Let me here remark, as a physician, that, had not my constitution been faultless, the scarlet fever would have seized on my kidneys or my heart, and have maimed me for life, allowing me, perhaps, twenty years in which to complete my survey of the world. But I passed unscathed through the ordeal, a sort of inoculation that renders one death-proof so long as it is not worth while to die. How did I get home through that long journey? In doing so I anticipated a two days’ instalment of my now near-approaching oblivion.
My recovery was rapid, and, now that I had a brother as my familiar, I was ready to set him a bad example, and to perpetrate whatever mischief our united talents could invent. Our most obvious opportunity was, after we had watched our neighbour at Heavitree sweeping his gravel walks, to throw rubbish on them over the fence, that he might have the labour in which he delighted, over again. We would then retire unseen, and, as we thought, into the security of non-detection, too young to know the value of circumstantial evidence. But the nonsense of children is little worth repeating, except to babes, and I cannot emulate those wonderful geniuses who can even turn metaphysics into fairy tales. I cannot resist giving an account of the finest ride I ever had in my life.
It was at Heavitree, where, near the churchyardand parsonage, there was a large meadow, which I and my brother often crossed on our rambles. One day we encountered a large sow there. I coaxed my way up to it, and leapt on to its back, when it started off at a tremendous gallop, needing neither whip nor spur. My seat kept safe, and I was carried round the meadow at a fabulous pace, no doubt amid gruntings the most terrific. This ride seemed to realize in me a state of existence surpassing all common pleasure; it was a taste of glory.
My leave of funereal absence, which was so soon converted into a holiday, was prolonged without difficulty on the certificate of Mr. Harris, a leading surgeon of Exeter, who was good nature itself; but he must have seen that I was malingering. I must have remained at home nearly a year. By this time I was intelligent enough to understand my mother and her history, and my brother was not behind me in that respect. She instilled into our minds a contempt for the Hake family, some of whom were in trade; but this was most unjust, for their moral tone was high, and they were a credit to the middle class. Their position in life had changed since the generation previous; but family pride had remained to them, and that is sometimes the parent of honour—if not its father, its mother at least. On the other hand, she was never tired of her own family distinction; her father and two of her brothers, the third being still a boy, had in her eyes the attributes of nobility. But all this was inthe warmth of her own imagination and love; for no one else thought so. They were respectable and respected—that was all. Those who are really great are not aware of it, for it never occupies their thoughts.
The time came for me to be returned to my owners, the masters of the school—a change that gave me neither pleasure nor pain. I cannot recall the time when I did not feel myself the subject of destiny against which I had no instinct of resistance. So amenable was I to the mastery of circumstances, that all things happened as a matter of course, and I knew no protest. When my illnesses began, I was the subject of diarrhœal disorder, and I was brutally treated. I was put into a room with a tub of cold water to cleanse my miserable self, when the boys, hearing of my wretched plight, broke in upon me with a broom, and did the work of scrubbing me. My feeling was that I must bear it; my consolation was that it would not last. Soon afterwards I was taken to the sick ward and treated with humanity.
My governor, as was called the one who gave a boy his presentation, made an attempt to have me kept in London, but I was still thought too young, and I reached Hertford again, where I remained for perhaps another year; but after theAugust holidays, I was established in the Newgate Street school.
The Wallingers had settled at Seaford, in a house on the Crouch, to which a good garden was attached, and in this my uncle plied the spade and grew vegetables. It was a gentlemanly residence, standing high and overlooking the sea.
At Seaford I spent my first holidays, and made a large acquaintance there. It was the property of the Earl of Chichester and Mr. Ellis, and it returned two members to the House of Commons at the dictation of its owners. Mr. Canning once had the honour of representing, I cannot say the borough, but the gentlemen to whom it belonged. During his proprietorship Mr. Ellis was created Lord Seaford; he afterwards succeeded to the family title of Howard de Walden.
A row of houses led from the beach up to the Crouch on the left side; opposite to this was an open field. One of these houses Mr. Ellis kept as his occasional residence. It was entirely in the French style, had a long walled garden, and was very picturesque. The man cook of this gentleman sometimes visited Seaford, and took up his abode in the family house, bringing with him his hounds and horses.
A cousin of mine, Henry Shore, who was also in the school, passed the August holidays at Seaford with our relations. His mother was the youngest of the four Miss Gordons. She married into a very considerable family, the Shores of MaresbrookPark, near Sheffield, an elder branch, of which the younger was Shore of Tapton, who took the name, afterwards, of Nightingale. He had two daughters, Florence and Penelope. The first of these, as is well known, remained single; the second married Sir Harry Verney.
