The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 1 (of 2) / By His Wife, Isabel Burton

The town of the Canebière was far from being the splendid City that it is now, but it always had one great advantage, that of being in Provence. I always had a particular propensity for this bit of Africa in Europe, and in after life in India for years, my greatest friend, Dr. Steinhaüser, and myself indulged in visions of a country cottage, where we would pass our days in hammocks, and our nights in bed, and never admit books or papers, pens or ink, letters or telegrams. This retreat was intended to be a rest for middle age, in order to prepare for senility and second childhood. But this vision passed into the limbo of things imagined (in fact, the vision of two hard-working and overworked men), and I little thought that at fifty-five I should be a married man, still in service, still knocking about the world, working hard with my wife, and poor Steinhaüser dead fifteen years ago.

To return. However agreeable Provence was, the change from Italians to French was not pleasant. The subjects of Louis Philippe, the Citizen-King, were rancorous against Englishmen, and whenever a fellow wanted to get up a row he had only to cry out, "These are the misérables who poisoned Napoleon at St. Helena." This pleasant little scene occurred on board a coasting steamer, between Marseille and Cette, when remonstrance was made with the cheating steward, backed by the rascally captain. Cette was beginning to be famous for the imitation wines composed by the ingenuity of Monsieur Guizot, brother of the austère intrigant. He could turn out any wine, from the cheapest Marsala to the choicest Madeiran Bual.

But he did his counterfeiting honestly, as a little "G" was always branded on the bottom of the cork, and Cette gave a good lesson about ordering wines at hotels. The sensible traveller, when in a strange place, always calls for the carte, and chooses the cheapest; he knows by sad experience, by cramp and acidity of stomach, that the dearest wines are often worse than the cheapest, and at best that they are the same with different labels. The proprietor of the hotel at Cette, had charged his dame de comptoir with robbing the till. She could not deny it, but she replied with a tu quoque: "If I robbed you I only returned tit for tat. You have been robbing the public for the last quarter of a century, and only the other day you brought a bottle of ordinaire and escamoté'd it into sixteen kinds of vins fin." The landlord thought it better to drop the proceedings. From Cette we travelled in hired carriages (as Dobbin and the carriages had been sold at Naples) to Toulouse. We stayed at Toulouse for a week, and I was so delighted with student life there, that I asked my father's leave to join them. But he was always determined on the Fellowship at Oxford. Our parents periodically fell ill with asthma, and we young ones availed ourselves of the occasion, by wandering far and wide over the country. We delighted in these journeys, for though the tutor was there, the books were in the boxes. My chief remembrances of Toulouse were, finding the mistress of the hotel correcting her teeth with table d'hôte forks, and being placed opposite the model Englishman of Alexandre Dumas and Eugène Sue. The man's face never faded from my memory. Carroty hair, white and very smooth forehead, green eyes, a purple-reddish lower face, whiskers that had a kind of crimson tinge, and an enormous mouth worn open, so as to show the protruding teeth.

When the great heat was over, the family returned to Pau, where they found a good house over the arcade in the Place Gramont. Pau boasts of being the birthplace of Henry IV., Gaston de Foix, and Bernadotte. Strangers go through the usual routine of visiting the Castle, called after the Protestant-Catholic King, Henry IV.; driving to Ortez, where Marshal Soult fought unjustifiably the last action of the Peninsular War; and of wandering about the flat, moor-like landes, which not a little resemble those about Bordeaux. The society at Pau was an improvement upon that of Naples. The most remarkable person was Captain (R.N.) Lord William Paget, who was living with his mother-in-law (Baroness de Rothenberg), and his wife and children, and enjoying himself as usual. Though even impecunious, he was the best of boon companions, and a man generally loved. But he could also make himself feared, and, as the phrase is, would stand no nonsense. He had a little affair with a man whom we will call Robinson, and as they were going to the meeting-place he said to his second, "What's the fellow's pet pursuit?" "Well!" answered the other, "I don't know—but, let me see—ah, I remember, a capital hand at waltzing." "Waltzing!" said Lord William, and hit him accurately on the hip-bone, which spoilt his saltations for many a long month. Years and years after, when both were middle-aged men, I met at Shepherd's Hotel, Cairo, his son, the boy whom I remembered straddling across a diminutive donkey—General Billy Paget. He had also entered the Anglo-Indian army, and amongst other things had distinguished himself by getting the better (in an official correspondence) of General John Jacob, the most obstinate and rancorous of men. "Billy" had come out to Egypt with the intention of returning to India, but the Red Sea looked so sweltering hot and its shores so disgustingly barren, that he wrote to Aden to recall his luggage, which had been sent forward, then and there retired from the service, married a charming woman, and gave his old friends a very excellent dinner in London.

