1845.

Dislike to Shaw in consequence of the dreadful life I led there with my father.—My guardian.—Her plan for my education.—Doncaster School.—Mr. Cape and his usher.—The usher's intolerance of Dissenters. —My feeling for architecture and music.—The drawing-master.—My guardian insists on my learning French.—Our French master, Sig. Testa.—A painful incident.—I begin to learn the violin.—Dancing.—My aversion to cricket.—Early readings.—Love of Scott.—My first library.—Classical studies.

One consequence of the horrible life I had led at Ivy Cottage was a permanent dislike to the place and the neighborhood, the evil effects of which will be seen in the sequel. For the present it is enough to say that I never went there again quite willingly. After my father's death my grandmother lived in the village, and I was taken to see her every year until her death; but though she was a very kind old lady, it was a trial to me to visit her. I used to lie awake in her house at nights, realizing those horrible nights I had passed at Ivy Cottage, with such extreme intensity that it seemed as if my father might enter the room at any time. This was not a superstitious dread of apparitions; but the association of ideas brought back the past with a clearness that was extremely painful. Even now, at a distance of more than forty years, I avoid whatever reminds me of that time, and am not sorry that this narrative now leads to something else.

My father had no great affection for his brothers, who on their part could not have much esteem for him, so there was a mutual coolness which prevented him from appointing either of them to be my guardian. Probably they felt this as a slight, for, although always kind to me, they held completely aloof from anything like paternal interference with my education. My father had named his eldest sister, Mary, as my sole guardian, with, two lawyers as co-executors with her. The reader will probably think it was a mistake to appoint an old maid to be guardian to a boy; but my aunt was a woman of excellent sense, and certainly not disposed to bring me up effeminately; indeed, her willingness to encourage me in everything manly was such that she would always inflict upon herself considerable anxiety about my safety rather than prevent me from taking my full share of the more or less perilous exercises of youth. As to my education and profession her scheme was very simple and clear, and would have been perfectly rational if I had been all that she wished me to be. According to her plan I was to go to good schools first, and then be prepared for Oxford by tutors, and become a clergyman. There was some thought at one time of sending me to one of the great public schools; but this was abandoned, and I was first sent to Burnley School again, and then, after the summer holidays of 1845, to Doncaster, where I was a boarder in the house of the head-master.

A word from me in favor of one of the public schools would probably have decided my guardian to send me there; but there was a vis inertiae in my total want of social and scholastic ambition. I never in my life felt the faintest desire to rise in the world either by making the acquaintance of people of rank (which is the main reason why boys of middling station are sent to aristocratic schools), or by getting letters put after my name as a reward for learning what had no intrinsic charm for me. In the worldly sense I never had any ambition whatever.

It seemed rather hard, after living at Burnley with my kind guardian, to be sent to Doncaster School and separated from her for five months at a time, but she thought the separation necessary, as there was nothing in the world she dreaded more than that her great affection might spoil me. Always gentle in her ways, always kind and considerate, that admirable woman had still a remarkable firmness of character, and would act, on due occasion, in direct opposition both to her own feelings and to mine, if she believed that duty required it.

In those days there was no railway station at Doncaster, and my guardian took me from Featherstone (where her brother-in-law, Mr. Hinde, was vicar) to Doncaster in a hired carriage. I remember that it was an open carriage and we had nobody with us except the driver, and it was a fine hot day in August. I remember the long road, the arrival at an inn at Doncaster not far from the new church, and my first presentation to Mr. Cape, the head-master, who seemed a very kind and gentle sort of clergyman to a boy not yet acquainted with his cane. Then I was left alone in the strange school, not in the best of spirits, and if it had been difficult to restrain tears when my guardian left me, it became impossible in the little iron bed in the dormitory at night.