It may be of interest to mention that these ladies took their names from the country of their birth, the one being born at Florence, the other at Athens.
This was my first opportunity of learning my aunt’s character, which was a very singular one. It was necessary to her that she should be the first person in her circle, wherever that lay. At Seaford she found no difficulty. It was then an obscure town with a few good families in it, among them the clergyman, the Reverend Mr. Carnegie and his wife; Mr. Verral, the surgeon, a man of great talent and skill, with his wife and children; and Captain Evans, the agent of the borough owners, whose business it was to see that the taxes were paid up, or to pay them himself, ready for an election, and never to press for rent. Then there were gentlemen farmers in the neighbourhood, a peculiar class—men of capital and education, devoted chiefly to the breeding of sheep. Every one has heard of Southdown mutton; in those days it was in plenty. Ellman of Glynde and Lord Chichester were great among its producers, and it was never killed till it was six years old. No venison equalled it in flavour, and, regrettable to say, it is now unknownin the market; if it still exists in perfection, it may be at Stanmer Park and at Glynde.
The greatest of our aunt’s accomplishments was keeping house—of all else she was ignorant in the extreme; but, by the aid of a small dictionary, she kept the spelling of her letters pretty correct, and by tact she concealed her ignorance of all human knowledge. She expected to be looked up to by her neighbours, and she required this homage of her relations, one and all. I and my cousin had to meet a heavy tax to retain her favour. She would spoil our morning by sending us on errands to her tradesmen, not in one round, but to one at a time, with a written order, which held us on the trudge up to the time of luncheon. She made us herpensionnaires, and she had the firm belief that she honoured and delighted us in thus keeping us employed. Her remaining sister, Mrs. Gwynne, lived at Denton, a village on the Newhaven side of the downs, three miles off. The Rev. William Gwynne, the husband of this lady, was the rector of the parish.
Mrs. Wallinger was very fond of this sister, who was a cautious and sentimental flatterer, and witty beyond all common measure. She was never at a loss for anecdotes of the most amusing kind. Her husband was a stout, showy man, a good talker and a lover of wine, which did not suffice him without a long double nightcap of brandy, gin, or rum. He and Captain Wallinger adapted themselvesadmirably to each other, and the two families met at each other’s table often.
There was a houseful of children at Denton Rectory, ending in five sons and two daughters, brought up without a view to education, both boys and girls. Notwithstanding this, one of the five sons became an Australian judge, and another entered the Church, though at first an M.D. Mr. Gwynne had a passion for shooting; he cared more for his dogs than for his own cubs. He was, however, a kind man, with a manner that made him appear interested in every one he met with.
As I have got so near to the remarkable family of Gwynnes, I must say a few more words about them.
Mr. Gwynne was one of six brothers and two sisters. One brother was a very artful lawyer of imposing demeanour, and was highly respected by all who did not know him.
Another brother, whose position in life—the head of the Legacy Office—was so good that all men spoke well of him, married a not good-looking Jewess. A third brother was also in the law, but the time came when he forewent his licence, perhaps owing to some irregularities in his practice; but he was the most true-hearted of the lot, and had one of the sweetest of daughters. He had a practicestill, but it was attended with certain disabilities. Two brothers remained; both attained rank in the East India Company’s service. They were, like the rest, very fine men, and, being soldiers, they were of unimpeachable honour.
Then there were two sisters, who, as is always the case in slack families, were a credit to society. These two ladies were both well settled in life.
My uncle was the most unfortunate of the family; too much for the day was the good thereof, so he allowed his affairs to drift in whatever direction they liked, and that was towards bankruptcy, of course.
He was indulgent towards his family, though perhaps a little ironical towards his wife, who would repeat all that passed concerning him with the greatest glee. After a quarrel, in which he said ill-natured things, she would say, “If that is your opinion of me, Gwynne, why did you marry me?” “My dear Henrietta,” he would reply, “it was for your present beauty and your future expectations.” And she would tell this story with fits of laughter.
These, my uncle and aunt, were frequent guests at Glynde, the residence of a Lord and Lady Hampden, who took much pleasure in Mrs. Gwynne’s society on account of her great wit.
One evening, after dinner, Lady Hampden spoke warmly in favour of one of the farmers, dwelling on his truthfulness and honesty.