There were also some very nice L'Estranges, one of the daughters a very handsome woman, some pretty Foxes, an old Captain Sheridan, with two good-looking daughters, and the Ruxtons, whom we afterwards met at Pisa and the Baths of Lucca. Certain elderly maidens of the name of Shannon lived in a house almost overhanging the Gave de Pau. Upon this subject O'Connell, the Agitator, produced a bon mot, which is, however, not fit for the drawing-room. Pau was still a kind of invalid colony for consumptives, although the native proverb about its climate is, "that it has eight months winter, and four of the Inferno." Dr. Diaforus acts upon the very intelligible system of self-interest. He does not wish his patients to die upon his hands, and consequently he sends them to die abroad. In the latter part of the last century he sent his moribunds to Lisbon and to Montpellier, where the vent de bise is as terrible as a black east wind is in Harwich.

Then he packed them off to Pisa, where the tropics and Norway meet, and to damp, muggy, reeking Madeira, where patients have lived a quarter of a century with half a lung, but where their sound companions and nurses suffer from every description of evil which attend biliousness. They then found out that the dry heat of Teneriffe allowed invalids to be out after sunset, and, lastly, they discovered that the dry cold of Canada and Iceland, charged with ozone, offers the best chance of a complete cure. I proposed to utilize the regions about the beautiful Dead Sea, about thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, where oxygen accumulates, and where, run as hard as you like, you can never be out of breath. This will be the great Consumptive Hospital of the future.

Smoking and drinking led us, as it naturally does, into trouble. There was a Jamaica Irishman with a very dark skin and a very loud brogue, called Thomas, who was passing the winter for the benefit of his chest at Pau. He delighted in encouraging us for mischief sake. One raw snowy day he gave us his strongest cigars, and brewed us a bowl of potent steaming punch, which was soon followed by another. Edward, not being very well, was unusually temperate, and so I, not liking to waste it, drank for two. A walk was then maliciously proposed, and the cold air acted as usual as stimulant to stimulant. Thomas began laughing aloud, Edward plodded gloomily along, and I got into half a dozen scrimmages with the country people. At last matters began to look serious, and the too hospitable host took his two guests back to their home. I managed to stagger upstairs; I was deadly pale, with staring eyes, and compelled to use the depressed walk of a monkey, when I met my mother. She was startled at my appearance, and as I pleaded very sick she put me to bed. But other symptoms puzzled her. She fetched my father, who came to the bedside, looked carefully for a minute at his son and heir, and turned upon his heel, exclaiming, "The beast's in liquor." The mother burst into a flood of tears, and next morning presented me with a five-franc piece, making me promise to be good for the future, and not to read Lord Chesterfield's "Letters to his Son," of which she had a dreadful horror. It need hardly be said that the five francs soon melted away in laying in a stock of what is popularly called "a hair of the dog that bit."

What we learnt last at Pau was the Bearnais dialect. It is a charmingly naïve dialect, mixture of French, Spanish, and Provençale, and containing a quantity of pretty, pleasant songs. The country folk were delighted when addressed in their own lingo. It considerably assisted me in learning Provençale, the language of Le Geysaber; and I found it useful in the most out-of-the-way corners of the world, even in Brazil. Nothing goes home to the heart of a man so much as to speak to him in his own patois. Even a Lancashire lad can scarcely resist the language of "Tummas and Mary."

