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.
On our way to the river the unpleasant reflection occurred to my mind, that possibly the books and the people might be wrong, and that mere courage might _not_ enable me to dispense with acquired skill. [Footnote: The doctrine that courage is enough is most mischievous and perilous nonsense. I have become a good swimmer since those days, and have taught my sons: but we had to learn it as an art, just as one learns to skate.] But I put away this idea as too disagreeable to be dwelt upon. Unfortunately the disagreeable idea that we set aside is often the true and the wise one.
As we went through the town to the water the boy who had expressed his scepticism disappeared for a moment in a rope-maker’s shop, and soon emerged with a long and strong cord over his shoulder. I guessed what that was for, and felt humiliated, but said nothing. The swimmers stripped and plunged, but just at the moment when I was going to plunge too I felt the strong hand of the assistant-master on my shoulder, and he said, “Wait one moment,” The moment was employed by my school-fellow in fastening the cord round my waist, “Now, plunge as much as you like!”
I was soon in the depths and struggling to get to the surface, but, somehow, did _not_ swim. My preserver on the bank thought it would be as well to convince me of my inability by a prolonged immersion, so he let me feel the unpleasant beginning of drowning. They say that the sensation is delightful at a later stage, and that the patient dreams he is walking in flowery meadows on the land. The first stage is undoubtedly disagreeable,–the oppression, the desire to breathe, are horrible,–but I did not get so far as to fill the lungs with water. Just in proper time there came a great tug at the cord, and I was fished up. I dressed, and felt very small, looking with envy on the real swimmers, and especially at the fat usher, who was rolling about like a porpoise in the middle of the river.
The boat came, and I was allowed only to see her from the bank. How lovely she looked with her outside varnish and her internal coat of Cambridge blue! How beautiful were the light and elegant oars that I was forbidden to touch!
Some time after that one of my school-fellows said: “You know, Hamerton, you’re just as well out of that boat as in her, for whenever we want to go out on Wednesday or Saturday afternoons we always find that the privates have got the start of us. The fact is, the boat is as if she belonged to them.” In a word, the private pupils looked on the aspirations of the others with marked disapproval. There ought, of course, to have been a plurality of boats; but Mr. Cape was not himself a boating man, and did not encourage the amusement. He dreaded the responsibility for accidents.
One result of my adventure was a firm resolution that I would learn to swim, and not only that, but become really a good swimmer. I never attempted anything that seemed so hopelessly difficult for me, or in which my progress was so slow; but in course of time I did swim, and many years afterwards, from daily practice in the longer and warmer summers of France, I became an expert, able to read a book aloud in deep water whilst holding it up with both hands, or to swim with all my clothes on and a pair of heavy boots, using one hand only and carrying a paddle in the other, whilst I drew a small boat after me. The perseverance that led to this ultimate result is entirely due to that early misadventure at Doncaster. I have learned one or two other things in consequence of being stung with shame in a like manner, and am convinced that there is nothing better for a boy than to be roused to perseverance in that way.
I never felt the least shame, however, in not being able to play cricket in a manner to please connoisseurs. I hated the game from the very beginning, and it was pure slavery to me, and I never had the faintest desire to excel in it or even to learn it. This dislike was a misfortune, as not to love cricket is a cause of isolation for an English boy.
A kind of exercise that I was fond of was ordinary walking. We often took long walks on half-holidays that were delightful, and I have escaped very early on the summer mornings and taken a walk round the race-course, being back in time for the usual hour of rising. This, however, was found out in course of time and put an end to; but I had occasional headaches, so the doctor (who was a very kind friend of mine and invited me to his house) told Mr. Cape that he must send me out for a walk when I had a headache. “But how am I to know that his head really aches?” inquired the head-master. I heard the reply and took note of it. The doctor said it would usually be accompanied with flushing; so whenever I thought I was sufficiently red in the face I applied for leave to go to the race-course.
The doctor had a son who was a good-natured, pleasant boy about my own age. There never was the slightest ill-feeling between us, but quite the contrary; and yet we fought many a hard battle simply because the elder boys backed us and set us on. They enjoyed the sport as they would have enjoyed cock-fighting, though perhaps not quite so much, as it was not quite so bloody and barbarous. This fighting was of no practical use; but if I had been able to thrash the bully who took my telescope _that_ would have been of some use. Unfortunately he was my senior, and considerably my superior in strength, so prudence forbade the combat.
CHAPTER IX.
1846.
Early interest in theology.–Reports of sermons.–Quiet influence of Mr. Cape.–Failure of Mr. Cape’s health.–His death.
During the time of my life at Doncaster I was extremely religious, having a firm belief in providential interferences on my behalf, even in trifling matters, such as being asked to stay from Saturday to Monday in the country. My prayers had especial reference to a country house that belonged to an old lady who was grandmother to a friend of mine, and extended a sort of grandmotherly kindness to myself also. [Footnote: She was a very remarkable and peculiar old lady. The house was very large; but she would only use a few small rooms. She never would travel by railway, but made long journeys, as well as short ones, in an old carriage drawn by a pair of farm-horses. She had a much handsomer carriage in the coach-house, a state affair, that was never used.]
At Doncaster we were always obliged to take notes of the sermons, and write them out afterwards in an abridged form. As I had a theological turn, I sometimes inserted passages of my own in these reports which made the masters declare that they did not remember hearing the preacher say that; and on one occasion, being full of ideas of my own about the text which had effectually supplanted those of the preacher, I produced a complete original sermon, which cost me a reprimand, but evidently excited the interest of the master. Dr. Sharpe was Vicar of Doncaster in those days, but after forty years I may be excused if I do not remember much about what he preached. The pulpit was arranged in the old-fashioned three stages, for preacher, reader, and clerk, and on one occasion the highest of these was occupied by the famous Dr. Wolff, the missionary to Bokhara. He was a most energetic preacher, who thumped and pushed his cushion in a restless way, so that at last he fairly pushed it off its desk. He was quick enough to catch it by the tassel, but he did not catch his Bible, which fell on Dr. Sharpe’s head or shoulder, and thence to the floor of the church. It was impossible to keep quite grave under the circumstances. Even the clergy smiled, the clerk sought refuge in fetching the fallen volume, and a thrill of humorous feeling ran through the congregation.
Mr. Cape did not say much to us about religion. He read prayers every morning and evening, and once or twice I heard him preach when he took duty in a village church not far from the famous castle of Conisborough. There is an advantage to an active-minded boy in being with a quiet routine-clergyman like Mr. Cape, who proposes no exciting questions. I came under a very different influence afterwards, which plunged me into the stormy ocean of theological controversies at a time of life when it would have been better for me not to concern myself about such matters. The religion of a boy should be quiet and practical, and his theology should be as simple as possible, and quite uncontroversial in its temper. That was my case at Doncaster; I was a very firm believer, but simply a Christian not belonging to any party in the Church of England, and hardly, indeed, in any but an accidental way to the Church of England herself. Nothing could have been better. A boy is not answerable for the doctrines which are imposed upon him by his elders, and if they have a beneficial effect upon his conduct he need not, whilst he remains a boy, trouble himself to inquire further.
Mr. Cape’s health was gradually failing during the time of my stay at Doncaster School, and on the beginning of my fourth half-year after a holiday I found the house managed by his sister, and Mr. Cape himself confined to his room with hopeless disease. Very shortly afterwards the few boys who had come were sent home again, and Mr. Cape died. His sister was a kind old maid, who at once conceived a sort of aunt-like affection for me, and I remember that when I left she gave me a kiss on the forehead. I was grieved to part with her, and showed some real sympathy with her sorrow about her dying brother. I felt some grief on my own account for Mr. Cape, though he had thrashed me many a time with his ever-ready cane. Altogether the three half-years at Doncaster had been well spent, and I had got well on with my work.
Mr. Cape’s brother kept a good school at Peterborough, and wanted to have me for a pupil, but as he was especially strong in mathematics, and prepared young men for Cambridge, it was thought that, as I was to go to Oxford, it would be better that I should study under an Oxford man. I never had the slightest natural bent for mathematics, though I did the tasks that were imposed upon me in a perfunctory manner, and with sufficient accuracy just to satisfy my masters.
CHAPTER X.
1847-1849.
