My father, I imagine, never knew how to be happy until he came to Bramfield. The study of Greek had ever been his ruling passion, but he was continually called from it by the necessity of advancing himself, since a curiosity concerning Euripides puts few guineas into a man’s pocket. At Bramfield he had the means and the leisure wherewith to pursue his favourite study. He learnt also to appreciate blessings of which he had hitherto been quite ignorant. He became aware of what he ate; he began to enjoy his dinner. Taught by my mother, desirous of loving all that might be dear to her, he perceived the beauties of Nature. The awkward, shy scholar became very good company, – warm-hearted, well informed, a fluent but not an overpowering talker, with all the ease of manner which springs from genuine contentment.
For her the change was equally benign. She had always longed for England and for Bramfield, yet I cannot feel that her early travels in France and Italy were entirely wasted; to natural good breeding there was added experience of the world, and manners above what one usually finds in a country parsonage. During her father’s lifetime she had been used to meeting distinguished people. She liked to read, although she was no blue-stocking. She possessed that power to be continually interested, even in the commonest objects, which is one of the marks of a truly superior intellect. She loved a country life, yet had no trace of rusticity.
The society in which they moved, however, was nothing above what might be expected in such a place. They were superior; their neighbours were not. I think that I must have perceived this very early, and I therefore took it for granted that I was a great deal more fortunate than my cousin Ned Chadwick, who had no such parents. I was sorry for him. Although I gradually came to learn that the world thought him more fortunate than myself, I continued to be sorry for him until we were one and twenty.
He is the nearest to me, in age, of that family, though he is an eldest and I a second son. There were seven of us; Eustace, Caroline, Miles, George, Catherine, Harriet and Susan. Our cousins were more numerous, but given to dying in infancy. Only five of them survived. Perpetual funerals were one of the many disadvantages for which I pitied Ned. He was for ever wearing black for some little brother or sister, too young to be of consequence to anybody.
We were all handsome children and our cousins were extremely plain. I suspect that my mother’s faith in green vegetables and fruit may have something to do with our advantage in this way. Her notions of diet were continental and she dressed many dishes at which our neighbours stared. Cabbage, for instance, which she cooked with sour cream, was a great favourite with us; in this country it is reckoned as only fit for cottagers. She set great store by sour cream and buttermilk, which our people throw away or give to the pigs. Nor would she suffer the gardener to send in those prodigious peas and carrots which are thought becoming to a gentleman’s table. She would have them small and tender. As for fruit, which is often forbidden to children, she gave it to us daily. My Winchester fare of beef, cheese and beer distressed her; at the beginning of every Half she would give me a guinea, with strict instructions to lay it out, not at the pastry-cook, but with the apple-woman. She believed that fruit is good for the bowels. And it is a fact that we seldom needed the black draught which was daily administered in the Chadwick nurseries. My sisters’ complexions were the boast of the country and we all had the bright eyes, the glow of perfect health, which is so particularly prepossessing in young people.
I once asked Harriet if she was not, as a child, very sorry for the Chadwicks.
‘To be sure I was,’ said she. ‘And am still. Only consider the size of their noses!’
‘Ah! You are thinking of the girls.’
‘And the boys too. Such a nose is a misfortune to anyone.’
‘But did you not pity them upon other grounds?’
‘Yes indeed! Everything at the Park was always so flat and spiritless. They had no notion of fun, or picnics, or schemes, or anything. They were good-natured enough, not cross or peevish, but they could not enjoy themselves as we did.’
‘Did it never occur to you that they were richer than we?’
‘No! Why should it? We kept a better table. My mother was beyond comparison the best housekeeper I ever knew. And our dress was always far more tasteful. Their Sunday bonnets! I am sure, if I pitied Isabella and Charlotte once, I pitied them a hundred times for those frightful bonnets.’
‘And when did you first understand that their mother must always walk out of the room before ours?’
‘Why Miles! She never did, poor thing. I never saw her with my mother but they were walking arm in arm.’