At length the wheezy, windy, rainy, foggy, sleety, snowy winter passed away, and the approach of the warm four months, warned strangers to betake themselves to the hills. This time the chosen place was Argélés. In those days it was a little village, composed mainly of one street, not unlike mining Arrayal in Brazil, or a negro village on the banks of the Gaboon. But the scenery around it was beautiful. It lay upon a brawling stream, and the contrast of the horizontal meadow-lands around it, with the backing of almost vertical hills and peaks, thoroughly satisfied the eye. It had cruel weather in winter time, and a sad accident had just happened. A discharged soldier had reached it in midwinter, when the snow lay deep and the wolves were out, and the villagers strongly dissuaded him from trying to reach his father's home in the hills. He was armed with his little briquet, the little curved sword then carried by the French infantry soldiers, and he laughed all caution to scorn. It was towards nightfall; he had hardly walked a mile, before a pack came down upon him, raging and ravening with hunger. He put his back to a tree, and defended himself manfully, killing several wolves, and escaped whilst the carcases were being devoured by their companions; but he sheathed his sword without taking the precaution to wipe it, and when he was attacked again it was glued to the scabbard. The wolves paid dearly for their meal, for the enraged villagers organized a battue, and killed about a score of them as an expiatory sacrifice for the poor soldier.

We two brothers, abetted by our tutor, had fallen into the detestable practice of keeping our hands in by shooting swifts and swallows, of which barbarity we were afterwards heartily ashamed. Our first lesson was from the peasants. On one occasion, having shot a harmless bird that fell among the reapers, the latter charged us in a body, and being armed with scythes and sickles, caused a precipitous retreat. In those days the swallow seemed to be a kind of holy bird in the Bearnais, somewhat like the pigeons of Mecca and Venice. I can only remember that this was the case with old Assyrians and Aramæans, who called the swift or devilling the destiny, or foretelling bird, because it heralded the spring.

As the mountain fog began to roll down upon the valley, our father found that his poor chest required a warmer climate. This time we travelled down the Grand Canal du Midi in a big public barge, which resembled a Dutch trekschuyt. At first, passing through the locks was a perpetual excitement, but this very soon palled. The L'Estranges were also on board, and the French part of the company were not particularly pleasant. They were mostly tourists returning home, mixed with a fair proportion of commis-voyageurs, a class that corresponds with, but does not resemble, our commercial traveller. The French species seems to have but two objects in social life: first, to glorify himself, and secondly, to glorify Paris.

Monsieur Victor Hugo has carried the latter mania to the very verge of madness, and left to his countrymen an example almost as bad as bad can be. The peculiarity of the commis-voyageur in those days, was the queer thin varnish of politeness, which he thought it due to himself to assume. He would help himself at breakfast or dinner to the leg, wing, and part of the breast, and pass the dish to his neighbour when it contained only a neck and a drumstick, with a pleased smile and a ready bow, anxiously asking "Madame, veut elle de la volaille?" and he was frightfully unprogressive. He wished to "let sleeping dogs lie," and hated to move quiet things. It almost gave him an indigestion to speak of railways. He found the diligence and the canal boat quite fast enough for his purpose. And in this to a certain extent he represented the Genius of the Nation.

With the excellent example of the Grand Canal du Midi before them, the French have allowed half a century to pass before they even realized the fact that their rivers give them most admirable opportunities for inland navigation, and that by energy in spending money they could have a water line leading up from Manches to Paris, and down from Paris to the Mediterranean. In these days of piercing isthmuses, they seem hardly to have thought of a canal that would save the time and expense of running round Spain and Portugal, when it would be so easy to cut the neck that connects their country with the Peninsula. The rest of the journey was eventless as usual. The family took the steamer at Marseille, steamed down to Leghorn, and drove up to Pisa. There they found a house on the south side of the Lung' Arno, belonging to a widow of the name of Pini. It was a dull and melancholy place enough, but it had the advantage of a large garden that grew chiefly cabbages. It was something like a return home; a number of old acquaintances were met, and few new ones were made.