My education becomes less satisfactory.–My guardian’s state of health. –I pursue my studies at Burnley.–Dr. Butler.–He encourages me to write English.–Extract from a prize poem.–Public discussions in Burnley School.–A debate on Queen Elizabeth.
The story of my education becomes less satisfactory for me to write as I proceed with it. At thirteen I was a well-educated boy for my age, at fifteen or sixteen I had fallen behind, and if I have now any claim to be considered a fairly well-educated man, it is due to efforts made since youth was past.
The main cause of this retardation may be told before proceeding further. I have already said what a strong affection I had for my guardian. It was a well-placed affection, as she was one of the noblest and best women who ever lived, and all my gratitude to her, though it filled my heart like a religion, was not half what she deserved or what my maturer judgment now feels towards her memory; but like all strong affections, it carried its own penalty along with it. About the time of Mr. Cape’s death, I happened to be staying with some near relations, and one of them made a casual allusion to my guardian’s heart-disease. I had never heard of this, and was inexpressibly affected by the news. My informant said that the disease was absolutely incurable, and might at any time cause sudden death. This was unhappily the exact truth, and from that moment I looked upon my dear guardian with other eyes. The doctors could not say how long she might live; there was no especial immediate danger, and with care, by incurring no risks, her life might be prolonged for years. After the first shock produced by this terrible news, I quickly resolved that as Death would probably soon separate us, and might separate us at any moment, I would keep as much as possible near my guardian during her life. She may have been tempted to keep me near her by the same consideration, but she was not a woman to allow her feelings to get the better of her sense of duty, and if I had not persistently done all in my power to remain at Burnley, she would have sent me elsewhere. Some reviewer will say that these are trifling matters, but in writing a biography it is necessary to take note of trifles when they affect the whole future existence of the subject. The simple fact of my remaining at Burnley for some years made me turn out an indifferent classical scholar, but at the time left my mind more at liberty to grow in its own way.
It is time to give some account of Dr. Butler, the headmaster of Burnley Grammar School, who now became my master, and some time afterwards my private tutor. He was a most liberal-minded, kind-hearted clergyman, and a good scholar, but his too great tenderness of heart made him not exactly the kind of master who would have pushed me on most rapidly.
I had a great affection for him, which he could not help perceiving, and this completely disarmed him, so that he never could find in his heart to say anything disagreeable to me, and on the contrary would often caress me, as it were, with little compliments that I did not always deserve. One tendency of his exactly fell in with my own tastes. He did not think that education should be confined to the two dead languages, but incited the boys to learn French and German, and even chemistry. I worked at French regularly; German I learned just enough to read one thin volume, and went no further. [Footnote: I resumed German many years afterwards, and had a Bavarian for my master; but he was unfortunately obliged to go back to his own country, and I stopped again, having many other things to do. All my literary friends who know German say it is of great use to them; but I never felt the natural taste for it that I have for French and Italian.] As for the chemistry, I acquired some elementary knowledge which afterwards had some influence in directing my attention to etching; indeed, I etched my first plate when a boy at Burnley School. It was a portrait of a Jew with a turban, and was frightfully over-bitten.
Mr. Butler (he had not received his D.C.L. degree in those days) was a very handsome man, with most gentlemanly manners, and all the boys respected him. He governed the school far more by his own dignity than by any severity of tone. He always wore his gown in school, and had a desk made for himself which rather resembled a pulpit and was ornamented with two carved crockets, that of the assistant-master (who also wore his gown) being destitute of these ornaments. My progress in classics and mathematics was now not nearly so rapid as it had been under the severer _regime_ at Doncaster, but Mr. Butler thought he discovered in me some sort of literary gift, and encouraged me to write English essays, which he corrected carefully to show me my faults of style. This was really good, as Mr. Butler wrote English well himself, and was a man of cultivated taste. He even encouraged me to write verses,–a practice that I followed almost without intermission between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. I am aware that there are many very wise people in the world who think it quite rational, and laudable even, to write verses in the Latin language to improve their knowledge of that tongue, and who think it is a ridiculous waste of time to do the same thing in English. In my opinion, what holds good for one language holds good equally for another, and I no more regret the time spent on English versification than a Latin scholar would regret his imitations of Virgil. Perhaps the reader may like to see a specimen of my boyish attempts, so I will print an extract from one,–a poem that won a prize at Burnley School in the year 1847.
The subject given us was “Prince Charles Edward after the Battle of Culloden.” The poem begins with a wild galloping flight of the Prince from the battlefield of Culloden under the pale moonlight, and then of course we come to the boat voyage with Flora Macdonald. Here my love of boating comes in.
The lovely lamp of Heaven shines brightly o’er The wave cerulean and the yellow shore; As, o’er those waves, a boat like light’ning flies, Slender, and frail in form, and small in size. –Frail though it be, ’tis manned by hearts as brave As e’er have tracked the pathless ocean’s wave,– High o’er their heads celestial diamonds grace The jewelled robe of night, and Luna’s face Divinely fair! O goddess of the night!
Guide thou their bark, do thou their pathway light! –Like sea-bird rising on the ocean’s foam, Or like the petrel on its stormy home,
Yon gallant bark speeds joyously along; The wild waves roar, and drown the boatmen’s song. The sails full-flowing kiss the welcome wind, And leave the screaming sea-gulls far behind! Onward they fly. ‘Tis midnight’s moonlit hour! When Fairies hold their court and Sprites have power. And now ’tis morn! A fair Isle’s distant strand Tempts the tired fugitives again to land. Fiercely repulsed, they dare once more the wave Fired with undying zeal their Prince to save; And when night flings her sable mantle o’er The giant crags where sea-hawks idly soar, They unmolested gain the wished-for land, And soon with rapid steps bestride the strand. To Kingsburgh’s noble halls the path they gain And leave afar the ever-murmuring main.
[Footnote: In the printed copies of the poem, the age of the writer was given as thirteen, but I was only in my thirteenth year.]
Very likely this extract will be as much as the reader will have patience for. I think the verses are tolerably good for a boy not yet thirteen years old. The versification is, perhaps, as correct as that of most prize poems, and there is some go in the poetry. It cannot, however, lay claim to much originality. Even in the short extract just given I see the influence of three poets, Virgil, Scott, and Byron. The best that can be expected from the poetry of a boy is that he should give evidence of a liking for the great masters, and in my case the liking was sincere.
In later years Mr. Butler made me translate many of the Odes of Horace into English verse. I did that work with pleasure, but have not preserved one of the translations. I have said that he also encouraged me to write essays. He always gave the subject, and criticized my performance very closely. I wrote so many of these essays that I am afraid to give the number that remains in my memory, for fear of unconscious exaggeration.
Besides these exercises we had public discussions in the school on historical subjects, and of these I remember a great one on the character of Queen Elizabeth. I was chosen for the defence, and the attack on Elizabeth’s fame was to be made by the Captain of the school, a lad of remarkable ability named Edward Moore, who was greatly my superior in acquirements.
It happened, I remember, that my guardian was staying at a country house (the Holme), which had formerly belonged to Dr. Whitaker, the celebrated historian of Craven, Whalley, and Richmondshire, and this learned man had left a good library, so I went to stay a few days to read up the subject. Those days were very pleasant to me; the house is very beautiful, with carved oak, tapestry, mullioned windows, old portraits, and stained glass, and just the old-world surroundings that I have always loved, and it nestled quietly in an open space in the bottom of a beautiful valley, between steep hills, with miles of walks in the woods. If ever I have been in danger of coveting my neighbor’s house, it has been there.
When we came to the debate, it turned out that my materials were so abundant that I spoke for an hour and a half; Moore spoke about forty minutes, and made a most telling personal hit when attacking Elizabeth for her vanity. “She was vain of her complexion, vain even of her hair” … (here the orator paused and looked at me, then he added, slowly and significantly), “_which was red_.” The point here was, that my hair was red in those days, though it has darkened since. I need not add that the allusion was understood at once by the whole school, and was immensely successful.
After we had spoken, a youth rose to give his opinion, and as his speech was sufficiently laconic, I will repeat it _in extenso_. The effect would be quite spoiled if I did not add that he was suffering from a very bad cold, which played sad havoc with his consonants. This was his speech, without the slightest curtailment:–
“Id by opidiod Queed Elizabeth was to be blabed, because she was a proud wobad.”
