was when we lived there, is to be seen in the frontispiece to the
first edition of that novel, having the good fortune to be delineated
by no less a pencil than that of John Millais.
My two elder brothers had been sent as day-boarders to Harrow
School from the bigger house, and may probably have been received
among the aristocratic crowd,--not on equal terms, because a
day-boarder at Harrow in those days was never so received,--but at
any rate as other day-boarders. I do not suppose that they were well
treated, but I doubt whether they were subjected to the ignominy
which I endured. I was only seven, and I think that boys at seven
are now spared among their more considerate seniors. I was never
spared; and was not even allowed to run to and fro between our house
and the school without a daily purgatory. No doubt my appearance
was against me. I remember well, when I was still the junior boy
in the school, Dr. Butler, the head-master, stopping me in the
street, and asking me, with all the clouds of Jove upon his brow
and the thunder in his voice, whether it was possible that Harrow
School was disgraced by so disreputably dirty a boy as I! Oh, what
I felt at that moment! But I could not look my feelings. I do not
doubt that I was dirty;--but I think that he was cruel. He must
have known me had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was
in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognise
me by my face.
At this time I was three years at Harrow; and, as far as I can
remember, I was the junior boy in the school when I left it.
Then I was sent to a private school at Sunbury, kept by Arthur
Drury. This, I think, must have been done in accordance with the
advice of Henry Drury, who was my tutor at Harrow School, and my
father's friend, and who may probably have expressed an opinion that
my juvenile career was not proceeding in a satisfactory manner at
Harrow. To Sunbury I went, and during the two years I was there,
though I never had any pocket-money, and seldom had much in the
way of clothes, I lived more nearly on terms of equality with other
boys than at any other period during my very prolonged school-days.
Even here, I was always in disgrace. I remember well how, on one
occasion, four boys were selected as having been the perpetrators
of some nameless horror. What it was, to this day I cannot even
guess; but I was one of the four, innocent as a babe, but adjudged
to have been the guiltiest of the guilty. We each had to write out
a sermon, and my sermon was the longest of the four. During the
whole of one term-time we were helped last at every meal. We were
not allowed to visit the playground till the sermon was finished.
Mine was only done a day or two before the holidays. Mrs. Drury,
when she saw us, shook her head with pitying horror. There were
ever so many other punishments accumulated on our heads. It broke
my heart, knowing myself to be innocent, and suffering also under
the almost equally painful feeling that the other three--no doubt
wicked boys--were the curled darlings of the school, who would never
have selected me to share their wickedness with them. I contrived
to learn, from words that fell from Mr. Drury, that he condemned
me because I, having come from a public school, might be supposed
to be the leader of wickedness! On the first day of the next term
he whispered to me half a word that perhaps he had been wrong.
With all a stupid boy's slowness, I said nothing; and he had not
the courage to carry reparation further. All that was fifty years
ago, and it burns me now as though it were yesterday. What lily-livered
curs those boys must have been not to have told the truth!--at any
rate as far as I was concerned. I remember their names well, and
almost wish to write them here.
When I was twelve there came the vacancy at Winchester College which
I was destined to fill. My two elder brothers had gone there, and
the younger had been taken away, being already supposed to have lost
his chance of New College. It had been one of the great ambitions
of my father's life that his three sons, who lived to go to Winchester,
should all become fellows of New College. But that suffering man
was never destined to have an ambition gratified. We all lost the
prize which he struggled with infinite labour to put within our
reach. My eldest brother all but achieved it, and afterwards went
to Oxford, taking three exhibitions from the school, though he
lost the great glory of a Wykamist. He has since made himself well
known to the public as a writer in connection with all Italian
subjects. He is still living as I now write. But my other brother
died early.
While I was at Winchester my father's affairs went from bad to worse.
He gave up his practice at the bar, and, unfortunate that he was,
took another farm. It is odd that a man should conceive,--and in
this case a highly educated and a very clever man,--that farming
should be a business in which he might make money without any
special education or apprenticeship. Perhaps of all trades it is
the one in which an accurate knowledge of what things should be
done, and the best manner of doing them, is most necessary. And it is
one also for success in which a sufficient capital is indispensable.