The studies were kept up with unremitting attention. I kept up drawing, painting, and classics, and it was lucky for me that I did. I have been able to make my own drawings, and to illustrate my own books. It is only in this way that a correct idea of unfamiliar scenes can be given. Travellers who bring home a few scrawls and put them into the hands of a professional illustrator, have the pleasure of seeing the illustrated paper style applied to the scenery and the people of Central Africa and Central Asia and Europe. Even when the drawings are carefully done by the traveller-artist, it is hard to persuade the professional to preserve their peculiarities. For instance, a sketch from Hyderabad, the inland capital of Sind, showed a number of mast-like poles which induced the English artist to write out and ask if there ought not to be yards and sails. In sending a sketch home of a pilgrim in his proper costume, the portable Korán worn under the left arm narrowly escaped becoming a revolver. On the chocolate-coloured cover of a book on Zanzibar, stands a negro in gold, straddling like the Colossus of Rhodes. He was propped crane-like upon one leg, supporting himself with his spear, and applying, African fashion, the sole of the other foot to the perpendicular calf.

Madame P——, the landlady, had three children. Sandro, the son, was a tall, gawky youth, who wore a cacciatore or Italian shooting-jacket of cotton-leather, not unlike the English one made loose, with the tails cut off. The two daughters were extremely handsome girls, in very different styles. Signorina Caterina, the elder, was tall, slim, and dark, with the palest possible complexion and regular features. Signorina Antonia, the younger, could not boast of the same classical lines, but the light brown hair, and the pink and white complexion, made one forgive and forget every irregularity. Consequently I fell in love with the elder, and Edward with the latter. Proposals of marriage were made and accepted. The girls had heard that, in her younger days, mamma had had half a dozen strings to her bow at the same time, and they were perfectly ready to follow parental example. But a serious obstacle occurred in the difficulty of getting the ceremony performed. As in England there was a popular but mistaken idea that a man could put a rope round his wife's neck, take her to market, and sell her like a quadruped, so there was, and perhaps there is still, in Italy, a legend that any affianced couple standing up together in front of the congregation during the elevation of the Host, and declaring themselves man and wife, are very much married. Many inquiries were made about this procedure, and at one time it was seriously intended. But the result of questioning was, that promessi sposi so acting, are at once imprisoned and punished by being kept in separate cells, and therefore it became evident, that the game was not worth the candle. This is like a Scotch marriage, however—with the Italian would be binding in religion, and the Scotch in law.

Edward and I made acquaintance with a lot of Italian medical students, compared with whom, English men of the same category were as babes, and they did us no particular good. At last the winter at Pisa ended, badly—very badly. The hard studies of the classics during the day, occasionally concluded with a revel at night. On one hopeless occasion a bottle of Jamaica gin happened to fall into the wrong hands. The revellers rose at midnight, boiled water, procured sugar and lemons, and sat down to a steaming soup tureen full of punch. Possibly it was followed by a second, but the result was that they sallied out into the streets, determined upon what is called a "spree." Knockers did not exist, and Charleys did not confine themselves to their sentry-boxes, and it was vain to ring at bells, when every one was sound asleep. Evidently the choice of amusements was limited, and mostly confined to hustling inoffensive passers-by. But as one of these feats had been performed, and cries for assistance had been uttered, up came the watch at the double, and the revellers had nothing to do but to make tracks. My legs were the longest, and I escaped; Edward was seized and led off, despite his fists and heels, ignobly to the local violon, or guard-house. One may imagine my father's disgust next morning, when he was courteously informed by the prison authorities that a giovinotto bearing his name, had been lodged during the night at the public expense. The father went off in a state of the stoniest severity to the guard-house, and found the graceless one treating his companions in misfortune, thieves and ruffians of every kind, to the contents of a pocket-flask with which he had provided himself in case of need. This was the last straw; our father determined to transfer his head-quarters to the Baths of Lucca, and then to prepare for breaking up the family. The adieux of Caterina and Antonia were heartrending, and it was agreed to correspond every week. The journey occupied a short time, and a house was soon found in the upper village of Lucca.