My opponent in the debate on Elizabeth was, I believe, all things taken into consideration, the most gifted youth I ever knew during my boyhood. He kept at the head of the school without effort, as if the post belonged to him, and he was remarkable for bodily activity, being the best swimmer in the school, and, I think, the best cricketer also. He afterwards died prematurely, and his brother died in early manhood from exhausting fatigue during an excursion in the Alps.
The school was in those days attended by lads belonging to all classes of society, except the highest aristocracy of the neighborhood, and it did a good deal towards keeping up a friendly feeling between different classes. That is the great use of a good local school. Many of the boys were the sons of rich men, who could easily have sent them to public schools at a distance, and perhaps in the present generation they would do so.
CHAPTER XI.
1850.
My elder uncle.–We go to live at Hollins.–Description of the place.– My strong attachment to it.–My first experiment in art-criticism.–The stream at Hollins.–My first catamaran.–Similarity of my life at Hollins to my life in France thirty-six years later.
My elder uncle, the owner of my grandfather’s house and estate at Hollins, had been educated to the law, as the income of our branch of the family was insufficient, and he had begun to practise as a solicitor in Burnley, where at that time there was an excellent opening; but he had not the kind of tact which enables lawyers to get on in the world, so his professional income diminished, and he went to live in Halifax, and let the house at Hollins.
His family was large, and for some years he did all in his power to live according to his rank in society, for he had married a lady of good family (they had thirty-six quarterings between them), and, like most men in a similar position, he was unwilling to adopt the only safe plan, which is to take boldly a lower place on the ladder. At Halifax he lived in a large house (Hopwood Hall), which belonged to his father-in-law, and there his wife and he received the Halifax society of those days, at what, I believe, were very pleasant entertainments, for they had the natural gift of hospitality, and lacked nothing but a large fortune to be perfect in the eyes of the world.
My uncle’s father-in-law was living in retirement at Scarborough when Hollins happened to fall vacant, so he became the tenant; but as the house was too large for him, my uncle divided it into two, and proposed to let the other half to my guardian and her sister.
They accepted, and the consequence was that we went to live in the country,–a most important change for me, as I soon acquired that passion for a country life which afterwards became a second nature, and which, though it may have been beneficial to my health, and perhaps in some degree to the quality of my work, has been in many ways an all but fatal hindrance to my success.
There are, or were, a great many old halls in Lancashire that belonged to the old families, which have now for the most part disappeared. They were of all sizes, some large enough to accommodate a wealthy modern country gentleman (though not arranged according to modern ideas), and others of quite small dimensions, though generally interesting for their architecture,–much more interesting, indeed, than the houses which have succeeded them. Hollins was between the two extremes, and when in its perfection, must have been rather a good specimen, with its mullioned windows, its numerous gables, and its formal front garden, with a straight avenue beyond. Unfortunately, my grandfather found it necessary to rebuild the front, and in doing so altered the character by introducing modern sash windows in the upper story; and though he retained mullioned windows on the ground floor, they were not strictly of the old type. My uncle also carried out other alterations, external and internal, which ended by depriving the house of much of its old character, and still more recent changes have gone farther in the same direction.
However, such as it was in my youth, the place inspired in me one of those intensely strong local attachments which take root in some natures, and in none, I really believe, more powerfully than in mine. Like all strong passions, these local attachments are extremely inconvenient, and it would be better for a man to be without them; but all reasoning on such subjects is superfluous.
Hollins is situated in the middle of a small but very pretty estate, almost entirely bounded by a rocky and picturesque trout-stream, and so pleasantly varied by hill and dale, wood, meadow, and pasture, that it appears much larger than it really is. In my boyhood it seemed an immensity. My cousins and I used to roam about it and play at Robin Hood and his merry men with great satisfaction to ourselves. We fished and bathed in one of the pools, where our ships delivered real broadsides of lead from their little cannons. These boyish recollections, and an early passion for landscape beauty, made Hollins seem a kind of earthly Paradise to me, and the idea of going to live there, instead of in a row of houses in a manufacturing town, filled me with the most delightful anticipations. My uncle put workmen in the house to prepare it, and on every opportunity I walked there to see what they were doing. Even at that age I knew much more about architecture than my elders, being perfectly familiar with the details of the old halls, and so I was constantly losing temper at what seemed to me the evident stupidity of the masons. There was an old master-mason, who did not like me and my criticisms, and he swore at me freely enough, in an explicit Lancashire manner. One day, simply by the eye, I perceived that he was four inches out in a measurement, and told him of it, when he swore frightfully. He then took his two-foot rule, and finding himself in the wrong, swore more frightfully than ever. This was my first experience in the thankless business of art-criticism, and it was the beginning of a false position, in which I often found myself in youth, from knowing more about some subjects than is usual with boys.
The small estate on which Hollins is situated is divided from Towneley Park by a road and a wall, and on the opposite side its boundary, for most of the distance, is the rocky stream that has been already mentioned. The stream had a great influence on my whole life, by giving me a taste for the beauty of wild streams in Scotland and elsewhere. It is called the Brun, and gives its name to Burnley. The rocks are a sandstone sufficiently warm in color to give a very pleasant contrast to the green foliage, and the forms of them are so broken that in sunshine there are plenty of fine accidental lights and shadows. It was one of my greatest pleasures to follow the course of this stream, with a leaping-pole, up to the moors, where it flowed through a wide and desolate valley or hollow in the hills. As the aspect of a stream is continually changing with the seasons and the quantity of water, it is always new. The only regret I have about my residence near the Brun is that I did not learn at the right time to make the most of it in the way of artistic study; but I did as much, perhaps, as was to be expected from a boy who was receiving a literary and not an artistic education.
The defect of the Brun was the absence of pools big enough for swimming and boating, but it gave a tantalizing desire for these pleasures, and I was as aquatic as my opportunities would allow. In June, 1850, my first catamaran was launched on a fish-pond. I built it myself, with an outlay of one pound for the materials. It was composed of two floats or tubes, consisting of a light framework of deal covered with waterproofed canvas. These were kept apart in the water, but joined above by a light open framework that served as a deck, and on which the passengers sat. The thing would carry five people, and was propelled by short oars. Being extremely light, it was easily drawn on a road, and was provided with small wheels for that purpose. This boyish attempt would not have been mentioned had it not been the first of a long series of practical experiments in the construction of catamarans which have continued down to the date of the present writing, and of which the reader will hear more in the sequel. I promise to endeavor not to weary him with the subject.
It is astonishing how very far-reaching in their effects are the tastes and habits that we acquire in early life! The sort of existence that I am leading here at Pre Charmoy, near Autun, in this year 1886, bears a wonderfully close resemblance to my existence at Hollins in 1850. I am living, as I was then, on a pretty estate with woods, meadows, pastures, and a beautiful stream, with hills visible from it in all directions. There is a fish-pond too, about a mile from the house, and I am even now trying catamaran experiments on this pond, as I did on the other in Lancashire. My occupations are exactly the same, and to complete the resemblance it so happens that just now I am reading Latin. The chief difference is that writing has become lucrative and professional, whereas in those earlier days it was a study only.
It is very difficult for me to believe that thirty-six years separate me from a time so like the present in many ways–like and yet unlike,–for I was then in Lancashire and am now in France; but this is a fact that I only realize when I think about it. The real exile for me would be to live in a large town.
CHAPTER XII.
1850.
Interest in the Middle Ages.–Indifference to the Greeks and Romans.– Love for Sir Walter Scott’s writings.–Interest in heraldry and illuminations.–Passion for hawking.–Old books in the school library at Burnley.–Mr. Edward Alexander of Halifax.–Attempts in literary composition.–Contributions to the “Historic Times.”–“Rome in 1849.”–“Observations on Heraldry.”
