The family went abroad when I was a few months old, and settled at Tours, the charming capital of Touraine, which then contained some two hundred English families (now reduced to a score or so), attracted by the beauty of the place, the healthy climate, the economy of living, the facilities of education, and the friendly feeling of the French inhabitants, who, despite Waterloo, associated freely with the strangers.
They had a chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Way (whose son afterwards entered the Indian army; I met him in India, and he died young); their schoolmaster was Mr. Clough, who bolted from his debts, and then Mr. Gilchrist, who, like the Rev. Edward Irving, Carlisle's friend (whom the butcher once asked if he couldn't assist him), caned his pupils to the utmost. The celebrated Dr. Brettoneau took charge of the invalids. They had their duellist, the Honourable Martin Hawke, their hounds that hunted the Forest of Amboise, and a select colony of Irishmen, Messrs. Hume and others, who added immensely to the fun and frolic of the place.
At that period a host of these little colonies were scattered over the Continent nearest England; in fact, an oasis of Anglo-Saxondom in a desert of continentalism, somewhat like the society of English country towns as it was in 1800, not as it is now, where society is confined to the parson, dentist, surgeon, general practitioners, the bankers, and the lawyers. And in those days it had this advantage, that there were no snobs, and one seldom noticed the aigre discorde, the maladie chronique des ménages bourgeoises. Knowing nothing of Mrs. Grundy, the difference of the foreign colonies was that the weight of English respectability appeared to be taken off them, though their lives were respectable and respected. The Mrs. Gamps and Mrs. Grundys were not so rampant. The English of these little colonies were intensely patriotic, and cared comparatively little for party politics. They stuck to their own Church because it was their Church, and they knew as much about the Catholics at their very door, as the average Englishman does of the Hindú. Moreover, they honestly called themselves Protestants in those days, and the French called themselves Catholics. There was no quibble about "their being Anglo-Catholics, and the others Roman-Catholics." They subscribed liberally to the Church, and did not disdain to act as churchwardens. They kept a sharp look-out upon the parson, and one of your Modern High Church Protestants or Puseyites or Ritualists would have got the sack after the first sermon. They were intensely national. Any Englishman in those days who refused to fight a duel with a Frenchman was sent to Coventry, and bullied out of the place. English girls who flirted with foreigners, were looked upon very much as white women who permit the addresses of a nigger, are looked upon by those English who have lived in black countries. White women who do these things lose caste. Beauséjour, the château taken by the family, was inhabited by the Maréchale de Menon in 1778, and eventually became the property of her homme d'affaires, Monsieur Froguet. The dear old place stands on the right bank of the Loire, halfway up the heights that bound the stream, commanding a splendid view, and fronted by a French garden and vineyards now uprooted. In 1875 I paid it a last visit, and found a friend from Brazil, a Madame Izarié, widow of my friend the French Consul of Bahía, who had come to die in the house of his sister, Madame Froguet.
Tours was in those days (1820-30) the most mediæval City in France. The western half of the city, divided from the eastern by the Rue Royale, contained a number of old turreted houses of freestone, which might have belonged to the fifteenth century. There also was the tomb of the Venerable St. Martin in a crypt, where lamps are ever burning, and where the destroyed cathedral has not yet been rebuilt. The eastern city contained the grand Cathedral of St. Garcien, with its domed towers, and the Archévêché or Archbishop's palace with beautiful gardens. Both are still kept in the best order. In forty-five years the city has grown enormously. The southern suburbs, where the Mall and Ramparts used to be, has become Boulevards Heurteloup and Béranger; and "Places," such as that of the Palais de Justice, where cabbage gardens fenced with paling and thorn hedges once showed a few pauper cottages defended by the fortifications, are now Crescents and Kiosks for loungers, houses with tall mansarde roofs, and the large railway station that connects Tours with the outer world. The river, once crossed by a single long stone bridge, has now two suspension bridges and a railway bridge, and the river-holms, formerly strips of sand, are now grown to double their size, covered with trees and defended by stone dykes.