The queen in ordinary was a Mrs. Colonel Stisted, as she called herself, the "same Miss Clotilda Clotworthy Crawley who was" so rudely treated by the wild Irish girl, Lady Morgan. I was also obliged to settle an old score with her in after years in "Sinde, or the Unhappy Valley." And so I wrote, "She indeed had left her mark in literature, not by her maudlin volume, 'The Byeways of Italy,' but by the abuse of her fellow authors." She was "the sea goddess with tin ringlets and venerable limbs" of the irrepressible Mrs. Trollope. She also supplied Lever with one of the characters which he etched in with his most corrosive acid. In one season the Baths collected Lady Blessington, Count D'Orsay, the charming Lady Walpole, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the poetess, whose tight sacque of black silk gave us youngsters a series of caricatures. There, too, was old Lady Osborne, full of Greek and Latin, who married her daughter to Captain Bernal, afterwards Bernal Osborne. Amongst the number was Mrs. Young, whose daughter became Madame Matteucci, wife of the celebrated scientist and electrician of Tuscany. She managed, curiously to say, to hold her own in her new position. Finally, I remember Miss Virginia Gabriell, daughter of old General Gabriell, commonly called the "Archangel Gabriel." Virginia Gabriell, "all white and fresh, and virginally plain," afterwards made a name in the musical world, composed beautiful ballads, published many pieces, and married, and died in St. George's Hospital by being thrown from a carriage, August 7, 1877. She showed her savoir faire at the earliest age. At a ball given to the Prince, all appeared in their finest dresses and richest jewellery. Miss Virginia was in white, with a single necklace of pink coral. They danced till daylight; and when the sun arose, Miss Virginia was like a rose amongst faded dahlias and sunflowers.

There was a very nice fellow of the name of Wood, who had just married a Miss Stisted, one of the nieces of the "Queen of the Baths," with whom all the "baths" were in love. Another marking young person was Miss Helen Crowley, a girl of the order "dashing," whose hair was the brightest auburn, and complexion the purest white and red. Her father was the Rev. Dr. Crowley, whose Jewish novel "Salathiel" made a small noise in the world; but either he or his wife disliked children, so Miss Helen had been turned over to the charge of aunts. These were two elderly maiden ladies, whose agnosticism was of the severest description. "Sister, what is that noise?" "The howling of hymns, sister." "The beastly creatures," cried she, as "Come across hill and dale" reached her most irreverent ears. I met both of these ladies in later life, and it was enough to say that all three had terribly changed.

Amongst the remarkable people we knew were the Desanges family, who had a phenomenon in the house. A voice seemed to come out of it of the very richest volume, and every one thought it was a woman's. It really belonged to Master Louis, who afterwards made for himself so great a name for battle-scenes (The Desanges' Crimea and Victoria Cross Gallery) and also for portraits.[3] The voice did not recover itself thoroughly after breaking, but sufficient remained for admirable comic songs, and no man who ever heard them came away from "Le Lor Maire" and "Vilikens et sa Dinah" without aching sides. There was another learned widow of the name of Graves, whose husband had been a kinsman of my father. Her daughter prided herself upon the breadth of her forehead and general intellectuality. She ended by marrying the celebrated historian Von Ranke. Intellectual Englishwomen used to expect a kind of intellectual paradise in marrying German professors. They were to share their labours, assist in their discoveries, and wear a kind of reflected halo or gloria, as the moon receives light from the sun; but they were perfectly shocked when they were ordered to the kitchen, and were addressed with perhaps "Donner—Wetter—Sacrament" if the dinner was not properly cooked.

These little colonies like the "Baths of Lucca" began to decline about 1850, and came to their Nadir in 1870. Then they had a kind of resurrection. The gambling in shares and stocks and loans lost England an immense sum of money, and the losses were most felt by that well-to-do part of the public that had a fixed income and no chance of ever increasing it. The loss of some five hundred millions of pounds sterling, rendered England too expensive for a large class, and presently drove it abroad. It gained numbers in 1881, when the Irish Land Bill, soon to be followed by a corresponding English Land Bill, exiled a multitude of landowners. So the little English colonies, which had dwindled to the lowest expression, gradually grew and grew, and became stronger than they ever did.

