What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

“What boy?” snorted Gabell. “What do you mean? I don’t know what you are talking about!”

The father, much relieved, but more amazed, pulls out the terrible letter which had summoned him, and puts it before the much crestfallen “informator.”

“I had forgotten all about it!” he was compelled to own. “The boy is a good boy enough. You had better go and talk to him yourself, and—and tell him not to miss answering his name again!” The parent’s feelings and his expression of them may be imagined.

It used to be said, I remember, that of the two masters of Winchester, one snored without sleeping (Gabell), and the other slept without snoring. Gabell was, in truth, always snorting or snoring (so to call it); but the accusation against Williams of sleeping was, I think, justified only by his peculiarly placid and quiet manner. He was a remarkably handsome man; and his sobriquet, among those of the previous generation rather than among us boys, was, “The Beauty of Holiness”—again with reference to the unruffled repose of his manner. We boys invariably called him “Gaffer.” Why, I know not.

Gabell, I think, had no nickname; but there was a phrase among us, as common as any household word, which was in some degree characteristic of the man. Any conduct which was supposed likely to turn out eventually to the detriment of the actor was called “spiting Gabell;” and the expression was continually used when the speaker intended no more reference to Dr. Gabell than a man who orders a spencer has to the first wearer of that garment.

Mr. Ridding was not a popular master, though I do not know that he had any worse fault than a bad manner. It was a jaunty, jerky, snappish manner, totally devoid of personal dignity. It was said that in school he was not impartial. But by the time he became second master, on the retirement of Gabell, I had reached that part of the school which was under the head master, and have no personal knowledge of the matter. I do not think any boy would have gone to Ridding in any private trouble or difficulty. There was not one who would not have gone to Williams as to a father.

But in my reminiscences of the college authorities, I must not omit the first and greatest of all—the Warden. Huntingford, Bishop of Hereford, was Warden during the whole of my college career. He was an aged man, and somewhat of a valetudinarian. And to the imagination of us boys, who rarely saw him, he assumed something of the mystic, awe-inspiring character of a “veiled prophet of Khorassan.” The most awful threat that could be fulminated against any boy, was that he should be had up before the Warden. I do not remember that any boy ever was. He alone could expel a boy; and he alone could give leave out from college; as was testified by the appearance every Sunday of a great folio sheet, on which were inscribed, in his own peculiar great square characters, each letter standing by itself, the names of those who had been invited by friends to dine in the town, and who were thereby permitted to go out from, I think, one to five. To go out of the college gates without that permission was expulsion. But it was a crime never committed. There were traditional stories of scaling of walls, but I remember no case of the kind.

There was one occasion on which every boy had an interview with the Warden—that of taking before him the “college oath,” which took place when we were, as I remember, fourteen. On a certain day in every year the “prefect of hall” made inquiry for all of that age who had not taken the oath, and required them to copy a sheet of writing handed to them. I cannot remember the words in which the oath was couched, but the main provisions of it were to the effect that you would never by word or deed do aught to injure the college or its revenues; that you would be obedient to the authorities; and that you would never in any way by word or deed look down on any scholar of the college, the social position of whose family might be inferior to your own. And I remember that there was appended to the oath the story of a certain captain in Cromwell’s forces, who, when the Parliament troopers were about to invade, and probably sack, the college, so exercised his authority as to prevent that misfortune, being influenced thereto by the remembrance of his college oath. Before swearing, which we did with much awe, we had to read over the oath. And I well remember that if a boy in reading pronounced the word “revenue” with the accent on the first syllable (as it was already at that time the usual mode to do), the Warden invariably corrected him with, “Revènue, boy!” It was, I suppose, an exemplification of the dictum “No innovation,” which (with the “a” pronounced as in “father,”) was said to be continually the rule of his conduct.

Probably it did not occur to him that the Herefordshire people might have considered it an innovation that Herefordshire candidates for orders should be obliged to come to be ordained in Winchester College Chapel, as was the case, instead of finding their Bishop in his own cathedral church!

Bishop Huntingford was a notable Grecian, and had published a rudimentary book of Greek exercises, which was at one time largely used. I take it he was not in any larger sense a profound scholar. But I remember a story which was illustrative of his grammatical accuracy. The Dean of Winchester, Dr. Rennell, was an enthusiastic Platonist, and upon one occasion in conversation with the Warden and others, quoted a passage from Plato, in which the adjective “παντων” occurred. Upon which the Bishop promptly denied that any such words were to be found in Plato. The controversy was said to have been remitted to the arbitrament of a wager of a dinner and dozen of port, when the Warden, who in fact knew nothing of the passage quoted, but knew that the Dean had said “παντων” in the masculine, when the substantive with which it was made to agree required the feminine, said, “No! no! πασων, Mr. Dean, πασων!” and so won his wager.