This suggests allusion to the Academy Masters in the olden time. It must be admitted that, in point of discipline and obedience to authority, the example set by the Masters to the pupils was far from beneficial. They resented military interference. They brooded over real and fancied slights. They absented themselves without permission; and their letters to the Lieutenant-Governor were not unfrequently impertinent. The case was at one time serious. But "Custodes quis custodiet ipsos?" At last a man was found to bell the cat; a man of whom we shall hear again—who was Lieutenant-Governor in 1776, before going to command the Artillery in America—James Pattison. A letter which he addressed to the Mathematical Masters on the 1st April, 1777, shows the line he adopted; and tells the whole story without any explanation being necessary.
"Gentlemen,—I have received your letter of 27th March, and the reply I have at present to make to it is principally to correct two essential mistakes contained in the four lines which compose the letter. You say, that at my request, you have subjoined your opinion on the mode of education in the Academy, and desire me to present it to the Master-General in your names.
"The case in my manner of stating it is this. I signified to you the Master-General's being not well pleased at the slow progress made by the Gentlemen Cadets in the Mathematics, and asked if you thought there was room for any beneficial alteration in the method of teaching in your department. Upon which you expressed great discontent at the printed rules you are prescribed to teach by, condemning them as being very defective and absurd, and mentioned several amendments you wished might be allowed to take place. I thereupon required, not requested, you to represent them to me in writing, that I might be able to lay them, if expedient, before the Master-General; not meaning, as you seem to conceive, to be merely the porter of them in your names.
"As to the temporary suspension of teaching Latin in the Lower Academy, it being by the Master-General's orders, his lordship will judge how far the manner in which you think proper to reprobate the measure is becoming. I have only to say that, as that branch of learning is not in either of your departments, it was no part of my directions to you to give an opinion on it.
"I have, &c.,
"James Pattison."
But not merely on matters of public and official importance did the masters test the patience of the authorities. Another letter, also, like the one given above, deposited in the Royal Artillery Record Office, gives a glimpse at the private worries over which the Academy Masters brooded—and which they inflicted on the Lieutenant-Governors. Two Professors had adjoining quarters in the Warren, adjacent to the wall bounding the road to Plumstead, and a long way from the Warren gate. From one of these quarters there was a communication through the wall to the town—from the other there was not. The occupant of the latter dwelling was, in consequence, a miserable and ill-used man; it was another case of Ahab and Naboth's vineyard—and he waxed sick as he thought of his hardship.
So, appending to his letter an elaborate map of the Warren, he addressed the Lieutenant-Governor on the subject, begging either for a right of way through his neighbour's house, or for a new communication for his own. So quaintly does he argue his cause, that his words are reproduced for the amusement of the reader.
"For want of such a ready communication with the town of Woolwich, with regard to my Family, I am subject to much inconvenience. For, the way by the gate of the Warren makes the distance to and from my house so great, that I can't have the necessary provisions brought to me as other people have, by Bakers, Butchers, Milkmen, &c., without great additional expense, and many not even for that at any rate. So that I am obliged to send my servants round about by all that way, on all occasions, to bring in all things necessary to the Family. This is not the worst of it; for all kinds of Family necessaries not being constantly to be bought in the shops in such a place as Woolwich, many things are brought only occasionally and cried about the streets, when it is matter of no small grief that such things as may then be much wanted in the family can be heard to be cried immediately behind the house, without a possibility of coming at them, but by going half a mile round about, when perhaps the servants can be least spared to go, and when they do go, it is ten to one they are disappointed by the crier then being gone quite out of sight and hearing. And besides all this, it is not always that I can prevail on my good and sober female servants to be willing so frequently to go through by the Warren gate, as it is next to an impossibility that such persons can pass so many soldiers as are generally there assembled, without sometimes being subject to rencounters disagreeable to them."
The Lieutenant-Governor, who had not merely official troubles with the Masters to vex him, but had also to listen to such harrowing domestic details as those just given, was not a man to be envied. Even a hundred years later, as the student comes on this plaintive picture, his imagination begins to work, and he sees, tearing his hair in his study, the ill-fated teacher listening to the well-known cry, just over the Warren walls, which told him that some much-loved delicacy was there—so near and yet so far.