The break-up took place about the middle of summer. It was comparatively tame. Italians marvelled at the Spartan nature of the British mother, who, after the habits of fifteen years, can so easily part with her children at the cost of a lachrymose last embrace, and watering her prandial beefsteak with tears. Amongst Italian families, nothing is more common than for all the brothers and sisters to swear that they will not marry if they are to be separated from one another. And even now, in these subversive and progressive days, what a curious contrast is the English and the Italian household. Let me sketch one of the latter, a family belonging to the old nobility, once lords of the land, and now simple proprietors of a fair Estate. In a large garden, and a larger orchard of vines and olives, stands a solid old house, as roomy as a barrack, but without the slightest pretension of comfort or luxury. The old Countess, a widow, has the whole of her progeny around her—two or three stalwart sons, one married and the others partially so, and a daughter who has not yet found a husband. The servants are old family retainers. They consider themselves part and parcel of the household; they are on the most familiar terms with the family, although they would resent with the direst indignation the slightest liberty on the part of outsiders. The day is one of extreme simplicity, and some might even deem it monotonous. Each individual leaves his bed at the hour he or she pleases, and finds coffee, milk, and small rolls in the dining-room. Smoking and dawdling pass the hours till almost mid-day, when déjeuner à la fourchette, or rather a young dinner, leads very naturally up to a siesta. In the afternoon there is a little walking or driving, and even shooting in the case of the most energetic. There is a supper after nightfall, and after that dominoes or cards, or music, or conversazione, keep them awake for half the night. The even tenor of their days is broken only by a festival or a ball in the nearest town, or some pseudo Scientific Congress in a City not wholly out of reach; and so things go on from year to year, and all are happy because they look to nothing else.

Our journey began in the early summer of 1840. My mother and sister were left at the Baths of Lucca, and my father, with Mr. Du Pré, and Edward and I, set out for Switzerland. We again travelled vetturino, and we lads cast longing eyes at the charming country which we were destined not to see again for another ten years. How melancholy we felt when on our way to the chill and dolorous North! At Schinznach I was left in charge of Mr. Du Pré, while my father and brother set out for England direct. These Hapsburg baths in the Aargau had been chosen because the abominable sulphur water, as odorous as that of Harrogate, was held as sovereign in skin complaints, and I was suffering from exanthémata, an eruption brought on by a sudden check of perspiration. These eruptions are very hard to cure, and they often embitter a man's life. The village consisted of a single Establishment, in which all nationalities met. Amongst them was an unfortunate Frenchman, who had been attacked at Calcutta with what appeared to be a leprous taint. He had tried half a dozen places to no purpose, and he had determined to blow his brains out if Schinznach failed him. The only advantage of the place was, its being within easy distance of Schaffhausen and the falls of the Rhine.

When the six weeks' cure was over, I was hurried by my guardian across France, and Southern England, to the rendezvous. The Grandmother and the two aunts, finding Great Cumberland Place too hot, had taken country quarters at Hampstead. Grandmamma Baker received us lads with something like disappointment. She would have been better contented had we been six feet high, bony as Highland cattle, with freckled faces, and cheek-bones like horns. Aunt Georgina Baker embraced and kissed her nephews with effusion. She had not been long parted from us. Mrs. Frank Burton, the other aunt, had not seen us for ten years, and of course could not recognize us.

We found two very nice little girl-cousins, who assisted us to pass the time. But the old dislike to our surroundings, returned with redoubled violence. Everything appeared to us so small, so mean, so ugly. The faces of the women were the only exception to the general rule of hideousness. The houses were so unlike houses, and more like the Nuremberg toys magnified. The outsides were so prim, so priggish, so utterly unartistic. The little bits of garden were mere slices, as if they had been sold by the inch. The interiors were cut up into such wretched little rooms, more like ship-cabins than what was called rooms in Italy. The drawing-rooms were crowded with hideous little tables, that made it dangerous to pass from one side to the other. The tables were heaped with nick-nacks, that served neither for use or show. And there was a desperate neatness and cleanness about everything that made us remember the old story of the Stoic who spat in the face of the master of the house because it was the most untidy place in the dwelling.

Then came a second parting. Edward was to be placed under the charge of the Rev. Mr. Havergal, rector of some country parish. Later on, he wrote to say that "Richard must not correspond with his brother, as he had turned his name into a peculiar form of ridicule." He was in the musical line, and delighted in organ-playing. But Edward seemed to consider the whole affair a bore, and was only too happy when he could escape from the harmonious parsonage.