“My dear Lady Hampden,” said Mrs. Gwynne,“you do not know that man; I can assure you that, with the exception of my dear husband, he is the greatest liar in the county.”
My uncle, Captain Wallinger, would sometimes drive me over to Denton, and we generally reached the parsonage in time to see a general rush of the boys from the house and premises. They were so dirty, so ill-clad and unkempt, they did not dare to face their uncle. Mr. Gwynne was seldom at home; his time was fully employed in keeping appointments with dog-fanciers, horse-dealers, gunsmiths, and the like. He allowed the parish to take care of itself, or to be cared for by the farmers or his wife; and as he preachedextempore, he had no sermons to prepare. He was very fluent, which he accounted for by saying that he looked at the congregation as he would do on a field of cabbage-stalks. I have no doubt that, when preaching to others, he was sincere, and that he preached to himself at the same time. But he was not one of those self-martyrs who annoy themselves through life with religious dogmas. Still, he was not a mere agnostic in canonicals, but true to his belief, though he did not avail himself personally of this advantage.
There was not a tree in the village, except a willow that wept over a mud pond on the roadside by the church, as some sanctified parties do over the worthless dead; yet Denton could be compared to nothing but the backwoods of a colony, so rugged an aspect did the Gwynne boys give to the place. They were the talk of the neighbourhood for milesaround. They could, nevertheless, satirize and very cleverly mock those who looked down on their doings. One or two of them, once on a visit at the Wallingers’, followed their aunt, by invitation, up to the drawing-room. She knew them of old, and while they ascended the stairs she turned round suddenly, when she met the sight she expected—one was making hideous faces at her, the other was squaring his fists at her back.
“Dear me! You seem amused,” was her only reproof; but she secretly enjoyed it, for everything was grateful to her that stamped others as her inferiors.
I was now to enter on a new life. My home was to be a monastic one, which three hundred years before had been the residence of mitred abbots. A king had expelled these from their Gothic dominion; another and a better king had given it to his children, among whom in these latter days were Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and Charles Lamb. And now I was to be there, to tread in their steps, to pace the same ancient cloisters, to catch the same earnest mood in pacing them.
The place was more like a university than a school. Four classical masters to teach us the languages of Athens and Rome; two writing-masters, who themselves wrote like copper-plate,and made us do likewise, besides teaching us figures.
Then we had playgrounds by the acre. One looking on Little Britain through lofty palisades, on which same ground were the residences of the masters and of certain dignitaries, among them that of the treasurer, always a City magnate, and to us inscrutably great. The counting-house was in the grounds, as well as the head and junior master’s houses, together with the office and house of the steward. With all these buildings, the playground was not crowded; and apart, in the large open space on the north side, stood the grammar school.
Now that the institution is to be removed, the character of the boys will change, and all its traditions end. The cloisters and garden within their quadrangle, with the monkish dormitories and other old places, have hitherto shaped the minds of the boys, and this influence will cease, and the feeling will vanish that the school owed its foundation to a king. It was in this feeling that the pride of the boys lay; it indulged them in the belief that they were superior to all other boys. They thought of their royal founder almost as if they were descended from him, and honoured their very dress from its similarity to that which the youthful sovereign himself wore.
In my time the cloisters were Gothic, as originally built; half a century ago they were reconstructed into Saxon or some other contemptible pattern, which has perpetuated the architect’s ignorance,insensibility, and bad taste up to the present. But it signifies little; all will be swept away and covered with shops, where the name of Homer will nevermore be heard. But Parliament, in sympathy with open spaces, may grant the necessary million. Not they!
But nothing was intended to last for ever, if we except—what?
The genius of the place affected me very soon, I felt myself growing into monkhood. I preferred the sombre cloister to the playground, and for that reason I often had to be alone there, not in steady thought, but under involuntary emotions which ran through me like an underground current. Then, the suggestiveness of some of the inscriptions on the walls, thus, “Here lies a benefactor, let no one move his bones.” This I used to regard as a very pathetic appeal, as if the bones were very comfortable where they were yet in constant dread of being disturbed. Had nothing been said they might have been safer from the antiquarian.
But I should mention that the first ordeal I was put through was to fight. Every boy knew whom he could fight; this was required of him for the benefit of his public. A boy named Yardley was selected to test my pugnacious powers. We were of a height, both tall, and of about the same age. We were taken into a private yard. Of fighting I knew nothing; but I had a quick eye and was quick of limb. More than this I had dramatic imagination, and to this it was that I owed my victory. Ipictured to myself a tiger springing at his prey, and with this example I leapt at my antagonist from some distance, and my fists covered his face and eyes almost before he knew that I was upon him. He had not a moment’s chance, he floundered each time that I was upon him.