The last chapter ended by saying that my occupations in early life were the same as they are at present, but I now remember one or two points of difference. In those days I lived, mentally, a great deal in the Middle Ages. This was owing to the influence of Sir Walter Scott, certainly of all authors the one who has most influenced me, and it was also due in some measure to a romantic interest in the history of my own family, and of the other families in the north of England with which mine had been connected in the past. For the Greeks and Romans I cared very little; they seemed too remote from my own country and race, and the English present, in which my lot was cast, seemed too dull and un-picturesque, too prosaic and commonplace. My imagination being saturated with Scott, I had naturally the same taste as my master. I soon learned all about heraldry, and in my leisure time drew and colored all the coats of arms that had been borne by the Hamertons in their numerous alliances, as well as the arms of other families from which our own was descended. I wrote black-letter characters on parchment and made pedigrees, and became so much of a mediaevalist that there was considerable risk of my stopping short in the amateur practice of such arts as wood-carving, illumination, and painting on glass. The same taste for the Middle Ages led me to imitate our forefathers in more active pursuits; amongst others I had such a passion for hawking that at one time I became incapable of opening my lips about anything else. My guardian said it was “hawk, hawk, hawking from morning till night.” Not that I ever possessed a living falcon of any species whatever. My uncle resigned to me a corner of the outbuildings, on the ground-floor of which was a loose-box for my horse, and above it a room that I set apart for the falcons when they should arrive; but in spite of many promises from gamekeepers and naturalists and others, no birds ever came! The hoods and jesses were ready, very prettily adorned with red morocco leather and gold thread; the mews were ready too, with partitions in trellis-work of my own making,–everything was ready except the peregrines!
I knew the coats-of-arms of all the families in the neighborhood, and of course that of the Towneleys, who had a chapel in Burnley Church for the interment of their dead, adorned with many hatchments. Those hatchments had a double interest for me, as heraldry in the first place, and also because the Towneleys had a peregrine falcon for their crest! I envied them that crest, and would willingly have exchanged for it our own “greyhound couchant, sable.”
Burnley School possesses a library which is rich in old tomes that few people ever read. In my youth these volumes were kept in a room entirely surrounded with dark oak wainscot, that opened on the shelves where these old books reposed. I read some of them, more or less, but have totally forgotten them all except a black-letter Chaucer. That volume delighted me, and I have read in it many an hour. It is much to be regretted that I had not the same affectionate curiosity about the Greek and Latin classics, but it was something to have a taste for the literature of one’s own country.
My uncle’s brother-in-law, Mr. Edward Alexander, of Halifax, was a lawyer of literary and antiquarian tastes, and a great lover of books,–not to read only, but to have around him in a well-ordered library. He was extremely kind to me, and now, when I know better how very rare such kindness is in the world, I feel perhaps even more grateful for it than I did then.
Mr. Alexander was the father of the young Alexander who was my school-fellow at Doncaster, and I am hardly exaggerating his affection for me when I say that he had a paternal feeling towards myself. He put his library entirely at my disposal, and gave me a room in his house at Heath Field, near Halifax, whenever I felt inclined to avail myself of it, and had liberty to go there.
His library had cost him several thousand pounds, and was rich in archaeological books. Mrs. Alexander was a charming lady, always exquisitely gentle in her way, and gifted with a quiet firmness which enabled her to match very effectually the somewhat irascible disposition of my friend, who had the irritability as well as the kindness of heart which, I have since observed, are often found together in Frenchmen. With all his goodness he was by no means an indulgent judge; he could not endure the slightest failure or forgetfulness in good manners, and most of his young relations were afraid of him. I only offended him once, and that but slightly. He was walking in his own garden with my uncle, when I had to do something that required the use of both hands, and I was encumbered with a book. I dared not lay the book on the ground, as I should have done if it had been my own, so I asked my uncle to hold it. I could see an expression on Mr. Alexander’s face which said clearly enough that I had taken a liberty in requesting this little service from a senior, and it only occurred to me as an afterthought that I might have put my hat on the ground and laid the book on the hat. This little incident shows one side of my dear friend’s nature, but it was not at all a bad thing for me to be occasionally under the influence of one who was at the same time kind and severe. In early life he had been a dandy, and a local poet had called him,–
“Elegant Extracts, the Halifax fop.”
[Footnote: “Elegant Extracts” was the title of a book of miscellaneous reading which had an extensive sale in those days. The couplet related to a public ball,–
“Elegant Extracts, the Halifax fop,
With note-book in hand, took coach for the hop.”
Mr. Alexander sometimes alluded in a pleasant way to his early foppishness, and told some amusing anecdotes, one of which I remember. He and a young friend having adopted some startling new fashion before anybody else in Halifax, were going to church very proud of themselves, when they heard a girl laughing at them, on which her companion rebuked her, saying, “You shouldn’t laugh; you might be struck so!” She thought the dandies were two misshapen idiots.]
In his maturity all that remained of early dandyism was an intolerance of every kind of slovenliness. He rigorously exacted order in his library; I might use any of his books, but must put them all back in their places. Perhaps my present strong love of order may be due in a great measure to Mr. Alexander’s teaching and example. Amongst the friends of my youth there are very few whom I look back to with such grateful affection.
Like most boys who have become authors, I made attempts in literary composition independently of those which were directly encouraged by my master. In this way I wrote a number of articles that were accepted by the “Historic Times,” a London illustrated journal of those days which was started under the patronage of the Church of England, but had not a great success. My first articles were on the Universities, of which I knew nothing except by hearsay, and on “Civilization, Ancient and Modern,” which was rather a vast subject for a boy whose reading had been so limited. However, the editor of the “Historic Times” had not the least suspicion of my age, so I favored him with a long series of articles on Rome in 1849, forming altogether as complete a history of the city for that year as could have been written by one who had never seen it, who did not know Italian, and who had not access to any other sources of information than those which are accessible to everybody in the newspapers.
Under these circumstances, it may seem absurd to have undertaken such a task, but the reader may be reminded that learned historians undertake to tell us what happened long ago from much less ample material. I got no money for these articles (there were twelve of them), and no publisher would reprint them because there was no personal observation in them which publishers always expect in a narrative of contemporary events. The work had, however, been a good exercise for me in the digesting and setting in literary order of a mass of confused material.
My passion for heraldry and hawking led to the production of a little book on heraldry which was an imitation of Sir John Sebright’s “Observations on Hawking,” a treatise that seemed to me simple, and clearly arranged.
My little book had no literary value, and the publisher said that only thirty-nine copies were sold; however, on being asked to produce the remainder of the edition, he said he was unable to do so, as the copies had been “mislaid.” The printing and binding having been done at my expense, I compelled the publisher to reprint the book, but this brought me no pecuniary benefit, as the demand, such as it was, had been satisfied by the first edition.
To this day I do not feel certain in my own mind whether the publisher was dishonest or not. It would be quite natural that a book on heraldry should have a very small sale, but on the other hand it is inconceivable that more than four hundred copies of a book should have been simply lost. [Footnote: There is a third possibility: the sale may have been exactly what the publisher stated; but he may have had no belief in the success of the work, and have printed only one hundred copies whilst charging me for five hundred.]
It was a very good thing for me that the printing of this treatise on heraldry was a cause of loss and disappointment, for if it had been successful I might easily have wasted my life in archaeology, and corrected pedigrees–those long lists of dead people of whom nobody knows anything but their names, and the estates they were lucky enough to possess.
The reader will see that up to this point my tastes had been conservative and aristocratic. Then there came a revolution which was the most important intellectual crisis of my life, and which deserves a chapter to itself.
CHAPTER XIII.
1850.
Political and religious opinions of my relations.–The Rev. James Bardsley.–Protestant controversy with Rome.–German neology.–The inspiration of the Scriptures.–Inquiry into foundation for the doctrine.–I cease to be a Protestant.–An alternative presents itself.–A provisional condition of prolonged inquiry.–Our medical adviser.–His remarkable character.–His opinions.
All my relations were Tories of the most strongly Conservative type, and earnestly believing members of the Church of England, more inclined to the Evangelical than to the High Church party. In my early youth I naturally took the religion and political color of the people about me.
There was at Burnley in those days a curate who has since become a well-known clergyman in Manchester, Mr. James Bardsley. He was a man of very strong convictions of an extreme Evangelical kind, and nature had endowed him with all the gifts of eloquence necessary to propagate his opinions from the pulpit. [Footnote: Since then he has become Canon and Archdeacon.] He was really eloquent, and he possessed in a singular degree the wonderful power of enchaining the attention of his audience. We always listened with interest to what Mr. Bardsley was saying at the moment, and with the feeling of awakened anticipation, as he invariably conveyed the impression that something still more interesting was to follow. His power as a preacher was so great that his longest sermons were not felt to be an infliction; one might feel tired after they were over, but not during their delivery. His power was best displayed in attack, and he was very aggressive, especially against the doctrines of the Church of Rome,–which he declared to be “one huge Lie.”