In the mean time I had been tried and found wanting. One of my father's sisters (Mrs. General D'Aguilar, as she called herself) had returned from India, after an uninterrupted residence of a score of years, with a large supply of children of both sexes. She had settled herself temporarily at Cambridge, to superintend the education of her eldest son, John Burton D'Aguilar, who was intended for the Church, and who afterwards became a chaplain in the Bengal Establishment. Amongst her many acquaintances was a certain Professor Sholefield, a well-known Grecian. My father had rather suspected that very little had been done in the house, in the way of classical study, during the last two years. The Professor put me through my paces in Virgil and Homer, and found me lamentably deficient. I did not even know who Isis was! worse still, it was found out that I, who spoke French and Italian and their dialects like a native, who had a considerable smattering of Bearnais, Spanish, and Provençale, barely knew the Lord's Prayer, broke down in the Apostles' Creed, and had never heard of the Thirty-nine Articles—a terrible revelation!

CHAPTER IV.

OXFORD.

As it was Long Vacation at Oxford, and I could not take rooms at once in Trinity College, where my name had been put down, it was necessary to place me somewhere out of mischief. At the intervention of friends, a certain Doctor Greenhill agreed to lodge and coach me till the opening term. The said doctor had just married a relation of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, and he had taken his bride to Paris, in order to show her the world and to indulge himself in a little dissecting. Meanwhile I was placed pro tem. with another medical don, Dr. Ogle, and I enjoyed myself in that house. The father was a genial man, and he had nice sons and pretty daughters. As soon as Dr. Greenhill returned to his house in High Street, Oxford, I was taken up there by my father, and was duly consigned to the new tutor. Mr. Du Pré vanished, and was never seen again.

The first sight of Oxford struck me with a sense of appal. "O Domus antiqua et religiosa," cried Queen Elizabeth, in 1664, standing opposite Pembroke College, which the Dons desecrated in 1875. I could not imagine how such fine massive and picturesque old buildings as the colleges could be mixed up with the mean little houses that clustered around them, looking as if they were built of cardboard. In after days, I remembered the feeling, when looking at the Temple of the Sun in Palmyra, surrounded by its Arab huts, like swallows' nests planted upon a palace wall. And everything, except the colleges, looked so mean.

The good old Mitre was, if not the only, at least the chief hostelry of the place, and it had the outward and visible presence of a pot-house. The river with the classical name of Isis, was a mere moat, and its influent, the Cherwell, was a ditch. The country around, especially just after Switzerland, looked flat and monotonous in the extreme. The skies were brown-grey, and, to an Italian nose, the smell of the coal smoke was a perpetual abomination. Queer beings walked the streets, dressed in aprons that hung behind, from their shoulders, and caps consisting of a square, like that of a lancer's helmet, planted upon a semi-oval to contain the head. These queer creatures were carefully shaved, except, perhaps, a diminutive mutton-cutlet on each side of their face, and the most serious sort were invariably dressed in vestibus nigris aut sub fuscis.

Moreover, an indescribable appearance of donnishness or incipient donnishness pervaded the whole lot. The juniors looked like schoolboys who aspired to be schoolmasters, and the seniors as if their aspirations had been successful. I asked after the famous Grove of Trinity, where Charles I. used to walk when tired of Christ Church meadows, and which the wits called Daphne. It had long been felled, and the ground was covered with buildings.

At last term opened, and I transferred myself from Dr. Greenhill to Trinity College.

Then my University life began, and readers must be prepared not to be shocked at the recital of my college failures, which only proves the truth of what I said before, that if a father means his boy to succeed in an English career, he must put him to a preparatory school, Eton or Oxford, educate him for his coming profession, and not drag his family about the Continent, under governesses and tutors, to learn fencing, languages, and become wild, and to belong to nowhere in particular as to parish or county.

In the autumn term of 1840, at nineteen and a half, I began residence in Trinity College, where my quarters were a pair of dog-holes, called rooms, overlooking the garden of the Master of Balliol. My reception at College was not pleasant. I had grown a splendid moustache, which was the envy of all the boys abroad, and which all the advice of Drs. Ogle and Greenhill failed to make me remove. I declined to be shaved until formal orders were issued to the authorities of the college. For I had already formed strong ideas upon the Shaven age of England, when her history, with some brilliant exceptions, such as Marlborough, Wellington, or Nelson, was at its meanest.