This encounter was never forgotten by the boys, and I was never asked to fight again.
Theodore Watts, as he told me twenty years ago, holds the opinion that Shakespeare wrote private poetry in a separate book while composing his dramas, and that he gave such portions of it as he could make fit, to certain of his characters. He thought, if I remember aright, that the soliloquy and the dagger-scene were morsels of this sort. It certainly must strike one that “the law’s delay” and “the insolence of office” were not prominent grievances in Hamlet’s career.
When I was about eleven years old I became owner of Rowe’s “Shakespeare,” which has in it a wonderful little life of the bard. He quotes the marvellous passage beginning with—
“She never told her love,”
“She never told her love,”
“She never told her love,”
“She never told her love,”
and, as far as memory serves me, it was to declare that poetry of such exquisite beauty was not to be found in any other writer, ancient or modern. Ihave since often thought that nothing in the context fairly led up to an idea of such magnitude, and that the passage was one of Shakespeare’s interpolations. Be this as it may, it had an elevating effect on me which has lasted me for life; it gave me a sense of perfect excellence. It may appear ridiculous to say that it not only made me envious of the greatest of writers, but that it depressed me, in turn, with the feeling that I could never equal it, however long I might live!
No other writer at that time affected me similarly, except Virgil, when I came to that passage which depicts the breaking of the waves on the prow of the vessel and the receding of the cities and lands (terræque urbesque recedunt). After we reached our beds at night the boys were wont to “coze” in literary cliques round some favourite tale-teller, who would relate marvellous stories of knights and ladies, with much about genii, fairies, and witches. Though I never heard anything to that effect, I have always thought that Coleridge must have lent himself to such delights for the pleasure of others, and that “Christabel” was unconsciously an outcome of these romantic entertainments.
Many of the boys were great readers of forbidden story, and smuggled books into the school, the penalty of which, on being found out, was a flogging. The books in question were romances of enchanted castles; of beautiful young women, the prisoners of tyrants; of subterraneous passages andsolitary cells. I would give much to possess a circulating library of that day. Such a one I found at Seaford, and devoured whenever my holidays came round. The novel, as reintroduced by Plumer Ward, and imitated greedily by Bulwer and Disraeli, was then unknown.
“Tremaine,” like all new conceptions which are accordant with the average mentality of great Britons, became epidemic, and floated over the reading world as a new sensation. It was succeeded by “De Vere,” while Walter Scott was winding up the business of romance. The success of these works started a fresh “novel” epoch, now, too, worn out, only lingering till such successors as Walter Besant and Louis Stevenson are ready to sweep them from view. This is so true that it is almost a disgrace to write a novel.
It must not, however, be forgotten that Dickens fired a bomb into library shelves, and that Thackeray gave us his own character in novelistic shape.
All great things appear in epochs, which hitherto have had a limited duration. Witness the rise and fall of sculpture in Greece, of epic and drama there; of painting in Italy, beginning with Titian and Raphael as late as the sixteenth century; of music in Germany and Italy, now on the point of extinction. Poetry, too, has had its day from Shakespeare to Coleridge, and is now dead. The present is the epoch of invention, and that will die out.
Music has never been of the highest quality in a free country. The northern nations, England,America, the great Colonies, produce no musical genius; Italy and Germany have ceased to do so since they came into the enjoyment of freedom.
Science itself, now rampant, is but of an epoch. But, amid all this, religion is enduring.
Some will say, We now have the Press; that will maintain and resuscitate all that is good or beautiful! Not so; it is but of an epoch, and is alreadyblasé. It does not lead; it only “follows the leader,” as in a game played by a child.
Nothing that has been and has died out, will be revived. The skeleton, an osseous Apollo, will remain, and that is all.
These dry bones cannot live, O son of man!
The masters of the school in my time were a certain set of reverends named Rice, Lynam, and the Trollopes. I was more or less under all, none of whom were in sympathy with boys. Rice was called “cuddy,” a word in our vocabulary signifying “severe.” He beat the boys with a fury worthy of a bastard son of the Eumenides.
To see that man of the fist, rod, and cane spending his force on a little boy, now leaving the autograph of his four fingers, in red and white, on the infant’s cheek, sending him reeling half-way up the room, while the robes he wore were flungfluttering into the air, was a sight worthy of the demons, and would have made for them amatinée.