I remember passing over the river on foot when it was frozen, but with the increased population that no longer happens. Still there are vestiges of the old establishments. The Boule d'Or with its Golden Ball, and the Pheasant Hotel, both in the Rue Royale, still remain. You still read, "Maison Piernadine recommended for is elegance, is good taste, is new fashions of the first choice." Madame Fisterre, the maker of admirable apple-puffs, has disappeared and has left no sign. This was, as may be supposed, one of my first childish visits. We young ones enjoyed ourselves very much at the Château de Beauséjour, eating grapes in the garden, putting our Noah's ark animals under the box hedges, picking snail-shells and cowslips in the lanes, playing with the dogs—three black pointers of splendid breed, much admired by the Duke of Cumberland when he afterwards saw them in Richmond Park, named Juno, Jupiter, and Ponto. Charlotte Ling, the old nurse, daughter of the lodge-keeper at Barham House, could not stand the absence of beef and beer and the presence of kickshaws and dandelion salad, and after Aunt Georgina Baker had paid us a visit, she returned with her to Old England. A favourite amusement of us children was swarming up the tails of our father's horses, three in number, and one—a horse of Mecklenburg breed—was as tame as an Arab. The first story Aunt Georgina used to tell of me was of my lying on my back in a broiling sun, and exclaiming, "How I love a bright burning sun!" (Nature speaking in early years). Occasional drawbacks were violent storms of thunder and lightning, when we children were hustled out of our little cots under the roof, and taken to the drawing-room, lest the lightning should strike us, and the daily necessity of learning the alphabet and so forth, multiplication table, and our prayers.
I was intended for that wretched being, the infant phenomenon, and so began Latin at three and Greek at four. Things are better now. Our father used to go out wild-boar hunting in the Forêt d'Amboise, where is the château in which Abd-el-Kadir was imprisoned by the French Government from 1847 to 1852, when he was set free by Napoleon III., at the entreaties of Lord Londonderry. (It is said that his Majesty entered his prison in person and set him free. Abd-el-Kadir, at Damascus, often expressed his obligations to the English, and warmly welcomed any English face. On one occasion I took a near relation of Lord Londonderry's to see him, and he was quite overcome.) My father was periodically brought home hurt by running against a tree. Sport was so much in vogue then as to come between the parson and his sermon.
This pleasant life came to a close one day. We were three: I was six, Maria four, and Edward three. One morning saw the hateful school-books fastened with a little strap, and we boys and our little bundle were conveyed in a small carriage to the town, where we were introduced into a room with a number of English and French boys, who were sitting opposite hacked and ink-spotted desks, looking as demure as they could, though every now and then they broke out into wicked grins and nudges. A lame Irish schoolmaster (Clough) smiled most graciously at us as long as our father was in the room, but was not half so pleasant when we were left alone. We wondered "what we were doing in that Galère," especially as we were sent there day after day, and presently we learnt the dread truth that we were at school at the ripe ages of six and three. Presently it was found that the house was at an inconvenient distance from school, and the family transferred itself to the Rue de l'Archévêché, a very nice house in the north-eastern corner of what is still the best street in the town (Rue Royale being mostly commercial). It is close to the Place and the Archbishop's palace, which delighted us, with small deer feeding about the dwarf lawn.
Presently Mr. Clough ran away, leaving his sister to follow as best she could, and we were transferred to the care of Mr. John Gilchrist, a Scotch pedagogue of the old brutal school, who took an especial delight in caning the boys, especially with a rattan or ferula across the palm of the hand; but we were not long in discovering a remedy, by splitting the end of the cane and inserting a bit of hair. We took lessons in drawing, dancing, French, and music, in which each child showed its individuality. Maria loved all four; Edward took to French and music and hated drawing; I took to French and drawing, and hated music and dancing. My brother and I took to the study of Arms, by nature, as soon as we could walk, at first with popguns and spring pistols and tin and wooden sabres, and I can quite well remember longing to kill the porter at five years old, because he laughed at our sabres de bois and pistolets de paille.
I was a boy of three ideas. Usually if a child is forbidden to eat the sugar or to lap up the cream he simply either obeys or does the contrary; but I used to place myself before the sugar and cream and carefully study the question, "Have I the courage not to touch them?" When I was quite sure of myself that I had the courage I instantly rewarded resolution by emptying one or both. Moreover, like most boys of strong imagination and acute feeling, I was a resolute and unblushing liar; I used to ridicule the idea of my honour being any way attached to telling the truth, I considered it an impertinence the being questioned, I never could understand what moral turpitude there could be in a lie, unless it was told for fear of the consequences of telling the truth, or one that would attach blame to another person. That feeling continued for many a year, and at last, as very often happens, as soon as I realized that a lie was contemptible, it ran into quite the other extreme, a disagreeable habit of scrupulously telling the truth whether it was timely or not.[1]