Philip Gilbert Hamerton
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Title: Philip Gilbert Hamerton
Author: Eugénie Hamerton
Philip Gilbert Hamerton
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8536]
Most recently updated: December 26, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON ***
E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Tonya Allen, Charles
Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
_AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY_
1834-1858
_AND A MEMOIR BY HIS WIFE_
1858-1894
"Intellectual living is not so much an accomplishment as a state or
condition of the mind in which it seeks earnestly for the highest and
purest truth.... If we often blunder and fail for want of perfect wisdom
and clear light, have we not the inward assurance that our aspiration
has not been all in vain, that it has brought us a little nearer to the
Supreme Intellect whose effulgence draws us while it dazzles?"--_The
Intellectual Life_.
PREFACE.
About twelve years ago my husband told me that he had begun to write an
Autobiography intended for publication, but not during his lifetime. He
worked upon it at intervals, as his literary engagements permitted, but
I found after his sudden death that he had only been able to carry it as
far as his twenty-fourth year. Such a fragment seemed too brief for
separate publication, and I earnestly desired to supplement it by a
Memoir, and thus to give to those who knew and loved his books a more
complete understanding of his character and career. But though I longed
for this satisfaction and solace, the task seemed beyond my power,
especially as it involved the difficulty of writing in a foreign
language. Considering, however, that the Autobiography was carried, as
it happened, up to the date of our marriage, and that I could therefore
relate all the subsequent life from intimate knowledge, as no one else
could, I was encouraged by many of Mr. Hamerton's admirers to make the
attempt, and with the great and untiring help of his best friend, Mr.
Seeley, I have been enabled to complete the Memoir--such as it is.
I offer my sincere thanks to Mr. Sidney Colvin and to his co-executor
for having allowed the insertion of Mr. R. L. Stevenson's letters; to
Mr. Barrett Browning for those of his father; to Sir George and Lady
Reid, Mr. Watts, Mr. Peter Graham, and Mr. Burlingame for their own.
I also beg Mr. A. H. Palmer to accept the expression of my gratitude for
his kind permission to use as a frontispiece to this book the fine
photograph taken by him.
E. HAMERTON.
_September_, 1896.
CONTENTS.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
CHAPTER I.
My reasons for writing an Autobiography.--That a man knows the history
of his own life better than a biographer can know it.--Frankness and
reserve.--The contemplation of death.
CHAPTER II.
1834.
My birthplace.--My father and mother.--Circumstances of their
marriage.--Their short married life.--Birth of their child.--Death of
my mother.--Her character and habits.--My father as a widower.--Dulness
of his life.--Its degradation.
CHAPTER III
1835-1841.
My childhood is passed at Barnley with my aunts.--My grandfather and
grandmother.--Estrangement between Gilbert Hamerton and his brother of
Hellifield Peel.--Death of Gilbert Hamerton.--His taste for the French
language.--His travels in Portugal, and the conduct of a steward during
his absence.--His three sons.--Aristocratic tendencies of his
daughters.--Beginning of my education.--Visits to my father.
CHAPTER IV.
1842.
A tour in Wales in 1842.--Extracts from my Journal of this tour.--My
inborn love for beautiful materials.--Stay at Rhyl.--Anglesea and
Caernarvon.--Reasons for specially remembering this tour.
CHAPTER V.
1843-1844.
A painful chapter to write.--My father calls me home.--What kind of a
house it was.--Paternal education and discipline.--My life at that time
one of dulness varied by dread.
CHAPTER VI.
1844.
My extreme loneliness.--Thoughts of flight.--My father's last illness
and death.--Circumstances of my last interview with him.--His funeral.
CHAPTER VII.
1845.
Dislike to Shaw in consequence of the dreadful life I lead there with my
father.--My guardian.--Her plan for my education.--Doncaster
School.--Mr. Cape and his usher.--The usher's intolerance of
Dissenters.--My feeling for architecture and music.--The
drawing-master.--My guardian insists on my learning French.--Our French
master, Sig. Testa.--A painful incident.--I begin to learn the
violin.--Dancing.--My aversion to cricket.--Early readings.--Love of
Scott.--My first library.--Classical studies.
CHAPTER VIII.
1845.
Early attempts in English verse.--Advantages of life at Doncaster.--A
school incident.--Fagging.--Story of a dog.--Robbery.--My school-fellow
Henry Alexander.--His remarkable influence.--Other school-fellows.
--Story of a boat.--A swimming adventure.--Our walks and battles.
CHAPTER IX.
1846.
Early interest in theology.--Reports of sermons.--Quiet influence of Mr.
Cape.--Failure of Mr. Cape's health.--His death.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
CHAPTER XV.
1851-1852.
The lore 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.
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.--Inmstrynich.--Oban.--A
sailing excursion.--Mull and Ulva.--Solitary reading.
CHAPTER XVII.
1853.
A journal.--Self-training.--Attempts in periodical literature.--The
time given to versification well spent.--Practical studies in art.--
Beginning of Mr. Ruskin's influence.--Difficulty in finding a master in
landscape-painting.--Establishment of the militia.--I accept a
commission.--Our first training.--Our colonel and our adjutant.--The
Grand Llama.--Paying off the men.
CHAPTER XVIII.
1853.
A project for studying in Paris.--Reading.--A healthy life.--
Quinsy.--My most intimate friend.
CHAPTER XIX.
1853.
London again.--Accurate habits in employment of time.--Studies with Mr.
Pettitt.--Some account of my new master.--His method of technical
teaching.--Simplicity of his philosophy of art.--Incidents of his
life.--Rapid progress under Pettitt's direction.
CHAPTER XX.
1653-1854.
Acquaintance with R. W. Mackay.--His learning and accomplishments.--His
principal pursuit.--His qualities as a writer.--Value of the artistic
element in literature.--C. R. Leslie, R. A.--Robinson, the
line-engraver.--The Constable family.--Mistaken admiration for minute
detail.--Projected journey to Egypt.--Mr. Ruskin.--Bonomi.--Samuel
Sharpe.--Tennyson.
CHAPTER XXI.
1854.
A Visit to Rogers.--His Home.--Geniality in poets.--Talfourd.--Sir
Walter Scott.--Leslie's picture, "The Rape of the Lock."--George
Leslie.--Robert Leslie.--His nautical instincts.--Watkiss
Lloyd.--Landseer.--Harding.--Richard Doyle.
CHAPTER XXII.
1854.
Miss Marian Evans.--John Chapman, the publisher.--My friend William
Shaw.--His brother Richard.--Mead, the tragedian.--Mrs. Rowan and her
daughter.--A vexatious incident.--I suffer from nostalgia for the
country.
CHAPTER XXIII.
1854.
Some of my relations emigrate to New Zealand.--Difficulties of a poor
gentleman.--My uncle's reasons for emigration.--His departure.--Family
separations.--Our love for Hollins.
CHAPTER XXIV.
1854.
Resignation of commission in the militia.--Work from nature.--Spenser,
the poet.--Hurstwood.--Loch Awe revisited.--A customer.--I determine to
learn French well.--A tour in Wales.--Swimming.--Coolness on account of
my religious beliefs.--My guardian.--Evil effects of religions
bigotry.--Refuge in work.--My drawing-master.--Our excursion in Craven.
CHAPTER XXV.
1855.
Publication of "The Isles of Loch Awe and other Poems."--Their
sale.--Advice to poetic aspirants.--Mistake in illustrating my book of
verse.--Its subsequent history.--Want of art in the book.--Too much
reality.--Abandonment of verse. A critic in "Fraser."--Visit to Paris
in 1855.--Captain Turnbull.--Ball at the Hôtel de Ville.--Louis Napoleon
and Victor Emmanuel.
CHAPTER XXVI.
1855.
Thackeray's family in Paris.--Madame Mohl.--Her husband's encouraging
theory about learning languages.--Mr. Scholey.--His friend, William
Wyld.--An Indian in Europe.--An Italian adventuress.--Important meeting
with an American.--Its consequences.--I go to a French hotel.--People
at the _table d'hote_.--M. Victor Ouvrard.--His claim on the
Emperor.--M. Gindriez.--His family.--His eldest daughter.
CHAPTER XXVII.
1856.
Specialities in painting.--Wyld's practice.--Projected voyage on the
Loire.--Birth of the Prince Imperial.--Scepticism about his inheritance
of the crown.--The Imperial family.--I return home.--Value of the French
language to me.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
1856.
My first encampment in Lancashire.--Value of encamping as a part of
educational discipline.--Happy days in camp.--The natural and the
artificial in landscape.--Sir James Kay Shuttleworth's Exhibition
project.--I decline to take an active part in it.--His energetic and
laborious disposition.--Charlotte Brontë.--General Scarlett.
CHAPTER XXIX.
I visit the homes of my forefathers at Hamerton, Wigglesworth, and
Hellifield Peel.--Attainder and execution of Sir Stephen Hamerton.
--Return of Hellifield Peel to the family.--Sir Richard.--The Hamertons
distinguished only for marrying heiresses.--Another visit to the Peel,
when I see my father's cousin.--Nearness of Hellifield Peel and Hollins.
CHAPTER XXX.
1857.
Expedition to the Highlands in 1857.--Kindness of the Marquis of
Breadalbane and others.--Camp life, its strong and peculiar
attraction.--My servant.--Young Helliwell.--Scant supplies in the
camp.--Nature of the camp.--Necessity for wooden floors in a bad
climate.--Double-hulled boats.--Practice of landscape-
painting.--Changes of effect.--Influences that governed my way of study
in those days.--Attractive character of the Scottish Highlands.--Their
scenery not well adapted for beginners.--My intense love of it.
CHAPTER XXXI.
1857-1858.
Small immediate results of the expedition to the Highlands.--Unsuitable
system of work.--Loss of time.--I rent the house and island of
Innistrynich.--My dread of marriage and the reasons for
it.--Notwithstanding this I make an offer and am refused.--Two young
ladies of my acquaintance.--Idea of a foreign marriage.--Its
inconveniences.--Decision to ask for the hand of Mdlle. Gindriez.--I go
to Paris and am accepted.--Elective affinities.
CHAPTER XXXII.
1858.