Lynam was a quiet man. He heard the boys their lessons, but never explained them. Under him I had the Greek and Latin grammars so well by heart, that, give me a week to look them over, I could repeat them now! We had to say them, year after year, but there was no teaching. When he got rid of a class he was at once at his own work, and that probably was “The Lives of the Roman Emperors,” published after his decease.
Trollope was of the neuter gender. He must have been paralyzed at some period of his life, for his articulation was jumbled; he rolled one word into another before it took sound, and he dragged a leg after him as a Scotchman would a haddock. But his father, the doctor, carried the divinity, in which he had graduated, about his person. His shovel hat, his robes, all bespoke that heavenly dandy, a dignitary of the Church Catholic and Apostolic. He looked worthy the order of the black silk pinafore.
In those days, and long after, an English clergyman dressed like a gentleman; he now wears a black livery, and he looks like a bishop’s footman, in mourning, with his master, for some dead archbishop.
The school was truly classical and nothing else, except for the teaching of “spongy” Reynolds and “hacky” Clark—the writing and arithmetic masters—the affix of this first being due to a nose which was amorphous and appeared to belong to the classPorifera, or sponges, while that of the second was due to a guttural crackling sound of the man’s voice.
To do Reynolds justice, he was not impatient, and he was painstaking with his pupils. To facilitate his arithmetical instruction he wrote two lines of verse which werenaïve—they ran thus:—
“Profit and loss accounts are plain;We debit loss and credit gain.”
“Profit and loss accounts are plain;We debit loss and credit gain.”
“Profit and loss accounts are plain;We debit loss and credit gain.”
“Profit and loss accounts are plain;
We debit loss and credit gain.”
But his supreme merit was that of substituting geographical for moral texts in our copy-books. One I remember, for small text, was, “Batavia in Java, capital of the Dutch settlements.”
Reynolds was somebody. He married his daughter to Thomas Hood, and his son was, I believe, the Reynolds of Sunday newspaper fame.
With this exception the school was purely classical; nothing whatever was taught but Greek and Latin. History, geography, English, and its grammar, were unheard of. We had to teach ourselves to read and spell, and none will dispute that the prayers before scanty meat were beautifully given by the Grecians, those head boys who proceeded to the University. Grammar we learnt only from the Greek and Latin, but it was sufficient; composition we derived from the same source, whence, perhaps, our habit of inversion, so offensive nowadays to poetic dribblers, who doat on Wordsworthy prose.
The steward of the school, who was ruler, a sort of president of the growing-up republic, namedHiggins, was an oldish man, grey-pated, with a youthful slim figure, fair skin, and a straight disciplinarian mouth. He presided at meal-time, seated at a desk on the large daïs at the upper end of the hall, like a modern Pontius Pilate. There he was, to receive criminals led to judgment by the monitors, and to flog them without mercy. He was greatly feared and, of course, greatly hated. He reminded one of a snake in his movements, which were rapid and flexible. No complaint was made to him of the boys, by beadles or monitors, but what was believed by him; he required no proof.
It was a sort of Russian system; every official, every monitor, was a spy, and the steward was the willing knout, a creature emotional as a reptile, servile as a dog, and as a cat cruel.
Nevertheless, there was one extenuating circumstance—he had a pretty daughter, with whom a friend and school-fellow of mine was in love.
I have remarked on the strictly classical character of the school; but, after all, if one learns only one good thing well, one wishes to know others, and can teach one’s self. Then, classics have another advantage: Horace alone can make a gentleman. But what is more remarkable than all the other omissions in the school is, that the boys were never, individually, taught a word of religion. When it is remembered what a powerful influence the wealth of the clergy exercises, one must pause in wonder over the fact of religious teaching being a thing unknown. Religious machinery was everywhere visible. Therewas a grand organ in the gallery at one end of the dining-hall, over the doorway; there was an organist, Mr. Glen, to accompany the hymn or psalm during the daily services before meat, consisting of a bit of Bible and a thanksgiving, the Grecians being pro-chaplains. There was a form of prayer read by any boy in the wards who was handy at bed-time, and a chapter selected at his option; but no teaching of the Scriptures or of the Church dogmas, if we may except the services at Christ Church on Sundays. There may have been such an appointment as chaplain to Christ’s Hospital; if so it was strictly honorary, and kept a profound secret.
