II.PEEP OF DAY.
Capital letter
HAVING so far established the genealogy of the author, it might be as well to bring him to the fore, and to state that on the 31st day of July, 1824, I made myentréeat Angoulême, one of the prettiest towns in France—a town now seldom visited by tourists, owing to its peculiar position on the summit of a sugar-loaf-shaped hill, almost surrounded by the river Charente—too steep for a railway. The engineers who planned the iron road in that locality avoided Angoulême, so that even in this age of progress my native town is, I may say, what it was when I left it many, many years ago—a quiet, unpretentious city, merely known by the paper mills, which afford the principal item of trade of its inhabitants. These mills, in the early part of the present century, belonged to my grandfather; and to this day the water lines on the paper manufactured at Angoulême bear the names “Laroche-Joubert,” the former family having intermarried with ours.
Earlier than it is usual now to put a youth to school, I was sent to Bordeaux, and made to plough up Latin and Greek under a most strict and overbearing taskmaster. In those days the easy hours and lazy system of education now in vogue were unknown. Strict discipline—such,indeed, as would now cause a mutiny in a penitentiary—was considered the right and proper treatment in the best regulated schools. Even Dickens has been mild in his description of scholastic comforts.
I confess that I little relished the scanty food, the corporeal punishment, and long dreary hours spent at my first school at Bordeaux.
The system of schooling now in vogue may—and I feel sure, does—bring about quite as good a result as far as education is concerned; but I still think that the discipline and hardship of the old system had its beneficial effects. I have still a strong impression of those old days, when the first bell used to wake us at 6A.M., winter and summer; ten minutes allowed to dress; marched to a trough of iced water, in winter, for ablutions; then into a cold, dreary schoolroom—each boy provided with a tallow dip to lighten the darkness of his desk—where, with fingers benumbed with cold, he had to dive into “Æsop” or “Cornelius Nepos,” translate Homer and Virgil on an empty stomach, and with heavy eye-lids, until 8 o’clock, when a slice of dry bread and very much christened milk of doubtful origin would be handed over on our way to the playground. Thus fortified we had to wait till 11 for adéjeunerà la fourchette, worse than that I have often seen placed before vagrants in the soup kitchens of Sydney or Melbourne. Such treatment, however, was “quite the thing” fifty years ago. It not only sharpened the appetite—it sharpened the “wits” of young “gentlemen.”
Being one of the youngest and smallest of boys in Mons. Worms’ school, I had to submitto the will of my seniors. The private store of our schoolmaster was in a large room on the upper floor. The skylight of our dormitories enabled us to have access to the roof, and by dint of a clothes line a small boy could readily be lowered through the chimney into this receptacle of jam pots, tinned sardines, and other delicacies.
What my elders (whoseeducationwas more advanced) conceived, I had to execute. Being lowered into the store-room to secure “goodies” for my mates seemed quite a heroic achievement. This systematic burglary we carried on for some time, until one fine evening the line snapped. I dropped into the fireplace with a crash which brought in one of the ushers. A trial—when, all attempts to make me disclose the names of my companions having proved fruitless, I was sentenced to expulsion from the school.
This scandalous beginning in the world, and ignominious exit from my first school, though very disgraceful, have not been altogether devoid of good results. I have ever since been fully impressed with several important facts—First, that burglaries in the long run don’t pay; second, that it is safer to get into a room by the door than through the chimney; third, it is always better to lower someone else after “goodies” than to be lowered one’s self; and last, though not least, that it is not safe to trust one’s body to a hemp rope. It may have been the means of keeping me from more mischief—who knows?
I, however, hailed with delight my removal to the College Bourbon in Paris, where, as a day pupil, I could enjoy the comforts of “home” when my day’s college work came to an end.
It was there that I became personally acquainted with many whose names have since become famous in French history, having for several years sat on the same form with A. Dumas (fils), Clavel, Leon Say, Phillipeaux Brénier; and, at the annual examinations, the sons of our monarch, Louis Philippe—the Ducs d’Aumale and Montpensier—schoolmates whom I had the good fortune to meet again in Paris in 1878, after many years of a rambling life in the Southern Hemisphere.
My eldest brother took it into his head to start for Australia in 1837. I was much engrossed by the fuss all our friends made with him when he left for what was then considered the confines of the world; his letters describing the voyage, his landing, and the prospects of this new world so preyed on my mind that I at once decided to follow in his tracks.
Communications, however, were not quite as frequent in those days as they are now. Instead of a thirty-five days’ passage on board a floating palace, a trip to Australia meant close imprisonment for eleven or twelve months in a wooden tub of three or four hundred tons, with hard biscuit and salt junk, and perhaps an occasional meal of tinned beef and preserved potatoes, washed down with a draught of putrid water, often doled out in very minute portions. All these were thoroughly put before me to cool down my travelling proclivities. But, on the other hand, most of the visitors at home were old shipmates of my father’s—Dumont-Durville, Laplace, Berard—all eminent French navigators, who had followed Cook and Lapeyrouse’s ships in the Pacific—so that, whilst one ear listenedto the words of caution and “Home, Sweet Home,” sung to me by the female portion of the household, the other, like gentle Desdemona’s, heard our visitors tell
Of moving accidents by flood and field;Of hair-breadth 'scapes in the imminent, deadly breach;Of being taken by the insolent foeAnd sold to slavery. . . .And of the cannibals that each other eat—The Anthropophagi— . . .In faith ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange.
Of moving accidents by flood and field;Of hair-breadth 'scapes in the imminent, deadly breach;Of being taken by the insolent foeAnd sold to slavery. . . .And of the cannibals that each other eat—The Anthropophagi— . . .In faith ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange.
Of moving accidents by flood and field;
Of hair-breadth 'scapes in the imminent, deadly breach;
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery. . . .
And of the cannibals that each other eat—
The Anthropophagi— . . .
In faith ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange.
The more welcome tales of adventures across the sea became prominent in my mind and eventually carried the day. Once my mind was set on going, I left no stone unturned to make a start. At the instigation of our sailor friends, and with their assistance, I obtained from the thenMinistre de la Marine, also a friend of my father—Admiral Duperré—a passage on board the corvette Heroine, which was going to make a voyage round the world, and,en passant, to carry to the Bay of Islands some Church ornaments and ecclesiastical garments sent by the Queen of the French—the sainted wife of Louis Phillipe—to Monseigneur Pompallier, Catholic Bishop of New Zealand.