Reception at home after engagement.--Preparations at Innistrynich.--I
arrive alone in Paris.--My marriage.--The religious ceremony.--An
uncomfortable wedding.--The sea from Dieppe.--London.--The Academy
Exhibition of 1858.--Impressions of a Frenchwoman.--The Turner
collection.--The town.--Loch Awe.--The element wanting to happiness.
MEMOIR.
CHAPTER I
1858.
My first sight of Loch Awe.--Arrival at Innistrynich.--Our domestic
life.--Difficulties about provisions.--A kitchen-garden.
CHAPTER II.
1858.
Money matters.--Difficulties about servants.--Expensiveness of our mode
of life.
CHAPTER III.
1858.
Painting from nature.--Project of an exhibition.--Photography.--Plan of
"A Painter's Camp."--Topographic art.--Charm of our life in the
Highlands.
CHAPTER IV.
1858.
English and French manners.--My husband's relatives.--First journey to
France after our marriage.--Friends in London.--Miss Susan Hamerton.
CHAPTER V.
1859.
Visits from friends and relatives.--A Frenchman in the Highlands.--
Project of buying the island of Innistrynich.
CHAPTER VI.
1859-1860.
Financial complications.--Summer visitors.--Boats and boating.--Visit
to Paris.--W. Wyld.--Project of a farm in France.--Partnership with M.
Gindriez.
CHAPTER VII.
1861-1863.
Effects of the Highland climate.--Farewell to Loch Awe.--Journey to the
south of France.--Death of Miss Mary Hamerton.--Settlement at
Sens.--Death of M. Gindriez.--Publication of "A Painter's Camp."
--Removal to Pré-Charmoy.
CHAPTER VIII.
1863-1868.
Canoeing on the Unknown River.--Visit of relatives.--Tour in
Switzerland.--Experiments in etching.--The "Saturday Review."--Journeys
to London.--Plan of "Etching and Etchers."--New friends in
London.--Etching exhibited at the Royal Academy.--Serious illness in
London.--George Eliot.--Professor Seeley.
CHAPTER IX.
1868.
Studies of animals.--A strange visitor.--Illness at Amiens.--Resignation
of post on the "Saturday Review."--Nervous seizure in railway
train.--Mrs. Craik.--Publication of "Etching and Etchers."
--Tennyson.--Growing reputation in America.
CHAPTER X.
1869-1870.
"Wenderholme."--The Mont Beuvray.--Botanical studies.--La
Tuilerie.--Commencement of "The Portfolio."--The Franco-Prussian War.
CHAPTER XI.
1870-1872.
Landscape-painting.--Letters of Mr. Peter Graham, R.A.--Incidents of the
war-time.--"The Intellectual Life."--"The Etcher's Handbook."
CHAPTER XII.
1873-1875.
Popularity of "The Intellectual Life."--Love of animals.--English
visitors.--Technical notes.--Sir S. Seymour Haden.--Attempts to resume
railway travelling.
CHAPTER XIII.
1876-1877.
"Round my House."--Journey to England after seven years' absence.--Visit
to Mr. Samuel Palmer.--Articles for the "Encyclopedia Britannica."
--Death of my sister.--Mr. Appleton.
CHAPTER XIV.
1878-1880.
"Marmorne."--Paris International Exhibition.--"Modern Frenchmen."
--Candidature for the Watson Gordon Chair of Fine Arts.--The Bishop of
Autun.--The "Life of Turner."
CHAPTER XV.
1880-1882.
Third edition of "Etching and Etchers."--Kew.--The "Graphic
Arts."--"Human Intercourse."
CHAPTER XVI.
1882-1884.
"Paris."--Miss Susan Hamerton's death.--Burnley revisited.--Hellifield
Peel.--"Landscape" planned.--Voyage to Marseilles.
CHAPTER XVII.
1884-1888.
"Landscape."--The Autobiography begun.--"Imagination in Landscape
Painting."--"The Saône."--"Portfolio Papers."
CHAPTER XVIII.
1888-1890.
"Man in Art" begun.--Family events.--Mr. G. F. Watts.--Mr.
Bodley.--"French and English."
CHAPTER XIX.
1890-1891.
Decision to live near Paris.--Practice in painting and etching.--Search
for a house.--Clématis.
CHAPTER XX.
1891-1894.
Removal to Paris.--Interest in the Bois de Boulogne.--M. Vierge.--"Man
in Art."--Contributions to "Scribner's Magazine."--New form of "The
Portfolio."--Honorary degree.--Last Journey to London.--Society of
Illustrators.--Illness and death.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON
1834--1858
CHAPTER I.
My reasons for writing an autobiography.--That a man knows the history
of his own life better than a biographer can know it.--Frankness and
reserve.--The contemplation of death.
My principal reasons for writing an autobiography are because I am the
only person in the world who knows enough about my history to give a
truthful account of it, and because I dread the possibility of falling
into the hands of some writer who might attempt a biography with
inadequate materials. I have already been selected as a subject by two
or three biographers with very friendly intentions, but their
friendliness did not always ensure accuracy. When the materials are not
supplied in abundance, a writer will eke them out with conjectural
expressions which he only intends as an amplification, yet which may
contain germs of error to be in their turn amplified by some other
writer, and made more extensively erroneous.
It has frequently been said that an autobiography must of necessity be
an untrue representation of its subject, as no man can judge himself
correctly. If it is intended to imply that somebody else, having a much
slighter acquaintance with the man whose life is to be narrated, would
produce a more truthful book, one may be permitted to doubt the validity
of the inference. Thousands of facts are known to a man himself with
reference to his career, and a multitude of determinant motives, which
are not known even to his most intimate friends, still less to the
stranger who so often undertakes the biography. The reader of an
autobiography has this additional advantage, that the writer must be
unconsciously revealing himself all along, merely by his way of telling
things.
With regard to the great question of frankness and reserve, I hold that
the reader has a fair claim to hear the truth, as a biography is not
avowedly a romance, but at the same time that it is right to maintain a
certain reserve. My rule shall be to say nothing that can hurt the
living, and the memory of the dead shall be dealt with as tenderly as
may be compatible with a truthful account of the influences that have
impelled me in one direction or another.
I have all the more kindly feelings towards the dead, that when these
pages appear I shall be one of themselves, and therefore unable to
defend my own memory as they are unable to defend theirs.
The notion of being a dead man is not entirely displeasing to me. If the
dead are defenceless, they have this compensating advantage, that nobody
can inflict upon them any sensible injury; and in beginning a book which
is not to see the light until I am lying comfortably in my grave, with
six feet of earth above me to deaden the noises of the upper world, I
feel quite a new kind of security, and write with a more complete
freedom from anxiety about the quality of the work than has been usual
at the beginning of other manuscripts.
Nevertheless, the clear and steady contemplation of death (I have been
looking the grim king in the face for the last hour) may produce a
paralyzing effect upon a man by making his life's work seem very small
to him. For, whatever we believe about a future state, it is evident
that the catastrophe of death must throw each of us instantaneously into
the past, from the point of view of the living, and they will see what
we have done in a very foreshortened aspect, so that except in a few
very rare cases it must look small to them, and ever smaller as time
rolls on, and they will probably not think much of it, or remember us
long on account of it. And in thinking of ourselves as dead we
instinctively adopt the survivor's point of view. Besides which, it is
reasonable to suppose that whatever fate may be in store for us, a
greater or less degree of posthumous reputation in two or three nations
on this planet can have little effect on our future satisfaction; for if
we go to heaven, the beatitude of the life there will be so incomparably
superior to the pleasures of earthly fame that we shall never think of
such vanity again; and if we go to the place of eternal tortures they
will leave us no time to console ourselves with pleasant memories of any
kind; and if death is simply the ending of all sensation, all thought,
memory, and consciousness, it will matter nothing to a handful of dust
what estimate of the name it once bore may happen to be current amongst
the living--
"Les grands Dieux savent seuls si l'âme est immortelle,
Mais le juste travaille à leur oeuvre éternelle."
CHAPTER II.
1834.
My birthplace.--My father and mother.--Circumstances of their
marriage.--Their short married life.--Birth of their child.--Death of
my mother.--Her character and habits.--My father as a widower.--Dulness
of his life.--Its degradation.
I was born at Laneside near Shaw, which is now a manufacturing town of
some importance about two miles from Oldham in Lancashire, and about
four miles from Rochdale in the same county.
Laneside is a small estate with some houses and a little cotton-mill
upon it, which belonged to my maternal grandfather. The house is of
stone, with a roof of stone slate such as is usual in those parts, and
it faces the road, from which it is separated by a little enclosure,
that may be called a garden if you will. When I was a child, there were
two or three poplar trees in that enclosure before the house; but trees
do not prosper there, and now there is probably not one on the whole
estate. One end of the house (which is rather long for its height and
depth) abuts against the hill, and close behind it is the cotton-mill
which my grandfather worked, with no great profit to himself or
advantage to his descendants. I have mentioned a road that passes the
house; it is steep, narrow, and inconvenient. It leads up to an elevated
tract of the most dreary country that can be imagined, but there are one
or two fields on the Laneside estate, above the stone-quarry, from which
there is a good view in the direction of Rochdale.
I never knew my grandfather Cocker, but have heard that he was a lively
and vigorous man, who enjoyed life very heartily in his way. He married
a Miss Crompton, who had a little property and was descended from the De
Cromptons of Crompton Hall. I am not aware that she had any family
pride, but, like most people in that neighborhood, she had a great
appreciation of the value of money, and when she was left alone with her
daughter, in consequence of Philip Cocker's premature death, she was
more inclined to favor wealthy than impecunious suitors.
My father had come to Shaw as a young attorney some time before he asked
for Anne Cocker in marriage. He had very little to recommend him except
a fine person, great physical strength, and fifteen quarterings. He had
a reputation for rather dissolute habits, was a good horseman, an
excellent shot, looked very well in a ball-room, and these, I believe,
were all his advantages, save an unhappy faculty for shining in such
masculine company as he could find in a Lancashire village in the days
of George IV. Money he had none, except what he earned in his
profession, at one time rather a good income.
