When the Marcus Hares were not at the Rectory, Uncle Julius in these years had a wonderfully varied society there, of whom we always saw more or less—German philosophers, American philologists, English astronomers, politicians, poets. Amongst those I particularly disliked were Whewell and Thirlwall—so icily cold were their manners. Bunsen, Star, Archdeacon Moore, Prentiss the American, Darley, Hull, I liked; but Professor Sedgwick I was quite devoted to.[30] He "threw a mantle of love over every one;"[31] and nothing could be more charming than his stories, more attractive and interesting than his conversation, especially with children, with whom he took pains to "be agreeable." I saw so many people of this kind, that I used to think that what I heard called "society" was all like these specimens: I was very much mistaken. A visit from the gentle and amiable Copley Fielding early encouraged my love of art. He greatly admired the peculiar scenery of Hurstmonceaux—the views from the churchyard, so like the descent upon the marshes of Ostia; the burnt uplands of the old deer-park; the long flat reaches of blue-green level; and the hazy distant downs, which were especially after his own heart. There was one view of the castle towers seen from behind, and embossed against the delicate hues of the level, which he used to make a frequent study of, and which my mother and uncle ever after called "Copley Fielding's view."

Amongst other visitors of this year, I must mention our cousin Penelope, Mrs. Warren (eldest daughter of Dean Shipley and sister of Mrs. Dashwood and Mrs. Heber), who spent some days at the Rectory with her daughters, because under her protection I had my only sight of the upper part of Hurstmonceaux Castle. One of the staircases remained then, and the timbers of many of the upper rooms were left, though the floors were gone. One day we were with my mother and uncle in the ruins, and they were saying how no one would ever see the upper floor again, when, to their horror, Mrs. Warren seized me in her arms and darted up the staircase. "Look, child, look!" she said, "for no one will ever see this again," and she leapt with me from beam to beam. I recollect the old chimney-pieces, the falling look of everything. It was wonderful that we came down safe; the staircase was removed immediately after, that no one might follow in our footsteps.

I remember Carlyle coming to stay at the Rectory, where they did not like him much. He came in a high hat—every one wore high hats then. The day he arrived, the wind blew his hat off into a ditch as he was getting over a stile: and he went off at once into one of his unbounded furies against "the most absurd outrageous head-covering in the world, which the vanity of the Prince Regent had caused people to adopt."

Aunt Lucy and the Maurices had long urged my mother to send me to school, and perhaps in many ways my terrible fits of naughtiness made it desirable, though they chiefly arose from nervousness, caused by the incessant "nagging" I received at home from every one except my mother and Lea. But the choice of the school to which I was sent at nine years old was very unfortunate. When illness had obliged my Uncle Augustus Hare to leave his beloved little parish of Alton Barnes for Italy, a Rev. Robert Kilvert came thither as his temporary curate—a very religious man, deeply learned in ultra "evangelical" divinity, but strangely unpractical and with no knowledge whatever of the world—still less of the boyish part of it. As Dr. John Brown once said—"The grace of God can do muckle, but it canna gie a man common-sense." Mr. Kilvert was a good scholar, but in the dryest, hardest sense; of literature he knew nothing, and he was entirely without originality or cleverness, so that his knowledge was of the most untempting description. Still his letters to my mother in her early widowhood had been a great comfort to her, and there was no doubt of his having been a thoroughly good parish-priest. He had lately married a Miss Coleman, who derived the strange name of Thermuthis from the daughter of Pharaoh who saved Moses out of the bulrushes, and he had opened a small school at his tiny Rectory of Hardenhuish, or, as it was generally called, Harnish, the estate of the Clutterbucks, near Chippenham in Wiltshire; so my mother, thinking it of far more importance to select "a good man" than "a good master," determined to send me there. How often since have I seen the terrible mistake of parents in "packing off" children to a distant school, to be entirely in the hands of masters of whose practical influence and social competence for their duties they know nothing whatever!

My own experience of Harnish is one of the many instances I have known of how little the character of the head of an establishment affects the members of it, unless his spirituality is backed up by a thorough knowledge of the world. The greater portion of Mr. Kilvert's scholars—his "little flock of lambs in Christ's fold"—were a set of little monsters. All infantine immoralities were highly popular, and—in such close quarters—it would have been difficult for the most pure and high-minded boy to escape from them. The first evening I was there, at nine years old, I was compelled to eat Eve's apple quite up—indeed, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was stripped absolutely bare: there was no fruit left to gather.

I wonder if children often go through the intense agony of anguish which I went through when I was separated from my mother. Perhaps not, as few children are brought up so entirely by and with their parents in such close companionship. It was leaving my mother that I minded, not the going to school, to which my misery was put down: though, as I had never had any companions, the idea of being left suddenly amongst a horde of young savages was anything but comforting. But my nervous temperament was tortured with the idea that my mother would die before I saw her again (I had read a story of this kind), that our life was over, that my aunts would persuade her to cease to care for me,—indeed, the anguish was so great and so little understood, that though it is more than fifty years ago, as I write this, I can scarcely bear to think of it.

III
BOYHOOD
1843-1848

"The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's returning stages:
A day to childhood seems an year,
And years like passing ages."
—Thomas Campbell.
"Oh if, in time of sacred youth,
We learned at home to love and pray,
Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth
May never wholly pass away."
—Thackeray.