Harriet would have come to feel it, had she not married so well. She can now walk out of the room before Mrs. Ned.
There was not a single activity in which I could not count myself superior to Ned. I could out-ride him, out-shoot him, bowl him at cricket and beat him at cards. That I rode his ponies, and shot his father’s coverts, did not occur to either of us. For Ned admired me almost as much as I admired myself. In acting, of which we were very fond, he often forgot his own part, in his wonder at me, as I gesticulated and ranted. In our studies with my father, I had always got my task before poor Ned had found his place in the book.
Ned is inseparable from all my memories of those early days. To recall them, to see him as he was then, is melancholy work, when I consider what he is now. I have so long thought of him as a sot, quite sunk, the surly husband of an odious wife, that I forget that he was not born so. He was a very good sort of boy, heavy and slow but sweet-natured, – better natured than I. He would never laugh at poor Bob Howes, the blacksmith’s son, who was a little clouded in his intellect, though a fast bowler at cricket. Bob, Ned and I were all confirmed together, along with Harry Ridding, a farmer’s son. Bob’s blundering answers, when examined in the Catechism, never failed to convulse Harry and me, but Ned pitied him and would often shield him from our mockery.
Unlucky Bob! We hauled him through his Confirmation, but when we all stayed for the Sacrament, for the first time, he disgraced himself in a most ludicrous way. I suppose that he was so much stricken with awe as to be robbed of what few wits he possessed. We had told him, again and again, what he must do, but, being once got to the altar-rail, he found it impossible to rise and go away, and remained kneeling there long after Harry, Ned and I had returned to our places. We should have observed it and dragged him along with us, but we were so much agitated ourselves that we noticed nothing. My father continued to minister to his Easter congregation, until he came to Bob again, whom he urged in a whisper to rise and go away. Bob remained kneeling, his eyes tight shut. My father, in despair, went on. But when he came to Bob a third time he lost his temper, and bellowed loudly: ROBERT HOWES! BEGONE! Whereat Bob, in absolute terror, rose and fled from the church.
I am sorry to say that I, once I had recovered from the scandalised sensations that this incident excited, was inclined to tease Bob and cry out: BEGONE! whenever I saw him. Ned would never suffer this in his presence. He once knocked me down for it, and we fought awhile, and I got the best of it, for I was the quicker with my fists, though Ned was the heavier. He would not shake hands and went off in a very ill humour, – a thing so rare in him that I was quite astonished.
‘Why don’t he take his beating like a gentleman?’ cried I to Harry Ridding, who had been a spectator of the fight.
Harry, however, came down upon Ned’s side.
‘Nay,’ he said. ‘Young Squire is a proper gentleman and thou art none.’
For which I was obliged to fight him, and this time got the worst of it. But I knew that it was ungentlemanly to tease Bob and I never did so again.
This chapter does not exactly come up to its title. I had not expected to arrive at black eyes and bloody noses. If I wish to believe that my infancy was an Idyll, I had better not remember any more of it.
Aut Disce
AT THIRTEEN WE were, in any case, thrust from Eden and sent to school. I went to Winchester, by the good offices of the gentleman w
ho had admired my mother at church. Ned went to a private academy in Hertfordshire where he was exceedingly miserable, caught the ringworm, and was partially bald for many months.
I was miserable too, but in a more glorious fashion. I had less than he to eat. I washed in cold water, exposed to all the elements. I was beaten constantly for the slowness with which my chilblained fingers buttoned prefectorial gaiters. But these tundings sounded more heroic than the occasional floggings endured by Ned; bevers was a manlier drink than beer; conduit more romantic than a bath. Poor Ned was very ready to believe that I was better off and he often wished that we might change places.
To hear him say so raised my spirits, for I had begun to understand some very disquieting truths concerning the importance of property. The young gentlemen with whom I now associated were not all of them as oblivious of their own consequence as was Ned. They were beaten, as I was. They lived hard, as I did. But, if their fathers were men of property, they thought better of themselves than they did of me. My prowess at games and up to books might advance me in College, but, in the world to which they returned in the holidays, I was nobody, because I was heir to nothing.