Miss Anne Cocker was a young lady with a will of her own, associated, I
have been told (the two characteristics are by no means incompatible),
with a very sweet and amiable disposition. At a time when my grandmother
still vigorously opposed the match with my father, there happened to be
a public charity ball in Shaw, and Miss Cocker showed her intentions in
a very decided manner, by declining to dance with several gentlemen
until the young lawyer presented himself, when she rose immediately with
a very gracious smile, which was observed by all near enough to witness
it. This was rather unkind perhaps to the other aspirants, and is, in
fact, scarcely defensible, but it was Miss Cocker's way of declaring her
intentions publicly. When my father made his offer, he was refused by my
grandmother's orders, but received encouragement from her daughter (a
tone of voice, or a look, yet more a tear, would be enough for a lover's
hope), and counted upon the effects of perseverance. At length, when he
and Miss Cocker thought they had waited long enough, they determined to
marry without Mrs. Cocker's consent, and the determination was notified
to my grandmother in the following very decided terms:--
"DR. Madam,--You are no doubt well aware of the warm attachment which
has long existed betwixt your dear daughter and myself. Upwards of
twelve months ago our affections were immovably fixed upon each other,
and I now consider it my duty to inform you that we are fully engaged,
and have finally concluded to be married within a fortnight of the
present time.
"I sincerely trust that all your hostile feelings towards me are
entirely worn out, and that you will receive me as the affectionate
husband of your beloved daughter, and I with great confidence hope we
shall be a happy family and live together with peace and harmony.
"At my request your daughter will have all her property settled upon
herself, so that I can have no control over it--thus leaving it
impossible that I should waste it. And I trust that by an active
attention to my profession I may be enabled not inconsiderably to
augment it.
"Be assured, Dear Madam, that your daughter and myself feel no little
solicitude for your comfort and happiness, and that we shall at all
times be most happy to promote them.
"It is our mutual and most anxious wish that you should not attempt to
throw any obstacle in the way of our marriage, as the only tendency it
could have under present circumstances would be to lessen the happiness
and comfort of our union.
"We trust therefore that your regard for your daughter's happiness will
induce you at once to give your full assent to the fulfilment of our
engagement, as you would thereby divest our marriage of all that could
possibly lessen the happiness we anticipate from it.
"I know that your principal objection to me has been on account of my
unsteadiness, and I deeply regret ever having given you cause to raise
such an objection; but I trust my conduct for some time back having been
of a very different character, will convince you that I have seen my
error. The gayety into which I have fallen may partly be ascribed to the
peculiarity of my situation; having no relations near me, no family
ties, no domestic comforts, &c., I may be the more excusable for having
kept the company of young men, but I can assure you I have lost all
inclination for the practice of such follies as I have once fallen into,
and I look to a steady, sober married life as alone calculated to afford
me happiness.
"I will wait upon you on Monday with most anxious hopes for your
favorable answer.
"I am, Dear Madam,
"Yours most respectfully,
"JOHN HAMMERTON.
"Shaw, June 1st, 1833."
The reader may be surprised by the double _m_ in the signature. It was
my father's custom to write our name so, for a reason that will be
explained in another chapter. The letter itself is rather formal,
according to the fashion of the time, but I think it is a good letter in
its way, and believe it to have been perfectly sincere. No doubt my
father fully intended to reform his way of life, but it is easier to
make a good resolution than to adhere to it. I do not know enough of the
degree of excess to which his love of pleasure led him, to be able to
describe his life as a young man accurately, but as my mother had been
well brought up and was a refined person for her rank in society, I
conclude that she would not have encouraged a notorious evil-liver.
Those who knew my father in his early manhood have told me that he was
very popular, and yet at the same time that he bore himself with
considerable dignity, one old lady going so far as to say that when he
walked through the main street at Shaw, it seemed as if all the town
belonged to him. It is difficult for us to understand quite accurately
the social code of the Georgian era, when a man might indulge in
pleasures which seem to us coarse and degrading, and yet retain all the
pride and all the bearing of a gentleman.
The marriage took place according to the fixed resolution of the
contracting parties, and their life together was immensely happy during
the short time that it lasted. Most unfortunately it came to an end
after little more than one year by my mother's lamentably premature
death. I happen to possess a letter from my father's sister to her
sister Anne in which she gives an account of this event, and print it
because it conveys the reality more vividly than a narrative at second
hand. The reader will pardon the reference to myself. It matters nothing
to a dead man--as I shall be when this page is printed--whether at the
age of fourteen days he was considered a fine-looking child or a
weakling.
"_Friday Morning._
"MY DEAR ANNE,--You will not calculate upon so speedy an answer as this
to your long and welcome epistle, nor will you calculate upon the
melancholy intelligence I have to communicate. Poor John's wife,
certainly the most amiable of all woman-kind, departed this life at
twenty minutes past eleven last night. Her recovery from her confinement
was very wonderful, we thought, but alas! it was a false one. The Drs.
Whitaker of Shaw, Wood of Rochdale, and Bardsley of Manchester all agree
in opinion that she has died of mere weakness without any absolute
disease. She has been very delicate for a long time. Poor dear John--if
I were quite indifferent to him I should grieve to see his agonies--he
says at sixty it might have happened in the common course of things and
he would have borne it better, but at twenty-nine, just when he is
beginning life, his sad bereavement does indeed seem untimely. It is a
sore affliction to him, sent for some good, and may he understand and
apply it with wisdom! They had, to be sure, hardly been married long
enough to quarrel, but I never saw a couple so intent on making each
other happy; they had not a thought of each other but what tended to
please. The poor little boy is a very fine one, and I hope he will be
reared, though it often happens that when the mother is consumptive the
baby dies. I do hope when John is able to look after his office a little
that the occupation of his mind will give him calm. He walks from room
to room, and if I meet him and he is able to articulate at all, he says,
'Ah! where must I be? what must I do?' He says nobody had such a wife,
and I do think nobody ever had. He wanted me not to write till
arrangements were made about the funeral. I thought you would be sorry
to be informed late upon a subject so near John's heart, and that it was
too late for Mr. Hinde [Footnote: The Rev. Thomas Hinde, Vicar of
Featherstone, brother-in-law of the writer of the letter.] to come to
the funeral. I have really nothing to say except that our poor sister
was so tolerable on Wednesday morning that I went with the Milnes of
Park House to Henton Park races, which I liked very well, but as things
have turned out I heartily repent going. Ann was, we hoped, positively
recovering on Monday and Tuesday, but it seems to have been a lightening
before death. She was a very long time in the agonies of death, but
seemed to suffer very little. Our afflicted brother joins me in best
love to you and your dear children. Kind compliments to Mr. Hinde.
"I remain,
"Your affectionate Sister,
"M. HAMMERTON."
The letter is without date, but it bears the Manchester postmark of
September 27, 1834, and the day of my birth was the tenth of the same
month. The reader may have observed a discrepancy with reference to my
mother's health. First it is said that the doctors all agreed in the
opinion that she died of mere weakness, without any absolute disease,
but afterwards consumption is alluded to. I am not sure, even yet,
whether my mother was really consumptive or only suffered from debility.
Down to the time when I write this (fifty-one years after my mother's
death) there have never been any symptoms of consumption in me.
No portrait of my mother was ever taken, so that I have never been able
to picture her to myself otherwise than vaguely, but I remember that on
one occasion in my youth when I played the part of a young lady in a
charade, several persons present who had known her, said that the
likeness was so striking that it almost seemed as if she had appeared to
them in a vision, and they told me that if I wanted to know what my
mother was like, I had only to consult a looking-glass. She had blue
eyes, a very fair complexion, and hair of a rich, strongly-colored
auburn, a color more appreciated by painters than by other people. In
the year 1876 I was examining a large boxful of business papers that had
belonged to my father, and burning most of them in a garden in
Yorkshire, when a little packet fell out of a legal document that I was
just going to throw upon the fire. It was a lock of hair carefully
folded in a piece of the bluish paper my father used for his law
correspondence, and fastened with an old wire-headed pin. I at once took
it to a lady who had known my mother, and she said without a moment's
hesitation that the hair was certainly hers, so that I now possess this
relic, and it is all I have of my poor mother whose face I never saw,
and whose voice I never heard. Few people who have lived in the world
have left such slight traces. There are no letters of hers except one or
two formal compositions written at school under the eye of the mistress,
which of course express nothing of her own mind or feelings. Those who
knew her have told me that she was a very lively and amiable person,
physically active, and a good horsewoman. She and my father were fond of
riding out together, and indeed were separated as little as might be
during their brief happiness. She even, on one occasion, went out
shooting with him and killed something, after which she melted into
tears of pity over her victim. [Footnote: A lady related to my mother
shot well, and killed various kinds of game, of which I remember seeing
stuffed specimens as trophies of her skill.]
The reader will pardon me for dwelling thus on these few details of a
life so sadly and prematurely ended. The knowledge that my mother had
died early cast a certain melancholy over my childhood; I found that
people looked at me with some tenderness and pity for her sake, so I
felt vaguely that there had been a great loss, though unable to estimate
the extent of it. Later, when I understood better what pains and perils
Nature inflicts on women in order that children may come into the world,
it seemed that the days I lived had been bought for me by the sacrifice
of days that my mother ought to have lived. She was but twenty-four when
she passed away, so that now I have lived more than twice her span.
The effect of the loss upon my father was utterly disastrous. His new
and good projects were all shattered, and a cloud fell over his
existence that was never lifted. He did not marry again, and he lost his
interest in his profession. My mother left him all her property
absolutely, so he felt no spur of necessity and became indolent or
indifferent; yet those who were capable of judging had a good opinion of
his abilities as a lawyer. Just before his wife's death, my father had
rather distinguished himself in an important case, and received a
testimonial from his client with the following inscription:--
_Presented to Mr. Hammerton, Solr, by his obliged client Mr. Waring, as
a token of Esteem for his active services in the cause tried against
Stopherd at Lancaster, in the arrangement of the argument arising
thereon at Westminster, and his successful defence to the Equity Suit
instituted by the Deft_. 1834.