By the way, there was some religious improvement to be derived personally through the committing of a misdemeanour, the punishment for which was the getting a chapter in the Bible by heart. I profited by this myself in a curious manner, for, being a very sensitive boy, I made a bad reader, so, when called upon to perform the evening service, I always read the chapter which I knew by heart, and that so impressively and faultlessly, that I came off with muchéclat.
I can still repeat that chapter, but no other.
Perhaps ten thousand boys have passed through the school since I bade farewell to its cloisters, but I am unable to say whether the system of non-religiousteaching has been changed. Our reverend classical masters manifested no religious tastes; it may be due to their not having imbibed any when they were pupils like ourselves in the school. I do recollect Mr. Lynam, of whom I was a pupil for several years, correcting my pronunciation ofJōb, which I calledJŏb. If we were reading something from Scripture before him, I have wholly forgotten it; the occasion must have been so rare.
What the effect of religious ignorance may have been on so many before and after me, it is difficult to surmise. I have no recollection of any boy, in after-life, becoming a bishop or a millionaire. Nature was open to them; she is constantly carrying on revelations, and all must begin with these before entertaining Divine ones. The greater our acquaintance is with natural teaching, the better we are able to judge of religious. A well-educated scientific man would decide a religious question in five minutes which would take five hundred years for all the doctors of divinity to get to the bottom of. A large knowledge of Nature is requisite even to find a meaning for any inspired passage, and it is doubtful if any divine ever had training enough to understand fully any one important passage of Holy Writ. Those men who are recognized as having undergone inspiration were never able to state lucidly what they heard, but recorded it in such shape as must for ever puzzle the brains of the priesthood. If such men as the Herschels had been made the vehicles of a revelation, it would have been expressedto the world in such tangible language as shuts out all dispute.
The advantages of knowledge derived from observations made within the sacred precincts of Nature is that there is always a revelation going on, made by a silent, invisible power that we can question without offence. But the custodes of the holy archives greatly disapprove of such proceeding. The Catholic forbids the perusal of Scripture; the Protestant the perusal of Nature; and that reverend gorilla, the agnostic, inculcates the wisdom of studying all things and learning nothing. Surely he is the missing link!
I admire the clergy as gentlemen and men of education, but the fault is that they proceed from the university to the Church, and drop science and literature out of their daily life, returning to ignorance at the same pace as they quitted it as children. The cultivated class find it impossible to converse with them on any profitable grounds.
My mother’s youngest brother was an officer of artillery, and, as adjutant, was always stationed at Woolwich. He had married the daughter of a Mr. Samuel Enderby, an oil-merchant, and a man of great wealth, living on Croom’s Hill, Greenwich, when first I knew his family, and afterwards moving to a mansion on Blackheath.
When a day’s holiday occurred, I and my cousin walked down to my uncle’s house, taking that of the Enderbys on our way. We were paid our travelling expenses both ways, though we never rode, but kept the money in our pockets, together with the heavy tips that we got at both houses.
My uncle did not attain the rank of captain, even, till middle age. Promotion in the artillery, going by rotation, was slow, and so long remained, owing to the Duke of Wellington’s narrow ideas, andbrevetat last had to be substituted for real rank.
My uncle, however, died a lieutenant-general, with a good-service pension, followed by the command of a brigade.
My son, Alfred Egmont Hake, has given a true and pleasing account of my uncle, Henry William Gordon, and his family relations, derived from information supplied by me for his “Story of Chinese Gordon,” who was one of my uncle’s younger sons.
I had a strong love for this uncle, and he reciprocated the feeling; nay, more, he always overlooked my faults, which were not a few in the eyes of those relatives who were incompetent to judge me, and expected me to play the commonplace game in life for which, unfortunately, I was wholly unqualified.
Charles Gordon’s education was military only. His rapidity of perception and combination, so conspicuous in his command of an army, were left otherwise barren; he was, therefore, unable to grasp the great truths that surround our actual being,sacrificing their beauty and enjoyment to a meaningless superstition. He had even humour of the most delicate kind, without which no man of genius is ever born, for it is the crowning faculty of man’s intellect.
As possessing a judgment myself which reaches no conclusion before passing through an unprejudiced analysis of all things great and small concerning it, I have never been able to conceive a soldier’s duties accordant with a Christian’s, or to realize such an idea as that of a man leading one army of paid assassins against another, with a love of Christ, or of his Maker, or of mankind in his heart. The fact that men offer their own lives only shows how earnest they are in the profession of shedding blood. Those of the Mahometan class might infuse religion into slaughter; but not one of the disciples or evangelists could have done it, except one.
