II. ETON
The Eton period[51] had marked effects. Fitzjames owed, as he said, a debt of gratitude to the school, but it was for favours which would have won gratitude from few recipients. The boys at a public school form, I fancy, the most rigidly conservative body in existence. They hate every deviation from the accepted type with the hatred of an ancient orthodox divine for a heretic. The Eton boys of that day regarded an 'up-town boy' with settled contempt. His motives or the motives of his parents for adopting so abnormal a scheme were suspect. He might be the son of a royal footman or a prosperous tradesman in Windsor, audaciously aspiring to join the ranks of his superiors, and if so, clearly should be made to know his place. In any case he was exceptional, and therefore a Pariah, to associate with whom might be dangerous to one's caste. Mr. Coleridge tells me that even the school authorities were not free from certain suspicions. They wisely imagined, it appears, that my father had come among them as a spy, instigated, no doubt, by some diabolical design of 'reforming' the school and desecrating the shrine of Henry's holy shade. The poor man, already overpowered by struggling with refractory colonists from Heligoland to New Zealand, was of malice prepense stirring up this additional swarm of hornets. I can hardly suppose, however, that this ingenious theory had much influence. Mr. Coleridge also says that the masters connived at the systematic bullying of the town boys. I can believe that they did not systematically repress it. I must add, however, in justice to my school-fellows, that my personal recollections do not reveal any particular tyranny. Such bullying as I had to endure was very occasional, and has left no impression on my memory. Yet I was far less capable than Fitzjames of defending myself, and can hardly have forgotten any serious tormenting. The truth is that the difference between me and my brother was the difference between the willow and the oak, and that I evaded such assaults as he met with open defiance.
My brother, as has been indicated, was far more developed in character, if not in scholarship, than is at all common at his age. His talks with my father and his own reading had familiarised him with thoughts lying altogether beyond the horizon of the average boyish mind. He was thoughtful beyond his years, although not conspicuously forward in the school studies. He was already inclined to consider games as childish. He looked down upon his companions and the school life generally as silly and frivolous. The boys resented his contempt of their ways; and his want of sociability and rather heavy exterior at the time made him a natural butt for schoolboy wit. He was, he says, bullied and tormented till, towards the end of his time, he plucked up spirit to resist. Of the bullying there can be no doubt; nor (sooner or later) of the resistance. Mr. Coleridge observes that he was anything but a passive victim, and turned fiercely upon the ringleaders of his enemies. 'Often,' he adds, 'have I applauded his backhanders as the foremost in the fray. He was only vanquished by numbers. His bill for hats at Sanders' must have amounted to a stiff figure, for my visions of Fitzjames are of a discrowned warrior, returning to Windsor bareheaded, his hair moist with the steam of recent conflict.' My own childish recollections of his school life refer mainly to pugilism. In October 1842, as I learn from my mother's diary, he found a big boy bullying me, and gave the boy such a thrashing as was certain to prevent a repetition of the crime. I more vividly recollect another occasion, when a strong lad was approaching me with hostile intent. I can still perceive my brother in the background; when an application of the toe of his boot between the tails of my tyrant's coat disperses him instantaneously into total oblivion. Other scenes dimly rise up, as of a tumult in the school-yard, where Fitzjames was encountering one of the strongest boys in the school amidst a delighted crowd, when the appearance of the masters stopped the proceedings. Fitzjames says that in his sixteenth year (i.e. 1844-5) he grew nearly five inches, and instead of outgrowing his strength became a 'big, powerful young man, six feet high,'—and certainly a very formidable opponent.
Other boys have had similar experiences without receiving the same impression. 'I was on the whole,' he says, 'very unhappy at Eton, and I deserved it; for I was shy, timid, and I must own cowardly. I was like a sensible grown-up woman among a crowd of rough boys.' After speaking of his early submission to tyranny, he adds: 'I still think with shame and self-contempt of my boyish weakness, which, however, did not continue in later years. The process taught me for life the lesson that to be weak is to be wretched, that the state of nature is a state of war, and Væ Victis the great law of Nature. Many years afterwards I met R. Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke) at dinner. He was speaking of Winchester, and said with much animation that he had learnt one great lesson there, namely, that a man can count on nothing in this world except what lies between his hat and his boots. I learnt the same lesson at Eton, but alas! by conjugating not pulso but vapulo.' As I have intimated, I think that his conscience must have rather exaggerated his sins of submission; though I also cannot doubt that there was some ground for his self-humiliation. In any case, he atoned for it fully. I must add that he learnt another lesson, which, after his fashion, he refrains from avowing. The 'kicks, cuffs, and hat smashing had no other result,' says Mr. Coleridge, 'than to steel his mind for ever against oppression, tyranny, and unfairness of every kind.' How often that lesson is effectually taught by simple bullying I will not inquire. Undoubtedly Fitzjames learnt it, though he expressed himself more frequently in terms of indignation against the oppressor than of sympathy for the oppressed; but the sentiment was equally strong, and I have no doubt that it was stimulated by these acts of tyranny.