My father's practice at that time was beginning to be lucrative, and
would no doubt have become much more so in a few years; but the blow to
his happiness that occurred in the September of 1834 produced such
discouragement that he sought relief from his depression in the society
of lively companions. Most unfortunately for him, there was no lively
masculine society in the place where he lived that was not at the same
time a constant incitement to drinking. There were a few places in the
Lancashire of those days where convivial habits were carried to such a
degree that they destroyed what ought to have been the flower of the
male population. The strong and hearty men who believed that they could
be imprudent with impunity, the lively, intelligent, and sociable men
who wanted the wittiest and brightest talk that was to be had in the
neighborhood, the bachelor whose hearth was lonely, and the widower
whose house had been made desolate, all these were tempted to join
meetings of merry companions who set no limits to the strength or the
quantity of their potations. My poor father was a man of great physical
endowments, and he came at last to have a mistaken pride in being able
to drink deeply without betraying any evil effects; but a few years of
such an existence undermined one of the finest constitutions ever given
to mortal man. A quarryman once told me that my father had appeared at
the quarry at six o'clock in the morning looking quite fresh and hearty,
when, taking up the heaviest sledge-hammer he could find, he gayly
challenged the men to try who could throw it farthest. None of them came
near him, on which he turned and said with a laugh of satisfaction,
--"Not bad that, for a man who drank thirty glasses of brandy the
day before!" Whether he had ever approached such a formidable
number I will not venture to say, but the incident exactly paints my
father in his northern pride of strength, the fatal pride that believes
itself able to resist poison because it has the muscles of an athlete.
It was always said by those who knew the family that my father was the
cleverest member of it, but his ability must have expended itself in
witty conversation and in his professional work, as I do not remember
the smallest evidence of what are called intellectual tastes. My mother
had a few books that had belonged to her family, and to these my father
added scarcely anything. I can remember his books quite clearly, even at
this distance of time. One was a biography of William IV., another a set
of sketches of Reform Ministers, a third was Baines's "History of
Lancashire," a fourth a Geographical Dictionary. These were, I believe,
almost all the books (not concerned with the legal profession) that my
father ever purchased. His bookcase did not contain a single volume by
the most popular English poets of his own time, nor even so much as a
novel by Sir Walter Scott. I have no recollection of ever having seen
him read a book, but he took in the "Times" newspaper, and I clearly
remember that he read the leading articles, which it was the fashion at
that time to look upon as models of style. This absence of interest in
literature was accompanied by that complete and absolute indifference to
the fine arts which was so common in the middle classes and the country
aristocracy of those days. I mention these deficiencies to explain the
extreme dulness of my poor father's existence during his widowhood, a
dulness that a lover of books must have a difficulty in imagining. A man
living alone with servants (for his son's childhood was spent
elsewhere), who took hardly any interest in a profession that had become
little more than nominal for him, who had not even the stimulus of a
desire to accumulate wealth (almost the only recognized object in the
place where he lived), a man who had no intellectual pursuits whatever,
and whose youth was too far behind him for any joyous physical activity,
was condemned to seek such amusements as the customs of the place
afforded, and these all led to drinking. He and his friends drank when
they were together to make society merrier, and when they happened to be
alone they drank to make solitude endurable. Had they drunk light wines
like French peasants, or beer like Germans, they might have lasted
longer, but their favorite drink was brandy in hot strong grogs,
accompanied by unlimited tobacco. They dined in the middle of the day,
and had the spirit decanters and the tobacco-box on the table instead of
dessert, frequently drinking through the whole afternoon and a long
evening afterwards. In the morning they slaked alcoholic thirst with
copious draughts of ale. My father went on steadily with this kind of
existence without anything whatever to rescue him from its gradual and
fatal degradation. He separated himself entirely from the class he
belonged to by birth, lived with men of little culture, though they may
have had natural wit, and sacrificed his whole future to mere village
conviviality. Thousands of others have followed the same road, but few
have sacrificed so much. My father had a constitution such as is not
given to one man in ten thousand, and his mind was strong and clear,
though he had not literary tastes. He was completely independent, free
to travel or to make a fortune in his profession if he preferred a
sedentary existence, but the binding force of habit overcame his
weakened will, and he fell into a kind of life that placed intellectual
and moral recovery alike beyond his reach.
CHAPTER III.
1835-1841.
My childhood is passed at Burnley with my aunts.--My grandfather and
grandmother.--Estrangement between Gilbert Hamerton and his brother of
Hellifield Peel.--Death of Gilbert Hamerton.--His taste for the French
language.--His travels in Portugal, and the conduct of a steward during
his absence.--His three sons.--Aristocratic tendencies of his
daughters.--Beginning of my education.--Visits to my father.
I was not brought up during childhood under my father's roof, but was
sent to live with his two unmarried sisters. These ladies were then
living in Burnley with their mother.
Burnley is now a large manufacturing town of seventy thousand
inhabitants, but in those days it was just rising in importance, and a
few years earlier it had been a small country town in an uncommonly
aristocratic neighborhood. The gate of Towneley Park opens now almost
upon the town itself, and in former times there were many other seats of
the greater or lesser squires within a radius of a very few miles. It is
a common mistake in the south of England to suppose that Lancashire is a
purely commercial county. There are, or were in my youth, some very
aristocratic neighborhoods in Lancashire, and that immediately about
Burnley was one of them. The creation of new wealth, and the extinction
or departure of a few families, may have altered its character since
then, but in the days of my grandfather nobody thought of disputing the
supremacy of the old houses. There was something almost sublime in the
misty antiquity of the Towneley family, one of the oldest in all
England, and still one of the wealthiest, keeping house in its venerable
castellated mansion in a great park with magnificent avenues. Other
houses of less wealth and more modern date had their pedigrees in the
history of Lancashire.
My grandfather, Gilbert Hamerton, possessed an old gabled mansion with a
small but picturesque estate, divided from Towneley Park by a public
road, and he had other property in the town and elsewhere enough to make
him independent, but not enough to make him one of the great squires.
However, as he was the second son of an ancient Yorkshire family, and as
pedigrees and quarterings counted for something in those comparatively
romantic times, the somewhat exclusive aristocracy about Burnley had
received him with much cordiality from the first, and he continued all
his life to belong to it. His comparative poverty was excused by a
well-known history of confiscation in his family, and perhaps made him
rather more interesting, especially as it did not go far enough to
become--what poverty becomes so easily--ridiculous. He lived in a large
old house, and plentifully enough, but without state and style. His
marriage had been extremely imprudent from the worldly point of view. An
aunt of my grandfather's, on his mother's side, had invited him to stay
with her, and had not foreseen the attractions of a farmer's daughter
who was living in the house as a companion. My good, unworldly
grandfather fell in love with this girl, and married her. He never had
any serious reason to regret this very imprudent step, for Jane Smith
became an excellent wife and mother, and she did not even injure his
position in society, where she knew how to make herself respected, and
was much beloved by her most intimate friends. I remember her, though I
never knew my grandfather. My recollection of her is a sort of picture
of an old lady always dressed in black, and seated near a window, or
walking slowly with a stick. The dawn of reason and feeling is
associated in my memory with an intense affection for this old lady and
with the kind things she said to me, not yet forgotten. I remember, too,
the awful stillness of her dead body (hers was the first dead human body
I looked upon), and the strange emptiness of the house when it had been
taken away.
Though my grandmother was only a farmer's daughter, her parents were
well-to-do in their own line of life, and at various times helped my
grandfather with sums of money; but the fact remained that he had
married quite out of his class, and it has always seemed to me probable
that the marriage may have had some connection with the complete and
permanent estrangement that existed between Gilbert Hamerton and his
brother, the squire of Hellifield Peel. As soon as I was old enough to
understand a little about relationships, I reflected that the houses of
my own uncles were open to me, that my cousins were all like brothers
and sisters to me, and yet that my father and my aunts had never been to
their uncle's house at Hellifield, and that our relations there never
came to see us at Burnley. The explanation of this estrangement given by
my grandfather, was that there had been a disagreement about land; but
perhaps he may have felt some delicacy about telling his children that
his unambitious marriage had contributed to render the separation
permanent. However this may have been, my grandmother never once saw the
inside of her brother-in-law's house, and when she died there was, I
believe, not even the formal expression of condolence that is usual
among acquaintances. Gilbert Hamerton had lived at Hollins, a house and
estate inherited from his mother; and James Hamerton, the elder brother,
lived in a castellated peel or border tower at Hellifield, which had
been built by Lawrence Hamerton in 1440. The two places are not much
more than twenty miles apart; but the brothers never met after their
quarrel, and my grandfather's sons and daughters never saw their uncle's
house. One result of the estrangement was that we hardly seemed to
belong to our own family; and I remember a lady, who had some very vague
and shadowy claims to a distant connection with the family at
Hellifield, asking one of my aunts in a rather patronizing manner if she
also did not "claim to be connected" with the Hamertons of Hellifield
Peel. Even to this day it is difficult for me to realize the simple fact
that she was niece to an uncle whom she had never seen, and first cousin
to his successor.
My grandfather had lived in apparently excellent health till the age of
seventy-seven, when one afternoon as he was seated in his dining-room at
Hollins, nobody being present except his eldest daughter Mary, he asked
her to open the window, and then added, "Say a prayer." She immediately
began to repeat a short prayer, and before she had reached the end of it
he was dead. There is a strange incident connected with his death, which
may be worth something to those who take an interest in what is now
called "Psychical Research." At the same hour his married daughter was
sitting in a room forty miles away with her little boy, a child just old
enough to talk, and the child stared with intense interest at an empty
chair. His mother asked what attracted his attention, and the child
said, "Don't you see, mamma, the old gentleman who is sitting in that
chair?" I am careful not to add details, as my own imagination might
unconsciously amplify them, but my impression is that the child was
asked to describe the vision more minutely, and that his description
exactly accorded with his grandfather's usual appearance.