“Rich must a hero be in superstitionWho deems ’twas God who gave him his commission.”
“Rich must a hero be in superstitionWho deems ’twas God who gave him his commission.”
“Rich must a hero be in superstitionWho deems ’twas God who gave him his commission.”
“Rich must a hero be in superstition
Who deems ’twas God who gave him his commission.”
Throughout his childhood and youth, Charles Gordon associated with soldiers. His family were of the military class; he imbibed the love of their profession. He had an acute mind, with faculties which, if trained, would have served for a philosopher; but he had not the originality that leads a man to educate himself, and to cast all falsehood out of his nature. A slight knowledge of physiology would have sufficed to root out most of his theologicalideas; but that slight knowledge, even, he did not possess; and what he most wished might be, he believed. His name is great, but his reputation will rest finally on his military genius and his many virtues.
But to return to my subject. A day’s holiday at Woolwich was a pleasant pastime. It sometimes included a visit to Greenwich Hospital, sometimes a review, and more than once a sight of Richardson’s Theatre at Greenwich Fair-time, when all that is tragical in the world was enacted with all the rant that tradition had handed down from stage to stage.
I passed my last remaining holidays with my mother at Exeter, the old dean and chapter town of the west. Exeter continues in my mind to be a mediæval city, its inhabitants a people of the middle ages. To enjoy the height of respectability it was necessary to have a visiting connection with the bishop of the diocese, and this secured the unenviable acquaintance of the dean, the Mr. Dean, the divinest of doctors, and the whole chapter, which, judging from its antecedents, owed its importance to and was in itself a mere Chapter of Accidents. To think how men, ignorant of all things save privilege and dogma, can testimonialize their fellow-citizens by means of a nodding smile! To be admitted into the close to eat mutton andred-currant jelly with the canons of the cathedral was a fortune of social rank, sufficiently ample to confer honour on the dozens who knew them. How strange is all this to minds of any magnitude! A string of minor infallibles, each the owner of dearly beloved brethren whom he condescends to despise, ruling over the pauper intellects and imaginations of a city!
Yet all these idolaters are great economists; instead of earning their own respectability, they seek to get it dirt-cheap by having it conferred upon them.
I found my mother in better circumstances; her younger uncle had died, and as he could not take his hoard away with him, he left it to be divided among his near relations, but the only one, the Rev. Robert Clarke, who bore his name, came best off; and he deserved it, not only for his own sake, but because he was already better off than most of those who profited under the will! This cousin was the kindest, the most clerically gentlemanlike of the cloth he favoured. The name of Clarke is on record at Hexham as that of liberal Church patrons.
But mediæval cities and people of the middle ages, still playing out the ancestral game, have their theatres. To that of Exeter I went to see Yates perform the part of Falstaff. I was deeply bitten by the fun, and the next day performed much of the character myself before my mother, and kept her in a continual roar of laughter.
The eminent surgeon, Mr. Shelden, was, intimes preceding, a practitioner in the place; as such he was a friend of the Gordons. He left a relict, whom my mother often took me to see—a charming lady, who knew how to make herself delightful to a child. Mr. Shelden was Professor of Anatomy at the College of Surgeons in London. In the museum of the college there is a mummy which he made, and which he called “Madame Mahogany.” It excited much curiosity at one time. On visiting the museum, I readily found it on the left of the entrance door. There is a portrait of this eminent man in the Devon and Exeter Hospital, painted by the artist from memory after Shelden’s death, and it was said to be an excellent likeness by those who remembered him.
It may interest some to know that my grandfather resided for many years at Bowhill House in St. Thomas’s. The place was purchased over his head, and made the county lunatic asylum, which purpose I believe it serves to this day.
With this place were associated some of my mother’s happiest as well as most miserable recollections. The names of those who were known to her family are still rife in the old red sandstone country, and have been distinguished in the new generation. I must mention that of Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, who was a generous-minded reformer in days when to be a radical was worse than to lead a life of blasphemy. He was the first scientific man who succeeded in condensing a gas. The one he operated on was chlorine; his results were publishedinNicholson’s Journalin the year 1809. So little interest attached to great discoveries in those days that his researches were forgotten, and Faraday long afterwards succeeded in the same work. He had never heard the name of Northmore, and published his own results as the first obtained in that direction. This I learned from Mr. Northmore himself, when I was grown up. That philosopher did not even claim his discovery when the scientific world was ringing with Faraday’s praise.
