Such, then, was the one thought uppermost in my childish mind. I had a strong faith in my own ugliness. Happy days and hours I had, as all healthy children will have. I frolicked and played; and being naughty as well as ugly, I was often whipped; while my pretty little sister, the youngest of us all, being pretty as well as naughty, was only scolded and warned. However, no punishment I ever received (and I had many) hurt me so much as the oft-recurring, never-long-absent reflection, that Nature, when she turned me out of her mint, had impressed me with her strongest stamp of ugliness. Nay, when at times a child’s party was given at our house, and little neighbors came to see us for a few hours, I was quick at observing how that none of them took to me. If a game were proposed, I was always assigned the lowest place in it. If others were kings and queens, I was only a servant and a slave; and when others were captains and admirals, I was a common sailor; and on one occasion, which I well remember, I was degraded to the position of powder-monkey. It seemed indeed by universal, tacit consent that I should be thus used; and in my own secret little heart I attributed the cause to my ugliness. Often while I joined in the game and shouted my utmost, I was in reality sad and disheartened; and have more than once climbed a tree and hid myself in its topmost branches, while the sport proceeded in the garden below, and my absence was unnoticed.
Thus it was that my childhood fled away, till, as time progressed, the evil became more serious. Having been so often rebuffed and humiliated, I lost all ambition to excel. Insensibly I acquiesced in the idea that I was in all points inferior to others, and that no efforts of my own could ever raise me to their level. My friends now not only called me ugly, but stupid. My plain elder brother was undeniably clever. My plainer second brother was shrewd, but I was both the ugliest and stupidest of all. At first I wept at this double discovery. I then grew content at being at the bottom of my class at school. My master held me up to ridicule (the rascal has since been made a bishop), and that, too, not only because I was backward and idle, for in these respects I richly deserved his blame; but, alas! for poor human nature so apt to be biased by mere externals, because I was ugly. I felt at the time that, had I not been so very plain, my being a dunce would have been more overlooked. I saw good-looking dunces in the class with me, who were easily pardoned; but I was an ugly dunce, and therefore was ridiculed and punished. This treatment made me sullen. At last I never cared to work at all. I copied my exercises and blundered over my translations so much, that the master grew tired of hearing me, and would often pass me over entirely—a course that pleased me exceedingly, and only confirmed me in my idleness. I was called stupid, and I became stupid; and I discovered, till I half became a little misanthrope, that the ugliness for which I was bantered at home, caused me also to be treated with greater harshness for my faults at school.
Nor was it my enforced stupidity alone that thus gave the sting to my plainness, but my poverty. My father was very badly off. I wore my elder brothers’ old clothes, which were too large for me. I assumed, I recollect, on one occasion one of their cast-off hats, and it overshadowed me completely. My well-dressed school-fellows christened me Guy Fawkes on account of my frumpish attire: and one of them, kinder than the rest, came to me one day when I was all alone, and told me he was sorry for me. This last incident completed my humiliation. I did not weep but I kept very silent for a day or two. I entered into no sports. I walked apart and thought of my ugliness, my stupidity, my poverty; nor was it till a week or more had passed away that I regained my usual spirits.
Shortly after the above-mentioned events, when I was about fourteen years of age, my poor father began to think seriously of the future career of his ugly bantling. And now a fresh sorrow awaited me. My acquirements were so small, my manners and appearance so unprepossessing, that there was great difficulty in deciding on my future course. “Come here, Jack,” said my father one day to me. “Can you read well?” “No,” he answered for me. “Can you write well?” “No,” he said again. “Can you cast accounts well?” “No,” he replied once more. “You can do nothing well, but take birds’ nests. I don’t know at all what is to become of you.”
On hearing these words, poor Jack left the room very much crestfallen; and quite agreed with his father, that he did not at all know what was to become of him, being both the ugliest and stupidest of his family. “Send him to college, father, and make a clergyman of him,” suggested an amiable and compassionate sister, thinking more of her brother’s feelings than the Church’s interests. This last speech of hers I overheard, as I was disappearing through the doorway, with the additional words: “Perhaps he may just pass through, without being absolutely plucked.”
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Since the above-mentioned scenes, years have passed away and a great change has come over me. I have already said more than once that I was a backward boy, and very lazy over my books. About the age of sixteen years, however, a visible alteration took place in this respect. At the suggestion of a sister (a suggestion indeed half made in fun), I was induced to try my hand at writing verses. At first I refused, being quite aghast at such a daring proposal; but on the request being repeated, I complied. Then it was that I caught the first sound of praise my ugly ears had ever heard yet. She and I were both alike surprised. I could not believe that I had composed the poem out of my own stupid head. I read it over and over again, and each time with increasing wonder. I was actually startled at myself, while the pleasing idea stole into my mind that I was not so great a fool after all.
Nor did the matter end there. The verses were taken to another sister, and were praised by her in turn. My second brother also, who saw them next, declared boldly that they were not mine; or if they were, must have been made up of odds and ends by some unconscious trick of the memory. The answer was easy: I knew no poetry, and therefore the idea of plagiarism had no grounds to rest upon. And this last consideration made my triumph complete. My intellectual being awoke from its long slumber, and sprang at once into conscious life. Poetry became a passion. I read all I could lay my hands upon. I composed and filled volumes with my own lucubrations; my spirit within me yearned under the burden of a thousand new and contending romantic emotions; and while I continued busily my classical studies (for about this time it was settled that I should go to college), I read and wrote much in addition, and was never idle for a single moment.
Still, though the first step had thus been taken in the right direction, much remained to be done. When alone with my books, I felt and enjoyed the freedom I had acquired. I no longer looked on myself as below my fellow-men, but recognized my birthright of intellectual power, and delighted in the exercise of it. The case, however, was different when I was with strangers, or even with members of my own family. Immediately the fancied giant slunk back again into the stunted dwarf. The fault of my education came over me like a cloud. The lesson that had been drilled into me so early was not to be easily eradicated; and the consequence was, that, while my indignant spirit secretly rebelled at my own cowardice, I was obliged to submit with a good grace, and cut but a poor figure in the eyes of my companions and fellow-students.
Nor did this proud diffidence lose in intensity when I was introduced into the little world of academical life. The same fault haunted me still; and keeping aloof from others, I not only forfeited many advantages, but likewise ran the risk, incurred by all solitary men, of increasing selfishness and egotism. Circumstances, however, in some degree broke down this barrier to freedom of intercourse with others, which unwise friends had unconsciously helped to raise; and though I had a small but select circle of acquaintances, my evil genius was still with me; and I finally left the university, having missed much it was calculated to teach.