Of course a boy of my age believed his own religion to be absolutely true, and others to be false in exact proportion to their divergence from it, as this is the way with young people when they really believe. It was my habit to take an intensely strong interest in anything that interested me at all, and as religion had a supreme interest for me I read all about the Protestant controversy with Rome under Mr. Bardsley’s guidance, in books of controversial theology recommended by him. My guardian, with her usual good sense, did not quite approve of this controversial spirit; she was content to be a good Christian in her own way and let the poor Roman Catholics alone, but I was too ardent in what seemed to me the cause of truth to see with indifference the menacing revival of Romanism.
A large new Roman Catholic church was erected in Burnley, and opened with an imposing ceremony. There was at that time a belief that the power of the Pope might one day be re-established in our country, and the great results of the Reformation either wholly sacrificed or placed in the greatest jeopardy. Protestants were called upon to defend these conquests, and in order to qualify themselves for this great duty it was necessary that they should make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the great controversy between the pure Church to which it was their own happiness to belong, and that corrupt association which called itself Catholicism. I had rather a bold and combative disposition, and was by no means unwilling to take a share in the battle.
All went well for a time. The spirit of inquiry is not considered an evil spirit so long as it only leads to agreement with established doctrines, and as an advanced form of Protestantism was preached in Burnley Church, I was at liberty to think boldly enough, provided I did not go beyond that particular stage of thought. Not having as yet any disposition to go beyond, I did not at all realize what a very small degree of intellectual liberty my teachers were really disposed to allow me.
One occasion I remember distinctly. Mr. Bardsley was at Hollins, where he spent the evening with us, and in the course of conversation, as he was leaning on the chimney-piece, he spoke about German Neology, which I had never heard of before, so I asked what it was, and he described it as a dreadful doctrine which attributed no more inspiration to sacred than to profane writers. The ladies were shocked and scandalized by the bare mention of such a doctrine, but the effect on me was very different. The next day, in my private meditations, I began to wonder what were the evidences by which it was determined that some writers were inspired and infallible, and what critics had settled the question. The orthodox reader will say that in a perplexity of this kind I had nothing to do but carry my difficulty to a clergyman. This is exactly what I did, and the clergyman was Mr. Bardsley himself.
He was full of kindness to me, and took the trouble to write a long paper on the subject, which must have cost him fully two days’ work,–a paper in which he gave a full account of the Canon of Scripture from the Evangelical point of view. The effect on me was most discouraging, for the result amounted merely to this, that certain Councils of the Church had recognized the Divine inspiration of certain books, just as certain authoritative critics might recognize the profane inspiration of poets. After reading the paper with the utmost care I felt so embarrassed about it that (with the awkwardness of youth) I did not even write to thank the amiable author who had taken so much trouble to help me, and I only thanked him briefly on meeting him at a friend’s house, where it was impossible to avoid the interchange of a few words.
This autobiography is not intended to be a book of controversy, so I shall carefully avoid the details of religious changes and give only results. I do not think that anything in my life was ever more decisive than the receipt of that long communication from Mr. Bardsley. The day before receiving it I was in doubt, but the day after I felt perfectly satisfied that the Divine inspiration of the books known to Englishmen as the “Scriptures” rested simply on the opinion, of different bodies of theologians who had held meetings which were called Councils. The only difference between these Councils and those of the Church of Rome was, that these were represented as having taken place earlier, before the Church was so much divided; but it did not seem at all evident that the members of the earlier Councils were men of a higher stamp, intellectually, than those who composed the distinctly Roman Catholic Councils, nor was there any evidence that the Holy Spirit had been with those earlier Councils, though it afterwards withdrew itself from the later.
The Protestant reader will perhaps kindly bear with me whilst I give the reasons why I ceased to be a Protestant, after having been so earnest and zealous in that form of the Christian faith. It appeared to me–I do not say it _is_, but it appeared to me, and appears to me still–that Protestantism is an uncritical belief in the decisions of the Church down to a date which I do not pretend to fix exactly, and an equally uncritical scepticism, a scepticism of the most unreceptive kind, with regard to all opinions professed and all events said to have taken place in the more recent centuries of ecclesiastical history. The Church of Rome, on the other hand, seemed nearer in temper to the temper of the past, and was more decidedly a continuation, though evidently at the same time an amplification, of the early Christian habits of thinking and believing.
With this altered view of the subject the alternative that presented itself to me was that which presented itself to the brothers Newman, and if I had found it necessary to my happiness to belong to a visible Church of some kind, and if devotional feelings had been stronger than the desire for mental independence, I should have joined the Church of Rome.
There were, indeed, two or three strong temptations to that course. My family had been a Catholic family in the past, and had sacrificed much for the Church of Rome when she was laboring under oppression; for a Hamerton to return to her would therefore have been quite in accordance with those romantic sentiments about distant ancestors which were at that time very strong in me. Besides this, I had all the feeling for the august ceremonial of the Catholic Church which is found in the writer who most influenced me, Sir Walter Scott; and there was already a certain consciousness of artistic necessities and congruities which made me dimly aware that if you admit the glories of ecclesiastical architecture, it is only the asceticism of Puritan rebellion against art that can deny magnificence to ritual. I had occasionally, though rarely, been present at High Mass, and had felt a certain elevating influence, and if I had said to myself, “Religion is only a poem by which the soul is raised to the contemplation of the Eternal Mysteries,” then I could have dreamed vaguely in this contemplation better, perhaps, in the Roman Catholic Church than in any other. But my English and Protestant education was against a religion of dreaming. An English Protestant may have his poetical side, may be capable of feeling poetry that is frankly avowed to be such–may read Tennyson’s “Eve of St. Agnes” or Scott’s “Hymn to the Virgin” with almost complete imaginative sympathy; but he expects to believe his religion as firmly as he believes in the existence of the British Islands. Such, at least, was the matter-of-fact temper that belonged to Protestantism in those days. In more recent times a more hazy religion has become fashionable.
My decision, therefore, for some time was to remain in a provisional condition of prolonged inquiry. I read a great deal on both sides, and constantly prayed for light, following regularly the external services of the Church of England. Here the subject may be left for the present.
The reader is to imagine me as a youth who no longer believed in the special inspiration of the Scriptures, or in their infallibility, but who was still a Christian as thousands of “liberal” Church people in the present day are Christians.
Before resuming my religious history, I ought to mention an influence which was supposed by my friends to have been powerful over me, but which in reality had slightly affected the current of my thinking. Our medical adviser was a surgeon rather advanced in years, and whose private fortune made him independent of professional success. As time went on, he allowed himself to be more and more replaced by his assistant, Mr. Uttley, one of the most remarkable characters I ever met with. In those days, in a northern provincial town, it required immense courage to avow religious heterodoxy of any advanced kind, yet Mr. Uttley said with the utmost simplicity that he was an atheist, and the religious world called him “Uttley the Atheist,” a title which he accepted as naturally as if it implied no contempt or antagonism whatever. He was by no means devoid of physical courage also, for I remember that at one time he rode an ugly brute that had a most dangerous habit of bolting, and he would not permit me to mount her. He was excessively temperate in his habits, never drinking anything stronger than water, except, perhaps, a cup of tea (I am not sure about the tea), and never eating more than he believed to be necessary to health. He maintained the doctrine that hunger remains for a time after the stomach has had enough, and that if you go on eating to satiety you are intemperate. He disliked, and I believe despised, the habit of stuffing on festive occasions, which used to be common in the wealthier middle classes. I confess that Mr. Uttley’s fearless honesty and steady abstemiousness impressed me with the admiration that one cannot but feel for the great virtues, by whomsoever practised; but Mr. Uttley had a third virtue, which is so rare in England as to be almost unintelligible to the majority,–he looked with the most serene indifference on social struggles, on the arts by which people rise in the world. Perfectly contented with his own station in life, and a man of remarkably few wants, he lived on from year to year without ambition, finding his chief interest in the pursuit of his profession, and his greatest pleasure in his books. He so little attempted to make a proselyte of me that, when at a later period I told him of a certain change of views, concerning which more will be said in the sequel, he was unaffectedly surprised by it, and said that he had never supposed me to be other than what I appeared to the world in general, an ordinary member of the Church of England. My intimate knowledge of Mr. Uttley’s remarkable character must have had, nevertheless, a certain influence in this way, that it enabled me to estimate the vulgar attacks on infidels at their true worth; and though my own theistic beliefs were very strong, I knew from this example that an atheist was not necessarily a monster.