The old gentleman preserved the costume and manners of the eighteenth
century, wearing his pig-tail, breeches, and shoe-buckles. He took life
too easily for any intellectual achievements, but he had a great liking
for the French language, and wrote a very original French grammar, which
he had curiously printed in synoptic sheets, at his private expense,
though it was never completed or published. I have sometimes thought it
possible that my own aptitude and affinity for that language may have
been inherited from him, and that his labors may in a manner have
overcome many difficulties for me by the wonderful process of
transmission. He never lived in France, and I believe he never visited
the country, his French conversations being chiefly held with a
good-natured Roman Catholic chaplain at Towneley Hall. My grandfather's
most extensive travels were in Portugal, lasting six months, and with
regard to that journey I remember two painful incidents. His travelling
companion, a younger brother, died abroad, in consequence of having
slept in a damp bed. The other incident is vexatious rather than
tragical, and yet Wordsworth would have seen tragedy in it also. During
his absence from home, my grandfather had confided the care of his
estate to an agent, who cut down the old avenue of oaks that led to the
house, on the pretext that some of the trees were showing signs of
decay, and that he had an acceptable offer for the whole. The road
retained the name of "The Avenue" for many years, but the trees were
never replaced.
Perhaps the reader will think this incident hardly worth mentioning, but
to a lover of trees, avenues, and old houses, such as I confess myself
to be, it seems the very perfection of a vexatious incident. I cannot
imagine anything whatever, not entailing any serious consequences, that
would have tried my own temper more.
On my grandfather's death, the whole of his property went to his eldest
son. He had brought up all his three sons to be solicitors, not because
he had any peculiar enthusiasm for the legal profession, but simply as
the readiest means of earning a living. The sons themselves had no
natural affinity for the law; my eldest uncle heartily disliked it, the
other regarded it with cool indifference, and my father expressed his
desire that I should never be a lawyer, on the ground that a man had
enough to plague him in his own concerns without troubling his mind
about those of other people. One curious distinction may be noted here,
as the result probably of that intermingling with the every-day world,
which happens naturally in the career of provincial attorneys. Whilst my
aunts remained all their lives aristocratic in their feelings, and
rather liked to enjoy the hospitality of the great houses in the
neighborhood, my uncles, and my father also, abandoned all aristocratic
memories and aspirations, and entered frankly into the middle class.
Each of them did what was natural under the circumstances. Women are
generally more aristocratic than men, and cling more decidedly to their
class, and I think my aunts showed better taste in liking refined
society than my father did in lowering himself to associate with men of
an inferior stamp in rank, in manners, and in habits. I distinctly
remember how one of my aunts told me that somebody had made a remark on
her liking for great people, and the only comment she made was, that she
preferred gentlefolks because their manners were more agreeable. She was
not a worshipper of rank, but she liked the quiet, pleasant manners of
the aristocracy, which indeed were simply her own manners.
My childhood could not have been better cared for, even by my own
mother, than by these two excellent ladies. They gave me a beginning of
education, and they have told me since that I learned to read English
with the greatest facility, so that when I was sent to the Grammar
School at Burnley, at the early age of five and a half, the master
considered me so well forward that I was set at once to Latin. In those
days it was a part of the wisdom of our educators to make us learn Latin
out of a grammar written in that language, and I retain some
recollection of the perfectly useless mental fatigue and puzzlement that
I was made to undergo in learning abstract statements about grammatical
science that were written in a tongue which I could not possibly
understand. The idea of taking a child five and a half years old, and
making it learn a dead language by abstract rules, is of itself a great
error. The proper way to teach a child Latin is simply to give it a
vocabulary, including only the things that it can see or imagine, and a
few verbs to make little phrases. I had learned to read English so
easily that good hopes were entertained for the rest of my education,
but my progress in Latin was very slow, and the only result of my early
training was to give me a horror of everything printed in Latin, that I
did not overcome for many years.
There was another child-pupil rather older than I, and the head-master
of those days (Dr. Butler's predecessor), who had a rude disposition,
sometimes amused himself by putting me on one of his knees, and the
other little boy on the other knee, after which, by an adroit
simultaneous movement of the two legs, he suddenly brought our heads
into collision. I quite remember the sensation of being stunned on these
occasions, but am not aware that my Latin was any the better for it.
My recollection of those early years is extremely vague, and there is
little in them that could interest the reader. I was taken once or twice
a year to my father, and always disliked and dreaded those visits, as I
feared him greatly, and with good reason. On one of these visits, when
quite a child, I persuaded my father's groom to let me mount his
saddle-horse, which I remember as a gray animal of what seemed a
prodigious altitude. The man put me on the horse's back, and being
entirely destitute of common-sense or prudence, actually gave me a whip
and left the bridle to me. I applied the whip vigorously, and was very
soon thrown off and carried back to the house covered with blood,
happily without more serious consequences. Another little incident has
more of the comic element. My father employed a tailor for himself, and
told the man to make me a suit without entering into any particulars.
The tailor being thus left to his own wisdom, made a costume that was
the exact copy of a full-grown squire's dress on a small scale. It was
composed of a green cut-away coat, a yellow waistcoat, and green
trousers, the whole adorned with gilt buttons. The tailor dressed me,
and then, proud of his work, presented me to my father and the ladies.
If the tailor was proud, my pride and satisfaction were at least equal
to his, and we neither of us could in the least understand the roars of
laughter that my appearance provoked, whilst our feelings were deeply
wounded by my father's tyrannical decree that I was never to wear those
beautiful clothes at all. Even to this day I am capable of regretting
that suit, and certainly I often see children now whose costumes are at
least equally absurd.
CHAPTER IV.
1842.
A tour in Wales in 1842.--Extracts from my journal of this tour.--My
inborn love for beautiful materials.--Stay at Rhyl.--Anglesea and
Caernarvon.--Reasons for specially remembering this tour.
The pleasantest recollections I have of my father are connected with a
tour in Wales that he undertook with me and his eldest sister in the
summer of 1842. My aunt made me keep a journal of that tour, which I
still possess, and by its help those days come hack to me with a
vividness that is very astonishing to myself. Being accustomed to live
with grown-up people, and having no companions of my own age in the same
house (though I had cousins at Hollins and friends at school), I had
acquired a way of talking about things as older people talk, so that the
journal in question contains many observations that do not seem natural
for a child. The fact, no doubt, is that I listened to my father and
aunt, and then put down many of their remarks in my little history of
our tour; but I was very observant on my own account, and received very
strong impressions, especially from buildings, such as old castles and
cathedrals, and great houses, and I had a topographic habit of mind even
in childhood, which made every fresh locality interesting to me and
engraved it on my memory. Perhaps the reader may like to see a page of
the diary. It seems rather formal and elderly to be written by a child
eight years old, but it must be remembered that it was an exercise
written by my father's desire and to please him. Letters to my cousins
at the same date would have been more juvenile. Nevertheless, it was
perfectly natural for me then to use words employed by older people, and
the reader will remember that I had been learning Latin for more than
two years.
"On the road from Rhydland to Abergele we saw Hemmel Park, the seat of
Lord Dinorbin, lately burnt down. Near Rhydland is Penwarn, the seat of
Lord Mostyn; the house is small and unpretending, the grounds are
beautiful. There is a very handsome dog-kennel, in which are kept
forty-four couple of fine fox-hounds ready for work, besides old ones in
one kennel, and young ones in another: the dogs all in such good order
and kennels so perfectly clean. In one field were sixteen hunters
without shoes. Lord Mostyn does not live much at Penwarn, generally in
London. He is an old man, and at present an invalid. We had several
pleasant days' fishing in the Clwyd and Elway; a Mr. Graham at Rhyl has
permission to fish in Lord Mostyn's preserve, and he may take a friend,
which character Papa and I personated for the time.
"About eight miles from Rhyl is Trelacre, the seat of Sir Pyers Mostyn,
a very excellent modern building; the grounds are laid out with most
luxuriant taste, nothing is wanting to give effect to it as a whole. In
the woods opposite the house is a rich but rather formal distribution of
flower-beds; everything appeared to be in blossom. On an elevation is
placed the most ingeniously contrived Grotto; at every turn there is a
device of another character to the last, here a lion couchant, there the
head of Momus, a wild boar's head, a heron, a skeleton, &c., &c. In one
place were two old friars seated, each leaning on his stick, apparently
in earnest conversation; all these are roughly, but with great accuracy,
formed upon the numerous pillars which support a room or two above. The
last object you arrive at is a hermit as large as life seated in his
cell, with one book beside him and another on his knee, upon which his
left hand is placed; his right is laid across his breast. The pillars
are so contrived that the little cavern is light in every part; at the
entrance is an immense sea-dragon with large glaring eyes and a long red
tongue hanging half-way out. The monster had an effect somewhat
startling. Next above the grotto is a small room hewn out of the rock,
with sofas and pillows on each side the fireplace hewn out of the same
rock. In the centre is a stone table, upon which were some beautiful
antique bowls, cups, &c. The door to this apartment is a great
curiosity, being made to appear as if of rock; we did not think at first
that it was a real door. Over this room is another, the residence of a
lame woman, who showed us upon the leads above her dwelling a very
extensive prospect; amongst the objects was the mouth of the river Dee.
She afterwards [took us] to a moss house, and several other nice points
in the garden. The walks are covered with the material left in washing
the lead ore, through which no weed can even peep. It is many-colored,
and the glittering of here and there a bit of ore, lead, or silver, has
a very pretty effect indeed."
The reader will have had enough of the journal by this time. Its only
merit is the accurate noting down of details that I had seen; but many
of the details are such as children of that age do not commonly pay
attention to, as, for instance, in this bit about an old church:--
"The church at Dyserth has an east window which is considered the
greatest antiquity in Wales; many figures of the saints are represented
in colored glass, the lead betwixt the panes is the breadth of two
fingers. The yard has several old trees--two very fine yews, and
certainly the largest birch for miles round."
I notice a great interest in all beautiful materials throughout the
pages of this journal; the kind of wood used for the suites of furniture
is invariably mentioned, as, for example, the chairs of solid ebony in
the dining-room at Penrhyn Castle, the old oak in the dining-room at
Trelacre, and the light oak in the drawing-room, the carved oak ceilings
and pillars at Penrhyn, and the use of stone from St. Helen's there, as
well as the bedstead that is made of slate, and the enormous table of
the same material in the servants' hall. The interest in materials is a
special instinct, a kind of sympathy with Nature showing itself by
appreciation of the different qualities of her products. This instinct
has always been very strong in me, and I have often noticed it in
others, especially in artists. Some poets are very fond of describing
beautiful materials; but the instinct is not confined to poetical or
artistic natures, being often found amongst workmen in the handicrafts,
and it may be associated with a sense of the usefulness of materials, as
well as with admiration of their beauty. With me the interest in them is
both artistic and utilitarian; all metals, woods, marble, etc., are
delightful to me in some way.