I can recollect the first occasion upon which this fact became apparent to me. It was towards the end of my first Long Half that a boy lamented, in my hearing, the isolated situation of his father’s estate, – not another gentleman’s house within fifteen miles! I asked, very innocently, if there was no parsonage.
‘Oh ay! But parsons don’t count.’
I said hotly that parsons are gentlemen, but he would not have it. Some gentlemen were parsons, he allowed that, since his younger brother was to be one. But not all parsons were men of family.
Any other boy, I suppose, would have discovered all this long before. But I had grown up in Eden. I had gone to school, expecting trials, but determined to excel. It had never occurred to me that the world might have fixed my consequence in advance, without waiting to ascertain my merits. I had daily before my eyes the board in our schoolroom, which promised rewards to those who would exert themselves and a whip for those who would not.
Aut Disce … If I minded my book I believed that I should wear a mitre, and sit among the Lords Spiritual.
Aut Discede … If I chose an active life, rather than that of a scholar, it should win for me a place among the Lords Temporal.
Manet Sors Tertia Cœdi … of the whipping, reserved for those who cannot choose, I had no fear whatever.
I discussed the question with another junior, Newsome, the son of a poor curate in Yorkshire. He had entered as a quirister, but had got a place in College through the interest of a gentleman who took a benevolent pleasure in advancing boys of that sort.
Newsome laughed and told me that his father was happy to consider himself out of debt. When summoned to dine with the squire of their parish he invariably ate in the housekeeper’s room. The incumbent, who held several livings, and never came into Yorkshire, might be regarded as a gentleman. The curate, who did the duties, was not.
‘You know,’ said Newsome, ‘there is, there must be, a vast difference between a man of property and one who must work.’
‘I cannot see it,’ cried I. ‘The superior must be he who possesses the greater genius.’
‘The world won’t think so, unless the genius makes a fortune.’
I was quite certain, at that time, that I should make a fortune, but I was uneasy at the idea that these louts might not consider my father a gentleman. During the holidays I put the matter to my mother and asked her if she did not think it shocking that Mr. Newsome should dine with the housekeeper.
‘Why, as to that,’ said my mother, ‘the housekeeper may be better company for a clergyman than her mistress. She is also his parishioner, and she may be a better Christian.’
‘But should you not resent it, Ma’am, if my father were to be treated so?’
‘I should scold myself for any resentment that I might feel. A clergyman is not to be setting himself above other people, – thinking that he is too good to dine with one, and resenting a slight from another.’
My mother took an exalted view of a clergyman’s calling. She was deeply and unaffectedly religious. We were all aware of it, in spite of her reserve in such matters. We had her example before our eyes, – the regularity of her devotions, her stillness and attention at church, the Christian charity which inspired the whole of her conduct.
My father was made of other metal, though association with her had somewhat elevated his ideas. When I took my tale to him, his comment was:
‘Does he indeed? But that is up in the North, you know, and they are all fifty years at least behind the times. Their manners would make you stare, if all I hear be true. ’Tis all the fault of their roads. When I was a lad one could not get to Scotland save by pack horse, and even now they have no roads to speak of.’
‘But why should that make the squire uncivil to the curate?’
‘Civility depends upon some knowledge of the world. A fellow who never gets about, but crows on his own dunghill, will contract a boorish suspicion of anyone who knows more than he does. He will conceal his sense of inferiority by an insolent manner. He will flinch and jeer at words or customs which may be unfamiliar to him. Your northerners have always been so. You have the portrait of one in Harry Hotspur, with his thick speech and his scorn for the southern lord with the “pooncet ba-ax.”’
After that there was no getting him away from Shakespeare.
These replies should have answered my question. Both my parents, without asserting superiority, had displayed a considerable degree of it. They were quite free from any uneasiness about their station. But it was not enough to me to know that they were superior. I desired that others should be sensible of the fact.
