But, though my brothers and I effectually resisted the efforts made to teach us, we learnt during our winters in France a great many things indirectly. Unfortunately, French was not one of those things. My father would have liked us to speak and write French. He had it, however, so strongly impressed upon him by his advisers that if we were to go to Oxford we must above all things get a sufficient knowledge of Latin and Greek to pass Responsions that, though we had an occasional lesson in French, our sojourn on the Riviera, as far as learning French was concerned, was thrown away.
We lived entirely with the boys and girls of the rest of the British colony, and regarded the French inhabitants literally as part of the scenery, and largely as a humorous part thereof. We got on well enough with them, and knew enough French to buy endless sweets at Rumpelmeyer's or chez Nègres, to get queer knives and "oddities" at the fairs, or to conduct paper-chases along the course of the Canal or in Pine Woods bordering it. We refused, however, to take the French or their language seriously.
[Illustration: Sutton Court, Somerset]
However, my father did contrive to instil a little French politics into us. He was a fervent admirer of Gambetta and the Third Republic, and used to read us extracts from Gambetta's organ, La Republique Francaise. It thus happened that I early became a staunch adherent of the great Democratic leader and was full of zeal against first the Comte de Chambord and then the Comte de Paris. I still remember the excitement we all felt over Marshal MacMahon's rather half-hearted efforts to play the part of a General Monk.
We had, further, the excitement of seeing a famous General immured close to us in a fortress prison for the crime of treason. The Ile de Ste. Marguerite, opposite Cannes, with its picturesque Vauban fortifications, became, while we were at Cannes, the prison of Marshal Bazaine, the man who surrendered Metz to the Germans. He occupied, besides, the very rooms which had been occupied by "The Man with the Iron Mask." Can it be wondered that when we had a picnic-party on the island, or rowed under the walls of the fortress in a boat, we used to strain every muscle in order to get a glimpse of the prisoner? On one occasion we saw somebody's hat or head moving along a parapet, and were told it was the Marshal taking his daily exercise on the terrace of the fort, but whether it really was or not, who can say? At any rate, the Marshal escaped from his imprisonment during our stay, probably to the relief of his jailers. That was a source of great excitement in itself, and it was heightened by rumours that an English girl had assisted the prisoner to break out.
We were not personally in favour of Bazaine, but regarded him with distinct repulsion for surrendering at Metz. Still, an escape was an escape; and, besides, the fat old Marshal had let himself down by a rope into an open boat!
The epoch of tutors came to an end soon after the birth of my sister, which happened at Marseilles, when my mother was on her way to Cannes. After the event, my mother was pronounced by the doctors to be able to winter in England, and I and my two brothers, therefore, went back to Chewton Mendip and became private pupils of Mr. Philpott, for the second time. Here we remained till I went first to a tutor at Oxford—Mr. Bell— and then to live with my uncle and aunt, Professor T. H. Green (Mrs. Green was my mother's sister). There I was "coached for Balliol" by two of the best scholars in the University. One of them was Professor Nettleship, who a couple of years later was made Professor of Latin, and the other is now Sir Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen. They were both delightful expounders of the classics, and, though I was an unaccountably bad scholar, I am proud to say that they both liked me and liked teaching me. However, I need say no more on this point, as all that is worth saying about it is supplied by Sir Herbert Warren in the letter which I have included in my Oxford Chapter.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FAMILY NURSE
In the families of the well-to-do few influences have a greater effect upon the child, and so upon the man, than that exercised by the servants of the household in which he or she is brought up. And of those influences, upstairs or downstairs, none, of course, is so potent as that of the nurse. That is what Goethe would call one of the secrets that are known to all. Why it should ever be regarded as a secret Heaven knows; yet it must be so considered, for it is very seldom spoken of except in the case of nurses.