There were not many boarders, perhaps a dozen, and three or four private pupils who were preparing for Cambridge. All these were lodged in the head-master's house, which was in a pleasant, open part of the town, on the road leading to the race-course, just beyond the well-known Salutation Hotel. Besides these, there were rather a large number of day scholars,—I forget how many, perhaps fifty or sixty,—and in those days the schoolhouse was a ground floor under the old theatre. We marched down thither in the morning under the control of an usher, who was always with us in our walks. This usher, whose name I well remember, but do not choose to print, was a vulgar, overbearing man whom it was difficult to like, yet at the same time we all felt that he was a very valuable master. Boys feel the difference between a master who is a gentleman and one who falls short of that ideal. We were clearly aware that the head-master, Mr. Cape, was a gentleman, and that the usher was not. Nevertheless, in spite of his occasional coarseness and even brutality, the usher was a painstaking, honest fellow, who did his duty very energetically. His best quality, which I appreciate far more now than I did then, was an extreme readiness to help a willing boy in his work, by clearly explaining those difficulties that are likely to stop him in his progress. Mr. Cape was more an examiner than a teacher, at least for us; with the private pupils he may have been more didactic. The usher evidently liked to be asked; he was extremely helpful to me, and thanks to him chiefly I made very rapid progress at Doncaster. Unfortunately an occasional injustice made it difficult to be so grateful to him as we ought to have been. Here is an example. One evening in the playground he told me to get on the back of another boy, and then thrashed me with a switch from an apple-tree. I begged to be told for what fault this punishment was inflicted, and the only answer he condescended to give me was that a master owed no explanation to a schoolboy. Down to the present time I have never been able to make out what the punishment was for, and strongly suspect that it was simply to exercise the usher's arm, which was a powerful one. He was a fair cricketer, though rather too fat for that exercise, and a capital swimmer, for which his fat was an advantage. He was an immoderate snuff-taker. Sometimes he would lay a train of snuff on the back of his hand and snuff it up greedily and voluptuously. In hot weather he sometimes sat in his shirt-sleeves, and would occasionally amuse himself by laying the snuff on his thick fat arm and then pass it all under his nose, which drew it up as the pneumatic discharging machines drew grain from the hold of a vessel. The odor of snuff was inseparable from his person.

On Sunday mornings we were made to read chapters in the Bible before going to church, and the usher, who was preparing himself to enter Holy Orders, would sometimes talk to us a little about theology. Once he said that the establishment of religious toleration in England had been a deplorable mistake, and that Dissent ought not to be permitted by the Sovereign. This frank expression of perfect intolerance rather surprised me even then, and I did not quite know whether it would be just to extirpate Dissent or not. My principal feeling about the matter was the prejudice inherited by young English gentlemen of old Tory families, that Dissent was something indescribably low, and quite beneath the attention of a gentleman. Still, to go farther and compel Dissenters by force to attend the services of the Church of England did seem to me rather hard, and on thinking over the matter seriously in my own mind, I came to the conclusion that our usher must be wrong, unless Dissenters were guilty of some crime I was not aware of; but this, after all, seemed quite possible.

We were taken to the services in Doncaster old church, which was destroyed by fire many years afterwards. Though not yet in my teens, I had an intense delight in architecture, and deeply enjoyed the noble old building, one of the finest of its class in England. Our pew was in the west gallery, not far from the organ, and from it we had a good view of the interior. The effect of the music was very strong upon me, as the instrument was a fine one, and I was fully alive to the influence of music and architecture in combination. The two arts go together far better than architecture and painting; for music seems to make architecture alive, as it rolls along the aisles and under the lofty vaults. I well remember feeling, when some noble anthem was being performed, as if the sculptured heads between the arches added a noble animation to their serenity. Even now, the impression received in those early days still remains in my memory with considerable clearness and fidelity, and I believe that the habit of attending service in such a beautiful church was a powerful stimulus to an inborn passion for architecture.

I had already taken lessons in drawing, of the kind which in those days was thought suitable for boys who were not expected to be professional artists, so the drawing-master at Doncaster had me amongst his pupils. He was an elderly man, rather stout, and very respectable. His house was extremely neat and tidy, with proper mahogany furniture, and no artistic eccentricities of any kind whatever. He himself was always irreproachably dressed, and he wore a large ruby ring on the little finger of his left hand. To us boys he appeared to be a personage of great dignity, but we were not afraid of him in spite of the dignity of his manners, as he could not apply the cane. He was not unkind, yet in all my life I never met with anybody concerned with the fine arts who had so little sympathy, so little enthusiasm. On the whole, he was distinctly gentle with me, but I made him angry twice. He had done me the honor to promote me to water-color, and as I wanted a rag to wipe my slab and brushes, I ventured to ask for one, on which he turned upon me a glance of haughty surprise, and said, "Do you suppose, sir, that I can undertake to supply you with rags?" This will give an idea of the curiously unsympathetic nature of the man. On another occasion I was drawing a house, or beginning to draw one, when the master came to look over my shoulder and found great fault with me for beginning with the upper part of the edifice. "What stonemason or bricklayer," said he, "would think of building his chimney before he had laid the first row of stones on the foundation?" A young pupil must not correct the bad reasoning of his elders, but it seemed to me that the cases of a bricklayer building a real house and an artist representing one on paper were not precisely the same. Later in life I found that the best artists brought their works forward as much as possible simultaneously, sketching all the parts lightly at first, and keeping them all in the same degree of finish till the end. [Footnote: The most rational way to paint is first to paint all the large masses together, then the smaller or secondary masses, and finally the details, bringing the picture forward all together, as nearly as possible.]

