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.