In 1842 Rhyl was a little quiet place known to the Liverpool people as a
good bathing-place, but not spoiled by formal rows of houses and big
hotels. There was at that time in Rhyl a gentleman who possessed a sort
of genteel cottage in a relatively large garden, and though the house
was small, it might have done for a widower like my father, and it was
for sale. I remember urging my father to buy it, as Rhyl pleased me on
account of the possibilities of boating and riding on the sands, besides
which we had enjoyed some excellent fishing, which delighted me as a
child, though I gave up the amusement afterwards. I mention the house
here for a particular reason. It has remained very distinctly in my
memory ever since, as my father's last chance of escape from his habits
and associates. Whilst we were in Wales together he conducted himself as
a man ought to do who is travelling with a lady and a child. He was not
harsh with me, and notwithstanding my habitual fear of him, some of my
Welsh days with him are pleasant to live over again in memory. Now, if
he had bought that house, the sort of life we were then leading might
have become habitual, and he might possibly have been saved from the sad
fate that awaited him. However, though tempted for a moment, he refused
because it did not seem a good investment, being a flimsy little
building, not very well contrived.
Though my father would not buy the house to please me, he bought me a
little bay mare at Rhyl that was a pretty and swift creature, and we
took her on the steamer to Menai, where, for want of a convenient
arrangement for landing horses, she was pitched into the sea and made to
swim ashore. She had been in a hot place on the steamer, near the
engines, and the sudden change to the cold sea-water was probably (so we
thought afterwards) the reason why she became broken-winded, which was a
great grief to me. I hardly know why I record these trifles, but they
have an importance in the feelings of a boy, and I am weak enough to
have very tender feelings about animals down to the present day.
We visited Anglesea and Caernarvon, and other places too well known for
the reader to tolerate a description of them here. In those days the
tubular bridge had not yet been thought of; but the beautiful suspension
bridge at Menai was already in existence, and was the most remarkable
bridge then existing in the world. I was more struck by the beauty of
the structure than by its costliness or size; the journal says, "It is
indeed wonderfully beautiful." On one of our excursions we saw what in
rainy weather is a good waterfall, and I find a reference to this that I
quote for the curious bit of Welsh-English that is included in it,--"We
came to a little village, which has in a wet season a very fine
waterfall; the driver said it would not be seen to advantage because
there was 'few water.' There certainly was 'few water,' but the fine
high rocks gave a powerful idea of what it would have been had the
rushing of waters taken the place of the death-like stillness which then
prevailed."
The reader will perhaps pardon me for having dwelt longer on this Welsh
tour than the interest of it may seem to warrant; but I look back to it
with lingering regret as the last agreeable association connected with
the memory of my father. It was a most happy little tour. I had an
intensely strong affection for my father's eldest sister Mary, who
accompanied us, and whose dear handwriting I recognize in a few
corrections in the journal. Besides, that year 1842 is absolutely the
last year of my life in which I could live in happy ignorance of evil
and retain all the buoyancy of early boyhood. A terrible experience was
in reserve for me that soon aged me rapidly, and made a really merry
boyish life impossible for me after having passed through it.
CHAPTER V.
1843-1844.
A painful chapter to write.--My father calls me home.--What kind of a
house it was.--Paternal education and discipline.--My life at that time
one of dulness varied by dread.
The writing of this chapter is so painful to me that the necessity for
it has made me put off the composition of this autobiography year after
year. Then why not omit the chapter altogether? The omission is
impossible, because the events of the year 1843-1844 were quite the most
important of my early boyhood, and have had a most powerful and in some
respects a disastrous influence over my whole life.
Notwithstanding my father's kindness to me during our Welsh tour, my
feelings towards him were not, and could not be, those of trust and
confidence. He was extremely severe at times, often much more so than
the occasion warranted, this being partly natural in a strong
authoritative man, and partly the result of irritability brought on by
his habit of drinking. When inflamed with brandy he became positively
dangerous, and I had a well-founded dread of his presence. At all times
he was very uncertain--he might greet me with a kind word or he might be
harsh or silent, just as it happened. During my visits to him at Shaw,
one of my two aunts invariably accompanied me and stayed as long as I
stayed, which was a great protection for me. The idea of being left
alone with my father, even for a day, was enough to fill me with
apprehension; however, it did not seem likely that I should have to live
with him, as I should probably be sent to some distant school, and only
come home for the holidays.
This was the view of my future that was taken by my aunts and myself,
when one day in the year 1843, I believe in the month of June, there
came a letter from my father peremptorily declaring, in terms which
admitted of no discussion, that although a child might live with ladies
it was not good for a boy, and that he had determined to have me for the
future under his own roof. The news came upon me like a thunderclap in a
clear sky. I had grateful and affectionate feelings towards both my
aunts, but to the elder my feelings were those of a son, and a very
loving son, towards his mother. She had, in fact, taken the place of my
mother so completely that I remained unconscious of my loss. I reserve
for a pleasanter chapter than this the delightful duty of painting her
portrait; at present it is enough to say that a separation from her in
childhood was the most bitter grief that could be experienced by me, and
my father's ukase made this separation seem destined to be eternal,
except perhaps a short visit in the holidays. In a word, my filial life
with her seemed at an end.
I was taken to my father's and left alone with him. Some years before,
he had bought a house in Shaw called Ivy Cottage,--a house with a front
of painted stucco, looking on a garden,--and though the gable end of the
house looked on a street, the other end had a view over some fields, not
then built over. My father rented one or two of these fields for his
horses and cows, and some farm buildings just big enough for his small
establishment. He did not keep a carriage, and had even given up his
dogcart, but he always had a saddle-horse for himself and a pony for me;
at one time I had two ponies. His horses were his only luxury, but he
was as exacting about them as if he had been a rich nobleman. He would
not tolerate careless grooming for an instant; bits and stirrups were
always kept in a state of exemplary brightness, and when he rode through
Shaw he was quite fit to be seen in Hyde Park. At that time he had a
jet-black mare of a vicious temper, which only gratified his pride as a
horseman, and it so happened (I am not inventing this for a contrast)
that my pony was of the purest white with full mane and tail of the
same, and shaped exactly like the sturdy war-horses in old pictures. As
he was still a fine-looking, handsome man and I was a healthy boy, no
doubt we looked well enough, and it is probable that many a poor factory
lad envied me my good luck in being able to ride about in that way,
instead of working in a mill; but I rode in constant dread of my
father's heavy hunting-whip. It had a steel hammer at the end of the
long handle, and if at any time its owner fancied that I was turning my
toes out, he did not say anything, but with a dexterity acquired by
practice he delivered a sharp blow with that hammer on my foot which
made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of
gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to
beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up
with my father's ill-tempered mare, so he would say, "D--n it, can't you
whip her? Can't you whip better than that? The strokes of that whip of
yours are so feeble that they wouldn't kill a fly!" Nobody could say
that of _his_ hitting. I had a little young dog that was very dear to
me, and when it pleased my father one day to walk into the kitchen, it
unluckily so happened that the dog was, or seemed to be, in his way, so
he gave it a kick that sent it into the middle of the room, and there it
lay quivering. He took no notice of it, said what he had to say, in his
usual peremptory tone, and then left the room. I knelt down by the poor
little dog, which was in its death-agony, and shortly breathed its last.
During our rides my dreaded companion would stop at many inns and
private houses, where he slaked his perpetual thirst in stirrup-cups, or
sometimes he would go in and sit for a long time whilst the horses were
cared for by some groom. The effects of these refreshments could not
fail to be evident as we returned home; and it was more by good luck
than anything else, except his habitually excellent horsemanship, that
he was able to ride at all in that condition. I clearly remember one
particular occasion when he seemed to be keeping his seat with more than
usual uncertainty, and at last fairly rolled out of it. We were riding
along a paved street, so that the fall would have been very serious; but
two or three men who were watching him foresaw the accident just in
time, and rushed forward to catch him as he fell. On another occasion
when I was not present (indeed this happened before my settled residence
with my father) he fell in a most dangerous way, with his foot caught in
the stirrup, and was dragged violently down a steep hill till the horse
was brought to a stand. Fortunately my father wore a top-coat at the
time, which was soon torn off his back by the friction, and so were his
other clothes, and the back itself was almost flayed; but the doctor
said that if he had been lightly dressed the accident would have been far
more serious.
My father would sometimes send me on errands to a considerable distance
with the pony, and as he hated all dawdling and loitering in others,
though he had become a perfectly undisciplined man himself, he would
limit me strictly to the time necessary for my journey, a time that I
never ventured to exceed. In some respects the education that he was
giving me, though of Spartan severity, was not ill calculated for the
formation of a manly character. He quite understood the importance of
applying the mind completely to the thing which occupied it for the
moment. If he saw me taking several books together that had no
connection with each other, he would say, "Take one of those books and
read it steadily, don't potter and play with half-a-dozen."
Desultory effort irritated him, and he was quick to detect busy idleness
under its various disguises. He swore very freely himself, and as I
heard so many oaths I was beginning to acquire the same accomplishment,
when he overheard me accidentally and gave me such a stern lecture on
the subject that I knew ever after I was not to follow the paternal
example. What his soul hated most, however, was a lie or the shadow of a
lie. He could not tolerate the little fibs that are common with women
and children, and are often their only protection against despotism.