Nevertheless, the drawing-lessons were always a delightful break in our week's occupation, and I remember with pleasure the walk in the morning down to the drawing-master's house, two days in the week, and the happy hour of messing with water-color that followed it. In those days of blissful ignorance I had, of course, no conception of the difficulties of art, and was making that delusively rapid apparent progress which is so very encouraging to all incipient amateurs. Not a single study of those times remains in my portfolios to-day, and I know not what may have become of them. This is the more to be regretted, that in the fine weather our master took us into the fields round Doncaster and taught us to sketch from nature, which we accomplished in a rudimentary way.

My dear, wise, and excellent guardian was always anxious that I should receive as good an education as my opportunities would permit, so she insisted on my learning French, and had herself taught me the elements of that language, which she was able to read, though she did not pretend to speak it. On going to Doncaster I found Latin and Greek so serious a business that I wanted to lighten my burdens, and begged to be excused from going on with French; but my guardian (who, with all her exquisite gentleness, had a very strong will) would not hear of any such abandonment, and wrote very determinedly on the subject both to me and to Mr. Cape. It is extremely probable that this exercise of my guardian's will may have had a great influence on my future life, as without some early knowledge of French I might not have felt tempted to pursue the study later, and if I had never spoken French my whole existence would have been quite different.

Our French master at Doncaster was an Italian of good family named Testa, one of the most perfect gentlemen I ever met, and an excellent teacher. My deepest regret about him now is that I did not learn Italian with him also, then or afterwards. [Footnote: It is astonishing how many chances of improvement young men foolishly allow to slip by them. It would have been quite worth while after I became a free agent to go and spend six months or more at Doncaster, simply to read Italian with so good a master as Testa.] I learned Italian later in life, and with a far inferior master. Signor Testa was a tall, thin man, of rather cold and stately manners, with a fine-looking, noble head covered with curly brown hair. He was always exquisitely clean and orderly, both about his person and the books and things that belonged to him in his rooms, where there was an atmosphere of almost feminine refinement, though their occupant was by no means effeminate in his thoughts or bearing. We understood that he had left Italy in consequence of some political difficulty, and we knew that he had still relations there. One day, as we were engaged with our lesson at his lodgings, he took some leaves and a faded flower or two that had just arrived in a letter from Italy, and said, with tears in his eyes, "These have come from my father's place." Now it so happened that the eldest boy in our class was liable to fits of perfectly uncontrollable laughter (what the French call le fou rire), and, as the reader is sure to know, if he has ever been troubled with that disease himself, the fit very often comes on just at the moment when the patient feels that he is called upon to look particularly grave. This is what happened in the present case. Our unlucky fellow-pupil was tickled with something in Testa's accent or manner, or perhaps as he was an English boy the foreigner's tenderness of feeling may have seemed to him absurd; but whatever may have been the reason, his face became convulsed with suppressed laughter, which burst forth at last uncontrollably. This made the rest of us laugh too—not at poor Testa, but at our unworthy comrade. I shall never forget the Italian gentleman's look on that occasion. His eyes were still brimming with tears, but he laid down the flattened leaves and flowers and looked at us all round with an expression that cut me, at least, to the quick. "Young gentlemen," he said, "I did not expect you to be so unkind." I longed to explain, but did not find words at the moment, and we went on with our lesson. The fact was that Testa had not the least sense of humor in his composition, and so he could not understand what had happened. A humorous man, acquainted with the nature of boys, would have understood the attack of fou rire, and forgiven it; but then a humorous man would have thought twice before appealing to a set of English boys for sympathy with the feelings of an exile. The incident certainly increased my feelings of respect for Signor Testa, and made me try to please him. The French lessons were very agreeable to me, and besides duly preparing them, I read some French on my own account, and acquired a liking for the language that has remained with me ever since.

If the reader has the sound old-fashioned notions about education by which all subjects were strictly divided into the two classes of serious and frivolous pursuits, he will already have suspicions about the soundness of a training that included the two idle accomplishments of Drawing and French, and what will he say, I wonder, when music is added to the list? My initiation into music took place in the following manner. We had a dancing-master who came regularly to Mr. Cape's house to prepare us to shine in society, and his instrument was the convenient dancing-master's pocket fiddle or kit. Although this instrument gives forth but a feeble kind of music, I was far more enchanted with it than by the dancing, and wrote a most persuasive letter to my good guardian imploring her to let me study the violin. Those were the happy times when one had energy for everything! I had already three languages on hand, and the art of painting in water-colors, besides which I was in a mathematical school where boys were prepared for Cambridge, [Footnote: Doncaster School at that time was a sort of little nursery for Cambridge. Mr. Cape was a Cambridge man, and so was his brother, the able master of Peterborough School.] but there seemed to be no reason why the art of violin-playing should not be added to these pursuits. My guardian, before consenting, prudently wrote to Mr. Cape to ask if this new accomplishment would not interfere too much with other matters, and his answer was in these words: "The lad is getting on well enough with his studies, so if he wants to amuse himself a little by scraping catgut, even let him scrape away!" It will be seen that Mr. Cape did not assign to music the high rank in education which has been attributed to it by some famous thinkers in ancient and modern times. Few musical sensations experienced during my whole life have equalled in intensity the sensation of hearing our dancing-master play upon a full-sized violin, after the weak and thin tones that our ears had been accustomed to by his kit. I was so little in the way of hearing music at Doncaster that the richer note of the violin seemed musical as the lyre of Apollo. A contrast so striking made me more passionately eager to learn, but I was informed by one of the private pupils who exercised considerable authority over the younger boys, that although I might study the violin with the dancing-master, I was never to practise it by myself. This restriction was pardonable in one who might reasonably dread the torturing attempts of a beginner, but it was certainly not favorable to my progress. However, in course of time it came to be relaxed; that is, as soon as I could play tunes.