An excessive ambition was the outcome of all this, – an anxiety to become a person of consequence, not so much to satisfy my own vanity as to furnish proof of my parents’ worth. I could not wait for the mitre which was one day to be mine; I wished to be first among these boys who asserted, so insolently, that parsons did not count.
Believing my motives to be pure and commendable, I daily and nightly implored the Supreme Being to make me, some day, Prefect of Hall. This was the goal of all my prayers and vows, as I toasted bread and polished the shoes of my seniors.
Success depended largely, but not entirely, upon my progress in scholarship. Absolute seniority turned, as I soon perceived, upon favour of a tricky sort. Those were turbulent days. College was still rent by the vendetta between the Warden and the boys which, just before my time, had broken out into the Great Rebellion. Feeling was very bitter. Our treatment by Warden Huntingford was such that fresh revolts were ever near the surface. We had little government save that which we provided for ourselves. It was clear to me that, where the laurels of Senior Scholar were in question, Huntingford had a finger in the pie. To be thought a safe man by him was of first consequence. Yet his favour might have disadvantages; nobody who openly enjoyed it could hope for respect among the boys.
With these diverse considerations in mind I worked and played, cultivated popularity, studied the foibles of the masters, and strove to recommend myself in that quarter whence the most powerful influence was likely to be felt.
My appearance has always been of advantage to me. I was just such a fine young man as a noble visitor, received ad portas, might wish to see as Senior Scholar. The sight of me was enough to contradict all those rumours afloat, of which Huntingford was not unaware, concerning the true state of morals and discipline within our gates. My carriage was easy, my countenance open, – frank enough to please those who like to believe that boys are candid animals, yet with sufficient sensibility to satisfy a more discerning eye. The manly address with which Pronto makes so good an impression, his simplicity, his apparent modesty, were all well in train before I was sixteen years old. I looked like a good Prefect of Hall.
The pursuit of my ambition obliged me early to make those sacrifices which are nec
essary for one who wishes to go up in the world. Policy forced me to forgo certain friendships which I would otherwise have wished to cultivate. With quiet Newsome I was always intimate. But there were others, congenial to me in temper, with whom I could not afford to be too friendly, for they were always so near rebellion as to be dangerous companions. They might at any time break out, and get me into trouble; so I kept clear of them, though I liked and respected some of them very much, and felt, with a little regret, that they were my natural friends.
There is no doubt that we were monstrously neglected, that the masters could not keep order, and that every promise of reform was consistently broken. But we had before our eyes the fate of those who had been expelled in consequence of an effort to secure improvement. We could not know that the courage and energy which locked out the masters, and set up the Cap of Liberty upon Middle Gate, would, in some cases, win the world’s applause upon greater battle-fields. Dalbiac, for instance, was at that time a naughty boy; the hero of Salamanca was as yet undiscerned. But something of his spirit was left in College, and several were for taking measures against the unwarranted extortions laid upon us, the unjust taxes whereby the masters enriched themselves. My sympathy was with these young Hampdens, but I made it my business to restrain them as well as I could, without entirely forfeiting their respect. I think that Huntingford, perpetually in fear lest he might again be obliged to summon the magistrates, and call out the military, regarded me as a useful ally.
How far I might have gone in abetting him it is not easy to say. I was never upon explicit terms with him. He kept spies among us and we knew it, but I was not one of them. I don’t think that I got anybody into trouble; on the contrary, I kept hot heads out of trouble. I maintained a sort of order, in the absence of anyone else able to do so. In fact, I think that I was a good Prefect of Hall.
Ned, meanwhile, had come to love his school no better, although he had grown his hair again. While I drank the cup of success, and felt myself greater than I have ever since contrived to feel, poor Ned was always the same, – big-nosed, disconsolate and friendly, scuffling at my heels every day of the holidays, ready to do anything I chose, but expecting that we should do everything together. I began to grow weary of him. I no longer needed him as a boasting target. During the last summer holidays I sent him about his business once or twice. Newsome was staying with me and Ned made an unwelcome third.
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