What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

I remember that I enjoyed Trenton most. It appealed much less, of course, to the imagination and the sense of wonder, but far more to one’s, appreciation of the beautiful.

Our Niagara visit was in great measure spoiled by my father’s illness. He was suffering from one of his worst sick headaches. He dragged himself painfully to the usual spot near the hotel whence the fall is commanded, and, having looked, got back to his bed. I had plenty of hours at my disposal for rambling in all directions, but, as usual with me, had not a coin of any sort in my pocket. The fall and its environs were not as jealously locked and gated and guarded as has been the case since; but I was assured that I should be very unwise to attempt to penetrate below and behind the fall without a guide, and I should have been most willing to employ one had I possessed the means. But to lose the opportunity of enjoying a sight to which I had so eagerly looked forward, was out of the question; and I did succeed in making my way by the slippery and rather terrible path behind the fall, rewarded by an effect of the sun on the sheet of falling water as perfect and admirable as if it had been ordered expressly for me, and none the worse for the enterprise save returning to the inn as thoroughly drenched as if I had been dragged through the fall! Little enough I cared for that—in those days!

I may mention here one of those singular coincidences which, though in reality so frequently occurring, are objected to in a novelist’s pages as passing the bounds of credibility. Many years after the date of my visit to Niagara the mother of my present wife was there, and saw from the balcony of the hotel a boat with two rowers in it, who had incautiously approached too near the fall, carried over it! Her account of the horror of the sight, and of the sudden and evident despair of the frantically struggling rowers was very impressive, and hardly less so when I heard it for the second time from an American met by chance in Italy, who, sitting in that same balcony at that same hour, had witnessed the same catastrophe!

At New York we were again most kindly and cordially received by Mr. Wilkes, who gave my father much advice respecting his projected Cincinnati venture—advice wholly, as I take it, ignored.

Taught by experience, however, my father did not attempt a second steerage passage. We came back comfortably enough, and had an entirely prosperous voyage, the result being that my remembrances of it are very far less vivid than those of my steerage experience. We reached England in March, and again took up our abode at Harrow Weald, where I, with such very imperfect means and appliances as were at my disposition, was to employ the abundant hours in preparing, in accordance with my own unassisted lights, for the university.

Bad, however, as my father’s circumstances were at this time, and little pleasant in any way as was our life in the farm-house at Harrow Weald, I remember an excursion made by him and me, the only object of which, I think, could have been amusement. My father had an old friend named Skinner (no relative of the vicar of my uncle Meetkerke’s parish of Julians, of whom I have spoken in a former chapter), who was the rector of a parish near Bath. He was a widower, living with an only daughter, and was, I remember, an enthusiastic student of ancient British history in connection with the localities around him. One of the two days we remained with him was devoted to a visit to Cheddar Cliffs. Mr. Skinner mounted us, and we rode a partie carrée, he and my father, Miss Skinner and I, some twelve or fourteen miles to Cheddar. She was a pretty, bright girl, and I found her a charming companion in a scramble to the top of the cliffs overlooking the gorge through which the road runs. We became, indeed, such good friends, that, on our homeward ride, we gradually drew away from our respective parents and reached home a good half hour before they did—which procured for us both a scolding for knocking the horses up.

It was roughish riding, too, as I remember, for the road was very different from what I found it some months ago, when, revisiting Cheddar, I saw on the top of the hill a notice to bicycle riders that the descent is dangerous for them.

CHAPTER IX.

As the year wore on without any prospect of a vacancy at New College, it became necessary to decide what should be done as regards sending me to the university. My father was very ill able to support the expense of this. But I had received from Winchester two exhibitions—all that the college had in its power to bestow—and he was very unwilling that I should be unable to avail myself of them.

Concomitantly with continued increase in the frequency and intensity of his headaches, my father’s irritability of temper had increased to a degree which made him a very difficult man to live with. For simple assent to his utterances of an argumentative nature did not satisfy him, he would be argued with. Yet argument produced irritability leading to scenes of painful violence, which I had reason to fear hastened the return of his suffering. But the greatest good, in his opinion, that could then be achieved for me, was, that I should have an university education; and this he was steadfastly minded to procure for me at any cost of pressure and privation.