The only occasions that I remember in youth when Mr. Uttley might have influenced me were these two. Being curious to know about opinions from those who really held them, and being already convinced that we cannot really know them from the misrepresentations of their enemies, I once asked Mr. Uttley what atheism really was, and why it recommended itself to him. He replied that atheism was, in his view, the acceptance of the smaller of two difficulties, both of which were still very great. The smaller difficulty for him was to believe in the self-existence of the universe; the greater was to believe in a single Being, without a beginning, who could create millions of solar systems; and as one or the other must be self-existent the difficulty about self-existence was common to both cases. The well-known argument from design did not convince him, as he believed in a continual process of natural adjustment of creatures to their environment,–a theory resembling that of Darwin, but not yet so complete. I listened to Mr. Uttley’s account of his views with much interest; but they had no influence on my own, as it seemed to me much easier to refer everything to an intelligent Creator than to believe in the self-existence of all the intricate organizations that we see. Still, I was not indignant, as the reader may think I ought to have been. It seemed to me quite natural that thoughtful men should hold different opinions on a subject of such infinite difficulty.
The other occasion was, when in the vigor of youthful Protestantism I happened to say something against the Church of Rome. Mr. Uttley very quietly and kindly told me that I was unjust towards that Church, and I asked him where the injustice lay. “It lies in this,” he replied, “that you despise the dogmas of the Church of Rome as resting only on the authority of priests, whereas the case of that Church is not exceptional or peculiar, as _all_ dogmas rest ultimately on the authority of priests.” To this I naturally answered that Scriptural authority was higher; but Mr. Uttley answered,–“The Roman Catholics themselves appeal to Scriptural authority as the Protestants do; but it is still the priests who have decided which books are sacred, and how they are to be interpreted.” His conversation was not longer than my report of it, and it occurred when I met Mr. Uttley accidentally in the street; but though short, it was of some importance, as I happened at that time to be exercised in my mind about what Mr. Bardsley had told us concerning “German Neology.” Subsequent observation has led me to believe that Mr. Uttley attributed more originating authority to priests than really belongs to them. It seems to me now that they take up and consecrate popular beliefs that may be of use, and that they drop and discard, either tacitly or openly, those beliefs which are no longer popular. Both processes have been going on, for some years very visibly in the Church of Rome, and the second of the two is plainly in operation in the Church of England.
CHAPTER XIV.
1851.
First visit to London in 1851.–My first impression of the place.– Nostalgia of the country.–Westminster.–The Royal Academy.–Resolution never to go to London again.–Reason why this resolution was afterwards broken.
In the year 1851 I went to London for the first time, to see the Great Exhibition. Our little party consisted only of my guardian, my aunt, and myself.
My first impression of London was exactly what it has ever since remained. It seemed to me the most disagreeable place I had ever seen, and I wondered how anybody could live there who was not absolutely compelled to do so. At that time I did not understand the only valid reason for living in London, which is the satisfaction of meeting with intelligent people who know something about what interests you, and do not consider you eccentric because you take an interest in something that is not precisely and exclusively money-making.
My aunts knew nobody in London except one or two ladies of rank superior to their own, on whom we made formal calls, which was a sort of human intercourse that I heartily detested, as I detest it to this day.
Our lodgings were in Baker Street, which, after our pure air, open scenery, and complete liberty at Hollins, seemed to me like a prison. The lodgings were not particularly clean–the carpets, especially, seemed as if they had never been taken up. The air was heavy, the water was bad (our water at Hollins was clearer than glass, and if you poured a goblet of it beady bubbles clung to the sides), there was no view except up street and down street, and the noise was perpetual. A Londoner would take these inconveniences as a matter of course and be insensible to them, but to me they were so unpleasant that I suffered from nostalgia of the country all the time.
The reader may advantageously be spared my boyish impressions of the Great Exhibition and the other sights of London. Of course we fatigued our brains, as country people always do, by seeing too many things in a limited time; and as we had no special purpose in view, we got, I fear, very little instruction from our wanderings amidst the bewildering products of human industry. I remember being profoundly impressed by Westminster Abbey, though I would gladly have seen all the modern monuments calcined in a lime-kiln; and Westminster Hall affected me even more, possibly because one of our ancestors, Sir Stephen Hamerton, had been condemned to death there for high treason in the time of Henry VIII. I was also deeply impressed by the grim, old Tower of London, and only regretted that I did not know which cell the unlucky Sir Stephen had occupied during his hopeless imprisonment there.
The rooms of the Royal Academy left a more durable recollection than the contents of the great building in Hyde Park. Those are quite old times for us now in the history of English art. Sir Frederick Leighton was a young student who had not yet begun to exhibit; I think he was working in Frankfort then. Millais was already known as the painter of strange and vivid pictures of small size, which attracted attention, and put the public into a state of much embarrassment. There were three of these strange pictures that year,–an illustration of Tennyson, “She only said, ‘My life is dreary,'” the “Return of the Dove to the Ark,” and the “Woodman’s Daughter.” I distinctly remember the exact sensation with which my young eyes saw these works; so distinctly that I now positively feel those early sensations over again in thinking about them. All was so fresh, so new! This modern art was such a novelty to one who had not seen many modern pictures, and my own powers of enjoying art were so entirely unspoiled by the effect of habit that I was like a young bird in its first spring-time in the woods. I much preferred the beautiful bright pictures in the Academy, with their greens and blues like Nature, to the snuffy old canvases (as they seemed to me) in the National Gallery.
The oddest result for a boy’s first visit to London was a quiet mental resolution of which I said nothing to anybody. What I thought and resolved inwardly may be accurately expressed in these words: “Every Englishman who can afford it ought to see London _once_, as a patriotic duty, and I am not sorry to have been there to have got the duty performed; but no power on earth shall ever induce me to go to that supremely disagreeable place again!”
Of course the intelligent reader considers this boyish resolution impossible and absurd, as it is entirely contrary to prevalent ideas; but a man may lead a very complete life in Lancashire, and even in counties less rich in various interest, without ever going to London at all. A man’s own fields may afford him as good exercise as Hyde Park, and his well-chosen little library as good reading as the British Museum. It was the Fine Arts that brought me to London afterwards; the worst of the Fine Arts being that they concentrate themselves so much in great capitals.
CHAPTER XV.
1851-1852.
The love of reading a hindrance to classical studies.–Dr. Butler becomes anxious about my success at Oxford.–An insuperable obstacle.–My indifference to degrees.–Irksome hypocrisy.–I am nearly sent to a tutor at Brighton.–I go to a tutor in Yorkshire.–His disagreeable disposition.–Incident about riding.–Disastrous effect of my tutor’s intellectual influence upon me.–My private reading.–My tutor’s ignorance of modern authors.–His ignorance of the fine arts.–His religious intolerance.–I declare my inability to sign the Thirty-nine Articles.
The various mental activities hinted at in the preceding chapters had naturally a retarding effect upon my classical studies, which I had never greatly taken to. It seemed then, and it seems to me still, that for one who does not intend to make a living by teaching them, the dead languages, like all other pursuits, are only worth a limited amount of labor. It may appear paradoxical at first, but it is true, that one reason why I did not like Latin and Greek was because I was extremely fond of reading. The case is this: If you are fond of reading and have an evening at your disposal, you will wish to read, will you not? But _construing_ is not reading; it is quite a different mental operation. When you _read_ you think of the scenes and events the author narrates, or you follow his reasoning; but when you _construe_ you think of cases and tenses, and remember grammatical rules. I could read English and French, but Latin and Greek were only to be construed _a coups de dictionnaire_.
The case may be illustrated by reference to an amusement. A man who is indifferent to rowing cares very little what sort of boat he is in, and toils contentedly as peasants do in their heavy boots, but a lover of rowing wants a craft that he can move. This desire is quite independent of the merits of the craft itself, considered without reference to the man. A sailing yacht may he a beautiful vessel, but an Oxford oarsman would not desire to pull one of her cumbersome sweeps.