He had no knowledge, and, when he took this second farm, no capital.
This was the last step preparatory to his final ruin.
Soon after I had been sent to Winchester my mother went to America,
taking with her my brother Henry and my two sisters, who were then
no more than children. This was, I think, in 1827. I have no clear
knowledge of her object, or of my father's; but I believe that
he had an idea that money might be made by sending goods,--little
goods, such as pin-cushions, pepper-boxes, and pocket-knives,--out
to the still unfurnished States; and that she conceived that an
opening might be made for my brother Henry by erecting some bazaar
or extended shop in one of the Western cities. Whence the money
came I do not know, but the pocket-knives and the pepper-boxes were
bought and the bazaar built. I have seen it since in the town of
Cincinnati,--a sorry building! But I have been told that in those
days it was an imposing edifice. My mother went first, with my
sisters and second brother. Then my father followed them, taking my
elder brother before he went to Oxford. But there was an interval
of some year and a half during which he and I were in Winchester
together.
Over a period of forty years, since I began my manhood at a desk
in the Post Office, I and my brother, Thomas Adolphus, have been
fast friends. There have been hot words between us, for perfect
friendship bears and allows hot words. Few brothers have had more
of brotherhood. But in those schooldays he was, of all my foes,
the worst. In accordance with the practice of the college, which
submits, or did then submit, much of the tuition of the younger
boys from the elder, he was my tutor; and in his capacity of teacher
and ruler, he had studied the theories of Draco. I remember well
how he used to exact obedience after the manner of that lawgiver.
Hang a little boy for stealing apples, he used to say, and other
little boys will not steal apples. The doctrine was already exploded
elsewhere, but he stuck to it with conservative energy. The result
was that, as a part of his daily exercise, he thrashed me with a big
stick. That such thrashings should have been possible at a school
as a continual part of one's daily life, seems to me to argue a
very ill condition of school discipline.
At this period I remember to have passed one set of holidays--the
midsummer holidays--in my father's chambers in Lincoln's Inn. There
was often a difficulty about the holidays,--as to what should be
done with me. On this occasion my amusement consisted in wandering
about among those old deserted buildings, and in reading Shakespeare
out of a bi-columned edition, which is still among my books. It
was not that I had chosen Shakespeare, but that there was nothing
else to read.
After a while my brother left Winchester and accompanied my father
to America. Then another and a different horror fell to my fate.
My college bills had not been paid, and the school tradesmen who
administered to the wants of the boys were told not to extend their
credit to me. Boots, waistcoats, and pocket-handkerchiefs, which,
with some slight superveillance, were at the command of other
scholars, were closed luxuries to me. My schoolfellows of course
knew that it was so, and I became a Pariah. It is the nature of
boys to be cruel. I have sometimes doubted whether among each other
they do usually suffer much, one from the other's cruelty; but I
suffered horribly! I could make no stand against it. I had no friend
to whom I could pour out my sorrows. I was big, and awkward, and
ugly, and, I have no doubt, sulked about in a most unattractive
manner. Of course I was ill-dressed and dirty. But ah! how well
I remember all the agonies of my young heart; how I considered
whether I should always be alone; whether I could not find my way
up to the top of that college tower, and from thence put an end to
everything? And a worse thing came than the stoppage of the supplies
from the shopkeepers. Every boy had a shilling a week pocket-money,
which we called battels, and which was advanced to us out of the
pocket of the second master. On one awful day the second master
announced to me that my battels would be stopped. He told me the
reason,--the battels for the last half-year had not been repaid; and
he urged his own unwillingness to advance the money. The loss of a
shilling a week would not have been much,--even though pocket-money
from other sources never reached me,--but that the other boys all
knew it! Every now and again, perhaps three or four times in a
half-year, these weekly shillings were given to certain servants
of the college, in payment, it may be presumed, for some extra
services. And now, when it came to the turn of any servant, he
received sixty-nine shillings instead of seventy, and the cause
of the defalcation was explained to him. I never saw one of those
servants without feeling I had picked his pocket.
When I had been at Winchester something over three years, my father
returned to England and took me away. Whether this was done because
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