The teaching at Eton was 'wretched'; the hours irregular and very unpunctual; the classes were excessively large, and the tutorial instruction supposed to be given out of school frequently neglected. 'I do not believe,' says my brother, 'that I was ever once called upon to construe at my tutor's after I got into the fifth form.' An absurd importance, too, was already attached to the athletic amusements. Balston, our tutor, was a good scholar after the fashion of the day and famous for Latin verse; but he was essentially a commonplace don. 'Stephen major,' he once said to my brother, 'if you do not take more pains, how can you ever expect to write good longs and shorts? If you do not write good longs and shorts, how can you ever be a man of taste? If you are not a man of taste, how can you ever hope to be of use in the world?'—a sorites, says my brother, which must, he thinks, be somewhere defective.
The school, however, says Fitzjames, had two good points. The boys, in the first place, were gentlemen by birth and breeding, and did not forget their home training. The simple explanation of the defects of the school was, as he remarks, that parents in this class did not care about learning; they wished their children to be gentlemen, and to be 'bold and active, and to make friends and to enjoy themselves, and most of them had their wish.'
The second good point in the school is more remarkable. 'There was,' says Fitzjames, 'a complete absence of moral and religious enthusiasm. The tone of Rugby was absolutely absent.' Chapel was simply a kind of drill. He vividly remembers a sermon delivered by one of the Fellows, a pompous old gentleman, who solemnly gave out the bidding prayer, and then began in these words, 'which ring in my ears after the lapse of more than forty years.' 'The subject of my discourse this morning, my brethren, will be the duties of the married state.' When Balston was examined before a Public Schools Commission, he gave what Fitzjames considers 'a perfectly admirable answer to one question.' He had said that the Provost and Fellows did all the preaching, and was asked whether he did not regret that he could not, as headmaster, use this powerful mode of influencing the boys? 'No,' he said; 'I was always of opinion that nothing was so important for boys as the preservation of Christian simplicity.' 'This put into beautiful language,' says my brother, 'the truth that at Eton there was absolutely no nonsense.' The masters knew that they had 'nothing particular to teach in the way of morals or religion, and they did not try to do so.'
The merits thus ascribed to Eton were chiefly due, it seems, to the neglect of discipline and of teaching. My brother infers that good teaching at school is of less importance than is generally supposed. I shall not enter upon that question; but it is necessary to point out that whatever the merits of an entire absence of moral and religious instruction, my brother can hardly be taken as an instance. At this time the intimacy with his father, already close, was rapidly developing. On Sunday afternoons, in particular, my father used to walk to the little chapel near Cumberland Lodge, in Windsor Park, and on the way would delight in the conversations which so profoundly interested his son. The boy's mind was ripening, and he was beginning to take an interest in some of the questions of the day. It was the time of the Oxford movement, and discussions upon that topic were frequent at home. Frederick Gibbs held for a time a private tutorship at Eton while reading for a fellowship at Trinity, and brought news of what was exciting young men at the Universities. A quaint discussion recalled by my brother indicates one topic which even reached the schoolboy mind. He was arguing as to confirmation with Herbert Coleridge (1830-1861) whose promising career as a philologist was cut short by an early death. 'If you are right,' said Fitzjames, 'a bishop could not confirm with his gloves on.' 'No more he could,' retorted Coleridge, boldly accepting the position. Political questions turned up occasionally. O'Connell was being denounced as 'the most impudent of created liars,' and a belief in Free Trade was the mark of a dangerous radical. To the Eton time my brother also refers a passionate contempt for the 'sentimental and comic' writers then popular. He was disgusted not only by their sentimentalism but by their vulgarity and their ridicule of all that he respected.