I was at that time a private pupil of Dr. Butler’s, and was getting on at such a very moderate pace that he began to be anxious about his responsibility. My guardian and he had decided together that I was to be sent to Oxford, and it was even settled to which college, Balliol; and my dear guardian expected me to come out in honors, and be a Fellow of my college and a clergyman. That was her plan; and a very good scheme of life it was, but it had one defect, that of being entirely inapplicable to the human being for whom it was intended. I looked forward to Oxford with anything but pleasure, and, indeed, considered that there was an insuperable obstacle to my going there. In those days most of the good things in life were kept as much as possible for members of the Church of England, and it was necessary to sign the Thirty-nine Articles on entering the University. This I could not do conscientiously, and would not do against the grain of my conviction. I looked upon this obstacle as insuperable; but if I had been as indifferent on such questions as young men generally are, there would still have remained a difficulty in my own nature, which is a rooted dislike to everything which is done for social advancement. I might possibly have desired to be a scholar, but cannot imagine myself desiring a degree. However, I might have taken the trouble to get a degree, simply to please my guardian, if there had not been that obstacle about the Thirty-nine Articles.
From this time, during a year or two, there was a sort of game of cross-purposes between me and my guardian, as I had not yet ventured to declare openly my severance from the Church of England, and my consequent inability to go to one of her universities. The enormous weight of social and family pressure that is brought to bear on a youth with reference to these matters must be my excuse for a year or two of hypocrisy that was extremely irksome to me; but besides this I have a still better excuse in a sincere unwillingness to give pain to my dear guardian, and in the dread lest the declaration of heresy might even be dangerous to one whom I knew to be suffering from heart disease. I therefore lived on as a young member of the Church of England who was studying for Oxford, when in fact I considered myself no longer a member of that Church, and had inwardly renounced all intention of going to either of the Universities, which she still kept closed against the Dissenters.
The inward determination not to go to Oxford or Cambridge had a bad effect on my classical studies, as I had no other object in view whilst pursuing them than the intellectual benefit to be derived from the studies themselves, and I had not any very great faith in that benefit. The most intelligent men I knew did not happen to be classical scholars, and some men of my acquaintance who _were_ classical scholars seemed to me quite impervious to ideas concerning science and the fine arts. Even now, after a much larger experience, I do not perceive that classical scholarship opens men’s minds to scientific and artistic ideas, or even that scholarship gives much appreciation of literary art and excellence. Still, it is better to have it than to be without it. There is such a thing as a scholarly temper,–a patient, careful, exact, and studious temper,–which is valuable in all the pursuits of life.
Mr. Butler had been for some time my private tutor–which means that I prepared my work at Hollins in the morning, and went to read with Mr. Butler in the afternoon. The plan was pleasant enough for me, but it was not advantageous, because what I most wanted was guidance during my hours of study,–such guidance as I had at Doncaster. However, I read and wrote Latin and Greek every day, and learned French at the same time, as Mr. Butler had a taste for modern languages. This went on until he became rather alarmed about my success at Oxford (which for reasons known to the reader troubled me very little), and told my guardian that she ought to send me to some tutor who could bestow upon me more continuous attention. I was as near as possible to being sent to a tutor at Brighton,–a reverend gentleman with aristocratic connections,–but he missed having me by the very bait which he held out to attract my guardian. He boasted in a letter of the young lords he had educated, and said he had one or two still in the house with him. We had a near neighbor and old friend who was herself very nearly connected with two of the greatest families in the peerage, and as she happened to call upon us when my guardian received the letter, it was handed to her, and she said: “That bit about the young lords is not a recommendation; the chances are that P. G. would find them proud and disagreeable.” As for me, the whole project presented nothing that was pleasant. I disliked the south of England, and had not the slightest desire to make the acquaintance of the young noblemen. It was therefore rather a relief that the Brighton project was abandoned.
It happened then that my dear guardian did the only one foolish and wrong thing she ever did in her whole life. She sent me to a clergyman in Yorkshire, who had been a tutor at Oxford, and was considered to be a good “coach,”–so far he may seem to have been the right man,–but he was unfortunately exactly the man to inspire me with a complete disgust for my studies. He had no consideration whatever for the feelings of other people, least of all for those of a pupil. He treated me with open contempt, and was always trying to humiliate me, till at last I let him understand that I would endure it no longer. One day he ordered me to clean his harness, with a peremptoriness that he would scarcely have used to a groom, so I answered, “No, sir, I shall not clean your harness; that is not my work.” He then asked whether I considered myself a gentleman. I said “yes,” and he retorted that it would be a good thing to thrash the gentility out of me; on which I told him that if he ventured to attempt any such thing I should certainly defend myself. I was a well-grown youth, and could have beaten my tutor easily. One day he attempted to scrape my face with a piece of shark’s skin, so I seized both his wrists and held them for some time, telling him that the jest, if it was a jest, was not acceptable.
As my tutor was very handsomely paid for the small amount of trouble he took with me, my guardian had inserted in the agreement a clause by which he was either to keep my horse in his stable, or else let me have the use of one of his own. He preferred, for economy’s sake, to mount me; so in accordance with our agreement I innocently rode out a little in the early mornings, long before the hour fixed for our Greek reading together. As my tutor rose late, he was not aware of this for some time; but at length, by accident, he found it out, and then an incident occurred which exactly paints the charming amenity of the man.
His stable-boy had brought the horse to the gate, and I was just mounting when my tutor opened his bedroom window, and called out, “Take that horse back to the stable immediately!” I said to the servant, who hesitated, that it was his duty to obey his master’s orders, and dismounted; then I went to my lodgings in the village, and wrote a note to the tutor, in which I said that I expected him to keep his agreement, and in accordance with it I should ride out that day. I then left the note at the house, saddled the animal myself, and rode a long distance. From that time our relations were those of constrained formality, which on the whole I much preferred. My tutor assumed an air of injured innocence, and treated me with a clumsy imitation of politeness which was intended to wound me, but which I found extremely convenient, as the greater the distance between us the less intercourse there would be. However, after that demonstration of my rights, I kept a horse of my own–a much finer animal–at a farmer’s.
The intellectual influence of my present tutor was disastrous, by the reaction it produced. He was a fanatical admirer of the ancient authors who wrote in Latin and Greek, and was constantly expressing his contempt for modern literature, of which he was extremely ignorant. I was fond of reading, and had English books in my lodgings which were my refuge and solace after the pedantic lectures I had to undergo. My love for Scott was still very lively (as indeed it is to this day), but I had now extended my horizon and added Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, and other modern authors to my list. My tutor had all the hatred for Byron which distinguished the clergy in the poet’s life-time, and he was constantly saying the most unjust things against him; as, for example, that the “Bride of Abydos” was not original, but was copied from the Greek of Moschus. This clerical hatred for Byron quite prevented my tutor from acquiring any knowledge of the poet; but he had seen a copy of his works at my lodgings, and this served as a text for the most violent diatribes. As for Shelley, he knew no more about him than that he had been accused of atheism. He had heard of Moore, whom he called “Tommy.” I believe he had never heard of Keats or Tennyson; certainly he was quite unacquainted with their poems. He had a feeble, incipient knowledge of French, and occasionally read a page of Moliere, with an unimaginable pronunciation; but he knew nothing really of any modern literature. On the other hand, his knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics was more intimate than that possessed by any other teacher I had ever known. He was a thorough, old-fashioned scholar, with all the pride of exact erudition, and a corresponding contempt for everybody who did not possess it. I do not at this moment remember that he ever referred to a dictionary. I only remember that he examined my Liddell and Scott to see whether those modern lexicographers had done their work in a way to merit his approval, and that he thought their book might be useful to me. He had some knowledge of astronomy, and was building a reflecting telescope which he never completed; but I remember that he was often occupied in polishing the reflectors whilst I was reading, and that his hand went on rubbing with a bit of soft leather, and a red powder, when he would deliver the clearest disquisitions on the employment of words by Greek authors, most of which I was not sufficiently advanced to profit by. His manner with me was impatient, and often rude and contemptuous. What irritated him especially in me was the strange inequality of my learning, for I was rather strong on some points, and equally weak on others; whilst he himself had an irresistible regularity of knowledge, at least in Latin and Greek.
