Riding we did learn in a casual, haphazard way, and some of us hunted a little with a mild pack (the Old Surrey) in our bad hunting country—but all this was much later and hardly concerns my present subject.
The best practice I had as a boy was riding
twice or thrice a week (from perhaps my tenth to my twelfth year) to Mr Reed, Rector of Hayes, to be taught Latin and a little arithmetic. Our ponies were shaggy, obstinate little beasts, who had the strongest possible dislike of their duties. I remember well how my pony turned round and round, and at last consented to proceed till a new excuse occurred for a bolt towards home. It was a secret delight to me when one of my brothers was beaten in the pony-fight and was brought ignominiously home.
Mr Reed was the kindest of teachers, and after a short spell of Latin he used to give me a slice of cake and allow me to look at the wonderful pictures in an old Dutch Bible. Even under the mild discipline of this kindest of men I used to dissolve in tears over my work.
When I was twelve years old, i.e. in the summer of 1860, I went to the Grammar School at Clapham kept by Rev. Charles Pritchard. I was two years under Pritchard, and when he left [63] I remained under his successor, Rev. Alfred Wrigley, until I went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, 1866. Wrigley had none of the force of Pritchard, nor had he, I fancy, his predecessor’s gift of teaching. Mathematics formed a great part of our curriculum, and for these I had no turn. I am, however, grateful to Wrigley for having made me work out a great many logarithmic calculations which had to be shown up (as he expressed it) in a “neat, tabular
form.” As I have said in my article on my brother George in Rustic Sounds, my “recollections of George at Clapham are coloured by an abiding gratitude for his kindly protection of me as a shrinking and very unhappy ‘new boy’ in 1860.”
From school I went to Trinity College, Cambridge. I lodged first with a tailor called Daniells in Bridge Street, nearly opposite to the new chapel of St John’s—the slow rise of which I used to watch from my windows. Afterwards I moved into rooms on the ground floor to the left of the New Court Gate that leads out into the Backs. Why the architect made the sitting-rooms look into the Court and all its mean stucco decorations I cannot imagine. My bedroom looked out on the Backs and its avenue of lime-trees, where the nightingales sang through the happy May nights.
I hardly made any permanent friends till my second year, when I had the good fortune to become intimate with Edmund Gurney and Charles Crawley, both of whom died early. Crawley was drowned in a boating accident in which he tried in vain to save the women of the party. Edward Stirling, an Australian, has only recently (1919) died. I am glad to think that my undergraduate friends (except those removed by death) are still my friends.
Among the Dons who were friendly to students of natural science the first place must be given to Alfred Newton, the Professor of Zoology, who most kindly invited us to come to his rooms in Magdalene any and every Sunday evening. There we smoked our pipes and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We
had the advantage of meeting older members of the University. It was in this way I became acquainted with G. R. Crotch, of St John’s, who was an assistant in the University Library. He was a strikingly handsome man with a long silky beard and wonderful eyes. His passion was Entomology, and he had a great knowledge of the Coleoptera, and used sometimes to take me out beetle-catching, but I never became a collector. He was eccentric in his habits; for instance, he dressed entirely in black flannel—shirt, coat, and trousers—which were made for him by Brown, the tailor, who was a brother entomologist. He finally gave up his librarianship and went off beetle-catching to the United States, where he died in what would have been miserable conditions but for the tender care bestowed on him by a complete stranger, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten. There, too, I occasionally saw Clifford, the well-known mathematician, who died early—also Kingsley on at least one occasion. I remember him, too, at the New Museums (where I was dissecting some beast or other) reproving me for my white shirt, and telling me that flannel was far more suitable for dissections. John Willis Clark (who afterwards became Registrary of the University) was then Curator of the New Museums, and encouraged me to work in his department, and I well remember my pride when my preparation of a hedgehog’s inside was added to the Museum. J. W. Clark was the kindest of men, and I, like many another undergraduate, used to dine with him and his mother at Scrope