It is very odd that any one who dislikes dancing as heartily as I have always disliked it in manhood, should have been rather a brilliant performer when a boy. Our dancing-master was extremely pleased with me, and encouraged me by many compliments; nay, he even went so far as to teach me a sailor's hornpipe, which I danced in public as a pas seul when the school gave a theatrical entertainment on the approach of the Christmas holidays. All this is simply inconceivable now, for there is nothing which bores me so thoroughly as a ball, and I would at any time travel fifty miles to avoid one.

At school the principal amusement was cricket, for which I soon acquired an intense aversion. All games bore me except chess and billiards, and it was especially hard to be compelled to field out to please the elder boys, and so waste the precious holiday afternoons. Our cricket ground was on the racecourse, and when I could get away I did so most joyfully, and betook myself to a quiet place amongst the furze nearer to the Red House than the Grand Stand. There my great delight was to read Scott's poems, which I possessed in pocket volumes. The same volumes are in my study now, and simply to handle them is enough to bring back many sensations of long-past boyhood. Of all the influences that had sway over me in those days and for long afterwards, the influence of Scott was by far the strongest. A boy cannot make a better choice. Scott has the immense advantage over dull authors of being almost always interesting, and the equally great advantage over many exciting authors that he never leaves an unhealthy feeling in the mind. I began with "The Lady of the Lake," then read "Marmion," and "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" and the Ballads, and finally "Rokeby." These were in separate small volumes, which gave me a desire to possess other authors in the same convenient form, so I added Goldsmith, Crabbe, Kirke White, and Moore's "Irish Melodies." A prize for history gave me "Paradise Lost" in two volumes of my favorite size, and two school-fellows, who saw that I had a taste for such volumes, kindly gave me others. During the holidays my guardian authorized the purchase of a Shakespeare in seven pocket volumes, and the "Spectator" in eight, so I had quite a little library, which became inexpressibly dear to me. It is very remarkable that for a long time I knew Scott thoroughly as a poet without having read a single novel by him. Having been invited by one of my school-fellows to a country house not very far from Doncaster, I was asked by the lady of the house what authors I had read, and on mentioning Scott's poems was told that he was greater as a novelist than as a poet, and that the Waverley novels were certainly his finest works. This seemed incredible to me then, the poems being so delightful that they could not possibly be surpassed. On another occasion I happened to be standing with Mr. Cape in the little chapel at Conisborough Castle, and having heard from an older school-fellow that Athelstane had died there, I asked Mr. Cape if it was true. "Yes," he answered, "if you believe Sir Walter Scott." Not having read "Ivanhoe," I was under the impression that the Athelstane in question was an historical personage.

Nothing in the retrospect of life strikes me as more astonishing than the rapid mental growth that must have taken place between the date of my father's death and its second or third anniversary. When my father died I was simply a child, though rather a precocious one, as the journal in Wales testifies; but between two and three years after that event the child had become a boy, with a keen taste for literature, which, if it had been taken advantage of by his teachers, ought to have made his education a more complete success than it ever became.

The misfortune was that the classics were not taught as literature at all, but as exercises in grammar and prosody. They were dissected by teachers who were simply lecturers on the science of language, and who had not large views even about that. Our whole attention being directed to the technicalities of the pedagogue, we did not perceive that the classic authors had produced poems which, as literature, were not inferior to those of our best English poets. So it happened that those of us who had literary tastes were content to satisfy them in reading English authors, and left them, as it were, at the door of the classroom. I worked courageously enough at the Latin books which were set before me, but never found the slightest enjoyment in them; indeed, it was only much later, and through the medium of French and Italian, that I gained some partial access to the literary beauty of Latin. As for Greek, I began it vigorously at Doncaster, but I did not get beyond the rudiments during my stay there.