reason.
Alexander was a perfect little dandy, being at all times exceptionally well dressed for a schoolboy, and on Sundays he came out with remarkable splendor. In spring and summer he wore a jacket and trousers of the most fashionable cut and of the very finest blue cloth, with a gloss upon it, and a white waistcoat adorned with a bunch of valuable trinkets to his watch-chain.
His hat, his gloves, his wonderfully small boots, were all the pink of perfection. He smoked very good cigars, and talked about life with an air of the most consummate experience, that gained him profound respect. Most boys hesitate about the choice of a profession, but Alexander had no such indecision. He had made up his mind to be an officer, with his father's consent, and guided by a sure instinct, as he had exactly the qualities to make himself respected in a regiment. It does a young officer no harm to be rather a dandy and to shine in society, whilst the extreme decision and promptitude of Alexander's peremptory will, and the natural ease with which he assumed authority, would be most useful in command. A few years later he joined the 64th Regiment and went to India, where in spite of his rather delicate frame he became an active sportsman. One day, however, the surgeon of the regiment saw him by accident in his bath, and declared that he was too thin to be well, so he examined him, and found that consumption had begun. Alexander returned to England, where he lingered a few months, and then died. He came to see me not very long before his death, not looking nearly so ill as I had expected, but the doctor knew best. With better health he might have had a brilliant career, and was certain, at least, to be an efficient and popular officer, with the right degree of love for his profession.
Another of my fellow-pupils who died early was the eldest son and heir of a country squire, and one of the handsomest and most able young men I ever met. He was a private pupil, yet not at all disliked by the younger boys, as he was always kind and friendly towards us. There was a project for his going out to India, and he talked over the matter with his father one evening at his own home. A dispute arose between father and son as they sat talking late, and when they separated for the night they were not on good terms. The next morning the young gentleman was found dead in bed under circumstances which led to a very strong suspicion of suicide. We were all deeply grieved by his death, as he seemed to have the best gifts of Nature, and life was opening so brightly before him; but he had a very high spirit, and if he really did commit suicide, which is not improbable, it is very likely that his pride had been wounded. Whenever I read in the poets or elsewhere of gifted young men who have ended sadly and prematurely, his image rises before me, though it is now forty years since we met. Poor Brokenribs is gone too, though he lived long enough to be a clergyman for some years. He was a thoroughly good fellow, bearing all his hardships with admirable equanimity.
Before quitting the history of my school-days, I ought, perhaps, to tell the story of a great swimming exploit whereof I was the hero. The reader, after this expression, will count upon some display of prowess and of vanity at the same time, but there is neither in this case.
After I had been at Doncaster about a year, one of the private pupils came to me one day with a pencil and a piece of paper in his hand, and said, "We are going to buy a boat at Cambridge; will you subscribe?" Now it so happened that I was born a boating creature, just as decidedly as I was not born to be a cricketing creature, and such a question addressed to me was much as if one said to a young duck, "Would you like to go on the pond, or would you prefer being shut up in a cage?" Of course I said "yes" at once, and wrote an artful letter to my dear guardian begging for the four guineas which were to constitute me a shareholder in the expected vessel.
The future captain of the boat took my money very readily when it came, and nobody could have felt more certain of a boating career than I did; but just before the arrival of the vessel itself, it occurred to Mr. Cape (rather late in the day) that he would take a prudent precaution, so he issued a ukase to the effect that none but good swimmers were to make any use of the boat. Now I had often heard, and read too in books, that man was naturally a swimming animal, and that any one who was thrown into water would swim if only he was not afraid, so I said inwardly, "It is true that I never did swim, but that is probably because I have only bathed in shallow water; I have courage enough, and if they pitch me into the river Don, most probably I shall swim, as man is naturally a swimming animal and fear is the only impediment." One day at dinner Mr. Cape asked all the subscribers, one after another, if they could swim. There was a boy of about fourteen who was a splendid swimmer, and well known for such both to the masters and his school-fellows, but Mr. Cape did not omit him, and I envied the simple ease of his "Yes, sir." When it came to me, I too said "Yes, sir," affecting the same ease, and Mr. Cape looked at me, and the assistant-master looked at me, and every one of the fellows looked at me, and then a slight smile was visible on all their countenances. After dinner the fine swimmer expressed his regret that he had not known sooner about my possession of this accomplishment, as we might have enjoyed it together in the Don. The next Saturday afternoon was fine, so the swimmers went to the river with the assistant-master, and I was very politely invited to accompany them. On this an older boy, who had always been kind to me, said privately, "You can't swim, I know you can't, and you'd better confess it, for if you don't, you run a good chance of being drowned this afternoon; the water is thirty feet deep." I answered, with cold thanks, that my friend's apprehensions were groundless; and we set off.