Among other friends of her youth my mother long remembered with affection her school-fellow, Ann Gifford, the daughter of a grocer in Exeter. The name was afterwards known through the brother becoming master of the rolls and obtaining a peerage as counsel for great George our king, during the prosecution of the queen.
In those days counsel were at their boldest, when Denman, who had to examine the Duke of York, could say to him in open court, “Stand forth, thou slanderer!”
I have heard say that one of the most amusing transfigurations ever produced, without a miracle, was that of Mr. Wareman Gifford, from a grocer behind the counter to the brother of a lord.
At school was laid the foundation of two lifelong friendships; one with Henry Edmondes, who afterwards was a barrister, and became deputy clerk of the peace for Middlesex during Sergeant Adams’s chairmanship—another with Hugh Worthington Statham, who proceeded to medicine, finally occupying the mastership of the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries. Edmondes was of short stature, with an intellect the better of which I have never known. He had all the humour of Charles Dickens, and, had he lived, might have proved a closer rival than Thackeray to that inimitable writer. He had advantages that Dickens never acquired; he was a scholar, well read in English, French, and Italian, as well as in classics, and was free from that silly sentimentalism which at times placed Dickens below par.
Statham, like myself, is still alive: never losing sight of theliteræ humaniores, he threw his excellent abilities into the healing art, and touched the first place in his branch of the profession. Next to my brother, he is my oldest friend. Our first meeting must have been seventy years ago.[1]
I have not yet alluded to the King’s Ward, a sort of aristocratic section of the school, in which the boys were trained for the navy. Candidates were received into it at their own option. They formed a society apart, not associating with the other boys; consequently their deeds were traditional, relating to how in times past they had been in revolt, defying their masters, escaping from the school, and, after being retaken, how they were locked up in the prison cell and tamed on bread and water.
Their studies were under a mathematical master, apart from the other boys. They were distinguished by a metal badge with some emblem upon it, which was worn by them on the left shoulder.
They were always considered a very “gallous” set, which, in the school vocabulary, signified “daring.”
I preferred my solitary walks in the cloisters to joining in the games, and this secluded habit sometimes raised a faction against me, and I had only the choice left me of yielding or of being mobbed. There was a game in which some hundreds held on to each other by the tails of their coats, while the leader determined the direction they should take by going himself the way which pleased him. I was always a candidate for the leadership, and my plan was to drag the long chain of boys through segments of circles to left and back to right; the effect of this was, by a swift and sudden turn, to throw half the boys off their legs to the ground, the hinderones coming in for the fall as the impetus given by the foremost reached them.
It appears remarkable, at first thought, that with so many hundreds one should learn the name of every boy; but it is nothing compared with what is achieved by study. Some forty years ago I had a conversation with Professor Henslow, of Cambridge, on the subject of getting names by heart. At that time there were sixty thousand plants classified. He said that a botanist would by degrees fix all these names on his memory without any effort.
A memorable group among us was that of three brothers named Leighton, a family of such beauty as can only be rarely seen. Two of them were Grecians. The eldest, James Leighton, was tall, with dark hair and complexion, and of a graceful figure. He proceeded to the university early in my time, so I saw little of him, but that little has lasted my memory for seventy years. David Leighton came next; he was of a fair complexion, with large grey eyes, with nose and lips exquisitely curved, and a countenance expressive of talent and good nature.
The Grecians might reach their twentieth year at the school, and, as men, had the advantage of their dress being made of fine cloth; it was otherwise the same as that of the boys, except that they had broad red girdles, stamped like those of the monitors. In such dress the Grecians had a truly noble appearance; one might think of them as high officials at the court of Edward the Sixth.
The youngest of the group was Frederick Leighton, my junior, and my particular friend. He had dark and refined features, with curling hair.
I met David Leighton again at Baden Baden in 1832, among the fashionable crowds from all nations. He was chaplain to the English residents of the place. I have heard nothing more of this fine family from that time to this.
I asked him what he had done at Cambridge. His answer was, that he had disgusted his whole family.
Another contemporary, one who made some figure in professional life, was Lawson Cape. As a boy he was the greediest of readers. His father brought him historical works week after week, and he devoured their contents as fast as they reached him. He was short, fair-haired, freckled, quick at reading, quick at learning, quick at looking about him. It was difficult to follow his movements, so excited were they on all occasions. I met him again at Florence, during the carnival. I saw him abroad once more at Baden Baden, after which he settled in London as an accoucheur, when I came across him for the last time.
He was related to Sir Charles Locock, and through his influence acquired an obstetric practice in town.