What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Not that it is to be understood that any hour of our lives was left to our own discretion as to the employment of it; but this was attained by no immediate personal superintendence or direction. The systematised routine was so perfect, and so similar in its operation to the movements of some huge irresistible machine, that the disposal of each one of our hours seemed to be as natural, as necessary, and as inevitable as the waxing and waning of the moon. And the impression left on my mind by eight years’ experience of such a system is, that it was pre-eminently calculated to engender and foster habitual conceptions of the paramount authority of law, as distinguished from the dictates of personal notions or caprices; of self-reliance, and of conscious responsibility in the individual as forming an unit in an organised whole. Of course the eighteen prefects were to a much smaller degree coerced by the machine, and to a very great degree active agents in the working of it. And I was a prefect during three years of my eight in college. But at first, when a little fellow of, say, ten years old, entered this new world, it was not without a desolate sensation of abandonment, which it needed a month or two’s experience to get the better of.

All this, however, was largely corrected and modified by one admirable institution, which was a cardinal point in the Wiccamical system. To every “inferior” was appointed one of the prefects as a “tutor.” It was the duty of this tutor to superintend and see to the learning of his lessons by the inferior, and the due performance of his written “prose” and “verse tasks,” to protect him against all ill-usage or “bullying,” and to be in all ways his providence and friend. These appointments were made by the “informator.” The three or four senior prefects had as many as seven pupils, the junior prefects one or two only; and the tutor received from the parents of each pupil, by the hands of the master, two guineas yearly.

In order rightly to understand the working of all these arrangements, it must be explained that each individual’s place in “the school” and his place “in college” were two entirely different things. The first depended on his acquirements when he entered the college and his subsequent scholastic progress. The latter depended solely on his seniority “in college.” The junior in college was the last boy whose nomination succeeded in finding a vacancy in any given year; and he remained “junior” till the admission of another boy next year, when he had one junior below him, and so on. Thus it might happen, and constantly did happen, that a boy’s junior in college might be much above him in the school, either from having come in at a later age, or from being a better prepared or cleverer boy. And all the arrangements of the domestic college life, the fagging, &c., depended wholly on juniority “in college,” and had no reference to the place held by each in the school. But all this seniority and juniority “in college” ceased to operate in any way as soon as the individual in question became a prefect. He had then equal authority over every “inferior,” whether such inferior were his senior or junior in college.

It is evident, therefore, that the prefect’s authority was frequently exercised over individuals older, bigger, stronger than himself; and for the due and regular working of this system it was necessary that the authority of the prefect should be absolute and irresistible. It was traditionally supposed in college that for an “inferior” to raise his hand against a prefect would be a case of expulsion. Whether expulsion would have actually followed, I cannot say, for during my eight years’ residence in college I never remember such a case to have occurred. I have heard my father and other old Wykehamists of his day declare that no such absolute authority as that of a prefect at Winchester existed in England, save in the case of the captain of a man-of-war. It should be observed, however, in modification of this, that any abuse of this authority in the way of bullying or cruelty would at once have been interfered with by that other prefect, the victim’s tutor. An appeal to the master would have been about as much thought of as an appeal to Jupiter or Mars.

CHAPTER VI.

When I went into college in 1820, at ten years old, Dr. Gabell was the “informator,” and Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Williams the “hostiarius,” or second master. When I quitted it in 1828, Dr. Williams was head master, and Mr. Ridding second master. I do not know that Gabell was altogether an unpopular man, but he never inspired that strong affection that his successor did. His manner was disagreeable. In short, he was not so completely a gentleman as Williams was.

I am tempted to give here an anecdote that was currently told of Gabell—though I cannot say that it occurred within my knowledge—because it is at all events a very characteristic one.

Some boy or other—he was, I fancy, a “commoner,” or one of Dr. Gabell’s private pupils—was guilty of some small delinquency which had the unfortunate effect of especially angering the Doctor, who, in his rage, without giving a second thought to the matter, wrote off a hurried letter to the boy’s father, telling him that if his son continued his present conduct he was on the high road to ruin.

Unfortunately, the parent lived in one of the far northern counties. In extreme distress he at once left home and posted to Winchester.

Rushing, in agitation and anxiety, into Gabell’s study, he gasped out, “What is it? Tell it me at once! What has my unhappy boy done?”