Some eminent Victorians: Personal recollections in the world of art and letters

by J. Comyns Carr

With the events of the Mutiny our sympathies were even more actively engaged. We were closely allied at that time with a family, one of whom, General Henry Marshall, but lately commanded the Artillery in South Africa. They had lived in India, and had relatives still there at the time of the outbreak, and the terrible news as it reached England had therefore an enthralling interest for us all.

It was not to be supposed that my father could afford to any of us the luxury of a public school. At first, with my brothers, I was educated at home under a private tutor, and then at the age of thirteen I took my way to Bruce Castle School, Tottenham, at that time under the mastership of Arthur Hill, brother of Sir Rowland Hill of postage-stamp fame.

I remember my elder brother and I took our places on the form allotted to new boys side by side with William Lewin, better known as William Terriss the actor, and it was only a little while before his tragic end that he and I were recalling those times at Bruce Castle, where, if he gained but little learning, he at any rate acquired a perfect mastery in the art of tree-climbing. There was no elm in the playground, or beyond it, which he had not scaled in search of rooks’ eggs, and his constant companion in these lawless excursions was Fred Selous, the African hunter and explorer, with whom not long ago in his Surrey home, where we sat surrounded by his many trophies of the chase, I was glad to renew our memories of that earlier time.

Terriss’s name reminds me of an incident of our school-days which proves that at that time, at any rate, his histrionic abilities were scarcely equal to mine. Bruce Castle School boasted two masters of the French language, both of whom were regarded as marks for the ridicule and scorn of the English-born boy. Something of the spirit of Waterloo still survived in our outrageous treatment of these gentlemen, whom we could not help regarding as the luckless representatives of a beaten and inferior race.

One of them, I remember, had a known fondness for natural history, and under cover of sharing his enthusiasm we could nearly always lure him to stories of different wild animals which served to fill the hour which should have been devoted to the study of the French language.

This was our more amiable way of tormenting the unfortunate gentleman. Occasionally, in order to frustrate his well-meant efforts to instruct us, we resorted to more drastic measures. I remember one day it was jointly agreed among us that we should all assume to be afflicted with the worst kind of hacking cough, and from the very moment the class opened the room resounded with the most distressing symptoms of our common complaint.

Our master became at length fully conscious of the plot that had been forged against him, and slamming the book in a rage announced his determination of summoning Mr. Arthur Hill to restore the discipline of the class. This show of unexpected authority on his part produced something like consternation, and in a moment all the bronchial sounds were silenced—all save one, for it seemed to me then that the only policy, however desperate it might prove, was to persist in the signs of the malady which had already been announced.

In the interval of dead silence in which we awaited the arrival of the headmaster I therefore continued, at brief but regular intervals, with the same persistent cough which the others had abandoned. On Mr. Arthur Hill’s arrival, Mon. Delmas—for that was the unfortunate gentleman’s name—explained with some volubility the cause of his complaint against us, but at the finish, with a noble credulity that I had hardly dared to hope for, he exempted me from the general condemnation.

“Now, Carr,” he said, “has a cough, but he suffer so much it is better he do not attend the class for a space.”

On this intimation I was permitted to quit the room and to spend the rest of the dreaded hour in the playground, where afterwards I incurred the obloquy of my companions, and especially of William Terriss, because they had failed to adopt my more ingenious policy.