"Tell the truth and shame the devil" was one of his favorite precepts,
though why the devil should feel ashamed because I spoke the truth was
never perfectly clear to my childish intellect. However, the precept
sank deep into my nature, and got mixed up with a feeling of
self-respect, so that it became really difficult for me to tell fibs. I
remember on one occasion being a martyr for truth in peculiarly trying
circumstances. It was before I lived permanently under the paternal
roof, and on one of those visits we paid to my father. An aunt was with
me (not the one who accompanied us to Wales), and she was often rather
hard and severe. My father had made a law that I was to practise with
dumb-bells a quarter of an hour every morning, and this exercise was
taken in the garden, but before beginning I always looked at the clock
which was in the sitting-room. On coming back into the house one
morning, I met my father, who said, "Have you done your fifteen
minutes?" "Yes, papa." "That is not true," said my aunt from the next
room, "he has only practised for ten minutes; look at the clock!" My
terrible master looked at the clock; the finger stood at ten minutes
after eleven, and this was taken as conclusive evidence against me. I
simply answered (what was true) that I had begun five minutes before the
hour. This "additional lie" put my father into a fury, and he ordered me
to do punishment drill with those dumb-bells for two hours without
stopping. Of those hundred and twenty minutes he did not remit one. Long
before their expiration I was ready to drop, but he came frequently to
show that he had his eye upon me, and the horrible machine-like motion
must continue. On other occasions I got punished for lying, when my only
fault was the common childish inability to explain. "Why did you tear
that piece of paper?" "Please, papa, I did not tear it; _I pulled it,
and it tore_." Here is a child attempting to explain that he had not
torn a piece of paper voluntarily, that he had stretched it only, and
had himself been surprised by the tearing. In my father's code that was
a "confounded lie," and I was to be severely punished for it.
His system of education included riding as an essential part, and that
he taught me well, so far as a child of that age could learn it. But
though there were harriers within a few miles he could not take me to
hunt, as children are sometimes taken in easier countries, the fields in
Lancashire being so frequently divided by stone walls. The nature of our
neighborhood equally prevented him from teaching me to swim, which he
would otherwise have done, as there were no streams deep enough, or left
in their natural purity. To accustom me to water, however, he made me
take cold shower-baths, certainly the best substitute for a plunge that
can be had in an ordinary room. In mental education he attached great
importance to common things, to arithmetic, for example, and to good
reading aloud, and intelligible writing. His own education had been very
limited; he knew no modern language but his own, and I believe he knew
no Greek whatever, and only just enough Latin for a solicitor, which in
those days was not very much; but if he was a Philistine in neglecting
his own culture, he had not the real Philistine's contempt for culture
in others and desired to have me well taught; yet there was nobody near
at hand to continue my higher education properly, and I was likely, had
we lived long together at Shaw, to become like the regular middle-class
Englishmen of those days, who from sheer want of preliminary training
were impervious to the best influences of literature and art. I might
have written a clear business letter, and calculated interest
accurately.
To accustom me to money matters, child as I was, my father placed gold
and silver in my keeping, and whatever I spent was to be accounted for.
In this way money was not to be an imaginary thing for me, but a real
thing, and I was not to lose the control of myself because I had my
pocket full of sovereigns. This was a very original scheme in its
application to so young a child, but it perfectly succeeded, and I never
either lost or misapplied one halfpenny of the sums my father entrusted
to my keeping. He was evidently pleased with his success in this.
There was a village school near his house kept by a respectable man for
children of both sexes, and there I was sent to practise calligraphy and
arithmetic. During school-hours there was at least complete relief from
the paternal supervision, and besides this I managed to fall in love
with a girl about a year older than myself, who was a very nice girl
indeed, though she squinted to an unfortunate degree. That is the great
advantage of having the young of both sexes in the same schoolroom,--the
manners of the brutal sex may be made tender by the presence of the
refined one. Boys and girls both went to the Grammar School at Burnley,
in the now forgotten days when Mr. Raws was head-master there; but that
was long before my time.
My existence at Ivy Cottage was one of extreme dulness varied by dread.
Every meal was a _tête-à-tête_ with my father, unrelieved by the
presence of any lady or young person, and he became more and more gloomy
as his nervous system gradually gave way, so that after having been
simply stern and unbending, he was now like a black cloud always hanging
over me and ready, as it seemed, to be my destruction in some way or
other not yet clearly defined. It was an immense relief to me when a
guest came to dinner, and I remember being once very much interested in
a gentleman who sat opposite me at table, for the simple reason that I
believed him to be the Duke of Wellington. There was rather more fuss
than usual in the way of preparation, and my father treated his guest
with marked deference, besides which the stranger had the Wellingtonian
nose, so my youthful mind was soon made up on the subject, and I
listened eagerly in the hope that the hero of Waterloo would fight some
of his battles over again. He remained, however, silent on that subject,
and I afterwards had the disappointment of learning that our guest was
not the Duke, but only the holder of a high office in the county.
CHAPTER VI.
1844.
My extreme loneliness.--Thoughts of flight.--My father's last illness
and death.--Circumstances of my last interview with him.--His funeral.
It was one of the effects of the constant anxiety and excitement, and
the dreadful wretchedness of that time, that my brain received the
images of all surrounding creatures and things with an unnatural
clearness and intensity, and that they were impressed upon it for life.
Even now everything about Ivy Cottage is as clear as if the forty years
were only as many days, and the writing of these chapters brings
everything before me most vividly, not only the faces of the people and
the habits and motions of the animals, but even the furniture, of which
I remember every detail, down to the coloring of the services in the
bedrooms, and the paint on my father's rocking-chair. An anecdote has
been told in these pages about exercise with dumb-bells and an appeal to
the clock. In writing that, I saw the real clock with the moon on its
face (for it showed the phases of the moon), and my aunt standing near
the window with her work in her hand and glancing up from the work to
the clock, just as she did in reality.
Amongst other particular occasions I remember one night when the moon
shone very brightly in the garden, and I was sitting near my bedroom
window looking over it, meditating flight. My father's cruelty had then
reached its highest point. I was always spoken to harshly when he
condescended to take any notice of me at all, and was very frequently
beaten. Our meals together had become perfectly intolerable. He would
sit and trifle with his cutlet, and cover it with pepper, for his
appetite was completely gone, and there was no conversation except
perhaps an occasional expression of displeasure. The continual tension
caused by anxiety made my sleep broken and uncertain, and that night I
sat up alone in the bedroom longer than usual and looking down upon the
moonlit garden. There was an octagonal summer-house of trellis-work on
the formal oblong lawn, and on the top of it was a large hollow ball of
sheet-copper painted green that had cost my grandmother three pounds. It
is oddly associated with my anxieties on that night, because I looked
first at it and then at the moon alternately whilst thinking. The
situation had become absolutely intolerable, the servants were my only
protectors, and though devoted they never dared to interfere when their
master was actually beating me. I therefore seriously weighed, in my own
childish manner, the possibilities of a secret flight. The moonlight was
tempting--it would be easy to go alone to the stable and saddle the
pony. On a fine night I could be many miles away before morning. There
was no difficulty whatever about money; I had plenty of sovereigns in a
drawer to be accounted for afterwards to my father, and meanwhile could
employ them in escaping from him. Still, I knew that such an employment
of _his_ money would be looked upon by him as a breach of trust, and
would, in fact, _be_ a breach of trust. This consideration was not
easily set aside, though I now see that it was needlessly scrupulous,
and have no doubt whatever that if a child is left by the ignorance or
the carelessness of superior authority in the hands of a madman, it has
a clear right to provide for its own safety by any means in its power.
But where was I to go? My uncles were two very cool lawyers, always on
the side of authority, and they would not be likely to believe my story
entirely. A vague but sure instinct warned me that they would set me
down for a rebellious boy who wanted to escape from justly severe
paternal authority, and that they would at once send me back to Ivy
Cottage. One of my two maiden aunts would be very likely to take the
same view, but if the other received me with kindness, she could not
have strength to resist my father, who would send or go to her at once
and claim me. After thinking over all these things, I came to the
conclusion that real safety was only to be found amongst strangers, and
it seemed so hazardous to ask protection from unknown people that I
decided to remain; but a very little would have settled it the other
way. If those sovereigns had been really my own, I should probably have
crept out of the house, saddled the pony, and ridden many miles; but so
young a boy travelling alone would have been sure to attract attention,
and the attempt to win deliverance would have been a failure. In after
years, one of my elder relatives said that the attempt would almost
certainly have caused my father to disinherit me by a new will, as my
mother's property had been left to him absolutely. This danger was quite
of a serious kind (more serious than the reader will think probable from
what I choose to say in this place), as my father had another heir in
view whom I never saw, but who was held _in terrorem_ over me.
I awoke one bleak winter's morning about five o'clock, and heard the
strangest cries proceeding from his room. His manservant had been
awakened before me and had gone to the room already, where he was
engaged in a sort of wrestling match with my father, who, in the belief
that the house was full of enemies, was endeavoring to throw himself out
of the window. Other men had been called for, who speedily arrived, and
they overpowered him, though even the remnant of his mighty strength was
such that it took six men to hold him on his bed. The attack lasted a
whole week, and the house would have been a perfect hell, had not a
certain event turned it for me into a Paradise.
I had not been able somehow to get to sleep late at night for a short
time, when a light in the room awoke me. The horrible life I had been
leading for many a day and night had produced a great impressionability,
and I was particularly afraid of my father in the night-time, so I
started up in bed with the idea that he was come to beat me, when lo!
instead of his terrible face, I saw what for me was the sweetest and
dearest face in the whole world! It was his sister Mary, she who had
taken my mother's place, and whom I loved with a mingled sentiment of
filial tenderness and gratitude that remained undiminished in force,
though it may have altered in character, during all the after years. For
the suddenness of revulsion from horror to happiness, there has never
been a minute in my existence comparable to the minute when I realized
the idea that she had come. At first it seemed only a deceptive dream.
Such happiness was incredible, and I did not even know she had been sent
for; but the sweet reality entered into my heart like sunshine, and
throwing my arms about her neck I burst into a passion of tears. She, in
her quiet way, for she hardly ever yielded to a strong emotion, though
her feelings were deep and tender, looked at me sadly and kindly and
told me to sleep in peace, as she was going to remain in the house some
time. Then she left the room, and I lay in the darkness, but with a new
light brighter than sunshine in the hope that the miserable life with my
father had at length come to an end. It had only been six months in all,
but it had seemed longer than any half-dozen years gone through before
or after.
