Dickens’ novels in All the Year Round; how eagerly they were looked for. Lucky he or she who had heard the great master read himself in public. His books were read in our homes, often aloud to the family circle by paterfamilias, and moved us to laughter or tears. I never now see our young people, or their elders either, affected by an author as we were then by the power of Dickens. He was a new force and his pages kindled in our hearts a vivid feeling for the poor and their wrongs.
Scott’s Waverley Novels, too, aroused our enthusiasm. In the early sixties a cheap edition appeared, and cheap editions were rare things then. It was published, if I remember aright, at two shillings per volume; an event that stirred the country. My father brought each volume home as it came out. I remember it well; a pale, creamy-coloured paper cover, good type, good paper. What treasures they were, and only two shillings! I was a little child when an important movement for the cheapening of books began. In 1852 Charles Dickens presided at a meeting of authors and others against the coercive regulations of the Booksellers’ Association which maintained their excessive profits. Herbert Spencer and Miss Evans (George Eliot) took a prominent part in this meeting and drafted the resolutions which were passed. The ultimate effect of this meeting was that the question between the authors and the booksellers was referred to Lord Campbell as arbitrator. He gave a decision against the booksellers; and there were consequently abolished such of the trade regulations as had interdicted the sale of books at lower rates of profit than those authorised by the Booksellers’ Association.
Practically all my school days were spent at Derby. As I have said, ours was a large family. I have referred to an only sister, but I had step-sisters and step-brothers too. My father married twice and the second family was numerous. His salary was never more than £300 a year, and though a prudent enough man, he was not of the frugal economical sort who makes the most of every shilling. It may be imagined, then, that all the income was needed for a family that, parents included, but excluding the one servant, numbered eleven. The consequence was that the education I received could not be described as liberal. I attended a day school at Derby, connected with the Wesleyans; why I do not know, as we belonged to the
Anglican Church; but I believe it was because the school, while cheap as to fees, had the reputation of giving a good, plain education suitable for boys destined for railway work. It was a good sized school of about a hundred boys. Not long ago I met one day in London a business man who, it turned out, was at this school with me. We had not met for fifty years. “Well,” said he, “I think old Jessie, if he did not teach us a great variety of things, what he did he taught well.” My new-found old schoolmate had become the financial manager of a great business house having ramifications throughout the world. He had attained to position and wealth and, which successful men sometimes are not, was quite unspoiled. We revived our schooldays with mutual pleasure, and lunched together as befitted the occasion.
“Jessie” was the name by which our old schoolmaster was endeared to his boys; a kindly, simple-minded, worthy man, teaching, as well as scholastic subjects, behaviour, morals, truth, loyalty; and these as much by example as by precept, impressing ever upon us the virtue of thoroughness in all we did and of truth in all we said. Since those days I have seen many youths, educated at much finer and more pretentious schools, who have benefited by modern educational methods, and on whose education much money has been expended, and who, when candidates for clerkships, have, in the simple matters of reading, writing, arithmetic, composition and spelling, shown up very poorly compared to what almost any boy from “old Jessie’s” unambitious establishment would have done. But, plain and substantial as my schooling was, I have ever felt that I was defrauded of the better part of education—the classics, languages, literature and modern science, which furnish the mind and extend the boundaries of thought.
“Jessie” continued his interest in his boys long after they left school. He was proud of those who made their way. I remember well the warmth of his greeting and the kind look of his mild blue eyes when, after I had gone out into the world, I sometimes revisited him.
But my school life was not all happiness. In the school there was an almost brutal element of roughness, and fights were frequent; not only in our own, but between ours and neighbouring schools. Regular pitched battles were fought with sticks and staves and stones. I shrunk from fighting but could not escape it. Twice in our own playground I was forced to
fight. Every new boy had to do it, sooner or later. Fortunately on the second occasion I came off victor, much to my surprise. How I managed to beat my opponent I never could understand. Anyhow the victory gave me a better standing in the school, though it did not lessen in the least my hatred of the battles that raged periodically with other schools. I never had to fight again except as an unwilling participant in our foreign warfare.
CHAPTER III.
THE MIDLAND RAILWAY AND “KING HUDSON”
In the year 1851 the Midland Railway was 521 miles long; it is now 2,063. Then its capital was £15,800,000, against £130,000,000 to-day. Then the gross revenue was £1,186,000 and now it has reached £15,960,000. When I say now, I refer to 1913, the year prior to the war, as since then, owing to Government control, non-division of through traffic and curtailment of accounts, the actual receipts earned by individual companies are not published, and, indeed, are not known.