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
of the expense, or because my chance of New College was supposed
to have passed away, I do not know. As a fact, I should, I believe,
have gained the prize, as there occurred in my year an exceptional
number of vacancies. But it would have served me nothing, as there
would have been no funds for my maintenance at the University
till I should have entered in upon the fruition of the founder's
endowment, and my career at Oxford must have been unfortunate.
When I left Winchester, I had three more years of school before me,
having as yet endured nine. My father at this time having left my
mother and sisters with my younger brother in America, took himself
to live at a wretched tumble-down farmhouse on the second farm
he had hired! And I was taken there with him. It was nearly three
miles from Harrow, at Harrow Weald, but in the parish; and from
this house I was again sent to that school as a day-boarder. Let
those who know what is the usual appearance and what the usual
appurtenances of a boy at such a school, consider what must have
been my condition among them, with a daily walk of twelve miles
through the lanes, added to the other little troubles and labours
of a school life!
Perhaps the eighteen months which I passed in this condition,