One influence, at this time, mixed oddly with that exerted by my father. My eldest brother, Herbert, had suffered from ill health, due, I believe, to a severe illness in his infancy, which had made it impossible to give him a regular education. He had grown up to be a tall, large-limbed man, six feet two-and-a-half inches in height, but loosely built, and with a deformity of one foot which made him rather awkward. The delicacy of his constitution had caused much anxiety and trouble, and he diverged from our family traditions by insisting upon entering the army. There, as I divine, he was the object of a good deal of practical joking, and found himself rather out of his element. He used to tell a story which may have received a little embroidery in tradition. He was at a ball at Gibraltar, which was attended by a naval officer. When the ladies had retired this gentleman proposed pistol shooting. After a candelabrum had been smashed, the sailor insisted upon taking a shot at a man who was lying on a sofa, and lodged a bullet in the wall just above his head. Herbert left the army about 1844 and entered at Gray's Inn. He would probably have taken to literature, and he wrote a few articles not without promise, but his life was a short one. He was much at Windsor, and the anxiety which he had caused, as well as a great sweetness and openness of temper, made him, I guess, the most tenderly loved of his parents' children. He had, however, wandered pretty widely outside the limits of the Clapham Sect. He became very intimate with Fitzjames, and they had long and frank discussions. This daring youth doubted the story of Noah's flood, and one phrase which stuck in his brother's mind is significant. 'You,' he said, 'are a good boy, and I suppose you will go to heaven. If you can enjoy yourself there when you think of me and my like grilling in hell fire, upon my soul I don't envy you.' One other little glance from a point of view other than that of Clapham impressed the lad. He found among his father's books a copy of 'State Trials,' and there read the trial of Williams for publishing Paine's 'Age of Reason.' The extracts from Paine impressed him; though, for a time, he had an impression from his father that Coleridge and other wise men had made a satisfactory apology for the Bible; and 'in his inexperience' he thought that Paine's coarseness implied a weak case. 'There is a great deal of truth,' he says, 'in a remark made by Paine. I have gone through the Bible as a man might go through a wood, cutting down the trees. The priests can stick them in again, but they will not make them grow.' For the present such thoughts remained without result. Fitzjames was affected, he says, by the combined influence of his father and brother. He thought that something was to be said on both sides of the argument. Meanwhile the anxiety caused to his father by Herbert's unfortunately broken, though in no sense discreditable, career impressed him with a strong sense of the evils of all irregularities of conduct. He often remembered Herbert in connection with one of his odd anniversaries. 'This day eighteen years ago,' he says (September 16, 1857), 'my brother Herbert and I killed a snake in Windsor Forest. Poor dear fellow! we should have been great friends, and please God! we shall be yet.'
Meanwhile Fitzjames had done well, though not brilliantly, at school. He was eighth in his division, of which he gives the first twelve names from memory. The first boy was Chenery, afterwards editor of the 'Times,' and the twelfth was Herbert Coleridge. With the exception of Coleridge, his cousin Arthur, and W. J. Beamont (1828-1868), who at his death was a Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, he had hardly any intimates. Chitty, afterwards his colleague on the Bench, was then famous as an athlete; but with athletics my brother had nothing to do. His only amusement of that kind was the solitary sport of fishing. He caught a few roach and dace, and vainly endeavoured to inveigle pike. His failure was caused, perhaps, by scruples as to the use of live bait, which led him to look up some elaborate recipes in Walton's 'Compleat Angler.' Pike, though not very intelligent, have long seen through those ancient secrets.
One of these friendships led to a characteristic little incident. In the Christmas holidays of 1844 Fitzjames was invited to stay with the father of his friend Beamont, who was a solicitor at Warrington. There could not, as I had afterwards reason to know, have been a quieter or simpler household. But they had certain gaieties. Indeed, if my memory does not deceive me, Fitzjames there made his first and only appearance upon the stage in the character of Tony Lumpkin. My father was alarmed by the reports of these excesses, and, as he was going to the Diceys, at Claybrook, wrote to my brother of his intentions. He hinted that Fitzjames, if he were at liberty, might like a visit to his cousins. Upon arriving at Rugby station he found Fitzjames upon the platform. The lad had at once left Warrington, though a party had been specially invited for his benefit, having interpreted the paternal hint in the most decisive sense. My father, I must add, was shocked by the results of his letter, and was not happy till he had put himself right with the innocent Beamonts.
Under Balston's advice Fitzjames was beginning to read for the Newcastle. Before much progress had been made in this, however, my father discovered his son's unhappiness at school. Although the deep designs of reform with which the masters seem to have credited him were purely imaginary, my father had no high opinion of Eton, and devised another scheme. Fitzjames went to the school for the last time about September 23, 1845, and then tore off his white necktie and stamped upon it. He went into the ante-chapel and scowled, he says, at the boys inside, not with a benediction. It was the close of three years to which he occasionally refers in his letters, and always much in the same terms. They were, in the main, unhappy, and, as he emphatically declared, the only unhappy years of his life, but they had taught him a lesson.