If this book were a novel, a very effective chapter might be written to
describe my father's sufferings during his week of delirium, and all the
dreadful fancies by which his disordered brain was oppressed and
tortured; but I prefer to skip that week altogether, and come to a
morning when his recovery was thought to be assured. He was no longer
delirious, but apparently quite calm, though his manner was hard and
imperious. He ordered me to be sent up to him, and I went almost
trembling with the old dread of him, and with a wretched feeling that
after my single week of respite the tyranny was to begin again. Such may
have been the feelings of an escaped slave when he has been caught and
brought back in irons, and stands once more in his master's presence. I
tried to congratulate my master on his recovery in a clumsy childish
way, but he peremptorily ordered me to fetch the "Times" and read to
him. I began, as usual, one of the leading articles on the politics of
the day, and before I had read many sentences my hearer declared that I
was reading badly and made the article nonsense. Why had I put in such
and such words of my own? he asked. His own precept that I was always to
tell the truth under any circumstances had habituated me to be truthful
even to him, so I answered boldly that I had not inserted the words
attributed to me. Then I read a little farther, and he accused me of
inserting something else that was not and could not be in the text; I
said it was he who was mistaken, and he flew into an uncontrollable
fury, one of those rages in which it had been his custom to punish me
without mercy. What he might have done to me I cannot tell; he raised
himself in bed and glared at me with an expression never to be
forgotten. My aunt, however, had been listening at the door, thinking it
probable that I should be in danger, and she now opened it and told me
to come away. I have a confused recollection of reaching the door under
a parting volley of imprecations.
It was a mistake to let my father see me, as, in the perverted state of
his mind, the mere sight of me was enough to make him furious. Whether
he hated me or not, nobody knows; but he treated me as if I was the most
odious little object that could be brought before his eyes. Very soon
after the scene about the article in the "Times," and probably in
consequence of the excitement brought on by it, my father had a fit of
apoplexy, and lingered till the next morning about nine o'clock. I was
not in the room when he died, but my aunt took me to see him immediately
after, and then I received an impression which has lasted to the present
day. The corpse was lying on its side amidst disordered bedclothes, and
to this day I can never go into a bedroom where the bed has not been
made without feeling as if there were a corpse in it. That dreadful
childish sensation received when I saw my father's body just as it lay
at the close of the death-agony, can even now be revived by the sight of
a disordered bed; such is the force of early impressions, especially
when they are received by a nervous system that has been overwrought by
the extreme of mental wretchedness.
The reader will hardly believe that the death of so hard a father could
have been felt otherwise than as an inexpressible relief, and yet I was
deeply affected by his loss. The kindest of fathers could hardly have
been wept for more. My aunt's tears were more explicable; she was old
enough to understand the frightful waste of the best gifts involved in
that premature ending; as for my grief, perhaps the true explanation of
it may be that I mourned rather the father who had been kind to me in
Wales, than the cruel master at Ivy Cottage.
I sometimes try to imagine what he might have been under more favorable
circumstances. There were times after his wife's death when he meditated
a complete change of residence, which might have saved him. He would
always have been severe and authoritative, but without alcohol he would
probably not have been cruel.
I remember the day of the funeral quite distinctly. My father's two
brothers came, though he had had scarcely any intercourse with them for
years. They were most respectable men, quite free from my father's
errors; but they had not half his life and energy. Such was the strength
of his constitution that so recently as the time of our journey in Wales
his health was not visibly impaired, and at the time of his death he had
that rare possession for a man of thirty-nine, a complete set of
perfectly sound teeth.
His coffin was carried on the shoulders of six men from Ivy Cottage to
the graveyard near the chapel. Shaw at that time had only a chapel, a
hideous building on a bleak piece of rising ground, surrounded by many
graves. It never looked more dreary than on that wretched January day in
1844, when we stood round as the sexton threw earth on my father's
coffin. He was laid in the same tomb with the poor young wife who had
loved him truly, and to whom he had been a tender and devoted husband
whilst their short union lasted.
I am the only survivor of that day's ceremony. The little procession has
all followed my father into the darkness, descending one by one into
graves separated by great spaces of land and sea. And when this is
printed I, too, shall be asleep in mine.
CHAPTER VII.
1845.
Dislike to Shaw in consequence of the dreadful life I led there with my
father.--My guardian.--Her plan for my education.--Doncaster
School.--Mr. Cape and his usher.--The usher's intolerance of Dissenters.
--My feeling for architecture and music.--The drawing-master.--My
guardian insists on my learning French.--Our French master, Sig.
Testa.--A painful incident.--I begin to learn the violin.--Dancing.--My
aversion to cricket.--Early readings.--Love of Scott.--My first
library.--Classical studies.
One consequence of the horrible life I had led at Ivy Cottage was a
permanent dislike to the place and the neighborhood, the evil effects of
which will be seen in the sequel. For the present it is enough to say
that I never went there again quite willingly. After my father's death
my grandmother lived in the village, and I was taken to see her every
year until her death; but though she was a very kind old lady, it was a
trial to me to visit her. I used to lie awake in her house at nights,
realizing those horrible nights I had passed at Ivy Cottage, with such
extreme intensity that it seemed as if my father might enter the room at
any time. This was not a superstitious dread of apparitions; but the
association of ideas brought back the past with a clearness that was
extremely painful. Even now, at a distance of more than forty years, I
avoid whatever reminds me of that time, and am not sorry that this
narrative now leads to something else.
My father had no great affection for his brothers, who on their part
could not have much esteem for him, so there was a mutual coolness which
prevented him from appointing either of them to be my guardian. Probably
they felt this as a slight, for, although always kind to me, they held
completely aloof from anything like paternal interference with my
education. My father had named his eldest sister, Mary, as my sole
guardian, with, two lawyers as co-executors with her. The reader will
probably think it was a mistake to appoint an old maid to be guardian to
a boy; but my aunt was a woman of excellent sense, and certainly not
disposed to bring me up effeminately; indeed, her willingness to
encourage me in everything manly was such that she would always inflict
upon herself considerable anxiety about my safety rather than prevent me
from taking my full share of the more or less perilous exercises of
youth. As to my education and profession her scheme was very simple and
clear, and would have been perfectly rational if I had been all that she
wished me to be. According to her plan I was to go to good schools
first, and then be prepared for Oxford by tutors, and become a
clergyman. There was some thought at one time of sending me to one of
the great public schools; but this was abandoned, and I was first sent
to Burnley School again, and then, after the summer holidays of 1845, to
Doncaster, where I was a boarder in the house of the head-master.
A word from me in favor of one of the public schools would probably have
decided my guardian to send me there; but there was a _vis inertiae_ in
my total want of social and scholastic ambition. I never in my life felt
the faintest desire to rise in the world either by making the
acquaintance of people of rank (which is the main reason why boys of
middling station are sent to aristocratic schools), or by getting
letters put after my name as a reward for learning what had no intrinsic
charm for me. In the worldly sense I never had any ambition whatever.
It seemed rather hard, after living at Burnley with my kind guardian, to
be sent to Doncaster School and separated from her for five months at a
time, but she thought the separation necessary, as there was nothing in
the world she dreaded more than that her great affection might spoil me.
Always gentle in her ways, always kind and considerate, that admirable
woman had still a remarkable firmness of character, and would act, on
due occasion, in direct opposition both to her own feelings and to mine,
if she believed that duty required it.
In those days there was no railway station at Doncaster, and my guardian
took me from Featherstone (where her brother-in-law, Mr. Hinde, was
vicar) to Doncaster in a hired carriage. I remember that it was an open
carriage and we had nobody with us except the driver, and it was a fine
hot day in August. I remember the long road, the arrival at an inn at
Doncaster not far from the new church, and my first presentation to Mr.
Cape, the head-master, who seemed a very kind and gentle sort of
clergyman to a boy not yet acquainted with his cane. Then I was left
alone in the strange school, not in the best of spirits, and if it had
been difficult to restrain tears when my guardian left me, it became
impossible in the little iron bed in the dormitory at night.
There were not many boarders, perhaps a dozen, and three or four private
pupils who were preparing for Cambridge. All these were lodged in the
head-master's house, which was in a pleasant, open part of the town, on
the road leading to the race-course, just beyond the well-known
Salutation Hotel. Besides these, there were rather a large number of day
scholars,--I forget how many, perhaps fifty or sixty,--and in those days
the schoolhouse was a ground floor under the old theatre. We marched
down thither in the morning under the control of an usher, who was
always with us in our walks. This usher, whose name I well remember, but
do not choose to print, was a vulgar, overbearing man whom it was
difficult to like, yet at the same time we all felt that he was a very
valuable master. Boys feel the difference between a master who is a
gentleman and one who falls short of that ideal. We were clearly aware
that the head-master, Mr. Cape, was a gentleman, and that the usher was
not. Nevertheless, in spite of his occasional coarseness and even
brutality, the usher was a painstaking, honest fellow, who did his duty
very energetically. His best quality, which I appreciate far more now
than I did then, was an extreme readiness to help a willing boy in his
work, by clearly explaining those difficulties that are likely to stop
him in his progress. Mr. Cape was more an examiner than a teacher, at
least for us; with the private pupils he may have been more didactic.
The usher evidently liked to be asked; he was extremely helpful to me,
and thanks to him chiefly I made very rapid progress at Doncaster.
Unfortunately an occasional injustice made it difficult to be so
grateful to him as we ought to have been. Here is an example. One
evening in the playground he told me to get on the back of another boy,
and then thrashed me with a switch from an apple-tree. I begged to be
told for what fault this punishment was inflicted, and the only answer
he condescended to give me was that a master owed no explanation to a
schoolboy. Down to the present time I have never been able to make out
what the punishment was for, and strongly suspect that it was simply to
exercise the usher's arm, which was a powerful one. He was a fair
cricketer, though rather too fat for that exercise, and a capital
swimmer, for which his fat was an advantage. He was an immoderate
snuff-taker. Sometimes he would lay a train of snuff on the back of his
hand and snuff it up greedily and voluptuously. In hot weather he
sometimes sat in his shirt-sleeves, and would occasionally amuse himself
by laying the snuff on his thick fat arm and then pass it all under his
nose, which drew it up as the pneumatic discharging machines drew grain
from the hold of a vessel. The odor of snuff was inseparable from his
person.
On Sunday mornings we were made to read chapters in the Bible before
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 _régime_ 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 Pré 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 _à 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
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