We did absolutely nothing else but Latin and Greek during my stay with this tutor, and I suppose I must have made some progress, but there was no _feeling_ of progress. In comparison with the completeness of my master’s terrible erudition it seemed that my small acquirements were nothing, and never could be more than nothing. On the other hand, the extreme narrowness of his literary tastes led me to place a higher value on my own increasing knowledge of modern literature, and conclusively proved to me, once for all, that a classical education does not necessarily give a just or accurate judgment. “If a man,” I said to myself, “can be a thorough classical scholar as my tutor is, and at the same time so narrow and ignorant, it is clear that a classical training does not possess the virtue of opening the mind which is ascribed to it.”
Besides his narrowness with regard to modern literature of all kinds, my tutor had the usual characteristic of the classical scholars of his generation, a complete ignorance and misunderstanding of the fine arts. All that he knew on that subject was that a certain picture by Titian was shameful because there was a naked woman in it; and I believe he had heard that Claude was a famous landscape-painter, but he had no conception whatever of the aims and purposes of art. One of his accusations against me was that, from vanity, I had painted a portrait of myself. As a matter of fact, the little picture was a portrait of Lord Byron, done from an engraving; but any artist may, without vanity, make use of his own face as a model.
In religion my tutor was most intolerant. He could not endure either Roman Catholics or Dissenters of any kind, and considered no terms harsh enough for infidels. He told with approbation the story of some bigot like himself, who, when an unbeliever came into his house, had loudly ordered the servant to lock up the silver spoons. He possessed and read with approbation one of those intolerant books of the eighteenth century entitled, “A Short Method with Deists,” in which the poor Deists were crushed beneath the pitiless heel of the dominant State Church. It happened one day, by a strange chance, that an antiquary brought a Unitarian minister, who also took an interest in archaeology, to visit the church where my tutor officiated, in which, there were some old things, and as they stayed in the church till our early dinner-time, my tutor could hardly do otherwise than offer them a little hospitality. When the guests had gone (I hope they enjoyed the conversation, which seemed to me artificial and constrained) my tutor said to me: “That man, that Unitarian, will go to hell! All who do not believe in the Atonement will go to hell!” I said nothing, but thought that the mild antiquary who sat with us at table might deserve a less terrible fate. My tutor troubled me less, perhaps, about theology than might have been expected. He intended to inflict much more theology upon me than I really had to undergo, thanks to his indolence, and the craft and subtlety with which I managed to substitute other work for it. Still, it was a trial to me to have to look acquiescent, or at least submissive and respectful, whilst he said the most unjust and intolerant things about those who differed from him, and with whom I often secretly agreed. And of course I had to listen to his sermons every Sunday, and to go through the outward seemings of conformity that my master had power enough to exact from me. Beyond the weekly services in the church he fulfilled scarcely any of the duties of a parish clergyman. He rose about eleven in the morning, and spent his time either in mechanical pursuits or in desultory reading, often of the Greek and Latin classics. In fact, my tutor’s mind was so imbued with the dead languages that he was unable to write his own, but had constant recourse to Greek and Latin to make his meaning clear.
A year spent with this clergyman, with whom I had not two ideas in common, produced an effect upon me exactly opposite to that which had been intended. My feelings towards the ancient classics had grown into positive repugnance when I saw the moderns so unjustly sacrificed to them, and my love for the moderns had increased to the point of partisanship. My tutor’s injustice towards Dissenters and unbelievers had also, by a natural reaction, aroused in me a profound sympathy for these maligned and despised people, and I would willingly have joined some dissenting body myself if I could have found one that had exactly my own opinions; but it seemed useless to leave the Church of England for another community if I were no more in accordance with the new than with the old. The fact that my master had been a tutor at Oxford and was always boasting about his university career–he openly expressed his contempt for men who “had never seen the smoke of a university”–made me sick of the very name of the place, and to this day I have never visited it. In a word, my tutor made me dislike the very things that it was his business to make me like, and if I had ever felt the least desire for a degree he would have cured me of it, as it was impossible to desire honors that were accessible to so narrow a mind as his, a mind fit for nothing but pedagogy, and really unable to appreciate either literature or art.
At the end of a year, therefore, I said plainly to my guardian that I was doing no good, and that it was useless to prepare me any further for Oxford, as I could not conscientiously put my name to the Thirty-nine Articles.
If, in those days, any human being in our class of society in England had been able to conceive of such a thing as education not in clerical hands, I might have gone on with my classical studies under the direction of a layman; but education and the clergy were looked upon as inseparable; even by myself. My education, therefore, came momentarily to a stand-still, though it happened a little later that a sense of its imperfection made me take it up again with fresh energy on my own account, and I am still working at it, in various directions, at the mature age of fifty-two.
CHAPTER XVI.
1852.
Choice of a profession.–Love of literature and art.–Decision to make trial of both.–An equestrian tour.–Windermere.–Derwentwater.–I take lessons from Mr. J. P. Pettitt.–Ulleswater.–My horse Turf.–Greenock, a discovery.–My unsettled cousin.–Glasgow.–Loch Lomond. –Inverary.–Loch Awe.–Inishail.–Innistrynich.–Oban.–A sailing excursion.–Mull and Ulva.–Solitary reading.
The question of a profession now required an immediate decision. My guardian’s choice for me had formerly been the Church, but that was not exactly suited to my ways of thinking. The most natural profession for a young man in my position would have been the law, but my father had expressly desired that I should not adopt it, as he was sick of it for himself, and wished to spare me its anxieties. The cotton trade required a larger disposable capital than I possessed, to start with any chance of success.
My own desires were equally balanced between two pursuits for which I had a great liking, and hoped that there might be some natural aptitude. One of these was literature, and the other painting. A very moderate success in either of these pursuits would, it seemed to me, be more conducive to happiness than a greater success in some less congenial occupation. My fortune was enough for a bachelor, and I did not intend to marry, at least for a long time.
There was no thought of ambition in connection with the desire to follow one of these two pursuits, beyond that of the workman who desires to do well. I mean, I had no social ambition in connection with them. It seemed to me that the liberty of thought which I valued above everything was incompatible, in England, with any desire to rise in the world, as unbelievers lay under a ban, and had no chance of social advancement without renouncing their opinions. This was an additional reason why I should seek happiness in my studies, as a worldly success was denied to me.
The reader may perhaps think that I had not much, in the way of social advancement, to renounce, but in fact I had a position remarkably full of possibilities, that a man of the world could have used to great advantage. I had independent means, enough to enable me, as a bachelor, to live like a gentleman; I belonged to one of the oldest and best-descended families in the English untitled aristocracy, had a retentive memory, a strong voice, and could speak in public without embarrassment. A man of the world, in my position, would have found his upward course straight before him. He would simply have made use of the Church as an instrument (it is one of the most valuable instruments for the worldly), have given himself the advantages of Oxford, married for money, offered his services to the Conservative party, and gone into Parliament. [Footnote: The reader may wonder why the _Conservative_ party is specially mentioned. It is mentioned simply because all my relations and nearly all my influential friends (who could have pushed me) belonged to it. The Conservative party is also the one that gives the best social promotion to those who serve it. There have been many little Beaconsfields.]
It would have been much easier to do all that than to make a reputation either in literature or painting,–easier, I mean, for a man starting in life with so many good cards in his hand as I had.
I have been sometimes represented as an unsuccessful painter who took to writing because he had failed as an artist. It is, of course, easy to state the matter so, but the exact truth is that a very moderate success in either literature or art would have been equally acceptable to me, so that there has been no other failure in my life than the usual one of not being able to catch two hares at the same time. Very few dogs have ever been able to do that.
I decided to try to be a painter and to try to be an author, and see what came of both attempts. My guardian always thought I should end by being an author, and though she had no prejudice against painting, she looked upon it as a pursuit likely to be very tedious, at times, to those who practise it, in which she was quite right. It is generally a hard struggle, requiring infinite patience, even in the clever and successful.
One of the first things I did was to go on horseback to the English Lake district in the summer of 1852, with the intention of continuing the journey, still on horseback, into the mountainous regions of Scotland. Unfortunately this project could not be executed with the horse I then possessed, the most dangerous, sulky, resolute, and cunning brute I ever mounted. I rode him as far as Keswick, where a horse-breaker tried him and said his temper was incurable, recommending me to have him shot. The advice was excellent, but I could not find it in my heart to destroy such a fine-looking animal, so I left him in grass at Penrith, and went on to Scotland by the usual means of travelling,–a change that I regret to this day.
I had materials with me for painting studies in oil, and painted at